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By Norman Friedman, author, Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
NATO After the Wall
For the NATO navies, 1990 was a year of reorientation. The perceived Soviet threat seemed to collapse. For most of these navies—and to a greater extent than for the U.S. Navy—that threat had been their rationale. Most had specialized, for example, in local antisubmarine warfare or in mine countermeasures, on the understanding that these tasks fit within a larger NATO context. Now the overall context is far less certain, though it is still quite possible that the navies of the Western European Union will ultimately form some kind of cohesive whole. The European Community seems to be lurching toward some kind of political cohesion. For example, there was almost euphoria over proposals for a single European currency, and Mrs. Thatcher’s strong opposition to that proposal was sufficiently controversial in Britain to become a major cause for her downfall. In December, President Mitterand of France and Chancellor Kohl of Germany made the latest in a series of proposals for virtual political union. Political union is hardly certain, but it is the main item on the near-term agenda for most European countries.
The creation of a single European market comes at a very painful time for European defense companies. In the past, each country had been able to buy local products, even if their cost was much greater than that of possible foreign competitors. It was universally understood that, whatever the merits of other forms of protectionism, this one was legitimate. This economic policy irritated U.S. suppliers and also offset the increases in Western defense spending achieved through the 1980s. It was also entirely contrary to the spirit of the single market scheduled for 1992. After 1992, in theory, governments will have to buy competitively within the full European community. Defense is currently exempted, but that probably will not last, particularly if the perceived threat declines and the argument for national self-sufficiency seems less valid. There also is a mismatch between capacity and demand.
It is now commonplace that much of the cost of a warship or aircraft lies in electronics and weapons rather than in the platform itself. What is less often noted is the effect of this shift on national defense industries. As unit costs rise, the number of platforms built each year falls off. That is particularly painful for shipyards, whose contribution to total unit cost does not rise very much. Instead, much of the added cost goes for electronics and weapons that are bought outside the yard. Shipyard work loads tend to decline even though total expenditure on warships may rise considerably, and it becomes more difficult for the individual yards to survive. In the past, the big private yards could offset cuts in warship orders by building merchant ships, but that business is now largely concentrated in the Far East. Merchant ships continue to be particularly attractive because virtually their entire cost goes to the yard.
Increasingly, too, ships built in one country are equipped with electronics and weapons produced elsewhere, so that the shipyard’s potential share of total cost cannot be very high. The German-designed Blohm & Voss MEKO-series of frigates capitalizes on this trend by minimizing the Work of adapting standard hulls to take alternative sets of equipment, squeezing whatever profit can be made out of the hull itself. No other yard has yet managed to follow suit. One reflection of this trend toward international production is interest in a pan-European—or even world— naval exhibition to replace the current purely national exhibitions (the British RNEE, the French Bourget Naval, and the Italian Mostra Na- vale). In 1990, the French announced that the next Bourget Naval would 'nclude foreign companies collaborating with French ones.
Moreover, each national defense industry will find itself subject to niore intense European competition just as national purchases decline sharply. Equipment already under contract will have to be paid for out of declining defense budgets, probably crowding out new equipment.
The new European Fighter Aircraft (EFA) may prove the symbol of this decline. In theory, EFA is the mechanism by which the British, German, Italian, and Spanish aviation industries can compete with the next generation of U.S. fighters, such as a modified F/A-18. But EFA must also compete with Soviet attempts to break into the non-communist arms market with upgraded versions of such current fighters as the MiG- 29. Development must inevitably be expensive (multi-national projects seem always to cost much more than single-nation projects) and relatively slow (all partners must reach consensus before proceeding). During the 1990 German election, several politicians said they could see no point in going ahead with EFA, given the declining Soviet threat. The British Government seems to have sanctioned EFA development funds, although implicitly rather than explicitly. In the past, EFA was justified on the ground that the new generation of Soviet fighters—MiG-29 and Su-27—grossly overmatched existing aircraft. Unfortunately, “West” German experience gained actually operating “East” German MiG-29s indicates less of a margin. That leaves a very expensive EFA program with less justification at a time of deep government deficits. Cancellation may be publicly justified on the ground that the projected EFA does not incorporate stealth technology, and thus is obsolescent in any case.
Some of the large European defense companies are already cooperating with (or even merging with) similar companies in other European Community countries, perhaps in expectation of the more competitive
An early model of the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System—an airborne radar designed to detect ground targets and transmit real-time imagery to an Army truck-mounted ground station—is scheduled to support Desert Storm.
High-Tech Surveillance
character of the post-1992 Single Market. More on this later.
One reflection of the reduced threat is the European conventional arms reduction agreement (CFE) signed late in 1990. It includes ceilings on totals of land-based combat aircraft, including naval aircraft, on both sides of the German frontier. This inclusion was important because the Soviets seemed to be evading the overall CFE limit by transferring large numbers of ground combat aircraft, such as Su-24 Fencers and Su-25 Frogfoots, from the central front to the Kola Peninsula, and placing them under naval forces. The German Navy, however, operates a large land- based naval air arm, and will presumably have to be included in ceilings for German combat aircraft. The CFE ceiling does not apply to maritime patrol aircraft.
