The submarine force needs to develop common communications capabilities with surface forces if it wants to be plugged in to today's naval operations. This new communications link should not, however, come at the cost of stealth.
The submarine force has been scrambling to get a place at the table within greater Navy roles and missions after its traditional role of independent antisubmarine warfare operations against Soviet submarines all but evaporated in 1990. In applying to join the existing U.S. Navy "union," one of the prerequisites is that submarines need to become just as connected as cruisers and destroyers. Submarines must conform to fleet command, control, and communications practices and expectations if they want to play. In response, the submarine force has begun a number of communications initiatives while being somewhat concerned as to whether violating the laws of physics is a misdemeanor or a felony. It has been suggested that, sometime in the past, the surface fleet came to a fork in the road and took the path less beneficial, let alone less traveled.
As so eloquently articulated by Commander Paul Nagy in his article "Network-Centric Warfare Isn't New" (Proceedings, September 2001), the fleet has depended on fused and correlated information for more than a half century. The difference today is that Moore's Law has enabled massive amounts of data to be dealt with, given huge bandwidth and dry antennas. The surface fleet is able to demand that all battle group units be provided with all of everyone's data—to be sorted, fused and correlated locally. The submarine force still operates on highly screened, processed, and analyzed information. A submarine forward deployed in an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission has an incredible network of "all-source" backup working in support of her effort. When she receives a low bandwidth message via several redundant paths (including ones copyable while submerged below periscope depth) ordering her to "get out of there," she does not "roger" the message or ask on what data that advice was based.
The armed forces have been promised a degree of situational awareness, or common operational picture, never before enjoyed by any military. Through space-based assets, unmanned aerial vehicles, and the like, the battle space will largely be observed and understood, and this understanding of an opponent's deployment and sometimes even intent can be broadcast to all friendly units.
U.S. forces are beginning to appreciate the value of stealth. The Air Force has its low-observable F-117s and B-2s, the Army has the Commanche helicopter, and the surface Navy is developing the Zumwalt-class DD(X). But what does it benefit a ship with low radar cross-section, infrared, and acoustic signature if it continually radiates with radars and radio link-this or link-that? Submariners have learned this lesson well—not only through the German experience in World War II, where nightly transmissions to ashore commands were not secure, but also through U.S. experience with submarines being operated out of Australia early in the war. In that case, the ashore commander was in frequent two-way communication with deployed boats and suffering very high loss rates. It took orders from Admiral Chester Nimitz himself to direct that these submarines be exempt from transmitting while deployed, a change that dramatically reduced that theater's submarine losses without degrading their combat effectiveness.
In today's context, there are appropriate times and places for large bandwidth communications products. A submarine commander would sooner get a given packet of information off in 0.1 seconds than 10.0 seconds or a minute. Similarly, surface units should download information continuously from any circuit available, but when transmissions are required, they should go with the highest data rate, most directional means available for the shortest possible length of time. There is no such thing as "covert" radio frequency (RF) communications (if there were, even the intended receiver would not copy), but some have a far lower probability of intercept than others. Narrow beamwidth, boresighted (and spatially stabilized) at some space or airborne relay node is among the best options. Narrow beamwidth coupled with wide bandwith is a real winner.
It is hard to disagree that submarines and the surface Navy should have a "common operational comms" philosophy. Should that be, however, the same philosophy that exists in the surface Navy? If Admiral Bill Owens's "system of systems" or Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski's "sensor-to-shooter" grid can provide DD(X) or the entire battle group with adequate situational awareness, can the battle group gravitate more toward a submarine communications theology rather than vice versa? Can those who pass information or orders to them accept, as do ashore submarine commanders, that there typically will be no "roger"? After all, the original reason for all the two-way chatter associated with establishing communications can be tracked to when RF communications was an iffy thing, and it was an imprudent assumption that the intended recipient would copy on the first transmission. At the other extreme, for 50 years the most robust part of the U.S. nuclear deterrent was to be actuated, without acknowledgement, with a message of perhaps a kilobyte. Rather than a fragile link, Ashton Carter in his seminal book Managing Nuclear Operations (Brookings Institution Press, 1987) identified it as the most secure, stating that "if the message can get out of Washington, it will get to the SSBNs." Over thousands of deterrent patrols and literally millions of hours of alert time, the aggregate time that ballistic-missile submarines did not have secure passive connectivity with the National Command Authority can be measured in minutes.
