Tactical Example — Stalking a Russian SSBN
They're still out there. They're called boomers in the U.S. Navy, bombers in the Royal Navy. They are the fleet ballistic missile submarines, really creatures of the past Cold War era, but they still sail, and their missiles must be aimed at something-what that something might be, their owners do not say. The Russian ones are probably aimed at the United States, and the American ones at Russia, rather in the manner of a "default" setting on a computer or washing machine. One Russian boomer captain was recently quoted as saying that the target packages on his boat's missiles had not changed, and in fact they might be aimed at some of the nations currently supplying aid to the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Until such time as these dinosaurs are relegated to the past, it is only prudent to keep an eye on them, and that is one mission of the SSN. When a Russian/CIS (formerly Soviet) SSBN departs its home port on the Kola Peninsula, waiting out at sea (possibly in a depression in the sea floor called a "tongue of the ocean") will be a NATO SSN. Probably. Almost certainly, in fact. The mission of the SSN and her crew will be to shadow the Russian SSBN.
The mission is not exactly a friendly one. Should a sudden crisis arise, the SSN's job is to close and destroy the missile boat before she can launch her birds. Short of that exigency, the SSN remains in trail, listening. There is much to learn. Probably the SSN's CO knows the name (or hull number) of the boat he's watching, and he observes the other CO's habits to add to what we already know. He'll listen to the boat, determining her unique mechanical characteristics so that other SSNs can identify her by her acoustic signature. Other observations will tell us much of the quality of the crew, changes in Russian operational doctrine, and from the boat's day-to-day routine, drills and readiness.
It's not quite that easy, of course. Soviet SSBNs are frequently accompanied by their own SSN guardians. Thus the Western submarine must track-and evade detection by-two adversaries who themselves have carefully thought-out routines for dealing with a potential shadower. This can be as simple as running the boomer at high speed toward her protecting SSN, forcing the trailing boat to move quickly herself and so make more noise than the U.S. skipper might wish. Noise is death in this business, and as important as the mechanical characteristics of the platform are, the commander with the most brains has the ultimate advantage.
The mission may be something from the past, but its immediacy hasn't changed. The warheads on those missile submarines are still real. Their aiming points are unknown, but so long as they exist, and so long as men can change their minds, they represent a danger to America and her allies. The smart move is to eliminate the warheads through diplomatic means. Until that happens, eliminating them in other ways will continue to be an option that our leaders will wish to have at their disposal.
So just how does one hunt such a beast? First you must learn its habits and characteristics, and like everything else in this world, the characteristics of the Russian boomer fleet are rapidly changing. With the drawdown in the CIS fleet, and the stipulations of the new START-II arms control treaty, the force of Russian boomers is becoming smaller. By the turn of the century they will probably have only fifteen to twenty missile boats altogether. The ones they keep are going to be the newest, most quiet boats in their fleet. This means that a Western SSN commander is likely to be hunting either a Delta IV or Typhoon-class boat. Both these types of submarine have the latest in quieting technology available to the CIS Navy. To the SSN commander hunting one, this means that even with his advantage in acoustic detection and tracking, which used to allow him to detect and track a target at ranges of tens of thousands of yards, now it's likely that solid contacts will be obtained at ranges of thousands of yards.
Another problem for potential hunters of Russian SSBNs results from the manner in which they are employed and deployed. One of the early goals of missile designers in the former Soviet Union was to make the ranges of their sub-launched missiles as long as possible. It is an acknowledged fact that CIS boomers can launch their missiles at targets in the continental United States from alongside piers at their Kola Peninsula bases. Consequently the only reason the Russian leadership has for moving them is to hide them against possible attack by aircraft or missiles. And like prized jewels, the CIS Navy tends to place them in the maritime equivalent of bank vaults: the "boomer bastions."
Bastions were originally created to place Soviet SSBNs beyond the reach of Western ASW forces. While the actual location and layout of a boomer bastion is a highly sensitive subject in both the Pentagon and the Kremlin, the basic concept is quite simple: an SSBN is placed in a patrol area that is highly defendable and as remote from Western operating areas as possible. The Barents Sea, the Kara Gulf, the Sea of Okhotsk, and even sites under the polar ice pack have been suggested as possible bastion areas. This may mean the SSBN is placed in an area with entrances that are easily defended, or it might be surrounded by a belt of ASW mines. In addition, it probably is aggressively defended by Russian attack submarines, maritime patrol aircraft, and, if available, surface ASW groups.
Clearly, a boomer bastion is not the kind of target a carrier battle group is going to take on. In fact, a modern SSN is the only platform that can even begin to think about penetrating the bastions and pursuing the Russian SSBNs contained therein. Back in the early 1980s the U.S. maritime strategy had NATO trying to actively pursue the Soviet boomers in their lairs. Today the task is made more difficult by the decreased size of the NATO SSN force and the greater stealth of the CIS SSBNs.
Let's assume that Western intelligence services manage to find a boomer bastion. The method is not particularly important-it might be a satellite photo of a missile boat breaking through the polar ice during a missile drill, or radio traffic from a supporting surface group. For our purposes, though, we will assume that the target is a Typhoon-class SSBN being protected by an Akula-class SSN. Their bastion area is a parcel of the Barents Sea that overlaps the polar ice pack in what is called the marginal ice zone. The interface between the polar pack and the marginal ice zone is an extremely complex acoustic environment. All the noise from the ice floes breaking apart and grinding together makes it very difficult to locate and track an opposing submarine. In addition the boomer, much like a rat in a warehouse, has a back door to run to under the ice. For this reason, only the most capable of American submarines, an Improved Los Angeles (688I), is suitable.
After a transit to the presumed bastion area, the 688I begins to listen. It maintains a low speed, probably around 5 knots, to optimize the performance of its towed arrays. As the 688I finally enters the target zone, the tracking team in the control room utilizes every sensor and capability of the BSY-1 system to locate and track the opposing boats. This is vital because of the background noises in the ocean (waves, fish, marine mammals, etc.), as well as the noise coming from the ice pack. The first contact is going to have to be a "direct path" contact, so the 688I searches, running in a series of expanding boxes until the first contact is achieved. This contact, which might be either the Typhoon or the Akula, is none too exact with regards to range, but bearing information is enough to continue the hunt. The hunt now becomes a task of patience. The boat will probably go to the quietest routine possible, as the closure to attack might take many hours.