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The Soviet Navy’s commander has boasted that his fleets, led by a growing vanguard of nuclear submarines, can detect and destroy an enemy vessel anywhere in the world.
Admiral Sergei Gorshkov took the occasion of Soviet Navy Day to warn the West in an article in the party paper Pravda that the Russian Navy is a world-wide striking force and ", . . an impressive factor deterring any attempts at sudden aggression against the Soviet Union.”
The naval commander added that Russia’snuclearsubmarines,". . . armed with ballistic missiles and long-range torpedoes, and backed by missilecarrying planes and ships, are capable of destroying an enemy in any region of the world’s oceans.”
Gorshkov also claimed that foreign submarines would fail to withstand Soviet attack if war were to break out.
The strategic arms limitation agreements, signed in Moscow last May by President Nixon and Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev, signalled Soviet, nuclear equality with the United States, and Moscow is now believed to have every intention of gaining naval parity, if not supremacy.
The Soviet Pacific, Baltic, Arctic, and Black Sea fleets today boast about 408 submarines, 95 of them nuclear- powered, 27 cruisers, two helicopter carriers, 1,010 destroyers and more than 1,000 smaller, but heavily-armed craft.
The United States still has superiority
in aircraft carriers and destroyers, although it is outnumbered in the cruiser and conventional submarine classes. The Americans have 101 nuclear submarines and are scheduled to produce only 11 in the 1972-1973 programs.
Writing in the latest issue of the authoritative Jane’s Fighting Ships, Editor Raymond Blackman said: "It is a sobering thought that no other country in the world in this day and age of sophistication and inflation can possibly build as many submarines as the Soviet Navy has at the present time.”
Instant, Portable Air Bases Will Widen U. S. Air Power
(Tom Englehardt in the Philadelphia Bulletin, 23, July 1972)
Within months, U. S. Air Force jet transports will be able to bring an instant air base,* packaged against wear and tear, to almost any spot on the globe.
72 hours from the moment the first C-130 or C-141 transport sets down, the whole base will be set up and jets will be flying combat missions out of it.
Such a base can support seven different weapons systems for periods up to six months.
The Air Force will be able to repack the whole base on its cartons, load them again onto the transports, and take them home for use another day. All that is needed to set up a Bare Base, lie says,
*See S. Turner, "The United Stares at a Strategic Crossroads," U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, this issue, pp. 18-25.
is a runway and a supply of potentially drinkable water. All other necessities from folding latrines for 6,000 men to avionics shops capable of supporting 3 to 5 squadrons of aircraft, will be flown in as part of the kit.
According to Air Force sources, 1,400 Bare Base sites, ranging from developed commercial terminals in Europe to weed-grown runways in Chad, Africa, already have been plotted. But the area of greatest concern is Southeast Asia, which brought the Bare Base concept into being.
Today, approximately $28 million has already gone into the Bare Base program. DMS, a marketing report group with close ties to the Pentagon, estimates that equipment costs in the near future will rise to $165 million.
Bare Base kit contains 400 collapsible structures, built to be packed into C-130 transports. It included hangars, a hospital, barracks, a field computer, lighting vans, a vacuum sweeper which cleans a 7,000-foot runway in an hour, and a chapel.
Marine Helicopters Attack Nine North Vietnamese Boats
(Chicago Tribune, 21 July 1972)
U. S. Marine helicopters* plugged holes in the blockade of North Vietnam by attacking nine boats unloading an offshore freighter, military sources said.
Military spokesmen said the action, on 19 July, marked one of two times
C. Cook, Jr., "The Attack Helicopter,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, this issue, pp. 97-98.
118
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1872
that U. S. choppers took an offensive role in North Vietnam. The other occasion was a raid on the Son Tay prisoner-of-war camp in November 1971.
Officers said guns and rockets of the Marine craft fired at nine North Vietnamese sampans unloading a freighter 28 miles north of Dong Hoi. This was about 66 miles above the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams.
The command said three of the sampans were sunk and six damaged. The U. S. Seventh Fleet office in Saigon said the choppers are based on the USS Denver (LPD-9) in the South China Sea. The copters were used to impede the flow of small vessels carrying supplies into blockaded North Vietnam.
Offshore Tanker Terminal Gets Administration Push
(Edward Cowan in The New York Times, 31 July 1972)
The Nixon Administration has taken a first step toward mobilizing the support of Congress, the oil industry and the public for the construction of offshore, deepwater supertanker terminals that would cost billions of dollars.
To present the case for the first such terminal, the Maritime Administration, a branch of the Commerce Department, has just published a 48-pagc summary of a four-volume $197,000 feasibility study made by the New York engineer-
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The terminals, which the company and the agency believe should be located 8.5 miles east of the Delaware coast in 100 feet of water, would cost $ 1.3-billion and require nine years to complete. The estimate is based on 1972 prices, without allowance for future increases.
