Executive overview: Jane's Underwater Warfare Systems

The end of the Cold War, nearly 20 years ago, caused many of the larger navies to rethink priorities, commitments and requirements. With plans and programmes having to be defined so far ahead, it is inevitable that a number of navies now deploy various classes of warship not really suited to meeting current requirements. The US Navy, for example, having spent billions of dollars on developing the new Seawolf-class submarines stopped construction at three vessels in order to concentrate on a new class, the Virginia.

The UK, while striving to maintain a navy capable of meeting a wider range of operational roles, is having to cut back on its fleet strength. This retrograde step is being forced on it by the impact of the cost of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. By cutting back on fleet strength, the government is saving money in maintaining, keeping in operational service and designing new ships for which there may not be a requirement. Unfortunately, in so doing it may have left the navy with insufficient resources to meet possible future commitments or contingencies. Under plans laid out in 2004, the RN's frigate/destroyer force was reduced from a level of 31 ships to 25, while the number of mine countermeasures vessels was cut from 22 to 16.

It could be argued that the Russians were in a rather more enviable position than the Western powers, because the collapse of the Soviet order meant that all work on new designs and construction halted through lack of funds and the Fleet laid up, much of it to be later scrapped. Now that more money is available the navy is starting to rebuild, almost from scratch, with designs supposedly more suited to the new requirements. However, much Cold War thinking is still evident, even in the latest designs, as well as in the maritime strategy adopted by Russia. The latest evidence of this is the recent announcement by the Russian Defence Minister that he was dispatching a Joint Naval Task Force (JNTF) to the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. The expedition is aimed at ensuring a naval presence "in the operationally key areas of the world oceans" and establishing conditions for secure Russian maritime navigation. Three tactical exercises, involving combat ships and aircraft as well as missiles fired at naval and coastal targets, are being planned during the mission. The aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, two large Udaloy-class anti-submarine warfare ships - Admiral Levchenko and Admiral Chabanenko - and an auxiliary ship left Severomorsk, Russia's main northern naval base, for the Mediterranean on 5 December 2007, where they were to be joined by a Black Sea Fleet missile cruiser, Moskva, and a tanker. A total of four major warships and seven other vessels of Russia's Northern, Black Sea and Baltic fleets, as well as 47 aircraft, including 14 strategic naval aircraft and 10 helicopters, were to take part in the mission.

We now have the far greater uncertainty of instability in the Middle East and the global asymmetric terrorist threat. This is beginning to have an impact not only on general naval requirements, but more specifically on types of vessel and armaments designed to counter the threat. Allied with this is the increasing frequency of acts of piracy on the high seas - and some of these may well be linked to terrorist operations. As many commentators are now signalling, we are entering uncharted waters, particularly where naval defence is concerned, and the role and structure of the world's navies may well have to undergo yet more radical changes in order to meet this new and developing threat.

From an industrial perspective, it is interesting to see how the defence industry is responding to these threats against both naval assets, in terms of both ships and harbours, but also much softer targets, albeit with enormous political and economic consequences, such as cruise vessels and ports, and oil terminals, refineries and offshore platforms. Many companies are marketing their expertise in ASW and MCM technologies to address this perceived market. However, there is still no evidence that governments are either committing expenditure to this area, or developing a coherent or co-ordinated strategy to meet this threat, particularly in relation to non-military targets. 704 of 10,728 words