Right, America, the seas ...
In an effort to “make America great again”, the new US President Donald Trump has actually begun to implement a large-scale military construction program, which, according to the White House and the Pentagon’s strategists, should preserve for the foreseeable future the status of the main military machine of the planet for the US Armed Forces, able to solve a wide range of tasks in different parts of the world. Not the last place in these plans is given to building up the combat power of the US Navy, which over the past decades has “wrinkled” like shagreen leather. President Trump’s new shipbuilding program can be briefly called “Fleet in 350 Pennants”. However in stories The US Navy already had an episode when Washington tried to implement an even more ambitious program called the "600 Pennant Fleet." It ended not quite successfully: to solve the problem posed by the American military-political leadership fleet and the shipbuilding industry then fully failed. It is possible that the same fate awaits the current ambitious program of Donald Trump.OCEAN SCARES AMERICA
In the spring of 1970 of the year, from 14 of April to 5 of May, a large part of the vast oceans - in the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans and eight seas - with the participation of the forces and means of all four navies of the USSR naval forces , which became the first truly oceanic maneuvers of the Soviet nuclear-missile fleet and vividly demonstrated its substantially increased combat potential.
The maneuvers led by the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, were attended by a total of several hundred submarines and surface ships of all classes, combat boats and auxiliary vessels, the forces of the Sea aviation (more than 20 aviation regiments) and coastal fleet forces (2 marine regiments and a number of units and subunits), as well as long-range aviation (8 air regiments) and the country's air defense forces (3 corps and 3 divisions, including 14 anti-aircraft missile brigades and regiments, as well as 13 fighter aviation regiments, a squadron of AWACS aircraft and 7 radio engineering brigades and regiments). At the same time, about 80 submarines were deployed in remote areas of the ocean and sea zones, including 15 nuclear submarines (including nuclear submarines with ballistic and cruise missiles that were involved in such exercises for the first time in the history of the Russian Navy), 84 main surface combat ships and 45 auxiliary vessels.
As part of the Ocean maneuvers, 31 tactical and command-staff exercises (SF-11, TOF-8, BL and CHF-6 exercises) were conducted in aggregate, and the warships carried out about 1000 combat exercises (rocket firing - 64, artillery firing - 430, torpedo firing - 352, depth bombing - 84), during which 68 rockets, 416 torpedoes, 298 sea mines, etc. were used
In the course of these large-scale exercises, the coherence of the headquarters and the interaction of the fleets of the Navy with the operational formations of other types of the USSR Armed Forces, as well as the naval forces of a number of friendly states of the world in order to solve the tasks of searching for and destroying the enemy’s underwater strategic missile groups and formations , landings and convoys, as well as the destruction of enemy coastal facilities for various purposes, including those located deep in the enemy's territory. It should be especially noted that the exercise was managed from a single command post.
“This exercise impressed the US Navy,” writes George W. Baer, a prominent American naval historian and expert in the field of naval strategy, at that time the head of the strategy and policy department and professor of naval issues. strategy of the US Naval College, in his work "The Centenary of Maritime Power: The US Navy in 1890 – 1990 years." - More than 99% of Soviet warships and submarines (who took part in the exercises. - V.SH.) were less than 20 years old. On the contrary, a significant part of the American forces (fleet) was ready for scrapping, and more than half of the American surface ships and vessels had served for over 20 years. The exorbitant costs of the Vietnam War and the very costly rearmament of 30 submarines from the Polaris missiles to the Poseidon literally ate up the shipbuilding budget of the US Navy. ”In general, as George Baer points out, the 1970 Ocean Ocean maneuvers “opened their eyes” to the command of the US Navy and the Pentagon’s leadership on the true state of affairs in the vast oceans. And soon the American sailors were able to feel the changed balance of forces at sea, as they say, the hard way. So, in the 1973 year, after the US showed clear support for Israel during the next escalation of its confrontation with the neighboring Arab countries, the Soviet command sent a large grouping of warships to the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea and concentrated considerable aviation forces on the airfields of Egypt and Syria.
