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they often cannot see. Hence sensor deception is an essential part of C3 warfare.
It is a common complaint that the ships remaining from World War II programs (e.g., the TRAM Gearings) are somehow “tougher” or more “warlike” than are their successors; and it seems to many observers a poor excuse to credit keener radars and sonars with this change in apparent emphasis. An only slightly ksS obvious shift since World War II can be seen in the distribution of funds and personnel within navies as a whole; we find the shore establishment growing at the expense of the fleet, and a good part of that growth goes into electronic devices, such as satellites and SOSUS-
It seems, therefore, worthwhile to examine the rela' tion between C3, including surveillance, and the corn' bat efficiency of individual ships and of fleets as a whole; to evaluate the judgment that too often elet' tronic frills have displaced serious weapons, or that means of reconnaissance and communication have grown excessively to the detriment of the ability t0
Preceding pages: A comer of Combat Information Center aboard the John F. Kennedy (CV 67) during a quiet moment. In battle those who command must be in some such place for, without immediate information, without immediate communications, “control" will be a meaningless word and weapons impotent instruments. Clearly the electronic duel must be won, or at least not lost, before the time comes to launch weapons.
1?robably the most striking development in naval technology since 1945 has been the progressive displacement of weapons by sensors and command/control devices. In this account sensors will be lumped with command, control, and communication systems under the umbrella term “C3.” This term is valuable because it emphasizes the unity of a system of command and control links informed by sensors (which last “communicate” with the environment beyond the C3 system). What counts is not a haphazard collection of radios, radars, sonars, satellites, and computers, but rather the entity growing out of all of them, that is, not three “Cs” which are slightly related, but one C3 which encompasses all. In fact, C3 did not spring into existence at one bound, and many of the examples which follow suggest that different pieces grew quite separately. But what does matter is that fleet effectiveness has often grown just as the three Cs have become more closely wedded, i.e., just as integration of disparate fleet elements has proceeded.
If in fact integration, the linking of physically disparate fleet elements, is the key to the efficiency of modern navies, then C3 warfare is the attempt to disable those navies by breaking links or by so distorting sensor inputs as to reverse the effect of the linkage. What long range communications have given fleet commanders is the ability to use sensors quite distant from their ships to direct weapons, the effects of which
make intelligent use of those means.
In what follows, we include under C3 a series 0 layers of sensors and communication links extending outward from a weapon aboard a ship to mechanism5 whose effect covers an entire fleet. What all of thes^ layers have in common is that they enhance the effect o the unit by allowing it to act in concert with othef units. Thus the characteristic of a C3-oriented fleet |S the emphasis on the links between the individual plat' forms, some of them carrying mainly weapons an others mainly sensors. C3-oriented tactics might envi5' age several widely separated ships firing missiles i(i concert at a target on the basis of information provide by an airplane or satellite or by some sensor ashore-
As electronics has developed, C3 and surveillam1' systems have become inseparable from the weapons. ^ a practical sense the growth in C3 and sensors suggest that the definition of suitable targets within an enem) force may change drastically. Attacks, including sue non-material “attacks” as jamming and deception, °n enemy C3 links and on enemy sensors may often retufn far higher dividends than more classical attacks °n enemy weapons and weapon platforms. In the past tHe former class of attacks have often been characterized a5 leading to “soft” rather than “hard” kills and somehu'' as intrinsically unsatisfactory. Consequently consi erations of C3 warfare have often been relegated 11 specialists while the great mass of weapon and platfor^1 ODerators have concentrated their attention on har
kill tactics and weapons.
A more profound appreciation of the significant and character of modern C3-dominated military forc'C may therefore prove useful, especially since, as we sha see, the Soviet threat to U.S. forces is particular1
system
more expensive and more visible as it has be-
more capable. Another very important effect of
n0t uS ^auncher. Similarly, deception and ECM have eaSjere charm of direct attack, and so it is always t0 spend money on “offensive” weapons than
Enu 8ear’ f°r pass've sensing of enemy signals, as distinguished
sejateJy dependent upon C3 and a wide variety of
ESM (panCl SUC^ m°dern sensors as radar, sonar, and ternectronic Support Measures)* are part of a sys- * ° which offensive weapons are only the most ness e ^art' ProPer evaluation of fleet effective- terr^ a&amst the threats we face is then in system neS' ^act these system aspects are not so much t , as traditionally understated; the effect of modern s00 °§y ‘s to make the non-weapon part of the
tome
jy. 1 r**^*Vt iiuvanvi v\.Ljr impui lain uiiuci Ul
of h rn technol°gy's to make links among elements eff eSe systems> especially distant elements, more act Ct'Ve’ so t*lat those elements can be designed to for ^ 3 more coherent, hence more effectively rein- tnent manner' such a situation individual ele- f°teb may seem far less impressive than their £ai CarS’ ^et c^e system as a whole may actually enormously in impact.
less SOrne Ways this dispersed system can also be far appaVu^nerahle to attack than a close-knit force of Platfrently more survivable units: sensors and weapon are °rrns can he made redundant; and even if they the n0t ^!£hly so, the distance between elements of dam S^.Stem makes single attacks relatively less in k-ln^' ^uch a philosophy is realistic in a world djs , only a few hits may disable large units: 0n ^Sl0n may he the only useful passive defense, at a C 0t^er hand, a commander relying on a sensor rtjergreat distance from himself is to a degree at the s0r. 7 anyone who can deceive or destroy that sen- disr e .^as no direct, e.g., visual, backup. And any force^ communication within the dispersed Whican destroy the mutual reinforcement from eXtet^le efficiency of the force follows. To some c0mnt rhe hey vulnerability of the dispersed force belts communication links, where formerly it 1 have been the physical survivability of the destr' °nCe ^aS heen broken, the physical
Th Ctl°n the force may be easy. inte>C r°^e telecommunications in accomplishing he L^rat’°n suggests, then, that in some cases it may tra ietter t0 attack C3 links than to try to strike more chart,0nal types of targets. Often such an attack is tj0riaj teri2ed as less aggressive than more conven- sjie °nes; to jam the control link of a Soviet mis- sjfjj, fems far less meaningful, somehow, than to
‘ntei
r°tti ^ 1 _ . _ _
’ W^*ch is Electronic Counter-Measures such as jamming.
on “defensive ECM.” Such a description, however, may often run afoul of the integrated character of the enemy’s fleet.
The successive levels of C3/sensors extend outward from rudimentary fire control gear to ocean-wide surveillance systems. Each is marked by a further order of integration, that is, by an increased order of coherence between apparently disparate, yet mutually supporting mechanisms or units.
The sense of C3 integration can best be appreciated by examining the role of C3 at various levels, from control of shipboard weapons through the relationship between one ship’s weapons and her onboard sensors, to fleet command and control, and finally to the relation between fleet operations and ocean surveillance. The thread of increasing coherence based on wider-scale communications and sensors runs through all of these examples; and each shows a vulnerability to attack oriented towards C3 links rather than towards more traditional targets.
