ABSTRACT
Navies were the first military forces to use massive technology to leverage
manpower. For example, in the late 18th century the Admiralty was the largest
industrial organization in the country, and its efforts probably helped touch off the
Industrial Revolution. The reasons navies are and were technology-intense were
simple. It takes a substantial technical investment simply to go to sea and stay
there. Thus, navies could never be numerous. The US Navy of 1945, probably the
largest in history, included only about 5,000 commissioned ships, many of which
(amphibious ships, minecraft and patrol craft) were limited to coastal operations.
Many others were needed to keep the fighting part of the fleet effective far from a
fixed base. Others were required specifically to protect allied shipping from
enemy submarines. What was left was a mobile striking force, a classic surface
and submarine fleet amounting to about 600 ships, which fought the enemy fleet
and destroyed his merchant fleet. The US Navy’s ‘Seapower 21’ strategy statement combines these issues in a
convenient form for an offensive fleet: the navy mounts its operations against the
land (‘sea strike’) from off shore (the ‘sea base’) which is protected from
defensive forces by the ‘sea shield’. A ‘force net’ binds together the force at
sea and also connects it to the logistics train which sustains it. This is the offensive
side of sea power, and it defines what the fleet needs. Implicit in ‘Seapower 21’ is
that the fleet involved already enjoys free use of the sea, and is merely defending
that freedom of action. Much of naval technology evolved in order to defeat an
enemy navy and thus to gain the freedom ‘Seapower 21’ embodies. That phase of
operations involved an additional requirement, somehow to bring an enemy fleet
to action in the trackless wastes of the ocean. A similar requirement is involved in
protecting trade from individual raiders, be they surface ships up to battleship size
(like the Bismarck) or submarines. ‘Seapower 21’ was written for a dominant
fleet, but most countries cannot afford that level of sea power. For them the issues
are the opposite of those raised by ‘Seapower 21’: denying free use of the sea
(once termed sea denial), which requires them to find and destroy the dominant
power’s ships and fleets; or, at least, breaking the ‘sea shield’ to destroy or repel
the ‘sea base’ and block the ‘sea strike’. The notes which follow apply to technology on board ships and submarines
and naval aircraft rather than to those platforms, on the theory that their
technology is more familiar. Even with this limitation, what follows cannot be
even remotely complete.
