As part of my 2011 master’s thesis, I conducted a case study
examination of how the U.S. Navy used Electronic Warfare (EW) and tactical
deception to counter Soviet long-range maritime strike capabilities such as
Backfire during the Cold War. I found that while a considerable amount of
information is now publicly (though not necessarily widely) known about the two
sides’ tactics, technologies, and real-world operational experiences from the
late 1950s through mid-1970s, relatively few details regarding the
competition’s late-1970s through early-1990s peak have been declassified by the
U.S. or Russian governments. Tokarev’s article sheds a remarkable amount of
light on the latter period from the Russian perspective. In doing so, he also underlines
timeless maritime targeting challenges that technology can partially ameliorate
but never fully eliminate. He additionally paints an intriguing picture of how
an advanced attacker might use tactical deception in an attempt to score a lopsided
win in a battle at sea. In my posts this week, I will point out the
most fascinating of the new details provided by Tokarev and then examine their
historical significance as well as contemporary implications.
What Kind of
Reconnaissance Support did Backfire Need?
One of the key historical questions regarding Backfire involves the reconnaissance support the bombers’ crews needed to effectively employ their missiles. The earlier TU-16 Badger series of Soviet maritime bombers depended upon targeting cues provided by scout aircraft. These so-called ‘pathfinders’ penetrated an enemy’s battleforce ahead of a raid in order to locate and positively identify aircraft carriers or other high-priority target ships. This was necessary because a standoff bomber like Badger simply could not tell whether a large contact held by its onboard radar was an aircraft carrier, a surface combatant or other ship configured to simulate a carrier, an artificial decoy, or a large and perhaps neutral-flagged merchant vessel. Even if a surface contact of interest made ‘telltale’ radiofrequency emissions, the vessel’s type could not be determined with high confidence because of the possibility that the emissions were deceptive. Visual-range verification of contacts’ types (if not identities) was consequently a prerequisite for the Badgers to be able to aim their missiles with confidence. Yet, because the Soviet pathfinder aircraft necessarily had to expose themselves to the entirety of a battleforce’s layered defenses in order to do their jobs, they represented single-points-of-failure that could easily doom a raid if neutralized before they located, classified, and identified desired targets.
In the mid-1970s, the Soviets began launching Radar Ocean
Reconnaissance and Electronic intelligence Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites
(RORSAT and EORSAT) into low earth orbit. RORSAT and EORSAT were primarily
intended to expand the maritime areas covered by the Soviet Ocean Surveillance
System (SOSS), a networked ‘system of systems’ that fused data from a wide
variety of remote sensors to locate, identify, track, and target U.S. Navy
forces at sea. In theory, Soviet standoff bombers might not have needed the
support of pathfinder scouts if SOSS operators were able to provide a raid with
high confidence, targeting-quality tactical pictures derived from RORSAT,
EORSAT, and perhaps other remote sensor sources.
Backfire made its Soviet Naval Air Force (SNAF) debut in 1976.
Unlike the subsonic Badger, Backfire could make its final approach to its firing
position—and then its subsequent escape attempt—at supersonic speed. The SNAF’s
Backfire-C variant, which reached Initial Operational Capability in 1981, carried
enough fuel to make an indirect approach against a targeted naval force
operating well beyond 2000 nautical miles from the Soviet coast. Defending
against a Backfire raid was therefore an order of magnitude more complicated
than defending against a Badger raid. The tactical dilemma facing a U.S. Navy
battleforce would have been further exacerbated—potentially decisively—if a
Backfire raid received its targeting data directly from SOSS instead of from
pathfinders. Some later Backfire-Cs were even equipped with a communication
system that allowed them to download RORSATs’ and EORSATs’ tactical pictures as
those satellites passed overhead.
