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This opens a two-part series, which follows the history of the Soviet Navy from 1955, when Fleet Admiral Gorshkov was appointed Commander in Chief of the Soviet Navy, until his recent death.
The death of Fleet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov and the publication of The Navy, a book he nominally edited, marks the end of an era. It began in 1955 when Nikita Khrushchev brought Vice Admiral Gorshkov to Moscow and appointed him commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy at the age of 45 early in 1956. Its passing was confirmed when Mikhail Gorbachev appointed Colonel General Mikhail Moiseev as Chief of the General Staff in December 1988 at the age of 48.
The book reflects the doctrinal decisions made in the first half of 1984, the last attempt of the “old political thinking’’ to square the circle of what Gorbachev calls the new realities of the nuclear age. It does not reflect the radical reorientation of military doctrine that was decided by early 1987 and whose implementation was signaled in Gorbachev’s United Nations speech announcing unilateral force reductions in December 1988.
The Soviet Navy is approaching its tricentenary, and for most of those 300 years it has been seen as an expensive necessity, rather than a preferred instrument of policy. Today, the navy is but one of five branches of service that respond to the strategic direction of the Soviet Army- dominated General Staff. Of some 20 places on the Central Committee, the ground forces usually occupy about 15, while the navy generally fills one.
The book must therefore be viewed in the context of the unending Soviet debate on naval missions and force structure that has characterized the last 40 years. That debate was generated by successive changes in Soviet strategic concepts, each of which had an exaggerated effect on naval requirements, and hence naval building programs. This perspective allows one to see that the Soviet Navy of today is not the result of some master plan. It is the end product of repeated changes to naval programs and of making do with what was available rather than what was really needed.
The First 15 Years___________________________
When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet Navy was embarked on a major naval rebuilding program. By 1966, t navy planned to have a force of 4 carriers, 40 cruisers, 2 destroyers, and 1,200 submarines (all but 180 to be e ployed in fleet-area defense), plus escorts, subchasers- minesweepers, and fast-attack craft. The Soviets bega this naval construction in 1948 when they realized tna ’ rather than a resurgent Germany in 20 years’ time, t w
ist coalition that would be ready for war by 1953.
U. S. pronouncements and budgetary allocations ^ cated to the Soviet Union that the coalition’s objective would be to deny the Soviet Union an atomic-deliver; capability, to contain the influence of communism wit i Soviet borders, and, if possible, to effect a basic change the nature of the Soviet state. None of these objects ^ could be achieved without resorting to force. The coal'11^ would be led by the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers a would be centered on a radical new partnership betwe^ France and West Germany, the recognized proponents large ground forces. The threatened invasion could con by land and by sea. ,
By 1955, the Soviets realized that the postulated tn of invasion would not materialize, and they ^roU.^ef Gorshkov to Moscow to restructure their navy. Cm1 construction and the medium-type submarine Progran (then delivering 72 units a year) already had come to abrupt halt and the production facilities had been rea^g cated to the merchant fleet and fishing industry; follow-on classes of the remaining surface ships had canceled. The primary national concern was the U- ^ doctrine of massive retaliation, which was backed ) large and growing capability for nuclear air attack’ United States had 1,750 strategic bombers in 1959. ^ maritime threat was limited to Western naval incurs^ and to conventional air strikes from carriers that wo^ have to close to within range of Soviet shore-base ^ The Soviets could deny Western naval forces acceS,ey the Baltic and Black seas by seizing the exits, but could not exclude carriers from the Northern and Pa fleet areas in that way. Overriding the objections o
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sile submarines (SSBNs) from 1968 to 1977, carr^j1),J 1,260 missiles (35 x 16 + 35 x 20), which
erstwhile naval leadership, this threat was to be met by long-range nuclear-armed cruise missiles (that had yet to be developed), whose potential reach and payload would allow far fewer launch platforms.
The missiles would be mounted on board medium-size surface ships (4 Kildin, lOKrupny, 12Kynda, 12Kresta), diesel submarines (72 Juliett, 98 Long Bin), and medium- range bombers (Badgers B and C). However, by 1957 a central premise was no longer true. The U. S. Navy now had aircraft that would allow carriers to launch nuclear strikes against the Soviet heartland from the south Norwegian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Soviet surface ships could not survive outside the range of shore-based air cover, while the diesel submarines would not get there in time.
