The traditional interdependence of the military and the State Department—as was smilingly reflected in the faces of Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk in a 1962 meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees—has become increasingly subject to barriers which threaten the vital rapport between soldier and statesman and lead, predictably, to militarily unsupportable commitments.
In an earlier and more simple day, Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenue were not very far apart. It was possible for a Foreign Service officer to stroll down Seventeenth Street and, in the course of an afternoon, to arrange with a naval officer for the loan of some Fleet broadcast time, some communications ratings, a few meager pieces of equipment—and practically in the time required for the telling—thus to initiate through command interest and personal relations a daily radio information service to our embassies and legations abroad.
For one reason and another, while global distances have been foreshortened by the technology of our times, Washington distances have not been similarly affected. It is no mean stroll, after all, from the new State Department Building to the Pentagon and the effort alone would probably not suffice to establish productive relations; for there are greater barriers in existence today to the meaningful exchange between “State” and “Navy” than mere distance.
All of this is something of a pity because, at this time more so than ever before in our century, we may discern the need for the closest sort of liaison, understanding, and mutual support, between these two branches of our government.
The Navy finds itself in a dilemma of historic implications. It has arrived at a complicated sort of crossroads. Practically speaking, its size, that is to say its number of ships, and its very nature, are being redecided. The vast bulk of the ships in service in 1966, with the exception of the Polaris fleet, were obsolescent. The various artifices of renovation and modernization had already about run their course. But the answers to the inexorable questions of replacement on a very large scale or progesssive [sic] abandonment were deferred in the face of Vietnamese war requirements. Even in 1966, replacement in kind was not perceived as a simple alternative to abandonment. There was then, and there is even more cogently today, the very involved matters of functional warship types to choose, a wide variety of mutually exclusive equipments and weapons to consider and, of greatest importance, the decision as to nuclear propulsion or no. All of these questions are operative against a backdrop of great change in our international and domestic situations. The Navy, in common with her sister services and the Foreign Service, has been drastically affected by the proportionate share of the budget now available for other than internally oriented affairs.
A specialized aspect of the Navy’s problem, additionally, derives from having been forced since World War II to specialize to an extraordinary degree in its officer corps because of far-reaching technological changes. It has been urged, within the profession, that officers reaching a given level of seniority go about the business of dispensing with their “wings,” “dolphins,” and (presumably) “black shoes,” and rise above parochial outlooks as aviators, submarine officers, or destroyermen, in assessing the various means applicable to given ends.
It is obvious, nevertheless, that apart from the Navy’s internal problems and the general problem of money, the question of “how large” and “what kind of” a navy should not be answered without detailed correlation with operational foreign policies—in addition to correlation with broader national strategies resting, in turn, on basic aspirations of our people to the extent that they can be perceived and articulated—principally by the President. The policies to be evolved will not be viable in their turn unless correlated with, and supported by, an adequate and suitable military establishment—including most specifically an appropriate Navy.
The Interdependence of Military and Foreign Affairs. It is by no means the function of the military establishment in this country to prescribe the foreign policy of the United States. It has been traditionally beneficial, however, for each of the military services to study closely this policy in order to anticipate, if possible, its military demands on the foreign scene. This has been a necessary adjunct to the military responsibility for the defense, in fact, of our homeland. It has been reflected, for the most part, by persistent, if not equivalent, interest on the part of the State Department and its Foreign Service officers as to the realities of our various military capabilities. This interaction is an extraordinarily useful ingredient in the complex business of adjusting operational foreign policies to available forces and to the more serious business (in a long range sense) of evolving forces to support sustained (or sustainable) policies. It takes place at the professional level among the officers concerned even though the formal aspects of consideration and decision take place in the rarefied levels of the National Security Council and its offspring committees.
