Iraqi Attack Cast New Doubt on U.S. Strategy : Underscores Perils of ‘Showing the Flag,’ Using Surface Ships Against Soviet Ports in Wartime

Last Sunday’s devastating Iraqi attack on the Stark in the Persian Gulf has raised new doubts about the Navy’s traditional practice of “showing the flag” with surface ships in Third World waters.

Advances in technology have made surface ships such as the Stark, a 453-foot, $200-million guided-missile frigate, increasingly vulnerable targets. Two missiles--apparently both 15-foot-long Exocets, worth a relatively inexpensive $200,000 each--severely damaged the Stark and killed 37 of its crew even though only one of the 363-pound TNT warheads detonated.

And beyond its impact on gunboat diplomacy, the attack on the Stark has reinforced criticism of one of the Reagan Administration’s most controversial naval doctrines--its “forward offensive strategy.”

Soviet Ports Well Defended

In wartime, according to that doctrine, the Navy would deploy carrier battle groups to attack Soviet ships in port. But those ports are heavily defended, and Soviet land-based aircraft would enjoy an enormous advantage over U.S. carrier groups.

“It’s absurd and adolescent” to sail surface ships into the face of such defenses, said Michael McGwire, a naval expert at the Brookings Institution.

R. James Woolsey, former under secretary of the Navy, advises: “Against the Soviets, you’d go forward with submarines, at least initially, not carriers.”

Power of Third World

As the Iraqi attack on the Stark showed, U.S. surface ships are vulnerable to missiles in the hands of far lesser powers than the Soviet Union. And the crippling of the Stark was only the latest in a series of successful attacks on warships by Third World nations.

Two missiles from an Egyptian patrol boat sank an Israeli destroyer during the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, and nine Indian missiles sank one Pakistani destroyer and disabled another four years later. During the 1982 war over the Falkland Islands, three Argentine Exocet missiles, one of whose warheads failed to explode, sank two British ships.

The surface of the ocean has become a very dangerous place without air defenses, such as carrier-based fighters that can prevent hostile aircraft or vessels from approaching close enough to launch their deadly missiles.

However, like many other areas of the world, the Persian Gulf is too small for an aircraft carrier to easily operate in. These behemoths of the sea need operational zones at least 200 miles in radius to launch and recover their planes. The Stark was hit in an area of the gulf that is only about 150 miles wide.

More important, “the anti-ship capabilities of even minor powers are growing very rapidly,” the authoritative International Institute for Strategic Studies has pointed out. Because anti-ship missiles are easy to operate as well as relatively cheap, the institute reported recently, their threat “has become a vital problem for navies to solve, and it may not be solvable.”

Among the reasons:

- The missiles can be launched from aircraft, fast patrol boats or land bases, and at ranges that reduce the risk to the launching platform. The Exocet has a range of about 39 miles. The U.S. Harpoon missile, now operational on 12 Iranian fast-attack patrol craft, has a somewhat greater range with a larger warhead. Newer cruise missiles can travel up to 300 miles with a 1,000-pound warhead.

- Once launched, the weapons are likely to hit their targets, thanks to radar or other sophisticated guidance systems. Traveling at high speed at sea-skimming height, the missiles are very difficult to shoot down. Such countermeasures as metallic chaff and flares can confuse the weapons’ homing devices, but the attacker has the advantage.

- The missiles inflict severe damage on modern, lightly armored warships such as the Stark-class frigates.

Effect on Naval Warfare

Guided missiles are only the latest of the past century’s technological developments that have radically affected naval warfare. Starting about 1850, when steam replaced sails for power, “technology produced fundamental changes in the capabilities and tactics (of navies) every 10 to 15 years,” according to Karl Lautenschlager, writing in International Security magazine.

After steam came screw propellers to replace fragile side-wheels for propulsion. Then ironclads replaced wood, and rifled gun barrels replaced smooth bores for greater accuracy at greater distance. Among the other significant developments were wireless telegraphy, submarines, aircraft carriers, sonar, radar, nuclear power, microelectronics and, starting about 1956, guided anti-ship missiles.

“Offense has always had a tremendous advantage over defense during this period, and it’s being maintained in the modern era,” said Barry M. Blechman, a consultant who specializes in military affairs. “There is little reason to expect this situation to change. Offense has the procurement edge because defense is always playing catch-up, tactically and strategically, to weapons bought by the offense.”

