James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the Naval War College, takes a look at 200 years of U.S. Naval history to predict rough seas ahead. Writing in The Boston Globe, he takes as his starting point the February 20, 1815, battle between the U.S.S. Constitution and the British warships Cyane and Levant in the Atlantic near Madeira. The Constitution was victorious, due to the 1,200-yard reach of its guns, vs. the 400-yard range of the British ships’ carronades. The Constitution retired with a 33-0 record.
Of course, naval warfare has changed significantly over the past 200 years. First, in 1815 communications was rudimentary. In fact, the War of 1812 had ended by the time the battle commenced. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, and went into full effect when ratified by the U.S. Senate on February 18, 1815.
In addition, writes Holmes, “No longer do iron men and wooden ships batter away at one another from close range. Time and technology have moved on.”
He continues, “All the same, the Constitution’s War of 1812 Rumble in the Atlantic hints at our Navy’s future in three intriguing—and unsettling—ways. It provides insight into the menace of land-based sea power; the importance of long-range weaponry; and the indispensability of old-fashioned seamanship, tactical wizardry, and derring-do. How well the U.S. Navy fares along these material and human axes will determine whether American fleets survive and win in increasingly contested oceans.”
Holmes notes that the 1815 battle took place on the open ocean with no opportunity for the combatants to summon reinforcements. However, he adds, “Madeira sits just over 300 miles off the African coast. What if the Royal Navy had emplaced guns along that shoreline that were capable of raining accurate fire on ships sailing, say, 500 miles out to sea? British gunners could have pelted the American vessel. The Constitution’s perfect record may have suffered a blemish had the frigate squared off not just against the Cyane and the Levant, but against artillery blazing away from afar.”
That’s the situation today. China, he says, recently displayed antiship, “antiaccess” missiles with ranges of 900 and 1,800 miles. A carrier-based F-35C has a combat range of about 700 miles.
“Engineers are pursuing remedies to the antiaccess quandary,” Holmes writes. “Prototypes of shipboard lasers and electromagnetic railguns already exist, for instance…. Lasers could play havoc with enemy arsenals, and railguns could sling projectiles over 100 miles at Mach 7—taking down incoming projectiles. Heartening stuff. But such exotic armaments are years from being ready for prime time.”
Then, of course, there is the human factor. Today, he writes, navigators have become dependent on GPS—which is fine, unless the satellites are knocked out. Consequently, the Navy announced this year that it will resume training youngsters in celestial navigation. He adds that Charles Stewart, caption of the Constitution in 1815, would be appalled to learn that the Navy ever stopped providing this training. Holmes adds, “The Navy must undergo what literary gadfly Tom Wolfe styles a ‘great relearning’ to regain its past dominance by 2025.”
Holmes concludes, “If the U.S. Navy measures up to likely antagonists in hardware terms, the skill and élan of aviators, surface-ship crews, and submariners will make the difference when it matters, just as it did 200 years ago on the high seas of the Atlantic.”
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