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c . y fask is to explain the rationale for the development of r I et seapower; to focus on the why of current developments 0rieler t^lan fBe what. This distinction is important, since it leads f t0 emphasize a different range of factors, each relevant to dif- r^r levels of threat analysis.
pla e Wbat ^ov'et: seapower provides the basis for contingency mng, where we focus on enemy capabilities and our own re- ernents, and the aim is to identify the most dangerous course r Soviet - ' ■................ ■ ■ -
action, rather than the most likely. This can be labeled
^military-tactical level of analysis.
Co ^ Contrast’ analysis at the politico-strategic level is primarily cerned to identify the most likely courses of Soviet action. This ide'nS We ^ocus primarily on the why of Soviet policy and, by Undntlfying the rationale behind past developments, we gain some ^ ’rstanding of the objectives and the constraints which will estT6 P°bcy ‘n the future. This requires us to look at Soviet inter- thei'r ^ Wbde lts liafd to Be certain of what they see as being in inter Interests’ *r ‘s much easier to identify what is against their tinuiests- also have to consider intentions which, given con-
government, tend to be remarkably stable at the asStrateS‘c level- But probably the most important step is to Sj SS ^ov'er capabilities in terms of the requirements they are de- Ca . t0 meet, and decide whether there is a surplus or shortfall of ^ dities over these requirements. stanrnaior difference between the two levels of analysis is the levejCC tbe analyst- At rhe military-tactical contingency-planning p°int’ be 's looking at the situation primarily from the West’s tlerab'p<r V'eW ant^ f°cus'ng on Western threat perceptions and vul- if pr1 lf'es- At the politico-strategic level, the analyst is looking at Per >m tbe ^uss’ans point of view and focusing on Soviet threat
Port Ob
tUtes i — ------------- 1---------- i---------- "--1 ------------------------ 1 _
ver ’ anti fhe level of analysis explains much of the apparent di
a0a] nCC °P v‘ews concerning the Soviet threat. Both levels of t^reat'S ^ essent‘aB s‘nce they provide the two components of the an<j , ecluat;ion: the type of enemy action which could take place; Co,^ e 1'kclihood that such action will take place. The operational levej1Tlan^er's required to focus on the first component, but higher b°th PA°llCymaking ln peacetime requires the judicious balancing of am to °St US afe already weH Briefed on the first component; I j give you my understanding of the second.
f’olitico-
of
------------------------- czi view auu lULUMUg UU JU Viet uueat
Qr l,Cl°ns and vulnerabilities, before considering the range of op- unities that are open to them.
Vlously these different viewpoints yield very different pic-
m going to focus on the naval element of seapower, although
“ Where the West thought in terms of credibility, argued about the arcane merits of counter force and counter-value, or worried about stabilizing and destabilizing developtnents, the Soviets focused on achieving victory in war. ”
It follows then that, for the Soviets, the Nonvegian Sea “had moved from being nice-to-have to need-to-have, ivith all that implies. . . .’’The view opposite shows the Soviet antisubmarine cruiser Kiev approaching the Shetland-Faeroes gap. The trailing ship is the frigate HMS Danae.
65
Second World War, was the fourth attempt in
Michael MccGwire is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, having been a Professor of Maritime and Strategic Studies at Dalhousie University in Canada 1971-79 and a Visiting Professor at the U. S. National War College in 1977. He was educated at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth, went to sea in 1942 and saw action in the Mediterranean, North Sea and Channel. He served two years as an attache in Moscow and, after heading the Soviet navy section of British Defense Intelligence, he retired as a Commander to take a degree in Economics and International Politics. He is currently engaged in a study of U. S. naval requirements in the year 2010.
towards the end I will touch briefly on other aspects of Soviet ocean policy. I will concentrate mainly on the last nineteen years, because contemporary naval policy, and indeed Soviet defense policy as a whole, stems from 1961; that is, the year before Cuba. But to understand this policy we must reach much further back in time, not least because most of the warships now in service stem from design decisions taken in the fifties.
For evidence, I draw on what the Soviets say and what they do. But I pay particular attention to their warship building programs, because these reflect high level decisions about the allocation of scarce resources. Detailed analysis of these programs allows one to identify the timing and the substance of past policy decisions and of subsequent shifts in policy, reflecting changes in Soviet perceptions of the threat, and the evolution of their naval requirements.*
Let me start by noting that for the last 200 years or so, Russia’s navy has generally been the third or fourth largest in the world, although its effectiveness fluctuated widely. Russia used naval forces in the eighteenth century to help the army gain or increase her holdings on the Baltic and Black Sea coasts and, four times between 1768 and 1827, she deployed sizeable squadrons to the Mediterranean for a year or more. For three of these deployments ships were drawn from the Baltic Fleet and were used in opera- •The detailed analyses which underlie this article can be found in “Naval Power and Soviet Global Strategy,” International Security, Spring 1979, and in the various chapters of Soviet Naval Developments (1973), Soviet Naval Policy (1975), and Soviet Naval Influence (1977), all published by Praeger and edited by the author (with others). The references in those works give some indication of the considerable debt the author owes to other analysts in this field.
tions against the southern side of the Black Sea exit* during the wars with Turkey.
But increasingly thereafter, Russia found herself confronting predominantly maritime powers. In the Black Sea, Britain used her naval strength to preven1 Russian gains at the expense of the failing Ottoman Empire; in the company of France, Britain intervened directly in what we call the Crimean War, e*- tending her naval operations against Russia to dlE Baltic, White Sea, and Pacific, and the subsequen1 peace treaty forbade Russia a Black Sea Fleet. Twenty years later in the eighth Russo-Turkish War, Britis'1 pressure ensured that Russia did not gain control i the Straits. In the Far East, Russo-Japanese rivalry culminated in the disastrous war of 1904-5, and the loss of two Russian fleets. In consequence, Russia* naval policy was increasingly dominated by the requirement to defend four widely separated fleet area* against maritime powers who could concentrate the>( forces at will.
It is therefore wrong to suggest that Russia ha5 only recently awakened to the significance of sea- power. She used it in the past to her own advantage but more often has seen its long arm used again*1 her. Over the years she committed very substantia' resources to naval construction, and the major ship building program, which was initiated after tb years to build up a strong Russian fleet: 1880, 19^’ 1928, and 1945. But national strategy involves set' ting priorities and balancing competing claims f°f scarce resources. Russia was predominately a la*1 power; the only threats to her territorial existent had come by land; the army was the basis of secunf at home, and of influence beyond her borders.
Substantial naval forces were indeed required defend against assault from the sea, and to thwaft attempts by maritime powers to dictate the outcoflf of events in areas adjoining Russia. But these foRe* were seen as an expensive necessity, rather than as'' preferred instrument of overseas policy. One of c'lC questions 1 will address at the end is the extent fl which this attitude persists today.
These perceptions of Russia’s naval requirement were reinforced during the interwar years. Betwee|1 1918 and 1921, Western navies provided vital sup port to the forces of counterrevolution. And then •' naval arms race built up during the thirties. Vff'1 traditional enmities now reinforced by a dee' ideological cleavage, the Soviet Union was a leaguered state and had to take account of Japan |(1 the Pacific, the Germans in the Baltic, and the p°s^ sibility of the Italians joining the Turks in the BlaL Sea; plus, of course, the worldwide capabilities ofc'11
b;
lsers, and 4 aircraft carriers during this period, s a mass of torpedo boats, gunboats, and subchas
American, British, and French navies.
During the thirties the Soviet Union devoted substantial resources both to warship construction and to "^proving her naval capabilities: by linking the three "Astern areas by inland waterway; by upgrading ex- lst‘ng shipyards; and by building major new ones, Safe from coastal assault, in the North, in the Pacific, on the Volga. Throughout most of the thirties tle Soviets only had the industrial capacity to build Srnaller units, and they concentrated mainly on submarines, torpedo boats, and naval aircraft. But by t e end of the Third Five Year Plan in 1943 they planned to have a navy of 19 battleships and battle- truisers, 20 cruisers, 160 destroyers, over 1,500 naval aircraft, and no less than 340 submarines.
This sounds a substantial force, but in fact it j^°uld have been a fleet of short-legged ships sailed y ^experienced seamen under the command of n°v'ce admirals. It would have lacked carriers, radar, s°nar, and much else. And, of course, this force had be shared among four fleets. In June 1941 the ')V|ets had the most numerous submarine force in k e w°rld, but the great majority of these units had een designed to defend the home fleet areas against naval incursions.
Tlie Second World War confirmed Russia’s belief
at ground forces were the basis of her national se-
jU*rity • However, at the end of the war her most
Hy opponents were now the traditional maritime
Powers, who had not only been responsible for the
j^P'talist intervention during the Revolution, but
, recently demonstrated their capacity to project
C°ntinental-scale armies over vast distances of sea,
to support their operations ashore. The likeli-
”°od of maritime invasion of the Baltic and Black
a coasts was considered substantial. The Baltic
^Ve access to the lines of communication with the
cstern front; the Black Sea would allow the invad-
to bypass Russia’s traditional defense in depth;
arH the rivers, instead of serving as defensive bar-
Would provide the invaders with easy access to
glia’s industrial heartlands. In enemy hands, the
ack Sea becomes a grenade in Russia’s gut.
In 1945, Russia had a powerful army but lacked a
atrleworthy fleet, and the navy therefore received
datively high priority in the rebuilding process,
force requirements largely carried over from be-
re cbe war. Under the new, twenty-year naval con-
tfuction program, no less than 1,200 submarines
'Vere to be built. We know that for certain. And I
Cck°n that they also planned to build some 200 es-
°rts> 200 destroyers, about 36 cruisers, 4 battle- cru-
Mil:
ers, and some 5,000 aircraft in the naval air force. Large numbers; but of course nothing compared to the size of the combined Western navies at the end of the war, and even the submarines fall into perspective when divided among the four fleets. The prewar concept of defense in depth and coordinated attacks by air, submarine, and surface units were carried over. About 1,000 of the 1,200 submarines were intended for the defense of the home fleet areas, and the carriers were probably intended to extend fighter cover in the north and in the Pacific.
However, in 1954, as a consequence of the post- Stalin policy review, the Soviet leadership downgraded the threat of seaborne invasion and gave first priority to the dangers of a surprise nuclear attack by strategic bombers. The naval threat from the West was seen in more limited terms of nuclear strikes by carrier-borne aircraft, primarily against naval bases. This engendered a radical reappraisal of naval requirements and the decision to place primary reliance on long-range cruise missiles, which would be carried by small to medium surface ships, diesel submarines, and aircraft. The operational concept relied on the reach, the payload, and the accuracy of these weapons as a substitute for large numbers of weapon platforms. However, the missile systems had yet to be developed.
Khrushchev brought the 45-year-old Gorshkov to Moscow to implement these decisions. The building of cruisers was checked in mid-course; the mass- production of medium-type submarines, then building at 72 units a year, was sharply tapered to a halt; and while the destroyer, escort, and subchaser programs ran their full course, their successor classes were put back four years. This represented a sixty percent cut in annual production of tonnage, enabling substantial resources to be released from warship construction to the domestic economy. Seven of the thirteen largest building ways were reassigned from naval use to the construction of fish factory and merchant ships. This shift of resources from naval to commercial construction was an important indication of Soviet priorities in the use of the sea.
The new concept of operations was predicated on engaging enemy carrier groups within range of shore-based air cover. It envisaged coordinated missile attacks by strike aircraft, diesel submarines, and large destroyers. These newly-designed units, the Badger C strike aircraft, the Juliett and Longbin missile submarines, and the Kynda missile ship, were intended to enter service in 1962.
