The U.S. Navy is sailing in uncharted waters as the nation is drowning in debt. The Secretary of Defense and service chiefs have been called to testify before Congress to answer questions and explain the impact of additional defense cuts on top of the planned $450 billion that then-Secretary Gates proposed. As the federal budget continues to get squeezed, the defense budget will continue to come under increased scrutiny.
The Navy’s order of battle has been steadily declining. The Fleet is concerned with present readiness while the world is experiencing more reckless and bellicose adversaries. North Korea has torpedoed a South Korean ship. Iran is testing ballistic missiles and advanced antiship cruise missiles, sending warships into the Mediterranean and patrolling its submarines farther from home. China is claiming exclusivity to international waters within 200 nautical miles from its shores and recently tested new antiship ballistic missiles, large torpedoes, a modern aircraft carrier, and stealth aircraft.
Even some of our allies seem to be aligning themselves with Iran, Syria, and China—just as the Middle East is beginning to unravel. Our ability to ensure maritime access throughout the world is increasingly at risk while the size of the Navy is shrinking. We need affordable asymmetric solutions to fill that growing capacity gap.
A Notional Scenario
The year is 2020, and all indications suggest an unfriendly nation is considering an overtly hostile action that will require a U.S. response to prevent an armed conflict. The goal: Stop the initial aggressive move, thus avoiding a conflict.
At 0200, under a new moon, four large-diameter unmanned underwater vehicles (LDUUVs) are launched from surface ships more than 200 nautical miles seaward of their objectives. After a few days of slow, covert transit—periodically verifying and updating their positions with the U.S. commander—the submersibles reach their assigned choke points of interest. Two of the four, carrying advanced undersea weapon system (AUWS) sensors and communication nodes, enter the operations area. They distribute their payloads and then transit to a predetermined rendezvous point to be recovered. The other two command submersibles—these having AUWS weapons on board—remain nearby in an area selected for concealment.
As diplomatic talks continue, the AUWS sensor nodes monitor traffic and pass the information to the command LDUUVs via secure acoustic communication. Periodically this information is transmitted to the naval commander through a secure gateway communication node. When it becomes clear that additional leverage is required, a command submersible is moved into position, deploys a weapon, and detonates it to credibly demonstrate our ability to rapidly close the choke point. Later, when diplomatic talks break down, weapons from the command LDUUVs are deployed in sufficient numbers to close the choke point; the United States issues a warning to marine traffic. The enemy then sends two mine-laying ships into the choke point with the intent of creating access-denial minefields. The AUWS destroys both ships, creating enough chaos in the adversary’s government to disrupt its plans and bring an end to hostile actions. With the threat subsided, the deployed weapons and sensors are ordered to self-scuttle. The commander recalls the remaining LDUUVs and any weapons, and they are recovered.
The flexibility demonstrated in that scenario is one of the AUWS capability’s most important attributes. The threat level can be dialed up and down to meet evolving circumstances. We may damage just one ship or submarine, or the decision may be made to destroy everything going through the choke point. More important, commanders are afforded the option to remotely scuttle both deployed weapons and sensors when the barrier is no longer needed.
Historical Use of Asymmetric Arms
Such asymmetric warfare has been used effectively since the Revolutionary War. During both world wars and in Vietnam the United States successfully employed asymmetric weapons (sea mines) to sink enemy shipping and close enemy ports. During the Cold War the United States maintained a large inventory of mobile and deepwater mines to augment the capacity of our forces. Even with a Fleet of almost 600 ships we understood the powerful deterrent those silent weapons provided. As the Cold War ended, the U.S. inventory of intermediate and deepwater mines dissolved along with the Soviet threat.
Today we maintain the very capable shallow-water Quickstrike series of mines delivered by aircraft. While the Navy’s carrier-launched strike-fighters can perform that mission, their limited payload capacity makes the B-52H and other strategic bombers the aircraft of choice. In short, what traditionally has been a Navy mission now has become largely reliant on the Air Force. Of greater significance is the fact that the use of these mines is overt, provocative, and dangerous for the delivery aircraft as more nations continue to acquire sophisticated integrated antiair defenses.
Moreover, once planted such mines are indiscriminate, rendering mined waters unsafe for all shipping. Eventually each mine that hasn’t detonated must be removed—as required by international law—and a long and expensive cleanup operation is required. The inability to rapidly render the remaining asymmetric weapons safe to follow-on shipping has contributed to our leadership’s reluctance to use these cost-effective, force-multiplying options.
Our adversaries have, and continue to invest in, credible sea-mining capabilities. Of the 18 warships lost or seriously damaged since World War II, 14 struck sea mines. In 1987, the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) struck a $1,000 mine and required nearly $57 million in repairs. Then in Operation Desert Storm (1991) both the USS Princeton (CG-59) and Tripoli (LPH-10) struck Iraqi-laid mines, resulting in repair bills of $67 million. Those three attacks cost our adversaries approximately $12,000 while temporarily removing three frontline combatants from the Fleet and causing $124 million in damage. The most significant impact, however, was that after the two warships were damaged in the north Persian Gulf, the United States was forced to rethink its amphibious assault plans for Desert Storm.
