Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: Part 3

For previous installments, see Parts I and II

Scenario #3: Major War

Now, let’s continue up the spectrum of conflict to explore what might happen if Chinese leaders placed a high value on less limited political objectives. Domestic political pressures; perceptions of the regional geostrategic order’s trendlines; or misinterpretations of U.S. and allied interests, intentions, capabilities, or resolve could dramatically affect Chinese leaders’ calculations by encouraging opportunism, exacerbating desperation, or a mix of both. Consider how Chinese leaders’ political objectives might be affected in the coming years if the Taiwanese people continue to refuse taking formal steps towards political unification with the mainland, or if the Taiwanese government took bolder steps towards political independence. Consider Chinese leaders’ objectives in a Korean peninsula scenario if they concluded the Pyongyang regime’s survival was endangered by U.S. and South Korean retaliation against some major provocation. Likewise, consider what might occur if the Pyongyang regime collapsed completely under its own weight and Beijing was unwilling to tolerate U.S. and South Korean forces moving northward to fill the security vacuum, secure weapons of mass destruction sites, and render humanitarian aid. Consider the stakes if factional competitions within the Chinese Communist Party’s senior leadership, bureaucratic politics, surging Chinese popular nationalism, or domestic economic policy failures and their sociopolitical fallout incentivized seeking a tangible strategic ‘win’ at the expense of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces or the Philippine military. Consider the possibility that Chinese leaders might seek to improve their geostrategic position by taking opportunistic advantage of some lesser issue, for example using a clash over the Senkaku Islands as a casus belli for a “short, sharp war” to force Japan to demilitarize and politically Finlandize the Ryukyu Islands. In short, no matter the economic and diplomatic incentives China enjoys courtesy of the existing international order, there is a quite-conceivable range of circumstances that could drive Chinese leaders to seek political objectives obtainable only via major deliberate escalations or general conventional war.

Achievement of this class of political objectives would almost certainly demand PLA bombardment, invasion, or violent blockade of a U.S. ally’s homeland ‘core.’ While escalation to such a level hardly seems conceivable at present, one must accept that political and strategic circumstances are highly dynamic and that the underlying factor driving the risk of a major East Asian conflict is the fundamental disagreement between China and its neighbors regarding the nature of the regional security order. Miscalculation, misperception, or accidental confrontation can definitely ignite a conflagration, but this can only occur when an underlying clash of interests and at least one side’s unwillingness to establish or adhere to substantive confidence-building and reassurance measures have already primed the environment.

It follows that if Chinese leaders were to characterize and value their political objectives along the above lines, then it is difficult to imagine how the PLA would be able to accomplish the major tasks that flow from those objectives with a high degree of confidence and at an ‘acceptable’ cost in blood and treasure in the face of a highly-probable major U.S. intervention. The PLA would have to preemptively neutralize U.S. forces in the Pacific to provide Chinese leaders that level of confidence at such a cost, plain and simple. Chinese leaders would no doubt be gambling against the historical record that such an attack would induce the U.S. to quickly concede (though perhaps with some token resistance and retaliation) rather than result in mobilization for major war.

A Chinese first strike would be the culmination of a regional crisis that either incrementally escalated over time or surged quickly depending upon the circumstances; it would never be a ‘bolt from blue’ occurring outside this context. It does not practically matter whether a first strike would occur as part of a pre-planned war-opening PLA offensive campaign, a major PLA intra-conflict escalation once Chinese leaders concluded they would not be able to achieve their objectives otherwise, or the culmination of an inadvertent crisis in which Chinese leaders did not recognize the diplomatic ‘offramps’ provided them by the U.S. and its allies (or chose to disregard them).

Might a PLA first strike be limited to a cyber-electromagnetic offensive against U.S. forces? This might be attractive to Chinese leaders in terms of relative escalatory risks. Also, U.S. C³ and scouting effectiveness in any maritime operation, U.S. forces’ operational security, and U.S. and allied air and missile defenses’ viability would depend heavily upon U.S. military networks’ security and availability. Differing operating concepts might use these networks in dissimilar ways, and technological as well as doctrinal measures exist for reducing a concept’s network dependency as well as increasing its resiliency. Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that neither Offshore Control nor any other strategic concept addressing maritime warfare could succeed without using some form of modern networking.

