Indo-Asia-Pacific

Using the Enemy to Train the Troops—Beijing’s New Approach to Prepare its Navy for War

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This article originally appeared on the Jamestown Foundation’s ChinaBrief and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.

By Ryan D. Martinson and Conor Kennedy

Introduction

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has quietly changed the way it interacts with U.S. military forces in the Western Pacific. Instead of just tracking and monitoring U.S. ships and aircraft, demanding they leave sensitive areas, the PLA has embraced an approach that favors hostile encounters as preparation for future conflict with the United States. In PLA parlance, it is “using the enemy to train the troops”—nadi lianbing (拿敌练兵).

This is not a new approach. The term nadi lianbing has appeared in PLA sources since 2014. However, recent statements by the Ministry of National Defense (MoD) indicate that it has become enshrined as doctrine. At the MoD’s press conference on January 22, Senior Colonel Wu Qian highlighted the key aims of PLA training. The first is to “vigorously promote the deep coupling of operations and training.” Specifically, forces operating on the “front line in the military struggle” should “use the enemy to train the troops” (PRC Ministry of Defense, January 27).

For the PLA, the front line in the peacetime “military struggle” is located along China’s maritime periphery: the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, and Philippine Sea. As a result, it is the air, surface, and undersea forces of the PLA Navy (PLAN) that are chiefly tasked with implementing this new approach. What does nadi lianbing mean for the PLAN, and what are the implications for PLAN-U.S. Navy interactions at sea?

From Concept to Doctrine

The notion of “using the enemy to train the troops” was first applied in undersea warfare. An August 2014 essay in People’s Navy, the PLAN’s official newspaper, highlighted the submarine force’s special function in “countering the powerful enemy” (应对强敌, yingdui qiang di), a common euphemism for the U.S. The author emphasized that the force should train like it will fight, which means it must “go to the battlefield of the future and boldly approach the opponent of the future…using the enemy to train the troops.” In his words, “training must be a rehearsal for war.”1 In a January 2015 article, the political commissar of a submarine unit urged PLAN submariners to “take aim at the operational opponent,” recognizing that peacetime “confrontation with the powerful enemy is the most realistic training form.” The force should embrace a culture that favors “competing with the enemy, and using the enemy to train the troops.”2

The PLAN expanded this approach to the rest of the service following a November 2020 Central Military Commission (CMC) meeting on military training. In his remarks, President Xi Jinping called for the PLA to realize a “transformation in military training.” This precipitated a greater emphasis on training in general, with a particular focus on “realistic” training that better approximates the conditions of actual combat with a likely adversary (Xinhua, November 25, 2020). Subsequently, the PLAN issued a document called “Decision on Accelerating the Promotion of Transformation of Navy Military Training and Constructing a New-Type Navy Military Training System.” The Decision took the concept of nadi lianbing from the shadowy world of undersea warfare and made it service doctrine. Henceforth, all components of the service would regard encounters with the “powerful enemy” as opportunities to bolster warfighting capabilities.3

Why Now?

According to PLAN leaders, nadi lianbing is a direct response to an uptick in provocative U.S. behavior along China’s maritime periphery. The PLA has long complained about U.S. naval operations within the first island chain, but the Chinese military believes that U.S. activities have become more aggressive in recent years. According to the (unnamed) head of PLAN Training Bureau, “some countries have sharply increased their hostility towards China.” In the maritime realm, they have “continuously strengthened their targeted military deployments, frequently sent air and maritime forces to conduct close-in provocations, and have even organized air and maritime forces to ‘use China to train their troops,’ drilling warfighting methods and tactics.”4

Zhang Tianjing, a senior officer in the PLAN Operations Bureau, echoes these points in an August 2021 essay. Specifically, Zhang asserts that “ships and aircraft are frequently infringing the territorial waters and airspace of Chinese islands and reefs in the name of ‘freedom of navigation and overflight,’ warships have transited the Taiwan Strait multiple times, and military aircraft have conducted high-intensity flights adjacent to China’s near seas.” He describes these as “abnormal activities.”5

