Understanding naval warfare [Second edition.] 9781351854252, 1351854259

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of illustrations
Preface
List of abbreviations
Introduction
PART I Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power
1 The nature of the maritime operating environment
2 Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1
3 Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2
4 Naval diplomacy
5 Putting theory into practice
PART II Contemporary practice
6 Combat operations at sea: sea control and sea denial
7 Combat operations at sea: exploiting sea control
8 Combat operations from the sea
9 Maritime security and the maintenance of good order at sea
10 Contemporary naval policy and future practice
Conclusion
Appendix One: Maritime warfare areas
Appendix Two: Abbreviations for types of ship and submarine
Appendix Three: A sample of world navies in 2017
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

“Understanding Naval Warfare lives up to the promise of its title and delivers a beautifully written explanation of concepts and relevant real-world examples.” Rear Admiral Mike McDevitt, USN (retd,), Senior Fellow, CNA Center for Naval Analyses, USA “This is a clear and well-written account of naval warfare. ... It should work well as a teaching tool as well as a guide to discussion in the scholarly community. ... An impressive book.” Jeremy Black, The Mariner’s Mirror This new and updated edition of Understanding Naval Warfare offers the reader an accessible introduction to the study of modern naval warfare, providing a thorough grounding in the vocabulary, concepts, issues, and debates, set within the context of relevant history. Navies operate in an environment that most people do not understand and that many avoid. They are equipped with a bewildering range of ships, craft and other vessels and types of equipment, the purpose of which is often unclear. Writings on naval warfare are usually replete with references to esoteric concepts explained in specialist language than can serve as a barrier to understanding. The objective of this book, therefore, is to cut through the obscure and the arcane to offer a clear, coherent and accessible guide to the key features of naval warfare which will equip the reader with the knowledge and understanding necessary for a sophisticated engagement with the subject. This second edition is divided into two key parts. The first focuses on concepts of naval warfare and introduces readers to the ideas associated with the theory and practice of naval operations. It also includes a new chapter in which the history of the last century of naval warfare is explored in order to illustrate the key concepts. The second part focuses on the conduct of war at sea and on peacetime roles for contemporary navies. This latter section concludes with a chapter that looks ahead to the likely future of naval warfare.

Ian Speller is Senior Lecturer in Military History and Director of the Centre for Military History and Strategic Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is the author/editor of Understanding Modern Warfare (2016), Small Navies (2016), and Amphibious Warfare: Strategy and Tactics from Gallipoli to Iraq (2014, co-authored with Christopher Tuck). NAVAL HISTORY / SEAPOWER / STRATEGIC STUDIES ISBN 978-0-415-78633-1 www.routledge.com

9 780415 786331

Cover image: The guided missile cruiser USS Zumwalt (DDG1000) undergoing acceptance trials in the Atlantic, April 2016. (US Navy image, 160421-N-YE579-005)

Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats

SECOND EDITION

Ian Speller

This textbook will be essential reading for students of naval warfare, sea power and maritime security, and is highly recommended for those studying military history, strategic studies and security studies in general.

UNDERSTANDING NAVAL WARFARE

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION: “Packed with useful definitions, explanations, examples, theoretical understanding and technical knowledge, the book is well worth the money for anyone wishing to embark on the study of naval power and its uses.” Greg Kennedy, Kings College London and UK Defence Academy

SECOND EDITION

UNDERSTANDING

NAVAL WARFARE Ian Speller

Praise for the first edition: ‘In order to understand the concept of naval warfare there are two things that are required: to be able to define what navies do for a state, and their utility for operations during total war, limited war and peace. Understanding Naval Warfare does both things very well and is a wonderfully informative and readable introduction into the complex world of naval warfare. Packed with useful definitions, explanations, examples, theoretical understanding and technical knowledge, the book is well worth the money for anyone wishing to embark on the study of naval power and its uses.’ Greg Kennedy, Kings College London and UK Defence Academy

‘Ian Speller has written what is likely to become a classic in the field. Understanding Naval Warfare lives up to the promise of its title and delivers a beautifully written explanation of concepts and relevant real-world examples. This is a comprehensive examination of the conduct of naval warfare . . . the work will help naval officers from Admiral to Ensign sharpen their ideas and expand the knowledge of their profession. By making obscure concepts accessible it will also be a boon to civilian policy makers and students of naval warfare. Finally, this book has the virtue of being a terrific read.’ Rear Admiral Mike McDevitt, USN (retd), Senior Fellow, CNA Center for Naval Analyses, USA

‘This is a clear and well-written account of naval warfare. . . . It should work well as a teaching tool as well as a guide to discussion in the scholarly community. . . . An impressive book.’ Jeremy Black, The Mariner’s Mirror

Understanding Naval Warfare

This new and updated edition of Understanding Naval Warfare offers the reader an accessible introduction to the study of modern naval warfare, providing a thorough grounding in the vocabulary, concepts, issues, and debates, set within the context of relevant history. Navies operate in an environment that most people do not understand and that many avoid. They are equipped with a bewildering range of ships, craft and other vessels and types of equipment, the purpose of which is often unclear. Writings on naval warfare are usually replete with references to esoteric concepts explained in specialist language that can serve as a barrier to understanding. The objective of this book, therefore, is to cut through the obscure and the arcane to offer a clear, coherent and accessible guide to the key features of naval warfare which will equip the reader with the knowledge and understanding necessary for a sophisticated engagement with the subject. This second edition is divided into two key parts. The first focuses on concepts of naval warfare and introduces readers to the ideas associated with the theory and practice of naval operations. It also includes a new chapter in which the history of the last century of naval warfare is explored in order to illustrate the key concepts. The second part focuses on the conduct of war at sea and on peacetime roles for contemporary navies. This latter section concludes with a chapter that looks ahead to the likely future of naval warfare. This textbook will be essential reading for students of naval warfare, sea power and maritime security and is highly recommended for those studying military history, strategic studies and security studies in general. Ian Speller is Senior Lecturer in Military History and Director of the Centre for Military History and Strategic Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is the author/editor of Understanding Modern Warfare (2016), Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (2014), and Amphibious Warfare: Strategy and Tactics from Gallipoli to Iraq (2014 co-authored with Christopher Tuck).

Understanding Naval Warfare Second edition

Ian Speller

Second edition published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Ian Speller The right of Ian Speller to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2014 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Speller, Ian, 1969– author. Title: Understanding naval warfare / Ian Speller. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; N.Y., NY : Routledge, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018014367| ISBN 9780415786300 (hardback) | ISBN 9780415786331 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315227818 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Naval art and science. | Sea control. | Naval strategy. Classification: LCC V103 .S73 2019 | DDC 359—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014367 ISBN: 978-0-415-78630-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-78633-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-22781-8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK

Contents

List of illustrations Preface List of abbreviations Introduction

ix xi xiii 1

PART I

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

13

1 The nature of the maritime operating environment

15

2 Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1

36

3 Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2

56

4 Naval diplomacy

75

5 Putting theory into practice

93

PART II

Contemporary practice

113

6 Combat operations at sea: sea control and sea denial

115

7 Combat operations at sea: exploiting sea control

134

8 Combat operations from the sea

149

9 Maritime security and the maintenance of good order at sea

169

10 Contemporary naval policy and future practice Conclusion

190 217

viii Contents Appendix One: Maritime warfare areas Appendix Two: Abbreviations for types of ship and submarine Appendix Three: A sample of world navies in 2017

221 223 225

Select bibliography Index

226 230

Illustrations

Figures I.1 1.1 6.1 C.1

The functions of navies Sea areas under UNCLOS Sea control and sea denial The span of maritime tasks

9 23 118 218

A sample of world navies in 2017

225

Logic and grammar US Coast Guard Defining the littoral region The advantage of seaborne transport Key terms within UN Convention on the Law of the Sea Attributes of maritime power/sea power/naval forces The levels of war Mahan, history and general principles The Battle of the Saintes, 1782 Definitions of command of the sea The US Civil War 1861–65 Sea denial in practice: the Dardanelles Campaign (1915) Battle of Koh Change, 17 February 1941 Edward Luttwak on the political uses of sea power US naval diplomacy and the Indo-Pakistan War, 1971 Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC) Op. Pontus. The Irish Naval Service in the Mediterranean, 2015–17 The US Civil War, 1861–65 Mahan and Corbett on the Russo-Japanese War The Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916 Norway 1940 The campaign in the central Pacific, 1942–45 Modern definitions of sea control

7 8 15 19 22 29 37 39 43 46 59 64 67 80 80 84 85 94 100 102 104 107 116

Table A.3

Boxes I.1 I.2 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1

x

List of illustrations

6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

Anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) Mine warfare and the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas Conflict: ‘Expendable Alacrity’ The kill chain approach Ships taken up from trade, 1982 Falklands/Malvinas Conflict Criteria for the conduct of a legitimate blockade The ‘quarantine’ of Cuba, 1962 The Gaza flotilla, 2010 The tanker war, 1980–88 Battles of Taranto and Pearl Harbor The US Navy explains the value of its carrier strike groups The raid on Alexandria, 1941 Overseas bases Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan, 2001) Navies and peace operations Coast Guard roles, missions and areas of responsibility Law enforcement at sea The attack on USS Cole and MV Limburg Hybrid warfare Surface attacks in the Red Sea, 2016–17 Unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles Alternative perspectives on the expansion of the PLAN

119 119 128 136 137 140 141 143 153 154 156 162 163 171 174 175 177 191 193 197 209

Preface to the second edition

The first edition of this book, published in 2014, was intended to provide a short, accessible and easy-to-read guide to the theory and practice of naval warfare and, more broadly, of maritime strategy. The book referred to ideas and events from across the centuries but the major emphasis was on recent practice and, inevitably, this means that it has dated a little since publication. Within a year or two of the first edition of the book being published, the United States revised their Maritime Strategy, Russia annexed Crimea, the EU published its first ever Maritime Security Strategy, the Indian Navy commissioned its first nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, tensions in East and Southeast Asian waters continued to rise, piracy off the coast of Somalia declined, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea got worse, and so on and so forth. Many of the concepts and ideas that were discussed are enduring and have not changed much (if at all). Indeed, in many respects the march of events has reaffirmed them. On the other hand, some things have changed, and it is appropriate therefore that the book should be updated to reflect this. This new edition also includes an entirely new chapter, exploring historical examples of the concepts and theories that are introduced. Given the above, when Routledge suggested that we might produce a second edition of Understanding Naval Warfare, it seemed like a good idea. Maritime strategy and security have not become any less important in the last few years, and navies remain important tools of national and international policy; it is best that we understand how they are used. This new edition provides the opportunity to take account of recent developments and to question whether any of these require us to adjust the way that we think about maritime strategy and naval warfare. It also provides an opportunity to pay notice to the advice of reviewers and, most important of all, the comments of readers. In light of positive feedback on the first edition, this book retains the same overall structure, with Part I of the book addressing concepts and theory and Part II examining contemporary practice. Some readers expressed a desire for more historical examples to provide illustration for the ideas introduced in Part I, and in response, this edition includes an entirely new chapter, Chapter 5, Putting theory into practice. This chapter uses the history of naval warfare from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries to clarify and illustrate the classic principles of maritime strategy. It does not provide a comprehensive history of that period, but instead uses selected examples to help ‘ram home the principles’. The other chapters have all been revised and updated in order to reflect recent events, current doctrine and new thinking. The preface to the first edition noted that the book was designed to introduce the reader to a wide range of views, opinions and ideas. That remains the case here.

xii Preface to the second edition The book owes a debt to a variety of sailors, academics and other commentators who have written and spoken on the subject and whose ideas are discussed in the pages that follow; it draws heavily on their work. References have been provided when they have been quoted or where ideas have been derived directly from their work. I owe even greater debt to a range of eminent historians and strategists with whom I have had the pleasure to have worked with over the years, and to my students (both civilian and military) who provide a constant source of ideas, questions and challenges. There is not the space here to mention every individual to whom I owe gratitude but particular mention must be made of David Murphy, Deborah Sanders and Christopher Tuck, each of whom has provided support and friendship when it was sorely needed. Mention is also due to Andrew Lambert and Geoffrey Till from whom I first learned the business of naval history and maritime strategy, and also to Eric Grove, whose book Vanguard to Trident first inspired me to study naval history. Thanks are due, once again, to Andrew Humphrys and to all the staff at Routledge for their help and assistance during the publishing process, and for the courteous and professional manner that has characterised all of their dealings with me. Particular thanks are due to my family and to my wonderful wife Colette who, after more than twenty years together, has still not read any of my work. I would be lost without her. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Joan and Hugh Speller. They were the ones who fostered my childhood interest in history and tolerated my obsession with military matters. They inspired me to learn, supported me through college and have encouraged me ever since. This book is dedicated to them.

Abbreviations

A2/AD AAW AEW AFM APS ARG ASCM ASEAN ASM ASW BMD C4ISR CARAT CIWS CMS CS21 CS21R CSG CSI ECM EEZ EM EMP ESG EU FSV GDP GPS HA/DR ICBM IMB IMERC IMO IRBM ISPS Code

Anti-Access/Area Denial Anti-Air Warfare Airborne Early Warning Armed Forces Malta Africa Partnership Station Amphibious Ready Group Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Association of South East Asian Nations Air-to-Surface Missile Anti-Submarine Warfare Ballistic Missile Defence Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Information, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (exercises) Close-in Weapons System China Maritime Surveillance US Maritime Strategy (2007) US Maritime Strategy – Revised 2nd edition (2015) Carrier Strike Group Container Security Initiative Electronic Countermeasures Exclusive Economic Zone Electromagnetic Electromagnetic Pulse Expeditionary Strike Group European Union Fully Submersible Vessel Gross Domestic Produce Global Positioning System Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief Intercontinental Ballistic Missile International Maritime Bureau Irish Maritime and Energy Resource Cluster International Maritime Organization Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile International Ship and Port Facility Security Code

xiv

Abbreviations

ISR ISTAR IT JAM-GC JCG JMSDF JOAC JSTARS LOCE MARPOL MEU MCM MDA MIOPS MPS MSC MSO NATO NCW NEO NGO NGS NM OMFTS OPV OTH PLAN PSO RAN RECAAP ROE RO-RO RPG RSN SAM SAR SAS SEAD SEAL SLOCs SOLAS SOSUS SPSS SSM STOM STOVL STUFT

Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting and Reconnaissance Information Technology Joint Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons Japan Coast Guard Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Joint Operational Access Concept Joint Surveillance Target Acquisition Radar System Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution by Ships Marine Expeditionary Unit Mine Countermeasures Maritime Domain Awareness Maritime Interdiction Operations Maritime Prepositioning Ship Military Sealift Command Maritime Security Operations North Atlantic Treaty Organization Network-Centric Warfare Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation Non-Governmental Organization Naval Gunfire Support Nautical Mile Operational Maneuver from the Sea Offshore Patrol Vessel Over-the-Horizon (Chinese) People’s Liberation Army Navy Peace Support Operation Royal Australian Navy Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia Rules of Engagement Roll-On, Roll-Off ferry Rocket Propelled Grenade Royal Singapore Navy Surface-to-Air Missile Search and Rescue Special Air Service (UK Special Forces) Suppression of Enemy Air Defences Sea-Air-Land Teams (US Navy Special Forces) Sea Lines of Communication Safety of Life at Sea Convention Sound Surveillance System Self-Propelled Semi-Submersible Surface-to-Surface Missile Ship-to-Objective Maneuver Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (aircraft) Ship Taken Up From Trade

Abbreviations xv SUA UAV UNCLOS UNIFIL USCG USMC USN USV UUV VTOL

Suppression of Unlawful Acts at Sea Convention Unmanned Aerial Vehicle United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon United States Coast Guard United States Marine Corps United States Navy Unmanned Surface Vehicle Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Vertical Take-Off and Landing (aircraft)

Introduction

Whosoever can hold the sea has command of everything. (Themistocles, 524–460 BC)

The first edition of this book argued that what happens at sea matters, has always mattered and would likely matter more in future. Freedom to use the seas, it was contended, was vital for the nourishment and economic well-being of many and was central to the maintenance of the globalised world economy. Navies and other actors within the maritime environment were employed to protect the use of the sea and also to challenge it. They had also been used actively to promote the interests of state and non-state actors, and many of the ways in which they did this were explored in that book. This new edition advances much the same argument. Nothing has happened in the intervening time to suggest that navies have become less important. This edition revises and updates the first, examining new threats and challenges, exploring the development of new strategies, doctrine and technologies that impact on naval operations. It also explores the practical application of naval power in recent years. It seeks to explain the traditional concepts of naval warfare and maritime strategy and to assess the extent to which these remain relevant in a security environment that is expected to be characterised by ‘complexity, instability, uncertainty and pervasive information’, where distinctions between war and peace have become blurred and where navies will face state and non-state adversaries.1 This book aims to provide an examination of and an introduction to the complex business of naval warfare. It does not provide a history of war at sea but rather gives the reader the intellectual tools required to fully understand that history and also to make sense of current plans, capabilities and operations. It provides a thematic examination of the conduct of naval warfare in the past and in the present, with an emphasis on the latter. The focus is on an examination of the concepts, issues and debates associated with military activity at and from the sea. For reasons that are obvious, the book will focus primarily on navies, but it will also reflect the joint (i.e. interservice) nature of most maritime operations and activities. The book is intended to act as an introductory guide, a first port of call for students, military professionals and the general reader seeking to understand naval warfare. This can often represent quite a challenge as the sea is remote from the experience of most people. Navies operate in an environment that most people do not understand and that many avoid. They are equipped with a bewildering range of ships, craft, other vessels and types of equipment whose purpose is often unclear and that have peculiar names. Writings on naval warfare are usually replete with references to obscure concepts

2

Introduction

explained in arcane language that can serve as an effective barrier to understanding. It is the objective of this book to cut through the obscure and the arcane to offer a clear, coherent and accessible guide to the key features of naval warfare that will equip the reader with the knowledge and understanding necessary for a sophisticated engagement with the subject. This book focuses on the role and activity of navies and on the conduct of naval warfare. It is divided into two parts: the first comprises Chapters 1 to 5 and focuses on the concepts of naval warfare, while the second comprises Chapters 6 to 10 and addresses contemporary practice. Thus, Part I introduces the key concepts and ideas associated with the theory and practice of naval warfare. It builds on the notion that maritime power is a form of power that derives from the attributes of the sea and that this gives particular characteristics to naval forces and particular features to the conduct of naval operations. Chapter 1 examines the unique nature of the maritime environment and explains the impact that this has on naval operations. Chapter 2 examines traditional concepts of maritime strategy and argues that there is a dominant ‘Anglo-American’ tradition that has had an important impact on both thought and policy through to the present day. Chapter 3 looks at some alternative interpretations that stand outside this tradition and relates ideas about maritime strategy to an analysis of the conduct of war at sea in the First and Second World Wars. Chapter 4 explores ideas about the use of navies for diplomatic purposes in peacetime and situations short of major war. Chapter 5 is different insofar as it seeks to explore and explain these concepts through reference to historical events. It provides an exploration of the conduct of operations in a number of conflicts, from the late nineteenth century through to the Second World War, in order to illustrate theory through reference to actual events. It also introduces the reader to some of the more interesting events from this period. Part II of the book builds on the conceptual foundation of Part I and examines naval roles and activities in the contemporary world. It seeks to assess to what extent and in what ways the established concepts and ideas still hold true. The aim is to identify what has changed and what has not, and to demonstrate how the concepts work – or don’t work – in the real world. The focus here is on an examination of the conduct of naval warfare. Thus, Chapter 6 examines combat operations at sea and particularly focuses on the different ways in which navies have sought to establish or contest control of the sea. Chapter 7 also examines operations at sea but addresses the exploitation of sea control through the use of sea lift, blockades/embargoes and also the defence of civilian shipping. Chapter 8 analyses the ways in which navies have sought to exploit sea control in operations from the sea, including amphibious operations, maritime strike and expeditionary operations. Chapter 9 examines the constabulary roles of navies and the conduct of maritime security operations, an issue of growing importance for many states. Chapter 10 addresses alternative visions of naval warfare in the future and assesses the extent to which military, economic, political and societal developments will either constrain or enhance the ability of navies to meet policy objectives in the future.

History and strategy The thematic approach adopted in this book implies an engagement with concepts and theories underpinned by an understanding of naval and wider maritime history.

Introduction 3 As has been noted already, it is not intended, nor would it be possible, to provide a detailed and comprehensive historical analysis within the confines of this one volume. Instead historical examples and case studies are used in order to illustrate and explain the issues under consideration. Most of the concepts examined were developed from, or justified by, reference to relevant naval history and the importance of history to the development of maritime strategy must be emphasised. As Colin Gray has argued, history is important as it provides the only evidence that we have of strategic behaviour.2 However, it is not the history itself that is the primary concern of this book but rather the ideas and concepts that have been and continue to be developed from study of the past. It is, of course, important to recognise that history has its limitations. History does not repeat itself, even if historians repeat one another. Each individual event is the result of innumerable different factors that can never be replicated. Similar things may happen for similar reasons but the past does not provide a reliable or uncontested guide to the future. To make matters more complex, different commentators looking at the same event are liable to draw different conclusions. History, therefore, does not provide ready-made lessons but rather offers a bank of information that must be discovered and interpreted. Interpretations must accommodate the knowledge that some things change, often quite radically, and that ideas derived from an examination of previous practice and experience may no longer be relevant. It is important to be able to recognise the things that change and those that do not, or at least, that do not change often. Most of the key writers and thinkers on naval warfare, both past and present, have believed in the existence of enduring characteristics or principles (i.e., things that do not change often). The most famous of these an American, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914), sought to derive such principles primarily from an examination of the British experience during the age of sail. He was undaunted by the obvious technological and tactical differences between warships in the age of sail and the steam driven armoured battleships of his own time, noting that, while the ‘conditions’ of naval warfare changed from time to time with the progress of technology, there were certain teachings that remained constant, that had universal application and thus could be elevated to the category of ‘general principles’.3 From the other side of the Atlantic, Julian Corbett (1854–1922) adopted a similar but more professional historical approach. Like Mahan he also focused on identifying principles of enduring value, and this is reflected in the title of his 1911 publication, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. For Corbett these principles were useful mainly as a way of focusing the mind on things that needed thinking about, of creating a common conceptual language that would foster understanding and debate, and as an intellectual tool designed not to replace judgement and experience but to promote them. He was very aware of the danger of simply memorising the principles without thinking about them, warning that that ‘nothing is so dangerous in the study of war as to permit maxims to become the substitute for judgement’.4 To understand naval warfare, therefore, one must engage with concepts and ideas in a sophisticated manner. That we should do this matters because to paraphrase Sun Tzu, the conduct of (naval) war is of such importance, quite literally the province of life and death, it is vital that it should be studied carefully.5 Only by studying the phenomenon will we be in a position to make appropriate decisions about when and how to wage war or to use military force in a range of lesser circumstances. For civilians, most of whom will never be called upon to make such decisions, it is still

4

Introduction

important to understand such issues as only then will they be equipped to make intelligent judgements about the ways in which their governments seek to use military force. In a democracy it is vital that as many people as possible are able to hold decision makers to account in this way. The requirement for naval personnel to understand both naval history and theory should, one would think, be too obvious to need justification given the correlation that exists between ignorance and incompetence. Unfortunately, military personnel of all types have sometimes been reluctant to admit the need for academic study designed to promote informed and critical thinking, often preferring instead to fall back on easily learned but essentially vacuous catchphrases and aphorisms. This has often been encouraged, or at least tolerated, by the process of military education in which bullet pointed lists on endless power-point slides can serve as an alternative to creative analysis. Anyone who has taught at a cadet school or staff college is likely to recognise Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton’s lament on seeing a particularly hackneyed phrase, ‘. . . my heart sinks because another ignorant officer has been allowed to perpetuate the old aimless catchwords’.6 In the past, some navies, and particularly the US Navy and British Royal Navy, were notorious for preferring experience and common sense to academic education.7 Certainty was valued over the equivocation associated with academic debate. Typically, naval thinkers, including Captain Stephen Luce (the founding father of the US Naval War College) and Captain Alfred Mahan, were criticised for wanting officers to spend time at a desk rather than at sea. Sir Julian Corbett, one of the greatest thinkers on maritime strategy, complained of the difficulty that he had, when lecturing at the Naval Colleges at Portsmouth and Greenwich, of ‘presenting theory to the unused organs [i.e. brains] of naval officers’. Geoffrey Till has characterised the ‘school of experience’ approach of the Royal Navy in the early twentieth century as follows: The proper place for naval officers, they said, was at sea, for the navy needed seamen not bookworms. This was the place to learn about strategy and tactics, after the due number of years on the bridge, a mystical appreciation of what sea warfare was about could be expected to descend on the head of the efficient naval officer, rather in the manner of the Holy Ghost.8 The Anglo-American tradition of anti-intellectualism was not shared by all and it is fair to say that this approach is no longer typical in either navy. However, running alongside this tradition is another that has proven more enduring. This can be characterised as a ‘material’ tradition that focuses primarily on current equipment and technology and, as these change over time, tends to deny the existence of enduring principles. In reality, advances in technology or material may change some things but have never yet changed everything, and they rarely transform or revolutionise to the extent that is often claimed. Once again, the challenge is to be able to identify what has changed, and also what has not. It is important to remember that, as Jeremy Black has argued convincingly, technology is not an independent variable and its development and use depends on a variety of factors that are not technological in origin.9 An understanding of technology and of the capabilities that it can foster is important, but is useful only if balanced by an appreciation of other factors. While not ignoring technology this book focuses primarily on those ‘other factors’.

Introduction 5

Sea power and maritime power Before embarking on an examination of naval warfare, it is important to clear up some potential sources of confusion over the vocabulary that will be used. While some terms are relatively uncontested others are subject to different usage and alternative interpretations that can mislead. It is symptomatic of this problem that among the classic works, Alfred Mahan’s most famous book was entitled The Influence of Sea Power upon history, 1660–1783, his contemporary Philip Colomb chose for his title Naval Warfare and Julian Corbett wrote of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. The pattern has been repeated today; note the focus of this book on Understanding Naval Warfare, Geoffrey Till’s focus on Seapower in the Twenty-First Century and Andrew Tan’s work on The Politics of Maritime Power.10 Despite the different terminology, and notwithstanding nuances in focus that are sometimes betrayed by the choice of words, all of these books focus on essentially the same thing, the ability to exert power at and from the sea in pursuit of national (and multi-national) policy goals. Reflecting on the problem of defining ‘sea power’ Eric Grove noted the following: Sea power means different things to different people. It can be an almost mystical concept, a magic formula to be muttered in awe struck tones to scare away evil spirits such as defence ministers with non-naval priorities or air force officers with alternate means on offer of providing a state’s military power on or across the oceans.11 As Till emphasises, the key difficulty can be the word ‘power’.12 Power is a tricky concept and rivers of ink have flowed in attempts to define it properly. Power can be understood in different ways. It has inputs (things that make you powerful) and outputs (things that you do with that power). It can be an attribute (something that you have), a right that can be exercised or a structure defining the relationship of one power in the context of all others. Most importantly, power is a relationship. The amount of power that any individual or organisation has is relative to the particular situation. The same force used in different circumstances will generate different amounts of power and it is, of course, entirely possible to be simultaneously powerful in one area and weak in another. The recognition that power is relative is important as it reminds us that all states that use the sea exert some form of maritime power, no matter how small. As Admiral Richard Hill noted in his study of maritime strategy for medium sized powers, ‘there appears to be no instance of a state which possesses a sea coast ignoring the fact. However minimally, some of its people will apply the resources of the sea to their environment. Thus, if power is the ability to influence events, all states with a sea coast have some maritime power.’13 Maritime power is not the exclusive province of the powerful. Sea power

Despite employing the phrase, Mahan did not define ‘sea power’ clearly. He saw it as an inter-locking system of forms of sea use that had both civil and military applications, and argued that it made a unique contribution to the wealth and power of a nation. As Till notes, the advantage of this term is that it reminds us that ‘it is a

6

Introduction

form of power that derives from the attributes of the sea itself.’14 ‘Sea power’ is often used interchangeably with ‘maritime power’ and it is the latter phrase that will be adopted in this book, except when directly quoting other authors. Maritime power is more commonly employed in current military doctrine and its use emphasises the connection to the broader civil maritime sector. Maritime power

Maritime power is an inherently broad concept, embracing all uses of the sea, both civil and military. Andrew Lambert has described it as ‘the total national engagement with the sea, and the capacity to operate there.’15 In its widest sense it can be defined as military, political and economic power or influence exerted through an ability to use the sea. The maritime power of a state reflects sea-based military capabilities, such as ships and submarines, and also a range of military land-based assets and spacebased systems that may or may not be operated by the navy. It also includes civilian capabilities such as port infrastructure, merchant shipping or a capacity for marine insurance, without which Britain would have been defeated at sea in two world wars. Naval power

Following on from the above, it is clear that naval power is a sub-set of maritime power that refers to the activity of navies. Its study involves an analysis of the way in which navies are organised and employed in support of government policy. Given this it is clear that to understand naval power one must understand the general context within which it is used. Maritime strategy

To use the sea purposefully implies some form of strategy. The maritime strategy of a state must account for conditions of war, peace and for the various stages between. In 1911 Julian Corbett offered what remains the most satisfactory definition of maritime strategy in wartime as ‘the principles which govern a war in which the sea is a substantial factor’.16 The emphasis is not so much on activity at sea, but rather on the impact of that activity on land. As Corbett emphasised: Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have always been decided – except in the rarest cases – either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life. Or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.17 The role of naval forces as an enabling factor within a wider maritime strategy is clear. Naval warfare is only one aspect of a strategy that needs to be integrated into a wider national or multi-national approach; as true of strategy in war as it is during times of peace. Naval warfare is thus a subset of maritime strategy, which is itself a subset of national strategy, and it can only truly be understood within this context. To put this in terms that Clausewitz might have recognised, while naval warfare may have its own grammar (i.e. there are certain things that appear to make sense from a purely naval perspective) it does not have its own logic. That is only provided by integrating

Introduction 7 BOX I.1  LOGIC AND GRAMMAR In November 1956, during the Suez Crisis, Britain and France prepared to conduct an amphibious landing against a defended beach at Port Said, Egypt. Fearful of causing civilian casualties and of increasing the already intense domestic and international pressure to impose a ceasefire, the British government, on the night before the assault, ordered the force commanders to forego any preliminary naval bombardment. This was a logical decision in terms of national policy. Unfortunately, the Egyptian Army was known to have gun emplacements, rifle pits and other defensive positions overlooking the beach. An assault landing without any preliminary bombardment was therefore ungrammatical, holding out the prospect of heavy friendly casualties and potential mission failure. Placed in an unenviable position by vacillating politicians, the force commanders exploited a semantic difference, cancelling the bombardment and instead employing ‘naval gunfire support’ to provide the assaulting marines with limited but appropriate fire support for the landings, which proceeded successfully on 6 November.18

naval concerns into national (or international) strategy. Sometimes grammar and logic collide, presenting interesting challenges for any commander.

Naval forces Navies can be defined as that part of a country’s armed force principally designated for military operations at and from the sea. The simplicity of this definition hides some underlying complexity. In some countries the ‘navy’ is not called such and actually operates as a branch of the army or of a unified armed force. It is also important to note that some organisations that are not navies have a capacity to conduct significant ‘naval’ operations, and the US Coast Guard (USCG) provides a perfect example of this (see Box I.2). It is noteworthy that, under international law, USCG cutters are considered to be warships.19 While the noun ‘navy’ refers to a particular state institution whose primary purpose is the conduct of military operations at, over and from the sea, the adjective ‘naval’ can usefully be applied more broadly to military activity at and from the sea regardless of bureaucratic organisation or affiliation. Thus the USCG is not a navy, but it has naval capabilities. Similarly, non-state actors may not have a navy in the formal institutional sense, but they may have access to naval capabilities. The so-called ‘Sea Tigers’, a maritime branch of the Tamil Tigers separatist group in Sri Lanka, provided an example of this, albeit with a limited range of capabilities. Navies have always been costly and resource intensive organisations. They demand professional skills and experience that cannot be acquired easily or quickly. To be successful navies require long term investment. For a state to maintain the costly and long-term commitment that maintenance of a navy entails then, it must command the support of the body politic. The people that matter must be convinced that there is a need. This can prove difficult for, as has already been noted, naval activity is remote from the experience or understanding of most people. As the Indian Navy has argued,

8

Introduction BOX I.2  US COAST GUARD Founded in 1790, the US Coast Guard is one of three branches of the US Naval Service (the others being the US Navy and US Marine Corps). In wartime the Coast Guard may perform military duties under the control of the Department of the Navy. In peacetime, however, it operates under the Department of Homeland Security and fulfils constabulary missions relating to homeland security, and to maritime safety, security and stewardship. While not intended primarily for a war fighting role, the service is equipped with a range of small craft, larger ships (cutters) and aircraft that would be the envy of many navies.

one of the features of the sea is ‘its relative isolation from common awareness’.20 The public tend not to understand the use or importance of the sea and politicians often share this handicap and will rarely be called upon to display mastery of maritime debates or concerns. This is described by some commentators as ‘sea blindness’, an inability to understand the sea or to recognise its importance to national and international well-being. It is often suggested that support for navies has proven most enduring when it is linked to commercial interests dependent on the use of the sea. It is no surprise, therefore, that navies frequently stress the importance of maritime trade to national well-being and the importance of the navy to the free flow of trade. The requirement to understand naval policy within the context of broader maritime activity is evident.

The role of navies In the 1970s, Ken Booth argued that states are interested in the use of the sea for three primary reasons: first, for the passage of goods and people; second, for the passage of military force for diplomatic purposes or for use against targets on land or sea; and third, for the exploitation of resources in or under the sea. Navies exist as a means of achieving these objectives and they do so, Booth argued, by three characteristic modes of action that he defined as military, diplomatic and policing.21 He articulated this in terms of a ‘trinity’, the unity (‘one-ness’) of which was provided by the idea of the use of the sea. Within each general role navies serve a variety of subordinate functions, and to carry out these functions planners need to make decisions about the nature, size, deployment and employment of naval forces. Naturally enough different states will emphasise different things, and be differently able to translate ambition into reality. In 1990 Eric Grove developed these ideas into his own version of the naval ‘trinity’, substituting the phrase ‘constabulary’ for ‘policing’ and revising the particular functions listed under each role.22 Both Booth and Grove were agreed that military role lay at the base of the trinity as it provided the foundation on which all other roles were built. As Booth argued ‘. . . the essence of navies is their military character. Actual or latent violence is their currency. It is a navy’s ability to threaten and use force which gives meaning to its other modes of action.’23 This is a point that is made explicitly in the published doctrine of a number of navies today.

ole

Introduction 9

cr ati lom Dip

The use of the sea

ng

(iii) Prestige

lici

(ii) Manipulation

Po

(i) Negotiation from strength

(i) Coastguard responsibilities (ii) Nation-building

Military role (i) Balance of power functions (ii) Projection of force functions

Figure I.1 The function of navies Source: Ken Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 16

Much has changed since Booth and Grove developed their analysis. It is appropriate to ask whether their ideas (and those of their contemporaries and predecessors) hold any value in the changed conditions of a new century. The nature of the sea may not have changed but ideas about security have evolved as have navies. One of the aims of this book is to question the extent to which established ideas about the role of navies and the conduct of naval warfare may or may not still be relevant or whether entirely new concepts are needed to understand naval warfare in the twenty-first century. This book will examine these and other issues with the aim of providing an accessible yet authoritative introduction to naval warfare and also to wider issues of maritime strategy. The overall aim is to examine the grammar of naval operations within the logic of contemporary security policy and concerns in order to provide a sophisticated and relevant understanding of this important subject. The book will thus provide an introduction to established concepts and theories of naval warfare and to traditional naval roles before questioning the extent to which these are relevant in the current and evolving security environment. As will be shown, this subject remains as important now as it ever was in the past and an understanding of naval warfare remains a necessary element in an understanding of security and strategy in the world today.

Key points • • • • •

This book focuses on modern naval warfare, with a particular emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries To understand naval warfare one must engage with relevant concepts and theories. Many of these have been derived from an examination of naval history. Theory works best when it is used to support critical thinking. It should not be used as a substitute for judgement. Naval warfare can only be analysed effectively if it is understood within the wider context set by maritime strategy. It has been suggested that navies have three characteristic modes of action: military, diplomatic and constabulary. Within these general roles they fulfil a range of

10

Introduction different functions. This book will assess whether this is still the case and will identify what these functions might be.

Notes 1 See UK Doctrine and Concepts Development Centre (DCDC), Joint Concept Note 1/17, Future Force Concept (July 2017). Available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-forceconcept-jcn-117 [9 Feb 2018]. 2 Ibid., also see John B Hattendorf, ‘The Uses of Maritime History in and for the Navy’ , International Journal of Naval History, Vol.2, No.1 (April, 2003), www.ijnholine.org. 3 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660–1783 (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1890), 2. 4 Sir Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988 [1911]), 10. 5 Sun Tzu, The Art of War trans. and with notes by Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). 6 Vice Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, Maritime Strategy (London: Cassell, 1965) 22. 7 See Hattendorff, ‘The Uses of Maritime History in and for the Navy’. 8 Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982) 7. 9 See Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History (London: Routledge, 2004). 10 Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). Andrew T.H. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Maritime Power. A Survey (Routledge: London, 2007). 11 Eric Grove, The Future of Sea Power (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 3. 12 Till, Seapower, 3rd edn, 24–25. 13 Richard Hill, Maritime Strategy for Medium Powers (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986), 30. 14 Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2004), 23. 15 Andrew Lambert, ‘Maritime Power: The Future’, in J. Blackham and A. Lambert (eds), Britain’s Maritime Future, COMEC Occasional Paper No.6 (2016). Available online at www.comec.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Occasional-Paper-No-6.pdf?x25948 [9 Feb 2018]. 16 Corbett, Some Principles, 15. 17 Ibid., 16. 18 Ian Speller, ‘The Suez Crisis. Operation Musketeer, 1956’ in T. Lovering (ed.), Amphibious Assault. Manoeuvre from the Sea (Rendlesham: Seafarer Books, 2007). 19 US Navy, NWP 1–14: The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (July 2007) 2–1. 20 Ministry of Defence (Navy), INBR8, Indian Maritime Doctrine (2004), 41 21 Ken Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 15 22 Eric Grove, The Future of Sea Power (Annapolis, MD.: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 232–236. 23 Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy, 16.

Further reading Jeremy Black, Naval Power. A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009). This book provides a short and accessible examination of the role of navies as instruments of power from 1500 to the present day. It offers a useful introduction to the relevant history. Colin S. Gray, The Leverage of Sea Power. The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York: The Free Press, 1992). Colin Gary is one of the most influential writers on strategy today, and in this book he offers a lively analysis of the nature and uses of sea power since ancient times and of the strategic utility of navies in the modern world. Eric Grove and Capt. Peter Hore RN (eds), Dimensions of Sea Power. Strategic Choice in the Modern World (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1998). This collection of short essays provides an interesting and very accessible introduction to a range of issues relating to traditional maritime strategy, interpretations of history and the formation of policy.

Introduction 11 David Jordan, James Kiras, David Lonsdale, Dale Walton, Ian Speller, and Christopher Tuck, Understanding Modern Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). This edited volume provides a brief examination of warfare on land, sea and in the air, and also of strategy, irregular warfare and weapons of mass destruction. It provides a useful introduction to the theory and practice of warfare beyond the maritime environment. John B. Hattendorf, Naval History and Maritime Strategy: Collected Essays (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing, 2000). As the title suggests, this book includes a collection of essays on a range of topics relating to maritime strategy and history. Written by one of America’s leading naval/maritime historians it provides much useful food for thought. Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). This book, written by a leading authority on maritime strategy and history, provides a detailed and sophisticated analysis of these topics and of the role of sea power in world affairs today. No serious student of maritime strategy or naval warfare can afford to ignore this work. A new fourth edition is due to be published in 2018.

Part I

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

1

The nature of the maritime operating environment

Navies are defined by, and gain particular characteristics from, their operating environment. If one is to understand naval warfare then one must first understand this environment. Most obviously this includes the sea for this is the primary medium in which navies work. However, the relevant operating environment is not limited to the sea but also includes the landward portion of coastal regions. Navies often find themselves opposed or supported by land based systems, depending on circumstances. Moreover, because people live on land and not at sea, all naval activity is aimed towards creating an effect on the land, even if that effect is sometimes indirect. As such, no discussion of the maritime operating environment would be complete without some reference to the impact of the land on that environment. US Joint Doctrine defines what it calls the ‘maritime domain’ as ‘the oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, and the airspace above these, including the littorals’ and this definition is the one adopted for the maritime operating environment throughout this chapter.1 A study of the maritime environment cannot, therefore, begin where the waves lap the shore but must encompass that portion of the land that can be used to have a direct bearing on activity at sea and that may also be subject to direct influence applied from the sea. Given that, with very few exceptions, humans live on land and not on the sea, it is inevitable that most maritime activity will be focused on those regions where land and sea meet, and throughout history the majority of naval battles have occurred within proximity of the shore. This area, referred to as the littoral region, has received increasing prominence in much western thinking about navies since the end of the Cold War (see Box 1.1).

BOX 1.1  DEFINING THE LITTORAL REGION According to NATO doctrine the littoral region is defined as follows: ‘In military operations, a coastal region consisting of the seaward area from the open ocean to the shore that must be controlled to support operations ashore, and the landward area inland from the shore that can be supported and defended directly from the sea.’2

16

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

The areas of the sea within which maritime forces operate are often differentiated in the following fashion: • • •

‘blue water’ referring to the open ocean or what are frequently called the high seas, ’green water’ meaning coastal waters, ports and harbours and, ’brown water’ referring to navigable rivers and estuaries.

Operations within these different areas set different physical challenges. Vessels designed to operate primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean (blue water) may require different sea-keeping capabilities to those designed for the Persian Gulf (green water) or the Mekong delta (brown water). It should be noted that these are informal and imprecise terms and that these areas shade into each other as part of an interconnected sea area that covers most of the planet. Of course, whether one is focusing on blue, green or brown water, knowledge of the maritime environment implies an understanding not just of factors that influence operations on the surface of the sea, but also of those above and below the surface. People have fought at and from the sea from the earliest times. For the majority of that time the maritime environment was relatively one-dimensional. Ships operated on the surface of the sea and any descent beneath the waves was usually fatal. The introduction of sea mines and submersible craft in the mid- to late-nineteenth century added a second dimension to naval warfare, and the development of military aircraft during the First World War (1914–18) added a third. Thus, by the second decade of the twentieth century maritime forces operated in three dimensions, on, under and over the sea. More recently the need to exploit space-based systems, cyber capabilities and the electro-magnetic spectrum for communication, navigation and for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) means that the twentyfirst century maritime operating environment is truly multi-dimensional. Navies are not the only players within this environment. Land-based systems such as coastal artillery, missiles and aircraft can have a profound impact on activities within their reach and are commonly operated by armies and air forces. Likewise, armies and air forces often go to sea as part of a maritime force, contributing to a navy’s ability to project power against the shore. Successful maritime operations therefore are frequently ‘joint’, involving the integration of the three different services – army, air force and navy. Even operations far from the shore and beyond the effective range of most land-based forces, will usually rely to some degree on enabling structures and facilities that are joint. The need to integrate joint forces within a multi-dimensional operating environment adds further complexity to maritime operations.

The physical environment The oceans and seas cover 70 percent of the planet. They are vast, connected, featureless and inhospitable. These simple facts have profound implications for the way in which we seek to use the sea and, by extension, for the context within which navies operate. Size and connectivity

The most obvious feature of the sea is its size. Almost three-quarters of the planet is covered by sea water which, with the exception a few inland seas, is connected in a

Nature of the maritime operating environment 17 manner that makes the different oceans and seas in effect one great world ocean that connects all points touched by its waves. This connectivity provides, and has always provided, the basis for world trade. It may also be exploited for military purposes. A state may close its land frontiers and refuse the right of aircraft to fly over its territory, but it may not legally hinder the progress of a ship at sea during peacetime. The sea thus represents a great highway for those who are able to use it and a barrier to those who cannot. As the American strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote in 1890: The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from a political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or better, perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions.3 Connectivity is not absolute, and it can be constrained by a combination of geography and enemy action. For example, prior to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the US Pacific and Atlantic fleets were separated by the American continent, and the Russian (and Soviet) navy has always been hindered by the wide geographical separation of its Baltic, Northern, Pacific and Black Sea fleets and by choke points constraining its access to the high seas. Of course, the construction of canals, such as the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal (opened in 1869) and the Baltic-White Sea Canal (1933) demonstrates that maritime geography can be altered by human endeavour. In a different way climate change may also have an impact on geography, opening up new routes such as the Northern Sea Route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through what was previously impassable ice. Featureless

While the surface of the sea is rarely flat, and may be punctuated by rocks, islands and man-made structures such as oil rigs (especially in coastal areas), the high seas by and large are featureless. There are no physical obstacles to travel or observation. On the whole, a ship may sail where it chooses without the impediments to progress facing any land-based manoeuvre. In the age of sail the prevailing winds promoted the use of established trade routes and today international shipping routes (ISR) exist by virtue of offering the quickest and most economical course between two points. But ships do not need to stick to these routes which have, in any case, always been longer and broader than any road could ever be. As Rear-Admiral Hubert Moineville noted: The most distinctive geographical feature – that which makes the sea so different from the land – is the uniformity of its surface. There are no contours on the sea, no hills and valleys, no built-up area; there are no road signs (or very few), no frontiers and no single prescribed route. Friends and enemies alike can come and go as they please.4 While established road and rail communications or the existence of physical barriers can make land manoeuvre predictable, this is not generally the case at sea, although geographical features such as straits and other ‘choke points’ can channel naval forces and make their approach predictable in a way that is analogous to the movement of armies.

18 Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power Inhospitable After their size, the next most obvious feature of the oceans and seas is the fact that they are inhospitable. The sea plays host to a fantastic variety of aquatic life, but humans are not aquatic. People cannot live in the sea or on the sea nor can they travel across it without recourse to special equipment – usually a platform able to sustain life and to support whatever activity brought its passengers to such a challenging environment. As one veteran sailor has put it, ‘[b]eing at sea is a temporary accommodation with a medium which, if not hostile, has infinite ways of expressing why mankind should not be there.’5 Thus naval warfare, and indeed all activity at sea, tends to be focused on platforms in a way that is dissimilar to activity on the land. With the exception of the ships that traverse them and of a small number of offshore oil platforms and the like, the seas are empty. They do not have a resident human population. There is no one to report on the passing of ships, and ships do not leave footprints or tyre tracks to mark their progress. In this sense the sea is opaque. This makes it easier for ships to pass unnoticed, particularly if they avoid busy sea lanes. Furthermore, as the sea is empty there is little point in trying to protect it. It has no intrinsic value. Unlike on land, there is no population, industry or fixed agriculture to defend at sea. Equally, one cannot control the sea in the way that one controls land. It is not a medium amenable to physical possession. These physical properties give rise to particular economic, political, legal and military dimensions to the use of the sea. These are each examined in turn below.

Economic dimensions The sea has always been of enormous economic importance. Indeed, some commentators have argued that maritime warfare is primarily economic, being driven by a desire to deny an enemy the economic advantage of the sea.6 Certainly this has been a feature of war at sea over the centuries, and some wars fit this model rather well, for example the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century. However, many other wars do not. The primary role of Anglo-French naval forces in the Crimean War (1853–56), for example, was the projection of power against the Russian coast in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea and support for land forces in Crimea. Economic activities were not absent, and Russia was subjected to a blockade, but this was of secondary importance within the context of that war. Similarly, economic warfare was not the primary consideration for the US Navy during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that the geo-economic importance of the sea does give maritime power an important and unique economic dimension that is relevant in both peace and in war. The economic importance of the sea rests on two basic facts. First, the resources in the sea and under the seabed are valuable. Fish, crustaceans and seaweed have all been harvested for food since the earliest times, while sea mammals have also been hunted for their meat, skins and oil. Today up to three billion people worldwide rely on wild caught and farmed sea food for their main source of animal protein.7 With fish stocks in some areas becoming depleted by pollution and over fishing, access to and control of such resources is likely to remain important. In recent decades the exploitation of oil and gas reserves found under the seas have added a new and very important economic dimension to use of the seas. The potential to mine the seabed for scarce minerals,

Nature of the maritime operating environment 19 such as manganese nodules, adds a further aspect to this. Thus, for example, in 2017 the mining company De Beers ordered a new $142 million diamond mining ship for use, exploiting the seabed off the Namibian coast.8 Second, it has always been easier to move heavy goods by sea than by land or air. Ships can carry much heavier loads than can trucks, railways or aircraft and, in contrast to land-based transport, they have access to the global highway that is the sea. Air freight offers the potential of very fast transportation of high value goods, but even the heaviest transport aircraft can only carry a tiny fraction of the load of an average merchant ship and at a much higher cost. For this reasons the sea is the primary and most cost-efficient medium for international trade. Over 80 percent of world trade by volume and over 70 per cent by value is carried by ships. In January 2017 the world commercial fleet consisted of 93,161 vessels, and their ability to travel freely across the oceans is vital to the global economic system.9 Given the highly interdependent nature of the globalised world economy and the adoption by industry of a ‘just enough, just in time’ approach to logistics, any interruption to the pattern of seaborne trade could have a major impact on the stability and prosperity of individual countries and of the system overall. It is not surprising, therefore, that many navies have emphasised their role in policing and protecting this system from hostile attack or criminal activity. As the world’s biggest trader in merchandise, with imports and exports totalling over $3.8 trillion in 2015, the US has a particular interest in the maintenance of this system.10 To the above one could also add the importance to the world economy of undersea cables. Trans-Atlantic cables were first laid in the 1860s to carry telegraph signals. A century later they carried telephone messages. Today a whole series of fiberoptic cables cross the world’s oceans and seas carrying ninety-nine percent of transoceanic data traffic, providing faster and more reliable internet connectivity than can satellite links. The cables are not indestructible and suffer occasional damage from natural causes such as earthquakes or misplaced anchors. They offer an obvious target for espionage or for deliberate strikes. In December 2017 Air Chief Marshall Sir Stuart

BOX 1.2  THE ADVANTAGE OF SEABORNE TRANSPORT Aircraft lack the bulk carriage potential of ships, and it costs far more to transport goods by air than by sea. In June 2016 it was possible to ship a forty-foot container (payload of 27,600 kg) from the west coast of the USA to Shanghai, China for as little as $800. It could cost more than three times that much to transport a medium size Box (c. 1,000 kg) the same distance by air. Ultra-large container vessels, such as the MV Edith Maersk, can carry between 11,000 and 15,000 standard twenty-foot containers (TEUs) weighing up to 14 tons each, while smaller ‘panamax’ vessels, designed to transit through the Panama Canal, can carry up to 5,000 TEUs. In contrast, a typical railroad train in North America might carry between 200 and 350 containers and a truck might only carry one or two. The largest transport aircraft, the Antonov AN-124, can take a maximum load of only 120 tons.11

20

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

Peach, chair of NATO’s Miltiary Committee and Chief of the Defence Staff in Britain, warned of the potential threat posed to transatlantic cables by the Russian navy. As one commentator has suggested, cutting internet cables may represent the ultimate ‘denial of service’ cyber weapon.12

Political dimensions Given the economic importance of the sea it is easy to see why its use has always been of great political importance, particularly for governments receptive to the interests of the merchant class or mindful of the importance of trade to the national well-being. The political dimension extends beyond just economics. States have often sought to establish their jurisdiction over coastal waters as a basic statement of sovereignty. Claims towards sovereignty have often been linked to a desire to exploit the economic potential of the sea and the sea bed, but one cannot entirely ignore the political desire to establish control over areas seen as ‘belonging’ to the state. Such claims, often by developing states, have been resisted by countries such as the US and Britain who have sought to maintain the principle of the ‘freedom of the seas’ against any creeping territorialisation. Leaving aside issues of economics and sovereignty, the sea has always had political value in providing a useful means of sending a diplomatic signal: supporting an ally or attacking an enemy. If international trade ceased to travel by sea, navies would still be valuable for these reasons. One of the great enablers of naval activity is that the sea is a politically free medium. A ship may sail where it wants, when it wants, without crossing any borders or infringing the sovereignty of any state. This means that navies can provide politicians with flexible options in a wide range of crises and makes them particularly useful tools for diplomacy and crisis management. It also means that navies operate in an environment where they might be joined by neutral parties or potential rivals who are equally entitled to exploit the freedom of the sea. As a French admiral noted in the context of the Soviet Naval expansion of the 1970s, ‘even in peacetime potentially hostile naval forces are everywhere, including regions where one would certainly prefer not to see them.’13

Legal dimensions As most of the sea is not subject to control by any state, it is not regulated by domestic law. Activity at sea is, however, covered by international law, both customary law (law based on accepted practice) and treaty law (law based on international treaties). There are two strands to the international law of the sea; first, there is law that relates to the use of the sea and regulation of the maritime environment in peacetime and, second, there is law relating to armed conflict at sea.14 A third strand saw attempts between the two world wars to set limits to the size of navies and to the size and armament of particular types of warships, most notably to battleships. This had an important impact on naval balance and on warship construction, and it helped to particularly disadvantage those powers that actually abided by the agreements.

The law of the sea Historically the oceans have generally been subject to a doctrine of ‘freedom of the sea’, meaning that beyond coastal waters the seas were common to all mankind and

Nature of the maritime operating environment 21 were the particular property of no one, although there were, of course, frequent exceptions to this rule. By the eighteenth century it was generally recognised that coastal states had sovereignty over their adjoining waters. In Europe the ‘canon shot’ rule gained wide acceptance, whereby states enjoyed control over those waters within range of shore-based cannon. This was assumed to be roughly three nautical miles and the three-mile limit was generally accepted as the limit for territorial waters until after the Second World War. In the years after 1945 a number of factors combined to bring about a change in attitude. The process of decolonisation created a large number of new states, most of which had coastlines and were eager to extend their new-found sovereignty into control of their coastal waters. At the same time new technology opened up greater possibilities for the exploitation of offshore resources. In light of this, and of depleted stocks in many traditional fishing grounds, there was a growing awareness that the resources of the sea were far from limitless and that they would need protection. There was also recognition that some form of international agreement was required to deal with the problems of pollution and the management of hazardous and noxious cargos. The result was a series of attempts to codify a body of law and system of maritime governance that resulted, eventually and after much debate and dispute, in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The convention was based on the conclusions of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, which ran from 1973 until 1982 and followed two earlier and generally unsuccessful conferences. It has been described as ‘the largest single international negotiating project ever undertaken’.15 The resultant agreement was extensive, being divided into 17 parts with 320 articles.16 It was also controversial. It did not gain sufficient signatories to enter into force until 1994. The British, West German and US governments did not sign the original document due to objections over articles relating to the exploitation of the deep sea bed. Britain finally acceded in 1997 after Part IX of the convention was amended.17 The US has signed the Convention, but the Senate has not yet ratified it. However, the US government has declared that it considers many of its provisions to be in accordance with customary law.18 One result of UNCLOS is the increasing enclosure of the oceans. The territorial sea was extended to 12 miles, with a further 12 miles contiguous zone and a 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) within which a state has sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting natural resources. The right of ‘innocent passage’ through territorial sea is protected, subject to certain limitations, and passage beyond the 12-mile limit remains unconstrained. However, under UNCLOS a far larger area of the sea is subject to some form of state control than was previously the case. Some coastal states have begun to demand prior notification of innocent passage by naval forces through their territorial sea. A few have demanded notification of this in respect of their EEZ. If it continues then this process may eventually impede the traditional ability of navies to navigate freely. Concerns of this nature underlie initial American objections to the extension of territorial seas out to 12 miles and to the enduring concern of many states to limit creeping sovereignty. This is a real concern in a situation where established practice can become accepted as customary law. For this reason the US Navy periodically chooses to sail vessels through contested areas in order to maintain the right to do so. This can lead to confrontation with the coastal state and even armed conflict. An example of the latter occurred between Libyan armed forces and the US Sixth Fleet in 1986 when the latter deliberately sailed across the ‘line of death’ into

22

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power BOX 1.3  KEY TERMS WITHIN UN CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA Innocent Passage: Passage is innocent as long as it is not ‘prejudicial to the peace, good order or security’ of the coastal state. Ships may not exercise or practise weapons of any kind, they may not launch or recover aircraft and must not engage in the collection of intelligence or the conduct of propaganda exercises. Submarines must navigate on the surface and must show their flag. Transit Passage: Vessels have the right of ‘continuous and expeditious transit’ through a strait between one part of the high seas or EEZ and another. Ships and aircraft must proceed without delay and must not threaten or use force against the sovereign integrity or political independence of states bordering the strait, but beyond that they enjoy the right of unimpeded passage in their normal mode of operation. Submarines may remain submerged. Territorial Sea: The territorial sea is a belt of ocean that is measured up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from the baseline (usually the low water mark) of the coastal nation and subject to its sovereignty. Ships of all nations enjoy the right of innocent passage in the territorial sea. Innocent passage does not include the right for aircraft overflight of the territorial sea. Contiguous Zone: The contiguous zone is an area extending to seaward from the baseline up to 24nm in which the coastal state may exercise the control necessary to prevent or punish infringements of its customs, fiscal, immigration and sanitary laws and regulations that occur within its territory or territorial sea. Ships and aircraft enjoy high seas freedoms, including overflight, in the contiguous zone. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): The EEZ is a resource related zone adjacent to the territorial sea – where a state has certain sovereign rights (but not sovereignty) and may not extend beyond 200nm from the baseline. Ships and aircraft enjoy high seas freedoms, including overflight, in the EEZ. Continental Shelf: The continental shelf of a coastal state comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of its continental margin or to 200nm of the baseline, whichever is the greater. The shelf may not extend more than 100 nm from the point at which the sea is 2,500 metres deep nor may it extend more than 350nm from the baseline. Coastal states have the exclusive right to harvest minerals and non-living creatures in the subsoil of the continental self and living creatures attached to (but not swimming above) the shelf. High Seas: The High Seas include all parts of the ocean to seaward of the EEZ. They are international waters and are not subject to the sovereignty of any state. Resources within the high seas are held to be part of the ‘common heritage of mankind’.

Nature of the maritime operating environment 23 the Gulf of Sidra in defiance of Libya’s claim that this area was a historic bay which, if accepted, would have given Libya sovereignty over the area under the provisions of UNCLOS. The ability of small parcels of land to provide a territorial sea and a large EEZ has brought a new importance to the control of what were previously insignificant islands. The Marshal Islands, for example, have a land mass of 181 square km generating an EEZ of 2.1 million square km. This can cause problems where claims overlap or where jurisdiction is disputed, notably in the Aegean Sea, where Greek and Turkish claims over a number of small islands have significant implications for control over a congested sea area. The situation is, if anything, even more contentious in the South China Seas where most of the littoral states have competing claims to islands within the Spratly and Paracel groups. In the East China Sea a dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands has led to diplomatic confrontation and naval posturing.

The law of armed conflict at sea The laws of armed conflict at sea are less well established than the laws relating to the peacetime use of the sea and are also less developed than laws relating to war on land. A body of law was built up from The Hague and Geneva Conventions and also from a number of international treaties and agreements such as the 1856 Treaty of Paris. An enduring theme has been the conflict between belligerent rights and neutral rights, particularly in respect of blockade and attacks on trade. Agreement on laws to regulate such activity has often been difficult to achieve. For example, the 1909 London Declaration was not ratified by the British House of Lords largely because they feared the impact of its provisions on the ability of the Royal Navy to impose an effective blockade. Even where agreement has been possible, it has often proven worthless in

baseline 200 nm exclusive economic zone

contiguous zone

territorial sea

12 nm 12 nm

mainland

high sea

continental shelf continental slope

continental rise

deep seabed

Note. In some areas the continental shelf, slope or rise may extend beyond the 200 nautical mile (nm) exclusive economic zone.

Figure 1.1 Sea areas under UNCLOS Source: Crown copyright DCDC, MoD. Diagram taken from JDP 0–10, UK Maritime Power, 5th edition

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Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

wartime. The 1936 Submarine Protocol offers a good example of this. This treaty, which outlawed the unrestricted sinking of merchant ships, was signed by all of the major powers and ignored by them once war began. In reality pressure exerted by powerful neutrals has often proved more important in the limitation of belligerent activity than has any paper guarantee. Already underdeveloped, the law of armed conflict at sea suffered from not being subject to any detailed or formal international review after the Second World War. In response to this, the International Institute of Humanitarian Law convened a group of naval and legal specialists who, in a series of meetings between 1988 and 1994, drew up the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts at Sea.19 The San Remo Manual is not an international treaty and thus is not legally binding. However, its provisions represent accepted practice and have been widely adopted and reflected in national policy statements, albeit often with some changes in particular areas.20 Thus, while the sea may represent a medium free from political control, it is not unregulated and activity there is constrained to some degree by a series of laws, agreements and accepted practices. It is vital for a naval commander to understand these and to be able to recognise the implications of their actions within the context set by this legal framework.

The military dimension The maritime battlespace is shaped by the interaction of the physical features of the sea with economic, political and legal dimensions discussed above. The result is an environment entirely unlike that on land. Connected

In a strategic sense the most profound impact that the maritime environment has on military operations is related to the connectivity of the sea. This connectivity can be used to strike at a wide range of different places, or can tie together widely dispersed friends and allies. It can be used to mobilise the resources of the world, or to deny them to an enemy. It would be difficult to overstate the strategic importance of an ability to use or deny the use of a medium that can represent either an intercontinental highway or a barrier to all movement. As Geoffrey Till has explained, the ability to dominate this medium may explain why small countries with limited populations, land areas and resources, such as Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, Oman and numerous others throughout history, were able to prosper in peace and prevail in war even against apparently stronger continental opponents. The sea offered a means of prosperity through trade and provided strategic advantage in war.21 The sea is often presented as a defensive barrier leading to the suggestion that countries separated from potential enemies by sea are somehow safer. History suggests the reverse. Nicholas Rodger has pointed out that between 1066 and 1485 England was successfully invaded by sea eight times, leading him to conclude that ‘[t]he sea is a broad highway, easier and faster than most of those available ashore until modern times, and provides no safeguard whatever to those who have not learned how to use it’.22 The sea has frequently provided an avenue for attack and this has represented an opportunity for raiders and a source of vulnerability for their victims. The various

Nature of the maritime operating environment 25 Viking raids and expeditions from the eighth to the eleventh centuries offer the perfect example of this in practice. The degree of effort that European peoples have expended on coastal defences from iron age cliff top forts to Hitler’s ‘Festung Europa’, demonstrate that this phenomenon was not limited to the Dark Ages. Chinese attempts to protect the Guangdong coast from piratical Japanese attacks during the Ming dynasty, and from European and Japanese attack in later centuries, illustrates that the phenomena was not restricted to Europe. Colin Gray has argued that the connectivity provided by the sea offers the basis for a global strategy in a way that continental land power cannot. While armies eventually run into difficult or impassable terrain, inconvenient neutrals or the sea, navies are not so constrained. The sea acts as a highway for those who control it and a barrier to those who do not. As Gray notes, ‘The continuity of the world’s seas and oceans translates into a global mobility and agility for maritime forces and for merchant shipping which can have no continental parallel’.23 If one adds to this the opacity of the sea, which can be used by navies to appear where they are not expected, exploiting the strategic, operational and tactical advantages of surprise, then the close correlation that Gray suggests has existed between strength at sea and success in war becomes easier to understand. Opaque

The size and opacity of the sea have traditionally made it difficult to find an enemy that is not tied to roads or favourable geography as are armies. The challenges facing Nelson in his attempt to discover the location of the French Mediterranean fleet that set sail from Toulon in May 1798 and to guess its ultimate destination, provide ample testimony to the difficulty of finding an enemy. The fact that he narrowly missed catching the fleet at sea, with General Bonaparte and a French army embarked, denied him the opportunity to inflict a crushing blow that could have dramatically changed the course of European history. It also illustrates the role that luck can play in naval operations. Nelson was able to destroy the French fleet when it was eventually discovered, having landed the embarked force, at anchor in Aboukir Bay, reflecting the fact that it is often easiest to find an enemy close to their ultimate destination, if one is able to discover what that destination is. Despite modern surveillance systems the sea is still a hiding place largely opaque to many sensors, as is demonstrated by the continued effectiveness of mines and submarines (i.e. things under the surface). Assets on or above the surface, once only vulnerable to detection by the naked eye, limiting range to the visual horizon (up to about 15 miles from a ship in daylight) became easier to detect with the advent of more effective open ocean surveillance based on the detection of enemy radio signals and other emissions, aerial surveillance, radar, sonar and, more recently, satellite surveillance.24 However, the mobility of warships makes them hard to detect and track with the precision necessary for engagement, especially if they do not reveal their positions through electronic emissions. Commercial satellites currently lack the capacity to track a target that might move 400nm in any direction over 24 hours, although they are very capable of identifying targets ashore.25 More complex military satellite systems may continue to erode the opacity of the sea for those who have access to them, but they represent a soft and obvious target in any major war and thus may become unavailable in a conflict between two advanced states.

26 Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power Distance The vastness of the sea not only makes it hard to find an enemy it means that distances work differently in naval warfare. It is worth noting that the Pacific Ocean is larger than the combined land mass of the entire planet.26 Battles and campaigns occur over a larger distance than they do on land, and ships travel further and, in an operational sense, faster than their land based counterparts. Campaigns can cover thousands of miles. The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 was preceded by a British pursuit of the French that took Nelson from the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and back again before he finally met and defeated Admiral Villeneuve off Cadiz. Villeneuve’s fleet had originally sailed from Toulon on 30 May 1805 and was not finally defeated until 21 October that year. The main American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii is around 4,000 miles from Japan, but this distance offered no protection against the surprise attack undertaken by the Imperial Japanese Navy on 7 December 1941. One of the most impressive features of the US Navy’s performance in the Pacific War, once they had recovered from their initial reverses, was their ability to develop a modern ‘fleet train’ to allow it to sustain operations at great range without heavy reliance on forward bases.27 A more recent example of naval forces sustaining operations at great range is provided by the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas campaign in which the British Royal Navy was able to project and sustain in combat a task force, including two aircraft carriers and an amphibious group, 8,000 miles from home and 3,800 miles from the nearest friendly airfield. Numbers

The forces involved in naval battles tend to be far fewer than those on land. By nature of the platforms employed, naval power tends to be disaggregated into fewer individual units than are land forces. These platforms can be manpower intensive but even large fleets lack the same levels of massed manpower that armies frequently deploy.28 Most major naval battles of the twentieth century occurred between sides whose major combatants numbered, at most, in the tens of units. The US Navy is the largest navy in the world and in July 2017 had 276 deployable battle force ships.29 In contrast, each of the US Army’s nine armoured brigade combat teams has over 600 vehicles.30 Obviously, these vehicles are much smaller than a warship but the comparison is useful in explaining that naval battles occur between fewer individual units than do land battles, and they also tend to happen over less cluttered terrain. This has important implications for naval command and control, helping to explain why network centric operations developed first in navies.31 It also makes the loss of individual naval assets particularly significant, as there are fewer of them, they are expensive and are difficult to replace quickly. Furthermore, a brigade combat team that is badly mauled in battle can usually withdraw, take in replacement equipment and personnel and reconstitute its fighting power in a reasonably timely fashion, as its strength is dispersed across a large number of elements, many of which will escape all but the most disastrous engagement. The same is not always true of navies, explaining why they have often been cautious in the use of what are scarce assets. Terrain

Terrain can have a bearing on maritime operations in coastal areas as an inhibition on movement and also by providing cover for those forces able to exploit it. For example,

Nature of the maritime operating environment 27 ships might seek shelter close to the steep sides of a fjord, where they could be difficult to detect on radar and where attack options would be complicated. Similarly, fast attack craft operating in coastal waters around the Strait of Hormuz might aim to exploit the clutter caused by other shipping and by offshore obstacles such as oil and gas rigs in order to ‘sneak up’ on an enemy without detection.32 However, on the high seas the lack of terrain features, vegetation or man-made structures mean that surface forces have nowhere to hide in clear weather. Poor visibility and poor weather can provide some relief from detection, but can hardly be relied on to arrive at the critical moment. To make matters worse, and in stark contrast to operations on land, beyond coastal waters an inferior fleet cannot exploit the terrain to offset its weaknesses nor can it fortify its position. The implications of this are articulated in contemporary Indian Maritime Doctrine: In contrast to the land, the sea is a medium for movement. It cannot be occupied and fortified. Navies cannot dig in at sea, or seize and hold ocean areas that have any great intrinsic value. Indeed, although the objectives of naval operations certainly involve control or influence over sea areas, they do not involve occupation of sea areas on a permanent basis.33 Operations at sea revolve around the use of the sea, not its physical occupation. While the surface of the sea may offer few places to hide, the same is not true beneath the waves. Submarines occupy a realm that is far more opaque than the surface. They may exploit the geography of the sea bed to hide from pursuit. Different levels of salinity or thermal layers, changing levels of ambient noise, tidal currents and a number of other features can make them harder to detect. Indeed, these factors may combine to give a significant ‘home advantage’ to submarines operating in local waters whose conditions they know well. Platforms and personnel

One of the most obvious characteristics of the sea is that one cannot live on them or travel across them without specialist equipment. This means that activity at sea is necessarily focused on platforms, the people that operate these platforms and what one can do with them. This should not be taken to imply that technology is the determining factor in maritime warfare. The performance of a platform reflects the technical specifications of the ship, but it is also the training, skill, experience and motivation of the crew, the quality of leadership and the adoption of appropriate fighting procedures. Technology is important in maritime warfare, but it is not an independent variable. It cannot be understood in isolation to the way in which it is used. However, even the most efficient crew will struggle to achieve success with inappropriate platforms. It is an unfortunate feature of maritime warfare that platforms, systems and operating procedures designed to work in one environment may be less effective in another. Small, fast, shallow-draught vessels designed to work in coastal waters are likely to be less suitable for operations in rough seas at extended range while larger vessels optimised for blue water operations may be less suited for operations close inshore where their size and deep draught may be a disadvantage. Nevertheless, larger warships tend to be more adaptable to different circumstances than their smaller counterparts. Unfortunately, such large and flexible vessels are expensive and most

28

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

navies have to accept design compromises to some degree or another. Small vessels tend to offer less flexibility as a result of their design and often lack the sea keeping and endurance for blue water operations. They may, however, be more affordable than their large counterparts and can be extremely effective at the particular role that they were designed for. Flexibility is not just a function of an individual platform’s capabilities. It also represents the ability of a task group or fleet to fulfil a range of functions. By operating as an integrated whole, a collection of diverse units can provide answers to a wide range of problems. It is for this reason that commanders frequently point to the need for a ‘balanced fleet’ with a mixed range of capabilities. Command and leadership

Navies, by their nature, tend to require different forms of command and control to those that would be employed on land. The limited number of vessels engaged and the ability of these to communicate with each other (at least in theory), has tended to lead to an approach that concentrates more control in the hands of the overall commander than would be common (or possible) on land. At a tactical level the differences between armies and navies may be particularly pronounced. Most modern armies now emphasise the value of mission command, where subordinates are aware of the commander’s intent and decision making is delegated to the lowest appropriate level in order to enhance flexibility and maintain the tempo of operations (i.e. to avoid unnecessary pauses in operations while waiting for revised orders). At sea any sensible commander will want their subordinates to show initiative, but they will also wish to operate the ship as a single cohesive fighting unit that responds to their orders. As the British Royal Navy once put it, ‘the Captain is the ship’.34 This tends to imply a different relationship between the captain and their subordinates than that which applies in land operations. Leadership at sea is about moulding the ship’s company into an effective fighting instrument. This requires not merely that they are able to fight (a challenge in itself), but that they are motivated to do so. Naval operations tend to be characterised by extended periods of routine patrol and surveillance interspersed with short, intense periods of combat. If they are to survive the latter the crew cannot become dulled by the former. Even in peacetime naval personnel may have to spend days, weeks or months confined within rather austere living conditions, in close proximity to colleagues, in an environment that is frequently unpleasant and often dangerous. This is trying at the best of times. At sea even an officer may live in conditions that might be considered primitive by an enlisted soldier in their billet ashore. Those in submarines endure conditions that would cause outrage if imposed on the inmates of most prisons. Maintaining morale and fighting spirit in such circumstances can be difficult. Leadership provides the essential ‘glue’ that holds together the ship’s company, enables them to do their job effectively and sustains them when times get difficult. Technology and infrastructure

Naval warfare is dependent on platforms. In modern times these have tended to be specialist vessels designed for a military role, notwithstanding the occasional use of converted merchant ships when the need arises, as was reflected in the use of merchant ships as amphibious vessels and even as auxiliary aircraft carriers by the Allies during

Nature of the maritime operating environment 29 the Second World War. Warships call upon particular expertise in their construction and may require resources that are not readily available, particularly in wartime. They also require a range of support facilities on shore in order to keep them in a seaworthy condition. During the age of sail, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, British naval power was enabled by an impressive and expensive range of dockyards, store houses, and factories that represented one of the first and most complex industrial enterprises. In the iron-clad era that followed, Britain’s numerous dockyards and clear industrial superiority gave it a critical edge in the various naval races with France. During the Second World War the expansion of the US Navy was enabled by the support of the largest and most advanced industrial economy in the world. Today the construction and maintenance of a modern, first rank navy requires access to an advanced industrial infrastructure and a capability for technological innovation that may be beyond the reach of most states.

Attributes of naval forces It is often argued, not least by navies themselves, that maritime forces have distinctive attributes that are derived from the medium in which they operate. Different navies have articulated these attributes in slightly different ways while generally making the same points (see Box 1.4). For the purposes of this study, the attributes are identified as follows: mobility, lift, sustained reach, versatility and flexibility, poise and persistence, and resilience. These are discussed in more detail below. Mobility

Ships are, by their very nature, mobile. This mobility is a feature of their design and a reflection of the utility of the sea as a medium for transportation. Even at a modest transit speed of only 15 knots a ship or task force can travel 360 nm a day, every day, for a period of days, weeks or even months. In circumstances where speed is important

BOX 1.4  ATTRIBUTES OF MARITIME POWER/SEA POWER/ NAVAL FORCES35 NATO36 Poise Readiness Flexibility Self-Sustainment Mobility

United Kingdom37 Access Poise Mobility Persistence Versatility

Australia38 Mobility in Mass Readiness Access Flexibility Adaptability Sustained Reach Poise and Persistence Resilience Transience Indirectness Speed

Netherlands39 Mobility Access Influence Sustained Reach Versatility

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Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

a ship or task group would likely travel much faster, covering in excess of 400 nm a day. Superficially warships are less mobile than aircraft, which travel at much higher speeds and at great range (depending on the type of aircraft). However, and unlike aircraft, ships can sustain their mobility over an extended time period and have the ability to carry a far heavier payload. For this reason the Royal Australian Navy identifies that warships are ‘uniquely mobile in mass’.40 Lift

The capacity for ‘mobility in mass’ relates to the ability of naval forces to lift far heavier payloads than can be carried by air and to move them over extended distances more easily than is possible on land. The things being lifted might be raw materials, food, munitions, troops, aircraft, missiles, intelligence and surveillance equipment or any almost anything else that might be of strategic importance. They might be lifted in warships, submarines, auxiliary vessels or merchant ships. Lift capacity varies according to the size and design of a vessel, but even a modest ship or craft can carry far more than the largest aircraft. A US Air Force C-5 Galaxy heavy lift aircraft might safely lift a single main battle tank, the same load as an average landing craft. A French Mistral class amphibious ship, in contrast, can embark up to 900 troops plus 60 armoured vehicles or 13 tanks, in addition to its own landing craft and sixteen medium lift helicopters. Sustained reach

Some vessels are designed to operate relatively close to the shore and do not have the range and sea keeping ability to safely undertake long ocean voyages. They may also lack the endurance to stay at sea for very long before putting ashore to replenish supplies of food, water, fuel or munitions. Thus, vessels such as the triremes of Ancient Greece, the galleys employed in European waters until the early modern period, motor torpedo boats in the Second World War and many coastal craft today lack(ed) sustained reach. However, many other warships, including most large warships today, have the ability to travel great distances (measured in terms of thousands of miles) and to stay at sea for weeks or months. Endurance can be enhanced by access to overseas bases or by an ability to conduct replenishment at sea. Poise and persistence

Once a naval force deploys to a theatre it can stay there for an extended period of time. The endurance of individual units may allow them to remain on station for weeks, and a navy can maintain a presence indefinitely if it has the ability to resupply at sea and can rotate units. This ability to ‘hang around’ in areas of importance can be diplomatically useful and can allow navies to preposition in areas where trouble has occurred or where it is expected. The ability to travel through the politically free medium of the sea and to poise in international waters unobserved by the general public, infringing the sovereignty of no one and without the need to negotiate bases from a third party, is an attribute of immeasurable utility in situations short of war.

