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.

Thinking About Cyber and Networking Resiliency

I’m well over a month late writing about the July 2015 issue of USNI Proceedings. Simply put, it contains three of the finest pieces about operating under cyber-electromagnetic opposition I’ve read in a long time. I’ll be talking about two of them today and the third one later this week.

First up is LCDR Brian Evans’s and Pratik Joshi’s outstanding article “From Readiness to Resiliency.” Evans and Joshi note that past Navy cyberdefense efforts primarily focused on unit-level compliance with information assurance measures such as firewall configurations, network configuration management and behavior monitoring, physical security protections, and regular ‘hygiene’ training for users. While these kinds of measures continue to be critically important in that they deny adversaries ‘cheap and easy’ attack vectors for exploiting Navy networks and systems, the authors observe that no cyberdefense can hope to keep an intelligent, determined, and adequately resourced adversary out forever. According to the authors, last fall the Navy’s nascent Task Force Cyber Awakening concluded (correctly I might add) that the Navy’s systems, networks, and personnel must able to continue operating effectively, albeit with graceful degradation, in the face of cyberattacks. In other words, they must become resilient.

Evans and Joshi essentially outline a concept for shipboard “cyber damage control.” They describe how the longstanding shipboard material readiness conditions X-RAY, YOKE, and ZEBRA can also be applied to shipboard networks: crews can proactively shut down selected internal and external network connections as tactical circumstances warrant, or they can do so reactively if cyber exploitation is suspected. The authors outline how crews will be able to segment networks and isolate mission-critical systems from less-critical systems, or isolate compromised systems from uncompromised systems, much like damaged compartments can be isolated to prevent the spread of fire, smoke, or flooding. The authors go on to discuss how damage isolation must be followed by repair efforts, and how knowledge of a system’s or network segment’s last known good state can be used to recognize what an attacker has exploited and how in order to aid restoration. It stands to reason that affected systems and network segments might additionally be restorable by crews to a known good state, or at least into a “safe state” that trades gracefully degraded non-critical functionality for sustainment of critical functions.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that resilience requires more than just technological and procedural measures. When I was an Ensign on USS First Ship in 2001, many crewmembers would tell me of the “Refresher Training” at Guantanamo Bay that Atlantic Fleet ships went through up until budget cutbacks ended the program in the mid-1990s or so. At REFTRA, the assessors would put ships through exacting combat drills in which chaotic attacks, major damage, and grievous casualties were simulated in order to expose crews to the most stress possible short of actual battle. According to some of the senior enlisted I served with, it wasn’t unusual for the assessors to “cripple” a ship’s fighting capacity or “kill off” much of a watchteam or a damage control party to see how the “survivors” reacted. Some ships were supposedly tethered to Guantanamo for weeks on end until the assessors were convinced that the crews had demonstrated adequate combat conditioning—and thus a greater potential for combat resilience. This kind of training intensity must be restored, preferably by shipboard leaders themselves, with the 21^st Century addition of exposing their crews to the challenges of fighting through cyberattacks. Perhaps a scenario might involve intensive simulation of system malfunctions as a pierside ship rushes to prepare to sortie during an escalating crisis. Or perhaps it might involve simulated malfunctions at sea as “logic bombs” or an “insider attack” are unleashed. Evans and Joshi allude to the cyber-conditioning angle in the fictional future shipboard training drill they use to close their article. One hopes that Task Force Cyber Awakening is in fact exploring how to develop the psychological aspect of resilience within the fleet.

This leads nicely into the July issue’s other excellent technical article on network resilience, CDR John Dahm’s “Next Exit: Joint Information Environment.” CDR Dahm argues that even if the Defense Department were to successfully consolidate and standardize the services’ information infrastructures within the most hardened of citadels, this Joint Information Environment (JIE) would still only be as combat-effective as the security of the communication pathways connecting that citadel to force in the field. He relates a fictional saga in which a near-peer adversary wins a limited war by severing the U.S. military’s satellite communications pathways as well as the oceanic fiber optic cables connecting Guam and Okinawa to the internet. He correctly notes that the “transmission layer” connecting deployed U.S. forces and theater/national intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets with the JIE presents the most vulnerable segment of the entire JIE concept. He alludes to the fact that a force that is dependent upon exterior lines of networking is essentially setting itself up for ruin if an adversary lands effective physical, electronic, or cyber attacks against any critical link in the communications chain. He closes by observing that “the communications necessary to support a cloud-based network architecture cannot simply be assumed,” with the implication being that the JIE concept must be expanded to encompass the transmission layer if it is to be successful in a major war.

