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.
The United States may now encounter a remarkable situation: resources may exceed strategic demands. Where to divert the funds? One alternative, suggested within the Department of Defense, is to spend the money on the war against drugs.
Another possibility would be to transfer two aircraft carriers—one for San Diego and one for Norfolk—from the active-duty forces to the Naval Reserve Force. If the choices of deactivating a carrier are scrapping, placement in the inactive reserve fleet (“mothballing”), or transferring to the Naval Reserve Force, the last seems best: to preserve is to reserve. If a ship is scrapped, it is gone forever; political trends can reverse, but razor blades cannot be transformed into a carrier very quickly. While mothballing is better than scrapping, the time necessary to bring the carrier on line may not be available. For example, when thenSecretary of the Navy John F. Lehman envisioned the activation of the Oris- kany (CVA-34), his estimate of the necessary time was two years, assuming proper preservation (which was not the case).
With the CoraI Sea (CV-43) having recently been decommissioned, current deployable carriers would number 14— from the Midway (CV-41) to the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) with one aircraft carrier (currently the Kitty Hawk [CV-63], with the Constellation [CV- 64] in transition) in the service life extension program (SLEP). The number would drop to 13 with the decommissioning of the Midway, the commissioning of the George Washington (CVN-73), and the extended refueling of the Enterprise (CVN-65), and then to 12, if and when the Forrestal (CV- 59) replaces the Lexington (CV/AVT- 16). Then, depending upon when any carrier would follow the Constellation into SLEP, the number may fluctuate. Thus, if there is a call to reduce the number of carriers downward from 14, but at the same time to maintain the potential for rapid return to 14 or more deployable carriers, one solution would
be the reserve carrier.
The idea is not new. Within the past decade the suggestion was made to replace the Lexington with the Coral Sea and simultaneously designate the Coral Sea as a reserve carrier. The flaws of this solution—improving the tactical capability of then-obsolete reserve aircraft and the need to retain the Coral Sea until the end of the decade—are no longer applicable. Assigning a carrier as both a reserve carrier and a re-
The Navy could save carriers (here, the Midway [CV-41]) from mothballing or worse by transferring them to the Naval Reserve Force.
placement for the Lexington may not be prudent, for if the need arose to mobilize the reserve carrier back into the active-duty fleet in a deployable status, there would remain no platform on which to train new aviators. Now, with current plans replacing the Lexington with the Forrestal, one or more For- restal-class carriers can still be assigned as reserve carrier(s).
Because a reserve carrier would normally sail, presumably, without a nuclear arsenal, a “semi-deployable” reserve carrier would not pose a first-strike threat to any potential adversary. Only in a mobilized status could a reserve carrier become any such threat; because mobilization would be more or less publicly observable, a reserve carrier could not become a nuclear threat secretly or overnight.
In addition, should some disaster devastate an active-duty carrier, preserving a reserve carrier to pinch-hit would be a welcome relief. Or if the need arose, because of hot spots flaring up (such as Iraq), for the deployment of an additional active-duty carrier, a reserve carrier could operate more or less locally, e.g., in Southern California, allowing an active-duty carrier to deploy to the locale of need. Another possibility would be to dedicate a reserve carrier to a primary antisubmarine warfare mission, similar to the former antisubmarine aircraft carrier (CVS) concept.
The availability of reserve carriers on each coast—one in the vicinity of the Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, California, and the other in Norfolk close to the Naval Surface Weapons Center, Dahlgren, Virginia— would enhance a variety of research and development efforts. Since carrier platforms are among the most complex structures for the installation and operation of weapons and communications systems, particularly in accommodating electromagnetic radiation, their availability for test purposes would both relieve the active-duty forces from a significant commitment and provide a challenging test environment for any new system development work.
Nevertheless, potential relief to currently deployable carriers is not, nor should it be, the primary focus of the Naval Reserve. While mutual support is today a valuable function performed by reservists, mobilization requirements remain paramount. A certain redundancy currently exists in the organization of multiple reserve aircraft carrier detachments. One reserve carrier could be the mobilization unit for a number of such detachments, and any surfeit of reservists assigned to the reserve carrier detachments could supplement the crews of active-duty carriers.
Depending upon the distance of reservists from their respective carriers (as well as upon other factors), monthly drills could remain as they are now or change to four days every other month. Annual training could be extended an extra week in order to prolong the valuable at-sea training.
If a reduction in the number of deployable carriers becomes mandated, there will also be a proportional reduction in active-duty air wings. In order to maintain a sufficient number of units to accommodate training of an incased number of reserve air wings, preserving carriers in the Naval Reserve Force would help a great deal. Otherwise, active-duty carriers will be overburdened with reserve aviation training beyond the current squadron augmentation units.
