Seventeen Questions on Naval Strategy from a Committed Contrarian

The following contribution comes from Peter Dombrwski, Strategic Research Department at the Naval War College.

As an observer and occasional participant in the naval strategy development process for more than fifteen years, I am puzzled by two trends found in the recent writings of officers, scholars, and analysts interested in naval strategy.   First are the calls for the principal professional schools for naval officers to produce more strategists. Second are the criticisms that the Navy and the Marine Corps do not have a worthy strategy.  Neither criticism seems particularly well suited to resolving underlying problem:  the need for sustaining well-prepared naval forces to protect US national interests in the maritime realm. 

In the interest of furthering both strategic thinking AND ongoing debates about the role of strategists and strategy in the naval services have several questions:

The Number of Naval Strategists

• Do the naval services actually need more officers who are by nature, education, and experience?
• Has the Navy used those strategists it has developed over the last several decades well?
  How many billets require naval strategists acting as naval strategists vice strategists more broadly defined?
• Are the programs at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College (or other institutions of professional military education) capable of educating officers in ways that will allow them to be successful as strategists?
• Are the existing specialized programs for developing strategists at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College scalable?
• Do we know whether or not these programs, however well intended, actually produce officers with the intellectual skills and background to help the naval services produce better strategy?
• What if naval strategy is inhibited by bureaucratic, organizational and cultural weaknesses rather than a shortfall of intelligent, educated, and motivated strategist-officers?
• Will the Navy personnel system ensure that newly minted strategists will be placed in the billets that both require strategists and use their unique background?
• What happens if these strategists attempt to exercise independent judgments and critical analytics skills in ways that run contrary to Fleet, OPNAV and/or USMC HQ preferences?

The Quality of Existing Naval Strategy

• Is the ability of the USN and the USMC to fulfill their responsibilities for defending the United States and serving the full range of national interests hindered by bad strategy?
• If so, how do we know this?
• Is it essential that the Navy and the Marine Corps (or for that matter the military service services) have separate and distinct strategies from the wide range of national level strategy documents?
• Have any of the strategic visions produced since the (in)famous Maritime Strategy of the 1980s fit even the most basic definitions of strategy taught in our war colleges?
• Has the current strategic vision A Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century led naval programmers and operators to make serious changes in naval acquisition programs, research and development funding, or operation plans?
• If not, why should we expect that a new, presumably better or more up-to-date strategy to lead to changes in the future?
• Can the Navy and the Marine Corps overcome institutional and cultural impediments to developing effective strategies that serve both service and national interests?
• If so, what needs to be done?

For the record, I know many dedicated officers, civil servants and strategists who are working at this very moment to provide useful answers to many of the questions raised above.  Reforms are already in the works.  Yet, if we look back at the last several decades of naval strategizing it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have seen this all before.

A recent CV-16 article and trouble with interpreting Chinese sources

There was a recent entry on War is boring which later got published on business insider talking about trouble that China is having with engine compartment of CV-16 in recent sea trials. As usual, such articles created a lot of debates on Chinese military forums.

Now, I have actually watched the original CCTV news report that this story is based on. It mentioned that CV-16 has just completed 6 months of maintenance and overhaul at Dalian shipyard before going out to sea again. The report focused on the electrical department of CV-16. Traditionally, it has been customary of Chinese news reports to interview naval personnel, talk about one challenge they had to deal with to give audience an idea of the challenges facing these sailors and then emphasize how their great works saved the ship or mission. These kind of new reports are common and are tools used to foster patriotism in the population. So in this particular praise, this news report was trying to praise the works of the electrical department of CV-16 and give the impression to Chinese population that the Chinese navy is making great progress with its historical mission. In reality, any real life and death scenario would probably be considered confidential and never reported on Chinese news.

