By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
The US Navy has in recent years been making rapid progress implementing new concepts of operation and tactics designed to align with the services Distributed Maritime Operations strategy, a strategic approach based on leveraging emerging networking technologies, wide-spread use of unmanned platforms and increasingly long-range precision weaponry.
DMO was first outlined in the Chief of Naval Operations 2020 Navigation Plan as a way of thinking designed to expand formations into more disaggregated operations fortified by networking technologies, unmanned systems and improved multi-domain connectivity. Secure networking is now able to connect platforms across much greater distances and newer weapons systems such as the deck-launched Naval Strike Missile are able to attack enemy targets with precision at much greater ranges.
DMO can be seen as part of a broader, long-standing trajectory of evolving Navy thinking, as it was preceded in 2015 by a surface warfare weapons strategy known as Distributed Lethality. Distributed Lethality, which arguably wound up being extremely successful, was intended to arm the entire surface fleet with new, more capable weapons to strengthen the services “open” or “blue-water” maritime capabilities. The idea was to shift Navy thinking, planning and weapons development to a new paradigm following 15 years of counter-terrorism operations. Many weapons were upgraded and many new ones were added over the course of several years during Distributed Lethality. The Navy’s SeaRAM was upgraded to hit greater ranges, surface ships such as the Littoral Combat Ship were armed with longer-range over-the-horizon offensive strike capability and closer-in ship defenses such as Close-In-Weapons-Station (CIWS) was upgraded to counter surface targets as well as incoming air threats.
Building upon this, DMO enables maritime attack formations to “distribute” into less condensed, linear formations, something which makes them more survivable. At the same time, should individual maritime warfare platforms such as surface ships operate more independently with greater levels of autonomy in disaggregated formations … will they be more vulnerable to enemy attacks?
Former director of Expeditionary Warfare for the Navy, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Coffman, argues in favor of operating with an interconnected network of maritime platforms designed to support, protect and further enable forward operating single platforms. Coffman explained some of the key variables likely informing the current Chief of Naval Operations intent with DMO in the context of how longer-range networking technology increasingly spreads throughout space, air, surface and undersea platforms to enable single disaggregated platforms to operate as part of a layered protective system.
Analyzing the Navy’s maritime warfare capability in terms of a “multi-domain” integrated system is a much better lens through which to evolve DMO.
“Ships are not alone. So I always hear the critique of ‘let’s look at the survivability.. that ship can’t survive a missile.’ It’s not designed to survive a missile barrage,” Coffman said.
Coffman further explained that thinking individual ships or platforms operating in disaggregated formation are far too vulnerable is somewhat misplaced given the ranges and domains through which Navy assets, platforms and “nodes” can protect dispersed operations.
“The LPD is a medium sized ship. When you’re thinking about it, if you’re thinking about one LPD off the coast of the Philippines, alone and unafraid, it’s not survivable for crap. That’s not how we fight….so when you go as an integrated fleet, you have the cruiser with the air defense, you have layered air defense and you have submarines with you for undersea defense,” Coffman told Warrior in a discussion about the future of amphibious warfare.
LPD Upgraded, More Autonomous
Coffman’s reference to the LPD Amphibious Transport Dock platform seems well places, as the Navy has in recent years been adapting its Amphibious Ready Groups to support more disaggregated, autonomous functions. For instance, emerging technology does enable ships such as the LPD to remain connected with a “mothership” big-deck amphib and Dock Landing Ship from dispersed formations at greater ranges. With this in mind, the Navy has in recent years upgraded the LPD with more of its own aviation capability and communications technology in the form of antennas and command and control systems. The LPD is definitely now more capable of autonomous operations apart from a closer-in ARG.
Survivability for individual warships operating in more dispersed formations is massively enhanced by the F-35B, Coffman said.
“The F-35 B is leading the way on a lot of that because it’s everything. It’s attack, it’s fighter and it’s our reconnaissance and it’s C. Basically. It couldn’t decide what letter to give it. It really can do almost any of those missions,” Coffman said.
Also, by dispersing assets in an ARG, a unit could become more survivable because a more condensed formation is of course much more vulnerable to enemy targeting and incoming fire. However, despite operating with greater levels of autonomy and distributed formations, individual elements of an ARG can remain connected with air, surface and undersea platforms enabled by new networking and command and control technologies.
The other equally critical but also lesser-recognized element of DMO relates to what might be called the Navy’s drone “explosion,” as individual surface ships are increasingly positioned to use advanced command and control technology, networking and AI-enable autonomous unmanned systems to expand an operational envelope and improve survivability for manned ships.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
