In the first half of the 19th Century, navies relied upon the frigate as a jack-of-all-trades: the sort of ship that could scout for the fleet, engage in commerce escort or raiding, and sail to distant and remote points around the globe to protect the national interest by engaging the navies of lesser powers, landing military forces to resolve matters ashore, or simply showing the flag. The sort of ship tasked with these diverse roles has changed over the years with the evolution of new technologies and terminology; the frigate was replaced by the cruiser (and to a lesser extent the gunboat) in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. These ships were often not possessed of the most modern technology - ships-of-the-line and the battleships that superseded them generally received the most modern guns and later propulsion systems - but they remained vital because of their versatility and the fact that they could be produced in numbers far greater than the staggeringly expensive larger units.
The Second World War and its aftermath suggested that the need for such ships had past; massive fleets, centered on carrier battle groups and supported by aviation and submarines, were now required to provide both survivable force and meaningful capability. The diffusion of technology to the Third World after the war suggested that a single ship alone, no matter how capable, would be a potential liability rather than an asset. The rapid advances of the Cold War era supported this interpretation of the strategic shift: as new technology drove costs ever higher, it paradoxically also enabled poorer nations to acquire capabilities that, while not on the cutting edge, offered conditions far closer to parity with the Great Powers than had been the case in the previous century. Cold War politics further encouraged this trend, as the Superpowers supported their allies with ever more capable weapons systems. One need only contrast the various 20th Century wars in former colonial battlegrounds like the Middle East, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia with their 19th Century precursors to understand how radically the playing field had been leveled.
The strategic situation today, however, is in some ways regressing toward that of the 19th Century. The bipolarity of the Cold War is gone, as are in large part the mass armies that made possible the total wars of the first half of the 20th Century. The historically more common state of international competition in a shifting multipolar system is once again emerging, as the United States, China, and Russia, joined in a fashion by Europe (as led by Germany and France), Britain, India, and Japan, are moving away from the relative stasis of their Cold War relationships and instead acting to more directly assert themselves in the protection of their own interests.
While the armed forces are certainly not the only, or even the primary, means of protecting national interest, they are a necessary component of the equation; without both the presence of useful military capability and the national will to employ it, national interests remain secure only by the continued acquiescence of one's rivals - rather a precarious condition. It should come as no surprise then that the reversion of the international political order to competitive multipolarity will require a significant shift in the military options with which nations provide themselves.
This has already been underway for some time. The obvious elements - reductions in nuclear arsenals, major combat units such as ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers, heavy ground forces (especially armor and artillery) - have been apparent in the U.S. and Russian militaries for well over a decade. Other powers are acting differently, dependent upon their circumstances: Europe is reducing its capabilities due to cost and the apparent belief that military force is of ever-decreasing utility, while China is streamlining its forces while developing new capabilities as it seeks to extend its international influence. In all of the Great Powers, the current conventional wisdom suggests that a combination of technology and doctrinal flexibility will compensate for the reduction in numbers.
Technology does indeed offer remarkable new options to precisely apply military force quickly and over an increasingly large area, while reducing the manpower required to do so. This has tremendous benefits in the current casualty-averse political and social environment so prevalent, especially in the West. New doctrines developed to employ these new technologies in current military circumstances may indeed further reduce the human costs of war.
But technology is increasingly costly. Reductions in manpower and the numbers of planes and ships has driven per-unit costs to astonishing heights as engineers and planners seek to build all the diverse capabilities for which they perceive a need into an ever-smaller number of units operated by an ever-smaller number of men. The paradox here is that, as the value of each unit rises, the willingness to use it (and potentially lose it) diminishes. Thus the seemingly tactical and technical questions of design and doctrine increasingly weigh on strategic decision-making. The dreadnought building programs of Britain and Germany in the years preceding the First World War, and the subsequent unwillingness to employ and risk these incredibly costly vessels (the fleets met in only a single major engagement, at Jutland in 1916; Germany turned increasingly to submarines as its primary naval weapons, while Britain employed a distant blockade of German ports), is but one example of how cost influences strategy.