Nature of the maritime operating environment 31 Versatility and flexibility

While some warships are designed to fill a rather limited range of functions and lack the capacity to do much else, most are able to fill a wide range of roles, from disaster relief through to high intensity war fighting, and may be able to transition from one role to another without the need to retrain or re-equip. Thus, a destroyer optimised for anti-surface and anti-air warfare against a sophisticated opponent with access to high tech weaponry can also be employed on a range of diplomatic ‘presence’ missions, provide support for forces ashore in a peace support operation or participate in drugs interdiction or counter-piracy operations. The combination of a well-trained crew, sophisticated command and control facilities, accommodation, medical support facilities, a helicopter and small craft useful for inshore work, the ability to carry food and medical supplies and to generate electricity and clean water, all combine to make this war fighting platform an extremely useful asset in the provision of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Resilience

In the age of sail, major warships were difficult to sink because their main weapon system, solid shot fired from smooth bore cannon, was not that effective at actually sinking sturdily built wooden warships. Today a variety of weapons launched from above, below or on the surface of the sea, have the ability to kill a ship. However, warships can be designed to take a considerable amount of punishment before they become non-operational. Even in the missile age, it is far from the case that a hit equals a kill, and it can be hard to hit a ship in a properly constituted task force. Perhaps more to the point, the loss of individual ships does not demonstrate that navies are not resilient anymore than the loss of troops, tanks or aircraft demonstrates the same for armies and air forces. During their campaign to liberate the Falkland Islands in 1982 the British Royal Navy lost four warships to enemy air attack, but the task force overall had sufficient resilience to continue the mission successfully. Resilience thus reflects the ability of a maritime force to survive and to complete its mission. Well-equipped and well-balanced fleets have time and again proven to be extremely resilient despite the loss of individual and sometimes multiple units. Limitations

Of course, navies are also subject to inherent limitations. Most obviously, their ability to directly influence events declines with distance from the shore. Sea-based aircraft may be able to reach hundreds of miles inland and cruise and ballistic missiles may reach thousands, but most naval forces will have only a limited capacity to directly influence events in the heart of a continental land mass. The impact that they have on the shore will often be indirect, through blockades or embargoes for example, and this may disguise the critical nature of the contribution. Navies are expensive. They depend on platforms and support structures that are rarely cheap to procure or sustain. A US carrier strike group, consisting of a large nuclear powered aircraft carrier, a cruiser and at least two destroyers or frigates, plus support and replenishment ships, represents an investment of capital that few can afford. The aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush was completed in 2009 at a cost of $6.2 billion. It is reflective of the pace of ‘defence inflation’ that the first of the new

32

Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power

Gerald R Ford class carriers, delivered to the navy in 2017, cost $12.9 billion.41 Most navies do not attempt to maintain such capabilities, but even a modern sophisticated destroyer, such as the British Type 45, is likely to cost well over $1 billion to construct and equip.42 Even smaller and less capable platforms are relatively expensive: the three offshore patrol vessels delivered to the Irish Naval Service between 2014–16 cost €213 million (US $244 million) despite their modest range of capabilities.43 On the other hand, all of these ships are expected to have long lives. The USS George H.W. Bush should have a service life of 50 years. It is interesting to note that the costs of maintaining such ships, while high, is substantially smaller than the cost of maintaining an army brigade combat team.44 The Royal Australian Navy notes two other attributes that can limit the utility of naval forces. First, they suggest that, despite a capacity for poise, navies cannot ‘hold the sea’ in a way that armies can occupy land. Their physical presence is thus transient when compared to armies (but not air forces). As a counterpoint one might argue that it is hard to envisage a situation where one would want to ‘hold the sea’ and that while the physical presence of a ship may be transient, the effect created by maritime forces may not be. Australian doctrine also notes that while navies have superior mobility in mass, they lack the speed of aircraft and thus, while the response time of air-mobile forces might be measured in hours, a sea-based force may take days or weeks to arrive.45 On the other hand, of course, air transported forces tend to lack the sustainability of their sea-based equivalent and cannot usually bring with them the heavy vehicles, support, logistics, fuel or munitions required to undertake combat operations for any significant length of time. Even the notional superior speed of delivery presupposes a state of high readiness and concentration near the point of departure and, most critically, appropriate reception facilities at the other end. In reality air and sea transport capabilities tend to complement each other. Thus, in Operation Desert Shield in 1990–91, many of the US troops arrived in theatre (Saudi Arabia) by air, but their equipment, vehicles, munitions, food, fuel and logistic supplies almost all came by sea.46 The US Navy does not define attributes of naval forces in the way that some other navies have done, although their 2010 doctrine does identify six ‘core capabilities’ that represent the foundation of US naval power. More recently the 2015 edition of US Maritime Strategy argued that the sea services had traditionally organised, trained and equipped to fulfil four ‘essential functions’ – deterrence, sea control, power projection and maritime security – and added to these a fifth function, ‘all domain access’.47

Conclusion Based on the attributes and characteristics examined above one can argue that the particular utility of navies is founded on an ability for sustained manoeuvre that they are able to exploit because of their own particular characteristics and because of the nature of the environment that they operate in. Equally important for many navies will be the ability to deny an enemy the capacity for such manoeuvre. This ability to manoeuvre can provide useful options in wartime and it has important consequences in situations short of war. The ability to deploy ships (and the things that they carry) overseas without crossing any territorial boundaries, and to poise in international waters without infringing anyone’s sovereignty and without the need to negotiate basing rights, makes navies extremely flexible tools of national policy. While at sea, ships and even more so submarines, are less visible than their landbased equivalents, both in a literal and a figurative sense. They can appear ostentatiously

Nature of the maritime operating environment 33 in a trouble spot, or hover quietly over the horizon, tailoring their visibility to suit a given situation. They may poise in a region ready for action but are able to withdraw quietly and without fanfare if trouble does not materialise. The routine deployment of ships, task groups and even of entire fleets into particular regions is common place and is likely to excite far less comment than the deployment of even a handful of landbased aircraft or ground forces, both of which require a footprint ashore that may be readily available or that may come at some political cost. The deployment of naval forces is thus easier and often less provocative than that of air forces or armies. These attributes represent nothing more than general characteristics that result from the interaction of naval forces with the environment in which they operate. Different types of naval forces will be able to exploit these attributes in different ways. Leverage results from the ability to use the potential provided by these attributes in a manner that is appropriate to the circumstances in any given situation. It is not the inevitable result of inter-action with the sea. Naval capabilities reflect national requirements for the use of the sea and thus are filtered through a complex process whereby national interests and priorities are identified and solutions sought. Capabilities cannot meaningfully be examined in isolation to policy. In the second part of this book we will examine contemporary policy, and capabilities, in greater detail. In the remaining chapters in Part I of the book we will analyse the manner in which the characteristics of the maritime environment and attributes of navies have been understood and interpreted in traditional maritime strategy, Chapter 2, and also how alternative approaches and interpretations have developed, Chapter 3, before examining how these characteristics and attributes can have a particular utility in support of diplomacy and crisis management, Chapter 4. Chapter 5 will place these issues and ideas into context with an examination of relevant history.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

US Joint Publication 3–32,Command and Control for Joint Maritime Operations (2013), viii. NATO, Allied Joint Publications (AJP) 3.1, Allied Joint Maritime Operations (April, 2004). Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power, 25. Hubert Moineville, La guerre naval (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982) trans. by Commander P.R.Compton Hall and published as Naval Warfare Today and Tomorrow (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 31. Chris Parry, Super Highway. Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Eliot and Thompson, 2014), 317. J. Boone Bartholomees, Jr. ‘naval theory for Soldiers’, in J. Boone Bartholomees Jr (ed.), US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues. Vol. 1. Theory of War and Strategy, 5th edn (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2012), 310. World Wildlife Fund, www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood (26 Jan 2018). Reuters, 21 Nov 2017. www.reuters.com/article/us-anglo-american-debeers-namibia/de-beersorders-142-million-namibian-diamond-mining-ship-idUSKBN1DL2L5 (25 Jan 2018) Figures from UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Review of Maritime Transportation, 2017 (New York & Geneva, 2017). http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/rmt 2017_en.pdf (26 Jan 2018). World Bank, http://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/USA/textview (downloaded 25 June 2017). Shipping costs discussed in UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transportation, 2016, 39. Air freight costs taken from www.freightos.com/portfolio-items/air-freight-rates-cost-prices/ (downloaded 10 July 2017). Stavridis, Sea Power, 42–44. Also see Douglas Main, ‘Undersea cables transport 99 per cent of international data’, in Newsweek 4 April 2015. Available online at www.newsweek.com/underseacables-transport-99-percent-international-communications-319072 (Downloaded 7 July 2017).

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13 Moineville, Naval Warfare, 34. 14 For an excellent brief introduction see Daniel Moran, The Maritime Governance System’, in Tan (ed.), Maritime Power, 115–130. Also see Peter Dutton, ‘Law of the sea for the twenty-first century’, in P. Dutton, R.S. Ross and O. Tunsjo (eds), Twenty-First Century Seapower. Cooperation and Conflict at Sea (London: Routledge, 2012) 261–280; Steven Haines, ‘The influence of law on maritime operations’, in E. Grove and P. Hore (eds), Dimensions of Sea Power: Strategic Choice in the Modern World (Hull: Hull University Press, 1998). 15 Mark Rosen, ‘Challenges to Public Order and the Law of the Sea’, in J.I. Bekkevold and G. Till (eds), International Order at Sea. How it is Challenged. How it is Maintained (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) chap 2. 16 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, available online at www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_ agreements/convention_overview_convention.htm (downloaded 1 Feb 2013). 17 See Ard Bernaerts, Guide to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: Including the Text of the 1982 UN Convention and Agreement Concerning Part IX of 1994 (Victoria BC: Trafford Publishing, 2006). 18 See NWP 1–14N, The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations. Also see Royal Australian Navy, Australian Maritime Operations (2017) chapter 7 ‘Legal Aspects Affecting Maritime Operations’. Available at www.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/australianmaritime-operations-2017 [1 Feb 2018]. 19 Louise Doswald-Beck (ed.) The San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts at Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The Manual is also available via the website of the International Committee of the Red Cross, www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/INTRO/ 560?OpenDocument (accessed, 1 June 2017). 20 For example the relevant British manual explicitly identifies the value of the San Remo Manual as a reference work and the basis of much (but not all) of its own provisions. See JSP 383: Manual of the Law of Armed Conflict (Joint Doctrine and Concepts Centre, 2004) Chapter 13 ‘Maritime Warfare’. For US guidelines, which do not explicitly refer to the San Remo Manual, see NWP 1–14N., The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations (Department of the Navy, July 2007). 21 Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 1st edn (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 18. 22 N.A.M. Rodger, Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2004), lxv. 23 Colin S. Gray, The Leverage of Seapower (London: Macmillan, 1992) 2. Also see Colin S. Gray, The Navy in the Post-Cold War World. The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press). 24 For a detailed discussion of this issue see Norman Friedman, Network-centric Warfare; How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009). 25 Ibid. Also see NATO, Allied Joint Publications (AJP) 3.1, Allied Joint Maritime Operations (April, 2004), 1–2. 26 Admiral James Stavridis, Sea Power. The History and Geography of the World’s Oceans (New York: Random House, 2017), 15. 27 For a brief summary see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean War. A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War, 2nd edn (Boston: Little Brown, 1990). 28 Norman Friedman, ‘Navies and Technology’ in Tan (ed.), Maritime Power, 32. 29 Status of the Navy, as of 6 July 2017, www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=146 (downloaded 10 July 2017). 30 In 2016 the US Army had 30 active Brigade Combat Teams (9 of them armoured). Congressional Budget Office, The US Military’s Force Structure: A Primer, July 2016. Available online at www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015–2016/reports/51535-fsprimer.pdf. 31 Friedman, Network-centric Warfare, passim. 32 See Charles Koburger, Narrow Seas, Small Navies and Fat Merchantmen: Naval Strategy for the 1990s (New York: Praeger, 1990). 33 Indian Navy, Naval Strategic Publication 1.1, Indian Maritime Doctrine (2009, updated online 2015) 54. Available online at www.indiannavy.nic.in/sites/default/files/Indian-Maritime-Doctrine2009-Updated-12Feb16.pdf (downloaded 10 July 2017)

Nature of the maritime operating environment 35 34 JDP 0–10, British Maritime Doctrine, 4th edn (2011), 3–8 35 British and NATO doctrine discuss the attributes/characteristics of ‘maritime power’ Australia refers to ‘the characteristics and attributes of ‘seapower’, Indian doctrine uses the term ‘characteristics of naval forces’. 36 Allied Joint Maritime Operations , 3.1, 1–4. 37 JDP 0–10 British Maritime Doctrine, 5th edn (2017), 2–6. Available online at www.gov.uk/ government/publications/uk-maritime-power-jdp-0-10 (downloaded 1 Dec 2017). 38 Australian Maritime Doctrine, 86–94. 39 Fundamentals of Maritime Operations. Netherlands Maritime Military Doctrine (2014) 91. Available online at www.defensie.nl/binaries/defence/. . .maritime. . ./GMO+engels+digitaal.pdf (Downloaded 10 July 2017). 40 Australian Maritime Doctrine, 86. 41 Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program. Background and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, June 16, 2017. Available online at https://fas.org/ sgp/crs/weapons/RS20643.pdf (downloaded 7 July 2017). 42 Public Accounts Committee (1 June 2009). Ministry of Defence. Type 45 Destroyer. House of Commons HC 372. 43 Irish Department of Defence Press Release (downloaded 14 July 2016). 44 In 2016 the US Congressional Budget Office advised that the annual cost per unit of maintaining an armoured BCT was $2,610 million. The annual cost of maintaining an aircraft carrier was $1,180 million plus $910 million for the air wing. Personnel costs for the BCT outweighed that of the carrier/air wing by more than a third. Congressional Budget Office, The US Military’s Force Structure: A Primer, Appendix B. 45 Australian Maritime Doctrine, 93. 46 Ultimately Desert Shield involved the movement of 3.3 million short tons of dry cargo to deploy and sustain US forces in theatre, 2.8 million of which came by sea. Ronald F. Rost, John F. Addams and John H.J. Nelson, Sealift in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm: 7 August 1990 to 17 February 1991 (Alexandra, VA: Center for Naval Analysis, 1991). 47 US Navy, Naval Doctrine Publication 1. Naval Warfare (March 2010) 31–32. US Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (March 2015) 2.

Further reading Natalie Klien, Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Klein examines the law of the sea and the rights and duties of states in the context of contemporary maritime security challenges. Daniel Moran and James A. Russell (eds), Maritime Strategy and Global Order. Markets, Resources, Security (Georgetown University Press, 2016). This edited volume explores regional, historical and contemporary dimensions of maritime strategy, exploring in depth many of the issues introduced in this chapter. Chris Parry, Super Highway. Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Eliot and Thompson, 2014). Written by a retired British admiral, this book explores the critical importance to contemporary world affairs of maritime power in the broadest sense. Admiral James Stavridis USN Retd., Sea Power. The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans (New York: Random House, 2017). Stavridis, the first admiral to serve as Supreme Allied Commander Europe at NATO, offers a very personal reflection on the importance of sea power and of his experience serving for decades as an officer in the US Navy. Martin Stopford, Maritime Economics, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2008). A survey of the importance of sea transport to the global economy since ancient times, with a particular emphasis on the economics of maritime trade today. Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). Till’s book provides a sophisticated examination of maritime power and strategy in the twenty-first century. His analysis is underpinned by an appreciation of the ‘historic attributes’ of the sea, and thus he devotes considerable attention to the impact of the maritime environment on naval operations. A fourth edition is due to be published in 2018.

2

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1

The previous chapter examined the way in which the unique operating environment of the sea has bestowed certain attributes on maritime forces and given naval warfare particular characteristics that set it apart from warfare on land or in the air. In order to gain advantage from the use of the sea these attributes and characteristics must be exploited in an appropriate way. Advantage does not come with proximity to the sea. Indeed, history demonstrates the opposite. For those unable to use it, the sea is a source of great vulnerability and an avenue for enemy attack. There is, therefore, an imperative to think about how best to use the sea or, in other words, to think strategically about the issue. Over the centuries numerous writers have sought to do just this, although it would be fair to say that until the nineteenth century less was written about maritime strategy than its equivalent on land and navies tended to be driven more by practical experience than published theory. However, in the nineteenth century there was a concerted attempt by a number of different commentators to examine past practice and to distil from that key features or principles of maritime strategy. This resulted in a body of work that has proven both enduring and influential. This chapter examines the dominant narrative that emerged and that might fairly be described as representing an Anglo-American tradition in maritime strategy. Chapter 3 will address alternative interpretations and seek to establish the extent to which the Anglo-American tradition had relevance and resonance beyond those two countries. It is reasonable to question whether it is worth studying traditional maritime strategy. The key features of such strategy were established over a century ago by a group of writers who tended to base their assumptions on an examination of the history of naval warfare in the age of sail. Does an understanding of British and French policy during the Seven Years War (1756–1763) or of the daring exploits of US frigate captains in the War of 1812 really tell us something useful about naval warfare today? It is not unreasonable to question whether the works of writers such as Philip Colomb, Alfred Mahan, Julian Corbett, Herbert Richmand, Daniel Landquist or Raoul Castex are still relevant in the twenty-first century, if indeed they ever were. This is an important question as the concepts and principles established a century ago are frequently employed in debate and discussion today, and it is important to consider their relevance. Traditional maritime strategy may, as is often claimed, offer insight into current problems and issues or it may simply be outdated and irrelevant. It is best to know which is the case. Another reason to engage with traditional works is that, whatever their intrinsic value, they have influenced the way in which people think and the terms within which debates about naval policy have been conducted, even if they are more often quoted than read. The US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, may have been exaggerating

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 37 when he complained in the 1940s that the Navy Department frequently ‘seemed to retire from the realm of logic into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God, Mahan his prophet and the United States Navy the only true Church’.1 However while the impact that Mahan had on his own and on other navies is open to dispute, it is fair to say that if one wishes to understand why navies thought and acted in the way that they did in the twentieth century, and why they think and act as they do today, some engagement with traditional maritime strategy is necessary.

What is maritime strategy and what is it for? Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie USN defined strategy simply as ‘a plan of action designed in order to achieve some end’.2 In military terms it is usually applied to high level decision making and is sometimes divided into ‘grand strategy’, focusing on broad national or alliance policy, and ‘military strategy’ which translates this policy into military objectives. There are two other ‘levels of war’ commonly identified in Western military doctrine: the operational level, where battles and engagements are planned and sequenced into coherent campaigns and the tactical level at which the individual battles and engagements are fought (see Box 2.1). These terms entered common usage in recent decades and are not often found within the classical works of maritime (or military) strategy. More common was a simple distinction between strategy and tactics with, at best, oblique references to the operational level. Whatever terminology is used it is important to remember that the classic works of ‘maritime strategy’ examined more than just strategy and often addressed issues and made recommendations relating to activity at the operational and tactical levels. Before examining the work of the key writers, it is useful to establish the relationship of naval or maritime strategy to wider national strategy. Reference to Julian Corbett’s work is useful here. Although he did not anticipate the current ‘levels of war’, Corbett did borrow from Antoine de Jomini a distinction between ‘major strategy’ and ‘minor

BOX 2.1  THE LEVELS OF WAR Tactical. The level of warfare at which battles and engagements are planned and executed to achieve military objectives assigned to tactical units or task forces. Operational. The level of warfare at which campaigns and major operations are planned, conducted and sustained to achieve strategic objectives within theatres or other operational areas. Strategic. The level of warfare at which a nation, often as a member of a group of nations, determines national or multinational (alliance or coalition) strategic security objectives and guidance, then develops and uses national resources to achieve those objectives. Source: US Department of Defense. Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (June 2017)

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strategy’. For Corbett major strategy dealt with ‘ulterior objectives’, meaning war aims and the allocation of resources, and minor strategy focused on ‘primary objects’, defined as the particular forces of the enemy or points to be dealt with in order to secure ulterior objectives. Minor strategy could be naval (where the immediate objective was attained by the fleet alone), military (when achieved by the army alone) or combined (when attained by the army and navy together). Naval strategy was thus a subdivision of minor strategy which was itself subordinate to major strategy that set national objectives. Building on the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz, Corbett noted that within major strategy there was bound to be some friction between political aims and objectives and military needs, and that such friction would also apply to minor strategy, albeit to a lesser degree. Thus, as he made clear, naval strategy could not be studied from a naval perspective alone. Other factors must, of necessity, intrude. For Corbett, naval strategy needed to be understood within the context of a wider maritime strategy of which it was but one part. As we have already noted, he defined maritime strategy as ‘the principles which govern a war in which the sea is a substantial factor’, recognising that only in the rarest cases were wars won by naval action alone. Naval strategy was merely that part of maritime strategy ‘which determines the movements of the fleet when maritime strategy has determined what part the fleet must play in relation to the action of land forces’.3 Corbett’s recognition that navies worked best when they cooperated with armies (and we should now add air forces to this equation) did not endear him to all at a time when some were prone to focus rather exclusively on specifically naval activity and to exaggerate the results. Rather like the early air power theorists that followed, there was a tendency among some commentators to imply that naval activity alone could achieve decisive strategic effect and that inter-service cooperation represented an unwanted diversion from core business. One should remember that while many commentators sought to identify and explain enduring principles most also had a normative agenda and wrote to influence policy. It is hardly surprising that their conclusions, designed to promote the interests of their favoured service, could sometimes be highly partisan. Subsequent events have tended to bear out the perspicacity of Corbett’s work and to highlight the shortcomings of those focused on independent effect.

Laws, principles or fertiliser? The classic works of maritime strategy were founded on an assumption that there are enduring principles that can be identified from the study of past events. In some cases, including that of Mahan, it might be argued that the principles seem to have been decided upon first and then history was exploited (and sometimes abused) in order to provide supporting ‘evidence’. This does not necessarily mean that the principles are flawed, but it should cause one to reflect on the manner in which they were derived. The idea of principles can be problematic in other ways. To what extent are they universal, authoritative and unchanging? Do they act as a general guide or can they be taken to provide hard and fast rules that must always be followed? Neither Mahan nor Corbett argued for unchanging laws but rather suggested that there were features and characteristics of maritime strategy and naval warfare that could be used to develop knowledge and understanding. They both warned against the mechanistic application of rules. On the other hand, other commentators, including Philip Colomb, appear to

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 39 have believed that there were ruling principles, laws of warfare at sea, that could be identified and that should not be transgressed.4 More recent commentators have noted that strategic principles cannot be applied like laws and that their application is always subject to local conditions and circumstance, but that they do provide a discipline that cannot be neglected without some cost. As Colin Gray has argued, strategy is intolerant of sub-optimal solutions adopted for reasons of politics, culture or ignorance.5 Mahan’s faith in enduring principles discovered through historical enquiry was not shaken by the obvious differences in tactics and technology between the age of sail, on which much of his work focused, and the steam driven armoured battleships of his own lifetime. He explained this as follows: . . . while many of the conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of weapons, there are certain teachings in the school of history which remain constant, and being, therefore, of universal application, can be elevated to the rank of general principles.6 He was clear, therefore, that while it was foolish to try to obtain tactical precepts to be followed in all circumstances it was possible to identify general principles. These could be detected through the study of the past. The application of these principles might vary over time, but the principles themselves would remain constant (see Box 2.2). Corbett adopted a similar approach and this is reflected in the title of his 1911 publication, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. He emphasised that systematic study of the past could provide an understanding of the particular characteristics of maritime power and strategy. He was aware of the dangers in this approach, particularly if such principles were used in the wrong way. He warned that ‘. . . nothing is so dangerous in the study of war as to permit maxims to become the substitute for judgement’.

BOX 2.2  MAHAN, HISTORY AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES Mahan used the example of Admiral Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 to illustrate the way in which historical examples could be used to detect and to illustrate enduring principles. In this battle the British admiral annihilated a French fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay by ‘doubling’ the enemy (sailing his ships in two divisions down both the starboard and port side of the enemy fleet) and exploiting the inability of the lee ships of the French fleet to come to the aid of the weather ships (i.e. those upwind) before the latter were destroyed. These tactics depended on features (reliance on the wind) that no longer pertained by the late nineteenth century but, Mahan explained, the principle which underpinned the attack, namely to ‘choose that part of the enemy’s order which can least easily be helped, and to attack it with superior forces’ remained relevant. At the strategic level, the principle to strike at the enemy lines of communication, was, he suggested, even easier to spot and just as valid a century later.7

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Theoretical study could not be regarded as a substitute for judgement and experience but was a means of ‘fertilising’ both.8 Thus, the ‘principles’ of maritime strategy should be viewed as fertiliser for the mind rather than as rules to be followed in all circumstances.

Traditional maritime strategy There is a western tradition of writing on naval warfare and maritime strategy that dates back thousands of years. In ancient Greece Thucydides wrote of the importance of the ‘rule of the sea’, while around 800 years later, Vegetius was just one of a number of Roman commentators who examined naval warfare.9 Works by King Alfonso of Castile (1270) Antoine de Conflans (1516), Pantero Pantera (1614), John Clerk (1782), Stephen Luce (1887) and Stepan Makarov (1898) from Spain, France, Italy, Britain, the US and Russia respectively, are illustrative of a wider body of literature from medieval times to the late nineteenth century. Despite this, it would be fair to say that less was written about war at sea than war on the land and much that was written focused particularly on tactical issues rather than strategy. Geoffrey Till has identified that writing on maritime strategy was not limited to the Western world and this is illustrated by works emanating from the Arabian Peninsula, such as those of Ahmad Bin Majid (1489) and Suleiman al Malin (1511). On the other hand, there was a paucity of theoretical writing on the subject in the Asia-Pacific region that Till identifies as rather puzzling, particularly given China’s rich tradition of strategic writing and the great strength and reach of Chinese maritime power until the 1500s. As he notes, maritime thinking in the Chinese, Islamic and Indian worlds did not match the extent and depth of published work in the west.10 It is often suggested that the ‘golden age’ of writing on maritime strategy began in the mid- to late-nineteenth century with pioneering work in Britain and the US. This rather neglects the contribution of those who did not write in English, including a very significant body of work in French. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that the AngloAmerican approach, reflected in the work of numerous different individuals, helped to codify and establish the general principles and concepts of maritime strategy and, in doing so, to set the terms within which debates were conducted. In Britain a Royal Marine, Captain John Colomb, provided a maritime focus to debates on imperial defence while his brother, Vice-Admiral Philip Colomb, published work that offered the navy and the public a means of understanding and articulating the principles of naval warfare. Their contemporary, Sir John Knox Laughton, did much to make professional naval history relevant and respectable, establishing its credentials as a discipline based on the appropriate use of evidence. Laughton was to become Professor of Modern History at King’s College London and, with Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, was a co-founder of the UK Navy Records Society.11 In the United States Captain Stephen B. Luce agitated enough to prompt the establishment of the Naval War College, serving as its first President, and he was instrumental in the establishment of the US Naval Institute and its influential publication, Proceedings. Luce was important in fostering an environment conducive to intelligent thinking about maritime strategy and he encouraged the work of his most illustrious subordinate, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a man who would succeed him as President of the Naval War College and surpass all of his contemporaries in terms of the reach and influence of his ideas.12

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 41 Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914)

Alfred Thayer Mahan was born at West Point in 1840, the son of Denis Hart Mahan, an Irish-American professor of military science at the US Military Academy. Alfred Mahan joined the US Navy, apparently against the wishes of his parents, graduating second in his class from the Naval Academy in 1859. There followed a rather unremarkable career as a naval officer, including blockade duty during the US Civil War, with his final sea-going appointment as commander of the protected cruiser USS Chicago in 1893. Retiring in 1896 with the rank of Captain he later benefitted from an Act of Congress in 1906 that promoted to Rear Admiral all retired captains who had served in the Civil War. Mahan was not a typical naval officer and did not enjoy life at sea, complaining, when in command of Chicago that, ‘I had forgotten what a beastly thing a ship is, and what a fool a man is who frequents one’.13 Mahan is not remembered for his exploits at sea but for a written output that amounted to 20 published books and 137 articles before he died of heart failure in 1914. He was appointed as a lecturer at the US Naval War College in 1885 and in preparation for this role undertook a year of research into naval history before replacing Luce as President of the College in 1886. He served two terms in this role until 1893 and his appointment to command USS Chicago. By this time Mahan had already established a global reputation as a maritime strategist, principally through publication in 1890 of The Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660–1783 and of The Influence of Seapower Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 in 1892.14 These were, and remain, his most recognised works. There is considerable debate over the extent to which Mahan developed new ideas or merely synthesised and promoted those that were already current. Equally, while he is often credited as having had a profound influence on naval policy and thought in his homeland, Europe and Japan, others have suggested that without Mahan policy would have changed little and that his work was feted because it reflected, rather than created, a growing interest in navies. His fame coincided with a naval resurgence, particularly in the US, Germany, Britain and Japan, and Mahan was certainly widely read, frequently quoted and often copied. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a particular fan. The architect of German naval growth, Alfred von Tirpitz, ordered a German translation of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History and bought 8,000 copies, 2,000 of which he had distributed in support of the First Navy Bill in 1898. Tirpitz was influenced by Mahan’s work, even if he does not appear to have really understood it.15 The essence of Mahan’s argument in The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, the thing that made it, in Andrew Lambert’s words, ‘a universal text for the Imperial age’, was the idea that naval mastery, founded upon a superior battle fleet, had provided the vehicle through which Britain had gained global pre-eminence through victory in war and the dominance of world trade.16 The argument was built upon a reading of British history and the implication was clear: what had worked for Britain could also work for others. To Mahan, maritime preponderance was the key to prosperity and success as a great power. He believed that national prosperity, and through it the means to wage war, were dependent on seaborne trade. This trade required the protection of a navy and thus he saw a close and beneficial relationship between trade and naval strength. Maritime trade encouraged the development of a navy to protect it, particularly when those in power benefitted from the proceeds of such trade. Trade also encouraged the development of facilities and resources upon which naval strength depended, including

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trained manpower, shipbuilding facilities, repair yards etc. A strong navy could lead to dominance at sea which could, in turn, encourage more trade. Mahan also recognised that navies could be built as a result of state policy and without a necessary link to maritime trade but he believed that history showed the sea power thus created to be less well founded and harder to sustain than when linked to maritime trade. In the introduction to The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, Mahan identified six key conditions that affected the ability of a nation to develop and exploit sea power: geographical position, physical conformation, extent of territory, population size, character of the people, and character of the government. These are examined below. •

•

•

•

•

•

Geographical position Mahan noted that it helped to be in the right place. Geography could support or inhibit the development of sea power depending on the access that it provided to important sea lanes, the impact that it had on the ability to concentrate maritime resources and also by proximity to enemies. Isolated countries like Britain, which could only ever be attacked by sea, were likely to be able to devote to their navy a greater share of national wealth than could countries like France which shared their borders with potential enemies. Physical conformation It helped to have harbours of suitable size and depth in the right places. Thus, in its wars against France, Britain had the advantage of numerous good harbours situated at points convenient for the support of operations in the English Channel. He also noted that it helped if conditions inland encouraged an outward view towards the sea for trade and fishing. He lamented that while this had been the case in colonial times in America, the manifest possibilities presented by westward expansion had promoted a more inward looking focus in his homeland. Extent of territory For Mahan the total extent of territory was less important than the length of coastline and the character of its harbours. The relationship of people to space was also important. Too few people in a country with a long coastline could be considered a vulnerability rather than a strength Population size Clearly there needed to be sufficient people to man the fleet and support military and economic activity. The most important factor for Mahan was not the size of population per se but rather the number ‘following the sea’. National Character Mahan was a product of his time and made a number of very sweeping generalisations about ‘national character’. The essence of his argument was that people needed to have a seafaring attitude, an understanding of the sea. In particular, he argued that those ‘with an aptitude for commercial pursuits’ who were interested in trade, and thus the protection of trade, would see advantage in activity at sea. Napoleon’s jibe was turned around and Mahan praised the English for being ‘a nation of shopkeepers’. Character of the government Mahan was critical of the ability of a democracy to focus sufficient attention and resources to the maintenance of naval strength. However, he believed that representative government enabled and encouraged trade and that, by reflecting the interests of the merchant class, were more likely to understand the utility of the sea. He noted that despotic government ‘wielded with judgement and consistency’ could build a great navy more quickly than could a free people, but believed that such navies were hard to sustain and tended to wither away, as had the navy of Louis XIV of France, when its sponsor Jean-Baptiste Colbert was gone.

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 43 BOX 2.3  THE BATTLE OF THE SAINTES, 1782 In 1782 the French Admiral de Grasse was in the Windward Islands and chose to support the French conquest of various islands rather than focus on the destruction of the weaker British naval forces. This resulted in a number of minor French conquests. However, in time, the British reinforced and united their various squadrons, brought the French to battle and defeated (and captured) de Grasse in April 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes. The British therefore defeated the planned French invasion of Jamaica and reversed the strategic situation in the Caribbean (opening up the possibility of retaking any islands lost) by focusing on the one thing upon which all else depended, the enemy battle fleet.

Mahan emphasised that sea power was built on a command of the sea enabled by naval supremacy in combination with maritime commerce. He placed a particular emphasis on the importance of the domination of maritime communications through a superior battle fleet and on the value of concentration and offensive action with a view to defeating the enemy fleet in a decisive battle. To Mahan the idea that ‘the decisive object of the offense is the enemy’s organised force, his battlefleet’ was one of the ‘fundamental principles of all naval war’.17 In his study of the wars between Britain and France he castigated the French for subordinating such fleet action to ‘so called particular operations’ that were driven by some immediate objective but ignored the over-riding requirement to secure command of the sea through destruction of the British fleet (see Box 2.3). Mahan identified the enemy fleet as the controlling factor in a campaign and its destruction was thus the true objective of an opposing force, the best way to secure ulterior objectives being the defeat of the force that threatened them. For Mahan command of the sea meant that a navy could strangle an opponent’s economy through blockade, seize its overseas territories, support continental allies and launch military forces against its coast. Without it rather little could be achieved. He did not believe that attacks on enemy trade, the favoured French approach of guerre de course (commerce raiding), could be successful without first gaining command. Mahan’s focus tended to be at sea, and battle was at the heart of his analysis. He did examine coastal, riverine and amphibious operations, notably in his biography of Admiral Farragut.18 However, from a superficial reading of his works it is possible to get the impression that once command of the sea is ensured all else falls into place and need not concern one too much. With an analysis that emphasised that dominance at sea was a key factor in the strength of nations, and with a strong focus on the centrality of battle, and thus on the need to build a dominant battle fleet, it is not surprising that Mahan’s work proved popular with many naval officers and others who sought to justify a strong navy. A ‘blue water’ school of thought

Mahan was the most prominent maritime strategist of his age but he was, of course, not the only one. The work of the Colomb brothers in Britain has already been noted.

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Sir John Colomb focused mainly on British imperial defence and rather ignored relevant and complicating factors such as politics and economics.19 His brother, Philip Colomb, had a broader approach and concentrated on the dual considerations of how to secure command of the sea and what could be done once such command was established. His analysis, like that of Mahan, was conducted within a framework of historical enquiry. His major works, Naval Warfare. Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (1891) and Essays on Naval Defence (1896), would, perhaps, be better known and more widely read had he not been overshadowed by The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, published in the same year as Naval Warfare.20 Despite this, Colomb was generous about the rival text, telling Mahan that ‘I think that all our navy men regard it as the Naval book of the age, and it has had a great effect in getting people to understand what they had never understood before’.21 Other intellectual naval officers, including Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge and Admiral Sir Reginald Custance offered their own interpretations of maritime strategy and naval warfare, as did civilians such as Sir James Thursfield, and together they may justly be regarded as having represented something of a ‘blue water school’ of naval thought in Britain prior to the First World War.22 Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922)

The most significant British writer on maritime strategy during this period was Sir Julian Corbett. Julian Stafford Corbett was born in 1854 into a family with sufficient means to ensure that, although he studied law at Cambridge and was called to the Bar, he did not devote himself to his practice as a lawyer. Instead he led a rather gentlemanly existence travelling and writing, first trying his hand at fiction, with no notable success, before turning to naval history for which he soon demonstrated a considerable talent. Biographies of George Monck and Francis Drake were followed by his first major scholarly work, Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898). The success of this book led to a request for another, this time entitled The Successors of Drake (1900) and to the establishment of his reputation as a major naval historian. He subsequently published a large number of books, articles and letters relating to both naval history and maritime strategy and was drawn into vibrant debates on current policy, maintaining a close relationship with Admiral Sir John Fisher. His most noted works, including England in the Mediterranean (1904), England in the Seven Years War (1907) and The Campaign of Trafalgar (1910), reflected an attempt to draw enduring principles from a detailed study of history, the process being most obvious in his study of the Seven Years War which was clearly driven by a desire to show how British success was not founded on naval action alone but rather on the combined effect of the army and navy acting in concert. In addition to his published work Corbett also lectured at the Royal Navy War Course at Greenwich. In collaboration with Captain Edward Slade, Director of the War College, Corbett put together his lecture notes in a document that became known as the ‘Green Pamphlet’, or, to give it its proper title, ‘Strategical Terms and Definitions Used in Lectures on Naval History’. First produced for a restricted audience in 1906 and then revised in 1909 the Green Pamphlet formed the basis of his major theoretical work, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, published in 1911. Some Principles caused controversy when it was published, as is discussed below. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most important books on maritime strategy for, as J.J. Widen has argued, ‘[d]espite its many shortcomings, Corbett’s theory of maritime

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 45 strategy is still the most sophisticated and eloquently written scholarly treatment of its subject.’23 Corbett’s analysis shares many things in common with that of Mahan, notably a focus on the importance of gaining command of the sea and the need to control maritime communications. However, his approach is grounded in a more detailed and less obviously partial analysis of relevant history. His work is more nuanced than Mahan’s and is more reflective of the limitations of sea power as well as its strengths. Corbett publicly noted Mahan’s importance as a pioneer of maritime strategy and praised him for placing naval history on ‘a philosophical basis’ but also noted that his work could be ‘attractive’ but ‘dangerous’ when presented to young students of naval warfare. Privately, and not unreasonably, he pointed to Mahan’s tendency to make ‘shallow and wholly unhistorical’ remarks.24 Throughout his work Corbett was at pains to stress that naval activity could only be understood within a wider maritime strategy, which was itself just one part of national strategy. He emphasised that except in the rarest cases navies alone could not be decisive and that to prevail in war they must learn to operate with armies. Indeed, Corbett suggested that joint military action represented the normal British approach to war and that this had given them a unique ability to make limited but effective commitments to limited wars overseas and had also, on occasion, enabled limited engagement in unlimited continental wars. Safe behind the bulwark created by command of the sea, Corbett argued, Britain had been able to strangle enemy trade while protecting that of Britain, and could also seize enemy colonies, conduct raids against the enemy coast, launch expeditions at some point away from the main enemy strength and support the continental allies needed to contain the main enemy army. He laid a particular emphasis on economic warfare as an offensive tool of maritime strategy and argued against any reduction in maritime belligerent rights relating to blockade.25 Corbett recognised the value of battle as a means of getting command of the sea but, somewhat in contrast to Mahan and Colomb, he emphasised the difficulty of achieving this and also recognised that there were other things that one might need to focus on before the enemy fleet could be defeated. For this reason, he placed less emphasis on the concentration of forces than did Mahan. He shared Mahan’s belief that commerce raiding was less effective than blockade but, in contrast to the American, he did not believe that convoy would represent an effective counter to raiders in the modern world. In this respect, he proved to be totally wrong and in advancing this notion he contributed to one of the greatest naval blunders of the First World War. As has already been noted, Corbett’s ideas were not always favourably received. His tendency to suggest that navies alone could not be decisive and that battle was not always the best option did not endear him to many that considered such ideas to be heresy. The fact that he was a civilian may also have alienated some within a naval audience more inclined to listen to those with experience at sea. Corbett had the temerity to question the navy’s cherished beliefs and also the dominant narrative of naval warfare that emphasised the achievement of command of the sea through fleet engagement. Thus, his criticism of Admiral Nelson in The Campaign of Trafalgar (1910), and particularly the suggestion that he had taken unwarranted risks during the battle, resulted in the convening of an Admiralty Committee to investigate the matter. Notable critics included Sir Reginald Custance, Spencer Wilkinson and Sir George Clark (Lord Sydenham). Custance argued against the ‘mistaken doctrine’ that the aim in naval warfare should be to control maritime communications rather than to destroy the enemy.26 Wilkinson responded to the publication of Some Principles of Maritime

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Strategy (1911) by calling Corbett the purveyor of ‘strategically false doctrine’. Clarke accused him of advancing ‘sea heresies’ and, in 1916, in the aftermath of the disappointment at the equivocal results of the Battle of Jutland, both he and Custance attacked Corbett, arguing that his teachings had had a demoralising effect on the Royal Navy.27 Corbett remained unrepentant asking, in a post-war public lecture, ‘what material advantage did Trafalgar give that Jutland did not give?’28 It is a question that students of strategy today would do well to ponder. In 1914 Corbett had been engaged to write the official history of the naval war against Germany. He did so, but only completed three volumes before he died in 1922. The remaining two volumes were written by Henry Newbolt. It is indicative of the controversy surrounding his ideas that the Admiralty inserted a disclaimer into the third volume, which discussed Jutland, noting that ‘Their Lordships find that some of the principles advocated in this book, especially the tendency to minimise the importance of seeking battle and forcing it to a conclusion, are directly in conflict with their views’.29 Corbett’s criticism of Admiral Beatty’s actions at Jutland no doubt encouraged their lordships’ concern, not least because Beatty was currently First Sea Lord and a bitter dispute raged between his supporters and those of his superior at Jutland, Admiral Jellicoe, over the events of that day.

Key concepts summarised Despite their various differences of interpretation, the writers discussed above established key concepts relating to naval warfare and maritime strategy. These concepts continue to be employed in historical analysis, in debates about contemporary strategy and in current naval doctrine. The key points are summarised below and will be examined throughout this book. Command of the sea

BOX 2.4  DEFINITIONS OF COMMAND OF THE SEA •

• • •

•

Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge (1907), ‘The aim of naval warfare is to obtain command of the sea, an expression which means control of maritime communications.’30 Vice Admiral Curt von Maltzhan (1908), ‘Of the first importance now as ever is the struggle for the mastery of the sea in battle.’31 Sir Julian Corbett (1911), ‘Command of the sea means nothing but the control of sea communications, whether for commercial or military purposes.’32 Rear Admiral Raoul Castex (1937) ‘The mission of maritime forces is simply to dominate lines of communications, and the achievement of that situation is normally described as sea mastery.’33 Bernard Brodie (1944), ‘The side which is able to carry on its own commerce and stop that of the enemy is said to be in “command of the sea” in the region where it enjoys that marked advantage.’34

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 47 Command of the sea, variously defined as control of maritime communications or, more broadly, as the freedom to use the seas and to deny that use to an enemy, has often been portrayed as something approaching the ‘holy grail’ of naval warfare. Philip Colomb, for example, stated boldly that ‘The primary aim of naval war is the command of the sea’ while Cyprian Bridge described its possession as ‘the main object of naval warfare.’35 Both Mahan and Corbett recognised the importance of this concept, although Mahan tended not to employ the phrase. Some commentators portrayed command in absolute terms, as did Clarke and Thursfield in 1897 when they argued that ‘There is no such thing as partial or incomplete command of the sea. It is either absolute or it does not exist’.36 It is hard to see how such conclusions can be drawn from any reasonable reading of history and most commentators (including Mahan, Colomb and Corbett) recognised that the extent to which one could control activity at sea varied according to circumstance and that total command was unusual. Mahan was absolutely clear that the notion that ‘the sea brooks only one mistress’ was false; even in situations where there was a significant preponderance in favour of one side it was impossible to control absolutely all enemy activity. Similarly, Corbett argued that command was usually limited in terms of time, degree and location, disaggregating the concept into general or local and temporary or permanent command. The most complete expression, general and permanent command, was barely attainable except with the practical annihilation of the enemy fleet. A pertinent question, then, was how much command is enough. Colomb tended to emphasise the danger posed by enemy formations and, by extension, to stress the overriding importance of seeking their destruction, arguing that ‘. . . nothing of consequence can be done in naval war till one side secures the control of the water area’.37 Corbett, recognised that disputed command was a normal state of affairs, at least in the early stages of any conflict, and that general command of the sea was not a necessary precursor to all operations. Indeed, he suggested that there might well be circumstances when general command of the sea was not the first and over-riding priority and that a navy might first seek to exploit a local command to secure some military or political objective. Lines of communication

Both Mahan and Corbett recognised that the only thing that mattered at sea was the movement of ships and thus command of the sea meant, in effect, command of communications at sea. Thus, as Corbett put it, the question that must be asked before any proposed operation was not ‘have we got command of the sea?’ but rather ‘can we secure the necessary lines of communication from obstruction by the enemy’.38 In this sense it is not the sea that is controlled but rather it means the control of an opponent. Unlike on land, where lines of communication for opposing forces tended to converge at the front line from more or less opposite directions, at sea they run parallel. In effect, a French line of communication through the English Channel was the same as a British one. This meant that, in securing their own lines, the British would also cut the French ones. Offensive and defensive functions were thus complimentary. Therefore, actions taken to secure command of the sea/use of communications by one side would simultaneously challenge use by the other. Gaining command of the sea would, by definition, deny it to an enemy. Thus, Nelson’s victory at the Nile in 1798 was doubly significant because it secured British lines of

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communication in the Mediterranean and severed the French, stranding their army in Egypt. On the other hand, just because one side loses command of the sea it does not mean that the other side automatically gains it. Control can remain disputed. Decisive battle

For Mahan, and those that followed him, the favoured means of securing command of the sea was through a decisive fleet engagement in which the main enemy fleet was defeated or destroyed. Historical examples of such battles might include Trafalgar (1805), Navarino (1827), Santiago de Cuba (1898) and Tsushima (1905), although in reality individual battles were in themselves rarely decisive. Trafalgar was just the last and the greatest in a series of major British victories against France, and Tsushima must be viewed in the context of a wider maritime campaign that included earlier Japanese victories over the Russian fleet at the battles of the Yellow Sea and Ulsan in 1904 and the additional losses in and around Port Arthur (see Chapter 5). It should also be noted that the enemy will usually retain some ability to act at sea. In the aftermath of Trafalgar France still retained a substantial navy and continued to build warships. That Britain could not afford to ignore enemy sea power, even after one of the greatest of naval victories, was reflected in the British assault on Copenhagen in 1807, designed to ensure that the neutral Danish fleet could not fall into Napoleon’s hands. Furthermore, one might note that even before the Battle of Trafalgar the French had given up their plans to invade Britain, having been thwarted by the success of the British blockade and Nelson’s pursuit of Admiral Villeneuve. The battle altered the balance of forces in Britain’s favour, with particular relevance for the Mediterranean theatre and it sent a shockwave across Europe, but in terms of the war overall, its significance pales in comparison with Napoleon’s decisive victory on land at Austerlitz in December 1805. Just because a battle might be important within the context of the naval war does not mean that it will necessarily be immediately decisive within the wider war. Corbett and decisive battle

Corbett’s focus was not so much on battle as on the control of maritime communications. He struck out against simplistic maxims that suggested that ‘the enemy’s coast is our true frontier’ or that ‘the primary object of the fleet is to seek out the enemy’s fleet and destroy it’. Instead he argued that ‘the primary object of the fleet is to secure communications, and if the enemy’s fleet is in a position to render them unsafe it must be put out of action’. The enemy fleet, he pointed out, might often be in such a position, but not always. If the latter was the case then it might reasonably be ignored until it did try to interfere with operations. He did admit that ‘nine times out of ten’ the maxim of seeking out and destroying the enemy fleet was indeed sound and applicable. However, he reflected that an inferior foe would be reluctant to offer themselves up for destruction and that ‘if you seek it out with a superior force you will probably find it in a place where you cannot destroy it except at heavy cost.’ Rather than seeking out the enemy’s fleet it was thus more a case of forcing action upon them. This could be achieved, he suggested, by seizing a position that controlled communications vital to their plans at which point they would be forced to fight or give up. For Corbett, this had the added advantage of forcing the requirement for offensive action onto the enemy on ground of your own choosing rather than theirs.39

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 49 Offensive action

Mahan emphasised the importance of offensive action, considering such tasks as coastal defence to be an inferior use of sea power, arguing that ‘defence is insured only by offence’.40 Others also emphasised this point. In Germany Admiral Curt von Maltzhan argued that battle was the keystone to the whole system of naval warfare and emphasised the importance of the offensive, criticising what he saw as French reluctance to take the offensive and to risk the loss of ships in battle as being a ‘cankerworm of decay’.41 Some years later a French admiral, Raoul Castex, offered a more sophisticated appreciation of the relative balance between offence and defence, but echoed Mahan in noting that there was little value in a purely passive defence, stating that ‘[d]efence protects the fleet itself, perhaps, but in no way safeguards the interest entrusted to it’.42 Concentration of forces

Mahan’s focus on the offensive and the importance of battle caused him to emphasise the value of concentrating forces and to warn against the danger of diverting attention to subsidiary operations. Without denying the utility of this concept Corbett was more willing to recognise that concentration was not always possible and could even be counter-productive as a weaker enemy was unlikely to engage the concentrated might of a superior opponent. Concentration thus might actually reduce the opportunities for a fleet engagement and, in the meantime, there would inevitably be a range of other things that would need attention, and other opportunities that might arise. This suggested the value and perhaps even the necessity of some dispersal of resources, although he recognised that it would be important to retain the ability to concentrate at the decisive point should circumstances demand it. Fleet-in-being

One of the main difficulties in trying to secure a decisive victory was that to do so one usually required a force that was superior in numbers or combat efficiency or preferably both. Unfortunately, such superiority, if evident, would usually deter an enemy from engaging and, in the absence of any fixed points at sea that must be defended, it could thus be hard to force an inferior fleet to fight. A weaker navy might simply avoid battle or remain within a protected anchorage, maintaining their ‘fleet in being’ on the assumption that its mere existence would constrain enemy choices and thus serve a useful strategic purpose even without achieving command of the sea. Colomb illustrated the concept with reference to the British Admiral Torrington who, in 1690, faced a superior French fleet in the Channel. Sensibly he declined to engage it in battle, reasoning that the mere presence of his undefeated force would inhibit the French from conducting an invasion of England as they could not do so without running an intolerable risk. Unfortunately, his strategy was not understood ashore and his hand was forced by the government, who demanded an attack. Torrington had no choice but to comply and was defeated at the Battle of Beachy Head. French indecision and poor weather were all that remained to save England from invasion. Colomb, who approved of Torrington’s initial caution, tended to emphasise the impact that even a markedly inferior fleet in being could effect and, by extension, to stress the value in defeating such force whenever the opportunity presented itself.43

50 Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power Blockade Blockade was a common response to an enemy fleet in being, with an enemy force confined to harbour and unable to come out without running the risk of encountering a superior enemy force. Mahan identified this as having both defensive and offensive value, bottling up enemy warships where they could do no harm whilst simultaneously denying them their seaborne trade and facilitating friendly strikes from the sea.44 Blockade could either be close or distant. A close blockade required that ships be kept close to an enemy port, able to react quickly to any sortie. It could be an effective way of bottling up an opponent, and was used to good effect by Britain at various stages in their wars against France. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to maintain logistically, as the British discovered, and combination of bad weather and bad luck will usually mean that such blockades are never watertight. By early years of the twentieth century a number of factors, notably the development of sea mines, torpedoes, submarines, long range coastal artillery and then aircraft all conspired to make it even more dangerous for a fleet to position itself close to a major enemy base. Distant blockade (or observation blockade) was founded on the assumption that it may not be possible to stop the enemy fleet from sailing, but it might be possible to deny them access to particular areas. This had the added advantage of not requiring friendly ships to be placed so close to the enemy base and also, by encouraging the enemy to leave harbour, it opened up the possibility that they could be engaged and defeated at sea. Exploiting command of the sea

Command of the sea is useful only an enabler for other things. It must be exploited for it to be relevant to national strategy. There are numerous ways to exploit command either through activity at sea, such as attacks on or defence of maritime trade, or through the projection of power from the sea to the shore. In terms of the former both Mahan and Corbett were both impressed by the potential of an economic blockade founded on command of the sea. Such command would allow the superior navy to drive enemy trade from the sea, impoverishing their finances and cutting them off from outside supply. In contrast, they believed that commerce raiding, attacks on trade by individual ships or small squadrons operating without command of the sea, could never be more than a nuisance and only diverted scarce maritime assets away from more important activities, namely securing command. As we shall see in Chapter 3, there were many others who took a contrary view. Without ever denying its utility, Mahan devoted rather little of his time to a detailed examination of the projection of power from the sea to the shore. Indeed, from his analysis of the Seven Years War it is possible to gain the impression that Havana fell to the British as an inevitable consequence of the application of ‘sea power’ rather than the result of a combined naval/military campaign. In contrast Philip Colomb devoted considerable time and attention to attacks from the sea, both in terms of naval bombardment and also amphibious operations. With even greater force Corbett emphasised that British success in war, when it occurred, was built on the ability of the navy to cooperate with the army in a joint strategy that exploited the advantages of maritime power to enable limited military force to be used to maximum effect. It was not for nothing that his 1909 study of the Seven Years War was published with the subtitle ‘a study in combined strategy’. The theory and practice of such operations are discussed in more detail in Part II.

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 51 Major-General Sir Charles Callwell (1859–1928)

The most detailed and sophisticated examination of the relationship between military and maritime operations produced at the turn of the century came, not from a naval officer or maritime strategist, but from an Anglo-Irish officer in the Royal Field Artillery, Sir Charles Callwell. Callwell wrote a number of books and articles on a range of subjects, including an influential study of ‘Small Wars’. In the context of this discussion his two most significant works were The Effect of Maritime Command on Land Campaigns since Waterloo (1897) and Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance (1905).45 In these books he examined the way in which maritime command could influence operations on land and also the way in which operations on land could have an impact on activity at sea. Sadly, as Colin Gray notes in the introduction to a re-edition of Military Operations, his work is significant not so much because it was influential but rather because it should have been.46 Too few people were acquainted with his insightful examination of the challenges and opportunities of joint military operations. It may say something about naval thinking in Britain at this time to note that the only other notable investigations into the detailed challenges of joint expeditionary operations were published by an army officer (Colonel George Furse) and a Royal Marine (Sir George Aston).47 Through a detailed analysis of a range of joint military operations in the nineteenth century, Callwell illustrated the disproportionate impact that maritime preponderance could have on military operations ashore through control of maritime communications, the diversionary impact created by amphibious potential and the ability to protect or challenge a vulnerable flank. Like Corbett he recognised that such impact was often indirect and most likely to be relevant at the strategic level, but this did not make it any less important. He also emphasised the contribution that armies could make to maritime forces, notably by protecting harbours and bases and by seizing those of the enemy. Throughout his work he emphasised the need for joint action and thought, and argued that ‘the ability of amphibious force to inflict grave injury upon the foe is usually immense’ but ‘the capabilities of a purely naval force to cause the adversary damage in often very limited.’ He was thus sceptical about the impact of naval blockade on a major continental adversary. Ten years before the Gallipoli campaign and 20 years before the US Marine Corps undertook their pioneering work in offensive amphibious operations, Callwell provided a remarkably prescient examination of the challenges and opportunities presented by such operations. It is a pity that so few people took note.

Conclusion Despite the difference in emphasis between some commentators (and most notably between Mahan and Corbett) it would be fair to say that by the second decade of the twentieth century the key features of a broad Anglo-American approach to maritime strategy had been established. Based largely on an examination of the history of the dominant navy of the previous two centuries, this approach emphasised the importance of gaining command of the sea, ideally through the destruction of the enemy fleet in battle or its neutralisation through blockade. Once command of the sea was established it could be exploited to momentous strategic effect even if the impact ashore was often indirect and could take time to develop its full impact. The value of blockade was emphasised, Mahan famously claiming that ‘grass grew in the streets of Amsterdam’

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as a result of the English blockade during the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century.48 Commerce raiding without command of the sea was seen as a far less effective form of warfare. This approach was, and remains, the dominant narrative in maritime strategy. It is important to recognise that it was not only British and American commentators who contributed to this ‘blue water’ approach. In France Admiral Jurien de la Gravière and, later, Admirals Baudry, Daveluy and Darrieus all published works that emphasised the importance of battle and the advantage to be gained from securing command of the sea. Similarly, in Germany, Admiral Carl Batsch, Captain Alfred Stenzel and ViceAdmiral Curt von Maltzahn argued along broadly similar lines. The works of Professor G. Sechi, G.J.W. Putman Cramer, Captain Berezin and Akiyama Saneyuki in Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and Japan (respectively) similarly shared common ground with other advocates of ‘La Grande Guerre’. Notwithstanding some differences of nuance and interpretation, the central theme tended to be the importance of command of the sea and of battle as a means of achieving this, and also a belief that commerce raiding without such command was a less effective way of waging war.49 As Geoffrey Till has noted in connection with the work of Davely and Darrieus, ‘their message, essentially, was the same as Mahan’s’.50 The historian Richard Harding has argued that the dominance of this tradition can be misleading and has noted how it has tended to skew subsequent historical analysis by defining the terms within which the debate is conducted. This tends to result in a particular focus on the success of the British approach in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, built, as Mahan argued, on a superior battle fleet and the fight for command of the sea and the neglect of alternatives such as commerce raiding. As Harding notes, while the dominance of the British battle fleet may ultimately have laid the basis for their success in the war at sea, this does not mean that the success of the British model was inevitable nor that it was the only route that could have been followed. It is even less obvious that it was a route that would suit other nations.51 Thus, a sophisticated understanding of maritime history and strategy requires one to think beyond the dominant narrative. It is important to remember that there are alternative interpretations that lie outside this tradition and these are examined in the next chapter.

Key points • •

• •

Success in naval warfare requires one to think strategically about the use of naval forces. There is a substantial body of work that examines the nature of maritime strategy. Within this there is a recognisable Anglo-American tradition that is particularly associated with the ideas of Mahan and Corbett. This approach stresses the utility of being able to gain, maintain and exploit command of the sea and identifies a number of approaches to achieve this. Within this broad approach there are some notable differences of opinion on issues such as the importance of battle, the need for concentration and the relative priority to be given to defeat of the enemy battle fleet.

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 53

Notes 1 Philip A. Crowl, ‘Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian’ in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) 444. 2 Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie USN, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989 [1967]), 14. 3 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 15. 4 Rear Admiral P.H. Colomb, Naval Warfare. Its Ruling Practices and Principles Historically Treated, Vol. 1. (London: Allen and Co., 1891) v-vii. Also see Barry Gough’s introduction to the third edition re-published by the Naval Institute Press in 1990. 5 See Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century. Future Warfare (London: Phoenix, 2005). Also see Colin S. Gray and Jeannie L. Johnson, ‘The Practice of Strategy’ in J. Baylis, J. Wirtz and C.S. Gray, Strategy in the Contemporary World, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 372–390. 6 A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston : Little Brown, 1890), 2. 7 Ibid., p.10–11. 8 Corbett, Some Principles, 3–11. 9 Beatrice Heuser. The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010), 207. 10 For further details see Till, Seapower, 2nd edn, 48. 11 For an examination of British thinking during this period see D.M. Schurman, The Education of a Navy (London: Cassell, 1965) and Geoffrey Till (ed.), The Development of British Naval Thinking. Essays in Memory of Brian Ranft (London: Routledge, 2006). 12 John B. Hayes and John B. Hattendorf (eds), The Writings of Stephen B. Luce (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1975). 13 Philip A. Crowl, ‘Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 447. 14 A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston, Little Brown, 1890); The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, 2 vols. (Boston: Little Brown, 1892). 15 See Herger H. Holwig, ‘The Failure of German Sea Power, 1914–1945: Mahan, Tirpitz, and Raeder Reconsidered’, in The International History Review, vol.10, No.1 (Feb., 1988), 68–105. 16 Andrew Lambert, ‘Naval Warfare’, in M.W. Hughes and W.J. Philpott (eds), Modern Military History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 180. 17 A.T. Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect. Studies in International Relations Naval and Political (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1902), 168. 18 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Admiral Farragut (New York: Appleton & Co., 1892). 19 For example see Sir John Colomb, The Protection of Our Commerce and Distribution of Naval Forces Considered (London: Harrison & Sons, 1867). Also see The Defence of Great and Greater Britain (London, 1880) and Colonial Defence (London, 1873). These two, plus other short works by John Colomb, are available to view via the internet archive. http://archive.org/. 20 Rear Admiral P.H. Colomb, Naval Warfare. Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (London: Allen & Co., 1891). Vice-Admiral P.H. Colomb, Essays on Naval Defence (London: Allen & Co., 1896). 21 Schurman, The Education of a Navy, 52. 22 For example see Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, Sea Power and Other Studies (London: Smith Elder, 1910) available via Project Gutenberg at the internet archive, http://archive.org/; Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, The Art of Naval Warfare (London: Smith Elder, 1907); James Thursfield, Naval Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913). For a general discussion see Schurman, The Education of a Navy, and Till (ed.), The Development of British Naval Thinking. Also see Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), chapter 2. 23 J.J. Widen, Theorist of Maritime Strategy. Sir Julian Corbett and his Contribution to Military and Naval Thought (Ashgate: Farnham, 2012).

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24 Ibid., 34–35. 25 Andrew Lambert (ed.), 21st Century Corbett. Maritime Strategy and Naval Policy for the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017), 1–19. 26 Geoffrey Till, ‘Richmond and the Faith Reaffirmed’, in Till (ed.), The Development of British Naval Thinking, 116. 27 See Grove, ‘Introduction’ to Corbett, Some Principles, xi–xlv. 28 Julian Corbett, ‘Napoleon and the British Navy After Trafalgar’, Creighton Memorial Lecture delivered Oct 1921, reproduced in Lambert, 21st Century Corbett, 146. 29 Julian Corbett, Official History of the Great War. Naval Operations (London: Admiralty, 1923). 30 Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, The Art of Naval Warfare. Introductory Observations (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1907), 123. 31 Baron Curt von Maltzhan, Naval Warfare Its Historical Development from the Age of the Great Geographical Discoveries to the Present Time, trans. John Combe Miller (London: Longmans & Co., 1908), 117. 32 Corbett, Some Principles, 94. 33 Rear Admiral Raoul Castex, Strategic Theories, trans. and ed. Eugenia Kiesling (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994 [1931–39], 17. 34 Bernard Brodie, A Guide to Naval Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 91. 35 Colomb, Naval Warfare, 1. Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, Sea Power and Other Studies (London: Smith Elder, 1910), 84. 36 Quoted in Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982),130. 37 Colomb, Naval Warfare, 21. 38 See ‘The Green Pamphlet’ at Appendix to Corbett, Some Principles (1988). 39 Corbett, Some Principles, passim and ‘Green Pamphlet’, 323–324. 40 Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect, 168. 41 Curt von Maltzhan, Naval Warfare, trans. John Combe Miller (London: Longmans, 1908), 46. 42 Admiral Raoul Castex, Strategic Theories, trans. and ed. Eugenia C. Kiesling (Annapolis, MD.: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 314. 43 Colomb, Naval Warfare, passim 44 Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect, 153–154 45 Charles Callwell, The Effect of Maritime Command on Land Campaigns Since Waterloo (London: Blackwood, 1897); Charles Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdependence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996 [1905]). 46 Colin Gray, ‘Sir Charles Callwell, KCB – An Able Theorist of Joint Warfare’, introduction to Callwell, Military Operations (1996), xv–lxi 47 Colonel George Armand Furse, Military Expeditions Beyond the Seas, 2 vols. (London: Williams Clowes & Son, 1897). Sir George Aston, Letters on Amphibious Wars (London: John Murray, 1911) and Sir George Aston, Seas, Land and Air Strategy: A Comparison (London: John Murray, 1914). 48 Benjamin F. Armstrong (ed.), 21st Century Mahan. Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 48. 49 See Heuser, Thinking Strategy, chapter 9. 50 Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age, 35. 51 See Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare 1650–1830 (London: Routledge, 1999).

Further reading Benjamin F. Armstrong (ed.), 21st Century Mahan. Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). Armstrong’s book is the first in a series by the Naval Institute Press and provides a selection of Mahan’s lesser known works and offers useful commentary. As the title suggests, Armstrong argues that Mahan’s core ideas remain highly relevant. John Hattendorf, The Influence of History on Mahan (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1991). This book provides a number of good papers that examine Mahan’s work and the influence

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 1 55 that it had in the USA and overseas. The book is available free online via the internet archive http://archive.org. John Hattendorf and Robert Jordan (eds), Maritime Strategy and the Balance of Power. Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan, 1989). Part two of this book is focused on Anglo-American maritime thought in the twentieth century and thus provides a useful introduction to both Mahan and Corbett. Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Heuser’s study is not focused solely on maritime strategy but does include five chapters that can act as a useful introduction to the subject and includes reference to a wide range of works. Andrew Lambert, 21st Century Corbett. Maritime Strategy and Naval Policy for the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017). Lambert introduces five lesser known papers by Corbett and offers commentary that helps to show the relevance of these (and Corbett’s other work) to twenty first century concerns. Donald Schurman, The Education of a Navy. The Development of British Naval Strategic Thought, 1867–1914 (London: Cassell, 1965). This work provides a classic examination of the key British thinkers in the ‘golden age’ of maritime strategy, including John and Philip Colomb, John Knox Laughton and Julian Corbett, It also includes a chapter on Mahan. Jon Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command. The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Suminda provides a clear, accessible and authoritative introduction to Mahan’s ideas. Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). No serious student of maritime strategy can afford to ignore this detailed and wide-ranging examination of the subject by one of the foremost experts on the topic. Geoffrey Till (ed.), The Development of British Naval Thinking. Essays in Memory of Bryan Ranft (London: Routledge, 2006). This book provides a useful collection of essays by leading commentators that examines the evolution of British thinking on maritime strategy from the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. There is no better way to engage with maritime strategy than to read the key texts for yourself. Many of these (including Corbett’s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911) and most of Mahan’s key works) are available free online via sites such as Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org/) or the internet archive (http://archive.org). Many works of classic maritime strategy have been re-published by the US Naval Institute with helpful introductory and explanatory notes in their ‘Classics of Sea Power’ series and these may provide the best way to approach the classics for the first time. Of particular relevance are the following: Charles E. Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdependence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996) with an introduction and notes by Colin S. Gray. Philip Colomb, Naval Warfare. Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990) with an introduction and notes by Barry M. Gough Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988) with an introduction and notes by Eric J. Grove. J.N. Hattendorf (ed.), Mahan on Naval Strategy: A Selection of Essays by Alfred Thayer Mahan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991). This book offers excerpts from Mahan’s major works and includes an extremely helpful introduction by John Hattendorf.

3

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2

Chapter 2 introduced maritime strategy and focused on an Anglo-American blue water tradition that suggested that success in naval warfare was linked to an ability to secure command of the sea, meaning, in essence, the ability to control maritime communications. Within that tradition the emphasis placed on battle tended to vary. However, and notwithstanding some important differences of nuance and interpretation, the central theme tended to be the importance of the ability to prevail in battle in order to achieve command of the sea, as an enabler for a range of other activities including the protection of trade, blockade of the enemy, and the projection of power ashore. Alternative approaches, that did not focus on achieving command, were usually identified as being a less effective way of waging war. This approach was not the only one on offer. Nor was it necessarily the most appropriate for any but the largest and most powerful navies. It is valid to question the utility of the work of Mahan and those like him for navies that are clearly inferior to their likely adversaries. Weaker navies may have to try something different if they are incapable of securing command in the traditional manner. Following that line of thought, Martin Murphy and Toshi Yoshihara have argued that often navies facing a larger foe have shown a similarity in response that suggests that there may be a ‘universal logic with respect to the naval strategy of the weaker side’.1 This logic tends to revolve around the denial of enemy use of the sea through a mix of coastal defence, limited local sea control and commerce raiding. This chapter will explore that alternative tradition.

Commerce raiding Commerce raiding, or guerre de course (war of the chase) as it is commonly known, had been a feature of naval warfare throughout history. Attacks on trade by commissioned warships or by private vessels (privateers) authorised by a letter of marque to conduct such attacks on behalf of the state had been a common and often, for individual ships, a very profitable way of bringing the war to bear against an enemy. Indeed, up until the seventeenth century, when ships lacked the sea keeping and endurance to maintain an effective blockade, it was one of the few ways of disrupting enemy trade short of actually landing at the point of embarkation or disembarkation. In practice, it was often difficult to differentiate the legal activities of privateers and the illegal predations of pirates, and both figured prominently in English naval activity in the early modern period. Nicholas Rodger has demonstrated the problems that this caused the English, not least in their relations with states whose ships suffered piratical attack and, while in later centuries the English (and from 1707 the British) would focus less

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 57 on guerre de course and more on blockade, the outrage felt by neutrals whose shipping was harassed or attacked has remained a constant feature of economic warfare at sea, and has often acted as a constraint on both raider and blockader.2 Commerce raiding is an obvious response for a weaker navy seeking to hurt an enemy dependent on seaborne trade. This was a feature of English policy in the wars against Spain in the sixteenth century and was exploited by the French in their numerous wars against Britain from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. It also reflected an important element of US naval activity in the War of Independence, the War of 1812 and of the Confederate Navy in the US Civil War (see Box 3.1). Raiding could inflict direct costs on the enemy in terms of ships and cargo captured or sunk and indirect costs in terms of disruption to trade, an increase in insurance costs, and the need to divert assets to the protection of merchant shipping. The standard response to such attacks in the age of sail was to collect merchant ships into convoys where they could be protected by friendly war ships. While this was generally effective, it was a very costly and inefficient way to move trade, and individual ships and unprotected convoys would still be vulnerable to attack. Traditional interpretations of maritime strategy suggested that, while guerre de course could be bothersome for the superior navy, it was rarely if ever decisive.3 This conclusion appeared to be borne out by English experience against Spain, French and American experience against Britain and also by the relative success of the Union blockade and Confederate raiders during the US Civil War. Indeed, as Mahan emphasised, commerce raiding could even be counterproductive, diverting scarce maritime assets away from the overriding need to secure command of the sea. Thus, while the British blockade of France during the Napoleonic wars slowly and inexorably strangled French trade and finances, French commerce raiders could harass but not halt British overseas trade and, as they were hunted down by the Royal Navy, British prisons slowly filled with experienced sailors that the French battle fleet could scarce afford to lose.4 The Jeune École

At times in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries the French were stronger at sea than the British and they were able to achieve some notable victories, especially when allied to other European maritime powers. For example, American success in the War of Independence (1775–83) owed much to the role played by the French navy in challenging British sea control on both sides of the Atlantic. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown was made inevitable by the British failure to defeat the French fleet, and thus to open Yorktown to reinforcement at the Battle of the Chesapeake Bay (1781). However, the more usual pattern was for the British to prevail over their continental rival, not least because they, unlike the French, could devote their main effort to maintenance of a powerful navy without having to worry about being attacked across land borders. Typically, French success at Chesapeake Bay was followed by a major defeat in the Caribbean at the Battle of the Saintes (1782) and Britain finished that war, as it had finished all of the major wars of the eighteenth century, on top at sea. The situation was worse still in the wars between 1793 and 1815. The French Revolution undermined the efficiency of the French navy by killing or driving into exile many experienced officers. France did pose a challenge at sea, assisted by the Spanish and Dutch navies, but that challenge was swept aside (along with that of their Spanish and Dutch allies) in a series of crushing British victories.5

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Despite the rather unfortunate record of failure against the British, French policy continued to emphasise the importance of battle, and thus of battle ships, until the 1870s. At this time a combination of factors gave added impetus to a school of thought known as the Jeune École (Young School). The threat posed by newly unified Germany on France’s eastern frontier reinforced the fact that France would never be able to devote to her navy the same resources as the British. Attempts to symmetrically challenge British dominance at sea were thus doomed to failure. However, new technology in the form of steam power, shell-firing guns, new self-propelled torpedoes and sea mines would combine to offer an asymmetric advantage to those willing to try something different, focusing on coastal defence and a ruthless guerre de course. The Jeune École built on foundations laid by Vauban in the eighteenth century, who had argued in favour of ‘la petit guerre navale’ (small naval war), equivalent to irregular warfare on land, and by Admiral Jean-Baptiste Grivel (1778–1869) and his son Baron Richild Grivel (1827–82) who had argued against a focus on the battle fleet and in favour of a cruiser strategy for commerce raiding.6 In the 1870s a number of commentators, most notably Admiral Theophile Aube (1826–90) and the journalist Gabriel Charmes and also Commandant Paul Fontin and Lieutenant J.H. Vignot (who wrote under pseudonyms), emphasised the utility of an approach that sought, not to gain command of the sea, but rather to deny the fruits of command to the British. Their idea was that small, fast and relatively cheap torpedo boats, backed up by gunboats, coastal defence ships and mines would make it impossible for British battleships to approach the French coast. This would make a blockade impossible, allowing fast steam powered cruisers to break into the sea lanes and to conduct a ruthless guerre de course, sinking ships without warning and also bombarding coastal towns and ports when the opportunity arose. The aim was not so much to starve Britain into submission as to disrupt British trade, undermine British finance, cause social unrest ashore and thus force the government to come to terms.7 The Jeune École exploited the experience of the US Civil War to support their analysis, pointing out that the superior Union navy had not managed to counter the modest threat posed by Confederate raiders, one of which, the CSS Alabama, captured or sank 69 Union ships before being sunk by the USS Kearsage off Cherbourg in June 1864. They could also point to the difficulty that the French had had in dealing with the Prussian Augusta, a cruiser originally built for the Confederacy as the CSS Mississippi and which, during the war of 1870–71, had evaded the French blockade and appeared off the French Atlantic coast, causing consternation in France far in excess of its actual impact as a raider.8 A less partial examination of the US Civil War might have revealed that Union sea control counted for much more than Confederate commerce raiding (see Box 3.1) but, of course, the Jeune École were advancing a concept for use by those for whom such control was not realistic. In such circumstances the only sensible approach, they argued, was to ‘shamelessly flee from the strong, shamelessly attack the weak’.9 The Jeune École self-consciously ignored international law as irrelevant. The recent Declaration of Paris (1856), signed by all of the major powers (except the US and Spain), had expressly forbidden the kind of undiscriminating attack on enemy trade that was at the heart of their strategy. Aube argued that international law was irreconcilable with the reality of war. His vision of ruthless torpedo boat attacks in the nineteenth century provided a foretaste of the type of guerre de course that was conducted with submarines in the twentieth century:

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 59 BOX 3.1  THE US CIVIL WAR 1861–65 The US Civil War offered an interesting insight into the relative merits of blockade and commerce raiding. The stronger Union navy imposed a blockade on the Confederate states. The blockade was initially rather porous, but it increased in effectiveness as Confederate ports were seized and Union bases were established on the southern coastline in a series of successful joint army/navy operations. The blockade cut off the Confederacy from the supply of vital warlike materials from Europe and also virtually halted the export of Southern cotton, undermining Confederate finances. Over the course of the war Union ships captured or destroyed 295 steamers and 1,189 sailing vessels seeking to break the blockade and, of course, deterred a far larger number from attempting to sail to Southern ports. While some fast blockade runners were often able to evade the Union blockade, earning their owners vast profits albeit at considerable risk, they could not supply the Confederacy with anything like the material that it needed to maintain the war effort and most had rather short careers. The Confederate navy was too weak to break the Northern blockade and responded, instead, with a mixture of coastal defence and commerce raiding. In total Confederate raiders captured or destroyed 261 vessels and the threat that they posed to Northern shipping resulted in many ships transferring to neutral flags to avoid attack, including 715 that adopted the British flag. This had a devastating effect on the US merchant marine, but the ships continued to sail to Northern ports. Confederate raiders were no more than a nuisance to the Union, whose trade continued to flow.10

. . . the torpedo boat will follow from afar, invisible [to] the liner it has met; and, once night has fallen, perfectly silently . . . it will send to the abyss liner, cargo, crew, passengers; and, his soul not only at rest but fully satisfied, the captain of the torpedo boat will continue his cruise.11 The impact that this would have on international opinion, and thus on the actions of both of the British and of neutrals, was not fully appreciated. The Jeune École was very influential in the late 1870s and 1880s, with Admiral Aube serving as the French Minister of Marine from 1886–87. They had an impact on the naval policy of many other states, including Germany and, particularly, AustriaHungary.12 Ironically, given that their views on the efficacy of torpedo boats was based, in part, on the successful Russian torpedo attack on the Turkish ship Intikbah on 27 December 1877 (the first warship to be sunk by a self-propelled torpedo), the Russians did not follow the advice of the Jeune École. The threat posed by Russian torpedo boats may have neutralised the larger Ottoman navy during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) but the Russians recognised that their lack of a battle fleet had reduced fire support options on the Black Sea coast and had forced them to pull back from Constantinople (Istanbul) when a British fleet had passed through the Dardanelles. Thus, the Russians continued to build battleships.13 Even in France there was never a

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consensus in favour of their policies, and French naval policy remained divided between advocates of the Jeune École and those who favoured a more traditional approach. Ultimately the Jeune École failed in their attempt to bring radical change to French naval policy. By the 1890s the focus of the major navies was firmly back on battleships, notwithstanding residual interest in the concept of commerce raiding. Their approach failed for a number of reasons. Partly this was to do with technological factors. They had over-estimated the ability of small torpedo boats to operate on the high seas, and had also over-estimated the vulnerability of large warships. The development of searchlights, smokeless powder, improved speed and rapid firing secondary armament combined to make battleships less vulnerable. The threat posed by torpedo boats was further reduced by the development of a new type of vessel that would accompany and protect its larger counterpart, the torpedo boat destroyer. Improved range and armour-piercing shells gave new life to the long range gun and to the heavy armoured warships designed to carry them and to slug it out with ships of equivalent size and capability. Balanced fleets that included such ships offered a wider range of capabilities than did torpedo boats, as the Russians had clearly appreciated. Perhaps equally to the point, the strategy of the Jeune École really only worked against an enemy dependent on the use of the sea. Beyond the possibility of coastal defence it offered little positive benefit against an enemy not thus constrained. In other words, it offered France little of value in any war against Germany and it was the Germans and not the British who were to become France’s most deadly rivals in the early years of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the ultimate failure of the Jeune École to transform French policy does not undermine the value of their core belief that, by exploiting new technology, a weaker naval power could challenge a stronger opponent that was dependent on the use of the sea, by seeking to deny such use without actually trying to gain command of the sea in the traditional way. In the event the technology of the day could not meet the expectations of the Jeune École and the strategy offered solutions that did not meet France’s evolving security requirements. However, within 25 years, new technology, in the form of the submarine, would offer new possibilities and a new enemy would seek to exploit these in a guerre de course against Britain.

