This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
^hen the British Second Army took Hamburg in May 1945 and found these nearly completed Nazi U-boats, the tools °nd technology that built these boats were pipped to the Soviet Union as part of reparations.” How the Soviets thereafter ntade submarines the linchpin of their sea- denial strategy has not gone unnoticed y the smaller navies.
Disapproving a request that the Royal Navy save its ships by retiring from Crete and abandoning the marines and soldiers ashore, j^miral Sir A. B. Cunningham said, “It takes the avy three years to build a ship. It would take three Undred years to rebuild a tradition.” The inheri- ance of a tradition, even a heroic one, can often be cl niixed blessing. The smaller navies of emergent nat'ons may have no maritime traditions to speak b but this grants them the advantage of being able Renter the maritime arena with the opportunity to c"°°se wisely and afresh.
. A summary of limited wars since 1950 shows that ln almost all cases, the aims of the belligerent pow- Crs Were to gain control of either disputed territory or any enemy territory, so as to start negotiations from a position of strength. In a few cases, superpower navies have interfered successfully to project their power ashore, brushing aside smaller navies never designed for any special “sea-denial” role. This summary includes the Suez wars (1956, 1967, and 1973), the Vietnam War (1959-75), the Indo-Pak Wars (1965 and 1971), the Greek-Turkish conflict over Cyprus (1974), the Malaysian-Indonesian confrontation (1963-65). It is apparent from the lessons learned regarding the naval roles in those conflicts that the strategic options to a small navy should be decided on the following criteria:
► Extensive sea-control forces to preserve sea lines of communication (SLOCs) have never played any worthwhile roles in post-World War II scenarios.
► Limited power projection ashore in an attempt to outflank enemy land forces is a useful adjunct to the overall war aim.
► Amphibious operations in areas geographically suitable are a worthwhile aim, if the enemy sea- denial capability is limited.
► Strong sea-denial forces are necessary to prevent big power bullying. Big power interference could curtail operations ashore at a disadvantageous stage, thus compromising the overall war aim.
► Successful engagements by small sea-denial units have enhanced the prestige and influence of the parent country after termination of hostilities.
From all this, the only sensible deduction one can make is the undisputed relevance of the sea-denial doctrine for smaller navies. First propagated under modern conditions by Hitler’s Navy, the tools of
**»V-*W> "P I}' | i___ | m Mr | jh. | 1 |
iPSl |
|
|
| hff |
the sea-denial doctrine manifested themselves in the Focke-Wulf Condor and the “Type-VIIC” submarine. Blessed by overland access to most natural resources, the German Navy could profit vastly from a preponderance of sea-denial weapons, particularly against maritime powers and sea control-type navies. Although this may be obvious with hindsight, the internal pressures in the German Navy to divert shipbuilding resources to capital ships resulted in Germany starting the war with the absurd figure of only 57 submarines at sea. The German lesson appears to have been put to good use by Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov in the 1950s and 1960s when, departing from the safe, conservative theory of a “balanced” fleet, he created a navy with the limited aim of denying the sea to an attacker for a certain number of miles around the Soviet Union, a process one cannot visualize occurring in navies with long traditions. This is because internal pressures in a balanced navy from senior professionals of the carrier, missile, submarine, small ship, and amphibious branches would likely result in all their shares in the navy being perpetuated, if not increased. This would result in the capital allotment forever being spread too thin to permit the kind of bold breakthrough that Gorshkov embarked upon. Soviet naval experience in World War II was indeed limited, and when Gorshkov states that the new postwar navy was built on the recommendations of operations research groups, he presumably means that there is a thread running through honest analyses of major naval encounters which, if extrapolated, will indicate the weapon system of the future. Two Gorshkov quotations are relevant. “A great achievement of Soviet naval science was the development in the 1930s of a new chapter in naval art; the theory of the operational employment of naval forces. It correctly analyzed the role of various types of naval forces in armed combat and, in particular, pointed out that in actual operations the role and significance of one type of naval forces or another or ship type depends on the missions being executed, the relative strength of the forces, and the military, geographical conditions in the theater.” Again, speaking of postWorld War II development: “Today, the criterion of comparability of naval capabilities is the relative strength of their combat might calculated by the method of mathematical analysis, by solving a multicriterion problem for various variants of the situation. ...”