Approaches to Nadi Lianbing

Nadi lianbing is a “special training form” that exploits opportunities created by close encounters with the putative enemy. The head of the PLAN Training Bureau explains that this approach has two forms, one passive and one active (see note 4 for source information). With the passive approach, PLAN forces respond to provocative behavior by the enemy (因敌而动, yin di er dong), such as tactical exercises aimed at Chinese forces, taking steps short of kinetic force to defend against them. This approach likely involves all the skills required to thwart an attack, short of using force: e.g., intercepting inbound aircraft, maneuvering for tactical advantage, and perhaps jamming and other forms of electronic warfare.

The second form involves proactively seeking out (依我而动, yi wo er dong) nearby enemy forces during regular missions and using interactions to serve training purposes. That is, deployed PLAN forces would target enemy ships, aircraft, and submarines to complete required individual training, platform training, group (module) training, and combined group training. According to Zhang Tianjing, PLAN forces will “conduct real reconnaissance, real transmissions, real tracking, real aiming, and simulated attack, treating the enemy as a live target.”

Nadi lianbing is not limited to PLAN forces operating at sea in the Western Pacific. Escort task forces also now refer to the approach during training operations in the Indian Ocean. So too do coastal defense missile units, including those deployed to Chinese outposts in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.6

Benefits for the PLAN

PLAN leaders believe that nadi lianbing can help bolster PLAN capabilities in a number of ways.7 First and foremost, it ensures that training is realistic. In the words of one PLAN officer, the service gets to take on a “real blue team” (真实的蓝军, zhenshi de lanjun), instead of the poorly-simulated rendering of the enemy that is common in other forms of training. For example, nadi lianbing can bolster the PLAN’s ability to compete across the electromagnetic spectrum, that is, to ensure the performance of its reconnaissance and communications systems despite enemy efforts to degrade them, and to use electronic warfare to impair the enemy’s systems. According to one front page article in People’s Navy, the PLAN must “fully exploit scenarios in which the enemy engages in electromagnetic confrontation against China to conduct countermeasures, test the boundary capabilities of China’s various types of weapons and equipment, and let front-line sailors practice synergizing their efforts and practice their technical skills in a near realistic environment of counter-interference, counter-attack, and counter-reconnaissance.”

But nadi lianbing is about more than just training technical skills. The PLAN believes that hostile encounters with the enemy will help strengthen the “fighting spirit” of PLAN sailors. PLA commentators often highlight the existence of a “peace disease” (和平积弊, heping jibi or 和平病, heping bing) within the ranks, and they see close contact with the enemy as one way of treating this malady. CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia amplified this point in a November 2021 essay, citing the value of using nadi lianbing as a means to instill the “martial courage” (血性, xue xing) needed to fight and win a great power conflict (People’s Daily, November 30, 2021).

Nadi lianbing provides opportunities to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary. As the head of the PLAN Training Bureau describes, hostile encounters allow the PLAN to “discover the ins and outs of the enemy’s combat capabilities.” By provoking a response, the service can gauge the enemy’s “principled red lines” (原则底线, yuanze dixian) and analyze the command styles and response speed of individual enemy commanders. The political commissar of the PLAN’s Type-055 cruiser Nanchang highlights the importance of collecting, analyzing, and using data collected during at-sea confrontations with U.S. forces, in order to develop a “brain trust” (智囊团, zhinang tuan) of PLAN experts specializing on the “powerful enemy” (强敌通, qiang di tong). According to Zhang Tianjing, effective use of nadi lianbing sheds light on current U.S. operational concepts, such as distributed lethality and mosaic warfare, which he describes as “posing a fairly large challenge” to the PLAN. With this knowledge, the Chinese military can develop plans to counter likely U.S. approaches in the event of a real conflict.

