The Soviet Navy, 1988 What the Soviets Are Saying . . .

General Yazov pointed out that “the P^ar" ty’s fundamental guideline oriented to­ward qualitative indicators with regard to solving the tasks of defense development

has programmatic significance.

and

The data provided described the • Navy as consisting of:

bm^a'

and<

rines; 96 cruisers, destroyers

What the Soviets are Saying . . . .

During 1988 the determination of So­viet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gor­bachev to achieve perestroika and his desire for arms control to support it were brought home forcefully to the Soviet armed forces. The resulting changes in Soviet military policy are affecting the organization and composition—the order of battle—of the Soviet Navy. They are causing modifications to fleet training for combat readiness.

About Soviet Military Policy

According to the book Military Policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published in the Soviet Union in November 1988,

“CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] military policy is an inseparable component of the overall system of party political activity. It represents the party’s ideological, the­oretical, practical and organizational activity to strengthen the Soviet state’s defensive capability and to di­rect its Armed Forces and their com­prehensive improvement. . . .

“Military policy is an especially important kind of party management activity. . . .

“Military policy conducted by the CPSU determines objectives and tasks in the area of organizing defense of the socialist homeland and the organi­zational development of the USSR Armed Forces. . . .

“Military policy predetermines the entire set of ideological, moral-politi­cal, military-patriotic, economic, sci­entific-technical and strictly military measures which our party conducts in the interest of ensuring the state’s de­fensive capability.”

The party has the authority and inten­tion to provide all-encompassing guid­ance to the Soviet armed forces via Soviet military policy. But traditionally military concerns and activities have been shaped by the threat and guided by the Soviet military doctrine that the General Staff develops to meet that threat. The military policy of the party, as stated in the party platforms of the Brezhnev era, simply was to “constantly ensure that the armed forces have at their disposal all modern means necessary.” That totally support­ive and noninterfering policy has changed in the Gorbachev era.

The military policy that the party adopted at its 27th Party Congress in Feb­ruary and March 1986 incorporated subtle changes in wording that suggested both a decreased commitment of re­sources and increased party involvement in military affairs. (See “The Soviet View,” Proceedings, June 1986.) Then, the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU in February 1988, followed by the party plenum in July 1988, implemented that revised party military policy by pro­viding specific guidance to the military. Part of the “Resolution on Restructur­ing,” drafted by a commission chaired by General Secretary Gorbachev, addressed restructuring in the military. That guid­ance ignored the threat as the basis for Soviet military development and said that “new objective factors” should guide it. Thus, military development was to be based on “qualitative parameters in ac­cordance with the new defensive doc­trine.”

The Soviet Minister of Defense, Gen­eral of the Army Dmitri T. Yazov, ex­plained the reasons for and results of this change in several subsequent articles in the military newspaper Red Star:

“The emphasis on quantitative pa­rameters is becoming not only in­creasingly costly but less and less ef­fective in both military-political and purely military terms. . . .

“The effectiveness of this [mili­tary] development, the all-union con­ference noted, should be ensured pri­marily by means of qualitative parameters. This fundamental princi­ple defines the content and thrust of the work of . . . all Army and Navy personnel.”

In his order for Navy Day in July 1988,

He

also noted that the guideline involves making “qualitative improvement in organization, training, discipline combat readiness.”

About the Soviet Naval Order of Badj^

As the Soviet fleet is restructured >°

reduce costs and increase efficiency

• the

emphasizing quality over quantity, ¹ most visible results should be a chang¹¹¹^. order of battle. To ensure that the rest o the world recognizes those results an • thereby, to create an atmosphere conn cive to naval arms control, the Sovt Union found it necessary during reveal its own view of the Soviet N^a • order of battle.

On 18 October 1988, the Soviet ne* agency TASS reported that

“The USSR delegation at the ^ U.N. General Assembly session • • took a new step. ... At a news c° ference at the U.N. Headquai*/' Vladimir Pertovskiy, Deputy FohjU Minister of the USSR, submitted the United Nations the data on state of the USSR’s Navy as ot J^u ’ 1, 1988.”

i So^vieI “4 aircraft carrying ships; 376 sui

sile frigates; 174 patrol ships and sf¹-_t ASW ships; 613 small combatant & and minesweepers; 107 landing ^s ^ and craft; (resulting in) 1380 number of combatant ships (P¹ .

