From the Archives (February 22, 1972): The race for submarine superiority

Washington, Feb. 21: A constant hide and seek game is going on between the navies of the United States and the Soviet Union to watch each other’s movements. The Americans claim that so far no Soviet submarine has managed to stay in the ocean depths, hidden from U.S. detectors. Anti-submarine warfare (A.S.W.) has become one of the basic calculations in the U.S. concept of strategic deterrent and gets a very big share of the new defence budget. Some $1,700 millions (Rs. 1,240 crores) will be spent on new hunter aircraft and attack submarines. A.S.W. is an area where the U.S. has a pronounced superiority over the Soviets, with many breakthroughs in acoustic research — still on the strictly secret lists. American researchers have developed an equipment which lowered from helicopters into the sea, can register normal harbour sounds 100 nautical miles away. They have also produced microphones which can be laid like a chain across the ocean-bed making a barrier through which no submarine can pass without being heard. The problem for the Russians is that they have not been able to build a really giant submarine. Here too the Americans are more advanced. The latest atom-powered “Yankee” class U.S. submarine, is so quiet that it makes the “Polaris” submarine, which it closely resembles, sound like a noisy tractor beside a Rolls-Royce car. The U.S. submarine fleet at present comprises 41 rocket hunter-attack submarines. These are the backbone of the U.S. “deterrent.”