In the late forties - early fifties of the last century, the US Navy found itself in a serious crisis: they could not justify their need for the country and the people. Indeed, there was not a single fleet in the world that could even be compared with the American one. Moreover, all the fleets in the world, taken together, if they were under a single command, would likewise not be able to compare with the American fleet. The US Navy simply had no adversary. Question: "Why do we need a fleet if the Russians do not have one?" asked more and more often.
In the late forties, one of the people who asked him was US President Harry Truman.
Truman's logic, inspired by Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, was as follows.
The main force required to crush the only potential enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union, is strategic aviation, armed with nuclear bombs. The main theater of operations is Europe, where the US Army and allies will have to stop the Soviet Army. What does the fleet and marines have to do with it? It has nothing to do with it, and this "liability" must be eliminated. The fleet must be relegated to the level of an escort force capable of transporting and supplying an army to Europe. Anything else is superfluous.
This position was supported by the army, which is interested in a larger share of the budget, and the Air Force, which already imagined itself as a global geopolitical factor.
However, in the United States, one cannot simply take and dissolve or liquidate something. Usually, Congress stands in the way of such reforms, and it has the right to stop them. To do this, however, it was necessary to stir public attention. The events that followed are known in American history as the "admiral revolt."
We must pay tribute to the then American sailors - they did it. The controversy about the future of the US Navy was deliberately published in the open press. This cost a lot of careers, including very high-ranking military personnel, for example, Rear Admiral Daniel Gallery, the author of a series of articles on the inadmissibility of the defeat of the Navy, only miraculously escaped a military court and never received a vice admiral. Even the command of the 6th Aircraft Carrier Division did not help during the Korean War. Nevertheless, the conspiracy of the sailors succeeded. Thanks to the beginning of the hearings in Congress, the pogrom was able to slow down and, in fact, reduced to a refusal to build new ships and a reduction in the number of existing ones.
And then the war began in Korea, where 41% of all strike missions were carried out by carrier-based aircraft, and without it, it would have been lost even during the battles for the Busan bridgehead. And the Incheon-Wonsan landing. By the way, the Marine Corps had already seriously degraded by that time due to chronic underfunding, which is why it "performed" so badly at first. This became an epiphany - the Americans mostly realized that without the Navy, at least they could not retain global influence. However, more was required - the fleet had to prove to society that it was needed not only in relation to the Korean war, which soon ended.
And that was done too.
In 1954, a young but already famous Ph. D. Samuel Huntington published an article "National Policy and the Transoceanic Naval Forces", in which everything was laid out on the shelves. Huntington rightly pointed out that any service, such as the navy, consumes the resources of society. In order for society to allocate these resources with confidence, it must have an understanding of what this service is for and how it meets the interests of national security.
With regard to the Navy, Huntington justified this with the following considerations.
The stage when the US Navy was supposed to provide security for the United States in the oceans is over - the enemy fleets have been destroyed. Now the fleet is dealing with a new threat - the continental mass of Eurasia. Previously, the task of the fleet was to fight ships, now it is to fight the coast - and Korea is proof of that. The Navy has achieved what the Anglo-Saxons call the command of the sea - command of the sea, and now must ensure the achievement of the strategic goals of the United States on the ground. Factors such as the ability to concentrate aviation on a huge scale against any point on the coast, the ability (which has just appeared) to deliver nuclear strikes by carrier-based aircraft, the planned mass appearance of heavy carrier-based bombers with a combat radius of thousands of kilometers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons (A3D Skywarrior has already been tested), provided such opportunities. The domination of the Mediterranean Sea made it possible to deliver such a blow to the very "heart" of the USSR through the territory of Turkey. Huntington also predicted that the imminent appearance of guided missiles would allow strikes against targets very far from the coastline. At the same time, there was simply no one to dispute the deployment of the US Navy anywhere in the world - the entire World Ocean was their "lake".
Huntington and the admirals turned out to be right - although it was not the Navy, but the US Air Force that carried the main shock load in all American wars, and on the ground, the army, not the marines, made the main contribution, the role of the Navy in hostilities has always been vital, but in terms of the demonstration of force and as a means of power diplomacy, the US Navy, in principle, has no competitors.
If then, in 1948-1955, the Americans had taken a different path, we might now be living in a different world.
This is an example of how a correct strategy not only saved the aircraft's appearance from defeat (which in itself has no value for society), but also brought unthinkable benefits to society itself, a long-term negative trade balance - only a small part of which. Americans could never have had their current standard of living without America's military dominance of the world, which would have been unthinkable without the Navy.
Well, a little later, the era of submarine ballistic missiles began, which further consolidated this state of affairs.
