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Operations and Leadership

Put the Commander back in Commander’s Intent

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By Capt. Bill Shafley

Commander’s intent is the cornerstone of mission command.1 Yet, it remains a nebulous form of communication. In naval operations, commander’s intent is infrequently understandable, let alone actionable. It is filled with jargoned terms like purpose, method, key tasks, end state, critical information requirements (CCIRs), and acceptable level of risk (ALR). While these terms of reference create nicely formatted PowerPoint charts, the resultant commander’s intent is an exchange of sterile terms that inhibit rather than enable mission command. The processes that create commander’s intent are staff-centric. The thinking surrounding mission command is commander-centric.2 The resulting mismatch prevents shared awareness, slows disciplined initiative, and challenges a commander’s ability to take prudent risk.3

The Critical Role of Commander’s Intent

Not only can we get better at writing intent, we must do so in a manner that enables our up-echelon commanders to take advantage of the creativity, ingenuity, and style of their subordinate commanders. First, commanders must take back the responsibility for thinking about and crafting their own intent. The Naval Planning Process (NPP) has whittled away the commander’s role in the process of analyzing a mission, developing courses of action, and creating a written order, and the commander’s role must be restored.4 Second, commanders must personalize their intent and ensure it reflects their vision of the unfolding operation, not the staff’s version of same. Successful intent statements are plain language attempts at a commander’s visualization of the battle. It lays the foundation and provides the framework for all that unfolds.5 Finally, commanders need to be developed for effective leadership in an environment where mission command is the norm. In an era where communication is ubiquitous and spans of control are ever-growing, the information demands of higher headquarters grow as well. This is making it more and more challenging to define commander’s business.

Formalized opportunities for this type of development need to be programmed into the career path of senior leaders. Improving self-awareness, deepening critical thinking skills, and providing the opportunity to reflect upon the responsibilities of and best practices for executive decision making are a must. 

Essential Element of Mission Command

In a white paper issued by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, “The commander is the central figure in Mission Command.”6 Staffs have neither the authority nor the accountability to execute operations. From receipt of the mission to orders production, the commander is the pivot point in command and control.7 NPP is all about planning, while commander’s intent is about decision making.8

As Milan Vego stated, “There is possibly no greater responsibility for a commander but to make decisions on the employment of…combat forces.”9 Staffs need to get out of the commander’s intent business. The planning process gives them ample opportunity to inject their expertise into mission analysis and course of action (COA) development. The by-product of a staff generated commander’s intent is that it feeds off the data collected, analyzed, and presented to the commander. It flows from the steps of mission analysis and COA development and thereby gets structured in terms of tasks, end state, and risk. Even the most involved commander will find it challenging to weave intent into this staff process. A personal example brings these observations to the forefront.

During strike group work-ups, the destroyer squadron (DESRON) staff worked diligently in developing its planning bona-fides. We committed to five-paragraph orders that included commander’s intent, CCIRs, and ALR as a format to communicate our mission tasking with assigned units. With the notion that these orders to subordinate units would give them ample understanding of what needed to occur, the staff needed to make follow-on decisions and decide how much risk we as a team were willing to accept to accomplish the assigned mission.

As the commander, I spent time with my planners throughout the planning process in an attempt to ensure the strike group’s mission and how it fed the fleet end state was adequately captured. Our planners developed a Situation, Mission, Enemy Situation, Admin, Command and Signal (SMEAC) five-paragraph order format. Over the course of work-ups, we refined the manner in which we captured the friendly and enemy situations. We labored over purpose and method. We added critical information requirements and discussed risk. Yet, after each order, reflection, and modification of our format, I still found myself summarizing that data in plain language from commander to commander to ensure we could see the forest through the trees.

In hindsight, I have concluded that the order is for watchstanders and subordinate planners, the intent is for commanders. It was clear to me in practice that my planners could only get me so far. I needed to add clarity to their words and do it a manner that made sense to my subordinate commanders. Without that additional clarity, the shared awareness, disciplined initiative, and prudent risk-taking I was trying to achieve would remain opaque.    