The decline in the Soviet threat will have another effect as well. The U.S. Navy will be selling or transferring substantial numbers of modem warships, the presence of which will probably depress the new-warship market. The same can probably be said of surplus Royal Navy ships. At this writing, the entire Charles F. Adams (DDG-2) class is likely to be sold or transferred, although so far the transfer of only four ships—to the Royal Hellenic Navy—has been announced. At least six Knox (FF- 1052)-class frigates will probably be transferred. Meanwhile nations like Portugal and Turkey, which are interested in new construction, cannot afford it.
IFF in the Gulf
Naval experts who had argued that naval power would be even more important in a post-Cold War world were suddenly provided with a spectacular case in point when Iraq invaded Kuwait and a United Nations blockade ensued. Although nearly all the ships taking part come from NATO or allied navies, the blockade is by no means a NATO operation. Nor is it dominated by the United States. Instead, it is the product of a weak U.N.-sponsored alliance, with all of the difficult command and control problems that implies. These problems were not too serious during the blockade, when errors are unlikely to be fatal. They loom larger now that war is upon us.
One striking feature of the naval deployments is that many (perhaps
all) of the ships in the Gulf are deploying with hand-held antiaircraft missiles. Since these weapons are not linked to ships’ combat direction systems, they have, in some cases, no organic identification-friend-or- foe capability (IFF). With the allies flying thousands of sorties daily, the chances for misidentification have risen dramatically.
This is only part of a larger problem. In the past, IFF systems have ' enjoyed only limited success. Many, but by no means all, of the participants in the allied effort in the Gulf are NATO states that enjoy some commonality in IFF systems and also in methods of tracking and identifying unknown aircraft. The NATO navies invested heavily in data links and in computerized combat direction systems intended largely to permit them to share a common tactical picture, so that weapons would be used economically against enemies while friendlies were not engaged. Because these navies intended to fight well offshore, their tactical data systems did not emphasize integration with standard land-based air systems—the U.S. Marine Corps, ever conscious of its mission of amphibious warfare, is the great exception in this regard. Even within NATO, ships equipped to handle only the Anglo-Dutch Link 10 could not receive the more sophisticated Link 11, and special “gateway” ships were required to perform translations.
Some of the several thousand allied combat aircraft share neither NATO data links nor NATO IFF. These include the Kuwaiti and Saudi forces—and the Saudi Air Force does not share Saudi naval data standards. At this goes to press, there have been few reported problems, but this may reflect more the miniscule number of sorties flown by the Iraqi Air Force to date rather than effective allied coordination. We won’t know unless the Iraqi air activity increases.
NATO Frigate Alternatives
The major European navies are searching for alternatives for the cancelled NATO frigate: the British Type-42 replacement and the German Type-124 are probably the most immediately available. It seems likely that the Dutch will collaborate with the Germans on a future air defense ship; given the close ties between the British and Dutch navies, one might assume that the British would join the program. The Dutch, however, have opted for the U.S.-led NATO antiair weapons system 1 (NAAWS), while the British have chosen the French-led family of antiair | missiles (FAMS). FAMS reportedly does not match British national requirements, and the choice favoring it was made for grand political reasons rather than on any objective grounds. At this writing it does appear that leaks suggesting a possible British reversal (to favor NAAWS) were little more than an attempt to force some concessions out of the French- led FAMS consortium.
FAMS may be the first of a series of such choices. Some British commentators suggested that Britain would have to collaborate closely with France to balance the new power of a united Germany. France and Germany, however, continue to collaborate closely within the European Community. Observers of the breakup of the recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks blamed France and Germany for preferring to protect their own farmers (through a Common Market protectionist arrangement called the Common Agricultural Policy) than to improve the overall trading position of the Community. Britain in particular has found the agricultural policy painful and repugnant, and any French move toward an Anglo-French entente within the Community would presumably have included a retreat from this form of protectionism.
The collapse of the GATT talks may have important implications for the U.S. defense industry. One U.S. objective in the talks was to improve protection of intellectual property (such as weapon designs and patents) in the face of widespread Third World pirating. To the extent that Third World governments see the arms trade as a way of modernizing, they are very tempted to avoid wasting money on actually developing new weapons; it is easier to buy (or steal) prototypes and make copies. The same might be said of computer hardware. That was not too important industrially as long as the United States and its close allies sold their advanced equipment only to each other. However, as the Soviet threat recedes, it will be almost impossible to avoid major military sales in the Third World, just as some of the buyers achieve the industrial . ability, to make usable copies of first-rate equipment. There are already claims that in some cases Israeli companies have done just that, but only ' on a very limited scale. More widespread pirating would be a much more serious proposition.