However, by 1958 the key premise that shore- based fighter defense would be available over the encounter zone had been falsified by increases in the
range of carrier-borne aircraft. This allowed U.S. carriers to strike at Russia with nuclear weapons from the Eastern Mediterranean and the southern reaches of the Norwegian Sea. To meet this threat from distant sea areas it was decided to place primary emphasis on nuclear submarines which, though not suitable for their intended offensive purposes, would be able to outflank the West’s surface and air superiority. Plans were therefore pur in hand to double nuclear submarine production (which was just beginning to yield the Hotel and November classes) to 10 boats a year, with deliveries due to begin in 1968. The recently authorized diesel submarine programs were cancelled and, as an expedient, their long-range missile systems were used to reconfigure nuclear submarines as SSGN: the Echo classes. Meanwhile, the development of a horizon-range submarine missile with its own target location capability was put in hand. At this same period in 1957-58, a requirement to extend the range of ASW coverage beyond that provided by shore-based helicopters was identified, particularly in northern waters, where the Soviets assumed the U. S. Polaris submarines would patrol. This generated the requirement for the Moskva class of antisubmarine helicopter carriers. So far, 1 have only talked of those forces directly involved in the defense of the home fleet areas, and I must now backtrack to pick up the task of “strategic,” or long-range delivery. At the end of the war, the torpedo-firing diesel submarine was the only weapon system available to the Soviets which had the range and payload to bring atomic weapons to bear on North America. This, combined with the navy’s tradition of daring attacks on enemy ports, led to the navy being given the task of long-range delivery. A nuclear warhead for a torpedo which, presumably, was to be exploded in such places as the approaches to New York or Hampton Roads, was probably developed by 1954, and a ballistic missile was fired from a submarine in 1955. This led to four classes of submarine which began to appear in 1958: two diesel, the Foxtrot and Golf, and two nuclear, the | curtailed, plans for the navy’s future contribution 1 long-range nuclear delivery were cancelled, and 1 second half-generation of nuclear submarines, the1 sign we now know as the Echo II class, was ret0(1 figured for the anti-carrier role, as were the last hu units of the first half-generation. The Echo Is "ttl later converted back to straight torpedo-firing SLl marines. This brings us up to the crucial year of 196 b 1 before moving forward let me summarize what 1 b1' said. During its first forty years, Soviet naval P°f|C and the allocation of resources to naval construed1’1 reflected Soviet perceptions of the threat of assault0 Russia from the sea. After World War II we see f"lfS the mass-construction programs designed to meet ^ misperceived threat, which was incorrectly infeff from the capitalists’ war-inflated navies and fro1’1 Marxist prognosis of history. This is followed by s‘1'j age cuts in shipyard allocations when the likelid0 of seaborne invasion was realized to be low. And d’L we have the heavy investment in nuclear submit1 ^ construction facilities, responding to the new correctly-perceived threat from carrier-borne stf ^ aircraft, and to the need to oppose them Western-dominated waters. • f $ Meanwhile, Soviet efforts to develop a counte* the maritime capability of the West were confine*1 thwarted by technological advances, which rende^ program after program obsolescent before the Ul1 . had even entered service. Of the 23 important clus of submarines and major surface ships whose c°^ struction was decided on in the late ’40s, only f*ve.j_ the earlier surface types ran to schedule. By the die ’50s, all programs had been radically altered, b1 did the decisions taken in 1954 and in 1957-5$ 1 any better, and we have a continuing picture of t‘|1. cellations, adaptations, and expedients. These are important to current Western assessments si*1^ in crude terms, about 75 percent of the Soviet distant-water surface ships and over 60 percent their submarines stem from design decisions ta^( during these years. The remainder are of more re°e origin. |
November and Hotel, one of each armed only with torpedoes, and the other carrying missiles. However, problems (the nuclear classes were noisy and unreliable and the missile-armed classes had an unreliable weapon system), coupled with advances in American antisubmarine capabilities meant that at least three of these four classes were unable to meet planned operational requirements. The torpedo-armed Novembers were therefore re-tasked upon completion to the anti-carrier role (the Foxtrots were retasked after Cuba), the role of the missile-armed submarines was | ijt As we move in to the current period, we F1 broaden our perspective and I want to focus br,e ■ on a significant double shift (or wiggle) in Soviet ■ fense policy during a twenty-month period in 1/’ 1 61. In January I960, Khrushchev announced the J suit of what appears to have been a thorough#01 jj defense review, which included the formation of 1.1 Strategic Rocket Force, its designation as the Prj mary arm of the nation’s defense, a substantial re‘,fj ganization of military research and development, 11(1 |
1 | Pmnoodinrrc / Noval PeuiftW * |
Giv tUtt’n£ back of conventional ground forces. bdGf ^Krushchev's faith in nuclear missiles and his . ,IC biat nuclear war would be suicidal, the new die \^C0U,d on,y indicate a shift in emphasis towards frLstern concept of nuclear deterrence, and away traditional reliance on balanced forces and a shif '.®btln8 capability. But by October 1961 the fitess ' ^een reversed and at the 22 nd Party Con- aSS’ Marshall Malinovsky’s speech clearly indicated ",hf|tUrn t0 Cbe traditional military values. Mean- voi ’ a thoroughgoing reappraisal of what was in- Vf.i 1ln lighting with nuclear weapons and the dee °prnent of ;
aPpears ^ha
a whole series of consequential policies to have been put in hand.
Khr T1 Cause<^ rh*s reversal? It was clearly a blow to guej ™ev s policies and vindicated those who ar- vaiJ • Cbat professional military opinion should pre- tjCsn rnatters of national defense. Bureaucratic poli- s0rtlet<)0 facile an explanation; there must have been ^.J'^ficant change in what Soviets call the “ob- anCeVe/aCt°rS” to have tilted a recently achieved bal- Poli ° 0P*n‘on within the leadership back to earlier ICs; and by far the most plausible would be a tjaj | ln threat perceptions. There is now a substan- (jec- .0to °f evidence that the range of defense policy afterl0ns announced by President Kennedy shortly SUchr t,lhing office in January 1961, engendered just varj a reeva*uation of the threat, and prompted the These$ measures which can be dated to this period. P0la . ’ncluded a very sharp acceleration of the dllcflS Ptogram and a doubling of the planned pro- pl°y^n rate of solid-fuel ICBMs, which would be de- p°pui m underground silos remote from centers of S0Vletat,on- Perhaps equally important in terms of r threat perceptions was the crusading rhetoric
of the new administration, with its willingness to go any place, pay any price, anil the detached logic of the tough-minded academic strategists who were thinking the unthinkable, and developing theories of limited nuclear war. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the Soviet leadership decided that they could not rely on nuclear deterrence, despite its obvious economic attractions, and applied themselves instead to the problems of fighting and winning a nuclear war, the likelihood of which appeared to have increased.
To understand the cluster of decisions that were taken in 1961, four related points concerning Soviet military doctrine must be borne in mind. First, Marxism sees international relations as conflictual, and the Soviet Union has always taken the possibility of major war very seriously. While its assessments as to the likelihood of war with the West have varied over the years, the Soviet leadership has never wavered in its belief that a strong military capability is the best way of making it less likely.
Second. Soviet military doctrine does not separate out the idea of “nuclear deterrence" from the general concept of defense. Defense of the Soviet Union depends on the capability to repel, or at least absorb any attack, and then go on to win the subsequent war. The Soviets obviously hope that their defense capability will be sufficient to dissuade an aggressor, which is of course deterrence in its traditional sense. But the crucial distinction between this and the Western concept of “nuclear deterrence” is implicit in the comment that “if the deterrent has to be used,
led
lif
it will have failed.” The Soviets do not entertain such ideas. Should war come, their defense will only have failed if their armed forces are unable to recover and go on to final victory. This emphasis on defense through war-fighting is central to Soviet military doctrine. While Western theorists saw nuclear weapons as a means of threatening “unacceptable damage” to Russia, the Soviet Union saw them as integral to her fighting capability. Where the West thought in terms of credibility, argued about the arcane merits of counterforce and counter-value, or worried about stabilizing and destabilizing developments, the Soviets focused on achieving victory in war. It is true that Khrushchev, and Malenkov before him, expressed the opinion that there could be no winners in nuclear war, and as we have seen, advocated some' form of deterrence policy, partly as a means of reducing military expenditures. But in the final analysis, neither was successful, because the security-conscious collective leadership was unwilling to base the defense of the homeland on an untested theory.
Which leads to the third point. This readiness to think through the implications of the nuclear arms race does not imply that the Soviet Union would willingly embark on nuclear war with the West. Marxist-Leninist theory lays down that the initiation of war as a deliberate act of policy can only be justified if (a) victory is virtually certain, and (b) the gains clearly outweigh the costs. War with the West meets neither of these criteria since by definition, such a war would be a world war and, again by definition, world war involves a fight to the finish between the two social systems. Defeat would be synonymous with extinction. Victory comes from survival. It is this catastrophic consequence of defeat which explains why, despite the admittedly low probability of such a war occurring, that preparations to fight and win one continue to be given such high priority within the Soviet Union.
Which brings us to the fourth point. Plans to cover the contingency of world war must provide for two equally important sets of objectives. The first focuses on extirpating the capitalist system, by such means as destroying its forces, its war-making potential, and its structure of government. The second set focuses on preserving the socialist system which, besides protecting the structure of government and ensuring the survival of some proportion of the working population and industrial base, must also aim to secure an alternative economic base which can contribute to the rebuilding of a socialist society. The implications of these dual sets of objectives are fairly self-evident, particularly in regard to the requirements for effective civil defense, the priority in loca1 ing ABM sites, the preferred size of missile inven tories, and the importance of NATO Europe as an d ternative economic base.
In the light of these four points, let us now con' sider the impact of the Kennedy decisions on Sovi£[ naval developments. Acceleration of the Polaris pr° gram highlighted a trend which has been alluded t0 repeatedly in Soviet pronouncements, namely shift in emphasis from land- to sea-based nuclear de livery systems, which the Soviets claimed constitute one-third of the U. S. inventory in 1966, rising fl one-half in 1970. What underlay this shift in efl1 phasis? When Polaris became operational, its vaunted characteristic was its invulnerability whiyj in Western deterrence theory, provided an “assufe response.” But from the Soviet point of view, more important implication of this invulnerabil*1' was that these missiles could be held back from ^ initial nuclear exchange, with the fair certainty they would remain available for use at a subseque(lt stage of the war. So, too, could carrier-based nude>( strike aircraft.
The capacity of sea-based systems to survive d’1 initial exchange affected two aspects of Soviet m1 tary doctrine. First, strategic reserves. Largely nored by nuclear deterrence theory, the requirem1 for strategic reserves is integral to the concept 1 war-fighting with nuclear weapons. Soviet strata? must assume that the availability of nuclear weap1 may be critical at certain stages of a war, and that who is in sole possession of a substantial capability likely to determine both the final outcome of the " and the political structure of the postwar wot* Since the West was acquiring sea-based syste^ which could be withheld from the initial exchang the Soviet Union had at least to match this capabih1 for deferred strikes. But the military planners ^ also to provide against the emergence of capita*1 power bases outside the NATO area, such as Al‘ tralia, South Africa, and Brazil.
The second aspect was the potential availability NATO Europe as an alternative base from which help rebuild the socialist system. This meant tb Western Europe must be occupied rather than fJ aged, and required a concept of political and mil*1 j operations that limited battle damage to 1 minimum. The importance of Europe in this role increased by the fact that America had no compara option, since potential areas like Canada ^ targeted by Russia. However, this advantage vvo11 be lost if, after the Soviet occupation of Eurof Western sea-based strategic systems could deny R sia its use.
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simplest was to provide the sea-based weapons would serve as the national strategic reserve.
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s °ugh the navy had previously been relieved of its ategic strike role, the Soviets were already com- ed to increasing the rate of nuclear submarine struction from five submarines a year to ten, with t ' IVefies starting in 1968. It was therefore possible at provide six ballistic missile submarines and four tj ac^ submarines annually for the ten-year produc- ^ run 1968-77, although this change to the s^. 18Uration-mix did cause major disruption to t;pyar<l assembly facilities, the SSBNs being almost ai 'Ce as large as the attack submarines which had !?dy been intended.
lven their problems with the West’s antisub- caPabdity, it seems likely that the 1,600- e SS-N-6 carried by the Yankee was an interim Ut'on, with the 4,200-mile SS-N-8, which could be from home waters, as their final objective.
^ n contrast, the problem of providing a counter to H(CStern sea-based systems was immensely complex. Wever, the triple potential of these systems, as r of the initial exchange, as the core of the West’s sate8ic reserve, and as the means of preventing ain'et USe NATO Eur0Pe> rneant they ranked high cali°ng C^e var‘ous threats to Russia. And paradoxi- V, the most important objective, that of denying ^est the option of withholding nuclear weapons Use at a later stage of the war, would be somewhat simpler to achieve than the less critical aim of limiting damage during the initial exchange. To achieve the first objective, it should only be necessary to pose a threat to sea-based systems that was sufficient to persuade the West to use those weapons while it could. This required that the U. S. submarines (and, for that matter, the carriers) be attacked at the very onset of war and meant that Soviet forces would have to be within weapon-range contact at the vital moment. Soviet surface ships and submarines must be predeployed in the seas where the threat lay.
Herein lies the genesis of the Soviet Navy’s shift to forward deployment and, as 1 bring the story through to the present, let me emphasize that for the time being I will continue to focus exclusively on the navy’s war-related mission. I will come back to the emergence of the peacetime role later on, but on the basis of a fair amount of evidence I remain convinced
ORKNEY
ISLANDS
fAEF)0E
ISLANDS
SHETLAND
ISLANDS
Murmansk
Leningrad'
Moscow
\ b,
1964
J*ents demanded “the organic restructuring of the et and the reorientation of traditional naval policy antl operational habits.” The policy that finally purged was shaped by several persistent tendencies. Irst, we have the traditional Russian spirit of tech- n'Cal and conceptual innovation and a readiness to °pt new but unproven technological advances. Sec- H a keen awareness that the best is the enemy of
\
good and, particularly where defensive responses involved, a willingness to invest in ten percent 10ns, rather than wait until the complete answer
s°tTie
type of solution is achieved
'
taty
strategy and military policy which has, at times,
t^lat strategic imperatives of the kind I have outlined Provided both necessary and sufficient cause for the ^CC|sion that, despite its manifest inadequacies, the 0yiet Navy should be required to move forward in strategic defense.
