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The strategic concept of the fleet-in-being has been so misunderstood ever since it was first articulated and demonstrated 304 years ago that its current definition is absolutely wrong. Says Webster's Dictionary, the fleet-in-being is "a fleet of naval vessels that because of its mere existence is a factor in the calculations of opposing strategists even though it is inactive or appears to be immobilized"--in other words, a passive defensive "Fleet-in-Existence." Indeed, an essayist in a recent issue of the U.S. Naval War College Review, claims that the static, anchored German High Seas Fleet and Austro-Hungarian Fleet of World War I constituted fleets-in-being as long as they remained "effective"--simply ready for action.(1)
The British strategists who created and nurtured the concept of the fleet-in-being knew better. The greatest modern theorist of them all, Sir Julian Corbett, declared in 1911 that a true maritime power like Great Britain aimed always at achieving ultimate command of the sea, even when its fleet was temporarily inferior in strength to its continental adversary, France (and later Germany). The United States Navy, through the teachings of its own naval philosopher, Alfred Thayer Mahan, embraced the British strategic example when it too became a maritime great power at the end of the nineteenth century. In its policy to attain command of the sea in the Pacific war, it emulated Britain's fleet-in-being stratagem in its struggle against Japan, a strategically continental nation which enjoyed naval supremacy early in 1942.(2) America's fast aircraft carriers provided the vehicle for that strategy.
The most accurate articulation of fleet-in-being is Corbett's:
At sea the main conception is avoiding decisive action by strategical or tactical activity, so as to keep our fleet in being till the situation develops in our favour. In the golden age of our navy the keynote of naval defence was mobility, not rest. The idea was to dispute the control [of the sea] by harassing operations, to exercise control at any place or at any moment as we saw a chance, and to prevent the enemy exercising control in spite of his superiority by continually occupying his attention. The idea of mere resistance was hardly present at all. Everything was counter-attack, whether upon the enemy's force or his maritime communications....[T]he essence of [this] defence...
