'Tactical Excellence by Design'

Facing a rising tide of capable, potential adversaries, the U.S. Navy’s surface force has ordered a course change in tactical training with a renewed focus on sea control. A big part of this effort centers on enhancing the lethality of multi-mission surface warships by synchronizing and massing fires to hold adversaries at risk at greater ranges than ever before. Yet this change will also require a shift in the way we think—about tactics, training, and personnel. And if we are to truly achieve a more lethally distributed surface force capability in which every ship that floats can fight, and fight well, this change must go beyond how warfare commanders employ ships and aircraft and focus on—and reinvest in—tactical proficiency at the individual warfighter and watch-team levels. As we embrace a culture of “tactical excellence by design” as opposed to “by choice and happenstance,” the surface warfare community is aligning training and tactics to secure “warfighting first” as our number-one priority.

On 30 June 2015, then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert directed the transition from Warfare Centers of Excellence to Warfighting Development Centers—aligned under Type Commanders—charged to “enhance fleet warfighting capabilities and readiness across the theater, operational, and tactical levels of war.” As the surface force’s Warfighting Development Center, the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) is focused on establishing and enforcing standards for tactical excellence across warfare areas within the surface community. Through four interdependent focus areas—(1) developing warfare tactics instructors; (2) standardizing and developing doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures; (3) developing and implementing a surface warfare combat-training continuum; and (4) conducting surface warfare advanced tactical training—SMWDC is creating the framework to enhance tactical innovation and sharpen the surface force’s warfighting edge in the 21st century.

Investing in Junior Warfighters

On surface ships, junior officers on the bridge and on the watch floor stand at the heart of a ship’s ability to fight. So it is not surprising that the first of many steps in designing a model for tactical excellence is to sow and harvest a cadre of surface warfare tactics instructors (WTIs), proven post–second tour division officers with the motivation and aptitude to immerse themselves in a tactical discipline. To be designated a surface WTI, candidates must complete a rigorous academic program founded in the tactical and technical details of weapon systems, threat analysis, and, most important, current doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures. This foundational knowledge builds confidence and analytical skill that will make the WTI community a collective cell of tactical innovation. Additionally, WTIs will learn the fundamentals of effective instruction, emphasizing the plan, brief, execute, and debrief (PBED) model so that they can take that knowledge back to the fleet.

Following their schoolhouse training, WTIs will complete their post–division officer shore tour in “production” billets throughout the existing tactical and training organizations in the fleet. In these production tours, WTIs serve as subject-matter experts and gain invaluable experience training warfighters, validating tactics, interacting with peer WTIs, and honing skills acquired in the schoolhouse. As WTIs report to operational staffs and training commands, they will create a network that develops tactical proficiency of every watchstander and watch team in the surface fleet. Even better, following their production tours, WTIs will be detailed to ships and staffs as department heads (one per ship or staff) building the fleet’s tactical focus, experience, and knowledge one ship and one staff at a time.

At program maturity, SMWDC will host three surface WTI programs: integrated air and missile defense (IAMD), antisubmarine warfare (ASW) and surface warfare (SUW), and amphibious warfare (AMW), producing 30–40 WTIs per year in each warfare area. Although it will take several years to reach full maturity, 53 post–second tour IAMD WTIs already exist in the fleet, with a seventh class of 12 students having just matriculated. Additionally, the surface community has 152 second-tour antisubmarine-warfare officer (ASWO) WTIs, many of whom are serving on our ships and destroyer-squadron staffs today. Beginning this month, the existing ASW WTI course will be renamed “Advanced ASWO” and extended from four weeks to five for second-tour division officers. At the same time, the pilot course for SMWDC’s new ASW/SUW WTI program is commencing, following a similar post–second tour model as the IAMD WTI program. Additionally, working closely with the tactical schoolhouses and key stakeholders within the amphibious community, SMWDC is actively developing an AMW WTI course, with the initial pilot course scheduled to commence this spring.

