The great theme of the current defense debate is transformation. The subtext of this debate is network-centric warfare. Much of the attack against the current naval structure is based on a claim that the Navy is resisting transformation as it always has, and that it is not at all net-centric. The unstated irony is that not only is the Navy network-centric right now, but it is so to a much greater extent than the other services. Indeed, the Navy’s experience offers some valuable lessons to the rest of the defense community that probably will be lost because the Navy itself does not recognize the extent to which it operates as a network-centric organization. None of this is to suggest that the Navy, having reached some ideal state, need not change. But some attention to historical and current reality can offer real dividends.
The basic tenet of network-centric warfare is that all war fighters benefit from sharing a common tactical picture, which is created not merely from their own sensors but from remote sensors as well. Thus it is possible for individual shooters to use weapons reaching beyond their own horizons. In the past, such shooters might have received orders to hit specific targets, but in the network-centric future, dynamic combat with long-range weapons is possible because each shooter knows where both friends and enemies are, thanks to the integrated wide-area picture.
This is a style of warfare in which widely dispersed shooters can be effective over wide areas. It is attractive to budgeters because effective firepower no longer is generated by massed formations. Instead of spreading weapons over large areas in hopes of hitting a few key targets, individual weapons can be aimed at the right targets. In the past, for example, it was necessary to drop thousands of bombs on a factory in hopes of hitting a key target such as a generator. Now a single precision weapon can, in theory, do the same job. Similarly, in the past it was necessary to mount a mass attack on an enemy ground force in hopes that attrition would cause that force to collapse. Now a precision weapon, destroying the enemy’s command post, can do the same job.
Is all of this really new? Clearly it is new to armies and air forces, which in the past have relied heavily on mass. Indeed, their style of warfare—rigid top-down control, operation to preset rules—is imposed by mass operations. When forces are massed together, their low-level commanders had better follow common procedures, because otherwise they will stumble over each other. During the Gulf War, the air component commander operated very large numbers of aircraft over Iraq all the time. Without a very rigid air tasking order, which specified where every strike airplane would be at all times, he would have risked collisions among his aircraft. Using the air tasking order, he could at least hit targets. It is, of course, questionable whether the rigidity of the system really paid off. For example, it took about 72 hours to construct a new order, so that anything the Iraqis moved on a quicker time cycle escaped attack. There also must be some question as to whether the mass attacks on deep targets within Iraq bought much military effect.
In any case, navies operate in a very different way. Ships and naval formations tend to be dispersed. Commanders have considerable discretion. Doctrine is written as a general guide, not as a rigid framework. This difference is not, sad to say, because of the greater virtue that comes from going to sea and breathing salt air. It comes from a necessarily dispersed operating environment. In fact, in the important case of massed naval formations, such as those of the age of sail or of the Battle of Jutland, army-style rigidity comes back, because it is just as necessary at sea as on land. In a massed situation, individual initiative can easily cause disaster, so it is discouraged. In a dispersed situation, initiative becomes essential.
So what has that to do with net-centricity? For initiative to be effective, the individual decision maker needs a picture of the situation, rather than simple instructions. Shockingly enough, that is exactly what modern naval command-and-control systems have been providing for about half a century. Beginning with the advent of combat information centers (CICs) during World War II, the object was to provide the decision maker on a ship with the best possible picture of the tactical situation in which he was embedded. When we think of the first CICs, inevitably we think of how they effectively merged the sensors on board the ship. However, the CICs in the fleet also were linked by a special radio net, so they could exchange their data.
\Postwar, we developed computerized CICs in the form of the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), the first of an almost-universal kind of naval command aid. Again, the emphasis usually is on the successful merger of a ship’s sensor data, to overcome increases in the number and the speed of potential attackers. Yet a vital element of NTDS was a digital link (Link 11) between the ships, which made it possible for all of them to share a common picture—in effect a network-centric picture. Anyone reading early claims for the promise of NTDS and Link 11 will recognize current claims for the power offered by network-centric operation.
It may be argued that Link 11 works within a force and thus is not quite what current advocates of net-centricity have in mind. Perhaps the proper ancestor is the net originally created to support Tomahawk antiship missile targeting. Initially it seemed that all a Tomahawk shooter really needed to know was the position, or perhaps the projected-ahead position, of the target. Then a study of Soviet antiship missile targeting showed all too clearly that the shooter needed detailed knowledge of what other ships were present because otherwise the missile might lock on the wrong target. That is, the shooter needed situational awareness well beyond a simple target location. To provide that awareness, the Navy linked dissimilar sensors initially feeding into shore computer systems. By the mid-1980s the Navy was practicing Tomahawk shots using remote (netted) data. The targeting net actually was used to support the embargo against Iraq in 1990. If that is not network-centric operation, what is?
When Link 11 and then the Tomahawk system were built, it took a ship or a large airplane to carry a computer powerful enough to make sense of the netted information. The significance of netted operation was concealed, in effect, because many deployed units, such as carrier aircraft, could not be independent nodes. For example, the network-centric character of many naval operations would not have been evident to a carrier aviator, whereas it would have been quite obvious to a surface officer. Indeed, the surface officer probably would not have considered netting special, because it had been in place in one form or another for so long.