The frigates and cruisers of the 19th and early 20th Centuries offered their respective owners options that more valuable fleet units did not. No Great Power of that time would risk a modern battleship in anything less than a full-scale war with another Great Power; to do so would not only require dividing the fleet, creating a strategic vulnerability, but the ramifications of the loss of a unit that might take years to replace at tremendous cost were politically, militarily, and economically dangerous.
So it is today. The fleets of the Great Powers are now but a faint shadow of those of the 20th Century; from the hundreds and even thousands of ships that comprised the navies of that time, the number of blue-water naval combatants in most fleets can be counted in the dozens. The ships that should be filling the traditional role of the frigate or cruiser - the modern destroyer is the closest analog - are so few that there are simply not enough to adequately perform the myriad roles in which they might prove useful. Consider the current situations which might benefit from an increased American naval presence: the looming crisis in Korea; the growing concern about China's naval and economic power; piracy in the waters off Somalia; the Iranian nuclear standoff; and perhaps even the ongoing turmoil in Jamaica. Add to these fleet duties, natural disaster response, search and rescue, patrolling shipping lanes, port calls, and all the various other tasks these ships may be called upon to perform, and it seems fairly optimistic to consider the 56 destroyers currently on the U.S. Navy's active list adequate. (It should be noted that the U.S. Navy still operates some 30 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, but these ships were designed as primarily anti-submarine warfare types, and the last one was produced in 1989).
More problematic, though, is their design and cost. While incredibly capable ships, it seems rather inappropriate to send a modern American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, equipped with 90 vertically-launched missiles and costing close to a billion dollars to produce, to chase down a dozen Somali pirates equipped with AK-47s and RPGs, or to provide a Marine security detachment to assist Jamaican police in restoring order (the disorder having been caused by a U.S. extradition request), or to provide logistical support to a disaster relief effort. Yet these are precisely the sort of missions that the U.S. Navy is called upon to perform. The majority of the capabilities of its only class of destroyers are utterly unnecessary to successfully fulfill these missions. Other navies face similar situations, though perhaps not as frequently as the U.S.; nonetheless, would not the anti-piracy effort in the Indian Ocean be more effective with twice as many less-capable ships? Would not the navies of the Great Powers be more willing to meaningfully commit their forces to non-controversial international missions if the costs were not so high?
The problem is far from new. Julian Corbett, in his classic Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911), identified a similar problem afflicting the Royal Navy: "What Nelson felt for was a battleship of cruiser speed. What Strachan desired was a cruiser fit to take part in a fleet action. We have them both, but with what result?...Battleships grade into armoured cruisers, armoured cruisers into protected cruisers. We can scarcely detect any real distinction except a twofold one between vessels whose primary armament is the gun and vessels whose primary armament is the torpedo." Today the distinction is even more faint: virtually every surface vessel employs missiles as its primary armament. Corbett's query was not answered, but was instead rendered largely irrelevant by the change in strategic conditions beginning in 1914 and only properly coming to a close in 1991. As fleets grew, organized into large task forces centered first on battleships and later aircraft carriers, the distinctions changed as primary missions became narrower and ever more focused on fleet engagements and total war. With ships in abundance, specialization became the norm. Only as the numbers drew down significantly did Corbett's question regain its relevance.
The world today bears closer strategic resemblance to the volatile years before the First World War than to most of the 20th Century, and as such it would be wise for policymakers to consider that the political framework in which they operate will dictate how they employ their military options. Ground and air warfare have already seen significant adjustments as the result of recent experience. Naval operations have been few and far between; naval forces, however, remain busier than ever. Drones cannot deliver humanitarian assistance; infantry is not well-suited to demonstrating diplomatic resolve. It falls to the navies of the world to form the closest visible link between national policy and military power, yet navies have changed the least in constitution and doctrine since the end of the Cold War. Corbett put it succinctly: "On cruisers depends the exercise of control; on the battle-fleet depends the security of control." The security of control was at great risk during much of the 20th Century, but that risk has since diminished. What presents a far greater problem in the current strategic environment is exercising control across the vast spaces of the world's oceans and littorals, in no small part for the want of a suitable number of suitable vessels and the political will to use them.
