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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
*: examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyer_escorts_of_the_United_States_Navy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower-class_corvette
.
It seems to me that PLAN has already done quite a few blockades of Taiwan - just for demonstration, and a total blockade might well be more effective and cheaper than an invasion to bring back Taiwan in the fold.
ReplyDeleteTaiwan has bout 23.3 million people. Assume 100 kg food imports per person-year are needed to sustain it on top fo domestic production.
DeleteThat's 233,000 tons of food in a year. About 640 tons per day. You could fly that in with C-17s, no maritime shipping needed. One trip by the world's biggest container ship per year would suffice, too.
A naval blockade will not force Taiwan to submit to dictatorship from Beijing, even if maintained for a decade.
Sorry, but you missed a zero: 100kg of import per person each year for 23.3 million people amount to 2,33 million tons yearly.
DeleteJM
Correct. In my defence; it was late at night.
Delete6400 tons is still doable by air, though. That's about 70 Boeing 747 cargo aircraft arrivals per day. A major effort, but doable with flights coming from Manila or Okinawa.
Likewise, a single convoy of a dozen big 20 kts-going cargo ships per year would suffice.
I believe the texts claiming that the UK was at risk of being strangled to peace by submarines in either world war are overblown.
It's extremely difficult to enact a blockade so perfect that a country with domestic food production has to surrender. That might work against Singapore, Nauru, Bahrain, Malta, Barbados and the like, but it's very difficult against the likes of England, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea - even taking into account issues with seed production, fertilizer/pesticide/insecticide supply chains, potentially bricked computerised agricultural tractors and diesel fuel scarcity.
If the blockade is combined with long distance bombing of airport, railway, farming equipment, power plants...
DeleteIt would work just fine.
Futhremore, you over estimate the willingness of the Taiwanese to fight and due over abstractions.
I am of the opinion that a Chinese attempt to bring Taiwan back into it's fold is possible and not nearly as difficult to do as some like to make it out to be, the main issue for the Chinese will be dealing with the political fallout of it and the heavy US sanctions that would follow.
In other news, The Scrapboard is gone. Angelfire closed, so you can only view it on The Wayback Machine.
ReplyDeleteIt's a whole new internet unfortunately.
DeletePhil is still around here:
https://phillosoph.blogspot.com/
I made lists of German milbloggers in the early years of this blog. Most are gone.
Deletehttps://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/10/almost-non-existing-german-security.html
https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/07/list-of-german-milblogs.html
The central German milblog is a news blog of a professional journalist. There's actually not much else for all I know.
It was a cabinet of curiosities. Same with Carlton Meyer, albeit he was kinda right with the ground-launched guided Hydra thing.
ReplyDelete