Time to Secure the Seas

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"All war upon the sea . . . has for its ultimate objective the control of seaborne commerce . .

—William Ledyard Rogers Greek and Roman Naval Warfare

apid reinforcement of NATO is the keystone of U. S. strategy for non-nuclear war in Europe. The growing Soviet naval presence casts doubt, however, on the workability of the rapid deployment concept. If rapid deployment is not workable, NATO must provide for its defense without surface-supported reinforcement during the first phase of the battle, and planning priorities must be changed on both sides of the Atlantic.

The easing of East-West tensions, the evolution of Sovict-U. S. relationships, the change of Soviet strategic thinking implied by their construction of a large merchant marine and major navy, all tend to de-emphasize the threat of land war in Europe. Nevertheless, Soviet- dominated and Free World armed forces face each other on the Central European front. The only major war

ll is one thing for a single Seasprite ASW helicopter to track a surfaced Soviet submarine in the Mediterranean, and quite another for a wartime Navy to be able to protect merchants ships, scattered over the high seas, against a very large, very capable fleet of attack submarines.

Russia could fight against West European powers would be fought in Europe. However remote the prospect of land war on the continent may seem, NATO must continue to plan to defend against ground attack from the East.

The expectation of prompt U. S. reinforcement is an essential component of present NATO defense plans. U. S. reinforcement planning is dominated by the rapid deployment concept.

For 20 years, the United States has sought concepts for so managing war as to avoid the commitment of major powers to mutual destruction. As the credible threat shifted away from nuclear war, planning refocussed on conventional warfare problems. Strategic planners agreed that the earlier effective forces could be brought into action, the shorter a war would be, the less the hazard of escalation, and the lower the final cost of victory. Prompt closure of combat forces in a contingency objective area would reduce by a major fraction the strength ultimately needed, reduce casualties by a still larger fraction, and increase the likelihood of ending hostilities quickly. Immediate response to enemy aggression might reduce the cost of a war by one-half or more.

The advantages of immediate deployment of effective forces to contingehcy areas are persuasive, and the rapid deployment concept has largely determined the design of our general purpose and strategic mobility forces and the plans for their use in contingencies. The concept calls for fast introduction into combat of forces large enough to predominate quickly within the initial area of conflict and so contain the conflict.

The typical scenario for a NATO war projects a minimum warning period before Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. Within a few days after war breaks out, U. S. combat and support elements arc flown to the continent. Some units marry up with prepositioned equipment and move into battle. The rest wait for their equipment to come by sea. Resupply by sea begins concurrently. The heavy tonnages of equipment and supplies must be delivered by surface shipping, and sealift capacity controls the rate of buildup. And the strategic planners assume that, whatever may happen on land and in the air, sealift support can be relied upon to deliver whatever must be transported, to the place it is needed, when it is needed.

When the rapid deployment concept was formulated, U. S. control of the seas was a fact of life. Today that control is sharply challenged, and we can no longer plan to use sea lines of communication without peril in a war involving the Soviet Union. Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, in his statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 15 February 1972, said: "Considering our great dependence upon the seas, in peace

and war, and in view of the rapid growth in the sophistication of the Soviet attack submarine fleet, I must conclude that the U. S. Navy is no longer the unchallenged master of the seas.”

Other opinions are less equivocal. A former assistant director of the Navy Long Range Objectives Group, in a letter to The Washington Post, wrote: "U. S. and other NATO naval forces combined couldn’t get out military shipping safely across the Atlantic (let alone bring in essential oil) against submarine opposition.”

The JCS Chairman stated that in mid-1971 the Soviets had more than 250 long-range attack submarines, over 50 of them nuclear-powered. Soviet submarines undoubtedly would be deployed on a war footing before Warsaw Pact forces launched a deliberate attack on Western Europe. If the Soviet Union adopted the sensible plan of wrecking Free World shipping at the outset, as many as 150 submarines, carrying nearly 3,000 torpedoes¹, might be in attack position on M-day. The peacetime movements of ships in the oil trade and in transatlantic commerce are easily determined, and the Soviet opening attack could wipe out most of the oil fleet and the modern dry cargo ships at sea, before defensive measures could be instituted. Setting aside the prospect of major M-day losses, Russia’s fleet of modern submarines, stationed to control the Atlantic sea lanes, would have a dominant advantage over the defense during the first weeks of war, when, under the current concept, deployment of reinforcements to NATO must be initiated.