Back to the war is boring article, it appears to me the author does not understand the context of such news report. He summarized that China is having a lot of problems with CV-16 and especially with its engines. What we do know is that Chinese navy is at its infancy when it comes to naval aviation and working hard to improve capabilities. We also know that while CV-16 has spent a lot of times at shipyard, it has also spent a lot of times in the ocean. Currently, it has been out on sea trials for 50 days after 6 months at shipyard. Even the most competent navy USN could have engine problems on a long deployment, because complex machines like the naval propulsion systems do breakdown. So it is completely expected that CV-16 would suffer breakdowns on various subsystems while on sea trials or deployment. We know that the problem was identified and fixed quickly without delaying take off/landing training of that day. That tells us the mishap was not major. The original news report was trying to show the head of electrical department is good at identifying problems in his department and working to fix them while at sea. These are all good signs for Chinese navy going forward. That is not a surprise, since these reports are meant as positive propaganda for the population. The irony of this story is that real problems with CV-16 power plant would never get reported on CCTV.

So I think this shows that a lot of experience and cultural knowledge is needed to decipher Chinese military news. Since PLA is still lacking transparency compared to most military around the world and most of their articles are in Chinese, English articles talking about news reports coming out of China often lacks understanding and context of the original article. Depending on the bias of the author, we could get different interpretation which could either sound fear mongering or overly dismissive. Real honest truth about problems facing Chinese navy is not easy to find in the midst of their modernization and building boom. One can decipher problems facing certain programs from delays in construction and commissioning. One can also decipher problems based on the subsystems used on certain ships. And finally, some insiders are candid on Chinese forums about the issues facing Chinese navy. Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese navy does not have unlimited budget. A lot of its decisions are financially related just like they are for USN.

The CNO is Wrong When He Says Seven Month Deployments are "Achievable and Sustainable"

Earlier this year, the CNO released his 2015-2019 Navigation Plan, a document that I wrote about elsewhere.  In that review, I wrote:

"The Navy stands today at 290 ships in its “deployable battle force”.  With these ships, it strains to fill two combat power hubs (Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean and Western Pacific) and provide mission tailored forces wherever else they are needed.  The plain truth is that even this number is insufficient, and the mechanism of necessity for mitigating this insufficiency remains extending deployment lengths.  Late in the Cold War, the Navy arrived at a six month deployment standard, which it believed was essential to retaining the talent that had “voted with its feet” during the routine eight and nine month deployments of the Vietnam era.  Yet just last week, the CARL VINSON Carrier Strike Group set out from the West Coast on its scheduled ten month deployment.  This is not an aberration.  Eight months has become the new goal, one that is regularly exceeded."

There exists in the brain of a much better mathematician than I a formula to describe the relationship among the following variables (not inclusive):  number of ships, operational availability, requirements for those ships, and deployment length.  Generally speaking, in order to control deployment length--or as in this example, reduce it--one could increase the number of ships in the fleet, get more time deployed per hull (operational availability) by a number of different measures, or reduce requirements.

The six month standard adhered to during the late Cold War and after is now a thing of the past, a victim of too small a fleet spread across too large a number of requirements.  Deployment length has been inching up for over a decade, tracking inversely with the size of the fleet, and the news is replete with stories like the one I cited above, in which the CARL VINSON Strike Group was deploying on a scheduled ten-month deployment.

Which brings us to yesterday's Navy Times story in which the CNO stated during an All Hands Call that lengthy eight-month deployments are no longer sustainable, and seven-month deployments are achievable, pointing to the recently announced Optimized Fleet Response Plan model which has already gotten off to a rough start.

It occurs to me that somewhere between Fleet Forces Command and the CNO's Office, a spreadsheet and PowerPoint tandem exist that depicts a situation in which if all the cosmic tumblers clicked into place, this would be an achievable goal.  Yet such a brief would be the only place in nature that such a plan would work--on paper.  The assumptions that support such a lock-step view of the future are sure to vary, and some of the assumptions made from the beginning are subject to great scrutiny.

The first is the size of the fleet.  It is virtually certain that the Navy's 30 Year Shipbuilding Plan and its goal of a 306 ship Navy underpins the OFRP, yet without a considerable increase in shipbuilding resources above historical allocations, the 306 ship Navy is unaffordable (as discussed in the article of mine linked to above).  Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current 290 ship Navy is unaffordable without an increase in shipbuilding resources.  Put another way, without a change in resources, the fleet will get smaller than it is today, seriously jeopardizing the CNO's goal.

