Notebook

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There will be no radical changes in the U. S. Navy’s mission after Vietnam. There will be instead reappraisal of its resources followed by necessary changes in its budget and priorities.

The mission still is to provide all Navy forces required for a safe defense posture, including a vital part of our nuclear, strategic forces, a necessary part of our general purpose forces and the ability to keep our vital sea lanes open.

As a result of the Vietnam War, much of our naval power has been expended or erroded by obsolescence. Replacement and modernization has been delayed. For example, in 1968 the Navy had 960 active ships. By 1974, our Fleet will total 523 vessels. Seventy-five % of our ships are over 20 years old. By contrast, 75% of the Soviet fleet is less than ten years old.

Naval plans, as revealed by reports to Congress in defense of current budgets, will now give priority to strategic forces by continued development and early deployment of Trident, the replacement for the Polaris-Poseidon system, with greatly increased capability.

General purpose forces will not be neglected, however. A new nuclear- powered carrier will be completed, giving us four of these vessels, two to be deployed on either coast as the nucleus of quick-reaction task force. Present efforts to obtain a minimum of 218

F-14 Fleet protection fighters are expected to continue.

The replacement of over-age ships with modern types will be expedited. These include destroyers, gun ships, and support vessels. Antisubmarine warfare will get added emphasis.

All U. S. Navy plans arc wisely responsive to the growing Soviet Navy and its obviously aggressive expansion into all the world’s oceans.

The principal Navy problems currently concern people and weapons. When the Department of Defense announced early termination of the draft and recourse to an all-volunteer military force, Navy planners anticipated a serious manpower shortage. As a result, it lowered its qualifications for recruits, taking in some who were untrainable for any technical skill. These men became dissatisfied with the unskilled tasks, the only ones for which they were qualified. Serious disruptions resulted, including some riots.

In retrospect, the decision to lower personnel standards was a mistake. The Navy never steers an unproductive course very long. These untrainable trouble-makers are now being discharged.

Recent legislation, improving status and pay for all military men, plus administrative changes designed to reduce long periods of family separation are improving the people problems. The excellent educational opportunities being stressed and advertised are proving effective.

The Navy’s weapons difficulties stem from the failure of two corporations,

which had won competitions to provide a new plane and submarine, to meet their commitments. Higher prices were demanded. Congress insisted that they be held to their contracts. This impasse has delayed and could jeopardize the naval rearmament program. Navy postwar prospects are otherwise favorable.

Marines Consider Seabasing As Modern Amphibious Concept

(Marine Corps Headquarters News Release JFF-130-73, 29 May 1973)

Marines have long been known as "Sea Soldiers.” A good name for those who come by sea to fight on land. Having an amphibious heritage, Marines are equally at home on land and sea. Ever since their founding in 1775, they have served at sea, launching attacks from ship to shore.

Amphibious concepts in the early days of sailing ships were simple in their design, becoming more complex with the advent of iron ships and steam power, and even more so in this complex technological age.

Amphibious warfare became an exact science in the 1930s when Marine planners developed the concepts and designed the equipment that helped win back the Pacific and defeat Japan in World War II.

These amphibious operations in the Pacific and Korea were major factors in America’s success in these wars. Today, the Marines are hard at work bringing amphibious concepts up to date. They are evolving a modern concept that they

call "seabasing,” to answer a compelling need for a strong, responsive amphibious capability in America’s military force.

Marines believe seabasing supports the contemporary strategic concept of realistic deterrence—a concept that requires military forces to be capable of complementing U. S. diplomatic and economic efforts in selectively projecting influence and deterring crisis.

Simply stated, seabasing is a concept featuring highly mobile, versatile amphibious forces operating from international waters and providing a flexible military force capable of exerting U. S. influence into the coastal areas of the world through cither a traditional amphibious assault or a selected application of force without establishment of permanent facilities ashore.

The traditional amphibious concept employs two distinct operational phases—the ”at-sea” phase and the "ashore” phase. The "at-sea” phase generally concludes once the fighting force

and its command and support elements are put ashore. At that point, control of operations ashore shifts from sea to shore. The seagoing forces then assume a secondary role, standing off shore and providing naval gunfire and air support or departing the operational area to undertake other missions.

Under the seabasing concept, should circumstances warrant, the control, coordination, and support elements for the landing force could stay on board ship. This would give the landing force increased flexibility and mobility, through the ability to commit only those forces required by the situation, since the landing force would not be required to establish, maintain, and defend complex command centers and logistic support bases ashore.

