Are Navies missing the Boat?

The focus in peace time has been efficiency. This focus results in lots of capabilities being embedded in a single vessel. In peace time the voice of ‘soft power’ creates a desire for larger and ever more impressive flag waving vessels. Nations also have a lower risk appetite in peacetime resulting in trading towards higher survivability over offensive firepower. A focus on individual ‘survivability’ also leads to larger and more complex vessels. Such complacency and economics has also resulted in a reduced focus on war stocks and logistics as resources are diverted to construction. ?

Navies have got used to these large and complex fleet assets that symbolise capital intensity and exquisite engineering. ?As a result of falling investment, defence inflation and lower economies of scale, the fleet has continually shrunk over the decades. ?The result is a inevitably smaller ‘fleet population’.

Any ecologist will tell you that small populations are very vulnerable and it doesn't take much of a catastrophe to make them extinct. In evolution such vulnerable populations can be overwhelmed by the disruption of a competing species better able to adapt to the new environmental demands. This much repeated evolutionary tale is being played out in the Black Sea where a larger population of aggressive, smaller, cheaper and more easily replenished suite of naval assets have dominated its larger, less numerous and expensive prey.

The revolutionary leap is towards smaller, cheaper, quickly replenishable fleet of boats/assets that win battles by being able to take higher risks, distribute their sensors and firepower, and can be ordered quickly and replenished at short notice. Such assets demonstrate their superior ‘survivability’ by measuring it across their whole population rather than on an individual basis. It is mass that makes them less vulnerable overall and more easily reconfigured. They are also less vulnerable because they have greater natural stealth and because they are not routinely maintained in fixed infrastructure such as bespoke berths and drydocks.

This revolutionary leap towards mass is also able to assist in winning wars by gaining a competitive economic advantage and drawing on a wider industrial base. Many regional navies have aligned themselves to take advantage of the power of mass produced and powerful ‘pocket ships’.

Global navies should now consider whether they are missing the boat. Perhaps a larger 'mixed fleet' is the better evolutionary approach. The esteemed Royal Navy has a history of understanding the natural world (HMS Beagle 2nd voyage) which is why we should have faith in their future choices in the Defence Review.

OCEA global experiences in the export markets suggests that smaller and more lethal warships will drive innovation. At OCEA we are proud to be energetically engineering rather than genetically engineering that future.

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