Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

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This study will cover the period between 1861 and 1865. It will cover within that period of time, the technical and historical advance of the navy through the Civil War. The technical approach will cover the advancements in design, engineering, and armament from the beginning of hostilities to its end, and contrast those advancements with those of the period immediately preceding them and immediately after it, while the historical approach will cover the main engagements of the war and the results of the technical advances. The study will also cover the advancement and growth of the Confederate States Navy, and the effect which the marine designs of that navy had on the designs of the rival United States Navy.

The United States Navy possesses a preeminent peacetime role in U.S. national security: “naval forward presence,” or the maintenance of combat-credible naval forces worldwide to deter adversaries, reassure allies, respond to crises, and perform constabulary functions for the global commons. To many, naval forward presence is nearly-synonymous with American grand strategy.But since the post-Cold War defense drawdown, forward presence has constrained the Navy’s efforts to prepare for great power war. To support forward presence, the Navy has organized its force structure around fixed-wing-capable platforms and their supporting multi-mission combatant warships. The politics and spiraling costs of building such ships have stymied efforts to expand the fleet. Presence also requires that the surface navy remain continually visible and busy. Too few ships thus face too many demands. The resultant operational tempo overwhelms maintenance and training cycles, and grinds away at the economic viability of American shipyards. In this way, naval forward presence consumes the Navy’s structural readiness, or its capacity to engage in severe and sustained combat with a peer competitor, such as the People’s Republic of China. And in so doing, presence consumes its own promises – deterrence and reassurance. Why, given its internal tensions, does naval forward presence remain a governing strategic concept for the U.S. Navy, even in the shadow of a major international threat? What lies behind the rhetorical consensus on the value of naval forward presence for U.S. national security? This dissertation takes a popular strategic concept to task, illuminating the ideas, politics, and organizational processes that sustain it, even as its costs and risks accumulate, and even as international conditions change. The inquiry comprises three parts: a history of presence and its implementation; a theoretical analysis of presence through the lens of political science literature; and a case study of the reform agenda following the U.S. Navy’s surface ship accidents of 2017. I find that naval forward presence, as an idea, ran away from the Navy. Initially elevated to prominence for bureaucratic reasons, presence was sustained both by organizational processes outside the Navy’s control, and by policymakers’ belief in the very benefits the Navy had claimed presence could deliver. Naval forward presence is rooted in deep-seated American foreign policy beliefs that cross ideological divides. The idea that the nation, and the world, cannot survive without a navy whose peacetime roles include deterring adversaries, preserving national credibility through crisis response, and policing the international system, is a uniquely American conceit. Ultimately, it also abuts against a physical reality: a navy tasked to do all these things, cannot do them all well. These findings have two implications. First, attempts to solve the trade-off between presence and structural readiness by building more ships are unlikely to succeed, as presence demands, sustained by the power of the idea and organizational processes resistant to change, will continue apace and even rise as the fleet grows. Second, the rise of populist nationalism may challenge consensus support for presence by calling alliance commitments into question. However, hyper-partisanship associated with this movement could doom efforts to restore Navy structural readiness regardless. Therefore, whether presence remains popular or not, presence must be substantially reduced to preserve the United States’ ability to deter, or if necessary, defeat China.

This dissertation explores the growing field of study around Maritime Security. While an increasingly common sub-heading in American naval strategy documents, maritime security operations are largely framed around individual threats (i.e. counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics). Here, we endeavor to explore how a seemingly disparate set of transnational issues fit into a more coherent framework to give greater theoretical substance to the notion of Maritime Security as a distinct concept. In particular, we examine, as our research question, whether the Broken Windows theory, a criminological construct of social disorganization, provides the lens through which to theorize maritime security in the littorals. By extrapolating from criminology, this dissertation engages with a small but growing impulse in studies on insurgencies, terrorism, and piracy to look beyond classic theories of security to better understand phenomena of political violence. To evaluate our research question, we begin by identifying two critical components of the Broken Windows theory, multidimensionality and context specificity. Multidimensionality refers to the web of interrelated individuals, organizations, and infrastructure upon which crime operates. Context specificity refers to the powerful influence of an individual or community's environment on behavior. These two themes, as explored in this dissertation, are brought into stark relief through an application of the Broken Windows theory. Leveraging this understanding of the theory, we explore our research question by employing process-tracing and detailed descriptions across three case studies (one primary and two illustrative)—the Caribbean Basin, the Gulf of Guinea, and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. In so doing, we demonstrate how applying the lens that Broken Windows provides yields new and interesting perspectives on maritime security. As a consequence, this dissertation offers an example of a theoretical framework that provides greater continuity to the missions or threats frequently binned under the heading of maritime security, but infrequently associated with one another in the literature.

