Sinking the navy to protect it

Press, 13 September 1983, Page 16

Sinking the navy to protect it

The United States Navy’s surface ships are so vulnerable to enemy missiles that they should be replaced with a new range of submersible vessels — including submarine aircraft carriers — according to a Pentagon official. Captain Charles Pease, a Navy analyst in the office of the Defence Secretary, Mr Caspar Weinberger, makes the startling proposal in the latest issue of United States Navy Institute Proceedings, a private publication with close ties to the Pentagon.

His article, entitled “Sink the Navy!” notes that surface ships were shown during last year’s Falkland Islands conflict between Britain and Argentina to be extremely vulnerable to precisionguided missiles such as the French-

made Exocet. In a nuclear war, surface ships would fall prey to atomic blast and radiation, and in future wars would be much easier to detect because of advances in surveillance technology, he adds. Pease argues that the answer is to replace the present Navy tankers, supply ships, missile-firing ships — even the aircraft carriers — with submarines, which he says would be much more difficult for the Soviet Union to detect and destroy. Pease’s advice runs contrary to the direction the Navy has taken under President Reagan and the Navy Secretary, Mr John Lehman, who have pushed for creation of a 600-ship fleet with large, conventional aircraft carriers.

Critics of Lehman’s approach, such as Senator Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, say the big surface warships are too vulnerable to justify the cost. “Surface ships are becoming vulnerable to modern weapons,” Pease writes, adding: “Submersibles are less vulnerable.” “The challenge is, carefully and deliberately, to sink the United States Navy,” he continues. “If we fail to meet that challenge, (the Soviet Navy chief) Admiral Gorshkov or his successor might attempt to do it for us.”

Pease says one type of vessel that could be developed in the next few years would be a missilecarrying ship that would normally be semi-submerged, but would have watertight hatches that allow

it to dive out of sight to protect itself. In the short term, special submarines carrying fuel tanks, ammunition and other stores could also be built and might be equipped with hangars for helicopters. The article also carries an illustration of a submersible, nuclearpowered aircraft carrier with a retractable conning tower, a craft that could rise to the surface to launch vertical-take-off jets stored in hangars below deck. Development of vertical-take-off jets such as the Harriers that Britain used in the Falklands has made submersible carriers, with shorter flight decks, more feasible, Pease says. In a nuclear war, he contends,

normal aircraft carriers “are vulnerable to blast and to heatdamage from ballistic barrage,” but submersible carriers could survive. He urges the United States defence establishment to consider the case for submersible carriers. “The United States Navy has developed an ostrich approach to nuclear war at sea,” Pease says. “This has been reflected in United States surface warship design during the last 40 years.” The chief obstacle to shifting toward an underwater fleet may not be technical so much as bureaucratic, he said, adding that Naval officers and Pentagon officials would have to be innovative if the change is to be accomplished effectively.