Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars

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Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars

Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars

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Within each of these chapters, they do a commendable job of producing a pleasingly readable condensed history that compares development success and failure across several nations including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia (and the USSR), Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire, although not all of them in each case. By 1914, with combat governed by caution, the capital ship’s strategic function had come to dominate its tactical function. Basically, because cost had escalated to the point where relatively few nations could afford to construct capital ships in any quantity, their primary function became to exist rather than to fight. Their very existence in superior numbers was enough to guarantee sea control. There was no point in fighting. This strategic aspect of the dreadnought revolution, as expressed in World War I, caught navies by surprise when it was recognized at all. Radio and radar. Radio expanded the volume and range of naval communications, while radar allowed platforms to see at great distances and in poor visibility. Both tools aided navies in bringing weapons to bear on their opponents and (generally) increased the amount of available information. This book focuses on six technologies grouped loosely into three broad categories. The categories are weapon, a technology designed to damage a target; tool, one to assist in using a weapon; and platform, one to deliver a weapon. Each of the technologies we examined transformed the practice of naval warfare in its own way. They include A theme that runs throughout the book is the idea of network effects. One radio is a novelty. Many radios in a network allow rapid communications for a variety of tasks and common understanding of the situation. Other technologies are similar. For instance, many radio direction-finding antennas provide more accurate locations and greater resilience against damage. Many mines are far more effective in constraining ship movement than a few that can be avoided. If Germany had fielded 50 more submarines when World War II began, the outcome may have been quite different. The limited application of technology produces a small effect, but massive proliferation produces a great effect.

Animals fight with horns, teeth, and claws. Humans can bite and scratch as well, but to win, they use technology. The word technology is a compound of two Greek roots, tekhne (craft) and logia (learning). In essence, technology is the practical application of knowledge expressed through the use of a device. There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. That sentiment was definitely the case during World War II, a massive global conflict that presented the United States with a variety of tactical and logistical challenges. At every turn Americans seemed to need more of everything—more supplies, bigger bombs, faster airplanes, better medical treatments, and more precise communications. In response, scientists, technicians, and inventors supplied a steady stream of new products that helped make victory possible. Many of these innovations transformed the very nature of warfare for future generations and also had a significant impact on the lives of civilians as well. Technology is constantly evolving, and the navies of the twenty-first century are juggling innovations that are likely to revolutionize naval warfare as profoundly as did the introduction of steam and steel in the nineteenth century or electronics in the twentieth. Forethought, strategic vision, and technical acumen might drive technological development in periods of peace, but it is a thesis of this work that navies learn the best use of new technology only through the medium of peer-to-peer combat. And within the chaos of combat, only those navies that innovate successfully discover the best uses of their own technology and the best counters to those of the enemy. To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, while the concept of innovation is simple, innovating under enemy fire is difficult.The admirals who developed fleet tactics were busy men with little time to explore the possibilities of untested technology. They used their platforms in the way they knew best. Accepting new technology and integrating it into the naval tool chest were neither natural nor easy processes; doing so was risky and took conscious effort and dedication from advocates and supporters in the highest places. The ruthless pressures of war brought out the true capabilities of technologies. Under wartime conditions, apparently weak technologies such as mines could completely transform the use and even the raison d’être of an alpha technology, the dreadnought battleship. Even an alpha technology must be open to innovative use if it is to remain relevant. by the organizations that developed, refined, and employed them.” —Trent Hone, author of Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898-1945 and co-author of Battle Line: The United States Navy, 1919-1939 “This is a marvelous book! O’Hara and Heinz have produced a Victory Innovations is a leading provider of cordless electrostatic spraying equipment for disinfecting surfaces. Victory Innovations is transforming the way businesses, transportation systems, hospitals and schools are cleaning and santizing using electrostatic technology. The chemical-agnostic product enables users to sanitize any surface area with the convenience of cordless portability, faster application time and reduced chemical usage. Founded in 2014, Victory has sales in over 40 countries. For more information, please visit www.victorycomplete.com. We recognize that we are shouldering a vast subject but consider it worthwhile to collect and follow the threads of technological development over more than a century of time and the course of three major and several smaller wars. To the best of our knowledge, such a broad and structured look at naval technology as a process viewed through the lens of specific application has never been done. Our goal is to seek new perspectives and insights and identify the factors that accelerate or retard the process of technological development. To accomplish such an ambitious goal, this work strives to be a synthesis and a simplification without being simplistic.

