In the opening hours of Operation Odyssey Dawn — the international military intervention in Libya that began on March 19, 2011 — Tomahawk cruise missiles struck Libyan air defense installations, radar sites, and command facilities across the country. USS Providence (SSN-719) was among the submarines that launched those missiles from the Mediterranean, contributing to the opening salvo of a campaign that was authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and executed by coalition forces from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and other NATO members. The submarine's role was the role submarines always play in such operations: invisible, precise, and decisive in the early hours when suppressing enemy air defenses made every subsequent mission possible.
The Ship
USS Providence (SSN-719) is a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, commissioned on July 27, 1985, and named for the capital of Rhode Island — the fourth U.S. Navy ship to carry that name. The Los Angeles class was the backbone of the Cold War submarine force: fast, deep-diving, and capable of conducting anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, intelligence collection, and, after the vertical launch system modifications that were added beginning in the late 1980s, land-attack strikes with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Providence was homeported at Groton, Connecticut, and throughout her service life deployed to the Atlantic and Mediterranean as part of the submarine force's sustained presence in those waters.
The Libyan Crisis
The Arab Spring of 2010-2011 swept through North Africa and the Middle East with extraordinary speed, and Libya was among the countries where the popular protests triggered a violent government response. Muammar Gaddafi's regime moved to suppress the uprising with military force, and by February and March 2011 Libyan government forces were advancing on rebel-held cities with the evident intention of conducting large-scale attacks on civilian populations. The United Nations Security Council responded with Resolution 1973, authorizing member states to take all necessary measures to protect civilians — language that, in practice, authorized a no-fly zone over Libya and the use of force to enforce it.
Operation Odyssey Dawn was the American contribution to the coalition response. On March 19, 2011, coalition forces launched the initial strikes: more than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American surface ships and submarines struck Libyan integrated air defense system targets — radar sites, surface-to-air missile batteries, command and control facilities — across the country. The objective was to suppress Libyan air defenses sufficiently to allow coalition aircraft to operate safely in Libyan airspace. Providence was among the submarines that contributed Tomahawks to those opening strikes.
The Tomahawk Mission
The Tomahawk land-attack missile is the weapon that transformed American submarines from primarily anti-submarine and anti-surface platforms into instruments of precise, long-range land attack. A submarine equipped with Tomahawks can strike targets hundreds of miles inland from a position that is effectively invisible — submerged, undetected, operating in international waters beyond the reach of any conventional response. The opening strikes of Odyssey Dawn demonstrated exactly what that capability means in practice: targets that would have required a substantial air campaign to suppress were eliminated by missiles that no Libyan defender could see coming and no Libyan defense system could intercept.
For the crew of Providence, the mission was the product of years of training executed in a matter of hours. The fire control solution, the launch sequence, the confirmation of missile away — these are procedures that submarine crews practice until they are reflexive, so that when the order comes, the execution is exact. The precision of Tomahawk strikes depends as much on the crew that prepares and launches them as on the guidance systems that steer them. Providence's crew did their part in the opening hours of a campaign that protected civilians at the cost of zero coalition casualties on the first night.
Life Aboard
A fast attack submarine on deployment in the Mediterranean is operating in a confined, heavily trafficked sea in a constant state of operational readiness. The crew — approximately 130 officers and enlisted — stand watches in rotation around the clock, maintaining the submarine's stealth, its systems, and its readiness to execute whatever mission the operational commander assigns. The nature of submarine operations means that most of what the crew does is invisible to the public and classified in its details: they were there, they did what they were trained to do, and the results were delivered on target. That is the submarine story, and it is enough.
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Legacy
USS Providence was decommissioned on September 30, 2016, after thirty-one years of active service. Her 2011 Odyssey Dawn deployment represents the Los Angeles class doing what it was built to do in the post-Cold War era: projecting precise, decisive power at long range, from a position of stealth, in support of a coalition operation that required speed and surprise in its opening hours. The sailors who launched those Tomahawks and the crew who kept the boat ready did their jobs without recognition at the time. That has always been the submarine way.