Fleet building program

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A fleet building program is generally understood to mean the political program of a state to build or expand its own fleet , usually a war fleet , i.e. to arm the sea.

The naval building program of Themistocles in Athens in the fifth century BC, known from the history of antiquity, was the decisive preparation for the victory of the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis and founded the thalassocracy of Athens in the Mediterranean region . A similar program made possible the victory of Rome over the Carthaginians in the third century BC .

An example of non-primarily military naval building programs is that of the Chinese Emperor Yongle in the 15th century, carried out by Zheng He , who built a representative merchant fleet and went on numerous expeditions with it.

The most well-known fleet building programs include the fleet laws of Admiral von Tirpitz in the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II , which led to an arms race with Great Britain and are among the reasons why the First World War broke out. Tirpitz's goal was to build a risk fleet (which should pose a risk to England in the event of an attack). England, on the other hand, wanted to receive the " two-power standard ", ie to have a fleet that was as powerful as the two next weaker ones ( Russia and France ) combined.

After the First World War, the Washington Fleet Conference also marked the pro forma end of the maritime arms race .

In fact, it came to an end because advances in aircraft construction had relativized the military importance of large ships: a single small aircraft could drop a torpedo , which sank a large ship.