A first
strike’s naval component is commonly referred to as the “first salvo.” A
first salvo builds upon the maxim that the fleet attacking effectively first
obtains a greater probability of victory in a given tactical action, with the
understanding that superior maritime surveillance and reconnaissance is a
prerequisite for being able to do so.[1]
This situational awareness becomes far more complicated to achieve against a
defender’s maneuvering naval forces, though, once the defender’s peacetime
rules of engagement regarding what he can do to suppress or neutralize enemy wide-area
sensors and their supporting data relay networks, interdict enemy scouts, and
employ deception and concealment are relaxed following hostilities’ outbreak.
Since an attacker has every reason to believe his maritime picture will never
be as accurate and comprehensive at any later point in a conflict as it is during
peacetime’s waning moments, and since naval warfare is inherently
capital-intensive, the attacker’s best chance to maximally neutralize a
defender’s higher campaign-value
fleet assets is in a first salvo.[2]
Accordingly, one of the defender’s most critical peacetime tasks is to mitigate
the risk that any conceivable non-nuclear first salvo can attrite his naval
forces below the minimum deemed necessary to prevent a potential adversary’s
aggression from achieving some military-strategic fait accompli.
An aggressor’s maritime offensive, though, may not be aimed
at seizing territory or resources, solidifying a blockade, or ‘violently
adjusting’ a theater’s power balance. Coercing the defender or other
international actors by creating a public perception that the defender is weak,
that a geopolitical status quo is tenuous, or that rising tensions are becoming
exceptionally dangerous may actually be more useful to an aggressor’s grand
strategy. A first salvo in these cases might be an extremely limited, ‘one-time’
tactical action intended not to ignite a war or to pave the way for follow-on military
operations, but rather to support subsequent diplomatic, economic, or
propagandistic endeavors at the defender’s expense. An example of this would be
the 2010 North Korean torpedoing of the South Korean corvette ROKS Cheonan.
Assuming an attacker can locate and target at least some of a
defender’s in-theater naval forces as a crisis peaks, a contemporary first
salvo may consist of minimal-warning saturation attacks using anti-ship missiles,
torpedoes, or irregular ‘swarming’ small boats and aircraft. The attacker might
also covertly lay minefields in shallow contested seas, inside maritime
chokepoints, or near the defender’s naval bases and forward logistical support
ports. These kinetic actions will likely be paired with cyber and electronic warfare
attacks designed to conceal attacking forces' movements, exacerbate the
defender’s confusion and demoralization, and inflict physical damage as
possible on the defender’s forces and Command, Control, and Communications (C3)
network infrastructure. A first salvo will almost certainly be coordinated with
a diplomatic and propaganda campaign that attempts to justify the attacker’s
actions, assign blame to the defender for peace’s collapse, and blur what
actually happened.
New systems and platforms can certainly be designed with
capabilities that help mitigate the U.S. Navy’s first salvo vulnerability risks,
but this offers only intermediate if not long-term solutions. Under the normal Department
of Defense acquisition process, it generally takes a ten year minimum to mature
a new system from prototype demonstration in a relevant environment to Initial
Operational Capability (IOC). Transitioning emerging technologies from the
applied research stage into an IOC system obviously takes even longer.[3]
First salvo defense into the foreseeable future, therefore, will largely depend
upon theater and tactical-level commanders’ successes in enhancing existing
forces’ resiliency in the face of a surprise attack.