The second is operational availability.  While the Navy is doing visionary things with forward stationing LCS in Singapore, DDG's in Rota, and eventually Amphibs in Australia (each of which increases THOSE HULLS' operational availability) the price to do so includes significant hits to the readiness of non-deployed units as a result of deferred and canceled maintenance.  In doing so, the aggregate fleet operational availability likely remains flat at best and more likely declines.  Put another way, not only is the fleet getting smaller, it is becoming less available, as forward deployed readiness will increasingly come at the cost of non-deployed and surge readiness.

The third assumption worth scrutiny is that the demand for naval forces remains stable.  While I have no insight into whether this assumption was made, it occurs to me to be logical.  Until it isn't anymore.  Our existing force structure inadequately services the existing demand for naval forces, and as that fleet declines in numbers, it will be harder pressed to meet those demands.  Yet China is rising, Iran is flexing, and the Mediterranean is roiling.  It is not difficult to conjure up a situation in which demand for naval forces increases at the very time budgetary pressures create fewer resources to meet it.

Unfortunately, the prospects for success in meeting the CNO's goal are dim, but more is at stake than just an overextended Service Chief.  The Navy is fraying, and it is no longer simply around the edges. It is too small to meet the current demand from its two-hub construct, even as that two hub construct reveals itself to be half-again too small to adequately protect and sustain American interests.  The Navy must AT A MINIMUM be properly resourced to meet its current force structure's needs while it constructs and argues the case to grow to meet easily foreseeable increases in demand in the future.

Bryan McGrath

21st Century Maritime Operations Under Cyber-Electromagnetic Opposition, Part III

For previous installments, see Part 1 and Part 2

Candidate Principle #4: A Network’s Operational Geometry Impacts its Defensibility

Networked warfare is popularly viewed as a fight within cyberspace’s ever-shifting topology. Networks, however, often must use transmission mechanisms beyond physical cables. For field-deployed military forces in particular, data packets must be broadcast as electromagnetic signals through the atmosphere and outer space, or as acoustic signals underwater, in order to connect with a network’s infrastructure. Whereas a belligerent might not be able to directly access or strike this infrastructure for a variety of reasons, intercepting and exploiting a signal as it traverses above or below water is an entirely different matter. The geometry of a transmitted signal’s propagation paths therefore is a critical factor in assessing a network’s defensibility.

The Jominian terms interior and exterior lines of operations respectively refer to whether a force occupies positions within a ‘circle’ such that its combat actions radiate outwards towards the adversary’s forces, or whether it is positioned outside the ‘circle’ such that its actions converge inwards towards the adversary.[i] Although these terms have traditionally applied solely within the physical domains of war, with some license they are also applicable to cyber-electromagnetic warfare. A force might be said to be operating on interior lines of networking if the platforms, remote sensors, data processing services, launched weapons, and communications relay assets comprising its battle networks are positioned solely within the force’s immediate operating area.

While this area may extend from the seabed to earth orbit, and could easily have a surface footprint measuring in the hundreds of thousands of square miles, it would nonetheless be relatively localized within the scheme of the overall combat zone. If the force employs robustly-layered physical defenses, and especially if its networking lines through the air or water feature highly-directional line-of-sight communications systems where possible or LPI transmission techniques where appropriate, the adversary’s task of positioning assets such that they can reliably discover let alone exploit the force’s electromagnetic or acoustic communications pathways becomes quite difficult. The ideal force operating on interior lines of networking avoids use of space-based data relay assets with predictable orbits and instead relies primarily upon agile, unpredictably-located airborne relays.[ii] CEC and tactical C² systems whose participants exclusively lie within a maneuvering force’s immediate operating area are examples of tools that enable interior lines of networking.

Conversely, a force might be said to be operating on exterior lines of networking if key resources comprising its battle networks are positioned well beyond its immediate operating area.

