Time Out for Tactics

Nobody’s arguing that inspections aren’t important. Heaven only knows what the beam of a flashlight might find under the bunk of a warship during a zone inspection. But there must be some way to reduce the 80 or so inspections a combat unit is subjected to every 18 months and use some of that time for the study of tactics.

Why have we let our concern for tactics slip away? How can we continue to call ourselves naval officers when our attention is being constantly drawn away from what should be our main interest—besting po­tential adversaries in war? As a naval officer, I am by definition a person who is capable of waging and winning a war on the high seas. I have trained and studied diligently, but is it for the next conflict or the next helpful inspection? We must refocus our at­tention on tactics.

As used here, the word “tactics” signifies the ac­tions and thought processes that should be second nature to the typical naval officer. In this respect, it is a broader term than is signified by ranges of guns, electronic characteristics of radars, or rates of turns. It encompasses many small-scale principles of logis­tics and an appreciation of how these tactics support larger strategic perspectives. This is not to say that tactical knowledge is an innate quality possessed by every officer; quite the contrary is true. Tactics must be learned, studied, molded, and changed to fit vary­ing circumstances.

The only time a future admiral or captain gets a chance to set his hooks into these warfare tasks is while he is trying to make a simulator perform in accordance with some blustery operation order writ­ten by a poor staff college graduate who has success­fully over-tabbed and super-appendixed anything that may have looked like an original approach to a problem. War games seem to have gained credibility under the aegis of the recently retired Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, Jr. These games support the large staffs and definitely do stimulate tactical development at their level. The problem is how to confer these bene­fits on every wardroom and ready room where victory will be lost unless these junior officers successfully contribute through their ability to execute correctly the tactical doctrine in an innovative fashion. How are we nurturing the thought processes required of our junior officers during war? Too often, we are not. The pedestrian excuse is that our division officers have too much to do in connection with the planned maintenance system (PMS), administration, and war­fare qualifications to have time for such diversions as tactics. The fact is that they are too busy; but cer­tainly, if a few four-star admirals can find time in their schedules, then the rest of us should follow their lead and set aside some time to concentrate on tactics. No matter how good our shore-based com­manders are, or how good our worldwide command, control, and communication system is, battles are won by relying on the capability of every command­ing officer to fight his unit through his people. This capability of judiciously melding people and combat systems must be the subject of thought and study before we are called upon to use it.

The 80 or so inspections that a normal combat unit is subject to every 18 months are certainly among the most often complained about reasons for our inability to free enough time to study tactics. These inspections seem to indicate the system’s basic mistrust of every commanding officer. More proba­bly, they are an admission that it takes a special team of experts to find which regulations are being broken today. Each inspection individually seems important enough. In fact, the seagoing sailor almost starts to feel guilty of the heinous neglect of supposedly un­derstandable notices and instructions until he realizes that it has taken four people three years of shore duty to decipher and implement these same directives. Of course, the time to reflect upon one’s poor performance has to be cut short also, because the next assist visit will follow soon thereafter.

There must be some way to heed these many in­structions while somehow rekindling the flame of in­novative tactical thought that we seem to have lost. Certainly by applying even outdated automatic data processing technology, it would be possible to de­velop an information storage and retrieval system that would allow single-source access to the majority of information on a subject, whether it be a machine, process, or administrative procedure. This would allow anyone interested in a subject to sit down at a cathode ray tube and see the entire spectrum of direc­tives, instructions, official magazine articles, and messages from all echelons in a premasticated form. This would tend to give us expertise, reduce the need for outside help, and give us back some time to study tactics.

