A Tale Of Two Navies. Anthony Wells
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Limited War in the Nuclear Era
Impact on the US Navy and the Royal Navy
There have been countless studies since World War II on nuclear warfare theory—the fine 1959 book by the man dubbed the “American Clausewitz,” Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, comes immediately to mind, as does the work of Philip Winsor at the London School of Economics and Political Science and, more latterly, the work of Franklin C. Miller in the United States. There is indeed a whole separate lexicon associated with how the opposing nations of NATO and the Soviet Union developed nuclear-warfare theory, deterrence postures, and indeed the very plans for executing nuclear warfare at various levels of escalation. Brodie was the father of the West’s understanding of the critical value of second-strike capabilities in nuclear deterrence theory. Brodie’s thinking impacted significantly the nuclear capabilities and postures of the US Navy and the Soviet navy. Brodie, for instance, made the singular observation that “thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to prevent them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.”
The ending of the Cold War would seem prima facie to have ended that era. However, logic and common sense say otherwise, since the key nations that were the nuclear powers between 1945 and, technically, August 29, 1949, in the case of the Soviet Union (the day the USSR detonated its first nuclear device) are still in existence and have nuclear arsenals. In spite of the various nuclear arms-limitations agreements, the threat of nuclear war is still there. Other nations may acquire nuclear weapons in due course. The ongoing diplomacy to constrain Iran from becoming a nuclear-weapons nation exemplifies the position of the Western nuclear-weapons “have” nations to prevent the “have not” nations from acquiring these weapons of mass destruction (WMD). From our seventy years of international relations in the nuclear age (1945–2015) one factor is self-evidently clear, that all conventional warfare is by definition limited warfare if conducted by one or more of the nuclear-weapons-owning nations.
As we proceed to look at the US Navy and the Royal Navy in the fifty-five years from 1960, one key factor has to be assimilated. It is simple and perhaps obvious at one level, but still necessary to articulate: that both navies became nuclear-powered navies and both navies became the guardians of their nation’s independent nuclear deterrents. These sea-based systems were on board submarines, and though the US Navy built and still builds nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs) and had nuclear-powered cruisers (CGNs) in the early part of our period, the submarine became the primary platform in nuclear deterrence strategy. The CVNs were nuclear-weapon capable, as were the Buccaneer aircraft of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, and both navies had other nuclear weapons: the nuclear depth bomb, for example. However, it is the submarine that is the mainstay and workhorse of the deterrent forces, with manned bombers and land-based missile systems (in the case only of the United States today) filling support roles. The first leg of the US triad is still today the ballistic-missile-firing Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines, and in the United Kingdom the Vanguard-class SSBNs have the same role as just a single leg. This basic fact is to be coupled to one other crucial fact, that nuclear-powered attack submarines have a service life of approximately thirty years–plus (the new US Virginia-class SSN has an infinite unrefueled life; its reactor never requiring refueling during the hull life of the submarine) and are stealthy, covert, and persistently present in the oceans and littorals of the world. It is clear that the nuclear submarine has a very special place in what follows.
All warfare is therefore limited unless the absolutely inconceivable but by definition always possible event of a nuclear exchange between major-state adversaries occurs or a third party (terrorist) or surrogate nation uses a nuclear device. The umbrella of nuclear protection for the West has been in position since the advent of nuclear deterrence theory. Tactical nuclear weapons, whatever posture changes their advent has brought, and whatever their yield, remain incontrovertibly weapons of mass destruction. The wars, conflicts, campaigns, counterinsurgencies, counterterrorist operations, and a plethora of other naval operations (such as the “Cod War” and the Beira Patrol in the case of the Royal Navy, operations in Central America in the case of the US Navy, and relief and humanitarian assistance, counterpiracy, counterdrugs, counter-weapons and -human trafficking in the case of both navies) of this period are overshadowed by the immensity and cost of both waging the Cold War at sea and the sustainment of the undersea nuclear deterrent posture. At one level the intensity and complexity of continuous forward-deployed operations against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the maintenance of the submarine-launched ballistic-missile (SLBM) deterrent can never again be matched.
USS Ohio (SSBN 726) U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE
The Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard (S28) UK MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
The fact that the Cold War never developed into a hot war is a lasting tribute to both navies and their leaderships. When we examine several of the other major conflicts that occurred both during and after the Cold War it is critical to recall that neither navy ever yielded once in any dimension that was militarily and politically significant to the opposition. It behooves us to recall what was achieved both strategically and tactically, because of its significance for the contemporary challenges of an emergent China and a reemergent Russia. The one common denominator throughout is, simply, the sea, and it is the sea that likely holds the keys to the security of the post-2015 world.
Both navies worked hand in glove to keep the West safe under the nuclear umbrella by one critical strategic tool—ensuring the security of the Western European base by maintaining the sea lines of communication (SLOCs), not just in the Atlantic but globally, wherever the Warsaw Pact challenged the West. Securing the sea lines of communication is a fundamental strategic goal. It is a simple concept, written with simple words, yet within these words are enshrined one of the most important concepts for today and tomorrow—that the free flow of trade and people underpins the global economy. It is not merely a question of moving divisions of troops by sea from one place to another without hindrance in order to execute a land campaign. Without sea control there is no free movement, and without access to such key resources as food, minerals, manufactured products, energy sources, and sea-based products (like fish, oil, and gas), there is no serious global economic life. Who controls the sea, controls the global economic flow and all the oceans’ resources. To upset that economic balance by means of war is to attack the very freedom that has sustained twentieth- and twenty-first-century economic life. The global, forward-deployed disposition of naval forces to maintain the balance of power at sea in order to sustain peace and prosperity is at the very heart of naval strategy. In the early part of the last century this was termed “the defense of trade.” Nothing has changed. For examples, keeping oil flowing from the Persian Gulf, maintaining the integrity of the critical straits through the Indonesian archipelago and the Malacca Straits, and preventing the seizure of seabed resources by illegal occupation of island chains are no different from protecting the flow of goods and raw materials during the golden age of the first Industrial Revolution. The impacts of the second Industrial Revolution of the global, networked economy and the attendant issues of energy and critical raw-material acquisition, supply, and flow are already upon us. We will later look at more complex and sophisticated aspects of this fundamental point.
During our period there was only one overt act of military aggression using a submarine: the attack and sinking by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror of the Argentinian navy cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands campaign of 1982. There