naval warfare 3rd WW, battle for the Arctic (Cold war period)

[Perun]

ARCTIC SUBMARINE WARFARE

Why Arctic warfare must be conducted by nuclear submarines becomes evident as one examines the unique nature of the Arctic Ocean environment and the state of today’s technology for operating in that Ocean area. Significantly, only submarines can control the Arctic Ocean and only submarines can contest this control. Moreover, the U.S. Navy has no other warfare area so distinctly different from all other sea areas of the world. In fact, jungle warfare comes the closest to being like Arctic warfare — certainly much closer than Indian Ocean warfare or Mediterranean Sea warfare.

There are subtle similarities between the Arctic Ocean and the jungle. Both have markedly different characteristics which are little understood by the average military man. In fact, one has to have been in these environments to appreciate their uniqueness, and both contain many unknowns. They have a similar remoteness and are not fully explored, while providing harsh impacts on military forces operating within their environments.

So, with an image of the arctic as a jungle of the north, where cold water replaces the warmth and humidity of the jungle, where ice and snow replace the rocks, thickets and lush green trees, and where the unexpected is to be expected -let’s focus on why Arctic submarine warfare needs to be better understood.

The very things which make the Arctic Ocean different are the things which make it difficult to operate there. Specifically, they are the extreme cold, the ice cover and the remoteness. That the submarine navy has been in the Arctic for thirty years doesn’t promise that much is known about operating there. The Arctic Ocean is still essentially an unknown area for there remain significant gaps in our knowledge and understanding with respect to ice thickness, ice distribution, sea water density, ocean currents, ocean eddies and fronts, Arctic weather, and most importantly acoustic propagation under sea ice. When these shortcomings are combined with the fact that up until recently the U.S. Navy’s high latitude operations in the vicinity of sea ice were limited to an annual single-ship Arctic deployment — usually by a submarine – one can better recognize that our 30 year experience provides only a simple base with few refinements. The Arctic Ocean is not the same as the open ocean. Because of its unique 

character, solutions to operational problems in the Arctic are different than for open ocean warfare. To operate effectively in the Arctic, whether it is a submarine or an ASW aircraft, the platform must have better all-around attributes than its counterpart designed for more temperate climates. For one, it must be more robust. And it must have undergone far more research and development to meet such standards. In today’s warfare environments and with equipments designed for the open ocean, performing well in the Arctic — on the ice, under the ice, or in the airspace overhead, is less efficient than in the open ocean.

To properly define warfare in the Arctic, there is a need to examine what the Arctic environment sets as limits on the various warfighting elements of the Navy.

First, is it possible to penetrate the Arctic surface icebarrier, rapidly and repeatedly to allow use of operational systems? The actual answer to that question is “no.” The only assured way of successfully delivering a sensor system or weapon from one side of the ice barrier to the other is through an opening in the ice cover — such as an open lead or polynya. Actual penetration of the ice is a different matter

— it becomes a chance event or is impossible. There is an inability to measure the thickness of ice with sufficient accuracy, remotely and in real time, by any existing operational system. Current ice thickness measurement accuracies vary plus or minus 50%. Imagine ice estimated to be six feet thick

— the nominal maximum thickness of first year ice — which might be as much as nine feet in thickness or only three feet thick. H the thickness is on the high side, a sensor which must get through the ice may not be usable. To counter the potential error in measurement, ice penetration devices are thus required in great numbers — which do not exist. Thus, if Arctic ASW sensors must penetrate the ice to be effective with today’s technology, there is a high probability of failure in such an ASW system when employing such sensors. A platform cannot properly execute a warfare task in the Arctic if it doesn’t have an assured chance of breaching the ice barrier anytime it desires. Why the nuclear submarine is, at present, the only effective means for controlling the underseas of the Arctic can be shown by examining surface and air ASW systems in the Arctic environment. Importantly, it must be recognized that the Arctic Ocean is and will be used by strategic submarines for their patrols, as well as for transfers of ships, including submarines, through and across this Ocean.

Surface Ships
Surface warships cannot operate in the near vicinity of the ice edge or in the Marginal Ice Zone because no U.S. Navy surface warships are ice hardened. In times of darkness or in daylight with a surface cover of fog, radar or visual detection of floating sea ice is not assured at safe ranges because of the low profile which such ice presents. Thus, the threat to the seaworthiness of surface ships in this ice zone is great. Consider further that the floating sea ice can move as rapidly as two knots when set in motion by both wind and current, and worse, that as little as four knots of wind is sufficient to put pack ice and free floating ice into motion. Thus, during a dark winter night — or eighteen hours of poor visibility — the ice edge with its threat to a surface ship, can move 36 nautical miles, the width of one convergence zone. Showing proper respect for this hazard reduces a surface ship’s ASW effectiveness significantly as the vessel approaches the last reported position of the ice edge by closer than 50 miles. In fact, when one considers the lack of real time information about the ice edge, and the lack of knowledge of local winds and currents in the marginal ice zone, it is prudent for surface ships to stay at least 100 nm from the ice edge. Getting any closer merely courts disaster.

At the same time, because of the difficulty of distinguishing submarines from large ice rubble, surface warship capability is badly degraded.

Use of an air cushion vehicle (ACV) over the ice, is at first glance attractive. (With a V -22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft aboard, the combined ASW system might seem even more attractive.) The use of ACVs alone seems to fit an ASW requirement for a medium-range, medium speed ASW platform and the ACV’s previous performance over an ice covering would contribute to that optimism. However, one must realize that the platform has never operated over sea ice and over nothing more than benign shore-fast ice — and that its maneuverability when on cushion is not readily compatible with abrupt surface irregularities; and that a long range highresolution navigation radar with pinpoint accuracy is a necessary first step in this capability. But, one can recognize that the existence of such a system is not near at hand. Perhaps, if the performance of the ACV over sea ice can be improved, its best role would be as a platform to insert ocean surveiJiance systems or act as an Arctic SURTASS-Iike platform where the response time inherent to ASW weapons delivery would be l,ess an issue. Additionally, the ASW system of an ACV carrying an Osprey would encounter the same limitations described below under “Aircraft.”

Aircraft
What about aviation in the Arctic? As with surface ships, air ASW warfare is severely hampered by the environment. An ice-penetrating sonobuoy is still not operational. However, because 60% — 3.3 million square miles — of the Arctic is under permanent sea ice that is up to 20 feet thick, the effectiveness of sonobuoys which are ice-penetrating would still be low because of the time required to penetrate the ice cover.

It is recognized that within the areas of permanent sea ice there exist small open water areas or thin ice leads and polynyas — even in mid winter. Deploying any sensor through thin ice or open water, however, requires an accuracy much akin to that achieved by a World War II bombardier. Otherwise, an ASW aircraft needs an accurate remote sensing system to measure and map ice thickness over large areas of permanent ice. Even then, the sensor mortality rate would be high — producing a great reduction in ASW effectiveness. Also, with daylight being essential to use of this technique, there’s so little daylight in the Arctic as to make this method undependable. Aircraft endurance also becomes a problem since there are few high latitude airfields from which ASW aircraft sorties can be conducted. If the aircraft must descend to a low altitude to deploy sensors with the accuracy needed, fuel consumption increases significantly and on-station time becomes critical. Conversely, if a sonobuoy barrier could actually be deployed at normal altitude, the loiter time onstation, waiting for ice-penetration of the sonobuoys, would further reduce profitable on-station time. Currently, thermal technology techniques provide ice penetration at a rate of one foot every five minutes. Thus, each sonobuoy would require upwards of 45 minutes to penetrate Arctic sea ice of nominal thickness — of about 8 feet. Can an aircraft wait that long on station? Of even greater concern is how an ASW aircraft can determine where it should deploy a sonobuoy pattern. The traditional cueing methodology used in the open ocean is not usable in the Arctic. Two things degrade the speed of delivery of Arctic Ocean surveillance information which ASW forces might expect. First, there are fewer available detections because of the ice cover and second there must be a reliance on polar orbiting satellites. Time late over ASW contacts will thus be greater in the Arctic as will the ensuing radius of uncertainty of any contact. The problem is great.

Significantly, the foregoing ASW capability assumes that ASW aircraft can freely occupy the sky over the high Arctic regions without drawing a reaction from the enemy. But the Soviets, for example, would have as easy a job of interdicting ASW aircraft as the U.S. would have of protecting them. Thus, in the face of an air threat based on a land mass that circles over one-third of the periphery of the Arctic Ocean, air ASW becomes potentially too hazardous.

Arctic Capable Weapons
The foregoing discussion has stressed the challenges of sensors breaching the ice barrier in support of a warfare task. Proper rapid delivery and performance of weapons, particularly for ASW, is another matter. At present, the torpedo launched from a submarine is the only weapon that can be used under the ice satisfactorily. No ice penetrating weapons exist today.

The effectiveness of air-to-underwater and surface-tounderwater weapons is generally untested. Extensive R&D is needed to achieve: (1) target discrimination by the weapon; (2) sufficient accuracy of platform sensors for localization for weapon use; (3) timeliness of offboard information; and ( 4) effective high latitude delivery tactics.

An additional challenge for ASW warfare is the adapting of deep ocean surveillance systems to the Arctic Ocean environment, recognizing that the accepted techniques of ocean surveillance using the deep sound channel are not going to be as effective under the ice as in the open oceans — even if it were economicaJiy and operationally feasible to install such systems today.

Other Sensors
Unfortunately, geosynchronous satellites have a coverage that only extends north to approximately 75° north latitude -less than 600 miles above the Arctic circle, and are not usable over any area within 900 nautical miles of the North Pole. Truly effective high latitude satellites must be in polar orbit. In a polar orbit, a satellite would have to be dedicated to Arctic military use. However, most satellites in a polar orbit are for environmental purposes such as ice distribution. Further, their capability lies in being able to map ice anomalies, but without sufficient resolution and timeliness for warfare purposes.

The Nuclear Submarine
Only nuclear submarines can operate effectively in the Arctic Ocean — and only nuclear submarines configured for the under-ice environment can operate safely there. The Arctic Ocean submarine must have ice-hardened sails, strengthened control surfaces and sonars which can: upward scan to recognize the irregularities of the under-surface of the ice cap; forward-look to spot deep ice keels (some of which project downward in excess of 50 feet); permit transit through narrow passages, (only Fram Strait to the east of Greenland provides a deep entrance to the Arctic Ocean). Additionally, nuclear submarines should have mine-locating devices because of the high probability of encountering submarine-laid mines in restricted and shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Because of transit difficulties in moving to station in the Arctic Ocean, submarines operating there should necessarily be forward based to increase on-station time.

Significantly, submarine operations are not affected by the light of daylight or the darkness of night. Moreover, the underseas of the mid-Arctic Ocean is basically benign with low ambient noise except at the ice-cap edges. But it is afflicted with unpredictable densities due to variations in salinity, and currents which make vertical-surfacing through open leads or polynyas like trying to land against a moving pier.

With the very cold ice-cap making the temperature of the upper stratum of the ocean colder than the lower stratum, a positive sound velocity profile bends sound rays towards the surface, creating a near-surface sound duct which promises long sound-propagation ranges. But sound transmissions from submarines at the same time are scattered by the rough underside of the ice, reducing detection ranges, and may not provide the correct bearing of return echoes from an enemy submarine.

Within this environment, strategic submarines can use the undersurface of the ice cap to remain hidden from prowling enemy SSNs and can use open areas of the Arctic seas, or areas covered by thin ice, for discharge of their weapons. Also, submarines and surface ships in transit across the Arctic Ocean, while avoiding submarine-laid minefields, can, for much of their passage, defensively use the shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Thus, it is only attack submarines — SSNs — which can control areas of the Arctic Ocean and only enemy SSNs which can contest that control.

Summary
Because of all the impediments to Arctic ASW execution, and because of system performance anomalies which must be overcome in the Arctic, only the submarine at the present time can successfully perform in the Arctic warfare role. Furthermore, the majority of near-term warfare improvements currently in development will support a better performance by the submarine in Arctic ASW.

In short, the submarine is the only platform capable of conducting warfare in the Arctic with any reliability. It is the only platform that can get there, stay there, respond to any kind of cueing, and deliver a weapon to kill.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1989/arctic-submarine-warfare-2

https://s36124.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/1989/Fall/1989-Oct-OCRw.pdf

[Perun]

SEAWOLF AND THE MARITIME STRATEGY

The crafting of a strategy for defense of the sea in the 1980s and the near-concurrent construction of a new class of nuclear-powered submarine present a study in policy, strategy, technology, tactics, and acquisition.

Logic suggests that policy directs strategy, which in turn leads to tactics to execute that strategy. These tactical considerations then become the foundation for development of supporting technologies. The technologies developed lead to acquisition of the equipment necessary to support the tactics. This logic, adopted from business and economic models, is the basis of the Planning Programming and Budgeting Systems.

Experience suggests that the real paradigm works differently. Organizational knowledge built on an understanding of environment and mission enlarged by study and experience forms the foundation of tactics. From this basis, an understanding of national interests, a sense of the history of conflict, a grasp of the capabilities of potential enemies, and an appreciation of technology all drive tactical opportunities. These in turn establish the designs for development of technologies and future acquisitions. Equipment developed makes possible improved, advanced, or different tactical possibilities. These new tactics in turn allow changes to strategy. Such changes may or may not then be reflected in policy.

The 1981-86 Maritime Strategy and the coincident design and construction of the USS SEAWOLF (SSN-21) offers an unusual opportunity to address the question of how these aspects interact. Technical developments directly reflected ongoing operations and thereby influenced both submarine acquisition and the strategy for their use. The influence of operations on strategy can be seen in retrospect. Conversely, practical influence of national policy on the design, acquisition, and operation of submarines is not evident.

