Naval Problem Research Articles

River Flotillas in Support of Offensive Ground Operations: The Soviet Dnieper River Flotilla Experience

ABSTRACTLarge rivers and lakes have served as major arteries of industry and commerce, defensive barriers, lines of communication, and avenues of advance. These bodies of water have been and are prime factors in European warfare. Armies are more accustomed to solving the problem of crossing rivers rather than controlling stretches or the entirety of the river or lake. Yet control of the river or lake can be more decisive to a campaign than a crossing. Large rivers rise also to the level of a naval problem. Armies should interact closely with brown-water or green-water navies as they attempt to control the important inland waterways. There are almost no contemporary studies that illuminate this important operational environment in the European theater. However, the Soviet experience in WWII does offer a rich examination and one that offers lessons for consideration today. This study examines the interactions of the Soviet Dniepr River Flotilla and Red Army during Operation Bagration in World War II and draws applicable lessons for the present. The lessons of this campaign are still studied in Russian military academies and colleges and are applied in active training today.

Corporate naval supply in England’s commercial empire, 1600–1760

Britain’s imperial and commercial success rested on maritime links. Whether trading wool across the Channel to Europe, seeking spices in South Asia or importing sugar from the Caribbean, shipping was an essential resource. Yet, to undertake these trades, merchants required naval supplies – finished ships, timber to build them and stores to fill them – that were not always easily accessible. This challenge was particularly apparent in the early seventeenth century for trading corporations whose specific needs demanded innovative approaches to the naval supply problem. This article examines the responses of English corporations to the challenge of supplying its international shipping by focusing on activities on each side of the Atlantic. First, it assesses the development of the East India Company’s docks at Blackwall and Dundaniel, before turning to a detailed study of ship-building and supply in Virginia and New England. In doing so, this article highlights the importance of naval supply to Britain’s north Atlantic empire, both in terms of the rhetorical support for empire and the economic incentives of participants. This reveals how traditional interpretations of Britain’s naval development have too often focused on state-driven activities (particularly from the very end of the seventeenth century) and failed to examine the complex, sometimes chaotic attempts by private individuals and corporations to overcome the naval supply challenges common to this early period of globalisation.

INVESTIGATION OF ISSUES OF MILITARYMARITIME POLICY OF KAISEROV GERMANY IN THE CONTEXT OF DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET HISTORICAL SCIENCE IN 1918-1920-S.

The paper briefly examines the main points of studying the problems of the naval policy of Kaiser Germany against the backdrop of the emergence of a new academic science in the Soviet Union. Particular attention is paid to transformations in historical knowledge. The role of methodology in the development and organization of scientific work, and the creation of educational infrastructure are emphasized. However, it is noted that in the first postrevolutionary years (1918-1920), the methodology of Marxism-Leninism, although it was a guiding factor in scientific knowledge, was forced to put up with the neighborhood of old pre-revolutionary methods. This led to a certain pluralism of opinions in the vein of one formal method of scientific work. These circumstances made it possible to take a fresh look at the picture of the naval policy of the German Empire before the First World War. Moreover, under these conditions, the source base of the research was replenished. It included archival material, as well as translated and memoir literature. As a result of the analysis of these sources, Russian scientists in the years 1918-1920. Could present their original view of the naval problem in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the main attention of the authors was focused on the consideration of the two directions of the naval aspirations of the Kaiser's Reich - the colonial and the development of German-English naval antagonism.

Understanding lifecycle cost trade-offs for naval vessels: minimising production, maintenance, and resistance

ABSTRACTCurrent optimisers struggle to explore the multi-disciplinary trade-space that defines vessel lifecycle cost. This paper tests an enhanced multi-objective collaborative optimiser on a three-objective hull and structural lifecycle costing problem. The optimiser extends multi-disciplinary collaborative optimisers by including goal-programming and a novel genetic algorithm at the discipline level. The optimiser finds the trade-space between vessel resistance, production cost, and structural maintenance cost. Simultaneous changes to the hullform geometry and structural scantlings are used to explore this design space. The approach is demonstrated on a naval optimisation problem. With fixed maintenance schedules, the trade-space is shown to be steeply walled. This topology indicates that single-discipline optimisation for lifecycle cost may lead to large increases in lifecycle cost for the disciplines not considered. In conclusion, multi-disciplinary optimisation is shown to be a useful tool for addressing lifecycle costing during design.

From the Archives: A Lady Codebreaker Speaks: Joan Murray, the Bombes and the Perils of Writing Crypto-History From Participants' Accounts

A declassified 1970s article by Joan Murray, the World War II–Cold War British codebreaker who worked on the German naval Enigma problem, and who was engaged to Alan Turing, gives some new insights into the battle against the U-boat Enigma. As important, in the light of documents released by the British and the American since the 1990s, the article shows the ganders in using a participant's memories as final evidence. Although privy to the secrets of Bletchley Park, Murray was, for example, unaware of the near equal power of England's own four-wheel Bombes compared to those designed in America.