If the inspections themselves do not indicate a lack of faith in the system, they seem to be part of the diminishing importance of tactical thought at all levels of command. The junior officer does not per­ceive that his senior pays attention to tactics as a matter of routine. If a junior commanding officer is delayed from returning to home port for some tacti­cally significant reason, he can normally'still expect to have to meet all his visits, assist teams, and in­spections despite the crew’s inconvenience. The commanding officer does not see a routine emphasis on tactics, and, therefore, he tends not to pass any concern down to the members of his wardroom. How often does one see the immediate superior in com­mand stay after the most recent inspection and talk about his philosophy of the wartime employment of his units? During the last year, how much has the immediate superior, type commander, or fleet com­mander contributed to the fleet officers’ thought pro­cess of winning an engagement? And if progress is being made, as it is in the Sixth Fleet, it rarely starts with or is emphasized at the unit level. Of all the reports and inspections conducted, how many can a junior officer reasonably link to combat thinking?

That there may be a more serious lack of faith and trust in the unit commanding officer is evident in the growing worldwide command and control sys­tems that have the capability of controlling the most routine battle decisions from thousands of miles away.

The above observations may seem to be overstated because they imply that there is a conscious effort to undermine the basic significance of tactics at sea that every naval line officer must hold as his raison d’etre. The real point, of course, is not that there is no con­cern about tactics, but rather that over the course of the last several years of peacetime, while we have been fighting large material problems, we have al­lowed ourselves to drift away from a reasonable pro­gram to keep and increase our tactical acumen. We have, with every good intention, allowed the short­term solutions to many of our problems to move us gradually away from devoting enough time to tacti­cal thought. Ultimately, tactical thought becomes the most important and immediate problem of any unit. The strategic world is well taken care of by the major staffs and national defense bodies. The grand tactical picture is fairly well thought out and cared for by the two-star afloat staffs. Yet, the wardroom of a ship rarely is pressed to come forward with realistically imaginative tactical thought. In fact, by the manner in which the system rewards and promotes, we are producing leaders, from division offi­cers through commanding officers, who are being taught that the administrative and material worlds are the answers to success. Instead, attention to the real worlds of tactics and leadership should cull the largest rewards. This attitude should not be surprising. It is a routine peacetime phenomenon, but in case of war there will not be time to change from administrative to tactical leaders; the process must start now. We have licked our wounds now for sixty years. It is time to place the administrative and ma­terial worlds in perspective and return to emphasizing the importance of the development of tactics even in the daily chores of the smallest unit.

The job is not one for the Chief of Naval Operations. We can’t even blame the former Bureau of Personnel for allowing tactical thought to decrease in importance. In fact, the problem may well have to be solved from the level of individual combat units. The insidious encroachment of demands dubbed vitally important by the shore establishment erodes the time and effort needed by the junior officer to improve upon his major responsibilities of leadership and preparation for battle. This places him or her in the unenviable position of calling to the attention of senior officers the efforts which are not directed to­ward these ends. Obviously, this approach smacks of a ‘‘can’t do” attitude that is anathema to success on the high seas. Thus, the long-term effort to rearrange priorities will require forbearance and support from the more senior naval officers. If the hierarchy does not support the first few who venture against the present system, then it will be a long time before anyone will try again. I hope it will be done before the next war. (If there is a touch of hyperbole in these statements, the observations, nonetheless, con­tain much truth.)

Our existing exercise structure offers a good place to devote more effort toward tactics. From five to six months before each exercise, the major concepts to be tried should be written down and distributed to all the players, including the ones at the individual unit level. A number of stimulating questions should be appended in order to provide the opportunity for everyone to offer his thoughts far enough in advance so that the best of the ideas could be incorporated in the exercise. The concepts and proposed tactics Sathered could then be sent out in advance of the operation order so the ideas being tested could be distinguished from the many routine details of the exercise. Between exercises, perhaps the Naval War College could come up with tabletop war games with problems published quarterly or semiannually.