If deployment support shipping sailed in the fa<* of the Soviet submarine offensive immediately after M-day, very heavy losses would be inescapable. Long- rangc submarines, some of them very fast, with good endurance and large weapons loads, opposed by the relatively small ASW forces in active service on M-day, would be able to make a shooting gallery of the North Atlantic. By rough approximation methods, without resort to formal attrition analysis, it can be estimated with sufficient confidence for the present purpose that between a third and a half of the U. S. merchant fleet would be sunk in the first 90 days, the heaviest losses coming in the initial encounters.

U. S. forces committed to NATO support could no' be combat effective if losses on this order were taken Neither ships nor the equipment and supplies the) carried could be replaced in time to restore the efleo tivcncss of our deployed forces.

It can be calculated that, despite heavy losses submarines, the U. S.-flag fleet could provide sustained sealift support for a NATO war—if all of the ships ‘ⁿ

¹ Most Soviet attack submarines cany 18 or 20 torpedoes.

Time to Secure the Seas 27

Ae U. S. merchant marine were under government control for military and essential civilian needs, if on M-day they were where they were needed or could get tack to port for loading, and if the war ended in a few weeks. These are certainly not fail-safe assumptions, tat the fatal defect of this kind of analysis is that it does not measure the price of success. The conclusion is simply that, if we begin with "X” ships and lose V” ships, we can meet a given delivery requirement tah "X” minus "Y” ships. The analysis does not ask whether we can afford to meet the requirement at the cost of "Y” ships.

In fact, if deployment objectives were met in the tast 90 days at the cost of, say, 40% of our modern Merchant ships, we would nearly have precluded meet- ^lng any national sealift objectives thereafter, whether ^war continued or peace ensued.

The U. S. merchant marine no longer has the structural resilience to remain effective under heavy submarine attack. The high-productivity ships which are ^rapidly replacing breakbulk freighters have the delivery system capacity of many times their number of the conventional freighters which supported our wars 'hough the Vietnam period. It is precisely this productivity that makes the U. S. merchant fleet so vulner- ^Jole to submarine attack. A container ship which pro- tales the sustained lift capacity of four or five conventional freighters, when sunk, represents the loss °f four or five conventional freighter equivalents. The ^vtaie of enemy torpedoes has been multiplied by the same economics which have promoted modernization °f the U. S. merchant marine.

A shipbuilding program would, of course, be undertaken after the outbreak of a European war. In World War II, a massive shipbuilding effort, started early in along mobilization build-up, enabled the United States ^t0 support allies and to deploy and support forces ^0verseas against submarine attack—although Great Britain’s situation was touch and go for a while, and taavy U. S. deployment did not begin until the ASW campaign was substantially won. But a new construction program begun after M-day could not begin ^t0 take effect during the initial deployment period or tat many months afterwards. While output from new construction was awaited, shipping losses would con- c>nue, each sinking constituting a larger percentage of 'he remaining sealift capacity, as that capacity dwindled Coward extinction.

But what about NATO ships? Notwithstanding the uncertainties in predicting NATO ship availability in the ^ear*y stages of war, planners may reasonably expect NATO ships to provide support for U. S. reinforcement of Europe. NATO shipping would extend the supply °f sealift assets in the long run and, for attrition analy

sis, would broaden the base against which losses were calculated. Nevertheless, U. S. war planning must be based on the capabilities of the U. S. merchant marine, for that is the only shipping on which we can depend with confidence. High-productivity ships will constitute the greater part of the U. S. commercial fleet in the near future, and the military services, as a matter of necessity, are pointing toward maximum use of container ships, barge-carriers and roll-on/roll-off ships for force deployment and resupply. Moreover, the productivity of modern ship systems offers the opportunity to reduce military logistic manpower by an order of magnitude, and the size and speed of modern ships enable them to deliver a given tonnage at much lower cost for submarine protection than an equal capacity fleet of conventional freighters.

