Nearly a year and a half ago, my colleague Tim Walton and I submitted a
study proposal to DoD’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) entitled “The
Operational and Strategic Implications of Electric and Directed Energy Weapons
for Naval Warfare”. The study was not
funded, but we put a lot of work into the proposal, and it occurred to me
recently that 1) it would be a shame to do all that thinking and not have it
reach a broader audience than the ONA evaluation committee and 2) that this
blog would be a useful venue for raising and discussing some of the many
important issues involved in the development and acquisition of Directed Energy
and Electric Weapon Systems (DEEWS). Additionally,
since we submitted the study idea to ONA, we have seen the Navy’s Office of
Naval Research release a “Solid
State Laser Technical Maturation Program” RFI, CSBA has released
a very informative report, and very recently, ONR’s Directed Energy lead
predicted in the open press that laser
weapons would be at sea in approximately four years. The time is right for a discussion of the
prospects and future of directed energy, and so over the course of the next
year, I will post occasional (likely monthly) pieces related to the subject of
DEEWS and naval warfare.
The rapid advancement of DEEWS technology over the
last few decades, both in the United States and abroad, hints at a shift in the
calculus of warfare similar to that which occurred in the interwar period in
the early part of the 20th century.
Armored Warfare, Close Air Support, Carrier Strike Warfare, and
Submarine Warfare were all enabled by technological advances, but in each case,
the countries that made the greatest strides in these new types of warfare were
not the originators of the technological advances on which they were based.
DEEWS such as lasers and rail-guns operate on
different physical principals than their gunpowder and high explosive based
predecessors. With unprecedented speed
of engagement and nearly surgical lethal effects, they offer potentially
revolutionary methods of conducting warfare at sea. However, military powers that have enjoyed
extended periods of preeminence are often prone to forcing new warfighting
capabilities into their existing ways of doing business and missing out on
their true potential. It is historically
the less mature or less bureaucratic militaries that are the best able to
maximize the impact of novel capabilities by forming new organizations and
tactics around them. With several other
countries actively pursuing DEEWS technology, the U.S. military may be at risk
of suffering technological surprise from the very technologies it originally
developed.
Put another way, I fear that sunk costs associated
with current weapons and ways of thinking, bureaucratic inflexibility, and an
inability to institutionally embrace disruptive change could stand in the way
of the development and fielding of these highly promising technologies. This series seeks to add to the ongoing
discussion in the Pentagon and to raise awareness within the community of
navalists as to the future promise and current reality of DEEWS.
I invite your views and comments as this series
matures. I am not a DEEWS expert, so if
I get something wrong or incomplete, call me on it. I have asked a few friends of mine who are
smarter on these systems than I am to look in on the dialogue and offer up
illuminating thoughts and comments as their time permits.
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