Of all the dangers that menace the United States today, none is comparable to a surprise of our nuclear striking force. If that force were caught unawares or unready, and our power of nuclear reprisal destroyed, we have lost the war, and there is no limit to the evils which may be inflicted upon us except the mercy of an all-powerful conqueror.
Our susceptibility to final, irreparable defeat by a successful surprise attack upon a single element of our fighting forces bears a singular and at first sight almost sinister resemblance to the strategic situation of Britain in those other cold war days that preceded the outbreak of World War I. Yet it is an encouraging resemblance too: for the measures which the British took to avert the danger of surprise are based upon a principle which may serve us to the same end.
In each case—Britain then and America now—the susceptibility to final defeat as the result of a sudden blow will be found to have its source in a fundamental strategic weakness. In each case, it will be seen that this fundamental weakness is covered by a single element of military power. In each case, it will be seen that the principal mission of that covering force is not to seek immediate combat, but to remain in being at adequate levels of strength and quality. In each case, the enemy will be seen preparing new weapons and methods for the precise purpose of surprise assault on the all-important covering force, being well aware that success in this enterprise would leave their opponents helpless to continue resistance by any other form or type of military power whatsoever. In 1914, Britain found the right countermeasures.
Today, despite the revolutionary changes in the techniques of warfare which have taken place since 1914, the principle on which the British counter-measures against surprise attack were based in 1914 is still valid for our purposes. The methods of warfare change with changing technology. The principles of strategy, like those of the other arts, may be considered ageless.
Among those principles, none is of more vital importance to the security of an insular power faced by a land-locked opponent than the principle of mobility.
Let us see, first, how the British made use of this principle in guarding against sudden and final defeat by surprise forty-five years ago, and then draw from the lesson of that experience some suggestions as to how we may best guard ourselves against surprise in this present time of peril.
The fundamental strategic weakness of Britain in 1912-1914 was the dependence of the British people on sea-borne food supplies. In terms of energy-production measured in caloric values, sea-borne imports accounted for 64% of British consumption, including 79% of all cereals.* Therefore the primary requirement of British strategy was to maintain continuous command of the sea-approaches to the British Isles. To lose that command meant speedy and certain starvation for the British people.
Command of British home waters was the primary mission of the battle fleet. This was well understood at the Admiralty, though less clearly in other circles. It was a truth founded on two-and-a-half centuries of stern experience. The mission might be discharged, if opportunity offered, by seeking the destruction of the enemy main fleet in battle; but, as Sir Julian Corbett points out, such opportunities had been exceptional in the past and might prove so in the future. “With rare and special exceptions,” says Sir Julian (History of the Great War—Naval Operations: Vol. I, pp. 2-3), “our main or Grand Fleet [had] always operated from its home station. Its paramount duty was to secure the command of Home Waters for the safety of our coasts and trade. There was no question of seeking out the enemy, for normally his fleet lay behind its base defenses where it was inaccessible. All our own fleet could do was to take the most suitable position for confining him to port or bringing him to action if he put to sea. . . . But until an opportunity for decisive action arose, it was by patient and alert vigil [that our Fleet] sought to attain its ultimate object —-that is, to cover the squadrons and flotillas which formed our floating defense against invasion and . . . those which operated in the home terminals of our trade routes for the protection of our commerce.”
This was the deep historic view of the Fleet’s function, drawn from the experience of the French wars. In principle it remained unaltered in the 20th century. The first duty of the Grand Fleet was to stay alive in superior force, and in the right position to maintain command of British home waters against any naval effort of which the enemy was capable. While it continued to do so, Britain remained secure both against oversea invasion and against blockade by hostile surface forces. But if the British battleship force—the hard core of the Fleet’s fighting power—were to be shattered by a “bolt from the blue,” British security was shattered with it. The whole global fabric of the Empire’s power would go down with the collapse, under the pressure of starvation, of the will of the British people to continue the war.