Let us look at the composition of the Soviet Navy today. What is startling is not that so many of its ships are new, but that almost all classes of ships built after 1960 are new in concept, compared with the single, but admittedly devastating, concept introduced in the U. S. Navy after 1960—the nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). Apart from the originality in conceiving new kinds of ships, the Soviet Navy also leads the way in employ*0? the air-to-surface missile, surface-to-surface m*s' sile, the marine gas turbine, the marine vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and the close-in weapon system. Would all these creditable achievements be possible, say, in the Soviet Navy in the year 2060 probably have balanced out among the subspecial' izations, resulting in the same disease of feeding evaluation computers with “judicious” mixes and getting “status quo” for an answer.
A small navy on the threshold of expansion or an emergent nation about to set up its own navy must start with no traditions. But, as noted earlier, it l*aS the unrivaled benefit of being able to choose afresh- What should it choose? Two kinds of naval activity can be highlighted to show the lessons that shoul guide the choice to be made. The first series constitute the cases of open hostilities that occurred a sea after 1945 and include those conflicts quote earlier. The second series are made up of the occasions when big powers used their navies in nearbelligerent roles, owing to the weakness of the navy of the affected power. These include the Soviet Navy in Port Said, Egypt, in 1967, in March 1969 in the Gulf of Guinea, in January 1971 on the West African patrol, in April 1973 in Iraq, and in sealifting roccan troops to Syria in July 1973. Also include are the U. S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet patrol oft Ta*' wan, its Sixth Fleet’s assistance of Jordan agains Syria, its Cuban blockade, and its landings in Ee' banon and the Dominican Republic.
K
will
Perhaps not. By then, the internal pressure
The first series, the apexes of which are the batt|e of Latakia in 1973 and the raid on Karachi in 1971, have shown that small combatants operating off the coast can make the surface of the sea untenable to major war vessels if substantial air cover is not avail' able night and day. The second series suggests that- in the absence of a substantial force of missile-fir*11^ craft and submarines, big power navies may attemp to interfere in the course of a conflict ashore.
i
For a
Most Of the instances where superpower inter- rence occurred might have been forestalled if the , a'ler nation had chosen wisely when spending its fraval capital budget. This conclusion has been drawn °m several peacetime scenario studies which have ^blished that:
. oe present gap in antisubmarine warfare (ASW) Jhnology, favoring the submarine, does not seem 'Ogeable, and current technological advances only ^Ppear to be widening the gap.
(ps: e state the art >n electronic support measures , electronic countermeasures (ECM), and ectronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) equip- l^cnt fitted in maritime patrol aircraft makes the . Cation of hostile surface forces a reasonable cer- c 'Pty within 500 miles of medium maritime powers; si H.Current air-to-surface missiles tend to make the ^ oace of the sea more untenable for surface vessels.
^mall combatants armed with surface-to-surface (oss>les deployed in sufficient numbers in proximity °ne’s own coast can inhibit most major task forces.
a new navy therefore, the days when one
could set up shop with an old frigate are gone. The skeleton of a modern navy consists of missile-firing aircraft, submarines, and fast patrol boats (FPBs). The amount of flesh one can pad on is dictated by financial limitations or, in the case of older navies, the amount of inherited deadwood which can be disposed. The Soviet Union and China have adhered totally to our “bare-bones” approach, and the current structure of a Chinese Navy so like the Soviet Navy of the late 1950s and early 1960s confirms their subscription to this theory.
Smaller navies set up by countries that were colonies of Western powers have been infected by the “protection of merchant ships” syndrome. There are some other Southeast Asian and East European navies where the character of the navy denotes less woollyheadedness and, thus, there was clear and pragmatic planning to deny their adjacent seas to most intrusions. It is these navies that also show a realistic view of that unglamorous aspect of naval warfare—minelaying and minehunting.
121
Scenarios that form the basis of planning of the other small navies are far too dependent on what may be expected to happen in the middle of the North Atlantic or the North Pacific. Formerly, this could be justified since the navies involved in these two scenarios have been the leaders in the evolution of weapons. Smaller navies thus were satisfied with being scaled down versions of superpower navies.
with
vide adequate sea time. It is the Israeli Navy
Even so, the existence of 700-800 missile-armed patrol boats does not quite indicate the shift in thinking necessary by maritime powers which do not expect to be involved in a long war over sea lines of communication. Some island nations that would be impregnable to enemy attack if the seas around them could be denied to hostile powers continue to dabble in antitrade warfare navies, when they are virtually self-sufficient on land. As a result, they are merely increasing the targets that they are offering to their enemies.
