Читать книгу A Tale Of Two Navies - Anthony Wells - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThis book is about naval thinking: its impact at every level of naval activity and interaction with national defense in its many complexities. An attempt has been made to select themes that are relevant and most topical for current issues, providing a framework for thinking through where both navies need to go in the future and why. Perhaps most of all it seeks to encourage thoughtful discourse on how to steer a successful course through what is often a minefield of opponents, skeptics, fellow travelers, and those with ill-conceived agendas or who simply have little or no knowledge of both navies’ rich maritime heritage or of the basics of maritime strategy. The book wants to provide guidance and stimulation. It will attempt to answer key questions, as a Socratic response. Most of all it aims to encourage thoughtful dialogue with readers so that individually and collectively they may contribute to the debate and actions needed to keep both countries’ naval strategies deeply rooted and focused on well-reasoned fact, intellectual integrity, and rigor. The past fifty-five years provide us with bedrock experience that can help us shape the future.
The US Navy and the Royal Navy have a unique relationship within the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. The special relationship was forged during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At its heart lay special intelligence sharing at the most sensitive levels, much of it focused on naval matters. Parallel to and coupled with intelligence activities ran a continuous thread of maritime strategic planning and execution that bonded the two navies throughout World War II. This golden thread that contributed so significantly to ultimate victory in 1945 continued in the postwar period. By 1960, when this story begins, this special relationship and the destinies of the United States and Royal Navies had become entwined, and endured thereafter.
The fifty-five years from 1960 to 2015 have seen extraordinary challenges and changes for both navies. They have been as demanding as World War II and of comparable strategic significance. One critical factor lies at the root of the strategic underpinnings of the past fifty-five years: the combined and shared national self-interests of the United States and the United Kingdom in preserving and protecting the values and interests that sustained them during the darkest days of World War II and for which they fought. This story from 1960 to 2015 reflects those very self-same Anglo-American values, which have been preserved to this day. The United States and Royal Navies together represent the enduring values that unite both countries in common goals.
This book is not a formal history or an anthology and does not follow a strict chronology. It is more a discursive analysis of selected key themes across time, as well as of how the two navies interacted in distinctive ways. I aim to engage and challenge the reader’s own knowledge and experience in a Socratic way, so that the reader may form his or her own ideas and conclusions, as a result of what I hope are stimulating and illuminating observations. This book does not, therefore, aim to be definitive in any sense of the word but rather a discourse between the author and readers whereby they may collectively form clear and reliable ideas about not just what happened in this critical fifty-five years but also how it will shape all our thinking about the future. Professor Sir Michael Howard, the father of the Department of War Studies at King’s College, University of London, has stressed that the past is not necessarily always a true guide to the future, that lessons learned may not always be applied to future events or scenarios or for formulating plans, policies, or programs, and certainly not to grand strategy. However, he does conclude that understanding why things happen in military institutions and their ultimate engagement in war has value, that such knowledge and insight can help address a way forward. The past should not be prologue but instead used to anticipate change and formulate future endeavors based on a didactic interchange between the past, the present, and the foreseeable future. For example, both navies are currently involved in what is the most expensive defense program for each nation, the replacement of the submarine-based ballistic missile, the keystone of both countries’ nuclear deterrence strategy. The history of both navies’ nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine (SSBN) forces is a study in strategy in its own right. The Cold War era has transitioned to the post–Cold War period. Both navies now witness the growth of Chinese naval power and the reemergence of a Russian navy that looks a lot different from the one US Navy admirals visited in the heyday of post–Soviet Union perestroika in the 1990s. Given the massive investment and the opportunity-cost choices confronting both governments, what do the past fifty-five years tell us? What is the interaction between the US-UK SSBN forces’ strategic underpinnings, program elements (technical, operational, force structure, and financial) and other choices, and the past? The continuity of institutionalized naval thinking may be challenged in ways that were simply not present when President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold MacMillan signed the agreements that shared US submarine nuclear technology with the Royal Navy and led to the creation of the UK’s Polaris submarine force. Political will and funding interact with both navies’ concerns about lost programs and diminished force levels as a result of the inevitable high cost of SSBN replacement. Based on our knowledge and experience, what is the best outcome for both countries and their navies?