Given the exceptionally high degree of uncertainty in cyber-electromagnetic warfare, though, Chinese leaders would have minimal assurances that any such attacks would decisively prevent an effective U.S. intervention. This means the PLA would also likely have to execute some form of conventional first strike against relevant U.S. forces and their supporting infrastructure in East Asia (and perhaps elsewhere in the Pacific), as well as engage in trans-oceanic and intra-theater maritime lines of communication interdiction, in order for Chinese leaders to gain confidence in their chances of achieving their political objectives. Accordingly, it should not be surprising that preemptive strike concepts figure so prominently in publicly-available PLA doctrinal works, or that the PLA 2^nd Artillery Corps’ conventionally-armed medium range ballistic missile inventories appear sufficiently sized to execute a crippling war-opening offensive but not to attack targets of opportunity during a protracted conflict.

It is therefore curious why so many critiques of Air-Sea Battle implicitly assume China would either not engage in a conventional first strike, or if it did, that it would only do so if its leaders were threatened by certain ‘excessively provocative’ U.S. force doctrine, capabilities, forward positions and quantities, postures, or actions. Yes, in some situations U.S. forces’ configurations and employment might risk inducing Chinese leaders to attack first when they would have otherwise preferred not to escalate, and such extremes must be identified through war gaming and then avoided. It is equally true, however, that the U.S presence in East Asia and the Western Pacific would be geostrategically provocative to Beijing regardless of its specific characteristics if Chinese leaders’ political objectives were lofty enough. In other words, U.S. or allied military ‘behavior’ is not the solitary potential trigger of major Chinese escalation.

Any strategic concept for deterring Chinese aggression, and failing that for preventing a major Chinese offensive from achieving its main political objectives, must consequently explain how it can succeed if U.S. forces in the Pacific are subjected to a PLA multi-domain first strike that segues into a maritime lines of communication interdiction campaign. As the critiques of Offshore Control discussed in Monday's post pointed out, if U.S. and allied bases—particularly those in Japan—as well as U.S. intra-theater lines of communication are being effectively suppressed or neutralized by PLA forces operating from the mainland, it becomes difficult to envision how the U.S. could sustainably defend an embattled ally’s airspace, waters, or territory without returning the favor against those PLA forces’ support infrastructure and bases. The PLA’s advantages in operational tempo, intensity, and initiative by virtue of its quantities, positions, and effective striking reach would be too great otherwise. The obvious implication is that defensive forces’ sustainability in ‘frontline’ territories such as Taiwan or the central and southern Ryukyus, not to mention the flow of basic sustenance to these populations, might not be possible under such circumstances. In the case of the southern Ryukyus in particular, one must not overlook the intense political impact of Japanese citizens being held ‘hostage’ by a PLA maritime denial campaign even if Chinese troops never actually invaded those islands. These kinds of problems might even manifest in a Korean peninsula contingency.

If China drew first blood by unleashing a war-opening or war-escalating strike against targets on allied or U.S. sovereign territory, its leaders would have no legitimate standing to protest if the U.S. responded in kind against equivalent mainland Chinese targets. While striking first conveys significant operational-tactical advantages, it hands the victim an invaluable grand strategic trump card by establishing a precedent for conduct within the conflict as well as a legal and moral basis for retaliation. Notwithstanding the operational-strategic necessity of the U.S. responding tit-for-tat under these conditions, the popular passions aroused within the victimized allied nation(s) as well as within the U.S. following a PLA first strike would all but compel U.S. political leaders to hit back. Any U.S. counterstrikes against PLA targets on the mainland would therefore be primarily shaped by the PLA first strike’s precedent-setting characteristics.

Just as is the case with offshore operations against maritime surveillance/reconnaissance networks, there is a tremendous difference between physically striking air and naval bases being used by PLA maritime forces, 2nd Artillery Corps cruise and short range ballistic missile forces’ support infrastructure (as opposed to their launchers in the field, which would be very difficult to achieve), or theater-wide maritime surveillance sensors on one hand and physically striking 2^nd Artillery Corps nuclear forces and their supporting infrastructure or similarly-sensitive targets on the other. Certain PLA tactical and operational-level command posts might even be valid targets depending upon the circumstances, especially if the PLA struck U.S. or allied command posts first.

It must be reemphasized that offensive cyber-electromagnetic operations could play disproportionate roles in U.S. attacks against mainland PLA targets, as they might be more effective than conventional strikes against very specific target types while carrying fewer or more tolerable escalation risks. Cyber and electronic attack objectives would rarely be to destroy or disable targets, if that were even possible using such means, but rather to disrupt PLA operations or provide deception and concealment support to friendly forces.

