At this writing, naval forces under the operational control of Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet launch aircraft that provide direct support to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Naval air forces in the region have operated in much the same way for two decades, supporting the land or air component commander and providing forces directed by the air tasking order and integrating into the U.S. Air Force’s tactical-aircraft-control system overland. This is a well-evolved system enabling air forces from all services to integrate into the joint fight. But that’s only part of the story.
Since 9/11, tactical command-and-control (C2) procedures have revolutionized the control and deployment of joint air assets against the highly dispersed enemy so prevalent in today’s land campaign. Contrary to past practice and popular belief, real-time targeting decisions are not developed or directed at the operational level. Instead, the necessary information is generated by tactical forces in the cockpit and on the ground. When required, these forces work together to deliver precise fires to targets.
Adapting Tactics to Meet the Threat
As we construct AirSea Battle C2 concepts, we should consider the dynamic and highly dispersed threats we may face in the maritime domain. We should resolve that it will be a joint fight. The Navy has worked hard to establish its Fleet headquarters as maritime operations centers and upgrade the ability to command and control joint forces at the operational level.1 However, there is still work to do at the tactical level. While the composite-warfare-commander concept is well-equipped to control naval forces, we must develop that concept procedurally to integrate joint air assets against dispersed targets in the maritime domain.
After crossing the Afghan border, the flight checks in with a control and reporting center (CRC), informing the controller of the JTAR they are supporting and the airspace they will be flying in. They refuel according to the plan orchestrated at the combined air and space operations center (CAOC). In fact, the CAOC exercises operational C2 of all fixed-wing Coalition aircraft operating in Afghanistan, matching JTARs to flights of aircraft and monitoring and adjusting as battlefield conditions dictate. The CRCs deconflict airspace and fires from the air, minimizing risk of midair collisions while supporting separate ground-force commanders. This effort meets the needs of the ISAF joint command, the joint operational commander of day-to-day operations in Afghanistan.
Command and Control
At the operational level of war, C2 nodes such as the numbered fleet maritime operations centers, and the U.S. Air Force’s CAOC assigns tasks, provides logistical support, and adjusts operations to ensure the alignment of the strategic objectives of the joint-force commander and the objectives of the tactical commander. At this level, commanders assign forces locally to the tasks at hand.
The development of rules of engagement and the authorities required to employ kinetic and non-kinetic effects are tied to the operational and tactical levels of war. Commanders balance the intensity of conflict, the exigency of engagement, the situational awareness of subordinate commanders, and the capacity to control multiple engagements to find the right mix of centralized execution and decentralized control. This ensures engagement decisions are made at the appropriate level of control. It ultimately led to the joint tactical aircraft C2 procedures currently in effect in Afghanistan.
Uproar 11 completes its refueling and flies to establish itself over the objective. It checks in with the joint terminal attack controller (JTAC), passes the mission number, position, and weapons and details. The JTAC builds the situational awareness of conditions on the battlefield. The flight begins providing effects by using its sensors to maintain overwatch of the company as it moves toward its key leader engagement site.
We can already identify potential threats—both symmetric and asymmetric—to key waterways throughout the world. Keeping those waterways open, some of which are fairly confined, is one of the Navy’s chief responsibilities. It is one we should expect to command and control as a supported commander. After all, Joint Publication 3-32 defines the maritime domain as “the oceans, seas, estuaries, islands, coastal areas and the airspace above these, including the littorals.”2
Just as naval forces have integrated into the tactical C2 systems of other components, the Navy must accommodate the contribution of joint and Coalition forces as well. We are at liberty to develop and evolve tactical C2 in this regard. Joint Publication 3-52 states, “In joint maritime operations, specific control and defensive measures may differ from those used in a land-based operation.”3
From Scenario to “Prime Time”
While our composite-warfare-commander concept has been flexible enough to accommodate an extraordinary span of new missions over the past two decades, its use has gone relatively unchallenged outside the exercise environment. Recent execution has involved little more than developing and approving responses and cycles for operations and apportioning forces. This has been a function of our operating scenarios, disaggregated operations, and the many task-force commanders who lead specific functions and so require dedicated forces. But the system has worked well, given the protection of a relatively permissive vital area and our explicit support of the combined-forces land- or air-component commands.
