Nuke Killer

Deep under the china-blue Straits of Florida last week prowled a black and sinister shadow: the U.S. nuclear submarine Skate. Since Skate is almost as fast as any surface vessel and can dodge like a rabbit, the U.S. destroyer leader Norfolk had little chance of touching her with conventional antisub weapons. But on the Norfolk's afterdeck a clumsy-looking box swung like a gun turret. A section of it tilted, doors popped open, and with a screaming roar a slender rocket slanted upward, trailing a feather of flame. Near the top of the climb the engine section separated, and as the missile curved down toward the sea, two more pieces fell off, releasing a small parachute to check its speed. When the missile hit the water, it freed itself from the parachute, turned itself into an acoustically guided torpedo and darted toward the Skate. If its warhead had been alive, the U.S. would have lost one nuclear submarine.

Nimble Prey. ASROC (antisubmarine rocket) is a foresighted Navy provision against hostile copies of its own nuclear submarines, which have made the antisub weapons of World War II as obsolete as blunderbusses. Non-nuclear submarines, depending on storage batteries for underwater propulsion, can move at full speed for only a few miles, then have to slow down to a walk to save electricity. A destroyer that makes sonar contact can hover over such a sub for hours, dropping slow-sinking depth charges. But the nuclear submarines--called "nukes"--can cruise underwater for weeks at top speed. When a destroyer makes sonar contact with one of them, it must attack instantly or its nimble prey will dodge and speed away. Only a quick-acting, long-range weapon has much chance of killing a nuke.

ASROC, developed by Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co. under the direction of the Naval Ordnance Test Station, can attack a submerged submarine almost as soon as it is detected by sonar. The boxlike launcher on the destroyer contains eight missiles. A digital computer, with superhuman speed, notes the roll, pitch, course and speed of the ship and the speed and direction of the wind.

Best Moment. From the sonar the computer gets the distance, bearing, depth, course and speed of the submarine. It combines all these factors and tells the launcher to point accordingly. When the destroyer commander decides that the best moment has come, he fires one or more missiles. The submarine does not know that it is being attacked until the missile hits the water. The Navy, which plans to put ASROC in 150 ships, will not tell its top range; in fact, the range is determined by the effectiveness of sonar, not by the power of the missile's rocket.

ASROC can also carry a simple depth charge, presumably nuclear, instead of a torpedo. It hits the water unchecked by parachute and penetrates several hundred feet before exploding. The Navy says that an ASROC depth charge has a "large effective kill area," but will not explain on which tactical occasions it will be used.

Long ranges will surely be preferred so as to let the destroyer escape from the mountain of radioactive water that it will toss out of the sea.

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