Technologies for naval warfare were further maturing in the early 1980s: surface effect ships, submarine laser communications, command-and-control, maritime satellites for navigational purposes, unmanned submersibles, to name but a few. All these became crucial during the 1980s and in the decades that followed. Documents extol the United States lead in any of these technological fields at that time, especially in undersea warfare systems and nuclear attack and ballistic missile submarine designs. Claims that the Soviets had made further advances in some fields of military and naval technology may have caused concern in the West. Since about the mid-1970s, there have been changes in the nature of ‘maritime power,’ which led to an impact upon the security situation of western Europe. And this was the case in 1983. A key finding at that time was that ‘sea dependence’ would have a significant impact on the Alliance. Editorial director Vice Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch (Ret) stated in his foreword in the first edition of Naval Forces in January 1983 that the meaning of sea dependence – other than ‘seapower’ (the ability of a country to use the sea for its own purposes, whilst denying its use to an adversary) – was new and not sufficiently understood. Sea-based activities, which are mainly of economic importance but also include sea denial in the longer term, were seen as “creators” of national security and territorial integrity. So, NATO’s Northern Flank area has been a maritime region that was subject to significant maritime influences. Another contributor to Naval Forces I/1983, Gerd W. Gossler, declared in his article, entitled “NATO’s northern flank”, that it became clear during the early 1980s how military-political, geo-strategic and economic factors would influence the use of the sea for the variety of purposes – from fisheries to large-scale exploration and exploitation of offshore gas and oil fields, such as in Norwegian territorial waters. Norway, like most of the NATO member states, and in the event of increasing presence of Soviet naval forces, were dependent on open trade routes to the world’s raw materials and consumer markets, e.g., on shipping routes above all else, he said. A coherent defence at the Northern Flank, stretching from Norway via Denmark to NATO’s central region, was of particular importance for the 1980s. This is the situation today – in times of Russia’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical manoeuvring. On the other side of the European continent, NATO’s Southern Flank member states – in 1983 – were causing further problems: the new socialist government in Spain has announced to reconsider its membership in NATO; Greece’s continued membership in NATO (at least in its military integration) was highly questionable; relations with Turkey (that faced latent financial, economic and social problems) have again become strained and posed a problem for NATO. So, 1983 was furthermore characterised by the fact that the interests of the countries of the Alliance were threatened not only within the confines of the NATO boundaries – by an increasing Soviet naval presence. In the end, the presence of Soviet maritime forces close to NATO’s boundaries was observed as a situation that would make it difficult to maintain the decade-long “Atlantic Link” or “Atlantic Sea Bridge,” as outlined in an essay by Admiral (Ret) Sir James Eberle. A look at the Soviet Navy’s orbat (in 1983) finds that the Northern Fleet and the Baltic Fleet had gained the upper hand over the West in the fields of shipborne missiles, missile-equipped submarines, destroyers and attack craft in particular. At that time, the US Navy retained its superiority only in nuclear ballistic missile submarines.
