By James R. Holmes
By using geography to their advantage, ASW forces can seize the offensive—for a change.
Methinks there’s a coda to my last column, which commented on a recent Naval Institute Proceedingsessay on “full-spectrum anti-submarine warfare.” Namely this: the author, retired submarine skipper Captain William Toti, adds a wrinkle to Admiral J.C. Wylie’s concept of “sequential” and “cumulative” operations. By harnessing nautical geography imaginatively, that is, commanders can compel enemy subs to choose between risking detection and destruction as they transit predictable waterways and abandon their hunting grounds on the open sea.
Either way, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces come out ahead.
Sequential operations are linear in nature. They generally proceed from point A to point B on the map, with each tactical action following the last in time as well as space. The Allies’ post-Normandy drive across Europe, for example, was largely sequential. The vectors tracing ground-force advances converged mainly on Berlin, the seat of Nazi power. It took hard fighting to execute the land campaign, granted. But the idea behind it was straightforward and easily intelligible. Such campaigns can yield decisive results.
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