1998 Year of the Ocean The Oceans and National Security 



SPECIAL QUALITIES OF NAVY AND COAST GUARD PLATFORMS 



Platforms operating at sea bring special capabilities to the table in those situations in 

 which U.S. military forces must be ordered into action to meet one or more components of our 

 national strategy of peacetime engagement, deterrence and conflict prevention, or conflict 

 control. Navy and Coast Guard vessels have unique attributes of carrying capacity, the endurance 

 inherent to the duty cycle, mobility, sovereignty, and other abilities to resist attack: 



Carrying capacity: Ships can duplicate land bases because of their ability to carry a 

 variety of essential defense functions. Theater missile defense is one example. Although 

 space systems may contribute to the launch detection of hostile missile(s), large, heavy 

 radars based at sea are needed to either detect, in the case of depressed trajectories, or to 

 manage the interception of hostile missile threats. Ships are the obvious platform for such 

 systems since they can carry the detection systems as well as large quantities of 

 interceptors. Because of their carrying capacity, ships are also ideal platforms for almost 

 all heavy logistics evolutions, command and control duties, space tracking, and 

 intelligence operations. 



Duty cycle and Mobility: The constant presence of a ship gives U.S. military plarmers a 

 significant advantage. Space sensors generally observe intermittently, and airborne 

 sensors, unless based aboard ship, require large numbers to maintain a presence far from 

 base. Because ships can often perform their missions far from a potential adversary's 

 coastline, they can continuously gather valuable information without threatening or 

 alerting them. 



Sovereignty: Warships and public vessels engaged in non-commercial service enjoy 

 sovereign immunity. Therefore, questions of landing or access rights do not arise if U.S. 

 ships are operating on the high seas or transiting through littoral areas and through straits. 



Defense against physical attack and jamming: A ship standing well offshore is much 

 more secure from physical attack than warfare centers ashore, and it has the carrying 

 capacity to serve as the platform of choice for many information collection operations 

 against an actual or potential adversary. Warfare centers ashore may be surrounded by a 

 hostile populace and if attacked from over the horizon, must defend in a more cluttered 

 environment. A moving ship is much harder to target with a missile or truck-bomb than 

 an installation ashore, whose static coordinates can be read from a map or a GPS receiver. 

 The positioning of warfare capabilities offshore provides separation from the land-based 

 jammers, thus limiting their effect. 



B-9 



