This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
Since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. military analysts and critics have considered the Soviet Navy a defensive force. But today, even with the current thaw in relations, Soviet submarines (Victor III, left; Oscar, below) remain an offensive threat.
The Bush administration and Congress are carefully scrutinizing the defense budget and will for the next few years. The Navy is a primary target in their efforts to reduce expenditures. It is difficult to justify all of the forces Navy now has, let alone building up to 600 ships or continuing new ships and aircraft currently under way.
The Navy must deal with: the end of the Reagan-era mandate for rebuilding the nation’s armed forces; the loss of a highly persuasive advocate in Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, Jr.; the euphoria occasioned by recent political developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; and the accepted thesis that its most probable and potent opponent—the Soviet Navy—is primarily a defensive force of an inward-looking state. The Naval Institute has been a principal forum for proclaiming that the Soviet Navy, lacking large-deck aircraft carriers, cannot be considered an offensive naval force.
In the early post-World War II period, the question of whether the Soviet Navy was offensive or defensive was largely irrelevant. The U.S. Navy, fighting to maintain a major role in the postwar defense establishment—in competition with the manned bomber carrying a nuclear weapon, envisioned by many as the final arbiter in all future warfare—sought to concentrate its available resources on developing a carrier-based nuclear strike capability. The Korean War of 1950-1953 saved the Navy in, at the time, a losing battle. That conventional conflict demonstrated conclusively that naval forces were vital— even in the atomic age. Subsequently, this need has been reinforced in scores of international crises, where the presence offshore of a carrier or Marine battalion landing team could influence unsettled political situations, and in the Vietnam War. Budget constraints and doctrinal uncertainty after the Korean War plagued those who sought to build (or rebuild) the U.S. Navy. Even the Vietnam War- in large part a naval conflict—did not create an immediate turnaround in naval construction. In time, however, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, though widely believed to be no friend of the Navy, did approve construction of a large number of amphibious assault ships and the first three nuclear-propelled carriers of the Nimitz (CVN-68) class.1
Congress, which controls the purse strings for warship construction, sought from administration after administration a context or strategy in which to rationalize the continued building of aircraft carriers and their attendant cruisers, destroyers, and replenishment ships. The situation was complicated because the Soviet Union, the principal military threat to the United States in the first 30 years after World War II, had neither aircraft carriers nor a long-range amphibious assault capability. Indeed, after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, the Soviet Union cut back severely the large Soviet cruiser, destroyer, and submarine construction programs, and cancelled the planned carrier program.
Soviets refer to the post-Stalin revision of military policies and programs as a “revolution in military affairs. From the viewpoint of the Soviet Navy, the post-Stalin emphasis on antiship missiles, nuclear weapons, land-
based aircraft, and above all, submarines, led Admiral S. G. Gorshkov, head of the Soviet Navy 1956-85, to write: “For the first time in its history our Navy was converted, in the full sense of the word, into an offensive type of long-range armed force.”2
Could the Soviet Navy be considered an offensive force in the absence of aircraft carriers? Stalin’s principal successor, Nikita Khrushchev, spoke of “wars of national liberation,” and the Soviets emphasized the development of nuclear weapons. For the next decade, Soviet political- military policy was considered to have an offensive thrust. U.S. politicians addressing this policy articulated a “bomber gap” and then, after the Soviets led the way into space in 1957, the “missile gap.” A massive buildup of U.S. land- and sea-based strategic missiles followed President John F. Kennedy’s arrival to the White House in January 1961.
After Kennedy forced the Soviets to “blink” in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, administration spokesmen declared the end of the Cold War and the arms race. One leading academic went further, asserting that the Cuban crisis marked the beginning of U.S.-Soviet detente—“A detente based on the acceptance by the Soviets of a fundamental shift in the relationship of violence to historical change.”3 (This academic, Zbigniew Brzezin- ski, later became national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. By the time he left office, however, he was being labeled a “Cold War hawk.”)