Faced by the ascendance of Western surface and air in distant sea areas, the Soviets turned to nuclear submarines. This coincided with the decision to rely on ballistic missiles for intercontinental delivery. In turn, this allowed the Soviets to reconfigure hull-propulsion units they had intended for the strategic mission to fill the anti-carrier role, using cruise missile systems they had originally programmed for the Juliett-class. These Echo I and II nuclear- powered guided missile (SSGN) submarines were an interim response, pending the development of a submerged- launch missile system that would rely on the submarine’s own sensors (20 Charlie, to be followed by 20 Papa). The annual allocation of reactors for submarine programs was increased from 12 to 20; deliveries to the fleet would start in 1968.
From 1948 to 1953, East and West mirrored and fulfilled each other’s threat perceptions, and ample evidence existed to support apprehensions of both sides. After 1953, the West’s threat perceptions remained largely unchanged, since its policy of deterrence was predicated on the continued existence of the threat it originally had been designed to deter. But Soviet threat perceptions steadily evolved. In 1956, the Soviets ruled that war between the two social systems was no longer fatalistically inevitable, and by 1960, they had largely discounted the danger of a deliberate U. S. attack. But the possibility of world war remained inherent in the prevailing structure of interna tional relations, and should it occur, Western objectives would still include the overthrow of the Soviet state.
The 1960s Strategy
By the end of 1959, the Soviets had reached the conclusion that a world war (a war they absolutely wanted t° avoid, but could not afford to lose) would inevitably be nuclear and involve massive strikes on the Soviet Union- In such a war, survival would constitute victory, whi e defeat implied extinction. In order not to lose, the Sovie s> would have to preserve the socialist system and destroy the capitalist one. If war seemed inescapable, the optimum Soviet strategy was to launch a preventive nuclear attac against the United States and its forward bases. The dit 1 culty of making such a determination and the political con straints on launching these types of strikes were obvious, but an offensive, preemptive, damage-limiting stratejig was the least of all evils, particularly in the face of 1 opponent’s overwhelming nuclear superiority.
This strategy did not eliminate the need for a land ofrc sive westward, which would have the objectives of ^ straying NATO’s military capability and gaining access Western Europe’s economic resources. The latter wou
Soviet-bloc countries and ensuring the survival of the s cialist system. .
The importance of Western Europe as an alternati socioeconomic base focused Soviet attention on West’s sea-based nuclear delivery capability, which * creased sharply in the early 1960s with the deployment^ the Polaris system and the entry into service of the carrlp0. ordered in the wake of the Korean War. The surge in laris procurement was part of the strategic buildup ^ Kennedy administration initiated on taking office in 1 The buildup included the emplacement of 1,000 Minu^_ man intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in a ened silos in the U. S. Midwest. These developing prompted a major rearrangement of Soviet strategic m _ sile programs and justified the attempt to emplace dium-range missiles in Cuba as a strategic stopgap, they also generated a new set of naval requirements- The United States could withhold its sea-based systc ^ from the initial nuclear exchange and, unless matched j comparable Soviet capability, would be able to dictate^ outcome of war. The Soviets responded with the Yan ^ program (using reactors intended for attack subrnun1' and planned to deliver 70 nuclear-powered ballistic^.
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roughly match the combined total of Western nava
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But the United States could also use its sea-based systems to deny the Soviets the use of Western Europe as an jt'ternative socioeconomic base, and the Soviets would nave to counter that threat directly.
The Soviets were on their way to developing some ca- Pnbility against the carrier, but had none against Polaris. n 1961, they embarked on a typical three-stage response, Pursuing the three possible ways of countering the SSBN: ijrea defense, trailing, and ocean search and surveillance, ue initial response involved extending and elaborating on established concept of antisubmarine defense zones.
e incremental process of excluding Polaris submarines °m the more threatening sea areas by increasing the Probability of their detection to unacceptable levels. The ea underlying this initial response was to maintain forces ‘thin weapon range of U. S. nuclear strike platforms, ureby forcing the United States to choose between using ^ese platforms at the onset of war or losing them; the n'ted States would no longer have the option of with-
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he interim response was to develop a high-speed, deepwing submarine that would use active sonar to trail an 'rnproved” Polaris; in 1962 that was the only practical 'J'uy of providing location data, and such a submarine (the ^Ipha) was programmed to start series delivery in the sec- °nd half of the 1970s. The final response required devel- °P,ng some means of detecting submarines that did not Squire access to surrounding coastlines and massive computer power, both of which the Soviets lacked. This exuded the option of sieving the ocean for sound (like blSUS, a sound surveillance system), and favored the Possibility of using air- or space-borne sensors to detect Efface and other anomalies caused by the presence of a Emerged submarine.
