Two perspectives on littoral warfare

ABSTRACT The world’s littorals is an important theater for all sorts of human interaction. So, also for naval warfare, which increasingly has led defense planners to focus on littoral capabilities rather than on Mahanian high-sea battles. We address the question of what littoral warfare means for different types of states. To that end, we develop a set of opposing ideal-types with regards to each type’s operational environment, aims, methods, and means for littoral warfare. We then use these ideal-types to analyze the naval doctrines of Sweden, the UK, and the US. This comparison generates some interesting results. For blue-water navies, littoral warfare is an additional burden and a high-risk endeavor, since the littoral, which the planning concerns is somebody else’s. For the small coastal state, correspondingly, littoral warfare is the sole purpose of its navy, and it can focus all its resources there as well as on cooperation with its air force and army, which are necessarily nearby. For blue-water navies, the objective of littoral warfare is to defeat the enemy, whereas for the small coastal state, it is deterrence.