Two ideas motivated this anthology of articles published in our quarterly, the Naval War College Review. First, the U.S. Navy is today at a critical point in its history. At a time when the nation is at war—with campaigns in two countries and engagements across the globe as part of the war on terror—the roles and missions traditionally assigned to the Navy have been called into question. Budget pressures have forced the service to reevaluate shipbuilding plans for several ships, including the DD(X) family. Second, it has been nearly ten years since selections from the Review have been compiled in a single, easily accessible volume; in that time there have appeared a number of articles that particularly deserve a second or third look by those who study and practice national security and naval affairs. The articles in this volume speak directly to the Navy's evolving role in the national and military strategies. The collection should serve as a handy reference for scholars, analysts, practitioners, and general readers interested in naval issues, and also that it will be useful for adoption as a reading by national security courses both in the United States and abroad. While the articles here certainly do not exhaust the range of views and important issues involving naval operations, strategy, or tactics, they do form a foundation for those interested in learning more. Moreover, they have enduring value; the perspectives and analyses they offer will not go out of fashion. The articles are reprinted exactly as they originally appeared, except that: proofreading errors noticed since original publication have been silently corrected; biographical notes have been updated; copyrighted art has been omitted; citation format (which evolved over the years) has been standardized in certain respects; and one author has appended a brief commentary. The volume is divided into three sections. The first introduces the changing security environment facing the United States and, by extension, the U.S. Navy. The articles examine both the external position of the nation and the emerging internal political and institutional contexts that constrain military and naval policies and decision making. The second part looks specifically at the roles and missions of the Navy at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Its articles cover both long-standing issues, such as forward presence, and the new missions the Navy has assumed in recent years—from projecting power far inland to providing theater and national missile defense, especially against opponents armed with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The last part of the volume concentrates on military and naval transformation. The articles in this section provide some perspective on, perhaps even ballast for, the claims of proponents of the revolution in military affairs. Finally, I supply a conclusion reviewing the main themes of the articles and the avenues to which they point. The Naval War College Review remains one of the premier journals dedicated to publishing articles and essays with a naval and maritime focus. The chapters in the volume provide many of the intellectual building blocks for a maritime strategy designed to maintain American primacy and, if mandated by political leaderships, support a liberal empire that helps protect and spread the ideals of democracy and markets. The Navy's role will be arduous, and the need for continuous adjustments to the prevailing international security environment great. By reading or rereading the chapters that follow, specialists and nonspecialists alike can gain greater insights into the challenges ahead.
The present volume, Reposturing the Force: U.S. Overseas Presence in the Twenty-first Century, is the twenty-sixth in the Newport Papers monograph series, published since 1991 by the Naval War College Press. Its primary aim is to provide a snapshot of a process—the ongoing reconfiguration of America's foreign military “footprint” abroad—that is likely to prove of the most fundamental importance for the long-term security of the United States, yet has so far received little if any systematic attention from national security specialists and still less from the wider public. As such, it serves well the broad mission of the Newport Papers series—to provide rigorous and authoritative analysis, of a sort not readily available in the world of academic or commercial publishing, of issues of strategic salience to the U.S. Navy and the national security community generally. Reposturing the Force is, however, unusual in the manner in which it combines rigor and authoritativeness, for several of its authors are or recently were senior U.S. government officials. Ryan Henry and Lincoln Bloomfield, Jr., have been central figures in the Global Defense Posture Review (initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 as the key mechanism for forcing transformation of the U.S. overseas presence) while serving as, respectively, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. As such, they are uniquely positioned to comment on the unfolding of this vast, complex, and extremely sensitive undertaking, many of the details of which are still in flux or are (and likely will remain) classified. For additional perspective on the subject, however, we have felt it important to include also papers by several independent scholars and policy analysts. Robert Harkavy's opening essay helps to place current developments in the American global posture in a larger historical and strategic framework. Andrew Erickson and Justin Mikolay provide an in-depth analysis of the role of Guam in recent thinking and decisions about the posture of the U.S. military in the western Pacific. Finally, Robert Work examines the emerging concept of “sea basing” in Navy and Marine Corps doctrine and force planning, an integral yet so far largely neglected dimension of the American military presence abroad.