We know that just as there can never be such a thing as an impregnable “information citadel,” there is no way to make any communications pathway completely secure from disruption, penetration, or exploitation. We can certainly use measures such as highly-directional line-of-sight communications systems and low probability of intercept communications techniques to make it exceedingly difficult for an adversary to detect and exploit our communications pathways. We can also use longstanding measures such as high frequency encoded broadcast as a one-way method of communicating operational orders and critical intelligence from higher-level command echelons to deployed forces. But both reduce the amount of information flowing to those forces to a trickle compared to what they are used to receiving when unopposed, and the latter cuts off the higher echelon commander from knowledge that the information he or she had transmitted has been received, correctly interpreted, and properly implemented. And neither method is unequivocally free from the risk of effective adversary attack. What’s needed, then, is a foundation of resilience built upon a force-wide culture of mission command. That may be outside the JIE concept’s scope, but it will be integral to its success.

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.

Combined Arms Support to Submarine Operations

Last month in the conclusion to my series examining the Jeune École, I noted that Germany’s use of submarines in the Atlantic for theater denial and Guerre de Course during the two World Wars—while incredibly costly to the Allies in terms of blood and treasure—ultimately failed in large part because German surface combatants and land-based aircraft could not seriously offset Allied anti-submarine efforts.

German U-boats were on their own in the Atlantic during the First World War because their surface combatant brethren could not break through the Royal Navy’s North Sea blockade in numbers. Granted, a handful of German large and medium surface combatants were forward deployed when the war broke out, and a few Germany-based medium surface combatants and armed auxiliaries managed to access the Atlantic at various points over the war’s course. All of these warships, though, operated as commerce-raiders either by design or by default—and few managed to operate for longer than a handful of months before being neutralized. Allied anti-submarine forces, whether operating independently or (after April 1917) as convoy escorts, therefore only had to contend with their prey

Nor did U-boats receive substantive support from the Kriegsmarine’s surface forces during the Second World War. If anything, Germany was at an even steeper surface order of battle deficit relative to the Royal Navy than had been the case two decades earlier. As a result, and with the exception of the April-June 1940 Norwegian campaign, the Kriegsmarine once again principally used its larger surface combatants for commerce-raiding. Although the Kriegsmarine’s surface threat to Britain’s lines of communication with the Americas was peacemeal and limited to 1939-1941, the threat it posed to the allies’ lines to the Soviet Union through the Norwegian Sea was more serious and lasted until 1943. One could make the case that the Kriegsmarine’s large surface combatants based in Norway supported U-boats in the case of convoy PQ-17, but that stemmed from the British Admiralty erroneously ordering the convoy’s ships to scatter to their fates in the belief that German surface raiders including the Tirpitz were approaching (they were not). In any case, the sad story of PQ-17 was not repeated.

The advent of theater-range aircraft during the interwar years, however, meant that U-boats did receive some combined arms support. Specialized Luftwaffe bombers were fielded to provide surveillance and reconnaissance support to Kriegsmarine surface and submarine units. These bombers also conducted anti-ship raids of their own. The Luftwaffe was able to iteratively increase its oceanic reach throughout the war, established a dedicated command for maritime operations in the northeastern Atlantic, and introduced radio-controlled anti-ship weapons that permitted standoff attacks. The first combat use of one of these weapons, in fact, caused the allies to temporarily halt offensive anti-submarine Surface Action Group (SAG) operations in the Bay of Biscay; this provided U-boats based on the French Atlantic coast with a temporary window of opportunity for safer transits to and from the open ocean.

And yet, the Luftwaffe never operated enough aircraft to pose a persistent threat to allied convoys or offensive anti-submarine SAGs. Moreover, the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine never hammered out doctrine, communications protocols, or planning processes that could enable effective operational coordination. On-scene tactical coordination between aircraft and U-boats was sporadic; the occasional noteworthy successes that did occur did not translate into major campaign gains. Luftwaffe land-attack raids against major British ports, naval bases, and shipbuilding hubs to suppress convoy and SAG operations as well as new ship construction were sustained for only the first half of 1941, were largely ineffective in their operational purpose, and were ultimately discontinued. Most significantly, U-boats operating in the western and southern Atlantic were outside the Luftwaffe’s range—and thus were on their own.

