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By Norman Friedman, author, Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
The most important factors in naval development last year were the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe. At the beginning of the year, there was some question whether NATO eould maintain its past momentum, and there were indications of U.S. cuts mandated by the Gramm-Rudman Act. By the end of the year, the threat to NATO seemed to have evaporated, and the United States and Western Europe were Rigorously pursuing cuts in their armed °rces. The major questions were varied: vvould NATO survive in its current form; jvould the Soviets keep any hold over Eastern Europe; and how would a rented Germany behave? From a naval Point of view, the major consequences Seemed to include the cancellation of a series of multinational programs, led by ne NATO frigate, which appears less ■mportant now than a few months earlier.
Few would foolishly argue that the World will now become peaceful. Mili- ,ary forces must remain in some form. However, just what that form should be Will depend on perceptions of the likely nreats those forces will face. For more •nan 40 years, the forces of the United lates and its NATO allies have been deigned largely for combat in and around Hurope. The U.S. Navy has had to fight repeatedly in the Third World, but the NATO navies generally have been designed to operate in European waters and, moreover, in concert with the United States. Inevitably, they have accepted a degree of specialization. That posture may not be suited to future conditions.
It seems likely that the main near-term employment of the major European navies will be in Third World areas such as the Persian Gulf; the recent Western European Union operations there would seem to presage future ones. The perception that the Third World will continue to require strong Western naval presence is evidenced in recent British press reports stating that the Royal Navy will not be cut as part of the forthcoming post-Glas- nost reductions, in contrast to the European-oriented army and Royal Air Force (RAF). NATO has limited itself to local areas north of 25° north latitude so operations will be outside of the formal structure of the Alliance. Given the divergence between U.S. and European views of the Third World, it seems unlikely that NATO will extend its activities in this area against distinctly non-Soviet threats.
Northern European navies have specialized in mine and antisubmarine warfare on the tacit assumption that U.S. carrier groups and NATO land-based aircraft would counter the main air threat of heavy Soviet land-based bombers. In the Third World, the submarine threat will still exist, but it will be far less intense than in northern Europe. Ships will generally face a strong land-based air threat, as the Royal Navy did in the Falklands. The northern European navies have, thus far, invested in neither of the two available solutions—strong sea-based air forces and high-capacity shipboard area air defense missile systems. Only the French Navy has the capability to destroy enemy aircraft tracking a surface force from a distance by calling in a missile strike. In Britain, the changed naval mission has caused the press to speculate that full-deck carrier aviation may be revived.
The new European naval mission should make a next-generation surface- to-air missile system particularly important. During 1989, the major navies chose between a U.S.-sponsored system, NAAWS (NATO Antiair Warfare System), and the French-sponsored FAMS (Family of Antiaircraft Missile Systems). NAAWS lost out to FAMS to the extent that it is now a U.S.-Canadian project as a replacement for the current Sea Sparrow. Britain, France, and Italy all have chosen FAMS.1
Neither system is entirely suited for a future out-of-area role; both were intended to defend individual ships against saturation attacks by fast sea-skimming missiles. Their speed and low altitude attack profile limit the size of the battle space, and there is little point in designing a 50-mile missile to deal with a threat that does not appear until it is 20 miles away. On the other hand, aircraft often can be detected at a greater range and should be engaged as far away as possible by an area defense missile. In a Third World context, the best way to deal with shorter-range missiles is generally to destroy their platforms, and that generally
In the “new world” NATO navies will steam more in Third World areas. Here, the Omani Navy’s landing ship Nasr At liahr escorts HMS Andromeda and HMS Illustrious in the Persian Gulf.
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means air attack. Again, the absence of aircraft carriers in the northern European navies limits their ability to deal with Third World problems.
There now is little indication of any European approach to an Aegis equivalent; only Britain and France display overt interest in the Third World role. The Dutch Navy, the next largest in northern Europe, will be cut during the next five years (five Kortenaer-dass frigates will be retired earlier than planned). The current euphoria induced by the changes in the East makes heavy investment, particularly in new weapons, unlikely.
