This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
In setting out its force-planning guidance, the Bottom-Up Review disregards certain weapon systems that are having difficulty shaking off their Cold War labels. But stealthy platforms such as the nuclear-powered attack submarine can be integrated into joint and conventional operations to increase effectiveness and potency.
One of the central problems facing joint military planners as they consider the scenarios and contingencies posited for them in the Bottom-Up Review (BUR) is how to adapt forces largely designed and deployed to confront the global threat of the former Soviet Union to meet the new requirements of conventional deterrence and defense at a regional level.2 The Bottom-Up Review may have suggested the correct number of military contingencies to plan for, but it appears to have presented us once again with a strategy-forces mismatch.
During the nearly half century of military confrontation with the former Soviet Union, many U.S. platforms and weapon systems acquired highly specific niche roles, labels, and missions, with correspondingly special doctrine and tactics. If they were not precisely the “favorite weapon” that Miyamoto Musashi warned against, they nevertheless were instruments for executing favorite roles and missions. The U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN). for example, became the ultimate antisubmarine warfare (ASW) platform, with its particular strength being its ability to engage the Soviet Navy in its heavily defended “bastions.” It used its intrinsic property of stealth to undertake something no other platform could attempt: holding at risk the Soviet strategic ballistic- missile submarine (SSBN) force.3
The ultimate deterrent value of this mission—coupled with its blend of danger, mystique, and projected effectiveness—resulted in preferential funding and manning of attack submarines during the Cold War, while permitting tolerance of any real or perceived shortcomings. For example, by the late 1980s, the SSN was seen as essential to the success of the Maritime Strategy, but its contributions to that strategy were distinctly singular and specific: it only operated well alone, showed little concern with distinguishing between friends and foes during wartime, didn’t like
You should not have a favorite weapon. To become overfamiliar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. ... It is bad for commanders ... to have likes and dislikes.
—Miyamoto Musashi, 17th Century Japanese warrior'
to or couldn’t communicate well, and “didn’t do” diesel submarines or shallow water. If not given the distinction of being a “black” program, the attack submarine force at least took on the some of the characteristics of a special- access classification: few officials were granted the security clearances to know of SSN peacetime operations and whereabouts, yet the submariners seemed to be gone a lot and got more than their share of medals, bonuses, and promotions. The reason the President did not ask at the first sign of crisis, “Where are the submarines?” is that nobody knew the answer.4
Thus, the decline in the elite status of the attack submarine force was related directly to the collapse of the Soviet empire, in no small measure owing to the submariners’ reluctance to discuss their range of military capabilities and their willingness to accept as their principal role the destruction of the Soviet SSBN fleet. When fiscal constraints began to pick up velocity, this primary anti-Soviet mission did not bode well for the SSN’s budgetary survival. The halving of the U.S. attack submarine fleet by the BUR is evidence of how far and how quickly a favored weapon system can fall.
Fortunately, the industrially based decision to keep a minimum nuclear submarine production capability intact will allow the United States to maintain its competitive advantage in undersea stealth technology. But the BUR does not demonstrate an understanding that the submarine’s inherent low observability, which proved so valuable in the winning of the Cold War, also could make significant contributions to U.S. military objectives in a new security environment.
A similar post-Cold War stigma may have befallen stealth aircraft such as the F-117, B-2, and F-22. That is, fire school of thought that regards these systems as Cold ^Var relics fails to appreciate the inherent flexibility in stealthy platforms that will allow us to leverage nonstealthy Weapon systems in future regional conflicts. Given the declared military requirements for power projection to deter and defend against aggression far from the continental United States, and in view of the compressed defense budgets that soon will prohibit the large conventional force Packages that once constituted overwhelming force, previous investments in these stealthy weapon systems will Pay substantial dividends in meeting the force requirements generated by the major regional contingencies (MRCs) of the Bottom-Up Review.
Cold War Stealth Platforms: Roles, Missions, Labels [1][2] rected related to a vessel’s length, this concept led to huge fleet boats, more than 300 feet long, displacing nearly 2,000 tons. When the U.S. surface battle fleet disappeared for all practical war-fighting purposes on 7 December 1941, the submarine force was turned loose to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare—for which tactics were undeveloped and boats and weapons were ill-equipped.