Seabased amphibious forces can rapidly respond to developing crises since they are already embarked and underway. If dictated by a higher priority situation, the committed elements of the landing force can rapidly withdraw

Inflationary Trend—What might appear to be a brace of backsliding weight-watchers are members of Underwater Construction Team One as they check out the Navy’s new "unisuit,” which is inflated to insulate divers from extremely cold water. The team will use the suits in the Antarctic, where they are scheduled to survey the conditions of a pier at McMurdo Sound.

and move to another hot spot—up or down the coast, or across the sea.

U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1973

The strategy of realistic deterrence calls for the kind of mobility and selective commitment capability offered by the seabasing concept—the capability to put quickly only the necessary forces into action ashore, control and support them from secure, mobile seabases, and then get them out again with equal speed.

Both world geography and demography support the seabasing concept. Over two-thirds of the world’s surface is covered with sea water, giving amphibious forces readily available routes to potential trouble spots. And, the world’s population is primarily concentrated along the coasts of world land masses, putting most potential trouble spots within easy range of seabased forces.

Although seabasing is a simple concept, it can be extremely complex in its application, and the ships, communication equipment, and air transport required to support seabased amphibious operations need to be relatively sophisticated in their design. Too, command and support schemes required to make this ship to shore control concept work can be somewhat complicated.

The Navy and the Marine Corps are working together to design the ships, equipment, and doctrine that will sup port the seabasing concept. Marine Corps aspects of the concept are being developed and tested at the Marine Corps Development Center in Quan- tico, Virginia.

Switch To All-volunteer Force Troubles Navy Health Program

(Baltimore News-American,

24 May 1973)

The proposed switch to the allvolunteer Armed Forces "amounts to a cancellation of military health care,” says the Navy’s surgeon general.

"We have a real crisis on our hands,” Vice Admiral Donald L. Custis, Medical Corps, U. S. Navy, said. "We have depended on the draft for two-thirds of our medical officers for many years.

These are doctors who would not be serving in the Navy were it not for the draft.”

About half of the Navy doctors who

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were not drafted are serving "payback time” for graduate medical training in the Service, Custis said. "So that leaves one-sixth of our 4,000 medical officers who are truly career-motivated,” he said. "To discontinue the draft would be absurd. It amounts to a cancellation of military health care.”

The effect on civilian medicine could be serious, too, Custis said. "It has been estimated that over 50% of the specialists who are practicing medicine in the United States received their training in military Services or through the Veterans Administration,” he said.

A planned federal medical school will help, but its first class will not graduate for nine years, Custis said. He also noted that a bill before Congress would raise Navy doctors’ pay to the average earned by civilian doctors.

Navy Is Ordered To Close Gunnery Range At Culebra

(The New York Times, 25 May 1973)

Elliott L. Richardson, as one of his final acts of Secretary of Defense, ordered that the Navy end its controversial use of the small Puerto Rican island of Culebra as a practice gunnery range.

Starting in mid-1975, under the Richardson order, the Navy will shift ■ts gunnery and air bombardment train- tng to ranges on two small, uninhabited islands off the west coast of Puerto Rico—Desecheo and Monito.

In ordering a termination of practice firings on targets in Culebra, Richardson, in effect, reversed a decision made by his predecessor, Melvin R. Laird. In the process, Richardson, according to associates, was attempting to remove one of the principal irritants in relations between the Puerto Rican and United States governments.

Since 1936, the Navy has been using a section of Culebra—a 7,000-acre island just off the east coast of Puerto Rico— for target practice by ships and naval aircraft. In recent years, the Navy’s operation has brought mounting protests by the 850 inhabitants of Culebra that •o turn have made the Navy’s use of 'be island a major political issue in Puerto Rico.

In April 1971, as the Puerto Rican

protests increased, Secretary Laird announced that the Navy activities would be moved from Culebra by mid-1975—a policy that he reaffirmed in November 1972, just before the Puerto Rican gubernatorial election. But a month later, Laird reversed himself and announced that shelling and bombing operations would continue until at least 1985.

Navy Initiates Diving Program Using Hydrogen For Breathing

{Office of Naval Research News Release 3-73, 7 May 1973)

The Navy has inaugurated a research program to study hydrogen as a breathing gas for diving. Five volunteer civilian divers are engaged in a series of pressure chamber dives which include breathing a mixture of 97% hydrogen and three % oxygen for periods of two hours at a simulated ocean depth of 200 feet.

The dives are taking place in the new hyperbaric chamber complex near New Orleans, and special physiological, speech, and behavioral studies are being conducted during the diving program by scientists of the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory of Groton, Connecticut.