From the beginning of the Cold War, U.S. military strategy focused on the Central Front in Europe. In the event of war, the Navy was to protect the sea lanes linking the United States and Europe. Based on the experience of two wars in the Atlantic, leaders assumed a horde of Soviet submarines would interdict the sea lines of communication between the two continents. This view of the probable Soviet campaign in the event of war mirrored the campaign most American naval officers would run. This antisubmarine warfare (ASW) mission dominated Fleet employment. In the event of war, the Pacific Fleet would swing to the Atlantic to become part of this effort.

Through the 1960s American defense leadership focused on the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms balance between the Soviet Union and the United States. Little time or energy was devoted to new strategic initiatives or technological developments outside these immediate issues. During the tenure of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,

. . . gaming was rejected as an analytical tool be-cause its results were not sufficiently precise or repeatable or, for that matter, grounded in sufficient understanding of enemy behavior. . . . This approach examined the way alternative technologies could handle the Soviet fleet on the unstated assumptions that the overall strategy would re-main fixed.

This policy froze both strategy and examination of major technical developments.

The Soviet Navy first deployed submarines equipped with ballistic missiles in 1958. The range of the missiles required the submarines to operate in the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans in order to threaten targets in the United States. The conventionally powered Golf and Hotel classes were replaced by nuclear-powered Yankee-class submarines operating in patrol areas in the mid-Atlantic and Eastern Pacific in the 1970s. These missions were carefully monitored by the U.S. Navy and provided training for its ASW forces so that by 1970 American naval commanders had confidence in their ability to track these ships. With the commissioning of the first Delta-class ballistic-missile submarine armed with a longer-range missile in 1972, the Soviets no longer had to transit into the North Atlantic to threaten the United States.

In 1971 Commander Robert Herrick’s study of Soviet strategy and behavior suggested that the Soviets would use their Navy in a defensive mode. This proposition gained few adherents in the West: official positions continued to predict Soviet naval offensive operations in all theaters.

Though the national military strategy remained basically unchanged in the Nixon administration, in the spring of 1968 efforts to describe a new attack-submarine class began, instigated by Admirals Hyman Rickover and Levering Smith and directed by Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Bernard Clarey. A panel of six submarine captains, buttressed by designers from the Electric Boat Company, convened to create the specifications for the new class. Led by then-Captain (later Vice Admiral) Joe Williams, the group produced characteristics that eventually became the Los Angeles-class submarine. This was to include improved quieting, higher speed, and upgraded electronics. Efforts to quantify the required speed were extensive but unsuccessful. Nevertheless, in the minds of responsible parties in the Navy, quieting and high speed remained an absolute necessity for this ship. “Never again should we field a submarine slower than many of the Soviets.”

Endorsement of the need and qualities for a new design was not universal. Some impetus for the new design had come from Rickover’s earlier endeavors to build a submarine with 60,000 shaft horsepower. In this he had been opposed by then-Rear Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Director of the Systems Analysis Branch of the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (OP 96). The conflict between them was direct, severe, and evidently acrimonious. In a truce engineered by Clarey, Rickover backed off his advocacy, and Zumwalt abandoned his objections to the new ship. The effort not only produced the new design but defined major research and development efforts that would affect the follow-on class, which became the SEAWOLF. Among these were new high-tensile hull steel, high-power reactors, titanium fabrication for equipment foundations, high-power low-voltage electrical generators, broadband sonar detection, narrowband passive ranging, and retractable towed arrays.

The new submarine was to have high speeds to rapidly close the forward area of operations, exploit datums developed by wide-area sensors, have at least a 5-knot speed advantage for sprint and drift tracking, and provide direct ASW support to surface forces.5These design criteria did not reflect national policy or overall military strategy: They were characteristics derived from best practices by experienced officers and operations in the field. In part they were reacting to the capabilities of new Soviet Victor-class submarines.

Through the Ford and Carter administrations, Secretaries of Defense Melvin Laird, James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Harold Brown concentrated on ending the Vietnam conflict and then harvesting the dividend that came from the reduction of forces following evacuation from Southeast Asia. Focus remained on the Central European front. Navy leaders’ energies concentrated on correcting the poor material conditions resulting from high operational tempos and long deferred maintenance during the Vietnam War. Late in Admiral James Holloway’s tenure as CNO, senior officers began to examine the Navy’s roles in case of war with the Soviet Union—again without apparent direction from higher authority or national policy.

In August 1976 Admiral Thomas Hayward took over as Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet and recognized the existing strategy accepted that NATO would probably not be able to withstand a Soviet attack in Europe without having to resort to tactical nuclear weapons. The planned Fleet swing from the Pacific would arrive Pacific would arrive too late to affect this calculus while at the same time uncovering the Asia-Pacific theater. Abandonment of the Pacific by the major American force would place Japan and South Korea under heavy pressures to remain neutral and diminish any Chinese threat, thus freeing the Soviet Far East land and air forces to reinforce a Soviet offensive in the West. Supporting this logic, intelligence examination of the trans-Siberian railroad found that the Soviets had double-tracked the entire line and established stockpiles for all-weather operations and emergency repairs as preparation for shifting their forces from the Far East to Europe in the event of war.

Hayward directed his planning officer, Captain James M. Patton, to redraw the Fleet’s war plans, shifting from a defensive posture to prompt offensive action against the Soviet Navy afloat and the Soviet infrastructure ashore. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who worried that the threat of failure of NATO’s conventional defense would lead inevitably to nuclear warfare, criticized commanders for their lack of a posture that would forestall the resort to tactical nuclear weapons. Completing his tour of commands in the Pacific, Nunn was briefed on the first iteration of Hayward’s alternative to the swing strategy. Nunn’s endorsement was key to recognition of this strategy.

Within four weeks Hayward was visited separately by Secretary of the Navy Claytor and Secretary of Defense Brown. Briefings of the major staffs in Hawaii, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski followed. Within a year all were working on new war plan for the Asia-Pacific Theater, incorporating all U.S. forces there in offensive action against Soviet bases in the Far East. Part of the plan was to demonstrate to Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing that the United States was committed to remaining in the theater, denying the Soviets local hegemony.

Fundamental to these plans were equipment and tactical developments that had been taking place since the beginning of the Nixon administration. Broad ocean ASW technologies under development since the 1950s entered service. The Sound Surveillance System was operational over most of the Atlantic and much of the Northern Pacific. Air-dropped sonobouys and the supporting computers had been installed in maritime patrol aircraft. In March 1972 Towed Array Sonars deployed for the first time in the Pacific Fleet. These devices feeding computers gave the American ASW forces a marked acoustic advantage over their Soviet counterparts. Tactical development, previously centered on platforms, began to explore coordinated antisubmarine operations involving submarines and aircraft. In 1976 coordinated ASW exercises were pioneered in the major Rim of the Pacific exercise.

As Hayward’s plan was refined and the Fleet moved from paper analysis through detailed war games, major operations, including coordinated air, surface, and submarine forces, indicated that in the event of conflict the Navy could prevail against the Soviet Navy. Demonstrated advantages over Soviet submarines gave confidence that U.S. submarines working independently or in associated support would prove critical for the carrier battle groups as well as for interdicting Soviet naval surface forces.

While the Los Angeles-class submarines deploying in the late 1970s were markedly superior in performance to the Sturgeons that were the backbone of the Submarine Force, interest in improvements continued. Group Tango, a group of senior submarine officers assembled by Deputy CNO for Submarine Warfare Vice Admiral N. R. Thunman, continued reviewing the research and development related to new submarines. Principles considered were quieting, speed, all-digital sensor/combat system, large weapon loads, and special features for Arctic operations. Chief among the goals was to restore the generous acoustic advantage previously held and to do so at a higher speed. Attempts to quantify the speed requirement, as before, came to naught though the desirability of a higher speed was clear: e.g., rapid repositioning, high search rates, and counterattack evasion. “The purpose of this ship,” said Admiral Kinnaird McKee, then-Director of Naval Warfare on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, “is to place in the mind of a potential adversary an overwhelming uncertainty as to the eventual success of his strategic plan.”

In July 1978, Admiral Hayward became CNO, and the Navy’s shift to offensive posture became general. This stance was characterized in classified discussions as “early, global, forward, offensive, joint, and allied.” The scenario discussed was a protracted, mostly conventional war, centered in Europe but global in nature. The plan aimed not only to gain sea control throughout the world ocean, but also to project naval power all around the Soviet periphery. Proponents saw the latter as altering the Soviet correlation of forces, limiting concentrations of tactical air forces, and preventing exclusive focus on the Central Region. While the original ideas included strikes from the sea on the Soviet homeland, anti-ballistic-missile submarine operations were not contemplated.

A number of movements and activities came together after 1980 that created the optimum conditions for expanding and publicizing this strategy. Chief among these was the new Reagan administration’s focus on expanding American defense posture. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman led the call for a larger Navy. The proponents of the Maritime Strategy were “pushing on an open door.”

At-sea experience with new and improving weapon systems and advanced exercises laid the groundwork for a feeling of confidence within the officer corps. The Global War Game at the Naval War College initiated in 1978 marked a wider examination of the purpose and execution of an armed conflict between the West and the Soviet Union. Hayward encouraged this intellectual ferment in the OPNAV Staff, at the War College, and especially with the establishment of the Strategic Studies Group (SSG) at the War College in 1982.

This organization, six senior captains and two colonels under the direction of former Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Murray first addressed the ASW campaign. Torpedo logistics was a major issue in their analysis. While there were enough torpedoes to rearm 30 percent of the submarines, getting this ammunition to the forward areas would be tedious and risky. Increasing the submarine magazines addressed both of these operational difficulties.11 In addition, attacks on the Soviet Surface Action Groups would roll back their outermost air defenses, permit operation of maritime-patrol aircraft, open paths for bombers, complement efforts to control the air over northern Norway, and allow surface forces to attack the Soviet northern flank. These concepts broadened the plans to emphasize the joint and coalition nature of this maritime focus.

Finally came the recognition that the Soviets planned to use their navy to provide what they called combat stability to their ballistic-missile submarines. Their new longer-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles enabled their SSBNs to operate near the Soviet homeland, where they would be easier to protect. While recognition of this essentially defensive Soviet naval strategy began with a number of analysts and intelligence professionals during the 1970s, the idea was internalized by Navy leadership as a result of a unique intelligence source that provided exceptional insights into the thinking of the Soviet naval leadership and by extension into the thinking of their overall military leadership. In 1981, guided by intelligence specialist Richard Haver’s interpretation of the information from this source, VCNO Admiral William Small chaired a group of senior officers to examine how best to exploit this information. This Advanced Technology Panel (ATP) examined the implications for the Navy and its desired aggressive strategy.

Haver preached the gospel of Soviet bastions. Most senior officers had rejected this theory because such a defensive mentality was contrary to their preferred course of action, but Haver was remarkably effective. Threatening both Soviet SSBNs and the forces protecting them quickly became the internal Navy preference and ultimately reflected in those operational plans the Navy controlled. In addition to the desire to take the fight to the enemy, this strategy would prevent the Soviets from shifting their naval effort to interdicting the sea lines of communication by keeping their general-purpose forces tied down in a protective role. The strategy was tested in a series of war games in 1982 and 1983. At this stage nuclear weapons were largely ignored. The Navy leadership was reluctant to say anything explicit about actually attacking Soviet SSBNs, fearing — correctly — that there would be a backlash from outside the Navy.

The Navy’s expert on nuclear warfare in 1982, Captain Linton Brooks, worried about the escalatory aspects of the strategy. Brooks embraced the classic nuclear-stability view that if both superpowers had survivable second-strike forces, nuclear war was less likely. The corollary was that attacks on strategic forces prior to nuclear use invited escalation.14 The ultimate answer to this quandary was a practical calculation. Expecting U.S. submarines inside the Soviet bastions to be able to selectively avoid attacking SSBNs was unreasonable. Accepting the assault on Soviet bastions meant accepting assault on all the targets, surface and submarine, within them.

Attacking SSBNs was the most prominent but not the only nuclear issue. Aggressive use of carriers near the Soviet homeland raised questions about inviting nuclear counter-attack. Nuclear war at sea would favor Soviet interests. Navies were vastly more important to the West than were the Soviets’ to them. Initial drafts of the strategy did not consider this risk. Ultimately, the ATP concluded that the Soviet General Staff had a land-campaign focus and that there was little or no chance that the Soviet Navy would be allowed to cross the nuclear threshold. In an instance of national policy reflecting this concern, the Secretary of Defense’s annual posture statements included language that the United States would not permit a nuclear war to be confined to the sea.

Over time, people outside the Navy became aware of the existence of this strategy. In 1982 and 1983 the strategy was briefed extensively within the Navy and to Congress without explicitly discussing attacking SSBNs. The implications were obvious, however, and a backlash began outside government. While never detailed as a resource issue, the words were used to open the Navy budget presentations and thereby linked to Lehman’s calls for a 600-ship Fleet. Objections followed on resource grounds, opponents preferring to spend on ground and air forces in Europe. While the presentations describing the strategy did not discuss attacking SSBNs, such an implication became obvious and concerns about such attacks on Soviet strategic arms generated a backlash outside the government from those who raised the fears of nuclear escalation or questioned the relevance of the Navy’s plans in deterring the Soviet Union.”

Professor John Mearsheimer attacked the strategy at a Navy War College conference in 1985. Brooks was present but bothered by the lack of unclassified material to defend the strategy. At his suggestion, the new CNO, Admiral James Watkins, agreed to put his name on a defense of the strategy written by Captain Robby Harris with some input from Brooks and subsequently published in Proceedings. Brooks also wrote a defense in the scholarly journal International Security in late 1986. By that point the anti-SSBN aspects of the strategy were accepted within the Navy and being defended publicly.

This document was directed at two audiences: internally as a statement of direction and externally at the leadership of the Soviet Union to indicate that in the event of war, the maritime related and geographically located bases and centers would be subject to direct assault by the U.S. Navy, e.g., attacking the Soviet Union’s submarine-based ballistic-missile forces. Later the Soviets admitted they had long expected us to attack their SSBNs.