And today - with us
Today Russia is experiencing a mental naval crisis of the same nature. The fleet exists rather by inertia. Even at the level of the supreme command, there is no understanding of what can be achieved with a well-trained and well-equipped fleet, moreover, even some sailors do not have it. As a result, Truman's experiment, which did not take place in the United States, went well with us.
Currently, the fleet is controlled by the naval section of the General Staff, the main headquarters of the Navy has been turned into something incomprehensible, the command infrastructure, such as the Central Command Center of the Navy, has been destroyed, the command of the fleets has been given to the army military districts, shipbuilding programs are largely formed by people who are so far from naval affairs. as far as possible, and the tasks for the Navy are completely formed by such people.
The High Command turned into a business administration with very limited functionality, and the Commander-in-Chief turned into a “wedding general”. A significant part of the problems that the fleet is experiencing is from this.
How did it happen? As shown earlier, in the article "What is more important for Russia: the navy or the army", the blame for everything is a significant cognitive distortion generated by the Great Patriotic War, and the previous history. People instinctively feel (without thinking) that the future will be the same as it was in the past, and yet the nature of threats and potential tasks for Russia today is radically different than in the first half of the 1940s and earlier. Rather, we ourselves will start wars on land. But we will get a slap in the face where we are weak - no one will stick a hand in the mouth of a bear and start a land war against us, the whole world knows how such things end. And on the sea - another matter, and it is not difficult to understand, just a little thought.
Unfortunately, the average person doesn't think. He operates with sets of clichés once hammered into his head, shuffling these clichés like a deck of cards. Thinking is a stretch, but nothing can be done - the adult psyche, being already formed, is extremely difficult to "alter". With regard to Russians, this is further aggravated by simply chronic wishful thinking, when a person does not understand the difference between reality and his ideas about it and sincerely believes that, as soon as he hoarsely defends some point of view, it will immediately become a real factor that will influence something. This is how, for example, super missiles and boats are born, capable of sinking an aircraft carrier. People just want to believe in them, and do not understand that the material world does not depend on their faith. You can sleep with this faith in peace, but only until someone's bombs wake up, and then it will be too late, but, alas, an ordinary person cannot understand the cause-and-effect relationship between his actions and their delayed consequences, which gives rise to a certain form of stagnation in public thought in our country, including in the military sphere, which is also repeated over and over again. We already had "tops", and "with little blood, on foreign territory", and "in two hours in one regiment", but, as it is quite obvious to an unbiased observer, our people still do not learn anything - at any cost.
As one of the intermediate results: a clear understanding of why we need a fleet, society does not have, and does not have power, which is a continuation of this society (no matter what and whoever thinks about it).
At the moment, there are two open (unclassified) documents that describe the priorities of naval development in Russia. The first one, "Maritime Policy of the Russian Federation" … In general, this is a serious conceptual document, and it remains only to wish that the goals voiced in it would be achieved. However, there is very little about the navy.
This, in theory, doctrinal document should have been "Fundamentals of the state policy of the Russian Federation in the field of naval activities for the period up to 2030" … Let us state that this is not a doctrine. Yes, there correctly (albeit vaguely, no potential rival other than the United States has been named) the threats are identified. Well, that's all. In fact, the entire document consists of good wishes, many of which are no longer just not fulfilled, but are fundamentally impracticable. The tasks of the fleet are generally formulated in clause 13.
13. The Navy creates and maintains the conditions necessary to ensure the safety of the maritime activities of the Russian Federation, ensures its naval presence, demonstrates the flag of the Russian Federation and the military force of the state in the World Ocean, takes part in the fight against piracy in the activities carried out by the world community military, peacekeeping and humanitarian actions that meet the interests of the Russian Federation, conducts calls by warships (ships) of the Russian Federation into ports of foreign states, protects the state border of the Russian Federation in the underwater environment, including anti-submarine, anti-submarine sabotage defense in the interests of the security of the Russian Federation.
With the same success, the authors of the document could not write anything about the tasks. Since 2012, the Navy (what is left of it) has been engaged in military transportation in conditions of special risk ("Syrian Express", delivery of MTR units to Crimea in 2014), delivering cruise missile strikes on coastal infrastructure, participated in ground combat operations by forces Marine Corps (Syria), together with the FSB conducted quasi-blockade actions against the ports of Ukraine on the Sea of Azov, and a couple of times effectively demonstrated strength to the Americans in the Mediterranean.
But with PLO we have a failure, with anti-submarine sabotage defense - it is not known how, the enemy's waterborne contingent is much better trained. In any case, the author is aware of the reports about the landing of foreign combat swimmers on the territory of the country, and about the combat losses of the PDSS in underwater skirmishes with the "seals". But the opposite is completely unknown. True, all this was a very long time ago.
