By EDWARD L. BEACH
Captain Edward L. Beach, Jr., USN (Ret.), a distinguished and highly
decorated naval officer and submariner, also is a noted naval historian
and novelist. Beginning with Run Silent, Run Deep, his classic
novel depicting submarine warfare during World War II, continuing with his
solidly researched history The United States Navy: 200 Years, and
culminating in last year's publication of Salt and Steel: Reflections
of a Submariner, Beach has written 13 books--continuing the writing
tradition established by his father, who also was a Naval Academy graduate
and career naval officer.
Two
and a quarter centuries ago, on the North American continent a new nation
was created, born of an idealistic and truly unprecedented concept of
self-government. Formed in revolution, it created a navy that it disbanded
when the revolution was over. The nation's founding fathers apparently
thought a distant, idealistic nation, with no territorial ambition against
any other, would excite no enmity--nor need to defend itself against
anything except armies, or aborigines, on the land. It would need no navy.
After only a decade, however, this premise was found not to be true, and
the U.S. Navy was recreated.
As might be
expected, the new Navy then authorized has had its ups and downs. Its
total demise between 1785 and 1794 was the worst example, and the nadir of
U.S. sea power. Now, on the threshold of the 21st century, the United
States Navy has flowered into the most powerful sea-force the world has
known.
Building on the
pioneering achievements attained during the 20th century by its air,
surface, submarine, and amphibious forces, today's Navy has launched a
revolution at sea. Marked by new generations of highly accurate,
all-weather, and long-range land-attack weapons and supported by
innovative developments in combat systems, information technology, and
warfighting doctrine, this revolution will have lasting impacts on U.S.
national security for decades to come.
Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson recently proclaimed that the U.S. Navy's
continued forward presence and the ongoing development of global-economic
interdependence would make the next 100 years a "naval century."
But throughout the progression of events at sea of the past 100 years,
including today's revolutionary technical innovations, the Navy's
development is a continuous story of dedicated people--men and women,
officers and Sailors, uniformed and civilian--who were and are committed
to a vision of U.S. naval power at sea.
The
Prelude
The United States
was fortunate in having the navy of Britain against which to whet its
newly reconstituted naval blade early in its history: the War of 1812.
This, no doubt, accounts for many historians' continued fascination with
that short conflict. U.S. Navy ships were excellent and, in the main,
well-handled. Victories imparted a great upsurge of confidence, and in the
war's aftermath the United States began to build ever more magnificent
warships--so well-designed and constructed that they received admiring
plaudits the world over. But following the War of 1812 there was little
hard employment for them. The U.S. Navy had no Napoleonic anvil on which
to shape and forge itself for several decades. The most important result
of those formative years was international acceptance of U.S. naval and
maritime competence.
U.S. bluejackets
looked with pride on their series of victories over their mother navy,
that of Great Britain, and made much of the naval traditions then born.
But for half a century U.S. naval personnel found no employment worthy of
all their efforts. Then came the Civil War--not, however, an
"ideal" war upon the high seas. With only a few exceptions, the
Civil War was a coastal war of blockade and commercial strangulation.
Nonetheless, the
"War Between the States," as it was sometimes called back then,
gave much to the Navy in terms of leadership and innovative ship design.
But after it was over the nation was hurting badly. In recovery it turned
its eyes westward, across the inviting land, and again allowed its Navy to
sink into decay.
Surprisingly,
next to nothing was done with the ironclads and monitors developed by both
sides during the Civil War. The explanation was probably the combination
of returning isolationism, the cost of modernizing, and the fact that the
nation was mortally tired. The wind was free, if sometimes unpredictable;
sailing a ship was a true art, proudly held, that cost very little money;
steam engines and coal were totally inartistic, and very expensive
besides. Economy had become the national watchword, so far as the Navy was
concerned.
The Navy
continued to "show the flag," but in embarrassment, in old
wooden ships that were usually good to look at but otherwise useless.
