Forward ... From the Start: The U.S. Navy & Homeland Defense: 1775-2003
Published Date: February 1, 2003
Written in the wake of the "9-11" terrorist attacks, this short paper lays out and draws conclusions from the long history of U.S. Navy involvement in what are now called "homeland defense" operations. Topics covered in the survey include: The submersibles and gunboats of the Revolution and the War of 1812; the creation (and subsequent reorientation forward) of a Home Squadron in 1840s; the innovative naval homeland defense systems of the Confederate Navy during the Civil War; the role of inshore U.S. Navy monitors during and after the Civil War; the massive failure of American homeland defense at Pearl Harbor in 1941; offshore antisubmarine warfare during both world wars; and Cold War U.S. Navy continental air defense and coastal underwater surveillance efforts. Analysis of the historical record shows that U.S. Navy forward offensive deployments have almost always taken precedence over homeland defense efforts; that naval systems and organizations originally developed for homeland defense usually migrate to other roles; and that naval homeland defense operations have almost always been embedded in larger joint, inter-agency and total force efforts, usually involving the U.S. Coast Guard. (A shorter version of this paper was published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings May 2003 edition).
