A Break in the Clouds: Learning Lessons From the Sea
Frank G. Hoffman, George P. Garrett
Learning lessons from past and current wars is a complicated endeavor, given observers’ personal and institutional preferences and other challenges. Nonetheless, Frank Hoffman and George P. Garrett argue that carefully drawn lessons based on access to more information and objective and rigorous analysis are critical in determining the course and speed of the defense establishment’s journey into the future. The authors consider how British and American observers drew lessons from the 1905 Battle of Tsushima between the Russian and Japanese navies and how naval analysts applied them to their own ideas of future naval warfare. They then look to the naval aspect of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and suggest that maritime forces should assess Ukraine's valiant efforts in the Black Sea, and carefully draw out key insights for future challenges.
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“… there is a break in the clouds: a small-scale conflict occurs somewhere and gives you a “fix” by showing whether certain weapons and techniques are effective or not; but it is always a doubtful fix.”1
The failure to learn from contemporary warfare “is in many ways the most puzzling of all military misfortunes.”2 But one historian disagrees, finding that learning from the experience of others is actually harder, since the “investigatory difficulty of foreign wars complicates accurately capturing what happened.”3 We underestimate that challenge. The U.S. military does not have a stellar track record in absorbing lessons from its observation of past conflicts. Its ability to learn from the Russo-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War, and Yom Kippur War are the subject of scholarly criticism.4
This article, centered around a war over a century ago, shows that learning is hard work but small wars can provide invaluable guideposts that provide a “fix” to confirm or alter the direction of the modernization initiatives of military forces. We believe the U.S. Navy can learn a lot from ongoing wars such as the present contest in the Black Sea and gain more conclusive insights than from studies and simulations.
https://tnsr.org/2024/06/a-break-in-the-clouds-learning-lessons-from-the-sea/