This can vastly simplify an adversary’s task of positioning cyber-electromagnetic exploitation assets. For example, the lines of communication linking a field-deployed force with distant entities often rely upon fixed or predictably-positioned relay assets with extremely wide surface footprints. Similarly, those that connect the force with rear-echelon entities generally require connections to fixed-location networking infrastructure on land or under the sea. Theater-level C² systems, national or theater-level sensor systems, intelligence ‘reachback’ support systems, remotely-located data fusion systems, and rear echelon logistical services that directly tap into field-deployed assets’ systems in order to provide remote-monitoring/troubleshooting support are examples of resources available to a force operating on exterior lines of networking.

Clearly, no force can fully foreswear operating on exterior lines of networking in favor of operating solely on interior lines.[iii] A force’s tasks combined with its minimum needs for external support preclude this; some tactical-level tasks such as theater ballistic missile defense depend upon direct inputs from national/theater-level sensors and C² systems. A force operating on interior lines of networking may also have less ‘battle information’ available to it, not to mention fewer processing resources available for digesting this information, than a force operating on exterior lines of networking.

Nevertheless, any added capabilities provided by operating on exterior lines of networking must be traded off against the increased cyber-electromagnetic risks inherent in doing so. There consequently must be an extremely compelling justification for each individual connection between a force and external resources, especially if a proposed connection touches critical combat system or ‘engineering plant’ systems. Any connections authorized with external resources must be subjected to a continuous, disciplined cyber-electromagnetic risk management process that dictates the allowable circumstances for the connection’s use and the methods that must be implemented to protect against its exploitation. This is not merely a concern about fending off ‘live penetration’ of a network, as an ill-considered connection might alternatively be used as a channel for routing a ‘kill signal’ to a pre-installed ‘logic bomb’ residing deep within some critical system, or for malware to automatically and covertly exfiltrate data to an adversary’s intelligence collectors. An external connection does not even need to be between a critical and a non-critical system to be dangerous; operational security depends greatly upon preventing sensitive information that contains or implies a unit or force’s geolocation, scheme of maneuver, and combat readiness from leaking out via networked logistical support services. Most notably, it must be understood that exterior lines of networking are more likely than interior lines to be disrupted or compromised when most needed while a force is operating under cyber-electromagnetic opposition. The timing and duration of a force’s use of exterior lines of networking accordingly should be strictly minimized, and it might often be more advantageous to pass up the capabilities provided by external connectivity in favor of increasing a force’s chances at avoiding detection or cyber-electromagnetic exploitation.

Candidate Principle #5: Network Degradation in Combat, While Certain, Can be Managed

The four previous candidate principles’ chief significance is that no network, and few sensor or communications systems, will be able to sustain peak operability within an opposed cyber-electromagnetic environment. Impacts may be lessened by employing network-enhanced vice network-dependent system architectures, carefully weighing a force’s connections with (or dependencies upon) external entities, and implementation of doctrinal, tactical, and technical cyber-electromagnetic counter-countermeasures. Network and system degradation will nonetheless be a reality, and there is no analytical justification for assuming peacetime degrees of situational awareness accuracy or force control surety will last long beyond a war’s outbreak.

There is a big difference, though, between degrading and destroying a network. The beauty of a decently-architected network is that lopping off certain key nodes may severely degrade its capabilities, but as long as some nodes survive—and especially if they can combine their individual capabilities constructively via surviving communications pathways as well as backup or ‘workaround’ processes—the network will retain some non-dismissible degree of functionality. Take Iraq’s nationwide integrated air defense system during the first Gulf War, for example. Although its C² nodes absorbed devastating attacks, it was able to sustain some localized effectiveness in a few areas of the country up through the war’s end. What’s more, U.S. forces could never completely sever this network’s communications pathways; in some cases the Iraqis succeeded in reconstituting damaged nodes.[iv] Similarly, U.S. Department of Defense force interoperability assessments overseen by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation during Fiscal Year 2013 indicated that operators were frequently able to develop ‘workarounds’ when their information systems and networks experienced disruptions, and that mission accomplishment ultimately did not suffer as a result. A price was paid, though, in “increased operator workloads, increased errors, and slowed mission performance.”[v] 

