The Future Maritime Operating Environment and the Role of Naval Power

which naval activities can be coordinated and power projected ashore, changing the scope of
sea-based operations. This too will continue to happen. New types of adversaries that frequently
use the maritime environment have also emerged, including terrorists and non-state actors
(organised crime, human smugglers, and drug cartels), and older ones have returned (pirates).
There are, nonetheless, common reference points, for alongside this dynamic the purpose of
waging war at sea remains unchanged. Its object, the British strategist Julian Corbett wrote, “must
always be directly or indirectly to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from
securing it.” 16
16 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Longmans, Green and Co.: London, 1911),
p. 87.
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