A Doctrine Reader: The Navies of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Spain

by James John Tritten, Luigi Donolo, U.S. Naval War College Press (Producer)

In March 1993, the United States Navy and Marine Corps established the Naval Doctrine Command as the primary authority for the development of naval concepts and integrated naval doctrine. Although this was the first time the sea services had established a formal command to prepare and publish multi-service naval doctrine, it was not the first time that either service, or navies in general, had formal written doctrine. In the minds of most serving officers, however, doctrine was something new for the fleet. The major message of A Doctrine Reader is that naval and navy doctrine is not new and there is value today in reviewing the lessons from of past doctrinal development experiences. Newport Paper Number Nine contains the results of research conducted on the navies of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Spain. Each has a unique story to tell, and each story has value for us today. This paper concludes with an interpretive essay on the relationship of doctrine to technology, particularly in revolutions in military affairs (RMAs). It questions the ground forces-oriented RMA paradigm and makes a strong case for the uniqueness of naval warfare. - Adapted from Introduction by Rear Admiral J.R. Stark, President, Naval War College

162 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2006

About the author

Jim retired after a forty-four-year career with the Department of Defense, including duty as a carrier-based naval aviator. He holds advanced degrees from the University of Southern California and formerly served as a faculty member and National Security Affairs department chair at the Naval Postgraduate School. Dr. Tritten’s publications have won him eighty-three writing awards, including the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award from the Navy League of the U.S., the Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) Writer of the Year and the Parris Award from SouthWest Writers (SWW) – both of the latter in 2023. He has published fourteen books and over four hundred fifty chapters, short stories, essays, articles, and government technical reports. Jim was a frequent speaker at many military, arms control, and international conferences and has seen his work translated into Russian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

I use Jim Tritten as my post-DoD career writing and Goodreads required me to create a separate page under that name.