Since its beginning, the U. S. Navy has been responsible for the protection of U. S. merchant shipping. The threats to commerce at sea, and the means of protection against these threats, have changed greatly over the years. But, the one organization whose only purpose is that of commerce protection—the Naval Control of Shipping Organization—seems not to have taken sufficient account of these changes.
Moreover, the nature of certain operational factors has led to a separation between Fleet action and merchant vessel protection and, whatever else this dichotomy may have accomplished in a beneficial sense, it has adversely affected the development of commerce protection doctrines.
For example, substantial disparities exist between the strategic and tactical facts available and the attitudes and doctrines now expressed by the Navy for shipping protection. We would be deluding ourselves if we thought the NCSO, in concept and in practice, could now do what we would want it to do.
The United States, a new kind of great power, has disavowed territorial aggrandizement. In foreclosing ourselves from securing colonies overseas, we Americans forfeit bases, resources, and geographical position, which otherwise would be available for the projection of military and naval power. Since we are a two-ocean nation, and since these oceans are no longer a defense but a danger, we must assure ourselves that whatever power we want to project overseas can in fact be projected. The only way to do this for any considerable period is by sea, particularly if economic power figures importantly.
Maritime trade is vital not only for our economic survival but for our defense as well. If our overseas bases are temporary and subject to the will or whim of host countries, we must have the capacity to project our maritime power from our own shores. As a corollary, maintenance of our position as a world power without reliance on traditional uses of military power, at least at levels below that of nuclear deterrence, requires that we possess a viable and safe merchant marine.
This need has been shown in the Vietnam war, and it is probable that these demands will be equally great in any future extensive war we may be required to fight anywhere. Airlift capability requires preplacement of fuel supplies, fixed bases, and numerous aircraft. Three hundred sorties by our C-5A aircraft would be needed to match the carrying capacity of one fully-automated cargo vessel. If this is the case, do airlifts really save time, especially if large military units and their associated gear have to be moved?
A strong merchant marine can have substantial strategic and tactical impact, in addition to purely economic effects, by enmeshing nations and economies into the free enterprise system. In fact, it seems probable that the Russians have already perceived the sense of this argument and have acted upon it, in their own way.
If the United States were to engage in any protracted war overseas, movement by ship of nearly all men and war material would be necessary; and the duty to protect and control those ships would be equally obvious. Whether the Navy has recognized the added significance of commerce protection and is prepared to fulfill this mission are important questions. It is particularly important at a time when our entire merchant marine policy is undergoing critical re-examination.
NCS tradition extends back to the British, Dutch, and French wars of the 18th century, the convoys of World War I, and their more complex counterparts of World War II. The present U. S. organization was developed during the Korean conflict, but it has not been tested in war. Its adoption took place in what can fairly be called a different strategic environment and depended heavily on the state of the U. S. merchant marine at that time. There is good reason for believing that what was appropriate then is not appropriate now.
The present NCS organization is designed to ensure the safe and timely arrival of merchant shipping in support of military forces and civilian populations; and to provide an uninterrupted traffic in strategic materials. Commanders of the ASW Forces, Atlantic and Pacific, are responsible for the day-to-day execution of shipping control policy. About a dozen Operational Control Authorities have been created and are responsible for control and protection in various oceanic areas. For example, the Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier, is the OCA responsible for such activities along the east coast of the United States. Below that level are a number of NCS officers who are located in major commercial ports. These NCS officers are responsible for control of shipping, e.g., reporting ships ready to sail, arrivals and departures, organizing convoys, and liaison with civilian port authorities. The NCS officer has neither authority nor responsibility for protection of shipping at sea, these powers residing at the OCA level. The OCA determines how and when ships will sail and the routes they will follow, as well as arranging for provision of escorts.
Linking OCAs and NCS officers at home and abroad, as well as the numerous Reporting Officers—whose primary duty is to relay shipping information—is a formal message system that, ideally, supplies all required shipping information to users. When we recognize that as many as 10,000 ships could come under Allied shipping control, one can appreciate the potential volume of message traffic.