For many years, the intermediary between the State Department and the Navy was the ubiquitous naval attaché assigned to the various embassies and legations abroad. Today, this officer is often a product of specialized intelligence training rather than “of the Fleet.” In any case, whether because of the technical specialization mentioned earlier, a possible tendency of the attaché to identify himself with the large U. S. military “communities” to be found abroad, or because of the increasing propensity in our government to treat all intelligence matters—and the people connected—as something “apart” from any other operational field, the naval attaché provides less and less often, from firsthand experience, the broad education on current naval affairs that his predecessor was able to transmit to our Foreign Service officers of an earlier era.
In a rapidly fluctuating international situation, it is of vital importance that operators in the foreign policy field have the most sensitive and accurate picture of the actualities of our military situation in various parts of the world—as opposed to the “official” position of the government, assumed when discussing the condition of military forces with the P.P.P. (Patriotic Popular Press). A failure to achieve this sort of perception (which comes from sustained interest and association between professionals) can result eventually in the unsupportable commitment to a Suez-type venture by the super-levels of government. Recently in our country the importance of conventional forces was reaffirmed by one President who then promptly stressed this theme by its application in, as we now preceive [sic], a rather unlikely concept of combat. High-level pronouncements as to the newly discovered importance of this or that mode of warfare are diverting enough for the press on a slow news day but it should not be supposed by professionals that the mere statement of policy at even the highest executive level causes long-neglected capabilities to spring into being overnight. To do so in the making of foreign policy decisions is to invite being unmasked in reality as a “paper tiger”—which was, essentially, the unhappy lot of Great Britain and France following Suez. In our country, no military system (conventional or otherwise) of practical and sustained import can be brought into being and maintained in a viable state today without a substantial and long-term commitment of the art, treasure, science, and manhood of our nation. Thus the substantial reduction of our Navy which we are witnessing today cannot, in sober fact, be recouped in the short term. The reconstituted Navy that will appear must be tailored to those foreign policies resting on the most secure of national convictions. The importance of sustained association between “soldier” and “statesman” during this period of reappraisal and adjustment rests on the fact that in a changing technological environment, lessons learned a generation ago are seldom entirely appropriate in detail to the exigencies of the moment or the predictable requirements of the future.
The Defense Complex. To avoid leaving the full responsibility for a breakdown in communications on the hapless attaché, however, it must be recognized that several other factors have contributed to the schism between “State” and “Navy” (and probably the other services) in recent years.
For one thing, since World War II, we have engaged in sustained occupations of various foreign territories. These occupations have, in general, been conducted under military pro-consulships—responsive actually to the President, the Pentagon, and the Senate, rather than the Secretary of State.
For another, the creation of the Department of Defense removed all military services from cabinet representation. As interpreted in practice, the Reorganization Act of 1947 requires that sustained contact with the upper echelons of the State Department by all military services be conducted through the Office of the Secretary of Defense—notably through the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA). There is considerable economy in this arrangement and is by no means to the Navy’s credit that, for a number of years, it, for all practical purposes, stood sullenly in the wings complaining instead of joining the new order with its best people.
Finally, the division between the Defense Department’s responsibilities for National Defense through the coordination of military procurement and technical support of the Armed Forces, and the State Department’s responsibility for the manipulation of foreign Policy, was often more than blurred on occasion during our last administration by the personal ambassadorial duties assigned by the President to the Secretary of Defense. The President of the United States is free to choose any individual in our nation to represent him personally and to “trouble-shoot” for him as he deems necessary or expedient. But, when this individual happens also to be the Secretary of Defense, whose “weight in council” reflects the approximately 50% of our national budget at that time accepted as the military’s “lot in life”—more than simple and transitory side effects could be expected to and did occur in the field of Defense’s impact on foreign affairs. Some of these effects were as they should be. Some were not.
But, without reference to the problems inherent in the Defense Department’s practice of operational diplomacy abroad, each of the military services in its own Peculiar sphere of cognizance has a legitimate and sustained individual need (above and beyond that served by the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense) to counsel State Department operational personnel and, in turn, to receive their advice.