Risk fleet or luxury fleet? In the late 1890s the Imperial German Navy began a process of rapid expansion under the stewardship of Secretary for the Navy, Rear Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Germany had traditionally had a small navy focused on coastal defence, with cruisers for duties overseas. However, as German power and overseas commercial interests grew there was growing support for a more assertive naval policy. Furthermore, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to power in 1888, was a naval enthusiast and an avid reader of Mahan. His interest in the navy and his support for an adventurous overseas policy, to win for Germany a ‘place in the sun’ helped to create conditions conducive to naval expansion.14 The result was an audacious plan for rapid growth that transformed the Imperial German Navy from its humble status into a navy second only to that of Britain. Tirpitz, like the Kaiser, was enthusiastic about Mahan and he shared Mahan’s focus on command of the sea achieved through battle. Mahan emphasised the value of a superior fleet and recommended a margin of superiority of 33 percent for the attacking fleet. He noted that inferior forces could only be used with great caution and at considerable risk.15 This posed a problem for German naval planners whose likely

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 61 enemy (Britain) possessed a considerable superiority over them. Tirpitz thus developed an ingenious ‘risk theory’ (Risikogedanken) whereby he turned Mahan’s logic around, arguing that to guarantee victory against his new High Seas Fleet, Britain would need to maintain a one-third superiority in numbers in the North Sea. If the High Seas Fleet reached its eventual target of 61 capital ships, scheduled to occur in the 1920s, the British would need at least 90 to be sure of defeating them. This would force the Royal Navy to denude all other areas of ships, leaving their global empire vulnerable, and it would exhaust British finances. Furthermore, a fleet of this size would make Germany an attractive ally for lesser naval powers. Tirpitz recognised that the fleet would be vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike in its formative years, but he argued that once it reached sufficient strength it would present the British with the risk of such heavy losses in any engagement that the surviving elements of the Royal Navy would not be able to match other naval powers or coalitions. Thus, while his new Risk Fleet (Risikoflotte) might not be able to actually defeat the British it could deter them from pursuing policies detrimental to German interests.16 The plan was driven more by politics than by strategy and proved a catastrophic failure in both respects. Politically the plan did help to maintain domestic support for the expansion of the navy but did so at the cost of driving isolationist Britain into the arms of Germany’s enemies. Moreover, Britain responded to German naval expansion with an expansion of their own. As a careful reading of Mahan might have suggested, there could only be one winner of the resulting arms race. Germany, with French and Russian armies on its borders, could never devote to their navy the same proportion of national energy and finance that the British could. The British government recognised that control of seaborne communications was vital to the survival of the Empire and could not allow a challenge to go unmet. To have stimulated an arms race with such a rival was foolish. It was the German budget that broke under the strain and by 1912 it was clear that Germany had lost the naval arms race. The Risk Fleet failed to deter Britain because, rather than accommodate a threat to what was recognised to be a vital national interest, the British instead settled their problems with their erstwhile colonial rivals and focused their attention on the primary threat. Interests in the Far East were catered for by an alliance with Japan, France was given prime responsibility for the Mediterranean and the western hemisphere was abandoned to the US Navy. This allowed Britain to refocus the Royal Navy on the North Sea, where it had sufficient superiority to deal with the German threat. In July 1914, on the eve of war, the British had 29 capital ships in service and another 13 under construction. The Germans had 18 in service and eight being built, leaving the British with a margin above and beyond Mahan’s recommended level.17 Not everyone within the German naval establishment supported Tirpitz’s dash to great naval power status. Some within the navy feared the impact of such a rapid expansion and others feared the consequences of challenging the dominant naval power in this way. Some, articulated their opposition in terms that might broadly be considered Mahanian in their focus on the utility of command of the sea. For example Vice Admiral Curt von Maltzahn (1849–1930), Professor of Strategy and Tactics and then head of the Naval Academy at Kiel, while an adversary of Tirpitz, argued that command of the sea was the determining factor in naval warfare and that battle was the ‘keystone of the whole system of naval warfare’, without adequately reflecting on what this meant for a navy unlikely to prevail in battle. He was clear that guerre de course, without command of the sea, could not be decisive.18 Others, however, offered a different

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approach, arguing for a cruiser war against British commerce rather than a focus on fleet battle. Such advocates of guerre de course, including Vice Admiral Karl Galster, Vice Admiral von Schleinitz, Captain Lothar Persius and Lieutenant-Commander Franz Rust were either silenced or hounded out of the navy.19 When war broke out in 1914, German naval policy remained grounded in the idea of the battle fleet. It remained to be seen just what could be done with a navy too large to ignore but too small to defeat the British.

The test of war, 1914–18 The First World War (1914–18) provided an opportunity to test the principles of maritime strategy in practice. Histories of that war tend to focus on the land campaigns and on the appalling conditions and horrific casualties associated with trench warfare. This is inevitable given the scale of the conflict and, as Corbett had emphasised, it is on land where wars are usually decided. This landward focus is further reinforced by the relative lack of major engagements at sea. There were a number of small naval battles in the North Sea, Baltic Sea, Pacific Ocean and the South Atlantic but there was only one major fleet engagement, at the Battle of Jutland (off the coast of Denmark) in May 1916. The result of that battle was not decisive victory on a par with Trafalgar; it was inconclusive with no clear winner (see Chapter 5). The war did see attempts by both sides to project power from the sea, most notably with the flawed Anglo-French attempt in 1915 to force the Dardanelles straits (see Box 3.2) followed by the equally flawed attempt to seize the Gallipoli peninsula through an amphibious operation. The British also conducted a range of shore bombardments, amphibious raids and even sea-based air strikes against targets in Belgium and Germany. The Germans had some notable success, in more benign circumstances, when they exploited their local sea control in the Baltic to seize Russian held islands in the Gulf of Riga in 1917.20 Despite this it would be dangerous to assume that maritime power did not make a critical contribution to Allied success in the First World War. Indeed, this success was entirely dependent on use of the sea, without which British and American troops could never have fought in France, the resources of the French and British global empires could not have been mobilised (and the German overseas empire conquered) nor could the resources of the wider world have been made available to support the Allied war effort and denied to the Central Powers. The absence of a decisive fleet battle did not indicate a lack of Allied sea control but rather was the result of an Allied superiority at sea that was evident from the first day of the war and that continued through to its conclusion. There were so few battles because the Germans were so reluctant to take on the Royal Navy. The one time that the two main fleets collided (Jutland, 1916) the German commander’s sole intent was to escape intact and, having done so by the skin of his teeth, he was in no mood to risk it again. Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey were similarly cautious in the face of superior Allied navies. Perhaps the most notable feature of German naval policy was the failure to develop a strategy to allow them to use their surface fleet to advantage in a war against Britain. In their pre-war thinking there had been an over-emphasis on the importance of battle as a dominating feature in naval warfare, and a failure to recognise that battle was only a means to an end, namely command of the sea, which meant simply the control of maritime communications. This contributed to the failure to appreciate that far from

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 63 projecting their navy into the Helgoland Bight to precipitate a battle in waters that favoured the Germans (due to the proximity to their own base, submarines, minefields etc.), the Royal Navy could exploit Britain’s maritime geography to cut the communications that mattered most without ever approaching the German coast. With their Grand Fleet based in Scotland, the British could not stop the German High Seas Fleet from venturing into the North Sea, where it could scurry around like a fugitive apprehensive of discovery, but it could not do any serious harm. The German Navy had no plan to deal with such an eventuality and proved incapable of devising one that worked. The best that they could manage was a number of ‘tip and run’ raids, including strikes against the east coast of England and raids on convoys to Scandinavia in the hope that they might encounter and destroy a detachment of the British fleet. The aim here was to whittle the British down to the point where the two sides were more evenly matched. The danger of such raids were that the High Seas Fleet might run into the combined might of the Grand Fleet and thus find itself on the wrong end of a decisive battle. This, of course, is precisely what happened on 31 May 1916 when the two fleets met at Jutland. The Germans escaped through a mixture of good luck, good training and the caution of the enemy commander. The experience proved chastening. The High Seas Fleet did occasionally sortie into the North Sea after this, but was careful to avoid the Grand Fleet. It spent most of the rest of the war idle and at anchor, slowly atrophying and a strategic irrelevance until, in October 1918, its sailors mutinied rather than commit suicide in a final sortie against the British and Americans. In contrast, German submarines, mines and light forces had some success, both in terms of denying British access to the German coast and the Baltic and through attacks on Allied communications. The German guerre de course, conducted using surface ships, mines and (most successfully) submarines, posed a severe challenge to British maritime communications. To be effective the submarines had to operate in a manner as ruthless as that suggested by the Jeune École, sinking Allied and neutral ships without warning and with no regard to the safety of the crew or passengers. When they did this merchant shipping losses mounted alarmingly. However, the resultant loss of civilian lives alienated neutral opinion far more than did Britain’s imposition of a blockade and contributed to US entry into the war on the side of the Allies. The submarine menace, which exploited a relatively new technology to pose novel problems, was eventually overcome with a series of countermeasures, most notably the introduction of convoys for merchant vessels (which made the ships harder to find and easier to protect). From this point (Spring/Summer 1917) losses continued, but at a manageable level. The Allies exploited command of the sea to impose a distant blockade of Germany that increased in severity as the war progressed. The blockade became truly effective once the US became a belligerent and neutral opposition to its measures could be ignored. With British cruisers intercepting Europe bound ships in the Channel and off the coast of Scotland, the blockade could be imposed without first having to engage the German fleet; the onus was on Germany to fight if it wanted to break the blockade. It may not be accurate to claim, as some have, that the blockade was the most important factor in German defeat, but it clearly played an important role in the collapse that occurred in 1918 and contributed to tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of civilian deaths through lack of food and fuel.21 On reflection the war at sea from 1914–18 would appear to vindicate the value of the traditional concepts of maritime strategy based on gaining the command of the

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Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power BOX 3.2  SEA DENIAL IN PRACTICE: THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN (1915) The 1915 Dardanelles campaign provides a good example of a navy defeated by an enemy much weaker at sea but one able to create a land-based defensive system that could exploit local conditions. In order to defend the Dardanelles straits, the Turks adopted a simple yet effective approach that integrated fixed shore batteries, minefields and mobile howitzers into a highly effective sea denial system. The mines meant that the British and French battleships could not penetrate through the narrow straits nor could they get close enough to the fortifications ashore to destroy them. The heavy guns in those fortifications posed a credible threat to the battleships and a critical danger to smaller ships, but were vulnerable to the suppressive effect of naval gunfire. Mobile howitzers, that could fire from positions where terrain protected them from direct naval fire, could do relatively little damage to the heavy ships but could disrupt and defeat the efforts of the Allies’ extemporised mine sweeping force. The Allied offensive began in February and the key attack occurred on 18 March. This was defeated when one French and two British battleships were sunk by an undetected series of mines in Eren Köy Bay. While some naval officers remained confident of success, the commander in chief (Admiral de Robeck) cancelled the offensive and decided to wait for assistance from the army, setting the context for the later (unsuccessful) joint campaign in Gallipoli.22

sea, at least from the perspective of the superior navy. Such command provided the means for Britain and France to sustain themselves in total war and for the United States to make a vital contribution towards eventual victory. It protected Britain from invasion and offered the opportunity for Allied power projection. That such opportunities were largely squandered should not detract from their obvious potential. It is far from clear, however, that an approach based on securing command of the sea offered much hope for navies of the second rank, for whom sea denial, coastal defence and limited local sea control might be more realistic. For a navy that did not aspire to use the sea, but aimed merely to deny that use to an enemy, the submarine campaign did appear to indicate that the ideas of the Jeune École might be valuable. However, the eventual defeat of these stealthy predators, and the Allied blockade’s slow strangulation of the German people, rather supports Mahan’s belief in the superiority of a blockade founded on command of the sea over a guerre de course conducted without it.

Strategy and policy from 1918–45 The Battle of Jutland was re-fought many times in naval staff colleges and similar institutions during the 1920s and 1930s, and the three largest navies, now those of Britain, the US and Japan, continued to place a heavy emphasis on the battleship and the requirement to prevail in fleet battle. Perhaps surprisingly, given recent experience, the threat to trade posed by submarines tended to be underestimated (even by the

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 65 Germans), as convoy and, later, the development of ASDIC (sonar) was believed to have made it much easier to control this danger. The employment of aircraft at sea had been pioneered tentatively during the war and great debates raged as to the impact that they would have on future naval operations. That maritime forces were able to think beyond the battle line was illustrated by the pioneering work in amphibious operations conducted by the US Marine Corps in the 1920s and 1930s, and this was to pay dividends in the war that followed, but by and large as that war approached, faith in the big ships remained strong in the major navies and their primary focus was on command of the sea. There continued to be a healthy output of works of maritime history and strategy that supported the established tradition of Mahan and Corbett. For example, in Britain the sailor-scholar Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond provided a body of work that was clearly in the tradition of his mentor Julian Corbett while from Sweden, Daniel Landquist offered an analysis that sat within the same broad approach.23 Mahan continued to dominate thought in the US while in Japan commentators and practitioners such as Sato Tetsutaro and Suzuki Kantero adapted his ideas to the Japanese context.24 German thinking between the wars

One of the sharpest critics of wartime German naval policy was Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener (1875–1956). In 1915, when a Lieutenant Commander serving as a fleet staff officer, he had enraged Tirpitz by criticising the rationale for the Risk Fleet and the German conduct of the war at sea. Building on these ideas after the war, and after retiring from the navy, he published The Naval Strategy of the World War (1929). In this book Wegener argued against the Imperial German Navy’s obsession with battle and its failure to think strategically about the war at sea. To Wegener battle was ‘to a certain degree an incidental goal’ unless it could be used to secure control of maritime communications.25 He noted the stupidity of a policy designed to secure victory through a battle in a corner of the North Sea that had no relevance to the British. As he memorably noted, ‘the Helgoland Bight was, is, and remains a dead angle in a dead sea’. It was foolish to expect the British to fight a battle on German terms in a region that did not matter to them and from which the Germans could not threaten anything that did matter. The thing that mattered to Britain was maritime trade and communications and, according to Wegener, Germany needed two vital elements to attack this, both fleet and position. In the First World War it had the former but not the latter. During the war he had suggested the occupation of Denmark and Norway, or possibly even Brest, France as a means of securing a position from which the navy might be used to positive effect, and he maintained and even extended this wish list between wars.26 It is somewhat ironic that in 1940 the German navy found itself in the situation envisaged by Wegener, with control of Danish, Norwegian and French ports. Unfortunately for them they now had a position from which they could threaten British maritime communications, but lacked the fleet strength to exploit this to decisive effect. Wegener was sharply criticised by Herbert Rosinski (1903–62), who taught at the German Naval Staff College before fleeing that country in 1936 to escape Nazi persecution. Rosinski argued that Wegener placed too much emphasis on position and that he failed to appreciate the importance of material superiority as a prerequisite for success in battle and that he had failed to explain exactly how the weaker German

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fleet was to defeat its larger foe. The result of a battle off Norway was likely to be the same as one off Helgoland, defeat. Roskinski expressed a firm belief in the importance of battle and command of the sea and of the need for a superior fleet to achieve this. He was pessimistic about the prospects of an outnumbered fleet, writing of the ‘strategic helplessness of a decisively inferior fleet, which is the outstanding characteristic of war at sea and distinguishes it most sharply from war on land.’27 The attitude of both Wegener and Rosinski towards the guerre de course was essentially traditional, believing that it could not be decisive independent of fleet action. In contrast other Germans including Captain von Waldeyer-Hart and Ernst Wilhelm Kruse argued that trade warfare would become the dominant form of naval warfare and that attacks on trade could be successful without the need to gain command of the sea.28 Vice Admiral Kurt Assmann, lecturer at the Naval Academy and Head of the Historical Section, similarly focused on economic warfare and was willing to accept British command provided that her maritime communications were threatened.29 Perhaps of more relevance than all of these was the head of the German Navy, Admiral Erich Raeder, whose approach to maritime strategy owed something to both Mahan and Tirpitz, an unhelpful combination given Germany’s strategic position, and one which helped to ensure that Germany approached a new war in Europe with a half-baked plan for massive naval expansion (the Z Plan), an actual surface fleet only one tenth the size of the British and a mere 27 operational U-boats. The Soviet New School/Young School

A more radical approach was offered by the Soviet New School (alternately, the Young School) that emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Rejecting the ‘bourgeois’ focus on battleships and major navies, and also reflecting both the weakness of the Soviet Navy and the experience of being attacked from the sea by Western powers in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the New School argued that traditional concepts of sea power were ill-suited to Soviet security needs and were, in any case, unrealistic given available resources. That they were also deemed to be an expression of imperialist policy no doubt also strengthened the New School’s case. Instead they argued in favour of the localised defence of the Soviet coastline, using an integrated and layered system of minefields, coastal artillery, torpedo boats and submarines facilitated by close inter-service cooperation and the latest communications technology. For a period the New School seemed to offer an alternative vision of naval power. However, by the 1930s Soviet policy had switched back to something more traditional with the construction of sea control assets such as battleships and heavy cruisers. While the New School did offer a coherent policy for the local defence of Soviet territory, a policy grounded only in coastal sea denial may not have been well suited to the growing ambition of the state as Stalin brutally dragged the Soviet Union towards great power status.30 Admiral Raoul Castex (1878–1968)

Perhaps the most original and sophisticated analysis of maritime strategy written in the inter-war period was provided by a French admiral, Raoul Castex (1878–1968) in a monumental six-volume study entitled Théories Stratégiques. This was published in its original five volume format between 1931–39 (the sixth volume was published

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 67 posthumously in 1976), although it has subsequently been abridged, translated and republished, making the work much less tedious and far more accessible.31 Castex built on the foundations provided by Corbett and Mahan, although he parodied the overemphasis on battle sometimes associated with the latter.32 He agreed that the primary mission of navies in war was to dominate lines of communication and that battle was a key means of achieving this, but, like Corbett, he reflected on the difficulty of doing this and noted that in the absence of such a battle there were still many important naval duties to attend to. Accepting that the best way to prevail in battle was to ensure superiority at the key point, he argued that this might often require the smaller navy to intelligently disperse their forces to prompt a similar dispersal on the part of the enemy, before the skilful exploitation of speed and manoeuvre on the part of the smaller force could produce a local superiority that would enable them to engage the enemy on favourable terms. Thus, while he argued that ‘the offensive possibility of a numerically inferior fleet are almost nil’, a weaker navy could still hope to achieve local superiority through skilful manoeuvre and the effective use of space and distance. As he noted, there was little point in simply adopting a passive posture as this ceded the initiative, and the sea, to the enemy. His attitude towards guerre de course was essentially traditional, arguing that it could not prevail unless accompanied by a fleet offensive and thus, to be effective, commerce raiding had to be integrated into a general system of war involving all arms. Castex’s work is particularly interesting in offering an approach designed to suit navies of the second rank as well as the first, providing an alternative to the strategic paralysis suggested by Rosinski. The experience of war from 1939–45 once again appeared to validate many of the traditional concepts of maritime power. The Germans employed submarines, mines, aircraft and occasional sorties by surface ships in an attempt to blockade Britain without first gaining command of the sea. Despite the enormous positional advantage derived from possession of Norway and of French Atlantic ports, the campaign ultimately

BOX 3.3  BATTLE OF KOH CHANGE, 17 FEBRUARY 1941 The battle of Koh Change occurred during the Franco-Thai War in 1941 when Thailand, seeking to exploit the inability of the Vichy French regime to support its colonies, attacked French Indochina in pursuit of disputed border territories. The French were outnumbered on land, sea and air and ultimately succumbed to a Japanese brokered peace that granted the territories to Thailand. At sea the French were numerically inferior to the Thai naval forces but nevertheless pursued an aggressive policy, seizing the initiative and using intelligent manoeuvre to create a local superiority of numbers. A French squadron consisted of the light cruiser La Motte-Picquet, and four colonial sloops engaged and defeated one of the two main Thai squadrons, crippling the Thonburi, a coastal defence ship armed with 8-inch guns, and sinking two torpedo boats. The French then withdrew under air attack but without suffering any loss having, at a stroke, reversed their previously inferior position at sea. This provides rather a good example of the kind of manoeuvre suggested by Castex in Théories Stratégiques.33

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failed once the Allies were able to develop appropriate techniques and technology and could devote sufficient resources to its defeat. The Allied blockade had a limited impact on an enemy able to command the resources of a conquered continent but, once again, Allied success was founded upon an ability to use the seas. This was challenged and sometimes denied by enemy air, surface and submarine forces but it ultimately provided the necessary basis for victory. In Europe it kept Britain safe from invasion in 1940 and allowed Allied forces to retain a foothold and then to go on the offensive in the Mediterranean. It made possible the convoys bringing supplies through Arctic waters to the Soviet Union and across the Atlantic to Britain and it eventually provided the only means of opening and maintaining a second front in France, guaranteeing the defeat of Nazi Germany. That defeat would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, had the bulk of the German Army not been occupied and eventually destroyed by the Soviets on the eastern front, reinforcing Corbett’s argument about maritime power being but one element in a system of war whose ultimate focus must be on land.34 In the Pacific theatre simple geography determined that this would be a maritime campaign founded on the ability to gain and exploit command of the sea. Allied victory was based on a series of impressive American victories over an Imperial Japanese Navy that was never able to properly exploit its initial run of success in the opening months of that campaign. While attention is naturally drawn to the dramatic fleet battles such as Midway (1942), the Philippine Sea (1944) and Leyte Gulf (1944) these were only one element in a maritime campaign that was inherently joint, relying on marines and the army to seize forward bases and to liberate occupied territories and, eventually, to provide bases from which the air force could attack Japanese cities. In addition to this the US Navy had destroyed the Japanese war economy through a submarine campaign that succeeded in cutting enemy maritime communications. In one of the most successful blockades in history, the submarine campaign had ruined the Japanese economy through lack of fuel and raw materials before the first B-29 bomber emptied its deadly load on the civilians living below. Significantly, however, the progressive strangulation imposed by blockade clearly lacked the shock effect achieved by the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the shadow created by the atomic mushroom cloud was to loom large over all post-war debates.

Maritime strategy in the nuclear age Many commentators took the Second World War as further vindication of the established principles of maritime strategy. For example, in Britain Stephen Roskill interpreted the war through a lens coloured by Richmond and Corbett, while in the US Bernard Brodie’s approach was broadly that of Mahan.35 That the US Navy had kept its faith in Mahan was reflected in Admiral Chester Nimitz’s famous report to the Secretary of the Navy in 1947 which essentially restated the validity of the traditional principles, with an additional focus on how air power had further enhanced the reach and role of navies.36 Nevertheless doubts soon emerged as to the role of navies in the nuclear age, not least as atomic weapons appeared to threaten the existence of the type of concentrated naval force that had been the basis for major operations to date and led to suggestions that any future war would be short and deadly, with little time for maritime power to have much impact. Some commentators suggested that nuclear weapons made conventional operations (on land or sea) all but impossible, while others found a role for navies in the kind of disjointed (‘broken-backed’) warfare anticipated after a nuclear

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 69 exchange or, increasingly, as agents of nuclear destruction whether by carrier launched aircraft or, by the 1960s, through submarine launched missiles. Others focused on the utility of navies in situations short of all-out war, and these issues are discussed in more depth in Chapter 4. Despite or perhaps because of such challenges the nuclear age was characterised by some innovative thinking on maritime strategy and a number of American naval officers made a notable contribution, including Rear-Admiral Henry Eccles, Admiral J.C. Wylie, and Admiral Stansfield Turner.37 Their work was accompanied by contributions from civilian commentators, including Herbert Rosinski (now settled in the US), Lawrence Martin, James Cable, Ken Booth, Eric Grove and many more. The work of these, and other, commentators, and the manner in which they developed and adapted traditional concepts to the new security environment, is addressed in the remainder of this book. Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov (1910–88)

Of all of the writers on maritime strategy of this period perhaps the most interesting was Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov (1910–88). Appointed Commander-inChief of the Soviet Navy in 1955 he presided over its transformation from a medium sized navy with limited reach and aspirations into, by the 1970s, a major navy with global reach able to challenge US dominance at sea. Gorshkov’s main books, Navies in War and Peace and The Sea Power of the State, represented an attempt to demonstrate how sea power war was vital even to a land oriented state such as the Soviet Union.38 These were expressed with due deference to Marxist-Leninist ideology, a necessary step for Gorshkov but not one that aids readability. Nevertheless, once one ignores the communist dogma, he advocated an approach to maritime power and strategy that was not dramatically different to that offered by Mahan and Corbett, particularly given his advocacy of the utility of a balanced fleet and the value of gaining dominance at sea. His work is particularly redolent of Corbett given his insistence that battle was merely a means to an end, that fleet versus fleet engagements were rare, and that (by the twentieth century) they were most likely to be associated with operations against the shore or to secure maritime communications. If Gorshkov was informed by an analysis that owed something to Mahan (even if he preferred to suggest that Mahan’s analysis owed something to an earlier Russian commentator, Lieutenant-Captain Berezin) the ultimate response to Gorshkov’s navy, the US Maritime Strategy published in 1986, has been described as a dramatic demonstration that the ‘Mahanian tradition was alive and well in the late-twentieth century’.39 The strategy was based on an overtly offensive plan to carry the war to the Soviet Navy in northern European waters and in the north-west Pacific through the forward deployment of US maritime power to protect America’s allies and, by drawing enemy resources into a battle on American terms, defend wider Western maritime communications and help to readdress the imbalance of NATO/Soviet forces on the vital central European front.40 The strategy was more than just a Mahanian impulse towards battle, as it was sometimes described by its detractors, but its focus on offensive action by major fleet assets did reflect a continuity in thinking associated with the dominant tradition established a century earlier. Thankfully for all concerned there was never an opportunity to find out whether it would have worked.

70 Concepts of naval warfare and maritime power The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) After victory in the civil war in 1949, the navy of the People’s Republic of China adopted policies that sat firmly within the alternative approach to maritime strategy. Like the Soviet Union in the 1920s, China was a continental power with a large army, a small navy and a weak economy. There was little prospect of it building a large conventional navy despite the residual threat posed by Nationalist occupation of offshore islands and possession of some significant naval assets. Influenced by Soviet concepts of layered and integrated coastal defence, and by Mao Zedong’s writings about protracted war and guerrilla warfare, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) adopted an approach that saw their limited naval assets operating in support of land based forces (including coastal artillery and aircraft) in local waters. They focused on hitand-run attacks, seeking to use speed and surprise to create temporary local superiority and to allow superior numbers of small vessels to over-power the larger, more capable Nationalist ships. The approach was articulated by the PLAN’s first commander, Admiral Xiao Jinguang (1903–89), an experienced army officer with no training or background in naval operations. Describing the approach as being ‘sabotage warfare at sea’, he focused on using surprise, deception, offensive spirit, unorthodox and unexpected methods and a series of small incremental victories as the means to defeat enemy forces in local waters. The approach was codified in 1956 into the concept of ‘active defence’, which remained PLAN policy until the adoption of the more ambitious ‘near seas defence in the 1980s. The emphasis on guerrilla type tactics, using tactical offensives to support a defensive strategy, was reinforced in a series of naval engagements against Nationalist forces in the 1950s and 1960s, where tactical success was taken to validate the general principles. Mao Zedong described the approach as ‘at sea, ants gnawing at a bone’, an analogy that makes clear the similarities between sabotage warfare at sea and his own ideas about guerrilla warfare ashore.41 Non-naval warfare42

Not all responses to superior enemy sea power are maritime in nature. It may be possible to secure victory on land in a place or within a timescale that makes enemy naval power irrelevant. This is particularly true of short wars. The rapidity and scale of Prussia’s victories over the French army in 1870 meant that French naval superiority counted for little. Had the Schlieffen Plan worked in 1914 the result might have been the same. Allied maritime power could not halt the German blitzkrieg in Europe during the Second World War. Had the Soviet Union collapsed in 1941, as many believed it would, then perhaps Hitler could have secured the thousand year Reich without needing victory at sea. Similarly, a rapid Soviet offensive into Western Europe during the Cold War might have secured victory on land regardless of events at sea. On the other hand, enemy sea control might have denied the Soviets the full fruits of victory, as it had denied the Germans, by limiting their success to the continent of Europe, turning a short war into a long war and enabling Britain, the United States and their allies to recover, mobilise and fight back (once again). In the latter example the potential for any conflict to result in a devastating nuclear exchange overshadowed conventional ideas of victory or defeat, and a nuclear counter-strike might today represent the ultimate form of non-naval response to inferiority at sea.

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Conclusion This chapter, and the one before it, have examined maritime strategy within two broad traditions. The first, examined in Chapter 2, was characterised by the ideas advanced by Mahan, Colomb, Corbett and their various fellow travellers and was built around the need to secure command of the sea defined as the ability to control maritime communications. The second tradition explored in this chapter, suggested that such command might not be attainable, or even necessary, but that valuable results could be achieved by focusing instead on denying the use of the sea to an enemy. This approach was more limited, offering little positive use of the sea beyond the ability to stop enemy activity, but that might be a more realistic route for navies facing a stronger opponent. This might revolve around coastal defence and limited local offensives (as with the Soviet New School and ‘sabotage warfare at sea’) or also include particular emphasis on commerce raiding (as with the Jeune École). Castex offers something of a middle ground between these two traditions, emphasising the importance of sea control but also reflecting on the means by which a smaller navy might be able to achieve this. The concepts and theories introduced in these chapters continue to underpin much debate about maritime strategy today. Questions as to the relative emphasis to be placed on securing, denying or exploiting sea control are as relevant to naval policy in the twenty-first century as they were in Mahan’s day and references to his (and Corbett’s) work abound in contemporary policy papers and doctrine publications. Equally, for many smaller navies today Xiao Jinguang may offer better advice than Mahan and ideas that reflect this alternative tradition still resonate in policy debates about the Chinese navy, despite its recent growth in size, status and power. Such ideas will influence others whose capabilities and ambitions may be closer to China in the 1950s than to the PLAN today. The recent emphasis placed by some navies on anti-access and area denial capabilities and techniques, therefore, should surprise no one. Part II of this book will develop many of the issues discussed here and address them within the context of current policy and debate. As will become clear, the specific details relating to contemporary maritime strategy and policy are sometimes strikingly reminiscent of older debates, and sometimes they are not. Thus, while in the age of a globalised world economy few now openly discuss the value to a smaller navy of a ruthless attack on merchant shipping, the need for smaller navies to devise strategies that suit their needs and resources remains as do alternative ideas about how best to exploit maritime power. Today, as previously, adherence to the dominant tradition grounded in exploiting sea control may prove unhelpful to those for who such control is improbable.

Key points •

•

It may be the case that concepts of sea control and decisive battle are of limited use for any but the strongest navies. Weaker navies may need to develop different approaches. There have been numerous different ideas about what these approaches should be and some navies have been torn between a desire to contest sea control or more asymmetric approaches based largely on denying control to an enemy.

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•

This chapter examines some of these alternatives, including those proposed by the French Jeune École, the Soviet New School, by the German Navy in the first half of the twentieth century and by the Chinese Navy from the 1950s. It has been argued that weaker navies tend to follow similar patterns (‘a universal logic’) in their response to more powerful foes, and that this often revolves around exploiting new technology and innovative techniques to deny control to an adversary.

•

Notes 1 Martin M. Murphy and Toshi Yoshihara, ‘Fighting the Naval Hegemon. Evolution in French, Soviet, and Chinese Naval Thought’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Summer 2015), 13–39. 2 N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain. Vol 1. 660–1649 (London: Harper Collins, 1997). 3 For example see James R. Thursfield, Naval Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913) chapter VII or Maltzhan, Naval Warfare, 116–117. 4 For an examination of the blockade during the Napoleonic Wars see Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History Since 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) especially chapter 2. 5 See Richard Harding, Seapower and Naval Warfare 1650–1830 (London: Routledge, 1999). 6 See Jean Grivel, Considérations Navales en Réponse á la Brochure de M. de Pradt (1837) and Richild Grivel, De la Guerre Maritime (1869). 7 See Erne Roksund, The Jeune École (Leiden, Brill, 2007) and Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy. French Naval Policy 1871–1904 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987 [1937]). 8 Arne Roksund, ‘The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak’, in Hobson & Kristiansen, Navies in Northern Waters, 127. 9 Heuser, Evolution of Strategy, 235. 10 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), 77–84. For further details see Kevin Dougherty, Strangling the Confederacy: Coastal Operations in the American Civil War (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2010) and Craig L. Symonds, The Civil War at Sea (Oxford: Praeger, 2009). 11 Quoted in Heuser, Evolution of Strategy, 238. 12 Lawrence Sondhaus ‘Strategy, Tactics and the Politics of Penury: The Austro-Hungarian Navy and the Jeune École’, Journal of Military History, vol.56, no.4 (Oct, 1992), 587–602. 13 Sondhaus, Naval Warfare, 147–148. 14 See Holger Herwig, ‘Luxury Fleet’. The Imperial German Navy 1888–1918 (London: Ashfield Press, 1987). 15 Mahan, Influence of Sea Power, 460. 16 For a contemporary explanation see Maltzhan, Naval Warfare, 141–142. For an interesting recent interpretation of German policy see Rolf Hobson Imperialism at Sea. Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875–1914 (Brill, 2002). 17 See Padfied, The Great Naval Race. Also see Michael Epkenhans, ‘Dreadnought: “A Golden Opportunity” for Germany’s Naval Aspirations?’ in R.J. Blyth, A.L. Lambert and J. Ruger (eds), The Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 79–94. 18 Maltzahn, Naval Warfare, especially pages 46 and 121. Also see Holger H. Herwig, ‘The Failure of German Sea Power, 1914–1945: Mahan, Tirpitz and Raeder Reconsidered’, The International History Review, Vol 10, No.1 (February 1988), 78. 19 Herwig, ‘German Sea Power’, 85 and Herwig, Luxury Fleet, 38–39. 20 The best single volume examination of the First World War at sea is Paul Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: Routledge, 1995). Also see Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea. A Naval History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 21 Davis and Engerman, Naval Blockades, chapter 5. Also see Nicholas A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Maritime strategy and naval warfare 2 73 22 See Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea, chapter 6 and Mike Farquharson-Roberts, A History of the Royal Navy. World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014) chapter 4. Also see Christopher M. Bell, Churchill and the Dardanelles (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Tim Travers, Gallipoli 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2001). 23 For example see Admiral Sir H.W. Richmond, National Policy and Naval Strength and Other Essays (London: Longmans, 1934). For Landquist, see Daniel Landquist, Some Fundamentals of Maritime Strategy’ (1935) discussed in Widen, Theorist of Maritime Strategy. 24 Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Japanese Maritime Thought: If not Mahan, Who?’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Summer 2006). For Mahan’s influence on the US Navy, see Samuel Elliot Morison, The Two Ocean War. A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1963), 11. 25 Cited in Herwig, The Failure of German Sea Power, 83. 26 Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener, The Naval Strategy of the World War, trans. and ed. by Holger Herwig (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989 [1929]). 27 Simpson, The Development of Naval Thought, 78–79. 28 Rosinski in Simpson, The Development of Naval Thought, 90–91. 29 Ibid. and Herwig, German Sea Power, 95. 30 Bryan Ranft and Geoffrey Till, The Sea in Soviet Strategy (London: Macmillan, 1983), 85–88. Also see Murphy and Oshihara, Fighting the Naval Hegemon, 13–39. 31 Admiral Raoul Castex, Strategic Theories, trans. and ed. Eugenia C. Kiesling (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994). 32 For example, see Castex, Strategic Theories, 72–73. 33 See Jean Guiglini, ‘A Resume of the Battle of Koh Chang, 17 January 1941’, Warship International, Vol. 2 (1990), 135. 34 This point was emphasised by Stephen Roskill in his official history of the war at sea, The War at Sea, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1954–61) and also in Stephen Roskill, The Strategy of Sea Power (London: Collins, 1962). 35 Roskill, Strategy of Sea Power; Bernard Brodie, A Guide to Naval Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1965). 36 Admiral Chester Nimitz, ‘Report to the Secretary of the Navy’, December 1947 reproduced in Rear Admiral H.G. Thursfield (ed.), Brassey’s Naval Annual, 1948 (New York: Macmillan, 1948). 37 J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy. A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989 [1967]); H.E. Eccles, Military Concepts and Philosophy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965); Admiral Stansfield Turner, ‘Missions of the US Navy’, Naval War College Review (March–April 1974). 38 Navies in War and Peace (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974) and The Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979). Also see Kevin Rowlands, 21st Century Gorshkov. The Challenge of Sea Power in the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017). 39 Till, Seapower 2nd edn, 55. 40 ‘The Maritime Strategy 1986’ in J.B. Hattendorf and P.M. Swartz (eds), US Maritime Strategy in the 1980s: Selected Documents, Naval War College Newport Papers 33 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2008), 203–225. 41 For an excellent brief analysis of this see Murphy and Yoshihara, ‘Fighting the Naval Hegemon’, 23–35. Also, Mark A. Ryan, David M, Finkelstein, Michael A. McDevitt (eds), Chinese Warfighing. The PLA Experience Since 1949 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015) especially pages 260–262. 42 I am indebted to Jeremy Black for identifying this point, Mariner’s Mirror, Vol. 100, No. 4 (2014), 497.

Further reading Admiral Raoul Castex, Strategic Theories, trans. and ed. by Eugenia C. Kiesling (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994). Castex provides a sophisticated examination of maritime strategy that is made accessible in this abridged version of his six-volume study. Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Heuser pays particular attention to works

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that stand outside the Anglo-American tradition of Mahan and Corbett and her work is thus particularly relevant here. Martin Murphy and Toshi Yoshihara, ‘Fighting the Naval Hegemon. Evolution in French, Soviet, and Chinese Naval Thought’, in Naval War College Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Summer 2015). A very interesting short article that examines French, Soviet and Chinese ideas about maritime strategy, with an emphasis on the approaches adopted by weaker navies. Erne Roksund, The Jeune École (Leiden, Brill, 2007). Roksund provides a detailed examination of the ideas developed by the Jeune École. For a shorter (but still authoritative) study of the same issue by this author see the relevant chapter in R. Hobson, and T. Kristiansen (eds), Navies in Northern Waters: 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2004). B. Mitchell Simpons III (ed.), The Development of Naval Thought. Essays by Herbert Rosinski (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1977). Rosinski did not complete a single treatise on naval warfare but his various writings are collected together in this volume and are accompanied by a useful introduction by the editor. Sam J. Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare. Countering A2/AD Strategies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). Tangredi explores a range of historical examples and contemporary case studies of situations where navies have sought to deny access to superior naval forces. He also explores ways in which navies can deal with such challenges. Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982). Once the standard text book on maritime strategy, this book includes some focus on ‘continental theories’ including the Jeune École and the other theorists that are discussed in this chapter. Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). As has already been noted, this is a ‘must read’ book for the serious student of maritime strategy. Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener, The Naval Strategy of the World War, trans. and ed. by Holger Herwig (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989). First published in 1929, this provides an interesting examination of the problems facing the German Navy, with a particular emphasis on the importance of both fleet and position.

4

Naval diplomacy

According to the book of Guinness World Records the shortest war in history was the 1896 Anglo-Zanzibar War, which lasted only 38 minutes.1 The British reacted in a robust fashion to the accession of a pro-German sultan after the death of his pro-British predecessor and sent a gunboat (actually, three cruisers and two gunboats). Having issued an ultimatum, they then bombarded the new sultan’s palace and harem until he stepped down in favour of their preferred candidate. This offers a fairly unambiguous example of what has been called gunboat diplomacy – the threat or use of limited naval force to secure advantage or avert loss in an international dispute. Gunboat diplomacy can involve more than threatening to destroy things from the sea. The British Royal Navy was back off the coast of Zanzibar in 1964, this time to provide a refuge for the outgoing sultan and his supporters after a bloody coup and to offer a means of evacuation for European civilians should they come under attack. They also provided a means of intervention should events in Zanzibar take a turn for the worse, and the British quietly and unobtrusively kept a maritime force available offshore in the months that followed. This gave them the ability to ‘wait and see’, providing a range of robust options but removing the need for any pre-emptive action. This strengthened their hand diplomatically in discussions with East African countries, who did not favour intervention, and with the US, who did. In the end, when events ashore stabilised, the British force quietly stood down as if it had never existed. It had served its purpose well.2 Other classic examples of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ include Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan in 1853–54, an exercise in coercive diplomacy which opened that country to international trade, and the minor US and European interventions in Japan a decade later during the Shimonoseki Campaign. The British, German and Italian blockade of Venezuela in 1902–03, to force that country to honour its international debts, represents another good example, as does the US deployment of its fleet to add weight to its own position in that affair.3 The global voyage of Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Great White Fleet’ from December 1907 to February 1909 represented a more benign form of diplomacy, a ‘showing the flag’ voyage of epic proportions that helped to announce the arrival of the United States as a major naval power. The German deployment of the gunboat SMS Panther to the port of Agadir during the Second Moroccan Crisis in 1911 provides another example where naval forces were used for diplomatic effect, albeit with generally negative results for Germany in this case. Navies and other maritime agencies have often been used to threaten and cajole potential or actual enemies, but they also often employ non-coercive means to secure diplomatic advantage or to avert loss. These can include activities designed to generate goodwill such as visits to foreign ports like the three-day visit to Haifa (Israel) conducted

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by three Indian naval vessels in May 2017, timed to coincide with a diplomatic visit by the Indian Prime Minister. Other benign forms of diplomacy include cooperative engagement and training, collaborative exercises, contributions to multi-national operations and the provision of humanitarian support and assistance at or from the sea. The deployment of the Chinese hospital ship Daishan Dao (Peace Ark) to the Philippines in the aftermath of a typhoon in 2013 provides a good example of the latter as does the use of the British naval auxiliary RFA Argus to provide medical support to Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis in 2014. The sale of new or second hand ships on favourable terms, collaboration in procurement projects, and cooperation in the development or maintenance of a particular capability, such as Franco-Brazilian cooperation in Brazil’s PROSUB programme, represents another form of maritime activity with a diplomatic impact. Most writers of traditional maritime strategy focused specifically on the employment of navies in war and often had rather little to say about their role in support of national policy at other times. Mahan discussed the value of ‘showing the flag’ and the importance of ‘prestige’, but this was not the main focus of his work. Similarly, Corbett alluded to the ability of a fleet to support, deter or coerce potential allies or enemies, in both peace and in war, but his main interest was in the latter. This approach was adopted by most other writers, who analysed the peace time role of navies largely within the context of the leverage that war-fighting capabilities might give over a potential opponent and the associated value that this might have in supporting or attracting allies. While this did address one important aspect of the diplomatic use of navies it did not provide a full or fair reflection of the true scope and complexity of such roles.4 In reality navies have always fulfilled important roles in support of foreign policy and these have not always been closely connected to their war fighting role or potential. While the term ‘gunboat diplomacy’ may be appropriate for some of the more coercive activities, a focus that is inclusive of benign applications suggests that ‘naval diplomacy’ is the more appropriate term. The relative scholarly neglect of such issues was reversed during the Cold War as naval involvement in a host of minor conflicts and crises prompted increased interest in the use of navies for diplomatic purposes and in the employment of limited naval force in situations short of war. The current environment of complex threats, where navies are constantly engaged in a variety of activities short of war, has further increased the apparent significance of the diplomatic roles of navies and of other maritime agencies. This is reflected in academic thought, published doctrine and naval practice. This chapter will address these roles.

War and diplomacy A dictionary definition suggests that ‘diplomacy’ is ‘the profession, activity, or skill of managing international relations, typically by a country’s representatives abroad’.5 Diplomacy for states is thus about the conduct of foreign affairs, an attempt to secure and promote their interests beyond national boundaries. It is most commonly associated with politicians, government envoys, ambassadors, attachés, civil servants and other ‘diplomats’ who aim to gather information, promote a particular image, negotiate agreements and treaties and manage the implementation of policy in a variety of ways. In 1954 the Chinese Premier, Chou En-Lai, offered an alternative definition, reportedly stating that ‘all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means’.6 The statement is expressed in language that is more honest than it is diplomatic but it reflects the

Naval diplomacy 77 reality that diplomacy can be coercive as well as benign. It is often suggested that diplomacy offers a means of resolving disputes without the use of force. However, it is important to recognise that it may also be used in tandem with military force, and that military activity, in both war and peace, has often been exploited for diplomatic effect. Navies have always been used to support government policy for diplomatic effect in times of war, peace and in all of the complex stages between. In this respect, they are no different from any other form of armed force which, by its simple existence, alters the diplomatic calculations of friends and enemies to some degree. It has often been argued that navies have particular features that make them uniquely useful as tools of diplomacy in situations short of war. During the Cold War these ideas were advanced by a number of writers who built on more general debates about strategy, diplomacy and coercion that proliferated in the 1960s and were reflected in the work of high profile commentators such as Thomas Schelling.7 In tandem, navies who had always practised diplomacy more than they had talked about it, began to take more note of this role in their public utterances and private policy debates. An example of this new emphasis within maritime strategy was Lawrence Martin’s 1967 book The Sea in Modern Strategy. Martin examined the use of navies in war and in a peace that had often proven to be less than peaceful. He suggested that the role of navies in any major war was uncertain because of the danger of nuclear escalation and of the difficulty of fighting any sort of war once nuclear weapons were used. On the other hand, he argued that navies might be used to good effect and in a variety of ways in peace and also in limited conflicts below the nuclear threshold and that, in this respect, naval forces possessed some particular strengths.8 It is important to note the diplomatic significance of a navy’s perceived role in a war. War fighting plans and potential can have a major role in support of diplomacy in terms of deterring an opponent or supporting an ally. One also needs to recognise that diplomacy does not end when war begins, and navies continue to be employed for deterrent and coercive effect against enemies, allies and neutrals in war as in peace. This was the feature of naval diplomacy most frequently discussed in the classic works. The role that the warships SMS Goeben and Breslau played in bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war on Germany’s side in 1914 provides an interesting example of naval diplomacy in wartime. Perhaps more typically, the ability of British naval superiority to dissuade European support for Boer independence during the war of 1899–1902 illustrates how naval strength can bolster diplomacy even in the face of setbacks on land. In this case the British ability to dominate the seas made impossible any plans for foreign intervention or for significant material support for the Boers, giving Britain some immunity from hostile opinion in continental Europe and the freedom to prosecute the war in South Africa. The potential to secure sea control, should the need arise, can be a potent diplomatic tool. The importance of ‘potential control’ was emphasised by the US admiral and strategist J.C. Wylie who argued that this could be of critical importance in both war and peace, tying together alliances and helping to dictate the strategic terms of engagement. Colin Gray has argued along essentially similar lines, noting that in the Cold War, US promises of assistance to Europe in the event of a Soviet attack were only credible, and thus NATO itself was only credible, as long as Western navies maintained the potential to keep open the maritime communications that glued the alliance together. Describing NATO as a modern day ‘Delian league’ he emphasised the centrality of

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maritime communications to the alliance.9 Questions about the utility of navies in any major war, such as those raised by Martin, were therefore problematic for NATO as they challenged the military credibility of the alliance. It is within this context that the US Navy’s 1986 Maritime Strategy may best be understood. This was built on the overt ability and intent to aggressively carry the war at sea into northern waters, where the US could directly threaten Soviet interests, particularly their nuclear missile submarines. Criticised by some as being dangerous and destabilising, and being driven by a Mahanian impulse towards decisive battle, one might suggest that it had a powerful diplomatic utility in sending a message to the Soviet Union, and also to America’s allies in NATO, about US resolve and intent.10 One must remember that published policy and strategy are as much an element of diplomacy as are summit meetings or naval manoeuvres and they send messages to many different audiences. Thus, while the main focus of this chapter is on the use of navies in situations short of war, one must not forget that their anticipated role in war can have important consequences for diplomacy in peace and that diplomatic effect may require credibility in such roles and thus investment in war-fighting capabilities that do not always appear to be designed primarily as diplomatic tools. Promises of assistance, or threats of sanctions, may mean little unless it is clear that they can be acted upon.

Limited naval force and gunboat diplomacy As has already been noted, from the 1960s on there has been a growing interest in the use of limited naval force. The best known contribution to this debate was provided by a retired British diplomat, James Cable. Cable wrote a number of books but his most famous work was his 1971 examination of what he called ‘gunboat diplomacy’. He defined this in the following way: Gunboat diplomacy is the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage, or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state.11 Cable distinguished limited naval force from an act of war by suggesting that the former relied on the threat or use of force to gain a specific, limited objective whereas in the latter case force was used with the primary purpose of injuring the opponent. This is not an unproblematic distinction, and it relies heavily upon interpretations of intent. What one participant views as an exercise in gunboat diplomacy another might view as an act of war. Cable divided gunboat diplomacy into four main categories, as follows: •

Definitive force. This is when force is used for a definite (limited) purpose which is apparent to both parties. Cable suggested that the force used should be sufficient to achieve a fait accompli where the opponent has the choice to either acquiesce or retaliate but is not able to actually stop the action from taking place. The North Korean seizure in 1968 of the unarmed surveillance ship USS Pueblo, which had been sailing in international waters off the Korean coast, is offered as an example of this.

Naval diplomacy 79 •

•

•

Purposeful force: This represents the employment of limited force to change the policy of a government, such as when Britain deployed a maritime force to the Arabian Gulf in 1961 to dissuade an Iraqi attack on Kuwait. Cable also cited the reinforcement of the US and Soviet naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean in 1973, during the Arab-Israeli War, as an exercise in purposeful force, each seeking to influence the policy of the other and of the belligerents ashore. Catalytic force: Cable defined this as the use of naval forces to act as a deterrent and/or to influence events by their presence in a situation where something hostile or invidious to the state’s interests could happen. Examples of this include the deployment by France of a naval force off Djibouti in 1977 in case they were required to support an evacuation of French nationals. Expressive force: This final category represents the use of warships to emphasise attitudes, support otherwise unconvincing statements or to provide an outlet for emotion. As an example of this Cable cited the use of the battleship USS Missouri to return to Istanbul the body of the deceased Turkish ambassador to Washington in March 1946. The ship was an unconventional hearse but it sent a powerful (and very visible) message of support to Turkey at a time when the Soviet Union was pressing for territorial concessions.

Cable argued that navies were particularly useful instruments of diplomacy as they were flexible and could be employed in all manner of ways that ranged from the benign to the overtly aggressive. They could exploit the medium of the sea to gain access to places that other forms of military power could not reach. Thus he argued that: [a]ir forces and armies, unless they enjoy the advantages of an adjacent frontier, are cumbrous instruments, dragging a long tail behind their teeth, ill-adapted to the tactics of tip and run, to the limited, tentative non-committal probe. A ship, a squadron, a fleet can as well float off one coast as another.12 One of the strengths of Cable’s work was his ability to show that gunboat diplomacy was not a feature of some by-gone era and that there continued to be very many incidents in which limited naval force was employed for coercive effect throughout the cold war. He was, however, very aware that naval forces could not do everything. Just like any other diplomatic tool, there were things that they could not do well. Cable’s work is not without its problems. He did not provide a very robust theoretical model. His focus on coercion, and on state versus state confrontation, has prompted criticism that he underplays other forms of naval diplomacy, including cooperative activity, and he ignores diplomatic activity undertaken by non-state actors. His tendency to view engagements in binary terms, neglecting to recognise the wide range of relevant actors and audiences, has also been criticised.13 As Hedley Bull argued, even the phrase ‘gunboat diplomacy’ may not be helpful due to its historical association with one particular form of naval diplomacy, namely the coercion of the weak by the strong. It is more redolent of a previous age than of the modern era in which few states are willing to admit to engaging in coercive diplomacy. The phrase is certainly not one employed by navies today in their own public statements. However, and in defence of Cable, one could note that Bull’s suggestion that this is a form of naval diplomacy that ‘has long been in decline’ is not borne out by the historical record or by current events.14

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In many respects the American strategist Edward Luttwak offered a more intellectually satisfying examination of the subject than did Cable. His focus, on the political uses of sea power, was broader than Cable’s and included diplomatic activity that was both coercive and non-coercive. Reflecting on a situation where there were many constraints on the use of force, Luttwak, like Cable, argued that navies had particular advantages over their land-based counterparts through their ability to exploit the access provided by the sea. That such access could be secured without the need for basing or military overflight agreements, which always come with military, political and/or financial strings attached, was, and remains, of great significance (see Box 4.1). Rather than employing the phrase ‘gunboat diplomacy’ Luttwak wrote of ‘armed suasion’, which defined all reactions elicited by all parties to the ‘display, manipulation, or symbolic use of any instrument of military power’ whether or not such reactions reflected any deliberate intent on the part of the deploying power. His concept thus encompasses the diplomatic impact of naval forces from the very passive (even by their existence naval forces have some impact on diplomacy) through to the very active. Thus, suasion could be ‘latent’, creating either a supportive or deterrent effect through routine deployment or activity, or it could be ‘active’ and the result of a deliberate attempt to evoke a specific response. He noted that as suasion only operated through the filter of other people’s perceptions, and one could not always anticipate how actions would be interpreted, the results were sometimes unpredictable (see Box 4.2). Writing shortly after Cable and Luttwak, Ken Booth offered another analysis of the use of navies in support of foreign policy. He placed a notable emphasis on the flexibility of navies in the diplomatic role, observing that ships, though designed for war, could fulfil a variety of roles and, in contrast to land-based forces, routinely and peacefully visited different countries and regions without causing undue political controversy or unwanted commitment. He noted the ‘relative subtlety of the stages through which a warship can be transformed from a platform for a dance-band and cavorting local dignitaries, to a haven for refuge for nationals in distress, to a gun-platform for shore bombardment’.17 Booth suggested that as diplomatic instruments warships had seven basic assets: versatility; controllability; mobility; projection ability; access potential; symbolism; and, endurance. He recognised that they also have weaknesses. Warships tend to be slow to arrive, unless pre-positioned, and the initial response to a crisis may come

BOX 4.1  EDWARD LUTTWAK ON THE POLITICAL USES OF SEA POWER ‘The familiar attributes of an oceanic navy – inherent mobility, tactical flexibility, and a wide geographical reach – render it particularly useful as an instrument of policy even in the absence of hostilities. Land-based forces, whether ground or air, can also be deployed in a manner calculated to encourage friends and coerce enemies, but only within the narrow constraints of insertion, feasibility, and with inherently greater risks, since the land nexus can convert any significant deployment into a political commitment, with all the rigidities that this implies’.15

Naval diplomacy 81 BOX 4.2  US NAVAL DIPLOMACY AND THE INDO-PAKISTAN WAR, 1971 A good example of the difficulties of employing limited naval force to positive effect was provided in December 1971 when the US Navy sent to the Bay of Bengal a task force centred on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. The force was apparently deployed to secure US interests during the Indo-Pakistan War at a time when Washington was alarmed by the prospect of imminent Pakistani defeat. Unfortunately, rather than generating leverage against India the deployment of the task force, which failed to influence the outcome of the war, it was viewed by India as an aggressive act and added impetus to their desire to build up their military capabilities with the support of the Soviet Union. The main result of the deployment was thus to reinforce the links between India and America’s main rival in the Cold War.16

more quickly by air. In some situations, the scope of what they can achieve may be limited and there are some circumstances where naval power is simply not relevant. He suggested that while navies are more flexible than land-based forces in terms of their ease of deployment and withdrawal, they can lack the ‘looming presence’ of an army or air force on an adjacent border. He also recognised that presence, so easy for sea-based forces, can actually be counterproductive and can engender hostility or uninvited responsibility. Booth’s list of ‘assets’ broadly reflects the general thrust of writing on the subject. The central point is that navies, unlike land-based forces, can deploy more or less where they want, when they want and in the form that they want (subject, of course, to their own capabilities) without depending on land-based facilities that may not be available or that may only be available at some cost. They are also highly flexible assets, able to offer a scalable response to emerging crises without the need to return home to refit or regroup. Perhaps most usefully, and in total contrast to land-based forces, they have the ability to simply ‘hang around’ in a region, either visible or not (depending on requirements), infringing no one’s territory, engendering no unwanted commitments on land, able to stay or go without fanfare or controversy. As Booth noted, armies are fond of saying that you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. Warships are even more flexible, you can sit on them in reasonable comfort for a very long period of time.

Naval presence As has been discussed, navies have always engaged in diplomatic activity even if they have often chosen to think and talk more of their war fighting roles. However, the shift in focus in academic writing towards a consideration of the political uses of navies in situations short of war was matched, and to some extent prompted, by similar moves within Western navies. By the mid-1960s, for example, the British Royal Navy was portraying itself as a force whose primary role was the projection of power and protection

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of British interests far from home, and was supported in its effort to do so by notable commentators including Basil Liddell-Hart and Stephen Roskill.18 The US Navy adjusted to the post-1945 shift to what Samuel Huntington described as ‘monopolistic sea power’ by retaining an emphasis on power projection and overseas presence that was redolent of previous practice by dominant navies, albeit supported by a range of capabilities that would have astounded admirals of past generations.19 It was somewhat inevitable that this would eventually find itself reflected in that navy’s public pronouncements. From 1970 the US Navy began to articulate its role as revolving around four key missions: strategic deterrence, sea control, projection of power, and naval presence. Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, President of the US Naval War College from 1972–74, stressed the importance of the ‘new’ naval presence mission which he described as ‘the use of naval forces, short of war, to achieve political objectives’. He explained that it was accomplished through preventive deployments in peacetime and reactive deployments in response to crises. Turner was an astute commentator and recognised that sometimes naval presence could be counterproductive. For example, a naval force sent to show support to a regime under pressure might prove more unsettling than stabilising while the deployment of a major force to a region in crisis might inflame the situation and make matters worse. He noted that when applied ‘deftly but firmly’ then naval presence could be a persuasive deterrent but, if used ineptly, ‘it can be disastrous’.20 Turner’s focus on presence was matched by that of Rear Admiral Edward Wegener, an officer in the West German Navy, who argued that while ‘mastery of the sea’ was the key concept in war, ‘maritime presence’ was key in peacetime.21 From the other side of the Iron Curtain Admiral Sergey Gorshkov was also alive to the value of naval presence, arguing that ‘the navy has always been an instrument of the policy of states, an important aid to diplomacy in peacetime’. He was careful to make clear that ‘gunboat diplomacy’ was a tool only of the imperialist powers and that the Soviet Navy was an ‘instrument for a peace-loving policy and friendship of the peoples’, but if one strips the Marxist rhetoric from his work it is clear that Gorshkov’s views on naval diplomacy differed little from his Western counterparts.22 Putting theory into practice, Soviet warships began to make their presence felt on all of the world’s oceans from the late 1960s, giving them with a military presence in regions where they had previously had none and challenging America’s monopoly at sea.

Strengths and limitations An analysis of military and academic writing on this subject and an examination of current and historic practice does suggest that navies have some general strengths when used in support of diplomacy, and also some limitations. The strengths relate closely to the general attributes of maritime forces as discussed in Chapter 1, particularly where they refer to the mobility, flexibility and versatility of maritime forces, and also to the access that can be provided through use of the sea. It is not intended that the discussion be repeated here except to emphasise that these attributes are likely to be even more important in peacetime than in war, as political considerations impinge on military decision making in peacetime in a manner that makes flexibility and versatility crucial and means that access can be circumscribed by the political objections or unacceptable demands of those whose land one wishes to be based on or fly over. A good example of the challenges that this can pose was provided in 1986 during Operation El Dorado Canyon when US aircraft employed in airstrikes against Libya

Naval diplomacy 83 were denied the use of continental European bases and overflight of France, Spain and Italy. It is worth noting that these countries were all allied to the US through NATO but, as they did not approve of the operation, they refused passage to their ally’s aircraft. USAF aircraft flying from the UK were thus forced to adopt a very circuitous route, flying around Spain and through the Straits of Gibraltar to avoid these restrictions, adding over 4,000 km to the return trip. Aircraft operating from the three US aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Sidra were not so constrained and, unlike the land-based aircraft, they did not depend on the goodwill of an ally. The USAF was fortunate that the British government, unlike its continental counterparts, was willing to support the operation. The British experienced problems during the 2011 Libyan campaign when value of the sovereign British base in Cyprus was undermined by the opposition of the Cypriot government to its being used for offensive missions by strike aircraft.23 Through the medium in which they operate, navies are able to provide access without creating a footprint ashore and thus provide presence without the compromise and commitment that accompanies the use of land-based forces. When deployed overseas they cross no frontiers and infringe no one’s sovereignty, unless they choose to do so. The deployment of ships overseas is a routine activity and does not excite the same kind of attention, or opposition, that moving armies or air forces would do and it is less likely to be seen as provocative. Thus, as current NATO doctrine stresses ‘[m]aritime forces provide one of the most politically acceptable and versatile forms of military presence, since they are able to demonstrate the Alliance’s resolve and political intent without violating an adversary’s or potential adversary’s territorial waters or airspace.’24 The fact that warships are designed to be mobile, and routinely leave home to head to some far off coast, means that they are well placed to respond to unexpected crises. They can sail without fanfare or public announcement, or with it if that is seen to be useful. Once out of sight of land they can, if they wish, largely disappear from public consciousness, a useful attribute in the media hungry world of today. On arrival in a region their presence provides a visible and tangible symbol of national interest and involvement, without necessarily engendering any specific commitment. It is helpful that navies have the eminently useful attribute of being able to ‘represent force without its necessary application’ and this generates a creative ambiguity as to their role that can be extremely useful.25 Contributing to this is the ability of a naval force to provide a scalable response across the spectrum of conflict. A warship that is monitoring developments ashore can quickly switch roles to that of humanitarian relief, noncombatant evacuation or shore bombardment, depending on the need. It is not a ‘onetrick-pony’. By their very nature, and the nature of the environment, naval forces are more controllable than armies. A modern warship is a self-contained unit that has advanced command and control facilities superior to that possessed by ground forces. At sea there are fewer external factors to worry about, no civilians, no protestors, reduced likelihood of terrorist attack, no local authorities and few laws to restrict your activities. The media has less access to activity at sea, making it easier to control the flow of information. Perhaps just as importantly, navies are used to operating in an environment shared with other navies, including potential enemies, and have established rules of the road that reduce the chances of dangerous accidents happening. One of the things that is notable about navies is the frequency with which they engage with other navies. This can occur through bilateral exercises, such as the

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Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) series that the US Navy conducts with a number of Southeast Asian navies, or multilateral exercises such as the International Mine Counter-Measures Exercises (IMCMEX) organised and led by US Naval Forces Central Command or the biannual RIMPAC exercises organised and run by the US Pacific Fleet (see Box 4.3). Similarly, the Indian Navy cooperates with regional and extra regional navies in the regular ‘Malabar’ series of exercises, meeting the long-standing commitment to use the navy to ‘build maritime bridges and confidence building measures’.26 The potential for such activities to have negative as well as positive implications was illustrated in May 2017 when India refused a request by Australia to participate in Exercise Malabar largely, it seems, due to fears that this might alienate China.27 Of course, armies and air forces also train with foreign forces. What does make navies unique is the frequency with which they conduct visits to other countries, including some that might not be considered particularly friendly. While armies and air forces rarely arrive in a foreign country for a visit, navies do so all the time. The idea that good looking ships and well behaved and well turned out sailors can leave behind a positive impression is an enduring one even if it is difficult to actually quantify the value of port visits. In the 1970s Admiral Gorshkov argued that such visits allowed peoples of other countries to ‘see for themselves’ the achievements of Soviet science, technology and industry and to bring to these peoples ‘the truth’ about the Soviet ideology and way of life. He claimed that evidence from Soviet diplomatic representatives demonstrated the value of such visits.29 In similar vein, Indian maritime doctrine argues that a warship is a sovereign instrument of the state and that its movement and posture ‘portray the nation’s interests, intent and technological capability. Its crew is also a microcosm of the nation’s population and mirrors their common culture, values and characteristics. Hence, when ships of the Indian Navy visit other nations’ ports, they project the nation

BOX 4.3  RIM OF THE PACIFIC EXERCISE (RIMPAC) The RIMPAC exercises are the largest multinational maritime warfare exercises in the world and are held biannually, hosted by the US Pacific Fleet based in Honolulu. The first exercise took place in 1971 and by 2016 included participants from 27 different countries and the involvement of 45 ships, five submarines, over 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel. It is interesting to note that the list of participants includes some countries that are allied, some that are not, and others that might be viewed as potential future adversaries. The exercises provide a valuable training opportunity but also offer a unique way for the armed forces of these states to collaborate, cooperate and to develop understanding in a manner that is difficult to replicate on land. The following countries participated in RIMPAC 2016: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the US.28

Naval diplomacy 85 and its people to the host military, government and civilian personnel’.30 Possession of impressive looking warships can act as a symbol of national technological prowess, particularly if they are produced at home, and this is reflected in the pride associated with the construction in India of INS Vikrant, the first aircraft carrier to be built in an Indian shipyard and, in China, of the launch of their first domestically built carrier in April 2017. It is tempting to believe that naval diplomacy is a role that only powerful navies can fulfil. While size does matter, and some of the more coercive tasks may depend on capabilities that are beyond the reach of smaller navies, one should not ignore the reality that even a very small navy can send its vessels on diplomatic visits overseas or can make some contribution to a multi-national operation. European Union antipiracy operations off the coast of Somalia, for example, have been supported by useful contributions from smaller navies including those of Sweden and Malta and at headquarters level by naval personnel from non-EU countries including Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Ukraine. It is no disrespect to those countries, or to their navies, to reflect that the importance of the contribution for some of these was probably more diplomatic than military. Similarly, the recent Irish contribution to search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean allowed that country to contribute to the security of the region in a manner that won praise for the Naval Service but did not undermine Irish neutrality (see Box 4.4).

BOX 4.4  OP. PONTUS. THE IRISH NAVAL SERVICE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, 2015–18 In 2015 the Irish government decided to initiate Operation Pontus, sending the OPV LE Eithne to assist the Italian Marine Rescue Coordination Centre with search and rescue in the context of a humanitarian crisis caused by people trafficking across the Mediterranean to Europe from North Africa. As the operation evolved a series of individual ships were deployed through the peak summer trafficking periods of 2015, 2016 and 2017. By May 2017 over 15,600 lives had been saved.31 The operation had an obvious humanitarian impact but also represented a useful exercise in naval diplomacy. Through Operation Pontus the Irish state demonstrated a commitment to help its European Union (EU) partners and a capacity to contribute to European security. It helped the government to show that despite being a neutral country Ireland is not a ‘free-rider’ in terms of European security. Political considerations meant that the Irish government was not initially willing to allow the Naval Service to contribute to the EU mission to deal with human trafficking (Operation Sofia) but the Naval Service was able to provide a national contribution towards an international response without being part of the EU force. The deployment simultaneously fulfilled humanitarian and diplomatic objectives. Later, after the mission was proven a success, the government relented and in July 2017 the Dáil (parliament) agreed that the Naval Service could join the wider EU operation. Since then Irish ships have contributed to Operation Sophia, returning to the Mediterranean in summer 2018.

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Navies are not the only state agencies that can engage in diplomacy at sea. Coastguard vessels are often employed on diplomatic roles and may gain utility from their nonthreatening appearance and benign roles. Thus, the Japan Coast Guard participates in international engagement activities, including with states in Southeast Asia that might, for historical reasons, be unwilling to work with Japanese warships. Coastguards may even find themselves engaged in rather confrontational activity. For example, in June 2011 survey vessels chartered by the Philippines and Vietnam to conduct oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea had their towed array sonars cut by China Marine Surveillance (CMS) vessels. Christian Le Miére identified this as an act of ‘nongunboat diplomacy’, used to send a powerful message about Chinese displeasure at such activities, discouraging further exploration and reinforcing Chinese claims to sovereignty.32 Since then China Coast Guard vessels have continued to be employed actively, sometimes aggressively, in support of China’s expansive maritime claims.33 Such actions, while often controversial, are less provocative than would be similar activity by fully armed warships. States are not the only agencies to use naval diplomacy. Non-governmental organisations, such as Greenpeace, have used maritime assets to send political signals or to harass ‘adversaries’ at sea. The illegal sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand by French agents in 1985 may be indicative of the political impact which that vessel was having through its active opposition to French nuclear testing in Polynesia. Since then a variety of Greenpeace vessels have undertaken environmental protests at sea and have sometimes clashed with coastguards. Confrontations with a Russian oil platform in the Pechora Sea in 2013, for example, resulted in the intervention of the Russian coast guard and the arrest of the Greenpeace ship MV Arctic Sunrise.34 Limitations

It seems clear that navies have a particular utility in situations short of war and that this derives from their general attributes. They can offer a mobile, flexible, scalable and independent response to unforeseen and evolving events. They do, however, have their limitations. They may be slow to arrive unless they are pre-positioned. There may be areas where a naval response is either not possible or not relevant. In some circumstances the ‘looming presence’ of a major land based force will be required, and navies may play a supporting or minor role. There are some things that a navy can do very well, and other things that are suited to other tools. If a crisis breaks close to home, or near an established base, then land-based aircraft may also offer a means of exerting coercive influence. Indeed, in many respects precision strikes by aircraft, missiles or drones (either land or sea based) represent the form of coercion most favoured by Western governments, as it allows them to exploit technological superiority to threaten or harm an opponent without risking too many friendly lives. This has been reflected in the western (and Russian) intervention in Syria. However, this does not negate the value of naval forces in sending messages, building partnerships and in offering a more varied range of effects than can be achieved simply by blowing things up from the air. To paraphrase Cable, air strikes are useful, but they are not an all purpose tool and, like a screwdriver, they can be useless at hammering home a nail. As long ago as the 1970s, Cable identified that gunboat diplomacy was becoming more difficult than it had been in the past. For most states the threshold on the use

Naval diplomacy 87 of military force is higher than it was when the British bombarded Zanzibar. Furthermore, Cable recognised that the proliferation of anti-ship missiles meant that even relatively weak states (and now even sub-state groups) had access to sea denial weapons that gave them a capacity to protect themselves that the beleaguered Sultan of Zanzibar could only have dreamt of. This is bad enough in wartime but it is worse in peace when, for political reasons, pre-emptive strikes to disarm an opponent may not be allowed. A superior force might have to hold back much of its offensive potential and accept risks that would be unacceptable in war time in order to meet a politically imposed requirement not to fire first. The fates of the USS Pueblo in 1968 or of the USS Stark in 1987, provide a reminder of the danger of forward presence, with the former captured and the latter badly damaged in an air attack. The USS Vincennes incident in 1988 (when that ship shot down a civilian airliner by mistake) provides ample illustration of the dangers of a more robust approach to force protection. This vulnerability is, for some, an opportunity. A smaller navy might still seek diplomatic currency by posturing or by demonstrating a capacity to challenge the free passage of its rivals. Given the likely reluctance of most navies to fire first, and the political costs associated with being seen as an aggressor, it may be possible to gain diplomatic leverage by demonstrating a willingness to force a superior enemy to either withdraw or to open fire. In some circumstances, a costly defeat may be of more diplomatic utility to the defeated party than victory was to its enemy. International opinion can be exploited to allow the weak to bully the strong, as was the case for Iceland against Britain during the so-called ‘Cod Wars’. Of course, different navies face different constraints. Icelandic coastguard vessels could manoeuvre aggressively around (and into) British frigates in the 1970s because the latter were not allowed to employ lethal force. An Iranian vessel trying the same tactic against the US Navy today might not be treated with similar restraint. While naval presence provides a state with options, and it reduces those of an opponent it can also have unintended consequences, as Turner noted. Capability can shape the will to use it in ways that are not helpful. Forward deployment can be seen as threatening, can alter expectations or drag a state into a conflict in unexpected ways. In general, such matters are easier to manage at sea than on land as adjustments to posture, numbers, etc. are easier to effect and not so remarkable, although the requirement to be attuned to the situation, to recognise that the messages you send may not be read accurately, is important. Luttwak was correct to note that for naval diplomacy to be effective political radar is as important as the electronic variety.35 It is also important to remember that a forward deployed ship may be a symbol of the state, but that does not make it invulnerable. Finally, one could argue that a focus on diplomatic roles could lead to patterns of deployment or types of vessels that are not optimal for wartime conditions and that undermine the opportunities for training in wartime contingencies. Ships designed and purchased for prestige purposes may look good but may not suit national wartime needs. It might be the case that a navy focused on ‘presence’ might allow its warfighting edge to be dulled. Famously, in the 1900s, the reforming British Admiral Sir Jacky Fisher complained of a Royal Navy encumbered with ships ‘too weak to fight and too slow to run away’ and moved quickly to cut these vessels and to refocus attention on the emerging German threat, much to the disgust of his counterparts in the Foreign Office. This dynamic may still be relevant today and navies will need to carefully balance the emphasis placed on their different roles. After all, naval diplomacy

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depends on the ability to use the sea and periods of monopolistic sea power do not last for ever

Navies and naval diplomacy today Presence, now defined as ‘forward presence’, remains a core capability of the US Navy, despite concerns that reducing hull numbers make global presence more difficult. Forward presence is identified as a means of cooperating with friends and allies, deterring conflict and responding to crises. In May 2017 the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson USN, reiterated this in his plan for ‘The Future Navy’, arguing that ‘[c]omplexity and pace place a premium on the ability to respond quickly, something that naval forces do well by virtue of their forward presence and ability to operate freely in international waters’.36 Current US strategy and doctrine stress the problem of the diminishing availability of overseas bases and the need to exploit the expeditionary nature of naval forces to overcome barriers to access. They emphasise the value of continuous engagement and persistent presence in limiting regional conflict, deterring major war and in fostering and sustaining cooperative relationships with international partners. The need to use naval forces to proactively shape the international environment represents an important element in this. Thus, the concept of presence, as articulated by Turner, is now mainstream within US thinking and is an important element in their policy and practice, encompassing both benign and coercive aspects of diplomacy. The importance of naval diplomacy is reflected in the theory and practice of other navies as well. The Dutch, for example, identify ‘showing the flag’, ‘naval diplomacy’ and ‘maritime capability building’ as different forms of ‘maritime assistance to diplomacy’.37 The British Royal Navy discusses naval diplomacy under the rubric of ‘defence engagement’ but does not deviate much from established ideas. Their latest maritime doctrine publication discusses nothing at any length and is so banal as to be devoid of much value.38 The previous edition was notably superior and explored the subject in greater depth, arguing that the key tenet of forward presence was to ‘shape and influence a situation to prevent conflict, projecting hard and soft power concurrently.’ This can involve conflict prevention, deterrence, reassurance, coercion or containment and includes ‘soft power’ activities such as capability and capacity building, outreach, confidence and security building measures and measures designed to engender support and reassurance. The unique ability of naval forces to ‘loiter’ in a minimally intrusive way was identified as a core strength.39 An examination of both policy and practice reveals that, whether you describe it as gunboat diplomacy, naval diplomacy, suasion, international engagement or something else, this activity involves a range of behaviour that stretches from the very benign to the openly coercive. The Royal Australian Navy, which suggests that naval diplomacy can also be defined as ‘shaping operations’, lists the following activities: • • • • • •

humanitarian assistance and disaster relief defence force assistance to friendly and allied nations presence evacuation operations preventative diplomacy coercion.

