A scant five years ago, the U.S. Navy was proclaiming that antisubmarine warfare was its top priority. The Soviet Navy was fundamentally a submarine navy. Their brief and rather star-crossed digressions into aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered cruisers notwithstanding, it was the Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) that threatened the United States and the Soviet general-purpose submarine force that threatened the U.S. Navy’s ability to execute its missions successfully. This was reflected in our platforms and weapon system procurement, but perhaps more important, it found expression in our training and consciousness. Ask any surface warfare or submarine officer what his primary mission was, and he would respond, “Kill submarines.”
I wonder what answer you would get today. . . From the Sea” and similar treatises appear to have shifted thinking to power projection, and the proliferation of ballistic missiles has opened a new warfare area where the Navy has an important contribution to make. Support to peacekeeping, information dominance of the battlefield, joint warfare, and a host of similar constructs all compete for our attention. All are perfectly valid missions, and, in many cases, it can be argued that they are no more than a repackaging or updating of long-standing Navy missions.
But in all of this, what has happened to antisubmarine warfare (ASW)? Has the Russian (nee Soviet) submarine threat really gone away? Has the threat really become diesel submarines operated in brown water by inexperienced Third World navies? Or is reality a combination of the two, suggesting we must pay more attention to ASW rather than less?
The Russian Navy continues to be what it has been for most of this century—a submarine navy. Today this is underscored by the scrapping of new construction aircraft carriers and the laying-up of other carriers and capital ships, while submarine construction continues apace. Two improved Akula nuclear-powered attack submarines, one Oscar II nuclear- powered cruise-missile submarine, two Kilo diesel-powered attack submarines, and a Poltus deep-diving special-purpose submarine launched in 1994, and several more diesel and nuclear submarines were planned for 1995. In addition to the quiet Improved Akula class, a new, very quiet class of SSN—the Severodvinsk—is under construction and will join the force in 2000.
The Russian general-purpose submarine force of 2000 will be a large, thoroughly modernized force of quiet submarines (see figure 1), and if current patterns continue, it will be a well- trained, proficient force as well.1 If anyone doubts its priority in Russian strategic thought, let him ponder the words of no less a personage than Russian Minister of Defense General Pavel Grachev, himself an Army officer: “A nuclear submarine fleet is the FUTURE of the armed forces. The number of tanks and guns will be reduced, as well as the infantry, but a modem navy is a totally different thing.”
The investment in new construction is being matched by the operations budget priority being attached to the Russian submarine force. While surface ships rust alongside piers, pilots compete for ever-decreasing available flight hours, and some ground force units are reduced to foraging for food, the submarine force continues to operate and maintain proficiency. This is illustrated by the recent appearance off our east coast ballistic-missile submarine base of a very quiet Akula SSN and the trailing of a deploying carrier battle group by an Oscar SSGN.
By 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine order of battle will be reduced by one- third, but it still will be the world’s largest, operating quiet, modern submarines, the majority of which will be third-generation boats (Typhoons, Akulas, and Oscars). The Russian submarine threat has by no means gone away.2
Nor has it turned into a brown-water Third World diesel threat. There are a growing number of diesel submarines in the hands of Third World nations, some of which we would just as soon not have submarines, but the number and operational capabilities of these boats will be limited for some time to come. Clearly we must be prepared to deal with this threat, but we should keep it in perspective. The submarine forces that pose the most significant threat to our ability to execute our missions remain the Russian and Chinese, and the areas where we could expect to be challenged by these submarines are predominantly blue water, not brown. And their capabilities are improving at the same time that our emphasis on ASW has declined.
I strongly support the requirement for the Seawolf (SSN-21) class and a new generation SSN, but the Navy needs to think beyond this one dimension and reinvigorate the entire spectrum of ASW capabilities—surface, submarine, and air; sensor, platform, and weapon systems; and above all, priority, consciousness, and mindshare.
1 Norman Polmar, “The Quest for the Quiet Submarine,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1995, p. 119.
2 Office of Naval Intelligence unclassified pamphlet, “Worldwide Submarine Proliferation in the Coming Decade.”
Rear Admiral Thomas A. Brooks, U.S. Navy (Retired), was a career naval intelligence officer who served a number of tours in ASW-related billets. He retired in 1991 as the 54th Director of Naval Intelligence.