In 1961, the Soviets had already embarked on a distant ater response to the aircraft carrier that would rely primarily on nuclear submarines. But they could also start on
°Jding them from the initial exchange.
The first stage involved extending the outer defense ^ne 1,500 miles out from Moscow, which included the ^°rwegian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean, covering , e threat from carriers as well as the early Polaris sys- I Us. The Soviets planned to begin the second stage in , ”8, when they would start the slow process of consoli- i uting the newly established defense zones while extend- c-§ the area of naval concern to include the 2,500-mile I r^e °f threat. This covered the northwest quadrant of the p 'an Ocean, an area from where submarines carrying the °seidon system (originally thought to have a 3,000-mile ^tge) could encompass all of the Soviet Union except ^ sternmost Siberia, while operating as far from Soviet ‘‘yal bases as possible.
the Soviet Navy was ill-prepared to meet this new re- relrerner,t to move forward in strategic defense, which paired the organic restructuring of the fleet and the reori-
Th
e navy probably did not relish the idea of relying on the tection of peace for these exposed deployments in ^tern-dominated waters, particularly since “counter- easures at sea” were newly in fashion as the best West-
°Ce«iinKS / August 1989
em response to incidents on land, particularly over Berlin. Nor was the role of marking U. S. Sixth Fleet carriers an enviable one, since the purpose was to provide continuous target data that could be used to bring down nuclear fire (including ballistic missiles emplaced in the southwestern Soviet Union) at the onset of war.
The navy may well have been skeptical of the whole idea, which had the stamp of ground force thinking, while the possibility of developing an effective area antisubmarine warfare capability was inherently doubtful. But even if the navy had believed wholeheartedly in the concept and accepted that a start must be made on developing the operational experience and infrastructure, the final results would depend largely on the number and types of units deployed. That meant surface ships, since the SSBN program would be receiving 70% of the reactor allocation, stretching out the attack submarine programs and underpowering the Charlie.
The navy had grudgingly accepted this idea by 1963, when it agreed to restore the Kresta program (truncated along with Kynda in the wake of the 1957-58 decisions) and to build the Kara large antisubmarine ship for delivery in 1971. Because the traditional cruiser building ways would not be returned to naval use, this 9,500-ton ship would have to take over the destroyer ways at Nikolaev from the Kashin program. Traditional escort yards would have to build the follow-on destroyer-size class, Krivak.
However, the navy would have to rely mainly on manipulating existing allocations in order to redirect the emphasis in oceangoing surface ships from anticarrier to antisubmarine. Fortunately, the planned 12-ship Moskva-c\ass antisubmarine cruiser program allowed some room for maneuver. These ships had been intended to extend offshore ASW helicopter coverage in the fleet areas, particularly in the north. But the Polaris submarine had never been intended for the polar arc of threat, and the Moskx’a’s complement of 15 helicopters would be inadequate in distant sea areas, such as the eastern Mediterranean, and the Arabian Sea. Therefore, the Soviets cut back the program to two units, and began to design a ship with more than twice the helicopter capacity.
This released the ASW and air defense weapon systems procured for the Moskva program, allowing the Soviets to reconfigure the last eight units of the original 12-ship Kresta 1 program, and the construction of two more, making ten Kresta 11s. In turn, this released the systems that had been procured for eight Kresta Is, and these were used to convert the Krupny missile ship into the Kanin surface- to-air missile (SAM)-armed antisubmarine ship. Meanwhile, the eight weapon-outfits left over from the truncated Kynda program were used to upgrade the ASW and air-defense capabilities of eight Kotlins. All ships carrying 1962-vintage or later (i.e., the Kashin) ASW systems were redesignated as large antisubmarine ships (BPKs). This included the Kresta 1 missile cruisers, but not the Kyndas or the SAM Kotlins.