These factors would draw NATO container ships and barge-carriers into the deployment support sealift system. As a consequence, the heaviest losses to submarines would be taken by the modern component of the NATO merchant fleet, and the effect on total shipping capacity would be far more serious than the number of sinkings, relative to total ship inventory, would indicate.

But the major part of the Free World modern ship inventory is under the U. S. flag. U. S. ships arc the most responsive to Defense Department needs and they are the only ships whose use and loading can be preplanned. Therefore, even with NATO shipping available, U. S. ships would be the first choice for deployment support, particularly in the earliest phase, and losses of U. S. ships would be greater than NATO ship losses, in absolute numbers and in proportion of the national merchant fleet. The availability of NATO shipping would not reduce significantly the impact of submarine warfare on the U. S. merchant fleet.

The loss of equipment and supplies carried on sunken ships is a separate and perhaps more urgent strategic problem. If ship sinkings reached the levels suggested above, losses of combat materiel would seriously impair the operational effectiveness of deployed forces.

Materiel inventories of the Military Services have been seriously depleted by Southeast Asia (SEA) operations and concurrent constraints on budgets for non- SEA operations. Several years of peace will be needed to reconstitute and modernize initial equipment and resupply stocks for the forces committed for initial NATO deployment. If the rapid deployment strategy were executed during the restocking years, we would go to war with severely limited materiel assets. Every tank, every aircraft, every round of ammunition would be earmarked for a specific job under the war plan.

Time to Secure the Seas 29

Modern shipping tends to concentrate types of equipment on specific types of ships for loading efficiency; for example, tanks are loaded on roll-on/roll-off ships to the extent of ship availability. Ship losses would generate block losses of equipment by type. A division could lose a major fraction of its tanks, aircraft or artillery on a single ship, and that division would not be an effective fighting unit until the losses had been replaced.

A shipload of tanks lost at sea could be replaced quickly only by withdrawing equipment from Reserve units, and the Reserve units, on which heavy weight >s placed in planning, would be ineffective until new tanks could be built. Modern tanks, aircraft and other weapons can no more be turned out quickly than modern ships, and equipment lost at sea during the early stages of deployment could not be replaced in time to bear on the issue during the period when the tapid deployment strategy must achieve results, if it is to succeed at all.

The rapid deployment strategy, in the hope of shortening a war by reacting quickly and containing the battle, would incur major losses of ships and troop materiel when they could be tolerated least, at the outset of hostilities, when production lines had yet to be set up and when demands were at the peak for equipment for forces being mobilized. Acceptance of these losses in planning implies a high level of confidence that the forces deployed initially would achieve decisive results and that additional forces would not be needed. But the major equipment losses which would result from sailing ships against a ready and waiting Soviet submarine attack would diminish the combat effectiveness of the deployed forces and reduce their chances of achieving quick decision. If follow-on forces had to be deployed, the shipping losses incurred in the opening phase of hostilities would critically impair the ability to continue reinforcement and support operations. By a reckless expenditure of irreplaceable resources—irreplaceable, that is, in the relevant time frame—the rapid deployment concept would bring the United States close to strategic defeat and would jeopardize the NATO defense on the European battleground.

Yet, the idea of rapid deployment makes sense. If Western Europe were invaded and we did not reinforce promptly, we might condemn NATO to defeat. Common sense tells us that we cannot lose a million tons of military equipment in the process of deployment and be effective—but common sense tells us also that we must get onto the battleground while there is still a battle to be won. The problem, of course, is finding the best path between two hazards, with time as the controlling dimension.

Soviet submarines could be defeated eventually, and the enemy’s ability to interdict sea lines of communication could be brought within militarily tolerable limits without absolute defeat of Soviet submarines, but today’s strategy does not provide time to defeat, or even to begin to defeat, the submarine offensive. Present planning, centered on getting reinforcements into battle as soon as possible, forces the Navy to plunge immediately into the job of protecting merchant ships, scattered over the high seas, against one of the largest, most capable fleets of attack submarines ever assembled. At the same time, the Navy must move onto a war footing from a peacetime posture in which much of the ASW force is laid up. Limited assets must be committed piecemeal and dispersed widely. Under these conditions, serious losses of deployment shipping could not be averted.

