Crowdsourcing Naval Innovation

Like in business, those who succeed in warfare are able to out-innovate their competitors. As Mark Mills notes,

"Technology development and innovation is a weird thing. People study it, write about it, profess to understand it, invest in it and lust after it. Well, lust may be a bit strong. But the sheer volume and diversity of literature on the subject argues that no one really knows how it happens except at the very high levels of hand-waving abstraction."

Today’s technological and social changes continue to impact war at a more rapid rate than ever. Moreover, the oft-repeated adage that “when you’re out of money, it’s time to think,” is true; the Navy has definitely reached that point. Accordingly, this week the Naval Warfare Development Command held a Maritime Innovation Symposium discussing various aspects of innovation in warfare with topics ranging from technology, modeling, and simulation to leadership, personnel, and acquisition practices. In addition to several thought-provoking presenters, a lively and interesting concurrent online discussion carried on among 100+ virtual participants, to include a number of flag officers up to 4 star rank. BZ to NWDC for opening this conference up to people online who otherwise who wouldn’t have the opportunity to participate in person.

NWDC is capturing the outcomes of the effort and will brief it up the chain. But to open the aperture of discussions a bit, I’ll proffer some questions the Symposium's speakers and participants explored to ID’s readers plus a few of my own:

• How do we create a culture of innovation?


• How can the Navy innovate without spending a lot of money?


• What does the next “Revolution in Military Affairs” look like? Cyber? Artificial Intelligence/Robotics? Distributed C2?


• What is the appropriate level, method, and place to conduct war-gaming and modeling? War Colleges and NWDC? Synthetically/virtually? Or all over the fleet to the lowest level? How do we share the results of all of this experimentation and implement innovations discovered by war-gaming and modeling?


• How does the Navy protect today’s entrepreneurs, mavericks, and subversives - of all ranks - who will be most likely to innovate in warfare? Does the Navy recognize and reward innovators or marginalize them? Would someone like GEN Mattis still be around following these remarks had he been an Admiral, not a General?


• Does jointness help or hamper innovation?

What do y'all think?

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.

Wait, He's a Congressman?

Did Representative Randy Forbes really write this? This is not the stuff one typically finds from a Congressman, because it's too smart. Forbes is no longer simply a Congressman on Navy issues - he's now the Congressman on Navy issues.

Throughout the last six decades, America’s military strength has helped preserve a relatively stable geo-strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific. However, in the past decade China has rapidly modernized its military, including another double digit military increase next year, with aspirations of supplanting the U.S. position. If present trends continue, the regional balance of power could tilt in Beijing’s favor as it is increasingly able to deter U.S. forces from entering the region, coerce neighboring states, or - should conflict ensue - win a rapid victory. In response, the United States must work to simultaneously sustain a level of credible deterrence in the region while reassuring allies, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and strategic partners like Singapore. Air-Sea Battle is now at the center of this effort.

In short, the Air-Sea Battle Office aims to define initiatives to develop the capabilities and integration necessary to help Combatant Commanders conduct integrated, cross-domain operations in A2/AD environments. According to Schwartz and Greenert, Air-Sea Battle seeks to use “Networked, Integrated Attack-in-Depth” to “disrupt, destroy, and defeat” (NIA-D3) adversary capabilities. More specifically, the joint force (integrated air, ground, and naval forces) armed with resilient communications (networked) aims to strike at multiple nodes of an enemy’s system (attack-in-depth) along three lines of effort. If we can consider these lines in terms of an enemy archer, one could choose to blind the archer (disrupt), kill the archer (destroy), or stop his arrow (defeat). Balanced capabilities geared towards executing all three will be required.

If Ray Mabus would have written this article, he'd be the most popular Secretary of the Navy since Lehman! Instead you folks get breathalyzers without any measurable or cited statistics related to alcohol on why... /facepalm!

Read it all.

One more thought on Randy Forbes. Yesterday I posted the YouTube link of his public, white glove, mild pat on the cheek of the SECNAV in a recent Congressional hearing. The thing about Randy Forbes argument that struck me at the time is that the questions he raised in that hearing about SECNAV priorities are the same questions I have heard in quiet, completely off record discussions with folks in the Navy.

That tells me two things. First, Randy Forbes has his finger on the pulse of the Navy like no Congressman in a long, long time. That leads to the second point. There is a snowballs chance in hell Randy Forbes is talking to the same people I do, and it has me thinking Randy Forbes questions about the SECNAVs priorities was a reflection of the uniformed Admiralty's concerns for the SECNAVs priorities. Maybe not the CNO, or maybe the CNO - who knows, but if Randy Forbes wrote that article it's a safe bet he had more than a few conversations on the topic from some pretty damn smart (and likely high ranking) folks inside the Navy bubble.