This illustrates the idea that a system or network can degrade gracefully; that is, retain residual capabilities ‘good enough,’ if only under narrow conditions, to significantly affect an opponent’s operations and tactics. Certain hardware and software design attributes including architectural redundancy, physical and virtual partitioning of critical from non-critical functions (with far stricter scrutiny over supply chains and components performed for the former), and implementation of hardened and aggressively tested ‘safe modes’ systems can fail into to restore a minimum set of critical functions support graceful degradation. The same is true with inclusion of ‘war reserve’ functionality in systems, use of a constantly-shifting network topology, availability of ‘out-of-band’ pathways for communicating mission-critical data, and incorporation of robust jamming identification and suppression/cancellation capabilities. All of these system and network design features can help a force can fight-through cyber-electromagnetic attack. Personnel training (and standards enforcement) with respect to basic cyber-electromagnetic hygiene will also figure immensely in this regard. Rigorous training aimed at developing crews’ abilities to quickly recognize, evaluate, and then recover from attacks (including suspected network-exploitations by adversary intelligence collectors) will accordingly be vital.[vi] All the same, graceful degradation is not an absolute good, as an opponent will assuredly exploit the resultant ‘spottier’ situational awareness or C² regardless of whether it is protracted or brief.

Tomorrow, we assess the psychological effects of cyber-electromagnetic attacks and then conclude with a look at the candidate principles’ implications for maritime warfare.

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[i] “Joint Publication 5-0: Joint Operational Planning.” (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2011), III-27.

[ii] For an excellent technical discussion on the tradeoffs between electronic protection/communications security on one side and data throughput/system expense on the other, see Cote, 31, 58-59. For a good technical summary of highly-directional line-of sight radiofrequency communications systems, see Tom Schlosser. “Technical Report 1719: Potential for Navy Use of Microwave and Millimeter Line-of-Sight Communications.” (San Diego: Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center, RDT&E Division, September 1996), accessed 10/15/14, www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA318338

[iii] Note the discussion on this issue in “Joint Operational Access Concept, Version 1.0.” (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 17 January 2024), 36-37.

[iv] Michael R. Gordon and LGEN Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret). The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf. (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1995), 256-57.

[v] “FY13 Annual Report: Information Assurance (IA) and Interoperability (IOP),” 330, 332-333.

[vi] See 1. 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): 21-22, accessed 12/13/13, http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2011/spring/solomon.pdf; 2. “FY12 Annual Report: Information Assurance (IA) and Interoperability (IOP),” 307-311; 3. “FY13 Annual Report: Information Assurance (IA) and Interoperability (IOP),” 330, 332-334.

21st Century Maritime Operations Under Cyber-Electromagnetic Opposition, Part II

Part 1 available here

Candidate Principle #2: A Network’s Combat Viability is more than the Sum of its Nodes

Force networking generates an unavoidable tradeoff between maximizing collective combat capabilities and minimizing network-induced vulnerability risks. The challenge is finding an acceptable balance between the two in both design and operation; networking provides no ‘free lunch.’

This tradeoff was commonly discounted during the network-centric era’s early years. For instance, Metcalfe’s Law—the idea that a network’s potential increases as the square of the number of networked nodes—was often applied in ways suggesting a force would become increasingly capable as more sensors, weapons, and data processing elements were tied together to collect, interpret, and act upon battlespace information.[i] Such assertions, though, were made without reference to the network’s architecture. The sheer number (or types) of nodes matter little if the disruption of certain critical nodes (relay satellites, for example) or the exploitation of any given node to access the network’s internals erode the network’s data confidentiality, integrity, or availability. This renders node-counting on its own a meaningless and perhaps even misleadingly dangerous measure of a network’s potential. The same is also true if individual systems and platforms have design limitations that prevent them from fighting effectively if force-level networks are undermined.

Consequently, there is a gigantic difference between a network-enhanced warfare system and a network-dependent warfare system. While the former’s performance expands greatly when connected to other force elements via a network, it nevertheless is designed to have a minimum performance that is ‘good enough’ to independently achieve certain critical tasks if network connectivity is unavailable or compromised.[ii] A practical example of this is the U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), which extends an individual warship’s air warfare reach beyond its own sensors’ line-of-sight out to its interceptor missiles’ maximum ranges courtesy of other CEC-participating platforms’ sensor data. Loss of the local CEC network may significantly reduce a battleforce’s air warfare effectiveness, but the participating warships’ combat systems would still retain formidable self and local-area air defense capabilities.

