by James Jinks
Until the late 1970s, analysts and strategic planners in the United States assumed that Soviet Admirals would act and react in the same way as their American counterparts, that in the event of war the Soviets would aim to bring about fleet-to-fleet actions on the high seas, with the aim of obtaining control of sea lines of communication, the so-called ‘SLOCS’, on which the resupply of Europe depended.34 As one naval historian noted:
From the early 1960s, when the growth of Soviet naval power became evident, the pre-dominant view in America was that the Soviets were building a naval force with many capabilities similar to the United States Navy. Most importantly, the existence of a blue-water Soviet Navy seemed to emphasize, in American minds, the capability for peacetime power projection, the facility for wartime attack on U.S. and Western naval forces and sea lines of communication, as well as the ability to launch strategic nuclear strikes from the sea. Increasingly, Americans worried about the Soviet Navy as a sea-denial force that could deprive the West of the free use of the sea, thereby creating political, economic, and military disaster. In short, Americans tended to view the new Soviet naval capabilities in terms of mirror-imaging and refighting World War II.35
However, beginning in the late 1970s, the United States obtained specific high-level intelligence about Soviet naval plans and capabilities. The intelligence indicated that the Soviets regarded the interdiction of sea lines of communication as a far less urgent task than the United States had previously assumed. The nature of this intelligence was predominantly SIGINT, but also ‘some very significant HUMINT penetration of senior echelons of the soviet leadership’, which remains highly classified.36 It is likely that at least one of the sources was a combined US Navy/National Security Agency top-secret programme to tap into Soviet seafloor communication cables in the Soviet Far East and Arctic areas, codenamed Operation ‘Ivy Bells’.37
Regardless of the source, the highly classified intelligence had a profound impact on US intelligence assessments of Soviet intentions and capabilities:
The insights gained from these sources allowed the U.S. Navy, led by Naval Intelligence, to totally reassess how the Soviets would fight a war, where their strengths and vulnerabilities were, and how their perceptions and prejudices caused them to view us [United States]. This enabled Naval Intelligence to stimulate and participate not only in a complete rewrite of U.S. naval strategy and the war plans which governed how the U.S. would fight a war with the Soviet Union, but also to plan and conduct meaningful perception management.38
In November 1981, a US interagency intelligence memorandum on ‘Soviet Intentions and Capabilities for Interdicting Sea Lines of Communication in a War with NATO’ expressed the general agreement of intelligence analysts that Soviet military planners regarded the wartime interdiction of NATO sea lines of communication as a secondary mission and that only a few submarines would be employed in attacking commerce in the North Atlantic in the opening stages of a NATO–Warsaw Pact war. The US concluded that the majority of Soviet forces would instead be deployed close to the USSR to defend the Soviet SSBN force and to protect the Soviet Union from NATO’s nuclear-armed strike force.39 This view was confirmed a year later in a 1982 US National Intelligence Assessment, which concluded that:
The Soviets view SLOC interdiction as a less urgent task than providing combat stability for their SSBNs and defeating the West’s nuclear-capable naval strike forces. They believe that Warsaw Pact forces would defeat the main grouping of NATO forces in Central Europe or the war would escalate to theater nuclear conflict before NATO’s seaborne reinforcement and resupply of Europe or US forces in the Far East became a critical factor. Only a few forces – primarily diesel submarines – would therefore be allocated to open-ocean SLOC interdiction from the outset of hostilities.40
Put simply, the Soviets appeared to have concluded that ‘increased interdiction effort would be at the expense of SSBN protection and the defense of the Soviet homeland’.41 Exactly why they had shifted their naval strategy remained a mystery.
