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Naval warfare - Modern naval tactics

Naval warfare - Modern naval tactics: Encyclopedia II - Naval warfare - Modern naval tactics

As with all other forms of battle modern naval tactics are reliant on fire and movement. The effective delivery of firepower results from scouting and assumption of good firing positions. Movement is a large component of modern combat; a naval fleet can travel hundreds of kilometres in a day. In naval warfare, the key is to detect the enemy while avoiding detection. Much time and effort is spent to deny the enemy the chance to detect your forces. There is also the concept of battle space: a zone around a naval for ...

Naval warfare: Encyclopedia II - Naval warfare - Modern naval tactics

Naval warfare - Modern naval tactics

Main article: Modern naval tactics

As with all other forms of battle modern naval tactics are reliant on fire and movement. The effective delivery of firepower results from scouting and assumption of good firing positions. Movement is a large component of modern combat; a naval fleet can travel hundreds of kilometres in a day.

In naval warfare, the key is to detect the enemy while avoiding detection. Much time and effort is spent to deny the enemy the chance to detect your forces.

There is also the concept of battle space: a zone around a naval force within which a commander is confident of detecting, tracking, engaging and destroying threats before they pose a danger. This is why a navy prefers the open sea. The presence of land and the bottom topology of an area compress the battle space, limit the opportunities to maneuver, make it easier for an enemy to predict the location of the fleet and make the detection of enemy forces more difficult. In shallow waters, the detection of submarines and mines is especially problematic.

One scenario that was the focus of American naval planning during the Cold War was a conflict between two modern and well equipped fleets on the high seas, the clash of the United States and the Soviet Union. The main consideration is for Carrier Battle Groups (CVBGs).

In modern naval combat there is the potential of a deadly strike being launched from up to 600 nautical miles (1,100 km) away. This is a huge area to scout. The double-edged answer to this is electronic warfare.

Submarines are the greatest threat to offensive CVBG operations due to the stealth of modern submarines (anechoic coatings, near-silent magnetohydrodynamic drives etc.), which is the submarine's sole advantage. The move towards shallow-water operations has greatly increased this threat. The cherry-on-top is that even the suspicion of a submarine threat forces a fleet to commit resources to removing it as the consequences of an undetected submarine are too great.

The key threat in modern naval combat is the missile. This can be delivered from surface, subsurface or air units. With missile speeds ranging up to Mach 4 the engagement time may be only seconds. The key to successful defence is thus to destroy the launching platform before it fires, thus removing a number of missile threats in one go. This is not always possible so the AAW resources need to be balanced between the outer and inner air battles.