Nadi lianbing also helps the PLAN learn about its own shortcomings. Some of these “weak links”—as Zhang Tianjing describes them—are already apparent to the PLAN. In his words, the PLA’s reconnaissance and early warning capabilities remain “fairly weak,” its target identification capabilities are “inadequate,” the challenge of configuring kill chains for long-range precision strikes remains “fairly difficult,” PLAN tactics are “comparatively simplistic and meager,” and “precise coordination” between services is still a problem when conducting joint operations. Zhang writes that these problems must be remedied so that the PLAN can effectively support the types of integrated joint operations the PLA intends to conduct against the U.S.: multi-domain precision warfare (多域精确战, duo yu jingque zhan), cross-domain joint operations (跨域联合战, kua yu lianhe zhan), and area-denial warfare (区域拒止战, quyu ju zhi zhan).

No Risk, No Reward

PLAN leaders fully acknowledge that nadi lianbing carries risk. According to one surface warfare officer, when PLAN forces deploy to the front line, the “battlefield” and the “training field” overlap. As a result, although nadi lianbing provides a valuable learning opportunity, it also heightens the risk of an “inadvertent armed clash” (擦枪走火, ca qiang zouhuo).8 In a 2020 article, a senior PLAN submarine unit leader highlighted the need for balance in nadi lianbing: “if things are pushed too hard, there is a concern about exceeding the scope of ‘training’; but if things are pushed too soft, then the ‘training’ aims cannot be achieved.”

In his guidance, the head of the PLAN Training Bureau prescribes methods to “avoid friction and conflict” when applying the new approach. The PLAN should, for example, “strictly control the use of weapons” and take special care when organizing live fire exercises. However, he suggests ambiguity about using the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), a 2014 agreement designed to reduce risky encounters between signatory countries (including the U.S. and China). In his June 7 guidance, he stated the service must “strictly obey” CUES and other such regulations. However, the following day he called for the “flexible application” of CUES, implying that PLAN forces would abide by the Code only when it suited their needs.

PLAN leaders perceive risk through the lens of the global balance of power, which is changing in a way “not seen in a hundred years.” That is, they see China as rising, while the U.S. is declining. In his August 2021 article, Zhang Tianjing cites the damaging impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. economy and concludes the U.S. is looking for a “strategic opening” to arrest its descent and maintain its status as a global hegemon. Thus, the PLAN “could not rule out” that the U.S. might manufacture an incident to cause a conflict or even a regional war. Despite these concerns, PLA leaders clearly believe that the potential rewards of hostile encounters with the U.S. military outweigh the risks.

Ryan D. Martinson is a researcher in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College. He holds a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a bachelor’s of science from Union College. Martinson has also studied at Fudan University, the Beijing Language and Culture University, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center.

Conor M. Kennedy is a Research Associate at the China Maritime Studies Institute of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.

This article reflects the personal opinions of the authors and not the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other U.S. government entity.

Notes

1. 王红理 [Wang Hongli], 能打胜仗是最大的担当 [“Being Able to Win Battles is the Biggest Undertaking”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], August 29, 2014, p. 4.

2. 李云平 [Li Yunping] 把握使命任务特点持续培育战斗精神 [Grasp the Characteristics of the Mission to Continue to Cultivate the Combat Spirit”] 政工学刊 [Zhenggong Xuekan], no. 1, 2015, p. 51.

3. 敢打善拼制强敌 [“Bold Enough to Take on the Powerful Enemy”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], September 7, 2021, p. 1.

4. 王世建 [Wang Shijian], 进一步提高部队训练质效和打赢能力 [“Do More to Improve the Quality and Effectiveness of the Force’s Training and Ability to Fight and Win”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], June 7, 2021, p. 1.

5. 张天敬 [Zhang Tianjing] 拿敌练兵主要“练什么” [“The Gist of ‘What We Train’ When We Use the Enemy to Train the Troops”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], August 10, 2021, p. 3.