Such statements were widely reported and did much to set the climate of opinion within the government, both civilian and military. In this environment, several studies proclaimed the “defensive” orientation of the Soviet Navy. Among the earliest and most influential of these analyses was an article entitled “A View of Soviet Naval Strategy” by Commander Robert W. Herrick, U.S. Navy (Retired), in the Naval Institute’s annual Naval Review 1967.4 This was an extract from his book-length study, Soviet Naval Strategy, published shortly thereafter by the Naval Institute.5
The book’s publication had been delayed for several years, while the Naval Institute’s Editorial Board debated its possible impact on U.S. Navy carrier programs. How would a well-written thesis—one that specifically declared that the Soviet Navy was necessarily defensive because it had no aircraft carriers—be received?6 Herrick, a former assistant U.S. naval attache in Moscow, also argued that the army officers who dominated the Soviet high command saw the Red Navy as little more than a helpmate for ground operations in coastal regions. When finally published in 1968, the Herrick book contained a foreword by retired Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, former Chief of Naval Operations, who attempted to place Herrick’s thesis in perspective. But Burke, too, accepted the defensive theory, explaining that the Soviets were developing a navy primarily to defend coastal waters and undertake other short-range operations.
An unusual Publisher’s Preface to the Herrick book pointed out that the author’s conclusions—“forthrightly stated—are not shared by all thinkers on naval strategy. . .” The publisher then invited readers to submit oppos-
ing views to Proceedings, which published a few letters approving of Herrick’s thesis. But not one opposing letter appeared in the magazine, indicating apparent widespread acceptance by the naval community. One might have expected at least the submariners to question Herrick’s argument that a fleet centered on undersea craft could not be offensive, or that the Soviet Navy must “mirror” the U.S. fleet to be an effective, offensive naval force.
Other voices joined Herrick in his statements that the Soviet Navy was defensive. Particularly notable were the writings of Michael MccGwire, a former Royal Navy intelligence officer, who had also served as an assistant attache in Moscow, and Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy (Retired), founder of the Center for Defense Information.
Their views appeared to be wholly consistent with the grams, was never answered satisfactorily in the eight years I served in Washington. The response was always short of being insubordinate but also short of being useful. Despite semiannual reminders, it was listed as incomplete on the books when we left office.”7 While the validity of Dr. Kissinger’s assertion may be questionable, his views reflected the perception at the highest levels of government.
During this period, several members of Congress also asked for the Navy to present a rationalization of requirements that could relate programs to strategy.
The Navy’s incentive to develop and articulate a persuasive strategy became urgent during the Carter administration (1977-1981) in which a distinct “Europe first” strategy existed, with the feeling that the United States required a Navy only to support the reinforcement of Western European allies. This view peaked when Presi-
A View of Soviet Naval Strategy
ROBERT W. HERRICK COMMANDER, U. S. NAVY (RETIRED)
“Despite the Soviet Navy’s having been assigned some vital missions independent of the ground forces, that is, to counter carrier and Polaris strikes, and to make submarine missile strikes against NATO countries . . . fundamentally,
Soviet naval strategy is still oriented toward support of the ground forces.’’
_________________ m NAVAL REVIEW—]
Commander Robert Waring Herrick, U.S. Navy (Retired), has been an outspoken proponent of the defensive theory with respect to the Soviet Navy. He began with a provocative essay published in the Naval Review in 1967, which he expanded into a book in 1968, also published by the Naval Institute. In 1988, the Naval War College Press published his latest work, Soviet Naval Theory and Policy: Gorshkov’s Inheritance, a look at the evolution of the Soviet Navy from after the Russian Revolution to the point at which Admiral Sergei Gorshkov took command. Reprinted by the Naval Institute Press in 1989, it represents years of research and reflection on the part of Herrick, who is currently working on the second part of his study, covering the Gorshkov years.
notion of detente held by the nation’s political leadership. To question Herrick’s thesis within the naval-defense establishment would appear to challenge the higher national Policy viewpoint. This was especially true in the U.S. government bureaucracy. For example, an analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was informed that he could write for Proceedings, but his letter should be noncontroversial and consistent with the CIA position: The Soviet Navy was strictly oriented toward defense.
