Adm. H. G. Rickover.

On Nov. 17, 1971, the New York Chapter of the American Ordnance Association gave its Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves Gold Medal to the "father of the nuclear Navy," Adm. Hyman G Rickover. It was perhaps a peace offering as the exacting admiral was well known for clashing with military contractors that didn't meet his high standards. His speech, "Lessons in Preparedness," put those differences aside and he instead spoke of the resurgent Soviet navy. "Americans seem unable to learn from the past that there can be no peace in our time without a strong defense," he said in the speech, reprinted in the January-February 1972 issue of Ordnance.

The Soviet submarine force, like the entire Soviet Navy, has become capable of sustained open-ocean operations and is being used to support foreign policy in various areas of the world. Last year the tempo of worldwide Soviet submarine operations was at an all-time high.

During their 1970 large-scale naval maneuvers that included over 200 ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and in nine adjoining seas, they deployed a large number of nuclear submarines away from their home bases.

Because of their expanding range of operations, the Soviet Navy can now deploy long-range missiles in submarines hidden underwater along the entire length of our Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. Thus they have brought 95 percent of American population and industrial centers within the range of their submarine-based missiles.

We now must reconcile ourselves to living with Russian submarines targeting their nuclear missiles on us from nearby ocean areas we thought of until recently as friendly American waters.

The Russians are in the Mediterranean. They operate regularly and continually in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea. Russian naval units now are being seen with regularity in the Indian Ocean and off both coasts of Africa. They are in the Pacific, the Arctic, and the Antarctic.

The swimming Russian bear is not yet 10 feet tall, but he is 5 feet, 8 inches--and growing rapidly. He has not yet wrested supremacy of the seas from the free world, but he is making a very determined effort to do so. If we are not alert, we may find...