The Second World War and its aftermath suggested that the need for such ships had past; massive fleets, centered on carrier battle groups and supported by aviation and submarines, were now required to provide both survivable force and meaningful capability. The diffusion of technology to the Third World after the war suggested that a single ship alone, no matter how capable, would be a potential liability rather than an asset. The rapid advances of the Cold War era supported this interpretation of the strategic shift: as new technology drove costs ever higher, it paradoxically also enabled poorer nations to acquire capabilities that, while not on the cutting edge, offered conditions far closer to parity with the Great Powers than had been the case in the previous century. Cold War politics further encouraged this trend, as the Superpowers supported their allies with ever more capable weapons systems. One need only contrast the various 20th Century wars in former colonial battlegrounds like the Middle East, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia with their 19th Century precursors to understand how radically the playing field had been leveled.
The strategic situation today, however, is in some ways regressing toward that of the 19th Century. The bipolarity of the Cold War is gone, as are in large part the mass armies that made possible the total wars of the first half of the 20th Century. The historically more common state of international competition in a shifting multipolar system is once again emerging, as the United States, China, and Russia, joined in a fashion by Europe (as led by Germany and France), Britain, India, and Japan, are moving away from the relative stasis of their Cold War relationships and instead acting to more directly assert themselves in the protection of their own interests.
While the armed forces are certainly not the only, or even the primary, means of protecting national interest, they are a necessary component of the equation; without both the presence of useful military capability and the national will to employ it, national interests remain secure only by the continued acquiescence of one's rivals - rather a precarious condition. It should come as no surprise then that the reversion of the international political order to competitive multipolarity will require a significant shift in the military options with which nations provide themselves.
This has already been underway for some time. The obvious elements - reductions in nuclear arsenals, major combat units such as ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers, heavy ground forces (especially armor and artillery) - have been apparent in the U.S. and Russian militaries for well over a decade. Other powers are acting differently, dependent upon their circumstances: Europe is reducing its capabilities due to cost and the apparent belief that military force is of ever-decreasing utility, while China is streamlining its forces while developing new capabilities as it seeks to extend its international influence. In all of the Great Powers, the current conventional wisdom suggests that a combination of technology and doctrinal flexibility will compensate for the reduction in numbers.
Technology does indeed offer remarkable new options to precisely apply military force quickly and over an increasingly large area, while reducing the manpower required to do so. This has tremendous benefits in the current casualty-averse political and social environment so prevalent, especially in the West. New doctrines developed to employ these new technologies in current military circumstances may indeed further reduce the human costs of war.
But technology is increasingly costly. Reductions in manpower and the numbers of planes and ships has driven per-unit costs to astonishing heights as engineers and planners seek to build all the diverse capabilities for which they perceive a need into an ever-smaller number of units operated by an ever-smaller number of men. The paradox here is that, as the value of each unit rises, the willingness to use it (and potentially lose it) diminishes. Thus the seemingly tactical and technical questions of design and doctrine increasingly weigh on strategic decision-making. The dreadnought building programs of Britain and Germany in the years preceding the First World War, and the subsequent unwillingness to employ and risk these incredibly costly vessels (the fleets met in only a single major engagement, at Jutland in 1916; Germany turned increasingly to submarines as its primary naval weapons, while Britain employed a distant blockade of German ports), is but one example of how cost influences strategy.
The frigates and cruisers of the 19th and early 20th Centuries offered their respective owners options that more valuable fleet units did not. No Great Power of that time would risk a modern battleship in anything less than a full-scale war with another Great Power; to do so would not only require dividing the fleet, creating a strategic vulnerability, but the ramifications of the loss of a unit that might take years to replace at tremendous cost were politically, militarily, and economically dangerous.
