For previous installments, see Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
Candidate Principle #6: Technical Degradation is Temporary, Psychological Effects can be Enduring
It
must be appreciated that the greatest damage caused by an adversary’s
successful cyber-electromagnetic attack may not be in how it degrades a system
or network’s performance, opens the door to kinetic attacks against a force, or
even tricks commanders into making operationally or tactically-sub-optimal
decisions. All of these are generally temporary effects and can be recoverable
with flexible plans, resiliency-embracing doctrine, and crafty tactics. Rather,
as renowned naval analyst Norman Friedman has hypothesized, it could very well
be the shattering of commanders’ and operators’ trust in their systems and
networks that is most destructive. If personnel are not conditioned to
anticipate their systems’ and networks’ disruption in combat, an attack’s lasting
effect may be a morale-corroding fatalism. Likewise, if they are deceived just once
by a manipulated situational picture, and even then not necessarily in a
majorly harmful way, they may still hesitate to take needed actions in
subsequent engagements out of fear of deception even when none is present.
Either of these consequences could result in ceding the tactical if not
operational initiative. In a short conflict, this might be catastrophic.
Doctrinal collapse might also result, which would be especially debilitating if
force structure is designed so tightly around a given doctrine that it severely
limits options for creating or adapting operating concepts on the fly.[i]
Interestingly,
similar effects might conceivably occur even when a system’s or network’s
electronic protection and information assurance measures cause a cyber-electromagnetic
attack to only achieve a relatively minor degree of immediate ‘damage.’ In
fact, near-continuous cyber-electromagnetic harassment in the form of noise
jamming, incessant yet readily parried cyber penetration attempts, situational
picture-manipulation attacks that the target’s operators can quickly discover
and reverse, intermittent system crashes or network connectivity interruptions
that are quickly recovered from, or even severe disruptions of non-critical systems and network services may
wear a force’s commanders and crews down mentally even if their critical
systems and networks remain fully capable. A clever adversary might actually
find this psychological degradation more exploitable (and more likely to be
available for use at any given time) than technical degradation. Indeed, cyber-electromagnetic
warfare’s psychological applications may well be where it finds its greatest
utility.
Assessing the Implications
As
the Chief of Naval Operations and others have asserted, the cyber and
electromagnetic domains have become equally important to the physical domains
in waging modern war.[ii]
The cyber-electromagnetic fight will extend throughout all phases of major
future conflicts, may begin well before open hostilities break out as an
adversary attempts to ‘prepare’ the battlespace, and accordingly may be
particularly pivotal during a war’s opening phase. Indeed, high-impact
anti-network operations with major maritime strategic implications date back as
far as the opening moments of the First World War.[iii] Just
as a belligerent might not be able to win a war with naval dominance alone but
could easily lose without it, so it will be for cyber-electromagnetic
dominance. It follows that a naval force’s ability to operate within a
contested maritime zone will be highly questionable if it cannot effectively
suppress or exploit the adversary’s force-level networks while simultaneously
parrying the adversary’s own cyber-electromagnetic attacks. This will even
extend to operations featuring stealth platforms, as such assets have long
needed direct EW support to achieve maximal effectiveness.[iv]
Should the U.S. Navy under-appreciate a potential adversary’s integration of
cyber-electromagnetic warfare within combined arms doctrine, in a future
conflict it would risk facing attrition rates on par with what it endured in
the Solomon Islands from summer 1942 through summer 1943—something that its
contemporary force structure simply could not endure.[v]
Assuming
the candidate principles we have outlined are validated, they will influence
future maritime warfare in at least five general ways. First, they will confirm
leading tactical theorist Wayne Hughes’s hypothesis from over a decade ago that
the next major maritime fight will be defined by the belligerents’ struggle for
scouting superiority.[vi]
This will represent a drastic change from the U.S. Navy’s post-Second World War
combat experiences, in which the absence of threats to its sea control allowed
it to focus on maximizing the efficiency and persistence of power projection
ashore. Regardless of whether a tactical action pits two naval battleforces
against each other, or one against a land-based force, the victor will likely
be the side that is able to achieve high-confidence classification,
identification, and targeting against his opponent’s forces first, thereby enabling
effective attack.[vii]
Cyber-electromagnetic discipline and capabilities will clearly be central to the
success of the scouting/anti-scouting phases of any future operation.
Second,
the above signifies that a force will need to extend its effective scouting and anti-scouting reach beyond that of its
opponent. This is not achieved solely by covering a given area with more
sensors than the opponent, or deploying scouts at greater ranges than the
opponent. Rather, as suggested earlier, a sensor network’s effectiveness is equally
a function of its architecture. This means the availability of
difficult-to-intercept communications pathways and backup communications
infrastructure will be just as important as raw coverage volume, lest key
sensors be cut off from the network or the situational picture they feed be
decisively manipulated. This also means the network must employ multiple sensor
types. For surveillance, this translates into multi-phenomenology sensors
positioned (or covering areas) as far as possible forward within the
battlespace, with some using sensing methodologies and platform characteristics
that allow them to avoid (or at least delay) counterdetection. For
reconnaissance, this requires sensors capable of penetrating the opponent’s
force to support the confident confirmation of a given contact’s classification
and identity. The U.S. Navy simply cannot afford to waste precious inventories
of advanced weapons by falling for deception in a future battle. In this light,
the Navy’s proposed Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike
(UCLASS) system could be a critical enabler for effectively employing the
proposed Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), beyond visual range anti-air
missiles, and similar network-enhanced standoff-range maritime weapons. It
should not be overlooked that UCLASS, a scouting and attack asset that will be
organic to the battleforce, can be designed to support expanded operations on
interior lines of networking.