Naval diplomacy 89 Thus, the provision of disaster relief off Banda Aceh by HMAS Kanimbla in the aftermath of the 2005 Asian tsunami represented one form of naval diplomacy, as did the despatch of this ship, plus two others, to waters off Fiji after the coup there in 2006, in order to demonstrate an Australian commitment to provide security, and an ability to evacuate its own citizens, if violence broke out ashore.40 Similarly benign exercises in naval diplomacy might include port visits, officer exchanges and participation in multi-national exercises or conferences. In recent years the US Navy has placed a notable emphasis on capability and capacity building in support of its vision for a cooperative endeavour to police the global commons. This involves an engagement with regional navies that can also be considered a form of naval diplomacy. An example of this is provided by the Africa Partnership Station (APS). Facilitated by the US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, the APS is an initiative designed to build African maritime security and safety capability and capacity through the provision of training and other support and this has involved the cooperation of other extra-regional navies. For example, in 2016 the Belgian command and logistic support ship BNS Godetia assisted in training personnel from Benin, Congo, Gabon and Togo under the auspices of the APS and participated in French-led multinational exercises involving eight regional and extra-regional navies.41 Of course the US Navy also engages in more coercive forms of naval diplomacy, as do many others. The deployment of US and European warships off the coast of Libya in 2011 was an exercise in a robust form of naval diplomacy that resulted in the application of limited military force (both naval and land-based) that supported local forces ashore in deposing the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Chinese and Russian practice demonstrates that they too recognise the utility of naval diplomacy. For example, in November 2011 Russia deployed to Syria a battle group of three vessels built around the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. This force demonstrated Russian interest in the region, and also provided tacit support to the Assad regime. The deployment also helped to balance the presence in the region of a US force based on the aircraft carrier USS George W. Bush. Subsequently, as Russian support for Assad became more active, the Admiral Kuznetsov made further trips to Syria, providing a visible and high profile symbol of Russian support and interest. Western interest in the movements of this ship says something about the diplomatic impact of naval vessels, even if the age and manifest shortcomings of the Admiral Kuznetsov make it an asset of somewhat dubious military value. Missile strikes undertaken from Russian warships provide more practical support for the air campaign (which is conducted from land bases in Syria) and offer a potent indication of Russian capabilities in this respect.42 In East Asia and Southeast Asia a proliferation of maritime jurisdictional disputes and the jockeying for position associated with the rise in Chinese power has seen a notable increase in the use of navies for diplomatic effect. These have ranged in scale and intensity from multi-national naval conferences and bilateral exercises aimed at confidence building through to the cutting of fishing nets in disputed regions and showdowns between opposing warships and coastguard vessels. Navies are clearly being used to back up diplomacy in what one commentator has described as a ‘muscular form of negotiation’.43 Extra-regional navies also play a role here. In May 2017 the US destroyer USS Dewey sailed within 12nm of the Chinese held Mischief Reef in the Spratley Islands in a ‘freedom of navigation’ deployment that signalled the US Navy’s determination to continue to operate in waters that are claimed by China.

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The act also provided tacit support for America’s allies in the region and signalled that Washington does not recognise Chinese sovereignty over Mischief Reef. Chinese vessels ‘identified and warned’ the Dewey but both sides, having made their point, refrained from more overt provocation.44 It seems clear that naval diplomacy, in both coercive and benign forms, remains at least as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth. Navies, coastguards and other maritime agencies will continue to undertake diplomatic duties and even roles (such as humanitarian relief) that are not articulated as being motivated for diplomatic effect but will nonetheless have value in securing political advantage. Nonstate entities are also likely to continue to use maritime assets for political effect, as has Greenpeace, and will likely pose additional diplomatic challenges for those navies and coastguards that must deal with them.

Key points • •

•

•

•

Navies have always been used in support of diplomacy, both in times of peace and in war. Navies are not the only maritime agencies to engage in diplomatic activity at sea. Coastguards are often used in this role and even non-state actors sometimes use maritime assets to send political signals. Navies (and other maritime agents) can be used for coercive effect (often called gunboat diplomacy) and also for more benign activities designed to generate influence. Numerous commentators have identified that navies have particular advantages when used in the diplomatic role, and that these relate to their endurance, flexibility and controllability and to their ability to exploit the access provided by the sea. Naval diplomacy remains an important role for navies today and this is reflected in both published doctrine and current practice.

Notes 1 Editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday (2007), Guinness World Records 2008, London: Guinness World Records, 118. 2 Ian Speller, ‘An African Cuba? Britain and the Zanzibar Revolution’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (June 2007), 283–302. 3 Edmund Morris, ‘ “A Matter Of Extreme Urgency” Theodore Roosevelt, Wilhelm II, and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902,’ Naval War College Review, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Spring 2002), 73–85. 4 Kevin Rowlands, ‘ “Decided Preponderance at Sea”. Naval Diplomacy in Strategic Thought’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Autumn 2012), 91–92. J.J. Widen, ‘Naval Diplomacy – A Theoretical Approach’, Diplomacy and Statescraft, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2011), 715–733. 5 Quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary (online). 6 As quoted in Saturday Evening Post (27 March 1954). 7 For example, see Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press, 1960) and Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Also see Robert Mandel, ‘The Effectiveness of Gunboat Diplomacy’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30 (1986), 59–76. 8 L.W. Martin, The Sea in Modern Strategy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967). 9 J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy. A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989 [1967]); Colin Gray, The Navy in the Post-Cold War World. The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 7.

Naval diplomacy 91 10 See John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the US Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986 (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2004). 11 James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1979. Political Applications of Limited Naval Force, 2nd edn (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1981 [1971]). 12 Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy, 67 13 For example, see Kevin Rowlands, Naval Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War Global Order, PhD Thesis, King’s College London (2015). Available online at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/ theses/naval-diplomacy-in-the-postcold-war-global-order(e08adae6-1450-4193-a981-eea8e07 fea40).html 14 Hedley Bull, ‘Sea Power and Political Influence’, in Jonathan Alford (ed.), Sea Power and Influence. Old Issues and New Challenges (Montclair, NJ: Osmun & Co., 1980), 3–11. 15 Edward N. Luttwak, The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore, MA: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 1. 16 Sam Bateman, ‘Navies and the Maintenance of Good Order in Peacetime’, in A. Tan, Maritime Power (New York: Routledge, 2007), 106. 17 Ken Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 27. 18 Ian Speller, ‘Corbett, Liddell Hart and the British Way in Warfare in the 1960s’, Defence Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2008), 227–239. 19 Samuel Huntington, ‘National Policy and the Transoceanic Navy’, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vo. 80, No.5 (May 1954). 20 Admiral Stansfield Turner, ‘Missions of the US Navy’, Naval War College Review (March–April 1974), 14–15. 21 Rear Admiral Edward Wegener, ‘Theory of Naval Strategy in the Nuclear Age’, US Naval Institute Proceedings (May 1972), 192–207. 22 Sergei Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979), 248. 23 Michele Kambas, ‘Cyprus Against Use of British Bases for Libya’, World News (20 March 2011). 24 NATO, Allied Joint Publications (AJP) 3.1, Allied Joint Maritime Operations (April, 2004), 1–8. 25 Peter Hayden, ‘Naval Diplomacy: Is It Relevant in the 21st century’, in A. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Maritime Power, 63. 26 See Vijay Sakhuja, ‘Naval Diplomacy: Indian Initiatives’, Bharat Rakshak Monitor, Vol 6, No. 1 (July–August, 2003). 27 ABC News Andrew Greene, ‘India blocks Australian Bid to Join Exercise Malabar Naval War Games’, ABC News online, 31 May 2017. Available online at www.abc.net.au/news/2017-0531/india-rejects-australian-request-to-join-naval-war-games/8577664. 28 Navytoday.com, ‘Record Number of Countries to Take Part in RIMPAC 2016’, 1 June 2016. http://navaltoday.com/2016/06/01/record-number-of-countries-to-take-part-in-rimpac-2016/. 29 Gorshkov, Sea Power of the State, 251–252. 30 Indian Maritime Doctrine (2009), 106. 31 (Irish) Department of Defence, Press Releases 2017 (23 May 2017). Available online at www. defence.ie/website.nsf/Release+ID/BB40ED4F620A3BE5802581290037D31A?OpenDocument. 32 Christian Le Miére, ‘The Return of Gunboat Diplomacy’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Vol. 53, No. 5 (2011), 65 33 See Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Are Maritime Law Enforcement Agencies Eestabilising Asia? (2016). http://chinapower.csis.org/maritime-forces-destabilizing-asia/. 34 Greenpeace International, ‘The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior’, available online at www. greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/the-bombing-of-the-rainbow-war/. Kevin Rowlands, Naval Diplomacy, 395–400. 35 Edward Luttwak, Political Uses of Sea Power, 14. 36 Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson USN, The Future Navy (May 2017). Available online at http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Richardson/Resource/TheFutureNavy.pdf. 37 Netherlands Maritime Military Doctrine, chapter 13. 38 Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 0–10, British Maritime Doctrine (2017), 5th edn (2017). 39 JDP 0–01, British Maritime Doctrine (2011), JDP 2:26. 40 RAN, Australian Maritime Doctrine, 109–112. 41 Cmdr Chuck Ridgeway, ‘Africa Partnership Station’, US Naval Forces Europe-Africa/6th Fleet website (6 Dec 2016). Available online at www.c6f.navy.mil/news/aps-belgian-naval-ship-godetia.

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42 For example, see Reuters, Russian Navy Launch Missile Strikes on IS Targets in Syria (23 June 2017). www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-missiles-idUSKBN19E0G7. 43 Le Miére, ‘The Return of Gunboat Diplomacy’, 57. 44 Jane Perlez, ‘US Warship Sails Near Island Claimed by Beijing in South China Seas’, New York Times, 24 May 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/world/asia/south-china-sea-us-navy-warshipspratly-islands.html.

Further reading Ken Booth, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977). This is one of the three real ‘classics’ of the subject and, along with Cable and Luttwak, is something that any student of the subject must read. James Cable, Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1979: Political Applications of Limited Naval Force, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). This is the most up-to-date version of Cable’s classic study of gunboat diplomacy, and it provides a good starting point for anyone interested in the subject. James Cable, The Political Influence of Naval Force in History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). Cable provides another classic examination of the influence of naval forces, adopting a broader focus than he did in ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’. Edward Luttwak, The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). Luttwak provides an insightful examination of the political uses of sea power and advances his idea of ‘suasion’. Peter Hayden, ‘Naval Diplomacy: Is It Relevant in the 21st Century?’, in A. W. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Maritime Power: A Survey (London: Routledge, 2007). Hayden provides a twentyfirst century perspective on naval diplomacy in this short chapter, updating the traditional concepts within the context of contemporary challenges. Christian Le Miére, Maritime Diplomacy in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2015). This book analyses the nature of maritime diplomacy in the twenty-first century, looking at activities across the spectrum from benign to coercive. It is particularly interesting for the focus on the use of coastguards and other government agencies in support of diplomacy at sea. Kevin Rowlands, ‘Decided Preponderance at Sea. Naval Diplomacy in Strategic Thought’, Naval War College Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Autumn 2012). Rowlands examines how naval diplomacy is addressed within the literature on maritime strategy. His PhD on the topic of naval diplomacy (King’s College, London 2015) is also well worth a look and is available online. J.J. Widen, ‘Naval Diplomacy – A Theoretical Approach’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2011), 715–733. Widen examines the classic works of naval diplomacy and offers his own perspective that emphasises the defence, coercive, supportive and symbolic value of naval diplomatic action.

5

Putting theory into practice

The concepts and theories discussed in the previous chapters were derived in large part from analysis of past campaigns. History was used to inform judgement about the principles of maritime strategy; it was also used as a teaching aid to clarify and illustrate those principles. This was reflected in the writing of both Mahan and Corbett and this chapter seeks to follow Mahan’s advice to ‘[m]aster your principles, and then ram them home with the illustrations which history furnishes’.1 The aim is provide a brief examination of a number of battles, campaigns and wars, focusing in particular on the period from 1815 to 1945, in order to identify and illustrate the ways in which the concepts discussed in chapters 1 through 4 have worked (or not worked) in the real world. The chapter does not aim to provide a detailed history of naval warfare during this period. That is not possible in the space provided nor is it necessary. The intention is to use a number of case studies to illustrate features of naval warfare and to ‘ram home the principles’, not to provide a comprehensive narrative. Readers who want to explore the history in more detail have many good books to choose from and a list of some of these is provided at the end of the chapter. References within the chapter should also provide a guide to further reading.

Part 1: From Trafalgar (1805) to Tsushima (1905) In the hundred years before the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), there were numerous naval battles involving large fleets. In the century between Trafalgar and Tsushima there were none. After 1815 there was no repeat of the prolonged tussle for mastery at sea that had characterised Anglo-French rivalry before the defeat of Napoleon. Periodic French attempts to match the British resulted in brief, one-sided arms races before France bowed to the inevitable and gave up. In the Crimean War of 1854–55, the Russians, quite sensibly, did not even try to match the British and French navies and suffered the impact of successful power projection in both the Baltic and the Black Seas.2 This does not mean that there were no naval battles or that they were of no consequence. There were engagements between sizeable squadrons in the nineteenth century, notably including battles at Navarino (1827), Sinope (1854), Lissa (1868), the Yalu (1894) and Santiago de Cuba (1898). In addition, there were many other battles between small groups of ships or individual vessels. The history of naval warfare after the Napoleonic Wars provides a useful reminder that when judging the importance of naval battles, size does not matter. It is much more useful to examine the significance of the battle than it is to count the number of ships involved. In this respect there were numerous important battles, as engagements

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even between individual vessels could have a powerful impact on the course of events. Thus, for example, the naval battles that characterised the War of the Pacific (1878–83) involved only a handful of ships but that does not mean that the consequences of victory or defeat were not profound. The victory of Chile in that war, against Bolivia and Peru, depended on securing and maintaining control of the sea. That control, established by virtue of a superior fleet, was challenged by Peruvian success at the Battle of Iquique in 1879 but was reaffirmed by the Chilean victory at Angamos later that year. Chilean sea control opened up Bolivia (which then still had a coastline) and Peru to blockade and invasion and to eventual defeat, while simultaneously protecting Chile from the same. The fact that the Battle of Angamos centred on an encounter between a single Peruvian ironclad and two Chilean armoured frigates did not make the result any less significant.3 Naval warfare is and always has been about much more than ships fighting other ships at sea. Sea control enabled or denied the ability to move troops, equipment and

BOX 5.1  THE US CIVIL WAR, 1861–65 In 1861 the Union Navy was weak and the Confederate Navy was almost non-existent. Both sides scrambled to mobilise naval forces but Union industrial and maritime strength made it a rather one-sided competition. Most battles occurred within coastal waters and on rivers, which provided important lines of communication, particularly in the western theatre. Such battles usually revolved around a small number of coastal or riverine vessels, including ironclads, often supported or opposed by shore batteries, mines and other obstructions. Though the activities of Confederate commerce raiders meant that the scope of the maritime conflict was global, there were no major fleet encounters. Neither side had a large fleet at the outset of the war, but while the Union did eventually construct one, it was tailored to enforce the blockade and for power projection in shallow water. Nevertheless, Union superiority at sea made an important contribution to eventual victory. It enabled the North to institute a blockade that strangled Confederate trade, undermined their finances and discouraged foreign intervention. At the same time it facilitated the protection of friendly trade and, while the Confederate privateers and auxiliary cruisers did have some economic and political impact, this was nowhere near as significant as the blockade (see p. 59). Superiority at sea enabled the Union to undertake a series of landings, seizing major southern ports such as Port Royal (1861), Pensacola (1862) and Mobile (1865). It also allowed the projection of power and support for campaigns ashore, as in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and, with more success, on the Mississippi River after the seizure of New Orleans in 1862 and Vicksburg in 1863. The latter cut the Confederacy in two and set the context for Union success in the west. In the east, Sherman’s devastating march though Georgia in 1864 was predicated on his ability to abandon his lines of communication, an initiative that only made sense because in advancing to the sea he was advancing towards friendly held territory.4

Putting theory into practice 95 supplies by sea, to conduct expeditionary operations, raids or evacuation, to bombard positions ashore, protect friendly trade and attack that of the enemy and to blockade the enemy coast. All of these activities were undertaken in the US Civil War (1861–65), a conflict in which there were no large fleet battles and very few engagements at all outside coastal waters. Nevertheless, naval activity played a key role in eventual Northern success (see Box 5.1). There is not space to list here all of the wars in the nineteenth century in which navies played an important part; it would be much easier to list those in which they did not (that list is much shorter). Conflicts as diverse as the Wars of Liberation in Latin America (1808–33), the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), the Liberal Wars in Portugal (1828–34), the Anglo-Chinese (Opium) Wars (1839–42 and 1856–60); and the Chilean Civil War (1891) were influenced heavily by their maritime context. Sometimes navies were important for the things that they enabled and sometimes they were important because of the things that they prevented. Naval power could also be important in terms of setting the overall strategic context. For example, as Mahan pointed out, the British Navy fought no battles at sea during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) but its ability to prevail against any probable combination of opponents ‘assured the control of the sea, and with it the necessary transportation of force’ which represented a necessary condition for British success in that war.5 It also deterred intervention on behalf of the Boers by European sympathisers. Boer inability to do anything to disrupt the arrival of British supplies and reinforcements by sea set the context for their eventual defeat on land. Despite this, there were some contexts in which events at sea did not have decisive impact. Geography mandated that naval supremacy could not prevent British defeat in the First Afghan War (1839–42) and, for the same reason, navies played no part in the Swiss civil war of 1847. Even in wars with a maritime dimension, victory at sea might not matter too much. The Danish fleet was unable to change the course of events during the Second Schleswig War in 1864, despite winning a minor victory against Prussia at the Battle of Jasmund (April 1864) and securing a draw against the Austrians off Helgoland (May 1864).6 Austrian naval strength counted for little in the 1866 war against Prussia. Victory at sea against Prussia’s Italian allies protected the eastern Adriatic from planned Italian landings but could do nothing to offset the impact of the crushing defeat on land at Koniggratz. Similarly, the French fleet could do little to influence the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) and tentative plans to land French troops on the north German coast came to nothing.7 The Greek navy was unable to do anything to offset Turkish victories on land in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.8 In short one-sided wars such as these, where enemies faced each other across shared land borders, victory or defeat at sea might not be a decisive factor in the eventual outcome. The tactics, techniques and technology of naval warfare in the last decade of the nineteenth century were very different to those of the first decade. The wooden sailing ships that had dominated warfare in Nelson’s era had been replaced by iron or steel ships, often clad with armour (hence ironclad) and armed with shell firing artillery able to engage the enemy at unprecedented ranges. Iron and steel construction changed the nature of ship design and of ship building, while steam produced by burning coal, freed warships from dependence on the wind. The US floating battery Demologos (1815) lays claim to be the first steam powered ‘warship’ and steam engines began to be employed more widely in warships as an auxiliary to sail from the 1820s.

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Steam had the advantage of providing for reliable navigation and enabled ships to venture close to the shore and up navigable rivers with greater security than had previously been the case. It had the disadvantage of reducing the almost unlimited endurance of sailing ships to something bounded by access to bases and to coaling stations, and thus it was not until 1871 that Britain launched its first ocean going battleship solely powered by steam (HMS Devastation).9 Guns firing explosive shells, adopted progressively from the 1840s, posed a much greater threat to wooden ships than had the solid shot previously employed, a fact illustrated by the rapid destruction of a Turkish squadron by Russian shell-firing guns at Sinope in 1853. Armour provided a counter-measure, initially added to wooden vessels, as with the French Gloire launched in 1859 or to iron-built ships such as HMS Warrior (1860). The stalemated battle between the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia and the Union Ironclad USS Monitor at the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862 illustrated the difficulty of sinking such vessels without armour piercing ammunition. The day before that encounter Virginia had destroyed the unarmoured frigate USS Congress by gunfire and sank the sloop USS Cumberland using a bow ram.10 The latter tactic, reminiscent of naval warfare in ancient times, was employed successfully by the Austrians in their victory against the Italian fleet at Lissa in 1866 and for a period rams once again became a feature of warship construction. However, it soon became apparent that the increasing range and accuracy of naval artillery meant that ramming would not be a common feature of battle between the most powerful vessels, although ships did occasionally ram each other (on purpose or otherwise) in the years ahead. The use of sea mines to protect vulnerable harbours, by the Russians (1854–55) and the Confederate States of America (1861–65), provided a new means of protecting the shore from superior navies, alongside coastal fortifications and artillery. Improved land communications by road and rail enhanced the capacity to move armies in response to sea borne attack, although not to the extent that this negated the manoeuvre advantage provided by the sea. Torpedoes, initially attached to long poles (spars) and later selfpropelled, provided an additional means of attacking large ships. In the 1860s the Confederate Navy had some success using spar torpedoes deployed from small steam boats and a decade later the Russian Navy was to gain acclaim for its use of purpose built torpedo boats in the war against Turkey (1877–78).11 The Confederate Navy also pioneered the use of submersibles, gaining the first successful ‘kill’ for such a vessel when the CSS Hunley managed to sink the sloop USS Housatonic off Charleston in February 1864 using a spar torpedo.12 The Hunley represented an innovative response to superior enemy sea power but was not a very satisfactory design. Powered underwater by a handcrank it sank with all hands shortly after its first successful attack. It was not until the 1880s that the development of electric engines and batteries provided a suitable form of propulsion for submerged vessels, with diesel engines used on the surface. By the end of the century the submarine was beginning to emerge as a weapon with real potential. From the middle of the century the telegraph provided a means of long range communication, while radio, deployed at sea from the turn of the century, for the first time offered a means of communicating from ship to shore (and vice versa) and between ships that were out of sight.13 Despite these changes, writers such as Mahan and Corbett argued that the core elements of maritime strategy remained unchanged (see Chapters 2 and 3). As has been discussed, their arguments were explained with reference to historical events drawn largely from the age of sail. They also made overt references to more recent

Putting theory into practice 97 conflicts, including the Sino-Japanese, Spanish-American, and Russo-Japanese wars. Geography dictated that maritime power would play an important part in all three conflicts and each is discussed, briefly, below. Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)

Prior to the outbreak of active hostilities between China and Japan in July 1894 both states transported armies by sea to Korea and the first engagement at sea resulted from this, with two Chinese gunboats lost and a troop transport sunk on 25 July. The major battle of the war occurred off the mouth of the Yalu river (17 Sept 1894) when a Japanese squadron caught and defeated a weaker Chinese force that was returning after successfully escorting the transportation of more troops to Korea. The Chinese retreated to Port Arthur (Lúshun Port) and then Weihaiwei (Weihai), ceding sea control to the Japanese. The Japanese used this to land troops on the Liaotung peninsula, taking Port Arthur, before conducting landings at Weihaiwei, where, in cooperation with the blockading Japanese navy, they destroyed the remnants of the Chinese Beiyang Fleet. They also landed troops to seize the Pescadores islands before China agreed to terms. It is important to note that the decisive actions of the war occurred on land. The defeat of the Chinese armies in Korea was of more significance than any action at sea, and both sides deployed the bulk of their forces (by sea) before the outbreak of hostilities. However, had China been able to defeat the Japanese navy and had it retained sufficient strength to exploit the situation, it could have isolated the Japanese armies in Korea, reinforced its own and potentially launched assaults on the Japanese homeland similar to those launched by Japan against China. Great power intervention subsequently robbed Japan of many of the fruits of victory and set the conditions for war with Russia a decade later.14 Spanish-American War (1898)

The war between Spain and the United States featured one-sided campaigns in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. In the latter case the rapid defeat of a hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched Spanish squadron by an American force at Cavite (Manila Bay) in May set the context for the eventual landing of an expeditionary force and the surrender of the Spanish garrison in the Philippines. The Spanish position in Cuba and Puerto Rico proved equally untenable in the face of superior naval power. To challenge a blockade undertaken by the larger US Navy, the Spanish despatched across the Atlantic a squadron under Admiral Cervera. Substantially weaker than the US Fleet it is unclear what Cervera’s squadron could achieve, particularly given a critical lack of colliers, and thus of coal. On arrival in theatre (May), Cervera was forced to seek shelter at Santiago de Cuba where he was promptly blockaded. US troops were landed in June and undertook a campaign that eventually placed the anchorage of Santiago in danger, prompting Cervera to attempt a desperate sortie on 3 July. This resulted in the annihilation of his squadron of four armoured cruisers and two destroyers at a cost of just two US casualties.15 US command of the sea, assured by their superior battle fleet, enabled the blockade of Cuba and provided the means to undertake landings there and later at Puerto Rico. The weaker Spanish squadron could not achieve much as a fleet in being. Blockaded in Santiago de Cuba, it could not stop any vital US activity (such as the landing of troops), and the US ships were not subject to attrition

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from attack by torpedo boats or mines. Caught in harbour and short of coal the Spanish ships could not even hope to raid US trade or attack the US east coast, as some had feared they might. Cervera’s fate lends credence to Herbert Rosinski’s pessimism about the prospects facing weaker navies (see pp. 65–66).16 Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)

The war between Russia and Japan began with a Japanese torpedo attack on the Russian Pacific Squadron off Port Arthur on 8 February 1904 before any formal declaration of war. That attack damaged two battleships and a cruiser. It was followed the next day by a second attack, but this was not pressed home and failed to inflict significant additional damage. The Russian squadron then retreated into the safety of Port Arthur, ceding control of the sea through its subsequent inactivity. The arrival of a new commander, Admiral Makarov, saw the adoption of a more aggressive approach until on 13 April 1904 his flagship hit a mine and sank, taking the admiral with it. Subsequently the squadron remained passive until advancing Japanese troops imperilled the anchorage and the new commander, Admiral Vitgeft, sortied in an attempt to escape to Vladivostok. On 10 August 1904, at the Battle of the Yellow Sea, Vitgeft was intercepted, defeated and sent back to Port Arthur by the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo. Togo did not vigorously pursue the Russians, perhaps mindful that he needed to look after his fleet, as there was no other to replace it. In any case, the Russian squadron was neutralised. Guns and men were landed from the warships, which were first assaulted and then sunk by howitzers belonging to the besieging Japanese army. Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese on 2 January 1905, a victory for the army and navy acting in concert.17 Elsewhere, a Russian cruiser squadron, based in Vladivostock, managed to make a nuisance of itself with hit-and-run raids against transport shipping before it was discovered and defeated on 14 August 1905 at the Battle of Ulsan. Unlike Japan, however, Russia did have another fleet. On 15 October 1905 a ‘Second Pacific Squadron’ departed from the Baltic and met with additional reinforcements from a ‘Third Pacific Squadron’ in Camranh Bay (off French Indochina) in April 1905. The combined force, under Admiral Rozhestvensky, was a heterogeneous mix of vessels, most of which were slower, smaller and weaker than their Japanese counterparts. The differences in speed and armament made it very difficult for these ships to fight as a coordinated unit. They had been at sea for some months and were ready for refit and repair in harbour but not for battle. The knowledge that there was insufficient coal at Vladivostok meant that they carried excess quantities of the fuel, meaning that they approached battle over-burdened with large stocks of highly flammable material stored on deck. The result was rather inevitable. A Japanese cruiser spotted the fleet at night on 27 May 1905 as it approached the Tsushima Strait. Radio enabled the cruiser to inform Togo, and radio intercepts warned the Russians that they had been discovered. Battle commenced at 13:40 and continued until darkness, when Togo despatched destroyers and torpedo boats to deal with surviving Russian ships. On 28 May his main fleet pursued the survivors, succeeding in catching four old battleships and forcing their surrender. Six other Russian battleships, one armoured cruiser and one protected cruiser were sunk. One Russian battleship, two armoured cruisers and one protected cruiser were scuttled to avoid capture and three protected cruisers succeeded in running to Manila where they were interned. Of the smaller Russian vessels, 18 out of 19 were

Putting theory into practice 99 sunk, captured or scuttled. The Japanese lost three torpedo boats. This was as onesided a result as you could wish to see in naval warfare.18 The Battle of Tsushima destroyed any possibility of Russia challenging Japanese sea control. In truth, even had Rozhestvensky, managed to get to Vladivostok he may not have been very well placed to mount a serious challenge given the lack of coal, the distance from Vladivostok to the relevant theatre and also the manifest deficiencies of much of his force. Nevertheless, defeat was a huge blow to Russia and removed its last hope of victory in the war. It should be remembered, however, that Russian failure was also a result of revolution at home and defeat on land in Manchuria. Had the Russian armies been more competently managed and had the home front remained strong, then defeat at sea could have been offset by victory on land. Control of the sea enabled Japanese success, and without it they would have been defeated. It enabled them to deploy their armies to Korea, to support them in the subsequent campaign ashore and to move them around within theatre. It protected the Japanese islands and Japanese shipping from Russian seaborne attack and victories at sea demoralised their enemy. Control of the sea was a necessary component in the Japanese victory, but it was not sufficient. Victory for Japan in this war was a result of military as well as naval success. Taken together, the Sino-Japanese, Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars seemed to confirm that, despite changes in technology and tactics, core ideas about maritime strategy remained relevant; certainly, that was the view of the most prominent strategists of the day (see Box 5.2). In each war the superior navy gained sea control where it mattered, either by battle or by the enemy’s unwillingness to risk a fight. Inferior fleets were defeated at sea and/or blockaded in harbour. This then allowed the dominant navy to land and support armies ashore, to conduct shore bombardments and, where relevant, to attack enemy shipping and protect their own. Success in each war was the result of joint cooperation between the army and the navy and in each case land forces were required to finish off or drive out weaker navies hiding in defended harbours. In all three wars the inferior navy’s attempts at sea denial were rather feeble and ships blockaded in harbour did not provide very convincing fleets-in-being. Russian cruisers operating from Vladivostok did manage to make a nuisance of themselves for a while, but their eventual defeat by superior Japanese forces rather seemed to confirm the traditional view of raiding being a weaker form of warfare, susceptible to defeat by the side that controlled the sea. The threat caused by torpedoes and by torpedo boats did influence operations, and made commanders justly cautious about the conduct of operations, but did not yet challenge traditional navies or traditional concepts in the way that the Jeune École had prophesized (see pp. 57–58). Submarines, possessed in small numbers by Russia and Japan in 1905, did not actively take part in operations.

Part 2: From the Dreadnought to Tokyo Bay, 1906–45 The Russo-Japanese War was taken by many as confirmation of the centrality of battle and of the importance of the heavy battleship as the means of prevailing in such encounters. The launch in 1906 of HMS Dreadnought made obsolete all existing battleships as this vessel was bigger, faster, more heavily armed and more heavily armoured. The adoption of steam turbine engines gave her an impressive top speed of 21 knots and the all big-gun armament (of ten 12-inch guns) facilitated the direction and control of long-range gunnery. In most respects, however, Dreadnought did exactly

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BOX 5.2  MAHAN AND CORBETT ON THE RUSSOJAPANESE WAR Julian Corbett was engaged by the Royal Navy to write a classified official history of the war and he used that and his public works to emphasise the importance of successful Japanese joint cooperation.19 Corbett noted that prior to the Battle of Tsushima the Japanese did not have a large margin of superiority over the Russians and that Admiral Togo was correct not to risk his forces though any unnecessary offensive action. The thing that mattered most in this war was to cut Russian lines of communication to the decisive theatre, protect Japanese communications and to defend against potential strikes on the home islands. Corbett praised Togo for recognising from the outset that victory in battle was not the ultimate aim, just a potential means to an end. Thus, rather than criticising Togo for any failure to press home his attacks on 8–9 February, he noted that while the Japanese attacks occupied the Russian squadron off Port Arthur, the Japanese successfully ferried an army to Chemulpo (Inchon). The main effort was moving the army, not the strike on the Russian squadron. In Corbett’s mind Togo’s practice reflected the reverse of the maxim that ‘the primary object of the fleet is to seek out the enemy fleet and to destroy it’ and he approved wholeheartedly.20 He noted that, with the Russians safely masked by a covering squadron, the Japanese navy was free to support the army ashore and he stressed that the experience illustrated that decisive battle was not a necessary precursor to getting on with other things.21 Perhaps predictably, Mahan’s interpretation of the war focused more on the importance of battle. He argued that Russia made a critical mistake in failing to recognise that the purpose of their fleet was to fight and defeat the Japanese. Given this, they should have retained adequate resources in theatre to prevail in battle and, rather than dividing their vessels between Port Arthur and Vladivostok, they should have concentrated these in one main force. For Mahan the war illustrated the enduring value of being able to prevail in battle, achieved by concentrating resources into a superior battle fleet employed aggressively to defeat and destroy the main enemy force. He noted the failure of the Russian ‘fleet in being’ at Port Arthur to stop the Japanese navy moving and supporting the army ashore and railed against ‘the exaggerated estimate of the influence of an inferior fleet.’22 In his mind Russia should have adopted a much more proactive approach at sea, aimed primarily at sinking Japanese ships. Thus, in breaking out of Port Arthur their aim should not have been flight but rather to engage the Japanese in such a way that, even if annihilated, they would leave their enemy incapable of defeating the reinforcements known to be on their way from Europe. In contrast, he approved of the Japanese conduct of the war, stating that ‘Japan appears to have fully grasped, and to have acted upon, the principle that the one object of a navy is to control the sea; the direct corollary from which is that its object is the enemy’s navy – his organised force afloat.’23

Putting theory into practice 101 the same thing that the previous generation of ships had done, it just did it more effectively. The British also pioneered the development of another type of big ship, the battlecruiser. These vessels carried dreadnought-sized guns but sacrificed some of the heavy armour for increased speed. This made them powerful weapons for imperial defence, able to hunt down and defeat enemy cruisers raiding at sea, as was evidenced by British victory at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.24 Unfortunately, the lack of armour made them less able to absorb heavy punishment, as was shown by the loss of three British battlecruisers (compared to no battleships) at Jutland in 1916. German battlecruisers, which traded lighter guns for heavier armour, were less vulnerable. Dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers dominated thinking about the naval balance before the First World War and were the major focus of the pre-war Anglo-German arms race. They represented symbols of national prowess and pride and had a role that transcended their military utility.25 To be a major power, or even a minor power with ambition, one had to possess dreadnoughts. They were, however, not the only ships that mattered. Cruisers and destroyers filled a variety of vital duties, including scouting and screening for the main fleets, trade protection, attacks on enemy trade, blockade duty, presence and power projection overseas. Gunboats and torpedo boats, minelayers and minesweepers (usually adapted from other vessels) and various other small craft all had an important part to play. Thus, the Battle of Jutland in 1916 revolved primarily around the engagement between 37 British and 21 German battleships and battlecruisers,26 but in total there were around 250 vessels employed (see Box 5.3). In the pre-war years the development of submarines gave them clear military utility, albeit the expectation initially was that they would focus primarily on warships rather than attacks on civilian vessels. Experiments with aircraft and also airships indicated that activity in the skies would also be relevant. Mines were to remain important and proved a powerful asset for sea denial in coastal waters. The conduct of the First World War at sea has already been discussed in Chapter 3, and it is not intended that the analysis be repeated here. It is sufficient to note that, once again, experience in that war appeared to validate traditional ideas about maritime strategy. Allied sea control cut off the Central Powers from access to the resources of the wider world, although neutral opinion meant that the blockade remained rather porous until US entry into the war meant that neutrals (and international law) could be ignored. The Royal Navy concentrated resources in the North Sea and thereby defeated German attempts to challenge their supremacy there, and with the German main force neutralised, the Allies were free to exploit sea control across the world’s oceans. Anglo-French failure at the Dardanelles in 1915 demonstrated the potential for local sea denial to halt the actions of even the most powerful navies. The subsequent joint campaign in Gallipoli illustrated how much the British had to learn about joint operations under modern conditions; strategic opportunity foundered in the face of tactical difficulty. Most importantly, control of the sea set the overall context for Allied victory. Sea control allowed Britain and France to mobilise the resources of their global empires, to conduct operations and campaigns overseas and to seize isolated German colonies. It kept Britain safe from invasion and enabled the British to deploy their armies to France and to sustain them there for four years. It set the context within which Britain could meet the U-boat (submarine) challenge and eventually enabled the US to deploy its armed forces across the Atlantic. It also allowed the Allies to trade with the rest of the world, giving them access to resources that were denied

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to the Central Powers. With sea control Allied victory was possible; without it defeat would have been inevitable.27 The German attack on Allied trade was conducted using surface vessels and, most significantly, with U-boats (submarines). The latter became most dangerous when international law was ignored and merchant ships were sunk on sight without any attempt to guard against civilian casualties. The most successful counter-measure proved to be an old one, to sail ships in convoy, and this was to prove effective in a second ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ over twenty years later. As was discussed in Chapter 3, the U-boat campaign posed serious challenges to the British, but it lacked the strategic impact of the Allied blockade which had become, by the end of the war, a weapon of mass destruction in terms of its effect on German willingness and capacity to continue the fight. The surrender, incarceration and eventual scuttling of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow at the end of the war marked the utter defeat of the Imperial German Navy and the success of the Allies, despite the absence of any dramatic Allied victory in battle at sea.

BOX 5.3  THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND, 31 MAY 1916 There were a number of naval battles during the First World War, with significant engagements at Helgoland Bight (28 August 1914), Coronel (1 November 1914), the Falkland Islands (8 December 1914), and Dogger Bank (24 January 1915). However, the main British and German fleets met only once, at the Battle of Jutland (31 May 1916). The battle occurred as a result of a German attempt to tempt out and then ambush a detachment of the British fleet. Forewarned by signals intelligence, the British, on the other hand, sought to exploit a rare opportunity to engage the main enemy force. The battle proved to be an unsatisfactory experience for the British, who suffered a greater material loss than the Germans largely as a result of Admiral Beatty mishandling the initial engagement between the battlecruiser forces of both sides. When the main bodies of both fleets engaged, it was the British who battered the Germans, who twice managed to escape certain defeat by well-executed manoeuvres to flee the scene. The British commander, Admiral Jellicoe, missed the opportunity to inflict a decisive defeat on the enemy through cautious conduct of the pursuit (famously turning away from a German torpedo attack) and the failure of his subordinates to relay accurate information about the movements of the German fleet as it limped home at night. His conduct reflected the understanding that destruction of the High Seas Fleet in battle, while desirable, was not essential for the British. Britain controlled the maritime communications that mattered before Jutland and still controlled them after the battle. Conversely, the Germans did need to defeat the Grand Fleet if they wanted to overturn British sea control, but they could not do this if Jellicoe was careful with his battleships. Jutland simply confirmed the strategic defeat inflicted by the British on a navy that could find no way to use its surface fleet to achieve positive strategic effect. That the Germans understood this was reflected in their subsequent shift in priority towards the submarine campaign.28

Putting theory into practice 103 An examination of the inter-war period reveals how politics and economics can have an impact on naval development. The post-war economic difficulties experienced by all of the major powers reinforced their willingness to negotiate naval arms limitations treaties at Washington and London. There was also a powerful political imperative to avoid the mistakes of the 1900s and to engage in arms limitation more generally. The naval treaties set restrictions on the size, armament and number of warships and limited the overall tonnage allowed for the major navies, in addition to mandating a ‘building holiday’ of ten years on capital ship construction. The process foundered in the mid1930s when Italy and Japan withdrew from the Second London Naval Conference and growing German belligerence sent Europe down the path towards war. These treaties helped to create new types of vessel, such as the 10,000 ton heavy cruiser and 6,000 ton light cruiser, as states generally built to the maximum dimensions allowed. They disadvantaged the British whose ‘allowance’ of destroyers and cruisers were reflective of the size of the fleet relative to their rivals rather than the actual size required to defend a global empire. Similarly, limits on the size and armament of battleships, hurt the British as they actually built vessels in accordance with the rules whereas their future enemies cheated on size. Legal restraints on naval activity proved to be less than enduring. The fate of the 1936 London Submarine Protocol, signed by the major powers and ignored by them in wartime, may be instructive as to the value of such treaties where law appears to be contrary to perceived interest.29 New technology promised to impact on naval warfare in a variety of ways. The development of radar and sonar increased the possibility of detecting adversaries on, above and below the surface. Allied to the growing potential of aerial reconnaissance and the intelligence that could be gained from radio intercepts these technologies promised to reduce somewhat the opacity of the sea and to give particular advantages to navies adept at using them. Amphibious capabilities were subject to study and important development work in the US and the United Kingdom, and by the late 1930s both had developed appropriate doctrine and experimental landing craft that would provide the foundation for successful operations in the years ahead. By 1939 the Japanese were significantly ahead of both in terms of experience in and equipment for such operations, but were not able to match the size, scale or sophistication of the amphibious capabilities later developed by Britain and America.30 The area in which technological development was most apparent was in the impact of air power at and from the sea. Britain had led the way in terms of naval airpower in the First World War, launching seaplane attacks against coastal targets in the North Sea and Mediterranean as early as 1914. The British conducted the first conventional aircraft carrier strikes (against an airship base at Tondern) in July 1918 and commissioned the first true ‘through-deck’ aircraft carrier (HMS Argus) in September that year. Unfortunately, the decision to transfer to the RAF all naval aircraft, taken in 1918, stripped from the navy all of their expertise in this field and left post-war naval aviation in the hands of an institution that showed little interest in the role. The end result, a navy with inadequate appreciation of the problems and opportunities presented by air power and a naval air arm equipped with limited numbers of obsolete aircraft, could not immediately be reversed by the decision in 1937 to return the Fleet Air Arm to the navy. Institutional arrangements (and jealousies) can have a major impact on the provision of capabilities at sea.31 The capacity for land-based aircraft to challenge use of the sea was shown off the coast of Norway in Spring 1940 (see Box 5.4), off Dunkirk in the summer of that year

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and in the Mediterranean, particularly after the arrival of the German 10th Air Corps in 1941.32 The same proved true of the Pacific theatre, and the loss in December 1941 of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse to Japanese aircraft off the coast of Malaya reinforced a lesson that was already becoming understood, namely that sea control required control of the skies.33 The answer was better coordination between friendly air forces and the navy, improved radar and air defence for the ships and, ideally, the self-defence capability offered by carrier-based aviation deployed with the fleet. The American annihilation of hundreds of attacking Japanese aircraft (both carrier and land-based) during the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 provides a good example of what a fleet well equipped in this respect could achieve.34 Carrier-based aviation had more than a defensive function. In the inter-war years carriers were expected to support the traditional battle fleet by providing reconnaissance, assisting with long range fire control, providing air defence and launching torpedo and dive bomber attacks on enemy ships, but most still expected the big guns of the

BOX 5.4  NORWAY 1940 The successful German invasion of neutral Norway appeared to contradict traditional ideas about the importance of sea control. On 9 April 1940 the Germans launched a surprise attack using airborne forces to seize airfields at Oslo and Stavanger and naval forces to secure landings at Oslo, Kristiansand, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik. The plan was audacious, as it required Germany to steam the invasion force through waters nominally controlled by the enemy. In theory the sea should have acted as a barrier to German ambitions but, caught by surprise, the Allies were not in a position to intercept the ships that covertly carried the enemy to their destination. Sea control does not exist if it is not enforced. In the days after the landings, British and French forces were hastily gathered and troops were landed, but not in sufficient numbers to be decisive. Attempts to liberate Trondheim failed. Narvik was retaken in May, only to be abandoned almost immediately as the worsening situation in France and the advance of German troops forced the Allies to abandon the town and to leave Norway in German hands. The campaign provided an early indication of the need to gain control of the air in order to maintain and exploit control of the sea. Germany was able to compensate for weakness at sea through strength in the air, exacting a heavy toll of Allied shipping. From the earliest days of the campaign, enemy air superiority denied the coast of southern Norway to the Allies and endangered operations further north. The German Navy successfully broke the established ‘rules’ of naval warfare. However, they suffered for their boldness, with one heavy cruiser and two light cruisers, ten destroyers and six submarines sunk and with numerous other vessels badly damaged. At the end of the campaign Germany had only three cruisers and four destroyers fit for operations and this would leave them ill-placed to contemplate invasion of Britain in the summer.35

Putting theory into practice 105 battleships to be the decisive weapon. Carrier aviation did fulfil this role, notably at the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean in March 1941 and during the hunt for and destruction of the German battleship Bismarck two months later. In both cases, fleeing enemy ships were hit and delayed/disabled by carrier aircraft, allowing the heavy ships to catch up and finish the action with their guns. That aircraft carriers could be offensive weapons in their own right was demonstrated by British attacks on the Italian fleet based at Taranto in 1940 and the larger scale Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 (see p. 153). In the Pacific Campaign the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in 1942 were decided by the actions of carrier-based aircraft without the surface ships of either fleet ever coming into contact with each other. Midway, in particular, demonstrated the central importance of control of the air and the key role that the aircraft carrier would play in securing this. The subsequent US drives through the southwest and central Pacific, towards the Japanese homeland, demonstrated their value also in conducting strike operations against the shore.36 Beneath the surface, submarines and mines continued to pose a threat even to dominant navies and both offered a means to strike at merchant shipping without first gaining sea control. German submarines and surface vessels raided Allied merchant shipping, assisted by long-range aircraft and aided from 1940 by possession of ports in Norway and on the French Atlantic coast. These gave German submarines easy access to their hunting ground, extending their range and making it impossible for Britain to bottle up German ships in the North Sea as they had done from 1914 to 1918. The campaign, which ran from the start of hostilities in 1939 to their end in 1945, was the longest of the war. The Allies overcame the threat through a mixture of convoys, escorts, sea and land-based air support, good operational analysis and often highly effective intelligence. This was a broad maritime campaign and the ability to replace lost civilian shipping with new construction, largely in American shipyards, also proved critical. The tide turned decisively in the Allies favour in the summer of 1943, but unlike a battle on land, victory at sea had to be re-won each time a convoy sailed. In the Pacific, the United States undertook a campaign against Japanese shipping that was every bit as ruthless as its German counterpart but that in the face of ineffective countermeasures, had crippled Japanese seaborne communications by 1945.37 Whereas the contribution of maritime power to victory in the First World War can be overshadowed by the events on land, activity at sea was clearly central to the eventual outcome in the Second World War. In the European theatre, Allied maritime power set the limits to Axis expansion in 1940 and 1941 and sustained Britain during its darkest hour. It also provided a means of supplying important aid to the Soviet Union once Axis forces turned their attention to the east. Eventually maritime power gave the Western Allies a means to complete the Axis defeat in North Africa and then to conduct offensive campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France then into Germany itself. In the east the Soviet counter-offensive was supported by many minor amphibious assaults.38 Within the European-North Atlantic theatre, there were numerous significant engagements but no major fleet battle to rival that of Jutland because neither the German or Italian navies was willing to concentrate their forces and vigorously contest in battle British (later Anglo-American) sea control. Instead they focused on sea denial, guerre de course and, particularly in the central Mediterranean, sought limited local sea control backed by land-based aviation.39 In many respects this fits the model for weaker navies that was discussed in Chapter 3.

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Clearly, of course, the war in Europe was not won at sea but, as Corbett would have anticipated, by armies on land. In the west the armies were landed and subsequently supported and supplied from the sea and therefore may justly be regarded as an expression of maritime power. The war on the eastern front was more land oriented and it was here that the main German armies were defeated. Nonetheless, as Basil Liddell Hart was to emphasise, the Soviets were aided in their struggle by the diversionary effect of Allied maritime power, ensuring that the Axis could never concentrate their entire strength against them. The brilliant Soviet land offensives of 1944 and 1945 were also assisted by the provision of supplies (particularly of trucks) arriving by sea at Murmansk.40 In the Pacific theatre simple geography dictated that this would be primarily a maritime campaign notwithstanding important land campaigns in China and Burma. The early Japanese victories against the US at Pearl Harbor, the British off Malaya and the ABDA41 force at the Java Sea gave Japan a level of sea control that was exploited to assault the Philippines, to take European colonies in Southeast Asia and to secure a range of bases and islands across the central and southwest Pacific. After an initial surge of success that was halted at Midway in June 1942, the progressive destruction of the Japanese fleet, and in particular its aircraft carriers and naval aviators, set the conditions for Allied victory. In the process the US Navy grew into a force of unprecedented size and capability and developed a new capacity to supply and maintain operations far from base using the afloat support provided by an extensive ‘fleet train’.42 In a series of engagements fought across the central Pacific between 1942 and 1945, the US Navy destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy opening up occupied islands and, ultimately, the Japanese homeland to attack by joint forces (see Box 5.5). To the south, US and Australian joint forces liberated New Guinea and the Philippines. By the summer of 1945 Japan was comprehensively defeated even before the first atomic bombs were dropped. These weapons reflected a new dawn in strategic affairs but in some respects fit comfortably within Corbett’s general analysis. The bombs were transported by sea to islands supplied by sea that had been seized by joint forces operating from the sea. Their use was the culmination of a joint maritime campaign.43 Even as the war was being fought, some commentators used the experience to emphasise the importance of traditional concepts of maritime strategy. Bernard Brodie and Herbert Rosinski, for example, both published works that explicitly emphasised the continued relevance of Mahan’s ideas. Both noted that within the European context two different approaches were at play: one, adopted by the Allies, focused on gaining and exploiting command of the sea while the second, employed by Germany and Italy, did not seek command but rather focused on challenging Allied use of maritime communications.44 As Rosinski identified, this did not mean that battle as a concept was not relevant, just that the Axis navies did not believe that they could win such a contest. Pessimism about the prospects of victory for a weaker fleet, a view shared by Rosinski, may have influenced their approach.45 The perceived Allied ability to prevail in battle forced their enemies to try something else and, yet again, that something else proved less effective. In the Pacific the Japanese followed a more conventional route seeking to gain and then deny sea control in a series of battles. This approach, which was effective for the first six months of the Pacific War, foundered in the face of an enemy that could survive the initial setbacks and that could generate far superior naval power. Unable to carry the war to the US homeland, the Japanese had no way of defeating their enemy in a war that the US choose not to keep limited

Putting theory into practice 107 BOX 5.5  THE CAMPAIGN IN THE CENTRAL PACIFIC, 1942–45 American victories over the Japanese at the battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and at Midway the following month halted the tide of Japanese expansion in the Pacific and helped to shift the initiative in the war at sea in favour of the Allies. The loss of five aircraft carriers in these two battles, and of hundreds of experienced pilots, dealt the Imperial Japanese Navy a blow from which it was ill placed to recover. Nevertheless, Japan retained a powerful navy and vigorously contested US attempts to take Japanese held Guadalcanal and other islands in the Solomons group. The struggle for Guadalcanal continued from August 1942 to January 1943 and was characterised by a series of naval battles at night that included a number of reverses for the Allies.46 Victory at Midway did not give the Allies control of all the seas, nor could it have been expected to. Ultimately, superior Allied numbers and growing US proficiency, particularly in surface actions at night (when air superiority counted for little), saw them prevail in the Solomons. The US Navy was then able to support a series of ‘island hopping’ amphibious operations that secured, after hard fighting, bases there, in the Bismarck Archipelago and then, from 1944, in the Marshall, Caroline and Mariana island groups. The sea, once control was established, represented a manoeuvre space for the Allies and a barrier to their enemies. A key feature of this campaign was that not all Japanese held islands were assaulted. Some, including the major base at Truk (in the Carolines) were neutralised by air attack, isolated by US sea control, and then ignored as strategically irrelevant. As their outlying islands were taken, and the US progressed ever closer to the homeland, the Japanese sought to reverse the tide with a major fleet engagement off Saipan in the Marianas group. The attempt, spearheaded by a massive land and sea-based air attack on the Fast Carrier Group (TF 58) of the US 5th Fleet, saw the US absorb and defeat the incoming attack before launching a devastating counter strike that sank an aircraft carrier and damaged three more; two carriers were sunk by US submarines. Controversially, the US commander (Admiral Spruance) chose not to vigorously pursue the Japanese fleet but instead remained close to the amphibious fleet undertaking operations to seize the island, his main duty being to support this operation rather than to chase a defeated foe.47 The last major attempt by Japan to contest sea control occurred in October 1944 after US landings on the island of Leyte threatened the Japanese position in the Philippines. US liberation of these islands would imperil Japanese communications to South East Asia (and thus to the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)), that were already under intense strain from the US submarine campaign. With a navy that was now critically inferior to the US in terms of both quantity and quality the Japanese sought to tempt the main US fleet, under Admiral Halsey, away from the amphibious group in order that surface forces infiltrating through the Philippines archipelago might fall upon the more vulnerable amphibious group. Halsey, took the bait offered by a Japanese carrier force that appeared to the north. In pursuing this dubious prize he unmasked the weaker amphibious fleet off Leyte and gave Japanese ships advancing through the

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Surigao and San Bernadino straits the opportunity for an unlikely victory. That opportunity was not taken and the resulting battle (or rather battles) at Leyte Gulf (23–26 October 1944) brought the destruction of much of what remained of the Imperial Japanese Navy.48 If one accepts Corbett’s conclusion that battle is a means to an end and not an end in itself then Spruance’s approach seems wiser than Halsey’s. Subsequently the Japanese were unable seriously to contest US sea control. The associated destruction of their land-based aviation left them few options to dispute subsequent amphibious operations at Iwo Jima (February 1945) or Okinawa (April 1945) except for the use of explosive laden Kamikaze aircraft that acted as guided missiles (using the pilot as the guidance system). These succeeded in sinking a number of ships but could not seriously challenge US sea control or the successful exploitation of that control.49

Conclusion As was emphasised at the start of this chapter, the aim here has been to illustrate the principles of naval warfare without attempting to provide a comprehensive narrative. The battles and campaigns examined appear to support an analysis grounded in traditional principles. With few exceptions, the ability to secure control of the sea gave the side in possession a range of options that were almost always useful and often proved decisive. Alternative approaches that were not based on gaining control could also offer strategic advantage, as was illustrated at the Dardanelles in 1915. The capacity to deny enemy use of the seas can sometimes be every bit as important as the ability to secure positive use for oneself; after all, it was the British capacity for sea denial in the Channel in 1940 that frustrated German dreams of invading the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the history examined here suggests that the greatest advantage has accrued to those able to exploit command of the sea. While the tactics, techniques and technologies adopted to secure and exploit command of the sea clearly change, the enormous benefit that can be accrued from exploiting the manoeuvre space provided by the seas does indeed appear to remain. If anything, as Roskinski argued, twentieth century new technology enhanced the importance of sea control by greatly expanding the range of things that could be done to the land from the sea.50

Notes 1 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Strategy (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1911), p.17. 2 Andrew Lambert, The Crimean War. British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1853–56. 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2016). 3 Lawrence Sondhaus, Navies in World History (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 141–170 4 See Craig Symonds, The Civil War at Sea (Oxford University Press, 2012) and James M. McPherson, War on the Waters. The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861–1865 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 5 Mahan, Naval Strategy, 4. 6 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare (New York: Routledge, 2001), 92–93. Also see Hans Christian Bjerg, A History of the Royal Danish Navy 1510–2010 (Copenhagen: Statens Forsvarshistoriske Museum, 2010) pp.141–142.

Putting theory into practice 109 7 See Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War. The German Conquest of France 1870–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lawrence Sondhaus, The Hapsburg Empire and the Sea. Austrian Naval Policy 1797–1866 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1989) 254–256. Also see Lawrence Sondhaus, The Naval Policy of Austria-Hungary, 1867–1918 (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1994), chapter 1. 8 H.P. Wilmott, The Last Century of Sea Power. From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894–1922, vol 1 (West Lafayette, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009) 31–35. 9 For a useful survey see Robert Gardiner and Andrew Lambert (eds), Steam, Steel and Shellfire. The Steam Warship 1815–1905 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992). 10 Ibid., For Hampton Roads see Harold Holtzer and Tim Mulligan (eds), The Battle of Hampton Roads: New Perspectives on the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). 11 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare (London: Routlede, 2001), 123–124. Also see Anthony Watts, The Imperial Russian Navy (London: Arms and Armour, 1990). 12 See Christopher Tuck, ‘The Strategic Value of Small Navies: The Strange Case of the Confederate Navy’, in Michael Mulqueen, Deborah Sanders and Ian Speller (eds), Small Navies. Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), chapter 12. 13 The British Royal Navy first tested Marconi radio sets in manoeuvres in 1899 and 1900. Roland F. Pocock, The Early British Radio Industry (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1988), 155. 14 Richard N.J. Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy (London: Chatham Publishing, 2000). especially chapter 8. Also see Piotr Olender, Sino-Japanese Naval War 1894–95 (Petersfield, UK: MMP Books, 2014) and David Evans and Mark Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). 15 The US force included five battleships and an armoured cruiser. 16 See Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War 1895–1902: The Conflict in the Caribbean and Pacific (London: Routledge, 1994) and A.B. Feuer, The Spanish-American War at Sea: Naval Action in the Atlantic (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995). 17 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare (London: Routledge, 2001), 188–189. 18 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, chapter 4. Sondhaus, Naval Warfare, 190–191. Wilmott, The Last Century of Seapower, Vol. 1., chapters 5 and 6. 19 See Julian S. Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Vols. 1 and 2 (Annapolis, MD: 1994). First published in confidential format by the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty War Staff in 1914. 20 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, 323. 21 Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, Vol 2, chapter XXIV. 22 Mahan, Naval Strategy, 416–417. 23 Ibid., 422. 24 Julian S. Corbett, Naval Operations. History of the Great War Based on Documents, Vol 1 (London: Green & Co., 1920), chapter XXIX. 25 Robert J. Blyth and Andrew Lambert (eds), The Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age (London: Routledge, 2011) especially chapter 1. 26 In addition, the Germans also had six German pre-dreadnought battleship at Jutland. One of these, SMS Pommern, was sunk. 27 The best single volume history of the war is Paul Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994). Useful recent works include Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea. A Naval History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Norman Friedman, Fighting the Great War at Sea. Strategy, Tactics, and Technology (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2014). 28 Corbett, Naval Operations, Vol. 3 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1923). chapters 16–21. Also see John Brooks, The Battle of Jutland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Also see Nicholas Jellicoe, Jutland the Unfinished Battle (London: Seaforth, 2016) and Gary Staff, Skagerrak. The Battle of Jutland Through German Eyes (Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2016 29 For an overview of this period see Michael Murfett, Naval Warfare 1919–1945. An Operational History of the Volatile War at Sea (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009). Also see Wilmott, The Last Century of Sea Power, Vol. 2, chapters 1–4.

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30 Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 50–95 and Ian Speller, The Role of Amphibious Warfare in British Defence Policy, 1945–56 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), chapter 1. 31 Geoffrey Till, ‘Competing Visions: The Admiralty, The Air Ministry and the Role of Air Power’ in T. Benbow (ed.), British Naval Aviation. The First 100 Years (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 57–78. Also See Geoffrey Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy, 1914–1945 (London: Janes, 1979). 32 Murfett, Naval Warfare, especially chapters 3 and 4. Also see Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940–1943 (London: Chatham Publishing, 1998). 33 Corelli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely. The Royal Navy in the Second World War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 378–428. 34 See William T. Y’Blood, Red Sun Setting. The Battle of the Philippine Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991). Samuel Eliot Morison, History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II. New Guinea and the Marianas. March 1944-August 1944, Vol. VIII (Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1953) especially chapters 14–16. 35 Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, chapter 5. Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea 1939–1945. The Defensive, Vol 1 (London: HMSO, 1954), chapter 10. For a reproduction of the wartime British ‘Battle Summary’ see M.J. Pearce and R. Potter (eds), Fight for the Fjords. The Battle for Norway 1940 (Plymouth, UK: University of Plymouth Press, 2012). 36 See James H. Belotte and William M. Belotte, Titans of the Seas: The Development and Origins of American Carrier Task Forces During World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1975). 37 See C. Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War. The Hunters 1939–1945 (London: Random House, 1996); M. Milner, The Battle of the Atlantic (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2005); C. Blair, Silent Victory,: The US Submarine War Against Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001). For a lively popular account see Peter Padfield, War Beneath the Sea (London: John Murray, 1995). 38 Donald Stoker, ‘Soviet Amphibious Landings in the Black Sea 1941–1944’ in Tristan Lovering (ed.), Amphibious Assault. Manoeuvre from the Sea (London: Seafarer Books, 2007), 233–244. 39 For the Mediterranean campaign, see J. Greene and A. Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1940–43 (Barnsley, UK: Frontline, 2011). 40 Basil Liddell Hart, ‘The Value of Amphibious Flexibility and Forces’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (Nov. 1960), 483–492. Richard Woodman, The Arctic Convoys, 1941–45 (London: John Murray, 2004). 41 American-British-Dutch-Australian 42 See Nathan Miller, War at Sea. A Naval History of World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) and Wilmott, The Last Century of Sea Power, Vol. 2. From Washington to Tokyo, 1922–1945 (West Lafayette, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 4. W.R. Carter, Beans, Bullets and Black Oil: The Story of Fleet Logistics Afloat in the Pacific during World War II (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1953). 43 Miller, War at Sea, passim. Murgett, Naval Warfare, passim. Wilmott, The Last Century of Sea Power, Vol. 2, chapters 10–14. 44 Bernard Brodie, Layman’s Guide to Naval Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942); Bernard Brodie, A Guide to Naval Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944) and Herbert Rosinski, ‘Mahan and World War II’ in B.M. Simpson (ed.), The Development of Naval Thought. Essays by Herbert Rosinski (Newport, RI: Naval Warf Colelge Press, 1977), 20–40. Also see John B Hattendorf, ‘Rethinking the Theory of Naval Strategy’ in J.B. Hattendorf and R.S. Jordan (eds), Maritime Strategy and the Balance of Power. Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1989), 136. 45 It is notable that Rosinski was on the staff of the German Naval War College until he fled that country in 1936. 46 See Samuel Eliot Morison, The Struggle for Guadalcanal August 1942–January 1943 (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1981. 47 See William T. Y’Blood, Red Sun Setting. 48 See H. Wilmott, The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The Last Fleet Action (West Lafayette, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2005). 49 See Evan Thomas, Sea of Thunder. Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941–45 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). Also see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two Ocean

Putting theory into practice 111 War. A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston, MA: Little Brown , 1963), especially chapters 11 and 14. 50 Herbert Rosinski, ‘The Expansion of Sea Power in World War II’ in B.M. Simpson, The Development of Naval Thought, 41–52.

Further reading There is a vast range of literature that examines the history of naval warfare. The guide below is intended only to provide a starting point for the reader. Jeremy Black, Naval Power. A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2009). Black, a prolific author in the field of military and naval history, provides a broad ranging overview useful as a starting point to those new to the subject. Also see his Naval Warfare. A Global History Since 1860 (Roman & Littlefield, 2017). Richard Harding, Modern Naval Warfare. Debates and Prospects (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). As the title suggests, this book offers an introduction to key debates in modern naval history. It provides a guide to current practice within the field and identifies areas where more research is required. The bibliography provides a useful guide for further reading. Paul Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press, 1994). Published some time ago but probably still the best single volume history of the naval war. Also see more recent work by Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea. A Naval History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Norman Friedman, Fighting the Great War at Sea. Strategy, Tactics and Technology (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2014). John B. Hattendorf, ‘The Uses of Maritime History in and for the Navy’, in Naval War College Review, Vol. LVI, No. 2 (Spring, 2003), 13–38. One of America’s greatest maritime historians discusses the importance of history to naval practitioners. Nathan Miller, War at Sea. A Naval History of World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). The book provides a very readable single volume overview of the war at sea in the Second World War. Malcolm Murfett, Naval Warfare 1918–1945 (London: Routledge, 2012). Provides a survey of naval developments and operations from the end of the First World War to the Japanese surrender in 1945. Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2001). This book offers a brilliant overview of the evolution of naval thought and practice, and the development of technology, from the Napoleonic Wars until the outbreak of the First World War. H.P Wilmott, The Last Century of Sea Power, 2 vols (West Lafayette, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009/2010). Wilmott offers a challenging analysis of naval history from 1894–1922 (vol 1) and 1922–45 (vol 2). His work has the particular advantage of focusing on engagements and navies that are often overlooked in other books.

Part II

Contemporary practice

6

Combat operations at sea Sea control and sea denial

This chapter and Chapter 7 focus on combat operations at sea. Chapter 8 examines combat operations from the sea. As will be seen this is rather an arbitrary distinction and, in practice, the boundaries between the two are necessarily blurred. It is best not to think of them as entirely separate categories. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some useful generalisations about activities at sea and from the sea, and this approach does provide a means of breaking down these related activities into manageable parts. It is worth noting that numerous commentators have adopted this distinction. Gorshkov, for example, argued that naval art was divided into two parts: one that focused on the actions of fleet versus fleet (at sea); and the second that related to operations of fleet against the shore (from the sea).1 Today, NATO maritime doctrine makes a similar distinction between the applications of maritime power at sea and from the sea, and this approach is also reflected in the published doctrine of a number of navies.2 It is possible to divide combat operations at sea into two broad categories: 1 2

operations designed to achieve, maintain or deny control of the sea operations designed to exploit control of the sea

The first category goes to the very heart of naval warfare to which this chapter is devoted. The second category includes activities at sea such as blockades and embargoes, and these are discussed in Chapter 6. Once again it must be noted that the distinctions are a little arbitrary. Blockade could be viewed as something that exploits sea control, but it may also be an activity designed to secure such control. Strikes against targets ashore are usually considered to be an exercise in power projection, but their main purpose could be sea control or denial. Apparently simple distinctions hide a complexity that challenges any effort to draw clear lines dividing these activities. Keeping this in mind, we will examine combat operations at sea under the two general categories noted above. This chapter will discuss issues relating to sea control and denial and Chapter 7 will focus on how such control can be exploited at sea. In both cases they build on concepts that were first introduced in Part I of the book and that will be discussed again within the context of current and future policy in Chapter 10.

Sea control The place of sea control within traditional maritime strategy was discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. That concept, masquerading under a variety of different names, was generally recognised to be the critical enabler for most maritime operations. Indeed, its importance

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was identified by some as one of the most enduring features of naval warfare. Gorshkov, for example, argued that ‘history does not know a more ancient or hardier concept’ while his American counterpart, Stansfield Turner, claimed that ‘[t]he first and only mission of the earliest navies was sea control’.3 One should be careful not to overstate this position. It is difficult to apply modern ideas about sea control to naval operations before the seventeenth century. Until this time ships lacked the endurance and sea keeping, and navies lacked the logistical and administrative support structures, to undertake sustained sea control operations in the modern sense of the term. Naval warfare was more commonly characterised by a process of raid and counter-raid, by piratical attacks on trade and by direct support to military expeditions. Such activities often did require sea control within their immediate vicinity, and battles were fought to secure or deny this, but one must still be cautious when employing the term to describe historical actions and events for which it may not be well suited. Today, navies and commentators alike generally agree that command of the sea, in an absolute sense, is as unrealistic as it is unnecessary. The emphasis instead is on sea control, which tends to be defined and articulated in a manner that is redolent of Corbett’s approach. Thus, it is viewed as something that is relevant because of what it enables, and it is recognised that degrees of control will vary in terms of duration, location and extent (see Box 6.1). It is easy to be misled into thinking that sea control applies only to situations of major war and that it is solely the business of large navies. In reality, the concept applies across the spectrum of conflict. When a small navy or coastguard acts to ensure freedom of navigation within its EEZ, or through someone else’s, they are acting to secure the freedom of action which underpins sea control. If they move to stop another

BOX 6.1  MODERN DEFINITIONS OF SEA CONTROL Maritime Doctrine for the South African Navy (2006): ‘Sea control is defined as that condition which exists when one has freedom of action to use an area of sea for one’s own purposes for a period of time and, if required, deny its use to an opponent.’ British Maritime Doctrine (2017): ‘[Sea control is] . . . the conditions that allow freedom of action in a particular part of the sea, at a particular time, to the required degree, and, if necessary, deny its use to an opponent.’ Netherlands Maritime Doctrine (2014): ‘Sea control is control of the sea that is defined in time and location. There is said to be sea control if friendly forces can use a specific section of the sea for a certain period for their own purposes and can restrict or deny that use by an opponent.’ US Navy, Surface Force Strategy (2017): ‘Sea control does not mean command of all the seas, all the time. Rather, it is the capability and capacity to impose localized control of the sea where and when it is required to enable other objectives and to hold it as long as necessary to accomplish those objectives.’

Sea control and sea denial 117 navy from breaking the rules of innocent passage through their territorial waters (for example if they were conducting military exercises, dumping fuel, or operating submarines covertly) then they deny such freedom to an adversary (i.e. sea denial), even if their main offensive weapon might be the diplomatic embarrassment associated with the exposure of the proscribed activity. A little further up the spectrum of conflict, freedom of navigation and the safe operation of global maritime commerce is threatened on a daily basis by criminal and terrorist activity and also by piracy, all of which represent a challenge to sea control that demands a response by navies of all sizes. At the higher end of the scale, of course, combat activity may be required to gain, maintain or deny control. However, just because a navy may not have had to fight a major battle to secure control, this does not necessarily mean that such control does not exist, still less that it is not important. As Admiral J.C. Wylie emphasised, the manifest potential to achieve sea control can be a critical enabler in peace and war, so much the better if an adversary does not dare challenge it.4 Potential control rests on a perceived capacity to prevail in combat. It is not something that can or should be taken for granted. History demonstrates that the degree of sea control that can be attained, or that might be necessary, will vary according to circumstances. In the 1970s the American Admiral Henry Eccles argued that degrees of control could range through the following levels:5 • • • • •

Absolute control: where the enemy is unable to interfere with operations at sea and friendly forces can operate uninterrupted. Working control: where friendly forces can operate with considerable freedom and the enemy does so only at some risk. Control in dispute: where both sides operate at risk, and where control will be limited in time and space for the conduct of specific operations. Enemy working command: the enemy has working control. Enemy absolute control: the enemy has absolute control.

Most navies are at pains to emphasise that they are unlikely to be able to rely on conditions of absolute control. Even the mighty US Navy has long accepted that control may be local or regional rather than global, that it may be temporary rather than enduring and that it may be disputed.6 In recent years there has been a growing tendency to recognise that control may be hotly challenged and that the US Navy may have to find ways to work in a contested (rather than a controlled) environment.7 This then raises the question of how much sea control is enough? There is, of course, no answer to this question. As NATO doctrine puts it, ‘[t]he level of sea control is a balance between the desired freedom of action and the degree of acceptable risk’.8 If one demands absolute control before doing anything then nothing will ever get done. If, on the other hand, one tries to conduct operations with insufficient control, the result is liable to be disaster. Where the balance lies will depend on circumstances and cannot be made subject to any fixed rule. The amount of control that is required is determined by the nature of the task at hand. Some activities, such as large scale amphibious operations, require a higher degree of local sea control than others, such as tip-andrun strikes. In operations of choice, where important national interests are not at stake, one might expect the capacity to achieve a very high degree of sea control to be a prerequisite for naval operations as a guarantee against unexpected losses. In cases where the stakes are higher, governments might expect their navies to be willing to take greater risks.

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Sea denial Sea denial represents an attempt to deny an adversary use of a sea area without necessarily being able to control that area oneself. It is important to remember that sea control and sea denial are not necessarily alternative choices; the actions taken to deny control of the sea also often support attempts to gain control. Sea denial may often represent the precursor to an attempt to gain control or a defensive option in one area, while sea control is pursued elsewhere. Inevitably, navies will emphasise control and denial to different degrees, in different areas at different times. Turner expressed this in the form of a diagram, see Figure 6.1. Sometimes a navy will focus more on denying the use of the sea, left side of figure, other times the emphasis will be on securing positive use, right side of figure. It seems almost too obvious to note that the impact that sea denial may have on an opponent will depend on the extent to which they need to use the sea. Denying the sea to someone who does not intend to use it is devoid of meaningful purpose. It may often be the case that it is less demanding to deny use of the sea than it is to assert control. In terms similar to those expressed by Xiao Jinguang (see Chapter 3), Turner described sea denial as equivalent to guerrilla warfare at sea, with the denying naval commander choosing the time and place of attack, launching hit and run raids, never having to stand his ground and fight ‘toe-to-toe’ with the enemy. In this way a markedly inferior force can still thwart the plans of an enemy. As he noted, ‘sea denial forces can be much smaller than sea assertion forces and still do the job’.9 The attraction of such an approach to many smaller navies is obvious. There are a wide variety of activities that one might undertake to deny the use of the sea to an opponent. These could include barrier operations to restrict access through choke points or congested seas, the use of mines to bloke harbours or threaten sea lanes, ‘hit and run’ attacks on military vessels and on installations ashore, attacks on enemy and neutral merchant shipping, limited naval offensives designed to defeat elements of the enemy fleet, or the maintenance of a fleet in being to tie down and thus contain enemy forces. In recent years there has been particular emphasis placed on the sea denial potential of anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) approaches enabled by threats across all warfighting domains. The US Navy, in particular, has been concerned at the impact that this might have on its freedom of manoeuvre (see Box 6.2). Some of these threats, including anti-ship ballistic missiles, are rather new. Others, such as mines, are decidedly old. Mines have moved on considerably since they were

Asseron of Sea Control

Denial of Sea Control Figure 6.1 Sea control and sea denial Source: Admiral Stansfield Turner, ‘Missions of the US Navy’, Naval War College Review (March–April 1974)8

Sea control and sea denial 119 BOX 6.2  ANTI-ACCESS AND AREA DENIAL (A2/AD) The US Navy has identified that future adversaries may exploit the range, precision and lethality of anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles and the potency of modern submarines to deny access to naval forces potentially hundreds of miles from the enemy’s coast. Similarly, they may be able to deploy a mix of land, sea and air-based systems to deny freedom of manoeuvre within a particular area, employing submarines, mini-submarines, mines, fast attack craft, anti-ship missiles, guided munitions and/or conventional naval vessels. Within the littoral, sea-based systems will be reinforced by land-based ones, including aircraft, missiles, and artillery, and attacks may be conducted by conventional forces, special forces or by proxies. Adversaries will also employ electromagnetic warfare and may use cyberattacks to target friendly capabilities. Dealing with these threats will require sophisticated offensive and defensive capabilities, and calls for effective and persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems to identify and cue time-sensitive targeting of an enemy that may aim to ‘shoot and scoot’ and that could exploit civilian ‘clutter’ to execute an attack or that may undertake swarming attacks using large numbers of light (and expendable) assets.10

introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, and they have been employed in major wars and minor conflicts ever since. In design they can range from unsophisticated contact mines essentially unchanged from a century ago, through to sophisticated weapons triggered by particular signatures (pressure, magnetic or acoustic). Mine laying is relatively easy, and can be done covertly by submarines or simply from a disguised civilian ship or craft. Mine clearance has always been a tricky and time-consuming business, particularly in an environment where other threats abound. Sometimes operations may need to go ahead before an appropriate mine countermeasures (MCM) force is in place (see Box 6.3). Mines can circumscribe the activities of even the most powerful navies. In July 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, the US tanker Bridgetown hit a mine and was damaged when it sailed as part of a convoy apparently protected from attack by the US Navy. A large and robust double-hulled vessel, the Bridgetown did not sink. Instead it limped on in the convoy, sailing ahead of its thin-skinned naval escort following in its wake, all too aware that if they hit a mine they might not survive the encounter. One commentator was moved to say: Whatever we do, we will have to avoid repeating the spectacle of again having a merchantman we were supposedly escorting – already mined while in our care – lead our combatants to safety while the whole world looked on.12 Four years later, during the 1991 Gulf War, the USS Princeton and USS Tripoli hit Iraqi mines and were both badly damaged. Ironically, Tripoli (an LPH) had been acting as the flagship for US airborne mine countermeasures in the Gulf. It is little wonder that so much effort has been expended recently on finding ways of dealing with this old but persistent threat.