"^e shift to forward deployment appears to have ^een decided upon in principle by the end of 1961, ut the debate about means continued until 1963 or and, as Gorshkov has said, the new require- the ate
sOlu(-
s found. Third, a belief in the progressive applica- n of new concepts and capabilities, as they become vailable; there are often discrete phases of initial, and final application. In part, this is the I °n t just sit there, DO something” attitude, but ls also a conscious form of operational evaluation ‘fovelopment. Fourth, a readiness to take a very ng'term view, and to persist with a problem until
*fth, we have ground-force domination of mili- ^Suited the navy to undertake tasks that violate fractional naval assumptions and has forced the navy to tpVef°P radical concepts. An interesting example of ls *s the application of long-range surface-to-surface ^ 'ssiles to warships in the mid-1950s, overriding Val objections. Another is the deployment, ten actars *ater, of ill-armed ships to the Mediterranean to k as forward observation posts to call down shore- $aSecf fire on U. S. carriers, although they them- aes Were easily sunk. Sixth, the heavy emphasis on c°rnbined arms approach to military problems. [1][2]
This has had an invigorating effect on the development of Soviet naval doctrine, which has come to incorporate what are essentially ground-force concepts, such as theaters of military operations. It has also ensured that the resources of all relevant branches are deployed to meet any serious threat to the homeland, including those which come from the sea. And seventh, there is the concept of area defense which, though originating in the army, is fundamental to Soviet naval strategy, and is worth elaborating.
The concept of area defense is based on two main zones: an inner one, where local superiority of force allows command of the sea to be secured; and an outer zone, where command of the sea is actively contested. The greater part of Soviet naval policy and procurement since the 1920s can be explained in terms of the Soviets’ attempts to extend their maritime defense perimeter and, within it, the zone of effective command.
As you know, the Soviet Navy is split among four widely separated fleets. If these individual fleets are to be ensured the superiority of force necessary to establish command in their respective areas, they must be able to deny the enemy the opportunity to concentrate his forces against any one fleet. This is most economically achieved by seizing the exits from the fleet areas, thus denying the enemy entry into those areas. In this particular respect, Russia is favored by her geography. Three of her main fleet areas comprise semi-enclosed seas, and access to the Northern Fleet is canalized by ice during much of the year. Only Petropavlovsk lacks any geographical advantage of this kind.
Until 1961 the navy’s primary concern was therefore to extend the inner zone of effective command to these natural defensive barriers, all of which now are held by NATO allies (Norway, Denmark, and Turkey) and would have to be seized by Soviet forces in the event of war. The outer zones did not reach far beyond these geographic constrictions and were primarily seen as areas where the reinforcement of the enemy forces defending these barriers could be interdicted. It was therefore natural that part of the Soviet response to the threat from Western sea-based nuclear weapons was to extend these outer defense zones, but this could only provide a partial solution. A comprehensive answer to the problem required some means of knowing continuously the location of the enemy’s long-range nuclear delivery units wherever they might be, and the capability to strike them on command. This would be hard enough to achieve against carrier task forces; against ballistic missile submarines the problem was truly daunting. The Soviets nevertheless embarked on this difficult and
expensive road and their incremental approach to the problem was typical. First, do what you can, with what is available. Meanwhile, put in hand a series of projects, ranging from the short to the very long term, each aimed at progressively improving that capability and ultimately achieving an acceptable solution. The Soviet response involved two overlapping concepts, area defense and long-range interdiction and, in terms of operational deployment, the ordering of priorities was fairly clear. Set at 1,500 miles (the range of the Polaris A-2 missile) and centered on Moscow, the arc of threat took in the Norwegian Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, areas where Western strike forces were already operating. Extended to 2,500 miles (the range of the A-3 missile) the arc cut across the Atlantic from beyond Greenland to the African coast abreast the Canaries and then crossed the Arabian Sea between the Horn of Africa and Bombay. The first requirement was to extend the limits of the outer defense zone to the 1,500-mile arc-of- threat and then progressively develop the capability to contest, and perhaps ultimately to deny, the use of these waters by Western long-range nuclear forces. Initially, this would involve an increasingly active naval presence, backed by shore-based missiles and aircraft. But new systems would be required to counter the submarines in these areas. The second requirement was to acquire the capability for naval and air operations beyond this outer defense zone, in order to develop a counter to the longer-range Polaris A-3 system and its successors, and also to cover carrier deployments from American bases. In the short term these distant operations might have to depend on naval shore facilities in foreign lands. But in the longer term it was hoped to develop autonomous systems, such as reconnaissance satellites, anti-naval missiles emplaced ashore, and new classes of submarines, which would not have to rely on the good will of foreign rulers and would provide a truly worldwide response to the threat of strikes from the sea. Such a policy is easy enough to describe but, besides the intrinsic difficulties of locating and destroying the targets, we must recall some of the circumstances. First, in 1961 the Soviet Navy was at an ebb as a result of the cutbacks in naval construction which stemmed from the 1954 decisions, and the further disruptions arising from the reversal of plans in 1957-58. All the existing surface ships and many of the submarines had been designed to operate within shore-based air cover, most of the ships, surface and submarine, in the current building pro- | grams were designed to fight carriers, and 60 percen' of future nuclear submarine construction was resell for long-range nuclear strike. Second, the Soviet Navy was being required move forward into seas where the West enjoy^ overwhelming maritime preponderance. The concd,t| of relying on the freedom of the seas and the “prote*-" 1 tion of peace” to safeguard the deployment of armed ships (particularly in the Mediterranean) 'vai daring, given the tenor of debate in the West at d'3l| time, which included proposals for maritime coUn' termeasures, such as seizing Soviet ships at sei' I against Soviet pressure on Berlin. And third, the army-dominated Soviet leaders!11!1 i was skeptical of surface ships, and even when tM j conceded a need for such ships it had to be met fr0*111 within the navy’s agreed-upon shipbuilding all0<;ilJ tion. The surface ship programs give a good indicat*0'11 of the new priorities. During the 1960s we see a sh1' from anti-surface to antisubmarine systems of ari^' ment and an increased emphasis on the ships’ sllf vivability. As an interim measure, the ASW and SA- systems intended for the now-cancelled ships of ^ Kynda and Kresta programs were used to conv£fI Kotlin and Krupny class destroyers into effect''1 antisubmarine ships. The Kynda class, the first 0 [ which Khrushchev described as a ‘‘floating coffin’ }[ her commissioning ceremony, was ended at f°ll( ships, the yard facilities thereafter being used fl’ build five extra Kashins. The Moskva program ";l* cancelled at two ships. The ASW and SAM systd11* intended for the later ships of the class were tra"5 ferred to the Kresta program, resulting in the KreSt II. The Kresta II’s primary role became, not an1’ surface warfare, but antisubmarine warfare. ^ Moskva class, designed to operate within a ‘e" hundred miles of friendly airfields able both to S^P ply spare helicopters and provide air cover and sfF port, would be inefficient for distant-water opc!‘\ tions, and those ships therefore were succeeded ^ the Kievs, with over twice the aircraft capacity and' better defense capability. Looking ahead to the end of the Kashin progf11111 its successor, the Krivak, would be specialized ^ ASW, as would a new cruiser-size ship, the However, to start both Kara and Krivak and co^ plete the Kresta II program, it would be necessary drop the escort-sized ship from the inventory. ^ meant not providing a replacement for the Pe9‘’ The effect of these decisions was to introduce into fleet a substantial number of ships intended prifl1^ ily for distant deployments, ships which were q1'1 , different from those designed to operate within raaf |
164 | .q6° Proceedings / Naval Review |
° shore-based air cover and other forms of support.
eanwhile, no provision was made for any substan- tlal increase in afloat support.
relation to the new requirements being levied °n the navy, the allocation of resources to shipbuild- Was niggardly, the more so when we consider the Scale of naval construction which had been authorized ‘n the West at this time. We therefore can say with s°rne certainty that in the first half of the sixties, the n.avy was still seen in Moscow as an expensive neces-
Slty> rather than as a preferred instrument of overseas Policy.
The first phase of the shift to forward deployment, ^volving the progressive extension of the outer de- j,nse zone, lasted through 1967. In the Norwegian it was not all that difficult to increase the range k Northern (and later Baltic) Fleet operations and it ecame standard practice for Northern Fleet ships ari|J aircraft to deploy whenever significant Western ^ r.Ces operated in the area, with the NATO carriers e,ng targeted by Soviet surface, air, and submarine ^sile systems.
j the Mediterranean, where the Sixth Fleet was .^Ployed, and Russia had just been evicted from its banian base, the problem was immeasurably &reater. The Soviet Navy did not attempt a sustained ?resence until 1964 and even then operational activ- ^ remained low and intermittent. The main empha- "'as on trailing the U. S. strike carriers when they Pctated in the Eastern Mediterranean and, since T'ssile-armed units were not always present, it can e assumed that the resulting target location data
was for use by systems ashore such as ballistic missiles and strike aircraft based in southwestern Russia. The Soviets did not begin to be effective in the Mediterranean until they gained access to Egyptian ports and airfields following the 1967 war. Thereafter we see a progressive improvement in terms of numbers of ships and combat effectiveness until about 1972, when the trend levels off. By then, both in the Norwegian Sea and in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Soviet Navy could deploy an effective challenge to the strike carrier. The Soviets, however, had no comparable capability against the Polaris submarine in these areas, despite the steadily increasing emphasis on ASW.
The second phase of the shift to forward deployment began in 1967. This took in the 2,500-mile circle of threat and also addressed the problem of the U. S. Fleet’s bases in North America and the U. S. Navy’s transit routes across the Atlantic. After testing and rejecting the feasibility of providing midocean support to anti-carrier submarines, we see the search for shore facilities with Cienfuegos in Cuba, Conakry in Guinea, and Berbera in Somalia, as the
chosen hosts. A Cuban base would reduce submarine time-in-transit to America’s eastern seaboard from twenty days to about four. West Africa, or better still the Cape Verde Islands, gave access to the Canary Basin, straddling the Mediterranean approaches. Somalia provided a point d'appui in the northwest quadrant of the Indian Ocean. This latter is often misread as the Soviets rushing in to fill a vacuum left by the British, but the hydrographic precursors to the Soviet deployment were active in the area during 1967, at a time when British defense policy was still firmly committed to its role east of Suez. Meanwhile, the Arabian Sea provides better target coverage of Russia and China by a 2,500-mile missile, than does any other sea area. Long-standing Soviet suspicions about its use as a launch area for Polaris and Poseidon had been fueled by the 1963 agreement to build a U. S. Navy VLF communications station at North West Cape in Australia. Those suspicions were reinforced in 1966 by the agreement on the combined British and U. S. use of Diego Garcia near the center of the Indian Ocean, with America paying the costs of developing the base.
“The chastening discovery of just how long it took to develop any effective operational capability in distant seas” meant that the Soviets had “better start practicing right away at what they could do . . One result of such efforts is seen here with a modern Boris Chilikin class underway replenishment ship refueling a Kynda. The Boris Chilikinr, six in number, are credited with a speed of 19 knots. They are armed with SImm guns in two twin mounts, both visible on the forecastle.
By 1971, the worldwide Soviet pattern of deploy' ment was clearly established, and within a year or two the buildup had leveled off. There is little doubr that during the later stages of this extended process some of the original reasons for the shift to forward deployment would have been eroded and overlaid with new ones, including the navy’s emerging peacetime role. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the persistence of the original rationale, which stemmed from the Soviet emphasis on contingency planning for world war. And while a fullef realization by the Soviets of the problems inherent in countering Polaris may have cast doubt on the value of these interim measures, the chastening discovery of just how long it took to develop any effective operational capability in distant seas meant that they had better start practicing right away at what they could do, with the thought that thereby eventually they would develop suitable ships, equipment, and methods.
The decisions taken between 1961 and 1964 go J long way towards explaining both the present stricture of the Soviet navy and a substantial part of itS operational practices and patterns of deployment- But of course policies evolve and new requirement emerge, and towards the end of the sixties a clustef of developments combined to have a major effect on the navy’s war-related priorities.
Probably the most significant were reports lfl 1967-68 that the U. S. Navy was intending to de' velop two new classes of submarine for service i(l 1973-74, one very fast and the other very silent, dlC latter being specifically designed to operate against
shift
biljf
away from developing a conventional ASW capa- y in distant waters (as part of the counter to
the
ship to the surface program, a heavily armed ear-powered battle cruiser, which would be able Provide the command facilities which had been °und so essential to forward deployment. This addi- tlon to the program required the return to naval use
Soviet SSBNs. This, of course, had major implications °r the Soviet decision to embody a substantial part the nation’s long-range nuclear reserve in ballistic titssile submarines. It highlighted the requirement t0 defend these new ships, just then beginning to enter service, against U. S. incursions. The important fact was that the Americans were actually talk- lng about going after those submarines. That was "hat worried the Soviets. The fact that in due course . e U. S. Navy built only one very silent submarine ls not relevant to Soviet perceptions at the time.
