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The Teardrop Navy. With nuclear power and the missile, the Navy of tomorrow dramatically begins to take shape. Its atomic-fueled task forces will be able to operate for months, perhaps years, without refueling; about 70% of its cumbersome, vulnerable train of oilers can thus be eliminated. Its carriers will still need huge aviation stores, which can be shuttled between stockpile and task force by high-speed nuclear supply ships (the Navy is nearing a breakthrough in high-energy chemical fuels that may give twice the range of conventional aviation fuels). Ships will be teardropped: stacks, made obsolete by nuclear engines, will be gone; forecastles will be rounded off; missile turrets may be mounted on elevators, kept below deck while cruising and run topside only for firing.
For years to come (although some of Burke's visionaries see a time when the entire nuclear, missile-armed Navy will move underwater) the admirals plan that the heart of the task force will remain the attack carrier with its steam catapults, mirror landing system, angled flight deck, and mobile strike power. Forrestal and Saratoga will be joined by Ranger, Independence and a still-nameless carrier, all now under construction.
Since it will not have to worry about fuel conservation, the nuclear task force will be able to sustain a speed of better than 30 knots over long ranges. With one-tenth as many ships as World War II's massed armadas, it will have infinitely more firepower. Forged into a unit by its communications system and far-ranging missilry, it could disperse itself over an ocean area the size of Indiana, so that even if its shield were pierced, not more than one of its ships could be knocked out by any one existing weapon. As the admirals see it, that task force could appear on a given afternoon off any enemy coast, rain atomic—or thermonuclear—destruction, disperse rapidly, pop up the next afternoon to strike 600 miles away. With its extreme mobility on its ocean-wide base, the Navy could, at last, fight any kind of war.
Because of its new-found sense of direction, because it is strong and growing stronger, the Navy no longer needs to indulge in defensive sniping at the Air Force and Army. In its cockier moments it can still rile the Air Force, as Navy Secretary Thomas did when he told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee: "With its newest planes, now being introduced into the fleet, there will be few important targets in the world that the Navy, if called upon, could not reach with atomic weapons." Replied Air Chief General Nathan Twining last week: "We must be realistic about such factors as the probable [offshore] location of the carriers, as well as the amount of striking power they could contribute, which is small." But Nate Twining generally has gone down the line for the Navy's budget requests. Of the Army, Burke is the first to admit: "The final payoff is still to the man on the ground. He's going to have to occupy the territory."