The Influence of History

Two of the greatest navies in Europe have long been the British and the French. For most of their history, these two navies have been competitors, facing off in numerous wars from the Battle of Sluys in 1340 to the Attack on Mers-el-Kebir in 1940 (it is worth noting that, as was often the case in conflicts between these two great navies, the British triumphed in both the first and last of these actions). However, as Britain and France were eclipsed by rising powers outside of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale slowly became partners rather than rivals. From the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata in 1845 and the Second Opium War in 1856 to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British and French navies worked effectively together to project power abroad. Still, declining national strength during the Cold War saw both navies largely relegated to auxiliary forces under the umbrella of the United States Navy. While the Royal Navy saw a brief fli...

In flurry of articles surrounding last night's strikes on Syria, I noticed that a fairly important point has been largely missing from the coverage - it marked the first time France has fired naval land attack missiles in anger. Although the French naval contribution of just three missiles fired from the frigate Languedoc was rather small when compared to the dozens of Tomahawks fired from multiple American ships, it was still a major landmark for both the Marine Nationale and naval warfare as a whole. Despite the fact that the United States Navy first used land attack missiles to devastating effect during the Gulf War back in 1991, the rest of the world's navies have been remarkably slow to obtain this revolutionary capability. The Royal Navy was the second to do so, and fired land attack missiles at Kosovo in 1999. However, its capability has always been limited to a small number of submarine launched Tomahawks purchased from the United States. It was not until 2015, and ...