The strategy never gained traction outside the Navy, and the nuclear aspects began to lose influence within the Navy following the departure of Watkins. Although no one working on the strategy foresaw it, by 1989 the Cold War had effectively ended. In 1991 the Soviet Union itself had vanished, and the remnants of the Maritime Strategy disappeared with it. But it would be wrong to say the strategy had no long-term effect. At the end of his International Security article Brooks wrote that the strategy’s “long-term legacy, perhaps the most important of all, is the forging of a new professional consensus on . . . the importance of systematic thought and study.”

The contract for the SEAWOLF was awarded in January 1989, and her keel was laid on 25 October. Launched on 24 June 1995, she is the fastest submarine in the world with noise levels substantially below that of her predecessors, even at high speed. The ship’s size allowed larger hydrophone arrays that vastly increased the search area and search rate. Her magazine capacity was more than twice her predecessors’, fulfilling Watkins’ direction that the SEAWOLF have a large weapon load because “if the war came there would be no going back to New London for reloads.”17 She is also capable of operations under ice. Only three ships of the class were authorized and built, but many of the advances were incorporated in the following class, the Virginia.

The acquisition of ships, ship systems, and aircraft is a succinct statement of the country’s strategic interests as seen by the U.S. Navy. Such is an unambiguous statement of the Navy’s beliefs, aims, and ambitions. The supporting research-and-development programs are an even longer-term expression of strategic interests. As shown in the Seawolf conceptualization, the service’s long-term strategic interests may be only peripherally related to a particular administration’s stated national policy, and indeed national policy may come to follow the service’s lead.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/2014/seawolf-and-the-maritime-strategy

[Stuart Galbraith]

Apologies if this is inappropriate, but its the vest visualisation of a carrier group under attack ive seen.

 

[Perun]

NP, as long as is about topic. 

Interesting scenario but simplified

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yeah, you really have to read Red Storm Rising to understand the context. Its a reinforcement of Iceland with a Marine Regiment iirc.

[Perun]

SUBMARINE  LESSONS FROM THE FALKLANDS WAR

In the Falklands War, submarines were engaged in wartime action for the first time since World War II. Although submarines were involved in only a few incidents, we can draw some important lessons from this experience. The best way to reveal the influence of submarines in the overall actions would be a chronological examination of submarine participation in the Falklands War, which is the approach of this analysis.

The sequence of submarine events begins with the landing on 19 March 1982 of a so-called party of Argentinian scrap metal workers on South Georgia Island, 900 miles to the east of the Falklands.

On the 26th of March the Argentines, in response to British insistence that these illegal workers be removed from the island, seemingly evacuated these people but clandestinely left a shore party behind, it then became evident that the Argentine Government was very much behind the incident. By the 29th, when a diplomatic solution to this occupation seemed stalled, the COIIIDS.nder in Chief Fleet of the British Navy, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, ordered the nuclear submarine H.M.S. Spartan to leave the exercise in which she was engaged, embark stores and weapons at Gibraltar and deploy to the South Atlantic. On 30 March the nuclear submarine Splendid was ordered to deploy from Faslane in the U.K. and Conqueror was sailed a few days later. Instructions to covertly prepare a Task Force for South Atlantic operations were then received on 31 March. When the Argentines invaded the Falklands on 2 April, further preparations were openly conducted.

What is particularly significant about this sequence of prewar events is the recognition that nuclear submarines were deployed rapidly and covertly toward a distant area of tension, with no effect on ongoing diplomatic negotiations. With their impressive, sustained high speed, and freedom from the impact of weather and sea conditions nuclear submarines were in place well ahead of any surface forces, which were deployed at about the same time. And, if the political problem had been resolved satisfactorily prior to an outbreak of the conflict there was likely to be no evidence of pressure attributable to the on-station threat of several nuclear submarines.

On 12 April, the British imposed a maritime exclusion zone of 200 miles around the Falklands against Argentine naval ships, and on 23 April the British further warned that any threatening approach by Argentine forces which might interfere with the British mission in the South Atlantic would be dealt with appropriately. Well before this time, the British had revealed the presence of three nuclear subs in the war area. This threat thus posed by these British subs had effectively stopped Argentinian reinforcement of the Islands by sea since 12 April.

However it was revealed that one Argentinian resuppply ship had arrived during this period without being detected by any of the nuclear submarines — despite the total blockade being maintained. This set the stage for the Argentine use of the conventional submarine Santa Fe to haul relief supplies to the shore party on South Georgia. The British nuclear submarine Conqueror had been ordered to patrol off the island to prevent any sea lifted Argentinian reinforcements, while a group of Commando Royal Marines was covertly landed by helicopter on the 23rd. Thus, on 25 April with the weather having cleared, a British helicopter spotted the Santa Fe approaching the main port of Grytviken on the surface. It would appear that the Santa Fe, which did not know about British operationa in the vicinity, had pierced the Conqueror’s blockade and was about to deliver its supplies when she was attacked by British helos using AS12 missiles and depth charges. An AS12 wire-guided, 6km range missile with a 63# warhead, fired by a Lynx helicopter, hit the Santa Fe’s conning tower, inflicting serious damage, while helo launched depth charges which exploded nearby apparently destroyed the submarine’s watertight integrity. The badly damaged Santa Fe then limped to Grytviken and was beached nearby.

The role of the subma.rine for emergency resupply of beleaguered forces and its capability to penetrate a blockade of a port area was much the same as in World War II. Similarly, the great toughness of the conventional submarine in remaining afloat long enough to be beached despite damage from very close depth charges exploding at proper depth, was demonstrated. The efficiency of the nuclear submarine in the context of a total blockade role appears questionable, particularly in the environment of high sea noise, produced by heavy weather.

On 2 May the most interesting and significant submarine incident of the Falklands War took place. The Argentinian cruiser, the General Belgrano, escorted by two destroyers, was located by the British nuclear sub Conqueror south of the Falklands and beyond the 200-mile exclusion zone. The British felt that this small force which was armed with Exocet missiles, posed a clear threat to the British task force. At the same time other Argentine ships north of the zone were apparently conducting the same sort of probing action. Since the threat could not be ignored, Conqueror was ordered to attack the General Belgrano with torpedoes.

With her high submerged mobility, the Conqueror in a periscope attack, gained an ideal attack position and with a short torpedo run put two HK VIII torpedoes into the cruiser — which sank in a couple of hours. The HK VIlis were pre-World War II, straight running, 45-knot, 5000-yard steam torpedoes. They were used, either in preference to or because of a distrust of the very modern, wire-guided, terminal homing Tigerfish torpedoes which were also reported to be aboard the Conqueror. Apparently in the load-out of Conqueror at the beginning of the War there weren’t enough Tigerfish torpedoes readily available, so some of the obsolete HK VIlis were loaded on board. Although the two destroyers dropped numerous depth charges after Conqueror’s attack there was no evidence of their actually having contact on Conqueror.

The decision of Conqueror’s skipper to use these old torpedoes attests to his appreciation of how a nuclear submarine’s covert mobility relates to the weapons carried. The skipper recognized the proven reliability of the HK VIII based on almost 4000 of these torpedoes having been used in World War II. Its shortcomings were well ironed out by the end of that war. In addition, the MK VIlis had 750-pound torpex warheads approximating the destructive effects of the lighter Tigerfish torpedo warheads with its more efficient explosive. Although the MK VIII produces a good wake as opposed to the wakelessness of the electric driven Tigerfish torpedo, the skipper also evidently knew that he could approach undetected to close range and hit with the MK VII Is. And, the torpedo run would be so short that the cruiser would be unable to satisfactorily evade the torpedoes even if the wakes were promptly sighted.

The lesson illustrated with this selection of torpedoes seems to be that the high mobility of the nuclear submarine allows the use of simple, very low cost torpedoes in the anti-ship role –and even against warships under many oiroumstanoes. A seoond lesson would be that the nuclear submarine’s mobility allows it to make covert approaches on targets which would be considered well escorted in the traditional sense but which can’t begin to handle this new type of submarine threat.

After the sinking of the General Belgrano, Argentine naval surface forces stayed within 12 miles of the Argentine coast for the remainder of the War. The sinking of the cruiser was such a clear demonstration of nuclear submarine capability that no further attempt was made to risk any major Argentine warship outside of coastal waters. But at the same time British nuclear submarines patrolled the coast of mainland Argentine to provide intelligence on aircraft sorties from Argentina which might generate massed air attacks on British forces.

An examination of the waters in which the British nuclear subs operated shows depths of 20 fathoms in spots and usually less than 50 fathoms where they could effectively use their periscopes for detecting aircraft.

The British Fleet’s lack of an air-early-warning (AEW) capability was thus being remedied in part by stationing her nuclear submarines close to the Argentine coastal airfields to provide early warning of large aircraft raids directed at the British forces in the Falklands’ area. But this was apparently a far from efficient operation, since a large-scale air raid at San Carlos caught the British with little warning, resulting in the loss of their two landing ships which were in the process of being offloaded.

Another lesson from these forward operations is the need to ensure that today’ s submarines are efficient in shallow water  operations and particularly at periscope depth. With waters under 100 fathoms all the way out to the Falklands from the Argentine coast, even the blockade against Argentine shipping had to be carried out in “shallow” waters.

Throughout the Falklands  War,  questions were being continuously asked  about  Argentine conventional submarines. What were they doing? Argentina started the war with four diesel-electric boats. Two were u.s. Fleet submarines transferred to the Argentine Navy, the Santa Fe (es-USS Catfish) and the Santiago del Estero (ex-USS Chivo), and two were German-built 209 type submarines. The Santa Fe was rapidly put out of action and virtually destroyed. The Santiago del Estero was laid up at a naval base and never saw action. But the two 209s which were in some sort of refit status at the start of the War were buttoned up and quickly departed for sea operations. Little was reported about their operations except that they claimed to have shot at the British carrier Invincible and other targets but suffered torpedo trouble and failed in their attacks.

These two 10-year old subs have non-magnetic hulls (a special feature of Gerii8Jl submarines). Tiley are of 1285 submerged tons and have eight torpedo tubes with a reload of eight more torpedoes. They have a submerged speed of 22 knots and a small complement of only 32 men. They carry the German 21″ SST 4  antiship torpedo which has  a 260 kilogram  warhead,  is   battery driven with a speed of about 35 knots, and is wire-guided with both active and passive terminal homing.         Interestingly,        this      torpedo    has    a   3- dimension sonar for homing which is particularly useful for submarine targets but is a needless complication against surface ships.

What these two  conventional  submarines accomplished is summed up in Sir John Fieldhouse’s Dispatch to the Minister of Defence.

“Attacks on the Task Force by enemy submarines (the 209s) were a significant threat,  which was       recognized by the  inclusion of anti-submarine Sea King helicopters in the air order of battle. A number of torpedo attacks were carried out by these aircraft against underwater contacts classified as possible submarines. Results of the actions are not known, but the high intensity flying rates of this helicopter force throughout the operations were an essential part of Fleet antisubmarine warfare defences.”

Admiral Gorshkov, head of the Soviet Navy, in his articles on Navies in War and Peace observed that in World War II there were 25 Allied ships and 100 aircraft i&1Volved in ASW operations for each German submarine at sea. The same disparate use- of ASW forces to handle the threat of only two small conventional enemy submarines seems to have taken place off the Falklands Islands . The “appalling weather” which created much surface noise, plus the high density of biologics in the waters off the Falklands combined to make ASW operations extemely difficult with a high incidence of false contacts. The tiny shrimp-like krill which breed in the cold Antarctic waters are found in huge tightly packed schools which return convincing echos from active sonars and they  reportedly  make  a  lot  of  noise  with their massed tiny squeals. That the British warships expended large aaounts of ASW· ordnance on false contacts in this environment is highly likely. The magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) gear on British ASW aircraft was apparently of little use for classifying the non-magnetic hulled 209s. The detectable magnetic signatures of these susbmarines were probably too weak to make a determination of sub or non-sub in an environment where other masses of biologics could produce low magnetic signatures.

The experience of the Argentine submarines, their 209s, suggests that a highly complex antiship torpedo which requires a large number of electrical settings and a complex fire control system is difficult to use in war — particularly if there has been little or no opportunity to test out a torpedo’s fire control system before going into war operations. Such torpedoes are also almost impossible to use manually if there is a failure in the electrical input-firing sequence. The Conqueror’s skipper’s use of a torpedo, whether through preference or necessity, which lends itself well to manual firing, may also be an indication of this hazard in the employment of today’s sophisticated weapons.

That the 209 skippers were not certain whether the Invincible had been fired at would indicate the firing of their SST 4s on sound bearings only (i.e., no periscope looks were involved which would have made the nature of their target certain).

It is not clear why it would be advantageous to shoot on sound bearings from below periscope depth. The high seas experienced during the fall months in the Falklands area should have caused much water mixing with isothermal conditions down to considerable depths. Hence, the 209s would tend to be as susceptible to active echo ranging while operating deep as they would be up at periscope depth.

At  any rate,  conventional subaarines on both aides the British had one in action in addition to the five nuclears which eventually were on-scene – accomplished little except for their nuisance value.

On  the  other hand,   as  summarized in the Secretary of State for Defence white paper:

“Our nuclear-powered submarines (SSN) played a crucial role. After the sinking or the General Belgrano the Argentine surface fleet effectively took no further part  in the Campaign. The SSHs     were flexible and powerful instruments throughout the crisis, posing a ubiquitous threat which the Argentines could neither measure nor oppose. Their speed and independence or support aeant that they were the first assets to arrive in the South Atlantic, enabling us to declare the maritime exclusion zone early. They also provided valuable intelligence to our forces in the total exclusion zone.”

In summary : nuclear submarines had a totally dominating effect on the at-sea operations or enemy surface ships. Conventional submarines, although ineffective, tied up a considerable number or ASW units and caused a heavy expenditure or ASW Ordnance. In another war this might be an illportant way to dilute enemy ASW efforts against one’s nuclear submarines.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1983/submarine-lessons-from-the-falklands-war

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CONVENTIONAL SUBMARINES IN THE FALKLANDS WAR

Submarine lessons of the Falklands War, in the April Submarine Review, would hardly explain the
present resurgence of interest and demand for conventional submarines throughout the world.
The unsuccessful Argentine experience with their 1200-ton, German 209 diesel-electrics in the
Falklands War last year should have seemingly cooled world interest in the non-nuclear
submarine. But the opposite seems to be the case. While the 209s sank no British ships, they
tended to establish some important points which favor the use of conventional submarines in many
of today’s Navies and have probably generated this renewed interest.