By the end of the 1960s, on the basis of their original building programs and by using escorts designed for home waters, the Soviets were able to deploy a modest ASW surface force in the eastern Mediterranean, although it
47
The A'arrr-class cruisers, facing page, and the Moskva-class helicopter cruiser reflected the Soviets’ push to reconfigure the oceangoing surface ships for antisubmarine, vice anticarrier operations.
lacked any area search capability. The new additions to the BPK inventory began to enter service during the same period. By 1970, the Soviets had established a small naval presence in the Arabian Sea, based in Somalia. They had already gained access to Egyptian support facilities in 1967, which allowed year-round deployment in the Mediterranean and naval air support of the Soviet squadron. By the end of the 1960s, they also had a significant capability to counter carriers.
By then, however, military doctrine regarding the nature of a world war had undergone a seemingly minor adjustment, which would change the very substance of existing naval requirements.
The 1970s Strategy ________________________
In late 1966, the Soviet political leadership ruled that a world war would not necessarily be nuclear or involve massive strikes on their homeland. It thus became logically possible, and therefore necessary, for the Soviets to adopt the wartime objective of avoiding the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union. This meant they had to forgo nuclear strikes on the United States, because that would result in retaliation against the Soviet Union. The U. S. military-industrial base would therefore remain intact, which made it essential for the Soviets to deny the United States a bridgehead in Europe from which to mount an offensive once it had built up its forces, as it had in World War II.
Accordingly, in the event of world war, the Soviets would need to evict U. S. forces from Europe, deter Washington from striking at the Soviet Union as NATO went down to defeat, and then prevent Western forces from returning to the continent. This world war would have two phases, the first short and violent, the second of unknown duration whose course was hard to predict.
The first phase of some three to four months could be divided into three stages for planning purposes. The initial stage would last 12 to 20 days. During this time, the Soviets would effect the defeat of NATO forces in the central region. Using conventional means only, the Soviets would attack NATO’s means of nuclear delivery and mount a blitzkrieg offensive into Western Europe, a combined assault that would hamper, and perhaps even avert, NATO from resorting to nuclear weapons. This would reduce the momentum toward intercontinental escalation. The second stage, planned to last 20 to 30 days, would secure the northern and southwestern flanks. And the third stage, lasting two to three months, would consolidate Soviet control of Western Europe and establish an extended defense perimeter, exploiting natural defensive barriers in order to economize forces.
These natural barriers could include the Sahara Desert as the southern boundary of the defense perimeter, which would angle down to meet the Indian Ocean at the Horn of
Africa. To the west, some kind of “Atlantic Wall’ w°1' include Iceland and the British Isles. To the east, the ® fense perimeter would run north past the inhospiw shores of the Arabian Peninsula, through Baluchistan 1 Afghanistan, and along the Chinese border to the PaC1.'j An inner defense line would follow the north-south ahg ment of the Yenisei River, in case Siberia was outflan £ by a Western advance through Sinkiang. Strategic asse j such as early warning radars, would need to be l°ca e inside this line. .
This was contingency planning on a grand scale, but requirements flowed from the wartime objective of avoi ing the nuclear devastation of the Soviet Union, while n losing the war. At the end of 1966, the Soviets most of the means to implement such plans, but NAT adoption of “flexible response,” France’s withdraw from the alliance, and U. S. enmirement in Vietnam ^ sharply improved the chances of a successful convention^ blitzkrieg. Meanwhile, the third generation of Sov'^ ICBMs then beginning to enter service could deter United States from intercontinental escalation. r
In 1967, the Soviets embarked on the costly process ^ restructuring their forces in order to be in a position implement the new strategy by 1976 in the event ot vV ^ For the strategic rocket forces, the objective of Parltgios as low a level as could be negotiated, replaced the requirement for superiority. This allowed the curtail of ICBM programs, and the Soviets began negotiants strategic arms limitations. However, they would hav substantially strengthen and reequip their ground and porting air forces, while significantly restructuring navy yet again. ^
The change in naval requirements stemmed fro^1^ need to deter the United States from striking at the So Union during the course of a war, a concept that ha place in the 1960s preemptive offensive strategy. The j be mary deterrent would be the ICBM force, but it woU.iilie. necessary to insure against the possibility that the nious Americans would discover some way of ren e those fixed-silo missiles impotent. The Soviets' ma ^ to develop a successful solid-fuel missile for land-m deployment meant that the insurance force would have be deployed at sea.