For the Navy’s part, this mutual need is a product of factors such as: our national geographical situation; the Navy’s fortuitous “marriage” to a magnificent Marine Corps; the vigorous existence of a specialized naval air arm; the unique adaptability of currently vital weapons systems (such as Polaris) to the Navy’s natural habitat—the sea; the continuing importance of sea-lift in world affairs; and the acute current dependence of the world’s modern nations on oil.
Concerning these factors, the general tendency is to forget the Marine Corps and to ignore oil.
As to our relations with the Marines, one may say that it is not unusual for a husband to overlook on occasion the possibility that his welcome in high circles may be owing to his talented wife rather than solely to his own sterling attributes. On the other hand, the Marine Corps’ espousal to the Navy, beset as it may be with marital “ups and downs,” is not likely to be terminated by the Marine Corps. Not when “she” is confronted daily with the example of what happens to other “widows” bereft of their own tactically controlled air power.
As for oil, we must discuss it at further length.
Survival Without Nuclear War. One of the most important revelations of the last 15 years has been that the threat of nuclear war is not necessarily paralyzing. Life does go on. And as it does so, it becomes ever more apparent that there are great incentives for the successful pursuit of policies aimed at avoiding or preventing nuclear war. During these same years, however, we have also had evidence that for the United States these policies must be complete national expressions in their own right. They cannot be supine or emasculated policies of retreat or pacificism [sic]. Nor, we have learned more recently, can they be single-minded and rhetorically over-postulated determinations to interfere everywhere at all cost. It has been demonstrated that a policy of avoiding nuclear war carries with it the need to ensure our government’s ability to wage other sorts of war (within reason)—and to retain, absolutely, the ability for waging nuclear war in the last resort. It may be said, however, that it is also becoming more clear that this last resort is postponed or avoided in almost direct proportion to the number of peaceful and warlike alternatives available. The Navy is as inherently suited to this task of providing—and of ensuring-alternatives as the Army, in conjunction with the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command, is suited to the job of “making them stick.”
The general reasons for this inherent adaptability of the Navy to a wide spectrum of action have already been touched upon. The underlying key to the Navy’s peculiar “rapid response” application to foreign policy support in our present age, however, is found in oil and its transport by sea.
Oil and Antisubmarine Warfare. Modern industrial nations can neither produce, nor feed, nor transport, nor defend themselves without oil. Nations seeking adulthood in our current civilization are forced, first and foremost, to acquire oil. Yet only a relatively few nations, industrialized or not, possess this precious commodity in sufficient quantity within their own borders. And, in general, few of these nations are members of the Free World (maritime) alliance system. It may be said that this fact is found at the root of most of our foreign alliances (or entanglements, depending upon the viewpoint). In practically all of these alliances, somewhere, lies the need—the desperate need—of some nation for oil. Articulated recognition of this point, typically, has only occurred as energy demands on this continent and in Europe begin to overrun fuel capacities.
How long this excruciating dependence on oil will persist is a matter for technological advances as well as gas and oil exploration to decide. But it would be a self-delusion of the first magnitude to ignore its tremendous importance at the present time and probably through this decade.
A substantial proportion of the same 70-odd foreign nations with whom we have contracted either treaties or agreements for military assistance obtain their oil from outside their own borders; mostly by sea. Lest at this point the reader conclude that it is good that a merciful Providence chose to make oil-by-sea dependence a problem for our friends (whom we can help if we want), reference should be made to Figure 1—which apart from highlighting the oil dependence of our friends—also reveals some sobering aspects of the U.S. dependence.[1] All in all, however, it can be acknowledged that whereas important interests are involved for our country, the real issue at stake for our maritime friends is their absolute survival as national entities. It is, of course, a fact that the loss of these friends would drastically curtail the social, economic, and political options of our children.
[Figure 1: map depicting the “Free World International Flow of Petroleum 1971 . . .”]