1142 combat aircraft and helicop^tt,. (and) 12.6 thousand naval infantsl- In a 7 December 1988 article in ^ Soviet military newspaper Red Sta^r'• Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet N® Admiral of the Fleet Vladimir N- ^ navin, repeated the same numbers. \ traducing those numbers, the adn stated that

djj ' ■ ■ been reduced by 57 [ships].” He s|,j ^not> however, indicate the number of Ovgf ^l^^at had been added to that fleet ,_0ss^{r lhe} same period nor report the net Furth^>r ®^a'^{n t0 [}h^e fleet order of battle, ’he fl^6r P*^ay'ⁿ§ down the composition of ^eeF he said: “Specifically, almost of the submarines of the Pacific

c?^e half

Pi

h,

aircraft. . that

He explained,

">w,

“In line with Soviet military doc- ^tr'^ne, the nature of which is strictly defensive, our armed forces, includ- ^ln§ the Navy, are implementing a "'hole series of organizational, techni­^Cal and military-economic measures ^to restructure themselves on the basis °f the principle of defensive suffi- ejency. As a result, the size of our ^Navy has been reduced.”

_e)( ! ,^Ustrate that reduction, the admiral ^Pained that ”... the Soviet Pacific • • • between 1984 and 1988 . . .

Pop- ^are diesel powered, while a sizeable Sn_lai'j^>n °f surface forces is represented by \\x„, ^ar|tisubmarine ships and mine- ^W®^ePers. ... -

^ January 1989, a “military ex- £'^!. in Red Star provided a S_0vi °ai^anced view of changes in the edg_g^{at Na}vy order of battle. He acknowl- si_0nj ’he “Northern Fleet’s commis- the _c ®.°f’he aircraft carrying ship Baku, V₂₂^rJ^er Mikhail Kalinin and the new

ever

_Sj_0n^he Northern Fleet’s commis- |j ^ln8 °f new ships and planes must ^seen in the context of the replace- tec °f obsolete naval armaments. In ^ent years the Northern Fleet has

decommissioned tens of combat units, including large submarines and com­bat planes, particularly [many] Tu-16 bombers.”

Additional order of battle information on the combined Soviet Northern, Baltic, and Black Sea Fleets was contained in a statement of the Warsaw Pact Defense Ministers published in Pravda on 30 Jan­uary 1989. According to the tables in that document, those three Soviet fleets are comprised of 220 submarines, excluding those equipped with ballistic missiles but including 80 nuclear-powered subma­rines; 101 large surface ships, each dis­playing 1,200 tons or more, including two aircraft-carrying ships, 23 cruise missile-armed ships, and 24 amphibious warfare ships; 688 naval combat aircraft; and 288,900 men.

While this provision of official Soviet data is welcome, it is not sufficient to be acceptable as a valid, comprehensive description of the size and composition of the Soviet Navy. So far the information is incomplete, too inconsistent in grouping the forces, and too vague to reconstruct even the Soviet view of their own naval order of battle.

About the East-West Naval Balance

By releasing information on their own navy, the Soviets hope, primarily, to lay the groundwork for future naval arms control. From their perspective, they want the Soviet Navy and the few Eastern bloc forces that support it to be compared to the U. S. Navy and all Western navies allied in any way with it.

The Soviets accuse the West of applying a “one-sided approach to appraising the balance of forces.” These U. S. sailors should not see this Krivak-class frigate as a threat, they say. She is really part of a reduced and “strictly defensive” navy.

In commenting on the military balance between the United States and the Soviet Union or between the West and the East, the Soviets regularly complain that

“Western experts continue to apply a one-sided approach to appraising the balance of forces, not taking into ac­count the whole range of weapons, but artificially choosing only those areas in which there exists an asym­metry in favor of the Warsaw Pact . . . naval forces where the superior­ity is obviously on NATO’s side are left out of the analysis.

“The Statement of the Warsaw Pact Defense Ministers Committee on the Correlation of Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Force Strengths and Armaments in Europe and Adjoining Waters” was an at­tempt to set the record straight. It claims to show

“ . . . in a broader context, the over­all picture of the correlation of the military potential of the two military- political alliances in Europe. The armed forces form a single organism. The constituent parts—the ground forces, air forces, air defense forces and naval forces—interact, supple­ment and reinforce one another. Only a comprehensive analysis of them will permit a real correlation of forces to be made.”

Regarding naval forces, the report con­cludes that

“It is clear from the data cited . . . that... the North Atlantic Treaty has a two-fold superiority over the War­saw Pact in naval [personnel] strength. ... As far as naval arma­ments are concerned, NATO enjoys considerable superiority over the War­saw Pact in terms of naval combat air­craft and the number of large surface ships, including aircraft carriers and other aircraft-carrying ships. The Warsaw Pact has a certain superiority in submarines armed with missiles and torpedoes.”

