do enough damage to stop the group but not necessarily kill all the troops on the landing ships. One way to do this is to destroy the escorts in plain sight of the landing ships, so that they will realize how naked and vulnerable they are, and go back home. And this is exactly what the American boat decides to do.
The one constraint is that the U.S. skipper must make sure that the weapons used are not unique. This is to say, a torpedo is a torpedo, a Harpoon missile is a Harpoon missile. Many nations have these things. Using these weapons would not leave a 'smoking gun' pointing at the United States. 'Credible deniability,' they call it. But using a unique weapon like a Tomahawk antiship missile would point the finger directly at the United States, so these powerful weapons simply will not do.
The most favorable angle of fire is directly down the amphibious group's line of advance. Since the best ASW ships in the escort will probably be out front, these will be the first targets. The favored weapons would be two pairs of Mk 48 ADCAPs, each pair being controlled by a fire control technician at the BSY-1 consoles in the control room. In this way, the only thing the oncoming escorts will hear is the high-speed sound of torpedoes. There will be no way to know who manufactured them, or who fired.
The approach may be aided by targeting assets like a P-3 Orion patrol aircraft or other over-the-horizon targeting systems. Every now and again the 688I pokes its communications mast above the water for a short time, takes in the latest tracking data on the amphibious group, and then goes back to the job of positioning itself along the group's line of advance. Eventually the BSY-1 system begins to pick up indications of the oncoming vessels. The first contacts may be 'convergence zone' (CZ) contacts, which occur at regular intervals of about thirty miles from the target. In this way a submarine can hear a surface vessel at something like ninety miles, or the third CZ. But most likely the noisy diesel engines of the landing ships will allow the U.S. boat to hear them coming from over a hundred miles away.
By now the boat is at its most quiet routine, so that the oncoming escort vessels, as well as any ASW aircraft, will not be tipped to the presence of the intruder. Now the game becomes one of patience, staying quiet while the Ukrainian force bears down. Finally the last of the CZ contacts die out, and the first direct path contacts begin to be heard. The captain of the U.S. boat now tries to place the boat right down the middle of the group's course track and waits for them to close. When the range gets down to about 15,000 or 20,000 yards, the time for action has arrived. The four ADCAPs are launched in the slow-speed mode and guided under any thermal layer that might be present, so their passage to the two leading escorts will be as covert as possible.
Even when the torpedoes get closer to their targets, it is unlikely that the escorts will finally hear them and react. Now is the time to move the Mk 48s up to high speed (60-plus knots) and run them right into their targets. There will be little for the targets to do. With a top speed of around 30 knots, the escorts won't be able to outrun the fish anyway, and with the wires still guiding them (each ADCAP has ten miles of the stuff, remember), it should be an easy matter to guide the torpedoes under their targets and detonate them. The effects will be incredible. A single Mk 48 detonated under the keel of a frigate will, at the minimum, snap it in two.
At this point the next move is up to the senior Ukrainian officer present. If he is smart, he will turn around and run for port. If he is stupid, he will attempt to charge his remaining escorts into the area, call for some air support if any is available, and try to find the intruding boat. By this time the American skipper has reloaded his tubes and is setting up shots on the two remaining escorts. This will likely lead to the destruction of those ships as well. Should this happen, the captains of the landing ships will undoubtedly have the sense to run for home. The Ukrainian adventure is over. If the Ukrainian government is smart, they will not even bring up the fact that the incident took place.
As for the American skipper and his boat, their only problem is slipping quietly and discreetly away. And this they will do…
Mission #3 — Covert Missions/Special Operations Support
Into a world that is moving away from major war and toward a long-hoped-for global peace comes a new and intermediate hazard: low-intensity warfare. Actually, this is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called banditry, brigandage, or other desultory names by professional soldiers-when a soldier dies in such a conflict, he's just as dead as one killed on Normandy Beach. As a former commandant of the Marine Corps put it, 'If they're shooting at me, it's a high-intensity conflict.' That said, however, the rules are a little different. Today one must be more circumspect.
The new reality of warfare is a modification of the old. What was once reconnaissance becomes covert operations, putting small teams of exquisitely trained specialists into a place where they ought not to be, allowing them to do their job, whatever it may be, and then getting them out. If the job is done right, nobody will ever know who did it; and in many cases, nobody will ever know what was done at all.
Accomplishing something like that means stealth, and stealth is the submarine's stock in trade.
Tactical Example — Special Operations Insertion and Extraction
The quintessential special ops mission: pictures that need to be taken, an asset (human or electronic) that needs to be recovered, a bridge that needs to be rearranged. Whatever the particulars, it is essential that the mission be carried out. Such things are, by definition, outside the scope of normal national intelligence assets and may be considered to be acts of desperation. Thus they must be undertaken by personnel who have no desperation in their souls-in short, submariners and SEALs.
The nice thing about coastlines is that they are difficult to guard. There is no such thing as a straight piece of coast; winds and tides see to that. A 1,000-mile trawl for a ship can be double or triple that distance for a force of soldiers on dry land. The covert entry team need only select a piece that is unguarded and then get ashore. It's not as easy as it sounds, though-it's dangerous work. The submarine noses as close to the beach as it can. The first thing above the water is the search periscope with an ESM receiver, sniffing for electronic signals-radar first of all, then radio communications. If these are identified, the submarine skipper gets moving to avoid both.
The SEALs-the Navy's elite and exclusive SEa-Air-Land commando teams-will probably exit the submarine from underwater using one of the escape trunks. As the SEALs are approaching land with the utmost caution, the submarine captain tries to find a convenient place to wait, perhaps hugging the bottom, probably poking a radio mast up at preset intervals, waiting to recover the returning SEALs when their mission is done.
When the SEALs have completed this mission it's time to return to the sub. Despite what the movies would have you believe, usually the egress phase is quite calm and goes according to plan. If they have committed violence, there will be confusion. If all they have done is to look around and take pictures, then the victims will probably never know they have been had. Once the SEALs are on board, the submarine's skipper quietly leaves the area. Another special operation has been completed, and the joint SEAL/submarine team within the Navy has grown just a little bit closer. And each group of men feels both kinship and distant admiration for the other: the submariners because they have no desire whatsoever to go onto the beach-if they wanted to be Marines, they would have asked for it. The SEALs, on the other hand, shudder at the thought of being inside a steel pipe for weeks at a stretch. It takes all kinds to do the job.
Tactical Example — Special Information Gathering
It was called Ivy Bells. Once upon a time the U.S. Navy learned, never mind how, that there was a telephone cable on the floor of the Sea of Okhotsk that ran from Vladivostok to Petropavlovsk. Both cities were the sites of major Soviet naval bases, and someone, never mind who, wondered if it might be worthwhile to tap that telephone line. And so, an American SSN entered the area.
