Cold War Anti-Submarine Warfare

As enmity between China and Russia and the West deepens, and as the Chinese navy grows, the United States finds itself more and more in the situation it faced during the Cold War. Again, the United States depends on access to the world, and again a possible enemy is building a massive navy intended to cut off the U.S., which may well have to fight for the seas. In doing so, it is helpful to look back to the closest analogy—the struggle against the Soviet navy. For the first time, this book brings together enough of the declassified record—and enough of what the Russians published during their brief period of openness—to tell the story of the great Cold War anti-submarine warfare (ASW) struggle.

Cold War Anti-Submarine Warfare explains what happened and how the West won that fight. Although technology has changed, history is the best guide for future operations and to understand how different strategies and tactics can affect outcomes. The experience of post-Cold War ASW is much less relevant because it was conducted on a much smaller scale and generally in waters very different from the oceans of the Cold War. Unfortunately, much of what happened during the Cold War has been forgotten. The senior officers who understood the ASW fight have long since retired.

Author Norman Friedman is extraordinarily well placed to examine what happened and why. He has published books not only on Cold War ships and aircraft, but also on Cold War strategy, including the award-winning Fifty-Year War, and on the naval weapons and sensors of the Cold War. He has written design histories of U.S. and British submarines and surface ASW ships of the Cold War based on declassified documents. In this book, he emphasizes that there was no single Cold War ASW strategy because the character of the war changed greatly over time. This variety of themes makes it possible to consider alternative parallels to the present and the future.