When the British established that the Argentine conventional subs were out of port, the ubiquitous nature of a submarine went into effect. British ASW forces assumed they might be anywhere or everywhere in the theater of naval operations — vigorously pursuing and evidently attacking every detection made with their ASW sensors which might possibly be a submarine. False contacts were apparently so much in profusion in this relatively small ocean battle area that even the recognizably efficient British ASW forces expended large quantities of ASW ordnance — including some of their new homing torpedoes — without damaging a 209. With much of the theater of operations across a continental shelf — which stretched out beyond the Falkland Islands — British ASW forces were faced with “shallow water” operations, which seem to favor the characteristics of the conventional submarine. In fact, although five British nuclear submarines were reported to have operated extensively in this shallow shelf area their failure to make contact with the 209s might also be considered. And significantly, although the 209s ostensibly fired several German electric SUT torpedoes at British targets, the torpedoes were apparently so quiet that, although they missed, they did not alert British ASW forces to the presence of the 209. But perhaps the best feature of the 209s in the Falklands War was that they couldn’t be harmed by Exocets. Nor do any kind of submarine need
defenses for such antiship weapons.

So, rather than viewing the conventional submarine as being inadequate in a respectable level of sea war, the Falkland Islands War seemed to demonstrate its viability — particularly in an environment where long range missiles assumed an important role.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1983/conventional-submarines-in-the-falklands-war

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CONTROL OF SUBMARINES IN OPERATIONS ON ENEMY SEA LANES

[Ed. Note: This is an astute Soviet article, apparently designed to indicate how  submarine control should be exercised today.]

Many questions of the theory of naval art in the war years have been studied, analyzed, and clarified in the postwar period. One of them is the control of submarine forces in general and in operations on enemy sea lanes in particular. A careful analysis of this experience and skillful utilization of it will unquestionably promote refinement of the theory and practice of controlling submarines. It is very relevant here to recall the wise words of V. I. Lenin, 11 It is impossible to learn how to perform missions with new procedures today if yesterday’s experience has not opened our eyes.”

Combat operations on sea lanes in World War II were begun from the very first days of the war, but results were comparatively meager. This can be explained by the following considerations: low intensity of enemy maritime shipping and inadequate reconnaissance information on enemy operations at sea; underestimation of the danger of mines, failure to take account of combat experience with the use of submarines in World War I and the initial phase of World War II; and the lack of unified, smooth-working control organs.

However, as the submariners acquired combat experience, improved the quality of tactical training for commanding officers, and especially refined the methods of using submarines, they became more successful with each month.

Submarines operated under different conditions in different theaters. In various theaters, submarines had to operate under conditions of counteraction by the enemy, who sent all available ASW forces and means against them. In the North, for example. patrols were deployed near the basea, ports and on the approaches. Enemy ships and aircraft patrolled certain sectors of coastal sea lanes. Within a month after the start of the war the enemy switched to a system of convoys, usually consisting of 2-~ transports sailing in singlecolumn formation escorted by 3-~ ships and one or two aircraft. Moreover, all the German coastal sea lanes were protected on the seaward side by mine fields.

The Soviet submarines in all theaters patrolled in small areas located in shallow water and in the immediate vicinity of coasts occupied by the enemy and provided with submarine detection equipment. Up to 40 percent of submarine endurance was used transiting to the regions of combat operation. And, although the submarines were up to the standards of that time, their sailing range and independent cruise capability were low.

On the eve of the war and in its very first phase, submarines were controlled by fleet commanders. This centralization of the organization of control followed from the views adopted in prewar years concerning the use of submarines in combat .

Organizationally speaking, the submarines of the navy were grouped in brigades and divisions. The brigade, the highest operational-tactical unit. consisted of 3-5 divisions (a total of 20-25 submarines) and was beaded by a commanding officer subordinate to the military council of the navy. The division was the lowest tactical unit and included 6-9 submarines.

During peacetime the brigade commanding officers were usually not involved in the process of combat and operational training for performing the missions of controlling submarines at sea. They were only assigned to train crel-7S and ships for combat operations and to organize repair and restoration of their fighting effectiveness after returning from combat missions.

When the war got unden.1ay however, the control of submarines in all three active fleets was transferred partially (in the Baltic Fleet) or entirely (in the other fleets) to the brigade commanding officers who, although they were the best prepared specialists, had significant difficulties at first organizing and waging combat operations. This was a result of the lack of experience and the lack of trained control organizations. Specifically, the brigade headquarters did not have specialists in operational and reconnaissance training. Moreover, the tacticaltechnical performance and condition of the submarines in the prewar period did not fully correspond to the missions that they were assigned. Experience showed that the process of controlling submarines is complex and demands high qualifications from all who participate in it.

Full-fledged operational control demands a clear idea of the conditions in which combat operations are taking place, a knowledge of the specific conditions of the use of forces, and constant refinement and adaptation of tactics depending on how the situation develops. It is essential to give submarines full and accurate information on the enemy at the right time, to organize the process of guiding them to convoys, and to lead them away from strikes by escort forces. It was necessary to continuously summarize combat experience and anticipate the development and changes in the operational situation in the theater and the region.

Control was made complex by the specific operational-tactical properties of the diesel submarines, the remoteness of the regions of their combat operations from their bases, and the impossibility of using other naval forces there. There were also difficulties with organizing reliable underwater communications among submerged submarines and radio communication with cooperating forces and the control organization.

The functions of operational control at sea were then assigned to the commanding officer of the submarine brigade and his staff in addition to the missions of preparing the subs for performance of combat missions and restoring their fighting effectiveness after their return from the mission. As a result, brigade commanding officers at the start of the war used the simplest methods. In the course of the war they acquired skills in operational control, refined methods of operation in attacking the enemy and overcoming his resistance, and devised new methods. A directorate was formed in the Main Naval Staff, and submarine departments were organized at the headquarters of the fleets to summarize experience as to the use of submarines in combat and to direct the operational-tactical training of command personnel.

At first, submarines in all fleets were used according to prewar ideas, chiefly the positional method where each sub was assigned a patrol area of about 25 miles on a side, within which it was to wait for the appearance of the enemy. No provision was mad~ in this system for guiding subs to a target that had been detected.

There were a number of reasons for this. The fleets did not have reconnaissance personnel and equipment which could work in the interests of submarines, nor did they have stable operational communications with the subs. The brigade command had no experience using submarines in other ways. And the patrol area method was simple to organize. It made it possible to know the location of the subs at all times and alleviated fear that they would attack one another. In addition, it was considered necessary to assign a position if other naval forces were supposed to operate in the vicinity.

Meanwhile the amount of enemy maritime shipping increased and it became more and more important to disrupt it. The fleets searched for new forms and methods of using their forces. They began switching to commerce-raiding patrols of submarines in large regions of the theater and to the positional-maneuvering method. The introduction of these methods expanded the initiative of submarine captains. They could bunt actively for enemy ships and transports at sea. The effectiveness of submarine operations rose.

This made it possible to operate against the enemy in a large sector or his sea lanes with a limited complement or forces in the particular theater. The desire to constantly increase attacks against enemy warships and maritime shipping, especially in those cases where this was dictated by the situation on the coastal flanks of ground forces, led to constant refinement of the forms and methods of using submarines and controlling them. For example, 2-3 subs were required to destroy a small German convoy if the subs attacked it simultaneously or in sequence at intervals which prevented the enemy from restoring his defense or thwarting the attack of other ships. To achieve this the subs were used in a group, and guidance to the target was handled by the commanding officer of the group until the moment that the torpedo attack began or the subs were authorized to cross dividing lines, go into neighboring regions, and continue the attack on the convoy until it was completely destroyed.

In this way the techniques of massing several submarines against one enemy target for the purpose of reliably destroying it were realized in practice. Our own losses here were minimal. In 1944 the Northern Fleet used the “hanging screen” method, a variation or the maneuvering method. This involved the following: based on information from other forces (submarines or aircraft) the submarines of the screen would be guided from waiting areas located seaward or minefields to the enemy that bad been detected. They would then attack him and return to their initial areas.

As experience showed, limited maritime theaters important for data on the signals to move rapidly from during operations in it is especially enemy and control the command post to the submarines. Communications equipment at that time did not allow this to be done quickly, and often the information was so old that it could not be used. In rare cases it was usable by the captains of one or two subs which had time to meet the convoy and carry out one or two attacks, but because of heavy resistance and the fact that they did not have superiority in sailing speed they would lose the convoy. Under these conditions the tactical level of submarine control was important. To accomplish this, a group commanding officer capable of independently organizing the hunt for the enemy in a large region and organizing a combined attack by several subs would be assigned to one of the subs.

During the War our submarines normally operated independently in. the patrol areas assigned to them on enemy sea lanes. The Northern Fleet attempted to organize combined actions as part of tactical groups and cooperation with reconnaissance aircraft. For example, when sonar equipment was installed on K class submarines in January 1943 the command of the fleet decided to use them in tactical pairs. During the transit to the region of combat operations they tested the capabilities of the new equipment, practiced sailing in a quarter line formation — on the surface at night and submerged during the day, and carried on a sonar search for the enemy. Communication among the subs when submerged was unstable and often interrupted, and they would lose touch with one another.

In 1943, cooperation with reconnaissance aircraft was sporadic because sea lanes were scouted irregularly, mainly during the daylight hours when our subs were under water and could not receive radio messages. While, aerial reconnaissance data received during the hours of darkness would become out-dated.

Cooperation with aviation improved in late 1943. Submarines located in a waiting region would, upon receiving data on the movement of a convoy from reconnaissance aircraft and the shore command post, . sail out to intercept the convoy and, after attacking it, would withdraw to their former position. Control was exercised by the commanding officer of the brigade who would send a communications officer to the air force headquarters for better organized cooperation.

In 1944 the Northern Fleet began to receive aircraft and new classes of torpedo boats and the fleet command began conducting special operations to disrupt enemy sea lanes with participation by submarines, aircraft, and torpedo boats. The organization of such combined actions by mixed naval forces against convoys demanded flexible control from the command.

The first operations demonstrated the complexity of organizing combined operations with mixed naval forces, especially during the period of polar night and under unfavorable meteorological conditions: the airplanes could not always take off at the scheduled time because of non-flying weather and the torpedo boats could not go out in storms. Despite the difficulties, a number of operations conducted by submarines in cooperation with other naval forces, above all aviation, were successful in 1944 and submarines became the leaders among forces of the Northern Fleet for numbers of ships sunk.

WW II experience also showed that where there was one operations command for one brigade of submarines in the theater, control was exercised more precisely and operationally, as in the Northern Fleet. But when there were several brigades in the theater, as in the Baltic, it became complicated for several command levels (brigade commanding officers) to carry out control functions. At first each brigade was assigned its own region of combat operations. However, because of uneven utilization of the submarines of different brigades in combat and a decline in the overall productiveness of operations, it was necessary to combine all of them in a theater into a single operational-tactical force and to appoint a single operational command. This made it possible to move subs from one position to another and stepped up the introduction of stable, concealed communications between the headquarters of the consolidated force of submarines.

The question of the location of the command posts from which control at the operational and tactical levels was exercised was largely solved. Operational control, in brigade headquarters. was located on the shore, while tactical control was on the submarine at sea. This made it possible to obtain more complete data on the situation, maintain communications with the submarines, notify them while at sea of the presence and location of an enemy, carry out cooperation among different groups of submarines and with other naval forces, and organize joint actions by them in battle.

The experience of World War II confirmed the important role that submarines play in operations on enemy sea lanes. At the same time, it demonstrated the significant difficulty of using and controlling them in maritime theaters of restricted dimensions — on sea lanes running along a coast occupied by the enemy. Under these conditions combined actions by submarines and other naval forces and precise organization of control over them become especially important.

The continuously increasing complexity of the control process led to a division of control functions.

Assessing the importance of the problem of control under contemporary conditions, Commander in Chief of the Navy Admiral of the Fleet or the Soviet Union, S. Gorshkov, notes that “It is not possible today to accomplish assigned missions if the organization of the control system, its readiness, the available technical equipment for control (automation, communications, and situation illumination equipment), and the work methods of the commanding officers, their staffs, and other control organs do not correspond to the objective laws of warfare and the conditions of waging combat operations at sea.

Because combat operations at sea in the future will assume global scope, it becomes especially important to combine the centralized and decentralized methods of control optimally.

Giving a certain degree of independence to the commanding officers of tactical groups operating in the ocean (and in certain cases to the captains of individual subs as well) makes it possible to improve the stability of control.

It is very important today for commanding officers and staffs, using the latest advances of military science, to constantly refine the system and means of control of naval forces, to maintain them in a high degree of combat readiness, to develop their ability to work in a fast-changing situation, and to try to reduce the time required to make decisions and transmit commands and signals to ship at sea.

By Captain 1st Rank G. Karmenok

(This condensed article is from Morskoy Sbornik, No. 5, 1983.)

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1987/control-of-submarines-in-operations-on-enemy-sea-lanes

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SOVIET CONVENTIONAL SUBMARINES

Just after the start of World War II, I reported on board “a rusty old sewerpipe.” That’s what we called our S-boat of WW I vintage. But, she’d sunk a Japanese destroyer in the Java Sea a month earlier, and on my first patrol we sank a small Japanese seaplane tender just off the entrance to Rabaul — an important and welldefended Japanese forward base.

Yet, the old s-boats were supposed to be “obsolete” and of little practical use in a modern war. Despite that, they were mustered for frontline war duties, to spread out the U.S. submarine effort in the far Pacific. In a sense, they were there to dilute the Japanese ASW effort against u.s. first-line “fleet” boats — which were far larger, more long-legged and all less than six years old.

