When Attackers Become Targets

By Richard Hornik

Isolated and exposed on the open seas, surface fleets in the 20th century have proved increasingly vulnerable to a succession of ever more sophisticated attacks from the air. In 1921, Army Air Service General Billy Mitchell demonstrated that rudimentary aerial bombardment could scuttle the most heavily armed warships, a lesson Japan put to good use when it nearly destroyed the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Carriers that could launch swarms of fighter planes became the dominant sea weapon in World War II. Although the Reagan Administration has committed the U.S. to a 600-ship Navy with 15 carriers, some strategists consider flattops to be expensive behemoths. The problem with surface ships, argues Jack Beatty, a journalist and critic of the buildup, is that "instead of being attackers they become targets."

That lesson was vividly illustrated during the Falklands war in 1982 when an Argentine aircraft dispatched an Exocet missile to sink the British frigate Sheffield some 40 miles away. In the next two years the French-built sea- skimming missiles were snapped up by 27 nations. Even third-rate powers suddenly acquired the ability to threaten valuable warships from over the horizon.

After the Sheffield sinking, U.S. Navy brass insisted that newly developed defensive systems would protect the rapidly growing American fleet from the sea skimmers. The Stark disaster has not changed that view. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman points out that although the Sheffield was destroyed by a single Exocet, the Stark, with a more durable superstructure and redundant protective systems, was hit by two missiles and still "sailed home under its own steam." Moreover, since the U.S. frigate was blindsided by a supposedly friendly plane, its defensive systems were never tested. "This is basically a weird exception," says Michael MccGwire, a naval intelligence specialist at the Brookings Institution. "Under normal circumstances the Stark would have blown the aircraft out of the sky."

- Certainly the Stark, a lightly armed escort vessel, had an impressive array of aerial defenses. The ship's Mk 92 fire-control system can guide an antiaircraft missile to intercept incoming aircraft up to 90 miles away. Closer in, its Italian-made OTO gun can fire 3-in. antiaircraft shells at a rate of 90 a minute, dealing sequentially with as many as three incoming intruders at a range of up to twelve miles. Rockets that spray radar- attracting aluminum chaff can divert incoming missiles, and the frigate's electronic defenses can deceive attackers by producing fake radar images of the ship.

Like most U.S. warships, the Stark has a last-ditch weapon: the Phalanx, a six-barreled Gatling gun capable of firing 3,000 rounds a minute of uranium, 2 1/2 times as dense as steel, to create a wall of metal in front of the attacking missile. But the Phalanx system has its limitations: it operates only at close range and has difficulty tracking sea-skimming missiles amid the radar "clutter" caused by waves. Even under manual operation, the Stark's Phalanx system should have detected the incoming missiles, but the ship's only warning came just seconds before impact when a lookout spotted the first Exocet. To counter such problems, Israel is developing the Barak, an antimissile missile that is launched vertically into the air and then dives down to knock out a sea skimmer as far as several miles away; the U.S. has contributed $10 million toward the project.

For all its weaponry, a relatively inexpensive frigate like the Stark is not made to fight on its own. With medium-range striking power and armor less than an inch thick (the plating on the battleship New Jersey is up to 17 inches thick), the Stark is an escort ship designed for what Naval Analyst Bruce Linder calls a "low-threat environment" far less intense than what a naval battle group would encounter in wartime. The Navy is acquiring 50 of these Perry-class frigates, the largest class of U.S. combat ships built since 1945. Linder predicts that the ship "may quickly confront her operational support limits as she is integrated into naval operating forces."

The linchpin of the Navy's surface fleet is the high-priced ($1 billion apiece) Aegis cruiser, which Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger has called the "most advanced air-defense system in the world today." Named after the mythical shield of Zeus, Aegis cruisers like the Ticonderoga and Yorktown bristle with radars and weaponry capable of tracking and attacking 18 incoming missiles at a time. The Aegis radar is linked to a computerized fire-control system for the ship's antiaircraft guns, depth charges and rocket-launched torpedoes. Just seven of these advanced vessels are in service, but another 21 are in sea trials or planned. Eventually, the Navy will assign at least one Aegis cruiser to each of its 15 carrier battle groups.

Still, not even the Aegis radar is omniscient enough to deal with every potential challenge from the array of modern missiles deployed against it. Soviet Backfire bombers, for instance, could attack a U.S. fleet with cruise missiles launched from more than 350 miles away. One answer being considered by the Navy is a throwback to the barrage balloons that hovered over U.S. ships in World War II: helium-filled blimps containing enormous radars that could look down and track any intruder. The Navy has solicited bids for a $200 million prototype. Naval strategists also emphasize the critical need for air defense. To former Navy Secretary Lehman, the architect of the carrier buildup, the Stark episode confirms "what I've been preaching for six years: that combat ships need air cover."

No matter how sophisticated the defenses of a surface ship, new weapons inevitably emerge to outsmart them. Even now, the U.S. is putting the finishing touches on a Stealth version of the Tomahawk ship-to-ship cruise missile. The shape of these weapons, their nonreflective surfaces and electronic jamming equipment will make them still more difficult for today's shipboard radar to detect and track. Yet even if the most modern warships cannot be made totally invulnerable, they remain an essential way for a nation to project its power.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington