Naval strategy, naval power: uses & abuses

[Fuchs]

It wasn't abut fighting. It was about having a big stick in great power gaming.

Few navies have ever built beautiful and impressive battleships or aircraft carriers during peacetime for risking them in battle. Such ships are meant for impressing foreign leaders and for the occasional bullying of a small power, not for peer2peer slaughtering.

[carl]

It wasn't abut fighting. It was about having a big stick in great power gaming.

Few navies have ever built beautiful and impressive battleships or aircraft carriers during peacetime for risking them in battle. Such ships are meant for impressing foreign leaders and for the occasional bullying of a small power, not for peer2peer slaughtering.

What good is a big stick if people aren't convinced you will use it if the need arises?

Those ships don't get risked in battle very often because big naval fights don't happen very often. When the big fights happen the ships sail into harms way.

[Fuchs]

Who says the people who count (politicians) don't believe that capital ships would be risked in battle?


By the way; capital ship employment has often been very careful.
See WWI sea battles, WW2 Mediterranean battleship employment, Battle of Midway, Russian de facto non-use of its battleships in both World Wars.

[carl]

You carefully employ all your power. It is foolish to do otherwise. It might be more helpful to look at how many of the ships that started the war were still afloat at the end.