Commander’s Personal Viewpoint

As Gen. Dempsey described it, “In mission command, the commander must understand the problem, envision the end state, and visualize the nature and design of the operation.”10 Intent should reflect a commander’s personal and deep understanding of the mission. It should describe how subordinate units and warfighting functions come together to bring about a desired effect against an enemy force. It is, in its purest form, visualization. It communicates in clear terms for subordinate commanders how the boundaries and conditions around which a battle ahead should unfold. Intent communicates roles, success, failure, and pace. It describes to subordinate commanders and their staffs what is required to make decisions and who can make them and even how to act in the absence of further orders. Milan Vego has offered rules of thumb in drafting intent, including writing it in the first person, ensure it reflects the personality of the commander, keep it short and memorable, and write clearly and precisely.11 Intent crafted in this manner is akin to scaffolding around a building. It is simple pieces simply put together.  

Reflecting again on recent personal experience, workups provide numerous opportunities for strike group and warfare commanders to use intent as a reflection of this deeper understanding of the mission. Multi-warfare, multi-phased operations that consume a common set of resources create opportunities for friction, early culmination, and priorities. Commanders know where the breaking point lies and must be able to communicate that eventuality in a manner that is meaningful. We can use these opportunities to apply Vego’s reminders and really dig into what the sequence of tactical operations presented mean to the afloat fighting force and its staying power in the fight. 

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz achieved this in his famous Calculated Risk letter in the days leading up to the Battle of Midway.12 In a mere five sentences, he was able to communicate when it was appropriate for Rear Admirals Frank J. Fletcher and Raymond A. Spruance to commit their forces to action.13 Nimitz artfully told his commanders simply to avoid attack unless you know you can win. With that clear direction in hand, they took off to Midway and made the decisions necessary to turn the tides of the war.

Faced with the same resource challenge associated with the commitment of combat power during our own work-ups, we struggle to make it that clear. Nimitz understood it from the strategic through the tactical level. Fletcher and Spruance were tactically competent, their strike forces ready to take the fight to the enemy. Nimitz was aware of how this engagement was sequenced in time and space throughout his area of operations. He knew what failure meant to the remainder of the campaign in terms of residual combat power. It is a very good example of simple pieces put together simply.

Raising Commander’s Intent Above the Noise

Modern commanders keep a lot of plates spinning. There are horizontal and vertical relationships to foster within and beyond the immediate organization. There are allies and partners that need to be brought into the fold and enabled. As a local commander looks to the fight two echelons up and attempts to tap into the developing situation, even with the best staffs and the most refined process, it gets harder and harder to know what decision lies ahead and how commanders must work together to solve them. The time available to think and reflect is at a premium. A commander’s span of control affects his ability to influence subordinates directly. These challenges impact a commander’s ability to craft clear and meaningful intent. Buying back time through efficient and effective communication and developing our senior leaders for these challenges can mitigate some of this risk.

In the age of digital communication, we are clobbered by the exchange of information. Commanders are robbed of the time to write something thoughtfully, let alone consume it, and provide feedback. This deprives commanders of one of the remaining meaningful tools they may have to communicate complexity in these dispersed environments. Most commanders will argue that time is the biggest challenge to their collective ability to think critically, reflect deeply, and cogently communicate important information.

As a best practice, deliberate use of the battle rhythm and the various voice and video tools available can alleviate some of these pressures. As the battle rhythm drives the commander’s decision cycle, it can be used to home in on and tease out information necessary to assess ongoing operations and guide follow-on ones. A well-crafted and judicious set of critical information requirements are similarly helpful.14 While voice, video, and data tools remain available, interaction between and amongst commanders virtually affords the opportunity to communicate intent broadly. Minutes count in these environments. Time spent preparing for the battle rhythm and time spent consuming the information it presents slices away at the cognitive power of commander and their staffs. It is important to make wise use of it. Strike group workups provide another example.

Time must be guarded, and information exchange streamlined and relevant for commanders to gain the advantage in this environment. Workups deliberately tax afloat staffs to stress test the processes used to generate orders to subordinate units. Time becomes the most precious commodity. As workups evolve, the pace at which the changes occur to the base plan deliberately create trade-offs and resource constraints. As the fluidity of the tactical situation evolves, the challenge becomes to recognize those trade-offs, communicate them to higher headquarters, and capture them in a running change to commander’s intent. This rapidly evolving tactical situation, inside of this complex communications environment quickly exposes the weaknesses of even the best set of staff processes.

