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HDW Develops New Torpedo Tube
HD\y, the German submarine builder, has announced that it is modernizing the torpedo tubes of Greek Glavkos-class submarines, adding a Positive discharge system using gas generators. The system uses explo- slons to create pulses of gas that can expel objects from the tubes. The justing swim-out type tubes require any object fired to be self-propelled;
at excluded mines and encapsulated missiles. HDW developed a spend external saddle in which mines could be carried and from which they c°uld be dropped by gravity.
Years ago, Whitehead (of Italy) developed a small electric motor to rive Sub-Harpoons from the swim-out tubes of small submarines. The s'vim-out system was originally specified because it did not require the massive pumping (water-pulse) systems of, for example, U. S. subma- rmes. Thus a relatively small submarine could carry a large battery of SWlm-out tubes without paying the weight penalty imposed by the water- Pmse systems.
Apparently, HDW’s solutions were not altogether attractive. HDW announced that the modernization permitted the submarines to fire encapsulated missiles while submerged. It appears likely that the saddle minelaying system was not liked because it disturbed water flow over the submarine hull. It is also possible that a torpedo swimming out some- tlmes fouls part of the tube because it is traveling very slowly as it exits me tube.
. On the other hand, swim-out is inherently quieter than any type of "npulse launch. The new U. S. Seawolf (SSN-21 )-class attack submarine "nil have tubes capable of launching standard 21-inch torpedoes by '’'■vim-out or by impulse. Swim-out tubes must be substantially larger jhan the torpedoes they fire, because they must leave space for water to mw back around the torpedo as it exits. Therefore, they generally incorporate guide rails to keep the torpedo on course as it swims. The eawolf s tubes reportedly will be 30 inches in diameter. Such tubes, if . eY are also fitted for positive discharge, leave open the option of adopt- lng a substantially larger-diameter torpedo at some future time.
The Soviets Leave Afghanistan
The Soviets’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, completed on the 15 Feb- mary deadline, may have profound significance for the Soviet Navy, in mat it may call into question the military policies of the Leonid Brezhnev era> policies that until now have not really been discussed or analyzed Publicly even in the newly liberalized Soviet press. In particular, the rezhnev era was marked by the rise of the Soviet surface fleet, and that
fleet has probably been far more expensive than Westerners have generally supposed. It does, after all, consume large amounts of very scarce, and thus very expensive, electronic equipment.
The publication in 1987 of The Navy: Its Role, Prospects for Employment, and Development, the first new Soviet book on the Soviet Navy in about a decade, may well be a surface indication of a subterranean debate about the wisdom of continuing construction on, for example, the new Soviet carriers. The book gives every evidence of having been hurriedly stitched together from existing articles, some of them quite elderly.
It might be argued by a Soviet Army officer that the failure in Afghanistan was the result of a lack of resources, and not of the conditions of the war, which have defeated all earlier invaders. Since the Soviet military has received most of the country’s resources, the only possible explanations would be either inefficiency, which would call the military’s competence into question, or the imprudent diversion of resources from the really important roles of, say, the army and the strategic rocket forces to the irrelevant, Brezhnev-favored navy.
The Afghan humiliation is the first unequivocal military defeat imposed on the Soviets since 1920, when their army was driven from Warsaw. Under the tsarists, Russian society and politics were most affected by military failure in peripheral warfare, not by invasion. In theory, that is because political order is ultimately imposed by military (or police) power, and military failure brings that power into question. To some extent, Mikhail Gorbachev has sought to soften the blow this time by blaming the Afghan adventure on his predecessors and by using it as an example of the old inefficient ways that must now be foresworn. However, it seems likely that Gorbachev’s critics will ultimately blame him for the withdrawal. There is already substantial opposition to Gorbachev’s policies, both from the bureaucracy, which stands to lose heavily as he liberalizes the economy, and from a new, very reactionary pan-Slavic movement, Pamyat (“Memory”).
To Westerners, Gorbachev’s insistence that no page of Soviet history be left blank seems an extremely admirable, perhaps essential, measure of liberalization, and a means of preventing the rise of a new Stalin. However, while millions of Soviet citizens suffered horribly under Stalin, their oppressors, such as retired prison camp personnel, are still alive and may not want to be called to account. In effect, Gorbachev is promising something not altogether unlike a round of war crimes trials, in a country that has not totally accepted the idea that its citizens committed those crimes against other citizens.
