Cold War ASW Lessons

The Cold War saw the apex of ASW as practiced by the US Navy against the Soviet Union’s submarine fleet.  Although much (most?) of the tactics are secret even today, we can draw some lessons from what is publicly available.

The first lesson involves one of ComNavOps pet peeves – the tendency to discuss platforms and weapons in isolation despite the fact that they are used in a broad context of overlapping capabilities.  In other words, one surface ship does not engage one sub and yet that’s exactly how we persist in discussing such things.  The lesson is that Cold War ASW was an all hands, all platforms, all capabilities exercise.  Thus, a surface ship might be badly outclassed in a purely one-on-one battle against a sub but as part of an overall ASW effort it can be very effective.

Here are additional lessons, in no particular order.

ASW began the moment a Soviet sub left port.  In combat, ASW would begin before this by attacking subs in port but that’s not relevant to this discussion.  Soviet subs were picked up by US subs and continuously tailed, in some or many cases.  US subs picketed Soviet harbors and monitored the comings and goings of subs.  Thus, the ASW effort began with a good knowledge of how many subs were at sea, when the set out and returned, where they might be heading, and, for some, a continuous tail.  We see, then, that the ASW contest began long before a sub could present a threat to US naval forces.

Most initial detections were via land based sonar installations.  Everyone is familiar with the GIUK gap and SOSUS underwater listening arrays.  By all accounts, the arrays and their land based analytical stations were extremely effective at spotting and tracking Soviet subs even at immense distances from the arrays.  Naval forces often had the benefit of ballpark (or better!) locations of subs in their areas and could concentrate their local ASW activities accordingly. 

Most initial surface ship detections of subs occurred at convergence zone distances.  This is an important concept.  ASW does not begin when the sub moves into torpedo range;  it begins as far away as possible.  This ties directly into the next lesson.

Fixed wing aircraft, S-3 Vikings, provided wide area, distant coverage.  Again, the idea was not to wait until the sub reached firing range but to detect and engage at the greatest distance possible.  Vikings allowed the task forces to keep subs at an arm’s length.  The ability to quickly cover large distances and reposition between search areas was invaluable.

ASW proficiency comes from practice.  This was absolutely critical.  Cold War naval forces practiced ASW, for real, every day.  Soviet subs were, seemingly, everywhere and US naval forces were constantly engaged.  Proficiency was mandatory and almost unavoidable due to the constant practice.

ASW assets were specialized.  As opposed to today’s “do everything” platforms, Cold War assets were fairly focused on ASW.  S-3 Vikings were sub-hunters first and foremost.  The Spruance class destroyers were purpose designed ASW vessels with extraordinary quieting measures built in.  The Perry class frigates were primarily ASW vessels.  The helicopters had ASW as their first responsibility.

Carrier groups were able to provide their own ASW.  Carrier groups had sufficient numbers of ASW ships and aircraft to provide their own ASW protection.  Further, the carrier could provide protection for its ASW assets.  S-3 Vikings could range far knowing that F-14 Tomcats were always in the air to provide protection.

OK, so now we see how Cold War ASW was performed and the lessons it offers today.  How does this compare with today’s performance?  Let’s take the lessons one at a time and examine them.

Chinese Type 093 SSN

ASW began the moment a Soviet sub left port.  I would assume/hope that we’re doing this today by picking up Chinese (and now Russian) subs the moment they leave port.  Of course, this is an aspect that will never be confirmed until many years from now.  The worrisome part of this is that we have fewer subs than we did and are heading for an even worse submarine shortfall.  We may simply not have sufficient numbers of subs to do this to the extent that it was done in the Cold War.  We had 80-100 subs during the Cold War and have 70 now with numbers projected to further decrease.  On the other hand, our satellite surveillance capabilities have improved so we can at least have some idea of comings, goings, and numbers at sea.

Most initial detections were via land based sonar installations.  Arrays were deployed around the world at one time.  How many are still operational is unknown.  The ship mounted version, SURTASS, is operational in the Pacific.  Again, hopefully, we’re getting initial detections over very long distances via the SOSUS/SURTASS systems.  If we don’t have them, we should be deploying arrays throughout the first island chain around the South/East China Seas.