Viewed operationally, the shipping control organization moves merchant vessels, either independently or in convoy, under either close or distant protective support, between designated ports. Where the intention is to employ convoys, the system currently envisages formations and underway communications which are essentially unchanged since World War II. Factors then taken into consideration in developing convoy doctrine were merchant ship design and characteristics, communications limitations, and the capabilities of both friendly protective forces and enemy offensive forces.
Quite a lot has happened in the last 20 years. Substantive technological changes, not yet generally perceived in their effects upon commerce protection and control, have occurred. Among them are the vast improvement in sonar and radar propagation, the advent of electronic data processing, the solution of complex problems by computer, and a virtual revolution in merchant ship design. Conceptual and technological issues combine to create a gap between what is and what could be achieved in this vital area.
The conceptual issues. Because the protection of merchant shipping is basically provided at sea, and because control is essentially shore-based, it is easy to see why there is in practice a tendency to separate the two ideas. It is not uncommon for peacetime convoy exercises to be conducted without significant participation by shore-based NCS officers. These CONVEXes provide training for ASW forces escorting naval auxiliaries. Generally, however, the related facilities of the shorebased control organization are slighted. Conversely, the U. S. and NATO Command Post Exercises conducted annually are concerned almost entirely with the production and processing of message traffic and some few sailing folders. Simulation is frequently carried to a degree that prevents an appreciation of the complexity of all the problems involved. Only through integrated exercises could a rational evaluation be made. Control and protection do not hang separately; they hang together.
Another conceptual difficulty is that shipping protection and control have been traditionally regarded as components of ASW. This may have been true 20 years ago. Today, surface ship, land-based, or airborne weapons could as easily be deployed against merchant vessels as any submarine. The attractiveness of the U. S. merchant trade as a target cannot be denied. It would be worth considering whether we are needlessly limiting ourselves and impeding problem-solving by regarding shipping protection and control as solely an ASW mission. Freeing ourselves from this notion might result in strategic targets being assigned different priorities. Should the Navy alone be charged with commerce protection, or would a combined service effort under Navy control be more effectively mobilized for the defense of this trade? Or would it be enough to restate the missions of the antisubmarine force commanders as a way of focusing attention on the subject?
Finally, an equally important conceptual issue is the question of the Navy’s view of how much of the oceans it wants to control and what this implies for the merchant marine. If the Navy intends physical control of most of the major shipping routes, this spells out one set of attitudes for the merchant marine; but those attitudes obviously would change if the Navy had other intentions.
For example, a “sanitized lane” concept in which shipping would be directed along a sea corridor might imply the need to provide independently-sailed merchant ships, with some integral defensive capability for those occasions when weather or equipment failures reduced the quality of protection. On the other hand, if naval forces are concentrated in areas that become "moving havens” through which the ships progress, the constancy of protection afforded the merchant shipping lessens its need for such defense.
The technological issues. Vast technological improvement in sonar and radar propagation permits detection at ranges much greater than in the past. There are several implications to these advances. If the range at which a submarine can detect a vessel is as great or greater than the range of radar and radio emissions from merchant ships in convoy formation, it may no longer be necessary to impose conditions of radio and radar silence while at sea. This freedom may allow the use of more complex and varied formations not otherwise practical. Advantage would also be gained in letting convoy formations be changed at sea in response to varying enemy threats. Current doctrine does not provide for such adjustment after the convoy departs.
Electronic data processing has many possible applications to shipping control. The demand for an enormous number of discrete pieces of information by nearly everyone involved in shipping control, including the civilian shipping authorities, is a natural basis for this service. Items of particular concern are harbor facilities, anchorage capacities and locations; tug, towing, and salvage capabilities; and ship characteristics such as tonnage, speed, draft, communications gear, passenger accommodations, and heavy lift capabilities. These and many other items lend themselves readily to processing by electronic means. Since the data change frequently and require continuous updating, a regular information service to users would be more timely and accurate. It need not be provided on a real-time basis at the outset; but it is not hard to imagine that in the near future real-time reporting in many areas throughout the Navy will be commonplace. Such reporting of shipping control matters would be invaluable.
