The 2018 National Defense Strategy centered great power competition as the cornerstone of U.S. strategy. This focus shifts from the Middle East toward the greater threats posed by Russia and China. During the time the United States prioritized the Middle East, these nations’ navies constructed modern, competent, and capable surface and subsurface platforms and missile systems on par to or arguably marginally superior to those of the U.S. Navy.
To remain relevant, preserve the Navy’s unit-level survivability, and maximize lethality, the Navy’s information warfare community (IWC) must examine the implications of the high-end fight on manning, training pipelines, and billets. The IWC must re-engage and expand its relationship with the surface navy and reconsider its presence on non-flagship surface combatants. If the IWC decentralizes from flagships to capability-based manning on all primary surface combatants, it would reduce every ship’s reliance on over-the-horizon information warfare (IW) capabilities, equipping units to function as autonomous components of a larger force.
In the face of the growing Russian and Chinese capabilities, the Navy must respond to maximize competitive space. The IWC’s current construct consolidates most IW capabilities on the flat-top high-value units (HVUs) of the carrier strike groups (CSGs) and amphibious readiness groups (ARGs). This concentration likely invites operational risk by not maximizing individual surface combatant IW performance and tactical decision-making, while also depriving IWC professionals of opportunities to expand their understanding of the surface community and its operations.
The IWC does not need to remove personnel or capabilities from HVUs, but instead rethink its manning approach to “small boy Navy” for aerographer’s mates (AGs), cryptologic technicians technical (CTTs), cryptologic technicians network (CTNs), and intelligence specialists (ISs). The concept of distributed maritime operations (DMO) envisions CSGs and ARGs distanced from one another to minimize risk of force attrition. However, surface combatants will be tasked to conduct missions disaggregated from the IW-support functions of their parent CSGs or ARGs, an already common occurrence with independent deployers and disaggregated operations. The IWC cannot wait until the heat of heightened tensions to deploy IW personnel to the smaller ships. It must plan for decentralized information warfare, or the Navy potentially accepts ships being literally dead in the water partly because of an absence of organic capabilities, technicians, and specialists.
To understand why decentralized information warfare is needed, one must respect an adversary’s capabilities and prioritize presenting a harder target for their kill-web of Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess (F2T2EA). Further, another aspect involves operating in a command-and-control degraded or denied environment (C2D2E). This concept recognizes potential adversaries are competent and capable, as they can: 1) degrade communications and 2) exploit the use of communications or combat systems to feed their F2T2EA. This creates a dilemma for communications and combat systems within the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). Commanding officers (COs) face a reality in which every use of communications, control, or combat systems on the EMS must be carefully calculated for risk. The Navy’s peacetime addiction to bandwidth for command, control, communications, and combat system-derived situational awareness must be challenged and encouraged toward better independent operating.
Currently, AGs on board flagships provide weather forecasts and, more importantly, the daily EMS propagation models from the Navy Research Lab’s BUILDER tool. These models provide COs a scientifically based decision aid to consider how their EMS operations are propagating. If BUILDER is modeled against known adversary electronic support (ES) passive systems, COs receive an assessment of an adversary’s ability to detect their ships’ communications and combat systems, presenting opportunities for tactically exploiting environmental impacts. Why assume the adversary can or cannot detect us when the tools and technicians exist to elevate assumptions to assessments? This is an example of unit-level information superiority in decision-making, but with said capability organic only to flagships, it is de facto irrelevant to COs and the tactical action officers (TAOs) on cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships because of a reliance on over-the-horizon communications to receive products. When the reality of C2D2E is applied, the loss of communications (or risk of communications) negates the advantage AGs offer to any ship unless physically on board.
ISs are currently on board every cruiser, destroyer, and amphibious ship as the independent duty intelligence specialist (IDIS). Typically, a first-class petty officer (IS1) or chief petty officer (ISC), they serve as ship’s intelligence officers (SIOs), functioning as the conduit to the intelligence community. Until fiscal year 2021, no formal training existed to prepare a sailor to be the SIO of a surface combatant. Because of rapid advancement rates and limited sea billets available at the E4 and E5 levels, many of these IS1s/ISCs may have never served on a ship before.