When Nott visited Norfolk, Virginia, in March 1981 for a briefing by Admiral Harry Train, the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, he ‘began to grasp the true scenario’. SACLANT’s briefings ‘were of a much higher intellectual and practical quality than anything that I obtained from the Naval Staff in Whitehall’.42 Significantly, he found that the American convoy plans for the resupply of Europe ‘did not support the Naval Staff’s Second World War type convoying proposals, even if the war turned out to last six months rather than a week’. The US Navy’s new convoying plans took account of the reduced threat to the reinforcement and resupply of Europe by sea and ‘involved a series of hectic, dispersed single sailings to avoid the Soviet submarine threat, rather than Second World War escorted convoys’.43
Nott was also heavily influenced by his belief that any conflict with the Soviet Union would end up being a short rather than a long war. Whenever a battle on the central front was ‘gamed’, NATO was in such a desperate position after seven days that it was forced to initiate the use of tactical nuclear weapons.44 This meant that once reinforcement by shipping across the Atlantic arrived it would be too late to be of any use. ‘I wanted to have an open debate with the Royal Navy about these issues,’ recalled Nott, ‘but they [the Naval Staff] stuck to the long-war thesis on the basis that this justified the traditional naval role.’45 Nott wanted ‘fresh and original thinking to meet the Soviet submarine challenge’:46
Not only were these Soviet submarines (some hundreds in number) moving faster and diving deeper, but they were also being equipped with anti-ship missiles of increasing sophistication and range, targeted by satellite, which could be released by the Soviet submarines from under the sea. Clearly these missiles posed a very great threat, when coupled with the Backfire bombers, to our surface ships in the North Atlantic. This raised the whole question of whether we should not put more emphasis on our submarine fleet.47
As a result of the deadlock, Nott turned to his non-naval advisers, in particular to the MOD’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Ronald Mason, who initiated his own studies to determine the size and shape of maritime forces in the Eastern Atlantic. Studies from the Defence Operational Analysis Establishment indicated that land-based maritime air power and submarines were the vital assets in any conventional deterrent force for the Eastern Atlantic. The reports rejected the logic behind the navy’s re-equipment programme and argued that it failed to deal with the increasing anti-ship missile threat to warships conducting anti-submarine warfare. Nott believed that the way out was to strengthen NATO’s conventional forces on the ground in Europe and to ensure that naval forces in the Atlantic were strong enough to safeguard reinforcement.48 He wanted to shift the Royal Navy’s emphasis away from the traditional escorted convoy towards nuclear submarines and Nimrod Maritime Patrol Aircraft operating in the Atlantic, and away from expensive ships to cheaper ones such as the Type 23 frigate. This would allow deep cuts to be made to the Royal Navy’s destroyer and frigate force, as well as a reduction of the carrier force to just two ships and the eventual phasing out of the Navy’s amphibious capability, while the resources devoted to escorting surface forces in the Eastern Atlantic could be diverted to the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom Gap chokepoints. The Royal Navy’s top priority would remain the provision of the UK strategic nuclear deterrent, initially with Polaris/Chevaline and later the new Trident force. But for general maritime warfare the Royal Navy would concentrate first upon the provision of a powerful submarine force to exploit the country’s position on the flank of the Soviet Navy’s main exit to the Atlantic, defending the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap through which Soviet submarines would have to travel if indeed they planned to interdict NATO sea lines of communications.49
The First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, was so incensed by the proposed reductions in the Royal Navy’s surface forces that just nine months before the Falklands conflict he wrote personally to the Prime Minister:
Th
e proposal has been devised ad hoc in two months. It has been neither validated nor studied in depth. No alternative options have been considered. It has all been done in a rush. Such unbalanced devastation of our overall Defence capability is unprecedented … We are on the brink of a historic decision. War seldom takes the expected form and a strong maritime capability provides flexibility for the unseen. If you erode it to the extent envisaged I believe you will undesirably foreclose your future options and prejudice our National Security.50
Leach’s letter had little effect. ‘In the end, we agreed to an expansion of the submarine programme at the expense of the surface fleet,’ wrote Nott.51 In the introduction to the long-awaited and partially leaked White Paper ‘The Way Forward’, published on 25 June 1981, Nott declared that:
Our basic judgment … is that for the future the most cost-effective mix – the best balanced operational contribution in our situation – will be one which continues to enhance our maritime-air and submarine effort, but accepts a reduction below current plans in the size of our surface fleet and the scale and sophistication of new ship-building, and breaks away from the practice of costly mid-life modernization.52
The White Paper emphasized that:
Our most powerful vessels for maritime war are our nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs), soon to be equipped with the anti-surface ship guided missile Sub-Harpoon. There are 12 at present in service, and the fleet will build up further to 17. An order worth £117 million is now being placed for the next Trafalgar-class boat to be built by Vickers (Barrow). We intend also to proceed with the new class of diesel-powered submarines (SSKs) – which may have considerable export potential – and will if possible introduce these at the rate of one per year. Both SSNs and SSKs will be equipped later in the 1980s with a new heavyweight torpedo of high performance; we are considering the choice of design.53
In short, the Royal Navy’s hunter-killer submarines were to be the modern Dreadnoughts – the capital ships of the deep.
