Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat

Fighting the Fleet recognizes that fleets conduct four distinct but interlocking tasks at the operational level of war--striking, screening, scouting, and basing--and that successful operational art is achieved when they are brought to bear in a cohesive, competitive scheme. In explaining these elements and how they are conjoined for advantage, a central theme emerges: despite the utility and importance of jointness among the armed forces, the effective employment of naval power requires a specialized language and understanding of naval concepts that is often diluted or completely lost when too much jointness is introduced.

Woven into the fabric of the book are the fundamental principles of three of the most important naval theorists of the twentieth century: Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie, and Captain Wayne Hughes. While Cares and Cowden advocate the reinvigoration of combat theory and the appropriate use of operations research, they avoid over-theorizing and have produced a practical guide that empowers fleet planners to wield naval power appropriately and effectively in meeting today’s operational and tactical challenges.

Jeffrey R. Cares is the CEO of Alidade Incorporated and a retired navy captain. As a thought-leader in Information Age military innovation, he consults at the most senior levels of the international defense industry and lectures internationally and at service colleges on the future of combat. He is the author of Distributed Networked Operations: The Foundations of Network Centric Warfare and Operations Research for Unmanned Systems, in addition to pioneering work in the application of complex systems research to military problems.

Anthony Cowden attended the University of Michigan under the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), where he received his BA in history. He received his MS degree in computer science from the University of New Haven and his MA degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College. After nearly five years on active duty, Cowden joined Sonalysts, Inc., and affiliated with the Navy Reserve. After a twenty-year Reserve career Captain Cowden returned to active duty in 2009 and will retire after 37 years as a commissioned officer in 2021.