The next initially appeared in the summertime 1985 version of the Naval Warfare School Evaluation and is republished with permission. Learn it in its authentic kind right here.
By Floyd D. Kennedy Jr
“Air Protection of Naval Forces: a set of organizational measures and fight operations to repel the assault of an airborne enemy and shield groupings of naval forces at sea and in bases, and likewise to guard shore installations in opposition to air strikes. Naval air protection helps acquire and hold air supremacy in sure areas of a theater of operations. Air protection is utilized in all sorts of fight and operations, throughout a sea crossing (of formations or unbiased ships), and within the day by day fight exercise of naval forces…” —Rear Admiral S.P. Teglev, Chief of Naval Air Protection, Soviet Army Encyclopedia, 1978.
The Soviet Navy is consistently altering, evolving from a coastal protection power to a blue water fleet in a position to present the crimson flag within the far reaches of the globe. This evolution is obvious in Soviet shipbuilding packages and peacetime operations. However nowhere is it extra evident than in Soviet naval literature. This literature, greater than another indicator, displays the attitudes and considerations of high-ranking Soviet naval officers. Within the Eighties one of many prime considerations of the Soviet Navy’s management seems to be the air protection (protivovozdushnaya oborona, or PVO) of naval forces. This phenomenon is a comparatively latest one within the literature. The change portends a brand new Soviet intention to function naval forces exterior the protecting umbrella of shore-based air protection forces and, maybe, to make use of these forces extra aggressively in areas distant from Russian shores exterior the context of a NATO/Warsaw Pact battle.
Air protection problems with explicit significance to Soviet authors seem to middle on the menace posed by antiship missiles (ASMs) and the very best methodology of countering that menace. Among the many main ASM defensive measures mentioned are digital warfare (EW) methods, missiles, weapons, directed vitality weapons, and, probably the most controversial of all, carrier-based airborne early warning (AEW) plane and long-range interceptors. These Soviet views on fleet air protection require shut examination if the West is to achieve perception into the Soviet Navy of the late Nineteen Nineties.
Early Views on Fleet PVO
One indicator of the eye a selected challenge is receiving, or has lately acquired, on the greater ranges of the Soviet naval command construction is the frequency with which it’s mentioned within the navy literature. Within the Sixties PVO at sea was a major topic in solely 4 articles from the obtainable literature, and solely two of these articles had been devoted completely to fleet air protection.1 All 4 articles typically agreed that air protection could possibly be damaged down into two components: fight in opposition to missiles and fight in opposition to missile launch platforms. Motion in opposition to missiles was the accountability of the antiaircraft weapons, missiles, and digital countermeasures on board floor ships. Motion in opposition to launch platforms gave the impression to be the accountability of the land-based interceptor plane of PVO Strany, the Soviets’ air protection power. The Soviet authors thought of this division needed as a result of missiles could possibly be fired from past the vary of shipboard defenses. An unstated however apparent corollary to this argument was that the Soviets didn’t then plan to make use of their floor warships past the protecting umbrella of land-based interceptors in wartime.
The literature of the early Seventies contained nearly no point out of fleet air protection. In an in any other case extraordinarily complete article entitled, “Some Developments within the Improvement of Naval Ways,” Captain First Rank N. V’yunenko didn’t as soon as point out PVO at sea, though he touched on virtually each different naval topic possible.2 As a result of V’yunenko loved then (1975) – as he does now – an in depth relationship with the Soviet Navy’s highest determination makers, his omission of PVO from his in any other case complete article seems vital, reflecting both an absence of high-level concern concerning the topic or, extra probably, a division of official opinion on the matter.
The ASM Risk
Within the early Seventies the Soviet press started to debate a big new airborne menace, the ASM. The primary article on this topic of their navy’s skilled journal, Morskoy sbornik, was entitled “The First Fight Use of Ship-to-Ship Missiles and Their Improvement.” The creator, a civilian named Shaskol’skiy, mentioned the sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat in October 1967 and the Western response to that occasion within the type of ASM growth and countermeasures. The journal gave no prominence to the article – it was buried within the again pages, the creator was a digital unknown, and the occasions he was discussing had been virtually three years previous.3 But the difficulties Shaskol’skiy described as bedeviling Western engineers within the growth of ASM protection (ASMD) methods presaged comparable Soviet issues.