Most initial surface ship detections of subs occurred at convergence zone distances.  This is an important capability to have and I just don’t know whether we are still capable of this.  It requires a great deal of training and practice which we don’t appear to be doing.  I’m afraid that this has become a lost art.

Fixed wing aircraft, S-3 Vikings, provided wide area, distant coverage.  The Viking is gone and carrier groups have no fixed wing ASW capability.  By definition, our ASW will be much closer and less flexible.  This is a capability gap that the Navy needs to rectify.  P-3/8’s can supplement this capability to some extent but are not intended to provide the kind of continuous, dedicated carrier protection that embarked Vikings provided.

ASW proficiency comes from practice.  This is our greatest shortcoming.  We simply don’t practice ASW enough to be effective.  All the new equipment in the world won’t compensate for a lack of training.  Until we begin to take ASW seriously, again, we’ll remain a third rate ASW force.  There’s no reason why we can’t practice out in the real world.  There are enough Chinese and Russian subs at sea to gain practical experience.  Of course, that would require possibly offending sensibilities which we seem to want to avoid.  It would also require that we take Aegis destroyers away from their vital pirate chasing, humanitarian assistance, flag showing, and cross training with navies that will never work with us in combat.

ASW assets were specialized.  This is the second greatest shortcoming.  We no longer have focused ASW platforms.  ASW has been relegated to an add-on function.  This means that the platforms are not optimized for ASW and won’t be training for it.  What do you suppose a Burke CO is going to emphasize, AAW or ASW?  Our helos spend all their time performing logistics, transportation, and humanitarian assistance.  When they get enthused about combat it’s all special ops related.  We’ve lost our helo ASW capability by making every helo a do-everything aircraft.  We’ve completely lost our low end frigate ASW vessels.  We have no ship that we can send ranging out from a carrier group or dedicate to patrolling submarine transit routes.  What carrier group commander is going to send one of his three surface escorts off on a sub hunt?  We just don’t have the numbers to allow it.

Carrier groups were able to provide their own ASW.  As we’ve discussed, carrier groups lack sufficient numbers of ASW ships and aircraft to provide their own ASW protection and those that we do have are multi-function where ASW doesn’t make the top ten list of activities.  Lacking fixed wing ASW assets, carrier groups are limited to close range ASW only.  That’s not where you want to engage submarines!

In summary, we once knew how to conduct ASW.  It was a multi-faceted exercise beginning at extremely long range and continuing all the way to close range much like the concept of layered AAW defense.  We had dedicated assets that practiced in the real world on a continuous basis.  Now, we have no dedicated assets, we lack some of the ASW layers (like carrier fixed wing Vikings), other layers have been minimized our de-emphasized, our training has been almost abandoned, and there seems to be little recognition of, or enthusiasm for, ASW.  The Navy has become so focused on AAW and BMD that there is little attention paid to ASW and even less budget.  Unfortunately, the Chinese submarine threat is going rapidly in both numbers and quality and the Russian threat is being revitalized.  We need to begin responding immediately.

The Next Enterprise Is The Wrong Ship

While our military must be sized and designed to fight a high end war, the fact is that most of the time our military is involved in very low end conflicts against third rate opponents, if even that.  We have Super Hornets wasting flight hours plinking pickup trucks that are replaced before the aircraft can even return to the carrier.  We have Aegis ships chasing down pirates in skiffs.  We have B-2 bombers flying all the way from the US to Iraq or Afghanistan to drop a bomb on a suspected sniper or mortar position.  And so on. 

Our naval aircraft have only a limited number of flight hours in their lifespan and we’re using them up conducting the simplest, lowest tech missions imaginable.  Our air wings are shrinking because we’re using up Hornets faster than we can buy new ones and the problem is only going to get worse as we buy the F-35 or some horrifically expensive, do-everything UCLASS.