Resilient Doctrine
and Plans
From a purely quantitative perspective and assuming flawless scouting,
an attacker’s probability of neutralizing a certain number of defending units in
a strike decreases as the defender’s number of kinetic and non-kinetic defensive
layers, as well as degree of unit-level passive hardening, increase. These
attributes drive up the number of weapons the attacker must employ against a
given target in order to attain a desired probability of success. Scouting is
never flawless and situational pictures can never be omniscient, though. The
defender can capitalize on these realities by using deception and concealment where
tactically viable to increase the probability that a ‘critical mass’ of his
units will evade detection long enough to avoid being attacked before they can successfully
execute their missions.[4]
In a first salvo scenario, however, the above attributes are critically
affected by the defending force’s degree of mobilization. Defensive mobilization
primarily relies upon timely detection and recognition of actionable intelligence,
followed by political and theater-level military leaders’ rapid decisions to
act upon those Indications and Warning (I&W). This sequence’s perfect
execution rarely occurs in practice for a litany of political, operational, and
psychological reasons. Even in the depths of a crisis in which war I&W are unmistakable,
these factors may deter a defender from adequately increasing his forces’
readiness postures in a timely manner.[5]
Nevertheless, naval doctrine and standing operational plans
can compensate for the mobilization problem if they are structured around an
expectation that a given potential antagonist would seek to initiate a
conventional war by unleashing a massive first salvo.[6]
As exemplified by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s war-initiating raids on the
Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904 and on the U.S. Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the simplest first salvo in terms of
targeting is against a defender’s fleet in port. Considering mobilization-on-warning’s
reliability challenges, a defender can best balance deployed warships’ need for
periodic pierside maintenance and crew relaxation time on one hand against
reducing overall force vulnerability on the other by adopting a posture that
prevents a ‘critical mass’ of his fleet from ever being in his principal forward
bases simultaneously. Routine forward peacetime operations can be built around always
having a minimum contingent either underway or visiting countries that it is
assessed the potential aggressor would prefer not to risk adding as parties to
a conflict. Units’ positioning and portcalls could be managed based on their
ability to quickly ‘become unlocated’ through use of speed, maneuvering space, Emission
Control (EMCON), and other concealment tactics in the event of a sudden crisis.[7]
The combination of geography and political objectives,
though, can constrain the defender’s fleet’s ability to sustainably remain unlocated
throughout a protracted crisis. As was the case with the U.S. 6th
Fleet’s operations in the highly-confined Eastern Mediterranean during the
October 1973 Yom Kippur War, forward forces often must occupy a relatively
fixed operating area when supporting an ally or deterring an antagonist’s
intervention or escalation. Should this area lie within a small or
significantly physically-enclosed marginal sea close to the potential
adversary’s homeland, and especially if accessing the area requires transiting
one or more chokepoints, the potential adversary’s surveillance and
reconnaissance/targeting problems become vastly less difficult.[8]
Under these circumstances, a defender can orient his frontline
peacetime conventional deterrent and initial wartime resistance around naval forces
and weapons that are relatively invulnerable to a first salvo, such as
submarines and offensive as well as defensive minelaying. These efforts can
also employ numerous relatively low campaign-value maritime forces such as highly
mobile land-based surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles, tactical aircraft
operating from dispersed austere forward land bases, and under some
circumstances missile-armed small warships logistically supported from forward
austere ports or rearward seabases. Frontline forces can be supported by
tactical and logistical aircraft from rearward land bases located in-theater, aircraft
carriers operating from ‘over the horizon,’ and homeland-based trans-oceanic
aircraft; all of these hinge on the availability of sufficient airborne
refueling aircraft. Large surface combatants operating from ‘over the horizon’ can
similarly provide cued land-attack and anti-ship missile fire support,
extended-range air defense support, and Ballistic Missile Defense support.
