By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
Rear Adm. Javon Hakimsadeh – Commanding Officer, Carrier Strike Group 2
Warrior recently spoke with US Navy Rear Adm. Javon Hakimsadeh, Commanding Officer, Carrier Strike Group 2 – a unit which recently completed an extensive deployment in the Red Sea and was responsible for stopping and destroying Houthi attacks from Drones and Anti-Ship missiles.
Hakimsadeh, known as “Hak” told Warrior the Navy continues to learn extremely valuable lessons about maritime warfare, the nature of drone threats and emerging Concepts of Operation. Hak explained that there were may “firsts” accomplished during the extensive deployment, to include the first-even Navy surface to air drone shoot-down in combat.
Many weapons were used, including air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-9X.
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Countless civilians and maritime warriors were saved from certain death in recent months by US Navy warships on patrol in the Red Sea, and warfare commanders are now looking closely to implement many critical combat lessons learned from months of successfully tracking and destroying incoming Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles and drones. US Navy radar and tracking systems, ISR and layered ship defenses such as interceptors, deck-mounted guns and surface to air targeting all functioned with great precision during months of maritime combat during which training sailors withstood the pressure of being under constant attack. There were many instances of cruise and anti-ship missile shoot downs as well as unprecedented surface to air strikes, multi-domain connectivity and air-to-air engagement.
The US Navy continues to study and reflect upon its combat in the Red Sea with a mind to adapting tactics, strategies and Concepts of Operation to address evolving threats. Drones and drone swarm defenses are now center stage as the Navy examines ways to further refine and improve its counter drone targeting techniques, according to the US Navy’s Commanding Officer of Carrier Strike Group -2 which spent months in the Red Sea.
“Obviously drones have been around for a while and we’ve been training to deal with drones. But I think what we have started to recognize, what the Red Sea really taught us was it’s not going to be just one or two drones, it’s going to be a lot more. So you got to be able to train to deal with a lot of those (drones),” Rear Adm. Javon “Hak” Hakimsadeh told Warrior in an interview about his Carrier Strike Group’s Red Sea deployment,
Hak’s comments are likely informing cutting edge thinking now taking place at the Pentagon and across the services when it comes to drone defenses and countering drone swarms in particular.
“Probably the biggest consideration from a war fighting perspective is, you know, the size of your magazine or magazine capacity. You know, you’ve got to be able to have enough bullets to be able to shoot those down,” Hak told Warrior.
Along with ensuring a sufficient magazine to counter “large numbers” of attacking drones, Hak also emphasized that the Red Sea experience is driving discussion about new tactics and methods of expanding drone defenses.
“How do we expand the options that a sailor has to be able to take care of a drone? And I think in the near term, it’s probably going to be something along the lines of a gun system or a kinetic way to do it with guns and ordnance, but the long -term, I’d love to see things like directed energy, you know, something that can just recharge and give you that almost infinite magazine size, right? You don’t have to worry about your magazine size, because if you can keep generating the power to be able to launch your directed energy, if you will. “ Hakimsadeh said.
Hakimsadeh said Navy warships greatly improved targeting tactics, something which helped multiply countermeasure options for ship-commanders and refine progressions and decision-making regarding layered ship defenses. For instance, warships used many Standard Missile interceptors before migrating slightly to air-to-air attacks given that air assets were often in an optimal position to destroy approaching drones with air-to-air weapons such as the AIM-9X. In one instance, an EA-18G Growler aircraft used an air to air weapon to destroy attacking drones.
“We started off a little bit with shooting standard missiles at those. We quickly, very quickly changed to using kind of air -to -air missiles, you know, so that’s what we talk about. We got some air-to-air kills with sidewinder variant missiles,” Hakimsadeh told Warrior.
Hakimsadeh, known as “Hak” by his Navy brethren, explained that there were many combat “firsts” for the US Navy in the Red Sea, such as the first use of key upgraded weapons systems such as the Joint Stand-Off-Weapon and Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM). Hak specified a handful of cutting edge maritime warfare “firsts” in an essay he wrote recently for the Center for Maritime Security.
“Ideally, as a warrior, I’d want to shoot the archer before it got launched, or I would want to electronically, through some sort of non -kinetic effect, be able to kind of interfere with the command signal from the archer to that, through that particular drone. But, you know, sometimes that’s not possible. So, if they come at you, big numbers of them come at you, what you’ve got to be able to do is you’ve got to have a good -sized magazine to go after those,” Hak said.
US Navy Commander Says Red Sea Combat Is Refining 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.
The technological elements of JADC2 are varied as they integrate otherwise incompatible computer networks, information databases and transport layer communications technologies such as RF, GPS or other wireless datalinks. This is enabled by what Navy weapons developers call “interfaces,” meaning common standards and IP Protocol engineered to support the secure, seamless exchange of data. Hubs or translators called “Gateways” are a big part of this, as they are small connecting devices which pool, organize, analyze and integrate incoming data from otherwise disconnected or separated transport layers. Perhaps a threat is first detected by a satellite system, Aegis radar or RF link from a drone or fighter jet? How does that targeting data get processed, verified and quickly transmitted to the optimal location so faster life-saving decisions can be made. These processes are breaking through with speed, range and efficiency at an alarming rate, in large measure due to growing applications of increasingly secure AI.
While evidenced in this case with the US Navy and various air and space-sensors, the Red Sea’s combat synergies are helping efforts from different US military services come together, as intended by JADC2. Specifically, the Army’s Project Convergence and Integrated Battle Command System which massively shortened sensor-to-shooter time across domains using high-speed AI-enabled computing and transport layer interfaces. The Air Force’s contribution, previously called Advanced Battle Management System, is merging technically with the Army’s networking and the Navy’s applications which were referred to as Project Overmatch. In each of these respective efforts, US military services sought to quickly and securely combine high-speed data aggregation and analysis across varied platforms and domains to enable US forces to operate faster than or “inside” of an enemy’s decision-making progress. Sure enough, this seems to align with combat operations in the Red Sea, which Hak told Warrior very much involved accelerating and improving a maritime warfare decision-making cycle.
This process, arguably coming to fruition to a key extent in the Red Sea, forms the conceptual basis for the Pentagon’s JADC2 integration. Perhaps one could almost refer to US Navy Red Sea combat as a testing or training ground for emerging technologies. However, test would hardly be the right word, given that the networking and weapons systems functioned entirely as “intended,” Navy commanders said.
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.