Whilst discussing some post World War 2 technological developments the authors generally avoid assessments arguing that the technologies have not been tested in major power conflict in more recent years, and hence accurate data is not available to sustain valid assessments. Having made these observations the authors nevertheless do make some broad statements on current capabilities. In relation to submarines, it is concluded that: “There is reason to think that they would be even more effective now, given the relative states of submarine and ASW technology.” In relation to the torpedo, the authors conclude that: “It is likely to be a part of naval arsenals for years to come and to experience more permutations before the concept is finally obsolete.” In relation to naval aviation the authors conclude that: “It is difficult to know whether the carrier has had its day, but the current crop of antiship weapons give little cause for optimism. Navies will still require wings, but those wings may well prove to be of a new type (such as unmanned drones) flying from new platforms rather than large, expensive aircraft flying from large, expensive ships.” Expectations do not determine best use. Historically, the expectations that attend new technologies have been unrealistic, and uses the development of submarines and aircraft as examples – their capabilities took a long time to mature. Each chapter discusses when and where the technologies were first developed, when it was used in war and what navies expected of it. It also traces the evolution of each technology and how it was eventually used compared to navies original intentions. Development of the technology in different navies is examined as is its employment in time of conflict, mainly during the Russo-Japanese War, World War 1 and World War 2. Victory’s tactical function as a capital ship was to maneuver in formation with her fellow capital ships to a position from which she could bombard enemy ships with her broadside of cannons. The tactical function of the dreadnought battleships that fought the Battle of Jutland, 111 years after Victory’s triumph at Trafalgar, was essentially the same. So too was the tactical goal of the commanding admirals: to concentrate their firepower through maneuver while preventing their opponents from doing the same. Naval professionals throughout the long decades of peace leading up to 1914 expended great effort trying to keep pace with the tactical implications of rapidly changing capital ship technology. Line-abreast formations were tried and discarded; ramming tactics went in and out of fashion; torpedoes and speed were heralded (by some) as revolutionary. Still, by 1914 fleets of gun-armed capital ships dominated naval thinking, much as the ship of the line had more than a century before. In terms of formations, objectives, and major weapons, John Jellicoe and Reinhard Scheer, the admirals at Jutland, essentially fought the same way that Horatio Nelson and Pierre Villeneuve fought Trafalgar. All sought to concentrate the power of their big guns. Jellicoe accomplished this by crossing in front of the German line and pounding its leading ships, while Nelson split the Franco-Spanish line and defeated it in detail, but both men had the same goal. The technical innovations in the capital ships of 1914 compared to those of 1805 were enormous, but the tactical goal was still to concentrate gun power more effectively than the foe.The transaction is subject to customary conditions and is expected to close by the end of September 2020. HMS Victory and HMS Dreadnought. With the ships built more than a century apart, the past meets the present in this 1906 photo. ( Gosportheritage.co.uk)

Users have valuable input. Scientists and experts in general, believe that they know best and have a poor record of accepting user contributions. For a long time complaints from submarine and destroyers crews about torpedo performance were ignored, epecially in the US and German navies. The dreadnought battleship provides an example of how combat experience can confound expectations. The dreadnought battleship was, in 1914, the alpha naval technology upon which victory at sea was supposed to depend. In the event, the technology produced results far different than those envisioned by politicians, admiralties, and the public: dominance without decisive victory for the British, and the seedbeds of revolution for the Russians, Germans, and Austro-Hungarians. Within forty years of its 1906 introduction, the dreadnought battleship had been supplanted. The last few heavily modified examples of the type are thirty years out of service while submarines and aircraft carriers dominate the seas of the twenty-first century. Why was the dreadnought superseded? Because it no longer had a use that justified its cost. Vincent P. O’Hara is an independent naval historian and the author of thirteen works, including Six Victories: North Africa, Malta, and the Mediterranean Convoy War, November 1941-March 1942 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2019) and with Leonard R. Heinz, Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914-18 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2017). He holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Leonard R. Heinz worked for many years as a financial services lawyer while maintaining an active interest in military and naval history. He has written articles and designed wargames on naval topics and earned a history degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Naval Technology in Three Wars