WTIs alone are not a cure-all for improving the surface community’s warfighting capability; however, they are a vital conduit through which SMWDC will raise tactical proficiency and enforce standards throughout the surface force. Playing an integral role in supporting SMWDC’s other three focus areas, WTIs will serve as both “keepers” of current tactical knowledge and as key players in the actual development and implementation of new warfighting methodology. Even at this early point in SMWDC’s development, WTIs are moving forward consolidating, updating, and developing doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)—the foundation of warfighting.

Tactical Guidance = the Foundation

SMWDC is charged with leading the standardization and development of TTPs for the surface fleet to create a consistent, tactically sound, single standard of warfighting. Building on the current doctrinal approach, SMWDC is using a cyclical process that will allow tactics to evolve at the same pace as the warfighting environment. SMWDC is in the process of validating the large body of legacy doctrine, along with developing new tactics to address current threats and new weapon systems through a cycle of modeling, simulation, wargaming, and exercises. These new tactics are being developed within the context of emerging threats, nascent warfighting technologies, and cutting-edge research that will shape the future warfighting environment.

Upon validation, new tactics will be introduced to the fleet by WTIs within the fleet training continuum. Feedback received during this training period will be incorporated into future development and revisions. This training-and-feedback cycle will deliver to sailors the most current tactics and provide a process to guarantee that fleet operations are influencing the development of those tactics. SMWDC shall ensure that they are regularly updated and keep pace with the development of new threats and technology. With warfare occurring at the speed of information, our sailors must be trained to know these tactics cold, so they can be implemented without hesitation when needed. In order for a tactics-generation model to be useful to the 21st-century surface force—indeed, trusted by the force—it must be ready for the challenges of emerging threats and evolving technologies. Simply put, the status quo does not deliver this degree of agility to our tactical-publication library—but that is beginning to change.

Since standing up six months ago, SMWDC’s WTIs have completed the validation cycle for 13 warfighting publications; by this spring, seven more will be ready for approval and distribution to the fleet. Given that it will take some time for the WTI program to fully mature and schoolhouses and tactical commands to be fully populated, the revised doctrinal approach will initially labor to keep up with our dynamic warfighting environment. Even at full maturity, the doctrinal cycle will be continuous, relying heavily on sustained WTI support. As WTIs spread throughout the fleet and gain experience, the doctrinal development cycle will strengthen, increasing warfighting effectiveness. That cycle and WTIs are two mutually beneficial lines of effort, in which effective WTIs improve warfighting technique, which in turn facilitates the production of improved TTPs.

Sustaining Warfighting Proficiency

Proficiency and currency are not only a priority for WTIs, but also for every warfighter in the surface force. To that end, one of SMWDC’s priorities is the development of a surface warfare combat-training continuum (SWCTC). By creating a new standard for training and evaluating individual warfighters, the SWCTC looks beyond initial qualification and requires the sustainment of critical skills throughout a warfighter’s career.

Using my own career as an example, I earned my anti-air warfare coordinator qualification in 1990. However, over the years that passed during my initial shore tour, my currency and proficiency atrophied from lack of practice. Simultaneously, the warfighting environment evolved with new threats, weapons, and combat systems. The result of this process was a watchstander with knowledge but lacking in “currency” in an environment with increasing complexity. In my department-head tour, I stood the force antiair-warfare coordinator watch on deployment and, while the fundamentals I learned in 1990 were a strong foundation, there was no standardized mechanism in place to refresh and maintain my currency in this warfare area. As I look back at my own tactical development, I have to admit that there were times when my abilities may have been perceived as “good enough” to stand the watch, but in today’s tactical environment, we need our commanders, tactical action officers, and warfare coordinators to be better than “good enough”—they need to be the best.

