A Definitive Article about Information Age Naval Warfare

Earlier this week I discussed two superb articles in the July 2015 Naval Institute Proceedings that examined aspects of cyber and networking resiliency. Today I’m going to talk about the issue’s third article on cyber-electromagnetic warfare: LCDR DeVere Crooks’s and LCDR Mateo Robertaccio’s “The Face of Battle in the Information Age.”

Usually when I read a journal article I mark it up with a pen to highlight key passages or ideas so that I can revisit them later. My doing so to their article was pointless in retrospect, as I ended up highlighting just about every one of their paragraphs.

LCDRs Crooks and Robertaccio touch on virtually every major aspect of operating under cyber-electromagnetic opposition. They correctly argue that cyber-electromagnetic warfare is integral to 21^st Century naval warfare, and that we ignore that truism at our peril. They observe that while our pre-deployment training exercises are generally designed to test how well units perform particular tasks, or to test or troubleshoot plans and operating concepts, they don’t generally allow for freeplay experimentation that might uncover new insights about fighting at sea in the information age. “What will tactical-level decision-makers experience, what will they be able to understand about the battlefield around them, and how will that lead them to employ the tactics and equipment they’ve been handed?” ask the authors.

They also highlight the centrality of emissions control to combat survival, with the added observation that the Navy must learn to accept “electromagnetic silence” as its “default posture.” They decry the fact that the Navy rarely is “forced to operate in a silent (or reduced) mode for any sort of extended period or while conducting complex operations.” They allude to the fact that we were able to regularly perform at such a level as recently as a quarter century ago.

They then go into great detail asking questions about whether our training, preferred communications methods, doctrine, tactics, and tactical culture are fully aligned with the realities of fighting under cyber-electromagnetic opposition. When I was on active duty at sea in 2001-2004, I only recall one exercise in which a destroyer I served on practiced performing combat tasks while using only our passive sensor systems—and that was done at the initiative of my destroyer’s Commanding Officer. I don’t remember ever conducting a drill in any of my ships in which our connectivity with external intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets was deliberately manipulated, degraded, or severed by simulated electronic attacks. Evidently LCDRs Crooks and Robertaccio had similar experiences on their sea tours as well. The issues they raise along these lines in the middle sections of their article are worth the “price of admission” alone.

Their concluding recommendations are most commendable:

• Begin conducting a “series of extended free play Fleet Problems with minimal scripting and objectives beyond the generation of a large body of direct, honest lessons learned and questions for further investigation.” These Fleet Problems should “allow either side to win or lose without intervention to drive a planned outcome” and should “apply as many of the atmospherics and limitations of an Information Age A2/AD environment as possible, challenging participants to work within the constraints of a battlefield that is contested in all domains.”
• Use these experiments and other forms of analysis to generate “a set of assumptions about the conditions that are likely to apply in Information Age naval combat (in specified time frames) and mandate that they be applied to all tactics development, fleet training requirements and scenarios, manning plans, and training requirements for individual personnel” as well as “to the development of requirements for future payloads and platforms.”
• Acknowledge at every level that the cyber and electromagnetic domains will be hotly contested. This means no longer treating the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of information “as a given” or otherwise that it would be “lightly contested.” Tactical-level commanders should treat the need for temporary localized cyber-electromagnetic superiority as just as integral to sea control as is the case with the physical domains of war. As they observe, “this may often largely amount to the monitoring of operations coordinated at higher levels of command, but it is critically relevant even to individual watchstanders.” I would add that qualitative observations of the cyber-electromagnetic situation will likely be just as important as quantitative measurements of that situation.

LCDRs Crooks and Robertaccio have written a definitive thought-piece regarding modern naval warfare under cyber-electromagnetic opposition. I commend it to all naval professionals and enthusiasts alike. It should be considered a point-of-departure reference for the naval debates of our time. 

And my thanks to LCDR Crooks for sharing a follow-on surface force-centric piece here at ID last week. I truly hope his and LCDR Robertaccio’s messages percolate within the fleet. Much in the future depends upon it.

 

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.