I'm not saying the SECNAV is facing a mutiny in the Navy (although what does exactly make a SECNAV jump THAT HIGH following a blunder THAT political), but I am saying there appears to be a Congressman who has more respect than the SECNAV from the uniformed Navy leadership at this point in time.

Theories and Realities of War

I think this article by Dan Cox over at the Small Wars Journal is an article everyone needs to go read. Read it from beginning to end.

Did you read it yet? Go read the damn article before reading this post any further.

I am going to ask you a serious question, which means if you post an answer in the comments within 5 minutes of being asked the question, your answer probably wasn't considered long enough...

How many different ways are we fooling ourselves? Is counterinsurgency doctrine as fragile as an applied military doctrine as that article suggests? How is it possible counterinsurgency is considered a practical military approach for theater campaign warfighting if as an applied military doctrine in a real war, it can be undone so easily?

If a few burned Korans and the actions of a single mentally unstable individual can set back a theater level military campaign by "months if not years" as suggested by Dan Cox, how sound is the judgment of the civilian and military leaders who pushed this course of action? How sound is the judgement of political leadership who went along with it?

If our nations theater level military strategy in Afghanistan truly is as fragile as Dan Cox suggests, there are many civilian and uniformed military leaders who need to be fired - and yes, it absolutely begins with the President who specifically picked this course of action and advanced it in that military campaign as his first act as Commander in Chief.

Think about the article before responding, because if you discover yourself believing the Koran burning and the rampage of a single individual truly does have the strategic impacts some (like Dan Cox) are suggesting, one only needs to wonder how many lies will be told to salvage the careers of existing civilian and uniformed military leaders who have committed one of the greatest military blunders in post WWII history.

I don't want to believe these events actually matter as much as Dan Cox suggests, because I don't want to believe the nation has this many Generals who supported a theater level war plan in Afghanistan that was truly this fragile. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, or perhaps there is too much overreaction to recent events in Afghanistan.

However, if Afghanistan does unravel by these very limited events, President Obama needs to fire the dozen top military leaders who pushed him for this military approach, and expect he himself could be fired come the next election for the same mistake. If these events are truly as damning as is suggested (and I truly am skeptical these incidents have staying power as strategic setbacks), COIN is a complete failure as an applied military doctrine for any war, ever.

The President is, based on the hype of these incidents, either the fool who picked COIN as the military approach for Afghanistan, or the fool who didn't know better. Regardless, the apparent fragility of COIN in application makes anyone who implements COIN at the theater level look like a fool, and it is a guarantee the American people will be lied to before the magnitude of the COIN mistake is ever admitted, or revealed, publicly.

Bottom line - President Obama isn't pulling out of Afghanistan, at least not this year. And these events aren't that big of a deal, because even if they are - they will get fixed come hell or high water in an election year. As sad as it may or may not be, in an election year soldiers become pawns in the political election. If you believe otherwise, you need to go read up on what was happening in Iraq back in 2004 - it was all flowers and rainbows until the day after the election.

Galrahn's Return

A prodigious day....nice to see you back!

Eureka! Wave Glider

I was cruising SOUTHCOMs photo gallery the other day and came across this image.

MONTEREY, Calif. (Jan. 23, 2012) -- Naval Postgraduate School Research Prof. of physics Joseph Rice describes to Commander, U.S. Southern Command Gen. Douglas Fraser, the auto-propulsion dynamics used in a long endurance wave-glider craft, which uses wave action as its thrust through water. It is tethered to a platform of solar cells and is capable of transmitting bathymetry and other oceanographic data via satellite. The two craft were recently acquired from Liquid Robotics of Sunnyvale, Calif., and will serve as test beds for NPS student research thesis. (U.S. Navy photo by Javier Chagoya/Released).

When I saw the image, I was like "Eureka!" I know exactly what that is. It reminded me of this article by CDR Rawley from last year. A friend of mine once told me about his visit with the folks who make these craft. He was incredibly impressed by those smart folks and their many creative ideas.

I sometimes laugh at the various fun concepts a "Department of Dirty Tricks" today like the one Admiral Halsey ran in the 1940s could come up with on a platform like this. A maneuvering SATCOM/GPS capable computer with a renewable power source. It doesn't take a deviant mind to recognize the potential for deviant activities...