The march of technology during the century that had passed since the last great naval war ended in 1814 had brought changes with it which affected this situation materially. Most importantly, there was a new weapon— the automobile torpedo—which for the first time provided the weaker naval power with a means by which the battle-line strength of the superior Navy might be attacked successfully by surprise.
To this weapon, the German Navy was giving marked attention, as the main armament both of its destroyers and its submarines. The Japanese in 1904 had dramatized the torpedo’s potentialities by a “bolt from the blue” against the Russian fleet in Port Arthur harbor, which had disabled two Russian battleships and a cruiser and given the Japanese the needed margin of naval superiority to risk transporting their armies across the Sea of Japan to the mainland. Since 1904, the range, accuracy, and general effectiveness of torpedoes had vastly increased. It was toward surprise attack with the torpedo that the hopes of the more ardent spirits in the German Fleet and the anxieties of the British Admiralty were increasingly directed as the war clouds grew darker above the North Sea.
We need not be astonished to find First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill describing the torpedo as “essentially a weapon of surprise and even of treachery.” It was the only weapon which might—in the words of the German Admiral Scheer—enable the German fleet, “by the skilful handling of inferior forces . . . finally to reach a position in which decisive action could be sought.” That position would be reached, if, in a surprise attack or series of such attacks, enough injuries were inflicted on British armored ships to wipe out the existing British margin of superiority in surface gunfire. The margin was barely adequate to take care of overhauls and accidents —24 British all-big-gun battleships and battle-cruisers against seventeen German in the late spring of 1914.
Considering the British superiority in gun- calibers, this looks satisfactory—until we recall that the British were compelled then, as we are today, to allow the enemy the privilege of striking—and timing—the first blow. The military policy of the British government was controlled by the ardent desire of the British people to avoid war. Hence the British fleet had to be ready, at its average moment, to receive the full force of a surprise blow struck by the Germans at their selected moment. It had to go about its daily tasks without even taking countermeasures which public opinion might have considered “provocative.” Yet the government was fully alive to the dangers represented by an aggressive, torpedo-armed enemy just across the North Sea.
“It was ruled by the Committee of Imperial Defense,” Churchill tells us, “that the Admiralty must not assume that if it made the difference between victory and defeat, Germany would stop short of an attack on the Fleet in full peace, without warning or pretext. We had,” he adds, “to live up to this standard; and in the main I believe we succeeded.” (World Crisis: p. 87.)
Essentially, the precautions thus quietly taken were founded on a daily assessment of the position and condition of the British Fleet in relation to that of Germany. The basic principles of these precautions were (1) that the battle force must never be caught divided, and (2) that the Fleet was far safer from surprise torpedo attack when cruising in the open sea with its destroyer screen than when at anchor in its bases.
In other words, safety for the Fleet lay in its mobility.
This conclusion, as regards a possible war with Germany, was reinforced by the lack of defended bases on the North Sea. During the ’80s and ’90s, France had been Britain’s chief naval rival. During these years, the torpedo (then in its infancy as an effective weapon) was the bright hope of the French naval enthusiasts who called themselves the Jeune Be ole. British reaction to the torpedo and to the swarms of torpedo boats which the French based along their Channel coast had been to develop the destroyer type for the protection of the Fleet at sea and to provide the great Channel bases, Portsmouth and Plymouth, and the fleet anchorage at Portland, with fixed defenses behind which the armored ships could rest in reasonable security. But as the German naval threat increased, it was seen that the Channel bases were in the wrong place for the concentration of the Fleet in a war in which Germany was the chief opponent. The German fleet was not based in Brest and Rochefort, but in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. The North Sea was now the critical maritime area in which the enemy must be contained—and brought to battle if he came forth from his bases. For this strategical shift, the British Navy lacked prepared and defended bases, and though the need was recognized, questions of cost and the swift march of naval technology caused considerable delays in the base-defense program. By 1912 it was plain to the anxious Admiralty that if war with Germany came, there would be no escape from an interval of vulnerability—it might have been called a “torpedo gap”—as far as North Sea base defenses were concerned.
In the full use of mobility, therefore, lay the best means of protecting the all-important battle fleet against surprise torpedo attack.