Conversely, a network-dependent warfare system fails outright when its supporting network is corrupted or denied. For instance, whereas in theory Soviet anti-ship missile-armed bombers of the late 1950s through early 1990s could strike U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups over a thousand miles from the Soviet coast, their ability to do so was predicated upon time-sensitive cueing by the Soviet Ocean Surveillance System (SOSS). SOSS’s network was built around a highly centralized situational picture-development and combat decision-making apparatus, which relied heavily upon remote sensors and long-range radiofrequency communications pathways that were ripe for EW exploitation. This meant U.S. efforts to slow down, saturate, block, or manipulate sensor data inputs to SOSS, let alone to do the same to the SOSS picture outputs Soviet bomber forces relied upon in order to know their targets’ general locations, had the potential of cutting any number of critical links in the bombers’ ‘kill chain.’ If bombers were passed a SOSS cue at all, their crews would have had no idea whether they would find a carrier battle group or a decoy asset (and maybe an accompanying aerial ambush) at the terminus of their sortie route. Furthermore, bomber crews firing from standoff-range could only be confident they had aimed their missiles at actual high-priority ships and not decoys or lower-priority ships if they received precise visual identifications of targets from scouts that had penetrated to the battle group’s center. If these scouts failed in this role—a high probability once U.S. rules of engagement were relaxed following a war’s outbreak—the missile salvo would be seriously handicapped and perhaps wasted, if it could be launched at all. Little is different today with respect to China’s nascent Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile capability: undermine the underlying surveillance-reconnaissance network and the weapon loses its combat utility.[iii] This is the risk systems take with network-dependency.

Candidate Principle #3: Contact Detection is Easy, Contact Classification and Identification are Not

The above SOSS analogy leads to a major observation regarding remote sensing: detecting something is not the same as knowing with confidence what it is. It cannot be overstated that no sensor can infallibly classify and identify its contacts: countermeasures exist against every sensor type.

As an example, for decades we have heard the argument ‘large signature’ platforms such as aircraft carriers are especially vulnerable because they cannot readily hide from wide-area surveillance radars and the like. If the only method of carrier concealment was broadband Radar Cross Section suppression, and if the only prerequisite for firing an anti-carrier weapon was a large surface contact’s detection, the assertions of excessive vulnerability would be true. A large surface contact held by remote radar, however, can just as easily be a merchant vessel, a naval auxiliary ship, a deceptive low campaign-value combatant employing signature-enhancement measures, or an artificial decoy. Whereas advanced radars’ synthetic or inverse synthetic aperture modes can be used to discriminate a contact’s basic shape as a classification tool, a variety of EW tactics and techniques can prevent those modes’ effective use or render their findings suspect. Faced with those kinds of obstacles, active sensor designers might turn to Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) transmission techniques to buy time for their systems to evade detection and also delay the opponent’s development of effective EW countermeasures. Nevertheless, an intelligent opponent’s signals intelligence collection and analysis efforts will eventually discover and correctly classify an active sensor’s LPI emissions. It might take multiple combat engagements over several months for them to do this, or it might take them only a single combat engagement and then a few hours of analysis. This means new LPI techniques must be continually developed, stockpiled, and then situationally employed only on a risk-versus-benefit basis if the sensor’s performance is to be preserved throughout a conflict’s duration.

Passive direction-finding sensors are confronted by an even steeper obstacle: a non-cooperative vessel can strictly inhibit its telltale emissions or can radiate deceptive emissions. Nor can electro-optical and infrared sensors overcome the remote sensing problem, as their spectral bands render them highly inefficient for wide-area searches, drastically limit their effective range, and leave them susceptible to natural as well as man-made obscurants.[iv]  

