ABSTRACT
Potentials or needs which lack a constituency—mine/countermine warfare is a prominent example in the United States (US) Navy—are neglected. The Navy shares with other large organizations—businesses, universities, and civilian government—the problems of maintaining vitality in a changing world of limited resources and ill-defined goals. The US and NATO navies have largely adopted the French strategy; both sea control and power projection are subsets of the overall French model concept of supporting other operations. In fact, the US Navy is careful to distinguish sea control, which it defines as using one part of the sea for a specific purpose for a fixed time, from Alfred Mahan's concept of control of the sea. In a "Mahanist" strategy, the fleet's main function is to destroy, or bottle up in port, the enemy's main naval force. Mahan argued that the destruction or immobilization of the hostile fleet was the best way to insure the safety of friendly maritime operations.