The use of higher campaign-value naval units operating from
‘over the horizon’ as opposed to in a frontline capacity is only partially due
to the first salvo threat. Sustained resistance to an adversary’s offensive
will be impossible if the defender cannot achieve localized ‘moving bubble’ sea
control in areas beyond the immediate contested zone’s periphery in order to support
reliable logistical sustainment of frontline forces, mass movement of
reinforcements and materiel into—and within—the theater, and the protection of theater
allies' primary economic lines of communication. These sea control tasks would
almost certainly drive carrier, amphibious, and major surface action groups’
positioning as a crisis escalates or immediately following a war’s outbreak. Needless
to say, higher campaign-value naval forces postured this way would also be better
able to take advantage of space and maneuver for pre-first salvo defense-in-depth,
concealment, and perhaps even deception.[9]
The further offshore these naval forces were operating from the adversary’s
homeland, the greater the adversary’s challenges would be in executing an
effective first salvo due to the difficulties of timely detection, confident
identification, and continuous targeting-quality tracking of uncooperative
warships within the expansive, dynamic open-ocean environment.[10]
There is a major caveat to the above observations, however. A
capable and audacious adversary might perceive his political objectives to be
so important, the conflict’s ‘inevitability’ of escalation so great, or the
defender’s leaders and citizens so feckless that kinetic first salvo attacks on
the defender’s homeland-based naval forces become operationally attractive
despite the high escalation precedent they would set. The Pearl Harbor case is
instructive: although the pre-Second World War U.S. Navy’s Orange Plans fully
expected Japan would open any war against America with a devastatingly
effective surprise attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Philippines-based
forces, U.S. Navy planners and leaders actively discounted the possibility Japan
would risk galvanizing American popular passions by also attacking sovereign
U.S. territory.[11] A
future adversary might similarly not be satisfied with isolating his first
salvo to forward areas, or otherwise limiting its extension against U.S. Navy
homeland-based forces to cyber or electronic attacks that offer a thin modicum
of escalation control. Mines and standoff-range cruise missiles employed by trans-oceanic
submarines or ‘commercial’ vessels against American homeports would be ideal methods
for maximizing surprise, confusion, and operationally-significant damage in
support of the adversary’s in-theater offensive. Attacks using irregular forces
might also be an option. Any warships laid up per a tiered-readiness approach
would be particularly lucrative targets, and as such would greatly detract from
force resilience.[12] As
it seems unlikely the doctrinal approaches that forward forces can use to
mitigate first salvo vulnerability will be fiscally extensible to homeland-based
forces, greater attention will need to be paid to concepts for dispersing the
fleet among homeland civilian ports in the event of elevated tensions, not to mention
direct homeport defense.
Anticipating ‘Defense
in the Dark’
The preceding examination of kinetic attacks should not
overshadow the fact that cyber-electromagnetic
warfare will form a major part of any future first salvo. While much of cyber-electromagnetic
defense is a technology development and acquisition matter, doctrine and
operational planning also play key roles.[13]
For instance, force-level commanders must not base their plans and operating
concepts on the flimsy assumption that their situational pictures and C3 capabilities
will enjoy relatively unimpeded confidentiality, integrity, and availability
early in a war. As a crisis worsens, it may actually be better to decrease campaign-critical
forces’ relative reliance on external networking with higher echelon commands
or rear echelon support activities rather than double down upon it.[14]
A force is most resilient against C3 attack when
all echelons from the theater-level down to the unit-level adhere to decentralized
doctrine rooted in commanders’ pre-promulgated intentions messages, pre-planned
initial immediate responses to foreseeable tactical situations, avoidance of
overly-synchronized operations, and overall command by negation.
This not only supports greater Operational and Communications Security through
reduced need for frequent detailed communications, but also allows greater lower-echelon
initiative and adaptability within a highly dynamic tactical environment.
It is also extraordinarily difficult for an adversary to detect—let
alone exploit—a localized tactical data and communications network connecting a
forward force’s units via highly-directional line-of-sight pathways that make
use of maneuvering assets (ideally organic to the force) as ‘middleman’ relays.
In comparison, an adversary’s cyber-electromagnetic warfare opportunities are
expanded when the defender employs networks that connect fielded forces with higher
command echelons and rearward ‘distance support’ services via predictably-located
or fixed infrastructure (e.g., satellites and their ground stations). Cyber-electromagnetic
first salvo defense means doctrine and operational plans should neither center
on the defender’s higher echelon commanders’ direct real-time tactical control over
lower echelons, nor offer the enemy an opportunity to exploit any informational
and logistical support provided by the defender’s rear echelon ‘reachback’
activities.