Foreign men-of-war left them always behind with their iron hulls and
coal-burning steam engines. In the meantime, Europe, Japan, and even China
had begun to apply the discoveries of the industrial revolution to their
own imperial navies. Again, America's leaders of the day felt no obvious
need for a navy. Improvement comparable to that experienced after the War
of 1812 would have to wait until the end of the century, when, after
another victorious war, an activist president would be able to set things
right.
This period after
the Civil War, from 1865 to 1885, is therefore remembered as "the
time of the doldrums," not much better than the total demise
experienced 80 years earlier. Worse, it earned our Navy the professional
ridicule of thoughtful men of the sea. The U.S. Navy had its own
thoughtful men too, however, and their demand for modernization led to the
creation of the U.S. Naval Institute in 1873, the founding of the Naval
War College in 1884, and finally to a national demand that the Navy be set
to rights. Two decades after the Civil War, the Navy at last began to
build steel warships with steam engines and modern guns in turrets. The
battleship USS Maine, whose destruction was one of the proximate
causes of the Spanish-American War, was one of the first of these.
From the point of
view of dedicated naval officers and others, all this happened just in
time. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer are today looked upon as
purveyors of "yellow journalism," accused of instigating the
1898 war with Spain to sell newspapers. Another interpretation of that era
would, more fairly perhaps, put them at the forefront of national unrest
resulting from an enlarged view of the world.
To a large
degree, this "ideal little war with Spain" mirrored the War of
1812 in one important way. From it, as in 1815, grew the warship-building
campaign that the United States should have started in 1865. At the turn
of the 20th century the U.S. Navy needed good warships and good
leadership. Theodore Roosevelt provided both. Before the end of his second
term as president, he was able to send a fleet of first-class, modern
battleships--the "Great White Fleet"--on a breath-taking cruise
around the world to show the flag in a way entirely different from the way
it had been shown just a few years earlier. It had a different message as
well. Ebullient Theodore Roosevelt did not put it into quite these words,
but it was clear enough. The United States was beginning to command at
sea.
Idealism
and Reformers
The Navy's
formative years had lasted 125 years. Now, at the birth of the 20th
century, it was an established institution. The question of whether the
nation should have a strong Navy had been resoundingly answered in the
affirmative one more time--this time for the foreseeable future.
The United States
now stretched across the North American continent and had acquired, in the
bargain, a sizable overseas empire in the Caribbean and in the far Western
Pacific. The protection of these territories was a national
responsibility. With the advent of more powerful and faster steamships,
and the expansion of global telecommunications, the world had become a
smaller place. Thought and policy were now independent of physical
movement. The United States reached from coast to coast, and it had to
look in both directions.
As part of this
new international focus, the United States also began building the Panama
Canal (a tremendous job, that). The mammoth undertaking was completed only
a few years later, making possible easy redeployment of the Navy's ships,
and all the great ships that came after them, between the East and West
Coasts of the continent (until, with the advent of the modern aircraft
carrier, some of them had become too big).
Only a few years
after completion of that extraordinary undertaking, the second generation
of Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, no longer white-and-buff, but painted a
haze-grey "war color," was a third again faster than the first,
its ships twice as big, some able to fire shells weighing half a ton or
more to ranges beyond the horizon from three times as many huge-barreled,
turreted rifles. In the meantime, Germany and England, both well ahead of
the United States as naval powers, had begun a battleship-building race.
Both nations had amassed fleets of these new Dreadnoughts by the time war
came again to Europe in 1914.
The deep
underlying idealism of that generation of naval officers also made its
mark on the U.S. Navy. As technological development drove the horizons of
thought to fill vacuums undreamed of in the days of sail, they strove to
harness their minds to improve the Navy. There was much to work on.
Foremost among
those bent on reforming and improving the Navy was Rear Adm. William
Sowden Sims. Probably no American naval leader before or since, with the
possible exception of Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz years later, or Adm.
