The Silent Deep
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‘BEARDING THE BEAR IN ITS LAIR’ – US MARITIME STRATEGY109
This shift in Soviet naval strategy posed a considerable challenge to both the Royal Navy and the US Navy. The US Navy responded with a naval strategy designed to seek out and destroy Soviet SSBNs and the forces protecting them at the outset of a major conflict. Confident that the Soviet Navy now intended to confine the majority of its forces to northern waters (see here), the new US strategy envisaged US submarines moving towards the naval and airbases of the Soviet Northern Fleet on the Kola Peninsula, followed by US Navy Carrier Battle Groups. The Americans hoped this would allow the US Navy to gain the initiative and keep the Soviet Navy occupied far away from NATO territory, shipping and military operations, forcing the Soviet Union to ‘disperse its forces into areas and activities’ where they could do NATO least harm.110
The process of reevaluating and rewriting war plans began with the US Navy submarine force in 1982, and was eventually distributed in classified form throughout the US Fleet in 1984.111 In 1982 the strategy was endorsed by NATO’s three military commands and NATO’s highest political authorities as NATO’s Concept of Maritime Operations (CONMAROPS), the first aim of which was described by the former US 2nd Fleet Commander, Admiral Henry C. Mustin, as ‘to contain and destroy the Soviet Northern Fleet’.112 However, in 1984, the British CINCFLEET, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, and NATO’s SACLANT, Admiral Wesley MacDonald, launched an initiative to alter NATO’s naval rules of engagement so that they were far more aggressive. They aimed at more ‘flexibility’ for naval commanders, including the ability in certain circumstances to fire first in self-defence.113 Other NATO countries refused to endorse the alterations on the grounds that they were not consistent with the fundamental principle that NATO was a defensive alliance.
The US was determined to proceed and in 1985 took the unusual decision to publicize and promote the strategy in order to secure public support. In a widely distributed 48-page supplement to the US Naval Institute Proceedings, the US Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James D. Watkins, argued that ‘the Soviet Navy’s role in overall strategy suggests that initially the bulk of Soviet naval forces will deploy in areas near the Soviet Union, with only a small fraction deployed forwards’. He insisted that ‘Soviet exercises confirm such an interpretation’ and that ‘the option some advocate, of holding our maritime power near home waters, would inevitably lead to abandoning our allies. This is unacceptable, morally, legally, and strategically. Allied strategy must be prepared to fight in forward areas. That is where our allies are and where our adversary will be.’114
The Maritime Strategy called for offensive operations at the very outset of war. ‘We have to move up north of the GIUK … gap,’ said Watkins:
We have to control the Norwegian Sea and force them back into the defensive further north, under the ice, to use their attack subs to protect their nuclear missile submarines, to use their attack subs to protect the Kola and the Murmansk coasts, and similarly their Pacific coast as well. If we try to draw a ‘cordon sanitaire’ and declare that we are not going to go above the GIUK gap or we are not going to go west of such and such a parallel, then obviously they have the capability to use their attack subs offensively against our SLOCS.115
As President Reagan publicly put it in January 1987, the purpose of the Maritime Strategy was to ‘permit the United States to tie down Soviet naval forces in a defensive posture protecting Soviet ballistic missile submarines and the seaward approaches to the Soviet homeland, and thereby to minimize the wartime threat to the reinforcement and resupply of Europe by sea’.116
The Royal Navy played an important part in the strategy’s aggressive, forward aspects. ‘Our nuclear powered hunter-killer submarines, and those of the United States, are the platforms best able to operate well forward and threaten the whole range of Soviet submarines and high value surface units,’ declared the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir William Staveley, in 1984.117 During a public speech to a naval conference in 1986, Staveley argued that:
Better sensors, weapons and communications would today allow an unhindered enemy to wreak havoc in a very short timescale and, in that same timescale, to cause an effect out of all proportion to the effort required. It is therefore vital in peacetime that our submarines develop, maintain and demonstrate their warfighting ability in order to deter an aggressor and prevent war. And, equally important, that if and when required, we are capable in war of inflicting heavy losses on enemy submarines very early in battle. We must do so to maintain our supply lines in order to support the conventional battle on land and at sea, such that war stopping leverage can be applied without recourse to the use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. NATO’s submarines would be in the vanguard of any war effort. Their task, in conjunction with other NATO fleet elements, is critical. By their covertness, and their independence upon material support once deployed, they suit the concept of Forward Defence. They multiply the options available to politicians and commanders in peace, tension or war.118
At the same 1986 naval conference, the Commander-in-Chief, Naval Home Command, Vice Admiral Sir Peter Stanford, outlined the Royal Navy’s role in any future war:
It will be essential, to conduct forward operations with attack submarines, as well as to establish barriers at key world chokepoints using maritime patrol aircraft, mines, attack submarines, or sonobuoys, to prevent leakage of enemy forces to the open ocean where the Western Alliance’s resupply lines can be threatened. As the battle groups move forward, we will wage an aggressive campaign against all Soviet submarines, including ballistic missile submarines.119
This would contain Soviet submarine forces in a defensive campaign and prevent them from surging out into the Atlantic to threaten NATO lines of communications.