The earliest modern C3 system was that used for fire control in an individual ship; it is the earliest case of ambiguity in distinguishing teeth and C3/ sensor “tail.” At first blush the teeth are what a warship is about, what it uses to attack its primary targets: other ships, aircraft, and shore positions. It would seem to follow that one warship can be rated against another according to number of guns, missiles, and torpedoes; and one navy against another in a similar way. However, in fact it has been a very long time since so simple a comparison has made much sense. For over half a century it has been well appreciated that weapons are not much better than their fire control systems. In a gun-armed warship, then, it might be realistic to combine with the number of guns some evaluation of the system of fire control—directors, computers, and internal communications.
Indeed, in both of the major World War II actions against German battleships, {Bismarck and Scharnhorst) what disabled their main batteries (in effect) was hits on vital fire control positions high in the ships. In effect secondary damage was quite enough to negate their well-protected offensive batteries. Their weapon systems had been struck at a weak point, instead of at the more obvious point represented by the guns themselves. In fact it was a great irony of many battleship designs that the system as a whole could not be protected properly because of the need to mount range finders high on the ship, in light-weight positions. Surely this problem corresponds in part to current complaints of the vulnerability of electronics to attack by fragmentation weapons.
of
noughts in the mid-1920s the Navy traded one
Fire control gear depended delicately upon the advance of communication technology which allowed better integration. That is, after about 1910 it became common in all the major navies for gunfire to be controlled from centralized positions. As ranges increased, it became important for calculations of target motion to be carried out continuously, and the results of such computation fed to the guns. An often unappreciated development was the internal communication gear tying observers to computer to guns. This was no simple matter; telephones, for example, could not transmit enough data fast enough, and special means had to be devised to display numbers (for example, angles of elevation) at gun positions.
These communication links were unobtrusive, and indeed most of them were inside a ship. But the vulnerability associated with them was well understood, and throughout the battleship period major attention was paid the protection of fire control wiring.
There was, however, one visible element of die system, at least in some navies: spotter aircraft. Most modern publications lump together spotters an scouts, but that is misleading. The spotters were, tn effect, remote elements of the battleship weapon syS' tern, essential for fire over the horizon or indeed over obstacles. The need for such aircraft was recognize early. Thus in reconstructing its six oldest dread
easiest way to attack the system would be to strike a its flimsy appendages, the aircraft and their rad'1 links. In such a context jamming becomes an ant1 fire control measure, just as later would be the cas^ with fire control radars. An element of perception 0 this vulnerability was the effort to provide each bac tleship with no fewer than three aircraft.
Incidentally, cruiser aircraft were not always sp°b ters: they were often scouts, extending the range 0 vision of the scouting cruiser. American cruisers 0 the interwar period paid a high constructional pr‘c<j for their scouting aircraft, in the form of enclose
the two elevated fire-control positions for a catapult- Air spotting was possible only because of the success of aircraft-to-ship radio, that is, only because it0' proved communication made better system integration possible. Once more, note that probably
lere were more subtle effects as well. For exam-
Pie
angar stowage. Even the appearance of carriers in nurnbers did not completely negate the need for ^cout planes, since cruisers had always been expected operate independently some fraction of the time, nor to World War II scout aircraft were the only ^a)°r physical manifestation of the next element of naval weapon system problem: the detection of enemy at which all of the fire control gear would Point. This problem was often unrecognized because was the province of lookouts, who took up little ^Pace and certainly made no great demands for re- tecjCtl°n 'n weaPons—in contrast, it must be admit> to the scout aircraft of cruisers. Radar, however, another matter. It was universal; and radar sys- demanded substantial space and weight allow- nces, especially as detection ranges were pressed ner and hence power loadings rose. Sacrifices in j^apons became necessary; for example, in 1945 two half0 deStr°yers traded one bank of torpedo tubes, their main offensive battery, for a specialized . ar- In fact this particular radar showed system ^plications, since it was to be used to control fight- j °Perating from a distant carrier. The carrier plus th -deStroyers forrned a more effective system than carrier (with its onboard sensors) alone, and the ganization as a whole gained in offensive power Pared to the carrier plus torpedo-armed destroyers.
The
> m many classes, radar and advanced fire control r required large electrical power plants, which in n required more fuel oil—and less of other loads, n as AA ammunition. An increasing mass of elec- ICs also restricted arcs of fire and even preempted ferwise ideal gun positions. There were also top- j 'gnt problems, particularly because of the very r8e stabilized fighter control radars installed in 1Sers and battleships in 1945; and some weapons ro be removed as compensation. One might be Pted, then, to suppose that somehow radar in- ations conflicted with weapons, that is, with the a'n mission of a ship; but that could hardly be the t ^ Rather, radar, fire control, and gun would have to e envisa«ed as elements °f a weapon system tied gcther by increasingly complex communications W,th<n the ship.
the same time increasingly efficient radio sys- s presented the possibility that two or more ships I 8ht be linked as parts of the same weapon system, k effect, some of the wiring within one ship might k rePlaced by ship-to-ship data links. This is the °f the present Naval Tactical Data System |. ^S), which consists of shipboard computers
ea by wiring to a ship’s sensors and by radio data
links to other ships in a formation, as well as to aircraft such as the E-2. The effect of the NTDS system is to allow weapons aboard one ship to be operated on the basis of information from another ship’s sensors. This goes far beyond the usual cooperation of ships in formation. In fact, NTDS carries with it the possibility that sensors aboard different ships will mutually reinforce, so that their effective ranges will increase greatly.
For example, at a given range, a single sonar may have a 30 percent probability of detecting a submarine. Two independent sonars have a net detection probability of 51 percent; three, of over 65 percent. In effect a single ship with three identical but separate sonars would have a net probability of detection of 65 percent. The effect of automated data exchange and combination is to give each of three ships a picture equivalent to that of one ship with all of their sensors—in this case, with all three sonars. Similarly, NTDS automates the exchange of radar data among several ships, each of which can see targets over the others’ horizons. A similar effect might have been achieved simply by reporting back and forth; but NTDS plots automatically what all the linked ships see, so that commanders can make sense instantly of a developing situation. Given NTDS, then, a group of ships functions nearly as a single ship in multiple hulls.
As it happens, the origin of NTDS was humbler than the foregoing suggests, and indeed closely related to the internal ship system problems already raised. Toward the end of World War II mass Kamikaze attacks raised serious problems of the allocation of AA resources among large numbers of incoming attackers. The sheer volume of fire available would be of little avail were it to be directed at one Kamikaze while others penetrated freely. This is a system problem: brain vs. fist, as it were. In 1945 the main future prospect was an automated Kamikaze, which about a decade later began to materialize as a series of Soviet air-to-surface missiles. An attack by such weapons might well develop too fast for C1C personnel to track by hand.
The demand, then, was for an automated CIC, which could present to a ship’s commanding officer a coherent picture of an incoming attack, and by means of which he could allocate defensive resources rapidly. In fact, of course, the problem was task force rather than single-ship defense, and the system required would tie together the radars of AEW aircraft, picket ships, and carriers, and would control defending missiles and interceptors.
