Sun Tzu e as operações de submarinos

Abstract

A strategist, very well known by his remarkable campaigns, lived in the 5 th century BC and was named Sun Tzu (Master Sun). He wrote a military oriented handbook, in which most of his professional background of years of battles was summarized. This book is known in the western world as “The Art of War”. In this handbook, a series of practical guidelines to be followed by military forces to be used before and during battles can be found. It was only at the end of the 18 th century and beginning of the 19 th century that military specialists started to look at the war phenomenum as a science. It was by that time that military and thinkers such as Clausewitz and Jomini, mainly the last one, that highlighted the war principles that nowadays are well known and can be found within his work. This work aims to evaluate the validity of the war principles described in Sun Tzu`s work, written 2400 years ago, applied to submarine operations. The evaluation method, at the beginning, identifies the war principles included in Sun Tzu`s text, highlighting some of the statements found in the book that can be used in our analysis. In addition to that, the evaluation includes: submarine`s characteristics; the ways they are used considering their basic task within Navy; their role in the strategies used and the submarine operations, executed by means of actions conducted using the submarines and developed by specific tactics that support the accomplishment of main and secondary tasks. At the same time, war principles from Sun Tzu`s work, analyzed within the scope of these above mentioned tasks are identified, using the examples from history, in order to validate our analysis. The conclusion is that those war principles are still consistent and can be used to support the present submarine operations.