Shrewd tactics underpin Navy strategy to defeat diesel submarines.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Up Front

In preparation for future wars, U.S. ship commanders will be trained to employ unconventional tactics against enemies equipped with diesel submarines.

Navy planners anticipate that adversaries will try to deny U.S. forces access to key strategic coastal areas by deploying quiet diesel-electric submarines. These hard-to-detect boats would make it difficult for U.S. ships to move around freely without exposing themselves to an enemy torpedo shot.

For that reason, the U.S. Navy is adopting an entirely new approach to tackling this threat, says Capt. David Yoshihara, who heads the Antisubmarine Warfare Task Force, a group specifically created to help fix the Navy's current shortfalls in antisubmarine warfare.

A new "concept of operations," approved in late December by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vernon Clark, makes a drastic departure from the traditional ways of conducting antisubmarine warfare, Yoshihara says in an interview.

Clark views the new concept of operations as a remarkable achievement, because it provides the Navy--for the first time since the end of the Cold War--a guiding document to develop ASW tactics and techniques, Yoshihara explains.

The concept of operations, fundamentally, is built on the notion that U.S. commanders will get accurate information about the location of potential enemy submarines, via a network of miniaturized sensors that will be deployed in strategic coastal areas. The information provided by those sensors, he says, would allow commanders to "see things and gain an understanding before they move in."

Current ships don't have access to such intelligence, and primarily rely on massive firepower to defend themselves against enemy submarine strikes.

That defensive stance makes it difficult for U.S. ships to maneuver and gain access to a particular area of operations--especially in coastal waters--close to where U.S. forces may engage in combat. The new concept favors an "offensive posture," which means that U.S. ships will try to beat the enemy by getting to a contested area faster, before these adversaries have a chance to deploy their submarines.

The sort of speedy response envisioned in the new antisubmarine warfare concept is unprecedented in the U.S. Navy, where ASW occasionally is mocked as "awfully slow warfare," according to Adm. John Nathman, vice chief of naval operations.

The concept now in place shrinks the response time from months to days, says Yoshihara. The measure of success, in this context...