Combat Conditioning:
The Key to First Salvo Survival
The common denominator needed to make doctrine, plans, and even
networking approaches truly resilient, however, is combat-ready personnel. This
depends upon on tactically, technologically, and psychologically conditioning
crews for battle’s fog and friction. Indeed, a 1975 U.S. Navy war game underscored
that a first salvo’s degree of devastation would likely stem more from crews’ shock
or disbelief upon detection of actual inbound weapons than from shipboard
combat systems’ performance limitations.[15]
Any decision to take self-defense actions in a fringe-of-war, tactically
ambiguous situation would need to overcome enormous psychological inertia.[16]
The tactical expertise needed to make such high-stakes,
compressed-timeline decisions largely stems from an individual’s experience-shaped
intuition. In peacetime, this experience is gained from training frequency and
realism.[17]
At-sea training remains vital because shipboard tactical, navigational, and
engineering activity coordination cannot be realistically simulated pierside. Many
Murphy’s Law-invoking maritime environmental idiosyncrasies such as disruptive
weather, unanticipated anomalous radiofrequency propagation, and ambient
acoustic complexity are also difficult to realistically simulate. Additionally,
much like man overboard recovery maneuvers, shiphandling proficiency in quick-reaction,
precision-dependent defensive maneuvers relies upon routine, impromptu drills
underway.[18]
It is true that budget-driven underway training reductions, inability to
simulate certain scenarios at sea due to severe operational risk or complexity,
and the need to safeguard certain tactics and capabilities from intelligence
exposure provide strong rationales for pierside unit and group-level synthetic
training as possible and appropriate. Nevertheless, challenges remain in
coordinating frequent pierside synthetic training events, or otherwise funding
and scheduling frequent watchteam visits to high-fidelity simulators located ashore.
As a result, fleetwide first salvo resilience’s core arguably
rests upon the individual unit-level Commanding Officer’s (CO) personal prioritization
of tactical training. Quality onboard training systems are worthless if the CO
does not mandate their regular use, demand that drills feature adversary
tactics derived from the latest disseminated intelligence, and insist that no
two drill scripts ever be alike in order to push watchstanders to continuously grow
their experience bases, hone their instinctive responses, and become
conditioned to cope with the unexpected. The CO must also ensure drills
periodically include simulated cyber and electronic attacks as well as tactical
deceptions to condition watchteams for operating amidst degraded or adversary-manipulated
situational awareness. Most importantly, the CO must directly participate in
drill debriefs to guarantee shortcomings are comprehensively and constructively
identified for follow-on individual or team training—as well as to signal the
training’s importance.
Relatedly, considering the countless deckplate as well as
external demands competing for a CO’s focused attention, Navy senior leadership
must unambiguously communicate to the fleet that tactical training is indeed a
paramount priority. Part of this will come from the seriousness of oversight
posed when higher echelons examine unit and group-level tactical readiness during
routine command assessments and pre-deployment workup exercises. This must be
balanced with promotion board guidance that unfailingly rewards COs whose commands
consistently demonstrate exceptional tactical proficiency and mature tactical
risk-taking. Should Navy senior leadership do otherwise, they would gravely
risk cultivating operational-tactical ineffectuality similar to what occurred
in the U.S. Navy submarine force during 1941-42. Also, just as Navy senior
leaders’ restrictions on submarine approach tactics during the 1920s and 1930s shortchanged
early-Second World War fleet operations, restrictions on contemporary cyber
defense training during battleforce exercises—though reportedly decreasing—may
endanger first salvo resiliency.[19]
Higher echelons must ensure similar mistakes are not being repeated regarding training
for other resiliency-critical tasks such as operations during prolonged EMCON, self-defense
while under intense electronic attack, or defensive anti-submarine warfare.