6. Information on escort task forces and Nadi lianbing is derived from 刘冬冬, 石小强, 王宗洋 [Liu Dongdong, Shi Xiaoqiang, Wang Zongyang], 第38批护航编队开展实际使用武器训练 [“38th Escort Task Force Conducts Weapons Training”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], August 11, 2021, p. 1; 孙飞, 方智坤 [Sun Fei, Fang Zhikun], 薪火传承 激发打赢热情 – 南部战区海军某岸导团利用红色资源提升教育质效 [“Continuing to Fuel the Fire to Inspire Enthusiasm for Winning – A Shore-to-Ship Missile Regiment of the Southern Theater Navy Uses Red Resources to Improve the Effectiveness of Education”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], July 21, 2021, p. 2.

7. Information in this section on how nadi lianbing may bolster the PLA’s capabilities is derived from the following sources: 本报评论员 [Anonymous Columnist] 坚持战训一致助力训练转型 [“Persist with the Unity of Operations and Training to Support a Transformation in Training”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], June 4, 2021; 刘志刚 [Liu Zhigang], 立足实战实案，紧盯新质新域求突破 [“Ground Ourselves in Real Combat and Real Cases, Focus on New Qualities and New Domains to Seek Breakthroughs”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], June 22, 2021, p. 1; 张校邦 [Zhang Xiaobang] 破“心中之敌”，深入纠治和平积弊 [“Destroy the ‘Enemy in the Heart,’ Rectify Peace Disease”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], June 5, 2021, 1; 赵宝石 [Zhao Baoshi], 把握关键环节 提升打赢能力 [“Grasp the Key Links and Improve Our Ability to Win in War”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], June 8, 2021, p. 1; 陈维工 [Chen Weigong], 深化强敌研究, 培养知彼胜彼的 “智囊团” [“Deepen Research on the Strong Enemy and Cultivate ‘Think Tanks’ that Can Understand the Enemy to Defeat The Enemy人民海军 [People’s Navy], July 16, 2021, p. 1; Zhang, “The Gist of ‘What We Train’ When We Use the Enemy to Train the Troops.”

8. Information on the PLA’s risk versus reward calculus on nadi lianbing is derived from the following sources: 杨黎明 [Yang Liming], 以战载训砥砺胜战刀锋 [“Use Operations to Advance Training and Sharpen the Blade of Victory”], 人民海军 [People’s Navy], April 29, 2020, p. 3; 徐杰 [Xu Jie], “以敌为师”漫谈 [“Ramblings on ‘Using the Enemy as a Teacher’”], 政工学刊 [Zhenggong Xuekan], no. 5, 2020, p. 75; Wang, “Do More to Improve the Quality and Effectiveness of the Force’s Training and Ability to Fight and Win;” Zhao, “Grasp the Key Links and Improve Our Ability to Win in War;” Zhang, “The Gist of ‘What We Train’ When We Use the Enemy to Train the Troops.”

Featured Image: A frigate attached to a naval flotilla under the PLA Southern Theater Command steams ahead towards the designated waters in a maritime combat training exercise in late June, 2022. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Zhang Bin)

Book Review

Andrew Marshall’s Reflections on Net Assessment

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Andrew W. Marshall, edited by Jeffrey McKitrick and Robert Angevine, Reflections on Net Assessment. Andrew W. Marshall Foundation and Institute for Defense Analyses, 2022, 331 pp, US $10.00., ISBN 978-0578384238.

By BJ Armstrong

Known throughout parts of the American national security establishment as “Yoda,” referred to by The Atlantic as the “Brain of the Pentagon,” and respected worldwide for his decades of strategic work at RAND, the National Security Council, and finally in founding and running the Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall was a critical figure in the Cold War and post-Cold War history of American security and strategy. He was also an intellectual figure who left a limited imprint on the literature of American national security, having written the vast majority of his work for classified audiences and publishing very little in the open.

