Operation Valiant Shield: Department of Defense Tracks & Destroys Decommissioned Ship

Video Above: Air War in 2050 – Air Force Research Lab Commander

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Attacking and destroying an enemy warship in the expansive waters in the Pacific requires air, surface, undersea and even ground sensing, targeting, precision weapons and, perhaps most of all, high-speed, reliable multi-domain information sharing.

While the ultimate success of an offensive operation of this kind would likely pertain to the effectiveness of the explosive, or “effector” used to destroy the ship, execution of the mission would unequivocally rely upon multi-domain data analysis, organization and transmission.

SINKEX

These kinds of modern warfare nuances are exactly what the Department of Defense sought to refine, verify and ultimately enhance during its recent Valiant Shield operation in the Pacific. The exercise conducted a live-fire mission called “SINKEX” in which a Joint Task Force tracked and destroyed the decommissioned ex-US Vandergrift (FFG). Clearly the exercise, deemed a success by Pentagon observers, sought to assess and solidify the technological envelope of possibility and refine the kinds of emerging tactics necessary to prevail in a high-threat, high-speed modern maritime warfare environment.

“SINKEX featured a tightly synchronized sequence of live-fire events, demonstrating the joint forces’ capability to deliver fires and effects in the maritime environment. This SINKEX provided the Joint Task Force the opportunity to test new weapons and communications technologies and rehearse the integration of cyber effects to conduct long-range, precise, lethal, and overwhelming multi-domain strikes against a surface target at sea,” a US Navy essay on Valiant Shield described.

From both a conceptual and operational perspective, a joint, multi-national, multi-domain live-fire exercise such as this aligns entirely with the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) initiative intended to network the Joint Force through high-speed, AI-enabled targeting and data sharing at the “speed of relevance” to get ahead of an enemy’s decision cycle.