THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 11, 1995 TAG: 9509110033
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
The admiral leading the Navy's drive to develop an ``arsenal ship'' insists that the dreadnought would never supplant the Navy's aircraft carriers.
Instead, said Rear Adm. Alexander J. Krekich, the ship would sail as part of the Navy's carrier groups. The arsenal ship, which in wartime might rain hundreds of missiles on targets up to 700 miles inland, would rely on the flattops and other ships for protection and would enhance the group's ability to inflict damage far from shore, he argued.
Early reports on the ship have suggested that it might one day replace the carrier as centerpiece of the U.S. fleet. But in an interview last week, Krekich dismissed that notion, casting the ship as simply another arrow in the quiver of the carrier group commander.
Both ships are needed, he said, even in today's smaller Navy, because the arsenal ship would hit targets deeper in enemy territory than can be easily reached from a carrier.
The 700-mile range of the arsenal ship would allow one posted off Virginia Beach to blast an arc from Bangor, Maine, to Toronto, Indianapolis, Nashville, Birmingham and Orlando. The longest-range carrier-based aircraft can go out about 500 miles and return, without refueling. That would be particularly important early in a war, Krekich added, when carrier-based planes probably would be occupied with attacks on the front line of an invading force.
The proposed ship - Navy planners insist it's only a ``concept'' right now - is drawing raves from Marines who see it as a way to provide additional protection for their amphibious landings.
With perhaps 500 missile tubes, and storage areas that would permit several reloadings, the 800-foot ship's punch would far outstrip that of the Navy's current missile cruisers and destroyers. The most potent of those ships carry only 122 missile tubes.
But independent analysts warn, and Krekich conceded, that a host of complex questions must be answered before the concept becomes reality.
One of those is the proposed ship's utility in anything short of an all-out war. The United States already has Tomahawk cruise missiles, one variety the arsenal ship would carry, on destroyers off the coast of Bosnia. But they cost $1.3 million per shot, and using them would escalate NATO's involvement dramatically.
``They've got to create a way to make the missiles cheaper,'' said Robert Gaskin, a former Air Force pilot who now is vice president of Business Executives for National Security, a Washington-based lobbying group. ``Because the ship would have to shoot a lot.''
Gaskin cited estimates that a 30-day air campaign with precision missiles like those the arsenal ship would carry could cost almost $1 billion a day.
Other observers are skeptical that the Navy can build and operate the ship cheaply. Though the current Republican-led Congress seems eager to invest in new weapons and is supportive of the Navy in particular, the arsenal ship probably would have to be economical to have a chance of winning approval.
``These precision-guided weapons require a lot of tender loving care,'' said retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, associate director of the Center for Defense Information, a think tank. That means the ship would need a substantial crew and complex equipment, he suggested.
Krekich argued that technological advances would allow the arsenal ship to stay simple, both in its construction and operation.
``The whole purpose of this is to build a very, very simple ship'' that would serve essentially as a launching platform, he said. Early estimates call for spending about $750 million to develop and build the first arsenal ship; carriers, the world's most expensive weapons, cost about $4.5 billion each.
As Navy planners envision it, costs would be controlled by using missile command and guidance systems already aboard the carrier, some other ship or even in carrier-launched jets.
``If the battle group engages in combat, someone on the aircraft carrier for example could say, `OK, as part of a strike package I'm putting together, I want to hit these targets here,' '' Krekich said.
``The battle group commander plans the mission . . . he sends it by datalink, it's received on the arsenal ship, goes from the radio receiver into the computer, directly into the missile.''
Using such an approach, the ship might operate with a crew of as few as 20 (a carrier sails with more than 5,000). That would allow replacements to be flown in at the end of each six-month deployment cycle, keeping the ship on station and reducing the number of ships needed.
Krekich envisions a fleet of four to six arsenal ships; the Navy has 12 carriers.
Though each arsenal ship would travel with carrier groups and rely on them for protection, early plans call for use of a ``double-double'' hull design, a three-layer shell of steel that would let the ships sustain multiple hits but remain on station so long as the third, inner shell wasn't penetrated.
Indeed, the ships would be designed to take on water as part of their defense. Planners want them to be able to ballast down, leaving their decks so close to the water's surface that they'll appear almost as a commercial tanker to enemy radars.
Those features would boost the ship's survivability, Gaskin agreed, particularly against the sea-skimming anti-ship missiles that even some small navies now possess. Other missiles, which would come in from a steeper angle and would have the punch to get through the double-double hull, would still present problems, he said.
One way to boost survivability further, Krekich said, would be to make the ship a submarine. Sub planners are to brief Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, next month on a proposal to refit some aging Trident ballistic missile subs with up to 200 tubes for smaller, conventional missiles.
The sub conversions would cost $1 billion or more each, carry fewer weapons than the surface ship and require larger, highly trained crews. The idea is widely seen as a long-shot competitor to the arsenal ship, particularly because Boorda already has openly encouraged development of a surface vessel, but Krekich said a refitted sub remains ``definitely an option.''
``You probably could look at this and say maybe there should be some of both in the final analysis,'' he said. ``A submarine is the ultimate stealth weapon.''
``I think it's too bad that people want to compete them,'' agreed Rear Adm. Dennis A. Jones, the Navy's director of submarine warfare. ``I think they're compatible.'' by CNB