High Tide is trying to be the definitive late Cold War module. But because I don’t think it properly presents the Maritime Strategy as written, and goes with negative assumptions about US/NATO political will, it is more like one fork of an alternate worlds outcome. Ideally, there should be a second book or a second batch of scenarios that show the alternate Maritime Strategy assumption: More positive NATO/US political will.
Even before the Reagan administration came into office with Dr. John Lehman as Secretary of the Navy, the Naval War College and the Navy itself felt that it was too pessimistic to assume a Russian “bolt from the blue” attack. They believed a war would follow a period of rising tensions and movements of forces. This would be like a chess game, setting up pieces in strong positions forward from the baselines, but without actually taking any enemy pieces for several moves.
The Maritime Strategy did not involve the headlong charge into the Soviet defenses that the critics of it claimed. It used these pre-hostilities deployments to position NATO forces inside the Soviet layered defenses, and possibly change the Russians’ minds about starting a war at all.Almost by definition, NATO yields strategic initiative (but not surprise) to the Soviets, since NATO will not make the initial attack, and the Soviets get a head start on their preparations, because they can make the initial moves in secret.
But once those moves are detected - and the assumption was that they would be detected - NATO would send carrier forces forward to wartime operating positions before the shooting started, so the Soviets wouldn’t be given the chance to attrit them as the US forces tried to pass through their layered defenses.
On a strategic level, naval forces are more mobile than large ground formations, so the West’s navies could move quickly into position while the Soviet ground forces are still deploying. The NATO forces would already be near striking range - and since they would be inside the outer layers of the Soviet defenses, fresh and ready, that would be more reason not to start shooting in the first place. In other words, the Soviets get a head start on their preparations, but unless they intend to shoot at carrier groups going to Norway before they can start their ground war, we get a head start too. And if they do shoot at the carriers first, then they have to start the war prematurely, before they’re ready.
From Dr. Lehman’s foreword in High Tide, left column, page 6: “...in the annual NATO naval exercise in the autumn of 1981, we sent three aircraft carriers along with two British “jump jet” carriers into the Norwegian Sea practicing not only amphibious landings to defend Norway but offensive air strikes from aircraft carriers based in the Norwegian fjords into the vulnerable Soviet military targets on the Kola Peninsula.”
Many people have not understood the significance of this, seen only the part about the Norwegian Sea, and missed the mention of the fjords. The forward deployed carriers would be set up in places that could be defended. In effect, these locations would be NATO bastions - just as the Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk would supposedly have been defended bastions for Soviet ballistic missile submarines. The ‘US Bastion’ concept was pretty popular at the War College. I saw it in use at Global ‘86-88 (which was the same war running in episodes) and the US forces also adopted it at the Seacon ‘89 game I attended even though that game was set in 2010 or so). Dr. Eric Grove’s book Battle for the Fjords dealt somewhat with the battle for Norway, but was not really cued into the carriers operating inside the Soviet protected zones. It focused more on the general naval battle for Norway.
NATO Bastions involved the use of terrain features - mountains and islands - to force Soviet aircraft to get much closer to NATO ships before they could launch their weapons. This also did not involve inserting carriers into tiny inlet-type fjords, but rather areas inside the island chains off Norway, which were also called fjords.
An early 1980s issue of the Naval War College Review has a color cover photo of USS America (CV-66) steaming in the Vestfjord. When most Soviet air-launched antiship missiles had to be locked on before launch, this would cause major problems for them. Further, if landbased fighters were added to the air defense capability of Norway - USAF squadrons and a Marine Air Wing, for example - we don’t have the scenario of a Soviet bomber regiment fighting a single carrier and its defenses - we have the scenario of 3-4 Soviet bomber and fighter regiments fighting 3 carrier air wings, a Marine air wing, the Royal Norwegian Air Force and reinforcements from the US Air Force, all in an environment where Soviet bombers were forced to come well within SM2 range before they can launch antiship missiles.
Not only that, but the extra fighter strength of the carriers in Norway can be used to force the Soviet bombers to either make even longer diversions before heading back down past Iceland to attack the Atlantic reinforcement convoys, or else force them to not bother at all. Even if the war started before the USN could position its forces, they might well have still tried to get to those bastions, but more slowly. The primary threat to the Soviets in the northern theater would then come from NATO SSNs until the carriers arrived. Again, the CVBGs would not be operating in the open ocean, but in confined waters that could be protected. The main threat would be from Soviet submarines that might try to get inside the bastions before the carriers got there - so there has been an interest in shallow-water ASW before the post-Cold War emphasis on littoral warfare.
Of course, one problem is that it comes down to an assumed level of political will. The USN assumed that a President would have enough political will to accept the risk and challenge of the early prehostilities deployment. Another aspect of the Maritime Strategy is that the Soviets would not be allowed to confine a conventional war to Europe. Soviet forces anywhere in the world would be counterattacked. To do otherwise would give the Soviets the advantage of fighting only where they wanted; and would leave totally unchallenged the Sea of Okhotsk SSBN bastion. High Tide has scenarios for actions in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific, but these are ‘practice scenarios’ as it were, and are not tied into the campaign scenario.
One purpose of the Global War Game series was to test some of these assumptions. There were some interesting events that would make good scenarios, that also offer certain insights.
First, to counter a charge that you sometimes hear about USN wargames - I saw a Blue carrier sunk off the US East Coast due to inadequate escort, and the referees said, “That stands -- that is an important lesson to learn”.
On the other hand - referees from a certain other service (not the US Navy) were handling the air war over land, and they wouldn’t allow Blue to shoot down Red Mainstay “SUAWACs”, no matter how hard the Blue forces tried, because if we could shoot down Mainstays, by extension the Red forces could shoot down E-3s.
Any attempt to nail a SUAWACS would always fail - but that does make a good scenario. It could be done with standard inventory aircraft as a fighter sweep, or for fun you could do what we did: Blue resorted to yanking the YF-12 out of the museum at Dayton, making it flyable, putting AWG-9 and Phoenix in it (after all, its planned armament of AIM-47 Falcon was a predecessor to the AIM-54), and sending it in on a supercruise attack to get an AWACS. The referees reluctantly allowed it, let the Red side lose a Mainstay, then ruled that the Blackbird had an engine failure on egress due to the ‘lash-up’ nature of the refit; the crew had to eject, and they were rescued, but Blue lost the asset that allowed Blue to kill a Mainstays.
High Tide is a one vision of the possible course of a NATO/Warsaw Pact war in the 1980s. But it is not a vision that reflects the actual vision of the USN Maritime Strategy - rather, it reflects a worse case scenario, where much of the Maritime Strategy was not or could not be carried out. Future Naval SITREPs or Harpoon Annuals may carry scenarios that reflect scenarios where the Maritime Strategy concepts were indeed executed.
BT
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