Reprint of the third edition (1966) with a new foreword and minor corrections. Describes the fundamentals of war gaming, its history, and some of the techniques employed in war games. It is intended primarily for the use of resident students at the U. S. Naval War College. It should also provide a source of background information for other military officers and researchers concerned with war gaming.
The Naval War College has expanded its expertise in the Asia-Pacific Rim region in recent years largely in response to the growing significance of the region to U.S. national security. The College has actively hired prominent scholars and hosted a number of conferences, workshops, and guest speakers focusing on the problems and possibilities facing the Pacific Rim. South and Northeast Asia, after all, are home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies and close American allies, as well as several potential political and diplomatic flashpoints. Even more to the point, China is an ascending economic and military power both in the region and on the world stage. The U.S. Navy plays a leading role in maintaining stability in the region with its strong presence and ability to guard the freedom of navigation in vital sea lines of communication. The efforts of the Asia-Pacific Rim specialists at the Naval War College in some ways represent a case of “back to the future.” One of the proudest episodes in the College's history came in the 1930s when Newport played a central role in developing the military plans necessary to cope with the ascendance of another Asian economic and military power—Japan. Although we expect that wise diplomacy and national self-interest will prevent a reoccurrence of similar difficulties in the coming decades, there is no substitute for military preparedness and well-thought-out international and regional strategies for dealing with the important region. The Naval War College Press has done its part in providing its readers with many excellent articles on regional security in Asia in the Naval War College Review; an important book—Jonathan Pollack, editor, Strategic Surprise? U.S.-China Relations in the Early Twenty-first Century (released March 2004); and now Newport Paper 22. Professor Lyle Goldstein of the Strategic Research Department of the College's Center for Naval Warfare Studies has been at the forefront of recent research into China's future. In this project he has guided a handful of naval officers through the puzzle of China's ongoing nuclear modernization programs. With the able assistance of Andrew Erickson, these sailor-scholars have examined various aspects of nuclear modernization from ballistic missile defense to nuclear command and control. In general the chapter tells a cautionary tale; the progress of China's nuclear modernization documented here should give pause to those inclined to dismiss China's military modernization. Steadily and with relatively little attention the People's Republic continues to improve its technologies and weapons systems. As the authors emphasize, no “Rubicon” has been crossed, but potentials are already apparent that, if realized, the U.S. Navy as now constituted would find challenging indeed.
Naval history as generally recounted is a story of battles at sea. However, it has to be admitted that since 1945 neither the United States nor any other contemporary naval power has had much of a naval history in this sense. Domination of the oceans by the United States and its allies, together with the fortunate failure of the Cold War to culminate in a test of strength between the American and Soviet navies, meant that classic naval battle gradually faded from center stage in the education and professional orientation of American naval officers. Beginning in the early years of the Cold War, the Navy became preoccupied largely with technology and the tactical proficiency that rapidly advancing naval and weapons technologies made increasingly necessary. At the extreme, of course, the advent of nuclear weapons seemed to many to leave the Navy little role in a major global conflict other than to provide invulnerable launch platforms for these weapons—and thereby a powerful deterrent that would, as it was thought, obviate their actual use. Beyond that, though, the switch to nuclear propulsion for the Navy's capital ships laid heavy technical demands on new generations of naval officers, with concomitant impact on their education and training. The result—or so contends Milan Vego in On Major Naval Operations, the thirty-second volume in the Naval War College Press's Newport Papers series—has been a long-standing neglect by the U.S. Navy of major naval operations and, more broadly, of the “operational” level of war or of naval “operational art.” The term “operational art” is apt to be unfamiliar to most Americans. American military officers encounter it routinely as a fixture of contemporary joint military doctrine, but even today the concept has substantially less traction within the U.S. Navy than it does in the other services. The reason is plainly that its origins are in land warfare—specifically, in large-scale land warfare as theorized by the German and (especially) Soviet militaries during the interwar period and practiced by these countries in World War II. From the latter, it migrated to the U.S. Army in the late 1970s, as the Army sought novel ways to grapple with the increasingly formidable prospect of a Soviet ground assault against Western Europe. Essentially, “operational art” refers to a level of command intermediate between the tactical and the strategic, one associated with ground command at the level of field army or corps and with the conduct of “campaigns” that unfold as a series of interconnected battles over time. That many naval officers remain unconvinced of its applicability to their own domain is not surprising, given the narrowly tactical focus of much naval warfare of the past. (Wayne Hughes's classic treatise Fleet Tactics, for example, begins by dismissing the utility of the concept of operational-level warfare for naval combat.) On the other hand, it is difficult to deny that naval command and control doctrine and practice today are insufficiently attentive to what in Army parlance would be called a “combined arms” approach to warfare. The tenuous relationship between the three principal naval warfare communities remains the strongest argument for a serious reconsideration by the Navy of major naval operations and operational art. Dr. Milan Vego is a professor in the Joint Military Operations Department of the Naval War College. He has published widely on the history of German and Soviet military doctrine, and he is the author of Operational Art (2001) and Joint Operational Warfare (2008), an authoritative textbook currently utilized in the department's curriculum. In this work, he looks back to the richly instructive experience of the U.S. Navy in World War II (as well as in more recent operations during the Korean and Vietnam wars and in the Persian Gulf) in order to develop a taxonomy of naval operational art that can help inform the thinking of the Navy as a whole today.