This problem was really a universal consequence of the emergence of high-performance aircraft, the pen-
a
etration of small numbers of which could have catastrophic effects. This had always been true to some extent at sea: the Pacific Fleet, for example, lost the carrier Princeton to a single bomb hit at Leyte Gulf and a few months later off Japan nearly lost the Franklin to a lone bomber which got through the defenses. An analogous situation on land was brought about by the introduction of nuclear weapons; and this threat led to the construction of the immense SAGE system, in which dozens of radars were tied by telephone lines to central computer centers, which in turn controlled interceptor aircraft and long-range air defense missiles. The major functions of the computers were, first, merely to present to a commander a coherent picture of a developing raid; and, second, to optimize the vectoring of aircraft and missiles to meet it. The NTDS technology appeared when attempts were made to link ocean picket ships such as DERs to SAGE.
Note that NTDS combines the coordination of systems aboard several ships with a central command exercised aboard one of them. The system enhances the effect of sensors aboard different platforms; and it improves the defense of the force as a whole. Such a system is practical only because of the existence of efficient data links coupled with effective processors of the data transmitted, so that it can be used as the basis of decision.
The next step might have been transfer of the commanding brain to an invulnerable point ashore, or at least remote from the battle. In the U.S. Navy little would have been gained thereby; U.S. fleets are concentrated geographically into task forces and task groups because their ships mutually support one another that way: carriers provide offensive (and much defensive) power and can make use of the sensor data and defensive weapons of their consorts. As we shall see, however, Soviet practice has been based on the use of individual surface ships, submarines, and aircraft as offensive weapon platforms, controlled by a central brain ashore. The difference, as we shall see, is largely a matter of strategic functions.
Thus far we have been largely concerned with a single ship. However, for centuries naval commanders have understood the value of concentration, the reinforcement of one ship by others. The result is a fleet; and a major problem in passing from individual ships to a coherent fleet has always been the means by which a fleet commander can hope to impose order upon his assembly of ships. Accounts of the famous battles of the sailing-ship era always include the admiral’s instructions to his captains on their actions once battle was joined, that is, once he would no longer be able to signal to them. In the
Royal Navy the elaborate Fighting Instructions were written for exactly this purpose; and the line-ahead formation was adopted precisely to avoid the confii' sion of a melee. In effect tactics were dominated by limits on command and control quite as much as by the limits of more obviously applicable technology-
Here the command and control problem was one of the fleet commander’s ability to perceive the shape of the battle as much as of his ability to communi' cate his commands to his subordinates. The problen1 of perception, of the impossibility of seeing the formation of a fleet led, before World War II, to the idea that in the future fleet commanders might well operate from aircraft above the scene of battle.
In the greatest naval engagement of pre-radaf navies, Jutland, all aspects of the fleet comman problem were represented. Both British and German admirals made it almost their highest priority t0 maintain rigid formations—in the hell of smoke and shell splashes they might otherwise well begin t0 lose ships to collision. Indeed, some ships were s° lost in the night fighting toward the end of the bat' tie. Both fleets operated with strictly limited repet' toires of maneuvers, a function of very limited signaling capacity. Even this capacity, a gift of radio- i.e., of telecommunication technology, was far i° advance of that enjoyed by earlier fleets. The greatest problem, however, was that neither commander could be quite sure of either his or his enemy’s for' mation. Scouting reports proved sufficiently inaccurate—largely for navigational reasons—£0 cause very serious problems of perception.
Indeed, after World War I a common British exercise was to show senior officers the information on fleet formations and deployment options available to Jellicoe at the outset of the battle. The nearly universal judgement was that the deployment pattern he chose (forming into a single column on his left flank* was, first, by far the best he could have chosen; and- second, that he had required remarkable intuition t0 make his choice. Anything else might well hav ended in disaster. Jellicoe had had two years to learn how little control he would be able to exercise; it lS no great surprise that he tended towards caution.
In such situations the significance of radar wa5 that for the first time a fleet commander could tell- in conditions of poor visibility, just where his own fleet was, just how it was disposed, and just whef£ his enemy was. “Surface search” radar was, therefote’ an essential element in the command and control sy5' tern which made modern integrated fleets practical-
The need to determine the positions, not merely 0 enemy ships, but also of friendly and even neutra ships is characteristic of modern fleet operations. ^
to
SO ati et- ig' [io, in
:est
def
:or
tiy
-to
e move to an era of longer range weapons and more e y dispersed fleets than ever before this type of see rrnat*on W'H become more important, as we shall
'T,i _
,, e highest level of naval C3 is ocean-wide sur-
Ve|Hance. .
Cl •
ass>cally it has been the aim of a fleet com
mand,
enern
er to so maneuver his fleet as to destroy his
n y s and thus to gain command of the sea. This k statement conceals a major problem, how to ^ °'v where the enemy fleet is in the first place. Just
risb
ioO
iblc
ini'
, he
ink) rid- i to ui\'e .‘ilfO
it i5
wa5
tell-
o\Vi’
Hc(‘
pre'n C^e CaSC sear<-h radar, such information is a
se p^Uls‘te f°r successful application of weapons per
Qp r,or to World War I, the necessary information
as bnCmy movernents appears to have been assumed
ajr^eing available somehow, for this requirement was ^rnosr —
:Ote’
sys'
teal'.
y
litral
A5
ost never explicitly mentioned—just as before °rld War II the matter of the lookouts was taken
• r granted Ud'crous.
Pot*
r example, in 1912 the United States Navy saw mos Pr*mary function hemispheric defense. The (gec°mmon war scenario involved a European q n^raHy German) attempt to seize a base in the ^ 1 bean from which to assault the U.S. or South thTler'Can coast- Strategists of the period thought the 1C W0L'fo be essential to defeat such an attack at ear**est moment; one attractive means to this end th 3 Ver^ ^ast battleship, which might reach a Sl)(?atened area in advance of enemy forces. Although Ca . a sbip would of necessity greatly exceed existing tyjpi a ships in size (hence cost) it would be worth- f0 ,e d it could prevent the expected possible incursions.
e trouble was that the fast capital ship made
Sometimes the consequences were
sense only if the U.S. government could be sure of gauging accurately the destination of an enemy force. There were too many potentially attractive bases for strategic reasoning alone to suffice; and if it had to be accepted that there would not be enough warning, then the battle fleet as a whole would have to dislodge the enemy; and there was little to be gained from a very expensive specialized ship—little at least in a strategic sense. The fast battleship idea was dropped; when the United States did begin to build fast capital ships, in 1916, they were conceived of as scouts to operate with and near a battle fleet.
The problem of strategic, or long-distance, scouting was symptomatic of a basic disease afflicting pre-World War 1 navies. Battle fleets such as that possessed by Britain were well equipped with scouts for local reconnaissance. But there was no way for a fleet covering perhaps hundreds of square miles to be sure of coming to grips with another fleet perhaps hundreds of miles distant. A quick review of classical naval battles suggests that generally they were fought near strategic points on land because those were places the enemy fleet had to occupy or pass
of
the surveillance system, the positive identification
every surface ship in even a restricted body of water such as the North Sea must be a laborious task; and if it is to be done quickly, it requires the attention 0 large numbers of people.
It is worth pausing here to note just how Iitde advanced we are as compared to, say, 1916. A fleet of that day would be able to secure complete photographic coverage of the North Sea in a day or two-
id
through. In this light, blockade can be considered a means of localizing an enemy fleet so as to ensure contact. In the famous campaign preceding Trafalgar, Nelson fruitlessly pursued his quarry across the Atlantic and back again; but he could bring the enemy fleet to battle only after he had bottled it up in port.
