Revisiting ADM Stansfield Turner’s Classic “Missions of the Navy”

Admiral Stansfield Turner, 1983 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

“The fundamental element of a military service is its purpose or role in implementing national policy. The statement of this role may be called the strategic concept of the service. Basically, this concept is a description of how, when, and where the military service expects to protect the nation against some threat to its security. If a military service does not possess such a concept, it becomes purpose-less, it wallows about amid a variety of conflicting and confusing goals, and ultimately it suffers both physical and moral degeneration. A military service may at times, of course, perform functions unrelated to external security, such as internal policing, disaster relief, and citizenship training. These are, however, subordinate and collateral responsibilities. A military service does not exist to perform these functions; rather it performs these functions because it has already been called into existence to meet some threat to the national security. A service is many things; it is men, weapons, bases, equipment, traditions, organization. But none of these have meaning or usefulness unless there is a unifying purpose which shapes and directs their relations and activities towards the achievement of some goal of national policy.” -Samuel Huntington. “National Policy and the Trans-Oceanic Navy.” Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 80, No. 5, May 1954.

An armed service must be able to provide solid justification for its requests to its political masters (and in a representative democracy, those who elect them to office) for a particular share of national resources. It cannot do this if it cannot clearly articulate its strategic purpose.

As Huntington alludes above, though, a service must also explain its strategic purpose to a second and equally important audience: its own rank and file. Its officers and enlisted, from the highest level staffs to the lowest level units, must understand and embrace their individual roles within the service’s corporate body. They must be informed as to which missions, tasks, and skillsets should receive the greatest share of their physical and intellectual energies, not to mention the service’s material and financial resources. A strategic purpose is essentially a form of mission command; it serves as executive guidance by which the service’s “little platoons” at all levels and in all of its organizational branches can self-organize in peace and in war for the betterment of the whole. Without this guidance, Huntington observes, the service will not be able to differentiate how the many things the nation asks it to do—or the many other things it sets forth to do by virtue of its own collective professional expertise—should be prioritized and balanced against each other. The end result of an absence of focused purpose: chaos, confusion, and “physical and moral degeneration” that percolates more-or-less out of view from outsiders until it reveals itself tragically in a moment of national need.

The U.S. Navy’s leadership of the early 1970s evidently feared exactly this kind of decay. A decade of power projection into North and South Vietnam from offshore sanctuaries had certainly educated the Navy as to the technical and tactical intricacies of conducting land-attack strikes in spite of opposition from modern air defense systems. But few of the Navy’s other missions during the Vietnam War paralleled the missions it would need to fulfill in a war against the Soviet Union. And on top of that, the Navy’s division into surface warfare, submarine, and aviation communities—and the subdivisions of each of those communities—made it difficult for the officer corps to view the service’s missions holistically.[1] The service needed a reassertion of its strategic purpose.

This was the role filled by then-VADM Stanfield Turner’s seminal article “Missions of the U.S. Navy” in the March-April 1974 Naval War College Review. His ideas and arguments regarding how the Navy should define its missions speak for themselves. I’m going to quote a few that I found particularly applicable to contemporary maritime strategic questions.

On the flowdown of operational and tactical objectives from a service’s strategic missions:

“Focusing on missions helps tactical commanders to keep objectives in mind. Anti-submarine warfare tacticians often overconcentrate on killing submarines when their ultimate objective is to ensure safe maritime operations. An example of a good sense of objectives was the Israeli achievement of air superiority in the 1967 war. Even though air superiority is traditionally thought of as a function of dogfight tactics, the Israelis recognized that shooting the enemy from the air was not the objective. Destroying Egyptian aircraft was. They employed deep surprise attacks on enemy airfields to successfully achieve this objective.”(Pg. 3)

On the necessary linkages between national strategy, a service’s definition of its missions and the allocation of resources to those missions:

“…an amorphous mass of men, ships, and weapons is difficult to manage because it is difficult for an individual to visualize. By subdividing these masses into their expected output, or missions, we are able to establish priorities for allocating resources—to know how much we are spending for different objectives and to judge their consonance with national strategy.” (Pg. 3)

On sea control as a principal mission of the Navy:

“The new term “Sea Control” is intended to connote more realistic control in limited areas and for limited periods of time. It is conceivable today to temporarily exert air, submarine, and surface control in an area while moving ships into position to project power ashore or to resupply overseas forces. It is no longer conceivable, except in the most limited sense, to totally control the seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy.