^roc_e

f 2 A .

I V.1 in naval combat aircraft

in naval personnel ^0se official Warsaw Pact statements

^ernber—had both cited NATO as

— ------------------------------------------  —

ino_St " ^{a rnore} modest superiority of “al- shj_ps ^t*^lree times as many large surface ^frigaP^CrUisers, destroyers and missile ^I'av_a>^es • • • and twice as much overall

In

I'alanP.Pacific, the U. S.-Soviet naval *s similarly lopsided, according

nee j ^vari

to

'it ^.‘^'^uvorossiy^sk *^s one of the Soviets’ four aircraft-carrying ships. She serves f_r ^he Pacific Fleet, which, the Soviets claim, has been reduced by 57 ships ^11,1 1984-88. But what about the net change?

^°re specifically, the tables show a War- *aw p_{act ac}i_vantage of '•1:1 in submarines (excluding those ^nied with ballistic missiles)

1^:1 in nuclear attack submarines NATO has advantages of .5:1 in large surface ships (including ^a'^rcraft carriers, other aircraft-carrying .. P^s> battleships, cruisers, destroyers, ^r'gates, and amphibious ships of 1,200 j^^ns and more)

^-5:1 in aircraft carriers and aircraft ^trying ships

11-9:1 in combatants armed with ^ise missiles

^;5:1 in amphibious warfare ships with displacement of 1,200 tons and more 2:1 Th,

of _t.

in ® naval correlation differ in the way a_n(j ^lch surface forces are aggregated hip/ ^tl'^Us, the stated NATO advantage is _K* Ihan the correlation that the Soviet tij^ had been routinely using up to that i\(j ’ For example, two officers— cC;^ral Konstantin V. Makarov, the Jpi ^C °f the Main Navy Staff, during his .*988 Navy Day interview, and a _SepJⁿ,first rank writing in Red Star in

tonnagi

^ \y°^US ^^ov'^et articles: a« [k ⁶ l^lave as many nuclear submarines ^c United States in the Pacific. But

there they have eight times as many multi-purpose submarines equipped with long-range cruise missiles.”

► “We lack aircraft carriers and battle­ships; . . . the United States has more than three times the number of war­ships.”

► “The United States has three times as many combat aircraft overall and more than ten times as many deck aircraft.”

Finally, making their calculations of strategic missile submarines, and the numbers of missiles and warheads, the Soviets conclude that

on Soviet missile submarines, that is 270 more than the Americans have. But of that number only 388 are MIRVd [multiple independently tar- getable reentry vehicle] missiles as opposed to 640 American [missiles]. In other words, we have fewer combat warheads than the Americans aboard missile submarines. Yet it is the war­heads rather than the carriers them­selves that possess strike capability.”

About Soviet Naval Operations

In the several decades under Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov’s leadership and under the protection of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Navy devel­oped into the admiral’s vision of a “bal­anced” and “oceangoing nuclear-missile navy.” During this time naval operations expanded beyond those required to carry out the traditional missions of “defense of the homeland” and “support of the ground forces.” Increasingly they came to include presence operations “as an instrument of state policy in peacetime” and “long voyages as the main school for combat training.” Now. with the intro­duction of “new thinking about interna­tional affairs” and with a new “defensive doctrine” guiding military affairs, those types of naval operations are being ques­tioned.

A critique of past Soviet foreign policy published in the July 1988 edition of the official journal of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs reveals “new thinking” about the utility of military power in gen­eral and naval presence operations in par­ticular. The author, a deputy director within the ministry, argues that

“None of the strata of Soviet soci­ety .. . can solve the problems facing it by means of a ‘struggle against im­perialism.’ There is only one way to do this—the internal revolutionary renewal of socialism, including the elimination of anachronistic ideas about the world as an arena for the ‘international class struggle.’ . . .

“We are not, of course, talking about disregarding our opponents’ aggressive potentials [against the So­viet Union] . . .

“But ... At the peak of the stag­nation [Brezhnev] period, matters reached a point where our ‘counterac­tion’ began to outstrip their ‘action’ and ultimately damaged our own in­terests.

“At the same time, we were unwit­tingly nurturing an atmosphere of sus­picion [in the West] about our inten­tions in the sphere of the developing countries. . . .

“Our direct and indirect involve­ment in regional conflicts leads to co­lossal losses by increasing general in­ternational tension, justifying the arms race and hindering establishment of mutually advantageous ties with the West.

