I’ve heard a lot of people saying recently, ‘Quantity has a quality all its own.’ And I just want to be clear: No, it doesn’t. That’s one of the dumbest damn things I’ve ever heard.”¹ With respect to the quoted speaker, not only does quantity have a quality all its own, but it also almost always proves decisive in naval warfare when professional competence is equal.

Using technological advantage as an indicator of quality, historical research on 28 naval wars (or wars with significant and protracted naval combat) indicates that 25 were won by the side with the larger fleet. When fleet size was roughly equal, superior strategy and substantially better trained and motivated crews carried the day.² Only three could be said to have been won by a smaller fleet with superior technology.³

When professional naval competence and strategic acumen were equal, the larger fleet usually won, even when the smaller fleet possessed technological advantages at the start of the conflict. A primary reason is that technological advantages were inevitably short-lived.⁴ In a war between equally competent technological near peers—absent a series of amazing strokes of luck—the larger fleet always won.⁵ (See Table 1.)

With the growing potential of a naval engagement between a shrinking U.S. fleet and a growing People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the three examples of technologically advanced but smaller fleets’ victories are not reassuring:

  • The Byzantine Empire’s naval forces versus Vikings, Slavs, Turks, and Arabs to about the year 1000 AD/CE. At that time, the Arabs learned to employ the equivalent of Greek fire.

• The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean versus Mamluks, the Ottoman Empire, and Indo-
regional allies, 1500–1580.

• The British East India Company and various European nations versus Imperial China circa 1840–1900.

All other wars were won by superior numbers or, when between equal forces, superior strategy, or admiralship. Often all three qualities act together, because operating a large fleet generally facilitates more extensive training and is often an indicator that leaders are concerned with strategic requirements. In the Napoleonic…