We are the premier surface force in the world—second to none—that controls the seas and provides the Nation with combat naval power when and where needed.
Since the founding of the Nation, the U.S. Navy—embodied in many ways by the sailors and ships that comprise the surface force—has secured its vital interests. It defends the homeland, protects critical sea lanes so goods and resources get to market, enforces territorial and economic boundaries, and deters conflict on the high seas and ashore. Today, the Navy’s role and value remain as closely connected to the national interests as ever. Indeed, as both the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the National Defense Strategy (NDS) make clear, the Navy has never been more important.
A premier surface force is required to achieve the ends outlined in the national strategies—with “premier” being the key word. Premier naval forces understand the relationship between preparing today for victory at sea tomorrow. Equally important, premier naval forces are defined not simply by state-of-the-art technologies and warfighting proficiency, but by core values and a culture that prioritizes and creates excellence. To maintain its premier status in the face of great power competition, the surface navy must build the best mariners, the most lethal ships and warfighters, and fully prepared warfare commanders.
Building the Best Mariners
Over the past two years, the surface community has focused on world-class mariner skills and high standards for shiphandling. With the help of Congress and Navy leaders, the surface navy made substantial and lasting investments in the training and professionalism of bridge and combat information center (CIC) watchstanders. While not declaring “mission complete,” the rapid progress and initial results are cause for optimism.
First, the quality of shore-based simulators has dramatically improved and junior watchstanders are afforded increased training repetitions. The commanding officer of Surface Warfare Officer Schools Command (SWOS) is establishing Maritime Skills Training Centers (MSTC) in Norfolk and San Diego to house new training courses for surface warfare officers (SWOs). This includes facilities for officer-of-the-deck (OOD) phase I and II courses on seamanship, watchstanding, and proper use of navigation equipment. Both courses will be ready for students in May 2021. As a prelude, the four-week junior officer-of-the-deck (JOOD) course was established this year and, thus far, has graduated 382 SWOs. Beyond the benefit for individual officers, these investments “float all boats,” as graduates teach their watch teams and peers from the source references once back on their ships. Feedback from graduates and commanding officers has been overwhelmingly positive.
Second, Afloat Bridge Resource Management Workshops (BRMW)—teaming watchstanders with commanding officer (CO) advisors and strategic sealift officers (SSOs)—have been implemented. The advisors take COs from theory to practice in day-to-day risk-management decision making. SSOs develop navigation, seamanship, and shiphandling proficiency at the individual and bridge/CIC team level. The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STWC) forms the foundation for this training, ensuring shipboard knowledge on navigation equipment no longer relies primarily on verbal pass down from watchstander to watchstander. By emphasizing the principles of plan, brief, execute, and debrief (PBED), implementing sound shipboard operating principles, practicing bridge resource management (BRM), and undergoing stressful rules-of-the-road scenarios, watch teams are mastering the fundamentals of navigating safely in heavily trafficked maritime environments. These workshops deliver tough, honest feedback to watch teams and COs, so that further unit-level training can target areas for improvement.
Advisors also bring the latest Surface Force Safety Team tools to help COs uncover risk in daily operations in a team setting. Short surveys identify operational safety climate trends (organizational drift indicators) within a ship that, if left unchecked, increase chances of a mishap. This Afloat Safety Command Assessment Survey (ASCAS) provides insights into a crew’s views on watchstanding principles, risk, and operational safety. Human factors engineers developed a series of observable standards to measure culture—how a crew executes the day-to-day business. These operational fundamentals measurements are now incorporated into Afloat Training Group and immediate superior in command (ISIC) assessments and self-assessments to allow COs to identify trends in watch team performance. Both ASCAS and operational fundamentals measurements raise awareness and help avoid the unrecognized accumulation of risk—a key causal factor noted in the Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents.
Finally, the revised SWO career path ensures proper training, experience, and assessments to keep the community in the center of the channel for the long term. Division officers and department heads are no longer sent to afloat staff tours. In addition, the community has implemented 10 milestone assessments along an officer’s career progression, including four “go/no-go” assessments at the division officer, department head, command, and major command milestones. We must acknowledge that what we do is hard, and what we do is exacting. Not everyone is up to the career path’s demanding challenges. Rest assured, not everyone qualifies as a SWO in a culture of excellence. Attrition is a necessary part of any premier organization.
