Combat operations at sea

This chapter and Chapter 7 focus on combat operations at sea. Chapter 8 examines combat operations from the sea. As will be seen this is rather an arbitrary distinction and, in practice, the boundaries between the two are necessarily blurred. It is best not to think of them as entirely separate categories. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some useful generalisations about activities at sea and from the sea, and this approach does provide a means of breaking down these related activities into manageable parts. It is worth noting that numerous commentators have adopted this distinction. Gorshkov, for example, argued that naval art was divided into two parts: one that focused on the actions of fleet versus fleet (at sea); and the second that related to operations of fleet against the shore (from the sea). ¹ Today, NATO maritime doctrine makes a similar distinction between the applications of maritime power at sea and from the sea, and this approach is also reflected in the published doctrine of a number of navies. ²