…Four U.S. national objectives which call for asserting our use of the sea and, by the same token, denial of them to an opponent are:

·         To ensure industrial supplies

·         To reinforce/resupply military forces engaged overseas

·         To provide wartime economic/military supplies to allies

·         To provide safety for naval forces in the Projection of Power Ashore role” (Pg. 7-8)

On blockades as a method for achieving sea control objectives:

“As opposed to the 18^th and 19^th century tactic of forcing a major fleet engagement at sea, today’s blockade seeks destruction of individual units as they sortie. If we assume an opponent will be in control of the air near his ports, sortie control tactics must primarily depend upon submarines and mines.

If successful, sortie control is a most economical means of cutting off a nation’s use of the seas or ability to interfere. Nevertheless, such established techniques have their disadvantages. No blockade is 100 percent successful. Some units may be beyond the blockade when hostilities commence and will remain to haunt opposition forces. Against the enemy’s aircraft there is no static defense. Planes must be bombed at their bases. Thus we must conclude that blockades are weapons of attrition requiring time to be effective. But the lesson of history is perhaps the most instructive of all—ingenious man has usually found ways to circumvent blockades.” (Pg. 8)

On the use of deception to perform sea control tasks:

“Assertive Sea Control objectives do not necessarily demand destruction of the enemy’s force. If the enemy can be sufficiently deceived to frustrate his ability to press an attack, we will have achieved our Sea Control objective.” (Pg. 9)

On the relationship between sea control capabilities and deterrence:

“The perceptions of other nations of our Sea Control capability relative to that of other major powers can influence political and military decisions. What any nation says about its capabilities influences the challenges that are offered or accepted.” (Pg. 9)

On the operational-strategic relationship between sea control and power projection (underlined text is my emphasis):

“…we would note that only a fine distinction separates some aspects of the Sea Control and Projection of Power Ashore missions. Many weapons and platforms are used in both missions. Amphibious assaults on chokepoints or tactical airstrikes on enemy airbases can be employed as part of the Sea Control mission. Sea-based tactical aircraft are used in Sea Control missions for antiair warfare and against enemy surface combatants. The distinction in these cases is not in the type of forces nor the tactics which are employed, but in the purposes of the operation. Is the objective to secure/deny the use of the seas or is it to directly support the land campaign? For instance, much of the layman’s confusion over aircraft carriers stems from the impression that they are employed exclusively in the Projection of Power Ashore role. Actually, from the Battle of Cape Matapan through World War II, aircraft carriers were used almost exclusively to establish control of the ocean’s surface. Today they clearly have a vital role to play in both the Sea Control and Projection of Power missions.” (Pg. 12-13)

On the linkages between naval presence and conventional deterrence:

“In a preventative deployment our force capabilities should be relevant to the kind of problems which might arise and clearly cannot be markedly inferior to some other naval force in the neighborhood, but can rely to some extent on the implication that reinforcements can be made available if necessary. On the other hand, in a reactive deployment any force deployed needs to possess an immediately credible threat and be prepared to have its bluff called. If another seapower, such as the Soviet Union, is in the area, a comparison of forces will be inevitable.

…the Naval Presence mission is simultaneously as sophisticated and sensitive as any, but also probably the least understood of all Navy missions. A well orchestrated Naval Presence can be enormously useful in complementing diplomatic actions to achieve political objectives. Applied deftly but firmly, in precisely the proper force, Naval Presence can be a persuasive deterrent to war. If used ineptly, it can be disastrous. Thus, in determining presence objectives, scaling forces, and appraising perceptions, there will never be a weapon system as important as the human intellect.” (Pg. 14-15)

When reading Turner’s full discussion of the sea control mission, it’s important to keep in mind that he incorrectly asserted that “full regulation of the seas in wartime” was something that was sought after—and possible—until the advent of the submarine and airplane. As I’ve noted before, Corbettian theory makes clear that such a broad degree of control was never possible in the ancient world let alone in the years leading up to the First World War. Turner was therefore partially mistaken when he wrote that “it is no longer conceivable…to totally control the seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy” as that kind of control never was conceivable.