Arleigh Burke later still, has had the charismatic personality of Sims. He
was the leader of an extraordinary group of reformers who worked
tirelessly within the system to better it. Widely acclaimed as the person
responsible for teaching the Navy how to shoot straight, he also made
lasting contributions to the proper design of the most important ships of
the time--the battleships--and in the proper and efficient organization of
the Navy and the Navy Department. The naval bureaucracy's resistance to
the correction of the many existing deficiencies in ship design--and its
near-automatic reflex to reject all new ideas or technological
developments--came in for hot and frequent criticism from him.
World War I was
the biggest war ever fought in that small, convoluted peninsula of the
Euro-Asian continent. It caused fantastic loss of life and irrevocably
changed the shape and face of that part of the world. The conflict started
from economic rivalry and militarism among the principal nations, but
self-destruction, unprecedented civilian suffering, the fall of monarchies
and spread of revolution, and a predictable second coming were its
principal legacies. It fully deserved both of the names by which it is
known to history: The Great War, The World War, and, because it was fought
a second time, World War I.
Unfortunately for
navy buffs and historians, the conflict saw only a few naval battles. Only
one, Jutland in 1916, could be compared to Horatio Nelson's Trafalgar
(1805) in terms of forces engaged, but it was not comparable in outcome.
At Trafalgar, British forces totally wiped out the French-Spanish fleet,
sinking or capturing 19 ships and driving away the rest in confused
flight. At Jutland, there was no decisive victory. The British suffered by
far the greater loss of ships and personnel, but the Germans seized the
chance, under dark of night, to disengage. So Jutland became known to
history as indecisive. No further battle at sea followed, the stress of
war was too great, and Germany was forced to give up when the impact of
added U.S. military muscle began to make its mark.
A division of
five U.S. battleships formed the initial American Battle Squadron as part
of the British Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, Scotland, but the major
employment of U.S. naval forces during the war was in convoying supplies
of all sorts across the Atlantic. When Sims arrived in London in 1917 to
direct the Navy's operations in European waters, England's Adm. John
Jellicoe, Great Britain's First Sea Lord, related his country's desperate
situation at the hands of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare. A
cable to Washington, D.C., brought prompt action with the dispatch of a
first destroyer division under the command of Cdr. Joseph K. Taussig.
In the eyes of
the world at large the major naval development of that war was an entirely
different type of combat--under the sea--followed closely by the
unheralded marriage of the airplane and the warship.
The
Road to Pearl Harbor
Had there been a
counterpart to Sims during the interwar period culminating in the
devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the debacle in naval
warfare that took place at the outset of World War II might have been
prevented. After World War I, the world embarked with some enthusiasm on
its first attempts to limit arms. Since battleships were the biggest and
most obvious military objects, as well as the most expensive, they
logically became the first targets for reduction. But professional
military persons are not the only ones with better vision backward than
forward. At the time they fell under limitations, battleships of World War
I design were already obsolescent, and navies were undergoing great and
hidden changes--and reductions. By the early 1930s, the U.S. fleet had
been reduced to a force of just over 300 active Navy ships.
Submarines and
aircraft were beginning their slow--and contentious--rise to acceptance as
first-line naval-weapons carriers. The cult of the battleship as the
backbone of the "real Navy" persisted, however. Absent a Sims or
an influential reform constituency, the natural tendency was for a return
to the old ways. The U.S. Navy after World War I--strong and feeling good
about itself--was feeding on itself.
The inability to
recognize the need for change when it is there, or the refusal to allow
change from the old ways, can only give the advantage to someone else. The
Navy's wonderful fleet of great World War I battleships--all commissioned
during or immediately after that war--was to discover this lesson afresh
on 7 December 1941.
The idea of a
ship devoted solely to handling wheeled aircraft on a long flat deck
received little encouragement during the 1920s and 1930s. How could an
aircraft carrier--unarmored, big, and vulnerable--remain afloat after
being hit by a salvo of 16-inch shells? A carrier might be useful for
scouting, but it had no business in the battle line. Only aviators asked
the newly pertinent question: What use was a battle line with weapons of
20-mile range if aircraft carriers could send weapons with greater
accuracy ten times as far?
