Now that the long-range ballistic missile has become a reality, we can look forward to a fuller exploitation of this remarkable weapon. The impact of intercontinental artillery has not previously been considered in the equations of naval war, but the mounting inventories of ready missiles have an ever- expanding significance. On the basis of economics alone, it is probably advantageous to exchange one or several ballistic missiles for any major warship. The question is, “Can a missile hit a ship?”
Not only can ballistic missiles match the capabilities of strategic bombers to strike deep into the enemy’s heartland, but their constant readiness, incredible speed, and excellent accuracy open an even greater spectrum of targets than are normally considered suitable for manned bombers. Latitude and longitude and little more are required for the missile shot, and the cost per shot will continue to descend as technology advances and the production run lengthens. Cities, industrial complexes, transportation centers, air and missile bases, seaports, and communication centers are probably already on the target lists of any missile-capable power, and, as the inventory of missiles mounts, we must expect
A 50-foot "shore-to- ship” Navy rocket is pulled by a tractor filled with Russian sailors past a portrait of Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square. The parade commemorated the 45th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s October Revolution. these weapons to be used to destroy any target worth the expenditure of the missiles required.
Though navies have until now been privileged to observe the ballistic missile race with detachment because of the preponderance of lucrative land targets and the dearth of ammunition, this situation is rapidly changing. It is already time to face up to the problem and coldly assess the threat to the Fleet in an era of missile plenty. Can the Fleet continue to consider itself immune to attack by ballistic missiles?
A recent press release indicated that the cost of the Minuteman force to be completed in 1965 can be prorated at $2,000,000 per missile. Our latest classes of destroyers have cost in the vicinity of $35,000,000 and carry crews of some 300 officers and men. Even with pessimistic estimates of reliability, accuracy, and lethal radius, one would be hard put to argue that it would be disadvantageous to exchange missiles for destroyers.
Though the missile may be able to hit any spot on the face of the earth, it is necessary to identify the particular spot occupied by the ship. Since the beginnings of history, ships and fleets have slipped over the horizon to become lost to the eyes of the enemy, and this capability takes on new value in the missile age. The sea is vast, an incomparable arena for unrestrained maneuver, and the location of a skillfully handled ship at sea defies prediction. Reconnaissance provided by aircraft, ship, or submarine would seldom meet the requirements for a ballistic shot, for every mile of error in target location is a mile of safety for the target. Maneuvering at sea today against normal reconnaissance, the ship is relatively safe from attack by ballistic missiles.
But as the Space Age overtakes the Missile Age, we find we must expect improved reconnaissance. The Transit Navigation System was in operation in 1962, and when this accurate satellite system is linked with an appropriate target detection system, the possibilities for reconnaissance are enormous. For radar, what more distinct target is there than a ship in the open sea? For passive sensors, a ship is normally emitting a variety of radiations helpful in locating and identifying her.
In a few years, if not today, we must be ready to face reconnaissance satellites capable of regularly scanning all of the oceans of the world and of reporting the location of ships at sea with a high degree of accuracy. Reconnaissance satellites will probably become a reality about the same time that ballistic missiles are sufficiently plentiful to be considered for targeting against individual ships.
Even with accurate satellite reconnaissance, however, our ships are not doomed. It is not sufficient simply to locate a target to insure its destruction; it is necessary to predict accurately its position at the moment of missile impact. This latter is a much more difficult task if the target is moving, because there is the “dead time” (time between last measurement of target location and the actual time of firing) plus the “time-of-flight” of the missile which must elapse before the missile strikes. This is a period of grace during which the motion of the target, if different from that predicted, will cause a miss. It is this dead time, plus time-of-flight which helps clear the bleak picture for the surface ship when reconnaissance satellites are operating as the “eyes” for ballistic missiles.
For any reconnaissance system, dead time includes the transmission time required to relay the sighting to the control station, the time consumed in converting the target report into meaningful ballistic data, as well as the time required for all of the remaining “countdown” steps before the actual firing of the missile. In the case of the reconnaissance satellite, transmission time might also include a substantial part of the satellite’s orbital period (some 90 minutes), because it may not be able to divulge its findings until it passes near its home territory. From ships and aircraft, the transmission time may also be considerable because of the necessity of relaying the target information through intermediate stations.
The conversion of the target location into useful ballistic data is not only time consuming, but costly. The computation of ballistic settings for shooting a missile from some known launch point to a single fixed target (the normal situation with strategic missiles) is straightforward if somewhat complex and the time required for the computation is of little concern. In the anti-ship case, where the target may appear anywhere within broad spectra of range and bearing, the problem of computation becomes many times more acute since a ballistic solution for any combination of range and bearing to the target must be produced in a matter of minutes. This dictates that a high speed ballistic computer must be associated with each missile, and this addition will raise both the cost and the complexity of the system.
As for the “countdown” steps which cannot be completed prior to receipt of the target data, they will depend upon the particular missile system being used. The final countdown for a missile using a volatile non-storable liquid propellant can be quite lengthy, but even with solid propellants which are always ready, certain last-minute fire control adjustments will be required. It must be remembered that even the direction of the target is not known until receipt of the target location message, so there is little that can be done to preset the missile.