The present thinking in the Maritime Administration is that the government would pay about one-fifth of the cost and the oil industry would pay the rest.
Tankers carrying up to 100 million gallons of crude oil could start unloading at the terminal in the fifth year of the project. Smaller so-called feeder tankers would carry the crude oil to coastal refineries. Alternatively, it could be delivered by pipeline.
The Commerce Department’s endorsement of the Atlantic offshore site represented a change of position. More than a year ago, it leaned toward Delaware Bay. Delaware’s opposition, and cost and environmental factors cited by the study, were understood to have changed the department’s thinking.
Robert J. Blackwell, the assistant secretary of commerce for maritime affairs, said in response to an inquiry that a single deepwater Atlantic terminal "would very likely suffice” to meet East Coast oil requirements into the nine- teen-eighties. One and possibly two terminals will be needed in the Gulf Coast, he said.
Because of greater natural depths at Pacific ports, Mr. Blackwell explained, no offshore terminals are contemplated for supertankers bringing oil to the West Coast.
In a statement that accompanied the illustrated summary of the study, Mr. Blackwell declared that "the construction of deepwater terminals is vital to this nation’s ability to meet its growing energy requirements economically.”
The study found that such terminals would be cheaper, in total costs and in the burden on the United State’s balance of international payments, than several other types of transportation systems for delivery of foreign oil. The environmental impact also would be least, the study said.
With domestic production at capacity and demand growing, oil imports have risen in recent years and arc expected to climb rapidly in the years ahead. The
National Petroleum Council, an industry group that advises the Interior Department, estimates that imports will soar from 3.7 million barrels a day in 1971 to at least 18 million barrels in the year 2000 and perhaps as much as 26 million barrels by then.
The country, and particularly the oil-hungry Northeast, now lacks the unloading, transport, storage and refining facilities to meet the anticipated volumes.
The study concludes that of 34 sites examined for an initial terminal, the best would be a spot in the Atlantic Ocean 10 and one-half miles south of Cape May, N.J., and eight and one-half miles cast of Cape Henlopen, Del. Lower New York harbor and the Delaware Bay were among five sites to reach the final round of evaluation. The other two were off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas.
Controversy is certain to envelop any move by the government to license and finance a supertanker terminal, as occurred when two oil companies sought to establish similar facilities at Machias- port, Me. Debate is likely to center on location, environmental effects and cost sharing.
Evidently anticipating such controversy, the Soros study said: "The role of Government in this endeavor remains to be defined. No precedent exists for offshore public works in deep water. Similar projects ashore have been provided government support for public works, with industry responsible for terminal costs.”
Mr. Blackwell, in response to an inquiry, indicated that his agency contemplated a similar arrangement. "We assumed,” he said, "that the government would pick up the cost of dredging and building the breakwater.”
Industry, he said, would be expected to pay for construction of an artificial island and the ship-berthing, oil transport and pollution-protection facilities.
The overall costs for the project were estimated at a combined outlay from private and government sources of $1.3-billion. The study acknowledged that the cost estimates were based on last January’s price level and would in fact turn out to be higher.
The study said that a deep-water terminal was necessary for two reasons: It
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is much cheaper to move oil in supertankers than in smaller ones, and supertankers draw more water.
Notebook 119
In open water, a depth of 100 feet is necessary for ships carrying 350,000 tons of crude oil (about 104 million gallons), the study said. Most United States ports, the study said, cannot accept ships carrying more than 65,000 tons, chiefly because they are not deep enough.
The maximum draft of ships using New York harbor in 1970 was 44 feet. Some ports could be deepened by dredging, the study said, but that presented several risks, including possible interference with tunnels and the danger of scraping into the fresh-water table and letting salt water into drinking-water supplies.
An important reason for locating a deep-water terminal out in the ocean, the study concluded, is that "the possibility of oil spills would be substantially reduced by eliminating the major source of such spills—grounding and collision in busy channels and harbor areas.”
Corps Human Relations School Is Redesignated As Institute
(U. S. Marine Corps News Release DAC-229-72, 27 June 1972)
The Human Relations School at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, has become a permanent school and redesignated as an institute.
Colonel D. J. Hunter, U. S. Marine Corps, former Head of the Human Relations Branch, has become the Institute’s director.
The school was first opened in September 1971 to test curricula developed by the American Institutes for Research and the Human Relations Branch at Headquarters, Marine Corps. A total of 113 officers and staff NCOS were trained in two pilot classes at the school.