Although the Falklands Crisis enabled the Navy to hold on to certain surface assets, the conflict had little impact on the Submarine Service. A foreword to the 1982 Defence White Paper, issued in June 1982 and written by Nott, stated that:
The events of recent weeks must not, however, obscure the fact that the main threat to the security of the United Kingdom is from the nuclear and conventional forces of the Soviet Union and her Warsaw Pact allies. It was to meet this threat that the defence programme described in Command 8288 [‘The Way Forward’] was designed. The framework of that programme remains appropriate.54
Indeed the 1982 Statement on the Defence Estimates went on to stress that ‘In the field of anti-submarine warfare, we attach particular importance to increasing the size of the nuclear-powered submarine force as rapidly as resources will permit.’55
In Nott’s mind, the future belonged to the SSNs, but there was a constraining factor of which the Royal Navy was well aware. In June 1977 a paper had been submitted to the Fleet Requirements Committee on the size and shape of the Submarine Flotilla. The paper argued that because of industrial and support constraints, the maximum number of SSNs that the Royal Navy could build and support was less than that required to meet operational tasks. SSNs were expensive in terms of capital and running costs, and the analysis by the MOD revealed that the Navy could afford to build and support no more than twenty-four nuclear hulls (including the four Polaris submarines). The possibility of replacing the SSBNs also limited the number of SSNs that the Royal Navy could build – only two or three extra (compared with pre-1981 plans) could be in service by the year 2000 and even that was very much dependent on a smooth ordering programme. One way of increasing numbers and meeting the various operational tasks assigned to the Royal Navy was to use conventional submarines to fill the resultant shortfall, operating a mixed fleet of SSNs and SSKs, with the SSKs carrying out a number of tasks ordinarily assigned to SSNs.56
THE ‘UPHOLDER’ CLASS
This represented a clear turn in naval policy. In 1962 the Macmillan Government had decided not to order a new generation of conventional submarines to replace the ‘Porpoise’ and ‘Oberon’ classes, the first of which was due to be decommissioned in 1984. However, by the late 1960s, the views of a number of senior Royal Navy submariners began to shift. When Vice Admiral John Roxburgh took up the post of FOSM in 1969 he ‘felt there was a case for another generation of conventionals on [grounds of] cost’. However, by December 1971 his views had changed, as he explained in a letter to a former FOSM, Vice Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch:
Having now lived with the problem for two years and discussed it at all levels I have become convinced it would be a grave mistake to dissipate our limited resources by going for more conventionals. I have very much in mind the time scale – the earliest we could in practical terms produce a new class would be by 1979–80. Whereas I am happy with their effectiveness now I cannot agree that they will be an effective warship on into the late 1990s, albeit correctly armed. The disadvantages of immobility and lack of endurance compared to Fleet submarines [SSN] in both anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare need no emphasis from me to you. I am also happy that the comparative noise advantage of the conventional is disappearing.57
Any new class of conventional submarine would need to be large to accommodate modern sonars and computer systems, all of which required large amounts of electrical power, both for running the equipment and maintaining a suitable environment in which it could operate. An SSK equipped and armed with the sensors and weapons of the 1980s and 1990s and powered by diesel electric propulsion was also judged to have little chance of survival against future ASW tactics, given the need to regularly expose a snort mast to take in air. ‘The conventional has little hope of survival, in the 1980’s and beyond, off a Russian Base,’ noted Roxburgh.58 Other forms of propulsion designed to prolong underwater endurance, thus giving some of the advantages of nuclear power, would have been very expensive in research and production, eliminating many of the cost advantages. As far as Roxburgh was concerned, ‘the case for a submarine which can fully exploit the advantages of endurance and mobility afforded by nuclear power far outweighs anything that can be provided by conventional power’.59