Within the mid-Seventies Morskoy sbornik adopted Western ASM developments pretty intently and reported their developmental milestones within the journal’s part on “International Navies: Reviews and Info,” a compilation of temporary, newsworthy vignettes on international naval developments. The primary full article devoted completely to a single ASM appeared within the July 1977 Morskoy sbornik and inaugurated a spate of writing on the ASM and the issues of defending in opposition to it that has continued to the current day. This preliminary article was written by Captain First Rank B. Rodionov and Engineer N. Novichkov, who’ve turn out to be prolific writers on the issues of fleet air protection. Entitled merely, “The Tomahawk Cruise Missile,” it contained a fundamental description of the land assault and anti-ship variants of the missile, together with a gentle polemic on their arms management implications.4
The next yr Rodionov and Novichkov revealed a extra analytical article entitled, “Is the Missile Protection Downside Solvable?” Crediting ”international navy specialists” with many of the evaluation, the 2 authors really helpful recruiting helicopters into the ASMD function to enhance a ship’s detection vary in opposition to missiles and their launch platforms. As well as, the helicopters had been to be geared up with digital countermeasures (ECM) to foil the missiles’ seekers and air-to-air missiles to knock down the ASMs. The authors advised different enhancements, together with the automation of data assortment, processing, and weapons management on board ship to compensate for the quick warning time afforded by sea-skimming anti-ship missiles. With regard to the query posed by the title of their article the authors concluded that there “is not any unequivocal reply . . . at current,” including “Many international specialists are removed from optimistic when evaluating the capabilities of combating anti-ship cruise missiles.” The 2 Soviet writers reached this conclusion even supposing that they had simply completed describing the unqualified success of Israeli ASMD in opposition to Soviet-made anti-ship missiles within the 1973 Yom Kippur battle.5 It will seem that their pessimism over ASMD capabilities was their very own and never of Western origin.
Kuz’min additionally had described the 1973 Israeli successes within the earlier version of Morskoy sbornik, as out of fifty ASMs fired by the Egyptians not a single one hit an Israeli goal. Kuz’min had a extra vital level to make, nonetheless,
“Reconnaissance help of the fight employment of anti-ship cruise missiles is linked straight with reconnaissance directed at combating cruise missiles. This truth has precipitated international navy specialists to precise grave concern concerning the difficulties of detecting missiles. . . . It would prove that the warning about incoming missiles shall be their detection on radar screens, which might already be too late for the employment of air protection missiles for his or her destruction.”
Like Rodionov and Novichkov, Kuz’min really helpful, by means of his “international navy specialist” surrogates, the employment of helicopters for detecting incoming ASMs and the automation of intelligence processing and distribution.6
The sixth quantity of the authoritative Soviet navy encyclopedia Sovetskaya Voyennaya Entsiklopediya was revealed at roughly the identical time because the above two articles. This quantity contained an entry by Rear Admiral S. P. Teglev, Chief of Naval Air Protection, on “Air Protection of Naval Forces,” the primary two sentences of that are quoted on the head of this text. Teglev continued his entry by describing the forces dedicated to naval air protection:
“This [defense] is completed with the antiaircraft weapons of ships and naval bases and naval fighter aviation in coordination with the Nationwide Air Protection Forces and the bottom forces. Outdoors the attain of the weapons of the Nationwide Air Protection and the air protection forces of the bottom forces, solely a ship’s personal antiaircraft missile complexes, small and medium-caliber antiaircraft weapons, ship-based fighter plane, and gear for naval reconnaissance and digital warfare are used.”7
Later, Teglev particularly described how capitalist nations performed naval air protection, implying that the above citation described the Soviet methodology of PVO. This level is curious, as a result of the entry was despatched to press virtually 5 years earlier than the one Soviet ship-based fighter, the vertical takeoff and touchdown (VTOL) Forger, demonstrated an antiair warfare functionality. This encyclopedia entry in all probability mirrored Soviet naval planning, and even need, moderately than capabilities.