There is one important caveat here. A paradox can exist with technologies that help us do more with less: they can increase consumption of the very resources one is trying to conserve. By an effect known as Jevons Paradox, they can increase greenhouse emissions. For example, a technology that reduces demand for fossil fuels will apply a downward pressure – at least in the short term – to the fuel’s price; this incentivises other players to buy the fuel – and use it inefficiently. For this reason, technological solutions to global warming will need to be coupled with international laws and taxation schemes that ensure that fossil fuels and trees stay in the ground. The value of technological solutions arguably lies in making the transition to a low carbon economy politically feasible.

This book relates the development and use of six important and successful technologies, but to focus on success might give the false impression that every invention has a use, or that every use has a lasting purpose, or even that technologies with the strongest pedigrees and the most clearly defined uses will continued to be relevant. For navies, the ultimate criterion is whether the weapon/tool/platform effectively advances the task of securing power at sea and contributes to ultimate victory.

Customer reviews

The difference between the 104-gun first rate ship of the line HMS Victory of 1805 and HMS Dreadnought of 1905 is a clear example of technological progress, but where is the innovation? If the capital ship represents a synthesis of many technologies, then one can easily argue that behind the technological progress that produced this synthesis, there was profound innovation. This is true if one considers only technical innovation. One can ask whether these innovations were driven by militaries or by society in general. For example, the steam engine transformed naval warfare, but first it transformed transportation and manufacturing in general and in the process changed the world economy. Society at large and not the military drove many of the improvements in steam technology. The same is true of electromagnetic technology and even of advances in the sciences of metallurgy and chemistry that had direct applications to armor and explosives. Militaries generally regard the goal of technological innovation as a matter of progressive improvement in a proven field: larger guns firing bigger shells to greater ranges, for example. In general, navies strive to win wars with better versions of existing weapons, tools, and platforms rather than use novelties in the front line. But the greatest power of new technology comes from innovative use. What are these improved guns being fired at, and to what purpose? If they are used in the same old way, it is legitimate to repeat the question that opened this paragraph: Where is the innovation? O’Hara and Heinz studied the development of weapons (mines and torpedoes), tools (radio and radar), and platforms (submarines and aircraft). The guiding idea was to focus, not on technical details but to explore “the process by which each technology’s possibilities were first recognized, tested, then used, or not used, to best advantage” (2). Aside from the specific technologies, the book also considers the effects of human factors such as prior established practice, politics, and policy. The goal was to divine any principles that governed the process and determine whether those principles applied across platforms, technologies, and nations. The authors also wanted to know whether any identified principles led to victory irrespective of the time in history or the specific technology pursued. This would help answer the question of whether those principles were generalizable enough to apply developing technology today. Overall, the book provides useful insights from its analysis and discussion of key tecnological developments during the first half of the 20th century. It also provides some stimulus for consideration by those planning the future of navies, in an inceasingly complex and challenging world. One of the key messages from the book is the need for a combination of scientists and specialists to work in collaboration with the end users to ensure a successful and effective outcome. Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world's navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology's best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. There are alternatives to technological solutions, and some of them will be necessary. Taxation and rationing are effective strategies – but they will be hard to stomach on the scale required. Halving emissions by 2030 means giving up some of the things we love. We could drastically reduce consumption of carbon-intensive products, but without truly decent alternatives, we’re unlikely to. Solar power is 99% cheaper than it was in 1980, but it’s still not cheap. We could cycle more, but our workplaces are not going to move closer to our homes overnight. We already have low-tech alternatives to meat and dairy (they grow in the ground), but the world’s population is growing much faster than veganism. We could use existing technologies to get out of this mess, but it will be far more politically feasible to develop new ones.



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