DiGar -- A Crappy Place To Do A Crew Swap

When the Navy announced they were converting the four oldest Ohio-class SSBNs to Tomahawk-missile carrying SSGNs, a lot of the discussion I heard was whether or not they were going to do overseas crew swaps -- places like Guam, La Maddalena, and Diego Garcia were discussed.

Now, I've never done a crew swap, and I've only done a few PERSTRANS evolutions out of DiGar, but I've heard some stories, and it seems to me that Diego Garcia would be one of the places that submarine crews would least like to swap crews. Nevertheless, it appears that they'll be doing that within a few years, since the Navy just awarded a contract for SSGN Support Facilities in DiGar. While perhaps undesirable from a creature-comfort point of view, there's no doubt that having such a facility makes a lot of military sense -- the Arabian Sea is one of the two areas (along with the Yellow Sea / East China Sea area) that we're most likely to need our SSGNs for the foreseeable future.

A left-leaning British newspaper printed an article about the news that, in addition to some standard anti-U.S. fearmonger, has some surprisingly interesting points. It's worth a read.