The alternative futures of naval force

Abstract

The paper discusses a series of new technologies and new strategic factors entering into naval power and their analytical consequences. The argument is made that (1) traditional ways of identifying “naval power”; no longer have any utility or carry real meaning; (2) current high‐value surface naval forces of declining utility are extremely vulnerable to attack, which will force a radical revaluation in the West of “sea control”; and the costs of such control; and (3) the Soviet Union, by virtue of its geography and its capacity to innovate in “sea denial”; naval force, may be better positioned that the West to take advantage of new antinaval technologies. Western countermeasures may be expensive, involve a radical restructuring of naval force, and mean the acceptance of permanent strategic vulnerability at sea. The “new era”; of naval politics cannot be divorced, analytically and operationally, from emergent space systems and from the strategic nuclear balance.