The junior officer rarely, if ever, picks up a book on tactics or reads a stimulating article on war at sea. Even if he does desire to learn about tactics, he will certainly by stymied by a lack of applicable material, there are many historical tomes that describe what others have tried. There is also the Naval Warfare I Publication (NWP) series which illustrates the broad and basic rules to be followed on the unit over the years, much thought has gone into these warfare and exercise publications, yet they seem to be losing some of their focus when the results of administrative inspections begin to creep into the awarding of the once-coveted battle efficiency “E.” That many of the publications and exercises no longer reflect the realities of current thought may be good because it indicates progress in tactical thought. Many of the details that the Fleet Exercise Publication (FXP) series emphasizes are im­portant for learning fundamentals; however, the danger is that too much faith is placed in their abil­ity to prepare a unit for combat. It would seem that we may be concentrating too closely on the minutiae of scoring in an artifical environment and neglecting applications of the exercise concepts on the high seas. We must continue to look at the details without being mesmerized by them.

The low regard in which the Naval Warfare Publi­cations library is held is easily illustrated by the fact that most of the books are being converted into microfiche format. Although they will be cheaper to distribute and easier to change, they will be abso­lutely useless for routine study and leisurely perusal to stimulate tactical thought. If we are not allowed actual books, future tacticians will be easily distin­guished by their bleary eyes from days before a microfiche reader. Updating these books is certainly important, so it is disappointing that the controlling agencies must solicit inputs for revisions. They should have to sort through piles of unsolicited sug­gestions from the fleet. The last thing they should want is more material. Where have our tacticians gone?

As the most obvious unofficial publication, the Proceedings has not been of much use in stimulating tactical thought in recent years. Granted, it is se­verely handicapped by its purely unclassified and un­official nature, but, there should still be more arti­cles written to foster our interest in tactics. Of course, the Proceedings is really only a mirror of the current thought of the officer corps, and it is impos­sible for the Naval Institute alone to persuade us that more sound tactical thought is vitally needed. It should be a source of some embarrassment that the prize essay contest winners in the last few years have been retired officers. Where is the new breed of thinkers? We must use every forum to its advantage to force us to attack the hard tactical problems that we will face. In unclassified publications, we can at least write about how to approach the problem of encouraging thought about tactics and thereby ex­pose others to possible solutions.

There really is no regular source of current tactical thought. Daily we are exposed to a variety of mate­rial that discusses safety, public affairs, Navy educa­tion, and the like—usually in the form of the pre­digested pablum found in such publications as All Hands, Fathom, Approach, Campus, and Direction. Slick—yes, interesting—maybe, important—no. These magazines are not important when the re­sources are not also being used to promote the gut issues of tactical thought.

If publications are inadequate, then perhaps peer groups can generate tactical thought. There is rarely a serious bull session that does not touch on what is going to happen during a conflict. Yet, most of the discussions seem to focus on what will be done to us as opposed to what can be done by us. Rarely does the thought process rise above the individual unit level to encompass the defense in depth provided by intelligence and forces of the same type, mutual sup­port given by air, surface, and subsurface units, and by the U. S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and our allies. The precepts of national strategy do not have to hang over every skull session. Yet the obvi­ous moderator, the commanding officer, is all too often missing. Although there is plenty to say, the people who can often add the most to the discussion are usually absorbed with other more immediate and seemingly more important tasks. As with so many other programs, the commanding officer is a key, but the priorities that have been established for him simply do not include the development of new tactics unless he is actually placed in an exercise environ­ment and can successfully innovate when pressed. While creative thought under fire is an important wartime asset that we should encourage, we should also insist that careful thought be given to the fight­ing of the unit on a routine—if not daily—basis.

Since it is the immediate superior in the chain of command who often sets his subordinates’ priorities, he in turn must receive encouragement from the type commander and fleet commander to promote tactical thought throughout their units. If the solution to the problem of increasing tactical thought is to rely on the wellspring of tactical thought from the more junior elements, then the commodore or air wing commander must also take a large share of the bur­den to prepare us conceptually for a battle situation. Too often, it seems that tactical ship, submarine, or aircraft commanders are relegated to mere adminis­trative duties and their years of valuable experience are bypassed. Surely, the many assist visits, inspec­tions, and reports that are consolidated for passing up the line are useful, but it would seem far more valuable to be able to point to a single tactical inno­vation for which the immediate superior acts as a catalyst.

