A "book navy" builds its ideas mainly from reading, theory, and inherited examples rather than recent battle experience. China's modern navy provides the opening example, but the term increasingly fits every contemporary fleet. By 2022, the Falklands War was more distant than the Second World War had been from the Falklands campaign, weakening living institutional memory. Theory can then dominate doctrine and lead designers into intellectual cul-de-sacs. The Regia Marina shows the related danger on the other side: direct experience can be overlearned until a navy prepares to repeat its last war instead of extracting portable lessons.
Notable Point · 5:55-8:17
Book navies and the fading memory of combat
As recent combat experience recedes, theory fills the gap, while the Regia Marina shows that even real experience can be applied too literally.