Backfire aircraft make sea-lane interdiction an air as well as submarine threat

Duffy lists homeland defence, protection of Soviet ballistic-missile submarines, and interdiction of NATO shipping among the Navy's competing missions. Land-based naval aviation may have posed the greater danger to Atlantic sea lanes, particularly missile-armed Backfire aircraft whose refuelled range extended well south of the Azores. He cites a period estimate that they could sink 20 to 40 ships per day, compared with two to four per day by U-boats in the Second World War. Soviet exercises reached into the Norwegian Sea and central Atlantic and appeared to rehearse attacks on Western reinforcements and convoys. Despite unanswered questions about the newly launched Alfa submarines, NATO retained a qualitative advantage in detecting, tracking, localizing, and attacking submarines while it held the technological lead. The much larger Warsaw Pact submarine force could offset that advantage, so the balance turned on missions, numbers, aircraft reach, and ASW quality.