The diving program covers a series of 24 dives, with eight using a hydrogen- oxygen mixture, eight on helium- oxygen, and eight using nitrogen- oxygen as the breathing mixture. Comparisons will be made of the effect of these various gas mixtures on the same diver subjects.

Called Project Hydrox II, the series of dives is a follow-up to exploratory dives by animals and men with mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen conducted in Hydrox I. Since this mixture could become explosive when mixed with room air, a special control system has been specifically developed for the safe handling of the gas.

Helium-oxygen mixtures are now used by the U. S. Navy for very deep diving. Although helium has been used down to a depth of 2,000 feet in a simulated (chamber) dive, which is far beyond the Navy’s present operational capability of 850 feet, helium does have certain drawbacks. The natural sources of helium gas are limited to a few geo

graphic areas in the world. Transportation of helium could be a serious logistic problem for extensive diving operations at sea. In contrast, hydrogen is present in abundance almost everywhere as a chemical constituent of water. It is therefore conceivable that hydrogen could be produced by electrolysis at any location near the sea.

Hydrogen gas is about half as dense as helium gas, and it should take less effort to breathe it at the high pressures of great depths. At those depths, the diver’s breathing gas has to be greatly compressed, and this in turn greatly increases the normal density of the gas, making it harder work to breathe.

Only a few experimental dives beyond 1,000 feet have been accomplished with animals or human subjects. An impairment of well-being in these dives has been variously described and labeled the High Pressure Nervous Syndrome (HPNS). This condition is characterized by tremors plus other effects that decrease the ability of the diver to perform useful tasks. Some investigators feel that HPNS is a direct result of breathing helium gas. The theory has been offered that this effect would be less severe with the use of hydrogen breathing mixtures.

The Hydrox dives are the first manned dives with hydrogen gas since 1948, when a Swedish naval officer, Arne Zetterstrom, made a series of pioneering open-sea dives breathing a hydrogen- oxygen mixture. Tragically, in a dive to 400 feet, Zetterstrom died in an accident not related to the use of hydrogen. This event, however, plus the danger of working with hydrogen has discouraged experimenters from attempting hydrogen dives until recently.

Experiments during Hydrox II include a study of the amount of speech deterioration with hydrogen gas. Helium gas produces the so-called "Donald Duck” effect, and there is some evidence that this voice distortion is no worse with hydrogen.

This experimental series should add greatly to the information on the use of hydrogen-oxygen breathing mixtures, and thereby provide a better indication of its potential use in Navy deep-diving operations. The data gathered could serve as the basis for further experiments designed to probe the ultimate depth limits for divers with this mixture.

In Others’ Words

Selected excerpts from foreign professional journals

Who Will Stop The Red Fleet?

Editor’s Note: The following is a translation of a report of the NATO exercise "Strong Express” which appeared in the October 1972 issue of the German magazine Dialogue.

"Ship cleared for battle,” is the signal on board the destroyer Schleswig-Holstein: all three watches are at battle stations, steel helmets on, spoons in the lifejackets, no bedding on the bunks (to lessen the danger of fire), mirrors and pictures covered (to reduce splintering). No more sleep, not even a snooze in the corner. Rough seas, the destroyer heeling 45°, spray shooting up to the bridge.

In the NATO maneuver Strong Express, powerful sea and navel air forces from "Orange-Land” attack the "Blue- Land” defenders in the waters off the northern Norwegian coast. The Schleswig-Holstein, part of the "Permanent Naval Combat Group, Atlantic,” defends herself against the attack, which comes in three waves: rocket-bearing aircraft (represented by German Star- fighters), missile-armed surface ships, and submarines.

Eleven NATO nations with 64,000 men, 300 ships, and 700 aircraft participated in Strong Express during the last weeks of September. This was the largest combined sea-land- and air maneuver yet carried out by the Western alliance. Area of operations: Norway, western Baltic, North Sea, Norwegian Sea, and the Atlantic.

A week before the maneuvers were to begin, while the "Blue” and "Orange” forces still lay in their homeland garrisons, the approach of a third, uninvited party was being traced on the world map in the bunker of the German commander of the North Sea naval forces, Flotilla Admiral Gunter Luther. Red and red-white tacks, notched arrows, red lines marked the "intruders” and their courses: off the Shetlands, in the mid-Atlantic, in the North Sea, in the Kattegat stood electronically outfitted reconnaissance ships, guided missile destroyers, and submarines ready to

shadow the NATO operations. The air command headquarters noted the first air incursion: two medium bombers of the Soviet naval air force, NATO code name "Badger,” had flown deep into Norwegian air space.

