'Offshore Missile Defense: Where are the Submarines?'
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (07/26/07)
Expertise in Congress occasionally manifests itself from an unlikely source. One of the unduly lesser heralded, but remarkably brilliant and versatile, Members of Congress is Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD). Who else in Congress is an experienced working farmer, a college and university lecturer on diverse subjects, a Ph.D. in human physiology - and a self-made man, working his way out of relative poverty!
Representative Bartlett also has become an authority on national defense. By sheer, if irrelevant, coincidence, his two predecessors from the 6th Maryland Congressional District also developed some military expertise. (The 6th comprises bits of Baltimore and Montgomery Counties and all of more rural and small-town Western Maryland; hence, it amalgamates a touch of suburban Baltimore and Washington.)
If coincidences are interesting, consider the following. Bartlett’s immediate predecessor was Beverly Butcher Byron (served 14 years, 1979 - 1993), who, from lovely wife and mother, in her widowhood was elected to succeed her husband, Goodloe Edgar Byron (1971 - 1978), who had died only in his forties. (Goodloe and I were in law school together, graduated from The Infantry Officers School and The Army Judge Advocate General’s School together.) Goodloe and Beverly were conservative Democrats. Yet another coincidence: Goodloe’s father (1939 - 1941) and widowed mother (1939 - 1941) held the seat. J. Glenn Beall (1943 - 1953) and his son, J. Glenn Beall, Jr. (1969 - 1971), held the seat, each later elected United States Senator.
So much for familial and other coincidence.
Now Ranking Minority Member of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, Representative Bartlett has developed an exceptional military and defense-needs knowledge. Not surprisingly, he is among the (unfortunately, too few) Members of Congress who advocate greater submarine construction.
The House of Representatives, if belatedly, has moved in the submarine-construction direction, the so-called “Virginia-Class” submarine. However, apparently only about one Virginia-Class submarine is to be launched each year - down from four or more of the then ultramodern “Los Angeles-Class” submarines during the 1980s. To amateurs the exact statistics are immaterial. The point is that we are becoming - probably already have become - deficient in submarine capability.
China, perhaps not unexpectedly, is reported to be building submarines faster than we are. However, one need not hypothesize about likely future military problems with China. Rather, one can think about dire possibilities closer to home. Whether the source or a source would be China is irrelevant.
At best the situation is unclear, and not especially reassuring, as to the state of our defense against offshore missiles. It doesn’t take much imagination, and no knowledge of ballistics, to realize that a powerful, modern submarine, undetected offshore, could launch devastating missiles against civilian targets along our Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific Coasts - cities, towns, roads, bridges, so forth.
If we are to defend ourselves against offshore missiles, nuclear and otherwise, launched by offshore submarines, we obviously need our own submarines to pinpoint and disable or destroy those terrorist submarines lurking in the sea. We also need submarines to assist the United States Coast Guard in monitoring of commercial shipping and private vessels which may launch offshore missiles. The Coast Guard also needs substantially more Congressional appropriations but that is a subject beyond that of this commentary.
However viewed, we need more thinkers and proponents like the versatile Member from Maryland.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation
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