THE WAR BENEATH THE SEAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0
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ARTICLE APPEARED 10 June 1985
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the War Beneath the Seas
America's security depends on the secrecy of the nuclear subs.
0 f all the secrets the Walker family may
have slipped to the Soviets, the most
damaging could be in the field of antisub-
marine warfare. Because of their ability to
hide and stay submerged for months at a
time, submarines are considered the one
invulnerable leg of the strategic triad-
probably the only weapons to remain func-
tioning in a nuclear war. As a result, both
superpowers have placed a premium on
tracking the other side's subs-and keeping
their own hidden. The global cat-and-
mouse game is played out in open oceans,
along shallow coastlines, under the polar
icecap and, increasingly, in computer
centers and research labs. The stakes are
enormously high: as many of this nation's
nuclear warheads are deployed aboard sub-
ed listening devices. One
key element is SOSUS
(sound surveillance sys-
tem), chains of hydro-
phones strung along the
continental shelf and at
key choke points such as
the.GIUK Gap between
Greenland and Great
Britain that Soviet subs
must cross to reach
open oceans. The underwater microphones
collect ocean sounds hundreds of miles
away and transmit them via cable
to onshore computer centers, where so-
phisticated supercomputers sift through
the whale barks and other noises for the
Soviet' trawler' sporting spy gear off Honduras: Cat and mouse
marines as in all U.S. land silos and strategic
bombers combined.
The United States has long held the upper
hand underwater. The Soviet Navy has far
more submarines-roughly 280 attack subs
to America's 96, and 62 ballistic-missile
subs to America's 34. Russian subs are also
generally faster, larger and able to dive deep-
er than their American counterparts. But
the U.S. fleet is much quieter and its detec-
tion systems are far more advanced-fac-
tors that count more than size and speed in
the murky world of antisubmarine warfare
(ASW). The U.S. edge may be eroding,
however, as new generations of Soviet subs
become less noisy. And as detection tech-
nology advances, running silent may not
continue to mean running secret.
For now, the U.S.
Navy still tracks Sovi-
et subs almost exclu-
sively through acousti-
cal methods-via a vast
network of sophisticat-
telltale "signatures" of Russian subs.
U.S. aircraft assist in the search by drop-
ping sonobuoys into the ocean. Surface
ships also trail long arrays of hydrophones,
listening for submarine sounds. In Novem-
ber 1983 a Soviet Victor III-class sub be-
cametangled in the towed-array sonar of the
frigate USS McCloy 475 miles off South
Carolina and was embarrassingly forced to
surface. Surface ships can also send out
"active sonar," bouncing sound waves out
into the ocean and listening for their echoes.
Some of the best underwater ears, mean-
while, are other subs themselves, which con-
stantly listen for enemy counterparts and
communicate with other tracking sources.
All told, the U.S. sonar and computer tech-
nology is so good that Navy personnel often
know precisely what Soviet vessel they are
listening to, down to its name and hull
number. Says one U.S. undersea expert,
"American sub skippers think they can find
a fish farting at a range of a thousand miles."
But finding Soviet submarines is becom-
ing more difficult. U.S. naval intelligence
experts say the Russians have made a quan-
tum leap in silencing their noisy subs in
recent years through such techniques as
precision tooling their nuclear engines,
coming hulls with sonar-absorbing materi-
als and making other external modifications
to mu e the sound o water passtng around
subs as they move. A U.S. fleet exercise in
the Pacific earlier this year provided graphic
evidence: a U.S. attack sub, modulating
its noise and tactics to imitate a Soviet
Victor III, was the only vessel to penetrate a
U.S. carrier battle group and theoretically
"destroy" the carrier.
The Soviets have also improved the range
of their sub-launched ballistic missiles, al-
lowing their missile-carrying subs to remain
in home waters and never cross a SOSUS
tripwire while staying in range of U.S. tar-
gets. In areas like the Barents Sea and the Sea
of Okhotsk, the Soviet "boomers"-as mis-
sile subs are called-are not only less
vulnerable to detection, they would also be
protected by Soviet sea and air defenses in
wartime. The point was driven home laugh-
ably a year ago when Moscow announced
that it was sending its new Delta-class subs
into the Atlantic Ocean just 10 minutes
from U.S. cities-in "retaliation" for the
deployment of Pershing II missiles in West-
ern Europe. U.S. officials scoffed that the
Soviet move had insignificantly decreased
U.S. warning time in the event of an attack
while substantially increasing the Soviet
subs' vulnerability. "We would invite them
to deploy all their Deltas" in the Atlantic,
said Navy Secretary John Lehman.
Ice: Even more ominous for the U.S.
