Full spectrum anti-submarine warfare - The historical evidence from a British perspective

Submarines are pressing their way back to the top of the maritime agenda. To deal with the burgeoning submarine threat, the full spectrum approach to anti-submarine warfare has been developed. Its ten threads hope to defeat - as opposed to destroy - hostile submarines. This paper will explore the historical evidence surrounding the full spectrum approach. It will argue that the historical evidence for many of the threads is weak, but that when the fundamentals of submarine warfare are considered many of the lessons of WW1 and WW2 may still be relevant to today's practitioners.