I’m ashamed to admit that although I had read elsewhere how Turner’s article had influenced the Navy’s path towards the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, until now I had never taken the time to read it (despite its 16 page length). Don’t make my mistake: download it today and read it yourself. Despite being four decades old and its Cold War-era context, there are few points in it that are not still fully relevant to maritime warfare in the 21^st Century.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

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[1] John B. Hattendorf. Newport Papers 30: U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s—Selected Documents. (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2007), Pg. 31

Weekly HASC Seapower and Projection Forces Read Board

Upcoming Events

M	0900-1030: Degrade and Defeat ISIS, CSIS

Scuttlebutt (News)

·       As Navy Missions Pile Up, So Does Jet Maintenance. Gaps emerge as readiness consumption exceeds readiness production, thereby forcing F/A-18 Super Hornets to fly longer than planned.

·       Pentagon Rushing to Open Space-War Center to Counter China, Russia. The Pentagon opened a center to develop space warfare tactics and combat adversaries in response to other countries’ development of offensive space capabilities.

·       China Aims to Challenge U.S. Air Dominance: Pentagon. Deputy Defense Secretary of Defense Robert Work says that China is “quickly closing the technological gaps” in order to compete with the U.S. in the air and space domain.

·       Marines Looking at Deploying Aboard Foreign Ships. Due to a shortage of U.S. Navy ships, the Marine Corps may deploy on foreign vessels for rapid response in Europe and North Africa.

·       Navy Wants to Work with Air Force on New Nukes: VADM Benedict. As both Air Force and the Navy seek to replace their aging nuclear arsenals, the Navy wants to coordinate programs in order to cut costs.

Now Hear This (Opinions)

·       Remarks at China Aerospace Studies Institute, by Bob Work. In last week’s speech, the Deputy Secretary of Defense discussed the reemergence of great power competitions and the DoD’s Long Range Research and Development Planning Program, often known as the “third offset.”    

·       America’s Pivot to Asia: Why Rhetoric Simply Isn’t Enough, by J. Randy Forbes and Jim Talent. Rep. Forbes and Fmr. Sen. Talent argue that the U.S. needs to rebuild its Navy to face Chinese expansionism.

·       5 Questions with Rep. Randy Forbes on Subs and Nukes, by Ryan Evans. In an interview, Rep. Forbes discusses the necessity of funding the National Sea-based Deterrence Fund to sustain America’s nuclear arsenal.

·       Let’s Be Real: The South China Sea Is a US-China Issue, by Jeff M. Smith. Smith argues that China’s actions in the South China threaten freedom of navigation and cause an increase in tensions between the U.S. and China. 

Deep Dives (Analysis)

·       Sustaining America’s Precision Strike Advantage, By Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark. Gunzinger and Clark argue that the U.S. is ill prepared to face fortified adversaries due to its reliance of direct-attack munitions.

Fact of the Week: 96% of the precision guided munitions procured by the DoD from 2001 through 2014 are direct attack while only 4% are stand-off.

China's export of Yuan submarine

Very recently, an article from Bangkok Post broke the news that China has own the competition to supply 3 submarines to Bangkok Navy. While this is China's third export deal of conventional submarine in the past year, this is the most significant one in terms of the competitiveness of the competition. Since China and Thailand has a history of military transactions, this deal is unlikely to encounter the kind of scrutiny like the Turkey long range SAM contract.

At present time, there are at least 12 Yuan submarines of different variants (4 039As and 8+ 039Bs) in service with PLAN across 2 flotillas. They and the Type 039 Song submarines are the work horses of PLAN. After a rapid production run the last couple of years, the production has slowed in the past year. While this is the most capable of China's mass produced conventional submarine, it is not considered to be as classified as when it first came out. In the past year, Admiral Greenert, Chief of US naval operation, was allowed to go inside one of the Type 039B. While this generally reflect PLAN's effort to be show greater transparency with its USN counterpart, it also indicates 039B is not held with the same level of secrecy as Type 093 nuclear submarine. Since late 2013, a model of S-20 was displayed in various arms exhibitions. From one of the exhibitions, the S-20 is shown to have submerged displacement 2300 ton with maximum dive of 300 m. I was always under the impression that 039B was larger than this, so S-20 may turn out to be a smaller version of 039B.

