And Now a ‘Submarine Gap’: It’s an Accusation Easily Sunk

In his forward to the 1987-88 edition of “Jane’s Fighting Ships,” the retiring editor, Capt. John Moore, criticizes Western navies on several grounds. From the United States’ point of view, the most important criticism offered by Moore is that, by its technological arrogance and complacency, the U.S. Navy has allowed itself to fall far behind in submarine design and construction.

The reality may be much less terrifying. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have tended to adopt standard designs, which they improve over the course of their production runs and which they ultimately replace with new standards.

In the case of the Soviets, the last standard nuclear attack submarine, the Victor, first appeared in 1968, and three new prototypes--the Mike, Akula and Sierra--appeared in 1984-86. It is by no means clear just how successful they have been, since the Soviets have not yet produced many of any of the three new classes. The production of the last major new Soviet attack-submarine design, the much-discussed Alfa, ended some years ago, and at least one (possibly two) of the seven built had to be broken up.

Given the character of the Soviet economy, it is likely that the new standard attack submarine, whichever design is chosen, will be in production for the better part of the next two decades. If the next standard U.S. submarine represents (as it does) technology about four to six years later in time (not to count any other superiority), it should retain that superiority for a very long time.

The picture is somewhat obscured because the Soviets tend to produce specialized submarines, like cruise-missile carriers, whereas the U.S. practice is to develop a wide variety of weapons to fit the standard torpedo tube. That is possible partly because the United States enjoys a lead in electronics, and partly because U.S. submarines tend to carry substantially more weapons than their Soviet counterparts. Moreover, U.S. torpedoes are dual-purpose weapons (they can be used against both submarines and surface ships), whereas Soviet torpedoes are single-purpose. Thus a U.S. commander gets more flexibility out of the larger number of weapons that he carries. Moore charges that Soviet submarines are better armed, but this really means that they have more torpedo tubes, not a greater total number of weapons aboard. The difference is significant.

The new Soviet submarines are quieter than their noisy predecessors, but not their U.S. counterparts. They may dive deeper and run faster--but they cannot outrun or outdive current U.S. torpedoes, guided by superior sonars feeding their data to superior computers. Experiments like the recent British work with lightweight torpedoes and the experience of the sinking of a Soviet Yankee-class missile submarine last year suggest that modern torpedoes are quite capable of sinking modern Soviet submarines, and that Moore’s belief in their tough construction is probably misplaced.

In the U.S. case, the standard design is the Los Angeles class, which began with considerable superiority over its Soviet counterpart. It has been improved considerably over the years. The question in such a program is always when to shift to something better enough to be worthwhile. In the case of the Los Angeles, the shift (to the new Seawolf) is now scheduled for 1994, 18 years after the appearance of the first of the class, and quite comparable to the gap in Soviet designs.

The U.S. choice culminates a series of studies of possible Los Angeles-class successors through the 1970s. All were discarded because they could not provide sufficient improvement to be worthwhile at an affordable price. Meanwhile, substantial but invisible improvements were made to the Los Angeles class in such vital areas as sonars and weapon systems.

What of the future? From reading unclassified Soviet publications, Moore sees evidence of imminent breakthroughs by the Soviets in areas like magneto-hydrodynamic drive. As justification, he argues that the controlled Soviet press limits itself to reporting on successful technologies that the Soviet state plans to exploit. Does he really think that Moscow would allow such disclosures about its secret military programs? I would hope that the Soviets control their press better than that.

Complacency is obviously dangerous. But so is alarmism. The current U.S. submarine program is a carefully designed compromise between desire and reality, between the ultimate worst-case conjecture and prudence. It certainly deserves much better than a weakly founded charge of gross conservatism.