Today, a similar situation seems to exist. The Soviets great students of history seem well aware of the war contribution made by “obsolete” old submarines, like our S-boats. The Soviets maintain a large force of conventional, diesel/battery powered submarines most of which are of considerable age, but they’re expected to supplement the large force of Soviet nuclear submarines. Though diesel boats have considerable limitations, the Soviets continue to build improved types of conventional boats. They also keep the old ones modernized and operational and indicate an expected use of all their boats in a wide variety of roles and missions. A latest count shows approximately 180 Soviet diesel submarines in commission, with another 60 to 75 in some sort of semi-active but reserve status. With about 200 Soviet nuclear submarines in an opera tional status — about 50% more than U.S. nuclears — there is seemingly little large additional number of  submarines, the diesels.

But, Admiral Gorshkov, the past Head of the Soviet Navy, has stressed that “modern technology” has forced naval power underseas, and that “the transfer of the main efforts of naval warfare (is) to the subsurface medium.” Also, that “submarines have become the main arm of the forces of modern navies.” And Admiral Chernavin, the new Head of the Soviet Navy, has indicated an equally strong support of his submarines for today’s naval wars.

Thus, all sorts of submarines — conventional diesel-powered ones as well as nuclears — have important roles to play in Soviet naval planning for wars which “embrace the expanse of the World Ocean.” Particularly, because of the global nature of the big wars envisioned, having large numbers of submarines — far more than their some 200 nuclear-powered operational units — the Soviets feel that by operating submarines in ocean areas worldwide, they can overwhelm an enemy’s ASW efforts. Recalling history: “For every German submariner at sea (in World War II) there were 100 British and American anti-submariners.” The Soviets apparently believe that many more Soviet submariners at sea can thus “break the camel’s back.”

This Soviet emphasis on submarines, dieselelectrics as well as nuclears, stems from their stated belief that “modern technology” electronic warfare, good worldwide communications, very long range broad ocean surveillance, computerized data collation and computer generated decision making — have put a particularly high and critical premium on the achievement of surprise in today’s naval battles. And even conventional submarines, the Soviets apparently feel, can be so operated as to achieve a high element of surprise in their employment.

Why do the Soviets seemingly disregard our pessimism about the utility of diesel boats versus modern ASW forces?

Salient characteristics of Soviet conventional submarines, which are presently in commission — as indicated by Jane’s Fighting Ships and, for the most part confirmed by Norman Polmar’s Guide to the Soviet Navy — to a great extent explain the Soviet’s continuing involvement with conventional submarines.

In general, Soviet conventionals are regarded as being quieter when operating on their batteries than enemy nuclear submarines — their primary enemy. They are relatively small as compared to today’s nuclears. They are double-hulled and apparently have degaussing coils between the hulls. They are well designed for shallow water operations — i.e. for mining, shore surveillance, landing of commandos, penetration of port areas, etc •• They are for the most part old submarines-25 years or more — but they have not been extensively used within their lifetimes. And t~ey are recognizably considered to be expendable. 

Their underwater mobility is still relatively limited. But the conventional submarine is understood to have a greatly improved “maneuver” characteristic due to the weapons it now has available. Missiles and long range torpedoes “have made it possible for maneuver by weapon trajectories to replace maneuver by the platform, to a considerable degree.” Thus, along with greatly improved organic sensors, including linear arrays for passive acoustic sensing, and with external means for providing targeting information (mainly airborne i.e. satellites, recce aircraft, and a manned space station with a good visual surveillance capability of the oceans — rarely equated) the diesel boats’ radius of effective action has been greatly increased. Also, with an indicated use of an external coordinating command for directing conventional submarine operations, the numbers of enemy targets susceptible to surprise submarine attacks are multiplied. Despite an irresponsible labeling of many Soviet diesel boats as being “coastal,” virtually all of their conventionals are long-legged — even the ROHEOs and WHISKEYs which have about a 9000-mile range on the surface. Evidently the so-called “coastal” boats are, for the most part, to be operated in the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and Okhotsk Seas. Still they need not be restricted to inland sea operations.

The most significant difference between Soviet diesel-battery boats and World War II counterparts is their submerged endurance — their time between snorkeling or surface batteryrecharges. The old FOXTROTs have demonstrated more than seven days of submerged endurance while the newer TANGOs are credited with “significantly more battery capacity than the FOXTROTs” and hence greater submerged endurance. The JULIETTa with reportedly silver-zinc batteries may have even greater submerged endurance.

Perhaps the most significant proof of the believed utility of conventionals in modern warfare is the Soviets’ continued building program of new types of conventional submarines. The KILOs are understood to have a present building rate “equal to the FOXTROT program at its peak.” This would equate to about 7 a year.

One area of conventional-boat capability and probably the most important — is the kind of weapons they carry and the efficiency of those weapons relative to their firing platform characteristics. Also, all of the Soviet boats carry a large load of heavy torpedoes, and seemingly all are likely to have nuclear torpedoes aboard during at-sea operations, as evidenced by the WHISKEY-on-the- rocks incident in Swedish coastal waters. The Soviet conventionals are covert. Are their weapons equally so? The Soviets have developed torpedo-tube-launched cruise missiles. How proliferated are they to the diesel boats? Anti-air weapons housed in the sail are ascribed to the KILOs and possibly the TANGOs . Is an anti-air capability to be expected in many of their diesels? And, with the Soviet emphasis on “destroying or diverting enemy weapons in their trajectories,” how difficult will it be to obtain a hit in a Soviet conventional boat with ASW weapons of the West? Are these unknown factors part of the reason why the Soviets have retained such a large number of conventional submarines?

Briefly, the Soviet diesel-electric boats in commission comprise:

thirteen KILOs of 3200 tons, with a shape like the ALBACORE but with a lesser submerged speed of about 25 knots, and a depth capability of an estimated 300 meters. The first KILO was launched in 1983 and has so few limber holes that it appears designed for continuous submerged operations — requiring only occasional snorkeling charges of the batteries of short duration due to the use of high capacity diesels. Its bow planes are low-down near the bow. It has what is thought to be an “anechoic” tile-coating but which may be primarily designed for drag reduction. Its hull is believed to be amagnetic, and it has 6 standard torpedo tubes up forward.

twenty TANGOs of 3900 tons and considered to be the successor to the FOXTROT class. The TANGOs have an estimated surface range of 17,000 miles, were constructed between 1972 and 1982, have 6 torpedo tubes forward and 4 aft, fire the SS-N-15 missile with nuclear warhead, and have a submerged speed of about 15 knots.

sixty FOXTROTS of 2400 tons, built between1958 and 1967 and credited with a snorkeling range of 11,000 miles at 8 knots– but of far greater range on the surface. With 10 torpedo tubes, they are considered to be an anti-shipping threat on the high seas.

fifteen JULIETTa of 3700 tons. built between 1961 and 1969, they carry four Shaddock 400mile cruise missiles with a 2200-pound warhead — launched from two pairs of topside deck-tubes. They can run 9000 miles at 7 knots on the snorkel, 16 knots on the surface and 14 knots submerged.

built between widely used, The WHISKEYs about 9,000 fifty WHISKEYs of 1350 tons, 1951 and 1957 and still being “but rarely seen out of area.” have a range on the surface of miles.

fourteen GOLFs of 2700 tons and built between 1958 and 1962. They carry three SS-N-5 ballistic missiles.

and an assorted bag of diesel boats for specialized uses including transport of minisubs, communications, oceanographic research, rescue and salvage, trainingtargets. etc, — as well as a considerable number of midget submarines for “Spetznaz” operations. (The many intrusions into Swedish waters by “unknown” small submarines would indicate a strong emphasis on this type of conventional submarine, battery-powered. )

It is probably unwise to postulate that the Soviet conventionals will be operated from a few “homeland” bases in time of war. Increasingly, the Soviets have developed overseas bases from which Soviet conventionals may possibly be operated — to spread out the Soviet threat worldwide. (Seemingly, much of the Soviet submarine threat is like that of the old “Shoats.”) Cuba, Guinea, Syria, Aden, the Seychelles, Camranh Bay — all appear to be usable forward basing areas already partially developed to support submarine operations. Moreover, if supplemented by submarine tenders and other types of auxiliary ships, the Soviet problems of logistic support appear solvable. The Soviet Navy, today, has far more auxiliary ships (about 775) than the u.s. Navy. They have 6 UGRA-class 9,600ton submarine support ships with a SAM-2 battery for anti-air protection; 6 DON-class submarine support ships of 9,000 tons; and 6 ATREK and 5 DNEPR class sub tenders of about 5,500 tons. None of these ships are specified as “nuclear” submarine support ships and are ostensibly, for the most part, for probable use at overseas bases. With long. submerged-endurance the quiet batterypowered boats. used in defense of such bases. can make their elimination a thorny problem.

In summary: although much of the threat that may be posed by the great numbers of Soviet conventional submarines might supposedly be neutralized by ASW forces of u.s. allies in time of war, the Soviets’ global deployment pattern -threatening critical wartime shipping — might overextend u.s. ASW resources needed for areas not covered by U.S. allies. And, this is seemingly a major Soviet reason for keeping their old. S-boatlike conventional submarines in commission.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1987/soviet-conventional-submarines

https://s36124.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/1987/Spring/1987-April-OCRw.pdf

[Perun]

To Submarine Arctic Operations

https://navsource.org/archives/08/pdf/08046001.pdf

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Submarine Warfare in the Arctic: Option or Illusion?

The U.S. Navy's New Maritime Strategy addresses the navy's role in a nonnuclear U.S.-Soviet conflict in Europe. Rather than protecting the North Atlantic sea-lanes by bottling up the Soviet Navy, it proposes that U.S. naval forces move aggressively into the waters near the Soviet Union and seek out and destroy Soviet warships. In particular, the strategy explicitly calls for destroying Soviet nuclear-powered attack and ballistic-missile submarines (SSNs and SSBNs). It posits that the threat to the SSBNs would accomplish two goals. The first is that the Soviets would not surge their SSNs out into the Atlantic to contest U.S. control of the seas but because of the threat would stay back and protect their highly valued SSBNs. The second is that attrition of their SSBNs by U.S. attack would decrease the incentive for the Soviets to go nuclear in the European war, since the balance of forces would shift to the U.S. side. Much debate has been provoked by the prospects of this strategy's leading instead to nuclear escalation.

Congress is being told that the proposed 600-ship navy is the minimum needed to carry out this mission. The strategy is the justification for both the number and the types of ships that are in the shipbuilding program. This program includes a new class of attack submarines, called the Seawolf, which will cost about $1 billion each and are described as the counter to the increasingly quiet Soviet submarines.

This study examines whether the force structure that is being proposed has a reasonable chance of success. lt explores whether modest changes in the building program can make a significant change in the outcome and considers possible alternative approaches.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/submarine_warfare_in_the_arctic_option_or_illusion

 

Does anyone have or know where to download this paper

[Perun]

SOVIET ANTISUBMARINE WARFARE: CURRENT CAPABILITIES AND PRIORITIES

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/0005512850

[Perun]

SOVIET INTENTIONS AND CAPABILITIES FOR INTERDICTING SEA LINES OF COMMUNICATION IN A WAR WITH NATO

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000261312.pdf

Edited July 20, 2022 by Perun

[Perun]

Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950-1983

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/intentions-and-capabilities-estimates-on-soviet-strategic-forces-1950-1983/

https://www.cia.gov/static/4f74f22c2c559325620b4ee5843abbdf/Intentions-and-Capabilities.pdf

Edited July 20, 2022 by Perun

[Perun]

SOVIET THREAT TO THE ATLANTIC SEA LINES OF COMMUNICATION: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE GERMAN CAPTURE OF NORWAY IN 1940

https://www.jstor.org/stable/44642156#metadata_info_tab_contents

[Perun]

The Soviet Navy and tactical nuclear war at sea

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232826614_The_Soviet_Navy_and_tactical_nuclear_war_at_sea

[Perun]

SOVIET NAVAL STRATEGY AND PROGRAMS TOWARD THE 21ST CENTURY

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp94t00766r000200070004-9

[Perun]

(ONE OF) MY BIGGEST MISTAKE(S)

Early 1978 was a busy time. As PARGO was finishing a 2- year refueling overhaul, SUBLANT had thrown down the gauntlet and asked if we move right into preps for a classic North Atlantic deployment as soon as we got out. Fortunately, since it was more fun than the shipyard, PARGO had logged more time in Sub School’s Attack Centers the last couple of years than any boat in SUBLANT, and had gotten pretty good at many of the necessary skills.

At the time, many boats-especially those coming out of the yards- were having some troubles getting certified on Mk 48 torpedoes at the AUTEC range, so the ship was loaded out with some 18 or so exercise units. SUBLANT had also volunteered PARGO to participate in the first mini-war at AUTEC, where it would be pitted against a 963 class Destroyer with MP A and helicopter support who would be escorting the IX range ship, as a simulated high value target, the length of the range while PARGO tried to attack.

All the Attack Center sessions paid off, the ship being declared certified after two successful runs, and I was told I could do what I wanted with the remaining exercise units, minus the ones reserved for the mini-war. That offer was a no-brainier, and all the wardroom officers, in inverse order of seniority, got to shoot one as the Approach Officer.