The Royal Navy recognized that one of its key battlefields in any future conflict would be the Norwegian Sea. Losing control of it would, Staveley argued, put ‘at risk the sparsely populated region of North Norway, then Iceland and the Faeroes and thus placing the North Sea and the United Kingdom so much closer to the front line of Soviet forces, needlessly exposing ourselves to a greater threat which would make war fighting a much more daunting prospect for NATO’.120 According to Staveley, the defence of Norway and control of the Norwegian Sea were both:
indivisible parts of what must be seen as a sub-strategy for the entire Northern region, which must itself form a coherent part of NATO’s overall strategy. Soviet domination of the NATO territory-bounded area would enable them to fulfil their maritime objectives more easily. If their increasingly capable submarine-based Northern Fleet can be contained by NATO forces and attacked in depth through the judicious forward deployment of our submarines, ships and aircraft, then I believe we should be able to deny the Soviets their objectives while achieving our own. Our goal must be to achieve the timely arrival of reinforcement and resupply shipping, not just across the Atlantic but to discharge their sustaining cargoes safely in whichever European port it is required.121
Alongside other European navies, the Royal Navy would engage in a series of complex operations designed to ‘contain’ the Soviet Northern Fleet, deploying aircraft and submarines forward to engage targets. Behind them, submarines and surface ships would conduct barrier operations at chokepoints in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea such as between the Bear Island–North Cape line and the GIUK Gap. Behind these chokepoints Soviet forces would encounter defences around British and other sea assets such as the reinforcement shipping coming across the Atlantic. The last line was the defence of British sea and air space. ‘The whole point of NATO’s naval strategy (and of the Royal Navy’s place in it), in short, is to offer defence in depth,’ wrote the naval historian Geoffrey Till. ‘There can be little doubt that serious failure in this policy of containment would gravely disrupt almost anything NATO would seek to do in a serious and sustained conflict.’122
To carry out this containment role the Royal Navy needed, as Staveley put it, ‘a regular pr
esence and a bank of experience in those areas in peacetime. Right now.’123 In April 1987, Sir Nicholas Hunt, CINCFLEET, reportedly stated that ‘forward defence’ effectively takes Royal Navy submarines ‘behind enemy lines’, and that this must be carried out in peacetime.124 The 1986 Statement on the Defence Estimates declared that ‘Enemy attack submarines are successfully to be held at arm’s length from the critical Atlantic routes. Defence against these submarines would begin when they sailed.’125 The 1987 Statement outlined four tasks for the Royal Navy: ‘the interception and containment of Soviet forces in the Norwegian sea’; ‘direct defence of reinforcement, re-supply and economic shipping, in conjunction with US and European maritime forces, and supported by the RAF’; ‘anti-submarine defence of the NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic’; and ‘protection and deployment of the combined United Kingdom/Netherlands Amphibious Force to reinforce the Northern Flank of NATO’.126 The first three highlighted the Royal Navy’s integration into the new US Forward Maritime Strategy. ‘We were right there in every respect, not just lip service to it,’ recalls Paul Branscombe.127 Instead of using Royal Navy destroyers and frigates as convoy escorts, the vessels, together with the Royal Navy anti-submarine carriers HMS Invincible, HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious, would attempt to fight the next war along with SSNs in the Norwegian and Barents Seas with the aim of destroying the Soviet Northern Fleet, the Soviet means of second strike, and of launching attacks on Soviet territory.