Overall, 1989 was a year of disaster for a series of pan-European programs. West Germany, hard-pressed by the cost of absorbing the flood of immigrants from the East (and the future possibility of absorbing East Germany), withdrew from the (ASRAAM) short-range missile project (the projected Sidewinder successor), in which it was the major investor, and it is hesitating to join the P-7A maritime patrol aircraft.2 The NATO frigate program collapsed when all the European partners withdrew. The major remaining European multinational programs are the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA), a medium NATO helicopter (NH90), and the Anglo-Italian EH-101 shipboard heavy helicopter. All are in trouble, particularly EFA because of projected costs. The British press has reported that withdrawal from the EFA program is part of planned defense cuts, and the Germans are also reportedly looking for a way to withdraw. Cancellation of the EFA would not necessarily mean the purchase of an alternative U.S. aircraft; the nations involved may well choose not to buy a new fighter at all, given the reduced perceived threat in NATO.
If the British and the Germans do buy, it may be the Hornet 2000, an advanced version of the current F/A-18. That would have implications for the U.S. Navy, which is now deciding which future fighter to buy. Through 1989, as the Soviet threat seemed to decline, commercial considerations became more important. Of the alternatives under consideration, Hornet 2000 is by far the most likely export candidate. Similar considerations may well apply to the current review of the air force advanced fighter program.
For the U.S. Defense Department, 1989 was a year of program reevaluation. The defense budget, built up steadily under the Reagan administration, was clearly in collision with the Gramm- Rudman deficit reduction requirements. For the Navy, the cuts entail massive ship retirements: within a few years, the
Charles F. Adams (DDG-2)- and Farra- gut (DDG-37)-class guided-missile destroyers will be gone, together with the Knox (FF-1052)-class frigates. The P-3Bs will also be retired. The numerical goal of the 600-ship fleet will have to be abandoned, and some might conclude that the Reagan buildup achieved very little.
That conclusion is incorrect. The ships and aircraft being retired represent, for the most part, older technology, often without the integrating advantage of a modem computer. For example, a Charles F. Adams-class destroyer, with an analog weapons direction system, holds four to six target tracks in her fire
The Aster missile is the heart of the French-sponsored family of antiaircraft missile systems (FAMS), designed to engage aircraft plus sea-skimming and terminal-dive-attack missiles.
control memory, and those tracks cannot be automatically compared to decide which is the most threatening. When she destroys a target with one of her two fire control channels, the fire control system refers back to the weapons direction system to find a new target.3 An Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7)-class frigate, which also has two missile control channels, backs the channels with a computer memory that contains more tracks, and the computer can compare these tracks and make reasonable decisions between them. The P-3B is of the same technological generation as the Charles F. Adams, with men, rather than a computer, integrating her sensors. A P-3C looks much like a P-3B, but its tactical computer makes an enormous difference.4
The fruit of the Reagan buildup is illustrated by the large number of modern automated weapons and platforms, typified by the growing force of Aegis ships.
Their improved electronics needs litde maintenance and much modification can be done by software which is cheap to reproduce rather than by expensive rewiring. Many of the older ships and aircraft presently being retired belong to an earlier age of crankier and much more expensive computers.
These observations carry an interesting corollary. It is generally impossible to determine, from the outside, exactly how sophisticated a ship or aircraft combat direction system is. Yet that system determines how efficiently the ship or aircraft weapons can be used. Weapon characteristics themselves give only a maximum potential system performance-
What, then, can we know of the real combat potential of Soviet ships? We can suspect that until recently, they lacked Western-style automated combat systems; the Indians have had to install Italian combat direction systems on board their Soviet-supplied destroyers. Most recent Western visitors to Soviet warships, for example, at Norfolk in 1989, never got to see their combat information centers, and thus could not even guess about the details of their direction systems. It does seem reasonable, however, to imagine that recent ships embody combat direction automation on some level, albeit probably without the reliability common in the West.
The logic of the U.S. Navy retirements should also apply to the Soviet fleet- Block retirements of ships that cannot survive modern battles are of little significance, however they may shrink a nominal order of battle. Soviet construction is continuing, and the newer classes represent a disproportionate fraction of overall naval power. Similar considerations may apply to Soviet tactical aircraft. In essence, combat performance will depend heavily on a factor invisible from outside the ship or airplane; a combat direction system that ties together sensors and weapons to give a commander a coherent and current tactical picture for decision making.