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BOX 6.3  MINE WARFARE AND THE 1982 FALKLANDS/ MALVINAS CONFLICT: ‘EXPENDABLE ALACRITY’ A mixture of operational concerns, political pressure and the onset of the South Atlantic winter meant that the British task force sent to repossess the Falkland Islands in 1982 could not await the arrival of MCM vessels (which tend to be smaller and slower than most other warships) before launching the amphibious operation to retake the islands. Thus, and before sending the amphibious group into the narrow sound between the two main islands, the British Battle Group commander, Admiral Woodward, was forced to order the Type-21 frigate HMS Alacrity to sail through the area at night to see if it was mined. The only reliable way that the frigate had of discovering a mine was to hit one. Fortunately for the British, and particularly for the crew of Alacrity, the area was clear. Argentinean defences had been concentrated in the region around Port Stanley and their only naval minefield had been laid there.11

Chapter 3 identified that traditional sea denial approaches tended to revolve around some combination of commerce raiding, coastal defence and the maintenance of a fleet in being. It is appropriate to examine the extent to which these remain relevant today. •

Commerce raiding: it is notable how little discussion there is today about commerce raiding as a valid option in wartime, particularly by Western navies. It tends, at most, to be referred to obliquely within naval strategy and policy statements. Admiral Menon has suggested that this is because national merchant fleets are no longer ‘national’ in the way that they once were, arguing that ‘when a country has a cargo of Honda automobiles . . . that are made in Texas or Wales, in a Panamanian ship, insured in London, its loss does not create the same ripples as the loss of a national merchant ship 50 years ago’.13 On the other hand, one could turn this logic on its head. The loss of such a merchant ship would send ripples that extended from Japan to Panama, and to Texas (or Wales) and London and to every country that had crew on the targeted ship. In a globalised world unrestricted attacks on shipping may prove unacceptable to the wider international community that it impacts and that depends on the safe and timely arrival of shipping for its own prosperity. A word of caution is due here. Unfortunately, not every state or organisation worries what the wider international community thinks and history shows that mutual self-interest provides a limited defence against military adventurism. In the past, restraint has often been the result of a concern about the impact on world opinion of unrestricted attacks. While most states may avoid commerce raiding through fear of alienating neutrals, and potentially triggering intervention against them, some may not. Indeed, some may value such intervention as a means of internationalising a conflict. The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) provides an example of a conflict where both parties engaged in attacks on neutral shipping within the Gulf in an attempt to undermine the finances of the other and, in the case of Iraq, in an attempt to involve foreign powers. Those attacks prompted intervention

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by the Soviet Navy, a number of European navies and (most notably) by the US Navy, seeking to protect the vital flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. It also saw a number of engagements between the US Navy and Iranian forces. It would be unduly complacent to believe that no future adversary would choose to follow a path similar to the two belligerents in this war, even if large scale global campaigns against shipping, such as characterised the two world wars, currently appear unlikely. Fleet in being: given the potential of modern ISR and precision strikes to identify and attack a fleet in being, even as it lies within a friendly harbour, one might question whether the concept has the same value as it once did. A fleet or ship may be no safer in harbour than it is out at sea unless it has control of the air and possesses effective cruise and ballistic missile defences. This does not make a fleet in being approach impossible, but it does mean that, to be safe, a ship must do more than just retreat behind a minefield and some coastal defence guns. It will need to be well protected, or well hidden, to remain in being. With this proviso there seems to be no reason why the fleet in being should not remain a useful option. In some circumstances it may represent the best way of retaining naval assets for use once the war is over, which appears to have informed Argentinean judgements in 1982. Indeed, one way of maintaining a fleet for future use might be to sail it to be interned by a friendly neighbour or neutral. This might, at least, prove a better option than offering it up for rapid destruction as did Iraq in 1991. Coastal defence: navies that fear attack by a more powerful opponent have often chosen to focus on coastal defence, either alone or as part of a wider strategy that might include commerce raiding. The continued importance of this role was illustrated by the emphasis placed on it by the Scandinavian navies during the Cold War, seeking to deter and if necessary to defend against any Soviet attack though what might, with some justice, be described as area-denial and anti-access strategies. These involved layered defences based on a mixture of mines, submarines, missile and torpedo armed fast attack craft and other surface combatants, supported by land-based aircraft, missiles and coastal artillery. These could be a potent force for sea denial in narrow seas and coastal waters.

Building on the Scandinavian experience Jacob Borresen (a retired Norwegian naval officer) has examined the way in which ‘coastal states’ can deter attack through a credible ability to inflict economic, military, and political costs on an aggressor that would outweigh any benefit from attack. His approach is based on the creation of an integrated sea denial force tailored to exploit local knowledge and conditions, and to harness the latest technology, in order to deny larger adversaries an easy win. He notes that it is not necessary to be able to defeat an enemy in the conventional sense of that term. It may be enough to make it necessary for them to employ more force than they are willing to do or that the wider international community is willing to accept. Smaller navies and smaller states can exploit international opinion and may even be able to bully the strong by daring them to fire the first shot. In situations short of war, firm resolve may often mean more than superior capabilities and, even if the bluff is called, ‘a magnificent and spectacular rout may come in just as handy as an unexpected victory’ if it leads to intervention in support of the weaker party.14 There are other less direct ways to deny an adversary the freedom to use the seas. Political pressure can be brought to bear. In an age when social media can be exploited

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to generate a powerful narrative, information can be exploited to undermine support for a particular course of action or to mobilise opposition. Likely this will have a greater impact on democracies than on less open societies (which often have greater control of the narrative that their citizens engage with). Similarly, international law can be exploited to deny a course of action and ‘lawfare’, as it is sometimes called, may be a powerful constraint on the behaviour of those who try to abide by such laws. The creeping territorialisation of the seas opens up the possibility that significant sea areas may be effectively denied to foreign navies in peacetime without a shot ever having to be fired.

Methods and means There are a variety of means of achieving sea control and generalisations can be difficult. Success will usually require a navy to achieve dominance in more than one environment and thus to conduct war-fighting operations in more than one area (see Appendix 1 for an explanation of ‘maritime warfare areas). Battle, meaning combat, is likely to remain at the heart of this although in many circumstances, it may be more a case of numerous individual encounters that accumulate towards a decisive result rather than single dramatic encounters between major fleets. As Admiral Wylie argued: It should be noted that, in practice, the exploitation of sea power is usually a combination of general slow stiflings with a few critical thrusts. These latter are frequently spectacular and draw our attention to the exclusion of the former, while in point of fact the critical thrusts would not be critical were it not for the tedious and constant tightening of the screws that makes them possible.15 That there is nothing new in this was discussed in Chapter 2. Today, with sea control/denial assets on, under and over the surface of the sea, based on land and supported by those in space, it seems even less likely that results will turn on single events rather than on a broader process, although it would be foolish to dismiss that possibility entirely. It is true that since 1945 there have been no major battles at sea to compare with those of the Second World War. This reflects the relative absence of major power conflict during the period and also the dominance of Western (primarily American) maritime power. US hegemony has been easier to challenge on land than at sea. Nevertheless, it is not true to say that sea control has always been assured or that it has not been fought over. Even the US Navy has found that its control of the sea has been challenged and sometimes denied. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive survey of naval operations during the period, but a few brief examples will illustrate some of the ways in which sea control has been contested. •

Korean War, 1950–53: UN control of the seas was not seriously challenged by Communist surface ships or submarines during the Korean War, and faced a limited (and region specific) threat from the air. Mines, however, did pose a serious challenge. It was fortunate that the approaches to Inchon were not mined extensively prior to the landings there in 1950. A subsequent amphibious landing at Wonsan, on the east coast, was badly delayed by the need to clear a path through the extensive minefields, leading Rear Admiral Allan E. Smith USN to bemoan that

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‘we have lost control of the sea to a nation without a navy, using pre-World War One weapons, laid by vessels that were utilized at the time of the birth of Christ.’16 Four minesweepers were lost off Wonsan in the effort to clear a path through the mines. The task took so long that advancing UN land forces had secured the town before the marines were able to come ashore. China 1965: In the 1950s and 1960s there were numerous engagements between Communist and Nationalist Chinese naval forces, and between these and the coastal artillery employed by both sides. Thus, for example on 6 August 1965, the Nationalists deployed two submarine chasers, the 890-ton Jianmen and the 280-ton Zhangjing off the Chinese coast near the city of Shantou in Guangdong Province. In response, the PLAN sent a force of 11 small ships (five gunboats and six torpedo boats) to attack at night, overpowering their larger opponents and sinking both ships. On 13 November that year, two Taiwanese warships (Yiongchang and Yongtai) were engaged at night by a greater number of small vessels. In the resultant battle a number of PLAN gunboats were damaged but the Yongchang was sunk and its companion was badly damaged and forced to flee to Nationalist held Wuqui island. In each of these examples larger Nationalist ships were overpowered by much smaller opponents who attacked boldly, exploited night to achieve surprise and negate enemy air power, and achieved local superiority through concentration at the decisive point.17 Indo-Pakistan War, 1971: This war provides an interesting case study of a landcentric conflict where navies played a supporting role. Indian sea control confirmed the geographical isolation of East Pakistan (Bangladesh), ensuring that Pakistan could not reinforce its forces in that region. The naval war is best remembered for the successful Indian strikes against Karachi using missile boats (see Chapter 8) and also for the sinking of the Indian frigate INS Khukri by the submarine PNS Hangor. Early in the conflict the Indian Navy was circumscribed in its ability to use its aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, by the threat posed by the submarine PNS Ghazi. Once that vessel sank (possibly after it had hit a mine off Vishakapatnam harbour) the carrier could operate freely in the absence of any Pakistani sea denial capability in the eastern Indian Ocean.18 Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1973: In this conflict the Israeli Navy defeated missile boats of the Syrian and then the Egyptian navies at the battles of Latakia and Baltim. Exploiting the technological limitations of their enemy’s Soviet-built Styx antiship missiles, the Israelis used electronic countermeasures and chaff (bunches of foil strips that can fool radar guidance systems into locking onto a false target) to defeat missiles fired at long range and then, once the enemy boats had fired all of their missiles, closed the range and engaged them successfully with their homegrown Gabriel missile. In these, the first engagements in which missile armed ships had fought each other at sea, the Israelis sank four Syrian and three Egyptian vessels for no loss of their own. These victories helped to protect the Israeli coast from attack by the Syrian and Egyptian navies and removed any fear of a successful blockade in the Mediterranean. They also enabled subsequent Israeli coastal raids and bombardment. Similarly, Israeli sea control in the Gulf of Suez was used to support land forces there. However, as an illustration of the fact that sea control in one region does not grant it in another, the Israelis were not able to challenge the Egyptians blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb, which cut the supply of oil to the port of Aqaba.19

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Contemporary practice Falklands/Malvinas Conflict, 1982: This conflict centred on what has been perhaps the nearest thing to a major battle for sea control since 1945. The battle was unusually one-dimensional. The threat posed by the Argentine Navy was effectively neutralised once their cruiser, the ARA General Belgrano, was sunk by a nuclearpowered submarine and their own small submarine force proved ineffective (one boat, ARA Sante Fe, was knocked out and captured). The contest revolved around the battle between the ships and aircraft of the British task force and land based aircraft flying from the Argentine mainland. The British prevailed, but suffered significant losses and the margins of victory were narrow. Had the Argentine Navy and Air Force been able to operate synergistically, or had the latter been better equipped for operations against ships, the result may have been different. On the other hand, if the British had still possessed the large conventional aircraft carrier capability, lost with the decommissioning of HMS Ark Royal just four years earlier, their margin of victory would likely have been greater. Indeed, one could argue that retention of this capability might have demonstrated a British potential to achieve sea control that could have deterred the initial Argentine invasion of the islands.20 Operation Praying Mantis, 1988: In April 1988 the US Navy launched Operation Praying Mantis, perhaps the largest US surface engagement since the Second World War. The operation was conducted within the context of US efforts to protect merchant shipping during the Iran-Iraq War and was prompted by continuing Iranian attacks on shipping and, most immediately, by damage caused to USS Samuel B. Roberts by an Iranian mine. The operation involved two surface action groups supported by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. In a rather uneven contest, one Iranian frigate was sunk and another damaged, a number of smaller vessels were also destroyed and military facilities on two oil platforms were put out of action. The US Navy defeated Iranian attempts to hit back using land and sea launched missiles, attack aircraft and armed speedboats operated by the Revolutionary Guard. The operation did not remove the threat to shipping posed by Iran, but it was followed by a reduction in attacks. It has been suggested that the US presence and actions contributed to the Iranian willingness to accept a ceasefire with Iraq in July. Unfortunately, and before this could happen, the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down a civilian airliner, with the loss of 290 lives, in the mistaken belief that it was an Iranian fighter-bomber.

Given that enemy forces rarely offer themselves up for destruction at a time and place convenient to their opponent, a variety of different approaches may be required to set the conditions for success in any campaign. Some of the more important of these are discussed below. •

Information superiority: all maritime activities, whether in peace or war, depend on having an understanding of what is happening on, above and below the surface of the sea, and also on and over those areas ashore that can influence the maritime environment. In combat the capacity to make appropriate decisions faster than an enemy, based on the ability to deliver, manage and exploit information more quickly than they are able to do, can be a critical enabler for success. At the most basic level, it is difficult to attack an enemy that you cannot find. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) are therefore key maritime tasks. Friendly

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forces must be screened from enemy ISR. The ability to undertake open-ocean surveillance has expanded exponentially over the last century, encompassing overthe-horizon capabilities based on land, sea, air and space and including fixed undersea systems such as SOSUS, deployed by the US during the Cold War to monitor the movement of Soviet submarines. Submarines themselves offer useful means of gathering information, helped by their ability to operate covertly. For example, in 2010 the Royal Netherlands Navy deployed the submarine HNLMS Zeeleeuw to the coast of Somalia, where it was able to covertly monitor pirate activity and radio transmissions, providing intelligence in support of NATO Operation Ocean Shield. The importance of information superiority to what Norman Friedman describes as ‘picture centric warfare’ was revealed by the disquiet caused in 2006 when the USS Kitty Hawk battle group was intercepted by a Chinese conventional submarine. The submarine must have been cued into position as it was too slow to catch up with the battle group. This suggested a Chinese capacity for open ocean surveillance that was previously unknown.21 Shaping operations: shaping operations are conducted before the main force arrives in an area. The aim is to ‘shape the battlespace’ to enable subsequent operations. They can include a variety of activities designed to degrade enemy capabilities and reduce threats. It may be possible to eliminate particular threats but sometimes a commander will have to be content with reducing and managing these. Thus, submarines might deploy ahead of the main body in an attempt to eliminate enemy surface units or submarines. Special forces might be used to identify and, if possible, attack key enemy support facilities. Aircraft or sea launched missiles might take out command and control facilities, missile sites, air bases etc. Some activities, such as neutralising enemy submarines and mines, may take a significant amount of time and commanders will need to balance this against what they consider to be an acceptable degree of risk. Similarly, extended shaping operations may compromise operational security by revealing the commander’s intent and undermine any chance of surprise. Such operations may need to be limited and covert if secrecy is to be maintained. Sortie control: this involves controlling an enemy’s ability to sortie from their base, and attacking those vessels that attempt to do so. In this respect, it is essentially the same as fleet blockade, as discussed in Chapter 2. In the past there was a distinction between close and distant blockades. One might suggest that today, using remote surveillance and stand-off weaponry, one could seek to impose a close blockade with forces that remained distant. Mines and submarines continue to offer useful options for sortie control, particularly in those environments where enemy control of the air poses a threat to surface ships. Barrier operations: geography can create choke points and focal areas that can channel or concentrate enemy forces, providing offensive and defensive options for what Turner described as ‘chokepoint control’.22 Barrier operations are designed to deny passage to an enemy in waters through which they must pass and to attack those who make the attempt. Defence in depth is usually the most effective way to deny access, with submarines and mines offering particularly effective means of attacking ships approaching choke points. For much of the Cold War NATO maritime forces focused on the conduct of barrier operations in the so-called Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, through which Soviet submarines would have to transit in order to reach the Atlantic sea lanes.

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Contemporary practice Layered defence: high value units are protected by moving layers of defence that protect and screen them from attack. Escorts provide warning and use their sensors and weapons to deal with incoming threats. Ultimately, they may place themselves in danger in order to save the vessels that they protect. In the age of long-range stand-off weaponry it is important to be able to push the layers out as far as possible, engaging threats with a wide range of passive and active countermeasures. For this reason, remote sensors are particularly important. Thus, an escort may use its helicopter’s dipping sonar to detect submarines beyond the range of its own ship-borne systems, hoping to discover (and destroy) any adversaries before they are in a position to launch their missiles or torpedoes. Carrier-based airborne early warning aircraft provide advanced notice of incoming raids, allowing fighter aircraft to intercept them before they can release their weapons. If the fighters are not successful then the incoming aircraft or missiles will still need to break through the fleet’s area missile defence system, and then face engagement by the escort’s close in defence systems before they have a chance of breaking into the final layer where the mission critical assets lie. They will also need to deal with the various passive and soft-kill countermeasures that will be employed on their dangerous journey through this defence system. Containment: enemy forces can be tied down and contained within a particular region, particularly if it is possible to threaten something that they must defend. This may not grant sea control in the immediate region, but will make it harder for them to achieve such control elsewhere. One example, cited in Australian Maritime Doctrine, was the German submarine U-862 which cruised off the coast of Australia between September 1944 and February 1945, ‘occupying the attentions of more surface and air assets over a longer period than any single submarine has ever achieved before or since.’23 It is interesting to note that the presence of additional German submarines may have increased the toll in merchant shipping, but might not have tied down any additional Allied resources. In this respect, the cruise of U-862 represents a model of ‘economy of effort’. The 1986 US Maritime Strategy also reflected this idea. By posing a threat to northern waters, and thus to Soviet submarine bastions, the US hoped to contain Soviet forces there, easing the threat that they could pose to NATO communications across the Atlantic. Exclusion zones: such zones have been used within the context of naval warfare to declare particular areas to be out of bounds. The aim is usually to exclude an adversary from the zone, or at least to justify attacks against them should they enter it. The zone is also designed to prevent neutral shipping from entering an area where they might be mistaken for a belligerent and thus be subject to attack. The declaration of an exclusion zone does not free a belligerent from its legal obligation not to attack neutral ships and aircraft going about their lawful business, but it can mitigate the political impact of any mistaken attacks that take place. Thus, as Admiral Menon has noted, having already declared it to be within an exclusion zone, India did not suffer too much international condemnation when, during a missile attack on Karachi on 8–9 December 1971, two neutral merchant ships were sunk.24 The declaration of an exclusion zone does not imply that enemy vessels outside this zone will not be attacked. In 1982 the British attacked and sank the Argentinean cruiser ARA General Belgrano outside the 200-mile Total Exclusion Zone that they had declared around the Falkland Islands. That this ship, and its Exocet equipped escorts, had been engaged in an aborted operation to

Sea control and sea denial 127

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attack the British task force, and that the British had never stated that they would not attack enemy vessels beyond this zone, is generally forgotten by those who saw the act as unwarranted. The controversy that surrounded the sinking of this ship illustrates the way in which the declaration of an exclusion zone can have unwanted political effects in terms of creating unreasonable assumptions on the part of some that warlike acts will occur only within this zone. Cover: a very well-established concept with a wide range of applications. Covering forces can be deployed to protect less combat capable forces and, by doing so, enable the latter to continue their activities unmolested. Such cover might be close, with ships deployed within reach of those that they protect, as with convoy escort. It might equally be distant, and provide cover for activities that occur hundreds or thousands of miles away. For example, in the First World War the British Grand Fleet provided cover for wider allied naval activity across the globe by neutralising the ability of the Imperial German Navy to operate beyond the North Sea. Claims that the dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet fulfilled no useful purpose during that war miss this essential point. Without the cover that they provided it would have been impossible to safely transport the BEF to France, to provide convoy escorts in the Atlantic, or to impose the blockade. Without the Grand Fleet to keep them at bay, German battleships would have intervened to make such activities impossible.

It must be remembered that in certain circumstances the sea can be controlled or denied primarily by land forces, even in the face of a superior navy. In 1915 Ottoman forces denied access through the Dardanelles using a combination of mines and landbased artillery (see Chapter 3). In 1943 German and Italian forces secured control of the Strait of Messina using artillery deployed on either side of the narrow waterway between Sicily and Italy. Because of this, and despite Allied naval superiority, they were able to evacuate by sea over 100,000 troops and much heavy equipment that otherwise might have been captured by advancing British and American forces.25 Thus, land-based forces can play an important role in sea control or denial, especially in narrow seas where range may be less of a constraint and where navies have less freedom of manoeuvre. Land-based aircraft, in particular, can often be a decisive asset. In some circumstances in may be necessary to secure large stretches of coast in order to achieve sea control or, if this is not possible, at least to be able to dominate enemy activity on both the landward and seaward sides of the littoral. Technology, tactics, and command and control

Naval warfare is platform-centric. Changes to those platforms, and to the threats that they face, inevitably bring change to the tactical conduct of naval operations. No commander today will deploy their fleet in the same way as the successful commanders of a century ago because they do not operate, or face, comparable weapons systems. The propensity for tactics to evolve in line with changing technology is even more apparent at sea than on land, as the various factors that mitigate technological change ashore are largely absent at sea. Often the effect of change can be hard to anticipate in advance. Few people in 1914 understood the true impact that submarines would have on the war that had just begun. Lessons were learnt the hard way. Similarly, in 1939 there were not many who understood that within a few short years the battleship,

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which had been considered the premier sea control asset for decades, would be rendered obsolescent by the aircraft carrier. There are many who claim to understand the impact of new technology on naval operations in the twenty-first century, but their conflicting advice suggests that they cannot all be right. It is important to remember that technology is not an independent variable. New capabilities do not spring from the ground ready-made, they are developed as part of a process that reflects choices which are themselves a reflection of assumptions about future possibilities and future needs. The ability to make the right choice, or fewer wrong ones, is important but is something that is notoriously difficult to judge in advance. Furthermore, new technology per se is usually less important than the way in which it is used, and it is not always apparent how tactics should evolve to meet technological challenges. Those navies and nations able to innovate with technology may gain a critical advantage in future conflict, but only if they are able to translate technological advance into meaningful purpose in the maritime battle space. It must never be forgotten that innovation comes in many forms and the most useful ones may not always be driven by technology. The challenges that may be posed by new technology are explored in more detail in Chapter 10. Here it will suffice to note that over the course of the last century new technology both challenged and enabled combat operations at sea, providing new means of offence and also of defence. Thus, carrier based aircraft provided the means to strike enemy ships or shore targets at far greater range than was possible using only naval gunfire (offensive) and also provided protection against attack by ships, submarines and other aircraft (defensive). By the 1960s anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM) were able to pose a real danger to surface vessels but, perhaps inevitably, this threat was later balanced by the introduction of other missiles designed to shoot them down, by rapid firing, radar-guided, close-in weapons systems (also designed to shoot them down) and by a variety of measures intended to fool their guidance systems. Today the side that is better able to exploit information warfare and cyber capabilities, and can conduct what the US describes as electromagnetic manoeuvre warfare, may gain a critical advantage in successfully completing the ‘kill chain’ (see Box 6.4). Of course, it pays

BOX 6.4  THE KILL CHAIN APPROACH The process of naval combat is sometimes described as the application of a ‘kill chain approach’ consisting of four connected stages: 1 2 3 4

find the target; determine the target’s location, course and speed; communicate that information correctly to the platform launching the weapon; launch the attack (using kinetic weapons, electromagnetic warfare or cyber attack).

The chain may be repeated as post-strike battle damage assessment leads back to stages 1 and 2 and may result in a follow-on attack.26

Sea control and sea denial 129 to be one step ahead of the enemy and superior technology can help to provide an edge in combat, but it is well to appreciate that sooner or later adversaries will detect and respond to this advantage. They may prove adept at finding innovative ways to level the playing field. Tactics

It is difficult to generalise about the specific tactics that might be employed in a given situation as contextual factors are so important. These might include geographical considerations, the relative balance of forces and, perhaps most important of all, what the different navies are trying to achieve. As Wayne Hughes has pointed out, tactics at sea are determined by national strategy in a way that is not necessarily true on land, where the need to hold ground can constrain choices.27 Nevertheless, when thinking about naval warfare at the tactical level the following points are worth considering. • •

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Battles usually occur in proximity to the land. This was true of all of the major fleet engagements of the twentieth century. The distance at which engagements can occur has grown dramatically. In 1894, at the Battle of Manila, the US Navy engaged the enemy at ranges of up to 4,500 metres and may have achieved a hit rate (against an anchored opponent) of only 2.3 percent.28 Today a Harpoon missile has an operational range of 125 km and a good chance of finding a target. A carrier-based FA/18 Super-Hornet fighterbomber has a combat radius in excess of 700 km. Weapons exist which can sink or disable a ship with a single hit. However, it is far from the case that every guided weapon will hit its target or that a hit will cause critical damage. Naval forces tend to be disaggregated into fewer independent units than is the case in land and air operations, increasing the possibility of rapid and decisive victory or defeat. However, as ships do not have to seize and hold ground (for there is nothing at sea for them to seize or hold) they can often simply withdraw, refusing to engage a superior adversary. This can make it harder to achieve a decisive victory. The importance of platforms in naval warfare, and the difficulty of quickly replacing lost assets, often makes their destruction of paramount importance. Given this, naval warfare tends to revolve around attrition. Fleets are defeated by the destruction of their constituent parts rather than by being out-manoeuvred, out-flanked or encircled, as may happen on land. That said, an ability to out-manoeuvre the enemy may well set the conditions for the application of attrition and this is often delivered very quickly and in a one-sided manner. Inferior navies are at a greater combat disadvantage than are inferior armies given that, unlike armies, they cannot generally exploit terrain or build fortifications to offset their limitations. As Hughes has argued, ‘[i]n the open ocean a fighting fleet that is even slightly inferior will usually be defeated decisively by and inflict little damage on a superior enemy’.29 ‘Inferiority’ (see above) may relate to more than just numbers or technology. As the US victory at the Battle of Midway (1942) demonstrates, a force that is used with skill and determination may sometimes be able to overcome an enemy that is larger and/or better equipped if that force is not handled as effectively.

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Contemporary practice Naval campaigns may last for a long time (even years) but battles can be over quite quickly, and may sometimes be decided in hours or even minutes. Given the above, the ability to land the first effective strike can be critical. The first strike is not always the first effective strike. Defeat of an incoming strike can set the conditions for a devastating counter-attack (as at the Battle of the Philippine Sea (1944)). Information superiority can be vital. Scouting (to find the enemy) and screening (to deal with enemy scouts) is a vital prerequisite to landing, or avoiding, the first effective strike.

A century ago Mahan emphasised the importance of concentration and of offensive action in naval warfare. These concepts remain important today, but in a measured manner. For example, the British Royal Navy has emphasised the value of an offensive mentality, a ‘determination to win whatever the difficulties’, but stressed that this does not necessarily imply an offensive course of action. There are some circumstances where the defence makes more sense.30 Similarly, concentration remains an important way of massing offensive and defensive sensors and firepower, and the latter may be particularly significant given the potency of some threats. However, and as Corbett and Castex noted, the ability to disperse and to re-concentrate offers flexibility and enhances reach and it may help to limit some threats. Today navies can exploit technology to create a concentrated effect from dispersed forces, in a manner that the writers of classic maritime strategy could not have anticipated fully. During the 1990s people such as Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN) began to argue that advances in sensors and computers enabled a new concept of Network Centric Warfare (NCW). The notion was that the information technology (IT) revolution would enable computer-based information gathering and processing that would provide for an accurate and real-time picture of enemy activity that could be shared between networked forces. Such forces could be geographically dispersed (distributed), but would be tied together by their data-links which would enable them to operate effectively as a networked ‘system of systems’. This would mean that sensors within the distributed force, which could cover a far larger area than could those of any individual ship or aircraft and would share information in real time, providing the basis for information superiority over an enemy and offering the opportunity for a systems-based response to threats rather than one focused on individual assets. In short, IT could be used to make a distributed fleet act as a fully networked force in which individual units are best considered as but one part of an integrated system that amounts to much more than the sum of its parts. Exploiting information superiority, and the precision strike capability of modern weapons systems, the commander of the networked force would (it was argued) be able to attack more targets, over a wider area and in less time than had previously been possible. Whether this represents something entirely radical or new is open to debate. Geoffrey Till has noted that even the battle fleets of the 1914–18 war are best viewed as constituting a system that revolved around the need to ‘connect sensor to shooter’ and the ability of the admirals to organise their individual forces into a coherent whole, although, admittedly, the capacity to translate this idea into practice is much more apparent today.31 The US Navy currently emphasises the importance of dispersed but connected forces and ‘Distributed Lethality’ is advanced as a response to the challenge posed to control by enhanced A2/AD capabilities (see chapter 10). Such approaches

Sea control and sea denial 131 may enhance the lethality of naval forces, as is claimed, but they also provide a vulnerability (in terms of the need to maintain connectivity). Cyber-attacks and electromagnetic warfare, or strikes against key enablers such as satellite communications and GPS systems, appear to be potential means of countering a networked foe. All of this suggests that, despite the apparent importance of one type of vessel or weapon, it is best to view naval battles as being between different systems, with a variety of assets and capabilities contributing towards the defensive and offensive potential of both sides. Sometimes these systems are roughly comparable sometimes they are dissimilar (there is nothing new in this). The ability to make all assets and capabilities contribute synergistically towards the overall effectiveness of the system is a complex and demanding task. Sea control, already a three-dimensional concept by the 1940s (demanding control of the surface, subsurface and air) has become multi-dimensional with the additional need to exploit, space, cyber-space and the electromagnetic spectrum for a range of vital tasks including navigation, communications, surveillance, targeting and command and control. The complexity of this task reinforces the need to be able to integrate the activities of diverse forces in a sophisticated manner. This, and the emphasis on coordinated campaigns rather than on single decisive engagements, raises the importance of operational art. This can be defined as the ability to plan, sequence, and synchronise tactical actions so that they contribute to the accomplishment of strategic objectives. It seriously complicates the business of command.

Conclusion Sea control remains as prominent in naval thought and practice today as it was in Mahan’s time, although there is a greater tendency to discuss it in terms more limited than did some of the most enthusiastic advocates of sea power a century ago. To achieve sea control, one must master diverse challenges and threats across a multidimensional battle space. To challenge it may often be easier and there are many options available for those who perceive the need for a sea denial strategy. The growing capacity of some states to develop blue water denial capabilities, to deploy theatreanti-access weapons and to engage in area denial within the littoral has been noted, and will be seen by some as a threat and by others as an opportunity. After many years where the US enjoyed ‘monopolistic sea power’ it seems likely that in many scenarios future sea control will be contested. In many respects, this is a return to the norm, where adversaries fight to gain or contest control. It is not something likely to surprise historians. The implications that this will have on the world’s navies will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 10.

Key points •

• •

Sea control remains an important enabler for most forms of naval activity. The ability to gain, maintain or deny such control is therefore a key task in naval warfare. The level of sea control that is required will vary according to circumstance. Absolute control of all sea areas is unrealistic. Sea denial represents an attempt to deny to an adversary the use of a sea area. It is often less difficult to deny control than it is to assert it.

132 •

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Contemporary practice In many respects sea control and sea denial represent two sides of the same coin. Friendly control implies denying control to an opponent. However, sea denial can be achieved without simultaneously attempting positive control for oneself (the bar is set lower for denial than it is for control). Control is sometimes achieved without a fight, but there have been numerous battles for sea control/denial since 1945 (and many more before then). Strategy and tactics employed to achieve control will vary according to circumstances. However, it is possible to identify some enduring approaches and these are examined in this chapter. In the twenty-first century control and denial is a multi-dimensional activity drawing upon assets and capabilities in all warfighting domains (land, air, maritime, the information dimension, and the electromagnetic spectrum). It is important to recognise the impact of international law and changing norms on the behaviour of navies and others who use the sea. It may be possible to deny a sea area or constrain activity within it through political or legal pressure.

Notes 1 See Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979). 2 NATO Allied Joint Publications (AJP) 3.1, Allied Joint Maritime Operations (April 2004), 1–9. See also British Maritime Doctrine and Netherlands Maritime Military Doctrine. 3 Sergei Gorshkov, Sea Power of the State, 229. Admiral Stansfield Turner, ‘Missions of the US Navy’, Naval War College Review (March–April 1974), 4. 4 J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy. A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 155. 5 Quoted in Geoifrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd ed (London: Routledge, 2013), 150. 6 Naval Doctrine Publication 1, Naval Warfare (US Government, 2010), 35. 7 For example, see Surface Forces Strategy (US Navy, 2017). 8 NATO, Allied Joint Publications (AJP) 3.1, Allied Joint Maritime Operations (April, 2004), 1–8. 9 Stansfield Turner, ‘ The Naval Balance. Not Just a Numbers Game’, Foreign Affairs Vol. 55, No. 2 (January 1977), 347. 10 See Sam Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare. Countering A2/AD Strategies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). 11 See Captain Chris Craig, Call for Fire. Sea Combat in the Falklands and the Gulf War (London: John Murray, 1995) 12 Charles Koburger, Narrow Seas, Small Navies and Fat Merchantmen. Naval Strategy for the 1990s (New York, NY: Praeger, 1990) 130. 13 Raja Menon, Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 185. 14 Jacon Borresen, ‘Coastal Power: The Sea Power of the Coastal State and the Management of Maritime Resources’, in R. Hobson and T. Kristiansen (eds), Navies in Northern Waters 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 254. 15 Wyle, Military Strategy, 128. 16 Quoted in Edward J. Marolda (ed.) The U.S. Navy in the Korean War (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2007), 205. 17 Mark A. Ryan, David M., Finkelstein, Michael A. McDevitt (eds), Chinese Warfighing. The PLA Experience Since 1949 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015) especially pages 260–262 18 Commodore Ranjit B. Rai and Joseph Chacko, Warring Navies. India and Pakistan (Frontier India Technology, 2014) especially chapters 8–16. 19 Rear Admiral Benyamin Telem, ‘Naval Lessons of the Yom Kippur War’, in Louis Williams (ed.), Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1975) 228–238. 20 See Sandy Woodward, One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997).

Sea control and sea denial 133 21 Norman Friedman, Network Centric Warfare. How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009) passim. 22 Turner, ‘Missions of the US Navy’, 8. 23 Royal Australian Navy Doctrine, 103. 24 Menon, Maritime Strategy, 84–85. 25 See Barbara Tomblin, With Upmost Spirit. Allied Naval Operations in the Mediterranean, 1942–5 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 227. 26 See US Navy, How We Fight. Handbook for the Naval Warfighter (Washington, DC: US Goverment Printing Office, 2015), 54. 27 Wayne Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Command, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000), passim. 28 Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2001), 177. 29 Wayne Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Command, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 151. 30 JDP 0–10, British Maritime Doctrine (2011), 2–9. 31 Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). Andrew T.H. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Maritime Power. A Survey (Routledge: London, 2007), 136.

Further reading Norman Friedman, Network Centric Warfare. How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009). Friedman provides an overview of the development of ‘picture centric’ warfare over the course of the last century and an analysis of its importance to operations today. Wayne Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999). Hughes offers a detailed investigation into the business of modern naval warfare at the tactical level. He unpicks complex problems in a way that is accessible to the non-specialist. Raja Menon, Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars (London: Frank Cass, 1998). Menon’s study is useful as it offers an alternative perspective on modern maritime strategy with a particular focus on how to make it relevant in wars between land-based powers. Lisle A. Rose, Power at Sea, 3 vols. (Colombia, Miss: University of Missouri Press, 2006). In three volumes Rose examines the history of naval operations from 1890 to 2006. This collection (and others like it) provide valuable historical detail that readers can employ to test the ideas raised in this chapter. Milan Vego, Maritime Strategy and Sea Control. Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2016). This book examines different ways in which sea control can be gained, maintained and exploited, with reference to a wide range of historical examples. US Navy, How we Fight. Handbook for the Naval Warfighter (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2015). This short book produced for the US Navy provides an overview of the history of how that navy has fought since its foundation as well as an introduction to current methods and capabilities.

Other Sources Useful information on current issues and ideas is available from relevant journals. Those who have access to the publications of Jane’s Information Group will find Jane’s Navy International and Jane’s Defence Weekly to be useful. The Proceedings of the US Naval Institute often includes discussion and debate on relevant topics and the US Naval War College Review is another valuable source. All of these are available online, although only the US Naval War College Review is available free of charge at www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Naval-War-College-Review.aspx.

7

Combat operations at sea Exploiting sea control

Sea control is made relevant by what it enables, just as sea denial is relevant because of what it prevents. Control may be exploited by activities at sea and by those from the sea. The latter are explored in Chapter 8, the former are discussed here. Operations to exploit sea control at sea can include military sea lift, blockade, embargo and quarantine operations, maritime interdiction and the protection of shipping. These activities often appear rather mundane and may lack the glamour of major fleet engagements or power projection operations. Despite this, they are often vital to the successful prosecution of a war or to the achievement of goals in situations short of war. They represent an important means of translating strength at sea into an effect on land.

Military sea lift Military sea lift is the ability to transport land and air forces from one place to another by sea, and to provide logistical support to them there once they have arrived. This represents one of the most useful capabilities possessed by a maritime force and an obvious way in which it can influence events on the land. Thus, the transportation of US forces to friendly ports in France in the First World War and to Britain in the Second was an important enabler for Allied success in both wars. Similarly, while the majority of the troops heading to the Gulf in 1990–91 during Operation Desert Shield arrived by air, most of their fuel, vehicles, equipment and ammunition arrived by sea. Such movements may sometimes be contested and sometimes not. One could argue that sea lift itself is an administrative rather than a combat operation although in many circumstances combat operations will be required to generate a level of control necessary for it to take place. As sea lift is an operation at sea that exploits sea control, it is logical to discuss it here. Military sea lift may be undertaken in military or auxiliary ships, or in merchant vessels. Cargo is most usually loaded administratively, meaning that the ships are loaded in the fashion of a merchant ship, in a manner that makes best use of available space. Tactical loading, which is employed for amphibious operations, is designed to allow the cargo to unload in tactical formation and without reliance on port facilities. This is important if opposition is expected on disembarkation, but is a less space efficient way of transporting troops and material across the oceans. Nevertheless, if one cannot be certain of a friendly reception then tactical loading may represent a wise precaution. Similarly, if friendly port facilities are not available, or are damaged, then amphibious ships and craft, able to land their cargo using degraded facilities or across an open beach, may prove vital.

Exploiting sea control 135 The difficulty of moving heavy equipment by any means other than by sea increases the importance of sea lift to any substantial military operation, particularly (but not exclusively) those conducted overseas. Sea lift has advantages and disadvantages vis-à-vis road, rail or air lift. The most obvious disadvantage is that it is limited to transportation on the seas and navigable rivers. Some places are not easy to get to by sea. On the plus side, ships have a far larger cargo capacity than do trucks, trains or aircraft, and they carry their load at far less cost. It has been estimated, for example, that the charter of strategic sea lift to carry Canadian forces to Afghanistan in 2001–02 cost just over $1.4 million, while strategic air lift charter cost $53.4 million. It cost the Canadians $14,478 an hour to operate their own medium lift C-130 aircraft, making this a rather expensive way of moving anything.1 The superior bulk carrying ability of ships, compared to aircraft or land-based means, was discussed in Chapter 1. This makes military sea lift useful for some operations and essential for others. It would, for example, have been impossible to support and sustain the Allied armies fighting in Western Europe in 1943–45 by any other means. Even much smaller operations, such as the coalition campaign in Afghanistan that began in 2001, depended to a considerable degree on the logistical support provided by sea lift. NATO forces in land-locked Afghanistan depended on sea-borne logistical support, much of which had to traverse the last perilous part of its journey on land through Pakistan into Afghanistan. Military forces are often moved in civilian vessels in what are inelegantly known as ships taken up from trade (STUFT). During the Falklands/Malvinas conflict in 1982, the British supplemented their amphibious lift with a large number of requisitioned cargo vessels, roll-on-roll-off ferries and even luxury liners (see Box 7.1). One such vessel, the MV Atlantic Conveyor, was struck by two air-launched Exocet missiles and sank, taking with it much of the helicopter lift intended to support operations ashore. The difficulty of chartering vessels that might be required to travel into a war zone and the possibility that it might prove impossible to requisition suitable ships, has led some countries to make special arrangements to ensure the availability of appropriate ships. Thus, in addition to expanding their fleet of amphibious ships and auxiliary vessels after the Cold War, the British procured six large roll-on rolloff sea lift ships able to conduct routine business in peacetime but which could be called up for use as naval auxiliaries when the need arose. The ships were manned by British crew who were required to be reservists, available to be called up for duty in a crisis. Similarly, the Danish government met the challenge of providing sea lift to support military operations overseas by the longterm charter of roll-on roll-off ferries owned by a Danish company, manned by Danish officers and flying the Danish flag.2 Perhaps inevitably, the US has devoted the greatest level of resources to ensure the availability of appropriate sea lift. The US Navy’s Military Sea Lift Command (MSC) provides ocean transportation for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies during peace and war. They deploy a fleet of 120 active and reserve vessels, including numerous high speed transports, container and roll-on roll-off ships, dry cargo vessels and tankers. The Reserve Ready Force provides a defence against unavailability of civilian ships with vessels available to be activated at short notice to support the MSC with a surge capacity. The MSC also operates 27 pre-positioning ships, loaded with joint military equipment and usually stationed with one of two squadrons in the Indian Ocean (Diego Garcia) or the western Pacific (Guam). These ships provide joint forces

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BOX 7.1  SHIPS TAKEN UP FROM TRADE, 1982 FALKLANDS/ MALVINAS CONFLICT In their campaign to retake the Falkland Islands in 1982 (Operation Corporate) the British eventually deployed a military force consisting of two brigades. The available amphibious shipping (two assault ships and six logistic landing ships) was insufficient to carry this force and all of its support equipment and logistics. As a result civilian ships were requisitioned and were deployed into the combat zone with their volunteer civilian crew, where many faced air attacks by the Argentine Navy and Air Force. Notable amongst the STUFT were the luxury cruise liners RMS Queen Elizabeth II and SS Canberra, used as troop transports, and SS Uganda, used as a hospital ship. Vessels were prepared for military service by the addition of helicopter landing pads, equipment to enable refuelling at sea and, in some cases, by the addition of light anti-aircraft guns. Their crews were augmented by naval personnel. The following STUFT were employed during Operation Corporate: 3 luxury liners, 15 tankers, 11 roll-on roll-off ferries, 1 container ship, 6 passenger/cargo ships, 4 offshore support vessels, 3 tugs, 1 cable ship and 5 trawlers. Some of these ships provided military sea lift, others provided logistic support for the fleet, while some fulfilled more specialist tasks such as minesweeping (the trawlers). One STUFT ship, the MV Atlantic Conveyor, was sunk after being hit by two air-launched Exocet missiles. Twelve civilian crew members died, including the ship’s captain.3

with forward deployed equipment and logistics, enhancing readiness and availability in any crisis when troops can be flown forward to join their sea-based equipment, allowing sea and air lift to cooperate synergistically.4

Blockade, embargo and quarantine A blockade is a belligerent act designed to prevent vessels and aircraft of all nations (including neutrals) from entering a specific area belonging to, or under the control of, an enemy. It is an act of war and as such is regulated by international law which, in this case, builds on the 1856 Paris Declaration, the Hague Regulations of 1907 and on customary practice. Blockades can be naval, commercial or both. A naval blockade represents an attempt to prevent an enemy’s armed force from leaving port, or to engage it when it does (i.e. sortie control) and this is designed to achieve or maintain control of the sea. A commercial blockade is a means of exploiting such control and, to quote Corbett, represents an attempt to ‘stop the flow of the enemy’s sea-borne trade, whether carried in his own or neutral bottoms, by denying him the use of trade communications’.5 Corbett and Mahan both viewed commercial blockade as an offensive tool that could have decisive strategic effect, particularly in long wars where it could be used to slowly strangle enemy trade and finances. They also believed that it was a

Exploiting sea control 137 far superior form of economic warfare than commerce raiding which, they argued, could not be decisive without first gaining command of the sea (at which point blockade would offer a surer and more fruitful course of action). Alternative perspectives on this matter were discussed in Chapter 3. Here it will suffice to note that this traditional perspective retained its currency post-1945 and was restated by commentators including, from different sides of the Iron Curtain, Admirals Gretton and Gorshkov.6 By this time it was generally the case that enemy capabilities close to their own coast would mean that blockades were more likely to be distant than they were close. To be valid a blockade must meet certain specified criteria (see Box 7.2). There has always been a tension between the rights claimed by belligerents, who tend to want to limit the range of goods that are allowed through a blockade, and neutrals who wish to continue their commercial activities unhindered. In reality, and whatever the stipulations of international law, belligerent states have tended to act in their own selfish interest, constrained only by the strength of those forces that oppose them. Neutral rights and international law have proven to be only as strong as the power that protects them. For example, the major constraint on the British blockade of Germany from

BOX 7.2  CRITERIA FOR THE CONDUCT OF A LEGITIMATE BLOCKADE For a blockade to be considered legitimate and binding a number of criteria must be met: Establishment: the blockade must be established by a formal declaration that identifies when it begins, its geographical limits and any period of grace to be given to neutral vessels and aircraft to leave the area. Notification: it is customary to notify all affected nations and local authorities of the imposition of a blockade. Effectiveness: to be legitimate a blockade must be effective. This means that it must be enforced by regular ships, aircraft, submersible forces or other legitimate means sufficient to make ingress and egress of the area dangerous. This does not require that every avenue of approach must be covered and temporary absences, such as might be caused by weather or stress to equipment, are permissible. Limitations: the blockade cannot bar access into or out of neutral ports. Neutrals retain the right to engage in commerce that does not originate in, or is destined for, the blockaded area. Blockades are prohibited if their sole purpose is to starve a civilian population or to deny them the essentials for life. Impartiality: the blockade must be applied impartially to the vessels and aircraft of all nations. US Navy, The Commander’s Handbook of the Law of Naval Operations (2007)

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1914–17 was not the letter of the law (which Britain breached almost from the outset) but rather the extent to which British policy was acceptable to the most powerful neutral, the US. Once the US entered the war on the Allied side then neutral opinion could safely be ignored and the blockade was tightened still further. US objections to the infringement of neutral rights disappeared as soon as they abandoned neutrality and the US government embraced Britain’s more expansive view of belligerent rights. It is worth noting that Britain never officially declared a ‘blockade’ as such, as it was unable to halt the traffic of goods (primarily iron ore) from Sweden to Germany in the Baltic. Blockade was a normal feature of maritime war long before 1914, having figured prominently in the naval wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even before this there had been frequent efforts to block the passage of enemy trade, although limits to the endurance and sea keeping of vessels meant that these attempts at economic warfare tended to have more the character of raiding than of blockade in the modern sense of the term. As has already been noted, Corbett and Mahan viewed blockade as an offensive tool of dominant sea power. Mahan argued that Britain prevailed in its wars against France, and before that against the Dutch, by their ability to exhaust their enemy in an economic war of attrition founded upon the naval blockade. Corbett took a similar position, viewing blockade as the maritime equivalent of the conquest of territory (i.e. as a weapon capable of wielding decisive leverage). Indeed, Mahan used his position as a US naval delegate to the 1899 Hague Peace Conference to stop a motion being tabled that would have made private property at sea immune from capture. He was keen to ensure that blockade remained an offensive tool of sea power.7 There remains much controversy over the impact of the blockade of Germany in 1914–18. The least that one can say is that it helped to depress industrial and agricultural production, contributed to major food shortages by the latter stages of the war and helped to cause the collapse that occurred on the German home front in 1918. It is abundantly clear that, as Mahan would have predicted, the blockade had a far greater impact on Germany than their own submarine campaign, conducted without sea control, had on the British.8 In the Second World War Germany proved less vulnerable to blockade, largely because it had access to the resources of a conquered continent. Nevertheless, the blockade did still reduce or cut off access to some critical key materials, notably oil. The Germans were forced to synthesise oil from coal to supplement the inadequate supplies available to them within Europe. Britain, which in the 1940s had no more oil than Germany, could ship its supplies from across the seas. The US blockade of Japan had a more decisive impact, eventually destroying that country’s merchant marine and strangling its industry. Enforced initially by submarines, the blockade achieved decisive effect later in the war as US forces advanced to the Philippines, providing the level of sea (and air) control required to make it truly effective.9 Since 1945 there have been numerous embargoes (see below) but few ‘blockades’ in the formal legal sense of the word. States seeking to block the passage of material to or from a rival tend not to actually declare a blockade, even if their actions imply that this is what they are doing. Thus, in 1973 when the US mined Haiphong Harbour, their actions were motivated by a desire to blockade North Vietnam, and they conformed to the criteria for a blockade in most senses (establishment, notification, effectiveness, limitations, impartiality), but the US did not declare this to be a blockade. In 1999

Exploiting sea control 139 NATO was unwilling to declare a blockade of the port of Bar in Montenegro (during the Kosovo conflict), because it was not formally at war with Yugoslavia. To complicate matters further, it could not declare an embargo under the UN Charter as it did not have the authorisation of the UN Security Council. Nevertheless, and in similar fashion to the example of Haiphong, NATO operations had the character of a blockade. The Israeli ‘blockade’ of Gaza from 2007–10 may not have been a blockade in the strictest legal sense of the term but in most practical senses it conformed to established practice. Blockade is, and always has been, rather a blunt instrument and can have an impact on the innocent as much (often rather more) than enemy belligerents. Thus, the Israeli ‘blockade’ of Gaza prompted widespread international condemnation. Similarly, the air and naval ‘blockade’ of Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition from 2015 onwards has prompted considerable international opposition due to the impact that it has had on innocent civilians. In April 2017 Idris Jazairy, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as a Special Rapporteur, stated that by slowing the arrival of fuel and humanitarian supplies to a trickle, the blockade was contributing to a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. He described the blockade as an unlawful unilateral coercive measure under international law. This, and negative media reports in the international press over the course of the summer, help to illustrate that blockade remains a potent but also a controversial tool of maritime strategy.10 Embargo and quarantine

Embargo operations are designed to stop vessels taking prohibited goods into or out of a country. In this respect, they are similar to blockades. They key difference is that blockades are military tasks undertaken in war while embargoes are constabulary acts undertaken to enforce sanctions imposed by a UN Security Council Resolution or a similar international agreement. They are usually designed to prohibit the movement of a limited set of goods, often relating to military supplies and equipment and sometimes also to fuel. The embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990, by UN Security Council Resolution 661, provides an example of a stringent regime that limited almost all trade and financial transactions, excluding the delivery of humanitarian supplies.11 In this case, as in most others, enforcement required maritime interdiction operations (MIOPS) to halt the movement of proscribed goods. Sanctions enforcement is notoriously difficult. It occurs in a politicised environment and pits navies against adversaries (both in terms of the target state and the supplier) who have often been ingenious in their ability to hide goods within legitimate cargo and to exploit legislative loop holes and limited rules of engagement in order to find some way through the embargo. Sanctions have the advantage of not usually requiring the use of lethal force and it can be easier to get international approval than for more robust military measures. They can be used to send a message of disapproval to an opponent and may inflict meaningful costs on a rogue regime, although the record here is not encouraging. At a minimum they allow states to show that something is being done, even if that something is not always particularly effective. On the other hand, there may be circumstances when the ability to impose an embargo can have decisive effect, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 provides an interesting (if rather atypical) example of this (see Box 7.3).

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BOX 7.3  THE ‘QUARANTINE’ OF CUBA, 1962 In 1962 the US Navy was called upon by the President to impose a ‘naval quarantine’ of Cuba, after it became apparent that the Soviets were deploying nuclear capable intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) to that island. The ‘quarantine’ was extended only to ships that were believed to be carrying offensive military hardware. Over a four-week period in October and November, over fifty Cuba-bound merchant ships were checked for proscribed goods. Soviet ships that were carrying missiles chose to turn back rather than to try to break what was, in reality, an illegal blockade. The operation provided the US with a way of preventing the Soviet deployment of additional missiles without requiring an attack on Cuba itself, something that was likely to trigger Soviet retaliation. The relatively slow pace at which events unfolded at sea provided vital time for negotiation. For a period of days the world held its breath, fearing an escalation to nuclear war. Fortunately the Soviets backed down, and agreed to remove the missiles in return for a US promise not to attack Cuba and also a secret agreement to remove US IRBMs from Turkey and Italy. During the crisis US anti-submarine forces identified a number of Soviet Foxtrot class submarines in the region and forced three of these (B-36, B-59 and B-130) to the surface by pursuing them (and dropping warning charges) until their batteries were exhausted. It was fortunate that their commanders chose to surface rather than to attack their tormentors, particularly given that each submarine was armed with a nuclear torpedo.

Maritime interdiction operations

According to NATO doctrine maritime interdiction operations (MIOPS), alternately known as maritime interception operations, are seaborne enforcement operations conducted to ‘enforce prohibition on the maritime movement of specified persons or material within a defined maritime area’.12 MIOPS may be designed to interdict the movement by sea of migrants, drugs, arms, fuel or other goods in support of national or international law, depending on the context. These issues are discussed at greater length in Chapter 9. They may be employed in support of an embargo, intercepting at sea cargo intended to breach a sanctions regime. Thus, MIOPS were conducted in support of sanctions against Iraq and Yugoslavia/Serbia in the 1990s, and were employed to halt the delivery of military equipment to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011. In a different context MIOPS were also used by the Israelis to enforce their blockade of Gaza in 2010. That operation highlighted the difficulty of conducting operations in a highly politicised environment against a media savvy opponent (see Box 7.4). While the Israeli operation in 2010 reflects some very modern problems associated with the use of even limited armed force, the need to intercept civilian and military cargo at sea is not new. Indeed, the British Palestine Patrol of the 1940s provides a classic (and very instructive) example of such difficulties, and also of some potential

Exploiting sea control 141 14

solutions. In the nineteenth century both the US and British navies devoted considerable time and attention to MIOPS (although they did not use that phrase) in their efforts to put an end to the illegal Atlantic slave trade, and both faced numerous practical and legal impediments to their efforts. Moreover, navies and coastguards have, for centuries, conducted MIOPS in local waters in support of customs regulations, etc.

Protection of shipping For most commentators, and perhaps also most practitioners, the protection of shipping has never generated quite the same level of interest and excitement as do major fleeton-fleet engagements. Despite this, the protection of shipping has been a very important role for many navies and was this was reflected in the classic works on maritime strategy. The importance of the role in the First World War guaranteed that inter-war commentators would continue to discuss the issue and the Second World War again demonstrated its salience. During the Cold War there were notable debates about the best way to protect NATO shipping threatened by the growing Soviet submarine force, although not all commentators were convinced that this was a likely task. In contrast, in the post-Cold War world there has tended to be less emphasis on this issue. As the immediate prospect of a major campaign against merchant shipping appears to have declined, navies have often focused their interest and attention on other things. Most major navies do reflect on the need to protect civilian shipping at sea and in port, but contemporary discussion tends to revolve around the challenge of protecting shipping from pirates, terrorists and other rogue actors (see Chapter 9). There is also recognition that states can challenge the free movement of merchant ships, as was the case during the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf in the 1980s and that navies may be called upon to respond, even if a sustained ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ style campaign currently seems unlikely.15

BOX 7.4  THE GAZA FLOTILLA, 2010 In May 2010 the Israeli Navy was employed to intercept a flotilla of civilian vessels heading to Gaza loaded with humanitarian supplies and construction equipment. In attempting to halt the flotilla it faced challenges similar to those experienced over 60 years ago by the Royal Navy’s Palestine Patrol, which had sought to intercept ships carrying Jewish migrants to Palestine. Attempts to halt the ships in international waters raised questions about the legality of such actions. More significant, perhaps, was the heavy handed conduct of Israeli naval commandos when dealing with activists, some of whom appeared to be armed with iron bars and knives. Fighting broke out on the Turkish registered MV Mavi Marmara when it was boarded, and Israeli forces opened fire, killing nine activists and wounding many more. A number of commandos were also injured. The negative political fallout associated with this botched operation was not unlike that experienced by the Palestine Patrol in the 1940s and reinforces the value of the principle of minimum use of force.13

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There are a number of ways in which merchant shipping can be protected from attack by enemy forces. These can be characterised in the following manner: •

•

•

•

•

•

Cover: the threat to shipping can be reduced by the distant cover provided by sea control forces elsewhere, preventing enemy assets from breaking through to a position where they can launch an attack. Cover may also be provided by aircraft attacking raiders as they move to and from the key sea lanes. Distant and close escort: naval forces can provide escort to vulnerable vessels by either positioning themselves in the vicinity of concentrations of merchant shipping (distant escort) or by accompanying selected ships (close escort). In doing so they offer direct defence and also deterrence against any attacks. Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS): NCAGS is designed to provide advice and information to merchant ships and to establish liaison between them and naval forces in order to reduce their vulnerability to particular threats. Organisations responsible for NCAGS, such as the NATO Shipping Centre, may also be responsible for organising convoys and escort through conflict zones. Convoying: gathering ships together into convoys is a well-established method of securing their protection, albeit one that is disruptive to trade. Convoys were employed widely in the age of sail to protect against attacks by enemy raiders, and provided a vital means of countering submarine attacks in both world wars. Despite this their value has been the cause of much debate and controversy (see below). Hunting groups and patrolled zones: sometimes navies have attempted to reduce the threat posed to shipping by conducting offensive patrols in areas where attacks might be expected. Their record of success is, at best, equivocal. Attack at source: enemy raiders can be attacked in their home base or the base itself may be attacked and seized.

Protection of shipping may occur during war time, it may be necessary in the buildup to war (to protect against a pre-emptive attack) or in the grey areas between war and peace. For example, in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, neutral shipping heading to Republican ports was subjected to attack by unidentified submarines. The submarines were in fact Italian, but this was never recognised officially. As a result, an international conference, held at Nyon in Switzerland, agreed that international patrols should be undertaken to counter the submarine threat and that submarines responsible for attacks should be sunk. The agreement was then extended to also include surface ships and aircraft. The British and French navies took primary responsibility for enforcing the agreement in the western Mediterranean and the submarine attacks stopped (although air attacks did not).16 The provision by the US Navy of convoy escorts to Atlantic-bound merchant vessels out as far as longitude 26 degrees west (around 50 nm short of Iceland) in 1941, despite US neutrality at this time, provides another example of the protection of shipping in the grey area between war and peace. A more recent example is provided by US Navy’s protection of merchant shipping during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) (see Box 7.5).

Exploiting sea control 143

BOX 7.5  THE TANKER WAR, 1980–88 During the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq war, Iran used the superiority of its navy and helpful geography to impose a conventional blockade of Iraqi shipping. In addition, both parties launched attacks on neutral shipping, particularly targeting oil tankers. The Iraqis initiated the campaign and were responsible for the large majority of attacks, using missile armed aircraft and helicopters to target oil refineries and shipping heading to Iran. Their objective appears to have been to exert leverage over Iran by threatening the flow of oil exports and also to provoke an Iranian response which might prompt foreign intervention in a war that was not going Iraq’s way. Iran was initially restrained in its response but retaliated to an increase in attacks from 1984 with widespread attacks of their own, using conventional forces and also Revolutionary Guards operating small fast speed boats armed with machine guns, rockets and RPGs, to attack shipping heading to Kuwait (which provided Iraq with its only access to the sea). Iran was also responsible for laying mines within the Gulf, posing a critical threat to shipping within the region. Despite the prevalence of Iraqi attacks on Iran it was the Iranian threat to ships heading to Kuwait that prompted international intervention. In 1987 the Soviet Union chartered tankers to carry oil to and from Kuwait and deployed naval forces to protect them. Britain and France also deployed escorts to the region to protect their shipping, and, with a number of other European navies, also sent mine countermeasure vessels. The US Navy provided the largest force, undertaking Operation Earnest Will to protect US shipping (and the numerous Kuwaiti vessels that switched to the US flag). As a result, US escorts accompanied convoys of entitled merchant ships to provide close protection while distant cover was provided by aircraft carriers and other ships outside the Strait of Hormuz. Mines were a major threat and one that proved difficult to counter. Considerable efforts were taken to disrupt Iranian mine laying, including an attack that resulted in the capture and destruction of the Iranian mine layer Iran Ijr. US forces were far from passive, launching offensive operations in retaliation for Iranian attacks (including operations Nimble Archer (October 1987) and Praying Mantis (April 1988)). The operation was accompanied by a number of high profile incidents involving US warships, including the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark, which resulted in 37 deaths, the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts and the accidental shooting down of a civilian airliner by USS Vincennes. By the end of the conflict around 60 Western warships and 29 Soviet ones had been deployed to the region (rather vindicating the Iraqis’ original aim of using such attacks to internationalise the conflict). Neither side was successful in its attempt to seriously disrupt the flow of oil from their rival. Navias and Hooton suggest that a total of 411 merchant ships were hit in one way or another during the tanker war, and that a quarter of these were destroyed. While these figures appear large, on average they amount to only around one per cent of the 800 to 1,000 ships that entered the Gulf each month.17

144 Contemporary practice Direct defence or distant cover? In practice there has often been a tension between the requirements for direct defence, such as convoy escorts, and the distant cover provided by sea control forces. Mahan suggested that the neutralisation of the enemy battle fleet was a necessary precursor to the effective protection of maritime communications by providing cover for flotilla defence and limiting the egress of raiders through the establishment of a blockade. The implication tended to be that the first priority was sea control, and that forces required for direct defence would occupy a lower priority. In reality things are rarely this simple. The tension between the two priorities became particularly acute in the twentieth century when submarines and aircraft provided additional means of evading a blockade and attacking maritime communications. Thus, in the First World War the British had to balance the need to provide destroyers to operate with the Grand Fleet (distant cover) and to provide escort for convoys (direct defence) and also antisubmarine patrols. It was not an easy balance to achieve. The problem with ‘sea lanes’ and ‘sea lines’

It is common practice for people to refer to the existence of ‘sea lanes’ and navies have often talked of the need to protect Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs). In reality, of course, there are no ‘lanes’ or ‘lines’ at sea and use of these terms can be misleading. Geoffrey Till has described the idea of sea lanes as a ‘pernicious notion’ and blamed Sir John Colomb for introducing it through his nineteenth century analysis of British Imperial defence (which had a particular focus on the defence of maritime communications).18 The problem is that reference to lines and lanes has the unfortunate effect of suggesting that such things actually exist at sea, and they do not. Ships may usually travel in ways made predictable because they offer the safest, fastest or most economical route between two points, but lines and lanes are notional concepts not physical constructs, and you cannot attack or protect a notional concept. There is no point in trying to defend an empty piece of ocean and dropping bombs on a ‘sea lane’ will probably do no more than disturb the fish. The things that can be protected and attacked are the ships using the sea and thus the defence of maritime communications means the defence of shipping, not of any notional lanes or lines. The value of convoy?

Convoy has a long record of success in providing protection of shipping that dates back to the age of sail. Perhaps counter-intuitively, gathering ships into a large convoy actually makes them harder to find as, by concentrating them within a given area, the rest of the sea is emptied of ships. Ships gathered together under naval guidance can exploit the latest intelligence and be routed away from danger zones, and they can be provided with escorts to protect them against enemy attack. Unfortunately, convoys have some disadvantages. They represent a very inefficient way of moving goods, imposing delays on embarkation (where the ships must wait while the convoy gathers), at sea (where they sail at the speed of the slowest ship) and on arrival (where they can swamp the reception facilities at a port). Some ships can find it difficult to maintain station, or may be reluctant to take orders from their naval escort. Their protection requires assets that may be needed elsewhere and that navies have sometimes been reluctant to spare. There is also the fear that, by gathering vessels together, there is the danger that they can be overwhelmed and destroyed on mass by an enemy raider.

Exploiting sea control 145 In reality, gathering vessels in a convoy makes them harder to attack. A surface raider can be deterred or driven off by provision of sufficient escorts. Even a weak escort might be able to buy sufficient time for a convoy to scatter, frustrating the raider’s attempt to catch all of the eggs in one basket. Escorts might not detect the covert approach of a submarine, but once a ship is attacked, the presence of a raider is revealed and escorts can move against it, providing the rest of the convoy with the chance to escape while the submarine evades attack. Gathering ships together in a convoy also offers the potential for effective air defence through the guns and missiles of the escorts and organic aircraft. The biggest problems occur when a raider is able to use surface, submarine and air assets synergistically, as in the German assault on convoy PQ17 in July 1942. That convoy, which was en route from the UK to Murmansk, was forced to scatter to reduce its vulnerability to a sortie by German surface ships based in Norway. Once it scattered it was impossible to protect from submarine and air attack and 24 of its 35 merchant ships were sunk. Sunk with those ships was their cargo which included 3,350 vehicles, 430 tanks and 210 aircraft, losses equivalent to those of a significant battle on land.19 The erroneous assumption that convoys are a defensive duty, and that scarce assets would be better employed on offensive missions to hunt out the enemy, may seduce navies into a preference for hunting groups and offensive patrols, or attempts to protect sea lanes and focal points rather than the ships themselves. The British attempted all of these approaches in the First World War with no notable success, and these were tried again in the early years of the Second with similar results. Most surprisingly, and despite the clear evidence from the British experience, the US Navy retained their faith in such ‘offensive’ approaches until well into 1942, providing German U-Boat commanders with a ‘happy time’ off the US Atlantic coast and contributing to the loss of a million tons of Allied shipping in just six months. The experience in both wars demonstrated that convoy escorts offered the best means of protecting ships, and also the best way for surface ships to sink submarines, which were easiest to find in the vicinity of their prey. Of course, it is important to remember that the U-boats were not defeated by convoys alone, and that convoys were but one element in an incredibly complex and sophisticated effort to counter this threat (see Chapter 5). The debate on the value of convoys re-emerged in the Cold War. The large number of Soviet submarines that might attack NATO maritime communications, and the limited number of ships available for escort duties raised questions about the ability to protect any convoys. On the other hand, the increasing speed of merchant ships suggested that convoys would be faster, would spend less time in any danger zone and would be harder for conventional submarines to catch. Improvements in the range and accuracy of anti-submarine sensors and weapons suggested that the predators would not have everything their own way. The requirement of Soviet forces to pass through a number of choke points in order to reach Atlantic waters implied a new value in focusing on offensive patrols in focal points such as the Greenland-Iceland-UK-Gap, and old debates about the relative merits of patrol or convoy were revisited. Discussion about the employment of convoy in any third world war had an element of unreality given the prevailing assumption that any such war would involve the early and widespread use of nuclear weapons. It was likely to be over before any Atlantic guerre de course would have time to be effective.20 On the other hand, NATO was (and is) an alliance held together by maritime communications and to be credible it must retain some capacity to utilise those communications in war.

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Conclusion Sea lift, blockade/embargo and the protection of shipping all represent important ways in which a navy can exploit sea control. It is apparent that the relative emphasis placed on these has varied according to circumstance and to fashion. It is unfortunate that the tendency of many navies to focus first and foremost on the challenge of sea control has sometimes caused them to think too little about such tasks. Today sea lift is routinely employed in support of joint operations, and many navies have experience of embargoes and sanctions enforcement. It may no longer be the case that blockade represents a navy’s ‘highest power’ for injuring an enemy, but experience in Yemen since 2015 appears to demonstrate how impactful it can be, and also how controversial. Interest in the protection of shipping appears to have waned somewhat, except with reference to counter-piracy operations. Indeed, it is worth noting that attempts to protect merchant shipping from pirates operating from Somalia has seen the adoption of most of the traditional approaches (cover, close and distant escort, NCAGS, convoy, patrolled zones, attack at source) employed in some form or another at various times. The protection of shipping as a naval responsibility has thus not gone away. Indeed, recent Chinese interest in the protection of their maritime communications suggests that it is an issue that may be of growing importance in years to come. Equally, Chinese pursuit of what one analyst has called ‘maritime escape routes’, land communications designed to offset reliance on sea transport, may reflect an appreciation that in times of conflict they may not be safe from the impact of maritime blockade or embargo.21

Key points • • • •

Sea control can be exploited at sea through the use of military sea lift, the imposition of blockades and embargoes, the conduct of maritime interdiction operations and the protection of shipping. Historically navies have had a tendency not to want to focus on these tasks, or to accord them a lower priority than the battle for sea control. Despite this, these roles have often been important and sometimes they have been absolutely vital to the achievement of victory (or the avoidance of defeat). The best way to protect shipping has been the source of some controversy, with navies often showing a marked reluctance to accept the value of convoys.

Notes 1 Strategic Air and Sea Lift for Canadian Forces. A Paper by the Royal United Services Institute of Nova Scotia (April 2003). Available at www.rusi.ca/_STRATEGIC%20AIR%20AND%20 SEA%20LIFT.pdf [Accessed 22 July 2013]. 2 Morten Berard-Anderson, Strategic Sea-Lift in Europe and the Future of the Ro-Ro Market, MSc Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2005/6. 3 David Brown, The Royal Navy and the Falklands War (London: Arrow Books, 1989), appendix III. Also see Sir Lawrence Freedman, The Official History of the Falklands Campaign, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2005). 4 See Military Sea Lift Command webpage, http://www.msc.navy.mil/ [01 August 2017]. 5 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 185. 6 Sergei Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979), 221. Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, Maritime Strategy. A Study of British Defence Problems (London: Cassell, 1965) especially pages 186–187.

Exploiting sea control 147 7 For a discussion of this see Andrew Lambert, ‘Great Britain and Maritime Law from the Declaration of Paris to the Era of Total War’, in R. Hobson and T. Kristiansen (eds), Navies and Northern Waters 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 11–38. 8 Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War. An Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chapter 5. Also see Eric W. Osborne, Britain’s Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914–19 (London: Frank Cass, 2004). 9 For an examination of the submarine campaign see Clay Blair, Silent Victory. The US Submarine War Against Japan (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001). 10 UN Human Rights. Office of the High Commissioner, ‘Lift Blockade of Yemen to Stop “Catastrophe” of Millions Facing Starvation, Says UN Expert’. Available at www.ohchr.org/EN/ NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21496&LangID=E [Accessed 20 Aug 2017]. Also see, BBC News Online, ‘Witness Yemen’s Desperate Suffering ‘ (23 August 2017). Available at www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-41000237 [Accessed 23 August 2017]. 11 UN Security Council Resolution 661, available at www.un.org/docs/scres/1990/scres90.htm [Accessed September 2013]. 12 NATO, Allied Joint Maritime Operations, Allied Joint Publication (AJP) 3.1 (April 2004), 1–12. 13 United Nations, Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Enquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident, Sept 2011. Also see Leiutenant Commander James Farrant, ‘The Gaza Flotilla Incident and the Modern Law of Blockade’, US Naval War College Review, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Summer 2013), 81–98. 14 See Geoffrey Till, ‘Quarantine Operations: The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol’, in Ian Speller (ed.), The Royal Navy and Maritime Power in the Twentieth Century (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 129–147. Also see Ninian Stewart (ed.), The Royal Navy and the Palestine Patrol (Naval Staff Histories) (London: Frank Cass, 2002). 15 For example, see Australian Maritime Operations (2017) chapter 10 ‘Exploiting Sea Control: Maritime Trade Protection’. 16 Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars. The Period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930–1939, Vol. 2 (London: Collins, 1976), chapter 12. 17 Martin S. Navias and E.R. Hooton, Tanker Wars. The Assault on Merchant Shipping During the Iran Iraq Conflict, 1980–1988 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996). 18 Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982). 156. 19 Stephen Roskill, The War at Sea 1939–1945. The Period of Balance, Vol. II (London: HMSO, 1956), 143. 20 For different perspectives on these issues, both written in the 1960s, see Martin, The Sea in Modern Strategy and Gretton, Maritime Strategy. 21 Chris Parry, Super Highway. Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Eliot and Thompson, 2014), 268.

Further reading Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War. An Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). This book examines the economic impact of a number of blockades and compares the effect of traditional blockade to commerce raiding. Bruce Allen Elleman and Sarah C.M. Paine (eds), Naval Blockades and Seapower. Strategies and Counter-Strategies, 1805–2005 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006). This book focuses on a range of interesting case studies of different types of blockade over two centuries. Greg Kennedy (ed.), The Merchant Marine in International Affairs, 1850–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 2000). This edited collection includes a number of papers that examine the importance of sea lift and shipping capacity in the nineteenth century and through two world wars in the twentieth. Malcolm Llewellyn Jones, The Royal Navy and Anti-Submarine Warfare 1917–1949 (London: Frank Cass, 2006). This book provides a detailed examination of the anti-submarine campaigns in two world wars, with a focus on the two Battles of the Atlantic and the impact of thinking in the early Cold War.

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Marc Milner, The Battle of the Atlantic (Stroud: The History Press, 2003). Milner provides an engaging overview of the Battle of the Atlantic (1939–45) as a whole, offering a useful single volume examination of the best-known cases study for the attack on/defence of trade. Martin S. Navias and E.R. Hooton, Tanker Wars. The Assault on Merchant Shipping During the Iran Iraq Conflict, 1980–1988 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996). Navias and Hooton provide a detailed examination of the attack on and defence of merchant shipping during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). Lee Alan Zatarain, Tanker War. America’s First Conflict with Iran 1987–88 (Havertown, PA: Casemate Books, 2008). The book focuses on the Tanker War from a US perspective, covering events from the Iraqi attack on USS Stark until the end of the conflict.

Useful websites • The website of the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command is full of useful information about that organisation, and on the value of military sea lift, http://www.msc.navy.mil/. The Command also has an official blog, http://mscsealift.dodlive.mil/. • The website of the NATO Shipping Centre offers much useful information on that Centre’s interaction with the maritime community and on the protection of merchant shipping, and also NCAGS, www.shipping.nato.int/nsc.aspx. • The Center for Strategic and international Studies website includes a version of Anthony H. Cordesman’s, Lessons of Modern War, Vol II. The Iran-Iraq War, which includes an examination of the Tanker War, http://csis.org/.

8

Combat operations from the sea

In common with blockade, embargo operations and military sea lift (discussed in Chapter 7) combat operations from the sea provide an important means by which navies can exploit sea control to directly influence events on land. The analysis focuses particularly on maritime power projection and on two key means of projecting force ashore: naval strikes and amphibious operations. The chapter then examines recent trends, with a particular focus on the conduct of expeditionary operations at a time when access may be challenged in many ways. It should be noted that military sea lift, discussed in the previous chapter, may play an important role in support of power projection operations by providing a land force with a capacity for maritime manoeuvre, which in its most basic sense involves the purposeful movement of combat power using the maritime environment.1 Some navies have suggested the existence of an additional type of combat operation from the sea, that of ‘support for operations on land and in the air’.2 It is certainly true that navies can support joint forces and joint operations ashore in a variety of ways that extend beyond power projection and maritime manoeuvre. These might include participation in an offensive or defensive air campaign or the provision of air defence (including protection from cruise and ballistic missile attack) for forces ashore. Ships might undertake electronic warfare, conduct intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) or provide command and control for landbased forces. Equally, of course, they may be needed to stop an opponent from doing all of this to a friendly force. As Charles Callwell pointed out over a century ago, it is difficult for an army to be secure ashore if it is flanked by a sea controlled by a hostile navy.3 However, most of these activities have been discussed or will be discussed under different headings in this and other chapters. For this reason, they will not be addressed separately here. It is important to remember that most of the operations discussed in this chapter require some degree of sea control in order to be successful. In some cases, such as a hit and run raid, only episodic sea control may be necessary. Indeed, it may be possible to complete some activities, such as the covert insertion of special operations forces from a submarine, without achieving sea control except in the most limited sense. However, most large and medium sized operations do require a robust and persistent degree of control. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. There have been occasional successes without much control, such as the German landings by air and sea in Norway in 1940. In this case, however, success came at a considerable cost to the German Navy and was enabled by some notable Allied mistakes. Similarly, the British succeeded in their operation to retake the Falkland/Malvinas Islands from Argentina in 1982, despite

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never fully neutralising the threat posed to their ships by the Argentine Air Force. They were able to maintain just enough control to complete the operation but in the process they lost four destroyers/frigates, one logistic landing ship, and a landing craft utility, all to enemy air attack. The losses in both cases are instructive.

