NATO Maritime Strategy during the Twilight War

NATO operations in the Twilight War followed a modified version of the strategy first outlined by John Lehman during his time as Secretary of the Navy for President Reagan. The strategic situation the US (and NATO) faced at sea was an impression of Soviet desire and ability to interdict vital sea lanes during a conventional conflict, primarily in the North Atlantic, although the increasing reliance upon semi-finished goods and raw materials from Asia made sea control a concern in the Pacific too. The retirement of masses of war-built escort ships in the 1970s and the increasing volume of maritime trade made the protection of NATO merchant shipping by traditional convoy unrealistic there was no way NATO navies could afford to build and maintain sufficient numbers of escorts. In addition, convoying is an essentially defensive strategy which does not provide the possibility to affect the outcome of a conflict. Two factors influenced this shift in NATO strategy. First, there was a growing realization that catastrophic nuclear conflict was less likely than predicted in the 1950s and 60s and that an extended conventional conflict was more likely than previously thought. Second, planning for an all-out war with the Soviet Union provided a stress case for NATO naval planning forces designed to successfully confront and defeat the USSR would be more than adequate for a wide range of regional and local conflicts, such as the Falklands and Persian Gulf. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, an increasingly modernized and powerful Soviet Navy forced NATO to shift focus from the purely defensive Atlantic sea-control mission to go onto the offensive early during a war and carry the fight to the enemy. Carrier warfare and the belief in the power projection capabilities of the supercarriers dominated this new maritime strategy, which was a central part of President Reagan's military buildup during the 1980s.1 While NATO technology provided a means to locate older Soviet submarines, the newest Soviet submarines approached NATO levels in quietness, presenting a serious challenge to small escorts in the convoy lanes. The growth of the Soviet Navy to a force capable of limited blue-water operations and the fielding of the long-range Backfire bomber, Flanker fighter and Mainstay AWACS aircraft increased the threat to NATO shipping on the North Atlantic. Meanwhile, the fielding of numbers of AEGIS cruisers (and destroyers in the 1990s) increased the survivability of American carrier battle groups against massed Soviet attack, while Tomahawk cruise missiles deployment increased the overall threat that Allied navies could pose to the Soviet homeland. US maritime strategy envisioned a three-stage process of nonnuclear "horizontal escalation" in wartime: (1) aggressive forward movement of antisubmarine forces, submarines, and maritime patrol aircraft, aimed at forcing the Soviets to retreat into defensive "bastions" in order to protect their nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines; (2) destroying Soviet naval forces and pushing the fighting toward Soviet home waters; and (3) complete destruction of Soviet naval forces by US aircraft carriers with airstrikes against the Soviet interior and the northern and/or central NATO-Warsaw Pact fronts.2 In a war situation, early control of the Norwegian Sea will be of great strategic importance for both NATO and the Soviet Union. For the Soviets, such control indirectly protects their strategic submarine bastions in the Barents Sea and reduces the possibility for an attack on the Soviet homeland. The Norwegian Sea is also the only avenue to the Atlantic Ocean and NATO's vital sea-lanes of communication (SLOC). By rapidly seeking control of the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland - Iceland - United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, the Soviets can achieve a good position for offensive operations into the North Atlantic.3 NATO control of the Atlantic Ocean is heavily dependent upon the Norwegian Sea. With war raging throughout Europe, the ability to reinforce and supply NATO forces from the United States is decisive. The loss of the Norwegian Sea will provide the Soviets with free access to the Atlantic, and thereby, the ability to cut NATO's SLOC's. It would also result in a NATO defeat in Norway and Denmark, which would give the Soviets several airfields of high strategic value. If the Soviets also gain control over Iceland, almost any important part of Europe