ASM Protection
The Soviets revealed no main Soviet articles in 1979 on both fleet air protection or ASMs, though the ”International Navies: Reviews and Info” part of Morskoy sbomik continued reporting on Western packages in each these fields. However the next yr greater than compensated for the lapse in 1979 with 5 main articles, 4 in Morskoy sbornik and one in Voyenno-storicheskiy zhurnal.
In February 1980 Captain First Rank Vasil’yev examined PVO at sea from the historic perspective. Vasil’yev asserted that in World Warfare II fighter plane had been “the best power in repelling an air assault,” however by the Sixties surface-to-air missiles had assumed “the primary place amongst different air protection weapons.” At current and within the close to future “plane and. . . winged missiles, which fly at very low altitudes, will successfully overcome the air defenses of ship formations.” The way in which to counter these methods, in line with Vasil’yev, was with a deeply echeloned protection in 4 zones: “self-defense (as much as 20 km), close-in (20-70 km), medium-range (70-180 km), and distant (greater than 180 km).8 Most likely not coincidentally, new Soviet SAM methods neatly fall into three of those zones: the SAM carried by the DDG Udaloy for self-defense, the SA-N-7 for close-in, and the SA-N-6 for medium vary.9 All that is still is the distant zone, for which Vasil’yev implied – however by no means straight acknowledged – ship-based fighter aviation could be probably the most appropriate.
Within the April 1980 Morskoy sbomik Captain First Rank-Engineer V. Grisenko revealed an in depth description of the American AN/ALQ-32 ECM system that was designed, in line with the creator, after a cautious evaluation of greater than 50 variants of naval fight. The system ”embodies utterly the fundamental views of the US Navy’s management with respect to the function of ECM gear within the protection of floor ships in opposition to missiles, particularly anti-ship missiles with radar homing methods.”10
In a basic dialogue of air supremacy within the July 1980 challenge of the journal of navy historical past, Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhumal, Main Basic of Aviation I. Tomokhovich included two paragraphs on air supremacy in sea and ocean theaters of operations, He made two factors, the primary being that carrier-based plane had performed the chief function in World Warfare II naval battles. This primary level was tempered by his second,
“The good significance of carriers as floating airfields and, alternatively, their vulnerability from the air, pressured the command components of the warring sides constantly to bolster the air protection of provider forces with fighter plane and air protection weapons. This truth is why the operations of provider forces often had been accompanied by fierce air battles and engagements.”11
Thus, in line with Tomokhovich, though provider plane had been important to victory at sea in World Warfare II, the ships on which they had been based mostly had been extraordinarily susceptible to enemy motion and wanted monumental assets dedicated to their safety. By inference the identical logic could possibly be utilized to proposed Soviet carriers.
Rodionov and Novichkov appeared once more within the August 1980 challenge of Morskoy sbornik with a treatise on the employment of airships (dirigibles) as airborne early warning (AEW) platforms for naval formations. Ascribing help for such an idea to “US Navy specialists,” the authors introduced a convincing argument for creating airships to offer non-carrier naval groupings’ early detection of anti-ship missiles and their launch platforms. They cited the large endurance of airships, their capability to deal with all of the features of E-2C Hawkeye plane, together with management of interceptors, and their capability to offer over-the-horizon focusing on help to ship-based ASMs. Once more paraphrasing their unspecified American supply, the authors offered the next situation. ”Dirigibles carry out surveillance and challenge goal designations; floor combatants function platforms for helicopters and as technique of help, together with gasoline for the dirigibles; and coastal patrol plane and ship-based helicopters ship assaults in opposition to targets detected by the dirigibles and lay sonobuoy fields over a big space.”12 This situation appears extra attuned to Soviet naval gear and operational ideas than to American ones.