Maritime power projection The maritime environment has offered an avenue for attack for as long as humans have been able to travel at sea, making proximity to the shore a source of vulnerability for those unable to control the sea, and providing an opportunity to those that can. Perhaps surprisingly, many writers of traditional maritime strategy focused less on this than on what they (and most navies) saw as the core business of fleet versus fleet action. Corbett, did emphasise the importance of power projection as a key offensive tool of maritime power and he also recognised the potential for power projection operations to be used in support of sea control. His contemporary, Charles Callwell, wrote two very perceptive books examining the interaction of maritime command and military operations, but neither appears to have had much impact on policy in his own day (see Chapter 2).4 The importance of power projection was harder to ignore after the Second World War given the key role that such operations played in Allied victory. Post-war commentators, including Stansfield Turner and Sergei Gorshkov, echoed Corbett in identifying this as an important role for the fleet. In fact, if anything, Gorshkov placed an even greater emphasis on the importance of combat operations against the shore, reminding his readers that there were 600 amphibious operations (of varying sizes) during the Second World War, averaging one every three days. He estimated that 18,000 ships had been involved in such operations, the vast majority of which were successful.5 Maritime power projection can be defined as the ability to project power from the sea in order to influence the behaviour of people and the course of events.6 To achieve this navies exploit sea control and the capacity for maritime manoeuvre in order to threaten or project force ashore. It is not the only means by which navies can generate power or influence on land, but it is one of the most direct. The reasons why one might wish to engage in maritime power projection vary according to circumstances. In a very broad sense one can characterise them as follows: •

•

To create a political effect ashore: this may be to coerce or deter a rival or to support an ally. In this respect the dividing line between power projection and naval diplomacy is porous, with considerable overlap between the two. An example of power projection for political effect was provided in 1998 when US warships and submarines fired 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles against suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in East Africa. To create an economic effect ashore: naval strikes may aim to destroy targets of economic value and amphibious operations may be designed to seize them. This was reflected in the many raids and expeditionary operations of European powers in the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fighting for control of the rich ‘sugar islands’. The British strikes by carrier-based aircraft against Japanese oil production facilities at Palembang in Sumatra in 1945 provide a twentieth century example of power projection used for economic warfare.

Combat operations from the sea •

•

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To create a military effect ashore: these might include strikes against military targets, the projection of forces ashore either in support of an existing campaign or to open a new front, and also a range of other activities that include air defence, electronic warfare, and ISTAR. They might be designed to seize and hold a position, to conquer or to liberate. These activities are discussed in more detail in the pages that follow. To create a military effect at sea, through operations ashore: operations ashore may be designed to facilitate sea control by destroying key equipment or infrastructure, sinking ships or capturing some important position. Francis Drake’s raid on Cadiz in 1587 provides an example of this. They can also provide a way to force an enemy to fight by threatening something that they feel they must protect. For example, the planned Japanese amphibious assault on Midway Island in 1942 was designed to draw out the US Navy so that it could be engaged and defeated in decisive battle. The US Pacific Fleet was indeed drawn out and engaged, but not with the results that the Japanese had anticipated.

Broadly speaking, it is possible to divide the means of projecting force ashore into two categories, naval strikes and amphibious operations. These are discussed in detail below. In addition, the ability to sustain forces ashore (whether landed from the sea or otherwise) represents an important way in which maritime forces can support the projection of power, as discussed in the previous chapter.

Naval strikes A naval strike is an attack by naval forces designed to damage or destroy an objective or a capability. Traditional thinking about such strikes tends to focus on kinetic (i.e. destructive) effect created through the use of naval gunfire, naval aviation, and ballistic or cruise missile attacks. However, one could also argue that some amphibious raids fit into this category as do non-kinetic and ‘soft-kill’ strikes using electronic warfare (EW) or cyber-attacks. Naval strikes can be employed for tactical, operational, and even strategic effect, depending on circumstances. In the past the range of naval strikes was limited. An eighteenth-century cannon might conceivably fire out to three miles, but would not have been expected to be very accurate at that distance. Amphibious raids were, almost by definition, confined to coastal regions. By the mid-twentieth century the heavy guns of a battleship might reach up to around 24 miles (39 km), and could be fairly accurate if directed by forward observers ashore or by spotting aircraft. Nevertheless, this did limit their impact to a narrow coastal band (particularly if one notes that the ships themselves might be some miles offshore). The introduction of aircraft at sea during the First World War increased the potential strike radius of a naval force dramatically and by the 1940s aircraft carriers had become important tools for the conduct of naval strikes, amongst other things. The introduction of helicopters at sea, pioneered in the US in the 1950s, added another dimension, increasing the range at which amphibious raids might be conducted and, from the 1960s, providing the opportunity to use attack helicopters in a strike role. The introduction of guided missiles further increased the range at which navies could strike and, in the guise of nuclear armed ballistic missiles, gave some navies a truly awesome strike potential. More recently, the ability to use the various advanced systems and sensors of the fleet for electronic warfare and other ‘soft-kill’ activities further

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enhances the ability of a navy to influence events ashore through strikes, of one sort or another. These issues are addressed in more detail below. Naval gunfire

While maritime strike operations did occur in ancient times, the limited range and impact of what one could fire from a ship tended to restrict the scope of such activities to raids. The invention of gunpowder, and its employment at sea, changed things dramatically. The Battle of Pinkie in 1547 provided an early example of what naval gunfire could achieve in support of forces ashore. In that battle the left wing of the Scottish army, close to the banks of the Firth of Forth, came under the cannon fire of English ships and was thrown into disorder, contributing to an English victory and to a fairly abject defeat for the Scots. In subsequent years numerous armies have had cause to regret finding themselves within range of the guns of an enemy fleet not least the Germans who, at Salerno in 1943 and Normandy in 1944, bemoaned the difficulty of conducting mobile operations within this range. Of course, artillery can be used to destroy static targets as well as to fire on armies and from the sixteenth century the use of naval gunfire to bombard installations ashore became common, bringing a new vulnerability to coastal settlements. By the twentieth century the increased size and range of naval artillery promised to enhance significantly the capacity for strikes against the shore. Unfortunately, guns and ammunition optimised for operations against other ships were not as effective as had been anticipated when used against shore targets, and such use required practise and procedures that navies tended to overlook in their eagerness to focus primarily on sinking other ships. The disappointing results of the Anglo-French bombardment of the Turkish defences at the Dardanelles in 1915 illustrated such limitations. Nevertheless, naval gunfire continued to offer useful strike options, particularly in amphibious operations or in situations where the ground force lacks sufficient artillery ashore. Thus, British ships used their guns to support ground forces during the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict and, with Australian ships, provided gunfire support to coalition forces in the Al Faw Peninsula (Iraq) in 2003. During the 2011 campaign in Libya the destroyer HMS Liverpool fired over 200 rounds from its 4.5-inch gun, accurately engaging and destroying targets ashore including rocket batteries, artillery and government vehicles.7 Carrier aviation

The introduction of sea-based aircraft in the First World War promised navies a means of significantly extending their reach. Developments were pioneered by the British Royal Navy, which launched seaplane strikes against German Zeppelin sheds at Cuxhaven as early as December 1914, and in July 1918 attacked sheds at Tondern using conventional aircraft launched from the converted cruiser HMS Furious. After a variety of experiments in launching aircraft at sea they eventually developed the concept of the through-deck aircraft carrier and the first such ship, HMS Argus, commissioned in September 1918. It is an indication of their strike potential that even at this early stage the British were planning a carrier attack on the German fleet in harbour in 1919, although the war ended before it could be carried out. In the inter-war period RAF control of naval aviation had a deleterious effect on British development until the Fleet Air Arm was handed back to the navy in 1937.

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More useful progress was made in the US and Japan, and in the Pacific Campaign from 1941–45 it was the aircraft carrier that was to become the critical asset both for sea control and also power projection. Nevertheless, and even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had demonstrated the true strike potential of carrier aviation, the British had launched a similar (but much smaller) strike against the Italian Fleet at Taranto in November 1940 (see Box 8.1). Operations during the Second World War demonstrated the importance of the aircraft carrier in terms of air defence, anti-submarine operations and also for strikes against targets at sea and ashore. They sank ships in harbour, destroyed aircraft on the ground and damaged base facilities, such as the Japanese at Pearl Harbor (1941) and the Americans at Truk (1944). They provided critical air support during the amphibious operations conducted by both sides, and they could be used to strike industry and infrastructure targets, such as the British at Palembang in Japanese occupied Sumatra (1945). The combination of a mobile airfield and aircraft, with integral support and

BOX 8.1  BATTLES OF TARANTO AND PEARL HARBOR Taranto (1940). On the night of 11–12 November, 21 obsolescent Swordfish biplanes from HMS Illustrious launched an attack on the Italian fleet based at Taranto. Achieving complete surprise, and costing the loss of only two aircraft, they succeeded in sinking one battleship and badly damaging two more. In one swoop, half of the Regia Marina’s capital ships had been neutralised. As a result the Italian fleet redeployed to Naples, a base less suited to operations in the central and eastern Mediterranean. The operation contributed to a growing caution on the part of the Italians to use their heavy ships. Pearl Harbor (1941). The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 7 December 1941 did to the US Navy what the British had done to the Italians, only on a much larger scale. It may be significant that the Japanese assistant naval attaché to Berlin flew to Taranto to view the aftermath of that attack. Like the British the Japanese had already been investigating the possibility of conducting bomb and torpedo attacks against a fleet in harbour and had developed a series of solutions to the problems of dropping torpedoes from aircraft into shallow water. Exploiting the element of surprise, and due to a woeful lack of preparation on the part of their unsuspecting enemy, six Japanese aircraft carriers launched over 300 aircraft in two waves, attacking ships, aircraft and base facilities. Attempts to attack the harbour with midget submarines failed. Within 90 minutes the air attack was over. With a cost of only 29 aircraft lost, the Japanese destroyed 188 US aircraft and damaged 159 more. Eighteen ships were sunk or run aground, including five battleships. In tactical terms this was a brilliant success, although the failure to launch a third wave and to destroy fuel storage and repair facilities, appears to have been a serious mistake. Strategically, of course, the strike was a disaster as it launched Japan into a war that it could not win against a far more powerful opponent.

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effective command and control, continued to be a potent mix for strike operations post1945. The Americans and British, in particular, made effective use of carriers in a range of limited crises and wars where often the choice was between carrier aircraft or no aircraft. Large aircraft carriers such as those currently deployed by the US Navy represent supremely capable platforms across the spectrum of warfare, with particular utility for strike operations and wider power projection (see Box 8.2). Other navies that might struggle to afford ships (and air groups) as big and expensive as a 100,000-ton Fordclass super-carrier, have still managed to deploy useful force packages on smaller vessels. Some, such as the 42,000 ton French Charles de Gaulle, launch their aircraft conventionally while others, including the new 70,000 ton British Queen Elizabeth class, are designed to deploy short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft like the F-35B Lightning. STOVL has the advantage of removing the need for costly catapult equipment (to launch the aircraft) and, by reducing the requirement for a very long deck for aircraft recovery, it allows smaller ships (such as the Spanish Navy’s 26,000 ton Juan Carlos I) to operate fixed wing aircraft at sea. Currently the navies of Britain, China, France, India, Italy, Russia, Spain and the US all deploy fixed-wing aircraft carriers of one sort or another. Thailand possesses a light aircraft carrier but has no STOVL aircraft able to operate from it. Many other navies possess vessels capable of deploying large numbers of helicopters at sea, and these are an asset of value for both strike and amphibious operations. Such vessels are often also suitable for STOVL aircraft, as is the case with the large American Waspclass LHDs. That sea-based attack helicopters can provide valuable strike options was demonstrated in 2011 during the NATO operation in Libya when both France and Britain employed attack helicopters to good effect from the amphibious ships Tonnerre and Ocean.8 Aircraft carriers have a symbolic value that extends beyond their practical utility, rather akin to that of dreadnought battleships a century earlier. Possession of an aircraft carrier is still seen as an important indicator of national strength and ambition. The furore associated with the commissioning in 2012 of the Chinese Navy’s first conventional aircraft carrier and with the launch in 2017 of the first Chinese built

BOX 8.2  THE US NAVY EXPLAINS THE VALUE OF ITS CARRIER STRIKE GROUPS ‘The U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs), in combination with their embarked air wings and strike group warships, provide the proper balance between forward presence and surge capability to conduct warfighting and peacetime operations around the globe in support of national priorities. Sailing the world’s oceans, each carrier strike group is a versatile, lethal, and independent striking force capable of engaging targets at sea or hundreds of miles inland. The unique mobility and independence of aircraft carriers provide unmatched global access that requires no host-nation support.’ US Navy Programme Guide, 2017, 2

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carrier is indicative of the power that such ships have on the collective imagination. For such reasons, perhaps, the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force has chosen to describe its 18,000 ton Hyúga class ships and the 27,000 ton Izumo Class as ‘helicopterdestroyers’ rather than the light aircraft carriers that they resemble. Possession of an aircraft carrier says important things about a state’s ability and desire to project power. Most states want people to notice this, some do not. Missiles

The introduction of land attack missiles in warships extends their capacity for strike attacks still further. The nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) currently operated by China, Britain, France, India, Russia, and the US represent the most potent strike weapons on the planet. In addition it seems likely that Israel has deployed nucleararmed cruise missiles at sea in their Dolphin-class conventional submarines. Fortunately no one has chosen to use nuclear weapons since 1945 and, to date, these weapons have been valued as deterrents and tend not to be viewed as options available for actual employment under normal circumstances. This makes them powerful, but not very useable in a practical sense. None the less, the possession of nuclear weapons is considered vital to the security of a number of states and of these all have either chosen to deploy a portion of their nuclear forces in submarines or (in the case of Pakistan and North Korea) are trying to develop the capability to do so. The near invulnerability to a pre-emptive strike of a properly constituted submarine-based force makes it the ideal platform for a national deterrent. Perhaps more relevant to this discussion are conventional sea launched land attack missiles such as the US built Tomahawk or the Russian Kalibr (3M-54) cruise-missiles. Such missiles, able to strike a target hundreds of miles from the launch platform, have dramatically increased the range at which naval strike operations can occur. Launched from either ship or submarine they can be employed in a wide range of circumstances and are especially useful in the early stages of a campaign, where they can penetrate air defences without placing a human pilot in danger. The US Navy and (on a much smaller scale) the British Royal Navy have fired Tomahawk missiles on numerous occasions since their operational debut during the 1991 Gulf War, including during recent operations in Libya and Syria. Similarly, Russia has fired submarine and ship launched cruise missiles against targets in Syria on numerous occasions since it began active military involvement in support of the Syrian government in 2015. Anti-ship cruise missiles have been around since the late 1950s and clearly have great potential in strike operations against naval forces in harbour. This was illustrated in December 1971 when the Indian Navy successfully attacked the Pakistan Navy in harbour at Karachi. The first attack, Operation Trident, was launched on the night of 4 December. Three short-ranged Vidyut class missile boats were towed by their escorts to the target area and, firing their Soviet built Styx missiles, sank a destroyer, a minesweeper and a transport ship, damaged two more destroyers and also hit fuel storage tanks ashore. Four days later, on 8 December, a follow-up attack was conducted by the missile boat INS Vinash accompanied by two frigates. Vinash fired its four missiles, one hit a Pakistani navy tanker while another hit fuel tanks ashore. Unfortunately, the other two hit and sank civilian ships, one registered in Panama and the other in Britain. In the missile age a fleet in harbour is not as safe as it once was.9

156 Contemporary practice Marines and naval special forces The US Navy argues that raids conducted by marines and naval special forces can also be considered to be strike operations and this does make sense where such activities are designed to destroy an objective or capability. Thus, British raids on Zeebrugge in 1917 or St. Nazaire and Bordeaux in 1942 were strike operations, as was the attack by Italian navy divers on the British fleet at Alexandria in December 1941 (see Box 8.3). Post-war British commando raids against North Korean targets in 1950, US raiding operations in Vietnam in the 1960s, and the Israeli commando raid against an Egyptian early warning radar station on Green Island in 1969, all fall into a similar category. The preparation to conduct such strikes remains an important part of the training of special operations forces (SOF) such as the US Navy SEALs and marines and naval infantry more generally.10 Electronic warfare and cyber-attack

One could also argue that navies can conduct a very different form of strike through their ability to attack an enemy using electronic warfare (EW) capabilities to jam communications, degrade sensors, and to subvert or suppress a variety of other systems. This could be employed as an enabler for other forces in the context of a joint campaign or might represent an objective in itself. The ability of a navy to provide an appropriate and moveable platform for a sophisticated range of EW capabilities may make them particularly useful in this respect and their associated capacity for ISTAR is valuable in a range of contexts. Similarly, naval forces might also be able to contribute to a computer network attack, employing cyber capabilities to create a ‘soft-kill’ that might be every bit as effective as a more traditional kinetic effect. The importance of this capability is reflected in the contemporary US idea of ‘electronic maneuver warfare’ (see Chapter 10).

BOX 8.3  THE RAID ON ALEXANDRIA, 1941 On the night of 19 December 1941 six Italian navy divers from the Decima Flottiglia MAS (10th Assault Vehicle Flotilla) were transported to the mouth of Alexandria harbour in the submarine Sciré. At this point they transferred to manned torpedoes which they used to enter the harbour covertly in order to place mines against the hulls of British warships. The operation was a huge success, disabling the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant and damaging a destroyer and a tanker. The divers were all captured but had, through their courage and ingenuity, neutralised a key element of the British Mediterranean fleet. It was many months before the battleships were operational again and, for a period, the British Royal Navy was unable to assert sea control in the eastern Mediterranean. The operation was conducted in a very different manner to the air strikes on Taranto (1940) and Pearl Harbor (1941) but the objective was essentially similar and focused on destroying enemy warships in the context of the battle for sea control.

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Amphibious operations An amphibious operation is an operation launched from the sea by a naval or landing force embarked in ships or craft and designed to put the landing force ashore tactically into an environment that can range from permissive to hostile. In a general sense there are four main types of amphibious operations: assaults, raids, demonstrations and withdrawals. In addition to these, US joint doctrine identifies a fifth category ‘amphibious support to crisis response and other operations’. These are all addressed in more detail below.11 Amphibious assaults

An assault involves the establishment of a force on a hostile or potentially hostile shore. A critical requirement is the ability to build up combat power ashore rapidly from the initial zero capacity to a level that is sufficient to defeat any counter-attack and to achieve the landing force’s objectives. When most people think of amphibious assaults it tends to be of dramatic opposed landings such as those conducted at Aboukir Bay (1801), Gallipoli (1915) or Tarawa (1943) or of the desperate first hours on Omaha Beach in Normandy (1944), as portrayed in the 1998 movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’. In reality, most amphibious assaults put the landing force ashore against a much lower level of opposition, avoiding enemy concentrations when possible. This reflects a notable strength, namely the ability to use maritime manoeuvre to pick the time and place of a landing and to choose a spot of enemy weakness. It is only in rather exceptional circumstances, where there are no alternative landing sites on a target of operational significance (as at Tarawa) or where the enemy has devoted vast resources to coastal defence (as in France in 1944) that it may not be possible to land where the enemy is weak. Even then maritime manoeuvre has its advantages. In France in 1944 the Germans did not know where the Allies would land and were thus forced to disperse their forces, around 60 divisions, over a very wide area. The Allies could exploit the manoeuvre potential of the sea to assault, not where they were expected and where the enemy was strongest (around Calais) but rather where enemy defences were significantly weaker (Normandy). Casualties for that operation, the largest and most complex amphibious operation of all time, were remarkably light, although some individual units did suffer disproportionately. Assaults can be used to capture isolated islands, as was the case in the Caribbean in a series of colonial wars from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in the Pacific War from 1941–45 and also the Falklands/Malvinas Conflict of 1982. They can be employed in the ‘theatre-entry’ role, to open up a new operational front, as with the British landings at Aboukir Bay (Egypt) in 1801, the Chilean landings at Curayaco (Peru) in 1880 or the Allied landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France from 1942–44. They can also be used to provide tactical or operational level support for an on-going land campaign. Examples of the former include the landings undertaken by the Irish Army during that country’s Civil War in 1922, the ‘end-runs’ conducted by US forces in an attempt to outflank Axis defences in Sicily in 1943 or the numerous Soviet operations employed to the same effect on the eastern front. Perhaps the best example of an assault with operational effect is provided by the Inchon landings of USMC and South Korean forces in 1950, which, by landing deep in the enemy rear, cutting North Korean lines of communication and retreat, helped to reverse the tide of that war.

158 Contemporary practice Amphibious raids A raid is a type of assault that involves a swift incursion into enemy territory to accomplish a defined objective, followed by a pre-planned withdrawal. Raids tend to be conducted to inflict loss or damage, to obtain information, create a diversion, or to capture or release individuals or equipment. Raids come in all shapes and sizes, from the landing of a handful of special operations forces in a covert operation through to large scale enterprises such as the landing of an entire division and three commando units at Dieppe in August 1942. Raiding an enemy coast is one of the oldest forms of naval warfare and, as has been discussed, can be considered a form of amphibious strike operation. Raids rarely change the entire course of a conflict, but can provide a useful means of harassing an enemy, forcing them to divert resources to the defence of a vulnerable coastline and they can provide a useful means of achieving specific defined objectives. Raids can also offer a useful way to strike an enemy in circumstances where ‘all domain access’ may be open to dispute and, if directed against the enemy capacity to influence events at sea, may provide a useful tool in the battle to secure and maintain such access. Amphibious withdrawals

An amphibious withdrawal involves the extraction of forces by sea from a hostile or potentially hostile shore. It is an unfortunate fact of life that armies are occasionally defeated and may need the navy to extricate them from an unfavourable situation. The British Royal Navy have rescued their colleagues in the Army on numerous occasions, including at Corunna (1809), Gallipoli (1915–16), Dunkirk (1940), Greece (1941) and Crete (1941). The evacuation of the Serb Army from Albania in 1915–16 provides another good example of a withdrawal that rescued a defeated army. In the Second World War the Germans conducted a number of amphibious withdrawals, including successful large scale withdrawals from the Taman Peninsula across the Kerch Straits (1943) and from Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily in 1943, despite the threat of superior Allied naval forces. They also undertook operations in the Baltic, to evacuate civilians and soldiers cut off by the advance of the Red Army in 1944 and 1945, described by Milan Vego as ‘probably the largest evacuation across the sea in history’.12 The safe withdrawal of the UN 10th Corps, which had been driven back to the North Korean port of Hungnam by a Chinese offensive in 1950, provides another classic example of this type of operation. A withdrawal of a different kind occurred in 1975 when US Navy ships offshore were able to evacuate by helicopter American personnel, and many South Vietnamese refugees, seeking to escape the North Vietnamese advance into Saigon. Similarly, in 1995 US ships evacuated 6,200 UN peacekeepers from Somalia, employing landing craft rather than aircraft due to the significant threat posed by ground to air missiles. The ability to use ships to evacuate non-combatants has featured in very many conflicts, including from Lebanon in 2006 and Libya in 2011, when ships (both military and civilian) were employed by many different states to rescue thousands of civilians from conflict areas. The Indian Navy, for example, sent the LPD INS Jalashwa (carrying helicopters and a marine commando detachment) and the destroyer INS Mysore to Libya to help extract Indian nationals from the deteriorating situation ashore. The Chinese Navy deployed the frigate Xuzhou.

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Amphibious demonstration

A demonstration is an operation conducted to deceive the enemy by a show of force, in the hope that it will fool them into an unfavourable course of action. This could take the form of a specific operation, perhaps to draw forces away from one area and towards another in order to support an immediate objective. Thus, in an attempt to divert Turkish forces from the actual landing beaches during the Gallipoli operation of 1915, the Royal Navy Division conducted a demonstration appearing to prepare to disembark to the north at Bulair. Equally, an enemy might be confounded by the demonstrable existence of an amphibious capability, which could be used to land forces somewhere, but where? Corbett tended to emphasise the value that this could have in supporting an ally, by forcing the mutual enemy to divert troops to the defence of their coastline. Similarly, Basil Liddell-Hart argued that the ability of the Western Allies to conduct amphibious operations against German occupied Europe in the Second World War forced the Nazis to devote disproportionate resources to the defence of this coast, easing somewhat the pressure on the Soviet Union in the east.13 Liddell-Hart rather exaggerated the impact that this had, but this does not undermine the general idea that an ability to divert enemy forces can be useful. During the 1991 Gulf War, for example, the apparent ability of the US Navy and US Marines to conduct an amphibious landing on the Kuwaiti coastline, outflanking their defences in the desert, compelled the Iraqis to divert forces to counter this possibility, thereby weakening their positions where the real blow was to occur, further inland. Amphibious support to crisis response and other operations

Amphibious forces are useful in a very wide range of circumstances outside of war. The nature of modern amphibious ships, with large accommodation spaces, well trained personnel, advanced command and control capabilities and the ability to project inland using their own landing craft and helicopters, means that they are well suited to the conduct of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR). Such ships are often employed in the provision of relief, in non-combatant evacuations and also in security cooperation with foreign navies. Amphibious vessels provided a useful platform on which to base the Global Fleet Stations discussed in Chapter 4. It is notable, for example, that the 27,000 ton Canberra-class LHDs built for the Royal Australian Navy were justified, in part, through their ability to play a key role in HA/DR. Similarly, the Brazilian Navy has noted the value of its forces, including the Marine Corps, as tools well suited to the support of ‘soft’ security operations.14 The US Navy and USMC have been keen to emphasise the utility of amphibious forces in such roles, demonstrating their value in the widest possible range of circumstances. Thus, for example, the Navy emphasised that of the 107 amphibious operations conducted by US forces between 1990 and 2010, 78 were considered to fall within the ‘support to other operations’ category.15 Enduring characteristics

Amphibious operations tend to be difficult. They require a force to translate strength in one environment (the sea) into strength in another (the land), combining and multiplying the problems inherent in both. Poor planning and preparation, rarely a good

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idea in any military enterprise, have tended to be ruthlessly exposed in amphibious operations and history is littered with examples of failure. Successful operations require close integration between the different services and mutual understanding of the difficulties facing the other. Unity of effort can be difficult to achieve when service priorities may pull in different directions. The requirement to rapidly build up combat power ashore poses particular challenges, as does the problem of ensuring the logistic sustainability of the landing force. Together these have often contributed to a command level failure to seize the initiative, to focus more on the difficulty of establishing a beachhead than the requirement to move inland to secure the key objectives. Furthermore, successful operations usually require specialist expertise and special equipment that cannot be produced at short notice. In this respect prior investment in both pays dividends. Historically such investment has been rare. Operating at the juncture between naval and military responsibility these operations have often been neglected by armies and navies, who preferred to focus on what they considered to be ‘core business’ (i.e. fighting other armies and navies). Organisations with a particular responsibility for amphibious operations, such as the USMC, are relatively rare and have often lacked the institutional clout required to make joint forces focus sufficient attention on this form of warfare. Amphibious operations did not receive either the professional or the scholarly attention that they deserved before the First World War. In the years that followed important pioneering work was undertaken in the UK and Japan, and most impressively, in the US where the USMC made great strides in developing prototype techniques and equipment. During the Second World War this work was to pay off. The Japanese made good use of light amphibious forces in their offensives of 1941–42 (and before that, in their war with China). More impressive was the eventual development by the Americans and British of a uniquely powerful amphibious capability, backed up by doctrine suited to the differing conditions in Europe and the Pacific and supported by a vast range of specialist equipment. By 1943 this new amphibious capability had ‘come of age’, giving them, from this time, an unbroken record of success in a series of highly challenging operations used to unlock very robust enemy defences in both theatres. By this point they had identified and solved most of the problems associated with amphibious operations and in the process had developed a new weapon system with war-winning potential. In the post-1945 period there was much debate as to whether amphibious assaults on the existing model would be necessary or possible in an environment where the enemy possessed nuclear weapons. The concentration of force required for operations such as those conducted at Normandy, Iwo Jima or Okinawa would represent a tempting and vulnerable target for a nuclear bomb. In the face of the scepticism of the army and air force, and some sections of the navy, the USMC kept the faith and sought to develop new techniques to reduce their vulnerability and retain their relevance. Fortunately, the success of the Inchon landings pointed to the reality that major amphibious operations might still be useful in more limited conflicts. Indeed, it soon became apparent that amphibious forces provided a kind of mobility and flexibility that could be extremely useful in circumstances short of outright war and this was demonstrated in a series of crises and operations. The development, by the 1950s, of the concept of vertical envelopment, using sea-based helicopters to outflank beach defences, greatly enhanced the range and versatility of amphibious forces, fitting them to a broader range of circumstances than had previously been the case.16

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Expeditionary operations Expeditionary operations are military operations undertaken in foreign countries, usually overseas and often at considerable distance from home. Expeditionary forces are those which conduct such operations. In the past expeditionary operations have included small or medium sized actions designed to achieve discrete objectives, such as the capture of a port or island or destruction of an enemy facility. The (failed) French expedition to Saint-Dominigue (Haiti) in 1801–03 provides just one of many possible examples. They have also been much less limited in nature and involved large and powerful armies such as the British Expeditionary Force of 1914–18 and 1939–40, the American Expeditionary Force of 1917–18 and, perhaps most impressive of all, the Allied Expeditionary Force of 1944–45. Expeditionary operations can involve land, sea and air forces, or most commonly today, some combination of all three. However, as will be discussed below, navies have some particular advantages when employed in the expeditionary role. Recently the term ‘expeditionary operations’ has been used most frequently to describe operations initiated at short notice and designed to achieve a specific and limited objective in a foreign country while ‘expeditionary forces’ is a term used to describe those forward-deployed or rapidly deployable, self-sustaining forces tailored to achieve such objectives. Used in this way, the term ‘expeditionary forces’ includes those forces designed for power projection, but is not limited to them. In many respects, this reflects the current interest in what were once known as ‘small wars’ and an enduring need to provide limited military options to deal with unforeseen crises overseas. There is nothing new in this, as even a cursory glance at British military operations across the globe in the nineteenth century or U.S. operations in the twentieth will reveal. Perhaps inevitably, minor expeditionary operations tended to feature in the careers of naval officers rather more than they did in their writings on maritime strategy but this should not diminish their importance. Maritime expeditionary forces proved useful during the Cold War when their capacity to provide access without reliance on overseas bases was particularly valuable (see Box 8.4). By their very nature expeditionary operations tended to occur within a highly politicised context and often with restrictive rules of engagement which meant that some options, such as pre-emptive air strikes, were often ruled out. Sometimes a maritime force could be deployed by politicians who knew that they wanted military options, but did not yet know whether or how they wanted to use these. In such circumstances, there was a premium on those forces that could deploy without fanfare, project and sustain a balanced military force, offer a robust series of options ranging from the benign to the overtly coercive and respond appropriately to circumstances as they evolved. In a series of operations at Kuwait (1961), East Africa (1964), in the withdrawal from Aden (1967) and during the Falklands/Malvinas Conflict (1982), the British made very effective use of their maritime expeditionary capabilities to provide a robust, flexible and scalable response to evolving crises.17 These attributes retained their utility in the post-Cold War environment when a series of crises and conflicts across the globe reinforced the value of a flexible capability to intervene overseas. At the same time, the demise of the Soviet Fleet, and the lack of any other credible rival, gave the US and its allies an opportunity to focus on things other than sea control (which now seemed assured). Expeditionary forces thus gained a new salience in providing answers to a problem expressed by the British Minister

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BOX 8.4 OVERSEAS BASES Bases provide a useful way of maintaining and sustaining forces overseas. Unfortunately, bases on overseas territory can become unavailable suddenly or may have restrictions placed on their use as a result of local political concerns. Bases require heavy investment in facilities that cannot move. They may necessitate commitments to a local regime that can become embarrassing. They also necessitate a footprint ashore that can inflame local sentiment and that offers an obvious target for political demonstrations or for terrorist attack. They also provide an immovable target for strikes by aircraft, ballistic missiles or naval forces. The British experience in the 1950s and 1960s provides a cautionary tale of heavy investment in overseas facilities that they were then promptly ejected from, that were made unavailable to them in a crisis or were simply in the wrong place when an emergency occurred. As recently as 2011 old lessons were relearnt as Cypriot opposition meant that in practice the RAF was unable to use the sovereign British base in Cyprus to conduct offensive strike missions in Libya (tanker and reconnaissance missions were undertaken). The British have used the base for offensive missions in Iraq and Syria, operations that the Cypriot government approves of, but their presence is a source of resentment for some locals and is a trigger for occasional demonstrations.18

of Defence George Robertson in 1998 when he stated that, in an age of uncertainty and instability, ‘we must be able to go to the crisis rather than have the crisis come to us’.19 The logic of this statement carried beyond British policy and many navies, large and small, were restructured in order to provide an additional focus on being able to ‘go to the crisis’. For larger navies, such as the US or Chinese navies, this revolved around an independent capability. For many small forces the emphasis was often on contributing to a collaborative effort, generating an ability to make some contribution to multi-national operations overseas. There was a notable renaissance of amphibious forces after the Cold War, with many states developing new capabilities or replacing old and worn out landing ships with new, more impressive vessels. Modern ships such as the South Korean Dokdo or French Mistral contrast with their predecessors in that they are large, well equipped and wellsuited to long ocean voyages. They are able to carry a battalion-sized force, plus their vehicles and equipment, and can land them ashore using their own integral medium helicopters or landing craft carried in and deployed from the ship’s enclosed dock. Alternately they may act as the command and control centre for a multinational operation, as a platform for anti-piracy operations (as in the case of the Dutch LPD Johan de Witt off Somalia) or as an asset seemingly tailored made for HA/DR. Their versatility in such a wide variety of roles has led to their being dubbed ‘the Swiss Army knives of the modern navy’.20 Just as in the Cold War, one of the key things that maritime expeditionary forces can provide is access. This could be in the context of an independent operation or as

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BOX 8.5  OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM (AFGHANISTAN, 2001) To support operations in Afghanistan in 2001 the US Navy created an expeditionary strike force (ESF) from four carrier battle groups and two amphibious ready groups. The ESF provided carrier strike sorties and precision guidedmissile strikes in Afghanistan and undertook supporting maritime interdiction operations. In November 2001 Marines from the 15th MEU and 26th MEU were projected, supported and sustained in Afghanistan from the North Arabian Sea (a distance of 450 miles) from the amphibious ships USS Peleliu and Bataan. The marines were the first conventional US forces in Afghanistan and, meeting up with US Army special forces, they secured a lodgement (Forward Operating Base Rhino) that allowed reinforcement by additional joint forces.

an enabler, to provide for the introduction of follow-on forces. The difference now, however, is that access can be provided deep in-land. Thus, in 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom the first US conventional forces deployed to Afghanistan (a landlocked country far from the sea) were marines from the amphibious ships USS Peleliu and Bataan (see Box 8.5).

Projecting power in the 21st century As has been discussed, the 1990s saw major investment in power projection by many Western navies. With the threat from the Soviet Fleet now gone, the US and its allies needed to devote much less attention to the fight to secure and maintain sea control and could focus on the different ways to exploit such control. US naval policy shifted very significantly towards an emphasis on power projection and this was reflected in key documents including, ‘From The Sea’ (1992), ‘Forward. . .from the Sea’ (1994), and Sea Power 21 (2002).21 For their part the USMC developed their concept of Operational maneuver from the sea (OMFTS) in 1996 to express their vision of how they could exploit sea control to create decisive effects ashore.22 OMFTS sought to adapt concepts of manoeuvre warfare to amphibious operations and to all aspects of warfare in the littoral. The basic idea was not particularly new. The Inchon operation of 1950 or McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign of 1862, provide good historical examples of operational manoeuvre (indeed, Inchon is cited in OMFTS as a ‘classic from the past’). What was new was the manner in which emerging concepts about manoeuvre warfare were married to an analysis of the impact of enhancements in information management, battlefield mobility and the lethality of conventional weapons to allow the USMC to meet new challenges. In essence, OMFTS sought to enhance and expand the traditional strengths of maritime forces through innovative thinking and by harnessing new technology. Both the marines and the US Navy understood that, while the threat of a major campaign against sea control had receded, control would be contested at sea and ashore within the littorals. It was recognised that local access could be challenged in a variety

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of ways and that new ideas and new technologies might be required to reduce the threat posed by mines, fast attack craft, anti-ship missiles, land based aircraft, diesel/ electric submarines and other potential hazards. This prompted interest in innovative new ship designs, such as the Littoral Combat Ship, conceived as a relatively small vessel with a modularised design that could be optimised for operations in the littoral. There was a notable emphasis also on the ability to conduct combat operations from over-the-horizon (OTH), enabling major assets such as aircraft carriers to project power into the littorals without having to come too close to enemy coastal systems. Similarly, within the field of amphibious operations the USMC developed a concept for ship-to-objective-maneuver (STOM), designed to allow them to project amphibious forces directly from the ship to their objective, removing the need to secure a beachhead, increasing the tempo of their operations, and reducing their footprint ashore. Increasing use of fast surface connectors (such as the LCAC hovercraft) and aircraft (both helicopters and the new tilt-rotor aircraft like the MV-22 Osprey) offered the potential to increase the tempo of amphibious operations, increased the range of suitable landing sites and reduced the need to bring large amphibious ships close inshore where threats were most acute.23 The marines and navy also developed the idea of sea-basing. Defined as the ‘rapid deployment, assembly, command, projection, reconstitution and re-employment of joint combat power from the sea’, sea-basing was designed to provide continuous support, sustainment and force projection to select expeditionary joint forces without (or with reduced) reliance on land bases.24 The aim was to reduce reliance on secure infrastructure ashore and had claimed for it the following advantages: • •

•

Enhances access: The sea base is free to deploy where it wishes, within the constraints of geography. Enhances security: Sea-based forces can be protected by the fleet, offering a multi-layered defensive system that it hard to find, hard to target, hard to attack, and that is virtually invulnerable to terrorist activity. Complicates things for the enemy: Dependence on ports and airfields makes the enemy’s job easier by giving them a mission critical asset that they can either defend or destroy. It is not so easy to figure out where the sea-based force will go.

The concept of sea basing remains under development and requires a range of sophisticated capabilities to make it work. The ships that are required must be able to deliver their loads without reliance on advanced port facilities. This requires a very different approach to logistics, and one that is more challenging. The concept places great demands on the connectors linking the force ashore to their offshore support, both in a physical sense (i.e. landing craft, helicopters and air craft) and also in terms of the network connectivity on which command and control will depend.25 Further, and important given the current emphasis on contested control, sea basing may not be an advantage in situations where the security of the ships cannot be guaranteed. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, with US and Coalition forces mired in costly and intractable operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the advantages of being able to provide influence overseas, without putting a large footprint ashore, seemed particularly significant. The US Navy argued that in ‘an era of declining access’, where fewer countries would be willing to have foreign forces stationed on their soil,

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maritime forces could provide valuable options without requiring long term commitments ashore. The sea tended to be portrayed as friendly terrain from which the dominant navy could operate, if not with impunity, then with relative ease.26 Since then things have changed somewhat. More recent US analysis has emphasised the challenge to sea control and to ‘all-domain access’ (i.e. access across all the war fighting domains) that could be posed by the emergence of ‘near peer’ rivals such as China, by regional adversaries, or even by sub-state groups able to get their hands on advanced weaponry. The successful Hezbollah attack on an Israeli ship in 2006 has been described as a ‘watershed moment’, providing a warning about the vulnerability of ships operating off a contested coast. It is notable that the subsequent US evacuation of 15,000 US citizens from the region did not take place until US destroyers were available to provide air defence.27 It is now widely recognised that ‘declining access’ may refer to the maritime environment as much as it does to the land (and air) and that the challenge to access may begin far from the hostile shore (see Chapter 10). In response to this the US Navy and USMC have devoted considerable attention to the problem of projecting power in a contested environment. Together they are developing a concept for littoral operations in a contested environment (LOCE) to explore how an integrated naval/marine force can operate from dispersed locations at sea and ashore in order to achieve both sea control and power projection. The aim is to adopt a holistic approach, creating a ‘littoral maneuver force’ that removes artificial boundaries between the different elements of the force and treats the entire battlespace as a cohesive whole. There is an emphasis on the requirement for sea control as a precursor to operations against the shore, but also on the necessity sometimes to conduct operations against the shore in order to gain local sea control. In conjunction with this, the USMC have also noted the requirement for their forces to be able to conduct expeditionary advanced base (EAB) operations to seize, establish and operate multiple advanced bases in support of naval forces. Once again this is cited as one means by which power projection forces can support the fight for sea control. ‘Advanced base operations’ was a key role for the marines in the first half of the twentieth century, and there is a recognisable sense of ‘back to the future’ in the general concept, if not necessarily in the means that will be employed.28 Indeed, the general approach is highly reminiscent of that discussed by Callwell over a century ago, with land and sea forces cooperating to support access and control in both environments.

Conclusion The capacity to conduct combat operations from the sea provides navies with a range of options that can be useful in war, peace and in all of the stages between. Maritime power projection capabilities may be employed to support peace keeping, peace support or peace enforcement operations under a UN mandate. They are also very useful for HA/DR operations. They might form the centrepiece of a diplomatic deployment, as a demonstration of power or as an asset well suited to capability building exercises with an ally. They can also be used to coerce or defeat an enemy, more or less on their own, as during the Falklands/Malvinas conflict or in combination with joint forces, as during the NATO campaign in Libya in 2011. Power projection may also provide a key tool in the fight to gain access in a contested environment. None of these roles are unprecedented.

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Of course, while some navies seek to project power, others will try to stop them. Defence against maritime power projection may take place across all relevant domains and the attempt to project power usually draws navies into littoral waters where they can be particularly vulnerable. It remains the case that the best defence is to maintain control of the sea and the air, although even where this is not possible the defender has many options. Advances in the capacity to project power almost inevitably encourage counter-measures in a kind of action-reaction cycle. There is no reason to believe that this dynamic will not continue. Nevertheless, and while the balance between offensive and defensive capabilities may have ebbed and flowed over time, it would be fair to say that the capacity of navies for power projection has grown exponentially over the past century, with the development of carrier aviation, long-range missiles, accurate and long-range naval guns, and sophisticated and flexible techniques for the conduct of amphibious operations. In addition, one should not forget the various non-kinetic ways in which navies can now create an effect ashore. The requirement to be able to project power overseas and to support the conduct of expeditionary operations figures prominently in the policy of many navies. It should be noted that sea control remains a prerequisite for most such operations and that navies have traditionally displayed a tendency to focus first on this, something that they regard as core business, before diverting remaining funds to other activities. This may have been encouraged in the past by a clear distinction between the type of ships required to secure sea control and those (usually less prestigious) vessels best suited to exploiting it. The distinction between the two is less clear today than it once was, particularly given the current US attempt to ensure that ‘if it floats it fights’ (see Chapter 10). Furthermore, there is a growing tendency, particularly in the US, to view combat activity at sea and from the sea not as separate activities but rather as part of single integrated approach. Emerging concepts such as LOCE seek to develop combat operations at sea, combat operations from the sea and combat operations ashore into a cohesive whole, integrating operations across the key domains of air, land, sea, space, cyberspace and the electro-magnetic spectrum. All of this suggests that combat operations from the sea will remain important in future and that such operations are best viewed as one element within a wider maritime strategy.

Key points •

• • •

•

Navies undertake power projection operations for a variety of reasons that can include attempts to create political, economic or military effects ashore. They may also be designed to create military effects at sea through operations ashore. Historically, naval strikes and amphibious operations have represented the main ways in which navies achieve force projection. The capacity for navies to project force ashore has increased substantially over recent decades, but to do so they must overcome a growing range of challenges. Much contemporary thought and practice has been devoted to the concept of expeditionary operations, those operations initiated at short notice and intended to achieve a specific and limited objective in a foreign country. The ability of navies to project power without requiring a substantial footprint ashore appears likely to be important in the years ahead as the costs of basing troops on foreign soil become more apparent.

Combat operations from the sea •

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The US Navy and USMC now emphasise the important role that power projection forces can play in the fight to secure access in a contested environment.

Notes 1 Modern concepts of ‘manoeuvre warfare’ would add that ‘manoeuvre’ can also occur within the ‘influence domain’ and involve influencing enemy perception and behaviour rather than just ‘movement’. For example, see Netherlands Maritime Military Doctrine, 295 2 For example, see Australian Maritime Doctrine, RAN Doctrine 1, 2010, 100 3 C.E. Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance. Their Relations and Inter dependence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996 [1905]), passim. 4 C.E. Callwell, The Effect of Maritime Command on Campaigns Since Waterloo (London: Blackwood, 1897); Callwell, Military Operations. 5 Sergei Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979), 219. 6 This definition is based on that provided in UK Ministry of Defence, Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 0–10, British Maritime Doctrine (2017). 7 See Royal Navy webpage, www.royalnavy.mod.uk/News-and-Events/Latest-News/2012/March/22/ 120321-Liverpool-Home [Accessed 30 Oct 2013]. 8 See Accidental Heroes. Britain, France and the Libya Operation: An Interim RUSI Campaign Report (RUSI, Sept 2011); and Geoffrey Till and Martin Robson, UK Air-Sea Integration in Libya, 2011: A Successful Blueprint for the Future? Corbett Paper No. 12, July 2013. 9 Vice-Admiral G.M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph. Indian Navy 1965–1975 (New Delhi: Lancer Publications, 2000) chapter 10. 10 For example, see Joseph H. Alexander and Merrill L. Bartlett, Sea Soldiers in the Cold War. Amphibious Warfare 1945–1991 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995). 11 Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 3–01, Amphibious Operations (18 July 2014), chapter one. Available at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_02.pdf [Accessed 1 August 2017]. 12 Milan Vego, Naval Strategy and Operatons in Narrow Seas, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 2003), 280. 13 For example, see B.H. Liddell-Hart, ‘The Value of Amphibious Flexibility’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Nov 1960, 483–492. 14 Martin Robson, Maritime Security and the Southern Cone: Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Corbett Paper No. 4 (June 2011), 15–27. 15 Naval Operations Concept (NOC) 10 2010, 61. 16 Alan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis. A History of the United States Marine Corps (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1991) especially chapters 15–17. 17 See Ian Speller, ‘The Seaborne/Airborne Concept: Littoral Manoeuvre in the 1960s?’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2006). 18 For example, see The Guardian, ‘British Base on Cyprus Rocked by Riots’, 5 July 2001; BBC News, ‘Five Injured in Demonstration Against UK Cyprus Base’, 3 Jan 2012; BBC News, ‘Syria Conflict: Why Cyprus Backs Cameron on UK Air Strikes’, 28 Nov 2015. 19 CM. 3999, The Strategic Defence Review (London: TSO, 1998). 20 Alex Pape, ‘Power Projectors’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 25 July 2011. 21 Forward. . .From the Sea: Preparing the Naval Service for the Twenty-First Century (Department of the Navy, 1992) available at www.dtic.mil/jv2010/navy/b014.pdf; Admiral Vern Clark USN, ‘Sea Power 21. Projecting Decisive Joint Capabilities’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Oct 2002. 22 Operational Maneuver from the Sea. A Concept for the Projection of Naval Power Ashore (USMC, 1996). Available at www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/usmc/omfts.pdf [25 July 2017] 23 Dept. of the Navy, Ship to Objective Maneuver (May 2011). Available at www.mccdc.marines.mil/ Portals/172/Docs/MCCDC/Documents/Concepts/STOM%20May%202011.pdf [Accessed 1 Sept 2017]. 24 Seabasing Joint Integrating Concept, quoted in US Navy Expeditionary Warfare Division, Naval Expeditionary Warfare Vision 2010 (2010), 49. 25 USMC, Marine Expeditionary Warfare Annual Report 2017 (August, 2017).

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26 For example, see NDP 1, Naval Warfare (2010) and Naval Operations Concept (2010). 27 Megan Eckstein, ‘Marines Begin Wargaming, Refining “Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment” Concept’, USNI News, 25 April 2017. Available at https://news.usni.org/2017/04/25/ marines-begin-wargaming-refining-littoral-operations-in-a-contested-environment-concept [Accessed 1 Sept 2017]. 28 See Department of the Navy, Marine Corps Operating Concept. How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century (September 2016).

Further reading Jeremy Black, Combined Operations. A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare (Roman and Littlefield, 2017). Black provides an overview of key issues and events within the history of ‘combined operations’ across a broad sweep of history. C.E. Callwell, Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdependence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996). Callwell’s classic work, first published in 1905, reproduced here with an introduction by Colin Gray. Bruce Elleman and A.C.M. Paine (eds), Naval Power and Expeditionary Warfare (London: Routledge, 2011). This book provides an excellent series of essays that examine the conduct of a number of expeditionary operations from the Napoleonic Wars through to the War on Terror. Theodore Gatchel, At The Water’s Edge. Defending Against the Modern Amphibious Assault (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012). Offering a different view on the subject, Gatchel investigates the best ways to defend against an amphibious assault. Tristan Lovering (ed.), Amphibious Assault: Manoeuvre from the Sea (Woodbridge: Seafarer Books, 2005). Lovering has put together a collection of useful essays examining a variety of different amphibious operations, including many that are ignored in other studies. Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers. A History of Carrier Aviation and its Influence on World Events, 2 vols. (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2008). Polmar provides a history of aircraft carrier development and operations from 1909 through to 2006. Ian Speller and Christopher Tuck, Amphibious Warfare: Strategy and Tactics from Gallipoli to Iraq (London: Amber Books, 2014). This short work provides an illustrated survey of the various stages of an amphibious operation, with reference to a range of historical examples.

Useful websites Much useful information on contemporary concepts and capabilities can be gleaned from the USMC website (www.marines.mil/) and from the US Navy website (www.navy.mil/). It is also worth looking at the site for the US Navy’s Expeditionary Combat Command (www.navy.mil/local/necc/) and the USMC Combat Development Command (www.mccdc.marines.mil/). Current US joint doctrine for amphibious operations is available online at www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/Joint DoctrineAmphibiousOperations.pdf

9

Maritime security and the maintenance of good order at sea

The introduction to this book discussed the notion that navies fulfil three general purposes or roles that can be broadly categorised as military, diplomatic and constabulary. This book focuses principally on military roles but one cannot understand what navies are or what navies do without reference to their peacetime activities, which includes their diplomatic and constabulary roles. The theory and practice of naval diplomacy was discussed in Chapter 4 and the constabulary role is discussed here. Thus, this chapter explores the challenges that exist in the maintenance of good order at sea and will examine the different ways in which navies and other maritime agencies are employed in support of maritime security. The constabulary role is covered in Part II and not in Part I of this book (which dealt mainly with concepts and theories), largely because the maintenance of good order at sea has not traditionally been subjected to theoretical analysis in the same way as wartime activity or even diplomatic roles. The topic was never ignored entirely and was the subject of some debate during the Cold War;1 however, and for a variety of reasons, this role has gained in importance in recent years which has been reflected in contemporary commentary, in naval thought and practice, and in the publication of ‘maritime security strategies’ by a number of states and organisations. It is appropriate, therefore, to discuss it within Part II of the book, which focuses on contemporary practice.

What are constabulary operations? Navies have always undertaken constabulary duties of one sort or another, as is clear from historical accounts of Roman anti-piracy operations or of English attempts to assert sovereignty of the seas around Britain from early modern times. More recently, the First Congress of the United States founded a Coast Guard (in the form of the Revenue Marine) four years before the Navy Act of 1794 established the US Navy, perhaps providing an indication of the relative importance of military and constabulary roles to that new state. Even Nelson, the archetypal ‘fighting sailor’ of the age of sail, found himself involved in the mundane enforcement of customs duties in the Caribbean for a period in the 1780s, and most sailors spend far more time on routine constabulary operations than they do fighting in battle. The Royal Navy and the US Navy devoted very considerable attention to anti-slavery and anti-piracy operations in the nineteenth century, both activities that sit firmly within the constabulary role. Despite this there was a tendency for most commentators to pay relatively little attention to such things, preferring instead to focus on more glamorous war fighting activities. However, from the 1990s such duties gained greater salience within written commentary and naval practice for a number of reasons that are discussed below.

170 Contemporary practice New approaches to security Part of the reason for this new emphasis may have been because Western navies and governments had the time and space to worry more about such things given the removal of the Soviet threat. Indeed, a cynic might suggest that the new found interest in ‘maritime security’ was sustained by a naval desire to appear relevant after their major role had disappeared along with their main rival. This reflected a general trend in postCold War thinking that began to emphasise the very real threat posed by a much broader range of security challenges than had appeared relevant in the past.2 Reflecting this growing interest in wider security, the 1998 Independent World Commission on the Oceans (IWCO) identified the challenges that a broad range of military and nonmilitary threats could pose to good order at sea, moving the focus away from just state-on-state competition.3 By the turn of the century there was a growing consensus that contemporary threats were likely to be diverse, unpredictable, transnational and asymmetric. The need to think about security in a more rounded way was reinforced forcefully by the Al Qaeda attacks on Washington and New York on 11 September 2001, which demonstrated that a focus on conventional military power and security could not, on its own, protect even the most powerful state. This prompted many changes, including, for navies, an increasing emphasis on the importance of ‘maritime security operations’ (MSO). Thus, for example, in 2005 the US published its first National Strategy for Maritime Security, which emphasised wider challenges that included terrorism, piracy, criminality, smuggling and the illegal extraction of resources. The African Union published a similar document in 2012, as did the European Union in 2014.4 In each case maritime security was defined to mean more than just security from the threat posed by other navies. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

Another factor that encouraged a focus on constabulary activities was the extension of national jurisdiction associated with the Third UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed in 1982 and which came into force in 1994. As was noted in Chapter 1, UNCLOS codified the extension of territorial seas out to 12 miles, contiguous zones to 24 miles and an exclusive economic zone to 200 miles from shore. This gave states new rights and also new responsibilities towards the protection and exploitation of what was now their offshore estate. Unfortunately, UNCLOS caused as many problems as it solved as too often states contested overlapping areas of jurisdiction or now had additional cause to dispute ownership of islands whose worth was transformed by their potential to give rights over substantial sea areas. The matter was exacerbated by the continued desire to harvest the resources in and under the sea, allied to recognition that these were not inexhaustible. The response to this international agreement that had aimed to prevent conflict and foster partnership at sea was, paradoxically, all too often driven by narrow national self-interest. Blue economy

In recent years there has been a growing appreciation of the economic value of the sea and an emphasis placed by numerous states and organisations on the ‘blue economy’. The importance to local economies of aquaculture, ocean energy, marine biodiversity,

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 171 seabed mining and coastal tourism have been emphasised by numerous states, by multinationals and by the United Nations. The EU, for example, argues that the blue economy supports around 5.4 million jobs in Europe and generates a gross added value of almost €500 billion a year. The EU strategy for ‘Blue Growth’ identifies the importance of knowledge, legal certainty and maritime security to support this activity, placing a particular emphasis on marine knowledge, maritime special planning and maritime surveillance. Similarly, the African Union and the UN have stressed the requirement to foster maritime understanding and security in support of the development of the Blue Economy.5 Globalization

Equally relevant is the fact that globalisation has enhanced the importance of the sea as the primary medium for international trade. In an increasingly globalised world, economic well-being (and thus political stability) is dependent on the free movement of trade and any threat to good order at sea, which could interrupt such movement, represents a serious threat to the global system and, both directly and indirectly,

BOX 9.1  NAVIES AND PEACE OPERATIONS Navies (and coastguards) can be called upon to undertake a range of duties in peace operations and these can range from the benign through to the coercive, depending on the nature of the operation. In addition to providing medical assistance and logistical support, naval roles may include the following: Peacekeeping: such operations occur with the consent of the warring parties and involve the interposition of observers able to stand between the two sides and monitor any agreement. Navies may contribute personnel to such roles on land and may be required to conduct patrols in coastal waters, estuaries and rivers. They may also be able to use their own sensors or aircraft to monitor adherence to any agreement. In addition, ships can offer a safe, neutral and well-connected environment in which to host talks between the belligerents. Peace building: in a post-conflict scenario navies can assist in infrastructure reconstruction tasks and also in rebuilding military and law enforcement capabilities. They may also have an important role to play in clearing ordnance, ensuring safe navigation, providing search and rescue services and in reopening ports and other maritime facilities. Peace enforcement: this requires the use of military force to assist diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire or agreement. It is inherently coercive and may require the projection of significant force ashore. Navies can provide sea control, escort and maritime interception operations and they may be used to project power ashore. Ships offshore may provide a secure holding facility for prisoners, or a means of escape for refugees.7

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to individual states. Current approaches to commercial and industrial logistics, based on the principle of ‘just enough, just in time’, exacerbate the impact of any interruption to this flow. Even short interruptions to the free flow of trade can have a major impact. As US naval doctrine states, ‘The sea lanes and supporting infrastructure are the lifelines of the modern global economy, visible and vulnerable symbols of the modern distribution system that relies on free transit through increasingly urbanized littoral regions’.6 Traditional approaches to the constabulary role emphasise that these are operations conducted within the mandate provided by national or international law. They focus on the requirement to protect sovereignty and the enjoyment of resources offshore, to enforce the law within territorial waters, to support the free and safe use of the sea within and beyond the boundaries of national jurisdiction, and to provide a kind of maritime emergency service able to deal with accidents and to offer relief to those in distress. The role relates primarily to what is known as the maintenance of good order at sea and includes activities that are essentially benign and humanitarian, such as maritime search and rescue and also those that may require robust forms of enforcement, such as anti-piracy operations. In tandem with the increasing focus on these activities there has also been a growing tendency for some navies to focus on the idea of promoting good order from the sea. This has contributed to a considerable broadening of the role to include activities that might not previously have been considered to be primarily constabulary, such as peace keeping and peace enforcement (see Box 9.1). This process has led to a blurring of the already rather fuzzy lines that separated constabulary duties from more military and diplomatic activities.

Coast guards and constabulary navies It is difficult to generalise about the agencies responsible for meeting constabulary responsibilities as different states adopt different approaches. In some states, such as Ireland, the key responsibility for constabulary duties lies with the navy. In others there is a sea going coastguard that takes some or all of this role. Still more share responsibility between a variety of agencies that might include the navy, coastguard, police force and a separate customs police. For example, in Italy the Guardia Costiera (coast guard) is a distinct part of the Marina Militare (navy) with responsibility for search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, the protection of maritime resources, safety of navigation and fisheries regulation. Unlike the Marina Militare, which is the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence, the Guardia Costiera is under the control of the Ministry of Information and Transport. Responsibility for customs enforcement and drug interdiction within territorial waters is shared with the Guardia di Finanza (Financial Guard), a law enforcement agency responsible to the Minister for Economy and Finance. Operating in a congested sea, these organizations must cooperate with each other, with multiple agencies in other countries and also with multinational institutions such as the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCG), if they are to fulfill their roles successfully. Naturally, this can be a complex business.8 The difference between a navy and a coastguard may not always be obvious, although the propensity of the latter to adopt non-belligerent white paint schemes can help in the process of identification. Some coastguards, such as those of Britain and Ireland, have a very limited role focusing on maritime safety and the coordination of search and rescue (SAR) and have few seagoing assets. With a broader range of responsibilities (and in the absence of a national navy) the Icelandic Coast Guard is better equipped,

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 173 with a fleet of three offshore patrol vessels and a hydrographic survey ship, supported by SAR helicopters and a fixed-wing maritime surveillance aircraft.9 At the other end of the scale the China Coast Guard (CCG) has a large fleet that includes 31 helicopter equipped patrol ships, 35 offshore patrol ships, around 120 coastal patrol vessels, hundreds of small craft and significant aviation assets.10 The US Coast Guard (USCG) is the largest and most capable force of its kind. With a budget of $10.3 billion in FY2017, the USCG has around 41,000 active service personnel, 7,000 reservists, 8,500 civilian employees and 31,000 volunteer auxiliaries. Equipped with 243 cutters (ships), 1,650 boats and 201 aircraft it has a range of capabilities that many navies would view with envy.11 Some coast guard vessels, such as the USCG’s 4,500-ton Legend-class National Security Cutters or the Japan Coast Guard’s (JCG) 6,500 ton Shikishima, operate organic helicopters, are relatively well armed and, in the case of the Legend-class, have a significant capacity to deal with surface and air threats. Most, such as the large 10,000-ton patrol ships deployed recently by the Chinese Coast Guard, have a more limited military capability and many are unarmed. The danger of an entirely unarmed force was revealed to both the Irish and the Icelandic governments in the 1920s when foreign trawlers proved unwilling to take direction from unarmed patrol vessels. In Ireland the immediate response was to place a boiler pipe on the deck of their solitary vessel, the Muirchu, in the hope that it would look like a gun. Eventually a real gun was fitted. Similarly, the Icelandic government placed a small cannon on their vessel, Thor, and in 1926 invested in a purpose built, armed patrol ship.12 Recent armed clashes between South Korean Coast Guard vessels and Chinese fishing boats demonstrate the continued salience of a capacity at least for self-defence on the part of those protecting the offshore estate.13 Whatever the particular institutional arrangement, coastguards (or their equivalent) tend to fulfil a similar range of duties relating to the protection of sovereignty and offshore resources, the enforcement of law and order and the general maintenance of good order at sea (see Box 9.2). Obviously these relate to constabulary roles, although in some cases there is considerable overlap into military and diplomatic activities more commonly associated with navies. Indeed, coastguards have some advantages over navies in the diplomatic role. Their benign appearance and shared focus on non-military activities can make it easier for coastguards to cooperate with each other than it would be for navies. On the other hand, navies tend to have access to a wider range of offensive and defensive capabilities, and can apply these in a graduated way that may prove advantageous in some circumstances. They also tend to have superior facilities for command and control and thus can be well placed to coordinate the activities of different agencies. Despite the generous equipment levels of some coastguard vessels and an overlap in roles between coastguards and navies, it is generally true that, as Colin Gray put it, these two types of maritime agency are ‘driven by the beats of a different drummer’.15 One might suggest that, while navies tend to focus on the requirement to deal with military threats and also fulfil a range of responsibilities associated with the need to maintain good order at sea, coastguards focus principally on the latter and only occasionally find themselves engaged in directly military roles. This distinction is reflected in the US policy, which emphasises the ‘warrior ethos’ of the Naval Service and the ‘guardian ethos’ of the Coast Guard. It is true that some navies focus almost exclusively on constabulary activities. However, even in these cases the salience of

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BOX 9.2  COAST GUARD ROLES, MISSIONS AND AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY14 Icelandic Coast Guard

Bangladesh Coast Guard

Law enforcement Patrol of the sea around Iceland Maritime search and rescue Assistance in rescue ops on land Airborne ambulance service Nautical charting Hydrographic survey Bomb disposal

Preserve national interest at sea Fishery protection Prevent illegal immigration Pollution control Piracy control Prevent smuggling, trafficking, etc. Disaster relief operations Search and rescue operations Preservation of forests Surveillance of Bangladesh sea areas Any other duties assigned by govt. Secondary Role Assist Bangladesh Navy in War

Japan Coast Guard

United States Coast Guard

Guarding territorial waters and EEZ Connecting the seas Maintaining maritime order Saving lives Protecting the maritime environment Preparing for disasters Exploring the ocean Ensuring maritime traffic safety International cooperation

Ports, waterways and coastal security Drugs interdiction Migrant Interdiction Defense Readiness Living marine resources Marine safety Search and Rescue Aids to navigation Marine environment protection Ice operations Other law enforcement

the military role (in theory if not always in practice) tends to differentiate navies from coastguards. Thus, the Irish Naval Service, a typical constabulary navy, still stresses that its key purpose is the provision of defence and deterrence in support of national security, even if it spends most of its time focused on fishery protection duties and humanitarian relief overseas.16

Key challenges Admiral Stavridis USN has described the sea as ‘the biggest crime scene in the world’.17 The physical and legal nature of the maritime environment can support the existence of threats. As Peter Chalk has emphasised, the maritime domain is vast, covering around 139,768,200 square miles, it is opaque and (on the high seas) is largely

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 175 BOX 9.3  LAW ENFORCEMENT AT SEA The concept of the ‘freedom of the seas’ means that beyond their own territorial waters states have a very limited capacity to interfere with the activities of foreign vessels, even if they are suspected of criminal activity. Except in cases of piracy, trafficking of slaves and illegal broadcasting, maritime law enforcement agencies require the permission of the flag state (i.e. where the ship is registered) before a vessel can be boarded. This can be problematic. Around 60 per cent of ships fly ‘flags of convenience’, being registered to states (such as the Marshall Islands or Liberia) that offer cheap rates but may lack the bureaucracy required to support effective and timely law enforcement. States can sign bilateral or multilateral agreements that allow others to intercept their vessels on the high seas, and the US, for example, has numerous arrangements with littoral states in the Caribbean to facilitate drugs interdiction. Nonetheless, the weakness of the legal framework for law enforcement on the high seas provides opportunities for criminals to evade justice.19

unregulated. Closer to shore there exists a ‘lattice of territorial waters, estuaries, and riverine systems, which in many cases are poorly monitored and in terms of internationally recognised jurisprudence exist as entirely and distinct entities’.18 Threats take no notice of imaginary boundaries at sea that mark the limits of national jurisdiction but navies and coastguards must do so and have very limited rights to stop and board non-national vessels (see Box 9.3). Threats may take the form of deliberate attacks by states, sub-state groups or criminals. They might involve resource degradation and environmental damage. They could stem from shoddy practice by those using the sea or simply be the result of an unforeseen accident. The range of potential threats defies easy generalisation and what concerns one country may not be the same thing that causes another to feel threatened. Nevertheless, there are a number of high profile threats or challenges that have characterised recent debates on maritime security and these are examined below. Maritime jurisdiction

Navies and coastguards are often called upon to support or oppose claims for national jurisdiction over particular areas. This could involve ‘presence’ missions to provide a symbol of control, or might involve a navy sailing through a disputed area to assert the right to do so, as with recent US ‘freedom of navigation’ cruises in contested waters in the South China Seas. Given the centrality of established practice to the development of customary law, upon which much international law is based, it is particularly important that claims to enclose the sea are challenged in this way if they are not to become accepted. On occasion, this may require ships to be ready to fight to defend their rights of passage, as when the US Navy was engaged by Libyan fighters (which were shot down) when it exercised its right to freedom of navigation through the Gulf of Sidra in 1981 and again in 1988.

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The ability of islands and even of apparently worthless lumps of rock or coral to grant control over sea areas complicates matters significantly, although in some cases the issue can be as much about pride and identity as it is about attempts to expand jurisdiction offshore. It would be unfair, for example, to suggest that Argentine claims to the Falkland/Malvinas Islands were primarily motivated by a desire to exploit the islands EEZ. Indeed, it might be easier to resolve that dispute if this were the case. Similarly, expansive Chinese claims to control islands, islets and reefs in the East China Sea and South China Sea may reflect entrenched ideas about Chinese sovereignty as much as a desire to exploit the offshore resources. Construction by China of military facilities on artificial islands developed on contested territories in the South China Seas has added a new and controversial dimension to the issue in that region. Most maritime disputes are resolved, or left unresolved, without any recourse to force. Navies can still be useful in such cases as they can through their presence be used to establish or contest a claim. This might involve a peaceful and uneventful cruise through disputed waters or something a little more robust, as has often been the case in the South China Seas where China and other littoral states have proactively employed navy and coast guard assets to support or contest competing claims to sovereignty and to dispute or disrupt the activity of their rivals. Within that region coastguard vessels appear to have become the ‘tool of choice’ for disputing control, perhaps favoured because of their more benign appearance and the reduced potential for escalation to armed conflict.20 Similarly, the on-going dispute between Japan and China over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has seen aggressive posturing by naval vessels and coastguard ships and the harassment of fishing vessels by both sides. Terrorism at and from the sea

The sea has not tended to be an environment favoured by terrorists. According to the RAND Terrorism Chronology Database only two percent of all terrorist attacks between 1968 and 2000 involved maritime assets.21 This may have been because ‘most guerrillas and terrorists are landlubbers’, or perhaps because operations at sea require expertise and equipment that can be difficult to acquire.22 Equally important is that events at sea tend to have less immediacy or impact than equivalent attacks on land, and they attract less media attention. Put simply, the terrorist gets more ‘bang for the buck’ on land than at sea. This does not mean that terrorism does not occur on the oceans, and the hijacking of the cruise ship MS Achille Lauro in 1985 by the Palestine Liberation Front, and the Irish Republican Army’s murder of Lord Mountbatten and two children off the coast of Sligo (Ireland) in 1979, using a radio-controlled bomb placed in their boat, provide just two examples. However, while many non-state organisations have exploited the sea as a medium for transporting weapons and explosives, it is fortunate that relatively few have been able to develop a sophisticated capacity for offensive operations at sea. Notable amongst these few are Hezbollah (Lebanon), Hamas (Palestine), and the Abu Sayyaf Group (Philippines). Perhaps the most capable of all were the so-called ‘Sea Tigers’ of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who fought a long and ultimately unsuccessful war against the government of Sri Lanka.23 Apparently learning from the example of the LTTE, groups affiliated to Al Qaeda have shown some capacity to launch attacks, including the crippling suicide attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 and a similar attack on the oil tanker MV Limburg two

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 177 BOX 9.4  THE ATTACK ON USS COLE AND MV LIMBURG In October 2000 the destroyer USS Cole was successfully attacked at Aden (Yemen) by a small boat which detonated itself against the port side, killing 17 crew members and wounding 39 more. A large and powerful warship was disabled by a suicide attack skiff, two suicide terrorists and 600 pounds of C4 explosives. Repairs to the ship cost around $250 million. Two years later Al Qaeda followed up the attack with another against the MV Limburg, a large French-flagged oil tanker which was rammed by an explosive laden boat three miles off the coast of Yemen. The ship did not sink but the attack prompted a temporary rise in the price of oil, an increase in insurance rates for ships heading to Aden and cost the Yemeni government an estimated $3.8 million a month in lost port revenues.26

years later (see Box 9.4). The most deadly terrorist attack at sea occurred in February 2004 when Islamist terrorists from the Abu Sayyaf Group planted a bomb in a television set on the ship Super Ferry 14, travelling between Manila and the southern Philippines. The explosion and resultant fire killed 116 and the ferry sank.24 On 6 Sept 2014, Al Qaeda unsuccessfully attempted to hijack the Pakistani frigate PNS Zulfiqar, which was docked in the naval base at Karachi, in the hope that they could use it to attack nearby US warships using its anti-ship cruise missiles. The challenge posed by terrorist operating from the sea was demonstrated by the ‘26/11’ attack on Mumbai in 2008, where the terrorists travelled by sea and came ashore in inflatable speedboats.25 Despite the impact, or potential impact, of such attacks, terrorist activity at sea is relatively rare and most attacks that do occur have tended to have relatively low impact. It is important to recognise that the idea of radical non-state groups using the sea to attack their enemy is not new. Long before the attack on the USS Cole, the LTTE had successfully attacked Sri Lankan vessels using explosive-laden suicide boats, as with the sinking of the supply ship Abheetha in May 1994.27 Indeed, it could be argued that these attacks were similar in many ways to covert attempts by American patriots to use a wooden submersible (the ‘Turtle’) to attach explosive devises to British ships in New York harbour in 1776. The methods are different, but the tactical objective was the same. As has been noted, Irish and Palestinian groups conducted terrorist attacks at sea in the 1970s and 1980s. Back in the 1920s the original IRA launched bomb attacks against British dockyards and succeeded in high jacking a ship at sea (after the ceasefire with Britain) in order to seize the load of weapons that it carried.28 New threats are rarely as new as they seem. This does not imply that there is any room for complacency. It may be the case that as targets on land and in the air become harder to attack, terrorists may focus more on the sea. There is certainly no shortage of soft targets to choose from, both at sea and ashore. Less spectacular than explosive attacks on ships or port facilities, but no less important, is the certainty that terrorists will use the sea as a means of supply, through arms smuggling, and possibly also as a source of revenue, through criminal activity or piracy. Unfortunately, terrorists appear to be inventive and resilient and it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of further outrages at, and from, the sea.