will be within range of their strike planes. So although the war will probably not be won in the Norwegian Sea, it can surely be lost there.4 In the event of a major war with the USSR, NATO's naval initial tactic is bottle up the initial Soviet incursion into the Norwegian Sea by establishing progressive ASW barriers from the Barents Sea all the way down through the Norwegian Sea into the GIUK gap. During the pre-hostilities mobilization phase, land-based patrol aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles and operating from Iceland, Scotland, England, and Norway, plus NATO submarines, will deploy along the Spitsbergen-North Cape line or in the Barents Sea.5 The GIUK gap itself will be actively patrolled by NATO surface forces including American carrier battle groups, British ASW groups centered on Invincible-class carriers, and towed-array ASW groups. Large numbers of shore-based maritime patrol aircraft will operate from bases on Iceland and the British Isles, and B-52s will lay down large numbers of CAPTOR mines in the Greenland Iceland gap.6 In the next phase of the operation, NATO's patrol aircraft and attack submarines initiate offensive operations. Landbased maritime aircraft play an especially important role in the early stages of this campaign since NATO's Atlantic Strike Fleet and its embarked aviation resources probably could not be present initially in northern waters. 7 As these units hold the line against the Soviets, NATO plans to move its Atlantic Strike Fleet (composed of three or preferably four US aircraft carrier battle groups) into the Norwegian Sea to threaten the Soviet Northern Fleets base facilities.8 In the Pacific, US forces would threaten the Kamchatka/Sakhalin area. The massed carrier groups will serve as bait and trap a force that poses such a threat to the USSR that it cannot be ignored, forcing the Soviet Navy to devote the majority of its assets to its defeat (allowing shipping on the North Atlantic to sail unmolested) (the bait), and a force strong enough that it would be able to defeat the Soviet onslaught (the trap). In the Norwegian Sea, the USN will initially engage the AV-MF (Soviet Naval Aviation) and heavily attrit if not annihilate its force of Backfires, Badgers and Bears. The US Navy will have to initially defeat Soviet Naval Aviation (V-MF) without suffering substantial losses in carriers or aircraft. The AV-MF's principal maritime strike aircraft is the Tu-22M Backfire B/C, a supersonic swing wing bomber equipped with Mach 3 AS-4 Kitchen or AS-6 Kingfish anti-shipping cruise missiles. The Backfire has a combat radius of 2,500 nm, much more than the 1,500 nm of the obsolete Badgers and Blinders which it replaced. Therefore, unlike its predecessors, it can attack a CVBG at substantial radii. The 1,500 nm radius of the Badger and Blinder was a serious operational constraint. 9 The Soviet view of defeating a CVBG on the high seas is one of massed saturation ASM attacks from several axes, to disperse the defending fighters and thus prevent them from destroying the inbound bombers and ASMs once launched.10 Ideally, V-MFs bomber attacks will be coordinated with strikes from SSGNs and surface action groups to overwhelm NATO defenses. With a 1,500 nm Badger/Blinder radius the CVBG must be within 500 nm of the coast for these bombers to have freedom of choice in axis of ingress to target, at greater radii the bombers have increasingly less choice and thus are subject to increasing concentrations of defensive SAM and AAM fire. The Backfire extends this kill zone out to about 1,000 nm. However, another aspect of the Soviet response to the Maritime Strategy has been the deployment of the long range Su-27 Flanker to Kola and Kamchatka, supported by Mainstay AWACS. With a combat radius of the order of 750 nm, the Flanker could tie down a substantial fraction of the USN's F-14 force, preventing them from engaging inbound bombers and ASMs and thus substantially reducing the concentration of defensive fire.11 Clearly if confronted by a CVBG, the Soviet Navy could choose not to engage until the NATO fleet had closed to a radius where it could apply its strike assets to best advantage - within the 500-700 nm kill zone radius where the older bombers could be used, and fighter/AWACS support was available. Under these conditions, any contest would be closely fought, as the Soviets could apply their assets in the best possible way, while the CVBG would be very limited in its offensive options.12