The two generations of “Jedi” who were trained by him during their time working in the Office of Net Assessment are strategists, scholars, and consultants who prefer their own moniker as “graduates of St. Andrew’s Prep,” and who have published widely and influentially in a myriad of topics. For those who never attended the “prep school” before it closed with his death in 2019, Marshall’s own words and thoughts are much harder to come by. Today’s scholars and practitioners of national and defense strategy are reliant on these acolytes for much of our insight into the running and thinking of ONA. Reflections on Net Assessment, edited by Jeffrey McKitrick and Robert Angevine for the Andrew W. Marshall Foundation, offers a rare glimpse into Marshall’s own thoughts and approaches to strategy and security, and is an insightful contribution to the wider national security community.

Across seven chapters, Reflections offers transcripts of a series of oral history interviews primarily conducted and transcribed by Kurt Guthe during the 1990s. The interviews included Guthe and Marshall, as well as a number of unnamed colleagues who likely were contemporary or former members of the ONA staff, in dialogue about a wide range of topics. It appears, from several comments made during the interviews, that Marshall was considering writing a book or memoir reflecting on his then nearly five decades of service. He ultimately never wrote the book. However, the content of the interviews overlaps so clearly with the content and details included in former ONA staff members Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts’ book, The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy, that it seems likely they carried forward on Mr. Marshall’s intent by writing the book themselves based largely on these oral histories. For Reflections, McKitrick and Angevine took the transcripts made by Guthe and formatted and edited them, created short contextual essays to remind readers of the milestones in American history which the interviews often mentioned, and overall did an excellent job of organizing the book for publication.

As is the case when reading raw or lightly edited oral histories, anyone looking for insights will be taken on a circular trip. In the case of the interviews with Marshall this often includes fascinating minor details of his background and education, insights into the inner workings of multiple Presidential administrations and their Departments of Defense, and occasionally sharp personal opinions and foibles. In the case of these transcripts, the interviewers themselves often head off on tangents sharing their own memories and interests. While this sometimes derails Marshall’s intended subject, and sometimes moves the conversation away from Marshall’s personal insights (even occasionally trying to answer questions for him rather than letting us read what he really thought), it is also likely the price of admission for such candid discussions with interlocuters who themselves are likely highly accomplished and intelligent strategists and researchers.

In addition to the fascinating look inside the mechanisms and intellectual infrastructure of American national security and strategy making, three key insights from Marshall repeatedly rise to the surface of the conversations included in this book. First, the importance and role of asking good questions. Second, the nature of influence within the American national security establishment. And finally, the ability, or lack of ability, of security organizations to do intellectual work together or share insights, and the training or lack of training of the members of these organizations in deeply intellectual work.

Marshall repeatedly shares that his primary goal throughout his career was not to find solutions to American defense and security problems, but instead to find ways of asking the right questions. By finding and researching the right questions, his view of net assessment was that it could present the military with the real parameters of the problems that needed to be solved. He quite clearly believed that the military services themselves were the real experts at determining the tactical, operational, and strategic solutions to the challenges of the Cold War (and eventually post-Cold War world). But he seemed to believe that they often struggled to do the deep work and research needed to ask the right questions and determine what the root challenges actually were.

In this respect, Marshall was a deeply inductive thinker. His instructions to members of his staff to “go read everything” on a topic in order to get started, presupposed his intense dislike of strategic work that tried to shoehorn threats or challenges into an already existing framework or the use of a deductive model that insisted on following a theory. He described two types of defense analysts, “theory oriented” versus “reality oriented” people, and lamented that there were far too few focused on reality. In this approach, inductive instead of deductive, Marshall might be seen more as a historical thinker than the social scientist he was by training, and his ideas followed in the wake of strategists of prior generations like Corbett and Clausewitz.

When considering the nature of influence within the American national security establishment, Marshall was far more sanguine that someone of his reputation might be expected to be. Despite being held up as something like the godfather of American success in the Cold War, Marshall instead saw influence as a far more nuanced and limited thing. He did not seem to believe that very many of the reports and studies conducted by ONA or for ONA really affected the military services or overall national strategy very much. As he repeatedly points out, his audience was actually the Secretary of Defense individually in an effort to (once again) get the Secretary thinking about how to ask the right questions.