We need time to reduce the probability of ship losses before deployment begins. NATO’s ability to hold against attack, with only the limited reinforcements the United States can provide and support by air, sets the outside limit on the time available. The first question, therefore, is whether NATO defenses are adequate to give us the time to address the submarine problem before beginning surface-supported reinforcement.

The NATO defensive situation is not desperate. The total strength of U. S. and NATO combat forces in the central region of Europe is about equal to the readily available Warsaw Pact forces. The Pact has a numerical advantage in tanks and fighter aircraft, but U. S. and NATO anti-tank and aircraft defensive systems may be superior. NATO has the advantage of a prepared defense. If the practical fact is acknowledged that for warmaking there is only one Western Europe and France is part of it, the balance begins to tilt toward NATO. Western Europe has the economic strength to muster additional combat units to offset delay in arrival of U. S. divisions. Therefore, while early reinforcement of NATO must remain the planning objective, the NATO defense plan could be adjusted to allow a limited time for the United States to make the opening moves in a campaign against Soviet submarines, before initiating major deployments.

The time needed to gain a measure of control over the submarine offensive could be minimized by increasing the ASW forces available on M-day, that is, by building up the ASW capabilities maintained in active service in peacetime. The cold truth is that the Defense budget offers no promise of funds to increase ASW forces without cutting back elsewhere. The choice lies between creating stronger ASW capabilities and retaining projected levels of naval offensive forces.

To be able to assure relatively safe passage of deployment shipping in the period immediately after the

outbreak of hostilities, in today’s budget environment the Navy would have to become predominantly an ASW force. A Navy so configured would be, from the strategic viewpoint, a defensive force. Wars are not won by defensive systems and the NATO war is not the only, or even the most likely, contingency for which the Navy must prepare. To ensure that the Navy retains a war-winning capability for the full range of contingencies which the nation may face in the next decade, offensive capabilities must be preserved, even at the cost of ASW systems urgently needed for the NATO contingency. Accordingly, substantial expansion of ASW systems is beyond reach.

The alternative is to change the parameters of the ASW problem. We cannot change the enemy’s capability, but something can be done about the target. Changing the target characteristics of friendly shipping requires a basic modification of the plan to reinforce NATO immediately after the outbreak of war.

The controlling objective in the initial period would be preservation of sealift assets until the capability to limit losses could be improved. Clearing friendly shipping from the seas as quickly as possible after M-day would, therefore, be the essential first step in the ASW campaign. The fewer the ships at sea, the more easily they could be protected and the smaller would be the diversion of Navy effort from operations to defeat the submarine offensive directly. Postponing surface supported reinforcements would be an integral part of the passive defense effort.

Most merchant ships at sea on M-day could be diverted to safe havens, although ships past the point of no return would have to make their way to destination and hope to arrive safely and some cargoes would continue to move in spite of the submarine threat. Very large crude oil carriers (VLCCs), for example, probably would have difficulty finding harbors short of their normal destinations and a few other critical cargoes would have to be delivered. Those ships would require protection, but, otherwise, clearing the seas and postponing deployments would preserve existing ships from catastrophic losses while freeing the Navy to organize and, at least for a short time, to concentrate on the antisubmarine campaign.

However short the period, the opportunity for the Navy to concentrate on defeating enemy submarines would improve the prospects for subsequent survival of merchant shipping. ASW forces could be assembled and committed in a concerted effort to drive Soviet submarines off the coastal approaches to U. S. and European ports, where so many ships were lost to Hitler’s U-boats. Enemy bases overseas would be neutralized and support ships located and destroyed. Submarine home harbors would be attacked and mined.

The enemy’s stationing plan would be disrupted, so that, when shipping operations resumed, his submarines would no longer be in the best attack positions. Enemy submarines would suffer losses to hunter-killer teams. Diesel-powered submarines, running short of range, would find themselves cut off from support bases and increasingly vulnerable to discovery and destruction.

