Navy’s Role in Persian Gulf

Melissa Healy’s story “Navy Ill-Equipped to Fight a Restricted War in Gulf” (Part I, Oct. 25) does a terrible disservice to our outstanding personnel serving in the vital Persian Gulf region and creates anxiety in the minds of the families of those sailors. Additionally, of course, it sends a wrong signal to the American taxpayer.

The Navy we currently have in the Persian Gulf area--and in every other region of the world--is the right Navy in both size and structure to meet every level of threat we may have to face. The Navy we have today is a product of years of detailed analysis by hundreds of experienced and knowledgeable Navy professionals who will have to return to sea and live with the weapons systems they have planned, designed, procured and integrated into the fleet.

Our revitalized Navy certainly is high-tech oriented--and it must be to confront a sophisticated adversary who would very much like to dominate the world and arrest the emergence of democratic societies. But the Navy is also very capable of handling the lower-scale threats which instance for instance can be very damaging.

Navy ships are not sitting ducks, as some have ignorantly claimed. They are not only designed to perform complementary roles in battle groups but are also able--as independent units--to protect themselves capably from missiles, aircraft and other surface vessels.

Today’s Navy also takes great pride in its interoperability with units of both sister services and allies and friends. We actively seek training opportunities in which we can work together because the realities of a dangerous world dictate that we must maximize our combat effectiveness. We have done a remarkable job in this regard and we continue to hone this interoperability on a daily basis, contrary to Healy’s assertion that the Navy possesses a “go it alone” strategy which resists working with other military services.

But without belaboring the issue, the key point I want to make is that Healy’s contention that the Navy “balked” at the Army offer of sending its helicopters to the Persian Gulf to operate off our ships is totally inaccurate. As a member of the Joint Chiefs, I fully supported that initiative and will support any other joint initiative which will increase our effectiveness and deterrence in the region. Interservice rivalries have been relegated to the athletic field, not the battlefield.

C.A.H. TROST

Admiral, U.S. Navy