By Cmdr. Timothy P. Hagan, USN

If we have a submarine casualty, national boundaries vanish. Rear Adm. John B. Padgett III, USN Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet

A Japanese sailor emerges from the U.S. Navy Submarine Rescue Chamber after a practice rescue from a submerged submarine during exercise PACIFIC REACH hosted by Singapore.

Submarine operating navies of the Asia-Pacific region face a daunting problem if they ever confront a situa-tion where one of their submarines and crew is unable to surface. With the Russian Navy’s Kursk submarine tragedy of August 2000 still fresh in memories, submariners from regional navies gathered at two events to increase regional cooperation in submarine search and rescue operations.

The short time available to conduct rescue operations creates a need to plan and practice with regional partners to bring all available assets to the scene of the accident without delay. Rear Adm. John Padgett, Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, summarized this view, saying, "If we have a submarine casualty, national boundaries vanish."

The two multinational submarine rescue events were Exercise PACIFIC REACH 2000 and the Inaugural Asia-Pacific Submarine Conference. The exercise and conference provided inter-national members of the normally tight-lipped "Silent Service" a chance to exchange ideas and operate together to improve cooperation and interoperability should a submarine rescue operation ever become necessary in the Pacific. The first event was the exercise.