The Soviet Union’s leading maritime strategist of the Cold War, Fleet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, took note of all this. In his 1976 book The Sea Power of the State, Gorshkov observed that Germany’s Second World War U-boat operations ultimately failed to achieve their strategic objectives in part because they

“…did not have the support of other forces, notably, aircraft, which could have been an irreplaceable means of reconnaissance, to fulfill the tasks of destroying anti-submarine forces and also to act against the economy of the opponent, particularly his shipbuilding industry, and to inflict blows on cargo ships in the ocean.” (Pg 120)

Gorshkov then observed that while German U-boat operations were representative of the roles submarines should play in war, the Germans erred as

“Throughout the war not a single attempt was made to counter the anti-submarine forces of the Allies in an organized way from operating with total impunity.” (Pg 120-121)

Notwithstanding the irony that Soviet interests in the war were on the receiving end of the U-boat operations he lauded, Gorshkov appeared to be arguing that Soviet attack submarines should perform much the same roles in a notional conflict with the U.S. and NATO. He further seemed to argue that Soviet air forces should provide his submarines with the direct and indirect forms of support that he had outlined.

Whatever Gorshkov may have actually believed, his Navy’s planned use of submarines for barrier protection of the Soviet maritime periphery represented the polar opposite of what his book seemed to recommend. Part of this was due to the paramount Soviet military-strategic task of protecting the motherland from naval strikes, whether conventional or nuclear. Part of this was also due to Soviet leaders’ fears that their strategic nuclear reserve force—their SSBNs—might be subjected to wartime attrition via U.S. and NATO conventional offensive anti-submarine operations. If the U.S. and NATO could attain a superior ‘correlation of nuclear forces’ during the conventional fight, Soviet logic went, then the West would gain a major card to play in the bargaining over war termination. Soviet Naval Aviation, surface forces, and attack submarines were consequently tasked with preventing U.S. and NATO naval forces from attacking the SSBNs; comparatively few Soviet attack submarines were to be hurled at NATO’s trans-Atlantic lines of communication at the beginning of a war.

It follows that offensive strategic anti-submarine warfare was one of the primary reasons the 1980s U.S. Maritime Strategy emphasized forward operations within the Soviet oceanic periphery. The strategy suggested that if U.S. carrier battleforces in the Norwegian Sea and Northwest Pacific could weather or outright defeat Soviet anti-carrier forces’ onslaught early in a war, then U.S. and allied anti-submarine forces might gain more operational freedom to interdict older Soviet SSBNs (or any Soviet SSNs for that matter) attempting to break out through forward geographic chokepoints into the ‘world ocean.’ Moreover, U.S. naval airpower could also be theoretically used to suppress Soviet surface and airborne anti-submarine forces protecting the newer Soviet SSBNs’ bastion patrol boxes. If these Soviet anti-submarine forces could be suppressed, then U.S. and NATO SSNs operating against the bastions (or conducting land-attack cruise missile strikes into the Soviet Union, if so ordered) would only face opposition from their acoustically-inferior Soviet counterparts. In essence, the 1980s Maritime Strategy redirected Gorshkov’s logic regarding combined arms support of submarine operations against his own fleet.

The late Cold War is not the only example of U.S. combined arms support of submarine operations. Again, as I noted in my Jeune École series’ finale, U.S. offensive submarine operations against Japanese sea lines of communication during the Second World War benefitted indirectly from the Imperial Japanese Navy’s myopic fixation on fleet-on-fleet operations:

The U.S. Navy fast carrier task force’s advance across the Pacific arguably provided increasing amounts of indirect combined arms support to their submariner brethren over time by occupying the attention of Japanese naval resources that theoretically could have been assigned to convoy defenses or submarine-hunting groups. Although the Imperial Japanese Navy showed little interest in protecting convoys from submarines during the war, an absence of the U.S. Navy carrier threat in the Central Pacific after 1942 might have provided room for reallocating some Japanese fleet assets to anti-submarine tasks as Japanese merchant vessel losses mounted.

So what might these history lessons mean for future U.S. Navy doctrine and operating concepts?

For starters, it’s important to keep in mind that a submarine’s combat “invisibility” has never been absolute. If a submarine torpedoes a ship, then the other side’s anti-submarine forces gain a “flaming datum” to orient their search. If a submarine launches a missile or raises a periscope/ESM mast for too long within the other side’s effective radar (or visual) coverage and is detected, then the other side's hunters know precisely where to start their cordon and redetection efforts—or place quick-response weapons in the water. A submarine may be able to scan or shoot far enough away from an opponent’s anti-submarine aircraft or surface combatants to be able to “break datum” before the hunters can react effectively, but it cannot count on that favorable scenario always being available. And the closer a submarine operates to an adversary’s coast, the denser the coverage by the adversary’s anti-submarine sensors (whether seabed-mounted sonar arrays, ship and aircraft-mounted sonars/radars, or fishermen’s eyes) and platforms will be. These assets might not be able to find or shoot at the submarine, but their presence might unnecessarily complicate its mission. In some situations it might even delay or prevent the submarine from completing that mission.