I frequently found myself challenged to keep a broader view. My own personal time to think critically about what was occurring around me in time and space was taken away brief after brief. Fatigue was setting in from endless phone calls in the middle of the night about tactical information that I had asked for in pristinely written orders that turned out to be irrelevant. Despite a fantastic staff and what I thought were fairly refined processes, my ability to think critically, write cogently, and re-assess my intent remain challenged.

Learning to Personalize Intent

Leaders are swimming in information, striving to make sense of it, and looking for where best to apply scarce resources to best effect. We can’t just expect a senior leader to learn how to be effective in this environment through broadening headquarters assignments alone. There are few opportunities for group commanders to get the balance of education and training necessary to excel in these new environments.15 Exposure to additional leader development opportunities that stress self-awareness, critical thinking, and executive decision making are necessary investments for commanders. These should include board selected in-residence opportunities at senior service colleges, political-military think tank fellowships, and corporate leadership development courses. Pulling forward courses like CAPSTONE for newly selected flag officer down to the major command level would go a long way in developing our senior commanders. Every year counts in an officer’s career progression. Spending 18-24 months off the flight-line or away from the waterfront is a calculated risk in its own right. In residence education, and more than once perhaps, is a must to provide the time away from the “building” to develop. Opportunities like these would help senior officers with the process of growing into roles where doing at the tactical level is replaced with sensing, shaping, and communicating priorities and expectations synonymous with executive leadership.16

Conclusion

Nimitz, Fletcher, and Spruance are tall figures for senior leaders to emulate. Though the environments they commanded in were markedly different in many ways, they wrestled with many of the same issues we wrestle with today. Their formations were large and diffused over many miles. And while communication methods improved over time, they were still left with fog and friction to overcome.

But none of them sailed with the same retinue of staffs, processes, and methods of communication that we sail with today. Yet they still succeeded with crafting plans that synchronized forces in space and time, and in a manner that created effects that employed resources effectively and efficiently. Simple written notes to each other created a shared understanding of the mission at hand and the roles of the forces assigned.

Commanders today are disadvantaged in many ways. We have large staffs and refined processes. Our communications methods create opportunities for over-communicating and are bereft of the right information at the right time for the right decision. Doubling down on putting the commanders back in intent, providing them with the skills necessary to create time and space for thinking and reflection, and deepening our investment in their development will help lay the foundation for successful mission command.

Captain Bill Shafley is a career Surface Warfare Officer and currently serves as Commodore, Destroyer Squadron 26, and Sea Combat Commander for Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group. He has served on both coasts and overseas in Asia and Europe. He is a graduate of the Naval War College’s Advanced Strategy Program and a designated Naval Strategist. These views are presented in a personal capacity.

References

1. For a good working definition of Mission Command, see ADRP 6-0 (2012).  p. 1-3.  https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/misc/doctrine/CDG/cdg_resources/manuals/adrp/adrp6_0_new.pdf.

2. General Martin Dempsey (2012) “Mission Command White Paper, 03 APR 2012,” p. 4. https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/missioncommandwhitepaper2012.pdf.

3. For the tenets of Mission Command, see ADRP 6-0 (2012).  p 2-1. 

4. Milan Vego, “The Bureaucratization of the Military Decision Making Process,” Joint Forces Quarterly: Vol 88, 1st Qtr 2018, p. 39. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/1411771/the-bureaucratization-of-the-us-military-decisionmaking-process/  

5. Dempsey, “White Paper,” p. 4.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Vego, “Military Decision Making,” p. 35.

9. Ibid., 36.

10. Dempsey, “White Paper,”  p. 4.

11. Vego, “Military Decision Making,” p. 39.

12. Robert C. Rubel, “Deconstructing Nimitz’s Principle of Calculated Risk,” Naval War College Review: Vol. 68: No. 1, Article 4. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol68/iss1/4.

