As demonstrated by today's naval presence in the northern Arabian Sea, the Navy-Marine Corps team is the U.S. military's premier expeditionary and forward-presence force. The Navy is executing precision strikes from the sea, but its capabilities are only as good as the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems that support multiple precision attacks accurately, concurrently, and rapidly.
Between Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and Operation Enduring Freedom today, the quantity, quality, and use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) increased faster than the supporting ISR structure. This disparity will grow unless the Navy accelerates and reorganizes current efforts to develop new capabilities that are integrated fully with joint ISR systems.
Challenges
The number of Navy land-attack weapon programs illustrates its emphasis on PGMs: Tomahawk land-attack missile (TLAM), Stand-Off Land Attack Missile-Extended Range, Joint Direct Attack Munition, Joint Stand-Off Weapon, and laser-guided weapons form the backbone of the Navy's precision strike capability. In the coming decade, the Extended-Range Guided Munition, Tactical TLAM, and other advanced weapons will enter the Navy inventory. These weapons, coupled with strike platforms—such as the F/A-18 E/F, DDX, and SSGN conversion—represent major commitments to improving the Navy's ability to project power ashore.
During Desert Storm, only 8% of the U.S. and coalition bombs and missiles were precision guided. During Operation Allied Force more than eight years later, 35% of them were precision guided. Following Desert Storm, the Navy relied almost exclusively on PGMs for strikes in Iraq, Bosnia, Sudan, and Kosovo. Although the Navy has not published the number of PGMs used in Enduring Freedom, anecdotal evidence suggests the upward trend continues. Further, in the past three years, an increasing percentage of Navy PGMs were guided by the Global Positioning System (GPS), thereby putting an added burden on ISR systems.
Although the quality of ISR support to precision-strike tasks has improved since Desert Storm, it is not keeping pace with the quantity of Navy PGMs available for use in constrained operating environments. Weather, air defense threats, concealment, camouflage, deception, terrain, and urban environments make target identification more difficult. Thus, distrust of target intelligence creeps into the minds of decision makers. Uncertainty and fear of collateral damage result in restrictive rules of engagement and policy limitations. (Even then, errors take place—as evidenced by errant attacks on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and others in Afghanistan.)
Timeliness in identifying mobile targets for precision strike—time-critical targeting (TCT)—is another major shortfall. Current Navy ISR provides only a rudimentary capability to locate critical enemy equipment effectively and disseminate intelligence to a precision-weapon platform before the target moves. During Allied Force, "Serbian forces soon learned to quickly relocate forces, weapons, and key functions and equipment, and this created major problems for U.S. and allied air operations." Similar problems arose during subsequent combat operations. Efforts to improve TCT are barely in the concept and experimentation phase, and attacking mobile targets in Afghanistan remains problematic.
Vision
". . . From the Sea," "Forward... from the Sea," and the Navy Operational Concept identify power projection from sea to land as one of the five key roles of the Navy. Power projection will be a critical naval mission for the next decade, underpinned by precision strike. To support precision-strike tasks properly, the Navy needs a guiding vision: a network-centric ISR system consisting of command, control, communication, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) nodes that produce timely all-source intelligence for attacks on mobile and fixed targets. These nodes should be capable of reinforcing larger joint ISR networks. They would reside on board fleet flagships, aircraft carriers, large-deck amphibious ships, and at selected Navy component command centers.
The ISR system must produce all-source intelligence that provides rapid target identification and battle damage assessment, and streamlines decision making and precision-strike execution. It should provide data from sensors to C4ISR nodes and intelligence from C4ISR nodes to weapon platforms. This puts a senior decision maker in the process and lessens the danger that large volumes of ambiguous target data sent directly from multiple sensors will overwhelm shooters. The intelligence team at the C4ISR node would fuse signal, imagery, and human intelligence to develop target cueing information, definitive location data, strike recommendations, and in-depth target analysis.
Because the Navy's expeditionary role often puts its forces in the best position to identify and attack mobile targets, the ISR network should be optimized for time-critical targeting. This would lead to commensurate enhancements in targeting fixed facilities by feeding data into a joint ISR system. In addition, the ISR system must be able to support both man-in-the-loop and GPS-guided PGMs. Such a system requires: reconnaissance assets to feed near-real-time imagery and other unevaluated data to C4ISR nodes; trained personnel equipped to convert raw data to precision-strike intelligence; and enhanced links so those nodes can pass evaluated imagery and GPS coordinates to weapon platforms.
