U.S. Navy Scraps Frigate's Missiles
In September 2003, the U.S. Navy ceased to support the SM-1 missile and withdrew it from service. The missile survives in foreign navies. In the U.S. Navy, the missile was used only on board Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)-class frigates, fired from a Mk 13 launcher forward of the superstructure. With its withdrawal, the above-deck portion of the launcher is being cut off. The below-deck part, including the cylinder that held the missiles, remains, presumably because removing a major weight so far forward would make the ships far too stern-heavy. Removal of the missile and its launcher leaves the ships without a medium-range antiaircraft missile and, incidentally, without the capacity to fire the Harpoon antiship missile.
Removal of the missile symbolizes the fleet's severe financial problems, which have several causes. One is the ongoing war against terrorism. Aside from actual combat, the Navy plays a vital role in two ways. It provides naval presence abroad, which encourages those who decide to support us and, hopefully, helps discourage those who would support enemies such as al Qaeda. It often seems that the main near-term goal of al Qaeda is to eject the West from the Muslim world, as a preliminary to taking control of that world. The presence of U.S. warships helps demonstrate that the West plans to stay. That the ships are offshore might indicate that we plan to stay not as occupiers but as friends, a vital difference.
A second major naval contribution is maritime interdiction. After the debacle in Afghanistan, al Qaeda operatives needed other bases. They also needed other ways to move the goods whose sale helps support them, such as drugs grown in Afghanistan and in the tribal area of Pakistan. The collapse of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and the enmity of the former Soviet states to the north closed off traditional drug smuggling routes. The sea beckoned. The U.S. Navy and its partners, such as the Royal Australian Navy and the Canadian Navy, operate a force in the Arabian Sea. Good evidence exists that its mere presence has prevented substantial numbers of al Qaeda refugees from reaching potential havens in East Africa. The force also intercepts drug shipments, the sale of which would have paid for al Qaeda's annual budget.
Such operations carry a substantial cost. Anything that reduces the cost of maintaining the ships on patrol (many of which are frigates) might help enormously. Like any other mechanical launcher, the Mk 13 required substantial maintenance. Its position far forward kept it wet, and seawater entering its mechanism would have increased the maintenance load. Eliminating the launcher saves considerable funds. It can be argued, moreover, that ships on operations such as the Arabian Sea patrol have little or no need for missiles to protect them against sophisticated forms of attack.
The war itself is expensive in its consumption of high-cost munitions. In the past, U.S. war stocks were calculated to provide enough weapons to fight the single big war against the Soviet Union. The assumption was that any other war would be minor, and that its small cost, in terms of munitions, could easily be made up. Today, no single big war is envisaged, but there is no reason to imagine that Iraq was the last smaller war we will fight for 20 years. In the face of such warfare, the basis for buying munitions shifts to production rates sufficient for regular usage. For example, for years the projected Tomahawk war reserve was about 4,000 missiles, and about that number were made. Since 1991, the U.S. Navy has expended about 2,000 Tomahawks (reportedly 800 of them in Iraq in 2003 alone). At $500,000 to $1.2 million each, we cannot easily afford to buy 500 or 800 each year. For this reason, among others, the less expensive JDAM (joint direct attack munition) guided bomb now is the munition of choice.
The Navy thus had to make a painful cut of the SM-1. Surviving frigates will be fitted with the much smaller but more capable rolling airframe missile (RAM), backed by the single ship deep sweep (SSDS) weapons control system. For the present, the assumption is the frigates can make do with the Phalanx close-in weapon system because when they operate alone they are most likely to be conducting maritime interdiction operations. When the ships operate near potential missile hazards, they will, at least in theory, benefit from the battle group's antiaircraft umbrella. The umbrella, however, is far from perfect.
All this having been said, the elimination of the launchers raises some interesting questions. The frigate's role now very clearly focuses on the helicopter and the sensor-data link between ship and helicopters. With the rise of the current multirole version of the SH-60 Seahawk, the frigate has a potent weapon to use against small patrol and attack boats in littoral areas. Standardization makes the same helicopter airframe the primary mine countermeasures aircraft. The frigate might therefore become a major littoral mine countermeasures platform. All of this is quite apart from the existing frigate antisubmarine warfare function. Perhaps the frigate is best characterized as a small aircraft (helicopter) carrier.
A second question also comes into play. To what extent should we care about the impression our warships make as projectors of real power? At one time, the locals in ports might have been impressed only by guns or by airplanes lined up on a flight deck. By now they probably understand what a missile launcher like a Mk 13 means. What do they think when they see a ship without any such launcher, with only a 3-inch gun amidships? Obviously, the situation would have been radically different if, say, a lightweight 5-inch gun had been installed when the Mk 13 was removed. That, however, would have been a costly operation.
In the past, U.S. Navy policy has been squarely against making special design or configuration provisions for the presence mission, apart from installations intended to counter the smallboat threat. If sheer presence now is an important part of the global war against terrorism, perhaps this viewpoint should be reconsidered. In the case of the frigates, it might be worth something to add weaponry that will make them seem more fierce. Perhaps we should take a leaf from the book the Royal Navy wrote after World War II, when it was far poorer than we are now. It kept many weapons on board ships, but reduced them to inactive status without admitting it.
Smaller Caliber Rounds Become More Explosive
Recently, the Royal Netherlands Navy announced it was replacing its 20-mm guns with .50-caliber machine guns. At first blush this might seem to be another unfortunate economical move, and indeed it was advertised as such: the machine gun is lighter, simpler, and easier to maintain. The move also advertises a quiet revolution in .50-caliber ammunition, led by the Norwegian company Raufoss. Most readers will think of the .50 as a solid slug, whereas the 20-mm round is explosive. Raufoss discovered a way to make a .50-caliber explosive round. The problem in the past has been that the .50 was too small to be provided with a mechanical safing-and-arming device (which was required to ensure safety if rounds accidentally were dropped). Raufoss developed, in effect, a chemical safing-and-arming mechanism. The hard body inside the bullet is surrounded by explosive, and a detonating charge is packed into a cavity in the nose of the bullet. When the bullet hits, the charge bursts and ignites the main explosive charge, while the solid penetrator passes through thin armor. If the bullet is merely dropped, the impact is insufficient to set off the detonating charge. Raufoss ammunition has been in service for years, but the Dutch announcement seems to be the first time its full implications have been recognized.
Obviously the ammunition still has limitations. A 20-mm round is more than three times as heavy as a .50, so it carries farther. On the other hand, the effective range of the two weapons against a moving target is not likely to be too different. Because the 20-mm gun is far more massive, it cannot be maneuvered as well, so the chance of hitting might be much smaller. It seems that 20-mm guns largely replaced .50s in the past because the hitting effect of a single 20-mm round was so much greater. If that difference has now disappeared, in many applications a .50-caliber gun might be preferable. Applications may include some seaborne Galling guns, as used in the Korean and Japanese fleets. Phalanx would not be a case in point, because it applies the full power of the 20-mm cartridge to a subcaliber (about .50-caliber) dart. It also can be argued that power-operated mounts, such as the Israeli Typhoon, get more out of a 20-mm gun because their fire control systems can exploit its full range. The weapons for which Raufoss's invention would be decisive would be those controlled entirely by hand, as in the Royal Netherlands Navy.