USSR reported embarked on massive shipbuilding

The Soviet Union is mounting the largest naval and merchant shipbuilding program of the century and in a sea war would have a substantial advantage, Jane's Fighting ships said today (Aug. 14).

The warning came in a forword to the 1980-81 edition by Jane's editor, Capt. John E. Moore, a former deputy chief of British naval intelligence.

"If peacetime operations were to escalate to a war at sea . . . using submarines and aircrafts as the primary arms supported by surface and amphibious forces," Jane's said, "The balance would be heavily weighted on the side of the Soviet Navy."