During the night before the mini-war, we were asked to serve as a target for a reserve squadron of P-3Bs out of Brunswick, Maine who were qualifying on Mk 46 lightweight torpedoes. When asked if any evasive maneuvers were desired or allowed, the answer was .. anything you want, as long as you don’t go faster than 12 knots, go below 400 feet or change course more than 30 degrees” – which was fine and understood, since these guys were trying to get qualified. What was decided was that once the weapons hit the water and the goodness of the delivery was established (splash inside of 500 yards from the submarine was the criteria for a successful attack) our BQS-14 under ice sonar would be lit off at the shortest range scale – 200 yards – which meant that every~ second there would be an FM sweep from 28-32 Khz. – right through the Mk 46’s operating frequency of 30 Khz. At the exercise washup later it was stated that although all of the dozen or so attacks had met attack criteria (<500 yds), all of the Mk 46s ran in an erratic fashion and failed to home. I was convinced then, and remain so today, that PARGO was countermeasure the weapons by capturing some side lobe of the weapons' sonar every 250 milliseconds with what the weapon evaluated as a valid return from whatever heading the torpedo was at the time. At the end of the exercise, having run out of Mk 46s, a Mk 44 was dropped which pinged at 60 Khz and was unaffected by the BQS-14. This torpedo detected and homed on PARGO and even went through its set safety ceiling to actually strike the ship-requiring an annoying surfacing and deployment of a diver to confirm that no damage was done.

During all of this it was noted that a sonobuoy barrier had been established across the mid-point of the range (for the mini- war Pargo had to stay south of mid-range until the 0800 COMEX, while the 00963 class with its escorted IX range vessel started from the northern end). This was clearly a tripwire for the transiting groups benefit, and it was decided that if they wanted to hear us, we would comply- but just pre-COMEX. After verifying from the Engineer that a crud burst could be cleaned up before 0800, MCPs were shifted to fast and the ship cruised back and forth just south of the barrier at a relatively shallow depth. At 0800, pumps were shifted to slow, and test depth ordered at a full bell. Running a mile or so to the eastern range boundary, we turned left to parallel this boundary, and again at the northern boundary to head towards the opposing force’s start box, arriving 20-30 minutes after COMEX.

Having been taught to always have a plan, and insure that everyone else knew what it was, it had been decided that shooting just at the simulated high value target was too easy, and that we would conduct a coordinated attack against both the HVT and its escort. This dual launch met range rules as long as the two weapons operated at different range pinger frequencies, and that the attacking ship was below the safety floor before either enabled. Both PKs were manned, and the first shot would be at the escort (assuming it would be the furthest away) with a high to medium speed setting, and the second, perhaps as we were going deep, against the IX with a medium to medium speed setting.

When we got to the start box, tubes were made ready in alt respects, firing point procedures announced (“Ship not ready”, “solutions not ready”, “weapons not ready” – oK tell me when they are”) and an immediate ascent to periscope depth with a 20° bubble was conducted – spiraling up to clear baffles, and dropping bells as appropriate to curl into PD facing south at 3-4 knots. Several sweeps in low power – “nothing close, down scope” – but having noted that there were two contacts on almost the same bearing to the south with stem aspects – beautiful! ••ship ready” was reported.

Brief the fire control party- will do an observation on the high value target, drop the scope, do an observation on the escort, drop the scope. When get the expected solutions ready and weapons ready will do final observation and shoot on escort, drop the scope. When first weapon away will do final bearing and shoot on high value target- but be prepared to shoot on generated bearings if needed as we go deep and speed up to clear datum. Everything going as planned.

“Observation, number two scope, Master two, the escort- up scope”. As the scope broke water, the escort went active-mind flashed yellow alert- “why now?” Find it in low, shift to high- ••mark bearing, mark range-down scope- range 6000 yards”. “Observation, number two scope, Master one, the high value target- up scope”. Find it in low shift to high, escort still active, no apparent change in range scale “bearing mark, range mark, down scope- range 6000 yards”.

“Attention in the Fire Control Party- we cannot attack both as planned since they are at the same range. We will attack the high value target- high to medium speed set. It may attack the escort since they are close in bearing, but we will evaluate what happens later and reattack as necessary- carry on” – “Firing point procedures, Master one, PK one” – “ship ready”, “weapon ready”, “solution ready” – “Match sonar bearings and shoot – all ahead standard, make your depth 400 feet, left I 0° rudder, steady course 120”.

A very interesting melee occurred over the next hour or so with great fun for all, but it wasn’t clear at all just what had gone wrong with the perfect plan. When all was sorted out later, it was pure pilot error. The escort’s lighting off of its active sonar just as the scope broke for the first observation was sheer coincidence. The effect it had, however, was to distract me just enough to make me forget that I was dealing with a Type 18 scope, not a Type 15, and the whole mantra about snapping your right wrist forward for low power ( l .5X) every time you initially touched or left that handle, and rolling it back for high power (6X) observations didn’t strictly apply when the 6X position lay between the l .5X and a new l 2X which was all the way back where the 6X was on earlier scopes. What I had managed to do, for both lack of focus and lack of practice with a new piece of equipment, was to make one observation in 6X and the other in I 2X leading me to believe that both contacts were at the same range when I actually had a perfect set up where one was at 6 Kyds and the other at 3 Kyds – shoot the escort with a final bearing and shoot and get the IX with a shoot on generated bearings as we went deep. As it turned out, the one weapon shot enabled directly under the IX, where it was visually sighted by an escorting helicopter who radioed “Tinman, tinman!” to the destroyer who was able to maneuver out of the acquisition cone before the weapon detected and homed.

There is a credible theory that states that all human skills consist of three constituents-concepts, procedures and tech- niques-in varying proportions depending on the skill involved. Concepts must be taught, procedures must be studied and techniques must be practiced. The concepts and procedures were nailed that day, but the periscope technique sucked. Just one of my biggest mistakes.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/2012/one-of-my-biggest-mistakes

https://s36124.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2012-Summer-OCRw.pdf

[Perun]

FIXED SONAR SYSTEMS THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE UNDERWATER SILENT SENTINEL

Executive Summary

One of the most challenging aspects of Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) has been the detection and tracking of submerged contacts. One of the most successful means of achieving this goal was the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) developed by the United States Navy in the early l 950’s. It was designed using breakthrough discoveries of the propagation paths of sound through water and intended to monitor the growing submarine threat of the Soviet Union. SOSUS provided cueing of transiting Soviet submarines to allow for optimal positioning of U.S. ASW forces for tracking and prosecution of these underwater threats. SOSUS took on an even greater national security role with the advent of submarine launched ballistic missiles, ensuring that U.S. forces were aware of these strategic liabilities in case hostilities were ever to erupt between the two superpowers. With the end of the Cold War, SOSUS has undergone a number of changes in its utilization, but is finding itself no less relevant as an asset against the growing number of modem quiet submarines proliferating around the world.

Introduction

For millennia, humans seeking to better defend themselves have set up observation posts along the ingress routes to their key strongholds. This could consist of something as simple as a person hidden in a tree, to extensive networks of towers communicating with signal fires. Regardless of the means, the goal was the same: to gain advanced notice of the approach of one’s enemies to allow for defensive forces to be prepared in a timely manner.

This strategy continues to hold today, though the technological means to do so are radically different. Many of our tools for long-range observation are now based on orbiting satellites. Instead of keeping watch from a high tower, we use photographic reconnais-sance. Instead of using signal fires for communication, we use radio signals that are relayed through satellites. However, one area of great concern with which satellites continue to have difficulty is the detection of submerged vessels approaching our shores.

Since World War I, sonar has been used with varying degrees of success to detect submarines. By the end of World War II, it was considered the premier sensor to locate submarines that were able to stay below the surface of the ocean for longer periods of time. Keeping forces constantly at sea to maintain a continuous patrol, however, is expensive and very time consuming. A method was sought that could provide the detection capability of sonar without the prohibitive cost of seagoing time and resources. That method was the fixed sonar system, an array of hydrophones deployed along the ocean floor in strategic areas, designed to detect an enemy submarine as she either left her home waters or approached ours. These silent tripwires came to play a vital role in the rapid buildup and undersea forces of the I 950’s and beyond. They still have an important role even today, as their capabilities continue to be refined to meet growing acoustic detection challenges.

Early Designs

The first sonar hydrophones, developed during World War I, could detect submarines from several miles away. However, self-noise was a very limiting factor (and still is today to a lesser degree). These early convoy escorts had to come to a complete stop to be quiet enough to listen for an enemy submarine, greatly hampering their effectiveness in protecting a convoy. (Cote, 2003) Having seen the effectiveness of the lone submarine against commercial assets, the Royal Navy spent several years after the end of the war developing a new technology to aid in the detection of a single submarine at sea. This new development-called ASDIC-was one of the most closely guarded secrets of any military program at the time. The meaning of ASDIC is still debated, but could possibly mean Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee or Anti-Submarine Division Supersonics. ASDIC was the first active sonar and provided a step-jump improvement over earlier passive arrays by providing not only bearing to a contact, but also the range.

Once the United States entered World War II, the British began sharing the technology behind their new secret asset. The United States used it to set up high frequency active sonar transducers known as the Herald system-mounted on submerged tripods outside of several commercial ports. The Herald transducers were operated via cable run to nearby shore-based stations. They could be trained as needed to detect and track a target. The Heralds also incorporated a magnetic tripwire detector that was a precursor to modem Magnetic Anomaly Detectors. (Gerken, 1986)

Acoustic Research Makes Major Strides

Further research into passive acoustic arrays and sound propagation through the water, both during and after World War II, resulted in a breakthrough discovery. Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel located the presence of a deep-water sound channel that trapped and focused low frequency sound waves, allowing them to propagate over distances of thousands of miles. (Cote, 2003) At the direction of the Office of Naval Research, this Sound Fixing and Ranging (SOFAR) channel was exploited by Bell Labs in late 1950 to begin development on the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). SOSUS was to be a vast network of seabed acoustic hydrophones that would utilize the characteristics of the SOFAR channel to detect submerged adversarial submarines at long ranges.

Detecting contacts underwater, particularly from long range, is a difficult task given the interference of acoustic noise in the signal reaching the hydrophone being monitored. Two methods of improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are antenna gain and processing gain. Given the relatively limited processing power of then-current computer technology, improvements in processing gain were difficult to achieve at the time. Antenna gain, however, was already being exploited in the design of the large hydrophone arrays being installed in the bows of hunter-killer submarines (SSKs). In addition, as the array length grew, the minimum frequency that could be detected also improved. This made SOSUS very well suited to aid in the detection of submarines at long distances. Its 1 ,000 foot long hydrophone arrays could detect even the lowest frequencies being generated by submarines at ranges of hundreds of miles. To maximize their low frequency detection capability, the SO SUS arrays were installed perpendicular to the expected direction of sound arriving from submarines transiting at the axis of the SOFAR channel.

The realization that the broadband nature of the noise signature of submarines also contained measurable narrowband components led to the next step increase in submarine detection capabilities. These narrowband components are usually associated with a particular piece of machinery, be it a pump, generator, or gearbox. Using a tunable set of frequency filters, these tonals could be picked out of the general signal being received by the array. The process of sorting out these narrowband tonals was termed Low Frequency Analysis and Ranging (LOF AR). LOF AR gave sonar array designers a way to dramatically improve the processing gain of their systems. As intelligence about adversarial submarine design improved, the aspect-dependent nature of many narrowband tonals could provide even more detailed information about a submarine’s general direction of transit. It was later realized that these tonals can also act as a form of acoustic fingerprint for identifying a given class of submarine and sometimes even a specific boat.

The Beginnings of the Network

Bell Labs’ first design for SOSUS -named Project Jezebel -was installed off the coast of Eleuthera, Bahamas in 1951. This test installation was so successful that 1952 saw the decision to install SOS US arrays along the entire Eastern coastline of the U.S. Two years later, SOSUS arrays were planned along the Western coastline and in the waters surrounding Hawaii. These systems were completed and began operations in 1958. The next installation was completed in 1959 off the coast of Argentia, Newfoundland, demonstrating the incorporation of allied nations into the ever-expanding Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) detection network.

In use, the detection network entailed a multi-stage process. The SOSUS arrays were connected to land-based Naval Facilities (NavFacs) that received and processed the acoustic information. The refined data was then passed to evaluation centers that incorporated other cueing sources, such as high-frequency direction-finding radars, to generate a submarine probability area (SPA). ASW forces were then directed to the SPA to attempt to gain local contact with the submarine. Completing this sequence of events entailed an inevitable time delay. It also suffered from a relatively high false alarm rate, adding further difficulty to the task of locating and tracking the target. (Cote, 2003)

SOSUS Comes Into Its Own

LOFAR was a great development in the ability to detect submarines. However, against diesel submarines, it was hampered by the fact that the target low frequency tonals were only emitted while the submarine was snorkeling. Thus, a sub could be tracked as it transited to its patrol area, but further localization was at the mercy of the sub’s operating routine for recharging its batteries. The advent of nuclear power in submarines, though, showed the great potential of the SOS US arrays.

Nuclear submarines have numerous pieces of machinery supporting the operation of the reactor that are required to run at all times. The acoustic stealth of early nuclear designs was further compromised by the continued practice of mounting engineering equipment directly to the hull, as well as the use of traditional, but noisy, propeller designs. Their tell-tale narrowband tonals were a constant noise source while they were at sea, making them prime targets for SOSUS. SOSUS also helped to highlight the noisy signatures of the U.S. nuclear subs. The most noted example of this involved USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (SSBN-598) as she transited for one of her first deterrent patrols in 1961. East coast SOSUS stations tracked her during her entire trip across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom. Another first in long distance detection was achieved in 1962, when the SOSUS station in Barbados detected a Soviet Hotel/Echo/November (HEN)-class submarine as it passed through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap.

SOSUS was also proving its value to the aviation-based ASW community. Using the cueing from SOSUS and their own LOFAR-based sonobuoys, ASW patrol aircraft were becoming more effective at tracking adversarial submarines. Coordination with SOSUS, however, caused their tactics to undergo a good deal of refinement. Detections were being made at much longer ranges, and so the area of location uncertainty for the target sub was much larger by the time the ASW aircraft arrived at the original detection point than had been experienced before. This was particularly troubling when attempting to track diesel submarines, as they would only be snorkeling for a finite period of time. Nuclear submarines and their constant noise signatures made this problem much less significant. The growing effectiveness of SOS US continued to spur development of new ASW tactics in the coming years.

