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.
By Norman Friedman, author, Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
The AV-8B Harrier II Plus made its first flight on 22 September. An APG-65 radar replaces the angle- rate bombing system; the night-attack systems are retained. Italy, Spain, and the United States are participating in the program. First aircraft will go to the U.S. Marine Corps in July 1993.
The Naval Weapons Bazaar
The post-Cold War world naval arms market is far from dead. In September, France sold three modified Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, which in turn had recently ordered three “Tripartite” minehunters, to be built in France. China has purchased plans for the same type of submarine (to be built locally, entering service about 1995) and plans for the German Type 209 (Dr. Ulrich Gabler, who designed the German submarine, visited China for some months as a consultant).
Taiwan continues to seek additional submarines, and it is quite possible that the Dutch embargo will be lifted. The Dutch government s excuse for canceling the sale in the first place was that it would cost even more in trade with the mainland. That was soon transformed into a parliamentary agreement that the embargo would be dropped unless such trade materialized by June 1992. It has done so.
In September, the first of three Iranian Kilo-class submarines began her delivery voyage from the Baltic. At just about the same time
some middle-level Soviet ..............
officials from the Foreign Trade Ministry denied that any such deal had been made (they claimed that no agreement on finances had been reached). It is unlikely that they were lying; they just did not know. In the old Soviet Union, the Foreign Ministry and its cronies only rarely found out what the military was doing, and old habits die hard. In the new Russia, the left hand may not even be sure which is the right hand. Even outside Russia, arms transfers have often been denied, or at least concealed.
That makes it difficult to comment on two transfers reported previously in this column—the aircraft carrier Varyag to China and Backfire bombers to Iran. Both have been officially denied, but in each case one might suspect that denial was inevitable.
If the Varyag is to be completed for China, then she will not arrive in the Far East for at least three years, and she will face a much hotter reception if other states have several years’ advance warning. Taiwan, for example, can easily use the purchase as a justification for buying more submarines. Even the likely target, Vietnam, can try to buy countermeasures. A sudden appearance on the scene would seem far preferable.
In the case of the bombers, the head of the Tupolev design bureau (which designed the Backfire) told reporters at the Fam- borough Air Show that none had been sold abroad. A Western
skeptic, however, would conclude that the bomber was clearly for sale, else why would it have been brought to Famborough?
The Saudi decision to purchase French La Fayette-class frigates may have been reversed; the Saudis are reportedly interested in buying Canadian City-class frigates instead. The French design was oriented mainly toward antiair and antisurface warfare, and will be completed without sonars. The Canadian ships are intended mainly for antisubmarine warfare, however, and it seems likely that the Saudi shift was motivated by the reported sale of Kilo-class submarines to Iran.
At the next level down, the Russians are reported offering Grisha-class corvettes, at very low prices, as offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) to enforce the 200-mile zone. Indonesia has already bought the East German equivalent, the Parchim, and
may buy Grishas, also. Other potential Far Eastern purchasers presumably include Malaysia and Thailand. The Thais, for example, currently plan to buy four more Vosper-Thorny croft OPVs, but they have just had their budget cut by 25%. If they still want their helicopter carrier, they must save money elsewhere, and Grishas may be an extremely attractive way of doing so. The sale price is probably about $30 or $40 million for a new hull, but it may be far less for one in as-is condition.
The most important pending minor surface combatant sale is probably that to Kuwait, whose navy was essentially eliminated in the Gulf War. The Kuwaitis decided to buy replacement ships from France, aircraft and missiles from the United States, and armored vehicles from Britain. The French component may include four or more new-generation La Combattantes.
The Kuwaiti dispensation is not rigid. In mid-October it was announced that the Kuwait Army would be buying M1A2 Abrams tanks rather than British Challengers. The army had apparently long preferred the U.S. tank, but the political side had favored the British vehicle. U.S. political pressure, generated by the need to maintain jobs, seems to have been the key.
Kuwait has already ordered smaller craft for coastal patrol. Just such a craft, named Isis, is being used to demonstrate the MM-15 short-range antiship missile (a surface-fired AS-15). Perhaps the implication is that Kuwait will be the launch customer. In its case a sea-launched missile could have a special significance, since the main road from Iraq into Kuwait runs along the coast, and craft offshore might be able to block it. Several of these developments point to the likely shape of
the post-Cold War arms market. It is tempting to compare it to the post-1918 and post-1945 markets, but that would be misleading. In both cases the winners had vast numbers of surplus Warships and other military goods, the existence of which depressed postwar shipbuilding. Few warships were sold after 1918, because prospective buyers were caught in the postwar wash in commodities. Presumably in several cases their situation was exacerbated by heavy prewar spending on capital ships, some of which were never delivered. Chile had to sell Britain two battleships, one of which was converted into a carrier. After the war, Chile was offered, but could not accept, several British battlecruisers. A few destroyers and surplus cruisers were sold in what would now be called the Third World, but not many.
