naval warfare

The search for constants

It should be said that, in order to achieve victory, willpower and courage must always accompany tactical art and science and often dominate the outcome of battle. These qualities are not tactics, but they are related to tactics in the way a sound decision is related to the resolution with which it is implemented. There is no finer example than Horatio Nelson. In the Battle of the Nile (August 1–2, 1798), not only were Admiral Nelson’s tactical decisions brilliant, but he had so imbued his captains with his thinking that, when they saw a chance for surprise by attacking the disengaged side of the French fleet, they were quick to seize it and gain a decisive advantage. Still, their decisions only established the basis of that great victory, for the French fought with desperation, and it took hard fighting by British tars, inspired by Nelson’s charismatic leadership, to fulfill the promise of victory.

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In a similar manner, new technology is not tactics, but it may have a decisive effect in both altering the face of battle and affecting its outcome. Navies put special emphasis on warships and aircraft. It is well said that on the ground men are served by their weapons while at sea weapons are served by men. Lest his readers be too enamoured of élan and fighting spirit, Rear Admiral Bradley Allen Fiske used a telling example in The Navy as a Fighting Machine (1916). He pointed out that in the American Civil War the Confederate ironclad Virginia, with 10 guns, handily defeated the Union sloops-of-war Congress and Cumberland, which carried a total of 74 guns. One day later the Union’s Monitor, carrying two guns in a turret, fought the Virginia to a standstill. Courage and resolve were powerless against progress and armour.

The American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan made perhaps too much of the influence on tactics of technological progress. In his seminal The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890), he wrote that, due to new fighting systems, “from time to time the structure of tactics has to be wholly torn down but the foundations of strategy so far remain, as though laid upon a rock.” Mahan appreciated the utility of naval history for the discovery of strategic constants—that is, principles of strategy that have remained valid throughout technological change. Tacticians, on the other hand, are conscious of tactical constants as well, especially the following: the power of concentrated force (rarely in history has a naval tactician withheld a reserve); the special value of surprise; the abiding need for cohesion brought about by sound command and combat doctrine; the consummate goal of attacking effectively first; and the unique role played by timing and timeliness.

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The study of trends

Naval officers also study history for its trends, because trends are the only clue as to how tactics are changing and are the best check against the fatal sin of preparing to fight the last war. The trend that has influenced all else in the conduct of naval battle is the increasing range and lethality of naval weapons. Paradoxically, greater lethality has not led a trend toward greater loss of life. The first reason is that, unlike ground combat, the principal aim at sea is to put the fighting machine, not the fighting man, out of action, and modern machines are (thus far) sensitive to damage. Second, it is a long-standing constant that naval battles, once joined, are fast-moving and decisive.

To sketch how the range of weapons has affected naval tactics, a simple structure that describes the processes of combat must be established. First is firepower delivery itself. Second is the scouting process, which gathers information by reconnaissance, surveillance, cryptanalysis, and other means and delivers it to the tactical commander. Third is command itself—or command and control (C²) in modern parlance—which assimilates the information, decides which actions are called for, and directs forces to act accordingly.

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Combat being the activities of force against force, there is a natural antithesis to all three processes described above. First, the effect of enemy firepower is reduced by shooting down the incoming aircraft or missile, by maneuvering to avoid a torpedo, and by ship survivability or “staying power”—that is, the ability to continue fighting after suffering damage. Second, when scouting was accomplished by ships or aircraft flung out ahead of a formation, information denial was accomplished by screening—that is, by flinging out an opposing line of ships and aircraft. Modern ways to confound the enemy’s scouting effort are keeping radio silence and jamming his radars, both of which deny him information. Third, enemy C² can be confused by deceptive signals or decoy forces. It can also be crippled or delayed by electronically jamming enemy communications.

The six processes described above—namely, firepower delivery, scouting, C², and the three countermeasures against them—as well as maneuver, are the raw materials of naval tactics. To achieve success, they are synthesized into a harmonious blend of action and counteraction. For example, a modern naval screen of ships or aircraft defends a formation both by destroying enemy aircraft or missiles and by denying tactical information. The screen itself may even be so central in importance that it becomes the focus of enemy attack, with destruction of the screen being tantamount to destruction of the force. Thus, the study of naval tactics has become more than the study of formations, firepower, and maneuvers. The increase in weapon range has been paralleled by scouting and the control of forces at longer and longer ranges; these in turn have opened up more avenues to gain information and confuse the enemy’s picture by electronic means.