Even though it was not officially so announced by NATO, Strong Express must be seen as the West’s reaction to the increasingly threatening offensive strategy of the East Block confronting the NATO northern area (Norway, Denmark, and Schleswig-Holstein, including Hamburg). The military superiority of the Warsaw Pact over the northern NATO forces is overwhelming; its strategic possibilities are terrifying clear.

The Baltic approaches are scarcely defendable. Thus Norway can be cut off from its allies by a pincer movement of the two Soviet fleets—the Baltic Red Flag Fleet and the Norwegian Sea Fleet. Before the beginning of a conflict, the Red cruisers and destroyers, which are over-sized for the conditions in the Baltic, can pass unhindered through the Baltic approaches and thereafter attack them from the west, while the remaining Warsaw Pact fleet attacks the Belt and Kattegat from the east. Already Soviet submarines lie weeks at a time motionless and silent at the bottom just off the narrow passages, squarely in the supposed path of the advancing Western naval forces; already Soviet nuclear combat submarines follow American carriers, the basis of Western naval supremacy, as closely as their speed allows. A simultaneous attack on all U. S. carriers, which at the moment could not be prevented, would be a new Pearl Harbor. From these dim prospects were drawn the chief concerns of Strong Express: testing the possibilities for defense in NATO’s northern area, and supplying the European NATO allies by sea in a defensive situation. In such a situation, the Bundesrepublik alone needs 120,000 tons of goods daily (only a fraction of which is for the fighting troops; the bulk: supplies for the civilian population). This means that every day the German Navy’s escort vessels must guard a convoy of 12 freighters coming from England to the North Sea ports against the threat of mines, submarines, and aircraft. Provisions have been made: German merchant shipping captains have been trained already in defensive

exercises to act as convoy commanders. In Strong Express, they could get some practical experience: 60 chartered merchant ships from various NATO nations practiced steaming in company.

Critique of the Strong Express maneuver, took place behind closed doors. Probable conclusions were:

(a)Even with timely reinforcement by the Allied mobile forces (an integrated intervention brigade made up of elite troops from the United States, Canada, England, and Italy), the small Norwegian army is capable of defending Norway for a short time only.

(b)Even more difficult is the defense of the Baltic approaches.

(c) Increased defense efforts must be made by the NATO countries in the areas of antisubmarine warfare (submarine chase), development of new methods of protecting convoys (perhaps using nuclear submarines as escorts), and above all, catching up with the Soviet Union in the crucial use of electronics in warfare.

(d)The critical period, that is, the stretch from the beginning of an attack on the NATO northern flank to the arrival of massive support by the Anglo- American allies, must be shortened.

One ray of light was the cooperation among all participating forces of the Western allies, which proved good on all levels. A high level of training throughout and the willingness to achieve, encouraged the conviction to grow among the NATO troops that even in difficult situations they held the prospect of success.

From Peter the Great to Stalin, undisturbed by the events of the October Revolution and the fighting of World War II, the naval strategic concept of the greatest continental power of the world remained the same—coastal defense by battleships. After Stalin’s death, however, a sudden and contradictor)’ development of the Soviet fleet construction program set in, which at first showed no mark of a consistent plan thought out over a long period. Within a decade, the Soviet Union, traditionally a land power, became a seapower.

Rear Admiral Edward Wegener, Federal German Navy, now living in Kiel, analyses and evaluates the military and political aspects of the development of Soviet seapower in his recent book,

Moskaus Offensive zur See, published by the MOV Verlag of the Deutschen Marine-Institutes, Bad Godesberg. From 1963 to 1965, Wegener was commander of the NATO naval forces at the Baltic approaches, and he is acknowledged in the naval profession in the West as one of the most distinguished experts on the development of political power on the oceans.

The Soviet abandoned their coastal strategy, Wegener writes, just as the United States entrusted its aircraft carriers with a part in nuclear warfare. In 1955, when the first carrier of the For- ratal class was commissioned, the Soviets felt surrounded by the threat of nuclear strategic weapons. They therefore built naval weapons with which they could attack the carriers before they reached their battle positions. The Soviet fleet took its first step into the vastness of the oceans.

The Soviet naval command developed in increasingly convincing system of naval defense in "three waves:” medium-range bombers with long-range missiles, defensive submarines, and guided missile surface ships. With the fleet growing in strength, however, the Soviets now had the opportunity of shifting from defense of a large-scale area of influence” to a partial offensive. In a war, NATO ships could enter large areas of the seas off the Soviet coasts only with great risk. Thus Moscow has freed itself from its original defense task, and the adjacent NATO countries now feel forced to defend their coasts.

