US Navy Commander Says Red Sea Combat Generates New Warfare Doctrine

By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior

The US Navy’s ongoing combat experiences in the Red Sea are helping the service further solidify emerging doctrinal approaches to maritime warfare, refine tactics and identify emerging Concepts of Operation suitable for a modern threat environment. 

There are many variables informing evolving military doctrine, such as multi-service autonomy, multi-domain and multi-national warfare, modern concepts of Combined Arms Maneuver for land war, new approaches to amphibious operations and of course ubiquitous manned-unmanned teaming both across and between the services.  

This transformation or maturation of military doctrine continues to be heavily influenced by US Navy Red Sea combat operations, as combat operations there have successfully implemented newer methods of networking, targeting, data sharing and multi-node cross domain combat integration.  A Red Sea Commanding Officer of the US Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 2, Rear Adm. Javon “Hak” Hakimsadeh told Warrior in an interview about his Carrier Strike Group’s Red Sea deployment, 

“Doctrine is what allows us to set up within the Red Sea to be able to put in place command   and control measures, airspace control measures or battle management areas or restricted operating zones to be able to manage the complexity of a multi -domain fight without spending a whole lot of time sorting things out,” Hakimsadeh, affectionately known as “Hak,” told Warrior. 

Hak added specifics to these maturing doctrinal concepts of command and control, explaining that warship commanders in the Red Sea were able to “speak the same language” as forces in an Air Force Air Operations Center and Regional Air Operations Center. This kind of synergy helped streamline targeting, as inbound Houthi missiles and drone threats were successfully intercepted from the air on multiple occasions, Hak explained, adding “we were able to establish standard command and control measures.”

“So doctrine is a thing that allows us to work outside our strike group. It allows us to work with our joint partners, say, in the Air Force or the Army. In this particular case, in the Red Sea example, doctrine is what allowed us to go into a theater of operations, if you will, the Red Sea, that has been largely for the past three decades or so has been a pass -through force,” Hak explained to Warrior.  “And then it’ll allow us to kind of structure multiple fights at the same time in multiple areas. A real shortcut that, you know, we train to all the time and, you know, likely again, saves a lot of heartache when you’re being shot at, if that makes sense.”

It clearly makes sense to view Hak’s description of this kind of integrated “command and control” in terms of the Pentagon’s fast-emerging Joint All Domain Command and Control effort, a technological and conceptual initiative intended to enable, streamline and vastly improve multi-service connectivity.  Led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleeen Hicks, the JADC2 effort has been in the process of being implemented as a breakthrough Concept of Operation intended to enable a new-generation of higher-speed, multi-domain warfare.  An ability to connect targeting data across otherwise separated regional areas and “fields of view” massively shortens sensor to shooter time, and in the case of the Red Sea, likely allowed warship commanders to see incoming Houthi attack with greater precision and at greater ranges.