The lack of substantial criticism of the “defensive Soviet Navy” concept appeared to validate Herrick’s thesis. This, in turn, threw into doubt the need to build up or even to maintain a large U.S. fleet centered on aircraft carriers. Dr. Henry Kissinger, national security advisor and later Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon, wrote that soon after entering office in 1969 “a specific Presidential directive . . . inquiring into the rationale of naval prodent Carter vetoed the fiscal year 1980 defense budget, because it contained funding for a nuclear carrier. The Navy had made its case neither for large (capital) warships nor a concept of operations for them. At the same time, Herrick, MccGwire, LaRoque, and others became increasingly vocal in their views that the Soviet Navy was oriented toward defensive operations.
In the late 1970s, the Navy undertook two major studies to articulate a strategy that would rationalize a U.S. fleet centered on attack carriers: the “Sea Strike Strategy” project developed by Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet at the time, and the “Seaplan 2000” study begun by the Navy secretariat in Washington.8
When Admiral Hayward became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in 1978, he sought to change the naval debate to strategic issues, from one centered primarily on pro-
grams and costs. In 1979, Hayward’s by-line appeared on a Proceedings article describing a naval strategy.9 He laid out a series of “fundamental principles” that were essential to understanding “naval supremacy.” His fourth principle noted that “Keeping the Soviets preoccupied with defensive concerns locks up Soviet naval forces in areas close to the USSR, limiting their availability for campaigns against the [sea lines of communication], or for operations in support of offensive thrusts on the flanks of NATO or elsewhere. . . . ”10 [emphasis added]
Although Admiral Hayward believed that the Soviet strategy was defensive—they had no carriers with which to take the offensive—he did note certain trends that had very unsettling implications: “The picture is one of a dynamic program to increase Soviet capabilities for offensive operations worldwide.”11 Admiral Hayward s con
cerns were for new Soviet naval construction programs, including the Kiev-class V/STOL aircraft carriers.
This analysis of naval strategy sponsored by Hayward was embraced in early 1981 by Reagan administration || Secretary of the Navy Lehman, who articulated an aggressive, offensive U.S. naval or “maritime” strategy. At the onset of hostilities, it would send the U.S. fleet into Soviet waters to attack the Soviet fleet, expected to be passive when the war began. This maritime strategy, quietly established in 1982 and widely publicized in 1986, assumed that the Soviet fleet would be on the defensive, because it considered U.S. Navy contributions in three phases, with two of them—“seizing the initiative” and “carrying the fight to the enemy”—implying that the Soviets would remain on the defensive in home or area waters.12 Some j Soviet submarines, according to the published strategy, ™ might be able to “leak” into the open oceans, assuming K. that “as the [U.S.] battle groups move forward [into Soviet waters], we will wage an aggressive campaign against | all Soviet submarines, including ballistic missile submarines.” Thus, the maritime strategy essentially accepted the Herrick-MccGwire-LaRoque thesis that the Soviet Navy was oriented toward defense.
Lehman was an effective Secretary of the Navy, as he garnered administration and congressional support for more carriers, reactivated the mothballed Iowa (BB-61)- class battleships, built new amphibious ships, and procured additional naval aircraft. He was a “Mahanist,” adopting the long accepted thesis of navalist Alfred Thayer Mahan, and building a fleet to seek an early, decisive naval battle that would set the course and determine the outcome of the war.13 Under the maritime strategy, his carriers would sail northward, against the Soviet strategic missile submarine bastions and the military installations on the Kola and Kamchatka peninsulas, to strike the Soviet naval and air forces.
Lehman’s quest for the decisive naval battle was, in essence, similar to the strategy of the Imperial Japanese Navy and, to a large degree, that of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II. It was, however, an outdated strategy even in that conflict. Germany had demonstrated this by almost winning the war for the Atlantic without a major surface fleet and without a decisive naval battle (instead, through a large number of decisive convoy battles).