All four Soviet fleets—in the Norwegian Sea, in the Baltic, in the Mediterranean, and in the Far East—hold rather unfavorable geographical posi- rions. The question is whether in an actual war the Soviet flag would disappear from the oceans, or whether the Red Navy, by employing new technol- ogy, could change the naval strategic situation on the oceans and succeed in eliminating the basis of Western sea supremacy— the American aircraft carders. Moscow’s chief weapon: the submarine fleet, which, with a good 400 boats, is the largest fleet of this type in Peacetime.

The fleet includes 45 strategic submarines, some nuclear powered, some conventionally driven, some with 16 missiles, some with only a few of lesser

range. Should they wish to attack the United States, they would have to approach so near to the American coasts that they would be located by the acoustical equipment of the sea-bottom cable network. Since the end of the 1960s, the Soviets have been building nuclear strategic submarines of the Y class, which could attack the United States with nuclear missiles from the open seas, far from the American cable networks. In addition, about 20 Y-class boats, and another 50 Soviet nuclear- powered attack submarines cruise the oceans. They are suited to combat against surface ships as well as to underwater submarine chase. Underwater submarine chase is possible in two forms, ambush of oncoming enemy submarines in the approaches to harbors or in narrows (conventional submarines are capable of this form) or pursuit of an enemy submarine that has been located. This can be done only by nuclear submarines because of their greater speed. In combat between submarines, the important things are silence and the effectiveness of the acoustical locating equipment. Whoever locates his enemy without being detected himself, wins the underwater duel.

Location of an enemy submarine by another, in the vastness of the sea, is impossible. A nuclear strategic boat can only be shadowed if she is located as she leaves the base, and is thereafter followed closely. But the Soviet nuclear attack submarines are still slower than the American Polaris boats. Nevertheless, the Soviets already lie in wait near U. S. bases for the Polaris submarines, and give evidence of their presence by their noise.

Conversely, American submarines can keep near the Y-class boats, ready to destroy them should a war break out. But it must be expected that the Soviets will soon build boats with superior speed, and for this reason the U. S. Navy is already working on giant submarines, which can travel very fast and silently and can dive very deep. How much influence the SALT agreement will have on this planning cannot be forecast.

NATO staffs believe they have identified a new submarine strategy by the opposing side: Before the outbreak of a war, the Soviets would send all their submarines to sea. The nuclear-propelled

attack submarines would have the mission of operating against U. S. carrier groups, while the conventional submarines would be dispersed widely and densely along the carriers’ expected routes of advance. Only after the carriers were destroyed would the second phase begin, the "cruiser warfare” against the shipping lanes, with the primary aim of cutting the flow of resupplies from the United States to Europe.

To be sure, the Soviet nuclear attack submarines would be none too strong in numbers, with two-thirds of them in the Atlantic and one-third in the Pacific; their handicap would be their speed of only 20 to 25 knots, and the carriers could outrun them. If the Soviets are already testing this new submarine strategy, then it is in anticipation of what is coming, of the time when they have more and faster nuclear subs. It indicates what they want to do.

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Notebook

In peacetime, the Soviet naval presence on the oceans of the world, assumes undoubted political significance— the nations dependent on the sea understand the consequences of naval supremacy in time of war.

New Soviet Cruiser

Once again, the Soviet Union has shown the West that it is capable of producing impressive warships, as these views of the new Kara-class missile cruiser Nikolaev confirm. Though at about 9,000 tons she is substantially smaller than was anticipated—indeed, she appears to be an expansion of, and improvement on, the Kresta II design—she is all warship, from jackstaff to flagstaff. Starting from the bow, her weaponry consists of two 12-barrel antisubmarine rocket launchers; a twin-armed SA-N-3 antiaircraft missile launcher; two quadruple dusters (one cluster on either side of the bridge) for SS-N-10 surface-to-surface missile launchers (with a reported range of 25 mites); four 76-mm. guns in two twin mounts, port and starboard; two SA-N-4 pop-up, short-range antiaircraft missile launchers, one on either side of the pyramidal mast; four 30 mm. guns; ten tubes for antisubmarine torpedoes in two mounts, port and starboard; another SA-N-3 launcher; and a pair of 6-barrel antisubmarine rocket launchers. She has a helicopter hangar, and under the small helo pad, a variable depth sonar. The ship is powered by gas turbines and bears a staggering load of electronics.

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