The operational requirements shaping an insurance °rce of SSBNs within the 1970s strategy were signifi- ca.ntly different from those for a matching force within the original 1960s strategy, when war was expected to start 'j'hh a massive nuclear exchange. Prior to that exchange, SSBNs of the matching force could shelter in home Waters under the protection of peace, since an attack would precipitate war. After the exchange, those SSBNs c°uld deploy in relative safety to within range of their targets, since the Western capability for ocean ASW "'ould be severely degraded.
In the 1960s’ strategy, the matching SSBNs would use jaeir missiles for war fighting in the event of a world war.
nder the 1970s’ strategy, the SSBNs’ missiles would be a deterrent against nuclear escalation and would not be
^sed. The insurance SSBN force would have to be held ecure against determined Western efforts to degrade its aPability. This meant deploying the force in protected °nes close to home, carrying missiles with the range to rfke directly at North America from those waters.
[• Soviets decided the best way to provide that protec- ^'°n was to treat the Arctic Ocean as a semienclosed sea, p establish command of the area by closing the ap- J°aches, as was already planned for the Baltic and Black Besides ensuring a safe area for the deployment of Sie SSBN force, closing off the Arctic would increase the ^curity of the Kola naval base complex, allow the safe ^ar>sit of submarines between the Northern and Pacific /ets, and reduce the possibility of commando raids in the rctic region in the second phase of a war. The apaches via the Bering Straits and the Canadian archipel- go Were relatively narrow and/or shallow in some places n could be blocked in some way. The third approach via
the Norwegian Sea, an area some 900 miles square with depths to 12,000 feet, was a different matter. To close off this access, the Soviets would have to do more than just counter U. S. carriers with submarines and aircraft; they would need to establish command of that sea.
In a battle for the Norwegian Sea, the Soviet Navy would be pitted against U. S. carrier battle groups in a series of meeting engagements. This revived the 1950s’ requirement for an antisurface capability, which had been largely sacrificed in the 1960s’ swing to ASW. However, the requirement was now much more demanding. Under the 1960s’ strategy, the use of nuclear weapons was inevitable, and they would be employed at sea from the start. The primary mission was to counter Western sea-based strategic delivery systems, and warships only needed to
survive long enough to launch their nuclear weapons against Western aircraft carriers and Polaris submarines, after which they were expendable. Under the 1970s’ strategy, naval forces would have to sustain operations for an extended period of war, relying on conventional ordnance only, but still be able to resort to nuclear weapons should wartime deterrence fail. Ships and submarines that only carried nuclear weapons would be of little use. Future classes of all types of major combatants would have to be much larger to provide the greater endurance and larger weapon loads needed.
The 1970s strategy also required that the distant water surface force be shifted from its predominantly antisubmarine focus to a more balanced capability better able to survive in a hostile maritime environment. Two new classes that could meet these demanding new criteria were already in the pipeline. One class was the Kirov battlecruiser, which was intended as a command ship under the
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1960s strategy, providing command, control, and communications, and long-range weapons to forward-deployed forces. The other was the Kiev, whose hull-propulsion system was originally conceived as a double-sized version of the Moskva ASW cruiser to provide helicopter ASW in distant sea areas. In 1967, a reconfigured version of this design was programmed as an interim response to the new requirement for afloat air support in the struggle to maintain command of the Norwegian Sea. The final response would be a nuclear-powered ship twice as large as the Kiev. This “universal” ship would combine the characteristics of the Kirov and the Kiev in a single hull, and would be ready for delivery in 1982.
Meanwhile, the gun armament on the Krivak class (which was to begin delivery in 1970) would be adjusted to favor antisurface over antiair capability, with the modified units planned for delivery starting in 1976. This reorientation of the surface force was formalized in 1977, when the antisubmarine designator was withdrawn from those classes (new or modified) that had not been designed primarily for ASW.