The United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy developed during the interwar period a doctrine that addressed the problems inherent in the substitution of naval gunfire for artillery support in an amphibious assault. The invasion of Betio Islet, Tarawa Atoll, in November of 1943 was the first test of this doctrine. It has been said many times since the war that the doctrine basically passed this test and that lessons learned at Tarawa increased the efficiency with which the Marine Corps and Navy applied the prewar doctrine during the rest of the war. An analysis of the planning and execution of naval bombardments in the Central Pacific Campaign, after the invasion of the Gilberts, does not support this claim. This analysis leads the researcher to three conclusions. First, the Japanese developed defenses against many of the effects of the gunfire support doctrine that blunted much of the force of American firepower. American planners were slow to recognize the implications of these changes and, consequently, were slow to react to them. Second, many naval commanders responsible for providing naval gunfire support for Central Pacific operations still equated tonnage of ordnance to effectiveness of bombardment, regardless of their frequent references to "the lessons of Tarawa." Finally, strategic concerns and outright ignorance played a large part in determining the use of naval gunfire, the first taking precedence over the "lessons" and the second leading to the ignoring of the "lessons" all together.

Of the large amount of writings concerning the Civil War only a small percentage pertains to the Federal Navy's role. This is understandable since this was primarily a land war. A few of the Navy's exploits such as the capture of New Orleans, the sinking of the Alabama, the capture of the Florida in Brazilian waters, and the Trent affair received great amounts of publicity, but the majority of the naval activities were of a routine nature, each individually warranting little notice but collectively contributing immensely to the final Federal victory. The purpose of this paper is to show in detail the role of only a portion of the Navy, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, during this struggle.

This thesis investigates the progress of technological development during the interwar period of 1919 to 1939. The interwar period was a time of slashed military budgets and isolationist policies. However, despite political, financial, and organizational handicaps, each branch of the military made significant progress in the development of military technology, and the air corps and navy achieved significantly better results. The reason these two branches were able succeed was through a combination of organizational policy and the development of an overarching goal for their respective branch. Within this thesis, I investigated each of the major military branches during the interwar period, specifically the United States Army, Army Air Corps, and Navy. The air corps is considered a separate branch despite being a segment of the army due to its different strategic goal and its growing independence during the interwar period. In my research I found that the army made by far the least technological progress, but did make significant strides in terms of the development of individual components for larger projects. For example, the army developed the M1 rifle and state-of-the-art shock absorbers for tanks. The air corps succeeded in transforming from a small army auxiliary made up of woodand-fabric biplanes into a largely independent branch of the military made up of all-metal monoplane bombers. The navy developed the aircraft carrier and aircraft to accompany the new ships, in addition to making substantial upgrades to existing ships. These upgrades included strengthening ships against torpedo attacks, making engines more efficient, and adding antiaircraft guns to the ships‟ arsenals

This thesis examines the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) sent to French Indochina, from 1950 to 1956, when the United States provided major monetary and material aid to the French in their war against the communist Viet Minh. MAAG observed French units in the field and monitored the flow of American materiel into the region. Relying upon primary research in the National Archives, the thesis departs from previous interpretations by showing that MAAG held generally positive assessments of France‟s performance in Indochina. The thesis also argues that MAAG personnel were more interested in getting material support to the French, than in how that material was used, to the point of making unrealistic assessments of French combat abilities. By connecting primary research with the greater history of Cold War American military assistance, the thesis contributes to the scholarship on American involvement in Vietnam.