A naval offensive is the aggressive deployment of naval forces

Navy

A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...

 during a military campaign

Military campaign

In the military sciences, the term military campaign applies to large scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of inter-related military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war...

 to strategically

Military strategy

Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...

, operationally

Operational warfare

Operational mobility, beginning as a military theory concept during the period of mechanisation of armed forces, became a method of managing movement of forces by strategic commanders from the staging area to their Tactical Area of Responsibility....

 or tactically

Military tactics

Military tactics, the science and art of organizing an army or an air force, are the techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology over time have been reflected in changes to military tactics. In...

 provide secure use of shipping route

Shipping route

A shipping route is a trade route used by merchant ships.Early routes usually were coastal in nature as navigators had to rely on the coastal landmarks...

s, or coastal regions for friendly shipping

Shipping

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck...

, or deny them to enemy shipping.

The aim of a naval offensive is usually in "exerting specific superiority at the point of impact", and has been considered the best strategy in Europe against a threat of invasion since the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

.

A naval offensive may include use of surface

Surface combatant

Surface combatants are a subset of Naval Warships which are designed to engage in combat on the surface of the water, with their own weapons. They are generally ships built to fight other ships, submarines or aircraft, and can carry out several other missions including counter-narcotics operations...

 or submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

 combat vessels, or both as at the Battle of Heligoland Bight, and aircraft carrier

Aircraft carrier

An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...

 or shore-based fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft and amphibious assault

Amphibious warfare

Amphibious warfare is the use of naval firepower, logistics and strategy to project military power ashore. In previous eras it stood as the primary method of delivering troops to non-contiguous enemy-held terrain...

 troops to conduct the offensive as a means of "projection of naval power against land objectives", or support one by transporting troops.

The scale of a naval offensive need not be a massive ocean fleet

Naval fleet

A fleet, or naval fleet, is a large formation of warships, and the largest formation in any navy. A fleet at sea is the direct equivalent of an army on land....

 operation, but may be conducted with relatively few and light forces on lakes.

In the naval history the earliest naval offensives in the record of military history

Military history

Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....

 were the Punic Wars

Punic Wars

The Punic Wars were a series of three wars fought between Rome and Carthage from 264 B.C.E. to 146 B.C.E. At the time, they were probably the largest wars that had ever taken place...

 between Rome and Carthage

Carthage

Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...

 for the domination of the Mediterranean regional trade

History of the Mediterranean region

The history of the Mediterranean region is the history of the interaction of the cultures and people of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea —the central superhighway of transport, trade and cultural exchange between diverse peoples...

, while coastal offensives date to the earlier raids of the Sea Peoples

Sea Peoples

The Sea Peoples were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty...

. At least one naval offensive is claimed to have changed the course of history in Europe.

The conduct of naval offensives may require construction of naval base

Naval base

A naval base is a military base, where warships and naval ships are deployed when they have no mission at sea or want to restock. Usually ships may also perform some minor repairs. Some naval bases are temporary homes to aircraft that usually stay on the ships but are undergoing maintenance while...

s to support offensive action in the area, particularly in the case of submarines

Submarine base

A submarine base is a military base that shelters submarines and their personnel.Examples of present-day submarine bases include HMNB Clyde, Île Longue , Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Naval Submarine Base New London, and Rybachiy Nuclear Submarine Base .The Israeli navy bases its growing submarine...

. One example is the Bay of Kotor

Bay of Kotor

The Bay of Kotor in south-western Montenegro is a winding bay on the Adriatic Sea. The bay, sometimes called Europe's southernmost fjord, is in fact a submerged river canyon of the disintegrated Bokelj River which used to run from the high mountain plateaus of Mount Orjen...

 base used by the Austro-Hungarian forces in the Adriatic Sea during the First World War.

A naval offensive may be active involving direct combat between units, or passive, involving use of sea route and operational area mining

Naval mine

A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...

.

See also

• Battle of the Atlantic (1914–1918)
• Battle of Gallipoli
  Battle of Gallipoli
  The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
  
  
• Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)
• Arctic Convoys
• Battle of the Mediterranean
  Battle of the Mediterranean
  The Battle of the Mediterranean was the name given to the naval campaign fought in the Mediterranean Sea during World War II, from 10 June 1940-2 May 1945....
  
  
• Battle of the Indian Ocean
• Battle of Pearl Harbor
• Battle of the Coral Sea
  Battle of the Coral Sea
  The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
  
  
• Battle of Midway
  Battle of Midway
  The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...
  
  
• Battle of Guadalcanal
• Operation Game Warden
  Operation Game Warden
  Operation Game Warden, Task force 116, was an operation to deny Viet Cong access to the resources in the Mekong Delta which was conceived of in December 1965. U.S. naval forces, backed by Marine artillery on the ground, launching a rapid surprise attack on the dozens of small Viet Cong ports which...
  
  

Further reading

For use of carrier and land-based naval aviation in a naval offensive

• Hammel, Eric, Carrier Strike: The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands,October 1942, Zenith Press, 2005 ISBN 0760321280
• Konstam, Angus and Bryan, Tony, Confederate Submarines and Torpedo Vessels 1861-65 (New Vanguard), Osprey Publishing, 2004 ISBN 1841767204