Electronic data processing is not all that computers can do. Shipping protection is a particularly apt subject for the use of computers. In the current state of the art, computers can be used to solve problems such as choice of convoy formations, routes, and escorts, taking into account numerous variables such as recent intelligence, meteorological information, operational availabilities and constraints, and enemy capabilities. In an era of high merchant ship speed and fast turn-around time in port, the need for quick decisions becomes greater than before. Even so, the principal advantage to be gained from computer problem-solving is the ability to consider explicitly many relevant variables in a rational framework.
Technology has already produced revolutionary advances in the merchant marine. If the labor problems now afflicting the industry can be overcome, these changes will doubtless accelerate tremendously. Chief among them are gigantism in ship-building, and containerization in cargo-handling. Future convoying will be strongly influenced by the advent of supertankers and container ships. The supertankers are becoming extremely attractive targets for nuclear weapons employed at sea. One of the greatest problems will be to provide the port and harbor facilities they require. Considering that the number of these vessels is growing, that the draft of an existing 312,000-d.w.-ton vessel is 79 feet, that ship population continues to grow despite the increase in ship size, that existing facilities—loading, unloading, and storage—are generally quite unsuitable for container ships and gigantic vessels, it is clear that very serious thinking should be given to the role of the merchant marine as a user, and the relationship between the merchant marine and the Navy. It may be necessary to engage in wholesale reordering of port facilities, or the creation of new ports or offshore loading and unloading platforms. A related problem is the relative speed with which supertankers and container ships can be turned around. If such vessels cannot be moved in and out of berths quickly and efficiently, problems of safe anchorages, congestion, exposure to weather or enemy action, and ultimate movement beyond ports are made more complex and difficult. In the case of supertankers, we are already experiencing the problem which size alone compels in the choice of routes, especially in the Indian Ocean where Russian activities threaten our presence.
The speed and turnaround time of container ships may subject them cumulatively to more exposure to enemy attack than other vessels, unless they are held back to accommodate slower ships, in which event, their advantage as a fast means of transport will be lost.
A supertanker can be so large that one of them equals an entire World War II convoy in carrying capacity. Their size requires considerable sea room for almost every evolution. Could convoy doctrine of World War II successfully be applied to them? Probably not.
There is little evidence that doctrine has been modified to take account of these changes. Other changes may make the shipping control problem easier, since automation and standardization of merchant ship construction might permit a smaller manpower pool for manning ships and both rapidity and flexibility in assignment of men and ships.
These matters are not the primary responsibility of the Naval Control of Shipping Organization, but they are bound up in shipping control. The need for the closest co-ordination among the various agencies concerned in the proper husbanding of merchant ships should be obvious, especially when one recalls the number of ships involved, the many ports, the enormous cargo requirements, our extensive and exposed coastlines, and the essential joint venture aspects between the Navy and the merchant marine during convoying evolutions.
The issues relating to naval shipping control and protection are complex and, if anything, growing in urgency. All these problems are symptomatic of a general systemic deficiency—too little attention paid to a vital problem. To a great extent, they call for concerted action by the Navy, the merchant marine, the Maritime Administration, and the Congress.
The Navy ought to re-examine the command relationships of the NCS organization and develop doctrine to meet changed conditions. For example, NCS is generally a collateral duty, poorly understood by the officers assigned, whose primary duties rightly demand their attention. The commands now responsible for NCS as an operational function should also have the responsibility for the training of those Reserve officers who will fill almost all the billets, afloat and ashore, in the event of mobilization. Past doctrine took into account shipping control and protection only in terms of general war. The time has come for the Navy to provide doctrine that deals with limited war and contingency situations. One might profitably think in terms of area mobilization, such as WestPac, rather than general mobilization. Similarly, reducing the number of peacetime NCS offices by deleting minor ports might improve efficiency; the resulting concentration of NCS officers in major ports might provide the requisite quality of training and experience not available in today’s organization.