For many years, our Navy was the only force in the world intrinsically capable of safeguarding this bloodstream of civilization. One hesitates to say simply “capable” of performing this task because of its extraordinarily far-flung nature (in view of the multiplicity of our commitments) and because of the fact that the most apparent threat to its integrity lies in the existence—and continuing modernization—of the four Russian submarine fleets. Succinctly stated: tankers are a submarine’s “meat;” and, where there may be some basis to the perennial professional naval argument as to the submarine vulnerability of this or that man-of-war, no one has ever argued the point with respect to tankers. And each single tanker today may carry approximately the quantity of oil carried by an entire convoy in World War II!
Antisubmarine warfare has long been acknowledged by our Navy as being one of its major “problems.” Unequivocal action toward its solution, however, has not necessarily been a major preoccupation of the Navy until very recently.
The end of World War II left the Navy endowed with a tremendous capital investment in carrier warfare. To understand the real extent of this heritage it must be realized that it comprised not only many large and expensive ships plus vast armadas of aircraft, but also great numbers of officers and men skilled in their use and confident of their wartime value. Too, there were extensive shore-based estates supporting the maintenance and training requirements of this huge fleet, a well-integrated supporting block in domestic industry, and the far-flung administrative apparatus to tie all of these factors together. Such an endowment is not lightly nor prudently cast aside. More than naturally it has been the Navy’s subsequent propensity to build largely upon this basic edifice of naval aviation and to adapt it, wherever possible and feasible, to the various requirements that became apparent thereafter—in short, to hang the Navy on whatever strategic peg might seem capable of bearing the traffic.
On occasion, this effort, as applied to antisubmarine warfare at any rate, has had a somewhat makeshift appearance, as was the case toward the end of the decade of the 1950s when naval leaders implied in their testimony to the Congress that our Attack Carrier Striking Forces were in fact the strong right arms of our antisubmarine capability inasmuch as they could be thus used in the attack of enemy submarine bases. This sort of hyperbole has been largely dropped in more recent years because of the increasing understanding that, in view of nuclear warfare’s catastrophic probabilities, nations possessing atomic weapons would, by such possession, be foolhardy to strike in any fashion at the homeland of any other nation similarly equipped This realization that it is, after all, better to fight abroad—or at sea—than to burn at home is undoubtedly the genesis of the atomic weapon proliferation urge which is exhibited by various nations around the world today.
There is no intention whatsoever of decrying here the value of naval aviation—nor, specifically, the merit of carrier warfare. This mode of naval warfare is peculiarly necessary where any substantial naval commitment (including antisubmarine warfare) is to be made in the vicinity of enemy air power.[2] It has proven extraordinarily efficacious in the destruction of enemy surface units and shore installations alike. Furthermore it has been developed to its present heights primarily through American tactical innovations (with notable technical contributions by the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy, plus a Japanese lesson) and there is no doubt that our combined genius exhibited so far in this field will result in further progress of great variety and military benefit. It is, after all, extremely valuable to the designers and manipulators of our foreign policies to have at their beck and call the naval capacity to strike, to blockade, to convoy, to search, and to land on short notice—all under self-provided air cover.
Nevertheless, as things stand today, although obscured occasionally by the well-meant efforts of Navy public information specialists (whose glasses are of roseate hue), the bulk of our aging fleet is ill-adapted to modern antisubmarine warfare—and it is essentially oil-fired.
These two factors combine to spell out the unpleasant truth that, while our Navy is not badly off in being able to support a wide miscellany of projects in the national interest—ranging from the Polaris Strike Fleet to the government-sponsored transport of food or medicines overseas—it is not yet attuned to the preservation of the one element currently essential to what we term the “Free World”—namely, the unrestricted flow of oil. And, of extreme importance, this superannuated fleet and many of our new ships under construction arc themselves almost completely dependent upon the sustained availability of oil.