So it is today. The fleets of the Great Powers are now but a faint shadow of those of the 20th Century; from the hundreds and even thousands of ships that comprised the navies of that time, the number of blue-water naval combatants in most fleets can be counted in the dozens. The ships that should be filling the traditional role of the frigate or cruiser - the modern destroyer is the closest analog - are so few that there are simply not enough to adequately perform the myriad roles in which they might prove useful. Consider the current situations which might benefit from an increased American naval presence: the looming crisis in Korea; the growing concern about China's naval and economic power; piracy in the waters off Somalia; the Iranian nuclear standoff; and perhaps even the ongoing turmoil in Jamaica. Add to these fleet duties, natural disaster response, search and rescue, patrolling shipping lanes, port calls, and all the various other tasks these ships may be called upon to perform, and it seems fairly optimistic to consider the 56 destroyers currently on the U.S. Navy's active list adequate. (It should be noted that the U.S. Navy still operates some 30 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, but these ships were designed as primarily anti-submarine warfare types, and the last one was produced in 1989).
More problematic, though, is their design and cost. While incredibly capable ships, it seems rather inappropriate to send a modern American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, equipped with 90 vertically-launched missiles and costing close to a billion dollars to produce, to chase down a dozen Somali pirates equipped with AK-47s and RPGs, or to provide a Marine security detachment to assist Jamaican police in restoring order (the disorder having been caused by a U.S. extradition request), or to provide logistical support to a disaster relief effort. Yet these are precisely the sort of missions that the U.S. Navy is called upon to perform. The majority of the capabilities of its only class of destroyers are utterly unnecessary to successfully fulfill these missions. Other navies face similar situations, though perhaps not as frequently as the U.S.; nonetheless, would not the anti-piracy effort in the Indian Ocean be more effective with twice as many less-capable ships? Would not the navies of the Great Powers be more willing to meaningfully commit their forces to non-controversial international missions if the costs were not so high?
The problem is far from new. Julian Corbett, in his classic Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911), identified a similar problem afflicting the Royal Navy: "What Nelson felt for was a battleship of cruiser speed. What Strachan desired was a cruiser fit to take part in a fleet action. We have them both, but with what result?...Battleships grade into armoured cruisers, armoured cruisers into protected cruisers. We can scarcely detect any real distinction except a twofold one between vessels whose primary armament is the gun and vessels whose primary armament is the torpedo." Today the distinction is even more faint: virtually every surface vessel employs missiles as its primary armament. Corbett's query was not answered, but was instead rendered largely irrelevant by the change in strategic conditions beginning in 1914 and only properly coming to a close in 1991. As fleets grew, organized into large task forces centered first on battleships and later aircraft carriers, the distinctions changed as primary missions became narrower and ever more focused on fleet engagements and total war. With ships in abundance, specialization became the norm. Only as the numbers drew down significantly did Corbett's question regain its relevance.
The world today bears closer strategic resemblance to the volatile years before the First World War than to most of the 20th Century, and as such it would be wise for policymakers to consider that the political framework in which they operate will dictate how they employ their military options. Ground and air warfare have already seen significant adjustments as the result of recent experience. Naval operations have been few and far between; naval forces, however, remain busier than ever. Drones cannot deliver humanitarian assistance; infantry is not well-suited to demonstrating diplomatic resolve. It falls to the navies of the world to form the closest visible link between national policy and military power, yet navies have changed the least in constitution and doctrine since the end of the Cold War. Corbett put it succinctly: "On cruisers depends the exercise of control; on the battle-fleet depends the security of control." The security of control was at great risk during much of the 20th Century, but that risk has since diminished. What presents a far greater problem in the current strategic environment is exercising control across the vast spaces of the world's oceans and littorals, in no small part for the want of a suitable number of suitable vessels and the political will to use them.
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