By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Navy wargaming results are leading service weapons developers to favor a greater number of drone ships, unmanned platforms and smaller vessels and a reduced number of large surface combatants. Wargames also call for more submarines and “distributed operations.”
“In terms of the surface force, we’re seeing a rebalancing. The demand as we war game, as we exercise as we do more analysis is the trend for surface ships is all less larger surface combatants and more smaller surface combatants,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said in an interesting report from USNI.
This may mean fewer new large platforms moving into the future as Navy planners look to add more Frigates, Unmanned Surface Vehicles, high-speed, smaller warships and submarines.
There are many reasons why this might make sense and align with the Navy’s evolving thinking about fleet structure surging into the future. For several years now, the Navy has been calling for a what’s termed a “hybrid” fleet with a large number of unmanned surface and undersea vessels supported and controlled by manned ships. The idea is to support Gilday’s Distributed Maritime Operations strategy and leverage advanced networking technologies to enable disaggregated, high-speed, yet strongly networked platforms able to expand combat formations across multiple domains and large swaths of ocean. Clearly concentrated formations of ships present more visible targets for potential adversaries, and longer-range weapons and sensors, supported by secure, multi-domain transport layer communications and data transmission, have enabled maritime warfare operations to sustain effectiveness and increase lethality with more spread out or “distributed operations.
One clear and often discussed reason for this is simple, as it pertains to survivability. Larger ships tend to move more slowly and present attractive targets to enemy forces increasingly armed with long-range precision weaponry. A larger maritime footprint simply means more vulnerability, a reason why Gilday and other Navy planners are implementing Distributed Maritime Operations.
Clearly large platforms and manned ships such as carriers and big-deck amphibious assault ships are not going anywhere and will be needed, they just may operate more as “mother ship” floating command and control nodes operating large numbers of unmanned systems from safer standoff locations using advanced networking. The Navy has been evolving in this direction for many years now through various studies, force design research initiatives and threat analysis. Also, large platforms such as carriers may still need warships such as destroyers in closer proximity in a Carrier Strike Group to ensure closer-in protections from various kinds of enemy attacks.
However, a fast-growing ability for surveillance planes, surface, air and undersea drones and unmanned surface vessels to conduct operations in close coordination with one another using AI-enabled computing and data processing along with secure, multi-layered networking and data sharing. This changes concepts of operation in quite a considerable way as it introduces new tactical possibilities. A massive amphibious assault operation, for instance could involve a big-deck amphib conducting command and control operations supporting very large numbers of unmanned surface vessels and aerial drones to survey an area, test the perimeter of enemy defenses, hunt for mines and submarines or even conduct precision weapons attacks when directed by a human performing command and control. Or, a carrier operation could use aerial gateways such as drones, surveillance planes and satellites, refuelers, multi-domain networking and longer-range sensors to operate a highly lethal air campaign from much greater stand-off distances to improve survivability.
Large manned surface ships will nonetheless likely still be needed for decades into the future, as technological advancements have greatly improved their protections. Laser weapons, coupled with networked defenses spread across long-distances enable commanders on large ship to “see” and “counter” threats at much greater distances, something which greatly improves protections.
This is a large part of why the Navy and Marine Corps are both calling for more “sea-basing” platforms and technologies wherein larger vessels can function as “host ships” to launch and control helicopters, drones and other kinds of operations.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. 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