This President's Report is designed to acquaint its readers with the history, traditions and missions of the Naval War College, located in Newport, Rhode Island"--T.p. verso.
In September 2005, fifty-five chiefs of navies and coast guards, along with twenty-seven war college presidents from around the world gathered in Newport for the Seventeenth International Seapower Symposium. We shared perspectives on a broad range of issues important to the global maritime community and individual countries through the mechanism of regionally oriented seminars. As the symposium drew to a close, a consensus was articulated that maritime security was fundamental to address these concerns, that the scope of security challenges reached beyond the waters of individual nations, and most importantly, that the responsibilities in the maritime domain—the great “commons” of the world—were shared. Moreover, the need was expressed for regional and global mechanisms that allowed maritime nations to more routinely and effectively bring their particular capabilities together to ensure a free and secure maritime domain. The host of the ISS, Admiral Mike Mullen, summarized the key proposition of the symposium: “Because today's challenges are global in nature, we must be collective in our response. We are bound together in our dependence on the seas and in our need for security of the vast commons. This is a requisite for national security, global stability, and economic prosperity.” Acknowledging that “the United States Navy could not, by itself, preserve the freedom and security of the entire maritime domain,” Admiral Mullen said that “it must count on assistance from like-minded nations interested in using the sea for lawful purposes and precluding its use by others that threaten national, regional, or global security.” So too must each nation count on assistance from other nations. Over the past two years the Naval War College has found itself in a position of prominence in helping the leadership of our maritime forces, and the leaderships of our global partners, think through the implications of a new set of global security challenges and opportunities. It has been a very productive period since the College—against the fundamental notions of the Seventeenth International Seapower Symposium—was tasked to work on a new strategy “of and for its time.” Critical to our effort to rethink maritime strategy has been an extensive scenario analysis and war-gaming effort and a series of high-level conferences, symposia, and other professional exchanges with maritime partners here in Newport and at other venues around the world. This collaborative effort has produced great insight and brought into focus the diverse perspectives necessary to make this strategy robust across multiple arguments and useful for both naval leadership and national policy makers in understanding the key role maritime forces must play in the evolving international system. We see some interesting new ideas in this strategy: the preeminent value of maritime forces to underwrite stability for the global system and an emphasis on unique capabilities inherent in maritime forces to prevent global shocks and to limit and localize regional conflict. While this enhances the long-standing naval commitment to provide high-end capability, there are clear new demands related to sustaining the global system—unique in the maritime domain. The new maritime strategy also recognizes that capacity must rely increasingly, across the range of military operations, on an expanded set of more robust, global maritime relationships—in effect, partnerships that engender trust, enable prevention, and yield more effective maritime security. The present volume contributes clearly and significantly to building just this sort of maritime partnerships. In subsequent guidance to the Naval War College, Admiral Mullen emphasized that any new strategy must be one viewed through the eyes of our partners. The essays from the Americas that follow are a compendium of “perspectives on maritime strategy.”