Beyond these aspects, the U.S. war effort would look very much like what was outlined in the limited war scenario. U.S. and allied forces would strive to blunt the PLA offensive within the contested zone, and ultimately roll the PLA back from any occupied friendly territories through a combination of maneuver and attrition. In support of this main effort, U.S. leaders might opt to escalate horizontally by conducting economic warfare (distant blockade, special/irregular operations against Chinese economic interests elsewhere, use of the U.S. financial system against Chinese trading partners, etc.) as balanced against the provocation-of-neutrals issue and other escalation considerations. Chinese cessation of its offensive and (if applicable) restoration of the territorial status quo ante in exchange for nothing more than relatively symbolic gestures would be the central U.S. political objective.

This scenario is comparatively the ‘least likely’ of the three, but nonetheless is the ‘most dangerous’ case. While it is to be hoped that Chinese leaders never establish political objectives that drive them towards pursuing this or any other kind of war, hope is not a strategy. Deterrence of a Sino-American war consequently rests on convincing Chinese leaders that the U.S. would be clearly able and willing to protractedly reciprocate if a PLA onslaught “went big,” with all the costs, risks, and uncertainties that would entail. 

Tomorrow, some concluding thoughts on how the range of contingency circumstances and both sides' potential associated political objectives must inform strategic concept design.

 

Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: Part 2

Yesterday we summarized the main arguments surrounding Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control. We also noted several variables that thus far have been largely overlooked in the debate: the belligerents’ characterization and valuation of their political objectives, and a confrontation’s unique political and strategic circumstances. Over the next two days, we will use plausible interactions between these variables to outline how relevant elements of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control can be integrated within a single strategic concept that covers the full spectrum of potential conventional Sino-American conflicts.

Scenario #1: High-End Salami Tactics

Let’s suppose that Chinese leaders sought to extract some political concession(s) by forcibly blockading one of a U.S. East Asian ally’s populated maritime territories or seizing one of its remote, unpopulated/sparsely-populated maritime territories. Let’s stipulate, though, that the initial Chinese actions did not result in direct hostilities with the U.S. ally’s military forces, and that any clashes were limited to exchanges between the belligerents’ constabulary forces such as coast guards or national law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. response in such a contingency would likely involve positioning and posturing its in-theater conventional forces in order to latently support allied constabularies’ or military forces’ efforts to counter or delegitimize the Chinese actions, not to mention deter Chinese escalation. Some lower-campaign value American forces might overtly line up alongside the ally’s frontline defenders to show solidarity and create a latent tripwire threat; this kind of response would be very desirable for accompanying vessels running through a Chinese blockade. Heavier U.S. forces latently backing this frontline from ‘over the horizon’ would likely take measures to conceal themselves from Chinese maritime surveillance and reconnaissance; their aim would be to severely limit Chinese opportunities for an effective preemptive first strike and thus enhance crisis stability as well as U.S. deterrence credibility. As U.S. political leaders would likely strive to avoid placing U.S. military units in situations where they would risk setting use-of-force precedents themselves, it seems unlikely the U.S. would impose any kind of distant blockade against China at this stage. Instead, information operations and diplomatic maneuvers to build regional and global opposition (or at least disengaged neutrality) to China’s actions would likely dominate the U.S. grand strategic response.

It is important to note, however, that the absence of direct military action in the physical domains almost certainly would not extend into the cyber and electromagnetic domains. It is quite likely that there would be extensive cyber and Electronic Warfare (EW) skirmishing as both sides jockeyed for situational awareness advantages, harassed each other’s forces, or attempted to manipulate third parties’ perceptions. Both would accordingly face the challenge of waging this cyber-electromagnetic warfare without precipitating accidental or inadvertent escalation.

Scenario #2: Limited War in the Contested Zone

Now, let’s examine a scenario in which initial Chinese actions did lead to direct hostilities between the PLA and the U.S. ally’s forces at sea or on the territory in question. Let’s also assume that the PLA did not escalate by striking civil, economic, or military infrastructure located within the ally’s homeland ‘core.’ Let’s additionally stipulate that in its ‘first move’ the PLA neither struck U.S. forward bases and forces in the region, nor deployed to interdict America’s maritime lines of communication with the ally. We could therefore conclude Chinese leaders valued their political objectives highly enough to resort to direct military force, but that the limited scope of those objectives encouraged them to adopt strategically-significant degrees of restraint—at least during the conflict’s opening phase.