In many ways, these were the glory days of the post-1945 Submarine Service, the years when they really stared the increasingly sophisticated Soviet adversary in the face and the East–West front line was on occasion reduced to a few cold and watery yards. They also represented the Anglo-American alliance at its tautest and fraughtest. From the mid-1980s onwards, Royal Navy and US Navy warships increasingly operated in northern waters, shadowing Soviet ships and submarines in the Barents Sea, east of the North Cape of Norway and near the highly sensitive Kola Peninsula, to determine Soviet patrol areas, operating techniques, submarine noise signatures and other characteristics.128
As the professional head of the Submarine Service, Flag Officer Submarines was responsible for ensuring that the service was integrated into US plans. ‘I went across several times to COMSUBLANT to talk about the future and organization and our part … about what we were prepared to do and what we could do to fit in. You were always fitting in to the Americans rather than the other way round,’ recalled Toby Frere. ‘The Americans and ourselves seemed to be absolutely in step as operators in what we were going to do, and what we could do. There was no divergence, no “you are going to go and do this and we are going to go and do that”, we were absolutely in step.’129 ‘They were totally honest,’ recalls Martin Macpherson, FOSM’s Submarine Operations Officer. ‘From Northwood, we used to play war games with them, which were totally bilateral submarine war games. How we would surge deploy all the SSNs, because they had fifty or so SSNs in the Atlantic and we had something like fifteen. How in times of tension we were going to get them into the Barents without hitting each other. We were going to bottle them up.’130
Throughout the 1980s successive FOSMs found themselves working more closely with the US Navy’s Submarine Service than to their own Commanders. When Richard Heaslip was appointed FOSM in 1984, operational day-to-day control of US Navy and Royal Navy submarines was routinely shared between both navies. HMS Swiftsure, for example, was attached to the US Navy under US operational control and stationed in the Pacific.131 Royal Navy submarines were also involved in exercises designed to simulate pacifying and locking down Norwegian fjords to allow US carriers to anchor and launch attacks.132 Relations between the two submarine services were so close that many submariners felt detached from the rest of the Royal Navy. ‘We were so close to SUBLANT in Norfolk, Virginia, that the rest of the Navy virtually took no notice of us whatsoever,’ admitted Heaslip.133 ‘I do believe that most of the Royal Navy didn’t have the faintest idea of what we were there to do,’ admitted James Taylor, Chief of Staff to FOSM in the late 1980s. ‘We thought the rest of the Navy had no idea what was going on,’ said Frere. ‘When we went and did a NATO exercise there was always that feeling that this is a bit of a chore, we are a clockwork mouse, and it was time out from doing our real job.’134
War plans were also drawn up, as were contingency plans. Heaslip was surprised to find that there were no contingency plans against the possibility the United Kingdom was wiped out in a pre-emptive nuclear strike. As a result, with his American counterpart, orders were issued in the form of a sealed envelope which was placed in each SSN’s safe instructing commanders that if they had cause to believe that nuclear war had broken out and they had been unable to hear the BBC for three days then they were to go to a certain position, at a certain depth and course, and wait until a US Navy SSN came along and with orders. ‘I felt that we’ve got a dozen SSNs and the Americans are still going to go on in combat, even if Britain is out of action,’ recalls Heaslip, ‘and it doesn’t make any sense not to have any plans for these SSNs.’135
One of the most important, and indeed controversial aspects of the US Maritime Strategy concerned the tracking of Soviet SSBNs. US Navy and Royal Navy SSNs would search Soviet operating areas and in war attack any SSBNs that they found. This, it was hoped, would alter the strategic nuclear balance in NATO’s favour as the conventional war progressed. It was also hoped that this would reduce Soviet willingness to continue to fight and force the Soviet Navy to divert many of its forces to the SSBN bastion areas to counter the NATO onslaught.136 The US believed that by prioritizing Soviet SSBNs, the Soviet Navy would be forced to divert its most capable SSNs away from other offensive missions, particularly any attempt to intercept NATO sea lines of communications. As Watkins later said, ‘Aggressive forward movement of anti-submarine warfare forces, both submarines and maritime patrol aircraft, will force Soviet submarines to retreat into defensive bastions to protect their ballistic missile submarines. This both denies the Soviets the option of a massive, early attempt to interdict our sea lines of communication and counters such operations against them that the Soviets undertake.’137