As you can see, theory is seriously at odds with practice. Moreover, this discrepancy is actually even deeper. There is not a word about interaction with the ground forces and the Aerospace Forces. This is just a paradox, given the previous historical experience and the current state of naval aviation. There is not a word about the fight against terrorism - and this task today is much more urgent than the fight against piracy. There is not a word about the mine threat, which again speaks of a complete disregard for historical experience.
The "fundamentals" are imbued with a defensive spirit - we defend, defend and contain, there is not a word about sometimes taking offensive hostilities. But the ability to attack any part of the planet is the "strong point" of the fleet.
There is nothing that would somehow be limited by the time frame, the procedure for adapting the Navy from the peacetime regime to the wartime …
It is unclear why the authors of the document do not stipulate such things as the geographical fragmentation of the fleet and the impossibility of ensuring numerical superiority in forces over potential adversaries in most theaters. It is not known why there is not a word about naval aviation - namely, it is the only force that is guaranteed to be able to carry out a quick inter-theater maneuver. But there are fantasies about such a maneuver by submarines - whoever would give it to be done.
In general, it is necessary to read this document, but with a clear understanding that this is a profanation.
And now - as it should have been
For comparison, it is worth looking out of the corner of your eye at the American - "Naval Strategy" of the 1980s, which was the basis of American naval activities against the USSR in the 1980s and turned out to be extremely successful.
Everything is completely different there. The main enemy has been identified - the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries "merged" with it to the point of inseparability. Potential allies of the USSR outside Europe have been identified - Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam. Revealed their real capabilities in naval warfare. The main features of the strategy of the USSR Navy, its goals and objectives set by the political leadership of the USSR, its advantages and weaknesses are listed. The order of escalation of the conflict by stages has been determined - from the peacetime regime to a global thermonuclear war with the use of strategic nuclear weapons. Specific goals of the US Navy are listed - from maintaining communications with Europe and "offensive mining" at the beginning of the conflict, to landing on Kamchatka, the Kola Peninsula and Sakhalin at the end (provided that the situation allows).
The role of the allies, the procedure for inflicting defeat on the forces of the USSR and its allies, the role of other types of the Armed Forces in joint operations with the fleet was determined - for example, Cuba and Vietnam were to "neutralize" the Navy and Air Force bombers, and the beginning of the war in the North Pacific was to be accompanied by a transfer army units to the Aleutian Islands, so as not to allow the Soviet landing party to capture them.
The approach of the US Navy to the use of nuclear weapons and the possible reaction to such from the Soviet side were voiced. A clause was made about the undesirability of strikes against Soviet strategic potential on the ground, so as not to force the Russians to use their ICBMs. Measures were determined to protect shipping. The strategy was drawn up for each year, and revised annually, and in order for the US Navy to be ready to act according to these plans, very dangerous provocative exercises were held annually, during which the deck strikes on Soviet cities were also practiced (see NorPacFleetExOps'82, he the same "Kamchatka Pearl Harbor"), and special forces were thrown into Soviet territory. These exercises were used as an instrument of military-political pressure on the leadership of the USSR - and successfully.
It was a coherent strategy with goals, forces, means, plans, a vision of what needs to be done. Are we able to "give birth" to something like that?
Someone may argue that there are still closed documents, and there, like, everything is there. Unfortunately, although these closed assignments from the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense do exist, the level of these documents does not make it possible to believe that the Navy will be reborn as an effective combat force. If without "entering the red zone", then these are just short-term decisions like "and now we are preparing to attack coastal facilities with cruise missiles, and so that inexpensively; and now we need to establish anti-piracy patrols - and also inexpensively. " There is nothing global and deeply worked out there, simply because our General Staff is predominantly army, and they know little about the operational and strategic capabilities of the Navy.
By the way, the USSR "gave birth" to a sane strategy, albeit not fully formalized - Korotkov's "direct tracking" was quite a strategy for itself, and it worked for some time - in any case, the peak of Soviet power in the world was due to this very concept, which forced Americans sometimes sweat with fear. It was only when they changed the rules of the game for their part, everything changed for the worse for us, and the Soviet Navy could not give an adequate answer.
In fact, a trained and equipped Navy can bring enormous benefits to any country. Up to financial. This is a self-evident fact. But in order for it to be just like that, society must understand WHAT IT WANTS TO GET from the fleet.
Do not invent an answer to the question: why do we need the Navy? This is completely counterproductive. No, our people have to answer themselves to a completely different question: WHAT THE COUNTRY WANTS TO GET FROM CHILDREN IN BLACK FORM WHAT ONLY THEY CAN GIVE?
And then everything will start to improve. But not before.