The American military response under such conditions would likely lean closer towards Offshore Control’s concept of a limited war within the contested zone, as U.S. political objectives would center upon arresting the Chinese aggression and eventually restoring the status quo ante without escalating the conflict unnecessarily. This means the U.S. war effort would likely be structured to conform to China’s precedent-setting actions in the conflict. Of course, nothing would preclude U.S. political leaders from determining that their own objectives and the conflict’s circumstances necessitated the setting of selected precedents by U.S. forces as well.The bias against doing so would nonetheless be high.

U.S. war strategy would be based around the use of sequential (and sometimes parallel) Joint conventional combined arms campaigns that gradually attrited the PLA’s offensive capabilities within the bounds of the contested zone while dislodging Chinese forces from any territorial spoils. Unlike Offshore Control, though, the U.S. strategy would not strive for persistent denial of a sizable majority of the East and South China Seas to the PLA. Nor would the U.S. strategy strive for permanent absolute control of the oceanic approaches to East Asia. Sea control and denial of these magnitudes and durations are neither necessary nor practicable, as Julian Corbett observed a century ago in his masterwork Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.

Consistent with Corbett’s logic, U.S. forces would instead strive to deny the PLA’s ability to transit or occupy selected maritime areas for discrete periods. Short-duration denial efforts might entail concentrating U.S. air and naval power in time and space against PLA forces once the latter were detected at, over, or under the sea. Longer-duration denial efforts could take the form of leveraging pre-deployed land-based anti-ship/anti-air missile batteries as well as offshore minefields to protect friendly territories and chokepoints. Offensive minelaying in the approaches to Chinese naval bases would also be an option for longer-duration sea denial.

Similarly, U.S. forces would strive to control only those maritime areas that it and allied forces (as well as protected commerce) would need to traverse in order to achieve U.S. political objectives, and only for the periods of time necessary to do so. One could picture this type of control as a purpose-defined ‘moving bubble’ of superiority in time and space centered on the military force or commercial convoy in transit. Longer-duration (but not permanent) control over fixed areas would only be necessary in the maritime approaches to U.S. and allied territories, or otherwise in the areas surrounding PLA-occupied allied territories if U.S. and allied forces were engaged in forcible entry operations.

The U.S. and its embattled ally could also conceivably allow the PLA to seize and occupy one or more contested territories of relatively low military-strategic value, as that might induce China to excessively allocate scarce materiel and vulnerable forces in order to hold onto its spoils. Chinese assets exposed in this way could be subjected to withering and incessant attacks that would help gradually reduce the PLA’s quantitative advantages in theater. This might have the secondary effect of drawing Chinese attention and resources away from more important U.S. or allied operations elsewhere in the theater.

It is additionally possible U.S. political leaders might order some form of cumulative campaign to provide indirect support to the conventional campaigns and perhaps pressure the Chinese economy at the margins. This might include a distant blockade (as feasible given available forces and supporting infrastructure), plausibly-deniable special or irregular operations against Chinese economic interests in other countries, severing countries or foreign companies that attempt to engage in proscribed trade with China from access to the U.S. financial system, or other measures. U.S. political leaders would obviously have to weigh how these kinds of coercive actions might detrimentally provoke China as well as third parties to the conflict.

Above all, it must be appreciated that the U.S. would be not able to successfully defend a frontline ally in a limited conflict—never mind restore the status quo ante—in the absence of several key factors associated with Air-Sea Battle. For example, doctrine and capabilities that enhance U.S. forces’ resiliency against a conventional first strike are critical to intra-conflict deterrence credibility. The same is true with respect to capabilities that promote latent and highly survivable U.S. conventional escalation dominance such as submarines, long-range strike aircraft, and an intelligently-crafted balance between long-range and short-range guided munitions. Most importantly, U.S. air, ground, and naval surface operations within a contested zone would not be practicable and U.S. and allied intra-theater lines of communication would not be defensible without extensive operations against PLA maritime surveillance/reconnaissance networks. While some Air-Sea Battle critics have asserted such operations would carry the escalatory risk of attacking PLA nuclear forces’ C³ architectures, the former’s maritime sensors and their supporting data pathways outside China’s borders are most definitely not part of the latter. Even so, and depending on the operational and tactical circumstances, deception and concealment in the face of those sensors might be far more effective and impactful than destroying them.

