Fleet in being

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In naval warfare, a fleet in being is a naval force that extends a controlling influence without ever leaving port. Were the fleet to leave port and face the enemy, it might lose in battle and no longer influence the enemy's actions, but by simply remaining safely in port the enemy is forced to continually deploy forces to guard against it. A fleet in being can be part of a sea denial doctrine but not one of sea control.

The term was first used in 1690, when Lord Torrington, commander of the Royal Navy forces in the English Channel, found himself facing a stronger French fleet. He proposed avoiding a set battle, except under very favourable conditions, until he could be reinforced. By thus keeping his 'fleet in being', he could maintain an active threat which would force the enemy to remain in the area and prevent them from taking the initiative elsewhere.

A more modern example is the stand-off between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet during World War I. Other than the inconclusive engagement at the Battle of Jutland, both Britain and Germany preferred to keep their fleets intact rather than taking the risk of losing an engagement.

In World War II, actions of the Italian Regia Marina in 1940 also demonstrate the idea of a 'fleet in being'. After a number of minor battles against the Royal Navy that were generally lost or drawn, the fleet was left in Taranto, where it could sortie very quickly against any British attempt to reach Malta. The effort was so successful that the British instead decided to attack their fleet at anchor during the famed Battle of Taranto. This attack, however, was very successfull. Realising that the Taranto harbour was no longer safe, the Italians relocated the undamaged ships to ports further away. Since fleet-in-being is not very effective at a distance, from that point on the Italians were forced into combat, and hence suffered repeated attrition over the next two years.

Even more so that other surface vessels in the Kriegsmarine, the German battleship Tirpitz served her entire career as a 'fleet in being'. Although she never fired a shot at an enemy ship, her mere presence forced the Royal Navy to allocate powerful warships in defending Arctic convoys.

Smaller nations also employed fleets in being, like the Finnish Navy with heavily armed coastal defence ships 'Väinämöinen' and 'Ilmarinen', whose mere existences prevented any Soviet attempts of invasion on Finland's southern coast and forced the strong Soviet navy and air force to play hide and seek in the Finnish archipelago.

The entire concept is based on the assumption that the fleet is relatively safe in port, even a port near the enemy. After Taranto and Pearl Harbour, however, it was obvious that a fleet is at least as vulnerable in such a port as it is at sea. Therefore it could be argued that the concept of fleet-in-being is now obsolete. If a port is sufficiently far away from the enemy to make the fleet there safe, the fleet is too far from the enemy to be much of a threat to him.

The term "fleet-in-being" is limited to sea warfare. However, it is not necessarily so for the basic logic behind the concept of fleet-in-being. A fortress under siege is essentially an army-in-being by tying up enemy forces without actually leaving the fortress or doing much fighting. During the Gulf War Saddam Hussein seems to have tried to use his air force with an operational doctrine analogous to fleet-in-being. Knowing the allied air superiority he seems to have hoped that his air force could remain safe in their bases and that their mere presence would force the allied air force to act more cautiosly and escort all their bomber sorties. His air force could sortie when the situation seemed favourable. When the Iraqi air shelters for aircraft proved vulnerable to allied precision bombing he ordered most of his air force to fly to Iran. Presumably he hoped that they could remain a threat to the allied air force from there.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a series of articles about the British Channel Fleet, collectively entitled A Fleet in Being and published in 1898; however, he used the term in more of a literary than a technical sense.

Bibliography

Virilio, Paul, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology New York: Semiotext(e), 1977 [1986]

Fleet in being

Bibliography

See also