"The Soviet fleet sent here four anti-aircraft (ship) groups that accompanied each of the three strike aircraft carriers of the 6 fleet and the amphibious group," writes George Baer in the above-mentioned work. - By the end of October, the 1973 of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet (meaning 5 (Mediterranean) Navy Squadron of the USSR. - V.SH.) counted 95 warships “capable of using 88 cruise anti-ship missiles, 348 torpedoes and 46 anti-aircraft guided missiles in the first strike rockets. " For the first time in the area of crisis, the Soviet fleet outnumbered the American fleet by a third. In addition, the Soviet command could strike at 6 fleet and with the help of coast-based aviation, and from four directions at once: from Yugoslavia, Egypt, Syria or the Crimea ... As a result, the United States had to accept the Soviet ultimatum for Israelis allowed to leave surrounded by the Egyptian 3-th Army ".
In this regard, Admiral Elmo Russell Zumvolt Jr., the youngest naval operations commander in the history of the American Navy (commander) of the US Navy, said: “I doubt that since the end of World War II, the US Navy has found itself in such a tense situation 6 fleet in the Mediterranean ".
Five years later, from 3 to 21 on April 1975 of the year, the Soviet Navy holds new grandiose naval exercises - “Ocean-75”, only slightly inferior to the 1970 maneuvers of the year. This time, the Northern and Pacific fleets were almost fully deployed and the interacting formations and units of the Baltic and Black Sea fleets, as well as formations and units of Long-Range Aviation, air defense forces, Strategic Missile Forces and the Leningrad Military District. The “northern” and “southern” forces included 76 surface ships, 35 submarines, including 11 nuclear, 28 auxiliary ships, as well as 168 airplanes and 44 helicopters from 11 aviation regiments.
The maneuvers tested the main provisions of the operational art and tactics of the types and types of troops, the transfer of the Navy from peace to martial law, the covert deployment of forces and their support, ensuring the unloading of their submarine strategic rocket carriers, disrupting naval communications of a potential enemy, and conducting combat operations using conventional and nuclear weaponsthat were used to strike warships and coastal targets of the enemy. In this case, the defeat of enemy aircraft carrier and various naval strike groups and groups of its anti-submarine forces in the North-East Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea, the conquest of domination in the Barents Sea and the disruption of enemy ocean traffic in the Atlantic Ocean, and the destruction of its SSBN in areas their combat patrols and in the bases - in cooperation with Long-Range Aviation and the Strategic Missile Forces.
Changing the paradigm and a major shift in the naval balance of forces was considered in Washington and the beginning of the operation of the Soviet Navy base Cam Ranh (Vietnam), built earlier by the Americans themselves. But the last straw that broke Washington’s patience was the fact that Soviet warships began to appear, as they say, in America’s “backyard” - in the Gulf of Mexico. In the period from 1969 to 1981, the Americans spotted 10 of such visits, and once the Soviet ships approached 20 miles from the coast of the continent. Among the "trespassers" of the American tranquility were including 20 surface ships with rocket weapons and 6 submarines.
NEW PRESIDENT - NEW MINISTER
In January, 1981, a new owner appeared in the Oval Office of the White House - the new US President Ronald Reagan. Uncompromisingly and decisively, like his heroes from dashing westerns, in which he, among other things, was filmed during his acting period of life (although during military service during the Second World War, Reagan never left the continental states, "fighting fearlessly" on the ideological front , but then, incidentally, told the exact opposite), a staunch anti-communist and anti-Soviet, Reagan took up the fight against the threat posed by the “evil empire” - such a title he assigned to the Soviet Union.
And this former Feborian “seksot”, becoming the full owner of the Oval Office, decided that the US military strategy became ineffective and even, one can say, amorphous, and therefore it should be urgently reviewed, making it more aggressive and able to reliably restrain America’s main enemy. The leadership of the White House and numerous American military experts made conclusions about the fallen combat potential of the national armed forces on the basis of the analysis of the experience of the participation of the US armed forces in the Vietnam War, which turned out to be very ambiguous, to some extent even negative.
Naturally, all of the above concerned the American naval strategy. To implement the idea of "crushing the bastions of the Soviet fleet" was supposed to be the new US Navy Minister - John Francis Lehman.
