Maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance weapons and tactics instructors (MISR WTIs) are highly trained professionals who provide decisive advantage at the operational and tactical levels of war. MISR WTIs connect sensors, weapons, and decision-makers across all domains to help naval units mass firepower and influence without massing forces. The Navy must increase its investment in this capability to succeed in great power competition.
MISR Origin Story
The coalition and joint combat apparatus has historically struggled to generate, manage, and close complex kill webs when wargaming in peer/near-peer competition. Often, that gap comes from the lack of connective tissue between intelligence and operational disciplines. To address this, naval aviation created the MISR program to train individuals in high-end ISR integration, which is necessary to develop accurate target packages that lead to kill-web execution.
Investment in the program began in 2016, when MISR WTIs were trained to deploy with carrier strike groups as MISR-afloat personnel to operationalize intelligence collection and ISR integration. The previous commander of Naval Air Forces, Vice Admiral DeWolfe Miller III, described these newly trained graduates as “6th generation officers.” Following the recent success of MISR WTIs in European Command’s maritime operations and air operations centers during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, there has been a sharp increase in demand for them across a number of geographic combatant commands.
Earning the Patch
MISR WTIs are trained at the MISR Weapons School at the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC) in Fallon, Nevada. Like students at other NAWDC weapons schools, including the famous TOPGUN Fighter Weapons School, WTIs are trained to the advanced level in MISR tactical employment. Applicants primarily come from the Navy: aviators from a wide range of ISR platforms, and officer and enlisted professionals from the intelligence, cryptologic warfare, surface warfare, and maritime space communities. In addition, classes include Marines and Air Force service members. The 18-week course is run twice a year and graduates on average 18 students annually. In addition to earning the WTI qualification, each student can use the course as a foundation to earn a master’s degree in aerospace operations, a first-of-its-kind opportunity for the Department of the Navy.
The course culminates in the biannaul Resolute Hunter capstone exercise, a three-week event dedicated to battle management, command and control, and ISR. Resolute Hunter involves more than 650 personnel and a dozen manned and unmanned aircraft, ships, and threat-representative systems, and exercises joint and allied partner interoperability in real-time problems.
The exercise provides robust ISR and kill-web-execution training in a realistic environment for the joint/combined training audience. Unlike Navy Air Wing Fallon or Air Force Red Flag exercises, which white-card (simulate) much of the left side of the kill web (the threat) and focus primarily on engagement, Resolute Hunter focuses on the speed to deconstruct the combat situation and determine actionable decisions. A unique aspect is the real-time live-play role, removing the biases of preplanning to allow for mistakes in an evolving campaign. This is critical to learning from mistakes and training operators to adapt in real time to a changing environment.
The 2022 National Security Strategy is rooted in national interests, but, much like the Chief of Naval Operations’ (CNO’s) 2022 Navigation Plan, it embraces coalition building. Resolute Hunter includes United Kingdom and Australian partners in MISR training, supporting the National Security Strategy line of effort to shape the global strategic environment and work together to solve shared challenges. Further allied and partner integration would only improve the effectiveness of the MISR community, going beyond the joint U.S. force to capitalize on a wider range of data and intelligence to defend common interests.
Embrace the Evolution
Generating meaningful institutional change is the biggest barrier to innovation in any organization, and the military is no different. Deeply rooted warfare doctrine and a “this is how we’ve always done it” mentality are pervasive in the armed forces and oppose organizational growth and agility. The MISR WTI program is a prime example of a capability that challenges the status quo, evolves at the speed of relevance, and is quickly garnering the support of leaders across coalition, joint, and Navy commands.
For example, the naval aviation community has already embraced MISR skills, as evidenced by selection rates of aviator MISR WTIs for operational command and department head positions. As the program continues to mature, decisions must be made about what the MISR community becomes in the future. Specialized career-path options for MISR WTIs from unrestricted and restricted-line communities need to be explored. For example, creating a detailing option for qualified MISR WTIs who wish this to be their primary specialty, while retaining the ability for due course officers and enlisted to continue to hit their community milestones, would help to increase return on investment and retain members with these unique skills.
The CNO has defined decision advantage in this way:
Naval forces will out-sense, out-decide, and out-fight any adversary by accelerating our decision cycles with secure, survivable, and cyber-resilient networks, accurate data, and artificial intelligence. Connecting sensors, weapons, and decision-makers across all domains enables naval forces to mass firepower and influence without massing forces.
The MISR WTI program fosters a learning mindset when it comes to closing kill webs. The skill of the Navy’s people and their ingenuity are a competitive advantage in great power competition, and a greater investment in the MISR WTI program is one way to advance that advantage.
ν Commander Bigay is the maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance department head at Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center in Fallon, Nevada.
ν Commander Herdt is a federal executive fellow with the U.S. Naval Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