The courses are designed to train Marines to organize and implement the human relations program at all levels of command throughout the Marine Corps. The curriculum encompasses: the value of human life and the role of the Marine as a defender of human life; minority-majority issues adversely affecting human relations within the civilian society and within the Marine Corps;
culture shock (a reaction to the differences in customs and cultures which individuals find difficult to understand in relation to their own culture); and, selected readings in the general field of human relations.
Emphasis is placed on oral and written presentations, basic research and interview techniques and procedures, and research and implementation of individual action programs.
Pollution Research Study Reports North Sea Surprisingly Clean
(News of Norway, 7 July 1972)
The North Sea off western Norway now contains far fewer pollutants than in 1970, says Karsten H. Palmork, of the Bergen Oceanographic Institute. Moreover, there is no trace of oil pollution in this area.
Joint Norwegian/Swedish research between Feic and Shetland has shown these results, described as surprising. The reasons for the improvement have
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Last October, the Oslo Convention against dumping in the northeast Atlantic was formulated on the initiative of the Scandinavian governments, and Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs played a major role in the preceding negotiations. The convention is not yet formally in force, but has been signed by 13 countries.
Freedom Of Sea Outmoded According To Law Specialist
(The Newark Star-Ledger, 18 June 1972)
A specialist on international law predicts that the 350-year-old concept of freedom of the seas will be outmoded in ten or 15 years.
Albert V. Koers, a research associate at the Institute for International Law, University of Utrecht, Netherlands, told a conference on oceanography that the high seas will either become the property of coastal nations extending their territorial limits, or the oceans will come under the control of an international body.
"In 1985, the nations of the world will probably no longer have free and unpaid access to the high seas and its resources,” Koers said during a panel discussion. The whole question of the laws of the sea will be discussed at a United Nations conference next year.
The problem also was discussed at a meeting at the University of Rhode
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120 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1972
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Commander Destroyer Flotilla Five has established a Professional Forum for the officers of Destroyer Flotilla Five, based in Pearl Harbor. The Forum is designed to stimulate thought and further professional interest among destroyer officers. The large concentration of many key operational staffs in the Pearl Harbor area provides the Forum with a ready pool of highly qualified individuals. Topics currently proposed for presentation to the Forum include: current ASW plans and tactics, politico- military strategic planning in the Pacific Command, and strategic intelligence in the Pacific area. The forum was inaugurated on 1 June with an address by Vice Admiral E. P. Aurand, U. S. Navy, on strategic and tactical ASW resource allocation and operational planning theory.
Island in 1971, and Dr. Lewis M. Alexander said after that conference that if there is no agreement in 1973, more and more nations would extend their territorial limits out 200 miles.
"If every country extended its territorial sea to 200 miles, about 40% of the ocean’s fishing grounds would be outside territorial limits,” he said.
Koers said that if more and more control of the oceans is given to coastal nations, the oceans will become their private property. Or more and more control can be given to international organizations to . . ultimately make the sea public property of mankind. But whatever alternative will be chosen, the freedom of the high seas as we know it today will disappear.”
Submarine Rescue Submersible Dives Below 5,000 Feet In Test
(The Washington Post, 13 July 1972)
A 50-foot submarine rescue vessel, which dived to a depth beyond 5,000 feet in a recent test, was delivered to the Navy on 11 July.
The sub, to be used by the Navy facility at Point Loma on San Diego Bay is the second deep-submergence rescue- vessel put into service.
In its preparation of a televised history of World War II, Thames Television, Limited, is seeking examples of original movie film of life during that war. Individuals knowing of such personal documentaries arc requested to address advisories to: Thames Television, Limited, Teddington Lock, Teddington, Middlesex, 01-977 3252, England.
The only complete list of the oncc-numcrous Austro-Hungarian merchant fleet to be published since 1918, has been published in four successive issues of the Belgian Shiplover, quarterly journal of the Belgian Nautical Research Association, Av. J Stubbaerts 16, B 1030, Brussels, Belgium.
In Others’ Words
Selected extracts from the foreign press
Subs And Frigates For Chile Under Construction In Britain
(Rivista Marittima, Rome, May 1972) The Chilean Navy in its naval buildup has, as of 1970, ordered two multipurpose frigates of the British 2,300-ton Leander-class and two conventional British Oberon-class submarines, displacing 1,610 tons on the surface. All were to be constructed in British yards.
The first of the frigates was laid down in June 1971, at Yarrow in Glasgow, and the first of the submarines was laid down on 10 January 1972 at Scott in Greenock, with the assigned name of Condell.
British May Build Submarines For Use By The Israeli Navy
(Rivista Marittima, Rome, May 1972) Reports from either British or Egyptian sources indicate that the Vickers yard in Furness is negotiating with the Israeli Navy for the construction of two or three conventional attack submarines. Characteristics are not yet known, but it is supposed that they could be of the new "Type 500” projected in an Anglo- German collaboration.