In Marshall’s opinion, new ideas often simply resulted in the services rebranding things they were already doing. In the case of both “competitive strategies” and the “revolution in military affairs,” which described the development of the reconnaissance and precision strike complex of the future, Marshall and his staff described how the services merely attached those labels to programs or new weapons that were already in development or in service. Marshall claimed that real influence only came when you changed the vocabulary of strategic discussions, and moved beyond the initial re-labelling phase to get service staffs to rethink their approaches by forcing them to consider the ideas behind the new labels. This kind of influence, interestingly, was not something Marshall believed he genuinely could control once released into the wild.

Finally, Marshall returns in his discussions to the relationships between the organizations inside the intellectual infrastructure of American national security and strategy making. The National Security Act of 1947 fundamentally reformed the American government’s security elements just as Marshall’s career was beginning. Across almost six decades he observed how new organizations, like the CIA and the National Security Council, changed over time. One of his strongest observations was how over time, convinced of their own expertise, these organizations became less collaborative and less open to outside ideas, either from government or civilian sectors. As organizations built their own internal cultures they entrenched and became less and less likely to share ideas or information. These organizations and their enclosed cultures, Marshall observed, also became less and less capable of producing the kind of inductive and deep-thinking analysts in their newer generations of employees. By the Reagan Administration, not only were the military services treating each other as bureaucratic adversaries, but so was much of the intelligence community and other elements of the intellectual infrastructure of American security and strategy.

As the U.S. Navy continues deeper into the twenty-first century, talk of a “new” Cold War is common and there has been a strong tendency to reach back on the successful methods of the “old” Cold War. The history of ONA and Mr. Marshall’s methods seem ripe for replication in our contemporary world as we face the challenge of China, the resurgent but chaotic Russia, and regional challengers in a multipolar world. There will be a temptation to ask about the “competitive strategies” necessary to overcome our adversaries, or to determine the next “offset” in a new “revolution” in military affairs that will lead to success. But, following Marshall and his interlocutors through their circling discussions of his experiences and approaches, this starts to appear exactly like the kind of “theory-oriented” thinking that he lamented from defense analysts. In order to be “reality-oriented,” perhaps we need to return to the roots of Marshall’s insights.

Today, who is making sure that the U.S. Navy is asking the right questions? Who is defining the vocabulary and the intellectual infrastructure of how we think about our contemporary challengers? And are we learning from each other, and developing the next generation of analysts who will be creative and intelligent enough to do the deep work, “read everything,” and come up with creative new ideas rather than rehashing old models? Andy Marshall believed in focusing on finding the right questions and defining their parameters. In Reflections on Net Assessment, naval and national security practitioners and analysts can still learn a great deal from Yoda in his own words, if we do the reading and remain reality-based in our search for wisdom in confronting the challenges of the 21st century.

BJ Armstrong is a historian and Principal Associate of the Forum on Integrated Naval History and Seapower Studies. He is the co-author of Developing the Naval Mind and author/editor of the forthcoming revised and expanded second edition of 21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era. Opinions expressed here are offered in his personal and academic capacity and do not reflect the policies or views of the U.S. Navy or any government organization.

Featured Image: Andy Marshall attends his retirement farewell ceremony at the Pentagon on Jan. 5, 2015. (Photo by Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz/U.S. Air Force)

Podcast

Sea Control- 404 An Updated Perspective on China with Robert Haddick

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By Ed Salo

Robert Haddick joins Sea Control to discuss his book Fire on the Water: China, America, and the future of the Pacific. The second edition of the book has recently been published by the Naval Institute Press.

Robert Haddick is a visiting senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Air Force Association. He is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer with experience in East Asia and Africa. Haddick was a contractor for U.S. Special Operations Command and performed research for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. He was a national security columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine and has delivered lectures on strategy across the U.S. government.  