This automation has been the dominant technical theme in NATO navies since the mid-1950s, but it has accelerated since the late 1970s, as minicomputers have become affordable even in relatively small ships. As a consequence, most frigates built before the mid-1970s and destroyers and large antisubmarine warfare aircraft built before the late 1960s lack the capability of their successors. If the Soviets are 10 or 15 years behind the West in computer production and application, then similar breaks in capability should apply to their fleet.
Many ships and aircraft will be sold
I
abroad as they are retired. It is notable *hat none of the Soviet client states have requested surplus Soviet warships, whereas there are already several bidders for retiring U.S. missile destroyers, and ’he frigates already retired have been taken up by other navies. These ships represent a large potential market for combat system modernization, particularly for (he installation of computerised combat direction systems, and several companies are now offering systems suitable for installation.5
The Reagan buildup included a large nt>mber of highly secret (“black”) projits, which were justified at the time bemuse their sensitive technology had to be Protected. The effect of secrecy was also
shield these projects from public depute, since their nature could not be regaled. As the defense budget began to shrink in 1989, these projects, formerly safe from attack, came into question. Probably the most expensive was the B-2 stealth bomber, which first flew in 1989, and which may have cost as much as $70 "hlion (some have suggested that the appropriate figure is much higher). The existence of the B-2 has been public for s°rne time, but not its cost or its characteristics.
Now critics are asking how that sort of nioney could have been spent on an air- P'ane that offers little real capability be- i'und that of a B-IB or even a missile.
1 here is some question whether a B-2 can evade even primitive Soviet radar, al- hough such speculation is difficult given ’he classification of aircraft characteris- tics.6 The new strategic bomber seemed Particularly unneeded in light of the "'arming U.S.-Soviet relationship. Yet it earried enormous political weight. Heavy 'nvestment in black programs was a Reagan administration hallmark. To back off °n the B-2, the Bush administration "'ould have to admit gross mismanage- n'ent on the part of its predecessor. To admit failure on this scale would be to eah into question its judgment on numeric1''' other issues, many of them still ’ack. There is also a high industrial cost. ”fter the failure of its F-20 tactical Thter, Northrop bet its future on the
B-2; cancellation would probably mean collapse.
To the Air Force, the B-2 is the dream come true: the renaissance of the manned strategic bomber in the face of modern radar and missiles. Given the primacy of flying within the Air Force, it seems likely that the service will try to keep the B-2 alive, even at the cost of scrapping major strategic missile programs. This has a naval significance because the Air Force is now arguing that the B-2 should be retained for its ability to attack Third World targets (i.e., to compete with the Navy force projection missions).7
The Air Force is currently troubled. Like the Navy, it is developing a new generation of tactical aircraft. Its new fighter, the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF), is expected to be so expensive that cancellation is a real possibility. One alternative under consideration is a modified F-15 powered by the projected ATF engines. Such a choice could have an enormous impact on the naval aviation program. The Navy is currently under heavy Defense Department and congressional pressure to buy a version of the ATF to succeed the F-14 fleet defense fighter; the Secretary of Defense went so far as to cancel further F-14 production. The past major naval purchase of a modified air force fighter, the F-11 IB, was an unmitigated disaster, partly because the land-oriented design was far too heavy for carrier work. With the ATF gone, the Navy could buy an F-14 derivative powered by ATF engines, in parallel with the F-15 derivative.
The economic effects of the end of growth in Western defense spending are now being felt. During 1989, several companies began to divest themselves of defense divisions that no longer seemed profitable, and other famous names may soon be gone. In Europe, Phillips sold its Swedish PEAB unit to Bofors, and control of its Dutch unit, Signaal, has now gone to the French firm, Thomson-CSF; Signaal will become a Thomson center of excellence for naval electronics. The fate of MEL, another major Phillips defense company, has not yet been decided. In England, Plessey was divided between
West Germany, concerned with reunification, may reconsider its decision to buy the U.S. Navy’s P-7A ASW aircraft, left. The Hornet 2000 (below, larger than the F/A-18) provides an alternative to the European fighter aircraft (EFA).
carved up, but for a different reason. In the United States, Honeywell is selling its defense divisions; its combat direction work has already gone to Hughes Ground Systems, and its Electro-Optics to Loral. Ford is reportedly seeking to sell Ford Aerospace, which manufactures the Sidewinder missile series.