As of the turn of the century, very little had changed. The Japanese fought at Tsushima in 1905 largely because they knew the Russians almost had to pass through that strait, and they were able to dispose scouts to cover the alternative (and far less attractive) route. As compared to Nelson, their main strategic advantages were speed and radio communication, which latter meant that greater distances between scouts and the main fleet could be accepted, in other words, at least in theory the main fleet could be more centrally disposed.
However, had it not been for the geography of the Far East, there was no way a Japanese fleet could have been certain of intercepting a Russian one. The only classical solution, close blockade of the enemy’s ports, was already a matter of some difficulty in view of the development of submarines and minefields.
An alternative, widely used in World War II, was a picket line the enemy force would have to cross; but the cost of such a line could easily become prohibitive as the area to be covered increased. Moreover, the pickets could not do very much to indicate enemy movements beyond the information that at some particular time he had crossed some line at a particular point. Given the time required to organize a reaction, and the transit time to the area of probable enemy activity, the picket line was of limited utility.
Radar and aircraft could improve matters somewhat: the former, because it could increase the effective area covered by each picket ship, the latter because search aircraft could hope to reach a reported enemy position quickly enough to find ships still there. Just before World War II the Royal Navy actually ordered specialized “fleet shadowing” aircraft; and the role of such reconnaissance aircraft as the Catalina in locating enemy forces during that war is well known.
Note the sequence: the wide-area locator, in this case the line of pickets, coaches a localizing platform, here an airplane, into position to provide continuous details of enemy movement. Given a crude idea of enemy location, all else follows. The problem was always that the initial crude fix was nearly impossible to attain in any general sense.
Even where it was practical the line of pickets was vulnerable. For example, in 1942 Japan used fishing boats with radios as distant pickets around the Home Islands. These boats had no great survivability and so might well be sunk before reporting the approach of an enemy—as was indeed the case when Doolitde raided Tokyo. However, to use more survivabk pickets would have been impractical in view of the numbers required.
What was needed was some means of wide-area sea surveillance, some means of detecting the movements of enemy units well out to sea. This was and is an extremely difficult problem. Even “narro'V seas” such as the North Sea cover enormous areas- Most of the ships moving across them at any given time are not the ones of interest to a commander; ,n modern terms, the targets of interest often have fev'/ “signatures” which distinguish them from nontargets.
In effect the only unambiguous signature the ship presents is its appearance to the eye. It will be appreciated that no one has yet made a machine even marginally capable of turning a photograph of an unknown ship into an identification; no matter wha( using Zeppelins, always assuming a lack of cion cover. With modern aircraft we gain a factor 0 about ten in speed; and we can use night-vision devices to increase greatly the number of hours available, although cloud cover will still defeat us. O'1 the other hand, modern fleets tend to be spread on and therefore not so easily identifiable as such excePf by positive ship-by-ship recognition. Now, as 1(1 1916, the real problem would be that total information could not be obtained in anything like realtime; that,- given the photographs, the really difficult work would as yet remain to be done.
A useful way to characterize the problem would b6’ to say that to be sure of the identity of a given sh<P one needs an immense amount of information, in tb1 technical sense. To pass that information over a da£‘| link takes enormous band width or a long time; an band width may mean interference with other signal5 of importance, or merely that a signal is easier t0 intercept, or harder to encode. Here “signal” lti' eludes the optical signal a bit of film in an airplan11 or satellite picks up; but it also includes the mean5 that an airplane or a satellite uses to pass the pictuft
fa ^ Un't rhought it was at some position when in ^ u was not. U.S. codebreaking efforts in World
n tH someone who can make sense of it. Anything rn°re c°mplex than handing it to someone means °nsiderable transmission problems, which is why news sefvice wire photos take minutes per photo- braph for transmission over the simple medium of a 0 ephone wire.
All of these possibilities were of course utterly impractical before quite recently; and even now ocean- e surveillance carries with it considerable prob- ^ s' ^act surveiHance would clearly be most ef- ctive if the ships of interest could be made to pro, e s°me characteristic signature—which is just
at happened when all fleets adopted radio as a basis for c3.
s- niPs using their radios could be detected pas- •j,^e y ar>d tracked by radio direction finders (DF). e cype of communication, even if it were coded, u d often identify the ship, so that an enemy fleet ^ 1 sometimes be tracked in the open ocean. {je°reover, radio transmissions might sometimes be te^0c^e<^ sufficiently to provide limits of enemy in- tlons. On the other hand, DF/code breaking was a 1Ve system subject to blackout if the enemy em- yed radio silence; and to enemy deception.
Dp °te a^S° C^at under conditions of radio silence a j_j network would not be able to track its own fleet. 0-ce h would be able to send out position reports latLnemy ships only in absolute terms, i.e., as frltudes and longitudes, and not in relation to ^ er>dly forces The usefuiness 0f the DF system fo U t*leref°re, depend upon the ability of friendly tes at sea to navigate accurately. This is true of y more modern systems. As for code-breaking, a wou^ depend upon the accuracy of enemy
Ration; it would be useless to know that an enemy
ar H often turned up orders for the movement of
rn u JaPanese units—which sometimes failed to
vee t^le'r required courses and speeds and so inad-
th tent*y evaded U.S. submarines lying in wait for
n-j01 ’n positions deduced from their (intercepted) °rders.
in ^ a 111010 8eneral sense, often the means of achiev- catj lnte^rat'on over wide areas, that is, of community n’ are also the key to passive surveillance. As 0j: n°logy advances, the signals different elements system must exchange increase in number and in b0th^ exiry, so that radio and similar links become •ph more important and more easily intercepted. a Heet of the World War I period might signal 9Uatters ashore once in a while. Most of the to C *tS un'ts would be in visual touch, so that prior Joining battle radio would be little used. By way
of contrast, modern naval formations are spread over very large areas; and the density of NTDS traffic is such that some radio links are almost continuously in operation, even when commands per se are not being exchanged. In addition most modern fleets make continuous use of such active sensors as radar and sonar, themselves subject to DF.
During World War I both Britain and Germany began to use radio intercepts for what amounted to ocean surveillance, especially in the North Sea. The Germans added to this passive measure reconnaissance by Zeppelins; and the Zeppelins were a sufficiently serious menace that the British took aircraft to sea in order to drive them off. It is important to recognize here that the Zeppelins were not in themselves offensive weapons; they were elements of an embryonic ocean surveillance system. As such, they were often misunderstood; many postwar writers thought of them not as a German naval asset but as expensive toys.
Yet, like later ocean surveillance systems, they were essential to the effective operation of the more apparently useful part of the German fleet. In particular, the Germans, with an inferior force, considered it vital to avoid contact with the main body of the British Grand Fleet: they sought to entice smaller formations into battle. The Germans had, therefore, to track the movements of the Grand Fleet in the North Sea. In August 1916, they used Zeppelin reports to decide to withdraw when an engagement with the entire Grand Fleet proved imminent.