178 Contemporary practice Trafficking: arms, people, narcotics Insurgents, guerrillas and others engaged in irregular conflicts have always sought to obtain arms, explosives and other supplies from across the seas. This is a longstanding threat and one that navies and coastguards have sought to counter, with varying degrees of success. Experience suggests that it is impossible to completely cut the supply of weapons transported by sea. This problem is of greatest concern when one considers the possibility that ships might carry weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and associated materials from one rogue state to another or to a terrorist group overseas. In such cases even one undetected shipload might be too much. Legal problems were highlighted in 2002 when a Spanish warship intercepted the North Korean freighter So San en route to Yemen with 15 scud-type missiles on board. Ultimately it transpired that there was no legal basis to hold the missiles and they had to be returned to Yemen. In an attempt to address the legal difficulties of stopping a ship at sea carrying such materials, and to increase international cooperation designed to interdict such shipments, the Proliferation Security Initiative was formed in 2003. By 2017 there were 105 participants in the Initiative. One of the results have been a number of ‘ship boarding agreements’ to allow naval personnel to board foreign-flagged ships if they suspect that they are carrying contraband.29 In addition, in 2005 the 1988 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA Convention) was updated to criminalise the use of ships to transfer or discharge biological, chemical or nuclear weapons (except the transport of nuclear weapons to or from the territory of a state that is signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and to control the release of noxious and radioactive materials by ships at sea. The trafficking of illegal narcotics is an activity that spreads crime, corruption and misery along its entire journey from source to final destination. It creates a major law enforcement concern and a public health problem in developed countries, where it kills far more people than does terrorism. In developing countries involved with the production and trafficking of drugs it can undermine the very fabric of the state and of society. The major international drugs flows are of cocaine from Latin America to the United States and of opiates from Asia to Europe and the Russian Federation. Much of this travels by sea for at least some of its journey, including around 80 percent of all cocaine heading to North America. The trade is lucrative. In 2017 an independent thinktank report estimated that drug trafficking had an annual global value of between $426 billion and $652 billion.30 It is not surprising that the traffickers have invested heavily in the process of smuggling. In the Caribbean and eastern Pacific very fast motor boats are employed to evade and escape capture. Traffickers have even employed relatively sophisticated submersibles to move the product up the supply chain. Navies and coastguards clearly have a role to play in intercepting this trade and they must have an appropriate range of capabilities to deal with an adaptive opponent. As an indication of the size of the problem, the US Coast Guard successfully seized 455,000 pounds (c. 207 tonnes) of cocaine being trafficked in FY2017, worth over $6 billion, but this represented less than a quarter of the cocaine believed to have been processed that year in Colombia alone.31 Rather different to the problem of drug smuggling is that of illegal immigration and human trafficking. Navies and coastguards may be called upon to help to stop such immigration, intercepting migrants at sea and, if possible, returning them from whence they came. Under international law they are also required to provide relief

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 179 and assistance to migrants in trouble. Thus, for example, in 2015 the European Union initiated military action, EU Naval Force Mediterranean (Operation Sophia), deploying naval assets (typically including four warships) to help in search and rescue operations in a situation where tens of thousands of migrants were seeking to cross from north Africa (primarily Libya) into Southern Europe, and where large numbers had drowned after their unseaworthy boats foundered. An additional aim of Operation Sophia was to halt the activity of the human traffickers by identifying and disposing of their boats and supporting assets. In October 2016, it was reported that 26,248 migrants had been rescued, 89 smugglers and traffickers had been arrested and 303 vessels removed from the criminal organisations. Unfortunately, the traffickers have continued to operate, often using cheap (and easily replaced) inflatable craft, illegal migration across the sea to Europe continues and the death count rises.32 Whether one is seeking to intercept arms, drugs or illegal immigrants, intelligence is usually the key to success and this requires an interagency response in which navies are likely to be a supporting element, but probably not the most important one. The task is important, but difficult. As Geoffrey Till has noted, the amount of heroin consumed in the US in one year would fit into a single standard cargo container, and 20 million such containers enter the US annually.33 They cannot all be searched. Nevertheless, navies can, at least, make life difficult for the smugglers and there are occasional spectacular successes. In any case, if the law is to mean anything at all then it must, at the very least, be seen to be enforced. Piracy

Perhaps the most prominent maritime security issue in recent years has been piracy. According to international law piracy is ‘any illegal act of violence, detention, or any act of deprivation, committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of any private ship or private aircraft’ committed against another ship, aircraft or persons and property outside national jurisdiction.34 Strictly speaking, illegal activities at sea but within the territorial waters of a state are not acts of piracy but are simply ‘sea robberies’. This creates legal problems for counter-piracy activities. While pirates on the high seas are considered hostis humanis generis, and they may be seized and punished by anyone, piratical attacks within territorial waters are not considered to be piracy in the eyes of the law and foreign warships have no right to intervene in the jurisdiction of another state. Regardless of the legal definition, piratical acts often occur close to the shore (i.e. within territorial waters) and in regions where the littoral states have a limited capacity to deal with such threats. This problem is as old as seafaring itself but had been an issue of marginal significance for navies for many decades until it reappeared on a large scale in Southeast Asia in the 1980s.35 Concerted action by the regional navies succeeded in controlling the upsurge there, but unfortunately, and as a direct consequence of disorder ashore, incidents of piracy off Somalia rose dramatically after 2005, peaking with a total of 237 attacks in 2011 before falling back substantially in 2012. Perhaps typically, as piracy appeared to be in decline off the east coast of Africa it surged on the west coast with a notable increase in incidents in the Gulf of Guinea. On a smaller scale there continued to be incidents of piracy in Southeast Asia, notably within the Indonesian archipelago.36 It can be difficult to generalise about pirate activities. Often they involve attacks on merchant ships at anchor or moving slowly close to shore, where they can be most

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easily boarded by armed criminals working from small boats. However, pirates can also operate at great range when the need arises, as did Somali pirates using ‘mother ships’ to transport them far from home before transferring to the fast skiffs that they used to attack their prey. Pirates traditionally focus on theft of cargo and belongings carried on the ship, and sometimes of the ship itself. On the other hand, in the case of Somalia the usual aim was to take the ship, crew and cargo and to hold these to ransom, exploiting the safe haven provided by a lack of governance ashore. In the Gulf of Guinea kidnap for ransom is currently the preferred approach, replacing the theft of cargo (particularly of oil) as the most lucrative strategy. A total of 1,921 seafarers were subjected to piratical attack in the Gulf of Guinea in 2016 and 96 were taken hostage. Two thirds of the attacks occurred in the territorial waters and EEZ of Nigeria.37 It is difficult to judge the overall cost of piracy. In 2013 the World Bank estimated that when considered as an increased cost to world trade piracy translated to an $18 billion yearly loss to the world economy. This is not an insignificant sum, although it is dwarfed by the total value of world merchandise trade, estimated to be $16 trillion in 2015.38 Naval deployments and other countermeasures designed to counter piracy are not cheap; international naval activities off the coast of East Africa, for example, have been estimated to have cost $228 million in 2016.39 Of course, piracy also brings with it additional costs in terms of promoting criminality onshore and off, challenging governance and upsetting the freedom of navigation upon which the international system depends. There are also fears that pirates could develop links with insurgent groups, turning a problem of criminality into something even more serious. There are numerous problems to be overcome when dealing with pirates. There are legal difficulties countering a foe that can exploit jurisdictional boundaries that they can ignore and that navies must adhere to. The problem tends to occur in regions where the littoral states are not well placed to police their own waters, or where such waters offer plenty of places to hide (both in a physical and a legal sense). Pirates can often pose as innocent fishermen and operate from craft that are largely indistinguishable from legitimate fishing vessels. Attacks are usually over very quickly, often within 15 minutes, and thus naval vessels are unlikely to be able to intervene unless they are already in the immediate vicinity. Most navies have proven reluctant to use lethal force to retake merchant ships once captured, largely due to the risk that this would pose to the lives of the captured crew. Even if pirates can be captured many states have been reluctant to arrest individuals that they may then become responsible for, and a policy of ‘arrest and release’ had become common off Somalia. Some countries overcame such difficulties by drawing up agreements to hand over arrested parties to a third party (Kenya and the Seychelles) to have them deal with the problem, and this at least reduced the chance of an arrested pirate serving their sentence and then claiming asylum in the country that had imprisoned them. Despite this, and as has been noted, the problem can be controlled, if not eradicated, by concerted action. Legal problems can be overcome to allow action within territorial waters, as has been the case off Somalia, and, on occasion, international forces have been able to fill the gap created by the lack of local governance offshore. Thus, in order to meet the threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden around 40 different navies deployed vessels either on a national basis or as a contributor to multinational operations such as NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield, the European Union’s Operation

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 181 Atalanta, or the Combined Maritime Forces’ CTF-151. Counter-measures included the establishment of a Maritime Security Centre–Horn of Africa (based in the UK), to provide for better monitoring and surveillance and the provision of up-to-date advice on pirate activity; the creation of a Recommended Transit Corridor through the most dangerous area, where navies could focus their efforts; and, the adoption by the shipping industry of Best Maritime Practice (BMP) to avoid, deter and defeat attacks through a variety of passive, and not-so-passive defensive measures. In addition to the above, the International Maritime Organisation of the UN sponsored and supported multilateral agreements such as the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery (RECAAP) and the 2009 Djibouti Code of Conduct concerning the repression of piracy and armed robbery against ships in the western Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, which enhance regional cooperation against piracy. From around 2011 some shipping companies began to employ armed private maritime security contractors (PMSC) to protect their vessels as they transited the most dangerous areas. The presence of armed civilians on ships raises important questions in both national and international law about the legality of such acts and the rights and obligations of those bearing arms in this fashion. Many states will not allow ships thus armed to enter their territorial waters. As an alternative, some states, including Italy and the Netherlands, provided military vessel protection detachments (VPD) to protect national shipping. VPDs are uniformed personnel belonging to the flag state and as such avoid some of the problems associated with PMSCs. However, the diplomatic fallout associated with the killing of two Indian fishermen by an Italian VPD in 2012, who misidentified the fishermen as pirates, demonstrates that such deployments are not without their problems. Further, arming merchant ships (a solution that would be recognised by the merchant captains of a different age) raises the possibility that pirates might raise the level of violence that they employ. The average monthly cost of a four-person PMSC team has been estimated as $21,000, this is substantially cheaper than the VPD alternative; the Dutch government charged shipping companies $5000 per day for their teams. To date no ship protected by a PMSC or a VPD has been successfully pirated, making these effective (if expensive) ways of responding to the challenge.40 Private security contractors, armed or otherwise, also have an important role to play in port security and in protecting infrastructure ashore. Of course, piracy is not a problem that can be solved at sea. The root cause lies on land and is associated with weak institutions, poor governance, corruption, unchecked criminality and in the lack of opportunity facing many young men. The solution to piracy off Somalia, Nigeria and elsewhere, is thus to be found on the shore. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be fixed quickly or easily. In the meantime, navies have a role to play in dealing with the seaward manifestation of this land based problem, in protecting merchant shipping, in promoting best maritime practice, deterring and arresting pirates when possible and responding to crises as they develop. They can also help to deal with the situation at the root by assisting in capability and capacity building to enable local forces to meet the threat as with, for example, EU CAP Nestor in Somalia. Ultimately, of course, they can also be used to deal with piracy in the oldfashioned way, to launch punitive strikes against the pirates’ shore bases, destroying at source their capacity to operate, although to date there has been a marked reluctance of governments to sanction such action.

182 Contemporary practice Environmental degradation Environmental issues have risen in prominence in recent decades, with a growing awareness that environmental degradation threatens the well-being of individuals, of states and of the planet itself. Unfortunately, navies can themselves contribute to such problems through the generation of greenhouse gasses and the dumping of fuel and other waste. Navies have a stake in minimising such incidents not least because of the danger that they may find themselves under pressure to adhere to the constraints of the 1973/78 MARPOL Treaty (International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), which currently applies only to civilian vessels. Most maritime pollution is the result of agricultural and industrial run-off from the land, and this is not directly the concern of navies. However, of course, major incidents of pollution can result from accidents or deliberate action at sea and may involve ships or offshore platforms, as was demonstrated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Navies and coastguards may be required to deter and detect such activity or to help clean it up. They may also be required to clean up after themselves, to clear the detritus of war, such as the continuing operations to clear the many sea mines still left over from the Second World War or the munitions dumped into the Adriatic Sea by NATO (in this case by aircraft) during the Kosovo campaign of 1999. Of course, the potential for terrorists or pirates to create an environmental disaster (either deliberately or otherwise) must also be considered and catered for. The environmental impact of an attack on an oil tanker is something that is all too easy to imagine. The danger presented by an attack on a vessel carrying nuclear waste is more frightening still. In a more general sense navies and coastguards have a capacity to act as guardians of the sea. They can use their skills and presence to foster a better understanding of the maritime environment and to argue, to governments and to the public alike, for the need to adopt sustainable approaches to the use and exploitation of the maritime environment. Environmental protection and monitoring represent an important responsibility for naval forces and it is a role that is unlikely to diminish in importance. Fishing

It has been apparent for a long-time that the oceans’ fish stocks are under intense pressure. Global fish takes have increased dramatically from 16.8 million tonnes in 1950 to around 80 million tons currently captured annually from the world’s oceans. This figure, almost five times what it was in the 1950s, is unsustainable in the long term and the UN has warned that if fishing continues at current rates then fish stocks could collapse by 2050. Global per capita consumption of fish has doubled since the 1960s and fish account for around 17 percent of the global population’s intake of animal protein. Fishing also provides an important source of revenue for many communities. This is particularly true in developing countries, where fish exports were valued at $80 billion in 2014, figures that were substantially higher than those for agricultural commodities like tea, coffee and rice. The fishing industry is therefore important for the economic well-being and physical nourishment of billions of people. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether it can continue to provide these benefits given the perilous state of many key fishing grounds.41 A national response to the challenge of depleted fisheries is important, but not sufficient. As the EU Commission has noted, ‘Fish move across borders and seas, and

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 183 fishing fleets have done the same for centuries’.42 Given the transnational nature of the industry some form of international agreement is required in order to secure sustainability, and this must be backed up by national agencies able to enforce the regulations. This can be difficult for rich countries, given the vast size of their offshore estate. It can be almost impossible for developing countries who lack the necessary resources to police their own EEZ or who are seduced into granting licences to large mechanised foreign factory ships whose activities they are not well placed to monitor. Illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing can have a devastating impact on a local fishing industry. It has been estimated, for example, that 37 percent of all fish catches in the Gulf of Guinea fall into the IUU category and that illegal fishing by Chinese companies off the West Coast of Africa costs local economies approximately $2 billion.43 It can be difficult to get international agreement on the measures necessary to sustain global fish stocks. Even in fairly harmonious regions, such as within the European Union, the national sacrifices required to create a Common Fisheries Policy have caused numerous problems. Disputes over fishing rights can cause diplomatic incidents and international confrontations, as with the Anglo-Icelandic ‘Cod Wars’ of the 1950s and 1970s and the Canadian-Spanish ‘Turbot’ War of 1995. In these cases, naval forces were deployed to protect fish and fishermen but confrontation stopped short of armed conflict. In other regions, the potential for disputes to turn violent is more pronounced. There have, for example, been numerous clashes between fishing vessels and the enforcement agencies of littoral states within East and Southeast Asia, and these have included the use of lethal force. Such incidents are not confined to Asia, in March 2016 an Argentine coast guard ship fired on and sank a Chinese trawler that had been fishing illegally within its territorial waters.44

Navies and maritime security operations As has already been discussed, traditional ideas about maritime strategy and security have broadened to encompass challenges that had hitherto received less attention. This has been reflected in academic discourse and ‘maritime security’ is now a hot topic amongst scholars who previously seemed scarcely aware of the existence of the sea. More importantly, it has also been reflected in a number of strategy statements published by states and organizations that include the US (2005), the African Union (2012), Spain (2013), the United Kingdom (2014), the European Union (2014), France (2015), India (2015) and the G7 (2015). Each of these identifies the key challenges in slightly different ways but they all stress the requirement for a collaborative approach, encompassing inter-agency and multinational coordination in order to the protect use of the seas and to protect the sea itself. A key point emphasised by all of the above is that navies are not the only organisations that have a role in the provision of maritime security, and the requirement to work with other groups (i.e. coast guards, intelligence services, police, customs and immigration, port authorities, ship owners, fishermen, etc.) is commonly stressed. Thus, NATO Alliance Maritime Strategy emphasises the need for an international and interagency response as part of a ‘comprehensive approach’ to dealing intelligently with complex threats. Similarly, the Canadian Coast Guard have emphasised the requirement to work with other agencies, including the navy, in order to protect the maritime approaches to Canada.45 The numerous groups involved in coastal security, a subset

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of wider maritime security, were noted in the recent Indian maritime security strategy, which identified 15 different agencies working with or for six ministries (Defence, Home Affairs, Fisheries, Agriculture, Shipping and of Petroleum and Natural Gas).46 Inter-agency and international collaboration lies at the heart of the drive to achieve improved maritime domain awareness (MDA). This can be defined as an effective understanding of anything that happens at sea that can have a bearing on human safety or security, on economic activity or on the environment. The concept was advanced by the US in support of their National Strategy for Maritime Security, and it is now widely recognized to be a key enabler for security at sea. The point of MDA is to be able to identify the full range of maritime threats and to disseminate the information required to facilitate appropriate action. This requires a concerted effort in intelligence and surveillance gathering, and also information sharing with a broad range of parties in order to build up an accurate picture, something that may challenge the organisational culture of some agencies. MDA requires engagement with industry and can be supported by new technology, such as the automatic identification system fitted to many merchant ships that allows their location to be accurately tracked, with positive implications for maritime security and also collision avoidance, navigation, search and rescue, etc. A number of national and international systems, processes and institutions have been established to support greater information sharing in the maritime environment: examples include the (US) Global Maritime Operational Threat Response Coordination Centre, the UK National Maritime Information Centre and the EU’s Common Information and Sharing Environment (CISE). Given the march of technology and the current desire to maximize awareness and control over activities within the maritime environment, it may one day be the case that shipping routes are watched and regulated as closely as is air traffic, although that day has not yet arrived.47 Some navies continue to refer to ‘constabulary operations’ to describe their attempts to promote maritime security but others have tended to adopt the more expansive term ‘maritime security operations’ (MSO). This is true of the US and UK navies and also the Royal Netherlands Navy which defines MSO as operations ‘designed to protect interests in the maritime domain against breaches of the (international) rule of law’.48 British doctrine offers a slightly broader approach that includes ‘defence (short of war fighting)’, but even here the focus is largely on protecting economic activity at sea, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, non-combatant evacuation operations, and ‘countering piracy, slavery, people smuggling, illegal immigration, drug smuggling, arms smuggling, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’. There is recognition that the boundaries between MSO and diplomatic or war fighting roles might often be blurred.49 It is apparent that there has been a considerable emphasis placed on cooperation, between different navies and between navies and other agencies. It is symptomatic of this that the US Navy’s new strategy, published in 2007, was the first such document to have been produced in collaboration with the US Marine Corps and the US Coast Guard and was entitled A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.50 This document placed considerable emphasis on the idea that maritime security was a common interest shared by all and that collective action was required to secure the global maritime commons against diverse threats. This idea underpinned the emphasis placed on developing global maritime partnerships and a global network of navies where navies could cooperate to meet local challenges. This was reflected in various forms of engagement including capacity and capability building exercises, such as the

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 185 Africa Partnership Station, discussed in Chapter 4, and multinational exercises like the biannual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) exercises conducted with Southeast Asian navies. Some small navies, particularly those in Scandinavia, invested heavily in the idea of contributing towards multinational collaborative operations, and in the 2000s Norway, Sweden and Denmark all shifted the focus of their naval policy from coastal defence and local sea denial towards such activities. Similarly, the Brazilian Navy stressed its role in support of multinational peacekeeping operations, while still maintaining a focus on national defence tasks. The capacity of even a very small navy to make a meaningful contribution to MSO was demonstrated by the participation of the Maltese Maritime Squadron in support of the EU anti-piracy mission off Somalia (Operation Atalanta) and in capacity and capability building with the new Libyan government after the 2011 civil war in that country.51 Reflecting on the salience of MSO and on the importance of international collaboration, Geoffrey Till suggested that one could identify ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ tendencies in naval policy. The former related to traditional missions focused narrowly on the national interest while the latter were those that fostered collaboration in support of the common good. Sadly, and as Till has subsequently emphasised, it is easier to be ‘post-modern’ when one does not have an immediate (modern) threat to worry about.52 This appeared to be the situation for most Western navies in the 1990s and early 2000s but, as we shall see in the next chapter, it may not be the case today. The new edition of the US Maritime Strategy, published in 2015, placed a much greater emphasis on more ‘traditional’ threats than had the original.53 Similarly, the three Scandinavian navies mentioned above have all refocused their policy to cater first and foremost for traditional ‘modern’ threats (see Chapter 10).

Conclusion As has been discussed, maritime security may be threatened by a broad range of challenges that include piracy and other forms of criminality, trafficking of drugs, arms and people, IUU fishing, environmental damage and terrorist attack. To be truly effective the response to these threats must often be transnational and across jurisdictions and requires cooperation from multiple agencies. Solutions will require maritime forces to collaborate with shore-based agencies, as it is on land where most of the problems originate. Navies and coastguards are not the only bodies required to police the seas, but they are usually central to any effective response. As Chris Parry has argued, they are akin to a computer anti-virus system designed to deal with the ‘malware’ problem caused by disorder at sea and, just like an anti-virus programme, you may only notice that you need the system when it is missing.54 Contemporary ideas about MSO include traditional constabulary roles but they go beyond these in a number of respects. Even navies that continue to employ the term ‘constabulary’ often include under this concept activities that go beyond established ideas about maintaining good order at sea. The Royal Australian Navy, for example, suggests that peace operations (including peace building, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and peace making) are ‘constabulary’ roles as they are linked to the enforcement of international law. This would suggest that actions such as the UN mandated operations in Libya in 2011, which involved the enforcement of an arms embargo and also missile attacks, air strikes and naval gunfire against shore targets,

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should be considered to be constabulary rather than military operations because they involved the enforcement of an international mandate. In such cases it does seem more appropriate to employ the term MSO, and to recognise that such operations span a range of activities that can be military, diplomatic and/or constabulary in nature. Thus, during Operation Unified Protector in 2011, NATO warships enforced the arms embargo on Libya (constabulary), sent signals about alliance cohesion and opposition to the actions of the Libyan government (diplomatic) and conducted strikes against shore targets (military). Of course, here the aim was not so much security at sea as securing the lives of civilians and assisting the insurgency in Libya. Thus, this was less a case of maintaining good order at sea as one of maintaining good order (on land) from the sea. The difference between this and traditional power projection (discussed in the previous chapter) may not always be very apparent.

Key points • •

•

•

•

Navies and other maritime agencies have always conducted a range of important constabulary duties. The sea provides an environment that can support a range of threats and challenges to good order at sea. These include terrorism, piracy, criminality, environmental degradation and resource degradation. Some of the challenges can be met by national action but many require international collaboration and an inter-connected, cross-jurisdictional response that also takes account of activity ashore. Many navies today emphasise the importance of maritime security operations. This concept encompasses established constabulary roles and also other security activities including peacekeeping and stabilisation operations. Maritime security has now entered the mainstream in security studies discourse, bringing new attention to what is, in truth, an old problem.

Notes 1 For example see Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982, chapter 9. 2 For example, see Barry Buzan, ‘New Patterns of Global Security in the Twenty-first Century’, International Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (1991), 431–451. 3 IWCO, The Ocean Our Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 4 US Government, The National Strategy for Maritime Security (Washington, D.C., 2005). African Union, 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime Strategy (2012). Available at http://cggrps.org/wpcontent/uploads/2050-AIM-Strategy_EN.pdf [Accessed 1 February 2018]. EU Maritime Security Strategy (2014). Available at https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy/maritime-security_en [Accessed 1 February 2018]. 5 See the EU Maritime Affairs website, https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy_en [1 Oct 2017]. Also see UN Economic Commission for Africa, Africa’s Blue Economy: A Policy Handbook (Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa, 2016). 6 US Navy, Naval Doctrine Publication (NDP) 1 (March 2010), 14. 7 See James W. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen (eds), Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Operations: Stability from the Sea (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009). 8 See Chiara Ruffa and Giampiero Giacomello, ‘Small Navies and Border and Immigration Control: Frontex Operations in the Mediterranean’ in M. Mulqueen, D. Sanders, and I. Speller (eds), Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (London: Ashgate, 2014).

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 187 9 See The Icelandic Coast Guard ‘Always Prepared’. Available at Accessed www.lhg.is/media/ LHG80/Landhelgisgasla_Islands_enska2_.pdf [10 Oct 2017]. 10 IISS, The Military Balance 2017, Asia, Vol. 1, 287. 11 United States Coast Guard, www.overview.uscg.mil/ [ Accessed 10 October 2017]. 12 Padraic O’Confhaola, ‘The Naval Forces of the Irish State, 1922–1977’ (National University of Ireland Maynooth, Unpublished PhD thesis, 2010), 46. 13 For example, see BBC News, ‘Chinese Fishermen Killed in South Korean Coast Guard Clash’, 30 Sept 2016. 14 The list is derived from the relevant Coast Guard websites and posture statements. 15 Quoted in Sam Bateman, ‘Navies and the Maintenance of Good Order in Peacetime’, in A. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Maritime Power: A Survey (London: Routledge, 2009), 95–114. 16 Defence Forces Ireland website, ‘Roles of the Naval Service’. Available at www.military.ie/navalservice/organisation/roles-of-the-naval-service/ [Accessed 10 June 2017]. 17 Admiral James Stavridis, Sea Power. The History and Geography of the World’s Oceans (New York: Random House, 2017), 377. 18 Peter Chalk, ‘Maritime Terrorism in the Contemporary Era. Threat and Potential Future Contingencies’, The MIPT Terrorism Annual, 2006, 26. Available at \www.thebreakingnews.com/ files/articles/2006-mipt-terrorism-annual.pdf [Accessed 20 June 2013]. 19 Sarah Percy, ‘Maritime Crime and Naval Response’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2016), 155–186. 20 See Lyle J. Morris, ‘Blunt Defenders of Sovereignty: The Rise of Coastguards in East and South East Asia’, US Naval War College Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Spring 2017). 21 See Chalk, 21. 22 Rohan Gunaratna, ‘The Threat to the Maritime Domain: How Real is the Terrorist Threat?’, in R.M. Lloyd (ed.), William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics Papers. No. 2. Economics and Maritime Security. Implications for the 21st Century (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2006), 82. Available at www.usnwc.edu/Departments—-Colleges/National-SecurityDecision-Making/Ruger-Economic-Papers/RugerPaper2Web.aspx. 23 See Paul A. Povlock, ‘A Guerrilla War at Sea: The Sri Lankan Civil War’, Small Wars Journal, Sept 2011. Available at www.smallwarsjournal.com [Accessed 29 June 2013]. 24 BBC News, ‘Bomb Caused Philippine Ferry Fire’ 11 Oct 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asiapacific/3732356.stm [Accessed 29 June 2013]. 25 Peter Lehr, ‘(No) Princes of the Sea: Recollections on Maritime Terrorism’, in J. Krause and S. Bruns, Routledge Handbook of Maritime Strategy and Security (London: Routledge, 2016), 202–214. 26 Chalk, 32. 27 Arabinda Acharya, ‘Maritime Terrorist Threat in Southeast Asia’, in K.C. Guan and J.K. Skogan (eds), Maritime Security in Southeast Asia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 79. 28 For example, see Peter Hart, the I.R.A. at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) especially chapter 6. 29 See the PSI website, www.psi-online.info/ [Accessed 1 Oct 2017]. Also, Mary Beth Nikitin, ‘Proliferation Security Initiative’, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 15 June 2012. Available at www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL34327.pdf. 30 Global Finance Integrity, Transnational Crime and the Developing World (March 2017). Available at www.gfintegrity.org/report/transnational-crime-and-the-developing-world/ [Accessed 10 Oct 2017]. 31 USCG, 2017 US Coast Guard Posture Statement and Budget in Brief (2017). Available at www.uscg.mil/Portals/0/documents/budget/2017_Budget_in_Brief.pdf [Accessed 10 Oct 2017]. Dan Lamothe, ‘As Trump Presses for a Border Wall There is a New Record for Coast Guard Drug Seizures at Sea’, Washington Post, 20 Sept 2017. Also UN World Drug Report 2017, www.unodc.org/wdr2017/index.html [Accessed 25 Oct 2017]. 32 European Commission Factsheet, EU Operations in the Mediterranean Sea (4 October 2016). 33 Geoffrey Till, Seapower. A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013), 298. 34 UNCLOS: article 101. 35 See Robert McCabe, Modern Maritime Piracy. Genesis, Evolution, Responses (London: Routledge, 2017).

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36 Oceans Beyond Piracy, The State of Maritime Piracy 2016. Available at http://oceansbeyondpiracy. org/publications/state-maritime-piracy-2016 [1 Oct 2017]. (Also see the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre, available https://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre 37 Ibid. 38 World Trade Organisation, World Trade Statistical Review 2016. Available at www.wto.org/ english/res_e/statis_e/wts2016_e/wts2016_e.pdf [Accessed 1 Sept 2017] 39 Oceans Beyond Piracy, The State of Maritime Piracy 2016. 40 See Oceans Beyond Piracy, Issue Paper: Privately Contracted Armed Maritime Security, http:// oceansbeyondpiracy.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Privately_Contracted_Armed_Maritime_ Security_IssuePaper.pdf and Oceans Beyond Piracy, Issue Paper. Vessel Protection Detachments http://oceansbeyondpiracy.org/publications/vessel-protection-detachments [1 September 2017]. 41 See FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016 (Rome: United Nations, 2016). Available at www.fao.org/3/a-i5555e.pdf [1 Sept 2017]. 42 European Commission, ‘The European Union Explained. Fisheries and Maritime Affairs: Safeguarding the Future of Our Seas (Brussels: European Commission, 2013), 4. 43 Alice Veraeke, ‘Gulf of Guinea: Pirates and Other Tales’, EU Institute for Security Studies, Issue Alert No. 19 (June 2017). 44 Reuters World News, 15 March, 2016. 45 Canadian Coast Guard, Maritime Security Framework (2010). NATO, Alliance Maritime Strategy (18 March 2011). 46 Indian Navy, Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy (New Delhi, 2015), 109. 47 See Christian Bueger and Amaha Senu, ‘Knowing the Sea: The Prospects and Perils of Maritime Domain Awareness’, Piracy-Studies.org (8 July 2016). Available at http://piracy-studies.org/ knowing-the-sea-the-prospects-and-perils-of-maritime-domain-awareness/ [Accessed 1 Oct 2017]. 48 Netherlands Maritime Military Doctrine, 338. 49 Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 0–10, British Maritime Doctrine (2017), 6 and 52. 50 CS21 (2007). 51 See Mulqueen et al, Small Navies (2014), especially the introduction. 52 G. Till, ‘The changing Dynamics of Sea Power and Concepts of Battle’, in J.I. Bekkevold and G. Till, International Order at Sea. How it is Challenged. How it is Maintained (London: Palgrave, 2016), chapter 8. 53 CS21R (2015). 54 See Chris Parry, Super Highway. Sea Power in the 21st Century (London: Eliot and Thompson, 2014), Passim.

Further reading Jo Inge Bekkevold and Geoffrey Till (eds), International Order at Sea. How it is Challenged, How it is Maintained (London: Palgrave, 2016). This is a very interesting collection of essays that examine the challenges to international order at sea, globally and also on a regional basis. Section three of the book explores the different responses to these challenges of navies, coastguards and other actors. Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, ‘Beyond Seablindness: A New Agenda for Maritime Security Studies’, International Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 6 (September 2017). This journal article provides a handy introduction to ‘maritime security studies’ from an international relations perspective. Joachim Krause and Sebastian Bruns (eds), Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security (London: Routledge, 2016). This volume includes a number of chapters that explore topics relating to maritime security and to the perspectives and policy options explored by a variety of different actors. Robert McCabe, Modern Maritime Piracy: Genesis, Evolution, Responses (London: Routledge, 2016). McCabe examines the nature of modern piracy, and of counter piracy initiatives, based on case studies of activity in Southeast Asia and Northeast Africa, with conclusions that also explore current incidence of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

Maritime security and maintenance of good order 189 Michael McNichols (ed.), Maritime Security: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 2016). An authoritative guide to the practical challenges posed by maritime security, written by practitioners for practitioners. Daniel Moran and James A. Russell (eds), Maritime Strategy and Global Order. Markets, Resources, Security (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2016). Part two of this book contains chapters that explore maritime security issues relating to the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, the Arctic and the Indian Ocean. Chapter nine, by Steven Haines, offers a useful guide to issues relating to maritime law. Dave Sloggett, The Anarchic Sea: Maritime Security in the Twenty-First Century (London: Hurst & Co., 2013). Sloggett explores maritime security using a seven dimension framework, as follows: state on state competition, trade protection, resource management, smuggling, terrorism, natural disasters and oceanography.

Useful websites The website of United Nations’ International Maritime Organisation contains much useful information about maritime security, www.imo.org/en/Pages/Default.aspx. Up-to-date information about contemporary piracy is available from the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Centre, www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre. Many Coast Guards have English language websites that include information about role, structure, organisation, capabilities etc. A sample of these include the following: • • • •

US Coast Guard, www.uscg.mil Indian Coast Guard, www.joinindiancoastguard.gov.in/index.html Japan Coast Guard, www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/e/english.pdf Philippine Coast Guard. www.coastguard.gov.ph

Useful information can be gleaned from published maritime security strategies, including the following: • African Union: Integrated Maritime Strategy, http://cggrps.org/wp-content/uploads/2050-AIMStrategy_EN.pdf • European Union: Maritime Security Strategy, https://ec.europa.eu/maritimeaffairs/policy/maritimesecurity_en • France: National Strategy for the Security of Maritime Areas, • India: Indian Maritime Security Strategy, www.indiannavy.nic.in/sites/default/files/Indian_Mari time_Security_Strategy_Document_25Jan16.pdf • Spain: National Maritime Security Strategy, http://www.lamoncloa.gob.es/documents/20131333 estrategiadeseguridadmartima_ingls.pdf • US: National Strategy for Maritime Security, www.state.gov/t/pm/rls/othr/misc/255321.htm • UK: National Strategy for Maritime Security, www.gov.uk/government/news/national-strategyfor-maritime-security

10 Contemporary naval policy and future practice

According to the US Navy the current security environment is characterised by volatility, instability, complexity and inter-dependence.1 It is difficult to generalise but potential sources of instability and conflict may include competition for resources, the impact of climate change and environmental degradation, demographic shifts, the uneven fruits of globalisation, rapid urbanisation, the instability caused by failed and failing states, the challenge of extreme ideologies or simply poor governance and irresponsible leadership. Sadly, the world is not a peaceful place. It is clear that the use and the threat to use armed force provide tools than many are willing to employ in support of their perceived interests, and there appear to be no strong grounds for believing that this will change in the near future. Indeed, the reverse may be the case: data from the ‘Global Peace Index’, compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, suggests that the decade between 2007 and 2017 was characterised by increasing global violence.2 Most recent conflicts have tended to be within rather than between states, and navies have been actively involved in such conflicts, notably during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars. The prevalence of intra-state conflict does not mean that state versus state violence is a thing of the past or that the capacity to threaten other states with superior military force is somehow irrelevant. Calculations of relative military strength continue to influence the behaviour of potential antagonists, and there can be costs associated with getting the calculation wrong. Thus, for example, Russian conventional forces were employed directly to defeat Georgia in a brief one-sided war in 2008 and their looming presence dissuaded Ukraine (and everybody else) from responding militarily to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, an action supported by Russian troops masquerading as local forces. Mutual self-interest and the threat of nuclear escalation provide a powerful disincentive for the great powers to fight each other but it would be foolish to assert that such wars are entirely impossible. In any case, the ability to prevail in conventional combat may provide important diplomatic advantage, particularly in situations where it is clear that neither party would want to escalate to using weapons of mass destruction. The unique size, reach and proficiency of the US military since the end of the Cold War has meant that all except the most foolish have avoided fighting them and their allies using conventional means. Instead, most adversaries have adopted asymmetric or hybrid strategies, designed to target identified enemy weaknesses and to make the most of their own, often rather limited, capabilities (see Box 10.1). The conventional military imbalance that has uniquely favoured the United States may not endure much longer. The proliferation of new technology and the adoption of hybrid techniques may work to the advantage of weaker powers. Equally, and as

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 191 BOX 10.1  HYBRID WARFARE Hybrid warfare can be defined as ‘a form of warfare combining conventional and unconventional military and non-military actions to achieve a specific goal’.3 Hybrid strategies might involve clandestine operations, information warfare, and cyberattacks, the use of proxies, and political and economic pressure designed to undermine an adversary below the threshold that might trigger a military response. Such strategies often aim to avoid or delay attribution. They exploit the ‘grey area’ between war and peace, Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014 provides a classic example. At a more tactical level hybrid warfare may involve a mixture of conventional and irregular military tactics tailored to exploit specific enemy vulnerabilities, and also cyber warfare, information warfare and political pressure designed to influence domestic and international opinion and to exploit enemy restraint. Most discussion of hybrid warfare has referred to its occurrence on land but Admiral Stavridis, amongst others, has noted the potential for states and other groups to use similar tactics within the maritime environment, employing irregular forces with plausible deniability to dispute, disrupt or attack adversaries at sea. This could be particularly challenging within the cluttered littoral region where legitimate civilian shipping can simultaneously provide cover and offer tempting targets.4

US policy makers now acknowledge, there has been a growing shift in economic wealth (and military potential) away from the US and its European allies and towards Asia. China may soon surpass the US as the world’s largest economy and in doing so realise its potential to become a superpower. The US must get used to the idea that for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union it may soon face a peer rival in terms of power and influence. In addition, other countries, including Russia and India, may emerge (or re-emerge) as major regional powers. Looking ahead, US Joint Forces Command anticipate that the future security environment will be characterised by twin over-arching challenges of ‘persistent disorder’ and ‘contested norms’. The former relates to the ability of groups to exploit weak governance in some regions in order to cause conflict. The latter refers to actions that can ‘credibly challenge the rules and agreements that define the international order’, an order that currently works to the advantage of the United States.5 Of particular relevance to the maritime environment is the fear that future adversaries will be able to challenge the use of the global commons, defined as those areas that ‘belong to no one state and provide access to much of the globe’ including spaces at sea, in the air, in outer space and also the electro-magnetic spectrum. The fear is that even in peacetime the commons may become ‘more congested, contested and competitive’.6 Use of the global commons can be challenged by military forces. Changes to international law or to the ‘norms’ that govern behaviour at sea can also undermine access within the maritime environment. As Geoffrey Till notes, China has selfconsciously exploited the ‘three warfares’ of law, psychological pressure and public

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opinion in order to inhibit enemy access into areas where it would prefer not to see them.7 The US response, in terms of Freedom of Navigation cruises, has tended to be robust. Challenges to established norms do not come just from potential adversaries, sometimes friends and allies share the desire to spread territorial control into the adjacent seas without necessarily reflecting on the wider implications. Challenges may even come from one’s own population, if popular support for an established policy or idea is eroded. An effective response requires a ‘whole of government’ approach, and the effective use of information, diplomacy and legal argument may be as important as naval activity in protecting the free use of the seas. While it is impossible to forecast the future with any accuracy, it seems clear that in the years ahead, navies will operate in an even more complex environment than at present. Within this context, they will be required to offer their governments useful options to enhance national and international security. To do so they may need to overcome significant challenges; some of these challenges will be posed by other navies, air forces and armies, others will come from less conventional adversaries and some will be grounded within the political constraints imposed by societal values. This chapter aims to examine these issues. To do so it will first address the nature of the emerging maritime battle space. It will then examine ideas relating to new technology and new techniques in naval warfare, before exploring the impact of these on the policies adopted by a number of navies.

The future maritime battle space If the security environment evolves in the manner discussed above it seems likely that navies in future will face even more complex challenges than at present and will meet conventional and unconventional threats. Adversaries will adapt to challenge Western strengths and will adopt various strategies to pose hybrid threats in unexpected ways. The military will have to operate in a complex, congested and contested battle space, subject to intense scrutiny by the media, and in situations where conventional military force will sometimes be difficult to employ to good effect. Forces operating in one domain have a growing capacity to influence activities in others and find they have a growing dependence on friendly exploitation of those domains. Thus, a modern warship may be able to exert influence on land, in the at sea and in the air, but equally may require support from those environments and will need to exploit space-based systems and will depend on the use of cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum in order for its systems to operate effectively. The need to control all relevant domains has led some to adopt the term ‘battle space dominance’, others have employed the term ‘commons control’ to refer to the need for navies to exert control in the face of challenges that will exist in war and in times of apparent peace.8 Maritime forces will experience challenges on land, sea, air, in space and cyberspace, across the electro-magnetic spectrum and also in terms of the flow of information. Some of the more important of these are summarised below. •

Surface of the sea: The surface of the sea is likely to play host to a variety of threats, some of which are state sponsored, some may be linked to non-state groups and others are posed by criminal activity, including piracy. There will, of course, also be plenty of non-combatant activity to complicate things. It seems likely that the sea will remain an important manoeuvre space for military forces and that

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navies will seek to employ it as such. It is certain that it will remain the main conduit for international trade, the movement of commodities, energy supplies, etc. and that such movement will need to be protected from a variety of dangers. Traditional threats may revolve around the proliferation of advanced anti-ship missiles and also the employment of unmanned surface vessels, either missile armed or laden with explosives (see Box 10.2). Lower technology threats, including swarming attacks by small high speed boats with light weapons and explosive charges, will remain a problem, particularly in littoral regions, choke points and the approaches to ports. Sub-surface: The sub-surface of the sea remains opaque, enabling some maritime operations and challenging others. Mines will continue to pose a threat, both in terms of large numbers of relatively cheap, unsophisticated mines and also increasingly smart weapons that can be programmed to detect the signature of particular types of ship, and may attack their target using fast homing torpedoes. Submarines remain a potent weapon in the open ocean and also in confined waters. Improving torpedo technology, which may increase the range and speed of torpedo attacks, is likely to enhance the threat to surface ships. This creates an imperative for ships to push out their submarine detection ranges still further, particularly through the use of helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft and long-range detection systems. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) will add further challenges, and provide opportunities for unseen but persistent presence which could enable ISR. They may also provide useful platforms for anti-surface operations, antisubmarine operations and for strikes against the shore. One should also remember the potential for divers to attack ships that are in port or anchored close inshore. Space: Military forces are increasingly reliant on space-based systems for navigation, communication, ISR and targeting. An increasing number of states have deployed their own satellites and others have access to capabilities provided by allies or made available from commercial sources. Such systems can enable detection and attack of both friendly and adversary forces, making dominance of this domain of considerable importance. In a conflict against a technologically advanced opponent it is reasonable to expect satellites to come under attack from

BOX 10.2  SURFACE ATTACKS IN THE RED SEA, 2016–17 In October 2016 Houthi rebels fired a missile at an Emirati ship in the Red Sea off Yemen and later attacked the destroyer USS Mason (unsuccessfully) using rockets or missiles, in response, the US Navy launched missile strikes against Houthi positions ashore. The Houthis have launched a number of attacks against ships belonging to their major opponents, a Saudi-led coalition. Thus, in January 2017 the Saudi frigate Al Madinah was successfully targeted by Houthi forces using a remotely piloted explosive laden vessel, resulting in the death of two Saudi crew members. In July 2017 another Emirates ship was attacked with missiles off the port of Al-Mokha. Houthi sea denial capabilities appear limited, but they can still pose a challenge to ships operating off the coast of Yemen.

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Contemporary practice anti-satellite missiles and also from lasers. Both the US and China have successfully tested missiles which destroyed old satellites in orbit. Adversaries will also seek to jam and confuse signals and may initiate attacks on ground stations. Air: It has been clear for many decades that sea control also requires control of the air. The enormous cost of maintaining modern air forces has tended to mean that positive use of the air for military purposes has been dominated by those states able to devote considerable sums to this task. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), often called drones, has been a notable feature of recent operations and offer the user a system with extended loiter time which is valuable for ISR and also for strikes in areas where their use is not contested. UAVs also allow aircraft to be deployed without putting a pilot in harm’s way. It seems probable that unmanned systems will continue to be developed, potentially to the point where manned combat aircraft may become a thing of the past. The use of such systems by non-state actors is inevitable and they may provide a platform by which such actors can achieve efficient ISR and also deliver explosive, chemical or biological attacks. Electromagnetic spectrum: Defending and attacking the use of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum has been a feature of warfare for many decades. The exploitation of this domain for sensing (i.e. radar) and communications (i.e. radio) was important in the 1940s (and before) and is now critical to maritime operations. Use of the EM spectrum is important for a variety of key activities, but it creates vulnerabilities as transmissions can be detected, raising the importance of emissions control (EMCON) and the use of decoys. The spectrum is now crowded with military and non-military users and is vulnerable to jamming, spoofing and direct attack, in addition to the danger of detection. The creation of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), as a by-product of a nuclear explosion or through the non-nuclear EMP bombs and missiles currently under development, could cause widespread damage to electrical equipment. The ability to use the EM spectrum to maintain connectivity between dispersed assets is key to the US concept of ‘distributed lethality’ (see the heading ‘Distributed lethality’ later in this chapter), prompting increased American interest in the need to undertake what the US Navy now describes as electromagnetic maneuver warfare to protect friendly use of the spectrum and to challenge use by an adversary. Cyberspace: In common with the EM spectrum, cyberspace is of critical importance in modern military operations. Advanced sensors, weapons and communications systems depend on computer processing and on connectivity to each other. Ships need to be operated together as part of an integrated network, tied together by their data links, if they are to survive the challenges posed by a competent adversary. Using and denying the use of cyberspace is already critical and will continue to be so. A well-targeted computer virus could prove a decisive enabler for the application of deadly force. It may also offer a good means of attacking critical infrastructure and logistic support facilities, all of which depend on the use of computers and the internet to some degree or another. In 2011 the US armed forces added ‘cyber’ as one of their war-fighting domains, in recognition of its importance. Some commentators have argued that, rather than being a domain in its own right, ‘cyber’ is really a ‘substrate’, impacting profoundly on all other domains.9 Either way, it is clear that the use and denial of cyberspace will figure prominently in future conflict and, given the difficulty of attribution, will offer opportunities for ‘deniable’ attacks in peacetime.

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 195 •

Information: Information can be used to shape public opinion at home or on the international stage, it may also be used to shape opinion within the operational area, with important consequences for any ‘hearts and minds’ strategy. Military operations tend to be conducted in a highly politicised environment where the ability to manage the flow of information can be valuable in terms of garnering local support and maintaining a political consensus back home. In a world in which most people have access to a mobile phone able to take photographs or videos and to upload these to the internet, it is more difficult than ever to achieve such management. ‘Information dominance’ can also be used to fool an adversary, degrading their decision making while enhancing that of friendly forces.

It is clear that the maritime battle space is complex and multi-dimensional and that success in naval warfare will require navies to overcome a wide variety of threats across different but inter-connected environments.

Technology and techniques One of the features of the contemporary environment is the speed with which new technologies are devised, developed and then integrated into combat systems. This poses obvious problems for navies that must adjust to new challenges. Another feature is the rapid diffusion of high technology systems through arms transfers and sales. Additive/3D manufacturing may exacerbate this problem, giving groups the ability to self-manufacture key items. The successful missile attack by Hezbollah on the INS Hanit in 2006 illustrated that some sub-state groups have access to anti-ship missiles (in this case Chinese built C-802/Yingji-82 missiles supplied by Syria), and recent Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea reinforce the point. Naval activity may be threatened or enabled by new technology and also by more innovative use of older systems. Often the focus will be on the evolution of weapons types already in use, such as the development of more sophisticated anti-ship cruise missiles or better, smarter sea mines or simply on the wider distribution of very established systems. Current experimentation in new systems and capabilities, including a variety of directed energy weapons, electromagnetic rail guns, hypersonic missiles, and high-power microwave systems may all provide navies (and their enemies) with a range of new offensive and defensive capabilities. The desire to develop such systems, and to provide the high levels of electrical power that they require, is reflected in the adoption of an integrated turbo-electric power-plant for the new US Zumwalt class destroyer.10 Perhaps more important, but less likely to grab the headlines, increases in computer power and data processing may enable increasing connectivity and foster more distributed operations while simultaneously creating critical vulnerabilities that might invite attack by kinetic and non-kinetic means. As far as one can tell it seems unlikely that any radical new technology is about to emerge that will change naval warfare overnight. One can never totally discount the possibility of there being a remarkable technological leap but, in reality, this tends not to be how things happen. Even apparently revolutionary changes are usually the result of a process that takes years or even decades, providing time for reaction and adjustment. Change is often enabled by new technology but the most revolutionary element is often new thinking about how to employ old, existing or evolving technology. Thus, emerging threats are likely to involve a combination of new technology, now more widely

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available than before, and new techniques (often using old technology) which together will combine to make the future maritime battle space a high threat environment. Nevertheless, change will occur, whether it is revolutionary or evolutionary. It will affect platforms, weapons and sensors in ways that both enhance and inhibit the use of naval forces. Ships may get larger to accommodate more effective systems, or smaller to reduce cost. It may be the case that they become more sophisticated to deal with complex threats, or less sophisticated, with navies instead choosing to invest in the platforms that operate from the ship. Some vessels will require enhanced endurance, others will demand high speed. Costs may be reduced and flexibility enhanced by the introduction of modularised weapon systems, allowing tailored packages to be inserted or removed, according to requirements. The US littoral combat ship was designed to be able to do precisely this. Many navies will seek technological solutions to allow for reduced crew numbers, reflecting challenges of cost and recruitment. Unmanned systems may be more widely employed (see Box 10.3). Some navies will invest heavily in domestic innovation and shipbuilding, others will seek to share the burden through collaboration with partners, and many will depend entirely on friends, allies or the open market for their access to new technology. New missiles may exploit nanotechnology to become smaller, faster, smarter, stealthier and more deadly at greater range. Hypersonic missiles, such as those under development in China and Russia, may pose critical challenges to existing air defence systems by flying many times the speed of sound with a capacity for evasive manoeuvre as they approach their target. Mines may become more discriminating and harder to detect. There will continue to be a battle between submarine and anti-submarine technology, and the wider availability of air-independent propulsion systems will enhance the potency of conventional boats. A growing number of states will deploy nuclear-powered boats, giving their submarine forces greatly enhanced speed, range and endurance. Torpedoes will continue to pose a deadly threat and may gain yet more speed, range and accuracy. Enhanced ISR will make the sea less opaque than previously, opening up possibilities for targeting and attack and increasing the need for robust countermeasures. Aircraft will continue to pose a deadly danger, particularly when equipped with the latest anti-ship missiles and supported by effective sensors. This may lead to a greater emphasis being placed on stealthy vessels, particularly submersible or semisubmersible assets.12 The widespread (and growing) availability of very potent sea denial technologies, many of which do not require one to be particularly proficient at sea to use them, has prompted questions about the survivability of naval forces, and particularly of surface ships. There is nothing new in this. In the 1980s some questioned whether large surface ships could meet the challenge posed by flotillas of missile-armed fast attack craft (FAC). The 1991 Gulf War, in which the British and US navies quickly neutralised Iraqi missile armed FAC, suggested that such concerns had been overstated. Large surface ships may be vulnerable to attack, but they possess a potent range of offensive and defensive capabilities that give them utility across a spectrum of operations. Surface ships are the only naval assets able to operate simultaneously on, under and over the surface of the sea. To survive in a high threat environment they may need to be protected by a range of expensive and sophisticated systems, and to be able to operate as part of a coordinated networked force. But the sheer utility of the surface ship means that it is unlikely to disappear from naval inventories any time soon. Unfortunately, it tends to be the case that the things needed to protect a ship are more expensive that the

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 197 BOX 10.3  UNMANNED AERIAL, SURFACE AND UNDERWATER VEHICLES Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV): UAVs, often called drones, are already widely employed to provide persistent surveillance and also strike options. Future systems will likely have enhanced speed, range, payload and endurance. Currently UAVs are very reliant on maintaining constant real-time communications with the controller and they are vulnerable to countermeasures (both kinetic and jamming). Future systems may become more robust and more self-reliant. The ability to operate UAVs from relatively small ships, and the possibility they may one day may replace manned-aircraft in many roles, suggests that in future ship-based aviation will be more widely available than at present and that the ‘aircraft carrier’ of the future may be a very different vessel to those currently employed by navies. Unmanned surface vehicles (USV): The sea is a more difficult environment to operate in than is the air, given the challenges of changing sea state, danger of collision, etc. Nonetheless USVs can be used for a variety of tasks. Some are employed to gather oceanographic and meteorological data, others are used for maritime security tasks including surveillance, reconnaissance and interception, as with the Protector USV deployed by the Singapore Navy. In May 2018 the British Royal Navy began trials with a new autonomous minesweeper system, showing another possible use for such vessels. The potential to employ USVs to attack surface ships was demonstrated by the successful Houthi attack on a Saudi frigate in 2017, using a remotely piloted vessel. Small unmanned systems have clear potential for use in swarming attacks against larger targets, and also for swarm defence. Their small size can make USVs stealthy and the potential to provide persistent presence has obvious utility for ISR and for combat roles. It will be interesting to see the extent to which established rules and norms applying to naval combat also apply to USVs or whether they are employed with greater freedom and less restraint than manned systems have been (as have UAVs). Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV): There are grave difficulties maintaining communications with underwater systems. To date this has meant that UUVs are mostly ‘tethered’ systems, linked to a mother ship/submarine. These are often used in mine clearance. Independent systems would need to be able to operate without near-constant real-time control. The technological challenges are significant. Nevertheless, the covert nature of underwater systems offers very real potential to use UUVs ‘up-threat’ in areas where one might hesitate to send a manned vessel. They could also be deployed more generally as an area denial asset. There already exist sophisticated mines (such as the US CAPTOR) that are designed to detect the acoustic signature of particular vessels or submarines and are equipped with a homing torpedo to attack their adversary. It seems inevitable that such systems will continue to evolve and that current experiments with large displacement UUVs (i.e. unmanned submarines) will continue.11

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things that threaten it; thus, a sophisticated air defence system able to deal with enemy aircraft and anti-ship missiles costs more to develop, acquire and maintain than does the capability to fire such missiles at an opponent. It seems likely that major warships will have to be equipped to operate in a very dangerous environment. Stealth and the increasing speed of weapons will reduce reaction times. This makes effective surveillance and the ability to respond rapidly to any threats a matter of growing importance. Improved sensors will help, but make it harder for the force to hide (due to the associated emissions). Disrupting the enemy targeting cycle and enhancing one’s own will be vital. Improved ISR will make the surface of the sea less opaque than previously, but engagements will often occur in regions where adversaries can exploit terrain and civilian clutter to launch sneak attacks. A competent opponent will seek to challenge their enemy at several different levels simultaneously and to exploit both high and low technology threats. For ships to survive in such an environment they will need to be able to call on more than just their own sensors and weapons. They will need to be networked into a structure where the whole force together mitigates the vulnerabilities of its individual elements. Admiral Menom memorably noted that ‘[a] ship that has to depend largely on its own sensors is like a blind man in today’s warfare – a liability and a target unless it can log into the information chain in the ether above’.13 This creates opportunities, but also vulnerabilities. The network itself is vulnerable to attack. It is noteworthy that recent US policy statements have emphasised that connectivity cannot be guaranteed all of the time and that commanders will still be required to show initiative, make their own decisions and achieve missions even when connectivity is disrupted.14

Anti-access and area-denial challenges One of the most discussed issues in this field in recent years has been the development and proliferation of advanced weapons and other technologies designed to deny access or undermine the freedom of action within an operational area, described as antiaccess and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities (see Chapter 6). The belief is that now even ‘middle-weight militaries and non-state actors’ will have weapons that were once only available to superpowers and that they will be able exploit these to deny or delay access to a particular region (A2) and to restrict freedom of action of a force once it arrives in theatre (AD). Some adversaries are expected to possess only a limited range of these capabilities but these can still pose key challenges. Others, it is claimed, may be able to deploy a fully layered and integrated A2/AD approach employing air, sea, land, space and cyber forces, all supported by an efficient command and control apparatus able to use each in mutual support of the others, posing threats to friendly forces at every stage of their journey (and even in the home base). Despite the snappy new title A2/AD ideas are not new. Indeed, attempts to deny an enemy access and the ability to manoeuvre have been common features of many naval wars in the past. What is new is the fear that technological advances and proliferation may have given a wide range of adversaries ‘previously unattainable’ capabilities in this respect. Thus, it has been argued that A new generation of cruise, ballistic, air-to-air, and surface-to-air missiles with improved range, accuracy and lethality is being produced and proliferated. Modern

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 199 submarines and fighter aircraft are entering the militaries of many nations, while sea mines are being equipped with mobility, discrimination and autonomy. Both space and cyberspace are becoming increasingly important and contested. The pervasiveness and advancement of computer technology and reliance on the internet and useable networks are creating means and opportunity for computer attack by numerous state and non-state aggressors, and the domain of space is now integral to such military capabilities as communications, surveillance and positioning. In certain scenarios, even low-technology capabilities, such as rudimentary sea mines, fast-attack small craft, or shorter-range artillery and missile systems render transit into and through the commons vulnerable to interdiction by coercive, aggressive actors, slowing or stopping free movement.15 It is important to remember that while A2/AD approaches may sometimes be enabled by new technology an effective response requires one to understand how the enemy will use their capabilities. It requires one to understand their strategy and their tactics rather than to focus exclusively on technical capabilities. It is also worth remembering, as Sam Tangredi has emphasised, that this tends to be the strategy of the weak. Navies employ A2/AD strategies in order to protect themselves from superior enemy force. If they could dominate the seas through more conventional means then they would do so and their adversaries would face problems that are exponentially greater. In reality, of course, even powerful navies are likely to employ anti-access strategies in one area whilst simultaneously attempting other things (sea control, power projection, etc.) elsewhere, much as they did in both World Wars and for centuries before.16

Operating over-the-horizon Anti-access challenges may affect a naval force at any stage of its journey to the operational area (or even at home) but they will be most acute in the littorals where the confluence of threats is greatest. This has reinforced the efforts of some navies to seek ways of projecting power from ‘over-the-horizon (OTH)’, creating effects in the littorals while keeping major assets out of them. Thus, an aircraft carrier might project its aircraft into the Persian Gulf without passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Amphibious forces equipped with fast, long range connectors, such as the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, may not now need to come close to the shore in the manner that was once required. On the other hand, to land heavy equipment still requires ships or craft to approach the shore and many other military and civilian activities do require a physical presence in the littoral danger zone where threats abound. This may not be somewhere that navies will want to put their most prized assets.

A high-low mix? In the past navies tended to employ flotilla vessels such as motor torpedo boats, frigates and destroyers to undertake dangerous duties in contested waters. Destroyers today are larger, more capable and less numerous than they used to be; navies are unlikely to risk them without good reason. In such circumstances smaller, cheaper, less capable but more numerous vessels have some advantage. Such logic informs the idea behind the US littoral combat ship and the conceptual ‘Black Swan’ class sloop discussed by the British Royal Navy in 2012. In the latter case, the concept was for groups of small

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and relatively cheap ships to operate together, acting as the host for manned and unmanned platforms that were suited for modularised operations and could be optimised for sea control, maritime security or mine-countermeasures. The vessels themselves would be cheap, lean-manned and have only limited armament. The major investment would be in the platforms that would operate from the ship and would be used to keep the host platform (the ship) out of the tactical engagement envelope of enemies. The concept was based on a recognition that decreasing defence budgets would make it hard to purchase very many large multi-purpose platforms, that navies will be very reluctant to place such mission-critical assets into the contested littorals and that sloops such as this might offer a solution where numbers would compensate for their individual vulnerability.17 Despite official claims to the contrary, such ideas suggest a ‘high-low mix’ of capabilities, where a limited number of expensive mission critical assets (such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, amphibious ships) are supplemented by larger number of ships with a lower level of individual capability. The former might tend to be kept ‘down-threat’, away from the most dangerous areas, whereas the latter could be deployed ‘up-threat’ in the knowledge that their loss would not be a disaster (except, of course, for the unfortunate crew).

Weapons of mass destruction To date weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been used only infrequently since the First World War (when chemical weapons were employed on a large scale by all sides). With the exception of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the US in 1945, and rogue uses of chemical weapons against civilian populations, notably by Iraq in the 1990s and during the Syrian civil war, the weapons have been feared more than they have been used. It may be the case that the military and political barriers to their use break down in the years ahead, and armed forces may need to fight in a WMD environment. This is not entirely unprecedented, and both NATO and the Warsaw Pact prepared to do just this during the Cold War. Ships are, by their nature, less vulnerable to attack than are land-based forces. They are mobile, capable of self-defence with sophisticated anti-air and anti-missile defences, and can be designed to provide an internal citadel where personnel are protected from chemical, biological and radiological threats. This may make them particularly useful platforms for the projection of power against an enemy armed with chemical or biological weapons. Against an enemy armed with (and willing to use) nuclear weapons, ships are more mobile and less easy to hit than land-based forces, can provide options for a nuclear or conventional response and are developing a capacity for defence against missile attack that has obvious relevance for tactical, theatre and national defence in such circumstances.

Ballistic missile defence The danger posed by the proliferation of ballistic missile technology and the additional fear that such missiles might be used to deliver WMDs, has prompted a growing interest in the use of navies in support of ballistic missile defence (BMD). The US Navy has been in the forefront of such developments, supporting the national plan for missile defence using the Aegis-combat system and SM-3 anti-ballistic missile missiles. The

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 201 Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force and the Royal Australian Navy have both received equipment to enable their own Aegis equipped ships to contribute to missile defence and a number of European navies are exploring similar options. Ships offer mobile and sophisticated platforms on which to base missile defences, providing the opportunity to use them for national defence and also as the foundation for theatre defence systems designed to protect deployed forces overseas. Their use has the advantage of not prompting the kind of political storm associated with land bases, and evidenced by Russian objections to planned US BMD sites being located in Poland. Inevitably, many other navies are investigating the potential to include BMD capabilities in existing or future air-defence ships.18

In defence of naval supremacy: the challenge for US policy During the Cold War the US Navy maintained a global presence and filled a wide variety of roles but was focused particularly on the challenge posed by the Warsaw Pact. With the dissolution of that alliance, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Soviet Fleet, the US was without any major rival at sea. In the years that followed, budgets were cut and Western navies shrank. The US Navy reoriented itself from a force designed to contest sea control with the Soviets to one designed to project power in support of US interests in a variety of crises and limited conflicts overseas. By the beginning of the new century it had broadened its vision to include an emphasis on maritime security operations and on the need to sustain partnerships with other navies and agencies in order to police and protect the maritime commons. This underpinned Admiral Mullen’s concept of the 1,000-ship navy and lay at the heart of the new Maritime Strategy published in 2007. That document, tellingly entitled ‘A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower’ (CS21) emphasised the importance of partnership between navies and other agencies. It identified that the oceans represented the lifeblood of this system and articulated a view of maritime strategy that focused on ‘cooperative’ activities to deal with common challenges.19 The 2007 strategy was never particularly popular in Congress, its emphasis on ‘soft’ security ideas and multilateral cooperation did not appeal to all.20 Moreover, it was published at a time when the Chinese Navy (PLAN) appeared to be emerging as a potential peer rival, when China was acting more assertively at sea and when other lesser powers appeared to be developing a growing capacity to challenge Western dominance within the maritime domain. It is notable that the second edition of the strategy statement, published in 2015, focused much more on the challenge posed by hard security threats. It offered what Geoffrey Till described as ‘a much more muscular emphasis on the defense of US national interests at sea’.21 Reference to multilateral cooperation remained (the so-called Global Network of Navies), but now there was more focus on this network being relevant to traditional ‘competitive’ roles such as balancing the power of a regional rival. Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR), elevated to a core role in the 2007 document, was downgraded to being a ‘smart power’ mission under the rubric of power projection. In contrast, maintaining ‘all-domain access’ was given prominence as the first of five ‘essential functions’, the other four being the traditional roles of deterrence, sea control, power projection, and maritime security.22

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Return to sea control Current US naval policy is built upon an understanding that US security depends on their maintaining a world role and that access to the global commons is critical to this. However, they recognise that such access may be subject to serious challenges (see above). It is notable that the Surface Force Strategy published by the commander of US Naval Surface Forces in 2017, is subtitled ‘Return to Sea Control’.23 This does not make power projection and associated tasks less important. Indeed, it may make them more important as projection against the land may play a key part in securing control within the maritime environment, particularly as in many cases control will be challenged primarily by land-based systems. This is reflected in the evolving Navy and Marine Corps concept of Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE) which explores how an integrated naval force operating from dispersed locations (ashore and afloat) can gain local sea control and power projection in a contested environment.24 US joint forces have responded proactively to the challenge of A2/AD. In 2012 the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) emphasised the need for far closer integration and cooperation between joint forces, arguing the need for ‘cross-domain synergy’ in order to maintain all-domain access. This was followed by the joint US Navy and US Air Force concept of ‘Air-Sea Battle’ (ASB). This identified the need to develop networked integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces. This was to be achieved by closely integrating cross-domain capabilities, creating synergies and exploiting asymmetric advantages in specific domains to ‘create positive and potentially cascading effects in other domains’.25 Since then AirSea Battle has evolved and been renamed Joint Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC). The emphasis on cross-domain synergy remains, with an emphasis on ‘distributable’, ‘resilient’, ‘tailorable’ forces of sufficient scale and with suitable duration to ensure access in the contested commons. However, while ASB focused largely on disrupting enemy capabilities and sought to defeat the A2/AD challenge, JAM-GC focuses more on disrupting the enemy plan and reflects an understanding that total control is unrealistic. Enemy A2/AD capabilities may never be entirely eradiated and the joint force may have to learn to operate in a contested environment.26 JAM-GC supports a broader national concept that seeks to exploit advantages in one or more domains in order to disrupt, defeat or destroy A2/AD capabilities in the other domains. Thus, naval strikes might be employed to destroy enemy land-based air defence missiles, enabling friendly air operations. Cyberattacks might disrupt enemy command and control, facilitating operations at sea or in the air, and so forth. The intention is to attack the enemy system in depth, rather than rolling them back from a perimeter, and to exploit deception, stealth, surprise and ambiguity to complicate enemy targeting. There appears to be an understanding that it is not possible to dominate all domains at all times, but that US joint forces should aim to ‘create pockets or corridors of local domain superiority to penetrate the enemy’s defences and maintain them as required to accomplish the mission’.27 It is recognised that this may be difficult and costly, it being more difficult to project forces at great distance than it is to defend local areas. It is interesting to note that the US Army has also shown awareness of the important role that land forces can play in achieving control within the maritime environment. Their concept of Multi-domain Battle mirrors the navy’s understanding that control

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 203 (or lack thereof) in one domain has an impact on the others and that in a contested environment the aim may not be total control but rather the achievement of ‘windows of advantage’ that enable the joint force to manoeuvre and achieve their objectives. The concept emphasises the interconnectedness of the land and maritime environment and notes that the ground force commander may be required to assist forces offshore, for example, by targeting anti-access systems based on land.28 Distributed lethality

In view of the challenge posed by the proliferation of anti-access weaponry and the rise of a near peer rival (in the form of the Chinese Navy), the US Navy faces a future where sea control cannot be assured. There is a realistic appreciation that the capacity to maintain sea control is not the ability to command all of the ocean but rather a capacity to impose localised control when and where it is required for as long as it is necessary to accomplish joint objectives: Corbett would approve. In order to achieve this the navy has introduced the idea of Distributed Lethality as an operational and organisational principle. The idea is to increase the offensive and defensive capabilities of all warships, employing them in dispersed offensive formations (Hunter-killer Surface Action Groups), generating distributed fires. Thus, for example, even amphibious ships and logistics ships should be given some capacity for surface strike and self-defence and thus be capable of contributing to networked distributed action; this is reflected in the slogan, ‘if it floats, it fights’. The distributed force should be more lethal and less susceptible to detection and targeting. In support of this the US Navy is investing in improvements to the defensive resiliency of ships and in enhancing the reach and range of offensive capabilities, such as with funding for an anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile.29 Distributed lethality is supported by new technology, such as the Naval Integrated Fire Control–Counter Air capability, a cooperative engagement capability (CEC) that uses data links to integrate aircraft and ship-based sensors and weapons capabilities into an integrated whole in support of air defence. Under this approach, for example, E2-D Hawkeye carrier based AEW aircraft could use their radar to set up missile attacks by stealthy aircraft such as the F-35B Lightening or the latter could be used to direct surface-to-air missiles fired from a ship.30 At first glance, these developments and concepts appear radical and new. On reflection, however, they fit comfortably within the traditional framework of thinking about naval warfare. Concepts such as JAM-GC and distributed lethality are designed to enable close integration of joint forces in order to gain local domain superiority sufficient to achieve mission objectives. Stripped of the jargon they are not dissimilar to traditional concepts of maritime strategy insofar as they seek to provide degrees of control in a contested environment. Over a century ago both Corbett and Callwell argued about the need for joint forces to cooperate in order to achieve success on land and at sea. In the 1960s Admiral Wylie wrote persuasively that strategy was about finding ways of achieving control. Current concepts simply provide new ways of thinking about how this might be achieved.

The end of pax Americana? The US Navy faces these challenges at a time when it feels badly overstretched. The navy today is a fraction of the size that it once was. In the 1980s President Reagan

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aspired towards a fleet of 600 ships, achieving a peak of 594 in 1987 before the end of the Cold War diminished the need and saw the defence budget, and the size of the navy, decline. Enduring and costly campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq put pressure on the US finances in the 2000s at a time when there was no obvious rival at sea. The Navy remained relevant in support of power projection, maritime security and HA/DR across the globe, but its numbers continued to fall, reaching a post-1945 low of 270 vessels in 2015. Since then there has been some growth in numbers and in January 2018 there were 280 deployed battle force ships (and submarines) in the US Navy including 11 aircraft carriers (but only three underway).31 This is not enough to fill all the roles of a forward deployed global maritime force. The Navy argues that it requires 355 ships and submarines (including 12 aircraft carriers) in order to meet current commitments and future challenges. It is reflective of the problems of refit and rotation that 12 carriers are required in order to guarantee that five or six such ships are available at any one time. The costs of generating and maintaining a force of 355 vessels are considerable. One estimate suggests that this goal could not be achieved before 2035 and that to build and operate the force would cost on average $102 billion a year through to 2047 (one third greater than the appropriated costs of the 2016 navy).32 President Trump endorsed the idea of a 350ship navy in his election campaign, but it remains to be seen whether his administration (or the US economy) can support the implementation of such a plan. The need for the US to meet global obligations while simultaneously balancing the growing strength of a near peer rival is, of course, far from unprecedented. One suspects that a British admiral from the 1900s would recognise the general problem. For decades the Americans have enjoyed a level of dominance at sea equivalent to (or exceeding) that of the British in the nineteenth century. This should not blind us to the fact that monopolistic sea power is the exception, not the norm. More usually dominance at sea is challenged. In war it must be fought for, as was the case in both World Wars and in innumerable conflicts before them. If we are indeed returning to a situation where the U.S. Navy faces one or more near peer rivals then this represents a return to the usual order. It is a situation where traditional concepts of maritime strategy, suitably adjusted and interpreted to suit current conditions, are likely to be more important than ever.

Naval policy in the twenty-first century On the basis of the analysis above (and in the previous chapters) it seems likely that in future navies will need to be able to combat a range of threats that may include criminals, pirates, terrorists, insurgents and sub-state groups. Many navies will also need to cater for the possibility of conflict with other navies. They may be called upon to police national waters and to help protect the global commons. They may have to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief or to conduct non-combatant evacuations in response to some crisis. They may need to do so at a moment’s notice. In addition to all of this, navies may find themselves required to engage in operations designed to secure or deny sea control, attack or defend trade, to project power or provide ballistic missile defence. Some navies will focus on some elements within this broad spectrum, others may feel the need to cover all bases. It is not possible to provide here a detailed guide to the various world navies. To do this properly would require an entire book in itself, and one that would need to be

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 205 updated each year. Such books exist, of course, and the annual Seaforth World Naval Review, Jane’s Fighting Ships, and Jane’s World Navies provide very useful reference sources. For our purposes it is worth noting that the US Navy remains the most powerful in the world and that the US spends more on its navy than does any rival. Despite this, one of the more interesting developments has been the shift in naval spending away from the traditional maritime powers (i.e. US and Europe) and towards the emerging navies in the Asia-Pacific region. As Geoffrey Till has noted, ‘For the first time in 400 years, the East will be spending more on its navies than is the “old west” – a truly momentous development’.33 This is represented particularly in the recent development of the Chinese, Indian, Japanese and South Korean navies and also in the activities of smaller regional players such as the Republic of Singapore Navy. It has also been reflected in the ‘pivot’ of U.S. policy towards the Asia-Pacific. A survey of the fleet strength of a number of the world’s major navies is provided in Appendix 3. In recent years many European navies have emphasised multi-lateral cooperation and soft security issues to police the global commons. The rivalries that exist in the Asia-Pacific have often meant that policy there places a higher premium on more ‘traditional’ concerns, such as national defence. Thus, for example, the Republic of Korea Navy has participated in multi-national missions to counter-piracy in the Gulf of Aden, but it must also cater for the very real threat of attack from the North. It must also manage a precarious strategic position balanced between two powerful states (China and Japan), both of whom have substantially increased the strength of their navies in recent years. Traditional tasks relating to defence and deterrence remain important. The Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force is a balanced force with a mix of advanced capabilities designed to defend Japanese waters, protect maritime communications and also to provide a capacity to contribute to international peacekeeping and maritime security operations. Like the Republic of Korea Navy, it maintains a close relationship with its US counterpart and ally. Of course, the growth in the size and ambition of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is one of the most talked about issues in strategic studies today. The US now identifies the rise of the PLAN as ‘a near peer rival’ and one of the key factors in its future planning. Fear of Chinese ambitions is one of the factors driving the naval policy of many of China’s neighbours prompting, for example, Vietnamese investment in their submarine force and closer relations between Hanoi and Washington. There may not be space here to undertake a detailed examination of global navies, but it is possible to provide a quick snapshot of a small number of navies and this may provide some insight into current concerns and likely developments. Given this, it is intended to focus particularly on the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Particular attention will be paid to China as it is often suggested that this country is emerging as a peer rival to the US. In order to balance the focus on major/emerging powers, three smaller navies will also be examined, those of Iran, Malta and Singapore. Brazil

Brazil is a country whose size, population and growing economy give it the potential to develop from a regional into a major power. Unfortunately, in recent years the Marinha do Brasil (Brazilian Navy) has suffered as a result of that country’s financial

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crisis and ambitious plans have not been met with additional funds. In some respects that navy has made significant progress, notably through the PROSUB project in collaboration with France. This involves the construction of a new submarine base near Rio De Janeiro, local construction of four Scorpéne class conventional submarines and French support for the Brazilian project to build nuclear-powered submarines, the first of which is scheduled to launch in 2027. The Brazilian Navy had traditionally focused on littoral and riverine operations. Under a new National Defence Strategy (published in 2008), a more ambitious concept for a blue-water navy was articulated, with the aim that by 2034 Brazil would be able to control its own jurisdictional waters, be able to conduct sea denial operations and to project power on the high seas. In support of this the navy pursued ambitious procurement policies, seeking to update and expand its submarine, surface and air forces. If all of the navy’s plans are realised, it should be a major regional navy with the capacity to challenge for sea control within the adjacent seas and project limited power further afield. Unfortunately, the surface fleet has suffered from the prevailing economic climate and the number of frigates and corvettes has been reduced in recent years. Plans to modernise the old aircraft carrier Sao Paulo were abandoned due to costs and the ship was decommissioned in early 2017 leaving Brazil without the ability to deploy fixed wing aircraft at sea. Despite these difficulties the navy has contributed actively to overseas missions, including support for multinational humanitarian relief operations and UN peacekeeping missions. Thus, for example, Brazil provided the flagship for the UNIFIL Maritime Task Force off Lebanon in 2016 and 2017. In February 2018 it was announced that Brazil would purchase the British LPH HMS Ocean, due to be decommissioned that spring. If the sale goes through the ship will provide a platform ideally suited for overseas missions, and one that also offers the potential to deploy aviation assets at sea.34 Russia

The Russian Navy is now beginning to recover from years of decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That collapse not only saw large elements of the old Soviet fleet decommissioned or fall into decrepitude through lack of investment, it also deprived Russia of large stretches of coastline and some important maritime infrastructure and industry. The annexation by Russia of Crimea in 2014 secures the most critical ‘overseas’ facility, the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, at the cost of alienating many of Russia’s neighbours. The revival of the Russian economy in recent years and the political assertiveness associated with the regime of Vladimir Putin, has seen increased investment in the navy and ambitious plans for future expansion. The new Russian Naval Doctrine, published in July 2017, articulated an ambition to provide a conventional strategic deterrent and suggested that Russia should be the second global naval power. Reality is more prosaic. The fleet is encumbered with many old vessels of dubious utility. Investment has tended to emphasise traditional roles of defence within the littorals and to particularly favour the submarine force. The requirement to support and protect the SSBNs will likely remain a core role. Their one existing aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, has been used in support of foreign policy, making high profile visits to Syria during the course of that country’s civil war, although the military (rather than the diplomatic) utility of that ship appears to be rather limited. The deployment of potent anti-ship missiles into many smaller vessels may to some degree mitigate

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 207 the limitations of the Russia’s ageing major surface combatants. Successful sea-based missile strikes against targets in Syria using the Kalibr cruise missile, demonstrate Russian capacity in this area. In recent years Russia’s European neighbours have expressed growing concern about that country’s apparent ability to employ A2/AD strategies to deny NATO control in the Baltic Sea and also in northern waters. Thus, Norwegian analysists point to the renewed Russian interest in establishing defensive ‘bastions’ in the high north, designed primarily to protect Soviet SSBNs but capable also of interfering with Western control in waters vital to the NATO alliance. The parallels with Cold War concerns are striking. Similarly, the deployment to Kaliningrad of land-based anti-air and anti-ship missiles suggests a Russian capacity for sea and air denial that may challenge NATO control in seas that until recently were considered relatively benign. Allied to fears that Russia could exploit hybrid approaches in the Baltic states, as they did in Crimea in 2014 (and in Ukraine since then), it seems that Russian forces have regained the capacity at least to make their neighbours wary of them, despite the manifest limitations of the surface fleet.35 India

India provides an interesting case of a nation with huge interests at sea but with a body politic that is decidedly land-focused. The Indian Navy has been active in articulating the need for the nation to think more about maritime security in the context of both traditional and non-traditional threats.36 It should be noted that the terrorists who conducted the 2008 Mumbai attacks arrived by sea and that piracy has been a notable problem in the region. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Indian Navy has sought to counter such threats and has been committed to international anti-piracy efforts for many years. The navy has also been active in terms of international engagement, through multi-lateral exercises and the like, and also through humanitarian assistance such as the major relief effort launched in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami when 19 ships conducted relief operations overseas. Indeed, it has been suggested that India sees HA/DR roles as an important way of contributing to stability while also spreading influence in the region amid disquiet that Chinese efforts to do the same might be bearing fruit.37 Despite the above, traditional approaches to defence and deterrence remain important. Concerns about Pakistan and about Chinese encroachment into the Indian Ocean have reinforced the need for the full range of capabilities able to contest sea control in an area that India considers its own. It is not surprising, therefore, to see India pursuing the development of a balanced fleet including plans for three large aircraft carriers. Unfortunately, a lack of funding and problems with the domestic shipbuilding industry means that the navy must cope with an ageing surface fleet and a very slow pace of new construction. The pride associated with the construction of India’s first homebuilt aircraft carrier, currently underway, cannot disguise the difficulties that they are having in terms of maintaining and upgrading capabilities overall. Thus, in 2018 only one carrier was actually in commission, INS Vikramaditya, a ship first commissioned by the Soviet Navy in 1987. In contrast, the submarine force has made progress. In addition to 15 conventional boats, the Indian Navy also operates an SSN, leased from the Russians, and in 2016 commissioned its first domestically constructed nuclearpowered ballistic missile submarine.38

208 Contemporary practice China The growth of Chinese power and assertiveness is one of the most talked about features of international politics in the twenty-first century. China appears to be on the road to becoming a superpower. Some commentators assume that this will lead to conflict between China and the US as part of a cycle of strategic challenge and response. Considered in this way the growth of the PLAN may be viewed with apprehension in Washington, which describes that navy as approaching the status of a ‘near peer rival’. For most of its existence the PLAN has been a relatively small force, focused on a guerrilla warfare style defence of local waters. It was clearly subordinate to the army in national priorities. More recently, the PLAN has benefitted from very significant investment and from a more assertive Chinese approach to foreign and defence policy. The navy has received investment in surface, sub-surface and air capabilities reflected most obviously in the commissioning in September 2012 of its first aircraft carrier, and the launch in 2017 of the first domestically built aircraft carrier. Despite the profile of these ships, it should be noted that neither are remotely as capable as their US counterparts, and it may be more appropriate to view them as counters to the construction of similar vessels by regional rivals, India and Japan.39 The submarine force remains an area of particular investment. Recent experiments with the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile reflects investment in asymmetric technologies designed to challenge major adversaries at range from the Chinese coast, although it is far from certain that this missile has the ability to find, track and target a moving ship. Nevertheless, with a potent combination of land, air and sea-based systems (and also a sophisticated capacity for cyber warfare), China could present a significant A2/AD challenge to the US Navy in home waters and might reasonably aspire to control these seas in any conflict against a regional rival. China now has the largest regional navy (surpassing that of Japan) and has adopted a more ambitious policy whereby the traditional approach of ‘Offshore Waters Defence” is joined now by an aspiration to be able to protect Chinese interests, and in particular their vulnerable sea lines of communication, in more distant waters. Thus, at present the PLAN aspires to challenge the dominance of the US Navy in the area from Vladivostok in the north to the Straits of Malacca in the south, and out as far as the so-called ‘First Island Chain’ (Aleutians, Kurils, Ryukyus, Taiwan, Philippines, Greater Sundra Islands). It will do this through asymmetric sea denial tactics. In conflicts with regional powers, and in the absence of the US Navy, China may deploy more balanced forces and aim to prevail in a conventional fashion. Ultimately the PLAN hopes to develop a capacity to challenge for sea control out to the ‘Second Island Chain’ (the Bonins, Marianas, Guam, and Palau) and beyond into the ‘Far Seas’. To do so, however, they must overcome problems posed by geography, local rivals and a US Navy that is used to being the only major player in these waters. The growing reach and ambition of the PLAN has been reflected in the purchase of more capable surface combatants, of new replenishment ships and of large amphibious vessels able to reach beyond local waters and, of course, in their aircraft carrier programme. The amphibious ships also reflect the longstanding requirement to be prepared for operations to ‘retake’ Taiwan should the need arise. Similarly, the PLAN has conducted a number of out-of-area exercises and visits. The deployment of three ships to undertake counter-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden in 2008 and of a warship to the Mediterranean during the 2011 Libyan crisis, illustrates the growing reach of the

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 209 PLAN. Thus, in 2015 Chinese vessels conducted exercises with the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and in July 2017 three Chinese warships participated in joint exercises with the Russian Navy in the Baltic.40 In 2017 China commissioned its first official overseas naval base, in Djibouti, apparently in support of their counter-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa. The PLAN has shown a pronounced interest in the security of the maritime communications on which Chinese prosperity depends. Any challenge to the security of these would likely trigger a robust response.41

BOX 10.4  ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON THE EXPANSION OF THE PLAN Viewed from Washington the growth of the Chinese Navy may appear to be threatening. Viewed from the countries in the region, with whom China has numerous maritime territorial disputes, the threat may appear greater still. On the other hand, the situation is rather different if viewed from the perspective of Beijing. China has for centuries been subjected to attack and humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who arrived by sea. It has a long and vulnerable coastline that must be defended, extensive interests at sea (in terms of trade and access to resources) that need protection, and a range of territorial disputes that see Chinese territory illegally occupied (in the view of the Beijing government) by neighbouring states. For the Chinese, the PLAN is no ‘luxury fleet’. China may view the US Navy as an unwanted and destabilising force, and resent encroachments of US ships and aircraft into the Chinese EEZ, but they are probably less assertive on this matter than the US government would be if Chinese battle groups routinely conducted large-scale exercises with local navies in the Caribbean or off the coast of California. The US government consider Chinese claims in the South China Seas to be excessive and dispute the construction of military facilities on some of these islands. A Chinese observer might note that the Spratly Islands area is 750 miles from China but that Guam is over 7,000 miles from the US and currently hosts one of the largest military bases in the entire region. They may not be willing to see why occupation of one is less legitimate than the other. Official pronouncements, to the effect that China is interested only in peaceful development and ‘harmonious seas,’ may not be entirely borne out by the experience of its neighbours. The aggressive manner in which Chinese vessels have harassed their counterparts in regional waters, the occupation of disputed reefs and islands in the South China Seas (and the construction on these of military facilities), and the 2016 rejection by China of a ruling on maritime rights by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, all suggest that their vision of harmony co-exists with one in which national interests are promoted in a robust fashion. Nevertheless, it would be unwise to be too quick to assume that the growth of the PLAN is built on aggressive designs. Unfortunately, even if it is primarily defensive, others may disagree with China’s idea of what ‘defensive’ may mean in practice. The response of regional navies to the growth of the PLAN suggests the possibility for an Asian arms race. The U.S. response is discussed above.42

210 Contemporary practice Iran The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy reflects the Iranian desire to be a major regional power, and it operates a small number of conventional frigates and corvettes and also some landing ships and craft. These vessels have been employed beyond the Persian Gulf for diplomatic purposes, for example conducting visits to Syria as a sign of support for the Assad regime after the outbreak of civil war in that country. Iran has participated in multi-lateral exercises with other navies, including IMMSAREK-17 in the Indian Ocean in 2017, conducing search and rescue exercises along with the navies of 32 other countries. Ambitions to project forces further afield and annoyance at the US presence in local waters may have been reflected in the Commander of the Iranian Navy’s claim in November 2017 that they would be sending a warship to visit friendly states in the Gulf of Mexico. The major focus of the navy, however, is to counter the potential of any Western intervention in the region and to this end it is equipped with a large number of missilearmed fast attack craft and also a variety of patrol boats and small craft armed with a range of missiles, guns and rockets. Many of these are operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which represents something of a parallel navy (and one that may show less restraint in a crisis). They also have a major mine warfare capability and the maritime forces are backed by land-based missiles, artillery and aircraft. The navy has recently modernised its Russian-supplied Kilo-class submarines and also has a number of mini-submarines that are optimised for operations in the shallow waters of the Gulf. The possession of swimmer delivery vehicles suggests an interest in underwater maritime special-forces that could be of considerable utility in the confined and congested waters of the Gulf. Similarly, deployment of low-profile, high-speed boats suitable for hit and run or swarming attacks suggests continued interest in the ability to attack shipping in local waters. Recent moves to develop the Khalij Fars anti-ship ballistic missile, with a claimed range of 300 km, provide further evidence of their interest in what the US would characterise as A2/AD capabilities.43 Malta

Malta is a small country situated in the central Mediterranean between Libya and Sicily. It has a small population (under half a million people) and a commensurately limited defence budget. As a member of the European Union it faces no obvious or immediate conventional military threat, but exists in an environment where a range of other maritime security issues (including drugs smuggling and illegal immigration from Africa to Europe) pose significant challenges. As one might expect, the major roles of the Armed Forces of Malta Maritime Squadron revolve around maritime security, surveillance and law enforcement. In essence it is a traditional constabulary navy and it is equipped accordingly with four offshore and four inshore patrol vessels. It is supported in its duties by the AFM Air Wing which has eight fixed-wing patrol aircraft and six helicopters. Despite its modest means the Maritime Squadron has actively participated in international exercises focusing on anti-piracy operations and has contributed personnel (including a vessel boarding detachment) to work with EU partners in Operation Atalanta off Somalia. In addition to this it has been heavily engaged in support of EU FRONTEX operations designed to counter illegal immigration and human trafficking in the Mediterranean.