Time delay estimation for passive sonar signal processing

An overview of applied research in passive sonar signal processing estimation techniques for naval systems is presented. The naval problem that motivates time delay estimation is the source state estimation problem. A discussion of this problem in terms of estimating the position and velocity of a moving acoustic source is presented. Optimum bearing and range estimators are presented for the planar problem and related to the optimum time delay vector estimator. Suboptimum realizations are considered together with the effects of source motion and receiver positional uncertainty.

II.—Simulation of Anti-collision Problems

The object of this paper is to describe how anticollision simulation is employed at H.M.S. Dryad, the Royal Navy School of Navigation. The methods described are those used in the Navy but this paper has no specific military slant, nor do the anti-collision problems studied at Dryad spring exclusively from the naval environment. Ship safety is one of the fundamentals of seamanship where the naval and mercantile problem is the same; the Navy does not however suffer the same manpower limitations on board ship.

The Procurement of Oarsmen for French Galleys, 1660-1748

THE architects of French naval expansion in the seventeenth century were deeply impressed with the importance of the oar-driven vessel. The galley was widely considered indispensable an instrument of war; it had played a central role in the naval history of the Mediterranean. Power and prestige were associated with the possession of galleys, and Mediterranean traditions of maritime pageantry and glory were inseparable from the oar. T'he French had only to look about them to see that every Mediterranean power of any consequence possessed at least a squadron of galleys. Spanish galleys in particular merited their attention, because Spain was the most formidable galley power on the Mediterranean littoral and a dangerous neighbor for France. Cardinal Richelieu's apprehensions about Spain led him to urge the construction of no less than thirty galleys.' Jean-Baptiste Colbert actually built such a fleet. His son the Marquis de Seignelay, succeeding him in the ministry, increased that fleet to over forty, for he was convinced, he said in I689, that the construction of galleys was as important for the Royal service that of vessels.2 Given the esteem in which the galley was held, the procurement of men to serve galley oars was important, and a naval problem probably reached its climax for the F'rench while Colbert and his son were at the helm in the Ministry of Marine. The evolution of this manpower procurement problem can be traced and reasonably well illustrated with the data drawn from archival sources in France. The story has two distinct facets, reflecting the fact that French galley oarsmen were ordinarily of two types, slaves and forgats. The slaves were purchased in the markets of Mediterranean Europe, hence there is a wealth of information about them and about their procurement in the correspondence of the French consuls who served commission buyers of slaves for the Corps des Galeres. On the other hand, the decisions and correspondence of French ministers and judicial officials can be used to throw light on the

Blood Transfusion as a Naval Problem

Blood Transfusion as a Naval Problem

The Unsolved Naval Problems of the Pacific

R. F. W. EGGLESTON, Chairman of the Australian Branch of the Institute of Relations, and former Minister of Railways for the State of Victoria, writing on Disarmament and the Pacific in the December, 1930, issue of PACIFIC AFFAIRS, advances two theses-first, that disarmament is both a world-wide and a regional problem, and second, that the problem should, in so far as it is peculiar to and primarily affects the regions, be discussed at the conferences of the Institute of Relations. On the first point there can, I presume, be no two opinions. I, for one, am in entire agreement with Mr. Eggleston. The second, as Mr. Eggleston himself recognizes, is open to controversy. In the present paper, then, I shall refrain from discussing whether or not the conference of the Institute could profitably and effectively deal with disarmament, but shall confine myself to the consideration of such aspects of the disarmament problem as are peculiar to the regions. Nor do I propose to cover all branches of armament, because the nations bordering upon the Pacific, except Japan and China, are separated from one another by vast expanses of water, and are therefore primarily interested in the navy as an international armament problem. And the naval problem in the resolves itself into one between the United States and Japan, as their navies in that water are so much larger than those of the other nations that by comparison the latter sink to Lilliputian proportion. Great Britain, by reason of her naval bases at Singapore and at Hongkong, enters the picture as a third naval Power. [863]

The Naval problem

The Naval problem

The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan. By Vice AdmiralG. A. Ballard, C. B. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1921. Pp. xix, 311.) - Sea-Power in the Pacific, a Study of the American-Japanese Naval Problem. By Hector C. Bywater. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1921. Pp. ix, 334.)

The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan. By Vice AdmiralG. A. Ballard, C. B. (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 1921. Pp. xix, 311.) - Sea-Power in the Pacific, a Study of the American-Japanese Naval Problem. By Hector C. Bywater. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1921. Pp. ix, 334.)

Sea Power on the Pacific, a Study of the American-Japanese Naval Problem

Sea Power on the Pacific, a Study of the American-Japanese Naval Problem