Senior civilian and military leaders have recently decried overclassification in the space and cyber domains as threats to national security.1 The surface warfare community has the opposite problem. Six- to 12–month surface warfare officer (SWO) training pipelines primarily teach only at the “general service” secret classification level on threats, plans, and capabilities, while placing the burden of higher classification read-ins, briefings, and applications on shore commands or busy afloat units during an already pressurized training phase.
At present, no policy or program exists to fully inform department heads before they assume their roles on board. While Cold War SWO department heads received training at classifications above general service secret, the mid-2000s’ lack of peer competitors and demand for intelligence officers in the Middle East led to the cut in top secret information from Surface Warfare Schools Command (SWSC).2 Failure to grow and sustain nascent reinvestments in higher classification information for SWO pipelines for milestone tours (department head, executive officer, commanding officer, and major command) leaves the Navy less ready to fight and win the next great power war, which may be imminent.3
Current policies that feel prudent for peacetime might doom the fleet for war. An abundance of caution for security and efficiency fails to provide the flexibility, redundancy, or scale required to meet a future crisis when afloat officers will be killed in combat, requiring new read-ins at the right classifications.4 If it is inconvenient to manage higher classification read-ins now, it will not be easier in a rapidly changing wartime environment. Even for motivated individuals, there is little downtime for special projects or research after assuming duties as an afloat department head or in a more senior position.5 Consequently, the SWOs specifically billeted to be tactical leaders afloat are unlikely to innovate and integrate advanced capabilities and tactics tailored to the threat information available at higher classification levels.
The surface navy’s history illustrates this necessity. During the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, which effectively ended Japanese attempts to retake the island, Vice Admiral Willis Lee led the battleships USS Washington (BB-56) and South Dakota (BB-57) against the Japanese battleship Kirishima and numerous escorts. Lee was victorious not only because of his exploits in gunnery, but also because he understood the details of Japanese night-fighting tactics and had multiple years working with then highly classified radar systems.6 When battle arrived, Lee had trained his flagship Washington to use radar ranges and visual bearings for fire control—which was the most accurate way to shoot with the Mk 3 radar—while the South Dakota used radar for ranges and bearings.7 Consequently, the South Dakota’s shooting was not as accurate, while the Washington sunk the Kirishima—the last time a battleship sank another using gunnery alone. Lee’s long-term and early knowledge of higher classification information enabled that victory. Even if the South Dakota had been read-in mid-transit to the South Pacific, it would not have given Lee time to persistently drill his crew with the details of early radar as he was able to do before the battle. Similar knowledge will be required in a distributed, limited-connectivity future war in the Pacific.
Including higher classification information in SWO training pipelines should start with department heads. An officer’s commitment to a future job that requires a top-secret clearance should commence the investigation process, providing more time to clear administrative backlogs before a pipeline. Second, the Navy must expand current investment in higher classification infrastructure from SWSC to Surface Combat Systems Training Command Dahlgren, to each fleet concentration area. This could include upgrading existing facilities or purchasing deployable sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs) or special access program facilities (SAPFs), such as the Armored Rapid-Deployment Compartmented Vault.8
To the community’s credit, the Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center already is working to have a SCIF available in San Diego to support broad SWO training. For other commands, in the interim, the Navy should establish memoranda of understanding between training commands and those in the area with active SCIFs to conduct targeted briefs and knowledge-management primers. Each of these efforts would help disseminate key information to the officers who will execute the plans of senior Navy and joint leaders, whose wargames are often played at high levels of classification.9 It is “too much paperwork” to read-in the people executing those operational plans will be a poor excuse when wargames are no longer a game.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday has called on the Navy to “Get Real, Get Better” to “maximize readiness for combat by training and education.”10 One essential way to get real and get better would to maximize SWO combat readiness with higher classification training pipelines.
1. Aaron Mehta, “‘Unbelievably Ridiculous’: Four-Star General Seeks to Clean Up Pentagon’s Classification Process,” DefenseNews, 29 January 2020; Frank Konkel, “U.S. Spy Chief Reiterates ‘Overclassification’ Concerns,” Nextgov.com, 11 May 2022; and Sandra Erwin, “Lawmakers: Declassification Would Help Boost Public Support for U.S. Space Programs,” SpaceNews, 20 January 2022.
2. Steven Wills, “Circles in Surface Warfare Training,” CIMSEC, 6 April 2016.
3. Mallory Shelbourne, “China’s Accelerated Timeline to Take Taiwan Pushing Navy in the Pacific, Says CNO Gilday,” USNI News, 19 October 2022.
4. James D. Hornfischer, Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal (New York: Bantam Publishing, 2012).
5. CAPT James “Ros” Poplar, USN (Ret.), “Focus on What Really Matters,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 6 (June 2022).
6. Paul Stillwell, Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021).
7. Trent Hone, Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2022).
8. ARMAG Corporation, “A.R.C. Vault SCIFs.”
9. Caitlin Kenney, “Are Naval Forces on the Right Path? Leaders Run Wargame to Check,” Defense One, 17 November 2021.
10. ADM Michael Gilday, USN, “Get Real, Get Better—Accelerating Warfighting Advantage,” Chief of Naval Operations memorandum, 15 April 2022.