Newport Paper No. 29, Shaping the Security Environment, edited by Derek S. Reveron, makes an important contribution to an unfolding debate on the global role of U.S. military forces in an era of transnational terrorism, failed or failing states, and globalization. Reveron, professor of national security decision making at the Naval War College, looks beyond the current conflicts in which the United States is involved to raise fundamental questions concerning the regional diplomatic roles of America's combatant commanders (COCOMs) and, more generally, the entire array of nonwarfighting functions that have become an increasingly important part of the day-to-day life of the American military as it engages a variety of partners or potential partners around the world. These functions are increasingly being given doctrinal definition and a larger role in U.S. military planning under the novel concept of “shaping.” This volume is intended to explore the notion of shaping in its various aspects, both generally and in several regional contexts. The changing role of the regional COCOMs (formerly CINCs) over the last dozen years or so is the focus of a paper by General Anthony Zinni, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), who provides a characteristically frank and illuminating account of his own tenure as commander of the U.S. Central Command, with responsibilities for the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East. Papers by Commander Alan Lee Boyer, USN (Ret.), and Stephen A. Emerson examine maritime and regional security cooperation from the perspective of the U.S. European Command on the one hand and, on the other, the Combined Task Force–Horn of Africa, a joint organization headquartered in Djibouti that has played a critical role in recent years in strengthening the capabilities of countries throughout the region to improve their own security and counter terrorism. Two further chapters examine aspects of shaping from a global perspective. Ronald E. Ratcliffe provides a searching analysis of the “thousand-ship navy” initiative proposed several years ago by outgoing Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen, including the difficulties the U.S. Navy has had in operationalizing this concept—and the difficulties some of our allies and partners continue to have in coming to terms with it. Ratcliffe makes a number of useful recommendations as to how the Navy can make headway in the area of maritime security cooperation in the coming years, which is likely to figure prominently in the new maritime strategy the Navy is currently developing. Finally, Dennis Lynn looks at “strategic communication,” also a relatively new concept that is intended to bring greater coherence to the way the U.S. military thinks about the overall impact of its words and actions abroad and how it can better craft messages to shape the environment—friendly as well as adversarial—in which it finds itself today.
U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980s: Selected Documents is the thirty-third in the Naval War College Press's Newport Papers monograph series, and the third in a projected four volume set of authoritative documents relating to U.S. Navy strategy and strategic planning during and after the Cold War. Edited by John B. Hattendorf, a distinguished naval historian and chairman of the Maritime History Department at the Naval War College, this volume is an indispensable supplement to Professor Hattendorf 's uniquely informed narrative of the genesis and development of the Navy's strategy for global war with the Soviet Union, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986, Newport Paper 19 (2004). It continues the story of the Navy's reaction to the growing Soviet naval and strategic threats over the decade of the 1970s, as documented in U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents, Newport Paper 30 (2007), and sets the stage for the rethinking of the Navy's role following the demise of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, as presented in U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s: Selected Documents, Newport Paper 27 (2006). Both of these volumes were also edited by John Hattendorf. A fourth volume, of documents on naval strategy from the 1950s and 1960s, will eventually round out this important and hitherto very imperfectly known history. This project will make a major contribution not just to the history of the United States Navy since World War II but also to that of American military institutions, strategy, and planning more generally. Including as it does both originally classified documents and statements crafted for public release, it shows how the Navy's leadership not only grappled with fundamental questions of strategy and force structure but sought as well to translate the strategic insights resulting from this process into a rhetorical form suited to the public and political arenas. Finally, it should be noted that all of this is of more than merely historical interest. In October 2007, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, unveiled (in a presentation to the International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College) “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” the first attempt by the sea services of this country to articulate a strategy or vision for maritime power in the contemporary security environment—a new era of protracted low-intensity warfare and growing global economic interdependence. It is too early to tell what impact this document will have on the Navy, its sister services, allies and others abroad, or the good order of the global commons. To understand its meaning and significance, however, there is no better place to begin than with the material collected in this volume and its forthcoming successor.