Employing Aegis and other air defense measures, including the natural concealment hopefully provided by Norwegian fiords, the USN feels confident that it can repulse Soviet attacks and win the battle of the skies against Soviet aviation units.13 NATO strategy also has to deal with the threat faced by the Soviet Navys surface force, which grew larger and more capable in the late 1980s and, with the commissioning of the Admiral Kuzentsov, Varyag and Ulyanovsk, acquired the ability to operate fixed wing high performance aircraft capable of establishing at least local air control. Ironically, this strategy was a mirror of the Soviet strategy to defeat NATO carrier battle groups. NATO submarines were tasked to locate, and where appropriate, attrit Soviet surface groups as they departed their bases. Once located, the defenses would be overwhelmed by a coordinated attack, directed from all avenues of approach land based aircraft (British Buccaneers, USAF F-111s and B-52s with Harpoon missiles, escorted by F-15s based out of Iceland and Tornado F3s from Scotland), Alfa strikes from the Atlantic Strike Fleet, and anti-ship cruise missiles launched by submarines and surface ships. In addition, the effectiveness of the Soviet carrier groups will be limited by NATO submarines attacking Soviet replenishment shipping, which is limited to begin with, exploiting the short range and limited endurance of Soviet ship designs. The neutralization of the Soviet aircraft carrier groups (and their ability to escort bombers beyond the range of land-based fighters) is essential to allowing NATO to successfully implement the Maritime Strategy. The anti-submarine battle will rely primarily on attack submarines and anti-submarine warfare patrol as well as carrier based aircraft supported by long-range surveillance systems (SOSUS), plus Iceland, Norway and carrier based tactical air. Even under the most favorable circumstances, however, some submarines will escape the forward sweeps. They then will have to contend with the layered defensive screen surrounding NATO naval task forces and convoys. That screen consists of surface combatants equipped with advanced sonar and anti-submarine torpedoes, torpedo-armed anti-submarine helicopters, and carrier-based ASW patrol aircraft, as well as attack submarines operating in the direct support role.14 NATO also plans to land amphibious forces to repulse a Soviet ground offensive in Norway. A significant new development, made possible by a 1981 agreement with Norway, allowed the pre-positioning in the Trondheim area of supplies for a 13,000-man brigade of U.S. Marines.15 With the extended period of tension preceding the Twilight War, NATO ground forces were able to deploy unmolested. However, the sustainment of these forces became a significant mission for NATO naval forces, as the limited road net was vulnerable to Soviet interdiction. As the NATO force moves to the offensive, amphibious operations will be used to circumvent Soviet defensive lines. Soviet ballistic missile submarines, also known as Boomers or SSBNs, normally operate within highly protected bastions in the northern home waters. This protective measure is necessary because unlike the USN's Ohio SSBNs, which patrol alone relying on stealth for protection, the noisier Soviet submarines are easier for NATO attack submarines to track and destroy.16 The introduction of the Delta class SSBNs in the 1970s, equipped with the world's first truly intercontinental SLBM, the SS-N-8, followed by the Typhoon class with the SS-N-20 SLBM in 1981, placed the Continental United States within striking range while the SSBNs themselves were berthed inside Soviet ports. This resulted in a revolution in Soviet priorities, and instead of forward-deployment, they preferred to withhold their modern SSBNs in local sanctuaries in the north. Deployment and employment was limited to the Arctic Ocean, where the submarines would partly be hidden by the North Polar icepack and protected by Soviet general-purpose naval forces. More than a dozen older Delta SSBNs operated in the Barents Sea, with Typhoon and Delta IV SSBNs patrolling the White Sea and east of the island of Novaya Zemlya. Although NATO's GIUK line of defense was still important for countering the older Yankee class SSBNs, it would not have an effect on the Soviet Arctic bastions. This brought offensive strategic ASW to the forefront of NATO's thinking, and soon saw the deployment of fast NATO attack submarines against Soviet SSBNs within their own bastions.17 This use of NATO SSNs (unable to be effectively coordinated with friendly units) serves two purposes reducing the threat posed by the Soviet nuclear fleet (causing doubt in the minds of Soviet leaders about the survivability of

their seaborne nuclear deterrent) and also diverting the most modern Soviet naval assets, especially attack submarines, from service against NATO carriers and shipping to defensive operations protecting SSBNs. Once the destruction of the Soviet surface fleet, the sinking of its large SS/SSN/SSGN fleets and the hunting down of its SLBM firing SSBN fleet takes place, the carriers will move to within 400 nm of the coast and subject Soviet coastal installations and naval forces to sustained air attack. The absence of serious Soviet air capability in the latter phase of the battle allows the USN's submarines and surface fleet to effectively annihilate the Soviet submarine force, while also destroying its vital support infrastructure and resupply system. 