For their part the British operated largely on the basis of DF and code-breaking. A unique feature of Jutland was that it occurred far from any strategic land point; rather, the fleets engaged as a consequence of successful British sea surveillance.
Postwar accounts of World War I did not emphasize these points. On the one hand, sea surveillance was somehow unglamorous and even unnaval. On the other, it was a closely held secret, and the nation with the most successful sea surveillance system, Great Britain, was also the nation with the Official Secrets Act. In any case, surveillance made up a small and well-obscured part of the British naval budget. Moreover, peacetime operations required very little in the way of ocean surveillance.
However, word of the value of DF gradually spread, and on the eve of World War II the major navies had networks of DF facilities connected to intelligence centers in which the movements of foreign fleets were tracked. Such facilities were little noticed largely because they cost little to maintain, were not publicized, and generally produced broad rather than specific data. However, they could provide the basis
o(
for dispositions of patrolling submarines and aircraft, and their product could be improved markedly by code-breaking and other intelligence gathering.
The important point was that all such fleet tracking operations were somehow integrated into a system, without which the “teeth” of the fleet would have little effect. The system had no name, and no public advocate; and indeed its operations were kept strictly confidential. Bits and pieces leaked out; it became known, for example, that the U.S. Navy had broken Japanese codes and that Midway was somehow an “intelligence victory.” What was far less appreciated was that on both sides Pacific warfare without some effort at ocean surveillance was impossible.
These are fleet surveillance systems. They provide crude data on fleet movements, which can be refined by reconnaissance systems integral with the fleet; in World War II, scout aircraft.
However, an account of ocean surveillance must also take into consideration another type of system, the prototype for which would be German U-boat C'!. The problem of the U-boats was that, submerged, they were essentially immobile. In addition, they had, individually, no great ability to detect ships at any distance. Hence a successful U-boat campaign would require that the CinC U-boats somehow coach his craft onto attractive targets, °r else that he dispose his boats near inherent points target concentration. The Germans tried both strate' gies, but could not keep up the latter in the face of Allied local antisubmarine forces, in the Caribbean for example. That left the C3 solution.
For their part the Allies adopted convoys in paft simply to clear most of the area of the North AtlaO' tic of U-boat targets, that is, to present the U-boats with a sea surveillance problem in the first place- The other side of this coin was of course that convoys simplified the Allies’ anti-U-boat sea surveillance problem considerably. That is because the U-boat Command had first to find convoys and to track them, just in order to sink much of anything. presenting a very limited number of targets the Ak lies could hope to concentrate ASW resources where the ASW targets would appear; which meant that in time the Germans would succeed only if they adopted saturation (“wolf-pack”) tactics, which ,fl turn required C3 links. In their turn these links were subject to DF and to code-breaking, and could be used to coach Allied ASW forces into position.
In some ways, then, one might see in the Battle o> the Atlantic a prototype of more modern forces of C warfare.
The form of campaign the Germans adopted re' quired a central command post ashore, capable °> communicating with all U-boats at sea. The U-boats could themselves do some of the reconnaissance, for 11 U-boat too distant from a convoy to strike it might well hear its noises and thus deduce its existence- However, such data would be useful only in the cor*' text of a mass attack on the convoy; and to set up
Use man lo;
Such an attack the CinC U-boats might well have to Call upon boats dispersed over a wide area. He ^°uld, moreover, have to know which boats had w many torpedoes and how much fuel and provi- Sl°ns, or else he might find himself assaulting a con- "°y with too few torpedoes to make it worthwhile.
ence> there had to be considerable two-way links be- tvveen Commander, U-boats, at Brest and boats at
sea
> not to mention tactical links for the convoy engagement itself.
fact the U-boat force had other means of sea SUrveillance as well: the usual DF net, code-breaking, an<J long-range aircraft.
^ ostwar analyses of the Battle of the Atlantic often arped on the impracticality of controlling a war at ea from a base at Brest rather than, presumably, on rn°re local level. Allied DF and code-breaking sys- ^rns were able to make use of the enormous volume radio traffic required, even though the Germans . ec> to take some anti-intercept measures. However, v,ew of the strategic problem they faced, the °at commanders really had no other choice. They °ulrl not hope, individually, to locate convoys.
y early in the war could U-boat commanders op- (*^ate at the natural points of shipping concentration either side of the Atlantic; from 1942 on it was by Brest or nothing.
k vloreover, in the absence of very good boat-to- °at communications there was not much point in y°ne but CinC U-boats setting concentrated at- Ual S 'rnPortant P°>nt here was that the individ. a U-boats were relatively flimsy craft, by no means Possible to sink once they had been located by ^ forces. What mattered was their numbers; the struction of a few U-boats could not disable the paign. That is, there were no special U-boats the
struction of which would somehow be decisive— as r .
^ ror example, the sinking of a carrier might be.
ere was, in a way, one exception, the specialized
Pply submarine (“milch cow”); but an Allied cam-
j.. 'gn against milch cows merely reduced the effec-
endurance of the U-boats.
U h 6 centra* fact was t^lat t*ie brain directing the ^ 0at war was relatively invulnerable. In the end a I'j. C3-oriented U-boat strategy failed because the les were able to turn the side effects of C3 to their
and also because they were able to produce so t y AsW craft that concentrations of U-boats no ^nger reached saturation levels. But analysis of the °at campaign of 1945 suggests that even then s6 balance was shaky. It had taken many Allied per- el to balance off every U-boat man; and at least ^ the reason was the amplifying effect of C3. tHiral Gorshkov says it took 100 men to balance
one U-boat man. But with 40,000 men in the U-boats, beginning to end, that would mean 4 million Allied men in ASW, which is as many as were in the British and U.S. Navies combined. But even if Gorshkov’s figure were cut by a half, and half again, that would mean one U-boat sailor balanced off 25 of his opponents. Not bad.)
Note that the Allies were unable to attack German C3, merely to make passive use of it.
In many ways the present Soviet Ocean Surveillance System (SOSS) is a direct descendant of the systems entirely standard during and before World War II. For the reasons cited, it is largely passive, an exploiter of our own radar and radio emissions. Passively collected information is supplemented by visual trailing of U.S. and allied ships by Soviet surface ships, submarines, and aircraft, and presumably by a Soviet intelligence network in U.S. and foreign ports.
For some time the Soviets have also been credited with naval satellites, both active (radar) and passive (radio or radar intercept). Satellites offer a landlocked power like the Soviet Union the only real means of gaining a worldwide DF network; and with present technology that seems to be the best way to conduct global sea surveillance. On the other hand, satellites are relatively regular in their orbital patterns, and therefore a commander at sea can be warned of the approach of, for example, an ESM satellite; and he can go silent while he is under observation—assuming that the backup U.S. intelligence organization can somehow determine which satellite does what.
It seems less likely that the Soviets will use photographic satellites for sea surveillance: such a vehicle can carry only so much film; and there is a great deal of ocean. Even an active radar satellite, which has a much simpler information-storage problem, can probably scan only a limited strip of ocean before filling its memory. The ESM satellite simplifies matters by listening only for those few emissions characteristic of its targets. It thereby lays itself open, of course, to spoofing; there is, after all, no law against playing tapes of carrier radars from selected supertankers—which might then “look” like carriers to both ESM and many active radars.