The new minister was young - just 38 years (!) - and came to the fleet from consulting: since 1977, he headed the consulting company Abington Corporation founded by him, among whose clients were not one company of the American military-industrial complex, including example, the corporation "Northrop Grumman." However, John Lehman was not, as it may seem at first glance, very far from the fleet - by that time he had already served 12 for years in the US Navy Reserve, where he reached the commander - a military rank, generally corresponding to the Russian rank of captain 2 rank. And before that, since the time of training in Cambridge, the future naval minister was in the US Air Force Reserve.
Thus, Minister of Naval Forces John Lehman, occupying this high post, at the same time was the commander of the reserve of the US Armed Forces species subordinate to him. Looking ahead, I note that he remained an officer of the Reserve Navy after 1987 resigned from the post of minister in the year, deciding to devote himself to entrepreneurial activity. And two years later, Lehman received the military rank of captain - corresponds to the military rank of captain 1 rank in the Russian Navy. In total, Lehman, therefore, served as a reserve officer for three decades.
That's exactly this man that President Reagan commissioned to build a renewed, more powerful and numerous - in 600 pennants - the US Navy, and also to develop a new naval strategy, which then became better known as the “strategy of progressive action” with the Soviet Navy in the entire ocean and even near the shores of the latter. With regard to the submarine forces of the US Navy, the concept of "advanced action" meant penetration into the "bastions" of the Soviet Navy - in contrast to the task of "holding the lines", which the American submariners had solved before.
It should be noted that John Lehman proved himself in the military field not only as one of the developers of the new naval strategy of the United States. He was also inspired by the idea of a highly ambiguous strategic concept, called to give an “adequate response” to a possible Soviet military invasion of Western Europe and called the Lehman Doctrine.
In short, the essence of this “genius” plan, promulgated in 1987, was simple: while Soviet troops, invading Western Europe, were moving towards the English Channel, American troops were supposed to land on the Far Eastern coast of the Soviet Union, where, according to Lehman, the defense of the enemy was much weaker, and then advance along the Trans-Siberian Railway in a westerly direction with the ultimate goal - Moscow. Today, knowing how powerful the grouping of forces and means of the USSR Armed Forces was concentrated beyond the Urals, and particularly in Primorye, and also realizing that in the event of such a large-scale invasion in the Far East, the Soviet military-political leadership would inevitably give good to the use of tactical nuclear weapons (this at best, and could well have reached the strategic nuclear forces), in which we still surpass the entire NATO bloc, the future of the Lehmann plan looks very unpresentable. However, since the military invasion of Soviet troops in Western Europe existed, apparently, only in the virtual megablokter scenario, concocted by the former actor Ronald Reagan playing the role of the US President and his surroundings, the Doctrine of Lehman remained unfulfilled, and the minister himself left state service for free of bread.
17 February 1987 of the year Navy Minister John Lehman filed a letter of resignation addressed to the president, noting that he was going to take a leadership position in the non-state sector of industry. A little earlier, 6 February, he announced his decision in an interview with the Minister of Defense Caspar Weinberger. President Reagan accepted this resignation, but, as indicated, with great regret, describing Lehman as an "outstanding minister." It should be noted that one of the achievements of the “outstanding minister” was that a very large part of the budget estimated at 1 trillion dollars allocated at the Reagan’s request to increase America’s military power went to the needs of the fleet — ships and aircraft.
Lehman emphasized that the moment for his resignation is very appropriate: he spent years in the post of 6, “creating conditions for the implementation of the concept of the fleet in the 600 pennants”, and the fleet and marines are currently in “good shape”. At the same time, he noted that the White House approved the addition of new combat ships to the 75 fleet, and in the 1989 fiscal year (FG), the shipbuilding program will be fully operational, which will allow reaching the milestone in 600 ships, the key goal of President Reagan. “Maintaining the fleet’s combat readiness today costs 60% of the Navy’s budget,” he added.
Lehman also noted that the United States should, in any case, continue to build new ships - even if the future president and Congress decide to reduce the target level in the 600 pennants. “If the presidents think in the future that the threat has decreased and that we can fulfill all our commitments in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Navy will be smaller, then all that needs to be done is simply to write off the oldest ships a little earlier,” Lehman emphasized. “If you do not build new ships, you will simply deprive yourself of the future.”
