Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies Black Books
The overall subject matter of this series of Naval War College monographs is applied research on national-security issues. The intent is to provide the backdrop for expanding and continuing public discussions on the topics that volumes in the series identify and examine, as a start to critical public investigations and dialogue. The objective is to aid readers in understanding issues impacting current choices that ultimately will determine the course of war and peace into the far future. Volumes in the series will strive to provide as much rigor and balance as possible in their research and analyses, as well as respect for other points of view.
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Crafting Naval Strategy: Observations and Recommendations for the Development of Future Strategies
Bruce B. Stubbs and Sam J. Tangredi
The “great captains” of military history have described the contradictions between rigorous, formal, institutionalized planning and the commonly chaotic results and necessary readjustments through a series of pithy aphorisms that by now have become clichés. The Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder is cited—routinely, exhaustingly, almost annoyingly—as having said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Yet perhaps Moltke captured the challenge more succinctly in a lesser-known but more apt quote: “Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline.”