Could a navy consisting primarily of submarines, without a substantial number of surface capital ships (e.g., today’s aircraft carriers), be an offensive navy? Three historical examples illustrate that it could, indeed. In brief, the German U-boat campaign against Great Britain in World War I was not defensive; Germany initiated it, not to stop Britain from attacking Germany (which it was already doing), but to defeat Britain by literally starving it out of the war. Two decades later, both the United States and Germany conducted unrestricted submarine campaigns against their enemies. To some degree, the U.S. submarine campaign in the Pacific, to hold the Japanese until the U.S. battle fleet could be reestablished, was de- tors caused U.S. submarines to have virtually no impact on Japanese naval operations until 1944. After that, the submarine campaign was certainly offensive. In the Atlantic, the German U-boat campaign of 1939-1945 was offensive, especially after September 1941 when the planned invasion of England was cancelled. Again, the purpose was to starve Britain. The indomitable Winston Churchill wrote: “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. ... I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.”14
Some would argue that in the modern context the terms sea-denial and sea-control have more relevance than offensive and defensive. But the terms sea-denial and sea- control are vague and less helpful than might first appear. For example, if a U.S. carrier battle group were to operate in the Norwegian Sea, it must have “sea control,” i.e., deny the area to Soviet aircraft, surface ships, and submarines. This is also “sea-denial.” A U.S. battle group is offensive because it is in the Norwegian Sea to launch weapons against the Soviet Union.
In the same regard, the Soviet Navy—centered on attack submarines—can be offensive by seeking to accomplish three things: destroy U.S. strategic missile submarines at the start of a conflict (the same role U.S. attack submarines have under the offensive maritime strategy); destroy U.S. surface forces whether or not they are threatening the Soviet homeland (certainly an offensive act); and attack U.S. convoys to prevent reinforcement of Europe (defensive on the Soviet part) and to force a capitulation of Western Europe (an offensive act, as were the U.S. and German submarine campaigns against merchant shipping in World War II).
Technology has significantly enhanced the offensive capabilities of the submarine. In both world wars the submarine commander sighted his enemy through a periscope (or in the later war by mast-head radar or short-range sonar), fired torpedoes with ranges measured in hundreds of yards, and could thread his way carefully through a minefield if the enemy had erected a defensive barrier.
The Director of U.S. Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Thomas A. Brooks, stated in 1988 that the capital ship of the Soviet Navy is the submarine.15 This is a central point. Western naval leaders have long accepted the Mahan thesis that a capital ship must stand in line with others of its kind in the decisive naval battle. Only these “line-of- battle” ships, whether battleships or aircraft carriers, can bring to bear the concentrated firepower—heavy guns or aircraft that can be decisive in battle.
Today’s Soviet Navy does not accept the Mahan thesis. The late Admiral Gorshkov wrote that “The Mahan theory of ‘supremacy of the sea’ according to which a general engagement of major line forces could lead to a victory, which was considered indisputable, had a considerable effect on the one-sided trend in the development of navies. This theory did not at all take into account not only the near future, but even the notable trends in the development of naval technology.”16 Rather, in describing the modem Soviet Navy, Admiral Gorshkov made it clear that the striking forces of the Soviet Navy are submarines and land-based aircraft. Further, Gorshkov reiterated in his writings that the Soviet Navy was an offensive fleet and continually criticized defensive-only navies.
The modern Soviet submarine can be the capital ship of an offensive fleet because it can receive targeting data from offboard sensors—aircraft, satellites, other submarines, and surface ships. It can fire cruise missiles with ranges of several hundred miles with high speed and semiautonomous guidance, and it can plant advanced-technology minefields that probably cannot be penetrated by Western naval forces. Further, the Soviet submarine captain can communicate with other submarines, surface ships, and aircraft to coordinate his movements with other forces—the undersea aspect of the Soviet “combined arms” practice. The recent construction of the V/STOL aircraft carriers of the Kiev and Tbilisi classes, which appear in large part have been justified to provide support or—in Soviet jargon—“combat stability” to the submarine force, should not distract Western naval leaders and analysts from identifying the submarine as the principal component of the Soviet fleet.
Looking at the extensive writings of Admiral Gorshkov and other Soviet writers, it is clear that the Soviet Navy considers the submarine as its capital ship, and will seek to launch the “first salvo” in a conflict, with surprise as a key element. The Soviet attack submarine has thus emerged as the ship that can make the difference in an offensive or sea-control or sea-denial naval campaign.
And those submarines comprise an offensive force which, thanks to modem technology, is potentially far more dangerous to the West than were German U-boat forces in either world war. The U-boats were a military threat only to shipping and, through secondary effect, to the enemy nation’s economy and fighting ability. Today, Soviet torpedo and cruise missile attack submarines pose a number of direct threats to major Western maritime, military, and economic targets. Acknowledgment of this situation with respect to the potential of modern submarines and of the offensive nature of the Soviet Navy is necessary, if the United States and its allies are to be credible in a future confrontation and effective in a future conflict.
