The New Weapons System

Top U.S. Navy planners last week were fairly hopping a hornpipe over a new weapons system that stands to reshape longstanding concepts of naval warfare --and, for that matter, seriously influence all current U.S. military and diplomatic thinking. The new idea, as radical as the development of the atom bomb, combines two new Navy weapons: the swift, deep-swimming nuclear submarine, and the intermediate-range, shipboard-type ballistic missile, Polaris. Such a mating would permit the far-ranging nuclear subs, lying submerged offshore at vital points around the Eurasian land mass, to launch thermonuclear missiles at any target within 1,500 miles of their position, and be all but immune to counterattack.

As blueprinted, the plan calls for at least ten subs, and perhaps 20, stationed at points in the Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Without surfacing, a sub crew could launch sixteen 28,500-lb. missiles up through the water and into the sky within 15 minutes. And moments after launching, the sub could be well on its escape route, beyond any known Russian sub-finding capability. With the minimum ten subs on station, the U.S. Navy would be sitting within striking distance of 95% of the more populated Communist cities and 90% of the Soviet industrial empire. Three such subs will be ready by 1960; appropriations for six more are in the hopper.

Instant Thrust. The Navy first hit full speed with the Polaris system early last year, after it ditched the idea of adapting the Army's bulky liquid-fuel Jupiter for shipboard use. As Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke said, the Navy needed "an IRBM with salt water in its veins." Burke picked peppery, redheaded Rear Admiral William Francis Raborn Jr., 52, to run the Polaris program, tossed Raborn a bankroll of $37 million for a start. "Red" Raborn, who moves so fast that he will only drink instant coffee (and sometimes a Scotch-and-water), rounded up a 45-man special-projects staff, set up his offices in the old Munitions Building in Washington. He made a target date of 1963, put his men and contractors to work on system-development projects that enveloped the whole weapon--a new kind of nuclear sub, fuels, missiles, guidance networks, navigation.

The breakthroughs came at an awesome rate. Raborn needed a reliable solid fuel, for liquid fuels are both too volatile and too bulky for shipboard use. Aerojet-General Corp. and Thiokol Chemical Corp. brought out solid fuels with a wallop ("as simple," says Raborn, "as the comb in your pocket"). Even so, solids presented a big problem: how to cut off burning with the split-second precision necessary if the missile is to land on target. (Liquid oxygen can be shut off mechanically with a valve.) The solution: a design called a retrorocket that automatically blasts portholes in the fuel chamber, drops the pressure, effectively cuts off the power.

SINS & SAC. The navigation problems were just as baffling. To aim any missile with accuracy, a missileer must know his own geographic position within a fraction of a mile. Land-based missile crews can set their guidance systems for the target on the basis of their known position. But how, traveling hundreds of feet below the sea, could the Navy subs fix position accurately? An error of a few hundred yards at launching point could mean a wide miss of the target 1,500 miles away. Advances in celestial navigation and radio astronomy systems helped, but the big answer came from two scientists who developed a gyroscopically oriented navigation system called SINS (for Ship's Inertial Navigation System). After a year's testing aboard a converted cargo ship, SINS racked up an accuracy score of less than half-a-mile deviation, and recently has narrowed that down to about an eighth of a mile.

Overzealous Polarismen, clocking this swift progress, are certain now that they have the ultimate deterrent to all-out thermonuclear war. The U.S. might as well get ready to scratch the Air Force's Strategic Air Command, they boast, since 40 Polaris subs (life span: 15-20 years), along with the necessary hardware, crews, tenders and a few extra bases, would cost only $7 billion--and that would about pay for all the deterrent the U.S. needs.

SAC bases, they argue, are already prime Russian targets, and SAC missile-launching sites (where liquid-fuel rockets require considerable time getting up steam) will be, too. Polaris subs, on the other hand, are moving platforms that would defy pinpointing. Moreover, with U.S.-manned Polaris subs operating in foreign waters, the nation would not need to haggle with NATO countries over placing IRBM launching sites on their soil. And finally, say the Navymen, since Polaris-plus-submarine equals an intercontinental missile, the U.S. coiild stop work on ICBMs and their-bases altogether.

With all this, the fact is that a full-fledged Polaris has not even been fired. One is scheduled for its first full test late this summer or early this fall. But Polaris' progress has been indisputable. And if it keeps its promise, it will do one thing that is overdue: it will speed the Navy beyond its traditional surface task force role--a role all but obsolete in the missile age--into a global underwater mission that will reassert and make meaningful the need for control of the seas.

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