For the successor class of fleet escort, the Soviets revived the concept underlying the Kynda and Kashin combination where, to limit the size of the ship, the necessary capabilities were shared between two hulls. The Kashin was optimized for ASW and air defense, while the Kynda had a reasonable ASW and antiair capability for the time, but its main armament comprised long-range anticarrier, nuclear-armed missiles. Similarly, the Udaloy, the lineal successor to the Kashin and Krivak, would specialize in ASW and air defense. The Sovremennyy would carry the antisurface systems and, because the new missiles would be much less bulky than the earlier models, the ship need not be much larger than the Kynda or the Kresta. Both classes, together with the Kirov and the massive Oscar SSGN, were programmed to start delivery in the early 1980s.
However, the 1970s’ strategy was scheduled to come into effect in 1976, by which time the Soviets would need some kind of SSBN insurance force at sea. The humpbacked Delta I and 11 represent the initial response to this unforeseen requirement; a missile then under test was lengthened to provide the necessary range, and married to the already-programmed Yankee II hull-propulsion unit with the minimum amount of change. These units would
begin delivery to the fleet in 1973. The even more un gainly Delta III was the interim response, whereby th Yankee’s missile-launching hull-section was modified accommodate a larger diameter missile that was proba ) originally programmed for the successor class to the ia kees. The final response was the massive new-design D phoon, optimized for survivability and perhaps incorpora^ ing some general-purpose capability for use at a later stac of a war. It would begin delivery in 1982.
By 1976, about 15 Delta SSBNs were to be delivered ^ the fleet. How was the navy to protect this growing f°rC of SSBNs, pending the entry into service of the new su face and submarine classes that were not programme start delivery until the early 1980s? . t
The staff answer to this problem was that missions contributed to deterring intercontinental escalation were take precedence over missions relevant to the period a ^ such escalation. Therefore, the navy should pull a most of its forward-deployed forces, especially from Mediterranean. If they remained there, greatly suPern_ Western forces would subject them to sustained conv tional attack at the onset of war, but they would be Pr0 ited from using their nuclear weapons, for fear of caUj\jer NATO to resort to nuclear weapons on land or, if a ca were sunk, intercontinental escalation. For similar r sons, land-based ballistic missiles could not be u against Sixth Fleet carriers. In such circumstances, d not clear how Soviet naval units could possibly surviv discharge the counterforce mission, even if the need ar0^ The General Staff argued that in the short term, by ling back its forces the navy would be able to bridge gap in protecting the emerging insurance force, and a) longer term it would reduce the requirement for addi i ^ forces to meet this new commitment. The navy chos differ with this reasoning. a(je
From 1961 to 1964, when decisions were being about the operational and shipbuilding implications o navy’s shift to forward deployment, Admiral Gors tj,e was still a low man on the military totem pole, an ^ naval arguments for additional resources to suPPor. j.0v deployment were relatively muted. By 1970, Gors had been in his post 15 years and when the ninth five^e£j, plan failed to give the navy what he thought was nee he took his argument to a wider audience. . uo-
Seniority was not the only factor that enabled t 1 .
precedented public advocacy. The 1971 party c°ng had marked a significant shift in Soviet foreign P0^^ which the Soviets later described as a “radical turn to ^ detente and peace on the European continent.” The ^ was largely prompted by economic considerations,
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°d reasons exist lor concluding that the allotment of The second part of this article will be published in the September Proceedings.
Michael MccGwire, a former British naval officer, is now a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D. C.
justified by favorable conclusions concerning the trend in the correlation of forces and the crisis of capitalism. The new policy was controversial, however, and this allowed Gorshkov to argue the importance of sea power in a series °f articles in Morskoy Sbornik that were published in 1972 Under the title “Navies in War and Peace.”
Drawing on 240 years of his country’s history, Gorshkov argued that naval strength had always been a neces- attribute of great power status and claimed that the Soviet Union had always suffered when it had neglected 4s naval strength. With hindsight, we can identify three ^ain strands to Gorshkov’s advocacy regarding current requirements.
* Gorshkov strongly opposed drawing back naval forces, Particularly from the Mediterranean. He asserted that forward deployment had fundamentally altered the correla- l|on of forces in that sphere of confrontation. He stressed jue continuing need to counter the threat from U. S. sea-
used nuclear delivery systems. And he argued that, be- ^'des acting as an ambassador, the navy had a role to play ln preventing Western military intervention in distant sea ureas.
