Sometime in the mid-1980s a gatekeeper boat was off the Kola Inlet, doing its job day after day. The sonar watch detected a submarine coming out of the barn from Severodvinsk. When the noise signature of the power plant and the other machinery on board did not match any known class of Russian boat, the captain of the U.S. boat decided to trail it and learn all he could about this new machine. Perhaps it was the first of the Sierra- or Oscar-class boats, or even the one-of-a-kind Mike-class boat with its titanium hull and liquid sodium reactor. Whatever it was, though, the U.S. commander was intent on getting to know everything possible about the new Soviet sub. The U.S. skipper carefully and quietly started stalking the Russian boat, probably from the rear, at a short distance.
In the chase that followed, the American sub listened and watched every move of the new boat. The sounds of the propellers and the all-important blade rate, which is used to calculate the speed of a ship or submarine. All of the machinery noise from the reactor (or reactors—many Russian boats have two), turbines, and pumps. They may even have heard some of the day-to-day living noises aboard the Soviet boat. The bilge tanks being pumped out, the TDU dumping garbage, and maybe even the sounds of hatches closing and pots and pans clanging in the galley. And through it all, the American boat and her crew remained undetected by the Russian boat and any supporting vessels that might have accompanied her.
After a period of time—and here the story begins to take on the air of unreality that is a hallmark of the true submarine stories—the Soviet sub came to the surface and slowed down. As the American sonar crews observed the Russians going to the surface, the American skipper apparently decided to try for the grand slam of submarine intelligence-gathering coups, getting some hull shots of the new Russian boat (video pictures of the hull, propellers, and control devices beneath the surface).
Such an operation is done by running underneath the target boat, raising the periscope equipped with a low-light video camera, and running a pattern around the hull to collect the video pictures. This is so difficult and dangerous that captains of U.S. submarines are almost never ordered to try it, as bumping a target can be non-career enhancing. On the other hand, successfully gathering hull shots is a sure sign that the boat’s skipper has the right stuff and is worthy of promotion to higher command. And with only a few O-6 (captain) command slots available for boomers, tenders, and squadrons, the competition is fierce among the various attack boat skippers.
What happened next was a marvel of seamanship. The American boat was able to make at least one (several tellers of the story say more) pass around the Russian sub’s undersides, and not once get noticed! Up and down the sides of the Soviet boat, the American skipper drove his periscope, obtaining the broadest possible coverage of the target. The coverage apparently included the control surfaces, propellers, and several sonar arrays. The quality of the video pictures was excellent, adding much to NATO’s understanding of the new Russian boat. And maybe most impressive of all, she was able to back away, continue the chase, and eventually resume her gatekeeper position off the Kola Inlet.
The achievement was so impressive in its day, so the story goes, that the skipper was awarded a “black” Distinguished Service Cross (i.e., the recipient is unable to wear it, but the decoration appears in his service file folder or “jacket”). While such peacetime decorations are not unprecedented, they are extremely unusual, and the award of such a thing would be an indication of how important the U.S. high command considered the action.
This is the way the game of hide-and-seek went for almost forty years between the nuclear boats of the United States and the Soviet Union. And the game continues today. Only recently, there was a very public airing of a minor collision between the USS Baton Rouge (SSN- 689) and a Russian Sierra I north of the Kola Inlet. There were some bent hull plates, some exchanges of diplomatic messages, and minor apologies between the United States and the Russians. But have no doubt, the day-and-night stalking still continues as this book goes to press.
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 Luftwaffe fighter command. Thus it was no surprise that as soon as they could be obtained, the 8th Air Force started to deploy fighters to escort the bombers against the danger the Luftwaffe fighters posed. These fighters not only reduced bomber losses but also tore out the heart of the Luftwaffe fighter command, making the invasion of Europe possible and victory that much easier.
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.
A Soviet Victor III wallows on the surface after becoming entangled in a towed array cable. The incident occurred in 1983 off the Carolina coast. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO
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 th
e 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.
Kilo-class submarine running on the surface. OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO
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 very quiet. This makes it an excellent candidate for operations in straits and other choke points. In addition, a well-handled Kilo is almost impossible to detect passively when she is running on her batteries. And so our little story begins.
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 happen if they do not comply with the wishes of the new Islamic government.
An ideal way would be to seal the nearest choke point, then try to collect reparations to refrain from doing it again. For a cash-starved country like Algeria, this toll might be considered an excellent way to generate capital. The likely place for this demonstration would be the Straits of Gibraltar. Not only is it an ideal place for a diesel boat to operate, but the symbolism of doing it under the nose of the British Empire would be tough to resist.