It is useful here to pause a moment while considering the implications, in more or less concrete terms and in specific areas, of the apparition that we have evoked. We describe a sphere of influence whose national entities are essentially dependent upon the sustained availability of oil; we postulate a threat to this availability in terms of the Russian submarine fleets; and we indicate that the military agency at our disposal for countering this threat is (a) obsolescent and not particularly shaped to the task and (b) itself readily susceptible to immobilization by loss of a sustained fuel oil flow.
Let us deal with the last statement first. The real dependence on oil of our present-day ships may be made clear to the landsman by saying that, in the case of a destroyer—a typical antisubmarine ship—sustained speeds of over 15 knots cannot be maintained without at least weekly refueling. As these ships operate with carriers, for instance, where higher sustained speeds are often necessary due to aircraft launching and to coincident departures from a given track to seek favoring winds, sea aspects, and so forth—the refueling rate approaches that of twice weekly. The quantities of oil involved are stupendous—the uninterrupted shuttling services of several large tankers being required for the operation of a single carrier task group. Our Navy’s critical bondage to oil is a very real thing. Wholesale conversion to nuclear power is of the utmost urgency and is a matter yet to be faced realistically by either its technical proponents or operational naval officers.[3]
Concerning the adaptation of the existing fleet to the containment of a submarine threat, we have already touched upon the rationale associated with our efforts to apply naval air power in this direction. It should be noted that against submarines normally operated on the surface—diving only in daylight to initiate (or escape) attacks—the great mobility and search potential of the naval aircraft made it an ideal antisubmarine weapon. Against the next generation of submarine which exposes itself on the surface only periodically by extending a small tube (snorkel) to recharge its batteries, the aircraft diminished somewhat in intrinsic effectiveness. By dint of magnificent flying on the part of truly dedicated officers and men, however, and with the commitment by the Navy of a very considerable supporting technical effort, naval aviation has retained a demonstrable level of usefulness in this area. But against the true submersible (of the nuclear-powered genre, for instance) the naval aircraft tends to suffer a severe loss of unilateral effectiveness. Its continued antisubmarine application in this case is justified by its susceptibility to coordination by antisubmarine ships, submarines, and shore bases, by its capacity for quick reaction against submarines who must surface to launch missiles, and by the desperate need for numbers imposed by the shortage of ASW ships in a navy primarily oriented toward aviation.
The truth of this becomes apparent when it is pondered that many devices created to help the aircraft find its submarine prey are essentially expensive modifications of tools otherwise more profitably employed on a ship—or another submarine. On top of all this we are becoming uneasily aware that any basic scientific breakthrough that we may achieve in the general area of ASW, besides not being exclusive to the United States, may well end in proving more advantageous to the submarine itself than otherwise. The appalling fact is that without reference to a nuclear holocaust, we are very likely faced, at sea, for the third time in this century, with a situation where if war comes, numbers and brute strength must be repelled by numbers and brute strength plus whatever scientific resources we can muster. The need for a firm and viable system of ASW-oriented maritime alliances under these conditions is painfully obvious.
Geography, Oil, and the Russian Submarine Fleets. When we come to an assessment of the Russian submarine fleets we are struck by a facet of geography which is, on the whole, peculiarly advantageous to us. By turning a mercator projection of the world on its side (See Figure 2) we perceive that the deep water exits available to the U.S.S.R. are guarded, in all cases except possibly one, by narrows susceptible to the establishment of prohibitive cordons of varying types (and varying effectiveness). The possible exception, Petropavlosvsk [sic], stands on a remote peninsula and falls into a special (and vulnerable) category of its own as concerns the affairs of the Pacific Ocean area—Petropavlovsk’s access to the Pacific is nonetheless directly affected by our situation in the Aleutian chain. The importance of the southern tip of Africa and Cuba are obvious.
The international political atmosphere which makes feasible the establishment of cordons in these pregnant narrows of the world—as well as the prior acquisition of contiguous and advantageous repair and replenishment bases so helpful to the mounting of escort systems necessary in the sustained prosecution of an ASW campaign—is just as much a valid function of our Foreign Service as is the winning of friends and the influencing of peoples in the course of generally advancing man’s lot while improving our “national image.”