The “strategic talent” of Lehman, which he showed in the past, seems to have been appreciated because, being engaged in the investment business, he does not drop out of the political cage, cooperating and being part of various military-political and so-called strategic working groups, institutions, etc. P. For example, the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies, the Center for Security Policy, the New American Century project, and others. The November 2001 attacks gave new impetus to this direction of Lehman’s activities - he is a member of a special commission investigating those events. It was rumored that work in the commission was a springboard to a high position in the administration of President George W. Bush (he was chosen to be director of the Central or National Intelligence or head of the Pentagon). None of these predictions came true. However, John Lehman still worked as an adviser to senators John McCain and Mitt Romney during their presidential election campaign.
FLEET IN 600 LAMPS
"Being once the undoubtedly dominant force at sea, the United States Navy over the past two decades due to the rapid growth in the numerical and qualitative terms of the Soviet Navy lost this advantage," the authors of the analytical study "Building a fleet of 600 ships: cost, timing and alternative approaches ”Prepared by the budget department of the US Congress in March 1982. - The Soviet fleet over the past 25 years has grown substantially in scale. Only the number of combat surface ships of the main classes and amphibious ships increased from approximately 1960 to 1980 units from the middle of the 260-s to the 362 of the year. ” On the contrary, “in the period from 1970 of the year to 1980, the number of ships in service of the US Navy fell from 847 to 538, and the number of personnel decreased from 675 thousand to about 525 thousand people”.
“However, the concern about maintaining the necessary balance in the naval area is caused not only by a simple comparison of numerical characteristics. The reason is in the qualitative changes and trends, in the rapid evolution of the Soviet Navy from a fleet of limited capabilities, focused on ensuring the defense of its coast (brown water navy), to the modern ocean fleet (blue water navy), which could pose a threat to the US Navy anywhere in the world. ” , - the authors of the report emphasized.
“During the 1970s, the Soviet Navy received for the 12 new classes of warships in the oceanic zone with modern weapons and radio-electronic systems,” says the said study. - The Soviet Union demonstrated its increased naval power and new tactics during large-scale exercises "Ocean", during which coordinated strikes were carried out against "enemy" forces, clearly designed to imitate American aircraft carrier groups. At the same time, a key element of the Soviet tactics was the use of cruise missiles, carried by airplanes, submarines and surface ships, for strikes at a long range. ”
In order to restore the national naval power and ensure the superiority of the US Navy over its main adversary - the Soviet Navy - the American military-political leadership in the person of President Reagan and the Navy Minister Lehman developed and launched 1980 in the beginning of the new naval Strategies are strategies for “advanced presence” and a very ambitious shipbuilding program associated with it. Their implementation, according to the calculations of American experts, would allow the US Navy to maintain global dominance in the expanses of the oceans.
The basic components of the new fleet construction program that the Reagan administration intended to implement were:
- a significant increase in the construction of new warships and auxiliary vessels, as well as the purchase of an additional number of aircraft and helicopters of coastal and ship-based naval aviation;
- increase the service life of old ships and auxiliary vessels;
- the return to service of the Iowa type battleships;
- acceleration and increase in the volume of construction of nuclear aircraft carriers of the Nimitz type, so that the Navy at every single moment of time would have 15 combat-ready attack aircraft carriers.
At the same time, one of the most important indicators of the new shipbuilding program was the need to bring the number of the US Navy's ship crew to at least 600 pennants in a fairly short time. Achieving this target in the most favorable situation was outlined in 1989 FG. And, although the ambitious program of naval construction was still complex, including not only actions to simply increase the number of the naval fleet, the term "600 fleet of ships (pennants)" (600-ship Navy) became the most popular unofficial definition of the main goal this program. Note also that the authorship of this ambitious plan is usually attributed only to the Navy Minister Lehman, although in reality the main provisions of the new naval strategy and shipbuilding program should probably be considered the result of “collective intelligence”.
