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By Captain D. A. Dyer, U. S. Naval Reserve
Lessons of the Falklands’ Crisis
Any armed conflict, such as the Falklands’ crisis, is like a magnet to armies of self-appointed experts from all walks of life to comment, often in articulate incompetence, upon the lessons to be learned.
The motivations behind many of these commentaries are suspect, as they interpret the “meaning" of such an action in extrapolations to reach conclusions about what size, shape, and makeup the U. S. Navy should be.
The proliferation of advice to the professionals, who live in daily contact with the Soviet Navy, and who have the special benefit of intelligence data, is mind-boggling and must be confusing to the public.
Discussion about small ships versus big ships, for example, based on a single time reference, runs the risk of creating more smoke than light. When such "analysis” is applied to the merits of the large-deck aircraft carrier, the small ship advocates always neglect the fact that the Soviet Navy has begun construction of a new class of large aircraft carriers because of its need to correct a major deficiency in its naval power— i.e., dependence upon land-based power for air cover. The Soviet Navy's carrier will be large and nuclear powered.
The experts who play this game fail to recall the many times when a change in point of view has resulted in our expulsion from land-based air facilities (and other bases) on foreign soil. This after these facilities were built at tremendous cost to the United States. The vulnerability of land-based facilities to attack by a variety of means, including sabotage and subversion, is also ignored.
One lesson of the Falklands' crisis is that a large ship built prior to
World War II is no match for modern weapons.
The Sheffield lesson is that ship design needs to focus as much on the need to have sufficient manpower and compartmentation to enable crews to fight fires as on the capability to fight another navy. It was the uncontrollable fire, not the missile, which caused the Sheffield’s sinking. This loss emphasizes the need for quality airdefense capabilities.
Little attention has been given to the fact that the Royal Navy is a fleet designed for antisubmarine warfare operations in the North Sea, which is its NATO mission. Cutbacks in military spending in Great Britain have placed that nation in a position where it must use a fleet designed for one purpose to fight an action of a different kind.
Those same cutbacks have reduced the Royal Marines to a fraction of their prior size, greatly hampering their ability to effect a landing on hostile territory 8,000 miles from home, and to defend itself from strong land-based air attacks once ashore.
Given the proliferation of modern military hardware to many countries, prospects of irresponsible actions taking place almost anywhere in the world grow daily.
There is no way that land-based facilities can be sufficient in integrity, numbers, or geographical distribution to anticipate and effectively counter such an emerging variety of contingencies. A floating airbase (i.e., a large aircraft carrier), however, is capable of getting to the right place when needed and providing early warning capabilities and air cover. It represents the most meaningful and effective means by which the United States can project its sea power to meet the variety of contingencies which can arise.
The self-appointed anticarrier experts consistently fail to distinguish between strategic and tactical considerations when they argue in favor of the submarine over the aircraft carrier. While the submarine is an awesome system in the strategic dimension, it is hardly an effective tactical system. Shallow waters, lack of air support, and lack of capability to soften the beach for a landing are just a few obvious reasons for making the distinction.
In the final analysis, wars will be finally decided by the ability of a foot soldier to walk ashore and take possession of real estate, short of devastation through the use of nuclear weapons.
The fundamental lesson, then, is that the best insurance against nuclear war will continue to be tactical mobility and tactical superiority. For this reason, and because our country is dependent upon its ability to acquire most of its strategic materials from overseas, the strength of our Navy’s conventional tactical superiority must be maintained. Let us not wait until the Soviets have placed their large, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service to begin a costly and risky game of catch-up.
Let us also remember that, given the demands upon the Soviet economy to support its satellite countries and to continue to build military capability, it is strained by the need to diversify from its concentration on strategic weapons. Perhaps this pressure, great as it surely is, will tend to persuade the Soviets of the value of the weapons reductions proposed by the President. A strong Navy will not come cheaply, but the insurance of a policy involving a small percentage of our gross national product is one that cannot be postponed or put off, except at great risk.
90
Proceedings / July 1982