However, there was plenty of evidence to reinforce the case for a new class of conventional submarine. Nuclear submarines, due to the complex machinery required to maintain nuclear reactors, tended to radiate far more noise than conventional submarines. A modern SSK operating at slow speeds on battery power was far quieter and a very difficult target for passive sonars. In the 1970s, the lack of detections on the Soviet ‘West of UK Whisky’, a conventional Soviet submarine that was almost always stationed off the United Kingdom, and the difficulty which very considerable NATO ASW forces had in detecting Soviet diesel-powered ‘Juliett’ and ‘Foxtrot’ class submarines in the Mediterranean, bore witness to the SSK’s ability to avoid discovery. Royal Navy and Dutch Navy SSKs frequently demonstrated the ability to conduct surveillance patrols in the vicinity of Soviet ASW vessels without being counter-detected. Major NATO exercises also highlighted just how difficult it was to detect diesel submarines. During the 1976 ‘Teamwork’ exercise the tactics used by four diesel submarines awaiting a NATO Strike Fleet in the Shetlands–Faroes Gap resulted in all of them being undetected. Technological advances, such as the fitting of higher-performance diesel engines and high-capacity batteries, had also considerably reduced the period which SSKs had to spend snorting to as little as 5–10 per cent of a patrol.
In November 1977, following the appearance of its June 1977 paper on the size and shape of the submarine flotilla, which concluded that because of industrial and support constraints, the maximum number of SSNs that the Royal Navy could build and support was less than that required to meet operational tasks, the Fleet Requirements Committee endorsed an Outline Staff Target for a new SSK to exploit its main advantage – quietness – and complement the Royal Navy’s SSNs.60 In times of tension and war the Navy envisioned
deploying the new SSKs on area ASW surveillance patrols in the GIUK Gap, the Norwegian Sea, IBERLANT (Allied Forces Iberian Atlantic Area) and the northwest and southwest approaches to the UK. In times of minimal tension they would undertake the larger portion of the training and trials tasks, releasing the SSNs to concentrate on shadowing, trailing, and intelligence-gathering and surveillance operations. Preliminary feasibility studies began in December 1977, when the operational roles of the new SSKs were defined in more detail.
The Navy required a submarine that had good endurance, was very quiet, and had excellent sensors, good communications and adequate weapons, with the potential for continuing weapon development to match improvements in SSNs. These characteristics had to be balanced against cost-effectiveness and great care was taken to avoid designing a submarine which would simply duplicate all the roles of an SSN, but, where it could, would do it more cheaply, both in capital and in support costs. The new SSKs would be appreciably better than the ‘Oberon’ class as a result of improved technology in all fields, particularly the greatly enhanced endurance of modern batteries. The aim was to produce a submarine capable of performing operational roles in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel areas, but also able to conduct low-intensity operations in other areas. ASW operations, both surveillance and offensive, were judged to be the most important and this required an ocean-going submarine with good sonar, good Action Information Organization, good communications and sufficient endurance to spend six weeks on station in the Iceland–Faroes Gap. Other operational roles included intelligence gathering, protection of the strategic deterrent, and coastal work, including mining and special operations as well as ASW training and exercises. The size of the new SSK had to be kept to a minimum in order not to degrade its shallow-water coastal performance and, most importantly, to keep the cost within the region of £52m each, about one third the cost of an SSN.