Abstract
As we enter the twenty-first century, a number of significant factors will affect the world’s navies. Among these factors are several new technologies, the proliferation of advanced weapons among Third World countries, the severe reduction of the Soviet-Russian fleet, the euphemistic ‘downsizing’ of the US Navy and the reshaping of US defence policy.
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Notes
Leslie Gardiner, The British Admiralty (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1968), p. 15.
Richard Hough, Dreadnought: a History of the Modern Battleship (Cambridge: Patrick Stephens, 1984), p. 239, 246 and 257.
Ibid., pp. 56–7 and 124–30.
Ibid., pp. 60–1 and 131.
Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 1: the Period of Anglo American Antagonism,1919–29 (London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1968), pp. 204–33.
The largest US battleships were the four ships of the Iowa class, completed in 1943–44; they had a standard displacement of 45000 tons and carried nine 16-inch (406 mm) guns. These ships were in intermittent active service until 1992! The planned Montana class was to have carried 12 similar 16-inch guns. Peter Pad field, The Battleship Era (London: Rupert Hart Davis, 1972), pp. 262–5.
To get a feel of the new era in maritime warfare see Eric Grove’s comparison of the planned postwar (1947) and prewar (1938) deployments of the Royal Navy. Eric Grove, Vanguard to Trident: British Naval Policy since World War II (London, The Bodley Head, 1987), p. 25.
James Cable, ‘Political Applications of Limited Naval Force’, The Soviet Union in Europe and the Near East: Her Capabilities and Intentions (London: Royal United Services Institution, 1970).
Richard Scott, ‘Which Course Will Russia’s Navy Steer’, Jane’sNavy International, October 1996, pp.18–21.
See Martin Edmonds (ed.), ‘British Naval Aviation in the 21st Century’, Bailrigg Memorandum 25 (Lancaster: Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, 1997).
Vasilii Sokolovshy, Soviet Military Strategy, 3rd edn, ed. Harriet Scott (London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1975).
Admiral V. A. Kasatonov, ‘On the Problems of the Navy and Methods for Resolving Them’, noted by Capt. Harlan Ullman, USN, ‘The CounterPolaris Task’ in Michael MccGwire et al. (eds), SovietNaval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (New York: Praeger, 1975), pp. 585–600. An excellent exposition on the use of land-based missiles against naval forces is found in Raymond A. Robinson, ‘Incoming Ballistic Missiles at Sea’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1987, pp. 67–71.
See, for example, Hung P. Nguyen, Submarine Detection from Space: A Study of Russian Capabilities (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1993). This is the most comprehensive unclassified analysis of this subject to be undertaken to date.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Polmar, N. (1999). The Measurement of Naval Strength in the Twenty-First Century. In: Dorman, A., Smith, M.L., Uttley, M.R.H. (eds) The Changing Face of Maritime Power. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509610_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509610_10
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