The Soviets are realists; and they know that matters improve for them as more and more different sensors feed into a single brain. The point of the SOSS is that all of this information from disparate sources is correlated in some central office, and then the correlated data is used to guide operations of the Soviet fleet.
The SOSS is the information gathering arm of a C3-oriented fleet, perhaps best described as the logical descendent of the German U-boat force of World War II. As we shall see, the high efficiency of Soviet naval C3 is a consequence of the necessity for that C3: without it the Soviet fleet is reduced very nearly to impotence. With it, Soviet strategy will generally have a reasonable chance of success, simply because the Soviets will often be able to achieve or approach saturation.
C3 warfare means, in this case, attack on the SOSS and on Soviet C3: deception, jamming, perhaps also assaults on sensor platforms such as satellites.
To Americans, the SOSS and Soviet naval C3 seem remarkable, unparalleled in the U.S. inventory. There is a reason: they are the physical manifestations of a naval strategy quite different from ours. To other than Americans the SOSS looks like classical sea surveillance systems because the central aim of its user is classical: the destruction of the U.S. fleet. To accomplish that end, the Soviets must locate and track U.S. surface ships operating in areas they wish to deny us. Almost certainly the SOSS also makes the task of Soviet submarines operating on shipping routes far easier (as in the case of U-boat operations in World War II).
However, since 1945 enemy surface ships have not been an important target for U.S. sea power: the enemy homeland has been. Indeed, it has been our ability to strike from the sea at the Soviet heartland which has inspired Soviet efforts to deny the seas off that heartland to our task groups. The profound asymmetry between current U.S. and Soviet naval goals leads to an asymmetry in resource allocation for sea surveillance.
Since the end of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the primary functions of American sea power have been a combination of projection of U.S. sea power, both amphibious and “strategic” against fixed land targets; and control of the sea to ensure the success of projection and of the resupply of troops already in action abroad, in NATO Europe, for example.
After 1945 the principal enemy was the Soviet Union; and the Soviet Union had very little in the way of a surface fleet. What there was spent most of its time in port and could be counted upon to be there at the outbreak of war. Of course, there were Soviet submarines, albeit primitive, in numbers.
In either case, the function of U.S. warships was to brush off this kind of opposition en route to an attack on fixed enemy targets. Reconnaissance integral to the fleet would suffice to detect those enemy units attacking the fleet; the enemy units had no intrinsic value that made them worth attacking per se. Rather they were nuisances to be dealt with as they appeared.
Soviet naval policy just after World War II waS confused; Stalin appears to have wanted an old' fashioned big-ship navy largely because he considered it a basic trapping of any serious world power, with' out any more subtle analysis. At the same time he began a large submarine program, perhaps in view 0 the successes Germany had so recently enjoyed, b was this second element which engaged U.S. attentions, and which led to U.S. interest in a kind of sea surveillance. From the Soviet point of view, Stalins attempts to build what amounted to a World Waf I-style navy probably showed chiefly that it was p°s' sible to expend a great mass of scarce resources purchasing remarkably little ability to counter the main U.S. attack arm, the carrier.
The only weapon which could be sure of handling a carrier was a manned or unmanned airplane. Conventional submarines armed with torpedoes were juSt too slow to be assured of hits, unless they were coached into position by a very sophisticated SOSS indeed. Manned aircraft were expensive, their crews hard to train and harder to replace. That left missiles—which, for a poor country, had the great virtue that unreliability on their part would not necessarily lead to great losses in platforms or *n trained personnel. Moreover, missiles could be launched from relatively simple and inexpensive warships. The latter could be built in numbers.
The rest of the story strongly recalls the German U-boat philosophy. The missiles require saturation tactics for their success; and their platforms, in order to avoid rapid destruction, must spread out over the widest possible area—otherwise a few carrier air sorties would suffice to dispose of the whole attack force-
The key to success then becomes C3; and the flin1' siness of the individual launch platforms demands that central command be exercised from a safe place ashore. In addition, the character of Soviet launch platforms implies enormous reliance on the correctness of SOSS identification of targets. That is, the Soviet fleet is essentially a one-salvo fleet. It has to be: many individual launch platforms are required t0 fire enough missiles to saturate the American defenses. Therefore they can be of only modest unit size and consequently in general can carry no reloads.
It must be kept in mind that generally the Soviet ships will launch at a point well over their horizon- at a datum transmitted by their expensive C,! °r perhaps at a blip in a radar scope. Saturation demands that in fact the platforms must launch together, and that means they must do so on command from a gentleman in a hole somewhere on shore monitoring what amounts to SOSS output.
When he shoots, he shoots just about everything-
most °f his ships and missile submarines are essen- tmlly disarming themselves by firing.
Mistakes can be disastrous. They can include fir- lng out of synchronization, so that the target is not Properly saturated; or firing at the wrong target; or t^en firing at a decoy. Probably there are no second
chances.
In fact this account of Soviet anti-carrier warfare tactics only begins to sketch how chancy they j^re' F°r example, the Soviet missiles are outranged rhe carrier’s attack aircraft. Hence, once war has e8un, their platforms, wherever they may be found, be fair—and quite possibly easy—game. What k at means is that the Soviets must begin their war y striking every U.S. carrier they can reach simultaneously. Any carrier not hit at the outset can wipe °ut all or part of the ACW concentration forming
a8ainst it.[1]
The Soviets have built many missile platforms, Surely too many for escorts of U. S. carriers to C°Ver at the same time—even if they could be sure of erecting and holding contact with the missile submarines among them. The individual platforms are no great value to the Soviets; it is the cooperative Cct of many platforms—including, incidentally, tTlany bombers—which matters.
Ought we not, then, strike at the mechanism j.^'ch drives the system? We are not likely to attack rectly the gentleman in his bunker in Moscow or uessa. But we can jam his communication links and try to deceive him through his sensors; and that ay prove to be the key to our victory.
That is C3 warfare.
The Soviets understand quite clearly their vulnerabilities. For example, their SOSS can locate for- rr’at*°ns of U.S. combatants, but probably is not so 8°od at locating one ship within the formation, the Carrier, for example, among her escorts. Nor are -o, Soviet missiles likely to be able somehow to lstinguish one type of ship from another: radar- 0rning devices go after the brightest echo. Even Very basic deceptive devices such as corner reflectors Counted in small ships may thus act to break up the duration effect of a Soviet missile raid, frustrating "hat amounts to their fire control.
„ The Soviets have found a partial answer in tattletales,” their destroyers which cruise with U.S. task groups. The point here is that the tattletale is
not part of the overall sea surveillance system. Rather, it is an attempt to break through the ambiguities of longer range radar sensors, in effect to return to the ship-identification function of the eyeball. Of course, “tattletaling” works only before hostilities begin—but that is in any case the primary Soviet scenario.
Part of the missile fire control problem is the absence of reliable IFF—which means that a Soviet tattletale in a U.S. formation when the Soviet missiles arrive acts as an inadvertent decoy or missile absorber. The tattletale must, therefore, withdraw at the proper moment—which is why Soviet destroyers suitable for tattletale duty are now receiving backward-pointing missile tubes. They will be able to join in the ACW attack as they steam away from the carrier formation at high speed.
