Island Naval Warfare

Pre-WWII, naval analysts envisioned open ocean clashes between mammoth battle lines of opposing battleships.  Cruisers with float planes were designed to operate as far ranging scouts for the battle line, seeking out the enemy’s battle fleet.  Destroyers would support the battle line by launching torpedo attacks and defending against the enemy’s torpedo attacks.  The vision was well understood, doctrine was well established, and the concept was extensively practiced.
 
Of course, reality came and none of that materialized.  Instead, the Navy found themselves fighting as small, disjointed units amongst the Solomon Islands, lost in the darkness, blinded by the mass of the islands, utterly confused, and unable to form a battle line that lasted more than a minute when combat began.
 
What were a few of the relevant factors that rendered the pre-war vision and scenarios irrelevant?
 
Detection – Detection of the enemy, whether visual or radar, was reduced to very short ranges by darkness and by the blocking mass of the islands.  Visual detection of enemy ships was severely hindered by the blocking mass of nearby islands with ships either hidden behind the islands or obscured on the near side by the background of the dark mass of the islands.  Similarly, the islands cast concealing radar shadows and returned clutter which hid or obscured targets and rendered radar far less effective than was hoped.
 
In one notable example, US ships were fired on by Japanese destroyers and the US returned fire against a nearby island, believing that the flashes from the Japanese ship’s guns were actually land artillery batteries!
 
Range – The impaired detection meant that engagement ranges were incredibly short compared to the extended ranges envisioned pre-war.  The short range had major implications for torpedo and gunnery tactics, none of which had been envisioned or practiced pre-war.
 
Uncertainty – The difficulty in detection led to a great deal of uncertainty in target identification – what we now refer to as Identification Friend or Foe (IFF).  Many firing opportunities were passed by due to uncertainty about target identification.  The well known axiom, ‘attack effectively, first’, was extremely difficult to implement.  The lack of close combat doctrine contributed to the uncertainty.  Having no viable doctrine, uncertainty abounded;  no commander had any solid expectation of what other friendly ships would do and where they would go and so they were often forced to hold fire due to uncertain identification.  This cost us badly on numerous occasions.
 
 
Given that our pre-war exercises and planning (War Plan Orange, for example) correctly anticipated an island hopping strategy, it is baffling that we didn’t make the logical conclusion that we needed to practice naval combat in close proximity to islands … but we didn’t and so we had to learn on the fly.  Learning on the fly in combat is the most expensive and deadly way to learn and, unsurprisingly, we paid a heavy price for the knowledge.
 

 
Today
 
Bolstered, now, by a thorough understanding of history and its lessons, we can turn our attention to current events and a war with China.  It is quite likely that we will be fighting amongst the islands surrounding the East and South China Seas and yet we’re practicing for long range missile engagements in open ocean.  Does this sound eerily familiar?  We’re repeating the mistake of WWII by failing to train for naval combat amongst islands.
 
To offer some context, Wikipedia notes that Indonesia consists of 17,000 islands and the Philippines have 7,641 islands.  Given that those are likely combat areas, wouldn’t it make sense to anticipate island naval combat and begin training for it?
 
Of course, it’s possible that a war with China will avoid any proximity to islands (although that seems like wishful thinking more than reality) but we should, nevertheless, train for it.  If it doesn’t happen it’s no big deal and if it does, we’ll be prepared.
 
How will the various island factors impact naval combat today?
 
Radar – The physics of radar haven’t changed.  Islands will still cast radar shadows and generate cluttered returns that will hide or obscure targets.  Recall the supposed land-based, anti-ship missile attacks directed against the Burke class destroyer, USS Mason?  As it turned out, we couldn’t even determine whether attacks had even occurred (they didn’t!), likely due to the interference/obscuration of the land mass. 
 
Detection ranges will still be far shorter than expected.  Incoming missiles, especially sea-skimmers, will be hidden in radar shadows.  The same islands that hide us, hide the enemy.
 
Of course, no sane commander will be using radar, anyway, so radar detection will be an infrequent occurrence.
 
Optical – The wise naval commander will be using passive sensors, for the most part, and islands still obscure targets on both the near and far side of the land mass.
 
Missiles – Islands will degrade missile effectiveness.  Ships sailing close inshore will be obscured by the surrounding land mass and modern missiles will likely lack the ability to discriminate a ship from a rocky outcropping, atoll, or other mass.  To the best of my knowledge, no navy or manufacturer has considered missile performance near islands.  We need to conduct realistic testing of missiles in proximity to islands and find out how well they can identify and acquire targets obscured by land masses.
 
Islands will block missile approaches.  A sea skimming missile (which most modern anti-ship missiles are) will be unable to attack a target on the far side of an island or will have to take an altered path to navigate around the island to approach the target.  We need to factor this into our combat tactics.
 
UAVs – UAVs will be affected by islands.  They’ll have to fly higher, linger longer to search and clear/identify targets near land, compensate for island-blocked communications, etc.  UAVs may also take advantage of islands by hiding in their shadows and background.  A UAV operating against the background of an island mass may well be able to ‘approach’ a target quite closely without being detected.  Again, we haven’t made any attempt to study UAV operations near islands and develop appropriate offensive and defensive doctrine and tactics.
 
 
Conclusion
 
There is every reason to expect that we’ll find ourselves operating in, around, and near islands and there is no reason to believe that the various WWII factors that made such operations dangerous, difficult, and chaotic won’t still apply.  Detections and engagements will still be sudden, unexpected, and short ranged.  We desperately need to begin training for such operations. 
 
We have no idea how missiles will behave near islands.  We have no idea what doctrine and tactics will prove successful.  We can prepare for island naval combat or we can be surprised and pay the horrific price to learn on the fly.
 
Assuming the anticipated scenarios occur, one blindingly obvious conclusion is that large caliber guns will be of immense value.  With short detection ranges, large caliber guns can establish and sustain fire that missiles can’t match and can do so far more cost effectively.  As our Ukraine donations have amply demonstrated, we’ll run out of high end missiles very quickly.  Large caliber guns and cheap (free on a relative basis!) shells will seem a godsend, at that point.
 
Hand in hand with large caliber guns is armor.  Ships that can absorb damage and stay in the fight (a Burke cannot) will be the difference between victory and defeat.
 
Bear in mind that we aren’t just talking about opposing ships being nose to nose like they were at Guadalcanal.  The scenario could be an anti-ship attack from a hundred miles away, directed towards a ship in or near the first island chain islands.  All the factors we discussed apply.  How will the missiles identify valid targets?  Will the missiles need to be ‘waypointed’ around various islands?  Will the target ships be effectively hidden by the surrounding islands?  Will terminal guidance be required?  We need to understand naval combat in and amongst islands.
 
We’re repeating the mistakes of WWII by failing to prepare for combat scenarios that are likely to materialize and focusing exclusively on open ocean scenarios that are less likely.