Appendix Ⅷ Overview of Naval Surface Warfare Systems

摘要

Today, surface warfare has once more become the dominant form of naval warfare. Maritime policing, though, has become vital in light of the increased economic importance of accessing undersea energy resources and harvesting sea-based food. Policing national zones of economic control and preventing poaching are as much matters of national security as the more obvious uses of naval surface combat capability.In this respect, the nature of surface warfare has not so much changed as reverted to type. In past generations, the overwhelming majority of naval actions involved preventing piracy, protecting fishing grounds from poaching, stopping smuggling, and defending trade. Major fleet actions were a rarity - there might only be two or three in the course of a decades-long war. The concept of a war where major surface actions are both commonplace and decisive to the outcome of a conflict is very much one of the 20th century, and it is disappearing as that century recedes into history.