Download Sea Control- 404 An Updated Perspective on China with Robert Haddick

Links

1. “Fire on the Water: China, America and the Future of the Pacific, 2nd Edition,” by Robert Haddick, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2022.
2 “Which ships will be combatants in the Taiwan Strait?” by Robert Haddick, Lawfire, October 7, 2022.
3. “Sea Control 401 – Defeat China’s Navy, Defeat China’s War Plan with Robert Haddick,” by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, January 5, 2023.
4. “Defeat China’s Navy, Defeat China’s War Plan,” by Robert Haddick, War on the Rocks, September 21, 2022.
5. Robert Haddick biography.

Ed Salo is a Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.

This episode was edited and produced by William McQuiston.

History

Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet Submarines Attack?

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By LtCol Brent Stricker

“It would be well for your government to consider that having your ships and ours, your aircraft and ours, in such proximity is inherently DANGEROUS. Wars have begun that way, Mr. Ambassador.” –Jeffrey Pelt, The Hunt for the Red October

Introduction

The lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis remain relevant today when nuclear powers struggle in crisis and do their best to avoid escalating to conflict. As a prime example, the Russia-Ukraine War has similar parallels to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States objected to Soviet missiles in Cuba seeing them as a direct threat to the United States and the Western Hemisphere. Russian President Vladimir Putin provided NATO expansion and “military development of the territories of Ukraine” as a similar existential threat to Russia justifying the invasion of Ukraine. A review of the confrontation between the navies of the Soviet Union and the United States during the crisis may inform the Western powers supporting Ukraine in its current defense against Russia.

Soviet Submarines Bound for Cuba

In addition to its missiles and bombers, the Soviet Union intended to establish a naval base in Cuba. A submarine flotilla was dispatched before the crisis began. Ryurik A. Ketov, the commander of one of these submarines, wrote of his experiences during the crisis. The Soviet Navy made a critical error in sending Foxtrot class diesel submarines to Cuba as these boats were designed for northern latitudes and were required to run on the surface or snorkel to recharge their batteries. Oddly, the Soviet leadership in Moscow seemed unaware that diesel boats, and not nuclear powered submarines which could make the entire trip submerged, were being sent to Cuba. This would lead to confrontations with the U.S. Navy who attempted to force these boats to surface.

To make this confrontation more dangerous, the submarines were each armed with one nuclear tipped torpedo. The Americans were unaware of this, and mistakenly assumed as the Soviet submarines were identified as Foxtrots that they did not have nuclear weapons. The torpedoes also required the voyage be covert, with the boats expected to stay undetected.

The torpedoes were a last-minute addition to the voyage added a week before. The torpedoes were each guarded by a designated officer who slept by it. They were not fully combat ready. The designated officer would prepare the weapon for use and was the only one carrying the keys to load the torpedo. The boat captains were provided vague instructions for the use of the nuclear torpedoes.

As Captain Ryurik Ketov recalled:

“Vice-Admiral A.I. Rassokha He said, ‘Write down when you should use these. . . . In three cases. First, if you get a hole under the water. A hole in your hull. This is the first case. Second, a hole above the water. If you have to come to the surface, and they shoot at you, and you get a hole in your hull. And the third case – when Moscow orders you to use these weapons’. These were our instructions. And then he added, ‘I suggest to you, commanders, that you use the nuclear weapons first, and then you will figure out what to do after that.’”

The crisis began while the flotilla was underway. The Soviet crews were able to monitor U.S. radio broadcasts to keep current with the emerging events. This was how they first learned of Soviet missiles in Cuba and the quarantine to be imposed on Cuba. 

As the flotilla headed south toward the quarantine line, conditions aboard the boats began to deteriorate. The internal temperature of the boats rose. The Foxtrots were designed to operate in northern latitudes and began to experience difficulty as they approached the Caribbean. Captain Ketov noted, “there was an insufficient supply of fresh water for the crew, no air conditioning in the compartments – which would otherwise have facilitated the smooth operation of the boat’s machinery – and most importantly, no one had experience in servicing equipment under such high temperatures.” This became worse as the boats tried to avoid U.S. Navy anti-submarine (ASW) patrols forcing the boats to attempt to recharge using snorkels which were unable to vent the boats with fresh air.