In late 2013, It was reported that China had received order for 2 Ming class submarines (Type 035B) from Bangladesh. This was certainly surprising news since Chinese shipyard have not produced such submarines since early 2000s. Rather than selling 2 from its existing fleet, these were to be new builds. It's not clear which shipyard is building these submarines, since I have yet to see any pictures. While the type of submarine was surprising, the fact that China was selling to one of its traditional clients was not. Then in early this year, Pakistan announced that it will purchase 8 submarines from China along with 4 frigates. None of this was surprising, since reports of export of 6 to 8 Yuan submarines (S-20P for Pakistan?) had been rumoured for several years after Pakistan's U-214 deal failed due to funding issues. Since Pakistani Navy had always been purchasing advanced European submarines up to this point, it was significant that Pakistani Navy found Yuan submarine as suitable purchase. Even so, China's traditionally strong relationship with Pakistan was important in this deal.

While, the order from Thailand is not as large as Pakistan, it involved more competitors based on the various articles on this sale. With offers from Germany, South Korea, Russia, Sweden and France, S-20T won against some quality competition. None of this means Yuan submarine is the most advanced or the quietest conventional submarine out there. The article was very clear in that Yuan was picked because it the best value for money. In other articles, they also mentioned China's willing to transfer technology and provide training. I would think that other nations are willing to provide training and ToT also, so I think the bigger draw is China's cost advantage. The article also mentioned Chinese submarines can stay in the water longer and had superior weaponry and technology. That could mean Yuan submarine's AIP engine showed good performance in trials. The superior weaponry probably points to the torpedoes and submarine launched anti-ship cruise missiles that China has developed in the recent years. Traditionally, the Chinese submarines have been more noisy than western submarines. While this export variant of Yuan submarine is unlikely to the quietest in the competition, its cost advantage along with comparable performance in other areas won over Thailand. It's worth noting that China's 054A had lost out to South Korea in Thailand's frigate competition despite similar cost advantage. So this shows Thailand would not pick S-20 if it did not believe in its performance.

Conventional submarine is one of the most lucrative sector of defense industry. West European and Russian submarine makers had been winning most of the export competitions in the past, so it bodes well that S-20 could win one of such competitions on more than just cost advantage.

Microbes Against the Giant: The Maritime Strategy of the Jeune École, The Finale

For previous installments, see Parts I, II, III, IV, and V

Visionaries to Emulate or Ideologues to Deride?

The French government’s resignation of May 1887 forced Aube from office. In poor health and having made scores of enemies in the Admiralty, Aube retired to the countryside for the final three years of his life. As Charmes had lost his battle with tuberculosis in 1886, the Jeune École no longer possessed clear leadership. With Aube gone, the movement devolved into a political faction fixated on the socioeconomic travails of arsenal workers, coal stokers, and junior officers, not to mention the implementation of ideologically ‘pure’ (vice circumstance-derived) policies. Notwithstanding the knowledge gained from Aube’s 1886 fleet experiments and the Royal Navy’s evident moves to counter the Jeune École  threat, the practical result of Aube’s and Charmes’s followers’ continued agitation into the 1890s and early 1900s was nearly fifteen more years of excessive torpedo boat procurement at the expense of maintaining a combat-credible battlefleet.[i] It is true that the French Navy’s administration suffered from superfluous bureaucratic inefficiencies and ill-considered policies before the Jeune École entered the scene, and that their overall fleet suffered accordingly.[ii] All the same, the movement most definitely made this bad situation much worse.

Even so, it is fair to ask whether historical criticism of the Jeune École has been excessive. Some of their ideas, after all, were not completely imprudent for their times or were otherwise quite predictive of future warfare. Was pursuit of change radically and prematurely their central mistake?[iii]

Certainly, the Jeune École foresaw large-scale oceanic commerce-raiding by independently-operating warships. As submarines matured during the early 20^th Century, their superior ability to strike at will and then hide from pursuers allowed them to take over the commerce-raiding role from cruisers. Germany’s submarine campaign against British commerce during the First and Second World Wars, as well as America’s submarine campaign against Japanese commerce during the Second World War, represented aspects of Guerre de Course strategy.