13. Ibid.

14. See my previous published work in CIMSEC regarding Information exchange and Mission Command. https://cimsec.org/the-currency-of-mission-command/43263.

15. SWOS Major Command and the Major Command Course at NLEC are the two predominant courses for SWO Major Commanders.  Over the course of 4 weeks, both courses do their best to provide these opportunities, but they are not enough.

16. See Heather Venerable’s recent work regarding education and Senior Officers.  https://cimsec.org/playing-to-win-crafting-a-creative-strategic-vision-for-maritime-superiority/.

Featured Image: POLARIS POINT, Guam (Feb. 7, 2020) Capt. Al Alarcon, prospective commanding officer of the submarine tender USS Frank Cable (AS 40), salutes sideboys as he arrives at a change of command ceremony aboard the ship. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Second Class Heather C. Wamsley/Released)

Fiction

“Pixelated Covers in the Sky”: Graduating The Naval Academy Class of 2055

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In 1876, Lieutenant Theodorus Mason, later the first head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, published an article “Two Lessons from the Future.” Using the literary device of letters in the future, he wrote that “they are supposed to be written in the future, and are merely conjectures as to the probable results of possible events.” The letters predicted the impact in 1880 of torpedoes defeating the Navy in a great battle and a later victory due to trends and necessary changes. As he wrote in the latter: “Something had to be done and was done” including throwing the Naval Academy open to all applicants, with “great weight being given to professional aptitude and officerlike qualities.”

It is in the spirit of Theodorus Mason that the following speech is offered.

By Claude Berube

Commissioning Day, 2055

Good morning, Brigade.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I sat where you are now – sort of. Thirty-five years ago. I was in the Naval Academy Class of 2020, the first class to have a virtual graduation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I can’t say a few of us weren’t disappointed while we were just weeks away from celebrating four years of hard work, some fun, and the foundation of lifelong friends and shipmates. But we and our families saw the immediate consequences of COVID-19. Some of our parents and siblings lost their jobs as the nation closed most businesses – some of them permanently. Eventually, nearly every one of us lost someone we knew – family, friends, neighbors. We had dreamt of that one day – commissioning – being on the football field under the sunshine and roar of the Blue Angels. Our loved ones were going to be in the stands cheering as we approached leadership and receive our diploma. We were to be sworn in as officers in the Navy and Marine Corps. We were going to toss our covers in the air and leave before children swarmed the field to pick them up.  

That did not happen.

That Superintendent made some of the toughest calls any Superintendent in the history of the Academy had to make, from not reforming the Brigade after Spring Break to cancelling graduation. The history – the data – in the past 35 years has proven what those decisions meant. He protected the health and safety of the midshipmen, the faculty, the staff, and the community. History shows what would have happened if he hadn’t demonstrated that leadership – that ability to make tough calls.

He saved lives. And we welcome and recognize he and his wife who are with us here to share in this day.

[Resounding applause from the midshipmen via the speakers.]

Our class took that leadership by example to heart. It prepared us to make the tough calls in our own careers. We learned to be agile like when the entire faculty and Brigade had to literally shift overnight from teaching in the classroom to teaching online as we were spread across the country on computers – those things you only see in museums today. We learned how to modify our services. We learned the importance of the situational awareness of our people when they’re overseas. And in the aftermath of COVID-19, the nation and the Navy learned to adapt our education and training.           

COVID-19 had many effects but three especially on how we had to change the navy including the Naval Academy. The first was its effect on the economy. The Dow Jones tanked – three times. The debt spiraled out of control. The president and Congress had little choice – they had to shrink the military budget. The navy was the first hit because of the cost of its platforms. In recognition of his prophecies about the “Terrible Twenties,” CDR Salamander was given the rank of brevet Commodore. When we graduated in 2020, some navalists were touting a 355-ship Navy. [Gasps from the midshipmen]. That’s right. Who could have predicted the 155-ship Navy that you will join in a few weeks?

We had to be leaner, so autonomous, unmanned vehicles proliferated. By 2040, we grounded the last of our manned air platforms and that’s why modern graduating classes don’t select naval aviation as a community like their parents and grandparents did, and why Pensacola was BRAC’d shortly after. Only a few officers are needed to command drone squadrons from our aircraft carrier.