Similar questions
were being asked by those acquainted with the tremendous threat posed by
submarine warfare. The submarine force also would have been well served
had it had someone like Sims to look into the design and performance of
its torpedoes. Their design problems paralleled the deficiencies he had
corrected in the guns and ammunition-handling systems on surface warships.
When World War II began, U.S. submariners found their torpedoes running so
deep that even a zero-depth setting was often not shallow enough to hit an
enemy ship. Torpedoes sometimes detonated harmlessly before reaching the
target. Design flaws in the weapons' detonators meant that the torpedo
might be a dud if it hit a ship's hull squarely--i.e., a perfect shot.
Throughout the war, torpedoes occasionally ran in a circle--sometimes with
fatal results to the submarine that had fired them. Nearly two years of
the war would elapse before the first three of these design problems were
identified and corrected. The fourth never was. An entrenched Navy
torpedo-design bureaucracy in the Bureau of Ordnance--coupled with tight
peacetime purse strings on live-fire testing--critically hampered the
submarine force's effectiveness during the early years of the war and
resulted in the needless combat loss of many submariners.
Fortunately for
the Navy, and the nation, far-sighted innovators and congressional
advocates for a strong U.S. fleet (Rep. Carl Vinson, especially) persisted
in their efforts during the late 1930s to build a modern Navy sized
properly to meet the strategic requirements levied upon it by national
leadership and world events. Nearly every class of major WWII-era
combatant warships--with the exception of the mass-produced
"jeep" escort carrier--was designed before war began. Modern
aircraft also were on the drawing boards to replace the fleet's slow and
outdated designs. U.S. Marines perfected the principles of amphibious
warfare by trial and error during the 1930s--setting the stage for the
success of their island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific.
Intellectual
ferment and war games at the Naval War College paid their dividends too.
Following World War II, Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz--a 1923
graduate--observed that, with the exception of Japan's
"kamikaze" suicide planes, "... the war with Japan had been
reenacted in the game rooms at the Naval War College by so many people,
and in so many ways, that nothing happened during the war that was a
surprise."
The
Global Armada
If it can be said
that the U.S. Navy had only about 56 hours of combat experience prior to
World War II, it also can be said that World War II was one long gigantic
battle with almost unrelieved stress on all participants. Respites in
harbor were conspicuously few. In the Atlantic, it was a long, torturous,
weather-traumatized war against German submarines. There was little action
against surface raiders, particularly warships, since the Royal Navy had
eliminated or neutralized most of these before U.S. entry into the war. It
is an axiom of naval warfare that the entire purpose of navies and sea
power is to influence events on land. The success of Operation Overlord,
the D-Day invasion of Hitler's "Fortress Europe," was enabled by
the success of its naval assault phase--Operation Neptune--in achieving
strategic surprise, maintaining control of the English Channel, and
successfully landing and resupplying allied forces in the face of bitter
opposition from entrenched Nazi forces.
From the point of
view of the participants, prosecution of the naval war can be divided into
four basic fields of combat arms: air, surface, submarine, and amphibious.
The importance of mobile sea-based logistics and service-force ships also
was vividly demonstrated in the Navy's ability to operate continuously at
sea in a forward-deployed posture, far from major shore support or repair
facilities.
Technical
research and development played key roles in the victory at sea--reflected
most dramatically in the wartime application of radar on U.S. surface
ships, submarines, and aircraft. The unsung heroes of cryptology and
intelligence made decisive contributions throughout the war. The Navy also
was blessed by an unusually strong team of highly capable visionary
strategists and combat leaders--best exemplified by Chief of Naval
Operations Adm. Ernest J. King at the seat of government and Chester
Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander, in the field. By August 1945, U.S.
aircraft factories and shipyards--working around the clock in a prodigious
industrial effort--produced a fleet of more than 103,000 Navy and Marine
aircraft, and 6,700 surface warships, submarines, patrol craft, amphibious
vessels, and auxiliary ships. The U.S. Navy's global armada was
unparalleled in size before or since.