The Way Ahead
Until now, the Navy has concentrated on building stove-piped solutions driven by technology—and has not spent enough funds and energy on organizations and doctrine. To move from platform-centric warfare to network-centric warfare, "a process for the co-evolution of technology, organization, and doctrine is required." These three pillars should underpin development of the ISR system:
- While continuing to improve the quality and quantity of current manned and unmanned tactical reconnaissance systems, the Navy should develop new versions under one ISR concept that includes signals intelligence (SigInt), new technology, and tactical imagery platforms. Because the focus is on precision strikes on land targets—as in Afghanistan today—the emphasis should be on building aerial platforms to extend the Navy horizon beyond the littoral. The SigInt and new-technology collection platforms should provide near-automatic cueing to tactical imagery platforms and feed data into the larger national intelligence network. To localize targets, a tactical imagery system requires high-resolution digital sensors, long-range data links, and a common ground station. At the same time, the Navy needs to continue upgrading communication and computer systems. Communications must be long range, reliable, jam resistant, secure, and part of an integrated joint network. Computers and information management systems must be simple to use and maintain, web accessible, and capable of providing real-time collaboration between ISR nodes.
- After Allied Force, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) directed planners to start to building the organizational pillar of an ISR network. They concentrated warfare integration within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OpNav N7), made the Director of Naval Intelligence (OpNav N2) the Navy's functional ISR manager (and established a small targeting office there), and undertook a wide range of experiments. But they did not go far enough. Navy ISR has not been up to the task of optimizing precision-strike missions in Operation Enduring Freedom. The CNO should charge the OpNav N2 with implementing and changing ISR policies and programs. This would entail giving him primary budgetary authority and would demand a rapid cultural shift in a community that for years has relegated targeting support to a distant second place.
The OpNav N2 should head a targeting staff manned by personnel from each of the principal warfare areas. As it relates to ISR, this staff would integrate precision-strike requirements, drive acquisition of integrated technology, and lead the way in doctrine and training. It would provide Navy views to joint and national ISR organizations. Concurrent with establishing a high-level targeting staff, the Navy should upgrade intelligence organizations afloat and ashore to support precision-strike missions. Deployed forces must have "reach-back" communications from C4ISR nodes afloat to Navy and joint command centers ashore. Virtual collaboration with other ISR nodes is necessary to provide rapid turnaround of intelligence data to precision-strike platforms.
- The third pillar of the coevolution process—doctrine—is in disrepair. Joint doctrine remains in draft form and is woefully outdated or too generic. The Navy has approached the process incrementally and is hardly better off-only parts of the doctrine and procedures for ISR support of precision strike are under discussion. Naval intelligence personnel supporting Enduring Freedom have to create ISR architecture from a patchwork of ideas. The OpNav N2 should produce the doctrine, tactics, and standard operating procedures that shape the ISR system and facilitate training. These products will provide a consistent set of tools to Navy (and other) units for the conduct of ISR support to Navy and joint precision-strike missions. Together with expertise resident at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, doctrine should draw heavily from unified command requirements, battle group lessons learned, and fleet exercises.
Efforts to improve training were ongoing before Enduring Freedom. However, deficiencies in doctrine and an inability to identify requirements for multiple precision-strike platforms hampered this work. These problems would be alleviated under a centralized OpNav N2 targeting organization. Training should become a regulated process, both at formal schools and during preparations for exercises and deployments. Naval intelligence leaders will need to learn—and relearn—to manage the new ISR network. Intelligence analysts will have to undergo periodic training in interpreting raw data drawn from numerous platforms.
Conclusions
Based on lessons from Allied Force, the Department of Defense added $1.5 billion to its fiscal year 2001-2005 program "to address the need for increased investments in the tasking, production, exploitation, and dissemination of intelligence assets." But there was only a limited push within the Navy to build a Navy ISR network. Despite some funding increases, overall cost constraints—exacerbated by lack of warfare community sponsorship—left Navy ISR creeping forward. Naval intelligence had to do more with less. Sometimes, the answer really lies in more money and people.
An adequately manned and funded Navy ISR system that is balanced among the foregoing pillars will provide timely, quality intelligence support to precision-strike missions. Failure to build a networked system will result in a suboptimized collection of platforms, technologies, and organizations incapable of supporting precision strike in anything other than slow-paced minor contingencies—notwithstanding ever-rising expectations related to new technologies.
Although Enduring Freedom has a large Navy component, we cannot operate in isolation. Our ISR network must be integrated with joint and national intelligence agency systems. "If we are going to succeed in tomorrow's combat ... we will have to stop buying service-unique systems and work with the other services to design and acquire the capabilities that make best sense for all of us." And the same principle holds true for organization and doctrine. A networked Navy ISR system apart from the other services and agencies will not support precision strike effectively. If the Navy fails to fund and accelerate its efforts to build a networked ISR system now, increasing numbers of Navy precision weapons will become little more than expensive ballast.
A 2001 graduate of the Naval War College, Commander Turner is assigned to the J-2 staff of the Commander-in-Chief Pacific in Hawaii.