Bringing the Fight to the Enemy

The ability to detect and track Soviet submarines almost at will emboldened the Navy’s vision of ASW operations. In 1965, Navy leadership decided to install SOSUS arrays in locations as close to the Soviet home waters as possible. This strategy would offer as much lead time as possible to position U.S. and Allied surface, submarine, and aviation ASW assets to best prosecute the coming threat. The Navy began by looking for natural choke points where the Soviets would have to transit to reach their open-ocean patrol areas. An array was built in the Norwegian Sea in 1964 to watch for submarines leaving their bases on the Kola Peninsula, and NavFac Ketlavik was established in 1966 to supervise the GIUK gap. By 1981, thirty-six stations were keeping watch for submarines of the Soviet Union and their allies around the world. These barrier stations provided the cueing data needed by ASW prosecution vessels. The constant monitoring capability of SOSUS reduced the need for ships, subs, and aircraft to maintain the barrier watch for Soviet subs. The granting of basing rights in places like Rota, Spain and Keflavik, Iceland greatly increased· the proximity of ASW aircraft to the expected Soviet transit lanes. SOSUS also freed up American attack submarines (SSNs) to be able to forward deploy in Soviet waters to conduct intelligence gathering, as well as provide the first line of defense in case hostilities were to break out.

The need for a permanent advanced warning system was highlighted by the deployment of four Soviet Foxtrot-class submarines to the Caribbean Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The detection of one of the Foxtrots by SOSUS and its subsequent prosecution by ASW patrol aircraft marked another milestone in the program’s continuing development. (Association, 2010) SOSUS provided the ideal combination of round-the-clock watchfulness without alerting the adversary to the presence of the sentries.

SOSUS Continues its Evolution

One of the great concerns of the ASW community, and thus one of its primary driving factors, was maintaining its established acoustic advantage over the Soviet Navy. Leaders in the community predicted that it was a matter of when, not if, the Soviets would improve the noise silencing on their submarines to eliminate the early-warning capabilities provided by SOSUS. A primary focus in maintaining that edge was the continuing refinement of acoustic and computing hardware to further enhance array and processing gains.

ne of the innovative enhancements to SOSUS was altering how it processed the data from its hydrophone strings. Instead of linking all the hydrophones on a string into a single array, it was determined that splitting the hydrophones into two or even three arrays on a given string would still provide an acceptable level of acoustic detection. The advantage to this technique is that these arrays could be steered to look at separate acoustic arrival paths, which helped to resolve the issue with bearing resolution that was present when a string was configured as a single array. The omputers that processed the acoustic data saw continuing improvements as well, allowing for frequency spectra to be resolved at a finer level. This development of passive acoustic detection capability also helped to improve the quieting efforts of American submarine designers. (Cote, 2003).

Navy leadership recognized the vulnerability of SOSUS’s passive detection to quieting efforts by the Soviets shortly after the system was first implemented. As a means to prevent the possibility of future obsolescence, SOSUS designers took up where the Herald system left off and tried to develop active echo-ranging capabilities that would work across entire ocean basins. The most notable of these efforts was Project Artemis, which ran during the first half of the I 960’s. Artemis, like most other large-scale active echo-ranging systems, had difficulty in developing a low frequency active transducer powerful enough to operate over the desired ranges. It was also inhibited by an inability to perform enough signal processing to account for the effects of reverberation on the outgoing pulses. Ultimately, the idea of an ocean-wide active sonar network was abandoned as unfeasible. In the meantime, technological improvement in passive acoustics continued. However, the biggest challenges to the viability of SOS US were on the horizon.

SOSUS Meets Its Match

The 1970s saw the introduction of two significant-and different threats to the ability of SOSUS to fulfill its early-warning detection role. The first, introduced in 1973, was the Delta-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). The second, introduced in 1978, was the VICTOR Ill SSN. These two Soviet submarines were the harbingers that the days of overwhelming U.S. ASW superiority over the Soviet Union were drawing to a close.

The Delta was not a remarkably new design for Soviet SSBNs. In fact, it was viewed by American intelligence analysts as yet another example of the Soviets failing to improve their quieting techniques. One analyst was quoted as saying:

Those of us who are in the technical community had staked our reputations on the fact that when the Delta-class submarine(s) went to sea in 1976 they were going to demonstrate a fundamental quieting program, and we said that to the rest of the world and they did not do it and we lost a lot of credibility. (Cote, 2003)

What made the Delta so formidable to SOSUS was its submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which had sufficient range to reach the continental United States from the waters in the vicinity of the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. This meant that Soviet SSBNs no longer had to transit through the elaborate series of choke points and acoustic barriers to be able to endanger the U.S. with their nuclear payload. At the same time, the United States publicly declared that one of its first goals upon the commencement of hostilities with the USSR would be the destruction of all Soviet SSBNs. These two factors-the Delta’s long-distance launch capability and the announced targeting of their SSBN fleet in the event of hostilities-caused a fundamental shift in the strategic and operational policy of the Soviet Union. They implemented their bastion strategy, in which their SSBNs would conduct their patrols within friendly home waters or under the protection of the marginal and permanent Arctic ice. There were even reports of Deltas conducting strategic patrols while still in port. The bastion strategy meant that U.S. SSNs would have to pass through Soviet ASW barriers to reach their prey in the event of war.

Despite this radical shift by the Soviet strategic forces, SOSUS could still operate against the other classes of Soviet subs, which were still at a noticeable acoustic disadvantage. 1978 was another milestone in the improvements to the Soviet submarine program. This time, it was the introduction of VICTOR III SSN, a measurably quieter nuclear submarine. VICTOR III and its mid-I 980’s descendent, the even-quieter AKULA, put the U.S. Submarine Force on notice that its acoustic advantage was coming to an end. The Victors and Akulas incorporated numerous technological improvements, from equipment rafting to improved propeller design, to reduce their acoustic signatures. The Akulas, in particular, achieved the long sought-after goat of being quiet enough to evade detection by SOSUS. These dramatic improvements in acoustic quieting technology were the direct result of the classified information collected by SOSUS that was leaked to the Soviet Navy by the Walker/Whitworth spy ring. (Whitman, 2005) Prior to that compromise of information, U.S. intelligence indicated that the Soviet Submarine Force had little indication of the degree to which their submarines were acoustically vulnerable. Despite the setback, proponents of SOSUS could take some comfort in knowing that it would be some time before the rest of the Soviet Submarine Force would reach the acoustic silence standard set by Akula, if such a program was even feasible for the Soviet Union to undertake.

New Life and New Developments

The Navy was not willing to resign SOSUS to the annals of Cold War history. Through efforts led chiefly by Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 3 t as it worked to restore its long-dormant coordinated ASW skills, operational commanders were given more ability to access and incorporate SOSUS and other elements of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS) into their planning and tactical employment. Specifically, DESRON 31 developed techniques for the reverse cueing of contacts to SOS US operators. This involved sending contact data back to SOSUS monitoring stations to prompt their review to look for the vessel in question and allowed the operators at sea to take advantage of the significantly greater acoustic processing capability of SOSUS base stations.

The 1980’s also saw the fielding of two new sonar systems. The first was the Surveillance Towed Array Sonar System (SURT ASS), which was essentially a SOSUS-like array towed from a DOD-contracted civilian ship. This array, incorporating the use of a low frequency active (LF A) transducer, achieved the goat of open-ocean active sonar search envisioned by Project Artemis. Further experiments with LF A may be able to incorporate both SOSUS and SURTASS arrays as receiving stations to track quiet modem submarines. The second new development was the Fixed Distributed System (FDS), which used an array of hydrophones designed to take advantage of shorter-range direct path acoustic signals. These sensors would then be networked together through fiber optic cables and routed to an operating station on shore for signal processing. The advantage to FDS is that it can be deployed in both deep and shallow areas because it does not depend on sound propagation through the SOFAR channel. The successor to FDS was the Advanced Deployable System (ADS). ADS operated in much the same fashion as FDS, except that it was intended to be deployed from a ship on an as-needed basis in a forward operating area. The development program for ADS was cancelled in 2006, though remotely-operated, forward-deployable systems continue to be under development. These new systems, now known as Distributed Netted Systems (DNS), are taking on an increasingly important role in the emerging field of Subsea Warfare. DNS perform some of the same monitoring functions as SOSUS, but also have more advanced communications capabilities, such as being able to communicate directly with ships at sea without a shore-based relay station, as well as a growing variety of non-acoustic sensors.

The future of SOSUS is likely heading in a much different direction from what its designers originally envisioned. While it is still considered an important national security asset, the opportunity is also being granted for civilian use of the array and its data collection capabilities. SOSUS has been used in several areas of research, including seismology, marine mammal migration, and looking for global warning trends in oceanographic conditions. Users are required to possess a security clearance, as the data is still in use by Defense Department personnel, but it provides an excellent infrastructure that might not otherwise be feasible for development and deployment by research and academic institutions. SOSUS has also been used by law enforcement personnel, most notably in drug interdiction efforts for over-water supply routes from Central and South America.

Conclusion

SOSUS has had a storied service record over the last fifty-plus years, though many of those stories are only recently being declassified for public consideration and analysis. It was a revolutionary system that provided a significant technological advantage to the United States in its conflict with the former Soviet Union. For all the secrecy associated with the information it provided, SOSUS had a profound impact on the growth and development of modem ASW techniques and tactics. It directly contributed to the acoustic advantage that the U.S. Submarine Force enjoyed for many years, allowing U.S. subs to operate with near-impunity in virtually every region of the world with water deep enough to accommodate them. Even as SOSUS has been pushed towards obsolescence by continuing advances in submarine design, such as air-independent propulsion and ultra-quiet nuclear submarines, its legacy of technological innovation has continued. SOSUS continues to be a valuable resource as its capabilities are applied to new areas of study, ensuring its relevance for years to come.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/2011/fixed-sonar-systems-the-history-and-future-of-the-underwater-silent-sentinel

https://s36124.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2011-April-OCRw.pdf

[Perun]

De-Icing Required: The Canadian Air Force’s Experience in the Arctic

https://www.academia.edu/2638274/De_Icing_Required_The_Canadian_Air_Force_s_Experience_in_the_Arctic_Sic_Itur_Ad_Astra_Canadian_Aerospace_Power_Studies_Series_No_4_Trenton_Canadian_Forces_Air_Warfare_Centre_2012_xiv_151_pp_With_Major_W_A_March_

[sunday]

1 hour ago, Perun said:

(ONE OF) MY BIGGEST MISTAKE(S)

Early 1978 was a busy time. As PARGO was finishing a 2- year refueling overhaul, SUBLANT had thrown down the gauntlet and asked if we move right into preps for a classic North Atlantic deployment as soon as we got out. Fortunately, since it was more fun than the shipyard, PARGO had logged more time in Sub School’s Attack Centers the last couple of years than any boat in SUBLANT, and had gotten pretty good at many of the necessary skills.

(...)

 

1 hour ago, Perun said:

FIXED SONAR SYSTEMS THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE UNDERWATER SILENT SENTINEL

Executive Summary

One of the most challenging aspects of Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) has been the detection and tracking of submerged contacts. One of the most successful means of achieving this goal was the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) developed by the United States Navy in the early l 950’s. It was designed using breakthrough discoveries of the propagation paths of sound through water and intended to monitor the growing submarine threat of the Soviet Union. SOSUS provided cueing of transiting Soviet submarines to allow for optimal positioning of U.S. ASW forces for tracking and prosecution of these underwater threats. SOSUS took on an even greater national security role with the advent of submarine launched ballistic missiles, ensuring that U.S. forces were aware of these strategic liabilities in case hostilities were ever to erupt between the two superpowers. With the end of the Cold War, SOSUS has undergone a number of changes in its utilization, but is finding itself no less relevant as an asset against the growing number of modem quiet submarines proliferating around the world.

(...)

Two excellent reads. Thanks!

[Perun]

I am glad that you enjoyed, that interesting site have nice articles

[Perun]

ROYAL NAVY COLD WAR CAPABILITIES vs. SOVIET NAVY SUBMARINES 1970s COLD WAR FILM

https://archive.org/details/75714NavyCombatFootage

[Perun]

SOVIET SEA POWER TODAY COLD WAR ERA RUSSIAN NAVY CAPABILITIES 80434

https://archive.org/details/80434-soviet-sea-power-today

[Perun]

REMEMBERING: THE SOUND SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM (SOSUS) PART II

Caesar First Steps

In June 1952, with the successful LOF AR detection of submarines at Sandy Hook and Eleuthera and long experience with SOF AR, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) directed Bureau of Ships to acquire six stations under CAESAR, increasing to nine stations in September. Three contracts were implemented to include equipment, installation, and construction or expansion of a cable-manufacturing facility. The Simplex Wire and Cable Company in New England was expanded to manufacture the miles of cables needed for Caesar installations.

In a 1952 letter to CNO, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet indicated interest in the system and offered suggestions regarding Pacific Ocean locations for future sites. By May 1954, ten more stations were planned with six on the West Coast. An unclassified cover story was created for the new system and the low frequency passive detection development was designated SOSUS.

During the next five years, SOSUS facilities were installed and commissioned along the eastern Atlantic Ocean. “They form a huge semicircle from Barbados to Nova Scotia, opening toward the deepwater abyss west of the mid-Atlantic Ridge. This provided both excellent coverage of the deep ocean basin off the eastern seaboard and the opportunity for contact correlation among arrays with widely separated vantage points. “23 Likely Soviet submarine routes to gain access to the United States eastern seaboard provided a basis for the location of SOSUS hydrophone arrays.2~ The results of Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Kelly’s efforts during the first years of the project are shown in the table.