There’s also the operating cost to consider.  An F-35 is going to cost around $35,000 per flight hour.  Even lower tech aircraft like the A-10 cost around $10,000 per flight hour.  I don’t know what the operating cost of a Nimitz class carrier is but it’s almost unimaginable.

What’s needed is a low end, low cost combat capability for dealing with low end threats.  What’s needed is a small, basic propeller driven aircraft with reasonable speed, range, and combat payload.  What’s needed is something very much like the Embraer EMB-314 (A-29) Super Tucano.  For those of you unfamiliar with the plane, let’s take a quick peek at some of its specs.

• Cruise Speed:  320 mph;  that’s just fine since no low tech opponent has an air force and nothing will be chasing it.

• Combat Radius:  340 miles;  outstanding when compared to the Super Hornet with a radius of 400 miles.

• Endurance:  8.5 hrs;  fine – we’re not talking about flying from the US to Iraq to drop a bomb.

• Guns:  2x 12.7mm;  adequate given the absence of an aerial threat – a Hornet, by comparison, has 1x 20mm

• Hardpoints:  5 - 3300 lbs;  adequate for the types of low end missions that are needed

• Operating Cost:  $1000/hr;  outstanding compared to the $15,000 - $30,000/hr costs of jets.

• Cost:  $12M;  outstanding especially compared to the $60M - $150M for modern jet aircraft

We see, then, that we have a cheap aircraft capable of carrying out the plinking and low end close air support that makes up low end warfare.

Super Tucano - The New Air Wing?

 Now, where do we operate these aircraft from?  Well, we’ve consistently seen the difficulties in getting our “allies” to grant us basing and overflight rights.  Thus, the answer, as it’s always been, is the aircraft carrier.  No, we’re not talking about Nimitz or Ford class supercarriers.  Instead, in keeping with the low tech requirements, we simply need a WWII Essex carrier – a simple, basic platform for operating propeller driven aircraft.  The Essex, as you’ll recall, was tiny by modern carrier standards at only 880 ft long and yet it could operate an air wing of 100+ propeller aircraft.  That kind of asset is more than enough to deal with the low end threats we generally face.

Yes, I know the Super Tucano is not currently available in a navalized version, however, the conversion has been studied and would be routine.  We figured out how to make carrier prop planes decades ago.  It’s not magic.

Essex Class Carrier

 This is part of the peace/war mix that ComNavOps has advocated.  This is strictly a low end, “peacetime” asset.  When a high end war comes, this vessel gets parked and the big, shiny, well rested F-18/35s and Nimitz/Fords come out and do their work.

What does this gain us aside from immense cost savings when running a peacetime “war”?  It gains us the ability to save flight hours on our precious and expensive high end aircraft thereby extending their service lives.  It gains us the ability to keep our supercarriers well maintained instead of floating off the coast of some third rate nation/threat on 11 month deployments that pile wear and tear on the ship for no good return.  It gains us the ability to keep our carriers home and working on developing high end tactics and operating doctrine without having to worry about covering a low end threat.  It allows us to train our ships and aircraft to maximum potential.  It keeps our high end carriers in surge-ready condition rather than worn out and poorly maintained.

Given the infrequency of major wars and our propensity to jump into low end conflicts, this might be the best value for the dollar in the Navy.

Maybe the next USS Enterprise should be 880 ft long and 30,000 tons instead of 1100 ft and 100,000 tons.

Coyote Supersonic Drone

The use of supersonic target drones came up in a recent post so I thought it would be worthwhile to briefly review what the Navy has to work with.  On a related note, the annual DOT&E (Director, Operational Test and Evaluation) reports consistently fault the Navy for failing to provide representative threat surrogates so, again, let’s see what the Navy’s doing in this area.

Probably the best known supersonic target drone is the GQM-163 Coyote.  Coyote can operate from sea-skimming to 60,000 ft and at speeds of Mach 2.5-4.0.  The drone is around 18 ft long and a bit over a foot in diameter.  The drone is launched from land bases and has a range of around 60 miles.