Meanwhile, as more antisubmarine systems be- tartle available, mounted in surface ships, sub- arines, and aircraft, it must have become increas- 'ngly clear that however innovative their methods, r e traditional ASW instruments embodied in these Units had inherent limitations, and an effective solu- tlQn to the Polaris and Poseidon problem would have to Wait on the results of research and development stld in progress.
Taken together, these two events engendered a
». j unuuu vvaiuj pai c i mv —
0 aris) towards extending the inner defense zones in e Northern Fleet area and in the Pacific off Kam- latka, and providing them with watertight antiamarine defenses which would turn them into gCean "bastions” where SSBN could deploy in safety. P ecause ASW units can be brushed aside by superior ,°rces, it would be necessary to establish command of °th these sea areas.
T° meet these changed requirements, the navy W°uld need improved capabilities and, for a start, it *as agreed that the follow-on classes to the Kara and ,.resta programs (which would be due to begin de- 'Very in 1980), would be some 25-30 percent big- hL'r> allowing larger weapon loads and greatly incased combat endurance. A scaling-up process was s° applied to the amphibious program, the Pol- J!°Cny size being dropped from the schedule, the Al- gator size carrying on (Ropucha), and a much larger ’1J> the Iran Rogov class, being added. The latter the new Berezina class of underway replenish- tT'ent ship are notable for being relatively heavily rrned with self-defense systems, reflecting a new has is on being able to survive in hostile waters. These tollow-on classes would all be built within navy’s existing allocation of shipyard facilities. It ^as, however, decided to add a completely new type
lUcl,
to
of construction facilities which had been turned over to civilian shipbuilding in the mid-fifties.
On the submarine side, it was probably already planned that at the end of the ten-year buildup of SSBN in 1977, resources would be moved across to correct the dearth of SSN for use in the ASW role. However, the final details of the follow-on programs were probably held over until the performance of the Alpha prototypes could be evaluated, and the full impact of the SALT negotiations was known.
This is what appears to have been agreed at the 24th Party Congress which approved the 9th Five Year Plan in the spring of 1971. However, the navy did not consider that these additions would be sufficient to meet the new demands being placed on it. Having lost the argument within the planning process, it decided to take its case against the army- dominated military leadership to a wider audience by means of the articles in Morskoy sbornik which we refer to as “the Gorshkov series.” This debate had wide ramifications which I will come to later, but a major strand of the argument concerned the importance of general purpose forces and the need for a greater range of surface ship types, not excluding aircraft carriers.* It appears that by mid-1974 the navy had won at least part of its case, and an additional class of surface ship, comparable in size to the Kresta replacement, was added to the plan to allow for task specialization between classes. More important, the leadership seems to have accepted that the new concept of operations would require effective seabased air support, and it appears that an aircraft carrier program was authorized, with the first ship due to enter service in the mid-eighties.
This brings my explanation of the Soviet navy’s Western-oriented war-related role through to the present. Before turning to consider the implications of the added threat from China, let me touch briefly on specific missions in the event of war with the West. Bear in mind what was said about the reality of world war in Soviet contingency planning and accept that, irrespective of argument about the nature of nuclear war and its possible length, the Soviet planner must think not only of a post-exchange phase, but of subsequent phases through to its resolution. This emphasis on war-fighting, which must allow for the disruption of supply systems and base facilities, has major implications for the employment or withholding of forces in the initial stage of a war.
*For a summary of the evidence that Gorshkov was arguing for carriers, sec my “Naval Power and Soviet Oceans Policy” in Soviet Oceans Development, John Hardt (Ed.), U. S. GPO, October 1976, pp. 118-119- Prepared by CRS for the Senate Committee on Commerce and the National Ocean Policy Study.
allow the Soviets to use air ASW in their operation* against U. S. hunter/killer submarines. Command ^ the sea subsumes command of the air above it and- army doubts notwithstanding, there was a clear rf quirement for an air superiority carrier in the post' exchange phase.
So much for nuclear strike. The Soviets attad1 equal importance to the mission of countering W#1' ern sea-based nuclear strike systems. This is only common sense, given the concepts of war-fightiaf and of strategic reserves; moreover, the mission pr°' vides the bonus of damage limitation. However, ",e must distinguish between the priority the Soviets at' cord the mission, and their ability to discharge >'■ particularly as concerns the problem of counterin? Polaris, Poseidon and, most recently, Trident. Eve11 today, we have difficulty in distinguishing betweel1 the evidence which reflects what the Soviets are asp'r' ing to do, and that which reflects what their std* limited capability allows them to do. We know
Y ° — — — 1------------------- ,|.i (
outline of their final response, as original1'
1972-73, th!
buildup of specialized ASW forces (surface, air, a11'
It also heightens the awareness that war is in large part a matter of attrition and that victory goes to the side that gives up last. This awareness leads to the principle of never allowing an enemy weapon or force a free ride and to the continuing use of not-very-good and obsolescent weapons in order to complicate the enemy’s problems.
The navy’s most important mission is the contribution it makes to the Soviet long-range nuclear strike capability, and the SSBN force now has three overlapping roles: intercontinental strike, continental strike, and national strategic reserve. Endless permutations of targeting, deployment, and timing in these overlapping roles are possible, but they all raise the requirement that the submarines be kept secure against attack until such time as they have launched their missiles. As we have seen, the Soviets adopted the concept of ocean “bastions,” which gave a new urgency to the requirement to establish command of the inner defense zones in the North and the Pacific. But it also gave a new importance to the outer defense zone and (to focus on the Northern Fleet area), whereas in the past, the Soviets have been primarily concerned to deny command of the Norwegian Sea to the West, they are now concerned to secure command for themselves, as a means of strengthening the outer defenses of the SSBN bastions.
Soviet submarines would play a key role in these operations, but to be effective they needed surface ship support—a point emphasized by Gorshkov. This new concept therefore had its major impact on surface ship requirements, since Soviet naval constructors could no longer think in terms of some “D-Day Shootout,” where ships only had to survive long enough to discharge their primary mission. Instead, the Soviets now had to prepare for the kind of sustained operations necessary to gain and maintain command of a large sea area, requiring long endurance, large weapon loads, and an underway replenishment capability. Further (as Gorshkov remarked in his book), command of a sea area is greatly facilitated by control of the adjoining coast, and this raised the new requirement for a long-range heavy assault lift, suitable for seizing key islands and stretches of the Norwegian coast. The Soviet navy also had to assume that in the post-exchange phase, it would be operating without shore-based air support, in the face of a U. S. carrier capability. This raised the requirement for a more ambitious type of sea-based air than that provided by the K/er class, not so much to protect the major surface units (which could continue to rely mainly on SAM and other weapon systems), as to deny the U. S. navy the use of the air in support of its ASW operations, and to from the start they recognized that the complexity the Polaris problem would require the application all available resources, including involvement W other branches of service besides the navy. On the basis of past practice, we can assume that they have pursued all three of the available lines of attack (&' elusion, trailing, and area search/surveillance), and* have already described their initial and interim te' sponses aimed at achieving a modicum of exclusi011 by extending their defense zones. It was probate hoped that ten years would be sufficient to develop} range of measures which, beginning in 197 2-73' would allow some kind of final response along ea<3j of the three lines of attack, even if they needeJ further improvement. As usually happens when c*lC Soviets try to move from an imaginative concept 10 its practical application, they were unable to me£l ^ their timetable and meanwhile circumstance* changed, but hindsight allows us to postulate d1
envisaged.
To exclude Polaris/Poseidon from the more fav°f’ able launch areas, it was probably intended to staft consolidating the ASW capability in the newb" extended outer defense zones. By submarine) would be significant, and it may ah1 have been planned that a WIG-type vehicle, with capacity for high-speed low-level search, would add i new dimension to this essentially conventional cap3' bility. It was probably assumed that these measure5’ supplemented by those developed for the other r"° lines of attack, would prove a sufficient threat fl encourage the United States to withdraw their SSB^
r°m these forward areas. The second line of attack
VVas trailing. Given their state of the art in the early
Slxties, the most readily available means of providing
c°ntinuous target-location data was to use active
^>nar to trail a Polaris SSBN with another submarine. Th
nc essential requirement was a speed and depth ad- Var*tage over the quarry, and it seems probable that le Alpha was designed with this task in mind, re- ecting the natural (if incorrect) assumption that any SUccessor to the Polaris submarine would have a sig- ni 'cantly improved performance. The third line of attack was area search/surveillance. Russia’s geo- btaphic situation, coupled with their technological 'Advantage in acoustic detection, virtually forced e Soviets to place their major emphasis on discover- ln8 other ways of detecting a submerged submarine ar)d developing original means of doing so. Western Staternents make it clear that the Soviets did indeed k e this route, including the development of space- asc‘d systems. And finally, assuming that they could S|^Ve the problem of location, it seems likely that ley intended to use ballistic missiles to sink the Subrnarine, as I explain below.
is difficult to assess the present state of Soviet ingress in developing a counter to the Polaris/ ,r'dent systems. The adoption of the defended bas- tl0n concept for their own SSBN has placed an insurveillance systems. However, although it is difficult to know the present level of achievement, there is every reason to assume that the Soviets are persisting in their efforts to develop an effective counter to the SSBN, and are probably still pursuing all three of these mutually-supportive lines of attack.
Turning from Polaris to the strike carrier, the Soviets appear to have developed a reasonably effective range of responses to this threat, even though it took them the best part of twenty years to do so. The requirements for locating and attacking the carriers are handled somewhat differently in each of the three main types of scenario. We are all familiar with the meeting engagement or encounter, which would take place in the approaches to the Norwegian Sea or in the northwestern Pacific and involves in-depth defense with coordinated attacks. In the Mediterranean the continuous-company scenario presents the Sixth Fleet with a difficult problem, but I suspect the evolution of this successful concept was no more foreseen by the Soviets than by us. It raises a couple of points: first, the need to be able to strike instantaneously places a premium on deployed forces, particularly the missile submarines, and it seems likely that shore- based aircraft such as the Backfire will only have a follow-up role. I would, however, expect the ships of the Sixth Fleet to be targeted by 1RBM and MRBM
j^eased emphasis on the outer defense zones in the °rWegian Sea and Northwest Pacific, to the detri- etlt of plans for the Eastern Mediterranean and the
Arabi
th
3ian Sea. It would seem that the development of
le Alpha proved more difficult than had been foremen,
lass.
- seriously delaying the series production of this
and meanwhile the problem of initial attach-
J^tnt has still to be solved. And while it is hard to
of Certa'n °h their progress in non-acoustic methods
detection, there are as vet no clear indications of a Hair * 3
ajor
breakthrough in this field or in space-based
emplaced in southwest Russia. Second, the shift in priority from conventional ASW to securing the SSBN bastions in the Norwegian Sea and the Pacific, suggests that nowadays the primary role of Soviet ASW forces in the Mediterranean is to protect anti-surface missile units from preemptive U. S. attack.
The distant targeting scenario covers those carriers which do not immediately threaten Russia, but if not disposed of would contribute to the West’s strategic reserve. Target location of these ships is provided by air and satellite reconnaissance, by surface and submarine pickets, and sometimes by trailing. Probably the Soviets hoped originally to meet the sink-on- command component of the anti-carrier and anti- Polaris missions with a common strike system. Two methods were probably envisaged, both relying on terminally-guided ballistic missiles: from ashore ICBMs and IRBMs; and from afloat shorter range weapons carried by submarines, strategically deployed. The present status of the concept is not clear. In 1972 the Soviets explicitly claimed they could attack surface forces from ashore. At this same period they were actively developing a submarine-launched tactical ballistic missile for use against ships, but the system appears to have been shelved in 1973- Quite apart from any technical difficulties with the latter, the Soviets may well have run into problems with SALT. If, as seems quite likely, it had been decided in the sixties to push ahead with the application of sea-based ballistic missiles against ships, the SALT limits may well have stifled the development just as it was reaching fruition and this would have created serious problems for the navy.
These, then, are the two main maritime missions: contributing to Soviet long-range nuclear strike and countering the West’s sea-based strike capability. Of the other missions, I will only mention the interdiction of Western sea communications. There is some argument in the West as to the priority the Soviets accord this mission, and whether priority will be given to terminals or to ships in transit. There is also argument within the Soviet military about the importance of this mission. But this obscures the point that, irrespective of the significance the Soviets attach to Western sea communications, merchant ships are virtually certain to be attacked at the outbreak of war as a means of pinning down Western forces and, more important, of diverting them from assaulting the Northern Fleet’s inner defense zone and attacking the ballistic missile submarines therein.