As to cost, a carrier is manpowerintensive. With the potential retirement °f Knox (FF-1052)-class frigates from the Naval Reserve Force, however, this intensity could be resolved by the reassignment of appropriate personnel to •he reserve carriers. Even if the number °f personnel necessary to maintain a carrier in a ready reserve state represented a large percentage of the personnel normally required for an active carrier (for example, in engineering), a manpower reduction could be elfccted.
If the carrier did not maintain a nuclear arsenal, fewer personnel would be required to man magazines. Similarly, defensive missile or gun batteries would not need to be manned, nor would a Marine Corps detachment. Further, hull and painting maintenance could be contracted out to civilian concerns. With each decrease in personnel in operating roles, there would be a decrease in personnel in supporting (administrative and supply) roles as well. Also, to the extent that the entire crew was rounded out by reservists, the cost of the reserves would be a fraction of active-duty cost when one considers the fraction of annual pay received by a reservist and the smaller retirement payment to reservists, both in dollars and in years.
In addition, local reserve steaming requires neither as extensive an escort as does a deployed battle group nor as much dependence upon an underway replenishment group. Savings would have to be calculated and included in any proposal.
If mobilized readiness is the raison d’etre of the reserve, we must also take into account the presumably better training and, hence, greater readiness of the selected reservists assigned to reserve aircraft carrier detachments. Since reserve duty on board a reserve carrier would be more appealing than static shore training, we must consider the talent the Navy would retain, as opposed to losing the huge investment in those people altogether. Retention is an issue for reservists just as it is for active forces.
If the administration or Congress demands budget reductions, a naval budget strategy based on an all-or- nothing approach toward the number of active carriers may produce the unwelcome result of the outright loss of at least one carrier.
Commander Cohen is executive officer of the Naval Reserve Legal Service Office in San Diego, lie practices law in San Diego.
Patrol Boats to the Reserves
By Captain Victor A. Meyer, U.S. Naval Reserve
“This need for small, fast versatile, strongly armed vessels does not wane.
Kt fact it may increase in these troubled times when operations requiring just these capabilities are the most Ukely of those which may confront us."
John F. Kennedy
The nation and the Navy are in the midst of dramatic changes resulting from world events. But while the bipolar superpower confrontation is being transformed to one based on multipolar relationships dominated by economic competition, greater disparity between the “have” and the “have-not” nations of the world is likely to occur. Areas such as Central and South America, southern Africa, and Southwest and Southeast Asia will continue to lag behind the more developed nations, and Will be more likely to resort to force to redress perceived grievances. Since these Third World nations have mostly small or irregular forces and coastal navies, the probability of low-intensity conflict will increase. U.S. involvement, however reluctant, may be necessary to protect U.S. citizens and interests. The question of how this will he done is critical to the success or failure of U.S. foreign policy.
One possibility rests with the Naval Reserve and its historic involvement in fast patrol boats such as the patrol torpedo (PT) boats of World War 11 and more recently patrol gunboats that support special warfare units. Reservists comprised 98% of the PT boat crews and today account for 66% of the special boat units.
The value of patrol boats has always been difficult to quantify because they have been used primarily to support amphibious and special warfare operations or in coastal interdiction roles. They generally went out in pairs at night to avoid air attack and to interdict barge and lighter traffic operating in inshore waters. Operating around island groups and in choke points, they enjoyed marked success against troop and supply barges and in intelligence probing and antisurface screening operations.1 More recently, in the Persian Gulf, combatant craft escorted oil tankers being threatened by armed speedboats and naval mines. Once again they proved to be a cost-effective alternative to frigates, which could not match the speed and maneuverability of the speedboats and were vulnerable to naval mines. Only when Army helicopters began operating from the flight deck of the Navy frigates against the Iranian speedboats was the frigate s utility restored.
This flexibility and adaptability (some would say expendability) of fast patrol boats in undertaking risky missions would seem to be exactly the attributes the U.S. Navy would seek as it tries to restore balance to the fleet in the area of low-intensity conflict. Patrol boats have not found favor in the U.S. Navy, however. In this attitude the U.S. Navy stands alone; other navies of the world have developed fast patrol boats. The only U.S. patrol boats currently operational are the six hydrofoils (PHMs) of the Pegasus (PHM-1) class, which were developed in the 1970s and only procured by the Navy under heavy pressure from Congress, and the 18 patrol boat (PB) Mk Ills, which were developed for the Vietnam War and delivered in the early 1970s. Although these craft have served useful roles, most notably the PBs in escorting tankers in the Persian Gulf and the PHMs in interdicting drug traffickers in the Caribbean, the PBs’ age and the exotic PHMs’ support costs limit their utility in the future.
The reasons for the lack of U.S. Navy interest are subtle, and range