If Chinese restraint held following a U.S. intervention along the lines I’ve suggested, both sides would be able to take advantage of deep operational-strategic sanctuaries for basing and maneuver within the combat theater. The practical result of this might be a protracted conflict that could remain limited unless one of the belligerents’ political objectives and perceptions of the conflict’s circumstances eventually came to demand escalation. Conversely, conflict protraction along these lines and unambiguously strong U.S. and allied resolve might drive Chinese leaders to seek out a mutually-tolerable negotiated settlement if their political objectives encouraged as much. In the second-best outcome, U.S. and allied forces would be able to induce China to break off its aggression and (if applicable) restore the territorial status quo ante in exchange for nothing more than relatively symbolic gestures. The ideal outcome would obviously be convincing Chinese leaders that a limited war within the contested zone would not be quick, cheap, or low-risk, thereby deterring them altogether from seeking one.

Tomorrow, addressing scenarios for major war.

Soviet Oceanic Reconnaissance-Strike: New Observations from Maksim Tokarev (Part 1 of 2)

A few weeks ago I published a series of posts analyzing Maksim Tokarev’s outstanding Naval War College Review article that detailed the Soviet Navy’s 1980s-era doctrine for employing combined arms against U.S. Navy battleforces. At the end of my first post, I suggested that:

With a finite number of bombers, missiles, and trained crews, it is reasonable to think Soviet commanders would have been somewhat hesitant to dispatch such irreplaceable forces into battle unless they had some degree of confidence in their situational picture’s accuracy; the operational-strategic penalties that would be incurred if they ‘got it wrong’ simply seem too high for this not to have been the case. Accordingly, it will be extremely interesting to someday learn the criteria that had to be satisfied for SNAF commanders to order a raid. 

In the comments section to my final post in that series, Maksim graciously shared many new observations to address multiple aspects of that very question. As before, I’m going to quote his key points and then add my commentary. I’ve lightly edited his remarks; the wording changes I made are in brackets.

Maksim first notes that the Soviet Naval Air Force’s organizational ethos, much like that of most air forces and service air arms, was rooted in the ‘spirit of attack.’ Detailed mission planning was less important than seizing upon fortuitous opportunities to deal the enemy a severe blow:

Courage, brisk battle, blaze of glory, fair uniform first - and at least moderate careful planning [only] then. The heroes, the warriors, don’t hesitate to fight and die, bird's souls in the human’s bodies. The staff work is always something neglected, too boring to be the good job… sometimes “the good enough decision now is better than the brilliant one tomorrow.”

The consequence was that, as Maksim puts it:

The commanders who share that ethos can send the strikes against [ambiguous or low-confidence] target, hoping to receive definite targeting enroute, or counting on the strike’s inherent recco and targeting abilities.

This is a crucial (and quite obvious in hindsight) point that I’ve previously failed to consider. It is applicable not only within the context of the Cold War naval competition, but also to any attacker’s calculus. Attack opportunities against a highly capable opponent’s maneuvering forces are generally fleeting. A brief intercept of the opponent’s radio or active sensor emissions, or perhaps a scout’s brief (and perhaps sacrificial) direct contact with what seems to be an element of the opponent’s force, might be the only targeting cue the prospective attacker ever receives. The next detection of the opponent’s force might be when it is too late to derail or defeat the opponent’s operational plan. In fact, the next attack opportunity might not arise until after the opponent has already achieved his operation’s main objective(s). Maksim alludes to this dilemma from Soviet Navy commanders’ perspective:

Look, they [examined] the Northern Weddings’ logs hard, every minute of evolutions, every launch and landing, every word on radio and so on. They understood that when the carriers came in the Norway fjords, it [would be] just too late to try to hit them [with] air assets. [i] So the time slot to decide could have been very narrow. It’s better to make a wrong decision than suspend the good one.

Individuals make opportunity cost decisions based upon how they subjectively value their available options. A prospective attacker must choose between withholding scarce strike assets in hopes of a future opportunity to attack with a higher degree of targeting confidence, or otherwise expending those assets in the present with low targeting confidence under the assumption that there may be no future opportunity. When an attack-embracing organizational ethos within belligerent “A’s” forces mixes with a paramount objective of preventing belligerent “B” from attacking first, there will likely be intense psychological pressures on belligerent “A’s” operational commander to order a strike. The implication is that a careless and perhaps overconfident “B” who does not employ effective concealment (with some supporting deception for good measure) risks falling victim to a bold “A” who capitalizes on the most limited of targeting cues. Conversely, an intelligent “B” who understands “A’s” opportunity cost calculus well enough might be able to craft a deception and concealment plan that lures “A” into expending precious ordnance (and perhaps platforms and crews) for naught. There is no way to determine the outcome of either of these two scenario types in advance; circumstances and chance during battle matter greatly.