Since a proportion of Soviet nuclear weapons would almost certainly have been targeted against the British Isles, there was a prima facie case that the Royal Navy should seek to destroy them, in essence continuing its historic ‘walls of England’ role, defending the realm against sea-based attack.138 Advocates of the strategy argued that being able to threaten something the Soviet Union valued would increase the deterrent and war prevention effectiveness of the Royal Navy. However, critics argued that such action against the Soviets’ strategic reserve would be provocative and destabilizing and that Soviet force levels were so high that attrition was unlikely to reduce the Soviet nuclear threat to the UK in any significant way, so the whole effort would be pointless. Also, with only seventeen SSNs and around ten SSKs, the Submarine Service would have little impact, unless it was operating alongside the US Navy. The House of Commons Defence Select Committee, for example, argued that:
At best, the forward deployment of RN ships in a period of tension could only monitor transiting Soviet submarines. It could not prevent them leaving the Norwegian Sea for the Atlantic, deal with those already operating there, or intercept and monitor those redeploying from elsewhere in the world. In a period of tension, forward deployment could appear provocative.139
If tension escalated into all-out war the Submarine Service hoped to inflict a damage ratio of three to one. Privately, Royal Navy submariners admitted that they would have around a 50 per cent chance of returning. They realized that once they went north, they would stay until they either ran out of torpedoes or were destroyed. ‘We never got to the stage where we felt that we could flood their areas so much with submarines that we would know where every single one was,’ recalled Toby Frere. ‘On the other hand they didn’t feel at all secure, because they did know that we were there and we did know where they were operating and we could wo
rk out how they were doing it and we had the weapons to take them out.’140
ARCTIC OPERATIONS
Although the Maritime Strategy had many critics, changes in Russian activity from 1986 onwards suggested that the Soviet Navy was attempting to counter it. The deployment of Soviet submarines and surface forces ‘out of area’ dropped markedly. Major Fleet exercises in 1986 departed from previous trends emphasizing far-reaching operations and were instead staged much closer to the Soviet mainland, under the umbrella of Soviet land-based aviation. As Lehman wrote:
Overall, the Soviet Navy has continued to operate and to train, but activities have switched dramatically to their home waters. The net strategic result appears to us to be a Soviet fleet positioning and training to counter our new maritime strategy. That precisely was what we intended, to force them to shift from an offensive naval posture targeted against our vulnerabilities to a defensive posture to protect their own vulnerabilities.141
As the Maritime Strategy took US Navy and Royal Navy submarines still further into northern waters, the Soviets increasingly looked to the Arctic to ensure the safety and potency of their submerged deterrent. In 1983, a ‘Delta II’ SSBN, the K-092, conducted the world’s first under-ice ballistic missile launch, when it fired two SLBMs while operating under the ice pack. They also began to use more and more of their SSNs to protect the SSBNs. In 1985, the Joint Intelligence Committee noted that:
The ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) force is increasingly deployed to Arctic waters where the ice-cap can give extra protection from Western anti submarine warfare (ASW) forces. SSBNs can fire their missiles on the surface either where there is open water or by breaking through the ice-cap … Nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) (of the ALFA, AKULA, VICTOR III and SIERRA classes) would be expected to operate in close support of these SSBNs, while Maritime Patrol Aircraft and surface ships would operate in distant support. The protection of these strategic forces thus occupies a large part of the Northern and Pacific Fleets.142