However, the German and American campaigns disprove the Jeune École’s assertion that coercive economic warfare alone would inevitably lead to the strategic defeat of a maritime-dependent nation. While severely damaging in both World Wars to Britain’s war economy, the two German campaigns failed in no small part due to Germany’s inability to project other forms of maritime power into the Atlantic in support of its submarines. As a result, the allies were eventually able to command the surface of the Atlantic in both wars and the air above it in the Second World War. In both cases, the allies gradually reduced the German undersea threat to operationally acceptable levels by evolving anti-submarine doctrine and tactics through practical experience, developing increasingly effective anti-submarine sensors and weapons, and exploiting the German naval communications network’s vulnerabilities. It also must be noted that Germany’s strategically tone-deaf resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in the First World War resulted in horizontal escalation—America’s entry into the conflict on Britain’s and France’s side—that ultimately led to Berlin’s defeat.

In the American Guerre de Course example, the U.S. Navy fast carrier task force’s advance across the Pacific arguably provided increasing amounts of indirect combined arms support to their submariner brethren over time by occupying the attention of Japanese naval resources that theoretically could have been assigned to convoy defenses or submarine-hunting groups. Although the Imperial Japanese Navy showed little interest in protecting convoys from submarines during the war, an absence of the U.S. Navy carrier threat in the Central Pacific after 1942 might have provided room for reallocating some Japanese fleet assets to anti-submarine tasks as Japanese merchant vessel losses mounted.

Nonetheless, neither the German nor American commerce-raiding cases directly resulted in a targeted nation’s capitulation; in the American case it was a prominent contributing factor to Japan’s surrender but not decisive on its own. As Clausewitz suggested, a nation’s will to fight is influenced by far more factors than just economics or the availability of war materiel. Human passions such as honor and fear, not to mention political leaders’ valuations of what they believed was at stake, maintained the British and Japanese wills to resist long after ‘rational sense’ might have suggested otherwise. Conventional sequential campaigns aimed at destroying or neutralizing the adversary’s fielded military forces were therefore essential to political objective attainment—something the Germans were unable to accomplish in either World War against Britain and the U.S. successfully achieved against Japan. The Jeune École, not to mention scores of strategic coercion theorists who followed them, failed to grasp these principles.

Jeune École maritime strategy suffered from another critical point of failure: dependence upon the adversary compliantly exposing its ships of the line to torpedo boat attack. Per the movement’s strategic concept, commerce-raiding cruisers’ ability to break out into the open ocean depended upon the flotilla’s ability to disrupt or destroy the adversary battlefleet’s blockade of French ports. Yet, the flotilla could hardly be expected to achieve this if the adversary’s blockade was distant rather than close, or if the adversary used torpedo boat catchers and other lower campaign-value combatants to defend ships of the line in depth against attacks. Failure to break a blockade would be especially likely if there was little left of a functional French battlefleet to entice or compel the adversary’s heavier forces into seeking major battle.

Much the same can be said of the Jeune École’s general theories on fleet structure and doctrine. With respect to cruiser Guerre de Course, the Jeune École’s embrace of the torpedo as a wonder-weapon blinded them to fact that France’s lack of overseas coaling stations rendered the entire commerce-raiding concept operationally unexecutable unless cruisers’ onboard coal storage capacity was drastically expanded. The Jeune École’s failure to perform even rudimentary campaign-level analysis by examining the oceanic distances involved in interdicting British trade routes (and their apparent devaluing of the traditionalists’ arguments along these lines) contributed to the production of underarmed cruisers that lacked the requisite endurance.    

As for torpedo boat operations, Aube’s belated fleet experiments revealed battleships’ superior strategic mobility and torpedo boats’ vastly inferior seakeeping made flotilla operations far more difficult than the Jeune École originally thought (with the same even more true for the bateau-cannon gunboat). Their fixation on ship size, obsession with a single weapon system, and distraction by ideology led them to discount combined arms applications of large and small combatants that could strengthen—or parry—torpedo boat attacks. The Jeune École likewise overrated torpedo performance, completely neglected other naval technology developments that could disrupt or destroy torpedo boat attacks, and ignored the possibility that torpedo evasion tactics for ships of the line might be developed.

Their cardinal lapse in this regard, of course, was their implicit assumption that adversaries were incapable of adaptation and innovation. It followed that although torpedoes and torpedo boats remained fearsome weapons in coastal operations, France’s competitors discovered the risks they posed could be managed through doctrinal, tactical, and technological evolution.