It is necessary to point out that the new naval strategy and shipbuilding program had both influential supporters and numerous opponents. And if the former claimed that, if implemented, the “strategy of advanced action (presence)” and the new “Fleet in 600 pennants” would keep America’s strategic superiority over the Soviet Union, the latter, on the contrary, warned that the plan of Minister Lehman was too expensive and It is designed to build up manpower and resources in the area where the United States has already achieved military superiority, and also indicated that the strategy proposed by Minister Lehman did not at all take into account the urgent need to strengthen Lenia groups allied army and air force, which is vital for the successful defense of the European theater of war (HPT).
Of particular note is the fact that the new ambitious program of military shipbuilding, which had the goal of bringing the number of the US Navy ship staff to “600 +” pennants, was one very valuable feature. This program would actually save the entire US shipbuilding industry, which at the turn of 1970 – 1980-s was in a rather unpresentable state.
Thus, in the above-mentioned analytical study “Building a fleet in 600 ships: cost, time and alternative approaches” from 1982, it was stated: “The main problem of the shipbuilding industry today is not whether its physical capabilities correspond to any naval naval construction plan, and in order to keep working at all due to reduced demand from civil shipowners. For example, while in 1972 and 1973, American shipbuilders received new orders for 48 and 43 civilian ships with a displacement of 1000 of gross tons and more, respectively, then in 1980, only 7 ships were ordered, and in 1981, 6. As of 31 December 1981, orders in the civil shipbuilding sector for all American shipyards accounted for the entire 33 vessel with a total tonnage of 705 thousand gross tons. So already placed by the US government at the end of 1981 of the year or an order ready for placement in the near future to build 98 warships and ships for the Navy and 9 ships for the coast guard became an industry driver from an economic point of view. ”
However, the Pentagon and the White House failed to fully implement the plan to create the “Fleet in 600 pennants”. Mostly for economic reasons, this ambitious Reagan-Lehmann program was too expensive. Solving the task of reducing the budget deficit, the Congress with F 1986 f. began to gradually reduce national defense spending. As a result, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was forced to resign in 1987 after fruitless attempts to “conciliate” congressmen.
Prior to that, at the beginning of that year, Navy Minister John Lehman resigned. Yes, and his successor, James Webb, briefly held out on this post, retiring the following year (was in office from 1 in May 1987 of the year to 23 in February of 1988 of the year). The reason for this was the disagreement with the new Minister of Defense Frank Carlucci, who decided to reduce the financing of the program of construction of 16 frigates. It is noteworthy that President Reagan regarding the resignation of Webb 22 February 1988 of the year noted the following: “The current Minister Webb resigned because of disagreement with the reduction of budget expenditures. I do not think that the fleet will regret his departure. ”
On the other hand, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the American fleet received the first strategic missile carriers of the new generation of the Ohio type, which became the “largest and deadliest” submarines ever built in the United States; programs for the serial construction of nuclear aircraft carriers of the Nimitz type and multi-purpose nuclear submarines of the Los Angeles type were significantly accelerated, while other American aircraft carriers went through a program to extend their service life; and finally, in the US Navy surface forces, the first Ticonderoga type URO cruisers appeared with the unique Aegis multi-purpose command and control system. Also, the Iowa-type battleships, which received during the modernization of the BGM-109 "Tomahawk" cruise missiles, the Harpoon anti-ship missiles RGM-84, the rapid-fire anti-aircraft artillery systems "Phalanx" and other newest weapons and equipment, and allowed for some time to keep the veterans of the Second World War as a powerful tool for dictating Washington their will in the vast world ocean. In turn, the Reagan Naval Aviation received the F / A-18 "Hornet" carrier-based fighter-bomber and the upgraded versions of the Intruder A-6 "Intruder" and the F-14 "Tomket" fighter, as well as the EE EA-6 " Prowler. By the way, it was President Reagan who resumed the program for the serial construction of the strategic bomber B-1В and sent the Pershing II missiles to Europe - to frighten the "Russian bear".
The collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to all ambitious programs of military construction (including in the part related to the US Navy), launched under President Reagan. The “Iowa” type battleships finally went on a well-deserved rest, but the serial construction of the unique Sivulf-type multipurpose nuclear-powered submarines, for which there was no enemy, was discontinued. Do not step on this rake again.
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