Under the Navy’s composite warfare commander structure, the strike warfare commander (STWC) and the air resource element coordinator (AREC) are carrier aviation’s most critical warfighting positions. The carrier air wing commander (CAG) serves as the STWC and the carrier commanding officer as the AREC. During flight operations, the STWC and AREC are represented, respectively, by officers filling the “papa” and “romeo” watchstation positions. Normally, an air wing lieutenant commander serves as papa and a lieutenant as romeo. Unfortunately, for far too long, these watch positions have been underresourced and undervalued—and no formal requirement for a watchstation module has been validated.
Papa is the current operations watch representing STWC-led missions such as overland strike, maritime strike, offensive counterair, combat search and rescue, or air tasking order (ATO) sorties in support of joint operations. As such, the papa watchstander attends all briefs for strike missions and must know aircraft requirements, tanking plans, and contingency plans if scheduled aircraft are unable to launch. During a mission, the papa watchstander closely monitors strike progress, facilitates necessary changes to the strike package during execution, and keeps the STWC apprised of mission progress. The papa watchstander also responds to emergent STWC tasking, such as changes to the ATO through coordination with the combined air operations center (CAOC) when Navy air wings are integrated into a joint air operation.
The primary role for carrier air wing personnel standing the AREC romeo watch is to execute the carrier’s air plan. This requires coordinating with squadron ready rooms and the carrier’s air operations center, providing updates to the strike group’s command center, monitoring tanking requirements, setting alerts, and serving as approval authority for air plan and ordnance load plan changes. Most important, the romeo watchstander coordinates among all composite warfare commanders for asset allocation, alert launches, and possibly retasking aircraft with different missions once airborne.
The papa and romeo watchstanders are normally side-by-side in the carrier’s intelligence center (CVIC), the same space where pilots receive intelligence briefs and debrief their missions to the intelligence team. The papa watchstander attends briefs, receives aircrew debriefs, and passes intelligence support to airborne strike assets. While the romeo watchstander does not work for papa, most strike groups find it useful to pair the senior aviator filling the papa role with the junior officer standing romeo, so that papa may provide romeo advice on a variety of carrier operations. It is also useful to pair watchstanders from fixed- and rotary-wing communities to ensure a breadth of knowledge at the watchstation.
Persistent Neglect
I served as the Carrier Air Wing 11 papa and romeo watch coordinator beginning about nine months prior to its 2017 Middle East deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) in Syria and Iraq. The USS Nimitz (CVN-68) had just finished a lengthy yard period when I entered the CVIC to inspect the papa/romeo watchstation module, and during that yard time the watchstation keyboards, mice, monitor cables, power cords, and radio terminal had been relocated to other spaces on board the carrier. The ship’s personnel clearly had no appreciation for the importance of the watchstation.
During the summer of 2017, I realized most of the other strike group staffs likewise were largely oblivious to the importance of the papa and romeo watches. Exacerbating this problem, placing this modest watchstation in CVIC kept it out of sight and mind of most other watches on the carrier. Yet, no other carrier watchstation can interpret reports from individual aircraft and quickly process that information for the other warfare commanders or joint service elements. No other watchstation can deal with the second- and third-order effects of those reports and quickly coordinate air plan, ordnance, and ATO changes; alert launches; and airborne mission reassignments and restrikes. Tactically proficient carrier air wing officers stand these watches for a reason.
On board the Nimitz, the air wing operations officer, carrier combat systems officer, and carrier strike group communications officer (N6) cobbled together ship and air wing equipment to make a minimally suitable watchstation. This was the STWC’s only watchstation. Every other warfare commander had a dedicated module for their tactical action officer or current operations watch. Papa and romeo supported hundreds of OIR missions with little more than a radio, a phone, and two computers running 16-year-old Windows XP software.
Formalizing a Watchstation Requirement
Following our support to OIR, the air wing commander received a questionnaire on future warfighting capability requirements from commander, Naval Air Forces (CNAF), inquiring about our use of the papa/romeo module. It became clear to us that no formally documented requirement for the papa/romeo module exists. Ship change documents had been drafted to perform technology refreshes of the papa/romeo module equipment, but without a formal requirement, CNAF could not justify those refreshes. Moreover, plans for papa/romeo modules in future carriers were scrapped because of this lack of a formal requirement. The carrier strike group, carrier air wing, and carrier itself need a properly equipped space for the STWC and AREC watchstanders.
Chapter six of Naval Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures publication 3-03.4, “Strike Warfare Commander and Air Resource Element Coordinator Watch Organization,” does an excellent job explaining the purpose of the two watches, where they should be located, and how they should interact with the other warfare commander watch positions and the Air Force’s Tactical Air Control System. It also has a thorough section on the required equipment for this watchstation module.
In essence, the watchstation needs a UHF/VHF communications suite to talk to aircraft, big-screen displays to maintain situational awareness of air operations, unclassified and classified computers with network access, and a satellite communications transceiver or voice-over-internet protocol to communicate with a CAOC.
In addition, the module would benefit greatly from improved current operational picture (COP) monitoring tools. It was immensely frustrating in the 2017 deployment to know better situational awareness was available from COP monitoring tools found online than from the carrier’s sensors. For example, the carrier had a useful COP tool called the air-defense system integrator, but because of the limited number of software licenses available, it could not be provided to papa and romeo watchstation computers.
Finally, the papa/romeo watchstation needs a better home than the little desk space in CVIC, where we were often asked to be quiet during intelligence briefs while trying to communicate with squadrons or aircraft on missions. A partition from the rest of the CVIC would be useful, as would giving the module wall space for charts and whiteboards.
A More Robust Watch
Recently, carrier strike groups operating in the Persian Gulf have been required to man an onboard dynamic air resource coordination center (DARCC). While there are different ways to do this, on board the Nimitz we used the papa/romeo watchstation module along with two other secret internet protocol terminals and a whiteboard/chart area manned by air wing personnel. This setup was successful and kept the watch team together in one area. The DARCC is now a central part of new fleet synthetic training and composite training unit exercise scenarios that strike groups must go through prior to deploying. Continuing to support a DARCC will require a larger and more segregated papa/romeo watchstation module in CVIC.
CNAF must act on validating and fulfilling formal requirements for a papa/romeo watchstation. The Navy’s ability to successfully conduct carrier air operations in the joint environment will depend on it.