GO UNDER THE ANTIACCESS WALL

摘要

In "Breaking the Antiaccess Wall" (Proceedings May 2015), Captain Sam Tangredi, U.S. Navy (Retired), correctly emphasizes the Navy requirement to deliver large numbers of cruise missiles to hostile coastal regions to provide continuous, long-range precision fires on enemy communications nodes and critical weapon systems. This, he says, would break the anti-access area-denial (A2/AD) wall. But his call for the renewal of the arsenal ship program of the late 1990s misses the mark. Large cruise-missile-armed surface combatants are not the answer to the Navy's growing antiaccess and area-denial problem. Instead, the Navy should replace the four Ohio-class conversion guided-missile submarines (SSGNs) with a new class of smaller SSGNs capable of high reaction speeds and armed with a smaller, but still potent, battery of cruise missiles.