If a prospective attacker possesses enough ordnance or is not cowed by the political-diplomatic risks of misidentification, he might not care to confidently classify a contact before striking it. On the other hand, if the prospective attacker is constrained by the need to ensure his precious advanced weapons inventories (and their launching platforms) are not prematurely depleted, or if he is constrained by a desire to avoid inadvertent escalation, remote sensing alone will not suffice for weapons-targeting.[v] Just as was the case with Soviet maritime bombers, a relatively risk-intolerant prospective attacker would be compelled to rely upon close-in (and likely visual) classification of targets following their remote detection. This dependency expands a defender’s space for layering its anti-scouting defenses, and suggests that standoff-range attacks cued by sensor-to-shooter networks will depend heavily upon penetrating (if not persistent) scouts that are either highly survivable (e.g., submarines and low-observable aircraft) or relatively expendable (e.g., unmanned system ‘swarms’ or sacrificial manned assets).

On the expendable scout side, an advanced weapon (whether a traditional missile or an unmanned vehicle swarm) could conceivably provide reconnaissance support for other weapons within a raid, such as by exposing itself to early detection and neutralization by the defender in order to provide its compatriots with an actionable targeting picture via a datalink. An advanced weapon might alternatively be connected by datalink to a human controller who views the weapon’s onboard sensor data to designate targets for it or other weapons in the raid, or who otherwise determines whether the target selected by the weapon is valid. While these approaches can help improve a weapon’s ability to correctly discriminate valid targets, they will nevertheless still lead to ordnance waste if the salvo is directed against a decoy group containing no targets of value. Likewise, as all sensor types can be blinded or deceived, a defender’s ability to thoroughly inflict either outcome upon a scout weapon’s sensor package—or a human controller—could leave an attacker little better off than if its weapons lacked datalink capabilities in the first place.

We should additionally bear in mind that the advanced multi-band sensors and external communications capabilities necessary for a weapon to serve as a scout would be neither cheap nor quickly producible. As a result, an attacker would likely possess a finite inventory of these weapons that would need to be carefully managed throughout a conflict’s duration. Incorporation of highly-directional all-weather communications capabilities in a weapon to minimize its datalink vulnerabilities would increase the weapon’s relative expense (with further impact to its inventory size). It might also affect the weapon’s physical size and power requirements on the margins depending upon the distance datalink transmissions had to cover. An alternative reliance upon omnidirectional LPI datalink communications would run the same risk of eventual detection and exploitation over time we previously noted for active sensors.  All told, the attacker’s opportunity costs for expending advanced weapons with one or more of the aforementioned capabilities at a given time would never be zero.[vi] A scout weapon therefore could conceivably be less expendable than an unarmed unmanned scout vehicle depending upon the relative costs and inventory sizes of both.

The use of networked wide-area sensing to directly support employment of long-range weapons could be quite successful in the absence of vigorous cyber-electromagnetic (and kinetic) opposition performed by thoroughly trained and conditioned personnel. The wicked, exploitable problems of contact classification and identification are not minor, though, and it is extraordinarily unlikely any sensor-to-shooter concept will perform as advertised if it inadequately confronts them. After all, the cyclical struggle between sensors and countermeasures is as old as war itself. Any advances in one are eventually balanced by advances in the other; the key questions are which one holds the upper hand at any given time, and how long that advantage can endure against a sophisticated and adaptive opponent.

Tomorrow, we will consider how a force network’s operational geometry impacts its defensibility. We will also explore the implications of a network’s capabilities for graceful degradation.

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[i] David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, and Frederick P. Stein. Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2^nd Ed. (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense C4ISR Cooperative Research Program, August 1999), 32-34, 103-105, 250-265.

[ii] For some observations on the idea of network-enhanced systems, see Owen R. Cote, Jr. “The Future of Naval Aviation.” (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program, 2006), 28, 59.

[iii] Solomon, “Defending the Fleet,” 39-78. For more details on Soviet anti-ship raiders dependencies upon visual-range (sacrificial) scouts, see Maksim Y. Tokarev. “Kamikazes: The Soviet Legacy.” Naval War College Review 67, No. 1 (Winter 2013): 71, 73-74, 77, 79-80.

[iv] See 1. 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): 88-94; 2. Norman Friedman. Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 365-366.

[v] Solomon, “Defending the Fleet,” 94-96.

[vi] Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,” 95.