PROJECT CAESAR STATIONS COMMISSIONED 1954-591954 Ramey, Puerto Rico-Grand Turk-San Salvador1955 Bennuda, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Nantucket, MA, Cope Mny, NJ1956 Cape Hatteras, NC, Antigun1958 Point Sur, CA, Center ville Beach, CA, Pacific Beach, WA, Coos Head, OR, Argentia, New found land

Caesar Cable Fleet Ships

WHOI, SOI, and Columbia University’s Hudson Laboratory under Project Michael dealt with finding answers to questions regarding cable placement. The Navy cable ships and AT&T accomplished the actual laying of the hundreds of miles of cables in depths up to 1000 fathoms. Initially the cable ships NEPTUNE and MYER were assigned. Later, ships THOR, AEOLUS, MIZAR, HUD DELL, ZEUS and USNS WATERS made up the cable fleet. They became known as the Caesar Fleet. Some locations where deep water was available needed ten or twenty miles of cable while others required a hundred miles. At some point in the SOS US years, 30,000 miles of undersea cable and more than 1000 hydrophones were maintained.

NAVFACS

The shore station facilities located along the coasts with their hydrophone arrays, buildings, and instrumentation came to be identified as NA VF ACS. Sites were chosen where the continental shelf break came closest to land. Upon the completion of the installation and in operation, sufficient manpower for the daily 24-hour operation placed a requirement of 100 or more personnel at each facility. The unique skills for reading and interpreting the LOF AR analyzer’s black and grey paper printout made training and education important requirements.

The number of LOF AR analyzers at each NA VF AC was quite large “A Lo far analyzer was associated with each beam of each array served by a NAVFAC, and typically, the large watch floors were filled with hundreds of these “gram-writers: busily turning out Lofar grams on ‘smoky paper 24 hours a day. “’27 Equipment maintenance, data collection and its transfer to centers for analysis and operational commands provided continuing challenges. Eventually more than twenty stations were in operation and met a man-power requirement of several thousand.

Continuing SOSUS Expansion and Operational Example

With the above clusters of stations in 1956 and more to follow, the concept of regional SOSUS Evaluation Centers was adopted to correlate contact information and provide reacquisition data concerning the target for use by patrol aircraft, surface ships and submarines. Later, the Centers were called Naval Oceanographic Processing Facilities (NOPFs). The first two were in Norfolk and New York. Combined with other intelligence, the resulting target position estimates and probability areas were provided to local and regional ASW commands.

At the end of the 1950s, “SOSUS cables and hydrophones, separated by intervals of five to fifteen miles, were also laid off Denmark, Iceland, Norway, the North Cape, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and around the British Isles.”

Expansion of SOSUS stations was modest in 1961 with one NA VF AC placed in operation at Adak, Alaska, not far from the western tip of that state. On the operational side, as a demonstration, East Coast United States SOSUS arrays successfully tracked the first Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine, USS GEORGE W ASHJNGTON (SSN 598) on its first transit from the United States across the North Atlantic to the United Kingdom.

1962 Soviet Submarines and SOSUS

The Cuban Missile Crisis (July-November 1962), provided opportunity for the Atlantic SOSUS stations to have an important role in the naval blockade. The heightened time was during October. In June, the SOS US NA VF AC at Cape Hatteras identified the first Soviet diesel. The following month, NAVFAC Barbados made the first detection by SOS US of a Soviet Nuclear submarine as it crossed the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.” …

SOSUS was able to exploit the fact that both propellers and rotating machinery mounted directly to a submarine’s hull generated, predictable narrowband tonals at source levels high enough for large LOF AR arrays to detect them and track them on an ocean wide basis.” From SOSUS data, Neptune naval aircraft (P2s) were able to broadcast in the clear the exact locations of Soviet Submarines and were heard by the Soviet submarines as well as blockade members.31 ASW aircraft, in addition to the cueing advantage by the long range SOSUS detection data, were further enhanced by the use of their aircraft launched sonobuoys in the pursuit of the Soviet submarines.

During October at the peak of the crisis, Soviet Foxtrot submarines (nuclear torpedo equipped), in transit to and in the Cuban area were detected by SOSUS and closely trailed. The tracking data was passed to the Navy blockade participants. After the crisis was resolved, the observed SOSUS effectiveness led to the expansion and upgrading of the network. A SOSUS array was placed to cover the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap with NA VF AC Keflavik established in 1966. One path for Soviet Submarines to the Atlantic and the United States from the northern Soviet submarine base was through the Gap.

Data from these widely-distributed arrays brought attention to new uses for the underwater surveillance. In 1965-66, the Norway SOSUS array detected and tracked Soviet Bear-D bombers flying over the Norwegian Sea. Surface ship detection as well as detection of nuclear explosions occurring near oceans or underwater was included in SOSUS capability. With 55 Soviet nuclear submarines deployed between 1958 and 1968, opportunities for SOSUS detection were increased.

1962 USS THRESHER (SSN 593)

On Sunday April 9, 1963, THRESHER was lost with all hands at a depth of 8400 feet 260 miles off the New England coast. Nearby oceanographic ships and others were able to identify an area of interest. A chronology of SOSUS for the year of the tragedy cites “SOSUS plays critical role in pinpointing the location of the incident.”

Strong interest in determining the cause of the submarine loss was directed at the obvious to prevent future similar events. In this regard, resolution of the question of whether the loss might be due to deliberate enemy action was critical.34 Was the loss from an explosion or implosion? The Navy’s Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV) development was one of the results of the loss of the THRESHER.

1968: Soviet K-129

In 1968, SOSUS Pacific operations included a new operational NA VF AC at Midway Island and the commissioning of the Guam, Mariana Islands NA VF AC. First SOSUS detections of Victor and Charlie Class Soviet nuclear submarines occurred at the Keflavik, Iceland station.

SOSUS involvement occurred with the April loss of the Soviet ballistic missile, first Soviet submarine with underwater launch, diesel electric GOLF (K-129) submarine in the Pacific northwest of Hawaii and a few weeks later on May 27 with the loss of the USS SCORPION (SSN 589) in the Atlantic in water with depths of the order of 15,000 feet.

The mid-Pacific SOSUS array (code-name Sea Spider: a 1,300-mile-long circular array surrounding the Hawaiian Islands) has been cited as the array that monitored and localized the breakup of the Soviet submarine K-129.

In both submarine losses, sound surveillance data contributed to the overall effort to determine the location of each lost submarine. The United States search for SCORPION was undertaken with reasonable public exposure while the Soviet search was extremely classified. The United States search for the K-129 included careful security measures. Searching for the submarines at great depths and, in the case of the Pacific location, of the order of 15,000 feet or greater made the searches extremely difficult and complex. Developing accurate information concerning the reasons for the losses provided a broad number of challenges.

USS SCORPION (SSN 589)

Regarding SCORPION loss on a return trip to the United States, it was realized that during a three thousand mile track from southern Europe, the sounds of its collapse and the implosions at collapse depth might have been recorded. A Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) research station in the Canary Islands equipped with a hydrophone found about five separate trains of acoustic events that could have been associated with a submarine breakup.

In addition, “Kelly (now a Captain) came to the rescue with his awareness of a super-secret hydrophone installations in the hands of another government agency. The sounds of SCORPION’s death might be buried in this organization.” Captain Kelly’s resourcefulness led to additional Scorpion acoustic signatures. Collectively the signatures and using triangulation identified a location for SCORPION. The following year, the deep submergence vehicle Trieste II provided further details of SCORPION’ s sinking. The SCORPION was 400 miles southwest of the Azores at 10,000 feet.

Continuing interest in SCORPION recently in the 2006 book Silent Steel brings further revelations regarding the search for the submarine.39 The author points out that it was the additional acoustic signal picked up by the Air Force’s Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) facility in Argentia, Newfoundland. The facility’s purpose was monitoring Soviet nuclear weapon tests. AFT AC’s implosion data coupled acoustic data from the SOF AR operation on La Palma, a small island in the Canary Islands that identified the submarine’s location.

High point

Under Captain Joseph Kelly, SOSUS grew in size, improved its operations and methods, and more than met its purpose. At the time of his retirement in April 1973 after more than 20 years as SOS US Project Manager, there were a total of22 SOSUS installations along the East and West Coasts of the United States.

SOSUS success in the 1970s and the availability of effective air-dropped homing torpedoes and more intensive use of the P3 Orion patrol squadrons allowed the U.S. submarines to adopt a barrier strategy in the Norwegian Sea, along the Greenland-United Kingdom line, and at choke points in the North Pacific.40 ln summary, “By 1981, unclassified depictions of SOSUS described it as having 36 installations, including facilities located in Continental United States (CONUS), the United Kingdom, Turkey, Japan, the Aleutians, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Bermuda. Barbados, Canada, Norway, Iceland, the Azores, Italy, Denmark, Gibraltar, the Ryukyus, Panama, the Philippines, Guam, and Diego Garcia.”

SOSUS Eclipsed

The mid-I 980s brought several technology changes that challenged SOSUS ‘s role. The Soviet submarine ballistic missile range changed from the early days of SOS US. The Soviet initial range of 350-1600 nautical miles (nm) increased to ranges of the order of 4900 nm. This enhancement placed Soviet ballistic missile submarines closer to the USSR, typically further from SOS US locations.42 Soviet SSBNs no longer needed to pass through the SOSUS barriers to reach their targets. Soviet SSBN patrols could be conducted in the marginal ice seas of the Soviet Arctic littoral, including the Norwegian and Barents Seas and later under the permanent ice of the Arctic Ocean, and be provided with support by the rest of the Soviet Navy.43 SOSUS was beginning to be perceived as an aging system and not capable of covering large mid-ocean areas.

During the period 1967 to 1985, John A. Walker, a U.S. Navy warrant officer and career submarine communication expert watch officer in Norfolk, VA, continuously shared submarine information with the Soviets until 1976 when he retired and afterwards. In 1985, he was taken into custody. Soviet knowledge of SOSUS success contributed to the rapid quieting of Soviet submarines, making them more difficult noise sources to detect and localize.

Towed Sonar Arrays

In the late 1960s, there was significant and growing interest in the use of towed sonar arrays for ASW. As a result, by September 1970 systems were installed on three Dealey class destroyers in the Mediterranean. Demonstrations of these arrays were eminently successful. “During their stay in the Mediterranean, they accounted for over 50% of all submarine detections by any method, including visual sighting.”

The comments of Rear Admiral J. R. Hill, RN, regarding towed arrays in a 1984 assessment of ASW was one of the many statements that emphasized the significance of towed array development. “The passive sonar towed array … may well be the most important single development in ASW sensors since 1945.”

Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURT ASS)

Gradually quieter Soviet submarines of the 1960s and 1970s created a need for mobile towed array detection. In the mid-l 970s, the Navy contracted with the Hughes Aircraft Company to develop the equipment for mobile surface ship detection. The latest computer technology for the computer-based sonar was expensive and required long development time. As a fixed system, SOSUS presented a wartime target and restriction to operate in certain areas. With its mobility SURT ASS complemented SOSUS. Further enhancement for the undersea surveillance came from active and passive sono-buoys.

Ships

Towed array ships required special design to accommodate the equipment, long arrays and extended patrols. In 1984, the first SURTASS ship of 18 United States Navy Ships for the Hughes developed equipment and arrays was commissioned. It was a mono-hull design and manned with a civilian and military crew. The ships are 224 feet long, beam of 43 feet displacing 2,262 tons, with a speed of 11 knots, and capable of ASW patrols of 60-90 days.48 SURTASS ships require stability at low speeds and in rough waters.

The towed linear array of 8575 feet was deployed on a 6000 ft neutrally-buoyant cable. SURTASS ships are manned with civilian mariners under contract to the Military Sealift Command and are designated United States Naval Ships (USNS). Ports of operation include Glasgow, Scotland; Rota, Spain; Yokohama, Japan; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and Port Hueneme, California. At this time, SURTASS joined SOSUS, and the combined name for these two systems became the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS).

SUR TASS vessels send, via satellite, the gathered data on ocean sound signals and other target information to East and West Coast shore-based processing stations for transmittal to numbered fleets. These ships improved the Navy’s ability to locate Soviet submarines and monitor their fleet bases, but a wartime environment would restrict them to deep ocean areas.

End of Cold War and New SOS US Users

The official date for the end of the Cold War, December 26, 1991, brought a lessening of the need for SOSUS, and the system mission was declassified after forty-one years of secrecy. That year, Federal scientists in Newport, OR began to use SOSUS to listen to seaquakes, quickly detecting thousands of them. In 1993, the scientists monitored the explosive fury of a deep-sea volcanic eruption and sent a small flotilla of research ships, robots, and submersibles to explore the site.

SOSUS BUDGET

YearAmount (million)

1991$335

1994$165

1995$ 60 (estimate)

The status of SOS US is reflected in the budget table. A steady reduction occurred in the manpower assignments with 2500 for 1993, 2000 for 1994, and 750 for 1996. SURTASS technology and the end of the Cold War eclipsed SOSUS’s position. It diminished the need for global surveillance while the SURTASS technology offered mid-ocean coverage and mobility.

New uses for SOSUS began. In 1992, the Navy, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Coast Guard used SOSUS to track fishing vessels in the Pacific to explore possible enforcement of international bans on drift-net fishing. Over a two-year period ( 1992-93), biologists used SOSUS to track the migrations of whales including a single blue whale as it swam southward from Cape Cod to Bennuda to Florida and back to Bennuda. All told, for about 1700 miles it was closely monitored .

To accommodate downsizing, SOSUS hydrophone arrays in both the Atlantic and Pacific became involved in shutdowns and closings. To reduce manpower requirements and realize other efficiencies, most of the original arrays were retenninated at alternative shore sites or remoted to central processing facilities that allowed a reduction in the number of operational NAF ACs. These transitions were completed in 1997 and 1998.

As mentioned previously, IUSS (formed in the mid-1980s to bring SOS US and SURTASS under one head) is made up of fixed, mobile, and deployable acoustic arrays that provide vital tactical cueing to ASW forces. It is the Navy’s primary means of submarine detection, both nuclear and diesel, continuing as an effective force multiplier, and in the post-Cold War period provides mobile detection, tracking, and reporting of submarine contacts at long range.’2 IUSS claims more contact holding hours since 1997 than all other anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms combined.

https://archive.navalsubleague.org/2007/remembering-the-sound-surveillance-system-sosus-part-ii

https://s36124.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2007-Oct-OCRw.pdf