It is difficult to assign a value to dead time for a generalized discussion, because it depends upon the character of the reconnaissance system as well as the missile system under consideration. It would be a very excellent system, however, which had a dead time as short as 15 minutes, but for purposes of this discussion, we shall consider that a dead time of 15 minutes is attainable.
Fifteen minutes also seems to be a good number for time-of-flight, whether one is lobbing an astronaut several hundred miles down range or whether one is shooting to IRBC range. For shorter shots, the velocities are lower, so the time elapsed for the total flight does not vary as much as one might expect. For the long-range shots in the ICBM range, times-of-flight of about 30 minutes are usually reported. To cover all cases, we should consider that times-of-flight can vary from a minimum of about ten minutes to a maximum of about 40 minutes.
So, if we add dead time to time-of-flight, we find as a minimum something between 25 and 55 minutes that we can expect to elapse between the last “pinpointing” of the target and the arrival of the missile; but in most cases, the elapsed time will be longer.
Now, if we assume that the sighting vehicle can correctly report not only our geographic position, but our course and speed as well, and if we also assume that we will be unaware that we have been sighted (thus eliminating the opportunity for drastic course and speed change immediately after the sighting), we will be reduced to relying upon passive evasive maneuvers such as zigzagging, continuous turning, or periodic speed changes to give us protection. Even so, we will find the systems which were effective against any but the shortest torpedo runs in World War II will stand us in good stead against the new threat.
As an example, consider a 20-knot ship being fired at by a reconnaissance missile system under conditions such as the dead time plus time-of-flight being 30 minutes. Assume that the ship has been steering an evasive course and the course made good is 30° to one side of the course she was on at the moment of sighting. This ship would be missed by five miles by a perfect shot on the part of the enemy—and the speed and maneuver used in this example are certainly modest.
One might argue that five miles is not an adequate margin, that the megaton range warhead has longer lethal arms. Here the environment lends a hand, for a ship which is designed to stand up to the fury of a typhoon has a first step towards preparing it for the nuclear blast. Her metal structure and lack of exposed inflammables give her the ability to withstand a much higher intensity of heat flash than can normal structures ashore. The ocean provides a resilient base which allows the ship to heel to the pressure waves and nuclear winds which would shatter a rigid structure. The rugged structure of a warship is a tough target for a blast mechanism and the built-in damage control systems of a warship will help arrest fires and flooding before they become dangerous.
Ships at sea can combine all of the beneficial defensive characteristics so frequently extolled in debates concerning ballistic missile systems; they can be at one time dispersed, hard, and mobile. The surface warship is an evasive, tough target, and naval formations at sea should be thought of as dispersions of evasive, tough targets.
Of course, the enemy can increase his lethal radius by increasing the size of his warhead, but as his warhead grows, so will his missile, and the cost per shot will skyrocket. He might take the shotgun approach and fire a pattern of missiles to cover the whole gamut of possible positions of the target, but this method can quickly become prohibitive. For example, if it is assumed that, for a given warhead, a hit within one mile of a warship is required to assure lethal damage, 100 warheads would be required to cover a 20-mile square (one every two miles) which is approximately the area of possible positions of a 20-knot target one half hour after positioning. Obviously, the economics of the exchange become lopsided.
The discussion so far has conceded to the enemy perfect reconnaissance, exact target data, and perfect operation of his missile system, though it has endeavored to point out the difficulty of employing an intrinsically static system to solve a dynamic problem. Reconnaissance, target data, and missile system operation, however, will not be perfect. Though we have glibly conceded the existence of effective reconnaissance satellites, such capability may be far from a reality. Though promising spectacular improvement in many fields of reconnaissance, whether such vehicles will actually be effective in locating, identifying, and tracking ships at sea with sufficient accuracy to be useful for ballistic purposes, remains to be seen.
It should be apparent from the preceding discussion that the purely ballistic missile is not a very practical weapon for use against a maneuvering ship at sea. Given terminal guidance, however, we will have a different story. With a guidance system capable of acquiring the target as the missile plunges back into the atmosphere and of making a terminal correction of some ten or 15 miles, the effectiveness of the ship’s maneuvering will be cancelled. With terminal homing in the missile and an effective reconnaissance system in operation, the balance tips drastically in favor of the missile system.
Luckily for the ship, a guidance system which can withstand the eroding heat of reentry and still operate effectively has not yet been developed.
But the design of a re-entry body which could penetrate the atmosphere at all was beyond the grasp of technology a few short years ago. At the moment, both sides in the Cold War are developing and presumably filling their intercontinental ballistic missile arsenals—a requirement for maintaining the deterrence. By 1965, when the strategic missile force has been completed, attention should be turned toward refinements, and terminal guidance for anti-ship missiles will certainly be among the candidates. In the late 1960’s, we may well be facing a practical and accurate satellite reconnaissance system coupled with a long-range missile equipped with terminal guidance, making it capable of erasing all the effects of dead time, time-of-flight, and ship maneuver.
