The Influence of History

Moskva listing and on fire before she sank Late on April 14, 2022, the Russian cruiser Moskva sank while under tow, making her the largest warship lost in wartime since the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands War almost exactly 40 years before. While the details of the sinking are unlikely to be cleared up anytime soon, and the war in Ukraine remains far too confused for us to draw any tactical conclusions, the event is far too significant for us to ignore entirely, and perhaps there are some relevant lessons to be found. What Do We Know About the Loss of Moskva? To begin with, we must examine what we know about the loss of Moskva , which is, unfortunately, very little. On April 13, the Russians announced that Moskva had suffered an explosion and that her crew had been evacuated. On the same day, the Ukrainians announced that they had attacked her with Neptune anti-ship missiles. While it is probable that Moskva was indeed damaged through enemy act

Our First Look at the United States Navy's DDG(X) concept The first public concepts for the United States Navy's DDG(X) program have been unveiled, and they reveal quite a lot about the Navy's thinking on this critical program as well as the future of ship design and fleet architecture. Overall, the concept (the images are quite clearly not a final or even preliminary design) has a lot of potential and could shape up to be an excellent successor to the current fleet, but it remains to be seen whether that potential will actually materialize. In many ways the DDG(X) concept attempts to straddle a fine line, paving the way for the introduction of revolutionary new systems while simultaneously appearing extremely conservative and evolutionary. It is understandable why the Navy chose this approach, but it there is no guarantee the gamble will pay off. The State of the Surface Fleet Before diving into the details of the DDG(X) concept, we should take a moment to consider where

There is a cliched saying that, "Amateurs study tactics while professionals study logistics." But as there is growing interest and debate about the future of naval warfare between great powers, the influence of logistics appears to have been relegated to an afterthought. The world has not seen a full-scale naval war for almost 80 years, and technology has changed dramatically since then. In fact, technology continues changing at a breakneck pace, and numerous game-changers currently wait in the wings, ready to take their position on center stage. But as we ponder the ramifications of hypersonics, lasers, railguns, cyberwar, space-based weapons, and the whole gamut of unmanned systems, we need to remember that no amount of future weapons will eliminate the need for logistics. For the USN, logistics is a particularly critical need given America's chosen strategy of operating forward and challenging the enemy in their own backyard. However, as the number of speeches, reports

HMS Spey , the latest addition to the Royal Navy. While often underappreciated, offeshore patrol vessels like her are critical to projecting naval power at home and around the world. World Navies in the New Year For a much-delayed first post of the new year, we have the official Influence of History  2021 World Navy Rankings. As always, this ranking system attempts to provide an overview of the relative naval power of the world's nations by listing their naval inventories and providing a somewhat relative points value. Because of the contentious nature of warship classification, I have resorted to my own fairly simplistic, but universal, system that classifies ships based on size and type. Points are determined based on the number and type of ships. While my system does attempt to capture total national naval power by including coast guard ships and other government vessels, it does not count coastal craft outside of missile boats and minesweepers. The points system has remained fa

All non-US carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft (click to enlarge) The aircraft carrier has been the ultimate expression of naval power since World War II. Able to engage air, surface, and subsurface targets from hundreds of miles away, the carrier is a highly versatile class of warship and even a small number of carriers can turn the tide of an entire war. However, these ships (and the aircraft that they carry) are extremely expensive and only a handful of navies have ever operated them. Since the end of World War II, only 14 nations have operated a carrier with fixed-wing aircraft and no more than 9 nations have done so simultaneously. The above chart covers all non-US aircraft carriers operating fixed-wing aircraft from 1951-2020. I have not only excluded helicopter carriers, but also attempted to avoid counting commissioned ships that did not have available aircraft (for instance, I did not count the Soviet Kiev-class ships after 1991, when their Yak-38 fighters were phased out)