This historical volume introduces us to the Navy’s river force and American advisers to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. U.S. Navy and Marines securing the Rung Sat that was owned by Viet Cong early in the War offered our navy a river patrol craft that allowed for early naval intelligence attempts. Riverine warfare training because a mission for training sailors at home in addition to SEALS and SEALORDS for additional coastal surveillance force to support the riverine forces. Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. proved to be a strategic leader to: * plan a combined-arms, * multi-service, * multinational approach to interdicting Communist infiltration from Cambodia * and destroying enemies within the Mekong Delta The fast patrol craft or swift boat became one of the Navy’s workhorses from the SEALORDS CAMPAIGN. The Army’s Dust Off, medical evacuation helicopter is also introduced within this resource to provide medical attention to those in combat as part of rescue missions. Related products: Find more volumes in The U.S. Navy and Vietnam War series: The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945-1965 (ePub ISBN: 9780160928604) Nixon's Trident: Naval Power in Southeast Asia, 1968-1972 (ePub ISBN: 9780160928697) The Battle Behind Bars: Navy and the Marine POWs in the Vietnam War (ePub ISBN: 9780160928635) Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Passage to Freedom to the Fall of Saigon (ePub ISBN: 9780160928666) Naval Air War: The Rolling Thunder Campaign (ePub ISBN: 9780160931222) Knowing the Enemy: Naval Intelligence in Southeast Asia (ePub ISBN: 9780160937361) Fourth Arm of Defense: Sealift and Maritime Logistics in the Vietnam War (ePub ISBN: 9780160955433) End of the Saga: The Maritime Evacuation of South Vietnam and Cambodia (ePub ISBN: 9780160955570)
Deterrence as a strategic concept evolved during the Cold War. During that period, deterrence strategy was aimed mainly at preventing aggression against the United States and its close allies by the hostile Communist power centersâ€"the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies, Communist China and North Korea. In particular, the strategy was devised to prevent aggression involving nuclear attack by the USSR or China. Since the end of the Cold War, the risk of war among the major powers has subsided to the lowest point in modern history. Still, the changing nature of the threats to American and allied security interests has stimulated a considerable broadening of the deterrence concept. Post-Cold War Conflict Deterrence examines the meaning of deterrence in this new environment and identifies key elements of a post-Cold War deterrence strategy and the critical issues in devising such a strategy. It further examines the significance of these findings for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Quantitative and qualitative measures to support judgments about the potential success or failure of deterrence are identified. Such measures will bear on the suitability of the naval forces to meet the deterrence objectives. The capabilities of U.S. naval forces that especially bear on the deterrence objectives also are examined. Finally, the book examines the utility of models, games, and simulations as decision aids in improving the naval forces' understanding of situations in which deterrence must be used and in improving the potential success of deterrence actions.
This work describes riverine combat during the Vietnam War, emphasizing the operations of the U.S. Navy’s River Patrol Force, which conducted Operation Game Warden; the U.S. Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force, the formation that General William Westmoreland said “saved the Mekong Delta” during the Tet Offensive of 1968; and the Vietnam Navy. An important section details the SEALORDS combined campaign, a determined effort by U.S. Navy, South Vietnamese Navy, and allied ground forces to cut enemy supply lines from Cambodia and disrupt operations at base areas deep in the delta. The author also covers details on the combat vessels, helicopters, weapons, and equipment employed in the Mekong Delta as well as the Vietnamese combatants (on both sides) and American troops who fought to secure Vietnam’s waterways. Special features focus on the ubiquitous river patrol boats (PBRs) and the Swift boats (PCFs), river warfare training, Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the Black Ponies aircraft squadron, and Navy SEALs. This publication may be of interest to history scholars, veterans, students in advanced placement history classes, and military enthusiasts given the continuing impact of riverine warfare on U.S. naval and military operations in the 21st century. Special Publicity Tie-In: Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War (Commemoration dates: 28 May 2012 - 11 November 2025). This is the fifth book in the series, "The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War." TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The First Indochina War The Vietnam Navy River Force and American Advisors The U.S. Navy and the Rivers of Vietnam SEALORDS The End of the Line for U.S. and Vietnamese River Forces Sidebars: The PBR Riverine Warfare Training Battle Fleet of the Mekong Delta High Drama in the Delta Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. Black Ponies The Swift Boat Warriors with Green Faces Suggested Reading
To understand a series of events in the past, one needs to do more than just know a set of detailed and isolated facts. Historical understanding is a process to work out the best way to generalize accurately about something that has happened. It is an ongoing and never-ending discussion about what events mean, why they took place the way they did, and how and to what extent that past experience affects our present or provides a useful example for our general appreciation of our development over time. Historical understanding is an examination that involves attaching specifics to wide trends and broad ideas. In this, individual actors in history can be surprised to find that their actions involve trends and issues that they were not thinking about at the time they were involved in a past action as well as those that they do recognize and were thinking about at the time. It is the historian's job to look beyond specifics to see context and to make connections with trends