For those who would argue that a "broadcast" system of command and control cannot work without a confirming "roger" from those directed to take action, a parable used by my friend and mentor Rear Admiral Jerry Holland is offered. It involves automobile traffic around Washington, D.C., during a typical morning rush hour. When a local radio station reports that there is a four-car accident on Shirley Highway, literally thousands of people make a tactical decision to change their commuting route without even one of them pulling off (or coming up on a cell phone) to call the radio station with an acknowledgment.
Historically, a strong point of naval power has been the ambiguous nature of its location. For more than 200 years, the bad guys had to assume there was a squadron of British frigates just over the horizon. During the Cold War, the fact that some nuclear submarines were out of home port (as determined by space-based sensors) was of great concern to both U.S. and Soviet national command authorities. It is a reasonable assumption that information from space-based sensors now is available to any nation or even non-national entities that have some space-capable friends or the money to buy it. Although it remains beyond the technical pale to search all of the oceans visually for deployed naval forces, any RF emissions from those forces make detection and geolocation a relatively trivial matter.
Common operational comms for all naval forces is an achievable goal, but the right solution might be a melding of two current communications theologies. "I'll never emit, but I promise a patrol report when I get back" bounds one end of the range of possible answers. The other end is bounded by operational doctrines that result in all platforms being bright stars of RF emissions across a broad range of frequencies and power levels.
There are certain givens in this equation. It would be foolhardy to assume that any naval platform—submarine or aircraft carrier—can expect to leave port without being noticed. Once over—or under—the horizon, however, they have the option of either controlling "observables" or not. If observables are controlled, the positional uncertainty of that unit begins expanding at a geometric rate—about a million square miles a day, and upward of five million square miles in two days (the contiguous United States has an area of about three million square miles). In the absence of a recalibrating "hit" by some adversary platform or sensor, within about a two weeks, that platform could mathematically be anywhere in the some 160 million square miles of the world's oceans. If, of course, it became operationally prudent to do so—just preceding an attack phase or if in imminent risk of being attacked—all necessary active systems and sensors would light up like a Christmas tree.
If there is room for common ground between the extremes of submarine and surface Navy communications cultures, there is still much to accomplish before this compromise can be exploited. The submarine force must continue to develop hardware and operational doctrine that support real-time high-data-rate reception from operational speeds and depth, and, as directed or when appropriate, high-data-rate transmit capabilities from operational speeds and depths. An included requirement would be that while exposure of any kind is occurring, the ship have adequate optical, RF, and even acoustic situational awareness of the above-water environment. The surface Navy, to include embarked Marine amphibious forces, must become comfortable with the "broadcast" mode of command and control and develop the prerequisite doctrine and procedures to support it. In addition to space-based systems, there is a significant role for both manned and unmanned aircraft that are physically far removed from supported forces to serve as links or communication nodes for other platforms.
Naval forces should be able to show up at unexpected places at unexpected times. Submarines already can do so, but this feature is degraded when tight coordination with surface forces is directed or required under existing operational doctrine. The best of all possible worlds would be achieved if procedures and techniques better allowed the submarine's stealth and guaranteed access to be coupled with the deep firepower pockets of battle groups able to arrive in theater almost as covertly.
Captain Patton served in five nuclear submarines and two nuclear ballistic missile submarines, commanding the USS Pargo (SSN-650). He founded Submarine Tactics and Technology, Inc., which provides services to a number of government and private entities.