Synopses & Reviews
As the U.S. Navy enters the twenty-first century, many of the ships, aircraft, weapons, and tactics it employed so successfully during the Cold War will no longer be cost-effective or even effective. Future battlefields will shift the locus of naval action from the high seas into littoral waters, demanding sustained operations in relatively narrow, shallow waters. Naval forces in the twenty-first century must not only meet the traditional requirements of command of the sea—ships, planes, troops, and bases—carrying out forward presence, crisis response, strategic deterrence, and sealift. They must now put these together to obtain the four key operational capabilities of littoral warfare: command, control, intelligence and surveillance, and communication; battlespace dominance; power projection; and force sustainment. The core of the new U.S. strategic concept is power projection, and it envisions naval forces directly leading Army and Air Force elements to influence events ashore, most probably in the Third World. And this navy must be cost effective.
Review
The book's value rests in the realistic framework it projects for achieving the more revolutionary change to expeditionary warfare it expouses....Hopefully, blue-water naval enthusiasts will not focus on the author's brown-water Coast Guard background, choosing instead to gain from his rich experience as a naval historian and his thought-provoking visions for the US Navy's future.Military Review
Synopsis
Projects the requirements for sea power in the next century.
About the Author
CHARLES W. KOBURGER, JR., is currently a consultant on maritime affairs.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Introduction
The Operational Environment Today and Tomorrow
Naval Expeditionary Forces
Surface Combatants
Maneuvering from the Sea
In Harm's Way
Signs of the Future
A Future Model
Inter-Service Cooperation
Summary and Conclusion
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index