The second effect was on jobs. Jobless rates soared in 2020. Some businesses closed until the pandemic abated the following year. Other businesses closed permanently. Those businesses that returned found ways to reduce costs. Fast food was the first to turn to automation. Even restaurants began replacing service staff. Soon there was a permanently high unemployment rate which led to more people competing for enlistments in the military and admission to the Naval Academy. When I was in high school, about 16,000 students competed for 1,100 slots. Nearly 40,000 students across the United States competed for one of the 500 slots in your class. The Navy determined that it should expect more years of service. In addition to the competitive entry to the Academy, constantly high unemployment meant we could no longer lose our educated and trained officers after only five years. Back in 2018, I signed my 2-for-7 [groans from the midshipmen]. Today, you sign your 2-for-17s+5s (active and reserve.) But you all have a guaranteed job defending our country and you’re still young enough to embark on a second career.

The third effect was the options and flexibility presented by online teaching. As the fleet shrank in size, so too did the need for officers. Additional cost savings came from smaller crews from increased automation. The Navy revisited how we commissioned officers.

When I was your age, officers commissioned through the Academy, ROTC, Officer Candidate School, or a few in the Direct Commission Officer program for Reserves. The Naval Officer Commissioning Act of 2037 consolidated the programs for the first time since before the first World War. But we knew we couldn’t return to the past. We had to adapt. And that’s why we changed how the Academy prepared officers. We asked ourselves a fundamental question: how could the navy and the nation retain the best of the Academy, OCS, and ROTC? We couldn’t maintain the four-year program we had become accustomed to. Some alumni argued, “you shouldn’t change tradition.” But what tradition? The Academy wasn’t always a four-year program. And it didn’t always require four years for a class to graduate, as we witnessed in previous wars. Commissioning didn’t always include a hat toss – that started in 1912. The Herndon climb only started in 1940 and they didn’t grease it until 1949.

Tradition is not constant. It has a start. It changes. Tradition rarely retains its original qualities and people rarely remember the historical reasons that began those traditions.

The Navy and Congress found the right formula for our 21st century conditions. Anyone accepted to the Academy could choose whatever accredited domestic or international college to attend that they wanted to for one year. Because of advancements in online teaching, they would have one online course with a Naval Academy professor to start their tie to Annapolis. In their second year, they would serve on a ship as a midshipman. These conditions allowed the students to grow by seeing a bit of the world around them, to experience other schools and cultures, and to see what life in the Navy meant. If they did well in that one-year college program and received a positive recommendation from their ship’s commanding officer, they would come to Annapolis for I-Day. Induction Day. And here you would learn for the next three years.

Class of 2055, we must be aware of the conditions around us. We must adapt to those conditions. We must remain agile. And just as my class faced its challenge and sacrifice, so too does yours. Because of that, you are each ready to join the fleet and the challenges you will face in your careers.

I salute you, good luck, and hold fast.

[The midshipmen stood, cheered, and tossed their covers in the air. As media digitographers captured the moment, the covers and the midshipmen slowly pixilated, disappearing off the field to leave behind neat rows of holograph emitters.]

Commander Claude Berube, USNR, PhD, teaches history at the U.S. Naval Academy, is the Director of the Naval Academy Museum, and is a former Senate staffer and defense contractor. His next two books will be released in the next year. The views above are the author’s alone and not necessarily reflect those of the Navy or Naval Academy.

Featured Image: ANNAPOLIS, Md. (December 19, 2019) U.S. Naval Academy delayed graduation ceremony. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Burke/Released)

Education

Playing to Win: Crafting a Creative Strategic Vision for Maritime Superiority

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By Heather Venable

Daydreaming, meditation, and long walks in the forest do not spring to mind as ways to achieve maritime superiority, much less to win the next peer conflict. But these simple approaches to thinking reward institutions with unparalleled dividends. The deepest discernment, as Isaac Asimov explains, occurs when the mind can “take new pathways and make erratic associations you would not think of consciously. The solution will then come while you think you are not thinking.”1