An Oct 2014 purchase of 7 units showed a price of $4M per.  Public procurement contract announcements suggest a production rate of around 6 drones per year.

The FY 2013 DOT&E annual report discusses some limitations with the Coyote.  Apparently, the drone lacks threat representative anti-ship cruise missile seekers and can only realistically simulate two threats and is only actually simulating one.  From the DOT&E report,

“The Navy’s GQM-163A Coyote Validation Report of May 2006 identified two threats that the Coyote could fundamentally represent. Thus far, attention has focused mostly on a Coyote representation of one of the two threats. DOT&E recommends an engineering analysis to determine what alterations to the Coyote vehicle should be made to use it as a surrogate for the second threat discussed in the GQM-163A Coyote Validation Report.”

The report does not identify which threats the drone can simulate.

An interesting sidenote demonstrates the absolutely minimal testing that constitutes acceptance of weapon systems.

“Four targets (two primary plus two backups) would be for the Aegis Modernization IOT&E, and eight targets (four primary plus four backups) would be for the Aegis DDG Flight III IOT&E.”

The extent of weapon testing has been brought up before and some have suggested that there is far more testing than I’ve documented.  This DOT&E statement provides additional evidence of the meager testing that is considered satisfactory.

Think about what that level of testing means.  Given a fleet of many dozens of ships that have AAW capability, only a half dozen or less actually get to conduct a live fire exercise against a supersonic threat in any given year.  That’s hardly sufficient to provide the level of training required for combat readiness.

There are other supersonic target drones.  For example, the AQM-37C is a 60’s era drone that has been updated and appears to mainly be used for very high altitude and ballistic missile targeting.  The drone is 14 ft long and has a max speed of Mach 4.

So, is Coyote sufficient for realistic training?  No, or at least not enough.  A realistic threat surrogate should emit the same signals as the threat meaning that whatever radar or other signals the threat uses should be emitted by the surrogate.  The drone should also be programmed to follow the threat’s expected flight profile including terminal maneuvers.  Lastly, the drone should be capable of the same on-board ECM, if any, that the threat has.  Given all the supersonic threats out there, the Coyote apparently only realistically simulates one.  That’s not providing the fleet with the level of realistic training that’s needed.  That’s also not providing the weapon system analysts with sufficient data to determine whether the various weapon systems can handle the myriad threats in the real world.  In other words, we’re testing for one threat and making the highly suspect assumption that we can handle the others despite their having significantly different speeds, flight profiles, maneuvering capabilities, seekers, signals, and ECM.

Coyote appears to be an adequate platform for further development.  DOT&E actually presents some costs for modifications that would enhance the realism and usefulness of the Coyote and the costs are almost negligible on a relative basis.  There is no reason for the Navy not to provide realistic threat surrogates.

Filling the Gaps

We spend a great deal of time arguing over the LCS and F-35 and other pieces of highly advanced military hardware.  However, can we win a future major war with just military equipment?  Presumably, a major war will not be over in 90 days.  Presumably, it will last years since both the US and China/Russia/Iran/NKorea all possess large inventories of military assets and sufficient resources (to greater or lesser degrees) to build new ones as losses occur.

Consider, now, the rate at which we can replace combat losses.  It’s not fast!  A single ship takes years to construct.  We won’t be replacing many combat losses.  Even modern aircraft take quite awhile to build.

ComNavOps has previously suggested that the winner of a major war will be the side which has the greatest number of second tier assets.  Think about it.  The initial period of a major war will see both sides throwing their best units at each other and attrition will ensure that after that initial period both sides will be left with many lesser units.  The side with the most, wins!  Also, building lesser (meaning less complex and, thus, easier and quicker to build) assets as replacements for top level units may be a way to achieve a relatively quick and cheap advantage.

This ties directly into one of our previous posts in which we stated that numbers are the most important factor in winning a war.