Bookshelves and e-systems are full of outstanding works on both the US Navy and Royal Navy during this period. This book will not attempt to replicate what is easily available elsewhere. For example, the technical details of both navies’ force structure down to the unit level, in extraordinary fine and accurate detail, can be found in works like Jane’s Fighting Ships and the myriad publications of the U.S. Naval Institute, by distinguished authors such as the late Royal Navy captain John Moore and the American civilian author Norman Polmar. The histories of all the main conflicts, local wars, and other engagements are well documented and analyzed in multiple sources. Where this book hopes to contribute and stimulate is in the nonquantifiable domains that relate to the question why. In particular, it will cast light on themes where the author has unique knowledge and insight, hitherto unexamined and highly relevant areas. To illustrate from the past, the British government only released in 1974 a limited amount of information of the Ultra secrets of World War II and the Enigma code, together with the existence of Bletchley Park. Within a few years the data, which was released very slowly, changed completely our understanding of World War II, as exemplified by Sir Harry Hinsley’s masterful volumes published by the British government on the history of British intelligence in World War II. The point is self-evident. There is much that naval professionals and those associated with the political-military process do not know or consider. This is no one’s fault. It is the nature of the way security-conscious navies conduct business. What is key is to ensure that all salient factors are considered. When either navy engages in a critical event like a national strategic defense review that will lead to resource allocations and changes in national defense priorities, policies, and programs, there is likely to be generational impact. Here is an illustration. The British government decided in the 1960s to not replace the Royal Navy’s fleet aircraft carriers, thereby ending major carrier-launched fixed-wing aviation (with the exception of the three small, 20,000-ton, Invincible-class Harrier carriers or through-deck cruisers). Two new Queen Elizabeth fleet carriers will enter service in the early 2020s. There has been a gap of over forty years since HMS Ark Royal was decommissioned. The consequences of decisions made in the 1960s were witnessed in the Falklands campaign and more recently in operations off Libya.
The themes are selected for good reasons. They are based on criteria that reflect what drives change at all levels: from the high-level institutional and organizational aspects of political-military decision making down to the effects of hugely significant technical changes that in due course impact policy making and operations. A few obvious examples of the latter are nuclear-reactor technology in submarines; underwater cruise- and ballistic-missile launch; multispectral missile and warhead seekers that permit precision strike to within CEPs (circular error probabilities) of just a few feet or less; unmanned stealthy, long-range reconnaissance vehicles; distributed, real-time intelligence systems; and Aegis-like combat systems. The list is huge. All make a significant difference, some make quantum leaps. Fifty-five years have witnessed monumental technical changes: the digital revolution alone is in retrospect quite mind-boggling. When Allen Turing made his revolutionary applications of basic computer technology at Bletchley Park in World War II, he was in the van of technologies that will see no slowing down beyond current “cloud,” cyber, and digital communications and signal-processing technologies in the coming decades. The questions for readers that will be posed as this book unfolds is how should we best exploit these emerging technologies for the strategic and tactical benefit of both navies and that fit optimally the national security needs of the United States and United Kingdom.
The dialogue that occurred in our period of interest between the various editors of Jane’s Fighting Ships and US and UK intelligence officials was responsible and collegial. Retired Royal Navy captain John Moore had been a head of one of the United Kingdom’s intelligence agencies when he was a serving officer and later, indeed, regularly visited your author to discuss content for his annual volume. What this says is that many of the publications that readers are familiar with are simply outstanding and do not require embellishment or updates, certainly not replacement.
The structure of this book has been determined by its key themes, and these are reflected in the chapter titles. The themes cover the important relationship between both navies, manifested by their intelligence organizations, technology developments, political-military restructuring, selected key operations, and their joint and overarching reactions to the various global threats that they faced from 1960 to 2015. The abiding thread that connects these themes comprises the core issue, concepts, and furtherance of a global maritime strategy to protect the vital national interests of the United States and the United Kingdom.
A Tale of Two Navies draws on the unique knowledge and experience of the author, who had the privilege of serving in uniform with both the US Navy and the Royal Navy while working closely with their respective intelligence agencies. As a result, the substantive material that forms the basis for this book is both selective and focused; there is no intent to cover the waterfront, across each and every domain of naval activities that the two navies embraced. Thus, the author does not review all the major US and British naval operations, technology developments, or details like orders of battle and weapon capabilities. There are bookshelves of excellent sources that cover these topics. What you have in the following twelve chapters is the author’s insider perspective of critical themes that will endure for the foreseeable future. Please do enjoy the dialogue, for the goal is to provoke your own thoughts and opinions, for you to carry forward to support an enduring US-UK global maritime strategy.