This approach is imperative because—amidst the proliferation of many weapons technologies—the Navy faces a challenge to its current force structure potentially more disruptive than the shift from battleships to carriers or even from sail to steam.2 Yet it sometimes takes institutions too long to accept ideas internally even as it becomes clear to external observers how desperately updating is required.3 Simultaneously, the Navy must open up spaces for creative thinking in order to regain its lost strategic acumen.4 Fortunately, solutions are not costly, but they do require a cultural shift that recognizes the importance of creativity in crafting strategy.5

Historical precedent reveals insights into how and why creativity fosters the best strategy. In the 1950s, a handful of naval officers began working to revitalize naval education by thinking carefully about how they studied history to make strategy. This group included J.C. Wylie, who actively pursued creative thinking throughout his career by challenging accepted ways of doing things, as will be seen.

Wylie also benefited from attending the regular and the advanced courses at the Naval War College on two separate assignments.6 This education provided him with the requisite depth to imbibe basic patterns of strategic thought. As Wylie explained, getting to the “heart of the problem” required diving into the “strategic patterns of thought from which grow the actions of war itself.”7

Creativity cannot occur until one has “mastered the old ways of doing or thinking.”8 As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains, “One cannot be creative without learning what others know, but then one cannot be creative without becoming dissatisfied with that knowledge and rejecting it (or some of it) for a better way.”9 As such, much of the seminar format of professional military education (PME) focusing on history and international relations is sound. One cannot help one’s service push forward to viable solutions until one understands the foundational knowledge upon which past decisions have been made.

But that is not enough. Depth must be married to breadth in a way that spurs creative thought. But naval officers have not internalized these rules deeply enough because they lack a strong educational foundation. Fortunately, recent steps improve requirements for future flag officers, to include requiring all “future unrestricted line Flag and General Officers” to graduate from in-residence programs by the end of 2021.10 Key documents like the National Defense Strategy (2018) and A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0 (2018) recognize creativity’s importance.11 Still, creativity receives only a brief head nod, providing no vision to pursue.

The tendency to recognize creativity’s importance before quickly dismissing it runs throughout the defense community. One commentator recently called for the military to develop “creative solutions” to acquire new technology, citing the example of a “commercial cloud.” But this idea is not new at all.12 This exemplifies how a technical rationalist mindset pervades much of the Department of Defense (DOD), with cursory mentions of creativity predominantly linked to inventing new products. Creativity, in other words, is assumed to contribute the most to the development of new things, rather than new thoughts.

Innovation continually underperforms because it must occur after ideas. Previous eras of transformational change required societies to tackle “primarily intellectual, not technical” challenges.13 Placing too much emphasis on the tools with which to fight results in a lack of knowledge of how to fight or to what end.

Even the 2018 Education for Seapower study undervalues creativity. After mentioning creativity twice and characterizing it, along with talent, as the Navy’s “most critical resource,” the 468-page study fails to address creativity until an appendix, which ironically details the British appreciation for this trait in its PME.14 By contrast, the report repeatedly highlights the twin concepts of strategic and critical thinking, even defining “critical thinking” in the glossary but not creativity.15

Yet creativity provides the missing link to complete a triangle consisting also of strategy and critical thinking, without which the Navy just has a wobbly “stool.”16 Creativity’s ultimate value centers on its ability to trigger new ways of thinking, which requires individuals to make mental connections in unexpected ways.17

Those responsible for crafting U.S. naval strategy must foster new ways of thinking to challenge the nation’s current strategic paradigm.18 Although the U.S. military acknowledges this need—recognizing that peer adversaries have been studying U.S. successes since Operation Desert Storm—it has not figured out how to change the rules of the game because of “functional fixedness,” or the process whereby cognitive bias “limits the way we use an object to what it was originally intended for and keeps us from seeking new usages.”19 Take multi-domain operations as an example. The Army and Air Force’s newest solution to future war has striking overlaps with its predecessor AirLand battle.20 It seeks to improve upon jointness, even as it exacerbates the communication requirements that constitute the nation’s warfighting Achilles heel. It provides evolutionary improvements but no shift in strategy because the military feels more comfortable focusing on operational solutions.21 Thus the Navy is not alone in its strategic crisis.

