Naval operations a close look at the operational level of war at sea

Naval operations: a close look at the operational level of war at sea. Today American navy writes prolifically about maritime strategies but has not devoted equal attention to campaign plans or analysis that  tests the strategies' viability. We illustrate herein how the operational--or campaign--level links policy and strategy to the  tactical and technological elements of war at sea. First, we relate how the U.S. Navy reluctantly came to accept the existence of an operational  level of warfare but having done so will find it useful. Second, we describe important properties of naval operations in terms of constants,  trends, and variables in warfare at and from the sea. Third, we demonstrate how operational-level planning would help if the Navy and  the nation were to adopt six clearly stated, twenty-first-century  strategies that would serve present and future national policies better  than do current strategy documents. VIEWS OF NAVIES REGARDING THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL OF WAR    In both peace and war, we frequently carry out our roles through  campaigns [that] focus on the operational level of war.... There are  three levels: tactical, operational, and strategic.... The operational  level concerns forces collectively in a theater. GENERAL C. E. MUNDY AND ADMIRAL F. B. KELSO    The Operational Level of War at Sea Introduced and Described     The U.S. Navy first acknowledged the existence of an operational  level of war at sea when Admiral Kelso, as Chief of Naval Operations,  and General Mundy, Commandant of the Marine Corps The Commandant of the United States Marine Corps is the highest ranking officer of the United States Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reporting to the Secretary of the Navy but not to the Chief of Naval Operations. , signed the first "naval doctrine publication," entitled Naval Warfare naval warfare   Military operations conducted on, under, or over the sea and waged against other seagoing vessels or targets on land or in the air. The earliest naval attacks were raids by the armed men of a tribe or town using fishing boats or merchant ships. , in the spring of 1994. 1 In part the change had come from pressure for common terminology after World War II. In part it had come at the urging of the Marine Corps, which saw the advantage of applying "operational  art," standing between strategy and tactics. The second edition of Naval Warfare, issued in 2010, reaffirms the three levels of war and  concentrates specifically on the operational level as its doctrinal  domain. 2    The three elements of war, in the Navy's eyes, had previously  been strategy, tactics, and logistics. Part of the reason that logistics were prominent was the geographical span of naval operations. Distances scarcely imagined by ground force commanders are involved at sea; a map  of a maritime theater generally covers a geographical area an order of  magnitude A change in quantity or volume as measured by the decimal point. For example, from tens to hundreds is one order of magnitude. Tens to thousands is two orders of magnitude; tens to millions is three orders of magnitude, etc. larger than that for a ground campaign. The activities of a naval campaign Noun 1. naval campaign - an operation conducted primarily by naval forces in order to gain or extend or maintain control of the sea military operation, operation - activity by a military or naval force as a maneuver or campaign; "it was a joint operation of the  or operation are probably at least 80 percent the  processes of operational logistics. Therefore it is reasonable--and  clarifying--to say that the American navy's three levels of war at  sea have now become strategy, operational logistics or merely  operations, and tactics. In what follows, we apply this utilitarian  perspective of three levels of war to describe naval operations. We make  no reference to operational art in past U.S., German, or Soviet army  applications for ground operations. Nor do we have space to describe how  naval operations are linked to joint operations A general term to describe military actions conducted by joint forces or by Service forces in relationships e.g., support, coordinating authority which, of themselves, do not create joint forces. . We are consistent, however, with the quite adequate descriptions of joint operations in  Naval Warfare NDP-1. 3    The Traditional View of Navies     Sir Julian Corbett Sir Julian Stafford Corbett born 12 November 1854 in Thames Ditton, Surrey; died 21 September 1922 in Thames Ditton was a prominent British naval historian and geostrategist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose works helped shape the Royal Navy's reforms of that era. and American admirals Bradley Fiske and L C. Wylie, among others, thought strategy included the operations in a naval  campaign. This viewpoint permeates Corbett's Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. 4 Fiske's The Navy as a Fighting Machine describes his vi  Find out more on  payday loan