Funding for the U.S. military services is going to be tight. There are less funds available for defense than during the Reagan administration, and the Navy faces major budget reductions. To retain an active fleet of 500 ships or even 450—long gone are dreams of 600 ships—the Navy must intellectually accept the fact that the Soviet Navy is an offensive force.
This will become even more difficult to “buy” (or to “sell” to Congress) because of the current reductions in Soviet ship numbers and manpower. However, as of this writing, construction of Soviet surface ships and submarines continues. Indeed, the construction of Tbilisi-class carriers and modem cruisers shows an upward trend in resources allocated to naval construction with little if any reduction in numbers being built. The submarine picture is less clear, however. Launchings increased in 1989, but the end of the Typhoon nuclear ballistic missile submarine program and certain other adjustments—possibly for reasons of arms limitations—on submarine-launched ballistic missiles may mean an increase in the construction of attack and cruise missile submarines. The Severodvinsk shipyard in the Arctic, which produced the Typhoons, recently became a second source for the quiet Akula-class attack submarines. (The yard also builds Delta IV ballistic missile submarines, Oscar nuclear-powered cruise missile attack submarines, and possibly a submarine to carry the SS-N-24 land-attack cruise missile.)
At least once every decade during the 70 years of communist rule in the Soviet Union there have been surges of Western optimism that Soviet leaders were giving up their Marxist ideology of world-wide class war. Perhaps the most publicized was the massive military reductions of First Secretary Khrushchev in the early 1960s. He cut manpower by 1.2 million with accompanying reductions in tanks and other weapons. But in that same period he established the Strategic Rocket Forces and gave intercontinental ballistic missile development and production the highest priority, initiated a military space program, and accelerated the deployment of antiship missiles.
While it may be too early to draw parallels between the policies of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Khrushchev, Gorbachev has announced publicly that a principal goal of his perestroika and glasnost policies is to increase Soviet technology and production capabilities, with applications to the military as well as the civilian sector. And, despite the cutbacks and the current apparent emphasis on carriers and other surface warships, Gorbachev’s efforts will be manifest in the future submarine force—the primary naval threat to Western maritime and other political-military activities.
'These were the CVN-68 to CVN-70, to be replacements for the World War II-built aircraft carriers Midway, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Coral Sea (CV-41, CV-42, and CV-43)—although two of these older ships remained in the fleet in 1989. 2S. G. Gorshkov, “The Development of Soviet Naval Science,” Morskoi Sbornik, No. 2, 1967, p. 19.
3Zbignicw Brzezinski, “Peace, Morality and Vietnam,” The New Leader, 12 April 1965, p. 12.
4Robert W. Herrick, “A View of Soviet Naval Strategy,” in Nava! Review 1967 (U.S. Naval Institute, 1966), pp. 14-41.
‘’Robert W. Herrick, Soviet Naval Strategy, Fifty Years of Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1968).
6Herrick, pp. 144-145.
7Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1979), p. 217. Dr. Kissinger noted that “The same attitude existed in other services.” 8John B. Hattendorf, “The Evolution of the Maritime Strategy: 1977 to 1987,” Naval War College Review, Summer 1988, p. 10.
Thomas B. Hayward, “The Future of U.S. Sea Power,” Proceedings, May 1979, pp. 66-71.
10Ibid., p. 68 "Ibid., p. 69
nThe Maritime Strategy, Supplement to Proceedings, January 1986, p. 11. l3John F. Lehman, Jr., Command at Sea (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989), pp. 117, 126, et passim.
l4Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. 2 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 1949), pp. 598-599.
15Speech at intelligence community Red Tie Luncheon, Washington, D.C., 2 August 1988. Admiral Brooks also stated that the Soviet Navy is an offensive oriented force.
I6S. G. Gorshkov, “The First World War,” Morskoi Sbornik, No. 5, 1972, p. 13.
Mr. Polmar is an internationally known author and analyst, specializing in U.S. and Soviet naval issues. He is editor of the Guide to the Soviet Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986).
Mr. Robinson served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1948. He later served as an intelligence analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.