Mobilização marítima: sua importância para a projeção de poder sobre terra, por meio de um Assalto Anfíbio

Abstract

One ofe the Basic Tasks of the Brazilian Navy Naval Power is to project power over land. This capability, when performed through Amphibious Operations, is something few navies in the world have. The Amphibious Assault (AssAnf), in turn, is the most complex modality of OpAnf, being the only one capable of conquering or regaining an area of interest on the coast from the sea. However, their size often requires a considerable number of naval assets to carry the Landing Force, which, at the current juncture, is a major challenge for the Navy. In this sense, the country's ability to undertake a Maritime Mobilization of defense interest ships. That provides an increase in the military expression of the National Power, which contributes directly to the deterrence strategy and the projection of power, according to the National Strategy of Defense. Therefore, the objectives of this work are: to verify the main obstacles for the Brazilian Navy to project power over land, through an Amphibious Assault and to verify under what conditions the maritime mobilization would give to mitigate these obstacles. To this end, the characteristics of “oceanopolitics”, the Blue Amazon® and the Maritime Power, fundamental for Brazil's development and sovereignty, were initially analyzed. However, the lack of a maritime mentality on the part of Brazilian society. That was characterized as “sea blindness”. Subsequently, the current capacity of the Naval Power to project power over land was investigated, considering the Amphibious Conjugate as the primary basis of the power projection strategy and mobilization as one of the bases of the deterrence strategy. After that, an analysis was performed in the National Mobilization System, verifying its alignment with the current legal system and the doctrinal framework of the Ministry of Defense and the Brazilian Navy. Further research was undertaken into the UK maritime mobilization at the time of the Falklands War as a historical reference example. Then, the Brazilian Merchant Navy was analyzed in order to identify its possibilities and limitations in terms of mobilizable defense-interest merchant ships, culminating in an analysis of the importance of strengthening the Merchant Navy as a way of strengthening the Naval power. Thus, logistical deficiencies were identified in terms of naval means of troop transport in the Brazilian Fleet and the almost nonexistence of national merchant ships capable of being mobilized in order to remedy them. Finally, the importance of strengthening maritime trade as a growth inducer of the Merchant Navy and Naval Power was evident.