^ In the effort to gain and maintain command of the Nor- ^egian Sea, prompt execution was essential, because PlATO would be competing to establish command, and the ,°viet Navy wanted higher priority for ground-air opera- tlQns to gain control of the adjacent coastlines. Such con- tr°l was essential to command of the sea. So, too, was c°rnmand of the air, which would require sea-based as Well as shore-based aircraft. Gorshkov stressed that the Security of the SSBN force could not be provided by submurines alone, but would require surface ships and aircraft us well.
Gorshkov discussed the navy’s potential role in the sec- 0r>d phase of world war, following two themes. One concerned the defense of the extended defense perimeter; orshkov advocated attacking potential invasion forces in ueir assembly areas and in transit, rather than waiting to m’gage them with land-based forces as they approached
• Perimeter by land or sea. The other theme was the Ppportance of mounting a submarine blockade of North
Merica as the means of ensuring the ultimate defeat of Pe capitalist system.
These contemporary concerns were embedded in a 'de-ranging historical analysis, which made a powerful jPgument for a larger and better balanced fleet not so heavy biased toward submarines and shore-based air. Gorsh- °v emphasized the shortcomings of task-specific navies,
‘ Ueh as the German and Japanese navies in World War II, highlighted the strategic contribution of the general- ^Urpose fleets of Great Britain and the United States. He ^Ccried the military leadership’s inability to perceive the entra] importance of the Soviet Navy’s role in a war in 'ch the primary opponent would be a coalition of marine powers.
r % April 1974, some kind of compromise had been ^uched biased in the navy’s favor. The evidence suggests ut increased resources were allocated to naval construc- in response to each of Gorshkov’s main concerns.
nuclear reactors was increased by 50% at this time, from 20 to 30 a year. This would remedy the emerging deficiency in attack submarines. It would help ensure the security of the SSBN insurance force, and carry the war to the enemy in the second phase of a world conflict. A decision to go ahead as originally planned with the Kirov program was possibly made at this time as well. There is also tenuous but plausible evidence that the Soviets decided to build a U. S.-style CTOL aircraft carrier at Severodvinsk, to ensure command of the air in the Norwegian Sea. This was to take the place of the “universal” ship that Gorshkov disparaged in his final article. And his advocacy of the Mediterranean presence apparently was heeded.
The Soviets had already decided to improve the antisurface capability of the Black Sea Kashins (a mainstay of the Mediterranean deployment) by fitting horizon-range missiles, and improving their close-range air defense and submarine-detection capabilities. They would also upgrade the Kildin s capability. But this would do little more than enhance their capacity to survive, whereas Gorshkov wanted to be able to counter the carriers directly. This requirement would now be met with a scaled-up Kara hull- propulsion system, the 12,500-ton Slava class.
Whereas the Kirov and Oscar would carry the third- generation long-range antisurface missile, the Slava would have to make do with the second-generation system; this probably involved appropriating weapons that had been programmed to upgrade the Echo II class of SSGNs. The Slava would, however, carry the latest air defense systems, which may originally have been intended for the universal” ship. Once again, the destroyer ways at Nikolaev would be usurped, making it necessary to build the 8,500-ton Udaloy at the Kaliningrad escort yard, once the 3,900-ton Krivak program was clear.
The navy is generally considered to have come out ahead in this argument with the army-dominated military establishment. As part of the deal, it was authorized to publish Seapower of the State, which appeared early in 1976. But by this time, the navy’s fortunes had already peaked.
Author’s Note: This discussion is based on the book The Navy: Its Role, Prospects for Development, and Employment, by N. P. V’yunenko, B. N. Makeyev, V. D. Skugarev, (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1988). This review essay draws on the analysis in Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy (Brookings Institution, 1987), Perestroika and Soviet National Security (Brookings Institution, forthcoming 1989), and The Genesis of Soviet Threat Perceptions (Brookings Institution, forthcoming). Naval building programs draw on earlier published works by the author. For additional analysis of The Navy see “Gorshkov’s Final Words: What do they Mean?’’ U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 1989.