THE FUTURE OF SEA POWER

The Future of Sea Power |
139
many ways, we are indeed seeing a return in maritime warfare to the concepts current
at the end of the Cold War. What will be different will be the technologies involved and
the mechanics (and physics) of their interaction.
What is clear is that major surface combatants and amphibious units are not going out of
fashion just yet. Indeed, there is a new drive to greater size in terms of surface combatants
that may itself be recognition of their utility across the spectrum, a utility based on
the fundamental nature of sea power, the carrying capacity of ships. In contemporary
terms, this translates to weapons, sensors, helicopters, landing and boarding parties and
platform endurance. In the very near future, it will extend to unmanned vehicles which
can be deployed, recovered, serviced and re-deployed under, on and above the water.
My personal view is that such ‘swarms’ may also have the potential to provide the surface
ships concerned with the bubble of awareness in three dimensions (and, arguably, in
three environments) that will assist their survivability in high intensity warfare. In a
contest of both cyber and kinetic elements, such local networks are likely to prove much
more robust than systems which span space and the continents. Unmanned vehicles will
also provide manned surface ships and submarines with agents of action and influence -
systems which can be deployed into the areas of highest threat, establishing which areas
are safe and what is going on within them, even if they lack the capability to conduct
engagements in their own right - and many are likely to have that level of capability
as well.
But there will also be a fight to prevent A2AD becoming incorporated into legal regimes
and it is here that I see a potential nexus between offshore industry and military interest
that needs to be avoided. Not allowing the current Chinese interpretation of foreign
military operations within exclusive economic zones will be central to the ability of
navies to retain much of their utility across the spectrum of conflict. I expect that the
United States will continue to contest this matter in the South China Sea in particular.
It may be, of course, that China’s increasing global interests will bring about a change of
mind within China on the subject, if only because such constraints within other state’s
exclusive economic zone will create excessive limitations on the freedom of manoeuvre
of an increasingly capable Chinese navy. Although some casuistry has already been
employed to justify Chinese operations in other exclusive economic zones on the basis
that the states concerned have failed to promulgate the necessary national legislation
to exclude the military operations of others, this is not a legally sustainable approach.
I should add that, while I have concerns over some directions of Chinese strategic
thought, I do not see a direct parallel between the Chinese navy and the Imperial German
Navy of the Tirpitz era and I do not think that the comparison is helpful. There are two
key differences. The Chinese navy does not represent a stake pointed at the heart of
the United States in the way that the German High Sea Fleet did to Great Britain. The
second is that it is devoting resources to the creation of global capability in a way that the
Germans failed to do with their handful of overseas cruisers. And, despite my worry over
the nature of China’s activities in the South China Sea, I regard the deployed presence of