Despite all the technological changes that are occurring in the field of shipping control and protection, one must recognize the ultimate failure of the merchant marine to participate in its own defense. One has cause to wonder whether the merchant marine is able to do so and whether its nearly complete reliance on someone else to do the job is justified. What is suggested is not merely that merchant vessels arm themselves, but that many opportunities exist for a greater commitment from the merchant marine for its own defense. For example, does today’s merchant marine captain know what the Navy may expect of him? Is there any reason for believing that all our merchant marine officers, in fact, are as familiar with control and protection of shipping as they ought to be? The Argentine Navy requires their merchant ship officers to take an NCS course—it receives the same emphasis as, for example, the course in radar—in order to retain their licenses. U. S. shipping companies appear indifferent to these problems, perhaps because they have not been shown good reason to deal with them. Whatever experience was gained in World War II has now either been lost or forgotten.
Some areas that call for a greater response from the merchant marine are in structural alterations and communications. Ship construction not only can provide gun platforms, but also helicopter landing platforms. Helicopters fitted with sonobuoys could be used as an effective defense mechanism in consort with naval escorts. Likewise, the installation of compact, high-speed communications equipment capable of sending instantaneous ship positions in case of attack would seriously impair the ability of commerce raiders to operate without detection. As a general observation, the Navy and merchant marine should act as a team in the development and reporting of changes in merchant vessel design and characteristics associated with defense.
The link between the merchant marine and the Navy has already been established by the granting of Naval Reserve commissions to Merchant Marine Academy graduates. In the interest of continuing professional development the merchant marine should jointly examine matters of mutual interest. One way to do this in relation to shipping control would be to adopt the Argentine method or to provide a well-designed self- instruction program by correspondence course for merchant marine officers, laying particular stress on the potential contributions they can make to defense onboard ship or within individual shipping companies. It might be possible to grant these officers pay and retirement credit for such training, or to invite their participation in NCS courses taught by the Navy. In addition, their experience in the maritime trade of the nation might have a beneficial effect on the development of shipping control doctrine by the Navy. Their knowledge and experience could provide valuable inputs to topics such as port and harbor facilities, piloting, navigational information, traffic patterns and routes.
The present complacency on the part of the merchant marine is ill-founded, and the lack of any participation in its own defense is obviously self-destructive, especially when it is capable of much more. Our merchant marine might lay better claim to those subsidies and grants which it now so earnestly seeks from the government if it were to recognize more fully its value as a strategic weapon and to communicate more effectively its part in the national well-being.
The Maritime Administration has given no substantive attention to the serious problem of co-ordinated civil and military defense efforts with respect to merchant vessels. It is the likely candidate to be the National Shipping Authority or to provide the nucleus of any War Shipping Administration in the event of war.
The British Ministry of Transport has taken part in NATO shipping control exercises with good effect for both civil and naval participants. The Maritime Administration, however, has never participated in any U. S. or NATO shipping control exercise and there is no evidence that it has recognized its mobilization responsibilities in any way. Providing names and putative billets in a National Defense Executive Reserve is mere tokenism.
The Congress is probably the one organization that could bring about the necessary co-operation and changes in the merchant marine and Maritime Administration which are necessary if the Navy’s efforts for shipping protection and control are to be as effective as possible. Ship construction and operating subsidies, as well as requirements for qualification of officers for licensing, should be used aggressively so that the defense needs of the merchant marine are met simultaneously with other goals relating to a viable merchant marine. Congress is also a key participant because the problems suggest that their solution may depend on a substantial funding, not merely paper changes, or attitude changes, or even organizational changes—although these are essential to the argument—but dollar and resource allocation changes.
Naval protection and control of shipping involve considerably more than convoying, which in itself is not a menial or unworthy task. The Navy, employed as a strategic and tactical weapon, provides, among other things, the environment within which the national merchant marine may safely operate. But it must be recognized that this trade is also an economic and strategic weapon that can be properly directed toward accomplishing national objectives in peace or war at the behest of industry or the government. All who serve in the Navy, afloat and ashore, should possess a full awareness of these considerations and the contribution which the Navy is called upon to make in defense of merchant shipping.