Having said something about what the composition of a new navy should be, the pitfalls that a sea- denial navy holds for the unwary should also be stressed. These can be summed up by the answers to two questions. What kind of seamen and officers will a navy have which offers no operational command higher than that of 30-year-old lieutenant commanders or 35-year-old commanders? What success can a new navy hope to achieve in maintaining weapon systems on board platforms which are essentially inhospitable to both user and maintainer?
To take the second question first, consider the case of the standard frigate which exists in different countries as the “Type-21” and “-22,” the “Type-122,” the FFG-7, and the Kortenaer-class frigate. Here we have a 3,500-4,000-ton ship designed to operate for long periods of time at sea, with 100% or more redundancy in generators, pumps, steering, switchgear, and electronic components, and with adequate expertise in electrical and engineer officers and artificers. Navies that believe they need these kinds of ships, rightly or wrongly, will certainly get their money’s worth in terms of sea time. Whether these ships will survive the first encounter in actual hostilities in a missile environment is open to question. But, in the intervening years of peace, the officers and men who sail in them will get sufficient sea time, if sea time itself is to be the foundation on which operational skills are to be structured. It may be argued whether sea time is a relevant parameter worth programming in a threat analysis. History is replete with examples where concrete technical advantages failed to achieve victory. The superior construction of French ships and cannons failed to stop Nelson at the Nile. Superiority in ship construction and gunnery should surely have been a motivating factor in the German High Seas Fleet not withdrawing at Jutland, and the incredible Japanese successes in night action in the Pacific are all examples that prove the existence of a common factor on the winning side—sea time.
Force levels based only on kill capability and limited funds would result in the navy being configured to consist of only medium-range patrol aircraft, missile-armed FPBs, and submarines. Where, in this force level, is the opportunity to introduce some salt into its senior personnel? Perhaps only in its submarines? This is a serious question that well-struc
tured small navies must answer. Small craft with large electronic and weapon packages are restricte severely by engine hours to between 100 and 50 hours a year. Officers and men brought up in these specific platforms will turn in a poor performance on the average. .
One answer might lie in the Soviet naval practice of designating one training vessel for each engme' hour restricted class. This training vessel is permit' ted to separate her refitting and docking schedule from her engine-hour schedule, thus permitting one vessel of each class to be flogged while the mean force level of the others are kept at a maximum- The contradiction between force projection and the creation of a winning psychology is clear. On the one hand, a small power, recently arrived on th maritime scene, wishes to deny its offshore areas to hostile interference and therefore acquires an effective sea-denial flotilla. On the other hand, it finds its navy headed by officers who have spent so many years driving a desk and whose confidence at sea "j nonexistent, giving rise to constant “no-go” tactic analyses when action is called for. There is perhaps only one navy which appears to have been able t° marry the contradictory requirements of having vessel with a knockout punch and yet able to Pr0 the Reshef class, a vessel which has already Per formed impressive feats of endurance. Whether these vessels will continue to remain frisky, despite beint flogged like a frigate, remains to be seen.
Most small power navies should therefore neithe' attempt to build smaller versions of big power nav,e^ nor should their command structure and mainte nance effort be modeled on bigger navies. In t first case, it would acquire vessels that would ha no role to play, and in the second case, it would ^ saddled with a senior officer cadre incapable of dY namic leadership at sea. The insistence on adopt' S the universally accepted rank structure of most na vies is unsuitable to a small power navy if suffic'e sea time cannot be given at each rank. .
So long as higher ranks do not perform seago'n- tasks of increasing complexity and requiring creasing experience at sea, a promotion can only a key to more privilege with no real attendant 'c sponsibility. Officers now diverted to shore jobs ' increasing numbers will set up a clamor for dev& luing sea time as being an anachronism in a tec nological age and thus sow the seeds of a defeat a sea.
A graduate of the National Defense Academy, Kharakvasla. a^j the staff college. Wellington, Captain Menon was commission in 1961. He specialized in submarines in 1965 and hascornman submarines and ASW vessels. He is presently the Captain. b marines, of the 9th Submarine Squadron. He is a frequent co tributor to magazines both in India and abroad.