Beyond this kind of upheaval lies the prospect of serious criticism of the Communist Party. Early in February, the Leningrad literary magazine Neva printed an article calling for the creation of opposition groups as a means of removing the Party’s monopoly on decisions. The changes in the Soviet electoral process, while they are unlikely really to challenge the Party’s power, have legitimized some non-Party politics, and that too must be a great shock to the vast numbers of the Party faithful who are the only direct non-military or non-police support of the Soviet system.
All of this means that Gorbachev is in a very delicate position. To rally the average Soviet citizen, he has allowed the publication of economic statistics that show that apart from its military power the Soviet Union is a very poor Third World country. For example, the total length of paved roads in the country is about equal to that in Japan. The standard of living officially ranks between 50th and 60th in the world. As such data are published, average Soviet citizens must ask where the fruits of their labors have gone. The answer is probably to heavy industry and the Soviet military, but now the failure in Afghanistan puts the value of the military, as currently organized, into question. The citizen can choose either to blame the system (as Gorbachev would have it) or to blame Gorbachev for stabbing the Soviet Army in its back, forcing it to fight a no-win war.
Gorbachev is therefore forced to cut his military costs, though it is by no means clear that such cuts can be translated into greater numbers of lower priced consumer goods. Incidentally, that need not mean luxuries
like decent toilet paper. The Soviets have stated publicly that one-third of the buildings described as completed during 1987 had no running water, no heating, no cooking gas, and no elevators.
Because the military cuts are inescapable, Gorbachev is trying to limit their cost by seeking corresponding reductions elsewhere. There is recent evidence that the West German public has been particularly responsive and that its government is finding it increasingly difficult to justify the military cost of remaining within NATO. For Germans, this is a day-today cost in terms of the dangers of military exercises, including low-level military flights. German feelings have been further affected by U. S. pressure concerning sales of sensitive technology, such as that for chemical warfare that the Libyans are said to have received.
The issue of trade is particularly sensitive because Germany depends so much on overseas trade in high technology for its economic health. Some have also seen a malaise: Germany is a major economic power, but its ties to the United States and to NATO are sometimes seen as denying it an independent foreign policy. In particular, Germany is caught uncomfortably between its current policy, in which it is tied to Western Europe, and a tradition, still quite alive, which made it the natural leader of Central Europe. Any indication that the Soviet satellite countries (which, after all, constituted the old zone of German influence in Central Europe) may gain more independence must revive the old tradition, whether or not such revival has any chance of realization.
The recent electoral victory of the far-right Republican candidate in West Berlin might be seen as a reflection of current German unease. The Republicans ran on a platform of ejecting foreign “guest workers, who entered the country in large numbers in the 1960s but now compete with Germans for a limited number of jobs, and for an end to the war guilt they see as having been imposed on their country. The Republicans entered office in West Berlin, with its unusually large immigrant population, only by virtue of the German system of proportional representation. This is the same system that has brought the Green Party into office with its strong anti-NATO platform.
As another reflection of German political trends, the government was forced to suspend work on the new Kolas deep-attack tactical missile 12 hours after a television report stated that the weapon could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead. The Kolas had been intended to blunt any Soviet attack by delivering entirely conventional warheads on the rear echelons of a Soviet army. The sensational report was no more than confirmation that any missile can, in theory, be modified to carry a nuclear warhead. In a large sense, the incident seems to demonstrate the extent to which the German government can now be manipulated by anyone willing to play on the nuclear sensitivity of the population.
Testbed Shows Value of Data Busing
Boeing flew a modified 720B as a testbed for advanced electronic warfare concepts in January. The project is sponsored by the U. S. Air Force, but it involves considerable investment by six major electronic warfare suppliers: ITT Avionics, Loral, Norden, Sedco, Tracor, and Electro-Radiation. The aircraft has been fitted with a data bus and with general-purpose controls, displays, and test instruments, and it can tow a countermeasure.
This project illustrates the power of modem data bus technology. In the past, each electronic unit in an aircraft or ship has been hard-wired to its own console or to some related equipment. Any change has required major modification, to the point that rewiring has been a major part of shipyard costs. That is clearly impractical in a testbed, hence the use of a data bus. The bus carries all of the data traveling through the avionic systems, and the individual consoles strip off the data they use. No element needs special wiring. A data bus is the data equivalent of electric power wiring, into which each home appliance can be plugged, for example. The general-purpose consoles and test equipment are configured by software to fit the particular countermeasures installed on board the aircraft.