The first notice of what was happening would probably be the “flaming datum” of an exploding merchant ship. Most modern torpedoes are designed to explode under the keel of the target ship, snapping it in two. If this were done to a tanker, for example, there would likely be a massive oil spill and fire, as well as wreckage that might float as a hazard to navigation for some time. This, combined with the inevitable declaration from the Algerian government, would undoubtedly cause a reaction from the Western powers. For hundreds of years Great Britain has held control of the seas around Gibraltar, and any mischief in the area would probably make them want to deal with it themselves. The likely candidate for this ASW extermination job would be a Trafalgar-class nuclear boat, because of its ability to deploy rapidly to the area threatened by the Algerian Kilo. Most folks do not realize that a diesel boat is actually just a mobile minefield. It simply does not have the strategic mobility or sustained speed of a nuclear boat, a simple fact that is lost on critics of nuclear submarines.
The deploying T-boat is likely to have some help in the form of RAF Nimrod ASW aircraft. In addition, it is a safe bet that the British have seeded the straits with a variety of acoustic sensors, and the area is about as wired as a pinball machine. The problem for the British hunters is the adverse noise conditions in the straits. There are several thermal layers, which make passive sonar almost useless. In addition several currents, overlapping and opposed in direction, generate a lot of flow noise. All in all, the Straits of Gibraltar is a miserable place for passive ASW hunting.
Fortunately, though, the nuclear submarine has another advantage over the diesel boat besides sheer mobility. That advantage is the huge active sonar array positioned in the bulbous bow of the boat, which is able to send out pulses of sound and bounce them off a target submarine. A special operating mode makes it even more effective: in areas with relatively flat, hard bottoms, a technique called “bottom bounce” can be used. Much like skipping a stone across the water, an active sonar can bounce sound waves off the bottom to contact another submarine. Using this technique, a nuclear submarine might contact an almost-silent diesel boat at ranges beyond 10,000 yards. And as an added benefit, because of all the reverberations from the sound waves bouncing off the seabed, the target submarine probably will not be able to tell what direction the active signal is coming from.
The Trafalgar enters the straits from the Atlantic side. The British may try to use their other assets, the Nimrods in particular, to help drive the Kilo into the hunting Trafalgar. The Nimrods may be tasked to drop active sonobuoys. These, combined with active sonars from ASW helicopters, might just make the Kilo captain move deeper into the straits, right into the waiting T-boat. The aircraft, however, will not be allowed to drop any ASW ordnance on it. With many submarines of various nations traveling through the straits, and the closeness of one of their own nuclear boats, the possibilities for a “blue-on-blue” or friendly fire confrontation are simply too high. The Trafalgar is like a surgeon’s scalpel compared to the bludgeons of the aircraft.
Once the British think the T-boat is within range of a bottom bounce detection, the Trafalgar would probably use her 2020 active sonar to scan for the Kilo. This will be extremely disconcerting for the Kilo captain, with the buoys and active sonars of the aircraft and helos driving him from the Mediterranean side, and the blasting from the active sonar of the Trafalgar. He may choose to find a shallow spot and bottom his boat in an attempt to wait the British forces out. This will not work. With the on-station loiter time granted by its nuclear power plant, the Kilo will be out of battery power and supplies to run her environmental control systems long before the beer runs out in the wardrooms of the T-boat.
Inevitably the Kilo will have to make a run for it, and that’s the time for the kill. The advantage of active sonar is that range and bearing to the target are known with a fair degree of accuracy. An added bonus with this powerful generation of active sonars is that the acoustic intercept receiv
er on the Kilo will be so swamped with noise (like a stereo system with the volume too high—you cannot make out any discrete sound), they will not hear anything but the sound of the British 2020 sonar blasting away. Once the T-boat has closed to the desired range (probably over 10,000 yards), it is time to prosecute the Kilo. The Trafalgar may launch a pair of Spearfish torpedoes in high-speed mode, active pinging, with the wires acting as data links to the weapons.
The Kilo is likely to hear nothing of this. Only when the seeker heads of the Spearfish have acquired the Kilo will the active sonar of the T-boat be secured, and then the crew of the Kilo will hear over their acoustic intercept receiver the pinging of two Spearfish torpedoes already commencing their endgames. Unlike the previous scenarios, in which the nuclear boats could sometimes run from torpedoes and possibly outmaneuver them, the Kilo just does not have that option. Its relatively slow speed makes it something of a sitting duck, and the end will come quickly. This time there will be no doubt, for when the first torpedo hits, it will kill the little diesel boat and all its crew. In all likelihood, all that will be left is scrap metal and fish food.
And that’s the way to deal with modern Barbary Pirates.
Tactical Example—Battle Group Escort
The big gun of the fleet is still the aircraft carrier battle group (CVBG), which for that very reason is itself a target. The carrier remains the best platform for projecting power from sea to land, and the best for establishing presence, a term that means just what it says. A carrier and her battle group can appear on the horizon and just be there. As a police car can calm a neighborhood merely by cruising down the street, so can a powerful air/surface force let people on land know that someone cares what is happening.