In effect counter-tattletale operations become an element of American C3 warfare. For example, u somehow the tattletale cannot exit from the formation he may act, merely by his presence, as a means of reducing the effective saturation of incoming missiles. Similarly, if his transmissions are unsuccessful’ Soviet fire control is, in effect, dislocated.
The U.S. Navy has no counterpart to SOSS because it has no ship target against which to mount a U.S- equivalent of ACW. The Kiev and her sisters may just possibly change matters but, we would argue, only in a limited sense: U.S. naval strategy is likely t0 remain projection-oriented.
The great exception to this rule is the protection of shipping, which means ASW. Submarines present particularly serious sea surveillance problems. They often operate as lone wolves, and when they do they are likely to observe radio silence: DF is a very limited asset in their case. Nor do modern submarines use radar very often; they can do quite well enough with passive sound. Since World War II, developments in underwater communication have in part obviated the high frequency radio the U-boats employed to make tactical arrangements—which radio transmissions Allied ASW units used so successfully-
It would be extremely attractive for the United States to be able to operate some underwater equivalent of the SOSS, some means of coaching ASW forces onto the approximate locations of submarines. At a minimum, such a system would have to cover not only potential areas of naval activity but also large areas nearby from which submarines could appear-
y way of contrast, a SOSS designed to secure the 0viet Union from carrier strikes need cover only a striP, some ocean, some land, about a thousand 'Tides deep off the Soviet coasts.
, . he alternative to a convoy system would be some lr,d of continous search of potential shipping routes which suggests aircraft, for they can cover Hng distances at high speed. Whether they can also c')ver large areas depends upon the effective range of e'r sensors—which is, unfortunately, short. The °,n‘y *0ng-range airborne detector in general use is e sonobuoy, and it is long range only in the sense . at *t can transmit to a distant listener what it hears 'n its vicinity over a radio link. However, fields of ^onobuoys benefit from the mutually reinforcing ef- ct noted above for surface-ship sonars, if their out- fots are fed into a single sufficiently sophisticated Central processor.
Aircraft really become attractive when they are c°nceived of as weapon deliverers which have only to Search the area immediately around some datum es- ushed by an external ocean surveillance system. ere lies an important point of contact between ASW batrol aircraft and Soviet land-based ACW types.
®°th navies use long-range land-based aircraft be- tause such aircraft, centrally based, can cover a wide ar>ety of possible enemy positions; their employ- is an economical use of resources. However, ey are useful mainly when the general location of er>erny forces is known, because they are not econom- Cal *n the general search role. In particular, in anti- tatrier warfare, the requirement for saturation de- rtlands that most of the available aircraft be used in attack rather than in search operations. In particular, lrta ait reconnaissance is hard to achieve. In the ASW Case. the area of sea one plane can cover suggests that p0rrie other area-location system would be more use- *^ke problem is that submarines have fewer signals than surface ships. They show little in the way a visual or even an infrared indication and conse- 'Nently are nearly invisible to satellites. When they Petate as lone wolves, they need to communicate their bases rarely, so give no comfort to DF *ets- After World War II the United States invested tavily in the 0ne distant signature which generally c<>uld be attributed to submarines, the sound of their 'Iteration: it built a very large system of passive ac°ustic devices, SOSUS. This system could be ex- H'cted to cover the waters up to several hundred '*es off the Atlantic coast. Similar systems could be fctT>placed off other coasts, for such purposes as to ^nitor the waters between Iceland, Greenland, and e U.S. East Coast; and technology promises deeper
water moored systems for the future. In the open sea, the only reliable indication of the pattern of submarine operations would be merchant ship sinkings, which could be tracked by the usual central plotting system. An interesting question is whether shipping can better be protected by large numbers of low- quality forces covering convoys (as in this century’s two great wars), or by high-quality hunter-killer groups cued by a mixture of SOSUS and attack reports (which, perhaps because of the absence of anything like SOSUS, failed under the test of war). In addition, of course, the ASW forces can achieve some successes by attempting to block paths of access to submarine operating areas, a strategy first tried in World War I. Captor is an instrument which would make possible this type of blockade in modern times—the blockade which depends, not on detailed intelligence (ocean surveillance) but rather on strategic or geographical facts of life.
The success of such a blockade comes to depend upon the effectiveness of the short-range sensors of the blockading weapons or units. The World War I blockade proved ineffective because the sophistication of its strategy was not matched by the available technology. A World War II operation in the Bay of Biscay proved more effective, but since it was prosecuted by aircraft with no great ability to detect submerged submarines, the Germans were able to counter it by remaining underwater.
The problem of a Captor blockade is subtler. It depends on the scenario with which the war begins. What Captor can do is to sink Soviet submarines en route to or departing the main shipping routes of the North Atlantic. Hence it may have little effect in a short war begun by the Soviets after they have sent many of their boats to war stations. On the other hand, such a requirement in turn forces upon the Soviet Navy a surge deployment which in its turn will alert Western forces and so deny the Soviets strategic surprise.
It will be apparent that at least up to the present, any antisubmarine ocean surveillance system would be far less precise than would be an anti-surface ship system. In the case of the Soviet Union, for example, anti-carrier location and surveillance is far more successful than is any possible U.S. ASW counterpart; but then, again, it has always been recognized that ASW is a war of attrition, whereas the Soviet anticarrier warfare operation carries with it a serious inherent penalty for even partial failure.
Polaris presented the Soviets with an underwater threat comparable to the carrier threat, for it required them to develop the ability to conduct area ASW surveillance. In fact the Soviet need now ex-
of
extremely labor-intensive. Thus visual observation
ceeded that of the United States; for the United States expected simply to deter Soviet SLBM attacks rather than to gain security by direct attack on Soviet missile submarines, whereas the Soviets have always preferred to believe in direct (damage-limiting) attack on hostile offensive systems. Since the midsixties, therefore, the Soviets have built a large number of ASW ships and aircraft, and indeed have classed all of their major surface combatants as ASW types. It would seem that they must have or must expect to have behind these units some kind of area ASW ocean surveillance system; but no evidence of such a system exists. There are, instead, constant rumors of satellite-borne sensors of unknown type.
It seems almost like the late nineteenth century: the Soviet ASW fleet can deal with SSBNs it happens to come into contact with; but there exists no means to coach it into such contact.
We find, then, a fundamental asymmetry between U.S. and Soviet requirements for C3 and sea surveillance. C3 on a large scale is so central to Soviet anticarrier tactics that it may well be the most attractive target for us. Since so much of the SOSS makes use of our own emissions, and since its primary active sensor, radar, is subject to serious ambiguities, it would seem that the SOSS and the C3 which accompany it should be vulnerable to jamming, deception, and disruption. At the very least, aggressive C3 warfare tactics on our part can break the coherence which is the heart of Soviet tactics.
In this sense weight and money invested in our own electronic gear may actually buy us greater protection than would many more clearly defensive weapons.