The victorious navies were already well equipped, so they hid not need much in the way of new production. The market slumped. The cost, both human and financial, of the war was so terrible that the Admiralty could not make the argument that some new construction was needed to preserve essential industry. The warship-building collapse caught Britain so hard that much of the armor-making industry was scrapped. Rearmament 15 years later was difficult, to the point that Britain received shipments of armor steel from Czechoslovakia (then under German rule) almost up until the outbreak of war in 1939.
The United States escaped the post-1918 shipbuilding disaster only because so much of our capability was in Navy yards, which by definition were largely immune to economic collapse. The largest of the private yards, Cramps, did go out of business, as did Bath Ironworks. Electric Boat barely maintained its ability to design submarines. The saving grace was that the Navy maintained its own resources for both design and construction, which formed the basis for much of the mobilization of the 1930s and World War II.
After 1945, surplus frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and even light carriers were widely exported. This time many of the recipients did not have to pay for them, because they were often a means of establishing relations with the navy of a newly independent country. Established navies within the two main blocs also benefited. The effect of the mass of modern surplus tonnage was drastically to limit new construction. Moreover, many of the recipient navies had not yet formed their own ideas as to national requirements, so they accepted what they were offered. Frigates, for example, which had been conceived mainly to fight German submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic, became the principal surface ships of small navies facing no submarine threat whatever.
The post-1945 military market was drastically different from that of the past, because a larger and larger fraction of the value represented by a ship (or, later, an airplane) was electronics and weapons. For about 15 years after the war, then, growth was largely a matter of developing new systems and then manufacturing them. Existing ships were rebuilt. The number of hulls built in any one year was never very great, and the yards were in difficulties even before the end of the Cold War.
Certainly the Cold War did entail the growth of Western naval (and other military) industries comparable to that which preceded World War I. Now that the Cold War is over, the industries are trying to stave off collapse by actively seeking Third World customers. That is nothing new in Europe, but it seems new to the United States, where many companies have sold largely or exclusively to the U.S. government, and where foreign sales have often been foreign military aid, extended for political purposes.
U.S. policy makers have assumed that U.S. weapons were uniquely effective, so denying them to a country or a region would almost inevitably impose limits. For example, it is U.S.
policy to discourage nuclear proliferation. For some years, Pakistan has nervously contemplated the Indian nuclear capability; for their part, the Indians have announced that they have no weapons (but they have demonstrated the capability by exploding a test device). The U.S. view of the Pakistani program is colored in part by fears that, should a Pakistani bomb appear, it would find its way into other Moslem hands in the Middle East. Congress decided that aid to Pakistan would have to cease whenever the President could no longer certify that Pakistan had no bomb. He has now declined to do so, and the U.S. military aid program has been virtually shut down (for example, Pakistan will not receive two P-3C Update II.5 aircraft).
The French submarine and minehunter deals show clearly that Pakistan has another option. France has not yet sold Pakistan systems that replace denied U.S. ones, but is clearly willing to do so, and may have a particularly strong incentive. In the 1960s and 1970s, France deliberately designed most systems for export to the Third World, knowing that its NATO allies could not or would not export competing equipment, for security reasons. By about 1980 it was clear that this view had severely reduced French national capability. France shifted to seek sales within NATO, often with considerable success. The French Flash low-frequency sonar, for example, has won a series of recent competitions (in Britain, Canada, and the United States). With the collapse of the Cold War, however, have come drastic reductions both in French national spending and in NATO military spending. High-end systems, using controlled technology, may no longer be very exportable. Even NATO buyers may have to rethink their priorities (for example, Congress practically ordered the U.S. Navy to rethink the Flash decision).
In this light, the Pakistani and Kuwaiti sales become quite important. The sale of frigates to Taiwan, which in effect violates the policy of the European Community, is another case in point. Without such sales, companies like Thomson-CSF must drastically cut their work forces, and France is already deep in recession. If in fact The Netherlands is selling submarines to Taiwan, that would be another example of economics overcoming political considerations (in this case, the supposed value of friendship with the mainland).
The United States is not immune from such considerations. President Bush approved the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia and of F-16s to Taiwan, justifying both decisions on domestic economic grounds. That is not altogether cynical. The United States probably cannot afford to buy sufficient military equipment to keep its specialist manufacturers healthy, yet it also cannot welcome their demise. If, like the post-1918 British armored steel industry, they collapse, then we will find it quite difficult to meet future emergencies. Unless we truly believe that the end of the Cold War is the end of history, that cannot be attractive. Foreign sales are probably the best way to preserve vital capabilities.
In any case, the other superpower, the former Soviet Union, is clearly willing to sell to any legitimate government with sufficient cash. Given the current cash shortages, the Russians and their former compatriots are likely to market aggressively. At air shows, their designers have offered to incorporate Western systems in their own robust airframes. For example, the Eurocopter consortium is reportedly negotiating with the Mil helicopter design bureau to match the new Mi-38 airframe with a Western ASW suite. Eurocopter apparently hopes that Turkey will be the launch customer.
Perhaps the most interesting opportunities, then, will be in modernizing or refitting the robust hulls and airframes the Russians and Chinese are now offering. In that case the real problem for Western governments, including ours, will be to keep the hull and airframe manufacturers alive.