Let me also reemphasize how important the underlying concept of area defense is to so many of the navy’s tasks, whether it be supporting military operations ashore, countering the projection of hostile
military forces, or protecting coastal communica' tions. Particularly in the inner defense zone, we art talking of establishing command of the sea, and it|S relevant that in recent writings there is a new eft1' phasis on the importance of this traditional concept’
Finally, a word about the naval implications of3 war with China. Developments during 1969 in' creased the possibility of such a war. Taken together with the other political developments discussed be' low, this meant that it became a more likely contif' gency than war with the West, and this was reflected in the adjustment of Soviet naval priorities which took place at the start of the seventies. It had to b£ assumed that in the event of a war with China, the Trans-Siberian railway would be cut and that the Faf Eastern Front would be supplied by sea. This intro* duced the requirement to protect such shipment5 from the Chinese navy, which includes the third largest submarine force in the world.
But this threat to shipping reached back to the northwestern parts of the Indian Ocean, where lC could be posed by Chinese forces using friendly base5 (eg. Pakistan or, in those days, South Yemen), by U. S. forces, or even by regional navies. The timely arrival of military supplies would be critical to the land battle in the Far East and, if circumstances pfe' vented their shipment via the Red Sea, the Soviet5 would have to exploit the route used by the Allies 1(1 the two world wars, shipping down across Iran and out through the Persian Gulf. The Soviets have othd naval requirements in that area since, in the event °1 world war, they most probably plan to move south t0 control the Gulf area and naval forces will be needed in the seaward approaches to fend off assaults by U. S. strike carriers and amphibious groups. But the heightened threat of war with China increased the strategic significance of the Arabian Sea, more tha11 compensating for the shift in emphasis away froO1 developing the means to counter Polaris in the area- The ground forces were now involved and the Sovid military investment in Somalia took off after Maf' shall Grechko’s visit in February 1972, indication that the provision of naval support facilities in tbe area was no longer a narrowly naval concern, but 3 matter of national defense requirements.
We can now go back to pick up the navy5 peacetime role. Just as the wartime role can only be understood within the broader context of Soviet mm1' tary doctrine, so must the peacetime mission be placed within the context of Soviet foreign policy aOt1 the role of military force within that policy. It |5 important to keep in mind the ordering of their pfl' mary foreign policy objectives. First, to avoid world war, but if it is inevitable, to win. Second, to ensilfe
of
sort
of
500
st. ^ears' The Soviets have no such illusions. They cC C^e Status 9U0 as a dynamic historical process of ^ nSe- They have always been quite explicit that PI e ‘Geological struggle (i.e., the fight for world in- Uence) would continue, detente being aimed at ’ding the dangers of world war. n considering the role of the military instrument
1(1 this
e Possession of military power and the use of mili-
thi
tar
th
Plai
tio
Crn in no particular order. First, the United States teed
ns and supportive intervention, which led finally
r^le Communist Party’s retention of power in Russia. ^nci third, to increase the Soviet Union’s share of ^otld influence at the expense of the West and of c°urse China. More than for most states, these objec- tlves involve major contradictions, as for example betWeen the defense burden and the party’s acceptability, between detente and ideological control, etween the dangers of escalation and the need for c°nfrontation, and between the ideological struggle ',Vlth capitalism and the domestic requirement to up- ftade technology and productivity. For over twenty Itars the long-term strategy has been the acceptance Peaceful coexistence, a formula which rules out re-
to interstate war with the West, but accepts otber forms of international competition as legiti- IIlate and indeed inevitable. The term implies a mix- th^ comPet‘t‘on’ restraint, and cooperation with e capitalist bloc in general and the United States in Particular. It is a multilevel relationship, part com- th^ion’ Part cooPerat*on, and the interactions on e various planes often move in different and appar- ^ndy contradictory directions. The West has diffi- cy with this concept, mainly because it believes a')rrnality in international relations to be the absence c°nflict, and this despite its own record of the last struggle, it is useful to distinguish between y force, and between coercive force and military Slstance. While the Soviets consider that military er is something you really can’t have enough of, foey have been very circumspect about the use of Th^ °Llts‘de their contiguous national security zone.
Relieve that history is going their way and, tak'k to S've ’c a nudge> 't does not justify
^’n8 risks. In the past, the most useful approach S t0 frustrate Western attempts to interfere with r ’s Process, by strengthening the forces of world a jtion through the supply of weapons, training, t, e<iuipment. On occasion this would also serve more important objective of enhancing Soviet se- Urity, as when the arming of Indonesia lured the pre British carrier force to east of Suez. cr°m 196 1 onwards, a series of coincidental trends , Pined to favor a more active overseas policy. I list
aced new emphasis on counterinsurgency opera- to half a million men in Vietnam. Second, there was growing Sino-Soviet competition for leadership of the World Communist movement, accompanied by Chinese accusations that Russia was less than wholehearted in countering imperialist aggression. Third, we have the post colonial era, with the diffusion of power and the prolonged sorting-out process which follows a breakdown of structure. Fourth, we have the gradual maturation of Soviet policy towards the Third World, moving from ideological determinants to national interests concerning access to markets and certain raw materials. Fifth, as a byproduct of decisions concerning the security of the Russian homeland, we have the emergence of a capability to project force overseas, the buildup of a long-range lift for the airborne forces, and the navy’s shift to forward deployment. And sixth, there is the renewed emphasis within the Soviet military on contingency planning for world war, highlighting the requirements for a worldwide infrastructure.
These were all enabling factors, but it seems that Soviet ideas about a more assertive use of the military instrument began to be shaped by various developments between 1967 and 1972. Achieving parity in long-range nuclear weapons increased Soviet selfconfidence, while a series of events caused them to downgrade the dangers that confrontation with the West would escalate to nuclear war. Among the latter, I would list the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Czech crisis in 1968, and the Jordanian crisis in 1970; but probably the more important was the SALT negotiation process, which led to a greater certainty of U. S. restraint. Meanwhile, the exaggerated response of the Western press to the Soviet Navy’s impotent involvement in the 1967 crisis highlighted the political potential of this instrument. Then, the Egyptian war of attrition and the Israelis’ deep penetration raids forced the Soviets to a decision of direct involvement in Egypt, with substantial air defense forces. And finally, the evidence of Vietnam, backed by the Nixon doctrine, suggested that the risk of direct confrontation with U. S. forces was on the wane.
Given this situation of increased opportunities and lowered risks, the overseas role of what they call a “Soviet military presence” appears to have been a major element in the sustained debate on defense and foreign policy which rumbled on from 1969 to 1973- The policy which seems to have emerged was that, anyway for the time being, direct Soviet involvement overseas would be limited to advisers, weapons, and logistic support, including the provision of adequate military supplies in the course of the battle. The combat role would be delegated to the Soviet-
equipped forces of revolutionary states such as North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. This allowed the Soviet Union the best of both worlds; to affect the outcome of an overseas conflict with direct battlefield support while ensuring that political commitment and liability remained strictly limited. What we see, then is a progressive shift in overseas policy towards an increasing readiness to use a “Soviet military presence” in support of foreign policy objectives. In assessing this development and the navy’s role in particular, I find it useful to distinguish between four types of objectives which underlie this peacetime employment of military forces, because each type involves a different level of risk and degree of political commitment. At the low end of the scale of political commitment, we have “Protecting Soviet lives and property.” This objective is referred to, but has received little priority to date. Landing ships are positioned to evacuate Soviet nationals in third party conflicts, but the only case of property involved Soviet fishing vessels seized by Ghana in 1969. At the high end we have “Establishing the strategic infrastructure to support war-related missions.” This objective is not referred to directly, but can be inferred from the pattern of overseas military involvement during the last 20 years, and is implied in some of their more recent writings. Such an infrastructure can also serve peacetime policies, and the pattern suggests a readiness to incur high political and economic costs in pursuit of this objective. However, so far the Soviets have not used military force to maintain their position when the host country has withdrawn its agreement to their presence, although on at least two occasions, once in Egypt, once in Albania, they have sought to engineer a coup to bring a more sympathetic regime to power. Neither effort was successful. In between these extremes we have the general objective of “Increasing Soviet prestige and influence.” In naval terms this encompasses a wide span of activities ranging from showing the flag and port clearance to providing support for revolutionary forces or to regimes threatened by secessionist elements. They are prepared to commit substantial resources to this objective, such as their minesweeping activities in Bangladesh and the Gulf of Suez, but while the propensity for risk-taking has risen steadily, the underlying political commitment remains limited. Overlapping this general influence-building objective is the more restricted one of “Countering imperialist aggression.” Despite much bombast in talking of this task, I believe that in terms of risking a major confrontation with the West, Soviet political commitment is low. The first clear cut example was | the establishment of the Guinea Patrol in December 1970, since when we have the deployments of war- j ships to the Bay of Bengal in 1971, to the South China Sea in 1972, and to Angola in 1975, as well as the three Middle East crises in 1967, ’70, and ’73- 1 The latter series did show a shift from a narrow concern with the carriers towards a more general concern for the overall capability of the Sixth Fleet. But none j of these examples provide evidence of Soviet readiness actually to engage Western naval forces in order to j prevent them from intervening against a Soviet client state. However, what we do see is progressively greater involvement by the Soviet Navy in the provision of logistic support both before and during third party conflicts. In 1973, Soviet landing ships, escorted by combatants, carried Moroccan troops to Syria. Land' ing ships were also used during the subsequent w*f to ferry military supplies from Black Sea ports to Syria. More significantly, SAM-armed warships were stationed where they could protect aircraft making their final approaches to the main resupply airfield5 in Syria and Egypt, as if to cover against Israeli a>r attack. And most recently, we have the escorting by Soviet warships of military supplies being ferried from Aden to Ethiopia, and the use of landing ships to deliver such supplies. The evidence suggests a policy of incrementalist*1! which explores and takes advantage of opportunity as they occur or are created, a policy of probing Western responses and establishing precedents. Tbe role of a “Soviet military presence" in support oI overseas objectives will therefore be shaped by tbe scale and style of the Western response to the varion5 Soviet initiatives. In this context the distinction I have just drawn between the employment of Soviet warships to ensure the safe arrival of logistic support and their employment to prevent Western interven' tion against a client state is important. So, too, 15 the distinction between the Soviet Union’s willing' ness to risk hostilities with a third-party state, and their continuing reluctance to engage U. S. nav^ forces. Meanwhile we should bear in mind that the Soviet Navy’s role in this assertive policy is second' ary. The primary instruments are arms supply; md1' tary advice and training; the transport of men, mun1' tions and equipment by merchant ship and long' range air; and direct participation by the comba|. troops of revolutionary states. The primary role 0 the navy is to provide protection and support and t0 serve as an earnest of Soviet commitment. This brings us to the question of whether there l* some grand Soviet design driving a coordinate^ oceans policy in support of overseas objectives- |
172 | Proceedings / Naval Review 19®® |
C 'nk the short answer is no, but we must distin- kUlsh here between the operational aspects and the Getting of objectives. The military style organization merchant, fishing, and research fleets means is relatively simple to make use of their ships Peacetime for naval support tasks such as re- ntshment and forward picketing, and they all rtlake some contribution to the generalized require- ITlent for worldwide intelligence and information fathering. There are also the geostrategic advantages 0 gained in terms of a worldwide infrastructure, (;tual or potential. The latter includes the provision 'mproved harbor facilities in locations which . u*d assume great strategic significance for Russia the event of world war, as for example the fishing 0rt at Gwadar in Pakistan.
that it ;
in
Pie
But when we turn to objectives, we see that the n8-term interests of the three main fleets often di-
Vpt*
&e- The buildup of the fishing fleet stemmed from decision in the late forties that fisheries were a re cost-effective source of protein than collective touting, The buildup of the merchant fleet reflected tC Post-Stalin shift in the middle fifties towards <ae' aid, and arms supply, and the consequential Suirement to earn hard currency and avoid depend- • Ce 0r> foreign bottoms. The navy’s shift to forward
lo
kePloyment reflected the new threat to the Soviet ^eland from distant sea areas. Inevitably there is e conflict among these interests and, at the' Law e Sea negotiations, the narrow domestic concerns e Soviet fishing industry, which likes to work as
sQrn
°fth,
°fth
I °Se as possible to foreign shores, thus irritating
. al fishermen, ran counter to the foreign policy object'
cut
Sttn
ent;
1Ves of increasing Soviet influence. Similarly, se- "•y concerns , and the concept of strategic infra-
cture have led the Soviet Union into political
k anglements which would seem to be against her ^r°ader interests. Only the merchant fleet, which lrigs in military supplies, takes out local com- ^■bes such as bauxite or sugar, and is generally a
pacific and well-disciplined instrument, consistently serves these more general foreign policy goals, and I see it as the principal maritime instrument of Soviet overseas policy.