Over this period, too, the warship has been used often as a political signal in peacetime. Appearing from over the horizon with its huge guns, it could scare natives into submission and underscore the serious intent of its masters.

This tactic survived into the post-World War II era, although the Navy has been used for such shows of force with somewhat declining frequency. From 1947 to 1975, Blechman found that the Navy was involved in an average of six cases a year in which the United States used “armed forces in support of a political objective,” a figure that declined to about 4.5 a year from 1975 to 1984.

Lebanon Bombardment

One relatively recent example was the U.S. deployment of the battleship New Jersey off the coast of Lebanon in 1983 and 1984. The New Jersey, however, was used for more than mere diplomacy: It actually fired its 16-inch guns at areas held by Druze militiamen fighting the government of President Amin Gemayel.

“Previously, ships were considered to be not in harm’s way, and no lives were at risk,” Blechman said. “That’s no longer true. The industrial powers have given Third World countries the power to make gunboat diplomacy much more expensive. We’ve bid up the price of projecting power. Showing the flag can’t be done casually anymore.”

Besides Iran and Iraq, the Third World countries that now have anti-ship missiles--mostly Soviet-made--are Cuba, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Vietnam and North Korea.

Several authorities such as Woolsey note that although surface ships are indeed vulnerable, the Stark incident offers no proof because the ship was struck by a missile from a friendly aircraft.

Had the Stark been on alert, its Phalanx defense system might have prevented the tragedy. The Phalanx consists of a six-barrel, swivel-mounted Gatling gun that, guided by computers and radar, can fire 3,000 slugs per minute at approaching aircraft or missiles.

Downing of 2 Libyan Jets

Similarly, the more sophisticated Aegis system, a missile-firing defensive system carried on one of the cruisers of a carrier group, could have handled a couple of Exocets fired by Iraqi aircraft, other experts said. And in 1981, the defenses of a two-carrier U.S. battle group were more than enough to destroy two attacking Libyan jets in the Gulf of Sidra.

However, deploying carriers and Aegis cruisers to show the flag would up the ante. The U.S. Navy has only 13 carriers now, with two more authorized by Congress at a cost of $10 billion.

The Navy justifies the new carriers as necessary to carry out its “forward strategy” against the Soviet homeland. Many authorities believe that to succeed, that strategy requires a total of 22 to 24 carriers, but there is little hope of funding such a force in this century.

Some analysts maintain that many smaller carriers, cheaper and more expendable, provide a workable alternative to large and expensive carriers. But the Navy is committed to the “big-deck” carriers with aircraft that have enough range, early-warning sensors and munitions to protect the fleet within a radius of 500 or 600 miles. Around them travels a protective screen of anti-submarine vessels and anti-missile cruisers and destroyers.

These defenses still would not be enough, in the view of many experts, to allow carrier groups sent into the Norwegian Sea to successfully attack so heavily fortified a Soviet bastion as the Kola Peninsula, where ballistic missile submarine bases and heavy concentration of ground forces would make it a prime target for a U.S. attack in wartime.

Beyond Carrier Planes’ Range

“By the time carriers are within 1,600 miles of Soviet air bases, they would be within range of 90% of the U.S.S.R. land-based bombers,” Adm. Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director and four-star fleet commander, wrote recently in Foreign Affairs magazine. “Yet, the Soviet bases would be still over 1,000 miles beyond the range of carrier aircraft.”

Blechman pointed out that the Iraqi attack on the Stark “was obviously nothing compared to what’s available to the Russians close to home.” On the Kola Peninsula, the Soviets have a multitude of anti-ship missiles on submarines, patrol craft and bombers that could wreak havoc on American carrier battle groups as they steamed up the Norwegian Sea.

In that situation, with multiple threats from missiles fired from the air, surface ships and submarines, some experts doubt that even the vaunted Aegis defense system would cope adequately. “Aegis can’t do the job against missiles,” said Richard DeLauer, former defense undersecretary for research and development.

One critic, William W. Kaufmann of Harvard University and the Brookings Institution, recalled the words of the Duke of Wellington when a draft of soldiers was sent out from England to the Peninsular War in Spain:

“I don’t know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they frighten me.”