The Navy we need and the one we got.

• Author: Shuger, Scott

Scott Shuger is writing a book on the Navy.

The current political and economic climate dictates that something like $300 billion worth of military programs will have to be canceled duri >;ng the new administration. And of all the services, the Navy is the most likely to be deeply cut. Over the past eight years, it is the only service that has actually grown. While the number of Army divisions has remained the same and the number of planes in the Air Force's tactical wings has actually shrunk, the Navy's fleet has swelled by more than 100 ships to 587, and its senior enlisted ranks have almost doubled since

1981. Moreover, the Navy's proposals for new programs-those not already underway-t >;otal around $80 billion.

Among the items the Navy is plumping for:

* Two more Mmitz-class nuclear supercarriers, for a total of eight vessels of that class, bringing fleet strength to 15 flattops, up from 12 in 1981.

* Smaller ships. The Navy wants 26 Burke-class guided-missile destroyers to go with the three already under construction and the 27 larger, Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers already funded.

* Subs anyone? The Navy wants up to 30 Seawolfclass attack submarines-subs designed >;to sink other subs-producing a fleet of 100 nuclear-powered attack subs. The Navy also wants money to complete the Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarines with their long-range Trident D5 missiles, for a total of 16-20 boats of that class.

* Don't forget the planes. The Navy wants to continue purchasing the carrier-based F/A-18 strike fighter, for a total of more than 1,000. It also wants to buy a new version of the carrier-based F-14 fighter, and to fund improvements for the older models already in the >; inventory, for a total of nearly 600.

To understand which weapons belong on the Navy's shopping list and which ones don't, you have to understand the scenarios the Navy is likely to encounter. While it's impossible to know just what our military needs will be next year, let alone 5, 10, 15 years from now, we can be certain that we'll need conventional weapons and nuclear weapons to keep the peace with the Soviets; we'll need to be ready to fight in limited, "tactical" engagements; and we should have th >;e capacity to fight "strategic" battles on a global scale.

Many of the items on the Navy's budget request aren't what we need for any of these scenarios. And many of the weapons that we do need are either inadequately funded or missing from the budget entirely.

A one-shot deal

Consider that first item: two more big nuclear aircraft carriers. So powerful is the mystique of carriers that senior Navy officials admit that in wartime they'd really want not the 15 carriers their request is based on bu >;t 20 to 24. Yet the carrier mystique belies considerable historical shortcomings. World War II's largest aircraft carrier, Japan's Shinano, had been in service for only ten days when it was sunk by four torpedo hits from a single American submarine. [See "The Sinking of a Supercarrier," Joseph Enright and James Ryan, May 1987.] In Vietnam, despite operating in an environment free of submarines and, for the most part, free of fighter aircraft,

U.S. carrier airwings hardly altered the war's outcome-but di >;d produce scores of POWs.

Limited uses of U.S. carriers in Grenada and Lebanon, and the use of an Argentine carrier in the Falklands, were likewise ineffectual.

These instances of vulnerability and inefficiency suggest that the Mmitz-class big-deck carriers the Navy wants won't be useful in many of the scenarios it must plan for. As far as the strategic nuclear environment goes, it is hard to see their advantage. The Soviets' development of a worldwide reconnaissance system, cruise missiles, and a su >;bstantial ocean-going, blue-water navy has largely negated any pre-existing American edge.

During my own service as a naval officer in the late seventies and early eighties I participated in some exercises where, in theory at least, my carrier battle group arrived undetected at a point in the ocean from which it could launch raids against Soviet targets. But we probably never did get close enough to pull off an airstrike that would truly work. ("Probably" because, happily, our work remained in the real >;m of simulation, as all such exercises do. No

one knows for sure what would really happen.) Invariably, the flying distance required complicated refueling plans, and, in order to conserve fuel, these bomber routes would be at very high and hence very detectable altitudes. When we practiced long-range strikes against non-Soviet targets, we ran into the same kinds of problems. In addition, no naval aircraft has electronics immune to the debilitating electromagnetic pulse produced by nuclear explosions.

>;Since stationing tanker airplanes along flight routes would be enormously difficult during battle, many of these sorties would wind up being one-way missions-recovering on land or ditching in the sea after bomb delivery. Even supposing round-trip missions could be pulled off, the carrier may well be located and sunk any time after the raid launches, because, while carriers have a hard time hiding from the Soviets under the best of circumstances, they become much more detectable once planes start operating. >; So even if inland targets get hit, you might still lose the subsequent use of an entire airwing. So in all-out and anti-Soviet scenarios, supercarriers look to be a one-shot deal. It seems that the Navy quietly admitted as much when some years ago it pretty much dropped carriers from our first-line nuclear war plans.

The old joke is that the reason you build aircraft carriers is so you can put planes on them to keep them from getting sunk. Because of the...