Turning again to the question of oil, the U.S.S.R. might one day find itself impelled to unleash its submarine fleets against the seaborne oil lines of the Free World, say of Western Europe, in a manner which we have not elected to do in our embargo of Cuba, if this were to occur, what, briefly, would be the consequences?
Militarily, one might calculate with some degree of refinement how many days guns could be fired, missiles launched, aircraft flown, or troops moved—including, especially, those flown over as an emergency measure—sans fuel supply.
[Figure 2: map depicting the U.S.S.R.’s sea access via narrow straits]
Politically, however, a naval officer cannot assess with any hope of exactitude how long allies deprived of fuel would continue as allies—nor, for that matter, what unilateral arrangements otherwise staunch friends must contemplate if threatened by the loss of oil.
The Navy is quite capable of working out the nature and extent of forces (including those of potential ASW allies) required for the containment of the Soviet submarine fleets. It is also capable of providing to the State Department, for operational reference, specifics of the geographic necessities for the implementation of such forces.
But, besides being instrumental in acquiring allies with ASW forces or suitable bases, only the State Department (assisted by the CIA) has the facilities and the background to evaluate the vital question of time in the ASW syllogism of naval force, geographic position, and time available. The import of time here revolves about the question of how long, in the event of a struggle—since ASW is neither a one-day nor a single-avenue affair—would the temper and vital interests of our allies permit the outcome of such a war to remain undecided?
That this question is not one of idle curiosity becomes obvious when it is considered that this factor of “time available” fundamentally decides the number in being of ASW forces required (as opposed to the mere nature of such forces). Primed with this time-available information the naval planner could be equipped to examine the validity (or nonvalidity) of a number of mobilization schemes supporting “standing” forces. And, finally, using this information within the context of overall Defense Department financial estimates, we would be able to provide the Secretaries of the Navy and of Defense, and, through the latter, the National Security Council and the President of the United States, some now-badly-needed, reliable indices of where our foreign policies and homeland defense requirements are, or are not, mutually complementary. Obviously, in the larger course of events, with all services participating, that is just the picture that must eventually emerge at the Presidential level. Such a picture would show whether our economic, foreign, and defense policies, taken together as a national posture, supported our people’s long-term determination to survive as a political, social, and economic entity of their own choosing.
In the case of each military service, close professional relations with State Department officers must lay the groundwork for this examination. In the Navy’s case, ASW offers as good an example as anything else upon which to base our discussion since upon this mode of naval warfare is predicated not only our ability to hold allies—but also the ability of any of the other services to operate overseas.
To postpone further the re-establishment of professional contact and the detailed reappraisal of military and diplomatic ways-and-means abroad could be disastrous. For the Navy’s part, it might act to prolong the perilous circumstances where we build too few misarmed ships, of not necessarily the right type, needlessly bonded to oil, in order to implement possibly unsupportable, and not necessarily vital, foreign policies. For the State Department’s part it might act to continue a dangerous euphoria where it is accepted as a matter of course that any U. S. foreign policy can necessarily be supported by the Navy or, in any case, at least the Air Force, if not the Army.
As a nation, we are rich and powerful, but we are neither so rich nor so powerful that we can recoup, for an indefinite period, from a failure to take first things first.
