Tactical Example — Escorting a Boomer
In World War II the U.S. 8th Air Force found out the hard way about the price of running bombing raids into Germany without fighter escort. The big, heavy bombers were no match for the quick, heavily armed fighters of General Adolf Galland's
Today, lessons such as these have not been lost on the operators of the boomer force in the U.S. Navy. The Ohio-class SSBNs are the largest and most capable FBM boats ever deployed by the United States, and also the most valuable. The Navy is proud of saying that no U.S. SSBN has ever been tracked while on patrol. But what about when it is headed out to patrol? With so many of America's strategic 'eggs' in just a few Ohio-class hulls, they clearly are crown jewels needing protection. And when the boomers come out of Kings Bay or Bangor, they are extremely easy to see, whether by satellite or just a set of human eyes watching as they steam up the channel. Once they are at sea they fade away into the depths, but while departing and arriving at the base, they are vulnerable.
While the U.S. Navy has never made a big deal about such things-and with the end of the Cold War it is unlikely that they ever will-such vulnerability is a concern when you have only a few of the big Ohios to carry over 50 percent of America's total nuclear weapons load. All it would take is some easy cueing from a source ashore to tell an enemy submarine just when a boomer might be headed to sea. Thus it makes good sense to have the big FBM boat escorted out to sea by attack submarines, much as a fighter might escort a bomber on a bombing raid. It should be emphasized that a hostile boat would probably not try to get a shot in, though in wartime conditions this is always a possibility. More likely the threat boat would try to get on the tail of the Ohio and track it for as long as it could.
Let's suppose someone wanted to try tracking an Ohio as it came out of the channel at Kings Bay, Georgia. The continental shelf near Kings Bay is somewhat longer and flatter than at Bangor (the seabed drops right to the continental slope at the mouth of Puget Sound), giving a potential enemy submarine a somewhat easier time finding the Ohio as she comes out. Some time before the boomer is scheduled to leave port, one of our SSNs, probably a Los Angeles-class boat, will be stationed off the mouth of the channel to sit and watch for any signs of foreign submarines. The U.S. boat's mission will be to sanitize the area, making sure no other submarines have covertly entered American territorial waters to lie in wait for the SSBN. It will be a long, boring process, with many of the same kinds of problems described in the previous hunting scenarios. They will slowly patrol the area and listen, looking for any sign of something unusual or man-made.
If they find another submarine at this time, it will be reported quickly, and action will be decided upon by higher authority. More likely, though, is the scenario in which a hostile submarine is waiting just outside the twelve-mile limit of American territorial waters. In this case the Los Angeles will probably try to sit astride the planned route of the Ohio and wait for any sign of activity. If such contact occurs, the action that follows might go something like this:
As the Ohio comes out (escorted by support and security vessels to keep, if nothing else, the Greenpeace protesters at a safe distance) and prepares to dive, the Los Angeles continues its job of sanitizing the ocean ahead of the boomer. Much like a sheepdog herding a flock, its job is to interpose itself between the SSBN and any threat until the boomer can slip quietly into the deep waters off the Carolina/Georgia coast. Once an Ohio is free of the continental shelf, even the latest 688I-class SSN would find it almost impossible to track.
The Los Angeles continues ahead of the boomer, until it gets the first 'sniff' of a hostile sub. Then the engagement takes on all the aspects of a game of chicken with tractor-trailer trucks. The Los Angeles closes with the threat boat, trying to get it away from the Ohio with everything short of actually ramming it or firing weapons. The SSN initiates maneuvers conforming to the rules of the road, which require the hostile boat to evade. The American SSN might launch noisemakers and other countermeasures in an attempt to make so much noise that the Ohio will be lost in the background. Another technique has the Los Angeles masking the Ohio by standing along the path between it and the hostile sub, and blasting away with its spherical sonar array as a jammer.
If the threat sub proves to be particularly obnoxious, the American skipper might even engage in a maneuver to force the hostile boat's skipper either to take evasive action or suffer the possible damage and embarrassment of an underwater fender bender. Whatever maneuvers the attack boat chooses, the desired result is that by now the Ohio has slipped into the deep waters off the continental shelf and is silently on the way to her designated patrol area. Once this is accomplished, the Los Angeles probably breaks off the chase and heads for home.
Thus begins another in the more than 3,000 FBM patrols that the United States has run over the last three decades. The SSN will have helped make it a successful one, that is, one in which the boomer returns to base with all twenty-four of its missile tubes still loaded, missiles unfired. Some might claim that the above scenario is only the wildest speculation and conjecture, and perhaps this is true. But just what was that Victor III that surfaced off the Carolina coast in 1983 doing there? Just remember that the submarine bases at Charleston, South Carolina, and Kings Bay, Georgia, are right in that neighborhood. Do you think the Victor was there just to photograph the resort at Hilton Head? Hardly.
Tactical Example — Hunting a Diesel Submarine
One of the few growth industries in the defense world today is the diesel-electric submarine market. Since the end of the Cold War, more and more small- to mid-size navies have seen these compact, cost-effective craft as a way to make up for whatever protection they may have enjoyed from whichever side they allied themselves with during the Cold War. Unfortunately, because of cutbacks in the defense industry worldwide, some of the nations that produce such boats have sold their wares to nations that the rest of the world might consider somewhat less than responsible. China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Algeria are just a few of the countries that have decided to invest heavily in diesel boats.
Surely the Volkswagen of the current generation of diesel boats is the Kilo-class boat produced by the CIS/Russia. This trim little boat is compact, has a good combat system, adequate weapons and sensors, and is
Let us suppose that the Islamic fundamentalist movement takes a serious hold in Algeria, along the coast of North Africa. And let us again suppose that the local ayatollah decides the merchant traffic passing along his coast should have to pay some duty for the privilege. It might then be possible that the Algerian Navy, the recent recipient of several Kilo-class boats, will be ordered to give the western merchants a demonstration of what might