More recently, computers have shrunk dramatically. The issue of Link 16 (JTIDS: Joint Tactical Information Distribution System) deployment on board tactical aircraft was really a matter of computer size and power. In effect Link 16 gives the pilot of an airplane something like the wide-area picture that a ship’s tactical action officer got via Link 11 and then via the Tomahawk link and its successors. Suddenly the pilot can see beyond the range of his own radar. He can even see when his radar has been turned off.
In each case, the netted picture in effect replaces the picture the individual operator would have formed on the basis of his own sensors. For example, for years fighter pilots relied on their radars. Data links might vector them to particular targets, but the basis of operation was still what the pilot saw on his own radar. Now the goal is to make the collective picture the basis of operation.
Clearly netting can go much further. The picture provided by Link 11 was quite simple. The newer links give more, and they allow much more reference to distant databases. Yet surely half a century’s experience offers some lessons in just how a netted force can and should act.
The first lesson is that distant information is meaningful only if it is geographically registered. That is, a satellite may see a target at position X, but the shooter must understand just where X is relative to himself. Otherwise scarce long-range weapons will be wasted. The Navy learned this lesson when it dispersed and used Link 11 to unify battle groups; the problem was called gridlock. Unless two ships seeing the same target shared a common set of coordinates, they might report two separate targets. The group antiaircraft coordinator might then assign twice as many weapons to those targets. In modern terms, when the attack is to be against a target on land, netting fails if the source of geographical data, which means global positioning system (GPS) satellites, fails. It also fails if GPS coordinates are badly estimated, or if targeting maps do not quite line up—which are real problems.
The second lesson is that the shooters must have reason to trust the net. By the 1980s, the Tomahawk targeting system worked, but many in the fleet did not trust the offboard data, which had been collected almost entirely passively. In exercises, commanders refused to shoot until their own organic sensors, such as reconnaissance aircraft, confirmed target locations. In at least one case, a commander who did trust the netted data won simply because he could engage as soon as the target was within range—because he understood what the net could deliver. Many of the sensors involved are space-based and are highly classified. It is possible that this level of classification in itself tends to preclude trust in the sensor net. That is one way to read the reasons for misuse of another highly classified sensor—radar in World War II. We learned then to teach officers a great deal about how radar works (and doesn’t work). It may be a good idea to apply the same logic to satellite sensors.
A third, and more general, lesson may be that netting works only with a highly dispersed force. Advocates of network-centric warfare have pointed out that it acts as a strong force multiplier; a few aircraft can, in theory, hit targets in a volume that otherwise would have required many more aircraft. However, the other side of this coin may well be that the net-centric style of warfare requires that tactical numbers be very small, that there is some transition point in density of forces at which netting is no longer very helpful. Modern navies have so few ships that this is not an issue for them. It is a real issue for armies and air forces.
Conversely, for an army or air force to benefit from net-centric operation it probably has to undergo a deep cultural change, from conformity to individualism, simply because dispersed forces demand far more personal initiative on the part of the fighters.
A fourth point is the effect of net-centric operation on allies. In the case of the U.S. Navy, net-centricity went hand in hand with the computerized CIC, and that was seen as essential if a fleet was to deal with the new threats of fast jet aircraft and missiles. No post-1945 navy could lightly ignore that threat, so all of the major navies became interested in computer operation. Moreover, effective air defense demanded long-range weapons. The common tactical picture became essential to naval operations, and U.S. allies had to adopt our style of operation and our data link. Link 11 is now a prerequisite for operating with the U.S. Navy in a high-threat environment; soon cooperative engagement capability will be as well.
Maybe classical sea power is like net-centric warfare. With their global mobility, navies are far less affected by distance than are ground forces. That is one reason they tend to think globally. Advocates of net-centric warfare also claim that they are abolishing distance. They pay for this abolition by limiting the number of weapons they can use and the payload of those weapons. Unless we revert to nuclear attack, we can get only so much effect per bomb or per missile. It is never clear that precision inevitably makes up for smaller warheads. What does seem clear is that in either case the global attack imposes real pressure on an enemy. The difficulty in identifying centers of gravity suggests that such pressure, while effective, is unlikely to be decisive by itself—just as the Royal Navy by itself could not win World War I. The historical lesson seems to be that coalitions of unlike partners really are decisive, because the pressure imposed by one kind of attack greatly magnifies the effect of the other. Without the coalition, neither form of attack is decisive.
That leaves one more lesson, perhaps the hardest of all. Networks are enablers. They do not substitute for firepower; they only help make firepower more efficient. Moreover, network-centric warfare is not equivalent to all the things that military forces do. It was a very natural development for navies, because it designated targets for their weapons. There was no subtle question of a center of gravity; a ship firing at an incoming airplane has to destroy that airplane before it strikes. Much the same can be said of a missile attack on a major warship. On the other hand, net-centric concepts buy little in the vital naval presence mission, when what matters is that others actually see our force demonstrated nonlethally. It may well be that occupying territory is analogous. In both cases, numbers and obvious unit strength count. Subtle measures that allow a small ship to exert real power (if such measures can in fact be devised) buy surprisingly little. The great question for the U.S. military, then, may be whether, in accepting transformation, it is giving up some vital capability.
Dr. Friedman is the author of Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare (Naval Institute Press).
Are We Already Transformed?
Despite the hand-wringing over transformation, the Navy’s history of dispersed operations has made it much more net-centric than the other services—as demonstrated by its ability to fire precision weapons such as this Tomahawk missile and hit targets in landlocked Afghanistan.
By Dr. Norman Friedman