Maritime Power: Some Observations on Strategy, Tactics and Technology. Revision.
Abstract
This study was written as a cautionary lesson about the humility which combat at sea has imposed upon naval commanders. The purpose of this brief study was not to castigate any single school of strategic or tactical thinking in the United States Navy today, rather it was to provide a series of analytical reflections that could serve to weaken dogmatic assertions of any stripe. Senior officers of the Armed Forces long have been castigated for their tendency to base their services' projected force levels and procurement plans on worst-case analyses of the potential threat. Indeed, this can be carried to extremes. However, when it comes to strategic planning, an inherent pessimism is a far less dangerous foe than an optimism bred of too many war games and canned exercises too far removed from the realities of actual combat. If the U.S. Navy does find itself involved in a protracted conventional war with the Soviet Navy in the first decades of the next century, this war is almost certain to both more arduous than all but the most pessimistic of today's planners envision and more variable in terms of operational and tactical employments than is now projected. The keys to victory under such circumstances may well be a strongly realistic understanding from the outset of the strategic costs as well as benefits of selected courses of action and a tactical flexibility born of early acknowledgement that whatever you do know about the nature of the developing conflict is likely to be far less than what you don't.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1986
- Accession Number
- ADA166310