18 In addition to carrier strikes, longranged Tomahawk cruise missiles will hit targets ashore. The carriers will conduct a series of air strikes against a wide range of industrial and military targets. The objective of this air campaign is to destroy the Soviet Union's war making potential in the region. This high-risk venture will expose the Strike Fleet to enormous danger but if successful, Soviet forces left in Norway, Sweden and Finland will wither on the vine. If a devastating blow can be struck; the industrial infrastructure in the region could be crippled for months and help bring a quick end to the war on favorable terms. With their ports near Murmansk no longer viable, Soviet naval vessels can be chased out of the area. The Soviets may even be forced to transfer aircraft from central Europe to this northern theater, taking pressure off the Central Front.19 However, the Soviet Union has transformed the Kola Peninsula into the world's most complex and concentrated naval base. The majority of the Soviet SSBNs are based here, and the Red Banner Northern Fleet is the Soviet Union's most formidable fleet. The Kola Peninsula has sixteen military airfields and eight dispersal airfields. Most of them are not used daily but were rapidly made operational in the days leading up to war. It is estimated the Soviets currently have about 350 aircraft in all categories based on the peninsula. The air defense forces consist of MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-31, Su-15 and Su-27 interceptors supported by ground-based radar and airborne command and control aircraft. The air defense ground element is made up of about seventy fixed SAM sites and a numerous mobile launchers.20 Before the Strike Fleet can initiate operations against Kola it must penetrate the Soviet defensive bubble. This involves neutralizing the Soviet bases on the Svalbard islands and sinking Soviet surface forces in the Barents Sea. Although Soviet assets may be highly attrited after weeks or months of fighting, the Strike Fleet faces formidable and numerous air, land, surface and sub surface threats. As the carriers get closer to the Soviet homeland it will be easier for waves of land-based aircraft, missile boats and diesel submarines to find and attack them. However, NATO commanders feel confident that the Strike Fleet can, thanks to the extended air power projection capabilities and multi-layered defensive shields, repulse Soviet submarine and surface attacks and win the battle of the skies against Soviet aviation units.21 The result of the application of this strategy would hopefully be that the Soviet Northern fleet would be on the defensive and unable to cut Allied shipping lanes. In addition, the Soviets' second echelon nuclear deterrent, the SSBN fleet, would be largely sunken or at least operationally crippled. 22 At the same time, following the defeat of the Soviet naval threat, NATO carriers would then be able to redeploy farther south, where their air wings could potentially tilt the balance in the air war on the Central Front in NATOs favor, or remain in the North, threatening to be used to prosecute an extended campaign against the Soviet Union itself, attacking the Soviets on their doorstep. 23 In other theaters NATO planned similar operations. Worldwide, Soviet merchant and naval traffic would be swept from the seas by a combination of surface and air operations and Soviet anchorages and basing facilities would be neutralized through use of air strikes, amphibious assault and/or special operations. NATO surface action groups (centered on battleships or reactivated heavy cruisers) and second-rate carrier groups (hastily established by the U.S. Navy in 1996 using reactivated Essex-class carriers) would provide the forces for these sweeps and to hunt down any Soviet or Warsaw Pact commerce raiders that escaped the (expected) slaughter to the north. NATO allies were also enlisted to help patrol local choke points and strategic straits to deny their use to Warsaw Pact shipping (both Naval and merchant). On the North Atlantic sea lines of communications NATO adopted a mixed strategy. Unable to provide sufficient escorts for the 6,000 to 7,000 ships required to maintain NATO during a protracted war24, NATO navies