Unfortunately, in our current system, only department heads, executive officers, and commanding officers assigned to Aegis ships have the opportunity to re-baseline their knowledge through the Aegis Training and Readiness Center. But even this is not enough to provide the proficiency and currency achieved through repetition and practice over a given sea tour. Under this new training continuum, a fresh standard will be established, building on current qualifications and training curricula and providing a mechanism that guarantees watchstanders in all warfare areas remain combat-ready to stand watch through the completion of currency exercises. This new approach will eliminate variability in the quality of non-standard qualification boards. Our commanding officers will execute a standardized qualification process designed to provide proficient and current warfighters throughout the fleet—who not only excel on the ships they qualified on, but more easily assimilate to the ship they report to in the future. Moreover, SWCTC is not only a method for initial qualification; it will also provide a continuum on which watchstanders will demonstrate proficiency and currency throughout their careers, providing combat-ready personnel throughout the ranks at all times, every time.

Still in its early stages of development, much work remains before the SWCTC is a reality; however, we cannot lose sight of its importance. Defining the specific training evolutions necessary to maintain a tactically proficient force, SWCTC will create a training-and-readiness matrix for the surface fleet, revealing the cost for ensuring proficiency of the individual warfighter. SWCTC will also quantify the inherently positive value of training in monetary terms by providing the surface force with a more accurate and consistent basis for determining budgetary requirements.

From Theory to Practice

As the fleet benefits from WTIs, better doctrine, and better qualifications, the surface warfare advanced tactical training (SWATT) will bridge the divide between theory and practice for our ships. During SWATT, commands emerging from the basic phase will be provided SMWDC mentorship and training in the execution of current tactics in preparation for the predeployment integrated training cycle. Envisioned as the “walk” phase of a crawl-walk-run approach to training, SWATT is a bridging event between the basic phase and the composite training unit exercise (COMPTUEX) for our carrier strike groups (CSGs) and amphibious readiness groups (ARGs). It is during this “walk” phase that our tactical warfighters begin developing the muscle memory required in the operational environment.

With SMWDC WTI guidance, individual watchstanders receive one-on-one mentorship and tactical training, emphasizing the PBED model. As a bridging event, SWATT facilitates higher-fidelity tactical training during COMPTUEX by shifting the focus away from the basics and toward the advanced tactics we must have mastered when facing “near-peer” threats. Pilot SWATTs are already under way, with the John C. Stennis (CVN-74) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) CSGs having completed their SWATTs in the spring and fall of 2015, respectively. The momentum created by this new tactical training will only continue to build, and the Nimitz (CVN-68) CSG is on track for an even more robust SWATT in the fall of 2016. Once fully operational, SWATT will comprise not only SMWDC mentorship and training, but the funding and ammunition allocations required to facilitate real-time weapons employment including live-fire missile exercises.

Aligned with the vision of Vice Admiral Thomas S. Rowden, Commander, Naval Surface Forces, to provide “Combatant Commanders with lethal, ready, well-trained, and logistically supported surface forces to assure, deter, and win,” SWMDC is charged with providing the fleet with tactically proficient, lethal warfighters. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. Achieving our goal of tactical excellence will take time, constancy, and commitment by the surface community for SMWDC to reach full maturity, but the track for tactical proficiency is plotted on the chart and the transit has begun. The demand signal from the fleet for more WTIs is strong and only exceeded by the demand from our junior officers to enter the program. Those initial classes of WTIs already in the fleet are making tangible progress, and have moved out at full speed consolidating, updating, and developing the doctrine and TTPs that form the foundation of what we do—warfighting. Further, efforts to make SWCTC a reality and erect the framework for sustained tactical excellence have already begun. Moreover, our first SWATTs have been executed. In the near future, our CSGs and ARGs will be undergoing fully operational and funded advanced tactical training that is vital to their ability to meet a near-peer adversary when deployed over the horizon.

The time has come to invest in our people to the same degree that we invest in our combat systems. Today’s warfighting environment brings with it a pace never before seen—far more revolutionary than evolutionary—and we can no longer rely on our material advantages to ensure dominance. Along with the finest ships and the most advanced warfighting systems, we must also have the most tactical warfighters in the world. For a truly lethal and combat-ready surface force relies on a culture of tactical excellence by design, rather than by chance.