The operating environment is likely to become even more complex. Today, “air, surface, subsurface, and littoral threats facing our navy forces have continued to grow” and now, “the primary threats may be . . . littoral instead of open-ocean.”4 This is a great challenge. Operations in littoral areas often occur in a confined battlespace. The shorter distances induce briefer warning and response times.
A potential maritime threat could resemble the enemy in Afghanistan in its dispersion, decentralized execution, and strategic impact on security and could pose as dynamic and ambiguous a hazard. In the littorals specifically, such threats could come from land, sea, or air, in the form of swarming small boats, mine-laying vessels (disguised as civilian fishing vessels), cruise missiles launched from fixed coastal sites, and aircraft and ballistic missiles.
Our strategic objectives may be more complex and evolve over time, shifting from maritime security to sea control to deterrence to power projection.
Today’s C2 must be responsive, allowing rapid decision-making at the level of the most competent warfighter. Since it will be a joint fight, it is to our advantage to adapt our tactical C2 concept to something consistent with the experience of our joint and Coalition partners.
The company conducts and completes its KLE, its civil affairs officers engaging the village’s maleks and elders to assess how the ground force commander can connect the people of the village to the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. After exfiltrating the KLE site, the infantry company comes under fire from enemy fighters hiding in a treeline. The enemy employs small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The ground-force commander takes stock of the tactical situation and estimates collateral damage. He decides the best option to return his company to its firebase is precision fires from the air from the Uproar flight. His JTAC starts the nine-line coordination brief to pass essential information for a successful employment of precision weapons.
Maritime Air Support Operations Center
The Air Force’s tactical air control system, as promulgated by Air Force Doctrine Document 2, includes C2 nodes that span the operational and tactical levels. The CAOC provides operational C2. Air support operations centers (ASOCs) are distributed in-theater and embedded in the ground force’s tactical operations centers to provide ground forces with air power. CRCs connect forces in the air and on the ground in accordance with the ASOCs’ direction. CRCs also collect and disseminate voice reports for initial reports of action. Finally, terminal controllers direct aircraft to objectives on the battlefield.
This system has been effective in Afghanistan. It is also the fundamental, common experience of an entire generation of U.S. and Coalition air and ground forces. Everyone understands it. If we accept the premise that any future littoral campaign will be a joint one, then it is easy to accept that in “joint operations composed of adjacent maritime and land environments, specific control and defensive measures may be a composite of those measures normally employed in each environment.”5 Clearly, a composite structure that implements the experience of all of our tactical air forces is needed.
As with the U.S. Air Force tactical aircraft control system on land, we should take the ASOC to sea as the maritime air support operations center (MASOC). Collocated on the aircraft carrier with the strike group commander, the MASOC would permit multirole aircraft to be leveraged against highly dynamic targets. In short, it would send joint air forces to the proper tactical engagements in a multi-threat environment. Terminal controllers and CRCs would continue to direct engagements and provide fires deconfliction locally, responding to warfare commander priorities and direction.
The MASOC would not supplant the duties, responsibilities, or authorities of the warfare commanders. It would, however, provide a C2 agency to assign flexible, multi-mission air forces to warfare commander tasks and resources at the direction of the tactical commander at sea. The MASOC would not obviate the need for mission planning and apportioning platforms against tasks. It would ensure that the appropriate aircraft could be tasked or retasked to higher warfighting priorities and be accomplished within the physical and temporal constraints that littoral waterways and dynamic targets present.
Each warfare commander and joint-force provider would have a representative in the MASOC. Where resources are unconstrained, the MASOC battle director would respond promptly. In more demanding tactical environments, the strike-group commander would have the real-time situational awareness and support necessary to make choices against potentially great numbers of dynamic and disaggregated targets. The MASOC would not supplant our composite warfare commander concept, but it would rectify it in a way that our joint and Coalition partners intuitively understand. Most important, it would ensure the right asset against the right target at the right time, with no waste.