A significant factor leading to the attack submarine’s ultimate dominance of the forward war against the Imperial Japanese Navy was that the excess space and weight characteristics of the fleet boat allowed for quick deployment to distant waters, long on-station time, and rapid and proper accommodation of technological advances such as radar and electromagnetic support measures.5 Thus, the combination of the submarine’s stealth and (somewhat counterintuitively) size provided it with the properties to carry out with devastating effectiveness roles that had not been foreseen before the start of the conflict.
In the mid-1970s, the very high speed Los Angeles (SSN-688)-class submarines again were designed to provide direct support to the fleet—this time, ASW to carrier battle groups. However, the coupling of extraordinary stealth (silencing) with speed in these submarines, along with the emerging saliency of the Soviet Union’s SSBN threat, quickly moved the Los Angeles class to other, higher priority ASW commitments. In this case, the carrier- protection mission was given short shrift and, therefore, doctrine and tactics for battle group defense remained undeveloped.
Perhaps that is a downside to the flexibility of a low- observable platform, but it also is a testament to the relatively few roles that can be supported by a limited number of systems, no matter how flexible or stealthy they are. Whatever submarine support a battle group commander might have thought he had, the actual number of SSNs dedicated to his fleet would have been driven quickly to zero if the scenario had escalated beyond a regional contingency to a U.S.-U.S.S.R. strategic nuclear confrontation, as all operational SSNs sortied into Soviet bastions.6 Soon, with the priority of this mission codified by the Maritime Strategy, the dominant Cold War mission of the SSN became ASW. And that label has proved difficult to remove. ► Combat Aircraft. Similar Cold War labeling appears to be sticking to stealthy aircraft, despite the stellar performance of the F-117 in the Gulf War. It should come as no surprise to the apostles of air power, who preach flexibility, that stealthy aircraft may never be dedicated fully to the mission for which they primarily were designed. For example, although the F-117 probably had its conceptual genesis in the intense air-defense environments over North Vietnam and the Sinai in the early 1970s, it clearly was designed to negate the growing number and sophistication of Soviet surface-to-air missile systems the U.S. Air Force could expect to encounter on a future European battlefield.
Developed as a very specialized aircraft with a precise, but minimal, weapons-delivery capability, the F-117 was “optimized to attack a small set of specific, high-value targets such as command and control centers, strategic bridges, weapons dumps, large missile sites and so on.”[3] The “stealth fighter” was a decidedly anti-Soviet/Warsaw Pact weapon system, but it had the bad fortune to arrive in the Air Force inventory just as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
The B-2 was another stealthy combat aircraft conceived at the height of the Cold War. The risk of heavy losses had confined B-52 heavy bombers to missions over South Vietnam during most of the war in Southeast Asia, and the architects of the U.S. strategic bomber force in the late 1970s did not believe that the low-altitude, high-speed penetration tactics of the follow-on B-l bomber would be much more successful at penetrating Soviet air defenses. Its long range, heavy payload, and low observability made the B-2 the ideal air-breathing complement to a strategic triad of forces fashioned to ensure nuclear deterrence.
As a “penetrating nuclear strategic bomber,” the B-2 could not have had a worse set of Cold War appellations working against its application in a post-Soviet security environment. However, the advocates of the stealthy, long- range aircraft—probably with an eye on the effective use of heavy bombers in conventional roles in the past—directed from the start that the B-2 possess conventional capabilities.
The B-2’s original mission statement specified that it would provide the capability to deliver both nuclear and conventional weapons, as well as to conduct missions across the range of warfare, including “conventional conflict.”[4]
At least the stealth fighter and the stealth bomber had been designed with onboard capabilities that ensured the effectiveness of air-to-ground conventional weapons delivery against a range of adversaries and targets. For the F-22, that was not initially the case.
The F-22 was planned to combine a stealthy, highly maneuverable airframe with supersonic cruise and advanced avionics, to guarantee a “first-look, first-kill” approach to sweeping enemy skies. Early rationales envisioned it penetrating hostile airspace controlled by a sophisticated and integrated Soviet air defense system, complete with Soviet airborne warning and control systems and advanced fighters with “look-down, shoot- down” capabilities. Integrating stealth into the air-to-air arena brought tremendous advantages to a competition in which, more often than not (in a striking analogy to submarine warfare), the loser never sees the victor, nor even knows he is under attack.'' Further, the F-22 was needed to guarantee the top cover allowing nonstealthy attack aircraft to direct their air-to-ground firepower against Warsaw Pact forces.