These sales are quite aside from the mergers and buy-outs of the 1980s, the most prominent being the acquisition of the Goodyear defense arm by Loral, and RCA by GE.
Ferranti was a victim of the atmosphere of black contracts built up during the 1980s. In the middle of the decade, it decided to expand into missile system work by buying up a missile developer. Ultimately it settled on a U.S. company, ISC (International Signal and Control). Ferranti auditors warned that they could not find evidence that ISC had much net worth, but Ferranti’s chairman became convinced that ISC actually had a series of secret contracts, including one to develop a missile for Pakistan. In 1989, it became clear that no such contract existed, that the company had virtually no net worth and Ferranti had been defrauded of several hundred million dollars, enough to force it almost into bankruptcy. Early in 1990, it seemed that GEC would be the main beneficiary, Thomson-CSF having withdrawn its bid.
Politically, the most important event of 1989 was the vast change in Eastern Europe, greeted throughout the West as the defeat of communism. That is probably a premature view. The societies of Eastern Europe have not yet reorganized, and many in the West do not realize how different they are from Western political and economic norms. The communist societies in the Soviet Union and its satellites are totalitarian: the Party controls (or tries to control) all aspects of national life, and actively fights-down any independent organization, no matter how innocuous. That is why the advent of privately organized social clubs was so dramatic a demonstration of the loss of Party power in all of the East European countries. Once such clubs organized without being disrupted, many citizens realized that the Party with the police backing them no longer had the will to rule. Hence the quick collapse.8
In the military sphere, the extent of the Soviet Union’s disaster is difficult to measure. Evaluation of Soviet military equipment is based on the assumption that it has been competently designed and that deception, if any, is designed to avoid revealing positive qualities. However, elsewhere in Soviet society the main role of deception has been to cover failings. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that the Soviet military has had similar goals, and that the targets of deception have included not only the West but also their political masters. In that case the disaster in Afghanistan will have had a profound impact on the Soviet leadership. It is also possible that the Soviets have found it extremely difficult to match the computer revolution in the West and that this difficulty became evident in the context of possible Soviet counters to, or equivalents of, the U.S. strategic defense program.
The primary driver in Soviet reform is the need to rebuild the industrial base. That will take time and enormous investment. It also requires better incentives to make Soviet workers more productive. Soviet citizens will not work hard enough because the rubles they can earn do not buy them anything they want. Nor is there any real stick to oppose to this nonexistent carrot: Stalin’s terror, and even the capital of fear it built up, are gone. They cannot lightly be revived because they would also stifle the sort of industrial creativity a modern economy needs (people would be too afraid to take chances).
The only large pool of capital and personnel in the Soviet system is the military, but Gorbachev has had to cut both standing military forces and production. Both are justifiable only if the outside threat can be reduced by non-military means, and that implies a highly conciliatory foreign policy. The general need to contract to provide for future growth also implies that liabilities must be cut, in this case the subsidies and the troops in Eastern Europe. As for the consumer goods, some of the funds acquired by military cuts will go into consumer production; the Soviets have made much of the conversion of military plants. However, that conversion may not be an end in itself; without consumer goods to buy, people will eventually decide not to work.
Thus the Soviet developments of 1989 are decidedly ambiguous, although in the West they have been treated as millenial. Gorbachev may really have permanently renounced Soviet expansionism and he may have permanently cut military power. But this is to ensure that his military is not permanently outclassed. He is scrapping large numbers of warships, but they are obsolete: soon Whiskeys, Skoryys, Kotlins, and most Sverdlovs, the fruits of Stalin’s big postwar building program, will be gone.1' New ships are still being built in large numbers. New weapon systems are appearing at the same tempo. The retreat may be permanent, but it may also be tactical. After all, Gorbachev has been a convinced Party member all his life, and he has been well trained in a style of operation which includes tactical retreats in the face of disaster.