When, at last, war was seen close at hand, the relief and even triumph in Churchill’s description of the secret concentration of the Fleet in northern waters are eloquent of his abiding faith in mobility:
“We were now in a position, whatever happened, to control events, and it was not easy to see how this advantage could be taken from us. A surprise torpedo attack before or simultaneous with the declaration of war was at any rate one nightmare gone for- ever. ... If war should come, no one would know where to look for the British Fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The King's ships were at sea." (World Crisis: p. 116. Emphasis supplied.)
There in the watery wastes—safe from surprise—the King’s ships remained for four long years. In all that time they fought but one fleet action, and that one was inconclusive. Yet for four years they covered the vitals of the Empire: they covered the transportation of American supplies, and eventually American troops, to Europe; they covered the daily victualling of the British people; they covered the blockade of Germany; they covered the Allied antisubmarine campaign; they covered all the world-wide combinations, movements and offensives which in sum total added up to victory. Without them, the war could not have been carried on at all, for Britain would have been starved into surrender.
Of course the Fleet did not remain at sea every day for four years. It used a variety of war bases, of which Scapa Flow was the chief; others were Rosyth and Cromarty, on the east coast of Scotland, Loch Ewe on the west coast, and even on one occasion Lough Swilly in Northern Ireland. The fixed defenses of these bases were gradually improved as time passed, until the Fleet could at last enjoy measurable security within them. But mobility remained its chief defense against surprise. Indeed in the uneasy days at the beginning of the war the battle squadrons put to sea at the first (and often false) report of a periscope sighting. The German propaganda machine jeered at the constant shifting of bases. The use of western anchorages like Loch Ewe and Lough Swilly was a calculated risk, for it gave the Germans wider freedom in the North Sea itself. Yet from first to last the Grand Fleet remained secure against surprise—and on the Grand Fleet’s security the edifice of Allied victory was erected piece by piece.
It was secure because it remained mobile.
It remained mobile because its destiny was in the hands of men—in and out of naval uniform—to whom an instinctive reliance on sea-mobility had become second nature, an inheritance of British history not to be overshadowed by the wonders of 20th century technology.
That instinct for mobility was of the very essence of victory: for a German “Pearl Harbor” success with the torpedo against the Grand Fleet would have been final. There would have been no possibility of recovery.
The United States today or in the very near future faces a comparable threat- similar in consequences though dissimilar in technology.
The fundamental strategic weakness of the United States in this year 1959 and for at least five years ahead lies in the fact that there is no defense against a ballistic missile once it has been launched. Defensive measures and devices are under development. We do not have them now, and we will not have them in reliable quantity or quality for at least five years. During that time, the range, accuracy, and general effectiveness of the ballistic missiles which the Soviet Union is building can be expected to increase. So will the numbers of such missiles.
The Soviets are devoting much greater proportionate attention to the ballistic missile than were the Germans to the torpedo before World War I. It is clear from their boasts that they are relying on it not only as a surprise weapon but as a support for blackmail because of its surprise potential. It is “essentially a weapon of surprise and even of treachery” to a degree far surpassing the comparatively humble aspirations of the torpedo. Just as the torpedo for the first time gave the enemies of Britain a means for striking directly by surprise at her battle fleet, so the ballistic missile gives the enemies of the United States a means for striking directly by surprise at the vital centers of America’s strength.
But no Soviet leadership composed of coldly calculating Communists would think of launching missiles against American cities until they had disposed of our ability to strike back.
The frightful power of nuclear weapons adds to the perils of war for both participants. It gives to the attacker a means of destruction far beyond that of any previous era. But it also imposes on him risks far beyond those which any previous would-be conqueror has ever faced.
It may be taken as axiomatic that a surprise attack with nuclear weapons must have for its primary targets the bases from which nuclear retaliation must come, if any retaliation is possible at all. It may also be taken as axiomatic that the calculations of risk against advantage which must precede the launching of such an attack will be prohibitively weighted on the side of risk unless the complete surprise destruction of the whole of the hostile forces capable of nuclear retaliation can be confidently counted upon— or at least that the surviving margin of such retaliation can be reduced to such limits that it can be largely absorbed by the defense systems of the assailant.