The difficulty in removing Cold War labels from these stealthy aircraft has placed their future—in terms of roles, mission, and even production—in some jeopardy- This is somewhat ironic, given that the Bottom-Up Re' view’s charter states that the primary role of U.S. military forces in the new security environment is the long-range, selective, and precise projection of offensive firepower to deter and defend against regional aggression—missions for which stealthy aircraft seem ideally suited. If the Air Force is to take advantage of these highly capable and flexible platforms, it may profit by transferring to air doctrine some lessons learned regarding the employment of stealthy submarines.
Stealthy Platforms in the Post-Cold War Era
An example of this occurred during the 1992 Global War Game series sponsored by the Naval War College. To prompt those acting as commanders-in-chief to consider the employment of SSNs in their planning to meet a regional contingency, a point paper was injected suggesting possible contributions from the attack submarine force. Objections to these guidelines came, not from the eommanders-in-chief, but from two recent submarine commanders, who complained that the paper overstated the SSNs’ capabilities: some of the proposed mission elements were “too shallow,” “too narrow,” or “too dangerous.”
In the wake of the war game, these issues ultimately were elevated to the highest levels in both the Atlantic and Pacific submarine commands, and, as a result, mission and training goals were identified and adjusted. A year later, virtually every contentious mission proposed at Global had been practiced by units attached to deployed carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups—and made to look easy. The cultural change had begun in both the stealthy and conventional communities.
Evidence of this growing synergy between stealthy and conventional seagoing platforms was further provided by the deployment of the Houston (SSN-713) and Louisville (SSN-724) to the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean as fully integrated members of the Kitty Hawk (CV-63) battle group from November 1992 to May 1993. Submarine operations during this deployment included submerged transits of narrow straits, prolonged submerged and undetected operations in waters less than half the length of the ship in depth, successful group exercise operations against diesel submarines on alert in their own waters, and weeks during which continuous two-way, data-linked communications were maintained while the submarines served in forward reconnaissance and surveillance modes.
In contrast with the majority of previous carrier battle group support operations, these SSNs were under the direct tactical control of the battle group commander, rather than responding to a shore-based submarine chain of command. Some specific mission areas exercised or improved
As the Air Force learned during the Gulf War, stealthy aircraft can be used to attack a wide range of strategic targets with little concern over opposing air defenses. Because the F-117 and the B-2 require neither electronic warfare support nor fighter escort, these stealth aircraft free conventional support assets for other missions.
upon during this deployment included:10
► Coordinated conventional strikes with salvos of 16 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles from a covert stance
► Covert indication and warning added to carrier battle group and amphibious ready group capabilities by SSNs >• Covert mine warfare added to the carrier battle group (either the emplacement of mines by the SSN or the detection of enemy mines)
► Special operations across the range of Navy SEAL and Marine reconnaissance operations
► Combat search-and-rescue operations where local bat- tlespace superiority had not yet been achieved
As a result of these and other fleet exercises, the previous reluctance of carrier battle group and amphibious ready group commanders to absorb an asset whose mission they didn’t understand or control has been replaced by the highest levels of support.
A significant factor in easing this dramatic post-Soviet adaptation to new roles and missions is that the submarine force is a very homogeneous group. As a rule, every submariner serves on both SSNs and SSBNs—in both “strategic” and “tactical” roles. Potential internal professional stresses are further mitigated by having one organization, Submarine Development Squadron 12, develop common tactics for all submarines, SSN and SSBN, Atlantic and Pacific. Thus, the submarine force has been protected from the development of distinct orientations or rivalries that may challenge the Air Force in its early development of tactics integrating stealthy aircraft into conventional operations. Neither SSNs or SSBNs ever considered themselves anything but attack platforms, with the purpose of bringing the fight to the opponent. The principal common denominator was that stealth was husbanded and exploited to accomplish the mission.
> Combat Aircraft. The compartmentalization of stealth aircraft and their intrinsic capabilities, together with Cold War mission labels, has precluded the depth and range of effective operational thinking needed to integrate these platforms into regional conventional conflicts. It will take considerable adjustment in mission orientation, doctrine, and training to grow an in-service recognition of stealth s value in conventional operations, but the Air Force does enjoy one distinct advantage in this effort: the documented performance of the F-117 stealth fighter during the Gulf War.
