Navy Networks Nuclear-Armed Submarine, Spy-Planes & Surface Warships in Norwegian Sea

By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior

Should a US Navy submarine-hunting P-8 Spy use advanced sonobuoys to detect enemy submarine movement, and quickly send threat details and intelligence data to warships, nuclear-command and control aircraft, unmanned surface vehicles and even submarines, is would indicate continued service breakthroughs with efforts to achieve, harden and refine real-time, multi-domain networking, intelligence-sharing and attack capability. 

These kinds of concepts of operation, which introduce strategic, tactical and technological implications of great significance, have been a fast-evolving and longstanding focus for the Navy as it surges forward with deterrence missions and greatly enhanced maritime warfare attack capacity.  

Given this, and the well known and often discuss networking progress explained by US Navy leaders and weapons developers, it is not surprising that the US Navy recently conducted a warfare-training or preparation exercise connecting a Ticonderoga-class cruiser with an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, E-6B Mercury nuclear command and control aircraft and a P-8 Poseidon sub-hunting spy plane. This formation was recently demonstrated and put into operational effect by the Navy in the Norwegian Sea.

This kind of operational networking and targeting ability, something to almost certainly be a focus for Navy warfighters during the exercise, is critical to the future of maritime warfare, as it could allow an interconnected group of Naval platforms to quickly identify, target and destroy emerging threats faster than an enemy can respond.  Perhaps an enemy attack submarine is quickly closing in on a US Navy maritime warfare formation? Perhaps there is even a serious, and fast-emerging nuclear threat from enemy ground ICBM silos or nuclear-armed submarines … the existence of networked, airborne nuclear capable command and control in the form of an E-6B could save millions and potentially deter a catastrophic, massive nuclear attack. 

Given this, and the well known and often discuss networking progress explained by US Navy leaders and weapons developers, it is not surprising that the US Navy recently conducted a warfare-training or preparation exercise connecting a Ticonderoga-class cruiser with an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine and a P-8 Poseidon sub-hunting spy plane. This formation was recently demonstrated and put into operational effect by the Navy in the Norwegian Sea

Efforts have been underway for many years wherein Navy weapons developers have engineered interfaces, common standards and gateways sufficient to successfully and quickly send data across domains in near real time. This often requires advanced, highly-technical gateway technology capable of essentially “translating” different transport layer technology and sharing information across otherwise disparate or disconnected pools of sensor data. This fundamental effort has for years been referred to as the Navy’s Operation Overmatch, a now mostly secretive effort to massively expedite maritime warfare attack, targeting and intelligence sharing. The Navy has often discussed this effort publicaly in terms of the service’s contribution to the Pentagon’s fast moving Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort to interconnect information transfer and sensor data gathering across the services.