Navies and trade

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Long-time readers may remember I'm a bit of a sceptic regarding naval power. In part because ship-killing can be done by land-based aircraft, in part because small navies historically simply didn't accomplish their missions. Warfare at sea was kind of a winner-takes-it-all thing, so a small navy was all-too often a waste of resources. Think of the utterly useless Polish, Danish and Dutch navies in WW2, for example.

 

Big (dominant) navies justify their existence (and budget) in large part with the claim that they protect maritime trade (and wartime transportation). I blogged about that in ancient times myself.

I see three distinct ways how a navy would do that:

1) Break a close blockade. No modern cruisers would enact a close blockade on ports. That fell out of fashion with the late 19th century torpedo. Close blockade by luring submarines or by offensive minelaying is a thing, but to counter this doesn't require warships. Boats, drones, helicopters, seabed sensor stations and defensive mines would suffice.

2) Break a 'blue water' distant blockade. This is mostly about escorts for convoys and I blogged a lot about it. 

3) Force open straits.

 

#1 is possible without a proper navy, but hardly any country is well-prepared to do it. None is efficiently prepared to do it. 

#2 is something that absolutely no navy is prepared to do at large scale. No navy - not even USN or PLAN - has enough escorts for this, especially not in addition to securing the own coastal waters. The Western allies built hundreds of oceangoing escorts in WW2 to counter the German submarine threat.* NATO lost the necessary numbers of escorts sometime around 1970 when the late WW2 destroyers that were retained and modernised to counter hundreds of Soviet fast diesel-electric submarines were decommissioned or rendered inoperable. Ever since, the counter to Soviet submarines was a cordoning them, especially in the 'GIUK gap', Baltic sea, English Channel and Bosphorus. The USN admitted it wouldn't even be able to provide escorts for its own strategic sealift ships (which as so fast that a proper ASW escort would be near-impossible anyway due to fuel consumption fo destroyers at that speed and the speed limit of towed variable depth sonars).

#3 is something that really only the USN had a credible claim to be able to do against a well-armed opposition. We learned that for all practical purposes, even they can neither do it against Iranians nor against the Houthis.

 

So it's about time we understand three things:

• Most navies are too small to accomplish wartime missions and are not credible in peacetime. They're a waste of resources.
• 'Blue water' maritime trade cannot be secured against well-armed opposition prepared to disrupt it unless we create giant escort navies. 
• The USN is a horribly overbudgeted land attack force and not much else.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyer_escorts_of_the_United_States_Navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower-class_corvette

 
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