Tactics and wartime situations are often neglected because of perceptual problems on the part of the more senior officers. In the rigidly structured mili­tary hierarchy, it is logical to expect a senior to avoid a question to which he should, but does not, know the answer. The fact that he should be asking the question in peacetime will not make any difference. It does not even matter that there is no obvious or single answer to the question. Since his next senior does not routinely submit to or ask these hard ques­tions, why should a combat unit commanding offi­cer, or, for that matter, a junior officer concern him­self with them? Their priorities are all too obviously set by the press of administrative and material prob­lems.

At sea, we live with the hard technology of war and have no time to study the “softer” subject of tactics. Why then, when we move ashore to places like graduate school, do we insist on emphasizing technology to the exclusion of tactics? It seems that Admiral Rickover has convinced us that we all must be scientists and that the gods of technology will re­spond only to the voodoo of higher mathematics. Even on the part of the most technically inclined junior officer on board a nuclear-powered warship, there should be at least a scintilla of concern about all the nontechnical problems that will someday face him as a commanding officer or the leader of a battle fleet. Yet, he will probably be tied to the engineer­ing plant for more than two-thirds of his naval career because of a career pattern that cannot retain enough officers to provide a reasonable sea-shore rotation- Where will he learn those skills that will make him appreciate the logistics of an air wing used to protect a strategic strait? The plain fact is that neither he nor his conventional counterpart probably ever will gain a broad tactical perspective. Despite the fact that there are electrons galore running amuck in the mod­ern war machine, and that the forefront of almost every technology—from food preparation to satellite communications—is evident in everything he does, the junior officer is still being paid to be a leader in war. He is not required to concern himself with complex equations or chemical analyses. When he is required to delve into the science of his machine, he can call on the support of fairly good technical man' uals, competent technicians, and the oversized shore establishment to cough up a knowledgeable expert if needed.

The answer to balancing the study of technology and the art of war is obviously not to stop training if the sciences. The ability to maintain our technical and scientific advantage in the future rests on the shoulders of technically trained naval officers who are able to propose programs to Congress and articulate details to industry. In the eclectic world of naval warfare, there still should be room for an increase^ emphasis on the lessons of previous wars, military science, and the military-diplomatic relationship Those lessons were recorded to be used by today’s junior officers so that they may avoid repeating past failures. Many of the lessons unfortunately lie in the discredited “soft” fields of history and political science. Certainly the problem of increasing tactical thought could not be solved by having the entire of­ficer corps drop its pocket calculators and rush for the library stacks. However, increasing programs in diplomacy, history, and political science for our op­erational officers would serve to broaden their per­spectives. It would also allow civilian graduate schools to see a military point of view. Merely studying history will not ensure that its lessons will be helpful during a conflict. Changes in technological and political climates will probably dictate that a great deal of thought go into the application of these lessons to any current crisis. But that is exactly the remedy for the overall problem—more thought on current tactical problems.

The goal of thinking tactically should not be to answer every question in its entirety or to cover a complete field, but rather to establish in every line officer a habitual appreciation and concern for things tactical. Every wardroom, ready room, and tactical school should regularly ask a question concerned with winning an engagement that appears to be without a solution. It is better to talk about those sorts of things now rather than reflect upon our mis­takes after it is too late.

I have no greater hope than that this essay will outlive its usefulness within a few years because the resurgence of tactical thought makes further worry uncalled for. We have tried to make scientists and administrators of a group of fighters who, by the very characteristics that tend to make them successful in battle will usually resist the mundane aspects of military life imposed by peace. We have the choice either to continue on the current path which dooms this innovative talent or to try to nurture it by giv­ing tactical thought due consideration. The adminis­trative and material concerns must not be forgotten, but they will never inspire the sparks of creativity or germinate the realistically imaginative approach that is so necessary for the present time. Let us allow, support, and even demand that this upwelling of tac­tical thought stem from every fleet unit in order to ensure our success at winning the next peace.