Commanders in
Nimitz's principal task forces shared his assertive outlook on the conduct
of the war with Japan, and they never ceased to press their advantage when
the tide of battle turned. Submariners, accustomed to the idea that only a
ship able to submerge in the face of superior forces could survive in the
far Western Pacific, particularly marveled at the surface fleet's entrance
into areas they had heretofore thought accessible only to them. They
marveled also at the huge fleet of aircraft carriers--so large that even
from the air only a part of it could be seen at any one time--their
country had created.
Marine Corps
amphibious doctrine matured as the costly lessons of early assaults from
the sea in the Pacific were painfully assimilated. Marines emphasized the
need to strike hard and prosecute the land campaign quickly--believing an
all-out attack in the beginning would result in fewer casualties in the
long run. In their island-hopping campaign--or in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's
imaginative leap-frogging amphibious attacks on Japanese forces in New
Guinea, for that matter--there was nowhere either side could retreat to.
The battle, once joined, was to the death.
Pearl Harbor
clearly illustrated, among many other things, the fallacy of permitting
respect for old tradition, extremely valuable in the right context, to
rank above research, logic, and capability. The battleships sunk there
could have rendered a good account of themselves against other battleships
15 miles away. Against aircraft from carriers 250 miles away they were
powerless, and the embarrassment showed.
Among naval
historians, it is customary to describe the attack on Pearl Harbor as a
"blessing in disguise," except for the loss of life, for in an
instant of time it demolished a pattern of thinking that might have been
disastrous had it continued long into the war period. Suppose Japan had
declared war in the accepted manner?
From all one can
today surmise, there might soon have occurred a fleet action somewhere in
the vicinity of Wake Island, as projected in Adm. Husband Kimmel's war
plans. But the Japanese fleet had ten first-line carriers in the
Pacific--the U.S. Navy only three, possibly augmented by two more hastily
returned from the Atlantic theater. In a war at sea, five U.S. carriers
would have stood no chance against Japan's ten. The fleet engagement would
have been a disaster far greater than the one that actually occurred at
Pearl Harbor. For this interpretation, we have Nimitz's fairly
well-informed opinion to thank. World history, at all events, might have
been very different.
What actually
happened, of course, was that the demise of U.S. battleships turned the
Pacific War over to the forces best-equipped to deal with it: aircraft
carriers, miraculously sent away from Pearl Harbor just in time, and
submarines, outfitted with faulty torpedoes though they were. This history
is well known, although there has never been an adequate explanation for
the orders, just before the Pearl Harbor debacle, that sent the carriers
out of harm's way (nor for the failure to proof-test the torpedoes
better). Nimitz's leadership was inspired; U.S. code-breaking also was
inspired. The Battle of Midway, occurring only six months after Pearl
Harbor, was the turning point of the war, although it had three years yet
to run. American blood lust was up, another result of Pearl Harbor, and
Japan had nowhere to go but down.
Essex-class
carrier task forces made progressively greater inroads against Japanese
forces after Midway, as did the Marine Corps--and so did increasingly
effective submarines. The great fleet battle everyone was expecting
finally took place, late in 1944 at Leyte Gulf, along with the associated
battles of the Philippine Sea, Surigao Strait, and San Bernadino Strait.
Rejuvenated, modern, and well-fought Navy surface combatants played their
invaluable supporting roles with telling effect, but the war at sea,
fought in desperation by Japan, was now like no naval battle ever joined.
When it was over, the Japanese navy had ceased to exist, and it was
recognized that naval warfare would hereafter be different from everything
that had gone before.
In any
description of World War II, there must at least be mention of the
tremendous effect that was achieved--and at what low cost--by the
submarine forces of the warring nations. This was outstandingly the case
with Germany and the United States. For strategic and operational reasons
it was less true of the British, Italian, and Japanese submarine forces.