How else can we sustain an effective military force in the face of attrition and insufficient replacements?  Well, one way is by conscripting civilian equipment and painting it green.  Our fathers made extensive use of civilian ships, small craft, and equipment during WWII.  Consider the many amphibious ships of WWII.  They were either purely or essentially civilian ships.  The landing craft, while built exclusively for military use, derived from civilian small craft and were built to civilian standards using common materials.

This leads to several thoughts about civilian equipment usage.  For example, once we run out of giant amphibious ships and turn to civilian transports, how will we get troops and equipment on and off the ships?  Perhaps, amid our fixation on LCACs, we should pause momentarily and think about a landing craft that can operate from and with civilian ships.

The flip side of the civilian usage issue is that perhaps we should be requiring that all civilian ships be built with certain military interface capabilities such as RO/RO or helo flight decks.  The Chinese do this – their entire civilian merchant fleet is military compatible.

We’ve already seen that the military made an extensive effort to maintain the tooling and expertise required to reconstitute the F-22 production line.  Perhaps we should also be maintaining the ability to reconstitute the A-4, A-6, F-14, F-15, F-16, and similar lines, assuming that they can be produced faster than an F-22/35.  Again, if we devolve to second tier assets, the side with the most, wins.

And, of course, it goes without saying that we should be maintaining an extensive reserve fleet of ships.  Consider what we could have in a reserve fleet right now:  the entire Spruance class, the Kidd class, the entire Perry FFG class, Forrestal, Saratoga, Independence, Ranger, Constellation, Enterprise, America, Kennedy, Kitty Hawk, the Tarawa class, and so many others.  The nine supercarriers that have been retired would be completely capable of being reactivated for emergency war duty and would totally outmatch any enemy capability.

It may not be our best, frontline assets that win a major war;  it may be our second line and civilian assets.  Maybe we should begin planning accordingly and preparing for war with secondary, civilian, and retired assets.

Good On The Army - ECM

ComNavOps has long preached the impact of electronic warfare.  All of our weapon systems are highly susceptible to electronic warfare countermeasures (ECM).  This is bad but even worse is the Navy’s head-in-the-sand view of the problem.  The Navy is not testing its systems against realistic and extensive ECM to see what our weaknesses are and fix them.  We are not developing tactics for working in an electromagnetically challenged environment.  In short, we’re sitting around fat, dumb, and happy, secure in the misguided belief that our systems are somehow immune to ECM and all will function perfectly in combat.

Well, at least the Army has begun to get the picture and is now initiating a series of weapon tests against realistic (I hope!) ECM, as reported by Breaking Defense website (1).  In the first,

“… the US Army conducted an unprecedented wargame this spring to test its new air and missile defense network against advanced electronic warfare techniques. “

“The exercise tested an early version of the Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System, which links together sensors, launchers, and command posts. The idea is that a battery no longer has to rely on its own radar but can get targeting data from any radar in the system — even if the two weren’t originally designed to work together, for example a Patriot launcher and a THAAD AN/TPY-2 radar.”

That’s a great start.  Test the weapon system you’re betting your future on in a realistic ECM environment before you have to pay in blood to find out the hard way.

There is an ominous note, here.

“The original inspiration for IBCS [Integrated Battle Command System] was simple efficiency. It will replace a half-dozen different command and control systems for air and missile defense, and it will allow the Army to mix-and-match elements from different weapons systems as needed. But the Army also realized that IBCS could help defeat radar jamming. If one battery’s radar is jammed, spoofed, or hacked, IBCS allows it to stay in the fight using data from radars that are in different locations and/or on different frequencies. Better yet, IBCS will combine data from different radars into a single “composite track” of a given target, allowing radars with an accurate picture to correct radars that are being spoofed.”

Does this sound a lot like the F-35 which supposedly ties together every sensor on the aircraft in a single composite picture? Of course, that’s not working.  Further, remember the descriptions of the F-35 being a collating center for every sensor in the theatre, tying disparate systems and platforms together and directing their functions, allocating their weapons, and rerouting weapons in flight?  Sounds awfully similar, doesn’t it?

It’s not just the F-35, either.  Remember, the promise that the LCS fleet would be nodes that would establish a vast sensor network comprised of every sensor in theatre?  How’d that work out?

