The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with Soviet Submarines (Newport Paper No. 16, 2003)
Abstract
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, submarines have been the weapon of choice for weaker naval powers that wish to contest a dominant power's control of the seas or its ability to project power ashore from the sea. This is because submarines have been and are likely to remain the weapon system with the highest leverage in a battle for control of the ocean surface. Hence, antisubmarine warfare (ASW) will always remain the most important element of the U.S. Navy's core mission sea control. Since the middle of the twentieth century, submarines have also become a weapon of the strong, both because they became a major if not the dominant platform for performing ASW, and because they also became a dominant means of projecting power from the sea, first as a nuclear delivery platform, and now, at the end of the century, as a conventional precision strike platform. For the U.S. Navy, maintaining superiority in ASW, and maximizing its ability to project power from the sea will require innovative contributions by each of its platform communities in new mission areas, as it did during the Cold War. It is likely that the sources of victory in these future endeavors will be similar to those that gave the Navy a great victory in the Third battle.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA421957
Entities
People
- Owen R. Cote Jr.
Organizations
- Naval War College