Maksim makes an additional point, though, in that the destruction of an opposing force may be far less important within a campaign context than its disruption or suppression:

The key success is not the sinking of the carriers. Just stop [their] launch, recovery, any air activity; it’s enough to weaken the NATO ASW along the Norwegian coast and give the SSBNs the possibility to reach launching positions in [the] Atlantic, making nuclear war very costly for both parts, [and therefore] evaporating the political will to start it. At the same time the tank armies will be in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and so on.

In other words, he is referring to one of the Soviets’ chief maritime strategic objectives for the early phases of a conventional European war: degradation of potential offensive ASW efforts by NATO navies against Soviet SSBNs. His assertion is consistent with the intelligence assessments that shaped the U.S. Navy’s development of the 1980s Maritime Strategy. The Soviets viewed the correlation of wartime-fielded nuclear forces as a key factor in deterring NATO’s escalation to the nuclear threshold. NATO would likely only have contemplated crossing that threshold, though, if the Red Army had routed NATO’s forward defenses along the inter-German front. From the Soviet perspective, then, any measures that increased the likelihood that mutual intra-war nuclear deterrence would hold also increased the likelihood that they could achieve their war objectives via conventional means. It was additionally recognized that if the Soviets had been able to effectively protect their SSBN force during a conventional war, they would have possessed a stronger position for war termination negotiations.

Consequently, effective disruption or suppression of U.S. carrier battleforce operations along the Soviet maritime periphery could have prevented NATO navies from attaining the margin of local sea control necessary for combined arms prosecutions of older Soviet SSBNs, such as the Yankee-class, that had to break through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap in order to reach their Western Atlantic patrol stations. Similar disruption/suppression efforts against U.S. carriers operating somewhat deeper within the Soviet maritime periphery could have delayed or prevented destruction of the Soviet surface combatants performing defensive ASW in support of the ‘boomer bastions’ used by later generation Soviet SSBNs such as the various Delta-classes and the Typhoon-class. All this would be in addition to—and possibly more important to the Soviets than—preventing U.S. carrier air wings’ conventional strikes against military targets in Soviet coastal areas.

Another key observation by Maksim is that Soviet maritime strike capabilities should be viewed holistically, or rather that the Soviet Naval Air Force was not necessarily the primary combat arm for the anti-carrier mission:

There were also surface and [submarine] components of the Anti-Carrier Doctrine, and it is extremely hard to say which one was main and which one [was] complementary. It depended on who, when, [and] how [the carriers were found] and where the [Soviet maritime] forces [were] deployed at the moment.

Naturally it does mean that [the entire] air component could have been used as the decoy, three whole air divisions of expendable planes and people - if the surface combatant[s] or subs needed [that kind of support in order to be able to attack effectively], [whether they were]in better [attack] positions in the staff’s opinion or by chance.

The idea that an entire combat arm could be used as an expendable decoy is quite incredible from a Western perspective, but in light of the aforementioned Soviet maritime strategic priorities it makes perfect sense. If the Soviets believed it was unlikely that a conventional conflict would be protracted, and that nuclear deterrence/bargaining therefore predominated, the opportunity cost of expending these platforms and crews in such a way could be quite acceptable. Coordination between two or more combat arms for a single near-simultaneous attack would have been incredibly difficult based on the issues Maksim identifies in his article and that I’ve addressed in some of my prior writings. Nevertheless, these issues would not have necessarily precluded Soviet Navy commanders from burning up one combat arm in an attempt to knock a U.S. battleforce off-balance in preparation for a later attack by another combat arm.

When the implications of Maksim’s aforementioned observations are combined, we come to see what he means when he says:

That is why my article is in general about kamikazes. It was one-way navy. No one expected to return, [had] the war been declared.

Continental powers’ concepts regarding the combat employment of naval forces have historically been quite different than those of maritime powers. U.S. naval strategists and operational planners, not to mention those of us in the armchair analysis community, would be wise to bear in mind that courses of action that seem rash or potentially self-defeating from our perspectives could be quite rational from a potential adversary’s perspective.

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[i] Jon’s sidenote: this refers to the U.S. Navy’s 1980s concept for creating carrier operations bastions in Norwegian fjords. For more details, see Commodore Jacob Børresen, Royal Norwegian Navy (Retired). “Alliance Naval Strategies and Norway in the Final Years of the Cold War.” Naval War College Review 64, No. 2 (Spring 2011): 97-115.