And we have been considering only ships maneuvering at sea. Ships in port are already vulnerable to attack by those ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach them. Even though vigorous efforts are made to keep our ships at sea and moving in a war situation, a large portion of our shipping will be found in port or at anchor, loading, discharging, refitting, etc., and a ship immobile is a target. In a time of missile plenty, even a modest merchantman may be well worth the expenditure of an icbm.
To recapitulate, though warships maneuvering at sea are not vulnerable to the long- range ballistic missiles as we know them today, a large part of our naval force is, i.e. that part which is in port or immobile within range of the enemy’s missiles. It is already economically advantageous to trade missiles for major warships and as time goes on, it will probably be advantageous to trade a missile for any warship or even for any oceangoing merchant vessel. Finally, as technology advances, even our mobile units at sea will be brought under the missile threat through the development of adequate reconnaissance systems and terminal homing missiles.
Against such a threat, one which menaces the very existence of surface fleets, what is there to do?
There was a time when the British and the Dutch held each other in check by matching battlelines of stately three-deckers. In the early 20th century, the balance of naval power was determined by comparing numbers of battleships and battle cruisers. We built the Alaskas to answer the Mogamis, the Missouris to answer the Bismarcks. Is our Fleet to be stymied, even in the open ocean by pairing lines of sullen missiles? Are we to lose the use of the sea, the key to our ability to project U. S. power across the world to the point of our choosing? We will surely lose it if we do not face up to the threat and take positive action to counter it.
The first required step is to examine our Fleet operating concepts to see if our static vulnerability cannot be minimized. Can we any longer depend on entering port for fuel, provisions, or repair? Can we afford to marshal task forces or convoys in sheltered anchorages? We have thought out and practiced dispersal in the face of an initial attack with warning; but in a continuing war where the threat is ever present and there is no specific warning, what are the best procedures?
Next we must raise our horizons. We must look up into the sky and above it to grapple the space age enemy in the environment which is ours, too—space. First, to counter his reconnaissance, passively through denying him the radiations which are so useful in detection and identification, and actively by giving him false targets to deceive and to confuse. Next, we must utilize the inherent power advantage we have in ships to “jam” his sensors, to deny information collection or transfer, to screen other friendly units.
Finally, we must develop the capability to destroy reconnaissance satellites by antisatellite missiles. Satellites swing through space on regular orbits, available for constant tracking and deliberate counteraction; satellites are the space age sitting ducks.
Though destruction of reconnaissance satellites will do much to eliminate the threat to our ships at sea, we still have the ballistic missile threat in port and with the advent of the homing missile, this threat will extend to certain situations at sea. To meet this threat, the Fleet must have an anti-ballistic missile capability. When our ships lie within range of the enemy’s battery, we cannot leave them undefended.
Anti-ballistic missile capability in ships? With enormous effort and expense, this capability has not yet been demonstrated ashore; can it be done at all at sea?
In the first place, defending a single ship or a limited number of ships in a relatively small area is a very much simpler problem than one might at first realize. The direction from which the attack is possible will normally be known and an incoming nose cone will have to appear in a certain sector of the sky at a velocity within certain very narrow limits if it is going to hit the vital zone. The tight boundaries on the location and velocity of a missile do much to simplify our search and fire control problem.
Next, the ballistic missile nose cone is not as difficult a target as is popularly supposed. Though it plunges into the fringes of the atmosphere at fantastic speed, the resistance of the air quickly slows it down to a terminal velocity which is quite modest. We might have as much as two minutes in which to counter it from first detection until the warhead reaches its detonate position, and with advanced radars, computers, and missilery, a lot can be done in two minutes.
The nose cone, heated a cherry red by air friction, will be an excellent infrared emitter to give us help in detection and tracking under certain conditions, and should the incoming missile be emitting radio energy for homing or fuzing, this will be an additional help to us.
A ship with an anti-ICBM battery will be a complicated and expensive ship. It may be that much of the AICBM equipment, when developed, can be used for other Surface-to- Air and Surface-to-Surface work, but the addition of AICBM capability will not be cheap. But when one appreciates fully the alternative of not having this capability—a situation where our whole surface Navy from the strike carriers to the LST’s will be vulnerable to shore-based artillery—it is clear that we must take the steps necessary to maintain our sea power.
It seems fantastic to be seriously considering a sea battle involving satellite reconnaissance, anti-missile missiles, thermonuclear warheads, etc., but our ability to use the sea to protect our way of life may well depend upon our readiness for such a conflict. Our use of the sea to protect our interests and to assist our allies has been so effectively demonstrated in the past that a potential enemy could be expected to go to extreme lengths to neutralize our Fleet. We are in the midst of a continuing technological explosion and we must continue to move ahead with it if we are to be the effective arm our nation needs.
The seas cover 75 per cent of the earth’s surface, but space blankets 100 per cent. We must prepare to fight the naval battle to the edge of space and beyond to maintain control of the sea and employ that control to the benefit of free men.
The advantage of time and place in all martial actions is half a victory, which being lost is irrecoverable.
Sir Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth I, 1588