During its 2010 deployment, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) Strike Group exercised with joint forces using the MASOC structure. Using the integrated-warfare command center on board the CTF-50 flagship and featuring ultra-high frequency, high-frequency, and Link 16 communications and connected with Global Command and Control System-Maritime, Analog Display Services Interface, and Joint Automated Deep Operations Coordination Systems displays, the MASOC was connected to all relevant command, control, and communications media. Further, it was located close to the tactical flag command center and the strike group commander’s cabin, using the actual coordinator billets corresponding to the warfare commanders whose functions they represented, as follows:
• Senior air coordination officer (SACO). A squadron commander, executive officer or post-command aviation O-5 assigned to the strike group and responsible for coordinating the dynamic assignment of air to emergent tasks. The SACO supervised the MASOC.
• Senior air tactical coordinator (SATC). A representative of the air resources element coordinator, the SATC ensures balance and alignment between strike group organic and JTF commander’s requirements.
• Senior air warfare coordinator (SAWC). The air-defense commander’s advocate for securing air resources dynamically in execution.
• Senior intelligence air coordinator (SAIC). The SAIC ensures integration of ISR and non-traditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform resources and information.
• Senior fires coordinator (SFC). The SFC coordinates emergent, dynamic maritime-strike resources for strikes in the maritime domain over water and in the inshore littoral areas. Additionally, a fires deconfliction officer was assigned to assist in air, surface, and subsurface launched fires. The SFC represented the objectives of both the sea combat-warfare commander and strike warfare commander.
In addition to organic elements of the strike group, U.S. Air Force assets, including F-16s and B-1s, directly supported the objectives of the exercise. E-3 airborne warning and control systems and E-2s contributed. Though limited in scope and generalized in scenario, the exercise demonstrated the power of the concept. On two occasions, aircraft were reassigned, via the MASOC, from exercise maritime dynamic strike tasks to real-world air-warfare tasks, intercepting and identifying unknown aircraft in the region. Equally important, Air Force pilots reported instant orientation to the command and control scheme. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve been operating like this for years.
Committing to MASOC
As in Operation Enduring Freedom and other combat scenarios, electro-optical and infrared systems aloft and on board ship are crucial in today’s conflict environments to establish patterns of life, differentiate small minelayers from fishing boats, and cruise-missile sites from decoys. There is little doubt that the air-sea battle will require both ships and joint C2 aircraft using advanced radars and battle management systems to help find targets, control the air, and assist in air resource flows. Link 16 is a vital node in this framework. The MASOC is simply the procedural basis by which this incredibly important “system-of-systems” will function.
With precise targeting information, the pilots of Uproar 11 fix sensors on the target. The JTAC, via remotely operated video enhanced receiver, confirms the correct target and clears Uproar 11 “hot.” It releases a laser-guided weapon that guides to the enemy position. The JTAC calls “good effects.” The infantry company proceeds to its firebase and calls “mission complete.” Uproar 11 executes a rendezvous with its tanker and refuels for its long journey to the carrier. On checkout from JTAC frequency to CRC frequency, Uproar 11 passes a mission report detailing the mission particulars. After the long flight back to the North Arabian Sea, Uproar 11 checks in with fleet air defense identification zone controller “Red Crown.” Uproar 11 flies a solid approach and lands on board the aircraft carrier, mission complete.
Our joint experience is dramatized by this fictional scenario. We must prepare for greater joint contributions inside the maritime battlespace to achieve tactical success in the future. As we look to the potential for conflict, we can already see that the forces needed to secure our objectives in important waterways will include joint forces. The threat and geography and exigency of time already tell us that. The development of the MASOC will adjust the composite warfare commander to our joint operating constructs and experience, allow the tactical commander to assign large numbers of air forces over a large area, and leverage the necessary assets to defeat what is sure to be a dynamic threat.
1. John C. Harvey, “Readiness Enhancer Q & A: Delivering Trained Forces Ready for Tasking to Combatant Commanders,” Military Training Technology, vol. 15, issue 3, p. 26, May 2010.
2. U.S. Government Joint Publication 3-32, chapter 1, p. I-2
3. U.S. Government Joint Publication 3-52, p. x.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
Captain Paparo is commander, Carrier Air Wing Seven.
Commander Finn is director of C4I training, Operations Directorate Strike Force Training Command, Atlantic, and the former commanding officer of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 121.