This also sounds a lot like the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) or its repackaged cousin, Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA).

On the plus side, if it can be made to work, who wouldn’t want a sensor system that ties together every system into one vast battle network?  On the other hand, one of the problems with such a system is that if the data from every sensor and function is concentrated into one central physical location, it becomes a single point of total failure.  Destroy the master control center and you’ve incapacitated an entire theatre of weapons and sensors.  Of course, one could create many duplicates of the central control system that would take over in the event of the destruction of the master but then the gain in efficiency is lost.  In combat, distribution of assets and capabilities equates to survivability.  We figured this out long ago but have steadily forgotten it.

There’s also an inherent contradiction at work, here.  The Army is testing their systems against realistic ECM because they’re rightly afraid that the systems won’t work as advertised.  In the same breath, however, they’re stating that their new system will flawlessly assemble data and commands from many separate systems, ignoring that the transmission of that data and commands is susceptible to the very same ECM that they’re testing against.  Unless the systems are tied together with hard lines (fiber optics), the data transmission signals are susceptible to the same ECM that the Army is afraid will affect the individual systems.

The overdependence on networks and data, and the inherent assumption that they are somehow invulnerable to ECM, is a military wide phenomenon although the Navy, in particular, seems especially fond of, and susceptible to, it.  The Navy’s dream is to tie every weapon and sensor in the world together.  Of course, if that network is disrupted you’ve lost everything – and that ignores the fantastic lack of success we’ve had doing this, so far.

So, we see again the tendency of the military to take a good idea and try to jam it well past the point of technological feasibility.  Oh well, at least the Army is going to be doing some realistic testing and that’s a vast improvement over the Navy.

The article points out the leap in ECM capability that has come from modern electronics.

“Traditional analog jamming can be effective, but it’s pretty obvious, Thurgood said: It just blasts out interference in selected wavelengths in a given area. But the Russians, Chinese, and others are using advanced digital jamming which attacks specific frequencies and can spoof the radar. Essentially, they record an incoming radar pulse and play it back in distorted form, confusing the radar receiver.”

The exercises also point out our own ECM shortcomings.

“The Army’s own electronic warfare arsenal is painfully thin, with offensive jammers not set to enter service until 2023.”

We’ve previously discussed that the Navy’s offensive and defensive ECM is being hugely, and unwisely, shortchanged at the altar of new ship construction.  The Navy needs to realize that all the shiny new ships in the world will be of no use if they can’t fight and survive in an ECM environment.

The time to figure all this out is now.

“That’s a problem the Army wants to figure out in wargames before it ever faces it in real life.”

Well, they got that much right!  Good luck to them and hopefully the Navy will take note.

(1)Breaking Defense, “US Wargame Pits Army Missile Defenses Against Russian Jamming”, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., August 14, 2015

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/08/us-wargame-pits-army-missile-defenses-against-russian-jamming/

CIWS Support Contract

Here’s an interesting contract related to the Phalanx CIWS.

“Raytheon Co., Tucson, Arizona, is being awarded a $159,958,743 firm-fixed-price contract for MK 15 Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) upgrades and conversions, system overhauls and associated hardware.  … This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $461,712,911.“

I’m surprised by this.  I had thought the CIWS was considered obsolete by the Navy, being superseded by the RAM/SeaRAM system.  The announcement did not specify how many systems were covered under this contract but it’s quite a bit of money, regardless, for a system that is being phased out.

LCS Deployment Support Contract

Here’s an interesting contract related to the LCS.

“Lockheed Martin Corp, Baltimore, Maryland, is being awarded an $8,676,460 modification to previously awarded basic ordering agreement N00024-12-G-4329 to support fiscal 2016 USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) deployment.”

The announcement didn’t say and I have no idea what specific actions are included under the contract.  I assume this refers to the LCS’ model of deferred shore maintenance.  Still, $8.7M to support a deployment seems like a lot.  I strongly suspect that the minimal manning model for the LCS is costing more than a regularly manned ship would.