that are not otherwise obvious. The process of moving from recorded facts to a general understanding can be a long one. For events that take place within a government agency, such as the U.S. Navy, the process cannot even begin until the information and key documents become public knowledge and can be disseminated widely enough to bring different viewpoints and wider perspectives to bear upon them. This volume is published to help begin that process of wider historical understanding and generalization for the subject of strategic thinking in the U.S. Navy during the last phases of the Cold War. To facilitate this beginning, we offer here the now-declassified, full and original version of the official study that I undertook in 1986–1989, supplemented by three appendices. The study attempted to record the trends and ideas that we could see at the time, written on the basis of interviews with a range of the key individuals involved and on the working documents that were then still located in their original office locations, some of which have not survived or were not permanently retained in archival files. We publish it here as a document, as it was written, without attempting to bring it up to date. To supplement this original study, we have appended the declassified version of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Intelligence Estimate of March 1982, which was a key analysis in understanding the Soviet Navy, provided a generally accepted consensus of American understanding at the time, and provided a basis around which to develop the U.S Navy's maritime strategy in this period. A second appendix is by Captain Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy (Ret.), and consists of his annotated bibliography of the public debate surrounding the formulation of the strategy in the 1980s, updated to include materials published through the end of 2003. And finally, Yuri M. Zhukov has created especially for this volume a timeline that lays out a chronology of events to better understand the sequence of events involved. The study and the three appendices are materials that contribute toward a future historical understanding and do not, in themselves, constitute a definitive history, although they are published as valuable tools toward reaching that goal. To reach closer to a definitive understanding, there are a variety of new perceptions that need to be added over time. With the opening of archives on both sides of the world, and as scholarly discourse between Russians and Americans develop, one will be able to begin to compare and contrast perceptions with factual realities. As more time passes and we gain further distance and perspective in seeing the emerging broad trends, new approaches to the subject may become apparent. Simultaneously, new materials may be released from government archives that will enhance our understanding.
This book is a collection of 16 essays by international authors who participated in an academic conference on Korea sponsored by the U.S. Naval War College. Papers were originally presented at the Naval War College's Asia-Pacific Forum, the annual conference of the college's Asia-Pacific Studies Group, held in Newport, R.I., on 26-27 August 2004.
From the foreword. "In Defeating the U-boat: Inventing Antisubmarine Warfare, Newport Paper 36, Jan S. Breemer tells the story of the British response to the German submarine threat. His account of Germany's "asymmetric" challenge (to use the contemporary term) to Britain's naval mastery holds important lessons for the United States today, the U.S. Navy in particular. The Royal Navy's obstinate refusal to consider seriously the option of convoying merchant vessels, which turned out to be the key to the solution of the Uboat problem, demonstrates the extent to which professional military cultures can thwart technical and operational innovation even in circumstances of existential threat. Although historical controversy continues to cloud this issue, Breemer concludes that the convoying option was embraced by the Royal Navy only under the pressure of civilian authority. Breemer ends his lively and informative study with some general reflections on military innovation and the requirements for fostering it.
This collection of documents reflecting the evolution of official thinking within the United States Navy and Marine Corps during the post–Cold War era concerning the fundamental missions and strategy of the sea services is part of a larger project designed to bring greater transparency to an important dimension of our recent naval history. This project was initiated by Professor John Hattendorf with his authoritative study in Newport Paper 19, which utilized much previously classified material, of the so-called Maritime Strategy developed and promulgated by the Navy during the 1980s. In the present volume, Newport Paper 27, covering the decade of the 1990s, Professor Hattendorf assembles for the first time in a single publication all the major naval strategy and policy statements of this period. Though all are public documents, most of these statements remain very little known and relatively inaccessible, at any rate outside the Navy itself. They are also not always easy to interpret, reflecting as they often do subtle shifts in emphasis or the nuances of internal bureaucratic argument rather than broadly understandable major changes in strategic thought or practice. Accordingly, the documents are accompanied by an introductory essay that attempts to put them in the proper historical and institutional perspective, as well as by a brief commentary for each that provides additional pertinent information and attempts to assess wider significance. A second Newport Paper dealing with comparable naval strategy statements of the 1970s and 1980s, in the same format and also edited by Professor Hattendorf. It is important to bear in mind that this material is not merely of historical interest. In his address to the annual Current Strategy Forum at the Naval War College in June 2006, the Chief of Naval Operations. Adm. Michael Mullen, announced his intention to craft what he called a new “maritime strategy” geared to the contemporary and emerging global security environment. The complex and not altogether happy story of earlier efforts within the Navy along similar lines can contribute in vital ways to preparing essential groundwork for such an undertaking.