In a major modern war, U.S. SSNs and SSGNs would be tasked with land-attack strikes, special forces insertion/extraction, and intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance collection within a contested zone’s inner reaches. The SSNs would additionally be tasked with forward anti-submarine and anti-surface operations. Just as was the case in the 1980s Maritime Strategy, our submarines might situationally benefit from some external help from other U.S. or allied forces in suppressing the adversary’s ability to conduct effective anti-submarine operations.

This help might take the form of aircraft performing anti-ship missile raids against enemy anti-submarine SAGs inside a contested zone. It might take the form of offensive sweeps by fighters against the adversary’s maritime patrol aircraft. The mere fact that adversary anti-submarine forces were attacked in a particular area in a particular way might induce the adversary to limit or cease operations in that area while it figures out how to adapt; this could be exploited to great effect by U.S. submarines even if the ‘pause’ only lasted for a few days.

External forces might also provide submarines with deception and concealment support. This might consist of air or surface naval operations that have the primary or secondary purpose of distracting the adversary’s attention from a U.S. submarine’s operating area. Or perhaps air or surface forces might release submarine-simulating unmanned underwater systems at some standoff distance from the adversary’s coast; these decoys could then “swim” forward into designated areas to confuse or distract the adversary’s anti-submarine forces.

External support to forward submarine operations might additionally include surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that report their surface pictures via interior lines of networking to a higher-echelon commander. The commander could then broadcast that information along with theater or national-level naval intelligence information “in the blind” for our submarines to receive and use for their purposes.

If authorized by U.S. political leadership, combined arms support to our submarines might even take the form of U.S. cruise missile strikes against the adversary’s naval and air bases supporting anti-submarine operations. As I’ve noted previously, it must be understood that a U.S. President’s decision-making on this question would be heavily—and perhaps decisively—affected by the escalatory precedents already set by the adversary (regardless of who that might be) in the conflict. 

These forms of external support would not be possible to all U.S. forward submarine operations due to asset availabilities. Nevertheless, air or surface operations could be sequenced or coordinated to support specifically prioritized submarine operations or operational periods.

The adversary’s ability to pose an excessively high threat to U.S./allied air or surface operations within a contested zone’s inner sections would also be a major limiting factor. Special assets such as very low observable aircraft might be needed to conduct attacks in support of submarine operations—or cue attacks by other forces armed with long-range weapons. These penetrating aircraft in turn might need to be supported via submarine-launched land-attack cruise missile strikes against an adversary’s wide-area air surveillance sensors or air defense systems. This is a great example of why mutual support between combat arms is so critical in modern warfare. Even so, it is quite likely that the further forward a submarine operates within a contested zone, the more likely external support (if any is possible) will be indirect.

None of this changes the fact that U.S. submarines will assuredly conduct high-risk independent operations deep within an adversary’s maritime periphery in a notional major war. That’s been a constant from the Second World War, through the Cold War, to today. U.S. direct and indirect support of submarine operations has also been a constant, whether it was inadvertent as in the Second World War or consciously planned for as in the 1980s Maritime Strategy. I’d argue that external combined arms support (as possible and relevant) can have much to offer our submarines in the present and future as well.

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I'll be on hiatus next week. I aim to resume posting the week of August 10th.

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.

Command and Control for Distributed Lethality

LCDR Jimmy Drennan wrote an interesting post at CIMSEC NextWar earlier this month about how the Surface Navy should implement Command and Control (C²) of Surface Action Groups (SAG) within the nascent distributed lethality concept. LCDR Drennan correctly points out that the Composite Warfare Commander organizational structure was designed for carrier battleforces and is inappropriate for (if not unexecutable by) SAGs. He also correctly observes that because voice and data communications between a SAG and a distant higher echelon tactical commander (whether embarked in a carrier or elsewhere) cannot be assured under conditions of cyber-electromagnetic opposition, the SAG must be tactically commanded by an officer embarked in one of its constituent warships. He then suggests that the position of SAG commander should be established as a Major Command billet (e.g., a command tour assigned only after an officer has completed a tour commanding a single warship).  