The ultimate 1980 article with regards to anti-ship missiles and anti-ship missile protection appeared to be an try to put the ASM menace in perspective and allay what could have been rising fears about these missiles throughout the Soviet Navy. Subtitled “‘Anti-ship Missiles: Strengths and Weaknesses,” the article by Captain First Rank A. Strokin described the warheads, efficiency, flight profiles, and platforms of Western ASMs. It then outlined their weaknesses, concentrating on their subsonic velocity, vulnerability to shipboard fireplace, insufficient goal selectivity, and susceptibility to ECM. He concluded with steps advised by “NATO naval specialists” for bettering ASMD. “Improve the vary of detection of the missiles; scale back time required to transform all means of fireside to full fight readiness; enhance the efficiency traits of technique of remark and destruction to the purpose of full automation of all processes from detection to opening fireplace.13 Automation appears to be a key idea espoused by many Soviet authors for fixing the ASMD downside.
In 1981 Soviet authors produced one article in Zarubezhnoye voyennoye obozreniye (Poreign Army Evaluation) on NATO ASMD capabilities,14 one in Morskoy sbornik on the operation of assault plane and fighters from provider decks,15 and one other in the identical periodical on the overall principle of the navy. This final is important for the topic of this paper due to one remark by its creator, Rear Admiral G. Kostev, “The successful of sea supremacy virtually will not be conceived with out the successful of air superiority.”16 Though apparent to most Western naval analysts, this idea of sea supremacy and the attendant necessity for air superiority had not beforehand been talked about within the obtainable Soviet literature and its articulation by Kostev implied a Soviet recognition of the requirement for deck-based interceptors and fighter aviation.
Within the Could 1982 challenge of Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal Chief of Naval Air Protection Rear Admiral S. Teglev traced the historical past of fleet PVO within the Nice Patriotic Warfare (1941-1945). Whereas Teglev didn’t try to relate the precise PVO classes of that battle straight to the current day, he did hold returning to the theme that fighter aviation was a useful element of fleet air protection. He concluded the article by saying, “The expertise of the Nice Patriotic Warfare confirmed that fleet air protection is a vital issue that exerts appreciable affect on the success of fight operations of warships and models.”17
Colonel I. Inozemtsev expanded on Teglev’s theme within the August challenge of the identical journal. In his article, subtitled “Airborne Protection for the Northern Naval Traces of Communication,” Inozemtsev was much less reticent than Teglev about advocating the usage of naval fighter aviation for future conflicts. His fundamental level was that air protection of the SLOCs could be a naval accountability in any future battle simply because it had been in World Warfare II, and that naval fighter aviation, with help from different providers, was needed to meet that accountability.18 As a result of Soviet Naval Aviation (SNA) in 1982 had in its stock only some obsolescent Su-17 Fitter assault plane and the Forger, appreciable additions of fighter plane to the SNA could be essential to implement Inozemtsev’s suggestions. Inozemtsev carried the argument nonetheless additional by repeating Fleet Admiral Gorshkov’s declare that every one different providers working in maritime theaters ought to be subordinated to naval management for higher coordination.19
Rear Admiral N. V’yunenko, supposedly considered one of Fleet Admiral Gorshkov’s ghost writers, turned to a wholly new subject within the August 1982 Morskoy sbornik and examined American growth of directed vitality weapons. After describing the technical traits of such weaponry, V’yunenko mentioned its attainable software to naval warfare, particularly in opposition to anti-ship missiles. Key to the potential of directed vitality weapons in opposition to ASMs was the velocity at which they might strike the goal: ‘”Whereas a traditional missile closes with the goal at a velocity commensurate with a Mach quantity, the damaging vitality of a particle beam strikes on the velocity oflight.” V’yunenko stopped wanting recommending – or having international navy surrogates advocate – basic adoption of directed vitality weapons for anti-ship missile protection, however his typically constructive remedy of the topic advised that such a course was being taken by the Soviet Navy.20
Commander Kennedy is knowledgeable employees member of the Middle for Naval Analyses and maritime editor for Nationwide Protection. He publishes extensively on US and Soviet naval and aeronautical affairs.