Of course these judgments are based on past evidence, and we cannot be sure how things will develop in the future. It is clear that a policy towards the employment of forces in peacetime has been evolved progressively and, although the navy’s political role stemmed from the presence in distance seas of warships which had been deployed forward in “strategic” defense, changes in threat perception, risk and opportunities meant that this role has become increasingly important. This brings us back to the question of whether the Soviet navy is still perceived as an expensive necessity, whose forces are procured exclusively for war-related tasks, or whether it is coming to be seen as a preferred instrument of policy for pursuing overseas objectives in peacetime. This is hard to answer, not least because the Soviets do not seem to have made up their minds on the matter. There is, however, some evidence that Soviet attitudes to the navy’s role in war and peace may perhaps be changing, and it is to that I now turn.
Evidence that there was disagreement within the military leadership over the navy’s role and the resources being allocated to naval construction surfaced in an unprecedented series of eleven articles pub-
first chapter was devoted to an extensive discussion
of
the priority of naval operations against targets
missions related to operations against enemy targets, and to the protection of one’s own territob against attacks from his navy.” This extensive definl tion permits full discussion of the traditional played by navies in World War II, including importance of carriers. And under the guise of e*
ceptions to the general rule, this section of the bo°
lished under Gorshkov’s name in the navy’s professional journal, Morskoy sbornik, beginning in 1972. Entitled “Navies in War and Peace,” the dominant tone of the series was defensive advocacy, which went beyond the contention that the Soviet Union needed a powerful navy, to criticizing the formulation of naval policy and the composition of the fleet. Using selective historical analysis, Gorshkov’s central theme was the increasing importance of naval forces as an instrument of state policy in peacetime, and as a means of influencing the course and outcome of wars. A powerful fleet was a necessary adjunct of great power status, but this required a conscious policy regarding the role of seapower in each nation’s plans. Gorshkov asserted that the Soviet Union lacked such a policy. In consequence, it had an unbalanced fleet that was deficient in surface ships, both in numbers and in the variety of different types, and the navy had been shaped too closely to a single, restrictive, and largely defensive mission. At the core of the navy’s argument lay three complaints against the army-dominated military leadership: the latter was unable to grasp the significance of naval operations in a war with maritime powers; it was unable to understand the importance of general purpose surface forces; and its concept of the armed forces’ “internationalist mission” in peacetime was too timid and restrictive.
Halfway through the series’ publication, Morskoy sbornik began to encounter unprecedented delays in being released to the press by the army-controlled military censors (delays which extended into 1974), and during the same period there were major turnovers of the journal’s editorial board, which were again unprecedented. These concrete reactions, reinforced by other circumstantial evidence, confirmed the strong textual indicators that a major debate was underway, with powerful coalitions on either side. However, a compromise biased in the navy’s favor appears to have been reached by mid-1974, when Marshall Grechko acknowledged that the external function of the armed forces had been expanded, and Gorshkov acknowledged that operations against land (rather than enemy fleets), now comprised the main naval mission in war, an explicit statement that the military leadership appears to have been seeking since at least 1967. Meanwhile, a significant increase in the future allocation of resources to surface warships had been approved and (presumably) the preparation of the book The Seapower of the State had been authorized.
Although the book originally was not scheduled for publication until the second quarter of 1976, it appeared without warning in February, just two weeks before the 25th Party Congress. The underlf ing message was much the same as the Gorshkov series, but the book’s scope and structure differed considerably. It was almost three times as long, with significant additions and deletions to the origin^ material, it was much more carefully written, an^ the style was less polemical. The historical analyst which made up 80 percent of the articles and pr0' vided the basis for Gorshkov’s original argument, reappeared as the second chapter (out of four), ^' though with substantial amendments. Of the remain' ing two-thirds of the book, 85 percent was essen' tially new material, and fell into two categories. Tne
the importance of the ocean and of the non-militaO' aspects of seapower, subjects which had been treated very cursorily in the articles and, unlike the lattef. the chapter read as if the different sections had beefl written by specialists. For example, the book almost 11,000 words on maritime transportati°n (compared to only 75 in the articles), and a formef Minister of the Merchant Fleet was a contributing author to the book. The other two chapters focus^ on naval matters and comprised a not very interest" ing review of naval developments since World II (Chapter 3) and a discussion of contemporary prob lems in naval warfare (Chapter 4). The latter |ir eluded three significant items.
A new section entitled “Fleet against Fleet an1 Fleet against Shore” is nominally devoted to stressing
land, but devotes most of its space to illustrating importance of the traditional naval role. This 15 achieved first by extending the definition of fleet" against-shore to include landing operations and tacks on sea lines of communication. Next, by esta^" fishing two categories of fleet-against-fleet op£(y tions: the “pure” form intended to gain and maintalfl command of the sea; and those operations which “tied to the simultaneous accomplishment of othef missions.” It is then shown that this second categ°6 of fleet-against-fleet, which comprises the vast of naval operations, is in fact supporting operatic5 against the shore. This allows the navy’s main objeC” tive to be redefined as “securing the fulfillment of1,1
laoa smuggles in numerous examples of traditional navil operations which have had strategic significance, 0
eVflopment of the other arms of the navy” (espe- y surface forces), which presumably reflects the
Call
nay
1967 the fe as
!lllVe even been more important than the battle on
land.
The same general thrust can be seen in the section °n the “Problems of Balancing Navies,” which pro- Vlcles a critical analysis of great power fleet structures S|nce I905 |n terms of their capacity to handle the ^foreseen demands of war, and it is clear that I °rshkov is arguing for maximum flexibility. As in ls article, he stresses the limiting effect of Ger- rr'any’s concentration on submarines, which was ex- ^tbated by its failure to provide anti-ASW forces for ^le,r support, points which are very relevant to the °viet circumstances. However, in discussing the bri°rity given to the development of submarines and ^eraft in the Soviet navy, there is a definite muting tone in his comment on the need for “a matching y s successful battle on this issue, whereas in the lrticles Gorshkov was still arguing the point. This SUccess may also explain why Gorshkov reverts to his tautological definition of “balance” as denoting capability to carry out assigned missions in dif- rent circumstances. In the articles he saw “balance” Renaming from the choice of mission, which he ar8ued should be defined in as general terms as pos. *e> in order to exploit the navy’s inherent versatil- ^ and to allow for unforseeable developments. °Wever, the choice of mission may now be less im- °rtant, given Gorshkov’s ability to redefine its ^Caning in terms which suit the navy’s purposes, as 6 did with “fleet against shore.” j, ^nd lastly, the section entitled “Dominance of the ea> a concept which Gorshkov asserts is the most vital in naval warfare. The discussion brings out all the classical advantages of gaining command, comes close to explicitly advocating the “pure” form of fleet-against-fleet operations, and in the process provides powerful support to the arguments in the other two sections for the continued importance of general purpose surface forces, particularly in the anti-ASW/ pro-SSBN role. Gorshkov argues that the strategic significance of sea-based long-range nuclear systems makes it essential to ensure a “favorable operating regime” for ones’ own forces, and asserts that undoubtedly, the West will seek to gain such command for themselves at the very outbreak of war.
The book, then, is not just a simple expose of the role of seapower in the contemporary world, but part of a continuing argument about the navy’s role and the resources being allocated to it. The nub of the argument is summed up rather nicely in the “Fleet against Fleet” section, where Gorshkov criticizes Napoleon for blaming his admirals for repeated failure, whereas the fault really lay in his own “inability to make a timely analysis of the French navy’s capabilities, and to use it in the struggle with the enemy.” Napoleon’s failure to invade England in
1805 was not due primarily to Britain’s unchallenged maritime superiority but to his “one-sided strategy, which stemmed from his preoccupation with operations in the land theatres and his lack of understanding of the navy, his disregard for its capabilities in war, and as a result, his inability to use it in a struggle with a naval power, such as England was at the time.” The analogy with present circumstances is striking. In Gorshkov’s view, the failure of the Soviet military leadership to understand or even to analyze properly the navy’s role, coupled with its prejudices concerning particular weapons and platforms, has meant that on the one hand the fleet has been configured for a relatively narrow span of specific missions, and on the other hand it lacks the full range of forces with which to discharge these missions effectively. In peacetime, this inability to comprehend the navy’s potential leads to its underutilization as an instrument of overseas policy. In a war with maritime powers, it could lead to national disaster. This critical tone, including the pointed reference to Napoleon’s failures, is preserved in the second edition of the book and is carried even further in a ten- page addition. This new section, entitled “The Strategic Employment of the Fleet” argues the importance of a country having a unified maritime strategy, and it mainly consists of a historical critique of the traditional tendency towards separate continental and maritime strategies. Gorshkov notes that the Soviet Union does have a unified strategy but it becomes clear that he is dissatisfied with its overall structure and method of application, and considers that the maritime aspects of the strategy are neither properly integrated nor given sufficient attention. Gorshkov reminds the reader that there is now no sphere of armed conflict where any one branch of service can exercise absolute sovereignty and that all military operations now involve the employment of several branches of service to achieve a common goal. Using circumlocatory language and rather obscure argumentation (p. 3 17, Russian edition only), he goes on to make two related proposals which can be read as criticism of the existing situation. In one, I understand him to say that, since naval operations are becoming increasingly important and since they rely on support from other branches of service, it is therefore desirable, when considering strategic missions in oceanic theaters, to review the ways of employing all the armed forces and not just the navy. From his full argument I infer that Gorshkov considers that the other four branches of service give insufficient priority to naval missions when shaping their strategic concepts and employment policies, and perhaps are reluctant to subordinate | themselves to naval requirements when supporting operations in the oceanic theatres. In the other, I understand him to say that, given ; the continuing growth in the role of the Soviet navy (which stems from the increasing importance of sea- ; based strategic nuclear systems), it is necessary t0 ! formulate a multi-faceted military strategy which : will provide for the most expedient employment of all branches of service, while allowing that the rela* five importance of the continental and oceanic theaters may vary during the course of a war. This last t point is particularly significant and, while Gorshkov : is unlikely to be challenging the overriding priority j accorded to the European land battle in the initial j stages of war with the West, I infer that he is argt>' | ing that in other circumstances the oceanic theater5 , may be more important. Two come readily to mind: j the initial phases of such a war in the Pacific theater; and the subsequent phases of such a war in the At' lantic theater. However, Gorshkov is flouting one of j the armed forces’ most basic dogmas by questioning the perennial primacy of the continental theaters operation. The debate continues, but if we consider where 11 f started from, the navy has made remarkable gain5’ ; Albeit addressed to a wider audience, the navy’s case j was first deployed in its “own” journal during 1972-73, as some 54,000 words spread over 11 >5' j sues and 13 months. Three years later, the argumen[ was extended, improved, and restated in a book 151,000 words, which had an unusually large print' ing of 60,000 copies, and was brought out ahead °* j schedule to meet a political deadline. Within fot|f years a second 60,000 copy edition had been pul1' i Iished, which is one-eighth longer and includes i new section which extends naval claims even furthet- The military publishers categorized the first edition* of the book as being for “the military reader”; the second edition is specifically for “admirals, general5 , and officers of the Soviet Army and Navy.” The at' gument evolved from defensive advocacy of thc navy’s role, to a more rounded discussion qf the if*1' portance of the ocean and of seapower in its broadef sense, to challenging the primacy of the continental theaters in war. And as a final mark of approval’ three of the contributing authors were promoted be' tween the first and second editions, two to Vice A1-!' miral and one to Rear Admiral. But the most persuasive evidence that Soviet at' titudes to the navy’s role may be changing cornt'5 I from the reviews of the first edition of The Seapower**/ the State. These are exemplified by Marshal of tl*e Soviet Union Bagramyan’s comment in Izvestiya tha* “for the first time in Soviet literature, the authof |
176 | Proeeedinp-K / Naval Review 19®** i |
foie
m war and peace.
Emulates the concept of seapower as a scientific tategory.” This judgment was echoed by other re- Vlews» all of which stressed the book’s contribution t() military science and noted that the role of Maritime power had, for the first time, been given a Sc‘entific formulation. This does not mean that all t?le *deas in the book have been fully accepted, but it °es imply that the concept is now established in the ‘painstream of Soviet analytic discourse and (to quote dmiral of the Fleet Lobov), “the book will be an lrnportant source for developing a correct viewpoint the seapower of the state.” This is significant, beCause up to now Soviet theorists have had an ideolog- 'cal aversion to the concept, which they equated with ahan, capitalism, and colonialism. Just as Keynes’ general Theory” legitimized the idea of deficit lnancing and induced a shift in national economic Policies, so may this “scientific formulation” efgender a shift in Soviet perceptions of the navy’s
, "^he shipbuilding evidence and the brazenness of J°fshkov’s most recent argument suggest that some
^arti
role
'me role. The evidence regarding the peacetime
ls much less clear, as are Gorshkov’s own opin- °ns 'n the matter. We should bear in mind that nt'l the publication of his articles in 1972, there re few indications that Gorshkov was a long- ar,ding advocate of far-flung, balanced fleets; one
c°uld
h,
We:
rWe;
well argue the reverse. Twenty-five years ago
Was brought to Moscow by Khrushchev to im- trient decisions which were primarily designed to
ase resources from naval use to the civilian econ-
omy. If they had been carried through, they would have resulted in a task-specific, defensively oriented navy, more firmly tied to home waters than at any time in its history. The 1957-58 decisions (which were prompted by Western technological advances rather than any change in Soviet objectives), would have partially broken these ties, but only to end up with an unbalanced fleet, depending wholly on submarines and aircraft for distant operations. While it can be argued that these particular procurement decisions derived directly from the political leadership, no such defense can be offered where combat capabilities and operational readiness were concerned. Yet the shift to forward deployment seems to have come as an unwelcome surprise to the Soviet navy, which was operationally ill-prepared for the move. As late as February 1963, seven years after he had taken over as commander-in-chief of the navy, Gorshkov had to lecture the fleet on the need to get to sea and stay there, so as to develop an ocean-going all-weather capability. Writing in 1968, Gorshkov noted there had been a need to “meet the qualita-
tively new requirements” which had involved the “organic restructuring of the navy and the reorienting of traditional naval policy.” This is hardly the picture of a navy straining at some political leash which was thwarting its peacetime aspirations. It also gives the lie to self-serving claims that contemporary Soviet naval policy stems from the mid-fifties, when Gorshkov took over.
