Are blue water conflicts a thing of the past?
 

I'm interested in people's idea's on what the conceivable naval conflicts in the near term would be.

Well, if u look at it this way, all of Earth's superpowers lie on oceans, and considering China has quite a large navy with submarine forces, both SSN's and SSBN,s the US Navy, if they ever enter a conflict with the Chinese, will need to use theirs, as well as their aircraft carriers to launch sorties, and destroyers and missile ships to attack their respectives on the Chinese side, so in my opinion, naval warfare will always play a major part in war.

Well, the question isn't whether or not Naval battles can occur, but *where* they will occur. Rather in large maneuvers far away from the coastline in waters that are thousands of feet deep, or whether they will be close in battles, just a hundred or so miles from the coast as the navy pushes into shallow waters...

For example. The USN activity in Iraq (in the Persian Gulf) can be considered a shallow water op. Relatively close in a shallow body of water. Consequently, the old USSR vs USA scenarios, for example battles in the GUIK gap, can be considered deep water ops in relatively open ocean.

So the question is whether or not all future battles will be "Persian gulf style", that is, in shallow waters near coastlines, or whether or not a deep water conflict is still conceivable. Both will involve the Navy equally.

The Chinese are building 15 subs a year.

The US is building one.

:hmm:

I would say that depends on the opponents and especially the area of operations.

If one party needs to ship lots of stuff over the ocean, maybe even in convoys then the likelihood for blue water battles considerably goes up (if the opponent has blue water capable forces). So I would say it depends ... in a hypothetical fight between China and America I would put some money down on the increase of blue water battles. On the other hand in a fight like Iran vs. America it would most certainly be restricted to Brown Water / Coastal Ops (with the odd exception of course).

Bottom Line : Who knows ...

I've heard sentiment that the US and China will never have open conflict since they are so economically intertwined... it would be like lumberjacks going to war with woodworkers... they need each other too much.

then again... all it would take is one ultra-nationalist pyscho to take power...

I sort of agree with the idea that the US and China won't fight, for a couple of reasons. Chief among them is, there's not any good reason to. Yeah, yeah, Taiwan, I know....but no one ever accused the Chinese of being stupid.

What the Chinese are aiming at is exactly what the US has enjoyed in the western hemisphere since the advent of the Monroe Doctrine: regional hegemony. They're telling other imperialist nations to stay out of their backyard, just like the US tells nations to stay out of the western hemisphere. As long as they refrain from overturning free governments or exporting human rights abuses I'm not sure the US has any moral basis for interfering in their peaceful economic and/or military expansion.

In short, they're doing the same dang thing we have done for over a century...how the hell do we get off complaining about it?

It really depends on what you mean by "opened ocean." All naval warfare is ultimately intended to influence events on land, and it always has been. These days that's by making strikes with aircraft and cruise missiles, landing Marines and SOF, raiding supply routes and commerce, and by delivering strikes with ballistic missiles. Since events at sea are driven by events on land, the tendancy is for war at sea to almost always be off the coast of somewhere.

It seems to me that "blue water" conflicts mean different things to different people. To ASW people, it usually means deep enough to have at least one reliable convergence zone. Well... there's places off the coast of Taiwan and Guam where that's the case. In that sense, in a hypothetical conflict with China, there might be "blue water" engagements tomorrow.

And to make things really interesting, Putin is really not a nice fellow and a resurgent Russia (the conflict nobody wants to think about anymore) lead by politician trying to re-establish the former Soviet empire, albeit with a capitalist bend, would be an interesting problem, I think. I dunno... though, the Cold War was so much more interesting than conflicts in the present day. Don't you think?

I think the complaining really stems from a since of paranoia, the idealogy is so different... I still remember the Beijing (sp?) massacre where in the face of a peaceful protest the military opened up automatic machine gun fire on crowds of teenagers... with military grade hollow-point bullets even. That "I exist to serve the collective" ideology is like the RL Star Trek Borg.... and with the individualist ideology here in American we're bound to always have a baseline of suspicion/chargin...

So we cover up our suspicious with complaining and protest.

Some think that China will eventually have democratic elections... but the last attempt (a couple of years ago) was denied... if/when it happens it won't be anytime soon.

In the next 15-20 years I would say yes, beyond that I don't know.

The fact that if any nation invaded i mean big nation it would be open ocean, lets say the US tried invading russia But not nuclear, the russians would meet the americans some where near the GIUK gap so that would be open ocean.

Its derelict yes but out right gone no i doubt it will ever be, even though it could just be two ships passing and one fires at the other thats an open ocean battle.

From all the hours of playing DW, it seems like the most interesting part of the Cold War was really the parity that existed. Like two title weight contenders in a big title fight... best of the best going at it. Otherwise, the technology gap is really unchallenging with kills per platform pretty one-sided.

I think two super powered forces in coastal waters (USN vs European Coastal defenses would be the only real parity I can think us) would probably be the most interesting of all scenarios.

That's not necessarily the case, though. There's ways to beat the technology gap. Sometimes it's the crudest attacks that are the most difficult to defeat. Small boat swarms, for example. A surface combattant and his helos might be able to blast a bunch of them, but the one you miss is the one loaded with explosives. That will sink or put a warship out of action. Support them with shore based ASCMs or from missile boats and you've got a potentially lethal force. Try doing a swarm of boghammers, where random ones have a script to do a suicide attack, support them with shore based ASCMs and missile boats against a pair of FFGs protecting a super tanker. The super tanker almost always takes a pounding, if you don't know which boghammers are supposed to go for the tanker and which are supposed to go for the FFG. They can also take out your helos.

The other thing that makes it difficult for us is that to win we have to really WIN. It's sufficient in a lot of cases, though, for potential opponents to simply not lose. For example, Hezbollah v. Israel. Israel blew the snot out of Hezbollah, but in the end, Hezbollah still exists so they call it a win, in spite of taking terrible losses. That's a really tough problem. Nobody really understands how to fight these sorts of shadow organizations with significant military capability. The solution to these kinds of problems (if there is one) almost certainly lies in diplomatic and political solutions rather than military confrontations, which seem to only strengthen these sorts of groups even if, from a military perspective, they lost the fight.

All of this is really not captured by most wargames. It's hard to because when you try to capture that aspect of things, it usually says more about the person making the model than it does about the actual situation. I mean... think about it, how do you model say... a hypothetical US intervention in a genocidal civil war like Rwanda. It's easy to model the battles or the logistics, you could even capture things like getting relief to refugees and quantify things like the number of refugees processed. The political implications of all this is tough to wrap your brain around in a computer model, though. I think a wargame like this could be really interesting, but how to do it is really an opened question.

I don't see it. They just don't have (need or want) the capability to defeat a superpower.

Superpowers doesn't seem like the biggest enemies nowadays anyway.

A navy is essentially just a few things:

• Means of Power Projection (and EU doesn't score high on a military imperialism scale)
• Defense against seaborne invasion (in EU's case, against whom?)
• Naval domain Police force (In adequately protected waters, pirates are a non-problem)

When your opponent gets too weak in comparison, they switch to tactics appropriate for that. (Reference: pretty much every war involving the US, including as patron, of late)

Of those who have an interest in harming/invading/whatever EU, who has a navy to put up a reasonable fight against the navy EU does have? I believe they're spending their money mainly on land and air forces instead - they are more important, and (for the EU in their strategic position) far more cost efficient.

Probably. Just educated guesses based on assumptions based on what little data I do pick up. Or something like that :D


A navy means little if you don't have an army. Unless you have only sea in your territory, and noone has colonized the seas yet.