Although the F-l 17’s impact is now legend within the Air Force, the vision of how best to employ the platform initially was far more traditional. The early indication— based on the NATO-inherited force package approach of
The Navy may not have stealth aircraft— here, the Air Force F-117 leaves behind the Blue Angels’ F/A-18s—but the lessons it has learned through the operation of stealthy submarines can be applied to both platforms to leverage conventional forces.
rolling back enemy air defenses and attaining air superiority prior to beginning attacks on strategic targets—was to use the F-117 little differently from nonstealthy fighter or attack aircraft. In some of the earliest campaign planning for Desert Storm, as many as eight F-117s were planned to attack the Tallil sector operations center. Also, both Navy and Air Force planners assumed that nonstealthy aircraft such as F-15Es and A-6Es could (and would) be used against targets in the most highly defended areas of Iraq, including Baghdad.[5]
As offensive campaign planning progressed, however, the air planners in-theater gradually came to the conclusion that the F-117 could be employed very differently because of the “inherent degree of air superiority built into any stealth platform.”[6]
With stealth aircraft, there was no need to “roll back” opposing air defenses, progressively destroying them from the periphery inward, before other campaign objectives could be pursued. Moreover, F-117 missions did not require other aircraft for suppression of enemy air defenses and force projection routinely included in strike packages built around non-stealthy aircraft. Finally, F-117s could be employed against targets in Baghdad, where it would have been difficult to silence all of the antiaircraft artillery without causing inordinate collateral damage.[7]
When all was said and done, creatively exploiting the stealth characteristics of the F-117 to attack a wide range of strategic targets from the opening hours of the campaign proved crucial to leveraging the capabilities of the conventional air platforms.[8]
As a result of the employment of stealthy aircraft in the Gulf War, the Air Force appears to have realized the need to expand the roles these aircraft will play in a smaller force structure. Former Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak noted that the words “strategic” and “tactical” no longer are meaningful ways to describe weapon platforms. Nor, for that matter, are the terms “theater” or “fighter” aviation of much use in force planning or budget allocation. And, although the Gulf War Air Power Survey concludes that the air war there did not constitute a “revolution in military affairs,” it observes some signposts pointing to a “paradigm shift.” Most significant is the employment of stealthy aircraft that “required neither traditional air superiority as a prerequisite nor electronic warfare and fighter escort support.”[9]
The freeing of these support assets for other missions and the achievement of air superiority through the suppression of enemy air defenses from a covert stance are vivid examples of the leveraging power of airborne stealth.
If these lessons are learned and incorporated as an increasing number of stealthy aircraft arrive in the Air Force, the roles and missions being carried out by low-observable airborne platforms soon will begin to approximate those developed between submarines and conventional ships. For example:
► Coordinated precise conventional strikes (16 2,000- pound bombs delivered with 20-foot accuracy) from a single B-2 from a covert stance
► Increased intelligence gathering by long-range, stealthy aircraft
► Enhanced maritime, special operations, and command- and-control operations with stealthy platforms in the communications loop
Nevertheless, there are both intellectual and institutional barriers to the integration of stealthy platforms in traditional Air Force operations. Specifically, there is a mismatch among labels, platforms, and organizations that must be reconciled. The F-117 is an attack aircraft, not a fighter, and the B-2, when excused from its strategic nuclear deterrent role to meet regional conventional contingencies, is a long-range, heavy payload attack aircraft, not a strategic nuclear bomber. Similarly, if its air-to-ground modifications turn out to be feasible and affordable, the F-22 is likely to assume more flexible roles than the air superiority fighter mission it was designed to perform.[10]
Adding to this problem of nomenclature is the problem of bureaucracy: decision making in post-Soviet Washington is still characterized by Cold War offices and budget categories. It is difficult to find a strategic bomber advocate in the Air Force (or in Congress, where the term has become politically incorrect) and hard to locate an office in the Pentagon willing to cross turf lines to integrate theater and strategic doctrine, concepts, and programs. Some labels prove harder to unstick than others.
