Young School!

This is coolbert:

Thanks to the Strategy Page book review by Professor Al Nofi we have:

"The Jeune Ecole: The Strategy of the Weak", by Arne Røksund

"Jeune École is the name given to group of French naval officers and politicians during the late nineteenth century who proposed radical changes in the country's naval strategy.  They believed that the French Navy should shift from a 'command of the seas' model based on a battle fleet to a 'guerre de course' (commerce raiding) and coast defense model.  The ultimate result was a notable decline in the importance of the French Navy by the eve of the Great War."

War of the flea, guerrilla warfare at sea. The SMALL victorious and to be preferred over the BIG! NOT necessarily to be thought of as WEAK!

"some among the more radical claiming that the battle fleet was obsolete in the age of submarines, automotive torpedoes, torpedo boats, fast cruisers, and long-range coast artillery.?

"the radicals grossly overestimated the effectiveness of the new technologies."

Those constituent element of Jeune Ecole more correctly understood as:

* Ocean-going torpedo boats and not merely coastal huggers..

* "Fast cruisers" a heavily armed but lightly armored warship the target primarily enemy merchant vessels.

* "Long-range coastal artillery those large-bore naval guns but emplaced in fixed positions near vital harbors, sea ports, naval bases, etc.

* Jeune Ecole the advocacy of which begun before the advent of the submarine. That submarine thought of when first developed as strictly a DEFENSIVE naval weapons system.

Overestimating "the effectiveness of the new technologies" AND ALSO THE IDEA IN THE HEAD OF THE POLITICIAN THAT THE JEUNE ECOLE APPROACH WAS MUCH CHEAPER!!

To what extent Jeune Ecole resembles the American "Military Reformers" of the modern era I leave to the devoted follower to the blog to ponder!

coolbert.