For its part, the U.S. Fleet gains much of its effectiveness from its own integration through NTDS which, with similar links, can make passive sensing sufficiently effective that we do not have to emit those radar and sonar signals which tip off our enemies to our presence. However, the very use of NTDS links as they are currently fitted provides alternative inputs to the SOSS. One answer is covert communication through satellites; the radio beam used is sufficiently narrow that it cannot be intercepted except by a receiver almost directly overhead.
Wide adoption of passive sensing also demands more precise navigation than formerly sufficed, so that ships adding the inputs of their sensors can do so accurately. Satellites can be very useful in this regard.
In both cases, what in the past might have been a luxury now becomes an essential element of an integrated strategy for C3 warfare—in this case, for the denial of inputs to Soviet sensors. Only when we can decide which inputs the opponent’s ocean surveil* lance system is to have, can we hope to deceive it-
And once its operators are aware that they are perhaps being deceived, they will be far less willi*1# than otherwise to launch their strikes. The gentle' man in his hole is betting a very great deal on whac he sees on his radar screens and teletypes. As soon a5 he loses confidence, he is in deep trouble.
The idea of our own surface sea surveillance system becomes increasingly popular as the wonders of rhe SOSS become better known. In particular, U.S. sea surveillance is mooted as a counter to an ever more impressive Soviet surface fleet. A serious U.S. prob' lem is the asymmetry between any potential Amefl' can and current Soviet requirements.
That is, the Soviet high seas surface fleet is still limited in numbers and, more importantly, for rhe most part in individual ship size. It constitutes 11 small part of the overall Soviet naval threat- Moreover, such active systems as radar are unlikely to be able to distinguish fifty or a hundred Soviet warships from the ten thousand merchant ships 0 similar dimensions in areas of the world ocean of d*' rect interest to the United States. Photography ca° distinguish, but at least at present its application 15 the area near a fleet makes far more sense than doeS> say, reconnaissance of the entire North Atlantic.
A possible benefit of U.S. ocean surveillance would be to enhance the effectiveness of thoSe American forces not equipped with aircraft. Ship' borne weapons such as Harpoon promise considerable long-range antiship capability for destroyers and rms' sile cruisers; but as we have seen, that capability lfl turn requires a sophisticated ability to acquire and identify potential targets.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that Harpoons will be available in very great numbers. Nor can most modern—at least Western—antiship missiles be counted upon to sink their targets at a single bio"'- They are, after all, comparable in size to 500-pound bombs. Even in World War II, very few destroy£fS succumbed to single bomb hits—modern surface combatants are much larger and therefore almos1 necessarily harder to sink. They may not be harder t0 disable, as they depend more heavily on C3 and sef>' * This need not be a plea for total electronic silence. For example, highly directional radio links such as satellite up-links are very difficult to infef cept or DF. Aircraft such as the E2 can take over much or all of the active radar operation of a Task Force, and so remove a major soss input; *n the links between ship and E2 can be made very directional indeed. ^e can also make far greater use of passive sensors, particularly in conjuflc tion with NTDS and covert communication via satellites.
Sorsi all of which are vulnerable to shock and frag- rnent damage. However, it may well be so difficult *° recognize a mission-kill at missile range that this ct will be irrelevant: missile fire will be maintained until enough hits are made to ensure disability, on e basis of predetermined estimates of missile effec-
tlveness.
such a world it is terribly important not to VVaste missiles. To fire a salvo of Harpoons into a neutral freighter may seem at first no more than an ^avoidable accident of war; but it may well also be an act of self-disarmament; moreover, missile fire ay present signatures to the passive surveillance of atl enemy. Hence it will be very important, if we are go to a SOSS-like system, for us to identify posi- tlvely ajj shipping
in the area of surveillance: a ^adar-homing Harpoon will be at least as happy to y into a fat tanker as into a Kiev.
The appreciation of this connection between even * most elementary weapon application and C3 is essential to us. We have been able to avoid it in the ^ast °nly because of the very strong reconnaissance CaPabilities built into our carrier groups—and beCause an air strike approaching an empty bit of ocean nere Soviet forces were incorrectly thought to be, come home. The guided missile cannot.
Although the Soviets use naval attack aircraft,
can
eV do not benefit as much as we do. The aircraft Merely serve as airborne missile launch platforms tdnding well outside sensor range, and launch not . the basis of their own sensors but on centrally- Ssued commands. Such tactics are a matter of satura- n: the air group’s missiles must arrive close to- kether in time (hopefully not, however, close in bear- n£) in order to overwhelm fleet defenses. A coordi- ^act*d launch demands centralized control, which in rri demands that sensors reporting to the overall >rr*mander be used, not sensors on the attacking 'tcraft. On the other hand, these Soviet aircraft do °nstitute a more readily reusable asset than do their yr^ace ships and missile submarines—which is why
e Soviets have poured considerable funds into
mem.
As time passes, more and more information be- j’mes potentially available to a fleet commander. It ec°mes more and more attractive to provide him h extensive data processing resources—more ex- fisive, perhaps, than can be accommodated on mpboard. At the same time many of the essential Orrnation-gathering assets come to be linked di- ct|y to land terminals: much DF, SOSUS, satellites, r°l aircraft. To beam all possibly relevant infor- cj t,0n to an operational staff at sea comes closer and Ser to the effective limits of existing or even potential data links. Moreover, as the volume of such transmissions grows the threat of enemy interference may grow as well.
It has, therefore, been proposed that much of the processing of naval data be done ashore, with the results data-linked to the fleet; even that the fleet commander should sit ashore, where the information is. Certainly he can no longer hope to see the entire situation at sea with his eyes: even small task groups are too spread out for that. Moreover, the use of a headquarters ashore can, at least in theory, provide a great measure of survivability for the fleet through the survivability of its brain.
On the other hand, it can be argued that data transmitted back from the fleet at sea cannot substitute for the eyes, however limited, of the CinC; and that the shore sensors cannot really tell what is going on in the fleet, cannot make essential queries of subordinates, cannot really facilitate essential decisionmaking.
The result is the hybrid system now being adopted in the U.S. Navy, a combination of a fleet command center ashore supporting the necessarily more compact tactical flag command center in the fleet at sea.
One can imagine a number of possible futures for these systems. In one, the United States moves to substantially more numerous but individually less capable units, either in more numerous or in larger task forces. In either case there is heavier reliance on worldwide naval tactical C3. The fleet command center comes to resemble more closely the bunker in Moscow or Odessa—although there still might not be a pressing need for a U.S. SOSS. Alternatively, the Navy may continue on its present course, but communication, probably via satellite, may be so improved as to reduce the fleet command center to a data terminal; and computing power may be so improved as to make total installations at sea more practical. In that case it may become essential to duplicate the tactical fleet command center aboard several units of a task group.
In either case the trend towards C3 at the apparent expense of firepower will grow; and so will the fallacy of that appearance.
r\ kg. JL
The author is indebted to Commander H. R. Cauthen, U.S. Navy, for many useful comments on the issues discussed in this essay while both of us were studying these matters at the Naval War College.
[1] p .
°Vlet land-based naval bombers and submarines might not be consid- re^ vulnerable, except that most of the latter must surface—and remain Urfeced for some time—to launch. Air groups forming beyond their ^ISs>le range may yet be vulnerable to preemptive carrier-launched '8hter attack.