Undersea War Spending

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30845, 2 September 1965, Page 15

Undersea War Spending

(N Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) WASHINGTON, Sept. 1.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union were spending about 3000 million dollars each year on preparations for undersea warfare, the Defence Department estimated yesterday, United Press International reported. A top naval officer said the Russian fleet consisted of about 400 submarines which were rapidly being modernised. He said the Russians had built about 150 submarines including numbers

of nuclear-powered types in the last five to 10 years. America’s total submarine fleet is 150, including 51 nuclear-powered ships. Vice-Admiral C. B. Martell, director of anti-submarine warfare programmes, described the Russian undersea effort at a press conference.

Estimates show that it would cost 3000 million dollars a year to build and operate submarines on the scale now practised by the Soviet Union, Vice-Admiral Martell said. To counteract the threat of the Soviet undersea fleet, the United States invests about 3000 million dollars a year.

That estimate covers all anti-submarine warfare programmes, including construction of atom-powered attack submarines but not the sub-

marines which fire Polaris ballistic missiles.

Russia evidently made a “clear decision” to expand its submarine operations in the last year and now is beginning to deploy them on a scale comparable with that of the United States. Vice-Admiral Martell said that about 40 of the Russian submarines operated routinely in the Norwegian Sea, the Phillipine Sea, and the Mediterranean.

The Russians “are providing us with the best antisubmarine warfare training we could possibly get,” the vice-admiral said. He also said China had 20 to 30 “old conventional submarines.” Neither Russian nor Chinese submarines had appeared in the South China Sea near Vietnam.