The Kennedy administration was anxious to avoid a misunderstanding when confronting Soviet ships, particularly submarines. Defense Secretary McNamara had the U.S. Navy developing a system to signal the submarines. These signal instructions were provided to the Soviets in a Notice to Mariners (NOTMAR). The surface ships would drop practice depth charges (PDCs) above a submarine and transmit the signal to surface. Submarines were expected to surface with a bearing to the east. The NOTMAR stated the signaling devices were not harmful. The Soviet captains never received the NOTMAR.

The flotilla was soon closing with the U.S. Navy ASW forces. The U.S. Navy was broadcasting in the clear, and at first the Soviets were suspicious. Captain Ketov wrote, “We started to listen to US radio stations, and compared their announcements with US ASW communique´s, as well as with messages from home, we came to believe that these transmissions could be taken into account to determine where and when the ASW ships and planes would be located.” The U.S. Navy was able to locate and track three of the four submarines. When located, PDCs were dropped on the submarines which the Soviets perceived as attacks.

The Soviet crews found themselves in a physically stressful and dangerously perceived environment. They could not know if a war had begun, and the constant explosions and heat were taking their toll. Captain Ketov noted, “My men began fainting from heat stroke, and the increase in humidity started to affect the operating condition of the equipment. The average air temperature inside the submarine rose to 113 degrees Fahrenheit, and up to 144–149 degrees in the engine compartment.” They each had a nuclear torpedo, but no specific instructions on when or if they could use it.

This situation nearly came to a head during the efforts to force the B-59 under Captain Savitsky with flotilla commander Captain Arkhipov aboard. The U.S.S. Beale encountered the submarine at 4:49 p.m. on 29 October 1962 and spent the next four hours signaling her with PDCs and hand grenades. Captain Savitsky was heard to say, “‘Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing summersaults here’ Political Officer Valentin Grigorievich, screamed “We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all – we will not become the shame of the fleet.’” The nuclear torpedo was not assembled—otherwise flotilla commander Captain Arkhipov might not have been able to convince Savitsky to not fire on the Beale.

The B-59 was eventually forced to surface at 8:59 p.m. due to its low battery levels. The Soviet crew was greeted by a ship’s band playing jazz. This surreal situation might have fit into a scene from Dr. Strangelove.

The B-59 was the closest the crisis came to a nuclear exchange. While the Kennedy administration had attempted to mitigate this with the NOTMAR, the confused situation aboard the submarines and the perceived threat of armed conflict at any moment made war very risky. On the Soviet side, “at least some officers in the Soviet military command thought that it would have been better if the submarines used their weapons rather than allow the US forces to force them to the surface.” The Soviet captains insisted they were never forced by U.S. Navy ASW efforts to surface; their drained batteries required it.

Conclusion

Uncertainty and confusion amongst the Soviet Captains concerning the ASW activities by the U.S. Navy could have led to a nuclear confrontation. Despite the precautions of the NOTMAR to the Soviet Union, this message was never transmitted through bureaucratic channels to submarine commanders. Vague orders on the use of nuclear tipped torpedoes and the heat and confusion might have caused a local commander to launch these weapons, dragging two nuclear powers into an escalating exchange both desperately wanted to avoid.

This potentially escalatory exchange at a pivotal moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis offers a cautionary tale for the continuing conflict in Ukraine. The availability and usability of bureaucratic channels, for example, seems an important starting point not only to ensure messages are received but that communication can even take place. And while uncertainty and confusion were potentially unavoidable in the Cuban Missile Crisis’ near-nuclear exchange, the Kennedy administration’s anxiety to avoid a misunderstanding when confronting Soviet ships might still hold implications for Western powers in their support of Ukraine in the current conflict there.

LtCol Brent Stricker, U.S. Marine Corps, serves as a military professor of international law at the U.S. Naval War College. The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy, the Naval War College, or the Department of Defense.

Featured Image: Soviet submarine B-59, forced to the surface by U.S. Naval forces in the Caribbean near Cuba. (Credit: U.S. National Archives)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.