Further degrading tactical readiness is the fact that intelligence is the only warfare domain on ship that can be degraded by collateral duties and leadership responsibilities. An IS1/ISC IDIS has no back-up to delegate warfare responsibilities while meeting unit-necessitated responsibilities. The other warfare areas intelligence supports are manned 24 hours a day at sea. Only flagships have manning for 24-hour intelligence watches, providing indications and warnings (I&W) to ships-in-company. Moreover, what does the IWC do when a surface combatant breaks from the CSG/ARG for independent operations or when surface action groups (SAGs) are constituted for special missions, such as the Navy’s newest antisubmarine warfare destroyer task force?
The Detachment Solution
Instead of reapportioning most ISs from the HVUs, the IS and AG rating communities should collaborate to establish small detachments that can embark small ships when needed. A detachment could include one AG forecaster, one AG BUILDER technician, and a few ISs with the operational intelligence subspecialty (as opposed to ISs with strike support and imagery interpretation subspecialties, as the technology for those disciplines only resides on aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious ships). This solution would decrease the number of ISs on board HVUs during deployment by about six personnel to free up the billets for these detachments.
In this construct, the IDIS would remain ship’s company for continuity, certifying the ship in basic phase evolutions and assist with the embark of the IS/AG team. The two junior ISs (or a junior IS and junior 1830 intelligence officer) would embark with knowledge of the theater the ship would deploy to, spending their in-port time prior to embarking at relevant intelligence centers building knowledge of adversary TTPs and pattern-of-life. The optional inclusion of an intelligence officer is significant, as typically junior intelligence officers almost never deploy on ships smaller than a large-deck amphibious ship. How is the IWC cultivating a cadre of naval intelligence officers if so few serve haze-gray early in their careers?
These ISs could stand a rudimentary intelligence watch supporting all warfare areas in the ship’s combat information center (CIC) by analyzing data pushed passively via the Integrated Broadcast System or Global Broadcast System. These broadcasts provide the ability to receive data without compromising ships’ positions through uplinking. The Navy and IWC can accomplish this, but only by prioritizing rehearsing communications-degraded and -denied IW operations consistently and requiring mature demonstration as part of a ship’s training cycle.
The AGs bring a toolkit for analyzing the environment and maximizing the ship’s tactical exploitation of the EMS within that environment to either disadvantage adversary F2T2EA, or advantage their own ship’s communications and combat systems. These AGs would benefit the combat watch team by constantly maintaining EMS exploitation of the environment—a role often performed by operations specialists (OSs) or fire controlmen (FCs), who receive on-the-job training. During the global war on terror, this decision carried little extra risk, but in great power competition, this is a tactical degradation with potential operational consequences.
Finally, the same approach should be taken for cyber support. The only ships doctrinally manned with CTNs are the HVUs, and only late in predeployment workups through deployment. It is not a stretch to state the Navy assumes uncomfortable cyber risk on small ships. Currently, CTNs may move between ships in a CSG/ARG to review network security on smaller ships, but this is a band-aid complicated by DMO and C2D2E. Navy Computer Defense Operation Center teams would be wise to recognize this reality and look now to address this shortfall. In the cyber realm, there are many ways to mission-kill a platform without kinetic force—especially modern combatants with complex systems, questionably secure programs, and sailors’ electronic gadgets that can pose an exposure vector.
As the Navy continues graduating IW weapons-and-tactics instructors (WTIs), it becomes more critical to consider how to maximize the human talent aspect of the finest IW warfighter minds. The Navy has the human resources, but the management aspect has fallen behind. Moreover, the addition of these personnel and capabilities at the unit-level demonstrates IW, as a domain, can warrant its own department onboard a ship. By aligning under this construct, the Navy would create a natural stepping stone at a unit-level towards the recently created force-level at-sea milestone of CSG/ARG information warfare commander (IWC) afloat. This notional department would reinforce the strengths of the IW community operating in concert together, encouraging greater overall tactical support to the physical warfare areas of a warship.
The IWC, which has relied on shore commands and centralizing on the HVUs for decades, must now decentralize and disaggregate. The consequences of failure for the Navy and the IWC have never been as high since the Cold War. To quote retired Admiral James Winnefield, winter is coming.
The IWC must dominate the Navy’s waterfront piers and bring their technical and tactical knowledge and expertise to the space the Navy physically needs it the most: every CIC, bridge, and wardroom in the fleet.