The Navy needs to reconsider the strategic use of a credible asymmetric capability, such as undersea weapons, to bring about similar results on future adversaries: Procuring at minimal cost a capability causing several orders of magnitude more in damage. Taking that concept one step further, developing and fielding a credible AUWS capability would cause adversaries to divert resources to counter it—much like the Navy had to invest millions of dollars in mine-countermeasures programs to ensure access against a threat that cost far less.
What’s Possible Now?
Since the last time a new U.S. naval mine was designed, several technological breakthroughs have occurred allowing dramatically improved capabilities. Standoff delivery can now be accomplished with an LDUUV, and those same vehicles will provide remote command-and-control (C2) by way of secure underwater communication networks with a retrievable gateway node floating on the surface. The mobility and C2 capabilities of the armed LDUUV can provide wide-area coverage with fewer weapons via the distributed underwater sensors.
Recent advances in automated target-recognition technology and computer-processing power will afford a higher degree of target discrimination than the more traditional asymmetric weapons. The ability for commanders to issue an order to neutralize deployed weapons and sensors, verify destruction, and then rapidly redeploy those remaining on the LDUUVs significantly reduces the lengthy, high-cost clearance operations of the past. Further, by using modular components and an open-architecture design, those silent weapons can serve a dual purpose for both strike and mine warfare.
Integrating the new technologies with existing mine components can provide a near-term contingency system to clandestinely deter, deny, or destroy maritime threats (including enemy mine-layers) well forward of our Fleet. The flexibility of such a system will add a new dimension to undersea warfare that has not been seen since the advent of the wire-guided torpedo. In addition, an early capability will provide the Fleet with the opportunity to mature the system concept of employment and develop tactics, techniques and procedures to facilitate the acquisition of the future AUWS capability.
An Integrated Strategy
Clearly, we must find a way to meet the growing global challenges with the Navy that we have today. As stated in the new AirSea Battle concept: It is incumbent on us to reconsider advanced smart, mobile undersea weapons as they appear particularly attractive, given the difficulty and time-consuming nature of mine-countermeasures operations, and they do not require increasing the order of battle. The most cost-effective approach may be the development, production, and employment of an AUWS that is much more capable than current sea mines. That would provide new asymmetric capabilities that could be clandestinely delivered by the Navy’s LDUUV, which is planned to enter service by 2020. But until those submersibles are fielded, we need to leverage commercially available vehicles and implement a parallel rapid integration and demonstration effort to deliver a contingent Fleet capability within a few years.
That near-term capability can be achieved through the integration of proven underwater sensors and weapons for delivery and recovery by LDUUVs into and out of non-permissive areas. Selectable weapons control and autonomy can be provided via remote satellite communications with commanders. Programmable weapons will strike only designated targets, allowing other maritime traffic to transit safely; such weapons also can be used for direct clandestine attack of pierside ships and submarines. Delivery and control of the LDUUV can be provided by surface ships (near-term) and submarines (longer-term).
An example of proven technologies that could be integrated and demonstrated in one year’s time include a commercial submersible, Mk 67 submarine-launched mobile mine warheads, and a weapon-deployment module. That capability could be rapidly improved with the integration of prototype AUWS sensors and gateway nodes and an LDUUV node-deployment module to deliver an undersea network of sensors for improved target discrimination and weapon control. When very lightweight torpedoes become available, they could be inserted into the undersea network to provide a wide-area-coverage weapon, thus reducing the number of weapons needed per barrier. While the technical maturity of those various capabilities are all relatively high, an initial integration effort is required to bring them all together with a launch platform to test the tactics, techniques, and procedures.
A long-term research, deployment, test, and evaluation acquisition program could be executed in parallel, to add future capabilities that include intermediate and deepwater depths for employment of sensors and weapons, targeting against a larger number of threat types, and dual-purpose weapons—i.e., a direct-attack torpedo or standoff mine that attacks later. A larger range of remote-control commands also could be developed, increasing the utility and applications of this system. Should the Navy decide to invest in and pursue this type of asymmetric capability, an immediate strategic-deterrent impact may be achieved by forcing potential adversaries to begin thinking about how to detect, deter, defend, and mitigate the threat.
A Prototype in One Year
Over the past 30 years, the Navy has allowed intermediate and deepwater mining to atrophy, leaving just a traditional shallow-water capability that can be delivered only by air assets. During that time, technology has evolved to the point that a network of sensors and warheads can be stealthily delivered to most ports or choke points and controlled by U.S. commanders in near-real time. As the Fleet and our defense budget continue to shrink because of the national debt crisis, we must consider investing in such asymmetric solutions. The sensors can be employed early to provide battlespace shaping and surveillance capabilities, and the weapons can be used to persistently hold threatening ships and submarines at risk for months.
An initial prototype system can be integrated in one year using existing hardware as part of a rapid nondevelopment item program to provide a limited contingent capability. The prototype could be used in Fleet experiments for tactics development and training, and provide valuable lessons-learned to a full-capability system-development and acquisition program. For a fraction of any major defense-program budget, the Navy could have an asymmetric asset that forces adversaries to divert anti-access funds to mine-countermeasures capabilities while giving our Fleet and combatant commanders a low-cost force multiplier.
Mr. Everhart has worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center on mine and undersea warfare programs since 1981. He currently is a mine warfare technologist, focused on innovating cost-effective solutions to fleet demands using unmanned systems. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland and a master’s in computer science from Johns Hopkins University.