Concurrently, the defensive posture of friendly ship ping would be enhanced. Laid-up ASW ships would be activated and Naval Reserve elements brought on active duty. Mines laid by Soviet submarines in U. S. and European ports would be cleared. Dry cargo ships would be broken out of the National Defense Reserve Fleet, the only source of readily available augmentation shipping, and crewed and made ready for sea. The requisitioning of commercial shipping would be put in train and arrangements completed for use of foreign ships. The Naval Control of Shipping Organization would be set up. Shipping priorities would be established and the convoy system organized.

By the time the ASW effort had brought sea lines of communication under a measure of control, the sealift system would be ready for rapid, organized and orderly deployment of equipment and supplies for NATO reinforcements and for essential support of the U. S. and European civil economies. The seas would not be secure and ships would still be lost, but the sharp edge of the Soviet submarine offensive would be blunted.

Delaying movement of reinforcements to NATO, in conjunction with a shipping moratorium, would avert the catastrophic losses of ships and combat materiel which would be the consequence of an attempt to sail support shipping immediately after M-day. Diverting ships at sea to safe havens would reduce the effectiveness of the initial Soviet attack from pre-M-day deployment positions. Very heavy losses would not occur during the immediate post-M-day period, simply because ships would not be exposed to sinking. When shipping operations resumed, the dispersal of enemy submarines from the coastal approaches would reduce the probability that ships would encounter submarines. Control of ship movements under a priority system which kept non-essential traffic off the seas would permit ASW forces to increase the protection afforded essential shipping and diminish the likelihood that ships, when they countered submarines, would be sunk. With the shipping protection task reduced to manageable proportions, Navy ASW operations would be able to apply sufficient pressure to begin to wrest from the enemy the initiative in the war at sea. The cumulative effect would be a significant improvement in the survivability of cargo ships. The avoidance of massive

Time to Secure the Seas 31

initial losses and the reduction of the probability of losses during subsequent operations would enable the merchant fleet, although it might be badly savaged as the war proceeded, to continue to exist and to perform its support function.

The delay in movement of U. S. divisions to Europe would be more than offset by the gain in ultimate effectiveness resulting from safe delivery of a higher proportion of the equipment and supplies of these divisions and from preservation of the greater part of the national sealift system.

The rapid deployment concept, in its present form, is a prescription for disaster. We cannot afford the catastrophic losses which would occur if we tried to deploy reinforcements to NATO immediately after M-day. Neither, however, can we afford the great increase in ASW capabilities which would be necessary to ensure safe passage of cargo ships against a prepared Soviet submarine offensive. Only one practical option remains. To conserve our sealift capacity and critical combat materiel inventories for effective use in the NATO defense, surface-supported reinforcement of NATO must be postponed until the Navy can make a beginning on bringing enemy submarines under control. NATO nations must therefore accept the necessity of carrying their own defense in the opening weeks, supported only by the few forward divisions which are

U. S. hostages to the antisubmarine warfare campaign.

In the larger strategic view, control of the seas is far more important to the NATO defense than the additional ground divisions which the United States proposes to contribute. Neither Europe nor the United States can live without sustained seaborne support. If the land war in Europe ended in 90 days, but the Soviet submarine fleet was not defeated, that fleet would hold the Western world at its discretion. A European war would not be won so long as the antisubmarine campaign was not won.

Because both the economic vitality of the Atlantic community and the ability of the United States to support a European war rest on the same foundation, clearance of the sea lanes is properly our first strategic task in a NATO war. Until we control the seas, we have no war-making power in foreign areas. When we control the seas, we control strategic time and can bring the weight of U. S. national power to bear decisively on the strategic issues.

An Army Transportation Corps officer and logistician, Colonel Case has served overseas in Europe during World War II and in Korea, Alaska, and Vietnam. He commanded the 48th Transportation Group (Motor Transport) in Vietnam in 1968 and was Chief of Staff, U. S. Army Support Command, Saigon, prior to his present assignment as Chief of Staff, Headquarters, Military Traffic Management and Terminal Service. He is a 1965 graduate of the Army War College.