implemented a policy of convoying purely military cargo (troops, equipment and supplies, fuel and naval stores) along with such economic shipping as could be accommodated in the convoys and requiring remaining shipping to sail independently. Such a policy, while not popular with ship owners and sailors unions, was not only necessary but also partially justified by the expected annihilation of the Soviet Navy making convoying unnecessary. This policy was also known by Soviet submarine commanders who, knowing that unescorted NATO ships had reliable communications and were not carrying military cargo, were reluctant to make their location known by firing on such a target and inviting a visit from a NATO patrol aircraft or ASW Hunter-Killer Group. NATO attempted to increase the ability of convoys to resist attack and aid ships sailing independently through the use of convoy escort carriers, converted container ships and, in the USN, use of aging amphibious assault carriers (LPHs) to carry anti-submarine helicopters and Harrier jump jets with air to air missiles. In the Pacific, sea lines of communication were less well protected. Military convoys were escorted by the USN. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) conducted coastal convoys between the home islands as well as escorting tankers through the South China Sea (however, the JMSDF was prohibited from entering Malaysian or Indonesian waters). The Chinese navy was fully engaged prior to NATOs entry into the war and unable to act effectively outside of coastal waters. The USN undertook to escort aid convoys to the PRC and suppress Soviet naval power in the South China Sea, including neutralizing the Cam Ranh Bay naval base and nearby airfield. In the Baltic, the reunification of Germany threw NATO maritime plans into disarray. Prior to the reunification, NATO naval planning in the Baltic had been essentially defensive, oriented on preventing a Warsaw Pact breakout into the North Sea and defense of the Central Fronts northern flank. The defense of the mouth of the Baltic was to be attained with extensive minelaying, covered by fast attack boats and maritime strike aircraft. Lanes in the minefields were to be patrolled by Danish submarines. The Danish and German navies, using minefields and more fast attack craft, would try to prevent a Pact amphibious landing along the Baltic coast. As a result of the reunification of Germany, NATO naval forces in the Baltic were compelled to develop a new strategy while under fire. The defensive mission of keeping the mouth of the Baltic closed remained paramount. Initially, NATO naval forces in the Baltic east of Jutland aimed simply to protect the coastline and prevent Pact amphibious flanking attacks. As Operation Advent Crown proceeded, NATO naval forces, reinforced by other NATO navies and with tactical air support, were able to launch a series of amphibious operations to outflank Pact lines in Poland. In addition, NATO naval craft mounted raids of Soviet shipping en route to Sweden and launched commando raids on Soviet naval facilities in the Baltic republics. NATO naval strategy in the Mediterranean and Black Seas also had to be changed under fire. The strategy adopted in the 1980s called for Soviet surface and submarine forces to be cleared by a group of four US aircraft carriers in cooperation with Allied navies, which would also neutralize anchorages and port facilities in Soviet allied states. An air campaign similar to the one in the Norwegian Sea would also be waged against Soviet naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet. Both campaigns would be supported by land based aircraft operating from facilities in Gibraltar, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. NATO planners, recognizing the vulnerability of the Suez Canal to interdiction, had not planned on using the canal to any great extent. NATO strategic goals in the theater were to obtain and maintain dominance, control the vital choke points to maintain dominance, to support Turkey and its efforts against the Warsaw Pact and to use the Black Sea as an approach to vital Soviet and Warsaw Pact strategic areas. The Black and Mediterranean seas are dominated by choke points. The most important of these are the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, the Sicilian Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar. The Greek and Italian navies played a vital role in NATO plans for control of the choke points, and Greek and Italian naval and air bases in the immediate areas of the choke points were of great use to NATO in control of the choke points. The denial of these forces and base facilities to NATO by Italian and Greek neutrality presented great difficulties to NATO naval operations in the war. When Greece and Italy joined the war in June 1997, they were able to cut the Mediterranean in two and cut the choke points near Sicily and deny NATO use of the Aegean sea approaches to the Bosporus, creating a situation similar to that faced by the British in the Mediterranean during 1941, where reinforcement of the eastern Mediterranean could only be attempted by sailing around Africa or by a fighting passage of the Mediterranean. An added nuance of some parts of the Twilight War in the Mediterranean was that the opposing navies both used similar or identical weapons and tactics and commanders were intimately familiar with their opponents capabilities and operational methods.

