Mind over matter? Multinational naval interoperability during Operation Iraqi Freedom

ABSTRACT

The increasing frequency of multinational operations has heightened the importance of interoperability. While human and cultural factors are only two pieces of the interoperability jigsaw they are of enduring significance. The cohesiveness of the relationship amongst the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Navy and the United States Navy during the 2003 Iraq War was underpinned by high levels of perceptive interoperability, which manifested itself in effective working relationships. That conflict demonstrated that while historical ties provided a foundation for cooperation, a number of multinational initiatives were undertaken to further enhance interoperability. This article addresses how such a high level of perceptive interoperability was achieved by examining the conduct of multinational exercises, the importance of personnel exchanges and the role of liaison officers, before considering the effect it had on the conduct of operations. The Iraq War demonstrated that cultural factors are at least as important as other facets of interoperability.     

The Royal Navy's Polaris lobby, 1955–62

This article examines the background to the Royal Navy's acquisition of Polaris. The conventional wisdom is that the Navy had little interest in Polaris, which was foisted on it upon the cancellation of Skybolt. Extensive use of files in the Public Record Office is made to mount the contrary argument, that the Admiralty had been interested in the submarine-launched ballistic missile since at least 1955, that there was widespread support for it among the Naval Staff, that a substantial amount of preparatory work was undertaken with the assistance of the US Navy, and that the naval staff were prepared to accept the deterrent role. Naval tactics – to play a waiting game and feign indifference – have contributed to the establishment of the orthodox interpretation, as has the view that the Navy was handicapped by the lack of a body of doctrine within which the deterrent role could be accommodated. The article shows that the orthodox account cannot be sustained by the evidence, which points to a naval triumph in terms of Whitehall politics and inter-service competition.     

Offensive defence in the Warsaw pact: Reinterpreting military doctrine

This essay examines the key role played by intelligence and deception in the interactive process of British and German preparations in the 1930s for U‐boat warfare. It argues that the Royal Navy (RN) employed the general perception of ASDIC (sonar) as an ‘antidote’ to the submarine to mislead potential foes about the state of its anti‐submarine defences. This British campaign of deception had a discernible impact. Before the outbreak of World War II, the German Navy failed to discover the realities behind ASDIC's image, and this intelligence failure helped to shape U‐boat policy.     

ANALYSING QUITS AND SEPARATIONS FROM THE ROYAL NAVY

Manning difficulties and retention of skilled personnel is a timely issue in the British armed forces, and especially in the all‐volunteer Royal Navy. Allied with difficulties of matching personnel numbers and posts, significant skill mismatches can take a long time to eradicate, with obvious financial and operational penalties. In the light of these factors, a holistic understanding of the exit behaviour of naval personnel is vital for naval manpower planners. This paper analyses ratings’ voluntary (quits) and involuntary (separation) exit patterns from the Royal Navy using an independent competing risks hazard regression analysis framework. The results show that both voluntary and involuntary exits are pro cyclical with respect to macroeconomic and labour market conditions for both male and female ratings. Male ratings are more likely to quit or separate due to a lack of promotion to higher ranks as compared with females. Male ratings are also more likely to quit as a result of a hectic operational tempo when compared with their female counterparts. Frequency of sea/shore deployments also seems to exert a significant effect with respect to quits and separation outcomes of both genders. In terms of marital status married males are less likely to quit compared with their unmarried male counterparts, whereas the opposite is the case for female ratings.     

舰炮制导弹药发展研究

从舰炮制导弹药的基本概念出发,结合其使命任务,对比中美两栖作战力量区别,指出发展低成本高精度制导兵器的必要性。总结当前国内外对制导弹药的研究现状,提取其关键技术,对比中外在顶层概念设计、系统交联、弹药实验测试等方面的发展差距,为下一步制导弹药的研究,提出了阶梯式、螺旋式发展、加强基础性研究工作、开展制导弹药协同控制技术研究等重要建议。     

Strategic and Budgetary Necessity,or Decision-making ‘Along the Grain’? The Royal Navy and the 1981 Defence Review

The 1981 Defence Review undertaken by John Nott as Secretary of State for Defence controversially and dramatically cut the capabilities of the Royal Navy’s surface fleet. Many of those involved in these decisions have emphasised the budgetary and politico-strategic drivers for these reductions in capability, and the first generation of academic analysis has broadly followed this position. However, recently released government and private archival sources demonstrate that Nott’s review was initially much more severe than thought, and that this was due as much to the presumptions and assumptions of the key decision makers as to any strategic or budgetary factors.     