The Battle for the
First Salvo’s Narrative
A successfully resilient tactical defense, however, may not
be sufficient strategically. As alluded earlier, defeating a first salvo also
means defeating the attacker’s inevitable diplomatic-propaganda campaign. Attackers
within range of their homeland cellular networks, or otherwise using satellite
uplinks, can quickly post audiovisual content recorded and edited on
smartphones or similar devices to websites such as YouTube. From there,
propaganda specialists can work to push the material via social networks to
critical audiences; it may not take more than a few hours to become ‘viral’ and
make the jump to traditional global media outlets. The side that gets seemingly-credible
evidence of what happened out first seizes the initiative, perhaps decisively,
in the diplomatically and politically-critical battle for the international and
domestic public narratives regarding culpability and justification.[20]
In a first salvo’s immediate aftermath, the defender must be
able to quickly collect, process, and disseminate unimpeachable audiovisual
evidence of its victimization without harming Operational Security. This would
be no small feat, especially aboard a warship that is severely damaged or
steeling itself for follow-on attacks.[21]
Even harder is developing continuously updated, interagency-coordinated,
‘stock’ narrative outlines in advance of any operation that might expose units
to direct first salvo risk, not to mention the doctrine and training necessary
to swiftly get an initial narrative out into the global media. Contrary to
current public affairs practice, in some scenarios this might require evidence processing
and public dissemination by lower echelons to be followed thereafter with
amplification and context by executive Navy and national leadership. This will
be a vitally important area for exploration through war gaming and fleet
experiments.
The Strategic
Criticality of First Salvo Resiliency
With its force structure in decline due to political and
fiscal pressures on the Federal budget, and with vital U.S. interests and
commitments in increasingly unstable East and Southwest Asia making forward
naval presence reductions in those theaters grand strategically undesirable,
the U.S. Navy will soon have to cope with a larger fleet proportion being
exposed to ever-increasing first salvo risks at any one time. Should an
especially crippling single-theater first salvo result in loss of several strategically-significant
units or a sizable overall number of warships and aircraft, and even if naval
reinforcements surged from other theaters and the homeland helped ensure the
ensuing conflict ended in American victory, the U.S. Navy would be hard-pressed
to restore its prewar global forward presence levels and crisis surge capacity until
its losses were made good. This would almost certainly have grand
strategy-shattering consequences.
American conventional deterrence credibility in increasingly
contested maritime theaters will depend in large part on whether the U.S. Navy
is able to use the approaches outlined here in ways that visibly improve its first
salvo resiliency within the near-term.[22]
The Navy’s greatest weapon for parrying a first salvo, after all, is convincing
a potential adversary of the probable futility of attempting such an attack in
the first place.
[1]
CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr, USN (Ret). Fleet
Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval
Institute Press, 2000), 40-44. On an adversary’s difficulties in achieving
effective wide-area surveillance and reconnaissance following his first salvo,
see Jonathan F. Solomon. “Defending the Fleet from China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile:
Naval Deception’s Roles in Sea-Based Missile Defense.” (Master’s thesis,
Georgetown University, 2011), 70-76, accessed 10/14/14, https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553587/solomonJonathan.pdf?sequence=1
[2]
For a definition of campaign-value, see Jonathan F. Solomon. “Maritime
Deception and Concealment: Concepts for Defeating Wide-Area Oceanic
Surveillance-Reconnaissance-Strike Networks.” Naval War College Review 66, No. 4 (Autumn 2013): 109.
[3]
“Report on Technology Horizons: A Vision for Air Force Science & Technology
During 2010-2030, Volume One.” (Washington D.C.: U.S. Air Force Chief
Scientist, 15 May 2024), 7.
[4]
Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,” 94-96, 99-103.
[5]For
definitive explanation of and expansion upon this statement, see Richard K. Betts.
Surprise Attack. (Washington, D.C.:
The Brookings Institution, 1982), 87-141, 155-156. None of this means I&W
collection and analysis efforts are pointless, but rather that strategy and
operational plans must not wholly depend upon them.