Nevertheless, in his articles Gorshkov was clearly arguing for an assertive foreign policy and for the importance of navies as an instrument of state policy in peacetime. This might seem to fit with the policy announced at the 24th Party Congress in 1971, which was amplified in the book Military Force and International Relations edited by V.V. Kulish, except there is a distinct difference in treatment. While not underplaying the naval contribution, Kulish discusses the role of a “Soviet Military Presence” in general terms, referring to the increased importance attached to strategic mobility, and the possible future requirements for “mobile and well trained and well equipped forces.” Gorshkov places all his emphasis on the navy’s unique qualifications and is at pains to point out the inherent limitations of other forms of military force in this role. We should remember, however, that one of the main purposes of his articles was to release more resources to naval construction and all arguments were grist to that mill. We do not know the exact make-up of the powerful coalition of interests which emboldened Gorshkov to make this untypical stand against agreed policy. There is, however, evidence that there was a major cleavage of opinion within the Soviet leadership at this period over foreign and defense policy questions and their impact on the domestic economy, and Gorshkov could only hope to draw support for the navy’s case from the “harder” side of the debate. It may therefore be that he angled his argument regarding the navy’s peacetime role in that direction.
If anything, the book can be seen as supporting this suggestion. The material from the relevant article is reproduced in heavily amended form, and the tone is less assertive. On the other hand, there is a new section devoted to Western naval involvement in “Local Wars of Imperialism.” However, these two sections make up less than seven percent of the whole and in the book the navy’s peacetime role gets much less prominent treatment than in the articles, the bulk of the book being devoted to war-related subjects or the non-military aspects of seapower. The latter takes up one-fifth of the book, the emphasis on marine transportation being particularly noticeable. In terms of the book’s title and the place of the sea in Soviet foreign policy, it is surely significant that the authors’ collective included V.G. Bakaev, a formef Minister of the Merchant Fleet.
Turning to the shipbuilding evidence, we see tha1 there are clearly defined war-fighting requirement5 lor all classes which are currently building or for£' cast. The longer range amphibious ships are config' ured for opposed assault in hostile waters, which at' gues against them having been built primarily forJ peacetime role. We also have evidence which ind1' cates that the new large carrier was justified in term5 of defending the SSBN bastions and not for peacenik intervention. Writing in February 1967, Gorshkov gave the standard line of disparaging the carrier5 vulnerability and reaffirming the correctness of rlie Soviet decision to rely on missiles. At this date, rhe Soviet navy had three years experience in the Mediterranean and in less than a year would be moV' ing to the second plase of its shift to forward de' ployment and the greater political exploitation ot naval forces in distant sea areas. But Gorshkov ^ not argue for a proper aircraft carrier at this time> indeed, his remarks can be interpreted as stiflfof suggestions in that direction. However, writing lfl 1972, he made no reference to the carrier’s vulner*1' bility and was silent about its contemporary task5 and capabilities; he did, though, deploy a rarel)" quoted Leninist principle which argued (by implied tion) that since the enemy had carriers so must tlie Soviet Union. And this was part of the larger arg11' ment for general purpose surface forces which \vefe needed for the defense of the SSBN bastions.
Lastly, we need to consider the Soviet Union5 geostrategic circumstances. It stretches from Wester11 Europe to Japan, borders twelve states, and anothef seven are directly accessible across short stretches °o sea. The country spans 170° of longitude (a full l£$ if we include the Warsaw Pact), and thus looks sou ft1 at half the globe. About 85 percent of the world5 population lives within airlift range of Soviet tetf1' tory, although China blocks immediate access 1 Southeast Asia. Western Europe, North Africa, f*ie Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent are ^ within 2,000 miles of the Soviet Union, and the tef' ritories of its national security zone are contiguous In terms of strategic access, Russia is Mackinder5 heartland, and the availability of strategic airlift’ backed by merchant shipping, means that the nav)'5 role in projecting Soviet military power is relative*) less important than it is to the United States.
To sum up: Additional resources have been all0' cated to naval construction and there are clear indie*1' tions that the Soviet leadership has accepted that <fte importance of the navy’s role has increased sigfoft' cantly, both absolutely and relative to the othef
C ear- If current building rates continue, the force C()uld dwindle to about 95 by the end of 1987, ^abilizing at about 75 in the mid-nineties. It would, Uwever, be prudent to assume a substantially larger prober since the Soviets have the experience of 'gher force levels, they have spare building capacity arid they could easily boost production in the years ai(-'ad. Within the Soviet concept of operations, ^‘bmarines are an all-purpose defense unit and it is ard to have enough of them. Nor should we forget 1at the Soviet Union was tooled up to build 72
branches of service, and this process may continue in b'ture. Meanwhile, a policy for the employment of b°viet naval forces in pursuit of peacetime objectives las evolved progressively, but there is as yet no evince that this is seen as a primary (as opposed to SllPporting) means of projecting Soviet power in distant parts of the globe. However, the concept of sealer has now been accepted as relevant to the Soviet Union’s circumstances, and while the theoreti- C:d implications are probably still being worked out, °ne of the upshots in the future may be a new will- lrigness to use Soviet naval forces to counter Western Military intervention.
Having outlined the reasons underlying the devel- °Pment of Soviet seapower, I conclude by consider- ln8 briefly some of the implications for the West.
Llt first we must review the main naval capabilities Vvbich will face us jn the years ahead.
On the submarine side, U. S. statements indicate dlat nuclear construction has dropped from ten to Seven units a year, and that missile tubes are being removed from Yankees. This suggests that SSBN pro- tuction is now running at three a year, and in measUre as Deltas join the fleet, Yankees are being conVerted to SSN so as to remain within the SALT limit 62 hulls. This implies that by the end of 1987 _e end of the ten-year program) the SSBN force will st|^ stand at some 60 units carrying about 950 mis- j’lIes> i.e., still within SALT I. Allowing a 25-year mil life5 the Soviets may plan to stabilize their force V the end of 1992 at 75 submarines carrying 1,200
missiles.
Turning to nuclear-powered attack submarines, dle Yankee conversion program will mean that seven attack units will now join the force each year, com- Utfed to about four a year during the previous decade- Assuming that the overall production of nuclear u *s remains at seven a year, this will boost the attack submarine force to about 135 nuclear-powered Un'ts by the end of 1987, reducing thereafter to j’.mbilUe at about 100 units by the end of 1992. The Uture of the diesel submarine force is much less
h
Whiskies a year in the mid-fifties, and had originally planned to build 100 submarines a year in the early sixties.
The new surface ship programs represent both an increase in the number of ocean-going warships delivered each year and in the size of the various ship types. In the past, the Soviets have been mainly successful in holding down the growth in size of successive classes, and for several decades the parameters of the main ship types have remained roughly constant, most notably the “destroyer-sized” type at about
4.0 tons and the “escort-sized” type at about 1,200 tons, and it was analytically useful to make use of those categories. However, some two or three years ago, the Soviet navy redesignated the destroyer-sized Krivak as an “escort ship” and at the same time altered the type-designation of various other classes to reflect a distinction between antisubmarine and anti-surface capabilities. Bearing in mind Gorshkov’s original argument that all-purpose ships had never proved successful, plus U. S. press reports that of the two smaller new classes of cruiser, one will carry anti-surface systems and the other will be primarily ASW, it seems likely that these redesignations presaged the future structure of the fleet.
On this assumption, when looking to the nineties it is useful to think in terms of four main sizes of ship, with the type designator indicating the general role: a battlecruiser size; a cruiser size of about
12.0 tons; a destroyer size of about 8,000 tons; and an ocean-escort or frigate-size of about 4,000 tons. I assume that the battlecruiser and cruiser sizes will have a general purpose capability and that only one class of each will be built at the same time, whereas there will be at least two classes of destroyer-size ship under construction, each optimized for different aspects of maritime warfare. The destroyer-sized ships will be able to operate as fleet escorts, whereas the frigate-sized will lack the long range anti-air and -surface systems required for such a role. I am not suggesting that this categorization will apply immediately, but this could be the general fleet structure by 1990, at which date the present inventory of antisubmarine and anti-surface ships will be obsolete or obsolescent, except for the Kara and Kresta II classes, both of which would be treated as destroyer-sized types.
What sort of numbers are we talking about? Counting only those ships which were built or converted after 1957, but using the former categorization of types (where the cruiser size is around the 8,000- ton mark), at the beginning of 1980 the Soviets had about 27 cruiser-size ships (Kynda, Kresta, Kara), about 60 destroyer-size ships (including Krivak), and about 100 escort-size units. They also had two modified Sverdlov command cruisers and four air-capable ships (2 Moskva and 2 Kiev). By 1995, allowing a 25-year life cycle and using the new categorization, we could expect about 15 cruiser-size ships, 65 destroyer-size (including Kara and Kresta II), and 55 frigate-size ships (Krivak and successor). There would also be 5 battlecruiser/command ships and perhaps 7 or 8 air-capable ships, comprising 2 Moskva, 4 Kiev and 1 or 2 new type large carriers. To put it another way, every three years the Soviet navy will acquire a powerful new battle group comprising a heavily armed battlecruiser, 3 cruisers, and about 10 large destroyers. The first three or four of these battle groups will rely on a Kiev to provide a modicum of seabased air support, but thereafter we might expect to see one fully capable air-superiority carrier for every two battle groups.
On the land-based air side, we can expect Backfire to replace Badger as the primary strike aircraft, but it is not clear whether the naval force will remain at its present strength of about 350 aircraft. Although the navy is getting half the Backfires which enter service, the annual production rate is low and at present two old aircraft are being retired for every new delivery. On the other hand, the improved aircraft now entering service with frontal aviation make it likely that the tactical air force will take over ground targets which were formerly the responsibility of the long-range air force. This may well release additional strike aircraft for naval missions.
So much for the numbers involved, but there are implications concerning capabilities which can be drawn from the preceding analysis. First, submarine technology. The Alpha represents an important breakthrough for the Soviets, since it can go faster and dive deeper than the latest U. S. submarines, although it is still noisier. However, the wider significance of the Alpha is that it represents the first real end-product of the 1957-58 decision which singled out the submarine as the key component of the Soviet navy, with all that implies in terms of priority for research and development resources. Bearing in mind- the Russians’ capability for innovation and their penchant for adopting unconventional means to outflank a superior capability, we should expect the Alpha to be only the first of a series of advances, which could challenge our technological lead in the submarine field, and may also affect our future antisubmarine capabilities.
Second, nuclear propulsion. Gorshkov stressed that surface ship characteristics should provide for good seakeeping and long endurance, and long range at high speeds. If nuclear submarine construction has dropped from ten to seven units a year, past ship' building practice would lead us to expect that the other three nuclear propulsion systems are still avail' able to the navy. If we allow that perhaps four ot these are being used for the battlecruiser program- this would leave another five systems available over three years. While we would expect the new large carrier to be nuclear powered (given the operational concept), this program was approved out-of-plam whereas the reallocation of propulsion systems lS more likely to have been part of the original plan approved in 1971. We might therefore find that the cruiser-size follow-on to Kara is nuclear powered.
