Three fleets, three strategic problems

The reconstruction plan had to divide limited resources among geographically separate fleets. The Baltic was oriented toward Germany, the Black Sea toward the Ottoman Empire, and the Pacific toward Japan, with different conditions and operational demands in each theatre. Russian planners did not treat Britain as another isolated, winnable fleet problem: they expected a war with the Royal Navy to coincide with Germany fighting in the Baltic while Britain attacked Russian positions elsewhere. That assumption shows how Anglo-Russian relations and coalition expectations affected force planning. Geographic fragmentation still made a balanced navy harder to create than the headline size of the service suggests.