A nuclear striking force which (1) is not to be used to strike the first blow and (2) nevertheless remains vulnerable to surprise destruction by a foe which has the privilege of striking first is of little value to the United States in this nuclear age. Indeed it may be a positive menace, for it produces an illusion of security in the minds of the uninformed public.
Our nuclear striking force bears the same relation to our strategical situation as a whole as the British Grand Fleet did to the strategy of Britain forty-five years ago. If it were to be wiped out, or fatally broken, by surprise attack, nothing else—no other form of national power—could save the American people from being atom-hammered into submission. Indeed, since if a surprise attack ever comes the bases of our nuclear striking force must be its primary targets, it is quite likely that a successful surprise attack would bring about the breaking of our will to resist at the same time that it destroyed our ability to resist—if we continue our present fatal policy of establishing our striking force in fixed bases in the bosom of our homeland.
Like the Grand Fleet, the primary duty of our nuclear striking force is not to seek combat, but to remain in being at an adequate level of quality and power to continuously impose the hard hand of deterrence on Soviet aggressive designs. If we have to use our striking force in combat, it has failed in its deterrent purpose.
The security of our nuclear striking force against surprise attack, by an enemy with the privilege of striking the first blow, must therefore be our first consideration.
In the measures we take to provide that security, we must carefully consider the qualities of the enemy’s surprise-attack weapon, the ballistic missile.
Its chief offensive characteristic, which gives it its surprise value, is its appalling striking speed—considered, of course, in relation to calculable warning times and the period required, after warning, for either defensive measures or for retaliatory action.
It is an ideal weapon for attacking fixed targets such as air bases and missile bases. The enemy has developed it precisely for that purpose.
Our nuclear striking power today is chiefly that of the Strategic Air Command, which operates, of course, from stationary airfields. A comparatively small percentage of our total nuclear delivery volume operates from mobile bases—the attack aircraft carriers of the Navy.
The Soviet missile threat is a developing one. As the number of Soviet missiles increases and as range and accuracy improve, we can foresee a time when they will be able to strike all SAC’s bases more or less simultaneously in a co-ordinated surprise attack. Meanwhile the ability of SAC’s subsonic aircraft to penetrate the Soviet defense system is declining as the quality of the latter improves.
To meet this threat and continue to maintain a high level of deterrent force is the object of our own missile program, which proposes the construction of a progressive family of missile bases in this country—the first lot to be armed with Atlas missiles, the second echelon with Titans, and the third with the solid-fueled Minuteman, which will have a shorter reaction time than its liquid-fueled predecessors.
But the enemy will still have his advantage of striking first.
Our missiles, if they are to have any survival quality and therefore any deterrent effect, must be adequately defended against surprise annihilation.
The first duty of a deterrent force is, let’s repeat, to stay alive.
We have already noted that defensive devices—such as an intercepting or “antimissile” missile—are under development, but will not be ready in the immediate future: a fair guess is about five years. We are, however, planning the defense of fixed missile bases in this country by putting them underground in massive concrete shelters.
Considering the long history of fluctuating contest between missile weapons and fixed defensive shields, it seems surprising that there should be any readiness to confide the life and liberties of the American people to the validity of calculations that the concrete shelters we build now can withstand the violence which the enemy may be able to unleash against them at some future time after he has subjected the problem to thorough study and experiment. Over confidence in the ability of yesterday’s armor to resist today’s missile-weapons designed to penetrate that armor is an old, sad story—the French knights at Crécy and HMS Hood in the Denmark Straits nearly 600 years later were alike the victims of this delusion, and many others in between. But whether we can build impregnable shelters for our missiles and their launching gear or not, one thing is absolutely sure: we cannot do it quickly. So far as defended shelters are concerned, either for air bases or missile bases, we are today, as we stand, 100% vulnerable to missile attack. However ambitious our construction program for defended bases, a considerable period of time must elapse before we begin to have any at all, and a much longer period of time before we can say that enough missile power has been “dug in” to give the Soviets pause in their aggressive calculations. For all this time, the American missile program—insofar as it relies on fixed-base missiles—must remain virtually at the mercy of the enemy.