Third, the tactical employment of ballistic mb' siles and the use of shore-based systems. We should pay serious attention to what the Soviets have writtefl about the employment of ballistic missiles againsf ships and submarines. There tends to be substance <n their technological claims, even though they oftetl advance the claim when the capability is in sigh1 rather than in service. It is quite likely that the Yam kee was originally conceived as a tactical missile bat' tery for use against carriers. It is quite likely that the SS-NX-13 terminally guided SLBM was shelved because of SALT and not because of insuperable technic^ problems. It is clear that important elements of the military leadership have always been attracted to the concept of “calling down fire” from land-based sys' terns on naval targets, using satellite surveillance sys' terns, or ships and submarines as forward observers’ Even if the Soviets have yet to develop a fully sut' cessful system, there is every reason to suppose that they will persist in their efforts because of the opefa' tional and political advantages such a "global sys' tern” would bring.
s
We can now move on to the implications of th>s analysis in terms of general war with the Soviet Union. First, we see that their definition of worl^ war generates massive doctrinal pressures to avoi^ war with the West; on the other hand, should cif' cumstances arise where a NATO war seems absolutely inevitable, there will be equally massive doctrinal pressures to preempt, whether or not the Unit^ States has an assured second-strike capability. Mean' while, no efforts are spared from developing tlie means of degrading that capability. This has focused Soviet military thought on “the initial stages of i war” and the importance of getting in the first blo'v’ should war be unavoidable. This leads them to stres5 the importance of achieving surprise in as many way5 as possible . . . technological, temporal and spatial’ and through novel operational concepts and une*' pected systems combinations. This is not somethin? you dream up on the day, but something you pla11
°ccs to respond to the maritime threat, sometimes vertently. I use “outflanked” literally, since it
frequently the change in a geographically specific ar'o which brought Soviet efforts to naught. But twenty years now, the U. S. SSBN force has
°Cean space and plans to carry on doing so for the ten years at least. Meanwhile, the Soviets have
°r long in advance.
, ^ second and more tangible implication is the
attle for the Norwegian Sea.” For the Soviets, this
Sta area had moved from being nice-to-have to need-
"nave, with all that implies in terms of military
res°urces being allocated to seizing key islands and
stretches of Norwegian coast in order to establish
C'),T|mand at the outbreak of war. It can be assumed
at the Soviets will seek to establish their defense
fj^imeter on the G-I-UK gap and, while it will be
'cult to resist the initial thrust, it would be much
afuer for the West to try and fight its way back
°nce the Soviets were firmly ensconced.
Third, the Soviet requirement to protect their
N bastions and establish command of the outer
j ense zones demands a very large number of forces.
ls therefore in the West’s interests to sustain a
l|fticient level of explicit threat in those directions in
^er ro tie down those forces. At the same time the
tstern alliance has to challenge any Soviet attempt
establish in peacetime implicit dominance of such
areas as are flanked by its member nations.
. ^od fourth, the West should look seriously at the
^Plications of the Soviet Union’s determined at-
^Pts to develop some means of countering Polaris
‘n<J Poseidon. One of the reasons why the U. S. navy
^aVed ahead in the past was that the routine process
f Ethnological innovation often outflanked Soviet ctte
'lad evas Eeri; for
R^aced primary reliance on the concealment offered "ext
[Pont the last eighteen years seeking the means of Caching that concealment, and doing the basic research which may lead them to some breakthrough in non-acoustic and/or space-based methods of detection. We may be right in our judgment that the Soviets will not be able to beat the problem, but it has two snags. One is that basic research is a Soviet forte, and while they will undoubtedly have difficulty in the technological application of any theoretical breakthrough, we have not been investing in the scale of research on our side to be certain of where they are at. The other is that if our assessments of Soviet progress are wrong, by maintaining essentially the same course for thirty years or more we are making it easier for them to arrange a successful interception. One of the great attractions of deploying our SLBM in penny packets in coastal waters is that it would largely nullify a massive Soviet investment in R&D (involving four of the five branches of service), and force them to rethink the requirement to counter Western SSBN.
We now turn to the peacetime activities of Soviet naval forces in distant sea areas. The most significant development is that Soviet wartime requirements have justified the procurement of powerful new general purpose forces which will greatly increase the peacetime potential of the fleet. For the first time the Soviets are now developing a genuine worldwide naval capability. And while the concept of defended SSBN bastions will tend to work against continuous distant deployments, concern for the Chinese threat acts in the opposite direction, drawing forces into the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. In terms of the Western response to these developments, what are the implications of the preceding analysis?
First, we would limit the forward deployment of Soviet naval forces in peacetime if we maintained an active naval presence in the outer defense zones of their SSBN bastions. At the same time we would be bolstering our allies and supporting our wartime objectives.
Second, we should exploit the fact that the peacetime role of Soviet naval forces is still in its formative stages. There is a continuing debate in Moscow on the nature of seapower and its potential role in state policy, on the value of a Soviet military presence in the pursuit of overseas objectives, and on the broader objectives of Soviet foreign policy. The nature of the West’s response to Soviet initiatives
There is evidence that "nowadays the primary role of Soviet ASW forces in the Mediterranean is to protect anti-surface missile units from preemptive U. S. attack, ” presumably hy nuclear submarines such as this pair anchored hy the stern at Augusta Bay on Sicily’s east coast.
preceding analysis in terms of arms control as * means of increasing Western security. One of the ks‘ sons we can draw from the past 25 years is that when we devise new ways to discomfort the Soviets in or to deter them from attacking us in peacetime, ' tention must be given to the response it will evoke For example, it is questionable whether the ad^[3]' tional security provided us by the Polaris-Poseid011 system compensates for the practical disadvantage arising from the Soviet navy’s shift to forward de' ployment. Similarly, the Soviet response to ^ threat to their own SSBN force has been to shift fe' sources into building powerful general purpose sur' face forces which will result in a genuine worldwi^ naval capability which may well discomfort us in th£ years ahead. Looking to the future, we need to a^ ourselves what the Soviet response would be if "e introduced the strategic version of the Tomaha^ cruise missile to the fleet, and whether that would k£ to our long-term advantage.
But the arms control implications of the analyslS go beyond these peacetime inconveniences to d'e more fundamental questions of threat and the likelihood of war. For some tin
ion5
will be a factor in the outcome of the debate and our aim should be to reinforce those who claim that for the Soviet Union, naval forces are not the most cost- effective instrument of overseas policy, while disproving those who argue that such forces are essential to the normal pursuit of overseas objectives. Unquestionably, this will be hard to achieve, but there are three things we must certainly avoid. We must not allow the employment of Western forces to be inhibited by a Soviet naval presence; indeed, we should go out of our way to demonstrate the opposite. We must not exaggerate the scale and nature of the Soviet navy's peacetime capability; rather, we should actively publicize their operational inadequacies and materiel failures, we should highlight their limited commitment to client’s interests and their narrow national security concerns. And, except in a narrow range of carefully considered circumstances, we must refrain from denying the Soviet Union maritime access to distant states; the casual use of Western naval power to prevent legitimate access by Soviet merchant ships can only reinforce the argument that a strong naval presence is required to protect the Soviet Union’s state interests in peacetime.
And third, we must face up to the problem of incrementalism, or the Soviet practice of developing policy step by step. Sometimes the process is forced on them by limited resources, as in the Mediterranean deployments. In other cases, the process is deliberate, as in Cuba, where we see at one time a pier for submarines, another time a recreation field for Soviet sailors, and still another a squadron of Soviet interceptors near Havana. This can only be dealt with by deciding ahead of time where we will draw the line. To an extent, we already do this, but it seems that the contingency planning process starts too high up the crisis scale to cover the problem. We need to fill this gap between the Soviet navy’s routine activities and the scenarios underlying our contingency plans. Besides allowing us to work out the appropriate responses ahead of time, this would highlight the longer-term consequences of allowing Soviet naval forces to establish apparently innocuous precedents. The Soviets are well aware that the West’s interest in the use of the sea is of a different order to their own. They are very conscious of our worldwide maritime preponderance. They also understand toughness. The question is, when and where we draw the line. However, for such a policy to be successful, the line must reflect a substantive Western interest (as opposed to passing political petulance), and the Soviet Union must be made aware ahead of time, where the line has been drawn.
Finally, we must look at the implications of the
perceptr
rhpre
been a growing disjunction between the very hig'1 nuclear inventories on both sides and the level 0 middle-of-the-road threat assessments. As the ar*11* buildup continued, this disjunction became increaS' ingly hard to bridge and the last few years have see<l a steady upward shift in threat perceptions, eVe<l though the objective circumstances governing inte11' tions have not changed. On the Soviet side, a maj°( engine of the arms buildup is their war-fighting d°c' . trine. On the U. S. side, a second-strike doctrine fe' quires a matching response and meanwhile, as thfeJt perceptions have risen, so has there been a moverne”' towards an increased war-fighting capability. T*lC cycle continues and, as threat perceptions are dra"11 inexorably upwards, it becomes more difficult t0 apply controls to the arms procurement process.
One means of breaking this cycle is to engendef^. shift from war-fighting doctrines to policies 0 mutual deterrence. The West has some leverage l<i. this direction, which stems from the importance 0 sea-based nuclear strike systems as strategic resetv'eS in a world war. In the post-exchange phase the Trl dent SSBN, with its autonomous capability and nuclear warheads, becomes the war-fighting mach|0£ par excellence. If this same missile capability were de
ployed in spartan diesel submarines which were ope . ationally tethered to U. S. home waters, it wOll)l provide unambiguous evidence that the U. S. vV‘l5 discounting war-fighting as a strategic option. important, it would effect the kind of fundament
rnirii
rnajor setback to the Soviet Union’s broader foreign lcy objectives, which also served to rekindle the Sading rhetoric of the Kennedy era. e can therefore assume that as the Soviets nalize the details of the 11th Five Year Plan for
fi
change in the situation which would force the Soviet eadership to review their policies and programs for e°untering Polaris and Trident, and to make new de- ClSl°ns. The need to start again from the beginning, C°upled with the even greater difficulties of develop- ln8 a counter to the spartan SLBM system, would ^'tnforce the case of those in the Kremlin who argue 1at d is time for the Soviet Union to adopt a postUre vis a vis the West of mutual deterrence based on and to play down the requirement to fight a kCneral war. It is at this stage, when new alignments are formed and Soviet policy is in a state of flux, that ■ lrtner proposals for naval arms control (involving °tn sides’ SSN and the security of the bastions) could nape the final outcome. While important in their °wn right, such measures could provide the catalyst needed to break the arms race cycle and open up new °importunities for arms control in other fields, includ- n8 land-based “strategic” weapons.
have, however, been discussing what could be ^ather than what is likely, and despite current talk °ut small coastal systems, U. S. domestic factors ^°uld prevent any such political initiative in the °reseeable future. This is unfortunate because devel- Proents in East-West relations over the last few feats evoke disturbing echoes of the 1960-61 period, terms of their impact on Soviet weapons procure- tTlent decisions. From the Soviet standpoint, things j^ere not going particularly well before 1979, but st year was an especially bad one, which saw a Sowing rapprochement between China and America, greased defense spending throughout the West, Provocations” over troops in Cuba, stalling of SALT Congress, the threat of new U. S. strategic sys- and a commitment to upgrade NATO’s theater [n,Ss‘le force with weapons which will target Soviet ritory and reduce strategic warning time to a few utes. And then, to cap it all, came Afghanistan,
Poli
W
Mentation to the Party Congress next spring, rst-case assumptions will hold the Field and, de- tte che growing competition for investment funds k ^evelop key sectors of the domestic economy, dense procurement may well increase. Given the re- ^ t additions to the surface warship program, naval turement is less likely to be affected than the p ategic rocket and air defense forces, despite the .act that there is probably some slack in naval build- k ° Capacity, and of course, additional facilities can diverted from civilian ship construction. However, while the delivery rates may remain unchanged during the next decade, the tough-minded decisionmaking climate may be favorable to incorporating improved characteristics (such as nuclear propulsion in surface ships), and the ratchet effect, which is present both in arms racing and in the Soviet planning process, may ensure that such systems will continue to be provided in the future.
Given these circumstances, the West has no option but to gird itself for a sustained, if low key naval buildup. We are faced by a substantial increase in the allocation of resources to Soviet surface ship construction, in part through the five-year planning process, in part through an out-of-plan addition, which not only increases the annual delivery rate and tonnage, but introduces powerful new types of ships into service. Besides this practical recognition of increased naval requirements, there is a new theoretical acceptance of the concept of seapower and its relevance to the Soviet Union in war and peace. And finally, we are faced with a period of revived East- West antagonism, which is likely to be characterized by increasing military intransigence. Respond we must, but it needs to be a measured response, and we should not allow ourselves to be mesmerized by the new surface programs. The Soviets continually stress that the submarine force is the primary arm of the fleet, an assessment we should heed, and we should also concern ourselves with the threat from land- and space-based global systems. The response should be measured because we do not wish to encourage naval confrontation in all corners of the globe. We should avoid the rhetoric of an arms race and as we build up our forces, we should talk in terms of arming to parley.
C(Jiieret*s in the past, the Soviets have heen primarily th < , to deny command of the Norwegian Sea to the West, >f) ^ are now concerned to secure command for themselves, as a ly a>ls °f strengthening the outer defenses of the SSBN v °ns-” Since “command of a sea area is greatly facilitated feC'J[>lr,d of the adjoining coast . . . this raised the new sej‘'re',lenl for a long-range heavy assault lift, suitable for
[2] j >nH key islands and stretches of the Norwegian coast. ” l>et e l"en’ *s oue °f main areas in which any war ee,i the Warsaw pact and the West will he waged.