Inter- and Intra-Service Rivalries in the Battle of the Atlantic

This article considers disputes the Royal Navy and Coastal Command had with Bomber Command, the Air Staff and supporters of strategic bombing over what was the ‘proper’ use of air power. The disputes centred on the provision of air support for the anti-submarine campaign in the Battle of the Atlantic. This article will argue that the balance was too much in favour of strategic bombing at the expense of the security of the Atlantic convoys, but that when corporate culture and grand strategy are considered, the reasoning behind such an imbalance becomes easier to comprehend.     

The rationalisation of warship building in the United Kingdom, 1945–2000

After the Second World War the Admiralty and shipbuilding industry agreed that the largest possible capacity for warship building should be maintained. This proved impossible as the Royal Navy struggled to evoke a strategy in the nuclear era and the price of increasingly complex vessels rose remorselessly. As the shipbuilding industry wilted in the 1960s in the face of international competition a process of natural selection was followed by increasing political intervention in the industry. Nationalisation in the 1970s aimed to preserve capacity and employment, policy aims which were reversed by privatisation in the 1980s and which, ultimately resulted in an oligopoly in the warship building sector.     

Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatening and aggregate shifts in power alone may not provoke counterbalancing behavior. In the 1930s, Britain balanced against the most threatening components of power: the German Luftwaffe and the threat of a knock-out air assault against the homeland, Japan's Imperial Navy and its threat to Britain's commercial trade routes and the Dominions in East Asia, and the Italian Navy and the threat to Britain's line of communication through the Mediterranean Sea to India and Asia. Given Britain's difficult financial circumstances, all other components of power, such as the army and the land components of power of Germany, Japan, and Italy were ranked as secondary in terms of its rearmament priorities. Thus, London was able to narrow the gap with Berlin in specific components of power of strategic importance such as aircraft production or to exceed Germany in other areas such as the Royal Navy and its battlefleet.     

Gorshkov's Gambit

This article is a portrait of Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, commander of the Soviet Navy for almost three decades, from 1956–85. The author, a retired US Navy admiral with a Harvard PhD in Russian studies who served as both defense and naval attaché in Moscow, draws on numerous face-to-face interactions with Gorshkov. He also explores Gorshkov's memoirs that were published recently in Russia but have not appeared in an English translation. The paper is not only a first-hand account of an important historical figure, but also a window into the world of military-to-military diplomacy and intelligence during the Cold War.     

ANALYSING DEFENCE DEPENDENCY: THE IMPACT OF THE ROYAL NAVY ON A SUB‐REGIONAL ECONOMY

This paper provides a methodology for estimating the economic impact of defence spending at a sub‐regional level. It does so by calculating the income and employment generated by Britain’s Royal Navy and associated defence activities in the City of Portsmouth and its surrounding area, during the financial year 2003–2004. In an era of military consolidation, the paper offers an insight into the multifaceted impact of defence‐related expenditure. Hence, it presents a generic framework that could prove useful to other researchers when seeking to measure the sub‐regional impact of naval, airforce and army facilities in other national contexts.     

Maritime Airpower in the Interwar Period: The Information Dimension

The impact of airpower on the conduct of naval operations was considerable. It affected the roles, perceived importance and composition of the battle fleet, but its transformational effect was gradual rather than instantaneous. Airpower played a crucial role in the information war that underlay maritime operations. Access to, and the exploitation of, information greatly influenced the way in which the Royal Navy managed the actual process of change, as institutional, cultural and political norms adapted to the new technological reality. The Admiralty's incomplete control of all aspects of maritime power does much to explain deficiencies in this process.     