Thus we can foresee a time when we will have, say, three or four defended bases—say, a year or two hence. At that time, if we go ahead with our present or an accelerated base program, we will also have a larger number of bases under construction and entirely open to attack. Also the other components of our missile program—industrial plants, test sites, central stations of warning and communication systems, storage facilities—will be wide open, too. All this time, the enemy’s offensive force will be increasing, and his defenses against air attack—which will continue to be our main reliance for deterrence until our missile program is better developed—will be growing more difficult to penetrate. It may of course be argued that our own air defense will be improving too, but this is beside the point. We are not and never have been seriously threatened with attack by Soviet- manned aircraft; the Soviet threat is a missile threat, period, and our air bases are fixed and open targets which can be given very little extra defensive qualities against missile blows.
Can we seriously suppose that a determined enemy will quietly sit by and allow us to complete a missile system housed in invulnerable bases—even supposing there is any such thing as an invulnerable base? Can we suppose that he will not use his advantages—the advantage of his head start in missile building, the advantage of being better able to conceal the sites of his bases and the other components of his program than is possible in any free country, the advantage above all of being allowed the first blow?
And can we suppose that our own firmness of purpose, our will to go “to the brink of war” in resisting his local encroachments will not be put to increasingly severe tests as it becomes increasingly apparent to every U. S. citizen that the risk we are running—if our resistance is challenged—no longer amounts to a war fought overseas in other people’s territory, but instead involves the possible destruction of our homeland and the death of 50% or more of our population by fall-out, not to mention the immediate results of nuclear explosions?
The time-relation of our missile program to this question of defended bases is similar in some respects to the problem of the British Admiralty in 1912-1914 in the matter of fleet bases with relative security against torpedo attack. They simply could not be constructed in time. Therefore, the only security against surprise was to keep the Fleet at sea as much as possible.
Mobility is likewise the only security for our nuclear striking force against surprise attack today.
Having due regard to the inexorable pressure of time, we can find that security only by the development of mobile sea-based nuclear striking power: for which there exists a respectable industrial and technological foundation in existing programs, and which— unlike our fixed-base potential—can be developed rapidly enough to give us added deterrent power with each passing year so that there will be no moment of opportunity upon which the foe can confidently calculate.
This reasoning, too, takes account of the qualities of the enemy’s principal surprise- attack weapon.
The ballistic missile has one main weakness; it is useless against a moving target. It must be pre-set to follow a programmed flight-path from a base of known location to a target of known location. All that we are told about improved guidance systems is related to this adherence to the pre-selected trajectory. The corrections which can be made in its course after it is launched serve only to bring it back to its original direction of flight.
Against a moving target, or a target whose location at the time the missile is being prepared for firing cannot be accurately known, the ballistic missile is useless.
Mobility is therefore the indispensable quality required for defense against ballistic missiles.
The reason is not, in tactical detail, the same as with defense against the torpedo.
A torpedo officer of good judgment could often hit a moving target at sea with a torpedo even with the comparatively unsophisticated equipment available in 1912-1914. Such things happened even to warships when proper precautions were neglected—as the loss of the Formidable exemplifies.
The use of mobility for the defense of a fleet against torpedo surprise consisted—as Admiral W. S. Sims points out in Victory at Sea—in establishing a mobile “zone of immunity” around the Fleet and carrying this zone of immunity along with the Fleet wherever it went. The zone of immunity, of course, was the area constantly patrolled by the accompanying destroyers with their antisubmarine detecting gear, their guns, and depth charges.
Combined with zig-zagging and proper alertness on board the heavy ships, this application of the principle of mobility to the tactical conditions of the time did the trick. No British capital ship was lost during the war to torpedo attack while cruising in a formation so conducted and protected.