Notes
1. V.S. Sysoyev and V.D. Smirnov, “Antiaircraft Protection for a Drive of Floor Combatant Ships,” Morskoy sbornik, March 1966, pp. 32-38; I, Lyubimov, “Coordination of Nationwide Air Protection Troops with the Navy,” Voyennaya myst, March 1969.
2. N. V’yunenko, “Some Developments within the Improvement ofNaval Ways,”‘ Morskoy sbomik, October 1975, pp. 21-26.
3. N.V. Shaskol’skiy, “The First Fight Use of Ship-co-Ship Missiles and Their Improvement,” Morskoy sbornik, Could 1970, pp. 94-99.
4. B. Rodionov and N. Novichkov, “The rTomahawk Cruise Missile,” Morskoy sbornik, July 1977, pp. 86-91.
5. B. Rodionov and N. Novichkov, “Is the Missile Protection Downside Solvable?” Morskoy sbornik, Could 1978, pp. 96-103.
6. I. Kuz’min, “Reconnaissance in Assist of Cruise Missile Firings,” Morskoy sbornik, April 1978, pp. 96-101.
7. S.P. Teglev, “Air Protection of Naval Forces” Sovetskaya Voyennaya Entsiklopedia (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1978}, vol. 6, pp. 587-588.
8. V. Vasil’yev, “Growing the Antiaircraft Protection of Giant Formations of Floor Ships,” Morskoy sbornik, February 1980, pp. 26-31.
9. See Jean Labayle-Couhat, ed., Fight Fleets of the World, 1984/85 (Aunapolis, Md.: Naval Insticute Press, 1984), p. 675 for unclassified descriptions of those methods.
10. V. Grisenko, “Shipboard ECM Tools within the U.S. Navy,” Morskoy sbornik, April 1980, pp. 78-82.
11. [. Tomokhovich, “World War IT and the Postwar Period: The Character and Methods of the Struggle for Air Supremacy,”‘ Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, July 1980, pp. 26-34, trans. inJoint Publications Research Service (JPRS) 76824 (Washington: 14 November 1980).
12. B. Rodionov and N. Novichkov, “Dirigibles in the Defensive System of Task Forces,” Morskoy sbornik, August 1980, pp. 82-87.
13. A. Strokin, “Antiship Missiles: Strengths and Weaknesses, Morskoy ssbornik, November 1980, pp. 84-87,
14. V. Vostrov, “NATO Capabilities Against Antiship Missiles,”‘ Zarubezhnoye voyernoye obozreniye, January 1981, pp. 72-74, trans. in JPRS 78054 (Washington: 12 May 1981).
15. I. Beriyev and N. Naskanov, “Operating Tactics of Deck-Based Attack Aircraft and Fighters,” Morskoy sbornik, August 1981, pp. 80-89.
16. G. Kostev, “On Fundamentals of the Theory of the Navy,” Morskey sborrik, November 1981, p. 25.
17. S. Teglev, “Soviet Art of Warfare in the Great Patriotic War: Operational Art: Covering Fleets from Air Attacks,” Vopenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal, May 1982, pp. 27-33, trans. inJPRS 82628 (Washington: 12 January 1983}.
18. I. Inozentsev, “Soviet Art of Warfare in the Great Patriotic War: Airborne Defense for the Northern Naval Lines of Communication,” Voyentto-istoricheskiy zhurnal, August 1982, pp. 13-19, trans. In JPRS 82549 (Washington: 28 December 1982).
19. See Floyd D. Kennedy, Jr., “Soviet Doctrine for Mutual Cooperation: The Naval/Air Force Context,” Naval Intelligence Quarterly, December 1981.
20. N. Y’yunenko, “‘The U.S. Beam Weapon,” Morskoy sbornik, August 1982, pp. 81-85.
Featured Image: 1988 – An aerial port quarter view of the Soviet Kiev class VSTOL aircraft carrier BAKU (CVHG 103) underway. (Photo by LT P.J. Azzolina, via U.S. National Archives)