‘Winston has gone mad’: Churchill,the British Admiralty,and the Rise of Japanese Naval Power

As Chancellor of the Exchequer during the late 1920s, Winston Churchill was at the center of British strategic decision making about how to respond to the naval challenge posed by Japan's rise as a rival sea power. Churchill downplayed the likelihood of war with Japan. The leadership of the Royal Navy disagreed: they saw Japan as a dangerous threat to the security of the British Empire. Examining this dispute between Churchill and the Admiralty highlights the awkward political, economic, and strategic tradeoffs confronting British leaders between the world wars.     

Britain's Great Security Mirage: The Royal Navy and the Franco-Russian Naval Threat, 1898–1906

This article focuses on the relationship between the threat perception analyses of the British Admiralty and the strategic orientation of the Royal Navy at the outset of the twentieth century. The current view is that this was an era when fear of France and Russia drove British naval policy. However, as this article will show, Britain's Naval Intelligence Department formed a low opinion of French and Russian naval capabilities at this time and this negative evaluation exerted considerable influence over decision making. The belief that, owing to multiple qualitative deficiencies, these powers could definitely be beaten in battle lessened the standing of the Franco-Russian naval challenge and freed the Admiralty to consider the danger posed by other possible enemies, most notably Germany.     

The 1907 Naval War Plans and the second Hague peace conference: A case of propaganda 1

The phenomenon of mutual sea denial had rendered offensive naval actions such as commercial blockade impossible in the narrow seas around Europe. Consequently, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher, abandoned commercial blockade for the safer option of interdicting enemy commerce on the high seas where the Royal Navy could control communications. The proposal to extend immunity to all private property at sea at the 1907 Hague Conference threatened this strategy. As part of a wider campaign to convince the British establishment to oppose immunity, Fisher created the 1907 Naval War Plans to directly influence Cabinet decision-making. Fisher's close involvement in the creation of the ‘Plans’ indicates that they are an expression of Fisher's strategic vision. Moreover, Fisher's attempt to influence the Cabinet asks questions of the bureaucratic decision-making process within the British establishment before 1914.     

基于粗糙集和TOPSIS的弹药目标匹配研究

针对多种弹药打击同一目标的弹种选取顺序问题,即弹药目标匹配顺序问题,从弹药毁伤和目标抗毁伤机理人手,构建弹药目标匹配指标体系,利用粗糙集理论约简弹药目标匹配指标体系并确定指标的客观权重,运用加权TOPSIS确定弹药目标综合匹配顺序,为最优火力分配决策提供了理论依据。     

The Needs of Political Policy versus the Reality of Military Operations: Royal Navy Opposition to the Arctic Convoys, 1942

It has become commonplace, especially in the post-Vietnam strategic environment, to quote Clausewitz's dictum that war is the continuation of policy by other means. We are told that military operations are dictated by, and must serve, clear political ends. Such thinking has been invoked to support everything from punitive strikes, to peacekeeping missions, to the ‘Powell’ doctrine and its political ‘exit strategies’, but at times political policy and military operations do not mix. In 1942 the Royal Navy bowed to political pressure and, against its collective better judgement, continued the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. These military operations culminated in the destruction of convoy PQ 17 in early July. This conflict between political policy and military strategy provides an object lesson of why in war issues of means and priorities must outweigh the importance of any given political policy.     

战时弹药供应协同调运模型研究

弹药协同调运是战时弹药保障工作中的重要环节,其协同调运的合理性将直接影响到弹药保障工作的顺利进行.针对弹药的调运问题,从战时技术实施与应用角度研究弹药的调运问题,以到达需求点的运输时间、弹药输送车数量以及弹药损失量为优化目标,建立一种多目标决策模型,为缩短运输时间、减少弹药输送车数量、提高安全到达需求点的弹药量提供一种实用的方法.     

弹药储存可靠性设计对策研究

从我军弹药储存可靠性设计现状出发，在深入分析某型弹药失效机理基础上，总结出了我军弹药产品储存性方面存在的质量问题；提出了弹药全系统相容的研究理念和储存性设计中的复合防护设计概念，并对如何提高弹药储存性能提出了建议。