Taking the U.S. Submarine Force Pacific Fleet as an example, during World
War II it sank one third of Japan's navy and nearly two thirds of her
merchant marine. Had U.S. torpedoes performed as intended, Japan's losses
would have been much greater still, particularly early in the war, and it
might have ended much sooner. Yet, the total U.S. Submarine Force,
including all support personnel, amounted to only two percent of the U.S.
Navy--a perfect example of the tremendous disparity of result when
unprecedented techniques are introduced into old-fashioned situations.
The
Nuclear Revolution
In the decades
that followed World War II, there was no time for the Navy's peaceful
consolidation of its remarkable accomplishment. The nation faced an uneasy
peace, and U.S. sea services responded to a continuing stream of
international crises and contingencies. Long years of Cold War
confrontation with the Soviet Union were spiked with politically
limited--and socially divisive--wars in Korea and Vietnam. In World War
II's aftermath, as the Navy's size was radically reduced (to 634 active
ships by June 1950), its ships and Sailors had to be driven harder than
ever before. Crews spent more time at sea and had less time for the upkeep
of their ships or, in a manner of speaking, for themselves. The pressures
of exercises increased and, because of rapidly changing technology, so did
the demands for proficiency. The trend continues to the present day.
World War II
ended with deployment of the nuclear weapon, and it is now clear that this
will be its all-time legacy. At the end of the war many submariners began
to wonder whether future years would bring worries about atomic depth
charges. No one, so far as is known, at that time thought about the
implications that nuclear power might have for submarines instead
of against them. No one, that is, except a certain small
"Engineering Duty Only" captain who had been assigned to the
electrical engineering section of the Navy Bureau of Ships until, by some
happenstance perhaps not entirely accidental (he sought it assiduously),
he was directed to look into nuclear power for propulsion of ships.
To detail that
extraordinary man's accomplishment is not the purpose of this essay,
except to point out that, except for the technical spikes represented by
early U.S. inventors, the last half of the history of U.S. Navy
submarines--and today's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier--has been totally
dominated by the nuclear power plant developed by Adm. Hyman George
Rickover and his devoted helpers.
Difficult though
he admittedly was, when it came to nuclear power Rickover emphatically had
what the U.S. Navy needed. First, he had the foresight to see, far ahead
of all his contemporaries, what a nuclear power plant could do for the
submarine and, later, its most potent surface warship. The best WWII-era
submarines, with postwar improvements, were capable of 20 knots on the
surface, in which condition they could range about 10,000 miles on a full
load of diesel fuel, and 15 knots submerged on the storage battery for an
hour--after which the "can" would be "flat" (the
battery completely discharged).
At very slow
speed, a submerged submarine hunted by enemy antisubmarine units could
stay down for perhaps 48 hours, but would then have to surface, exhausted,
only a hundred or so miles away from where the ordeal began--or at least
put up a snorkel pipe--to recharge her batteries. At high speed, the much
higher rate of discharge of the battery exhausted it much quicker (in the
foregoing example, only 15 miles away).
By contrast, a
submarine with a nuclear power plant would theoretically be capable of 30
or more knots, either surfaced or submerged, for several years. In the
sense that a reactor is nearly as inexhaustible as the wind, in
unsupported-cruising range Rickover brought the Navy back to the days of
sail. More than this, he foresaw, for example, that the Arctic Ocean,
heretofore inaccessible to men-of-war, would be a new operational arena
for a submerged boat with an inexhaustible supply of fuel and able to make
oxygen from electrolysis of the sea. Breaking through the ice from beneath
in case of necessity, as for firing a weapon, was now the only
problem--and he proposed innovative means to do this, too.
Today, the Navy
powers two types of ship with nuclear reactors. First, the huge Nimitz-class
aircraft carriers that, except for provisions (i.e., food), can stay at
sea literally for years. At the height of the crisis with Iran during the
Carter administration, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower remained under
way for nine consecutive months save for a four-day port visit to
Singapore. Today's carrier battle groups can be, and routinely are,
replenished by air, and personnel changes are accomplished in the same
way. Along with all its other functions, the aircraft carrier
simultaneously serves its own antisubmarine, antiaircraft, and land-attack
escorts as a massive supply ship for fuel and other categories of
provisions.