Precisely this same principle is used today in the protection of fast carrier task forces against attack by aircraft, surface ships, or submarines. The “zone of immunity” is enormously greater in area than that surrounding a battle force in 1914, but the principle is the same and can be expected to operate as effectively if implemented by proper precautions against known enemy capabilities within the limits of the existing tactical situation. The same principle can be used, of course, to protect any form of maritime enterprise, such as a troop convoy or a squadron of missile ships.
Such protection will not be 100% certain. The chances of war cannot always favor one side. But no enemy could count with 100% certainty (or anything like it) on the success of his attack, and he could not count on surprise at all.
The case of the ballistic missile as a weapon against sea-targets is not comparable to that of the torpedo or the air-borne weapon.
Its inability to strike a moving target is inherent in its basic characteristics. Its tactical ineffectiveness against moving targets is derived not only from its being tied to a programmed flight path, but also—being intended to strike at very long ranges—there is a practical difficulty in locating a moving target, indentifying it, reporting its position and course, and then setting the missile’s course and firing it on an intercepting trajectory. The chances of a hit—even with the wide damage-zone provided by a hydrogen warhead—are virtually nonexistent under those circumstances. The chances of a surprise hit are nil: for the search, identification, and reporting processes will already have given warning, modern electronic devices being what they are.
Thus if the purpose of the enemy attack is to destroy the moving missile base without warning—that is, before retaliatory action can be taken—it is frustrated by the very nature of the essential preliminary procedures.
Here, however, we are considering the problem within far too narrow limits, as is unhappily the case in all too many discussions of modern weapons. The real comparison we should be making is of far wider scope.
It is a comparison between conditions which are readily foreseeable on the basis of what we are doing now and what we know can be done within two or three years.
Would we, at the end of that time, be better off if the whole of our territory were studded with finished, half-finished, and just- started fixed missile bases, plus air fields, the exact location of each of which will be known to an enemy armed with missiles specifically designed to destroy such fixed targets; or
Would we be better off if our missile power and a growing proportion of our air power were deployed in moving bases over the surface of the oceans, with their location from day to day a matter of uncertainty to the enemy, and with surprise attack upon them no longer within the capabilities of enemy armament?
Would our diplomacy be firmer, our policies more resolute if hostile challenge— even though resulting from misconception or over confidence—might nevertheless carry with it the extermination of half our population; or
Would we be able to act with greater assurance if the enemy could have no hope of avoiding destruction if he reacted violently, and if in any case he would be compelled to direct his attack upon moving targets in the watery and uninhabited ocean wastes rather than fixed targets in Maine, Missouri, or California?
We should not, of course, suppose that we can be saved overnight by a maritime miracle. Any form of military power, in these days, has to be translated into expensive “hardware” and thoroughly trained manpower before it can be effectively used, either in combat or as a deterrent to aggression.
The time-lag in these processes—production of hardware and training of personnel— hampers all military planning. It was the source of British anxiety over defended North Sea bases in 1912-1914, but it was also the root source of their whole battle fleet problem, for a battleship sunk or seriously damaged by a torpedo could not be replaced quickly enough to offset the enemy’s relative gain in combat power.
The time-lag is the source of our “missile- gap” anxiety today. Our problem is not what we could do about the Soviet missile threat if we had plenty of time. Our problem is what we can do to maintain a continuously effective deterrent posture against a continuing threat, with the virtual certainty that the enemy will never allow us enough time to make ourselves invulnerable if he reaches a position of superiority which, in his opinion, greatly reduces the risk of violent reaction.
To prevent his ever being able so to calculate, to deny him even a single moment of riskless opportunity, is the condition of our survival.
We can best do this by confronting him, not with calculable but with incalculable risks: not with reactions he expects and understands and has provided against, but with new and unexpected problems which are outside the sphere of his calculations and against which he can make no effective provisions save by yielding to us the time-advantage while he labors to recast his whole military program in a new mold.