Building the Most Lethal Ships and Warfighters
Great power competition requires a renewed emphasis on sea control. China and Russia are actively working to displace U.S. power and exert global influence. The surface navy must build on its premier status against any potential adversary—that is what elite, winning competitors do. The highest objective remains to win without fighting—through deterrence—by maintaining a surface force no other navy will choose to engage. However, the military challenges posed by China and Russia are forcing a reexamination of our approach to conventional deterrence.
Deterrence through denial, as delineated in the NSS, requires forward-based, combat-credible forces prepared to “fight tonight.” The presence of these forces creates doubt in the adversary’s mind; if they choose to attack, their aggression will be defeated and a substantial cost subsequently imposed. The NDS further highlights conventional deterrence by denial through its reliance on ready, forward-based, lethal forces acting as part of the “contact” and “blunt” layers of the strategy. This is the sweet spot of the surface navy—persistent, visible, and credible force on par with any other element in the joint force.
The Navy must thoroughly dominate the seas and skies to project power, and the surface force is crucial to this imperative. Deterrence by denial requires precise tracking of potential adversary submarines, ships, and aircraft, and confidence in employing weapons to the maximum extent of their range. When a potential adversary knows they are always in range and targeted, their propensity for aggression will be reduced. The narrow margins of victory require faster and better kill chains than a peer adversary can employ. When U.S. partners and allies see a powerful, combat-credible force, they are reassured and remain closely tied to the relationship.
In the next several years, the surface force will see significant advancements in weapons, networks, sensors, and platforms, to include Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, a new class of frigate (FFG(X)), a new large surface combatant, the SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar, Maritime Strike Tomahawk, Naval Integrated Architecture, medium and large unmanned surface vessels, hypersonic weapons, Standard Missiles for offensive missions, Naval Strike Missile, greater Navy–Marine Corps integration with the F-35, and more. And to maximize the lethality of the planned capabilities on arrival to the fleet, the Navy is investing like never before in the people who operate these systems. This is what we are doing to prepare for tomorrow’s fight today.
In existence for several years now, the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) is steadily improving warfighting skills by increasing individual expertise and watch team proficiency. The Warfare Tactics Instructor (WTI) program produces SWOs with advanced expertise as instructors and tacticians in one of four warfighting areas: antisubmarine/surface warfare (ASW/SUW), amphibious warfare (AMW), integrated air & missile defense (IAMD), or mine warfare (MIW). Directly after completing the training curriculum and earning their patch, WTIs serve a production tour focused on planning and executing advanced tactical training exercises at sea and ashore, as well as writing and validating tactics, techniques, and procedures that directly increase fleet-wide readiness and lethality. These production tours optimize WTI training and spread that expertise widely. Specifically, WTIs work with watch teams to foster excellence in combat system alignment, threat identification and understanding, and tactical weapon system employment. With nearly 400 WTIs in the fleet now and more on the way, the return on investment for the program extends well beyond the production tours, as evidenced by the positive impact these talented officers have when they return to sea duty.
SMWDC and the WTI corps are improving watch team proficiency by participating in fleet exercises and demonstrations across the globe, to include an event known as SWATT—Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training. SWATT is SMWDC’s pinnacle tactical training event, and it makes the surface navy more lethal and tactically proficient. Typically, senior mentors, WTIs, and technical community experts embark during exercises to facilitate intensive training. WTIs instruct and mentor watch teams to use the PBED methodology and replay tools to help watch teams learn faster and work more effectively. SMWDC has completed 14 SWATTs thus far, covering all classes of ships, with five to seven scheduled per year going forward.
In May 2019, Surface Development Squadron One (CSDS-1) stood up in San Diego to develop the concepts, tactics, and sustainment approaches to enable manned and unmanned platform teaming. As the ISIC of the Sea Hunter unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and the three Zumwalt-class destroyers, CSDS-1 will guide the surface navy to reap the benefits of autonomy, lethality, and distributed operations. Unmanned systems are central to any concept of operations in the future fight, and CSDS-1 will train the fleet in the command and control of distributed unmanned sensor and weapons platforms.
One additional step forward in building lethal warfighters is the recent standup of two Combined IAMD, ASW Trainers (CIAT)—one in San Diego and one in Norfolk. The CIAT trainers are high technology trainers where instructors train shipboard watch teams in a digital environment. The realism CIAT brings, not to mention the ability to accomplish in-progress briefs and debriefs with WTIs, is exactly the stress-inducing training the surface navy needs to hone its skills. CIAT promotes the “reps and sets” approach, where mistakes can be pointed out immediately and scenarios re-run for watchstanders to implement corrective action.
