Combat experience can teach the wrong lesson

The comparison pairs World War I's influence on interwar navies with the later importance of the Falklands War as a rare modern naval conflict. The Falklands example includes nuclear submarines and the adapted Second World War-era carrier HMS Hermes testing systems under operational pressure. Actual operations test submarines, carriers, communications, and doctrine in ways that exercises cannot fully reproduce. Yet combat does not automatically produce the right lesson. Japanese operations in China appeared to confirm existing assumptions because the opposition did not impose the technological or operational pressure of a peer fleet. An opponent capable of exposing weaknesses provides the most useful experience.