Naval Revolutions Are Built Revolutions

A review of 'Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars' (336 pages)

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Military history YouTuber Bernhard Kast likes to say that “naval strategy is built strategy.” We could say the same of any revolution in naval strategy. Examining the last three major naval conflicts in history — the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and both World Wars — Vincent O'Hara and Leonard R. Heinz show that “new technologies do not materialize fully functional as from Aladdin’s lamp.” They are instead constructed with deliberation and planning, neither from the center outwards nor from the outside-in, but through the complex interaction of scientists, engineers, sailors, their admirals, and the politicians who must charge their taxpayers.

Published in 2022 by the Naval Institute Press, the book Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars examines the histories of mines and torpedoes (weapons), submarines and aircraft (platforms), as well as radio and radar (technologies), to reveal the underlying patterns of naval innovation. “History shows that a successful technology undergoes a process: invention, development, acceptance, deployment, and then a cycle of discovery, evolution, and exploitation. The capstone of this process is determining the technology’s best uses and then combining those with best practices for best results,” they write.

Thus “doctrine and training affect the use and usefulness of technology” more than the intentions of the inventor ever do. What matters is that the development process ends with sailors who know how to use their assigned technologies in combat. Building the system to fight in a battleship is equivalent to constructing the battleship. Navies have always been joined at the hip with governments and shipyards and contractors by this process. A revolutionary technology requires them all to change together. Failure in this complex endeavor creates conditions for strategic defeat.