Second, the
submarines: no longer "boats" (although that term is still
affectionately used), but full-fledged ships in the complete sense of the
word. Of the two types of submarines in the Navy today, the
"attack" class, which carries not only sophisticated
guided-and-homing torpedoes--now thoroughly tested as a matter of
routine--also is armed with highly accurate, 750-mile-range, subsonic
Tomahawk cruise missiles that are fired from beneath the surface of the
sea. An improved 1,500-mile-range tactical Tomahawk is in the works.
Nowadays, neither torpedo nor missile misses its target, if properly
prepared and launched.
The other type of
submarine, the fleet ballistic-missile "boomer"-- officially the
Ohio-class Trident missile submarine--is configured to carry 24 Trident II
missiles that, like the Tomahawk, are launched submerged. During its
ballistic trajectory, each of these 24 missiles can release as many as
nine "MIRVs" (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry
Vehicles--the exact figure is classified and will be reduced if the START
II treaty is finally ratified). Each vehicle is a guided missile of its
own, possessing a nuclear explosive force more powerful than the bombs
that laid Hiroshima and Nagasaki to waste. It may be asked if anyone can
name any nation on this earth that could stand a single broadside from
such a ship.
Today the
submarine is, arguably, second only to the aircraft carrier in its
importance to the Navy and the country, and the submarine force feels it
may ultimately even transcend the carrier--for only the nuclear-powered
submarine can hide effectively in the sea.
A
Remarkable Transformation
These two
dominantly destructive weapons systems, aircraft carriers and submarines,
are however ameliorated by the inherent ability of the mother system of
both: the ship. The ship--aircraft carrier or submarine, guided-missile
cruiser or amphibious assault ship--brings flexibility with it wherever it
goes, until the moment when it must go into action. Then it can be
diplomatic or brazen, gentle or hard. Most likely, either the carrier air
wing, surface combatant, amphibious ready group, or submarine would begin
its function softly, barely making its presence felt: a nicety much easier
for the surface ship to achieve than the submarine, but denied to all
other arms. Any ship, her presence known or unknown, represents practical
possibility for instant action under the control of the U.S. government.
It can bring the ultimate weapon to the point of contact, ready in all
respects to unleash its terrible power, and then hold its hand or let it
all go, as the situation, and the nation's leaders, may require. "The
lesson," Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery wrote in his History
of Warfare, "is this: In all history the nation which has had
control of the seas has, in the end, prevailed."
The remarkable
transformation now underway in the modernization of today's Navy and in
the design of tomorrow's will further increase its combat capabilities,
operational concepts, and utility in profound and revolutionary ways.
During the Cold War, the Navy-Marine Corps team responded to nearly 200
international crises--one almost every three months. During the past three
years, the response rate increased to nearly one per month. Such
high-tempo operations are likely to continue for the foreseeable
future--but with fundamental changes. The lesson that Secretary of the
Navy Richard Danzig draws from recent operations is that, for the first
time in history, naval forces are being called upon to influence events
ashore in landlocked countries--with long-range missile attacks on
terrorist camps in Afghanistan, for example, and sea- and air-launched
strikes against Serbia and its forces in landlocked Kosovo.
The Navy now is
developing even more accurate, long-range, all-weather weapons--missiles,
aerial bombs, guided munitions, and naval guns--to take the fight far
inland from the sea. By 2015, the Marine Corps also will execute its
future warfighting concept--Operational Maneuver From the Sea--with
faster, larger, and more efficient assault vehicles, aircraft, and
air-cushion landing craft. Highly networked information systems will
tightly link all Navy warfighting disciplines and forces--air, surface,
subsurface, amphibious--in real time, across vast geographical areas. In
the words of CNO Johnson, "They will use this coordination to bring
combined, powerful forces to bear at the best place, at the right
moment--creating rapid and overwhelming victory."