From a purely technical perspective, though, it seemed quite
unlikely Backfire could completely do away with reliance upon pathfinders or
other visual-range scouts. As I detailed in my thesis, RORSAT suffered from the
same contact classification challenges that inherently plague any radar. In
fact, RORSAT’s shortcomings were even worse: its sensitivity was apparently so
poor that it could only detect large ships, and even then not reliably when the
area it was searching contained inclement weather. EORSAT was completely
dependent upon ships complacently radiating telltale radiofrequency emissions,
and as a result could not compensate for RORSAT. Lastly, as neither RORSAT nor
EORSAT could report their data in ‘real time,’ their contact pictures generally
suffered from tactically-significant lateness. Nevertheless, other than
anecdotes from U.S. Navy veterans of the 1980s who directly observed SNAF operations
when their carrier groups steamed into the “Bear’s Den,” and beyond some open
source scholarly interpretations of Soviet doctrine dating to the early 1990s,
until Tokarev there has been virtually no authoritatively-sourced evidence available
to the public confirming or refuting Backfire’s dependence upon pathfinders.
On that note, Tokarev first relates that SNAF bomber forces
“…always tried to use
reconnaissance and targeting data provided by air assets, which was also most
desired by their own command structure. Targeting data on the current position
of the carrier sent by surface ships performing “direct tracking” (a ship,
typically a destroyer or frigate, sailing within sight of the carrier formation
to send targeting data to attack assets—what the Americans called a
“tattletale”), were a secondary and less preferable source. No great trust was
placed in reports from other sources (naval radio reconnaissance, satellites,
etc.). Lieutenant General Sokerin, once an operational officer on the Northern
Fleet NAF staff, always asked the fleet staff’s admirals just to assign him a
target, not to define the time of the attack force’s departure; that could
depend on many factors, such as the reliability of targeting data or the
weather, that generate little attention in nonaviation naval staff
work.”(Tokarev, Pg. 73)
He later amplifies this, noting that Backfire crews
“…had the targeting
data that had been available at the moment of takeoff and kept the receivers of
the targeting apparatus ready to get detailed targeting, either from the air
reconnaissance by voice radio or from surface ships or submarines. The latter
targeting came by high-frequency (HF) radio, a channel known as KTS Chayka (the
Seagull short-message targeting communication system) that was usually filled
with targeting data from the MRSC Uspekh (the Success maritime reconnaissance
targeting system), built around the efforts of Tu-95RC reconnaissance planes.
The Legenda (Legend) satellite targeting system receiver was turned on also,
though not all planes had this device.” (Tokarev, Pg. 74)
These statements tell us two things. First, while Backfires
could use direct satellite-based cueing, they relied heavily upon—and in fact
placed greater trust in—targeting provided by scout aircraft. Second, a
Backfire (or any Soviet maritime bomber) sortie depended upon raid planners
being told approximately where a U.S. or NATO naval group was operating. If
SOSS or any other surveillance or reconnaissance capabilities supporting this
general cueing was disrupted or deceived, a raid might be dispatched to the
wrong location, might be wasted against a decoy group, might be exposed to an ambush,
might be held back until too late, or might never be launched at all.
We must keep in mind that launching a SNAF raid was no small
undertaking. Per Tokarev, an entire air division—up to a hundred bombers—might
be hurled against a single carrier’s battle group. Furthermore, doctrine called
for the Soviet Northern and Pacific Fleets to be equipped with three air
divisions each in order to counter multi-carrier battle groups. Tokarev also
mentions that the bomber attrition rate for a single raid was expected to be as
high as 50% regardless of whether or not the objective U.S. or NATO warships
were successfully struck (Tokarev, Pg. 73, 78). With a finite number of
bombers, missiles, and trained crews, it is reasonable to think Soviet
commanders would have been somewhat hesitant to dispatch such irreplaceable
forces into battle unless they had some degree of confidence in their
situational picture’s accuracy; the operational-strategic penalties that would
be incurred if they ‘got it wrong’ simply seem too high for this not to have
been the case. Accordingly, it will be extremely interesting to someday learn the
criteria that had to be satisfied for SNAF commanders to order a raid.
Tomorrow, just how effective was U.S. Navy countertargeting?
Tomorrow, just how effective was U.S. Navy countertargeting?
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