Building Fully Prepared Warfare Commanders
The urgency the CNO recently reinforced in his FRAGO 01/2019 underpins important initiatives to raise the warfighting capability and proficiency of the force. All efforts are focused on a surface force ready to go over the horizon, fight, win, and come back home. This focus on combat-ready ships and battle-minded crews is foundational to our readiness to deter and readiness to win.
The carrier strike group (CSG) remains the Navy’s primary tactical “unit-of-issue” to the Joint Force and its success relies on the performance of its warfare commanders. The surface navy typically provides each CSG with the IAMD commander, the sea combat commander (SCC), the alternate strike commander, and the amphibious force commander. The function and impact of the screen commander, normally assumed by the SCC, is more complex and central to mission accomplishment than ever in light of distributed maritime operations. The margin of victory in the maritime domain against a peer competitor will be thin and requires an advantage in critical enabling functions, such as maneuver and surveillance—both of which have central roles for SWO-qualified warfare commanders.
In the case of the amphibious forces, officers who have shown sustained superior performance at sea—generally having served on amphibious ships—are detailed to amphibious squadron command. And while the “organize, train, and equip” functions of this position are skills gained along the way in a SWO career, the art and science of employing an amphibious force “weapon system” are unique and critical parts of a job that will get more complex and demanding as the naval force further integrates under the vison of the CNO and Commandant.
To improve the tactical development of our warfighters, the Maritime Warfare Officer Tactical Training Working Group (MWOTT) was chartered in September 2019 to identify the requisite SWO skills needed from division officer to major commander; and where the knowledge, qualification, and proficiency are established and evaluated for those skills in the career path. SMWDC is the executive agent leading this work, and like the approach taken to strengthen maritime skills, the MWOTT will establish a coherent tactical training continuum to prepare individual officers over two decades for each tactical milestone qualification and billet, ultimately leading to fully prepared warfare commanders, by design.
Building better warfighters throughout the career path is key to preparing warfare commanders; but is it enough? The future surface force will operate in a more complex environment leveraging a networked, integrated combat system. Thus, there is a need for focused training to enable SWO warfare commanders to apply the technology to the threat to meet the imperative to “fire effectively first.” An ensemble in which ship radars and sonars are networked, manned and unmanned platforms operate as a seamless system, and automated battle management aids work at machine speed to prompt warfighters with the best employment and engagement plans, is the goal. In addition, the surface force must field more effective battle-force-level training systems, such as fully integrated live virtual constructive systems, so that warfare commander staffs within a strike group can network together on land before sailing, and with counterparts from other strike groups in fleet-level simulations. MWOTT will enable expanded and tailored training to leverage technology advancements focused on the warfare commander functions as they come online.
The Year Ahead
Considering the year ahead, I have three major priorities. First as the surface type commander, current readiness of the force remains the highest priority. Completing maintenance availabilities on time with all needed work complete, supporting Ready Relevant Learning (RRL) initiatives, and manning ships earlier and better in the readiness cycle have my utmost attention. Combat ready ships and battle-minded crews are the product the surface force provides the fleet, and we must never lose focus on this first principle.
Second, the surface force will continue to enhance mariner and warfighting skills training and emphasize professionalism. Considerable progress has been made, but the job is not done, as improvements need oversight and constant evaluation. Continued development of the WTI corps will increase the warfighting edge of every wardroom. This will be done with better exercise support, by identifying the best junior officers to become WTIs, and by proliferating shore-based, high-fidelity trainers.
Finally, along with Rear Admiral Roy Kitchener at Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, Rear Admiral Gene Black at OpNav N96, and Major General Tracy King at OpNav N95, we will deliver warfighting capabilities essential to the future fight and initiate actions to prepare officers to be the very best warfare coordinators, tactical action officers, commanding officers, and warfare commanders. The preparation and experience gained in each critical warfighting job will lay the foundation for serving in subsequent billets—creating a maritime warfare continuum to support future sensors, weapons, platforms, and warfighters.
Never being satisfied with past successes fosters an unrelenting drive to improve—a hallmark of premier organizations. The NSS, NDS, and CNO’s guidance, along with the challenges associated with great power competition, substantially raise the standard for what it takes to remain the world’s premier surface force. We are addressing these shifts in the strategic and tactical environments and, make no mistake, we will remain the premier surface force. The surface warfare community—active duty, reserve, civilian, retired, and industry—is committed to building the best mariners, warships, warfighters, and warfare commanders. This is how we will own tomorrow’s fight today.