Conclusions over the last eight or nine decades through the operation °f submarines, but just now beginning to be applied to leverage conventional forces with stealthy platforms to meet the challenges of a new security environment:
^ Stealth equates to diversity. Low-observable platforms can conduct covert operations with a high degree of reliability and survivability and can carry out missions that would be immediately compromised by the known presence of conventional systems. Yet stealthy platforms also can provide presence when required, and they can do it on short notice with minimum visible preparation.
^ Stealth is empowered by size. Nuclear-powered attack submarines, because of their size, have been able to accommodate a variety of new roles and missions. This relationship should prove particularly transferable to combat aircraft, where size should equate to range—a critical characteristic permitting power projection from the continental United States.
^ Stealth is a force multiplier. A stealthy combat platform provides a survivable, flexible magazine that, when supported by advanced sensors, intelligence, and connectiv- ■ty and provided the most modem weapons, can bring devastating force to bear in a highly discriminating manner. The Navy has provided the attack submarine with the most Modern precision-guided munitions, as represented by the Mk 48 torpedo and the Tomahawk cruise missile. With the notable exception of the F-117 (where aircraft size limited the payload), the Air Force has been very late in mating precision air-to-ground conventional munitions with its planned fleet of stealthy aircraft.
^ Stealth is a hedge against uncertainty. Low observabil- tty can, to some extent, negate the consequences of a strategic miscalculation. The Navy’s fleet boats, post-Pearl Harbor, were able to adjust to new roles and missions when less stealthy and less sizable platforms could not. The B-2 bomber, with its stealth and size, provides the flexibility to tailor its weapons load to specific crises and also provides a platform for roles and missions not yet envisioned. An uncertain security environment and a declining defense budget demand flexible, multirole systems.
The submarine force, in becoming too wedded to a single mission, distanced itself from the mainstream and ignored roles that leveraged the conventional fleet. The Air Force, without a highly trained corps of stealth warriors and lacking a tradition of husbanding low observability to pursue mission accomplishment, may be even more vulnerable to the adhesiveness of some Cold War labels. There is a danger that in attempting to place mission (e.g., air superiority) before capability (i.e., stealth), the result may be declining capabilities in each.
Despite these caveats, the future is bright for the integration of Navy and Air Force stealth forces. Submariners have seen the light and become an integral part of the “• • . From the Sea” doctrine, operating closely with and in support of nonstealthy forces and working toward equally effective jointness with Army and Air Force elements. Someday, an SSN on a reconnaissance and surveillance mission could observe the “overt act,” call in a U.S.-based air strike, deliver pre-TOT Tomahawks at key air defense nodes, then conduct and report battle damage assessments as additional Army, Navy, and Air Force assets arrive on the scene.
The Air Force already has made great operational strides in the integration of stealthy aircraft into conventional operations, but much of the work done in the air has not yet taken root on the ground. Nevertheless, stealth planners in the Air Combat Command probably are busily at work on air power scenarios: the F-l 17’s inherent local air superiority releases the Wild Weasels to support nonstealthy F-15Es; the stealthy B-2 suppresses air defenses with precision and direct attack munitions to allow the ingress of a number of conventionally armed B-ls; the F-22 in an air-to-air configuration clears the sky for its nonstealthy cousins, while other F-22s use real-time target intelligence to deliver a precision air-to-ground strike.
If those planners are not so engaged, they should peel the labels from their favorite Cold War tactical manuals and mind-sets and stick them in their history books— and then begin to integrate the strategic and the technological with the synergy of stealth.
'Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings (as quoted in Joint Publication 1, “Joint Warfare of the U.S. Armed Forces,” 11 November 1991, p. 32).
:Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense, “The Bottom-Up Review: Forces for a New Era,” Washington: U.S. Department of Defense, September 1, 1993 and "Report on the Bottom-Up Review,” October 1993.
During this opening campaign, the SSNs would have been operating without supporting forces and would have conducted operations independently until conflict termination or until they ran out of ammunition or food. Because of the dangerous environment, operational concepts reduced dependency on communications, and “friendly fire” problems were obviated with the assumption that any target within an SSN’s assigned area of responsibility was hostile.
‘Or nobody wanted to say, because the advantage of a stealthy platform is that it can perform roles and missions that are unknown to friend and foe, alike. See for example, “Navy has long had secret subs for deep-sea spying, experts say,” The New York Times, 7 February 1994, p. 1.
