My concern has been growing lately about the importance of Sea Control, and my perception that as every day goes by--the gap between our ability to "do" it and others ability to "contest it" shrinks.
In this month's Proceedings, Captain Vic Addison of OPNAV and CDR David Dominy (RN) team up to offer an interesting discussion of Sea Control, offering a useful framework for evaluating "littoral" sea control and then applying it to two scenarios--the Falklands war and the 2006 Israeli/Hezbollah conflict.
I had to read the article twice in order to fully appreciate it. One hopes that both the Brits and the Israelis had staffs who could have performed a deeper dive along these lines. I get the feeling the Israelis just got caught sleeping, thinking that there wasn't a threat to their Sea Control (Addison and Dominy bring up a truth that one doesn't often think about--that control of littoral seas does not mean possession of a Navy or Coast Guard). But the Brits could have done quite a bit more to take the Argentine air arm out earlier--the primary method by which the Argentinians contested British attempts to control seaspace.
Bryan McGrath
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