Conclusion. At the beginning of this essay, reference was made to the parochialism of the intra-Navy rivalry which, in its convolutions, periodically reaches peaks of intensity and recrimination that would lift even the heart of any city editor sated with hackneyed stories of inter-service squabbles. Our internal Navy differences usually, however, are based on considerably more than dreams of personal aggrandizement, urges for empire building, or gross intellectual lethargy. They spring from deep-seated differences in opinion, based on fundamental differences in outlook—made inevitable by complete differences in personal service experience. The bitterness with which these differences occasionally find expression is very largely the product of a devotion to the United States which the naval officer (and, for that matter, the Foreign Service officer) understandably finds difficult to put into words. As a young man the commissioned officer takes a solemn oath to . . . “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . .” For the remainder of his adult life, this officer seeks to carry out this promise, and grows each day in his understanding of its implications. He becomes vested with, and conscious of, a personal responsibility for the safety of the United States which is shared by few of his fellow citizens. In the final analysis, when faced with decisions of fundamental import, the commissioned officer, like any responsible man, is forced to rely upon his best personal judgment—which is, inevitably, colored by his personal experience. Responsibility, if it does not make us cowards, certainly tends to encourage conservatism. We are forced to concede the aptness of the British General (then Colonel) J. F. C. Fuller’s words, . . . “an improvement in weapons is due to the energy of one or two men, while changes in tactics have to overcome the inertia of a conservative class.” To “tactics” we may add “attitudes.”
Yet, we find that, in our time, the record shows that the professional officer corps of the U. S. Navy is capable of facing facts and making logical and far-reaching decisions on a basis far removed from any petty considerations and limitations of personal experience.
Admiral Arleigh Burke and his immediate associates of the time were uneducated as to missiles and, for all practical first-hand purposes, knew next to nothing about the operation of submarines or the intricacies of nuclear power propulsion. And yet they were able to make, and to follow through on, the decision to establish the entire Polaris system. The true magnitude of this decision can be grasped, perhaps, when it is realized that for an aviation-oriented navy—headed, for the most part, by officers specialized in flying—the commitment to the Polaris system represented approximately the capacity to replace completely our 15 first-line attack aircraft carriers of that day. But any halfhearted commitment short of this—any attempt to “hedge”—would have resulted in no real strike capability at all.
We have every reason to believe, then, especially with new and vigorous naval leadership, that the next major decision as to the composition and extent of our Fleet will be made with maturity and firmness. The aptness of this decision to our vital national needs, however, will largely be determined by how well the career professionals in “Navy” and “State,” as well as their leaders, are able to make contact and to achieve and maintain a genuine meeting of minds.
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A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy in 1944 as a member of the class of 1945, Captain Bucknell served in LSMs and LSM(R)s and commanded the USS LSM(R)-514 in 1946. Subsequently, he served as a Gunfire Support School instructor and entered the submarine service in 1948. He served in the USS Cusk (SSG-348) as one of the first shipboard guided missile officers. Between 1952 and 1954, he acted as a technical aid for underwater ordnance in the Office of Naval Research. After serving as executive officer of the USS Pomfret (SS-391), he commanded the USS Remora (SS-487) in 1956, and in 1960 was commissioning captain of the nuclear-powered attack class submarine USS Snook (SSN-592). He commanded the USS Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600) from 1963 to 1967, and then became Chief of Nuclear Operations and Safety Branch on the Staff of CinCPac. From 1969 to 1970, he was Assistant Chief of Staff for Administration to the Commandant, Fourteenth Naval District. At the time of his retirement in October 1971, he was Director of Research, School of Naval Warfare, Naval War College, Newport, R.I. He is presently a graduate student of Political Science at the University of Georgia.
[1] Today over 50% of total East Coast petroleum product requirements and almost 100% of crude oil requirements in this sector are provided by seaborne transport.
[2] An aberration of this point of view led to the situation where our surface escorts and cruisers are individually outranged by the surface-to-surface missile equipped ships of the Soviet fleet. Rectification of this error, since carriers cannot be omnipresent, is of great urgency.
[3] This question of whether the U. S. Navy “should or should not” take advantage of its lead in nuclear power ship propulsion has finally been overtaken by the argument over whether it “can or cannot afford” to maintain this advantage. The monetary price tag of nuclear propulsion figures in this argument but not largely in the minds of knowledgeable men. More attention is now being paid to the matter of whether or not we can meet the stringent personnel quality requirements that have very necessarily been placed on the operating crews for these ships.