The Stark Was the Right Ship for the Job

The attack on the Stark naturally raises questions: Why was it on patrol in the Persian Gulf, under the threat of air and missile attack? Was it the right ship (was there any right ship?) for the job?

The answer must be that the job was worth doing, and that the Stark was the right ship to be there. First, the job. As a global power, the United States has vital interests in many troubled areas overseas, often in areas in which other countries (such as Iran and Iraq) are fighting. It often cannot intervene in such wars, but it can try to limit the damage they do to its own interests. That requires an American presence, in effect a deterrent. By our presence we announce that if Americans are attacked directly, we can and will react with force of arms.

That was the Stark’s mission: to protect American shipping in the Persian Gulf, in hopes of winding down the war on tankers that threatens the vital oil flow through the gulf. Ideally protection requires that Iranian and Iraqi aircraft not be permitted to overfly the gulf (and thus to threaten tankers), but until the Stark was attacked the United States could not possibly have demanded such limitation.

U.S. forces had no business threatening, let alone attacking, war planes on legitimate military missions. The attack on the Stark transformed the situation: The United States never wants to fire the first shot, but we are perfectly willing to fire the last shot.

This kind of mission, which is hardly unique to the Persian Gulf, demands that U.S. forces be able to remain in an area whatever the wishes of nearby governments. The only way that can be done is by ship, and the U.S. ships must be able to deal with air and surface problems. That means they must be surface ships, like the Stark. This point cannot be evaded: It does not matter whether surface ships are more or less vulnerable. They must be used.

Once the Stark was hit, President Reagan authorized U.S. ships to shoot at nearby aircraft. The net effect of this order is to make much of the gulf a keep-out zone for Iranian and Iraqi aircraft. Since they must approach U.S. warships on patrol in order to attack tankers, these aircraft cannot continue to pursue the tanker war--which was what the United States had sought to wind down through its naval presence.

Need the Stark have been hit at all? After all, it had substantial defensive armament, including the automated Phalanx anti-missile gun. However, equipment alone does not tell the story.

Neither the crew nor their equipment can be alert and operational continuously over the many months of a Persian Gulf deployment. The gun for example, will break down from time to time. A prudent captain, having learned that attack was extremely unlikely (and having learned this himself over several months in the area) might well keep his system turned off most of the time, to conserve it against the possibility that the character of the war would change.

As for the other systems aboard the ship, the combination of long-range radar and standard missile system would have been quite effective against the aircraft launching the missile that hit the ship. The ship did track the aircraft from 200 miles away, but there was no reason to believe that it was in fact hostile. The Stark had no way of knowing that the Iraqi aircraft was about to attack, because the radar on the plane would not have to lock on to the ship before firing. Still, the ship might have detected the actual launch on radar, but that is unlikely. As for the radar emissions of the Exocet itself, weather conditions may well have prevented the ship from detecting them.

Given the political limits inherent in the situation, no ship could have done better. The appropriate defense would have been to establish a “keep-out” zone around the ship, shooting down any airplane within missile firing range. That was politically inconceivable--before the Stark was hit. Now it is U.S. policy--which means that it will be much more difficult for Iran and Iraq to continue the tanker war.

The technology that really counted was the technology of damage control, of how the Stark reacted once hit. The ship performed magnificently. The crew contained the damage from two missiles, one of which exploded. The motors of both missiles probably continued burning once they struck, producing smoke that would have complicated firefighting. Both, incidentally, struck the ship quite close to its missile magazine. Internal armor and the crew’s performance saved the ship. Had the magazine exploded, the ship would probably have been lost.

The Stark, then, was the right ship for the job. Any ship on station in the gulf could have been surprised, given the experience of many years of patrol in the area. Any ship, no matter how sophisticated, could have been hit--the first time. The issue is the consequences of that damage. The only comparable case is the British Sheffield, hit by one Exocet missile (which did not explode) during the Falklands war. The two ships are comparable in size and in sophistication. But the British lost the Sheffield. We did not lose the Stark.