The surface of
the sea, that tremendous membrane between air and water, can easily and
cheaply carry huge cargoes of essentials. On it travels the world's
commerce, the life-blood of nations. This is why it has always, since the
beginning of time, been the object of competition or combat, and this will
not change. In the modern context, the contest for domination of this
all-important membrane has fallen to the U.S. Navy. Today, there is no
other naval power--nor combination of powers--able to mount an effective
opposition to the U.S. Navy's dominance as the preeminent global sea
power.
But, just as the
ocean's surface is continually transformed, so too can today's
international circumstances change in unpredictable ways. Despite the
continuing growth in the reach and power of its strike capabilities, the
Navy is fast approaching its smallest size since the depths of the Great
Depression. Unavoidably, the number of ships available for forward
deployments plays an important role in the nation's ability to lower the
risk to U.S. vital interests. To do this it must ensure a potent U.S.
military response is available on instant notice anywhere in the world,
and it must at the same time keep the burden of high-tempo operation at
levels acceptable to Sailors, Marines, and their families.
It must do this.
If it cannot, it will cease to be an effective force. Today's U.S. Navy
owes much to the British Navy of the days of sail, but the many lessons
must be understood. One is that forced servitude on board ship is a thing
of the past (back then it included impressment, no liberty, and
performance through fear of the lash). Today's Sailors and Marines will
follow good leadership (the Marines do it best), but they will not accept
unrequited burdens.
During the decade
of the 1990s there has been a quantum leap in capabilities in all of the
Navy's ships. To a nation exploding with new and undreamed-of computer and
information technology, it is totally unacceptable for its warships to
attempt to function with less than absolute state-of-the-art perfection
when the fate of the nation, and of the young men and women making up each
ship's crew, may hang in the balance. Anyone, even a computer neophyte,
privileged to visit the combat-direction spaces of one of the Navy's
first-line ships--destroyer, cruiser, aircraft carrier, amphibious assault
ship, or submarine--comes away with an impression of extraordinary
electronic capability, not only in the machines themselves, but also on
the multiple large screens where the amazingly intricate information they
use to manage and direct operations is displayed.
Equally
impressive is the manner by which the commanding officer of such a ship
controls her, usually from a combat-direction center--buried somewhere in
her bowels--where there is the greatest access to information in real
time. Control of all her weapons is at his or her fingertips and, if
everything is as it should be, none of the ship's complicated weapons
fails in its mission. This is reflected in the extremely high quality of
the men and women operating both the ships and the weapons. Some of them
are very young, but every one is a computer expert by any normal standard.
All can (or could) command princely salaries "on the outside,"
and here indeed lies one of the major problems facing the Navy today.
Warfare at sea
(all over the world, and in all the different venues) has changed more in
recent years, because of the computer and information-technology
revolution, than in the past thousand. It has not stopped changing, and
weapon capabilities have been "improving" (becoming more
accurate and more deadly--and at longer ranges) faster than the general
public can appreciate. But at the same time, the spread of democracy and
the very deadliness of warmaking capability means global wars are less and
less likely.
Thanks to modern
technology, today's ships can be built to last 50 years. If nuclear, they
may never require refueling. Their weapons and computer technology, in
major contrast, must be--and are--constantly updated. Such a ship, with
her crew of irreplaceable people, will not be sent in harm's way unless
fully computer-ready.
And that is where
it stands today--unconsciously perhaps, because, unlike better guns or
bigger armor, improvements in computer technology are invisible--but
nonetheless powerful. All that is needed to harness that power are the
qualified technicians--Sailors all--who, as always, will spell the
difference between victory and defeat.
And so, as the
U.S. Navy emerges into the new millennium, it mirrors the technological
revolution of a century ago--facing new and as yet undefined challenges
with the confidence of its proud tradition of sea-fighting
excellence.
Next article:
World Events Increase Demand for Naval Forces
Back to: 2000 Almanac of Seapower Table of Contents |