Navy, the Soviets have deployed their new
Typhoon-class missile subs beneath the
Arctic ice pack. There they are well hidden
from the AS W eyes of U.S. surface ships and
aircraft-and even sonar beams have trou-
ble distinguishing enemy metal from shift-
ing ice stalactites. The mammoth Typhoon
boomers-larger than World War II air-
craft carriers-are also extremely quiet and
Qlowm
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0 a
HIDE-AND-SEEK AT SEA: From the reaches of space to the depths of the ocean, an array of increasingly sophisticated technology works to spot
RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP the movements of submarines. To evade detection the subs try to move through the sea as silently as possible,
sometimes hovering near ocean outcroppings or surface ships to hide their presence from the ever-present watchers.
have reinforced conning towers that would pulses to the ocean and synthesize the waves
allow them to crack up through the ice as they bounce back, producing computer-
during wartime and launch their 20 multi- generated images showing details as fine as
ple-warhead ballistic missiles at U.S. tar- ocean waves only one foot high. In theory,'
gets. Some NATO strategists say that polar- this should enable a satellite to spot the
deployed Typhoons have altered the whole surface ripples in a submerged sub's wake.
notion of NATO maritime defenses and But in one recent test, when the Navy gave
present the greatest challenge yet for U.S. NASA the general locations of two U.S.
attack submarines. subs, NASA was unable to find them-even
Indeed, detecting enemy subs is only half under ideal conditions with the subs travel-
the ASW battle. U.S. attack subs, surface ing slowly just beneath the surface.
ships and aircraft must also be able to de- The Pentagon is also experimenting with
stroy enemy submarines, and here, too, infrared detection to monitor the wake of
Russian advances present new challenges. warm water left by passing subs. But the
The Soviets' new titanium-hulled Alfa-class subtle temperature differences are dispersed
subs can travel as fast as 45 knots underwa-' by warm surface waters when the subs are
ter and dive as deep as 2,000 feet-enabling running at depth; infrared is also absorbed
them to outrun most U.S. antisubmarine by air and clouds. Another possibility is
torpedoes. In response, the Navy has modi- "bioluminescence"-examining the trail of
fied its best sub-launched torpedo, the phosphorescent light created when a sub-
Mark 48, and there is another saving grace: marine strikes millions of tiny organisms in
noise increases in geometric proportion to its path. But the light changes are faint even
speed. "The first time they put the pedal to at the surface, and they could be impossible
the metal on an Alfa in the Barents Sea," to detect at depth-though other subma-
says one U.S. ASW expert, "the noise trav- rines could possibly spot them.
eled all the way to Bermuda," where an Lasers: Still another futuristic technology
American SOSUS station picked it up. involves monitoring radiation phenomena
NASA: The United States is experiment- such as neutrinos that are produced in large
ing with nonacoustical means of submarine quantities by nuclear engines and cannot be
detection, many of which involve satellites,; captured by any known shielding material:
but none of them have yet borne fruit. In one' The Navy has also considered using blue-
technique, known as synthetic aperture ra- green lasers, tuned to a frequency that passes
dar, satellites bounce intermittent radar through ocean water like light through
glass, as a kind of undersea radar to illumi-
nate enemy subs. Using the laser light, how-
ever, gives away the tracking sub's position.
The Soviets have been experimenting
with synthetic aperture radar for at least a
decade. But exactly what the Navy knows
about Soviet detection capabilities is among
the most classified of military intelligence.
(In fact, outside experts say the Navy may
well have made secret strides in nonacousti-
cal detection-and reported some successes
as failures to keep the Soviets off guard.)
Curiously, one of the most revealing
studies of the ASW game to date is the best-
selling novel "The Hunt for Red October,"
published earlier this year by the U.S. Naval
Institute Press. The plot centers on the de-
fection of a Soviet missile-sub skipper and
the race by both superpowers to find his
vessel, the Red October. The search is made
all the more difficult because the sub's pro-
pellers are tucked inside two tunnels run-
ning from bow to stern that shield them from
transmitting noise to the water. Author
Tom Clancy, who never served a day on a
submarine, says he invented the tunnel-pro-
pulsion system-complete with a hypothet-
ical Navy test of the concept at the David
~Oflall~
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0
C3
An AWACS Hawkeye-used for maritime spying missions-lands on the deck of the USS Kennedy: Is the U.S. detection advantage eroding?
Taylor Model Basin outside Washington.
To Clancy's astonishment, after the book's
publication, he received a letter from the
head of the test facility saying that such a
concept had indeed been tested there. In fact,
the Navy plans to use a tunnel-propulsion
system-with some key technical differ-
ences from Clancy's model-in its new at-
tack sub, the SSN-21, as do the British in
their new attack sub, the Trafalgar.
As the U.S. subs grow ever quieter, they,
too, are becoming more powerful. The
4,000-mile range of the Trident missile, for
example, is nearly twice that of the Poseidon
and will increase the Trident submarine's
patrol area by a factor of 10, allowing it to
cover its targets in the Soviet Union from as
far away as the Indian Ocean. The new D-5
missile will increase the range of the Trident
ever farther, opening up still wider areas of
ocean in which to hide. More important, D-5
missiles represent a great leap in accuracy:
experts say they should be able to strike
within 500 feet of Soviet targets-com-
pared with the 1,800-foot range of their
predecessors.
Details: How much damage did the Walk-
er family do to U.S. hopes for maintaining
its ASW edge? Experts may never know for
certain. Last week retired Adm. Bobby Ray
Inman, former head of the National Security
Agency, suggested that information the
Walkers supplied may have prompted the
Soviets' decision to build quieter subs and
withdraw their boomers to home waters.
Other U.S. experts insisted that in view of
U.S. detection capabilities, the Soviets had
little choice. The Walkers' secrets were al-
most certainly more subtle-but even learn-
ing such details as when the Nimitz followed
a certain Soviet sub on a certain day would
tip the Soviets to what the Navy knew and
when it knew it. And in the tricky undersea
game of ASW, a little information can be
damaging indeed.
MELINDA BECK with KIM WILLENSON and
NICHOLAS M. HORROCK in Washington
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807420004-0