Their German counterparts had to rendezvous with submarine tankers in open
ocean and make do with jury-rigged measures such as the “Biscay Cross"______ a
wooden frame wrapped with wire and held by a crew member on the bridge of a U-boat in an attempt to detect the emissions of British and U.S. aircraft radar.
‘In future general-purpose force planning to support MRCs, we should keep in mind the possibility of a resurgent strategic nuclear (or sub-strategic) threat that again might strip precious stealth assets from conventional roles.
’Bill Sweetman, Stealth Bomber (Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1989) p. 63.
■Unclassified extract from the ASPA mission statement, 1 November 1981.
■See James H. Patton, “Stealth is a Zero-Sum Game,” Airpower Journal, Spring 1991, vol. 5, no. 1.
'"Extracted from an unclassified memo from Commander, Submarine Force Pacific Fleet.
"Gulf War Air Power Survey: Part 1, Planning, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), vol. I, p. 124.
''-Gulf War Air Power Survey: Part I, Planning, p. 155.
11Gulf War Air Power Survey: Part I, Planning, p. 155.
'The Gulf War Air Power Survey notes that when Proven Force aircraft (the composite wing stationed in Turkey) began to venture south in the later stages of the air war, they had two related handicaps”—no stealthy aircraft and no precision- guided munition capability. As a result, the Iraqi air defense system presented a much greater obstacle to the launching of strikes against strategic targets. Gulf War Air Power Survey, Summary Report, p. 17.
''Gulf War Air Power Survey, Summary Report, p. 245.
“However, the F-22 s relatively short range and small payload may prove to be significant limiting factors. “The Case for Airpower Modernization,” Air Force, February 1994. pp. 46-51, is notable for its failure to see how long-range stealthy aircraft can change the formulation and execution of the air superiority and interdiction missions. For a counterpoint, see James Patton, "Stealth, Sea Control and Air Superiority," Airpower Journal (Spring, 1993), pp. 52-62.
17 Jeremiah: U.S. Strategic Thinking Lacking for Post-Cold War World,” Inside the Navy, 17 January 1994, p. I.
Captain Patton, U.S. Naval Academy class of 1960, is president of Submarine Tactics and Technology, Inc. His 25 years of active duty was spent on board seven nuclear submarines, including command of the Pargo (SSN-650). He also served as head of the Advanced Tactics Department at Naval Submarine School, and chief staff officer at Submarine Development Squadron 12.
^Attack Submarines. U.S. attack submarines rarely have been used for their designed purpose. In the mid-1930s, Navy operational doctrine called for submarines to be employed as a scouting line for the battle fleet, and, as such,
[2]hey had to have a high (18-20 knot) surfaced speed to keep up. Since maximum efficient surface speed is di
> Attack Submarines. Following the end of the Cold War, the need for deep interdiction of the Soviet SSBN force largely disappeared, and the requirement for open-ocean ASW search and engagement was difficult to justify- Nor was it clear how the attack submarine would meet the
challenges of regional conflict: integrated and joint operations; rigid two-way command and control employing real-time, fused, all-source intelligence; a pervasive presence on the battlefield of both friendly and neutral platforms; and a near-zero tolerance fof combat losses. Finally, a menu of new options—including shallow-water antidiesel ASW, land attack, mine warfare, and injection and retrieval of Special Forces—either were perceived to be beyond the intrinsic capabilities of an SSN or were missions submariners previously had disdained. So classified had been the SSNs’ peacetime and planned wartime employment, and so secure the
command-and-control
mechanisms, that when commanders-in-chief were asked how many submarines were involved in their various Cold War war plans, the answer was “essentially none!” However, the demonstrated malleability of combat missions within an overarching cloak of stealth promises to give the attack submarine a substantial post-Cold War role through the integration of these unique assets with the firepower of other nonstealthy platforms. Within the last year or so, the submarine force has made major steps toward such integration. Implementing this sea change, however, requires both top-level planning and frontline training.
In a recent speech, Admiral David Jeremiah, then Vice
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out that
U.S. strategists, lazy in their thinking, had failed to contemplate the end of the Cold War.11 Moreover, he ar
gued, technology—including stealth—has yet to be fully
grasped by those responsible for developing military strategy and doctrine. Taking the Admiral’s charge seriously,
we can suggest the following points, learned by the Navy