With four Japanese carriers sunk, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto chose to retire, though he still maintained a vastly superior fleet. Spruance carefully avoided maneuvering his remaining ships into a position where he could have lost the decisive advantage the United States had gained. The 1982 Falklands campaign illustrates the concept of leveraging a naval operation by sinking, or attempting to sink, certain ships. The sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano removed the Argentine fleet from further involvement, for a variety of reasons. In contrast, while the British had a number of ships sunk and damaged by aircraft-delivered weapons, the pursuit of a single, conventionally powered Argentine submarine became a virtual obsession for the Royal Navy.
Many submarines think so.
As a submariner, I have long found the idea of maneuver and leveraging through selective targeting and exploitation appealing, because of the stealthy nature of the platform and the finite nature of its resources. Fortunately the world was spared an empirical answer. It will be many years, if ever, before we know the full impact of naval operations, and more specifically submarine operations, on the ultimate outcome of the Cold War. But it is my belief that it was tangible. Perhaps the implicit nature of the concept is what is important, not a debate about the correct semantic label.