Third,
if there is to be a reasonable chance that any degradation will be graceful, cyber-electromagnetic
resilience must become a defining attribute of systems’ and networks’ designs.
Strong electronic protection and information assurance features are certainly
vital, with the latter applying just as much to ‘engineering plant’ systems as
to the warfare systems they support. Nevertheless, as no system or network can
ever be unexploitable, those central to a force’s tactical capabilities must
contain additional design features that allow for quick restoration, graceful
degradation, or capability expansion when subjected to withering cyber-electromagnetic
attacks. Systems’ avoidance of network-dependency will also help greatly to
this end.
Fourth,
operations within opposed cyber-electromagnetic environments will demand C2
decentralization, as a higher echelon’s ability to assert direct, secure control
over subordinate units under such circumstances will be dubious. Even if
possible, this kind of close control will almost certainly be inadvisable if
only for force concealment and counter-exploitation considerations. Instead,
maritime forces will need to re-embrace ‘command-by-negation’ doctrine, or
rather the broad empowerment of lower-level commanders to exercise initiative
in accordance with their higher commander’s pre-disseminated intentions, if
they are to fight effectively. Relatedly, aggressive experimentation will be
needed to find the proper balance between operating on interior and exterior
lines of networking when inside a contested zone—and will probably reveal that
the bias should be towards the former.
Lastly,
forces capable of operating under command-by-negation and in opposed cyber-electromagnetic
environments are not developed overnight. Frequent and intensive training under
realistic combat conditions will be needed if the requisite force-wide skills
are to be developed.[viii]
In particular, much as we have traditionally done to cultivate physical damage
control readiness, commanders and crews on the deckplates must be regularly conditioned
to expect, recognize, and fight-through cyber-electromagnetic attacks. A
force’s cyber-electromagnetic resilience will depend in no small way upon its
personnel’s technical, tactical, and psychological preparation for operating
with critical systems and networks degraded if not compromised, and with
situational pictures that have been manipulated. Likewise, a force’s ability to
successfully deceive the adversary—not to mention successfully employ
countermeasures against the adversary’s weapons—will depend upon the cyber-electromagnetic
tactical skills the force’s personnel cultivate through routinized peacetime
training. Emission control discipline, decoy placement relative to defended
assets, precision evasive maneuvers, precision timing and sequencing of
tactics, and the like require frequent practice if commanders and crews are to gain
and then maintain just the minimum proficiencies needed to survive in modern
maritime battle. The Navy’s next Strategy for Achieving Information Dominance
needs to make it clear that cyber-electromagnetic competence must not be
isolated to its Information Dominance Corps, and instead must be ingrained
within the total force.
While
cyber-electromagnetic risks hardly invalidate the use of advanced sensor and
networking technologies, they do caution us not to take for granted that our
systems and networks will be secure, functional, and reliable when needed. Our doctrine, contingency operational plans,
and tactics must be structured around the assumption each of our warfare
systems contain exploitable cyber-electromagnetic vulnerabilities that may
prevent us from using them to their fullest—or at all—when most needed. We must
not allow ourselves to build and field a force that can only fight effectively
when its systems and networks are unhindered and uncompromised.
[i]
Norman Friedman. “Trust but Verify.” Naval
Institute Proceedings 134, No. 11 (November 2008), 90-91.
[ii]
ADM Jonathan Greenert, USN. “Imminent Domain.” Naval Institute Proceedings 138, No. 12 (December 2012), 17.
[iii]
LCDR James T. Westwood, USN. “Electronic Warfare and Signals Intelligence at
the Outset of World War I.” U.S. National
Security Agency, undated, accessed 1/31/14, http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/electronic_warfare.pdf
[iv]
See 1. ADM Jonathan Greenert, USN. “Payloads Over Platforms: Charting a New
Course.” Naval Institute Proceedings
138, No. 7 (July 2012), 18-19; 2. Gordon and Trainor, 213-215, 217; 3. Arend G.
Westra. “Radar Versus Stealth: Passive Radar and the Future of U.S. Military
Power.” Joint Forces Quarterly 55
(October 2009), 136-143.
[v]
Thomas G. Mahnken. “China's Anti-Access Strategy in Historical and Theoretical
Perspective.” Journal of Strategic
Studies 34, No. 3 (June 2011), 310.
[vi]
CAPT Wayne Hughes, Jr, USN (Ret). Fleet
Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2nd Ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2000), 201-202, 210-212.
[vii]
Ibid, 40-44.
[viii]
Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,” 104-106.
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