HARLAN ULLMAN
Israeli soldiers are seen in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas, the militant group ruling the Gaza Strip, carried out a surprise, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets and infiltrating the country by land, air and sea.
Hamas’s heinous and dastardly attacks in Israel and the battle in Ukraine reaffirm one unchanging aspect of warfare and create what may be a new one. The critical reason why Israel was taken off guard by Hamas is that surprise attacks to start wars work. History is definitive on this.
From the mythical Trojan Horse to Japan’s surprise attack on the Russian base in Port Arthur to initiate the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 to Pearl Harbor 37 years later, the past is littered with examples.
Surprise does not guarantee victory. Often quite the opposite is the case, as Japan and Hitler learned in 1945, despite the latter’s initial success in surprising the Allies in 1939 and Stalin in 1941. While 9/11 was devastatingly shocking and it took more than a decade, Osama bin Laden paid the price.
What Hamas demonstrated in its attack and the damage Ukraine is doing to the Russian Navy is the value of cheap, readily available technology. In Gaza, Hamas used speed boats, paragliders and bulldozers. In Ukraine, with air and sea-based drones and missiles, Kyiv has severely damaged a number of Russian warships and forced that navy to retreat to the east out of missile and drone range.
Now suppose Hamas or some other group or even a rival power wanted to employ these tactics and cheap weapons of war to harm the United States while leaving no fingerprints or means to determine responsibility, how might that be done? President Joe Biden has ordered the USS Ford carrier strike group into the Eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent. A carrier strike group possesses an extraordinary amount of firepower and advanced weapons systems.
USS Ford’s air wing includes advanced strike fighters as well as anti-submarine assets. Its half dozen or so Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers also carry long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles and an array of close-in defensive systems. This is more than formidable.
But sailing in harm’s way in the Eastern Mediterranean is not without risk, as the navy is well aware. It is a crowded body of water south of Crete and west of Cyprus filled with merchant ships and fishing boats. That means hiding the strike group from detection is not easy. A merchantman, fish boat or drone could act as a “trailer.” Using civilian satellite data also can help with surveillance.
Assuming the strike group can be detected and followed, it can be targeted. The firing points for land-based cruise missiles are easily identified, and hence, culpability is established. The obvious tactic is to rely on surprise.
Suppose Hamas or someone intent on doing damage to the U.S. outfitted fishing boats and small merchantmen with commercially available drones and missile technologies. Sailing in international waters, following the strike group at a distance of 10 to 20 or more miles would not be difficult. At an appointed time around 4 a.m. when the watch sections aboard the strike group were changing, the attack would be launched.
While some drones are detectable, others made from cardboard are not. The purpose of these drones is not to sink but to damage the warships in the strike group by knocking out radars and fouling the Ford’s flight deck. And if the attackers were indeed imaginative, the possibility of repeating the suicide attack on USS Cole in 2000 in Aden, Yemen is real.
Speed boats capable of 60 or more miles an hour could be launched. Even if these boats are stationed miles away from the strike group, they are capable of covering one mile a minute or closing from 10 miles in 10 minutes. Laden with explosives, these would not be sufficient to sink larger warships. However, they are capable of doing enough damage to incapacitate a warship.
This is not new. Many war games have been played with similar scenarios. Indeed, Admiral Jim Stavridis and author Elliot Ackerman wrote a great novel called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War,” in which the Chinese Navy employed surprise to sink a good part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
What needs to be understood today is this: Surprise remains a powerful tactic. In the past, navies were only defeated by similar sea, air and undersea forces. The profound difference is that cheap, effective commercial technologies are now readily available. The above scenario would cost an attacker virtually nothing. Yet a nuclear carrier strike group with an air wing and escorts costs upwards of $20 billion.
Sailing in harm’s way is essential for the U.S. Navy. But do so wisely and with caution.
Harlan Ullman Ph.D. is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. He served at sea in the U.S. Navy and the United Kingdom Royal Navy in the eastern Mediterranean. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available at Amazon. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.a
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