“Our interests in the developing countries must be defined, above all, by the real potential for establishing mutually advantageous economic and technological cooperation. From this point of view, it is not difficult to see that the West’s interests of this kind are immeasurably deeper and broader. To attempt to balance this asymmetry by building up the potential of one’s naval presence and strengthening one’s ties to individual states that might ‘act in opposition to Western influence’ would be to construct one’s relations with the developing coun­tries on a very shaky and short-term basis.”

using comprehensive simulators be introduced widely. These exercis^

nW ____________________  bet'

ter. The exercises will not be abstra^ in nature; they will have a very ^SP^L cific thrust in line with the tasks th^a the ships will have to undertake their next voyages. Ships will p^ul

don¹¹

devoted to increasing the readiness

weapons and hardware for use. ¹ j

maintenance training of personnel a¹¹

an^c

Captain Manthorpc currently serves in the °^^,cC_jV.il the Chief of Naval Operations. He is a former ⁿ ^i

S0 ..

In addition to withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Soviets have kept their navy deployed in waters closer to home in a more defensively ori­ented posture. The new emphasis is on training. This Baltic Fleet Krivak dispenses a reflective cloud to protect herself from air attack during a recent exercise.

In keeping with this “new thinking” Admiral Chernavin said in his interview with Proceedings that

“The number of long ocean voyages has been somewhat reduced and the scope of operations in the Mediterra­nean Sea and the Indian Ocean, on the west coast of Africa and in other ocean regions has been decreased. Incidentally, the reasons for our pres­ence on the world oceans ... is dic­tated, above all, by the necessity of monitoring and observing U. S. naval forces.”

When speaking of Soviet naval exer­cise activity, the admiral noted that

“The requirements of Soviet military doctrine are realized today in the spe­cific activities of naval forces. Above all, the exercises in the system of op­erational and combat training are de­fensive in nature and take place mainly in regions adjacent to our coast. We do not plan and do not con­duct them directly near the United States.”

In his December article in Red Star, the admiral elaborated, saying,

“The Soviet Union ... in the Asian-Pacific region has already and unilaterally taken a number of practi­cal steps to reduce the level of its own naval activity. Specifically, the areas for exercises by the Pacific Fleet have, in the last few years, been lim­ited to just the waters of the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. Exer­

cises in the Pacific were conducted in the approaches to Kamchatka and in the immediate vicinity of the USSR coastline.

“ . . .it must be noted that with a view to reducing military activities during the Olympic games, the Soviet command deemed it possible to post­pone previously planned exercises in the Sea of Japan to a later date.”

About Soviet Naval Training

The emphasis on achieving increased effectiveness by focusing on “qualitative parameters” can be and has been applied most quickly in training. The goal is to ensure that despite reduced resources in the near term and fewer “defensive” forces in the longer term, combat readi­ness will improve.

In the January 1989 edition of the So­viet naval journal Morskoy Sbornik, Admiral Chernavin stated that

“The entire preparation of the Navy at the present time is conducted on the basis of the defensive character of Soviet military doctrine which en­visions an even higher requirement in combat readiness of the fleet and in all aspects of the activity of staffs, for­mations, ships and units of the Navy. But the main determination is the number of really combat ready forma­tions, ships and units that are prepared under any condition to initiate combat actions within the established time and to successfully execute assigned tasks.”

At the same time, Admiral Feliks N. Gromov, Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Fleet, was describing in the 3 January 1989 Red Star how that prepara­tion will be carried out in his fleet. Ac­cording to the admiral,

“In the course of planning for the new training year in our fleet, atten­tion was focused on ensuring that

combat training forms the basis of d the activity of naval forces. With‘^lUt resolving this task we cannot seriously expect to ensure the attainment o qualitative parameters in combat read' iness.        .

“As for specific avenues of work- would like to highlight three. F'^rS there is further improvement of P^er sonnel training ... we must greu*¹9 increase the role and place of train¹¹¹' at bases. So-called base exercise

will enable us to train ship coin¹ crews and control organizations

sea only when the crews have everything necessary at base.

“A second area of our activity ¹ ensure qualitative parameters in co¹^ bat training is to improve the tact^|C ^ training of ship commanders and ^J personnel. Thus, considerably ^11,0 two-sided exercises are planned tlu in former years. ...            ^

“Finally, more attention will t*.

¹                                - ;S¹¹

JV

the prompt execution of maintena¹^ work and repairs between voyag^e* j, that is how we hope to achieve wS. technical readiness of weapons ^a hardware.                                                 ^

“We have every reason to supP^ that the training measures planned the new year will give the fleet a p° .• erful boost in combat readiness. • • ’

attache to Moscow and is a noted expert on , affairs. He has written the bimonthly “Soviet ^v column for Proceedings since February 1986-