This assumes a SAG would be a standing distinct group of surface combatants in peacetime—something akin to a ship squadron. If that is the case, then a U.S. Navy SAG that includes DDGs would theoretically be organized around a Destroyer Squadron and its Commodore, and a U.S. Navy SAG that is entirely comprised of LCSs or the future LCS-derived frigate would be organized around a LCS Squadron and its Commodore.

But I’d argue it is highly unlikely that the only U.S. Navy SAGs in a war would—or could—be standing peacetime squadrons of combatants. It boils down to the intersection between desired operational tempo and surface combatant availability.

Sometimes there will be missions in which a full squadron is excessive. At other times the nature of a mission and the breadth of the operating area may require dividing a squadron into several smaller groupings, each with separate tasking, that are then dispersed. There will probably often be missions in which only a handful of surface combatants can be spared to form a SAG because of other pressing demands in theater. In situations like these today during peacetime, the SAG commander defaults to the senior-most ship Commanding Officer in a task group. I would expect this to continue to be the case in wartime.

The implication is that all prospective first-tour Commanding Officers will have to be taught not only how to command their own ship, but also how to command SAGs. The Executive Officers and Department Heads that serve under them will likewise have to be taught how to serve as something akin to a “group staff” for their Commanding Officer when they are the SAG flagship.

There’s an added wrinkle in that the composition of any given SAG in a major war will likely be ad hoc. This will be especially likely the longer a war lasts. Ships will be damaged, whether from battle or wear-and-tear. Some will be lost in battle. Reinforcement ships will arrive from elsewhere in theater, other theaters, or U.S. homeports. Operational tempo will be unremitting. As we learned in the Solomons Campaign of 1942-1943, ship assignments to squadrons or groups will only be permanent in the sense that the demands of the next day—and the number of ships available that can get to sea and fight—will result in frequent short-notice reassignments. Common SAG tactics, techniques, and procedures will be needed Navy-wide so that any given ship will be able to integrate relatively easily into a new grouping.

Even so, this will not be able to fully overcome the challenges of a Commanding Officer and his or her crew having to learn the unique tactical behaviors of the other Commanding Officers and crews in their newly-assigned SAG—not to mention those of the SAG’s commander. Just about every account of the Solomons Campaign I’ve ever read contained the observation that the lack of operational familiarity between group/squadron commanders and their subordinate ship commanders, as well as the lack of operational familiarity between the watchteams of the ships in the group/squadron, was a major impediment to the groups and squadrons achieving their full tactical potential. Nelson had several months in the lead-up Trafalgar to instruct his Captains on his combat thinking, obtain their inputs, and drill them and their crews on how they should fight in accordance with his expressed intentions. Modern war won’t provide SAG commanders and their subordinate Captains that degree of pre-battle training luxury. LCDR Drennan is absolutely correct, then, that ship Commanding Officers in a SAG will need to be granted considerable independent tactical decision-making authority in accordance with the SAG commander’s last promulgated intentions. This will require a great deal of trust between SAG commanders and their subordinate ship Commanding Officers, as well as amongst the Commanding Officers of the SAG’s warships. The same will also be true between the SAG commander and his or her higher-echelon commander.

One final point concerns the facilities a warship must possess to serve as a SAG flagship. If a SAG is to be commanded by the senior-most ship Commanding Officer in the group, then the ship’s communications equipment and its spaces available for operational planning ought to be adequate. If a squadron Commodore is to be embarked to command the SAG, then his or her flagship will need space for the Commodore’s staff. And if several small independent SAGs will be operating under the operational control of a Commodore embarked in one of the ships in one of the SAGs, then that ship may need considerable communications bandwidth.

DDGs can host a Commodore and a small staff, but the fit is extremely tight. Instead of bringing staff officers aboard, it might be worth exploring whether an embarked Commodore might tap a few of the flagship’s Department Heads and Division Officers to serve as his or her planning cell and watchstanding teams. Warfare Tactics Instructor-designated Division Officers might then “fleet up” to temporarily run their departments and stand Tactical Action Officer watches while this is going on. Chief Petty Officers might likewise stand in for the Division Officers serving in other roles. If the Commodore was also a Destroyer or LCS Squadron commander, then his or her dedicated staff might serve elsewhere as a cell planning this or another SAG’s follow-on operations.

It also may be worth exploring whether the space available aboard a LCS or LCS-FF might allow it to host some sort of “C² Mission Module” that contains staff space, a SAG command center, additional communications equipment, and additional topside communications apertures. I’ve touched on some of the communications capabilities that will be needed for SAG operations under cyber-electromagnetic opposition in the past, and I’ll be returning to the topic in a few weeks.

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.