The war between Greece and Turkey prevented NATO from being able to undertake significant naval operations in the Black Sea. Likewise, NATO was generally unable to provide Yugoslavia and Romania with significant material support (which had been exclusively through the Adriatic ports of Yugoslavia and by air) after Italian entry into the war until the Italian Navy had faded from the seas. In the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf the major NATO naval goal were the containment and eventual elimination of Iraqi and Soviet naval forces in order to secure shipping lanes for vital transportation of oil from the region and to allow NATO supplies and reinforcements to arrive unhindered. Once that goal was attained, NATO naval operations were to support of land operations, both amphibious operations and providing air support ashore. The regions great distance from both friendly and enemy ports and naval bases limited the numbers of naval vessels involved on both sides, and ensured that what units were in the region were quite often dispersed over a great area. The RDF Sourcebook contains specific information on some of the naval operations in the Persian Gulf region.

1 This (and much else of this document) is from Ragnar Emsoys excellent project for the Harpoon III computer game World War III in 1985 located at http://www.harpoonhq.com/harpoon3/scenarios/plot-ww3in1985.html. Hes put a huge amount of work into that project and this is probably not the last of his work we will see working on the Twilight War naval project. 2 Benjamin B. Fischer, A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare Langley, VA: Central Intelligence Agency, 1997, footnote 25. Located online at: http://www.cia.gov/csi/monograph/coldwar/source.htm . 3 World War III in 1985. 4 Ibid. 5 Dean C. Allard, The U.S. Navy, SACLANT, and the Northern Flank during the Cold War located at: http://www.luftfart.museum.no/Forskning/kaldkrig/dokumentasjon/Allard.rtf . 6 World War III in 1985. 7 Allard. 8 Ibid. 9 Carlo Kopp, US Naval Tactical Aviation Australian Aviation, Jan Apr 1995. Located online at: http://www.ausairpower.net/Analysis-USN-95.html . 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Allard. 14 Leon A. Edney, 50 Years of the Cold War: A Maritime - SACLANT Perspective located online at: http://www.luftfart.museum.no/Forskning/kaldkrig/dokumentasjon/Edney.rtf . 15 Allard. 16 World War III in 1985. 17 Ibid. 18 Kopp. 19 World War III in 1985. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Copp. 23 World War III in 1985. 24 NATO Study Steering Group, Merchant Shipping for NATO: An assessment of the Supply and Demand for Merchant Shipping in Crisis and in War. June 1990. This requirement is for a full NATO rather than a Twilight War NATO, and therefore includes the requirements and merchant fleets of Greece and Italy. It is unclear whether French requirements are included. In addition to the references above, this analysis is based on: Norman Friedman, The US Maritme Strategy. London: Janes, 1988. and the U.S. Navy War Colleges Global War Games: Robert Gile, Global War Game: Second Series 1984-1988. Newport, RI: Navy War College, 2004. and Bud Hay and Bob Gile, Global War Game: The First Five Years. Newport, RI: Navy War College, 1993. available online at: http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/np20/NP20.pdf and http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/np4/np4.pdf