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 211 Singapore

The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) is relatively small but is a balanced, wellequipped and highly respected force. Singapore is situated within one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and in a region that has experienced trouble with piracy and the competing claims of the littoral states. Naval policy has reflected national policy in its focus on defence and deterrence tempered by the realisation that Singaporean security can only be achieved through regional cooperation (notably through ASEAN). Thus, the RSN has promoted a number of multilateral initiatives and participates in the successful Malacca Straits Patrol, established in 2004, which sees the RSN cooperating with navies of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in policing this busy shipping lane. The deployment to Singapore of US littoral combat ships provides additional potential for international cooperation and for the policing of the Straits. The navy’s primary focus is the waters around Singapore. However, it has participated in multinational operations, the deployment of Endurance-class LSTs to support postconflict reconstruction in Iraq, providing disaster relief in Aceh and support of counterpiracy in the Gulf of Aden.44 Within Europe the range of naval policies is varied as are the capabilities. Britain and France are the most powerful navies and possess balanced forces with appropriate afloat support and are capable of global deployments, but both are experiencing difficulties maintaining their position. The 2013 French White Paper on Defence and National Security, for example, ruled out construction of a second French aircraft carrier and announced that it would collaborate with the Royal Navy in order to sustain future operations.45 In February 2017 France was left without any carrier capability when their only ship, Charles de Gaulle, began an 18 month refit. The British, who commissioned the first of two new carriers in 2017, have a ship but will not have the planned air group of F-35B STOVL aircraft until at least 2020. Furthermore, the cost of building and operating the carriers has had a knock-on effect on the rest of the navy. Thus, in 2017 it was reported that the Royal Navy’s stock of Harpoon anti-ship missiles was due to be retired in 2018 and that a replacement would not be available for some years (meaning that ships would sail with empty missile silos). Similarly, planned cuts to the amphibious fleet and to the number of Royal Marines appear to threaten the future of what had once been a particular strength for the Royal Navy. On a more positive note, the decision of the Ministry of Defence to purchase nine P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft for the Royal Air Force at least means that the UK will regain a capacity lost a decade earlier.46 The challenge of maintaining balanced capabilities is evident. Italy and Spain possess more modest forces but have invested in power-projection platforms including light aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, and these are valuable for crisis management and humanitarian relief operations. Other navies, such as those of Germany and the Netherlands, have also enhanced their capacity to contribute to multi-national crisis management operations and collaborate closely in order to enhance their capabilities, notably with the shared use of the joint support ship Karel Doorman and the integration of the German Sea Battalion into the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps (with Dutch land forces simultaneously operating under German command).47 This may point the way towards closer European integration in defence matters. Others have focused more closely on national defence needs or, as with Ireland, on the need to police and protect their jurisdictional waters. The ability of the Europeans to take a leading role in the 2011 Libyan operation, and the important role played by the

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British, French and Italian navies (numerous other European navies helped to impose the embargo at sea), led some to anticipate a growing European ability to take responsibility for the security of their region. This has additional salience as the US focuses on the Asia-Pacific region. Unfortunately, it is widely recognised that Europe still remains too dependent on the support of the US for key enabling capabilities and that the European Union has not yet evolved into an actor that can, in military and naval terms, amount to more than the sum of its parts. British plans to leave the Union may not help this situation. For those countries close to Russia, and particularly the Baltic States, Finland, Norway and Sweden, there has been growing concern about Russian capabilities and intent and calls for Europe and for NATO to match the apparent threat. Navies that once emphasised ‘post-modern’ roles overseas are now focused primarily on a much more ‘modern’ threat close to home.48 European navies, and particularly those in the Mediterranean, have had to focus considerable attention on the problems posed by those trafficking drugs and people, reflected in activities such as the EU Operation Sophia, designed to counter illegal migration from North Africa and to mitigate the associated humanitarian crisis. As was discussed in Chapter 9, for many navies (perhaps for most), catering for constabulary and maritime security roles, including counter-smuggling activity, represents the sum of their ambition and ability. The Republic of Benin (in West Africa) has a navy that operates a small number of patrol boats and is entirely constabulary in nature. On the other side of the continent, the Kenya Navy has a higher level of capability, but focuses particularly on maritime security operations. Like Benin, and many other navies in the developing world, it has been the beneficiary of US support, in this case through the provision of Defender class ‘response boats’ intended to help in the fight against piracy. Another navy to have benefited from the Defender class is the Fuerza Naval De El Salvador (El Salvador Navy), whose focus is also constabulary and has a particular emphasis on counter-narcotics operations. In Paraguay the Armada Nacional offers the unusual example of a navy within a land-locked country operating a number of patrol boats and river defence vessels to protect and police around 1,800 nm of inland waterways.49

Conclusion It seems likely that threats will abound in the future maritime battle space. Some of these will be conventional in nature, some will be asymmetric and the most effective adversaries will combine conventional and unconventional measures in a hybrid approach that challenges navies in all of the relevant domains. Technological diffusion and tactical innovation may give smaller navies (and other adversaries) the opportunity to deny larger opponents the freedom of use of the sea, to different degrees in different places. The growing strength of some states, and the relative decline of others, may challenge the existing distribution of naval power. In particular, the growth in naval spending in many navies within the Asia-Pacific region, and the explicit shift in US focus and priority from the Atlantic to this area, suggests a rebalancing away from the ‘old world’ and towards this region. This will have an obvious impact on the navies there and also on those extra-regional navies that see a continued need to project power within the Asia-Pacific. It will also have an important impact elsewhere as navies adjust to the emergence of new powers, and potentially new rivals, at the same time as the US shifts its focus, and its forces, elsewhere. If the global dominance of the US Navy is beginning to wane, then the next few decades may be characterised by a greater degree of change and uncertainty than we have become accustomed to.

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Key points •

•

•

•

•

•

It seems likely that navies will operate in a world where conflict remains frequent, where US dominance at sea is challenged by the emergence of near peer rivals, and where technology exacerbates threats. The future maritime battlespace is likely to be complex, multi-dimensional and will require navies to exert control in a variety of domains including the sea, land, air, space, cyber-space and the electromagnetic spectrum. The diffusion of high technology systems across the world, and the innovative use of these and low technology weapons, may allow smaller navies and nations, and less conventional adversaries, to pose a serious challenge to naval access and freedom of manoeuvre within the operational area. In response to this, the US Navy has responded with the development of new concepts designed to provide options to fight for all domain access in a situation where use of the global commons is contested. The multi-dimensional nature of the threat to sea control, access, domain superiority (or whatever you choose to call it), implies that control can only be achieved through the closest possible joint integration. It also suggests that one must think of operations in a holistic sense unbounded by traditional environmental boundaries. Despite the apparently new nature of some of these threats and challenges, most (if not all) fit within the framework provided by traditional maritime strategy and an understanding of this can thus inform thinking about naval warfare in the twentyfirst century.

Notes 1 Department of the Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (2015), 3. Available at www.navy.mil/local/maritime/150227-CS21R-Final.pdf. [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. 2 Global Peace Index 2017. Measuring Peace in a Complex Word (2017). Available at http:// visionofhumanity.org/app/uploads/2017/06/GPI17-Report.pdf [Accessed 23 Jan 2018]. 3 Joint Concept Note (JCN) 1/17 (London: UK Government). Available at www.gov.uk/government/ publications/future-force-concept-jcn-117. 4 See Admiral James Stavridis USN Retired, ‘Maritime Hybrid Warfare in Coming’, in Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, December 2016. 5 US Joint Forces Command, The Joint Operating Environment 2035: The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World (2016), executive summary (ii). Available at https://fas.org/man/eprint/ joe2035.pdf [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. 6 Ibid., 30–31. 7 Geoffrey Till, ‘The Changing Dynamics of Seapower and Concepts of Battle’ in Bekkevold and Till (eds.), International Order, p. 185. 8 Sam Tangredi, ‘Commons Control and Commons Denial: From JAM-GC to an Integrated Plan’ EMC Chair Conference Paper (2016). Available at https://dnnlgwick.blob.core.windows.net/ portals/0/P6%20Sea%20Control/Tangredi-Commons%20Control%20and%20Commons%20 Denial.pdf?sr=b&si=DNNFileManagerPolicy&sig=nznLeQqlT%2B5zYDUa5YpGI2kC5LbFaFq VjmuEDo4HG4I%3D [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. 9 Peter Dombrowski and Chris C. Demchak, ‘Cyber War, Cybered Conflict, and the Maritime Domain’, US Naval War College Review, Vol.67, No.2 (Spring 2017). 10 Norman Friedman, ‘A New Age of Naval Weapons’, in C. Waters (ed.), World Naval Review 2018 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2017), chapter 4.2. 11 See Robert Sparrow and George Lucas, ‘When Robots Rule the Waves?’, US Naval War College Review, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Autumn 2016), 49–78.

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12 See Australian Defence Forces, Future Maritime Operational Concept – 2025. Maritime Force Projection and Control, www.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/future-maritime-operatingconcept-2025 [Accessed 2 Oct 2017]. 13 Raja Menon, Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars (London: Frank Cass, 1998), 195. 14 See the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Capstone Concept for Joint Operations (2012). Available at https:// archive.org/stream/Capstone-Concept-for-Joint-Operations---Joint-Force-2020/Capstone%20 Concept%20for%20Joint%20Operations%20-%20Joint%20Force%202020_djvu.txt [Accessed 10 Jan 2018]. 15 Air Sea Battle Office, Air-Sea Battle. Service Collaboration to Address Anti-Access & AreaDenial Challenges (May 2013), 2. 16 Sam J. Tangredi, ‘Anti-access Warfare as Strategy. From Campaign Analysis to Assessment of Extrinsic Events’, US Navy War College Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Winter 2018), 33–64. 17 DCDC, Joint Concept Note 1/12, Future Black Swan Class Sloop of War – A Group System (May 2012). Available online www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/33686/20120503JCN112_Black_SwanU.pdf (Accessed 21 Oct 2013). 18 Norman Friedman, ‘Ballistic Missile Defence and the USN’ in Conrad Waters (ed.), Seaforth World Naval Review 2014 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth, 2013), 184–191. 19 Department of the Navy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (2007). Available at www.hsdl.org/?view&did=479900 [Accessed 10 Feb 2017]. 20 See Amund Lundesgaard, Controlling the Sea and Projecting Power: U.S. Navy Strategy and Force Structure After the Cold War (Oslo, Doctoral dissertation, 2016). 21 Geoffrey Till, ‘The New Maritime Strategy: Another View from Outside’, US Naval War College Review, Vol. 68, No.4 (Autumn 2015). 22 USN, USMC, USCG, A Cooperative Strategy for Twenty-first Century Seapower (2015). 23 Commander Naval Surface Forces, Surface Force Strategy: Return to Sea Control (2017). Available at www.public.navy.mil/surfor/Documents/Surface_Forces_Strategy.pdf [Accessed 10 Feb 2018]. 24 US Marine Corps, Marine Corps Operating Concept. How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century (Sept 2016) 12. Available at http://www.mccdc.marines.mil/MOC/ [Accessed 10 Feb 2018]. 25 Air Sea Battle Office, Air Sea Battle Service Collaboration to Address Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenges (May 2013), 4–5. 26 Michael Hutchens, William Dries, Jason Perdew, Vincent Bryant and Kerry Moores, ‘Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons. A New Joint Operational Concept’, Joint Forces Quarterly, 1st Quarter (2017). 27 US Joint Forces Command, Joint Operational Access Concept, iii. 28 US Army, Multi-Domain Battle. The Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century (December, 2017). Available at http://www.tradoc.army.mil/multidomainbattle/docs/MDB_Evolutionfor21st. pdf [Accessed 15 Jan 2018]. 29 Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Surface Force Strategy. Return to Sea Control (2017). Also see Vice Admiral Thomas A. Rowden USN, ‘Sea Control First’, Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Vol. 143, No. 1 (1 January 2017). 30 David Hobbs, ‘World Naval Aviation: An Overview of Recent Developments’, in Conrad Waters (ed.), Seaforth World Naval Review 2018 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2017) 149–150. 31 US Navy website, Status of the Navy, www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=146 [Accessed 31 January 2018]. 32 Congressional Budget Office, Costs of Building a 355-Ship Navy (April 2017). 33 Geoffrey Till, ‘NATO: War Fighting, Naval Diplomacy and Multilateral Cooperation at Sea’, in P. Dutton, R.S. Ross and O. Tunsjo (eds), Twenty-first Century Seapower. Cooperation and Conflist at Sea (London: Routledge, 2012), 182. 34 Marinha do Brasil website, www.marinha.mil.br/ [Accessed 10 Dec 2017]. Also see Conrad Waters (ed.), Seaforth World Navies Review 2018 (Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2017), chapter 2:1. 35 Katarzyna Zysk, ‘Russia’s Naval Ambitions’ in P. Dutton, R.S. Ross and O. Tusjo (eds), Twentyfirst Century Seapower (London: Routledge, 2012), chapter 7. IISS, The Military Balance 2017 (London: IISS, 2017), chapter 5. Also see Waters (ed.), The Seaforth World Naval Review 2018 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), chap 2.4; Klaus Mommsen, ‘The Russian Navy’ in J. Bruns and S. Krause (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security (London: Routledge), chapter 21; and, Dmitry Gorenburg, ‘Russia’s New and Unrealistic Naval Doctrine’,

Contemporary naval policy and future practice 215

36 37

38 39 40 41

42

43

44 45 46

47 48 49

25 July 2017 available at https://warontherocks.com/2017/07/russias-new-and-unrealistic-navaldoctrine/ [Accessed 10 Dec 2017]. For example, see Indian Navy, Navy Strategic Publication (NSP) 1.2. Ensuring Secure Seas. Indian Maritime Security Strategy (New Delhi: Ministry of Defence (Navy), 2015). For example see Robert Farley, ‘The Indian Navy Sets Up to Lead on Humanitarian Assistance in the Indian Ocean Will There be a “Peace Race” for Influence in the Indian Ocean?’, The Diplomat, 25 June 2017. https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/the-indian-navy-sets-up-to-lead-onhumanitarian-assistance-in-the-indian-ocean/ [Accessed 12 Jan 2017]. See Anit Mukherjee and C. Raja Mohan (eds), India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security (London: Routledge, 2017); and Harsh Pant, The Rise of the Indian Navy. Internal Vulnerabilities, External Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2012). Geoffrey Till, ‘The Changing Dynamics of Seapower’ , in Bekkevold and Till (eds.), International Order, p. 192. Magnus Nordenman, ‘China and Russia’s Joint Sea 2017 Baltic Naval Exercise Highlight a New Normal in Europe’, US Navy Institute News, 5 July 2017. news.usni.org/2017/07/05/china-russiasbaltic-naval-exercise-highlight-new-normal-european-maritime [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. Michael McDevitt, ‘China’s Far Seas Navy: The Implications of the “Open Seas Protection Mission”. A Paper for the China as a Maritime Power Conference’, April 2016. Avalable at www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/China-Far-Seas-Navy.pdf [Accessed 1 Dec 2017]. Also see Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific. China’s Rise and the Challenge of US Maritime Strategy, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018); Chu Hao and Cheng Qinghong, Maritime Security Cooperation in the South China Sea, in Bekkevold and Till, International Order, 221–240; and Andrew Ericksen, ‘China’s Naval Modernization: Strategies and Capabilities’, in Bekkevold and Till, International Order, 63–92. Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes, Red Star Over the Pacific. China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010); also see Shi Xiaoquin, ‘The Boundaries and Direction of China’s Seapower’ in Dutton et al, Twenty-First Century Seapower, 66–84. Geoffrey Till, Asia’s Naval Expansion: An Arms Race in the Making? (London: Routledge, 2012). James Fargher, ‘An Assessment of Iranian Naval Capabilities in the Red Sea’ (April 2017), Center for International Maritime Security, http://cimsec.org/presence-continue-forever-assess ment-iranian-naval-capabilities-red-sea/31593 [Accessed 1 Dec 2017]. Anna Ahronheim, ‘Iranian Warships Heading to the Gulf of Mexico’, Jerusalem Post, 28 Nov 2017. Anthony Cordesman, ‘The Gulf: How Dangerous is Iran to International Maritime Security’, in Bruns and Krause, The Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security, chapter 8. Republic of Singapore Navy website, www.mindef.gov.sg/oms/navy/ [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. Also see Swee Lean Collin Koh, ‘ “Best little Navy in Southeast Asia”: The Case of the Republic of Singapore Navy’, in Mulqueen et al, Small Navies, chapter 8. Livre Blanc. Défence et Sécurité Nationale 2013, www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/ fichiers_joints/livre-blanc-sur-la-defense-et-la-securite-nationale_2013.pdf [Accessed 31 Oct 2013]. Eric Grove, ‘United Kingdom Naval Strategy and International Security in the 21st Century’ in Krause and Bruns (eds), Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security, chapter 26. For a general discussion of European capabilities see Waters (ed.), World Naval Review 2018, chapters 2.4 and 2.4A. Nicholas Fiorenza, ‘Royal Netherlands Marines Cooperate with German Sea Battalion’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 3 October 2017. For example, see John Andreas Olsen (ed.), NATO and the North Atlantic. Revitalising Collective Defence, RUSI Whitehall Paper (London: Routledge, 2017). For further details see Commodore Stephen Saunders (ed.), Jane’s Fighting Ships, 2017–18 (London: IHS Janes, 2017).

Further Reading Jo Inge Bekkevold and Geoffrey Till (eds.), International Order at Sea. How is it Challenged, How is it Maintained? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016). This book offers a global perspective on a range of maritime security and naval policy issues and includes discussion by academics and by practitioners.

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Joachim Krause and Sebastien Bruns (eds), Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security (London: Routledge, 2016). This volume includes short chapters on a variety of relevant issues, including those relating to strategy, doctrine, technology and also the perspective of individual navies. Daniel Moran and James A. Russell, Maritime Strategy and Global Order: Markets, Resources, Security (Georgetown University Press, 2016). This edited volume includes chapters that explore issues relating to contemporary regional security and also some factors including maritime law, intelligence and warship design. Michael Mulqueen, Deborah Sanders andIan Speller (eds), Small Navies. Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (London: Ashgate, 2014). Focuses specifically on how smaller navies meet the challenges of contemporary strategy and policy. Admiral James Stavridis, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans (Random House, 2017). Stavridis, a retired US admiral and former NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, offers a very personal view of the challenges facing contemporary navies. Geoffrey Till and Atriandi Supriyanto (eds), Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia. Problems and Prospects for Small and Medium Navies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018). As the title suggests, this volume explores the challenges facing small and medium navies in Southeast Asia. There are a number of reference sources that provide a guide to the strength, deployment and doctrine of the world’s navies. These include the following: Stephen Saunders (ed.), IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships 2017–18 (London: Jane’s IHS, 2017) Conrad Waters, Seaforth. World Naval Review 2018 (Barnsley: Seaforth, 2017)

Other sources There are numerous official studies and reports that offer a perspective on the current and the future security environment. Many of these are available online, including the following:

United States The Joint Operating Environment 2035: The Joint Force in a Contested and Disordered World (2016): https://fas.org/man/eprint/joe2035.pdf The Joint Operational Access Concept (2012): www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/joac_jan%202012_signed. pdf A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (2015): www.navy.mil/local/maritime/150227CS21R-Final.pdf

United Kingdom Joint Concept Note 1/17. Future Force Concept (2017): www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/643061/concepts_uk_future_force_concept_jcn_1_17.pdf The Future Operating Environment 2035 (2015): www.gov.uk/government/publications/futureoperating-environment-2035

Australia Future Maritime Operational Concept – 2025. Maritime Force Projection and Control: www.navy.gov. au/media-room/publications/future-maritime-operating-concept-2025

Conclusion

The introduction to this book began by claiming that what happens at sea matters, that it has always mattered and that it will continue to matter in the future. Hopefully, having made it this far through the book, the reader understands why this is the case. The ability to use the seas is vital for the nourishment and economic well-being of billions of people. It is central to the maintenance of the globalised economic system. The sea provides a medium for cooperative engagement but also plays host to a variety of challenges and threats. It remains an environment within which states and other groups can challenge each other and where conflict can (and does) occur. Navies have an important part to play in policing and protecting this environment. They can also exploit it for coercive purposes. The ability to control, use or deny use of the sea can have important tactical, operational and strategic effect across the spectrum of conflict, and this has been explored in detail in the previous chapters. Maritime power is a form of power that derives its unique character from the nature of the maritime environment and navies derive their particular attributes from this. The physical nature of the sea has not changed much in recent years, notwithstanding the recession of Arctic ice which opens up new shipping routes in the high north. Political and legal dimensions associated with our use of the sea are less immutable and it is possible that the laws and norms that guide activity within the maritime environment may be subject to change. Note, for example, the December 2017 decision of the UN General Assembly to establish a process to prepare a legally binding framework under UNCLOS to support the conservation and sustainable use of maritime diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.1 If this (and similar initiatives) result in the creeping territorialisation of the sea, then navies may find that their freedom of navigation is more limited than it once was. Similarly, new technology may radically change what it is possible to do at and from the sea or may dramatically enhance the ability of land-based systems to challenge and control the environment offshore. This book has argued that change tends to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary and that it often generates an ‘action-reaction’ type cycle where new developments in one area prompt a countervailing response. In many respects recent technological developments have actually enhanced the capability of maritime forces to have an impact across all relevant domains. In any case, technological development may well change how navies and other agencies organise and equip themselves, and how they operate, but there appears to be nothing on the horizon that will make use of the sea irrelevant, even if that use may sometimes be difficult to achieve and maintain. That difficulty may itself be an indication of relevance, no one would invest in A2/AD if they did not fear what could be done to them at and from the sea.

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The Introduction explored the notion, advanced by Booth and by Grove, that navies filled roles that could be broadly defined as military, diplomatic and constabulary and it posed the question of whether or not this was still the case. On the basis of the analysis in the rest of this book it does seem fair to suggest that these roles still apply, although the weight placed on each role may vary and the particular missions and tasks that each imply may also have changed. Indeed, it is clear that navies fulfil a very wide range of roles and that, while military capabilities give navies their raison d’être and underpin all other activities, most navies spend most of their time engaged in diplomatic and constabulary activities that make a vital contribution to national and international security. In this respect they are one of the most flexible tools of national power. The Royal Australian Navy has retained the concept of these three roles in its recent pronouncements, listing a ‘span of maritime tasks’ most of which have been discussed in detail in this book (see Figure C.1). If nothing else it provides a useful reminder of the wide range of naval activities. It is apparent from the analysis throughout this book that while it may be helpful to think of discrete roles or tasks there is very considerable overlap between them.

Figure C.1 The span of maritime tasks Source: Australian Maritime Operations (2017), 4

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219

The distinctions between military, diplomatic or constabulary activities may be more theoretical than practical. The boundaries between different acts are necessarily blurred and are best understood in this way. The dividing line between coercive diplomacy (diplomatic) and power projection (military), for example, can sometimes be hard to spot. Similarly, distinctions between combat operations at sea and from the sea, are essentially arbitrary and may act as a barrier to our understanding of naval operations within an appropriately connected, and also joint (or cross domain), context. Thus, while it may be convenient to think and to write of particular roles, it is important not to allow this to blind one to the interconnectedness of all of these activities. It has been argued that traditional concepts, such as sea control and denial, retain their utility even in the changing context of the twenty-first century. Current ideas about all-domain access, commons control, distributed lethality and the like can, when stripped of the jargon, be related back to established ideas about the need to secure a measure of control and the things that one might like to do with that control once one has it. Similarly, attempts by many smaller navies to develop A2/AD capabilities fit comfortably within the general ‘sea denial’ tradition that was discussed in Chapter 3. The precise way in which one might deny, secure or exploit control may have changed, but the requirement to do so remains (as do difficult choices about which to emphasise). Of course, one should not slavishly follow the ideas of long dead strategists, even the greatest of whom made notable mistakes within their own time (Corbett’s opposition to the adoption of convoys in the First World War is a classic case). However, reference to their work can offer ideas and insight which can then be tested against current capabilities and concerns. At the very least this should be a stimulating and constructive process, a way of taking your brain for a walk. On the other hand, it is important to remember that not everyone is likely to follow the same thought processes as did Mahan and Corbett and they may think (and thus act) differently. It seems clear that the maritime battle space, already complex, will become increasingly so in the future. New technology and new techniques will give potential adversaries a range of options that may be used either to enable or to inhibit naval operations. This is normal. Those policy makers currently scratching their heads over the challenges posed by the proliferation of anti-ship missiles, or of emerging A2/AD techniques stand in much the same place as did their predecessors who had to consider the impact of aircraft and of submarines, both of which emerged as viable instruments of war just over a century ago. It is apparent that to meet the latest challenges, which come from across all domains, navies will need to cooperate closely with joint forces. To meet the requirements of policy they may also need to work with other agencies, particularly in the conduct of maritime security operations. In this respect Corbett’s analysis, which stressed the need for a joint approach to strategy, appears as fresh today as it did a century ago. While it may be possible to make generalisations about the maritime environment, the roles and missions of navies and the conduct of naval warfare, it is very difficult to generalise about the actual policies adopted by individual navies. Once again, to reference Corbett, naval policy is derived from broader maritime and national policy. This will inevitably vary from state to state. These are subject to constraints that are broadly similar (i.e. what can and cannot be done at and from the sea) and others that are dissimilar and relate to economic, political or societal factors. As Jeremy Black notes, capabilities may set the general parameters, but tasks are shaped by interpretations driven by perceived interests. The resultant polices are varied.2 One must avoid the

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assumption that there is one particular route to success, or that there is an ideal-type ‘paradigm navy’ and that others can be judged according to how closely they adhere to this model. Different navies seek to do different things and do so in different ways. Some focus on sea denial, others on control and the exploitation of control. Still more are interested primarily in constabulary duties within local waters and others focus on making a contribution to multi-national maritime security operations. One approach is not necessarily better than the other. Each must be judged within its own particular context. In the last years of the Cold War it became fashionable to suggest that the centuries old ‘Columbian era’, in which maritime power had triumphed over the land, was coming to a close and that the future would be dominated by continental powers.3 That conclusion appeared less prescient after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of NATO, an alliance tied together by its maritime links. It seems even less fashionable today after almost three decades of dominance by the world’s leading naval power (the US). One could also note the major efforts by China (a traditional land power) to refocus its attention towards the sea. The challenges that China will face in doing so, which relate to its size, geographical position, political culture and the existence of potential rivals on its borders, rather put one in mind of Mahan’s discussion of the conditions that influence a state’s ability to generate sea power. It will be interesting to see whether China is able to overcome these challenges, and how its neighbours react. The focus of many on events in Asia does not make maritime power less important elsewhere, but it does suggest that within that region it has greater salience than previously. Inevitably over time the balance of naval power will shift in one direction or another and the character of naval warfare will continue to evolve, as it has always done. It is impossible to guess the future with any accuracy. It may well be the case that the global security environment will in future be characterised by volatility, instability and complexity (see Chapter 10), but it is improbable that the sea will decline in significance or that states, non-state groups or international organisations will stop trying to influence what happens there, simply because what happens there is so important. Given this, an understanding of naval warfare and of maritime strategy is likely to remain of value. It is hoped that this book has given the reader a good introduction to these topics and that they are now equipped, and also enthused, to develop that understanding through further study of their own.

Notes 1 2 3

UN General Assembly, Resolutions of the 72nd Session (Accessed 24 December 2017). Available at www.un.org/en/ga/72/resolutions.shtml [Accessed 1 Feb 2018]. Jeremy Black, Naval Power. A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500 Onwards (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 229, Section 21. See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Fontana Press, 1991).

Appendix 1 Maritime warfare areas

NATO doctrine categorises the ability to use force at and from the sea into distinct warfare functions or areas. The definitions that NATO provides for each of these are summarised below.1 Anti-air warfare (AAW): This is the maritime term for defensive counter air operations. These are conducted to protect friendly forces from the threat of aircraft and airborne weapons. AAW operates as part of the overall joint air defence effort and seeks to protect forces through defence in depth and a layered approach designed to defeat threats at the maximum possible distance from maritime forces. To do this a range of assets may be employed, including organic and land based aircraft, long and medium range surface-to-air missiles, point defence missiles, close-in weapons systems, guns, decoys and jammers. Anti-submarine warfare (ASW): ASW comprises operations designed to deny an opponent the effective use of their submarines. ASW protection of a force depends on defence in depth and the close coordination of ships, helicopters, maritime patrol aircraft, friendly submarines and land-based support assets. Submarine threats are notoriously difficult to counter and ASW operations tend to be correspondingly complex. Anti-surface warfare (ASUW): these are operations designed to ‘detect, identify and counter an adversary’s capability’. They are intended to deny an adversary the ability to employ surface forces in an effective manner and may include sea control and sea denial operations, disruption of enemy sea lines of communication and/or defence of friendly surface units. Naval mine warfare (NMW): mine warfare can be divided into the laying of mines and mine countermeasures (MCM). Mine laying can be protective (laid in friendly waters to protect some point or force), defensive (laid in international waters to channel or restrict enemy movement) or offensive (laid in waters under enemy control, to disrupt their shipping). MCM includes actions taken to restrict enemy mine laying, and also to detect and clear any mines that are laid. It also includes actions taken to reduce the vulnerability of ships to mines, by reducing their magnetic, acoustic and pressure signatures. Amphibious warfare: discussed in Chapter 8, these operations may involve a wide variety of maritime assets employed to project a landing force ashore tactically in an environment that ranges from hostile to permissive. Strike warfare: strike warfare consists of attacks designed to neutralise or destroy enemy targets ashore. Maritime forces may contribute to strike warfare using sea-

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based aircraft, missiles and gunfire. US doctrine suggests that cyber and electronic attacks may also contribute to strike warfare and also that amphibious raids are a form of strike. Naval cooperation and guidance for shipping (NCAGS): NCAGS is designed to promote cooperation with merchant shipping in times of crisis or conflict in order to enhance their safety and to de-conflict shipping from military operations. Electronic and acoustic warfare (EAW): EAW consists of three complementary strands: electronic warfare, acoustic warfare, and emission control. AS NATO doctrine makes clear, ‘all military forces make extensive use of the electromagnetic spectrum and acoustic spectrums. Most maritime operations seek to dominate the use and exploitation of these spectrums’. Electronic warfare and acoustic warfare both consist of three divisions: 1

2

3

electronic/acoustic warfare support measures (ESM/AWSM): actions taken to search for, intercept and identify electromagnetic/acoustic emissions and to locate their sources. electronic/acoustic countermeasures (ECM/ACM): actions taken to prevent or reduce the adversary’s use of the electromagnetic/acoustic spectrum through jamming, deception or neutralisation. electronic/acoustic protective measures (EPM/APM): active and passive measures employed to defeat enemy ESM/AWSM and ECM/ACM.

Note 1

NATO, Allied Joint Maritime Operations, Allied Joint Publication (AJP) 3.1 (April 2004), section V.

Appendix 2 Abbreviations for types of ship and submarine

AIP BB BC DD DDG DE CA CG CG(N) CL CV CVE CVN CVS FF FFG FS LCC/AGC LCS LHA LHD LKA LPD LPA LPH LSD LSI LSL LSM LST LSV MCMV MGB MTB OPV PB

air-independent propulsion (in a submarine) battleship battlecruiser destroyer guided missile destroyer destroyer escort cruiser cruiser, guided missile cruiser, guided missile (nuclear powered) light cruiser aircraft carrier escort carrier nuclear-powered aircraft carrier support aircraft carrier frigate guided missile frigate corvette amphibious command ship littoral combat ship amphibious assault ship, general purpose amphibious assault ship, multi-purpose amphibious cargo ship landing ship, personnel, dock amphibious transport, attack landing ship, personnel, helicopter landing ship, dock landing ship, infantry landing ship, logistic landing ship, medium landing ship, tank landing ship, vehicle mine countermeasures vessel motor gun boat motor torpedo boat offshore patrol vessel patrol boat

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PT SSBN SSK SSN UAV USV UUV

motor torpedo boat (US Second World War) ballistic missile firing nuclear-powered submarine diesel-electric powered submarine nuclear-powered submarine unmanned aerial vehicle unmanned surface vehicle unmanned underwater vehicle

5 – 3

6 3 –

41 4 52

1 4 5 47 – 21 57 c.207

13 – – 5 – 3 10 14

– – – 6 – – 11 15 18 3 1

1 4 6 – – 12 11 22

France

6 – 9

1 1 1 13 – 14 13 107

India

5 – 17

– – – 45 – – – 127

Iran2

27 – 3

34 – – 19 2 33 9 6

Japan

45 – 19

1 13 26 23 5 15 12 116

Russia

11 316 –

10 14 54 – 23 62 8 57

USA

16 68 –

1 4 7 – – 6 13 22

UK

1 Figures are taken from the International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2017, Vol. 117 (London: IISS, 2017). 2 Including vessels belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 3 The decision to decommission this ship was announced in February 2017. 4 Vessels are officially designated as ‘helicopter destroyers’ but are in reality light aircraft carriers equipped with helicopters. 5 Plus 17 midget submarines. 6 Plus two amphibious command ships (LCC). 7 LHA, LHD, LPH, LPD, LSD. 8 Including 3 LSD operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. 9 LST, LSL and LSM.

Aircraft carrier Ballistic missile submarine Nuclear-powered submarine Conventional submarine Cruiser Destroyer Frigate Patrol vessel/ coastal combatant MCM vessel Principal amphibious ship7 Landing Ship Tank9

China

Brazil

Australia

Table A.3 A sample of world navies in 20171

4 4 –

– – – 4 – – 6 35

Singapore

Appendix 3

A sample of world navies in 2017

Select bibliography

Aston, Sir George, Letters on Amphibious Wars (London: John Murray, 1911). Aston, Sir George, Sea, Land and Air Strategy (London: John Murray, 1914). Baer, G.W., One Hundred years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy 1890–1990 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1996). Bekkevold, J. and Till, G. (eds), International Order at Sea: How is It Challenged, How is It Maintained (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Black, Jeremy, Naval Power. A History of Warfare and the Sea from 1500 Onwards (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Black, Jeremy, Combined Operations. A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare (Lanham, MD; Rowman and Lithfield, 2017). Booth, Ken, Navies and Foreign Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1977). Brodie, B., A Guide to Naval Strategy (New York: Praeger, 1965). Bridge, Sir Cyprian, The Art of Naval Warfare. Introductory Observations (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1907). Bruns, S., US Naval Strategy and National Security: The Evolution of American Maritime Power (London: Routledge, 2017). Cable, J., The Political influence of Naval Force in History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). Cable, J., Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1979: Political Applications of Limited Naval Force, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). Callwell, C.E., The Effect of Maritime Command on Campaigns Since Waterloo (London: Blackwood, 1897). Callwell, C.E., Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdependence (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996). Castex, R., Strategic Theories (ed.) E. Kiesling (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994). Cole, B., Great Wall at Sea: China’s Navy in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010). Colomb, Philip, Naval Warfare (London: Allen, 1899). Corbett, Sir Julian, England in the Seven Years War, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1907). Corbett, Sir Julian, The Campaign of Trafalgar (London: Longmans, 1910). Corbett, Sir Julian, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988). David, Lance E. and Engerman, Stanley L., Naval Blockades in Peace and War. An Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Dorman, A., Smith, M.L., Uttley, M. (eds), The Changing Face of Maritime Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). Dutton, P., Ross, R.S. and T., Oystein (eds), Twenty-First Century Seapower. Cooperation and Conflict at Sea (London: Routledge, 2012). Eccles, H.E., Military Concepts and Philosophy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965).

Select bibliography 227 Elleman, Bruce A. and Paine, Sarah C.M. (eds), Naval Blockades and Seapower. Strategies and Counter-Strategies, 1805–2005 (Abingdon: Routlege, 2006). Elleman, B.A., Forbes, A. and Rosenberg, D. (eds), Piracy and Maritime Crime. Historical and Modern Case Studies (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2010). Elleman, B.A. and Paine, A.C.M. (eds), Naval Power and Expeditionary Warfare (London: Routledge, 2011). Friedman, N., Seapower as Strategy: Navies and National Interests (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001). Friedman, N., Network-Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smart Through Three World Wars (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009). Furse, G., Military Expeditions Beyond the Seas, 2 vols. (London: William Clowes, 1897). Goldrick, J. and Hattendorff, J.B. (eds), Mahan is Not Enough. The Proceedings of a Conference on the Works of Sir Julian Corbett and Sir Herbert Richmond (Newport,RI: Naval War College Press, 1993). Gorshkov, Sergei, Navies in War and Peace (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974). Gorshkov, Sergei, The Seapower of the State (London: Pergamon, 1979). Gray, Colin S., The Navy in the Post-Cold War World. The Uses and Value of Strategic Sea Power (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). Gray, Colin S., The Leverage of Sea Power: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1992). Grove, Eric, The Future of Sea Power (London: Routledge, 1990). Grove, Eric, The Royal Navy Since 1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005) Grove, Eric and Hore, Peter, Dimensions of Sea Power. Strategic Choice in the Modern World (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1998). Gretton, Sir Peter, Maritime Strategy (London: Cassell, 1964). Goldrick, James and McCaffrie, Jack, Navies of South-East Asia. A Comparative Study (London: Routledge, 2013). Halpern, Paul, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995). Harding, Richard. Seapower and Naval Warfare 1650–1830 (London: Routledge, 1999). Hattendorf, John B. Mahan on Naval Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991) Hattendorf, John B., The Influence of History on Mahan (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1991). Hattendorf, John B. Doing Naval History: Essays Towards Improvement (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1995) Hattendorf, John B., Naval History and Maritime Strategy: collected essays (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publ., 2000) Hattendorf, John B. and Jordan, Robert (eds), Maritime Strategy and the Balance of Power. Britain and American in the Twentieth Century (London: Macmillan, 1989). Heuser, Beatrice, The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Hobson, R. and Kristiansen, T., Navies in Northern Waters 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2003). Holmes, James R. and Yoshihara, Toshi, Indian Maritime Strategy in the Twenty-first Century (London: Routledge, 2009). Holmes, James R. and Yoshihara, Toshi, Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century. The Turn to Mahan (London: Routledge, 2008). Hughes, Wayne, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Command (Annapolis, MD: Naval institute Press, 2000). Jordan, D., Kiras, J., Lonsdale, D., Speller, I., Tuck, C. and Walton, D., Understanding Modern Warfare, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Klein, Natalie, Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Knutsen, Dale. E., Strike Warfare in the 21st Century. An Introduction to Non-Nuclear Attack by Air and Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012).

228

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Krasna, James. Maritime Power and the Law of the Sea. Expeditionary Operations in World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Krause, J. and Bruns, S. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Naval Strategy and Security (London: Routledge, 2016). Le Miere, C., Maritime Diplomacy in the 21st Century: Drivers and Challenges (London: Routledge, 2014). Lovering, Tristam (ed.), Amphibious Assault: Manoeuvre from the Sea (Woodbridge: Seafarer Books, 2005). Luttwak, Edward, The Political Uses of Sea Power (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). McCabe, R., Modern Maritime Piracy: Genesis, Evolution, Responses (London: Routlede, 2017). Mahan, A.T., The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co. 1890). Mahan, A.T., The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793–1812 (Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1892). Mahan, A.T., The Life of Nelson (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., 1899). Mahan, A.T., Naval Strategy (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1911). Makarov, Stephen, Discussions of Questions in Naval Tactics (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990). Maltzhan, Curt von, Naval Warfare. Its Historical Development from the Age of the Great Geographical Discoveries to the Present Time, trans. John Combe Miller (London: Longmans & Co., 1908). Martin, L., The Sea in Modern Strategy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967). Menom, Raja, Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars (London: Frank Cass, 1998). Moran, D. and Russell, J., Maritime Strategy and Global Order: Markets, Resources, Security (Georgetown University Press, 2016). Mukherjee, A. and Raja M. C., India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security (London: Routledge, 2017). Mulqueen, M., Sanders, D. and Speller, I. (eds), Small Navies. Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace (London: Ashgate, 2014). Murphy, M., Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2009). O’Brien, P.P. (ed.), Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (London: Frank Cass, 2001). Padfield, Peter, Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind (New York: Overlook Press, 1999). Padfield, Peter, Maritime Dominion and the Triumph of the Free World (London: John Murray, 2009). Palmer, Michael A., Command at Sea. Naval Command and Control Since the Sixteenth Century (Harvard University Press, 2007). Pant, Harsh, The Rise of the Indian Navy. Internal Vulnerabilities, External Challenges (London: Ashgate, 2012). Parry, C., Super Highway. Seapower in the 21st Century (London: Elliot & Thomson, 2014). Hayes , John B. and Hattendorf, John (eds), The Writings of Stephen B. Luce (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1975). Richmond, Sir Herbert, Seapower in the Modern World (London: Bell, 1934). Richmond, Sir Herbert, Statesmen and Seapower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946). Rodger, N.A.M., Darnell, B. and Wilson, E. (eds), Strategy and the Sea. Essays in Honour of John B. Hattendorf (Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewers Press, 2016). Rose, Lisle A., Power at Sea, 3 vols. (Colombia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006). Roskill, S.W., Strategy of Sea Power (London: Collins, 1962). Roskund, Eric, The Jeune École (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

Select bibliography 229 Sanders, D., Maritime Power in the Black Sea (London: Routledge, 2016). Schurman, Donald, The Education of a Navy. The Development of British Naval Strategic Thought, 1867–1914 (London: Cassell, 1965). Sondhaus, L., Naval Warfare 1815–1914 (London: Routledge, 2001). Sloggett, D., The Anarchic Sea. Maritime Security in the Twenty-First Century (London: Hurst & Co., 2013). Stavridis, J., Seapower.The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans (London: Penguin, 2017). Sumida, Jon Tetsuro, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command. The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Tan, Andrew, The Politics of Maritime Power (New York: Routledge, 2007). Tangredi, Sam J. (ed.), Globalization and Maritime Power (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2002). Tangredi, Sam J., Anti-Access Warfare, Countering A2/AD Strategies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013). Till, Geoffrey, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982). Till, Geoffrey (ed.), Seapower: Theory and Practice (London: Frank Cass, 2004). Till, Geoffrey (ed.), The Development of British Naval Thinking (London: Routledge, 2006). Till, Geoffrey, Seapower.A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2013). Till, Geoffrey, Understanding Victory. Naval Operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2014). Till, Geoffrey and Bratton, Patrick (eds), Sea Power and the Asia-Pacific. The Triumph of Neptune? (London: Routledge, 2011). Uhlig, Frank Jr., How Navies Fight. The U.S. Navy and its Allies (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994). Vego, Milan, Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas (London: Routledge, 2003). Vego, Milan, Operational Warfare at Sea: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2010). Vego, Milan, Maritime Strategy and Sea Control (London: Routledge, 2017). Wegener, Wolfgang, The Naval Strategy of the World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989). Widen, J.J., Theorist of Maritime Strategy: Sir Julian Corbett and his Contribution to Military and Naval Thought (London: Routledge, 2012). Wirtz, James L. and Larsen, Jeffrey A. (eds), Naval Peacekeeping and Humanitarain Operations: Stability from the Sea (London: Routledge, 2009). Wylie, J.C., Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, MA: Naval Institute Press, 1989 [1969]). Yoshihara, Toshi and Holmes, James, Red Star Over the Pacific. China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, 2nd edn (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018).

Index

Page numbers in italic refer to Figures; page numbers in bold refer to Boxes. A2/AD (anti-access and area denial) 71, 118, 119, 121, 130, 198–199, 202, 206, 208, 217, 219 absolute control 117, 131 advanced base operations 165 Aegean Sea 23 Afghanistan 135, 164, 204 African Union 170, 171 Africa Partnership Station see APS aircraft carriers 95–96, 103–105, 126, 128, 151, 152–155, 199 Air-Sea Battle 202 Alexandria raid (1941) 156 Al Qaeda 176–177 amphibious assaults 157, 160 amphibious demonstrations 159 amphibious operations 2, 65, 134, 149, 150, 151, 157–160, 162, 165, 199 amphibious raids 151, 157, 158 amphibious support 159 amphibious withdrawals 158 Anglo-American tradition 2, 36, 40, 51, 52, 56 Anglo-Dutch Wars 18, 51–52 Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896) 75 anti-access and area denial see A2/AD anti-piracy operations 85, 162, 169, 172, 185, 207, 210; see also piracy anti-ship cruise missiles see ASCM anti-ship missiles 87, 118, 128, 155, 193, 195, 196, 206–207, 210, 219 APS (Africa Partnership Station) 89, 185 Arab-Israeli Conflict (1973) 123 armed conflict at sea laws 23–24 armed suasion 80–81 arms 179, 185 ASCM (anti-ship cruise missiles) 128, 155, 195

Assmann, Vice Admiral Kurt 66 Aston, Sir George 51 asymmetric strategies 58, 71, 170, 190, 202, 208, 212 Atlantic, Battle of the (1914–18) 141 Atlantic, Battle of the (1939–45) 102 Aube, T. 58–59 Australian Maritime Doctrine 126 ballistic missile defence see BMD barrier operations 118, 125–126 battlecruisers 101 Battle of Beachy Head (1690) 49 Battle of Jutland (1916) 46, 62, 63, 101, 102 Battle of Koh Change (1941) 67 Battle of Leyte Gulf (1944) 68, 108 Battle of Midway (1942) 68, 105, 106, 107, 129 Battle of Pinkie (1547) 152 Battle of the Chesapeake Bay (1781) 57 Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914) 101 Battle of the Nile (1798) 25, 39, 47–48 Battle of the Saintes (1782) 43, 57 Battle of Trafalgar (1805) 26, 48, 93 Battle of Tsushima (1905) 48, 93, 98–99 battleships 20, 60, 103, 127–128 Beatty, Admiral Sir David 46, 102 bilateral exercises 83–84 Black, J. 4, 219 ‘Black Swan’ class sloop 199–200 blockades 2, 23, 31, 45, 50, 51–52, 57, 99, 115, 136–139, 146; Crimean War 18; First World War 63, 64, 101, 102, 137–138; Gaza 139, 140, 141; Second World War 68, 138; Spanish-American War 97; US Civil War 59, 94; Yemen 139, 146 blue economy 170–171

Index blue water see high seas BMD (ballistic missile defence) 200–201 Boer War (1899–1901) 77 Bolivia 94 Bonaparte, N. 25, 48 Booth, K. 8, 81, 218 Borresen, J. 121 Brazilian Navy 159, 185, 205–206 Bridge, C. 40, 43, 46, 47 Britain 6, 21, 29, 43, 103 British Coast Guard 172 British Maritime Doctrine 88, 116 British Royal Navy 4, 26, 29, 57, 61, 95, 211; aircraft carriers 154; Battle of Jutland 102; blockades 23; Cod Wars 87; commerce raiding 57; constabulary role 169; cruise missiles 155; Falklands/Malvinas Conflict 26, 31, 119, 124, 126–127, 135, 136, 149–150, 152, 165, 176; First World War 62, 63, 101, 127, 144; naval diplomacy 75, 81–82, 88; naval strikes 152; offensive action 130; sea control 116; sea lift 135; War of Independence 57 Brodie, B. 46, 68, 106 brown water 16 Bull, H. 79 Cable, J. 78–79, 86, 87 Callwell, C. 51, 149, 150, 203 Canadian Coast Guard 183 capability: capability building 88, 165, 184, 185 CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) 84, 185 carrier-based aviation 103–105, 126, 128, 152–154 Castex, R. 36, 49, 66–67, 71; command of the sea 46; commerce raiding 67; force concentration 130 catalytic force 79 CCG (China Coast Guard) 86, 173 Cebrowski, A.K. 130 Chile 94 China 89–90, 123, 146, 191–192, 220; Diaoyu/Senkaku islands 23, 176; SinoJapanese War 97, 99; South China Seas 176 Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy see PLAN Chou En-Lai 76 civilian shipping 2 Clausewitz, C. von 6 coastal defences 25, 49, 60, 121

231

coastal waters 16, 20, 21, 27 coastguards 90, 141, 171, 172–174, 185 coastguard vessels 86, 89, 90, 116–117, 173 Cod Wars 87, 183 Cold War 70, 76, 77, 79, 121, 125–126, 161, 170, 200, 201, 220; merchant ships 141, 145 Cole, USS 176, 177 Colomb, J. 40, 43, 144 Colomb, P. 5, 36, 38–39, 40, 43, 47, 49, 50 combat operations 2, 115, 134, 149, 165, 218, 219 command and control 26, 28, 31, 83, 125, 127, 131, 149, 154, 159, 162, 164, 173, 198, 202 commanders 28, 125, 127 command of the sea 43, 44, 45, 46, 47–50, 51–52, 56, 63–64, 71, 108, 116 commerce raiding (guerre de course) 43, 45, 50, 52, 56–60, 61–62, 66, 67, 71, 120–121, 136; First World War 63; Iran-Iraq War 120–121; US Civil War 59 commercial blockade see blockades commons control see global commons constabulary roles 2, 169, 172–173, 185–186, 212, 220 containment 126 contested environment 165, 166, 203 contiguous zones 22, 23, 170 continental shelf 22 convoys 45, 57, 63, 102, 105, 126, 127, 142, 144–145, 146 Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training see CARAT Corbett, J.S. 3, 4, 5, 36, 44–46, 62, 106, 219; amphibious demonstrations 159; blockades 138; command of the sea 46, 47, 50; commerce raiding 45; commercial blockade 136; decisive battles 48; diplomacy 76; Distributed Lethality 203; force concentration 45, 49, 130; maritime communications 47, 48; maritime strategies 6, 37–39, 44–46, 96–97; offensive action 48; power projection 150; Russo-Japanese War 100 covering forces 127, 142; see also escorts Crimean War (1853–56) 18, 93 cruise missiles 155 cruisers 103 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) 139, 140 Custance, R. 43, 45, 46 customary law 20, 21 cyber-attacks 119, 131, 151, 156, 202 cyberspace 192, 194, 199

232

Index

Danish navy 95, 135 Dardanelles campaign (1915) 62, 64, 101, 127, 152 Darrieus, Admiral Gabriel 52 decisive battles 43, 48, 51 Declaration of Paris 58 declining access 164–165 definitive force 78 destroyers 31, 101, 199 Diaoyu/Senkaku islands 23, 176 diplomacy 75–77, 78, 219 direct defence 142, 144 distant cover 142, 144 Distributed Lethality 130, 194, 203 Dreadnought, HMS 99, 101 dreadnoughts 99, 101, 127 drones 194, 197 drug smuggling 178, 179, 185 Dutch Navy see Royal Netherlands Navy EAB (expeditionary advanced base) 165 East China Sea 23, 176 Eccles, H.E. 117 economic warfare 18, 45, 56–57, 66, 136, 138, 150 EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zones) 21, 22, 23, 170 electromagnetic (EM) spectrum 192, 194 electromagnetic manoeuvre warfare 128, 194 electromagnetic warfare 119, 131 electronic warfare (EW) 151, 156, 192 El Salvador Navy 212 embargoes 2, 31, 138, 139, 140, 146 enduring principles 3, 38–40 environmental degradation 182, 185 escorts 126, 127, 142, 144, 145 EU (European Union) 85, 170, 171, 178–179, 183, 212 exclusion zones 126–127 Exclusive Economic Zones see EEZ expeditionary advanced base see EAB expeditionary forces 161–163 expeditionary operations 2, 149, 150, 161, 165 expressive force 79 Falklands/Malvinas Conflict (1982) 26, 31, 119, 124, 126–127, 135, 136, 149–150, 152, 165, 176 First World War (1914–18) 2, 16, 45, 61, 62–64, 70, 101–102, 105, 127, 144; amphibious demonstration 159; blockades

63, 64, 101, 102, 137–138; merchant ships 63, 102, 141, 145; naval airpower 103; naval diplomacy 77; naval strikes 151, 152; sea lift 134; submarines 63, 64, 101, 102, 105 fishing 18, 182, 185 fleet in being 118, 121 flexibility 27–28, 31, 81, 82, 130 force concentration 49, 52, 130 foreign policy 76 forward presence 88 France 43, 48, 59–60 Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) 95 freedom of navigation 116–117, 175, 180, 192, 217 freedom of the seas 20–21, 175 French navy 25, 26, 57–58, 95, 211; aircraft carriers 154; Battle of Koh Change 67; commerce raiding 57; First World War 101; War of Independence 57 Friedman, N. 125 Furse, Colonel George 10–11 Gallipoli (1915–16) 62, 64 Gaza blockade (2010) 139, 140, 141 general principles 3, 39, 40, 108 German Navy 60–62, 65–66, 75, 211; Battle of Jutland 102; First World War 62–63, 65, 101, 102, 127; Norway 104; Second World War 65, 67–68, 105; U-boats (submarines) 101, 102, 105, 145 Germany 52, 60, 103 global commons 89, 191, 192, 202, 205, 213 globalisation 171–172 good order at sea 172, 173, 186 Gorshkov, S. 69, 82, 84, 115, 116, 150 Grand Fleet see British Royal Navy Gray, C. 3, 25, 39, 51, 77–78, 172 Greco-Turkish War (1897) 95 Greenpeace vessels 86 green water 16 Gretton, Admiral Sir Peter 4, 137 Grivel, Admiral Jean-Baptiste 58 Grivel, Baron Richild 58 Grove, E. 5, 8, 218 Guardia Costiera (Italian coast guard) 172 guerre de course (war of the chase) see commerce raiding guided missiles 151 Gulf of Guinea: fishing 183; piracy 179, 180 Gulf War (1991) 120, 155, 159, 196 gunboat diplomacy 75, 76, 78–79, 82, 86–87

Index HA/DR (humanitarian assistance and disaster relief) 159, 162, 165, 201 Harding, R. 52 Hattendorf, John B. 10–11 helicopters 126, 151, 154 high seas 16, 17, 22, 27 High Seas Fleet see German Navy Hill, R. 5 Houthi rebels 193, 195, 197 Hughes, W. 129 humanitarian assistance and disaster relief see HA/DR human trafficking 85, 178–179, 185, 212 hybrid warfare 190, 191, 192 Iceland 87 Icelandic Coast Guard 172–173, 174 illegal immigration 178–179, 212 illegal narcotics 178, 179, 185 Imperial German Navy see German Navy Imperial Japanese Navy see Japanese Navy Independent World Commission on the Oceans see IWCO Indian Maritime Doctrine 27, 84 Indian Navy 7–8, 84–85, 155, 158, 207 Indo-Pakistan War (1971) 80, 123, 126, 155 inferior fleet 27, 49; see also weaker navies information superiority 124–125, 130, 195 information technology see IT innocent passage 21, 22 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance see ISR intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance see ISTAR international law 20, 23–24, 58, 122, 132, 172, 175, 217; blockades 136, 137 international shipping routes 17 international trade 19, 20, 171–172 international treaties 103 Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) 120–121, 124, 142; Tanker War 143 Iraq 139, 164, 200, 204 Irish Coast Guard 172, 173 Irish Naval Service 85, 174 Islamic Republic of Iran Navy 210 ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) 119, 124–125, 193, 194, 196, 197 Israel 155; Gaza blockade 139, 140, 141 ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, targeting and reconnaissance) 16, 149, 156 IT (information technology) 130–131 Italy 103, 105, 172, 211

233

IWCO (Independent World Commission on the Oceans) 170 JAM-GC (Joint Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons) 202, 203 Japan 75, 103; Russo-Japanese War 98–99, 100; Senkaku/Diaoyu islands 23, 176; Sino-Japanese War 97, 99 Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force 155, 201, 205 Japanese Navy 26, 68, 105, 106, 107–108 JCG (Japan Coast Guard) 86, 173, 174 Jeune École (Young School) 58, 59, 60, 64 Joint Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons see JAM-GC joint forces 16, 83–84, 135–136, 149, 203 joint military operations 51, 68, 99, 106, 149 Jutland, Battle of (1916) 46, 62, 64, 101, 102 Kantero, S. 65 Kenya Navy 212 kill chain approach 128 Korean War (1950–53) 122–123, 157, 158 Kruse, Ernst Wilhelm 66 Lambert, A. 6 land-based aircraft 33, 86, 103–104, 127 land-based forces 33, 81, 83, 127, 149, 200 Landquist, D. 36, 65 Laughton, J.K. 40 layered defence 126 leadership 27, 28 levels of war 37–38 Libya (1986) 21, 23, 82–83 Libya (2011) 89, 152, 154, 155, 158, 165, 185–186, 211–212 Liddell-Hart, B.H. 82, 106, 159 Limburg, MV 176, 177 limitations 31–32 limited naval force 75, 76, 78, 79, 80 Littoral Combat Ships 164, 196, 199 littoral maneuver force 165 littoral regions 15, 119, 127, 131, 163–165 LOCE (Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment) 165, 166, 202 London Declaration (1909) 23 Luce, S.B. 4, 40 Luttwak, E. 80–81, 87 Mahan, A.T. 3, 4, 5, 17, 36, 56, 65, 71, 93, 95; blockades 50, 64, 136, 138; command of the sea 47, 50, 60, 61; commerce

234

Index

raiding 57, 136; diplomacy 76; force concentration 43, 49, 130; maritime communications 43; maritime communications, control of 47; maritime strategies 37, 38–39, 40, 96–97; offensive action 43, 49, 130; Russo-Japanese War 100; sea power 41–43 major strategy 37–38 Malta Maritime Squadron 210 Maltzhan, C. von 46, 49, 52, 61 Marina Militare (Italian navy) 172 maritime battle space 24, 128, 192–195, 212, 213, 219 maritime command see command of the sea maritime communications, control of 47–48, 49, 51 maritime domain awareness see MDA maritime environment 1, 2, 15, 16, 24–29, 32–33, 174–175, 182, 186, 217, 219 maritime forces see naval forces maritime interdiction operations see MIOPS maritime operations see naval operations maritime power 2, 5, 6, 18, 217, 220 maritime power projection 50, 81–82, 115, 149, 150–151, 165–167 maritime preponderance 41, 51 maritime security 169, 170, 171–172, 183–185, 186 maritime security operations see MSO maritime strategies 1–3, 6–7, 33, 36–40, 51–52, 56, 64–65, 71, 76, 93, 96–97, 213, 220; Anglo-American tradition 2, 36, 40, 51, 52, 56; see also command of the sea maritime trade 8, 41–42 maritime warfare see naval warfare Marshal Islands 23 Martin, L. 77, 78 MDA (maritime domain awareness) 184 merchant ships 19, 24, 28–29, 57, 120–121, 141–142, 146, 184; convoys 45, 57, 63, 102, 105, 126, 127, 142, 144–145, 146; First World War 63, 102, 141, 145; IranIraq War 142; piracy 179–180; Second World War 102, 105, 145; Tanker War 143 Menon, Admiral Raja 120, 126 military education 4 military sea lift see sea lift Military Sea Lift Command, US Navy see MSC military strategies 37, 38 mines see sea mines minor strategy 37–38

MIOPS (maritime interdiction operations) 139, 140–141 missiles 126, 128, 154, 178, 195, 198 mobility 25, 29–30 Moineville, H. 17 monopolistic sea power 82, 131, 204 MSC (Military Sea Lift Command, US Navy) 135–136 MSO (maritime security operations) 2, 170, 183–185, 186, 201, 219 Multi-domain Battle 202–203 multilateral exercises 84 Murphy, M. 56 Napoleonic Wars 57 national jurisdiction 170, 172, 175 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 29, 77–78, 115, 117, 139, 145 NATO Alliance Maritime Strategy 183 NATO Maritime Doctrine 115 naval airpower 103–104 naval arms limitations 103 naval artillery 96 naval battles 15, 26, 93–94, 108, 117, 122, 129–130, 131 naval blockade see blockades naval diplomacy 76, 77, 78–83, 85–90 naval forces 2, 6, 7–8, 29–32, 33 naval gunfire 128, 151, 152 naval operations 1, 2, 7, 9, 16, 219 naval power 1, 6, 26, 95, 212, 220 naval presence 31, 81–82, 83, 84–85, 86, 87, 88, 175 naval strategies 37, 38 naval strikes 2, 115, 149, 150, 151–156, 165, 202 naval trinity 8, 9 naval warfare 1–2, 3–4, 6–7, 9, 15, 16, 18, 27, 220 navies 1, 4, 7–9, 15, 16, 20, 29–33, 171, 173≠174, 204–205, 213, 217–220; smaller 67, 71, 85, 87, 116–117, 121, 185, 212, 219; weaker 49, 56, 57, 60, 67, 72, 99 NCAGS (Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping) 142 NCW (Network Centric Warfare) 130 Nelson, H. 25, 26, 39, 47–48, 169 Netherlands Maritime Doctrine 116 Nimitz, Admiral Chester 68 non-gunboat diplomacy 86 non-naval warfare 70 North Atlantic Treaty Organization see NATO

Index Norway, invasion of (1940) 104, 149 nuclear ballistic missile submarines see SSBNs nuclear war 68–69, 70, 77 nuclear weapons 68, 106, 145, 155, 190, 200 offensive action 49, 130 offensive patrols 142, 145 OMFTS (operational maneuver from the sea) 163 operational levels 37 Operation Desert Shield (1990–91) 32, 134 Operation El Dorado Canyon (1986) 82–83 Operation Enduring Freedom (2001) 163 Operation Pontus (2015–17) 85 Operation Praying Mantis (1988) 124 Operation Sophia 85, 179, 212 Operation Unified Protector (2011) 186 OTH (over-the-horizon) 164, 199 Ottoman Empire 77 overseas bases 30, 88, 161, 162 Pacific War (1942–45) 68, 104, 105, 106, 107–108, 138, 153 Paraguay Navy 212 peace building 171 peace enforcement 171, 172 peacekeeping 171, 172 Pearl Harbor (1941) 26, 105, 153 Peru 94 piracy 56, 117, 177, 179–181, 185; Somalia 85, 146, 179, 180 PLAN (Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy) 70, 71, 123, 154–155, 201, 205, 208–209 platforms 18, 26, 27–29, 127 PMSCs (private maritime security contractors) 181 pollution 18, 21, 182 potential control 77, 117 power 2, 5 power projection 163–165, 200, 219 privateers 56 purposeful force 79 quarantine 140 Raeder, Admiral Erich 66 raids 63, 116, 118, 149, 150, 156 Republic of Benin Navy 212 Republic of Korea Navy 205 Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) 211 resilience 31

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Richmond, H. 65 RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific exercises) 84 Risk Fleet (Risikoflotte) 60, 61, 65 Rodger, N. 24, 56 Rosinski, H. 65–66, 67, 106, 108 Royal Australian Navy 29, 30, 32, 88–89, 95, 96, 159, 185, 201, 218 Royal Netherlands Navy 29, 88, 116, 125, 184, 211 Russia 59, 190; Crimean War 18; RussoJapanese War 98–99, 100 Russian Navy 17, 89, 96, 155, 206–207, 208–209; see also Soviet Navy Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) 98–99, 100 sanctions 139; see also embargoes San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts at Sea 24 Scandinavian navies 121, 185 sea-basing 164 sea blindness 8 sea control 2, 71, 94–95, 103–104, 108, 115–117, 118, 122–127, 131–132, 134, 146, 213, 217; degrees of 116, 117, 131, 203 sea denial 64, 99, 101, 118–119, 120–123, 127, 131–132, 134, 196, 208, 217 sea lanes 18, 118, 144 sea lift 2, 134–136, 149; payloads 19, 30 sea mines 96, 118–120, 193, 196, 197, 199; Falklands/Malvinas Conflict 119; First World War 101; Gulf War 120; Iran-Iraq War 120; Second World War 105 sea power 5–6, 41–43, 50, 80; monopolistic 82, 131, 204 sea resources 21 seas 1, 15, 16–20, 23–29, 36, 217 seas resources 18–19 ‘Sea Tigers’, Sri Lanka 7, 176, 177 Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) 95 Second Moroccan Crisis (1911) 75 Second World War (1939–45) 2, 28–29, 67–68, 70, 103–104, 105–106, 127, 150; amphibious operations 157, 158, 159, 160; blockades 68, 138; merchant ships 141, 142, 145; naval strikes 152, 153; Pacific War 68, 104, 105, 106, 107–108, 138, 153; sea lift 134, 135 security environment 9, 190–192 Senkaku/Diaoyu islands 23, 176 Seven Years War 44, 50 shaping operations 88, 125

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Index

Shimonoseki Campaign 75 ship boarding agreements 178 ships taken up from trade see STUFT ship-to-objective-maneuver see STOM short take off and vertical landing aircraft see STOVL Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) 97, 99 SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication) 144 smaller navies 67, 71, 85, 87, 116–117, 121, 185, 212, 219 SOF (special operations forces) 149, 156, 158 Somalia 158; piracy 85, 146, 179, 180 sortie control 125 South African Maritime Doctrine 116 South China Seas 23, 86, 175, 176, 209 sovereignty 20, 21, 30, 172 Soviet Navy 17, 66, 69, 82, 161, 163, 201; see also Russian Navy Soviet New School 66 Soviet Union 70, 105, 106 space-based systems 193–194, 199 Spain 211; Civil War 142; Spanish-American War 18, 97–98, 99 Spanish-American War (1898) 18, 97–98, 99 Spanish Civil War (1936–39) 142 Spratly Islands 23, 89, 209 SSBNs (nuclear ballistic missile submarines) 155, 206 STOM (ship-to-objective-maneuver) 164 STOVL (short take off and vertical landing) aircraft 154 strategic levels 37 STUFT (ships taken up from trade) 135, 136 SUA Convention (Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, 1988) 178 Submarine Protocol (London, 1936) 24, 103 submarines 22, 25, 27, 60, 64–65, 96, 99, 125, 127, 193, 196, 199; First World War 63, 64, 101, 102, 105; Second World War 145 sub-surface of the sea 193 Suez Crisis (1956) 7 surface of the sea 192–193 surveillance systems 25 Syria 86, 89, 155, 190, 200 tactical loading 134 tactics 37, 95, 129–130, 132

Tanker War (1980–88) 141, 143 Taranto (1940) 105, 153 technology 4, 27, 95–96, 103, 108, 127–129, 130–131, 195–196, 198–199, 212, 213, 217, 219 territorial seas 21, 22, 23, 170 terrorism 176–177, 185 Tetsutaro, S. 65 Till, G. 4, 5, 24, 40, 52, 130, 144, 179, 185, 191–192, 201, 205 Tirpitz, A. von 41, 60, 61 torpedo boats 58–59, 60, 96, 99, 101 torpedoes 96, 99, 196 Torrington, Admiral 49 trade warfare see economic warfare trafficking 85, 178–179 transit passage 22 treaty law 20, 23–24 Turner, S. 82, 87, 116, 118, 150 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) 194, 197 U-boats (submarines) 101, 102, 105, 145 UN (United Nations) 165, 171, 185–186 UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982) 21, 22, 170, 217 undersea cables 19–20 unmanned surface vehicles see USVs unmanned underwater vehicles see UUVs US (United States) 19, 21, 97–98, 103 USCG (US Coast Guard) 7, 8, 169, 173, 174 US Civil War (1861–65) 57, 58, 59, 94, 95, 96 US Maritime Doctrine 116 US Maritime Strategy 32, 78, 126, 170, 184, 185, 201 USMC (US Marine Corps) 159, 160, 163, 164, 165 US Naval Service 173 US Navy 4, 17, 21, 26, 31–32, 83–84, 169, 175, 203–204, 205, 212, 213; aircraft carriers 154; amphibious demonstrations 159; Cold War 201; commerce raiding 57; Distributed Lethality 130, 203; Iran-Iraq War 120, 124; merchant ships 142, 143, 145; missiles 155, 200; naval diplomacy 75, 80, 82, 88, 89–90; Pacific War 68, 104, 105, 106, 107–108, 138, 153; power projection 163, 164–165, 201; raids 156; sea control 116, 117, 122, 202, 203; sea denial 118, 119; sea lift 135–136;

Index Second World War 29, 68, 106; security environment 190; Spanish-American War 18 USVs (unmanned surface vehicles) 197 UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles) 193, 197 Venezuela 75 versatility 31, 82 Vietnam 138, 158 VPD (vessel protection detachments) 181 War of Independence (1775–83) 57 war of the chase (guerre de course) see commerce raiding

War of the Pacific (1878–83) 94 warships 20, 25, 27–28, 29, 30, 31, 81, 83, 84–85, 95–96, 192, 198 weaker navies 49, 56, 57, 60, 67, 72, 99 Wegener, W. 65, 82 WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) 178, 190, 200 world trade 17, 18–19 Wylie, J.C. 77, 117, 122, 203 Xiao Jinguang 70, 71, 118 Yemen 139, 146 Yoshihara, T. 56 Young School see Jeune École

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