This process of thinking, if it is to be effective as well as reflective, requires mental access to certain sources of ideas. These sources may lie in the study of history, or in the wealth of doctrine and instructions gathered into official manuals and into other professional writings, or in the commander's own practical experience. Logicians who have investigated this natural process point out that suggested solutions are the resurrection of ideas from past experience. Good thinking demands access to a large storehouse of ideas connected in various and flexible ways. The best available knowledge is the main source from which reflective thinking obtains relevant and promising suggestions for a solution.
By such resort to analogy, the commander utilizes the accumulations of past experience. Sometimes he finds that the courses of action thus suggested are exactly suitable as tentative solutions for his problem. In other instances, of course, only parts of the present situation are found to be analogous to those previously encountered. Even then, however, the similarity of the facts may be helpful in providing suggestions. Guidance based on limited or partial similarity has been demonstrated to be better than purely intuitive thinking.
The commander cannot be content, however, to depend wholly on the guidance of the past. Sometimes, moreover, he may not be able to obtain suggestions by analogy. New suggestions, ideas not drawn from past experience, are very desirable; they are possible, also, in the sense that the result of the analysis of past experience may be reassembled, in imagination, in novel ways. New courses of action, overlooked in the past, may be contrived. Original combinations, not previously entertained, may be devised. Readiness to employ the novel and the new, as well as to utilize the old, is a prime qualification for command.
Reflective thinking of this nature requires adequate knowledge of the capabilities of weapons, so that new possibilities may be perceived as to coordination in their use. While analogy looks backward to find applicable lessons, the search for novelty seeks suggestions from potentialities not heretofore utilized.
The development of the full possibilities of new weapons is an important source of forward thinking. Such thinking constantly integrates the current developments in war. The competent commander does not wait for history to be made; he makes it.
Familiarity with experimentation, research, and new performance is also a fruitful source of suggestions. When used, this method results in advance demands by the armed forces for new weapons not yet supplied.
Closely allied to analogy is the application of ordered and classified knowledge as to the nature of warfare. Aware of the effects which can be brought about by the weapons at his disposal, the commander identifies his objective with one or more of these effects.
The application of ordered and classified knowledge of naval warfare starts, naturally, with a consideration of its objectives, and proceeds thereafter to the study of the various classes of operations which may be utilized to this end. Naval effort has as its objective the keeping open of sea communications (see [page 62]). Command of the sea exists for one belligerent when he possesses and can exercise the ability to move surface traffic, while also being able to prevent the enemy from doing so.
Naval warfare, therefore, logically includes operations for the purpose of gaining, maintaining, or disputing command of sea areas, especially under conditions where freedom of movement and the keeping open of sea communications are of vital importance.