Nevertheless, the fact that this evolution took some time did have some strategic consequences. 19^th Century British international deterrence and compellence strategies depended on the Royal Navy’s ability to blockade an enemy coast or otherwise project power ashore from the sea. The Jeune École’s ideas severely threatened these strategies’ credibility for roughly a decade until the Royal Navy improved its anti-torpedo boat defenses and torpedo boat performance limitations became more widely understood.

This closely parallels the situation today, in which the U.S. Navy and its allies continually strive to find ways to counter potential adversaries’ employment of torpedo boats’ descendants. Anti-ship cruise missiles and torpedoes carried by fast attack craft, aircraft, and submarines are analogous to the Whitehead. Autonomous mines also can be traced in part to the early torpedo. One might even extend this logic to apply to land-based anti-ship missile forces, whether cruise or ballistic. All these weapon systems can credibly threaten a superior maritime power.

However, credibility varies based upon demonstrated capability over time—it is not a constant. The Jeune École’s technological determinism led them to believe torpedoes were a permanently decisive weapon against large warships, and they used their political influence to alter French Navy procurement efforts and force structure accordingly. They should have known better. Military history is defined by the never-ending struggles between offense and defense that are bounded by the laws of physics as well as combat’s fog and friction. No new combat measure exists long before a vulnerability is discovered and at least one if not more countermeasures (whether technological, tactical, or doctrinal) are devised, which is exactly what the Royal Navy eventually did. This is why constant military innovation is so critical to sustaining a nation’s warfighting edge.

Innovation, though, must be disciplined. Radically changing force-level doctrine and committing to dramatic procurement policy shifts in the absence of rigorous precursor analysis and experimentation, not to mention without first demonstrating the relative maturities and real-world performances of the new technologies these changes rely upon, invites strategic, operational, and budgetary disasters. It is one thing to introduce new technologies and methods in an incremental fashion to provide even a low level of additional capability options to a force, as this promotes iterative improvement of the technologies, phased and orderly retirement of older technologies as they reach actual obsolescence, and doctrinal and tactical experimentation. It is another thing to rapidly gut an existing force by wholesale replacement of technologies and methods that are not yet obsolescent with immature technologies and methods. The Jeune École took the latter path. Its dogmatic agitation for rapid revolutionary change—a ‘shoot then aim’ approach, if you will—contradicted their professed adherence to ‘scientific’ thinking. France’s naval clout paid the price.

Yet, the Jeune École’s oversights and failures did not originate from their pursuing change prematurely and radically. These were mere symptoms of the underlying source of the movement’s failures: undisciplined, hubristic reasoning. Our review of the Jeune École’s story indicates Aube was just as guilty of arrogantly simplistic thinking as Charmes and the movement’s other voices. Indeed, the famous statement by a Jeune École supporter that “Let us be better, if that be possible, but in any case we must be different, in the adaptation to rejuvenated methods of war, of new engines, judiciously conceived and rapidly executed” beautifully captures the movement’s intellectual overconfidence, technological determinism, and zeal for seeking ‘change for change’s sake.’[iv] As the great Irish-British philosopher and politician Edmund Burke would likely have argued, the Jeune École enthusiast’s preceding statement is based around the fundamentally flawed idea that the ‘new’ is always superior to the ‘old,’ and as such the ‘old’ should be replaced by the ‘new’ wherever ‘reason’ dictates. To make such an assertion without dispassionate due diligence in examining why something ‘old’ was originally developed, exploring whether the functions it serves or wisdom it imparts remain valid, weighing the expansive potential second and third-order effects of a change, and considering the prospects for evolving the ‘old’ by integrating it with experimentally-validated elements of the ‘new’ (as opposed to tearing the ‘old’ down indiscriminately), is the apex of folly. Disciplined analysis and experimentation might very well reveal legitimate reasons to discard the ‘old’ in favor of the ‘new,’ but one’s process for arriving at such a conclusion—including the judicious application of humility to moderate that conclusion—represents the primary safeguard against prematurity and overreach.