This is what the British forced the Germans to do in World War I. The dearly cherished hopes of a surprise torpedo attack on the British Fleet, on which German naval writers were as eloquent just before that war as French naval writers had been ten or twenty years earlier, were proved illusory by the British use of the principle of mobility. Yet the basis of those hopes was founded in an accurate strategic concept: short of immediate and overwhelming success in the land assault against France, Germany could gain victory only by wresting command of the sea from Britain. Unable to do so by surface fighting, she turned to evasion—to the U-boat. It was too late. The inexorable principle of sea warfare, that evasive methods cannot prevail against the sea power which commands the surface of the sea and can deny it to any opponent, held good against the submarine as it had against the privateer. The submarine introduced a new tactical element, operation beneath the surface of the sea; but German sea-experience, or rather sea-instinct, was insufficient to understand, as Admiral Sims puts it, “the immediate connection that exists between control of the surface and control of the sub-surface; that the nation which possesses the first also potentially possesses the second.”
Thus the German attempt to create a new system of maritime war went down to defeat before a Navy rooted in understanding of war at sea.
The United States today has the immense advantage of controlling, actually or potentially, the surface of the seas and of possessing the only mobile weapons systems for controlling the air space above that surface. Neither Soviet geography nor the present state of Soviet naval armament suggests a Soviet capability of offering serious challenge to that control without large-scale recasting of Soviet armaments programs. It may well be too late for us to overtake the Soviets in a race for fixed-base ballistic missile superiority. But if we turn to the mobile sea-based deterrent force of which we now possess an expandable nucleus, we can, within the time limits still allowed us, produce mobile nuclear striking power in forms and volume far beyond Soviet ability to overtake or offset save after many years of effort.
This is not a matter—as one might suppose from current news reports—merely of producing a given number of submarines armed with Polaris ballistic missiles. It is a matter of controlling and using the whole of the saltwater surface of the globe as a deployment and operational area for our fighting forces. It is a matter of employing sea-based aircraft and sea-based missiles of all useful types as deterrent weapons, or as offensive weapons if occasion requires. It is a matter of providing adequate defense and warning and communications. It is a matter of organizing all these elements into task forces of appropriate composition and of keeping a considerable proportion of these task forces constantly at sea.
It is a matter of impressing indelibly on the minds of the Soviet leadership the stern fact that somewhere in the waste of waters, within striking distance of the Soviet heartland, dwell these mighty organizations, cruising now this way, now that, hidden in storms and mists or beneath the polar ice but ever ready to loose their frightful violence in retaliation against Soviet violence offered to the country which sent them forth.
It is more even than this. It is also a matter of constant vigilance over the seagates where maritime comings and goings may be constricted by land-based power or enemy- inspired political difficulties. It is a matter, therefore, of using the sea-mobility essential to the safety and freedom of action of our deterrent force to provide, also, freedom of action to deal swiftly with local and limited threats on the periphery of the Communist realm.
In short, it is a matter of confronting the enemy not with a form of war which is a mere reflection of his own ideas, but with a form of war which lies quite outside the scope of his experience. Here again we may well draw upon that British experience which contains so many lessons for an oceanic and insular power such as we have now become. We are faced with a relatively immobile and land- oriented continental enemy—just such an enemy as Britain has faced often enough in the past. Of the French Empire of Napoleon, of Hohenzollern Germany, and of Hitler’s Reich, the same epitaph might be written—in the eloquent words of Captain S. W. Roskill, RN (The War at Sea: Vol. I, p. 1) each of these “won a series of resounding victories on land only to find itself brought up against a method of waging war with which its leaders could not grapple and of which they had no clear understanding. Maritime strategy, founded on centuries of experience of the sea, brought our enemies to utter defeat.”
The life-essence of maritime strategy is mobility. Mobility, as a strategical principle, has a relative meaning. It does not mean mere purposeless movement, but movement so used as to produce a military result under the prevailing conditions. It is in the application of the principle of mobility to the tactical and technological conditions of our times that we may find security for the indispensable element of our fighting power (our nuclear striking force) against the “bolt from the blue” which the enemy prepares so diligently as he awaits his moment of opportunity.
* C. Ernest Foyle, History of the Great War—Seaborne Trade: Vol. I, p. 3.