There are two great questions for the future. One is whether the tactical moves now under way have released forces too profound for Gorbachev to control: whether tactical retreat will turn into a kind of rout. For example, the British press recently reported that the British government was now assuming that the Soviet Union might be dissolved within a decade. The other questions is whether profound change in the Soviet Union will necessarily eliminate the problems which led to the formation of NATO. Is the Soviet Union a problem because it is a Communist state, professing a revolutionary ideology? Or is that massive Eurasian state inherently a problem for the West, whatever its ideology?
‘At this writing. NAAWS is still undefined. The program will probably survive, possibly in redesignated form, as a replacement for current U.S. point defense systems. FAMS employs a new French Aster missile, in either a boosted or unboosted version.
“As a measure of the West German fiscal problem, the average per capita income in East Germany is about $12,000, compared to about $18,000 in the West. Either to integrate East Germany into the West, or to convince East Germans to stop fleeing, West Germany would have to make up much of the difference, a matter of about $108 billion per year. Matters arc actually worse, since at least part of the East German income comes in subsidized Soviet raw materials, such as oil, which probably will not be available in the future. This figure of course does not indicate the extent of investment required to bring East German industry up to date. Early in 1990, the West German government suggested that its European Community partners provide 20% or 30% of the total cost of East German reconstruction.
These limits do not apply to the three modernized Adams {DDG-2)-class destroyers, nor to their ncar- sisters in the Australian and German navies, all ol which have computer-driven combat direction systems—and all of which are virtually indistinguishable, externally, from their far less capable neat- sisters. Appearances now mean far less than ever before.
4A U.S. program to modernize the Reserve P-3A/B force will now be abandoned, as these aircraft will bu retired. Some foreign P-3’s have been, or are being* modernized with computer-based tactical data systems. For example, the first application of the Boeing UDACS (Universal Display and Control System)' which is part of the U.S. P-3C Update IV program, was to Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3B's.
“The most prominent is probably Plessey (Nautis), which is installing a system on board some Thai frigates built in China. During 1989 Telefunken, in Ger' many, began to advertise a tactical data system, MTDS, specifically for modernization; so far there have not been any publicized sales.
The usual speculation is that the bomber can be detected by low-frequency (metric wavelength) radar. B can probably also be detected by upward- or downward-looking radar. In a television interview, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William J. Crowe stated that the air force view was that precursor missiles would destroy the few Soviet radars which could detect the incoming bomber. Such tactics would be less useful in a Third World role- ’During the invasion of Panama, the Air Force used two F-117 stealth fighters, each of which dropped a 1,000 lb bomb on a Panamanian air field (and I missed). In theory, they were used to achieve surprise. However, while they were attacking, a decidedly non-stealthy AC-130 gunship was circling the same airfield. It might also have been argued that a stand-off missile, say a SLAM (AGM-84E), would have done better.
8Some Russian historians would argue that this form of government is nothing new, that the Czar ruled in much the same way through a non-hereditary bureaucratic nobility, unfettered by the rule of law, just as the Party is. It appears that the totalitarian Czarist system was weakened, in the late 19th Century, *n the interest of national development. The parallel is interesting: the key was probably the Russian disaster in the Crimea in 1855, which demonstrated to the Czar that his system had failed to produce the requt' j site industrial muscle. He therefore compromised, j since otherwise he would be defeated by the other Great Powers. Hence the urgency of industrial devel- I opment up to 1914. It might be argued that defeat in , 1914-17 was inevitable because the ruling aristoc- ' racy could not afford to surrender enough power to , competents outside it. The parallel to Mr. Gor- j bachev’s reforms is not particularly comforting. The parallel is probably meaningful because the Soviet Communist Party is much more a tactical than an ideological movement, organized more to gain and retain power than for any particular political or economic ideal. Hence the ease with which the Party : changes course, and also the difficulty the Party has I had in standing up to Mr. Gorbachev; its members are too used to taking orders from above.
^he current scrapping program mirrors the U.S. and British disposals of war-built ships in the late 1950s j and early 1960s, a program described at the time net as arms reduction but as the elimination of unusable 1 hulls to save maintenance funds.
Dr. Friedman, the author of numerous books on weapon technology, writes the monthly “World Naval Developments” column for Proceedings. received his PhD in physics at Columbia University-