There are at least five basic ways the Jeune École’s hubris resulted in easily-triggered failure conditions being incorporated within their theories. First, Aube, Charmes, and their associates viewed incredibly complex human interactions such as war and economics through a deterministic lens; they did not allow for the human certainty of misinterpreting or incompletely understanding the sublime. Second, they refused to account for mankind’s passions and adaptivity. Third, they attempted to take things that were true under specific circumstances, such as torpedo boats’ effectiveness against larger warships in certain coastal warfare scenarios, and extend them as universal laws. Fourth, as they made no effort to address the traditionalists’ valid criticisms, the Jeune École’s intellectual haughtiness and ideological fervor deprived them of opportunities to recognize and correct the major gaps in their logic. Lastly, they pursued ‘blind’ change—that is, revisions to the existing order without the benefit of testing their ideas in advance. Granted, it was impossible for them to test much of their Guerre de Course concept outside the cauldron of war, but it was completely within their reasoning ability to admit it was at least possible their economic coercion concept might not work and that other forms of naval force—and force structure—would be needed as a hedge. Furthermore, it was definitely within their ability to test their torpedo boat concepts in fleet experiments before wielding their political influence to upend French naval procurement. Aube did direct such experiments after he became Minister of the Marine, did deemphasize the bateau-cannon after its failures during testing, and did not personally advocate that torpedo boats were suitable for independent operations on the high seas.[v] Nevertheless, that does not excuse him from his original move to freeze battleship construction and begin massive purchases of torpedo boats despite the absence of experimentally-obtained supporting evidence. Nor does it excuse him from his tacit failures to rein in or at least add public caveats to Charmes’s torpedo boat advocacy.

It follows that the Jeune École predicted several major aspects of future maritime warfare in spite of their analytical methodology, not because of it. Their foresight may be a triumph of imagination, but we must remember that their movement neither sought to predict what might be possible in the future, nor sought to develop and advocate a policy path towards making their visions practicable over time. Instead, the Jeune École sought to implement their ideas in their own era at any cost regardless of the extant strategic, economic, and technological circumstances. The early 21^st Century’s most radical advocates for discarding ‘traditional’ combined arms force structure elements wholesale in favor of emerging technology-based wonder-systems, as opposed to incremental evolution of the ‘old’ through disciplined and complementary introduction of the ‘new,’ echo the Jeune École. The same is true of those who argue that networked sensors can and will provide a nearly-omniscient picture of a battlespace that an opponent cannot hope to counter. Needless to say, there is also a straight line from the Jeune École to contemporary advocates of ‘effects-based’ coercive strategies rooted in determinism.

The Jeune École did get one major thing right, though, as their rise to power demonstrates to us the importance of a military communicating effectively with the public it serves. The political and economic environment in 1880s France certainly made it difficult for the Admiralty to gain or retain popular support. All the same, it does not appear the Admiralty even tried to widely publicize their arguments in favor of a strong and balanced fleet using terms that were comprehensible by—and resonated within—their needed audience. In contrast, the Jeune École succeeded in large part because they were more able and willing than the Admiralty to engage French policy elites, opinion elites, and the general public. Although Jeune École egalitarianism and scientism were greatly attractive within French society of that era, had the Admiralty conducted fleet experiments focusing on torpedo boat operations earlier it might have gained enough concrete evidence to moderate Aube and discredit Charmes before too much damage was done. In ceding the narrative battle to the Jeune École, the Admiralty demonstrated the old maxim that ‘silence is concurrence.’

There’s a lesson to be learned from the French Admiralty’s public outreach failures. Debate over a military service’s missions, strategic concept, doctrine, and force structure is healthy and necessary in a democracy. There will always be influential voices, whether reasoned or polemical, criticizing a service’s path. A service’s leaders and their allies must be willing to clearly, credibly, publicly, and routinely explain the logic of the service’s plans and policies. They must not let hollow arguments levied against the service’s positions go unanswered.  If they do not do these things, and cannot adequately defend their requests for a share of the nation’s resources, then they risk losing the tacit support of their service’s most powerful advocates: the voting public. We are wise to remember this in our own difficult political and economic times.

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[i] Ropp, 178-180, 257-259.

[ii] Halpern, 37.

[iii] Erik J. Dahl. “Net-Centric Before its Time: The Jeune École and Its Lessons for Today.” Naval War College Review 58, No. 4 (Autumn 2005), 123-125.

[iv] Ropp, 165-166.

[v] See 1. Dahl, 122-123; 2. Røksund, 79.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.