In the shadow of the recent Iraq war, it is easy to accept that “growth and diffusion of stealth, precision, and information technology” has truly heralded the long-awaited revolution in military affairs. American leaders—from the President to the Pentagon military and civilian leadership—have called for dramatic transformation of each of the services to fit this revolution. In many ways, this is a far harder task. It is the purpose of this Newport Paper to examine the views of military officers on that prospect, a critical and unstudied factor in the implementation of transformation. Its coauthors, Professors Mahnken and FitzSimonds, are members of the Naval War College faculty—Dr. Mahnken in the Strategy and Policy Department and Captain FitzSimonds (U.S. Navy, Retired) in the War Gaming Department's Research and Analysis Division. The authors argue that the opinions of military officers on transformation are crucial, and not just because these attitudes guide the transformation process. They are critical also because receptivity to change in this group will affect innovation, both now and when today's mid-grade officers assume senior leadership posts. It is from some, but not all, of today's military officers that further transformation impulses will come. Accordingly, Mahnken and FitzSimonds explore a number of questions fundamental in the present and for the future of the American military establishment. What is the level of enthusiasm among officers for transformation? How compelling do they perceive the need for transformation to be? How extensive a change do they believe is necessary? How confident are they in the ability of the U.S. military to carry out transformation? We believe that this study is in itself as innovative as the military transformation that forms its broad subject, and we are pleased to bring it to the attention of a broad range of naval, academic, and policy readers.
Naval War College Historical Monograph Series, 18. Examines in detail, making extensive use of the Naval War College archives, each of the U.S. Navy's twenty-one "fleet problems" conducted between World Wars I and II, elucidating the patterns that emerged, finding a range of enduring lessons, and suggesting their applicability for future naval warfare.
Network-Centric Naval Forces: A Transition Strategy for Enhancing Operational Capabilities is a study to advise the Department of the Navy regarding its transition strategy to achieve a network-centric naval force through technology application. This report discusses the technical underpinnings needed for a transition to networkcentric forces and capabilities.
NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT ON THIS PRINT PRODUCT-- OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price Twenty essays selected from the writings of John B. Hattendorf, Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College, between 2001 and 2009. They represent a wide historical perspective that ranges across nearly four centuries of maritime history. A number of these pieces have been published previously but have appeared in other languages and in other countries, where they may not have come to the attention of an American naval reading audience. This collection is divided into parts that deal with four major themes: the broad field of maritime history; general naval history, with specific focus on the classical age of sail, from the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815; the wide scope of American naval history from 1775 to the end of the twentieth century; and finally, the realm of naval theory and its relationship to naval historical studies. They are reprinted, with only minor alterations, as they originally appeared. This work may appeal to general history readers, scholarly and general adult readers of history especially naval and maritime, plus students pursuing coursework in military science degree programs. Other related products: Fundamentals of War Gaming --Print Paperback format can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00299-1 --Print Hardcover format can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00269-0 Nineteen-Gun Salute: Case Studies of Operational, Strategic, and Diplomatic Naval Leadership During the 20th and Early 21st Centuries can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00252-5 Digesting History: The U.S. Naval War College, the Lessons of World War Two, and Future Naval Warfare, 1945-1947 -- Print Paperback format is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00255-0 --ePub format is available here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-300-00040-2 -- ePub is also available from Apple iBookstore, BarnesandNoble.com, Books on Board eBookstore, Diesel eBookstore, Google Play eBookstore, Overdrive, Powell's eBookstore -- Please use ISBN: 9781884733864 to search for this product within these platforms. Naval War College Illustrated History and Guide can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00265-7 Other products produced by the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-046-00265-7
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