Gulf War 20th: The War at Sea

Most observers think of the Gulf War as a land and air campaign; surely the naval aspect was secondary. In fact it was primary: Without the seapower, the war could not have been fought at all. For the United States, seapower is, above all, about access to the world beyond our shores. In an age of air transportation, it is too easy to forget that most heavy goods still travel by sea, because that is by far the easiest way to move them. It still only pays to move very valuable lightweight cargo – such as people – by air. It would, for example, be unimaginable to try to move an air base, with its airplanes and its resources, along a highway or through the air. Yet an aircraft carrier is exactly that, a moving air base.

Ships of Task Force 155 during Operation Desert Storm, including the carriers Saratoga, America, and John F. Kennedy. DoD photo.

It is also extremely important to note that a U.S. warship is U.S. territory, generally not subject to any other country’s authority in the way that a base on foreign soil is. Given such mobile territory, the U.S. government can decide what it wants to do in a crisis situation, without having to gain local support. In many cases a foreign government wants our support but risks domestic or local opposition if it requests it. By moving ships into place we can solve that government’s problem.

Finally, seaborne mobility still exceeds land mobility. A seaborne force can threaten an enemy with a wide variety of attacks, and those ashore may find it very difficult to build up defenses at each threatened place. Conversely, once defenses have been erected ashore, they are difficult to withdraw and reposition. In a larger sense, the sea is both potential barrier and potential highway. The force facing Iraq had long sea flanks in both the Gulf and the Red Sea, both of which it could use – and both of which the Iraqis could use as venues of attack.

Overall, U.S. seapower guarantees access to war zones overseas and tries to deny such access to an enemy. U.S. naval forces demonstrated all of these virtues during the Gulf War.

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'Perilous Fight': A book review

Perilous Fight: America’s Intrepid War with Britain on the High Seas, 812-1815 

Stephen Budiansky

Alfred A. Knopf, 448 pp., $35

Reviewed by Jonathan Lazarus 

News that Britain’s current financial woes had forced the Royal Navy to mothball its lone carrier, bearing the fabled name Ark Royal, was broadcast just as Stephen Budiansky’s salty, scrappy “Perilous Fight” was about to focus on the epic confrontation in 1812 between the frigates Constitution and Guerrier.

HMS Guerrier represented the essence of the thousand-ship, globally dominant Royal Navy, the same outfit that — only seven years before — had defeated the French at Trafalgar. The USS Constitution spearheaded a new class of vessels of the pitifully small and erratically managed fleet of a nascent nation, which impudently refused to yield up impressed seaman to his Brittanic Majesty’s insatiable manpower needs.

The David-slays-Goliath result of the encounter proved that the United States could confront Britain on the bounding mane with technologically superior vessels and a fighting spirit more intense than that in the ossified ranks of the enemy. While America’s military fortunes on land sagged during the War of 1812, its sea prowess swelled and provided inflections of pride in an otherwise exasperating conflict.

Opinion: Navies Can’t Defeat Piracy ... You Savvy?

Experts in the years before the 1970s were convinced that something such as piracy could not experience a renaissance after its zenith in the 18th century was ended by the technological progress of nations and their growing control of the world’s oceans and sea lanes, supported by the increasing effects of globalisation. 

Safe havens for pirates became rare and a noteworthy presence of piracy only sparked into life in very limited and politically unstable areas. With the collapse of all state authority in Somalia and the increasing local power of terrorist and fundamentalist Islamic groups, the coastal areas of the Horn of Africa became a perfect breeding ground for piracy.

The ultimate goal of piracy is to carry out raids that are particularly profitable. In this light, Somalia was naturally predisposed for pirate activities due to its explosive combination of political instability and its proximity to one of the world’s economically most important sea areas. The waters off the Horn of Africa represent a significant junction of international sea lanes, being the node for all maritime traffic coming from and going to the Eastern coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, as well as the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.