ALBERT PALAZZO
The US may have the most advanced navy in the world — but as Pentagon officials have openly warned, China’s strategy to counter it has been to load up on land-based anti-ship missiles. Below, Albert Palazzo of the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, warns that the threat will only continue to grow.
There is an old saying, attributed to British Admiral Horatio Nelson, that “a ship’s a fool to fight a fort.” In light of modern weaponry improvements Nelson’s saying is overdue for an update. Now it would be more accurate — if less alliterative — to say that “a ship is a fool to fight a missile defended coast.”
Sea control has always been an essential objective for many countries’ militaries. Without it, a fleet cannot achieve its goals. If an enemy force controls the sea, it can deny a weaker fleet the ability to maneuver and act. Sea control, therefore, is a prerequisite for the attainment of many nations’ war aims. For example, in 1982 Britain first had to establish its fleet in the waters around the Falkland Islands so it could put ashore the land force that retook the islands from Argentina.
For as long as humanity has sailed upon the world’s waters, the fight for sea control has depended on the outcome of battle between ships, or more recently, ships and maritime strike aircraft. This reality
endured from the age of the galley to that of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Now land forces, armed with long-range maritime strike missiles supported by sensing and targeting systems, will change how sea control is achieved or denied.
Contemporary anti-ship missiles that are already in service can reach out over the sea for thousands of kilometers and, since their cost is trivial compared to that of a ship, an adversary can afford to use them in large numbers and thus overwhelm a ship’s defenses. The Chinese, for example, guard their maritime approaches with a host of anti-ship missiles including the DF-21D, which is ominously known as the “carrier killer.” Nor are distant fleet bases safe. The Chinese DF-26 missile is nicknamed the “Guam Killer,” and has the range to hold the US military’s infrastructure on that island at risk.
To date, no major fleet has ventured into waters overwatched by a hostile land-based maritime strike missile system. Some may, therefore, point to a lack of real-world evidence to support this article’s thesis. Those advocating for the battleship over the aircraft carrier took a similar approach. Still we are not without harbingers of what is to come, including the sinking last year of the Russian flagship, the Moskva, by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles and the destruction of the HMS Sheffield by an Argentinean Exocet missile in the Falklands War.
It is likely that we are only at the beginning of a leap in the capability of land based anti-ship missiles. These weapons will almost certainly improve, and their range, speed and warhead size will all increase. The fielding of hypersonic missiles will only make warship survival even more of a challenge. While fleets may still be safe in the middle of an ocean, at least for now, at some point they will need to close with a coast that is overwatched by a missile fortress. Pearl Harbor decisively settled the battleship or aircraft carrier debate. It would be preferable to avoid a similar tragedy as warfare makes the transition to control of the sea by land forces.
Defense policy makers and naval strategists will need to adjust to a new reality since things usually end poorly for those who refuse to adapt in the face of technological progress. Where maritime affairs are headed is towards a naval no man’s land of enormous breadth across which naval power projection against a land-based missile defense will be prohibitively costly, if not impossible.
To succeed in this future will necessitate significant changes in how navies think and operate, as well as new recognition by land forces that the sea is theirs to dominate. Such changes in thinking would include:Thinking small and many: The trend towards bigger and exquisite needs to change, because large ships are easier to target and impossible to replace in any meaningful sense. Smaller ships are harder to find and their loss will not cripple an entire operation. Moreover small ships, with different capabilities, can be linked with modern communications to act jointly.
Thinking economically: Modern warships rarely cost less than a billion dollars each. The price tag for the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was $13 billion. While its capabilities are awe inspiring, the missiles likely to sink or disable it will cost in the millions. Big ships cannot win the cost contest against missiles. A smaller ship is a less costly and inviting target.
Thinking unmanned: Uncrewed platforms, in all domains, continue to gain capability. Where possible, tasks should be replaced by remotely-piloted vessels. Perhaps the only big ships in a future fleet will be the tenders for an uncrewed fleet.
Thinking differently: To sail into an adversary’s anti-access/area denial zone is to play to the enemy’s strength. In their doomed attempts to cross No Man’s Land in the First World War, soldiers died in their tens of thousands. Navies need to re-examine how they intend to operate. For example, it may prove necessary to establish local dominance with land, air and cyber assets before ships sail into harm’s way.
In the Second World War in the Pacific, US operations proceeded with a certain cadence. Air control enabled ships to put a land force ashore that enabled the construction of new airbases under whose cover the US fleet could move forward. Today, the challenge is not dissimilar, and will require similar coordination between the services. If sea control is to be achieved it will be achieved from the land. If it is denied, that too will be from the land.
Albert Palazzo is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia. He writes frequently on the changing character of war, with a special interest in the effect of long-range strike.
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