[7]
However unintentionally, the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s aircraft carrier posture
immediately prior to the Pearl Harbor raid met this criteria. Their survival
was pivotal to U.S. maritime denial operations during the Pacific War’s first
six months, especially at the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. See “Pearl
Harbor Attack, 7 December 2024 Carrier Locations.” U.S. Naval History and
Heritage Command, accessed 10/14/14, http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-9.htm
[8]
Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,” 96-97.
[10]
Robert C. Rubel. “Talking About Sea Control.” Naval War College Review 63, No. 4 (Autumn 2010): 45.
[11]
Edward S. Miller. War Plan Orange: The
U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945. (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval
Institute Press, 1991), 25, 27, 29, 354.
[12]
For an example of a fleet tiered readiness approach, see RADM Robert O. Wray,
USN. “The Utility of a Three-Tiered Navy.” Naval
Institute Proceedings 139, No. 6, (June 2013): 42-47.
[13]
For a discussion of technical countermeasures and acquisition approaches that
enhance a military system or network’s cyber-resilience, see Jonathan F.
Solomon. “Cyberdeterrence between Nation-States: Plausible Strategy or a Pipe
Dream?” Strategic Studies Quarterly 5,
No. 1 (Spring 2011), Part II (online version): 20-22, accessed 10/14/14, http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2011/spring/solomon.pdf.
For overviews of electronic protection measures for radars, see CPT Aytug Denk,
Turkish Air Force. “Detection and Jamming Low Probability of Intercept (LPI)
Radars.” (Masters Thesis, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, September 2006),
5-33; and Dave Adamy. “EW Against Modern Radars-Part 8: Side-lobe Cancellation
and Blanking.” Journal of Electronic Defense 33, No. 6 (June 2010): 44-46.
[14]
The operative phrase is relative reliance, as some forms of external networking
will be necessary for integrating tactical capabilities and coordinating
tactical actions across combat arms and services. See “Joint Operational Access
Concept, Version 1.0.” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 17
January 2012), 36.
[15] Norman
Friedman. Seapower and Space: From the
Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare. (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval
Institute Press, 2000), 346.
[16]
Barry D. Watts. “U.S. Combat Training, Operational Art, and Strategic
Competence: Problems and Opportunities.” Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments, August 2008, 36. The same is true for authorizing
activation of a combat system’s mode that performs fully autonomous defensive
engagements.
[18]
For example, consider the precision maneuvering needed for deploying and then
maintaining position within chaff clouds. See ADM Sandy Woodward, RN. One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands
Battle Group Commander. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 12.
[19]
See 1. LCDR Brian McGuirk, USN. “Rekindling the Killer Instinct.” Naval Institute Proceedings 138, No. 6
(June 2012): 41, 43-44; 2. “FY12 Annual Report: Information Assurance (IA) and
Interoperability (IOP).” (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Director, Operational
Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), December 2012), 307-311; 3. “FY13 Annual Report:
Information Assurance (IA) and Interoperability (IOP),” 330, 332-334.
[20]
The 2010 Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” campaign is an archetypical example of
how this might be done by an adversary following a first salvo. For a detailed
critique of the Department of Defense’s public affairs response, see Matt
Armstrong. “The True Fiasco Exposed by Wikileaks.” MountainRunner.us, 10 April 2010, accessed 10/14/14, http://mountainrunner.us/2010/04/wikileaks/.
[21]
The 2010 ROKS Cheonan sinking
exemplifies this point. There would have been no time for the Cheonan’s crew to directly perform this
role before the ship was lost. This highlights the potential utility of a
secure ‘black box’ tactical data recorder on a warship’s bridge can be quickly
removed should a crew need to abandon ship.
For a summary of how the absence of such data in the sinking’s immediate
aftermath affected South Korea’s narrative battle, see “ROKS Cheonan Sinking.” Wikipedia, 09 May 2013, accessed
10/14/14, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
[22]
Solomon, “Defending the Fleet,” 127-137.
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