The idea is familiar to users of personal computers. Those with “open architecture,” such as the IBM PC and the Apple IIC, accept a wide variety of special-purpose hardware in the form of cards that can be inserted in the back of the box. Each card plugs into a data bus running • through the back of the computer’s box; none requires special wiring. The computer itself is adapted to the added hardware by means of special software. All of this seems so simple and so obvious that one rarely stops to consider how radically different it is from past practice.
In the past, each card would have required a large number of specia connections to the central processor of the computer, amounting to reconstruction of the machine. Any computer with a “closed architecture,” such as a Macintosh, actually does require considerable work if it is to be modified. Hard wiring in its turn is inherently more efficient than the data bus, because the bus must carry all the machine’s data flow, including much that is irrelevant to any particular card. Thus the data bus can be used only when its data capacity far exceeds the needs of any one device in the machine. Presumably, Apple chose a closed architecture for Macintosh because the machine’s advanced graphics required a data flow far greater than that of other machines and therefore relatively close to a reasonable data bus capacity.
Current naval technology repeats these themes on a larger scale. Data- bus technology has become relatively popular in foreign navies, the most extreme case being the Danish Standard Flex 300 frigate, designed so that its weapons and sensors can be replaced within 24 hours. All plug into a common data bus, and all the fixed consoles are changed by changing their software. The U. S. Navy has found it more difficult to accept data bus technology because, like the Macintosh personal computer, it has required a heavier data flow, as in the Aegis system. However, as data buses have improved in their data capacity, they are likely to become standard in the U. S. Navy, with immense advantages in cost and simplicity both of construction and of modernization.
Data busing is not entirely new. For example, the pylons of tactical aircraft are connected to a 1553B data bus. As long as it can carry the weight of a missile, then, any pylon can accept (and communicate with) any weapon. That contrasts with past practice, in which individual pylons had to be hard-wired for particular weapons and rewired when weapons were modified.
Another feature of the Boeing testbed is a towed countermeasures body. There have been suggestions that such bodies might partly or even completely replace expendable countermeasures and many on-board countermeasures. Unlike an expendable countermeasure, a towed body can fully exploit on-board sensors, computers, and power sources.
Norway to Develop AMRAAM SAM
Norway announced in December that its air force had signed a development contract for a new land-based antiaircraft missile system using the U. S. AIM-120A advanced medium range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM). The system, designated NASAMS (Norwegian advanced surface-to-air missile system), is to replace the Nike system, and was chosen in preference to improved Hawk missiles. The NASAMS will use the existing Hawk search and fire-control radars, with different software.
The naval significance of the NASAMS is that it is the first step toward a possible sea-based version of the AMRAAM, which Hughes (the manufacturer) has advanced as a possible alternative to the Sea Sparrow. In the Norwegian case, the new system is to be developed jointly by Norsk Forsvarsteknologi and Hughes Aircraft. The Norwegian Air Force has already chosen the AMRAAM for its F-16 fighters, and presumably Norway would benefit from commonality.
The AMRAAM uses an active terminal seeker and can therefore approach and attack its target even if it is beyond the illumination range of a fire-control radar. The NASAMS system uses this property to locate the AMRAAM firing batteries far from the radar direction centers. By way of contrast, the Nike is command guided from launch to impact. The closer the radar to the launcher, the greater the accuracy of the command guidance. Even then, as the range increases the accuracy of command guidance must decline. Nike requires a very large warhead to provide enough lethal radius to make up for the errors inherent in its guidance system, and even then it may be unable to destroy very fast targets. The target may pass the missile before its burst can be effective. (There is a finite time delay between the explosion at the missile and the arrival of the effects of that explosion at a nearby object, such as an aircraft.) Better terminal guidance, either semi-active (as in the Hawk or NATO Sea Sparrow) or active (AMRAAM), greatly reduces the likely miss distance and so makes it possible to use a much smaller warhead (i.e., a much smaller and cheaper missile) to kill the same target.
The AMRAAM missile gains much of its range from the momentum imparted by the aircraft firing it. If the Norwegians want to achieve ranges like those achieved by the Nike, they will presumably add a booster, a relatively simple modification.