Likewise, the Navy struggled to adjust to the new realities of the nuclear age after World War II, a point at which Wylie and others turned to strategy to articulate the Navy’s purpose.22 Surveying the key theorists from each domain, Wylie expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of a general theory. Of the various theories, however, he found himself most drawn to Mao’s thinking on wars of national liberation as most “sophisticated.”23 He appreciated Mao’s thinking because it did not limit itself to the “bounds of military action.”24

By contrast, Wylie identified the dangerous direction that the U.S. military had taken. In effect, he argued that the DOD had embraced the ultimate measure of the airpower domain: destruction. While Wylie found destruction to be the air domain’s most logical goal, he did not necessarily see it as the key outcome for the Army or the Navy.25 But the DOD could not resist the air domain’s dangerously seductive quantitative form of measurement.

This approach continues to characterize the U.S. military’s underlying philosophy in what has been characterized as a “continuous movement away from the political objectives of war toward a focus on killing and destroying things.”26 This tendency can be seen in the Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0’s mission statement (emphasis added):

“The United States Navy will be ready to conduct prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea. Our Navy will protect America from attack, promote American prosperity, and preserve America’s strategic influence. U.S. naval operations – from the seafloor to space, from blue water to the littorals, and in the information domain – will deter aggression and enable resolution of crises on terms acceptable to the United States and our allies and partners. If deterrence fails, the Navy will conduct decisive combat operations to defeat any enemy.27

Currently, the mission statement sandwiches hints of a holistic naval strategy between “prompt and sustained combat” and “decisive combat operations.” Those operational and tactical tasks go last, not first and last.

Wylie posited shifting away from pure destruction toward asserting control. By control, Wylie did not refer to control of the sea—a concept so natural to naval thinkers—but something much broader. He defined control as how a “social entity” exerted control over individuals through the power of ideas.  he sought to prod the U.S. to “articulat[e] . . . a philosophy to be ‘for.’”28 Promoting aspects of an ideological enemy’s vision during the Cold War required moral courage and intellectual openness.

For the Navy to regain its strategic acumen similarly requires traditional ways of thinking to be “disrupt[ed]” so that one achieves a perspective typical of an outsider rather than an insider.29 As Geoff Colvin asks, “Why didn’t IBM invent the personal computer? Over and over, the organizations that knew all there was to know about a technology or an industry failed to make the creative breakthrough that would transform the business.”30

One of the easiest ways to facilitate this process is to locate strategists on cultural fault lines because they trigger new ways of seeing and understanding, which helps them envision how to change the rules of the game rather than reacting to what others do. As Everett Dolman explains:

“When confronted with an unbreakable logic, such as the paper-scissors-rock dilemma of the of the Swiss pike, which is superior to the French cavalry, which is superior to the Spanish tercio, which is superior to the Swiss pike, ad infinitum, the only way out is to move beyond the conundrum and change the rules of the game.”31

This problem is made more challenging by differences in perspective between tactical thinkers and strategic ones.32 A tactical thinker concentrates on the short-term prospect of winning a clear-cut victory. A strategic thinker, by contrast, plays the long game, continually asking, “then what?” These two perspectives often exist in tension. In the case of a father who wants to teach his daughter how to play chess, the tactical mindset of seeking to “win” a game sits at odds with the more strategic perspective of ensuring that the father does not extinguish the daughter’s motivation to learn when she keeps losing.33

Recently, then-Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, explained that the Navy had a new strategy of “making the first moves ‘so that we can force our competitors to respond.’”34 A “first move,” however, epitomizes this short-term tactical approach. A more holistic method begins with the consideration of desired ends. Richardson made his comments in the wake of another freedom of navigation operation, also making the strategy’s novelty unclear. Richardson’s rectitude can be understood in light of the nation’s return to great power conflict; still, the deepest creative thinking cannot occur if the Navy shuts itself off from outside connections that stimulate originality. Indeed, the U.S.’s greatest strategic advantage may be how it fosters the sharing of information; China’s tight control of information, by contrast, could result in a creative drought in some areas, although it might be able to overcome these limitations in other ways that it facilitates creativity.35

Because of the range of political, economic, diplomatic, and military responsibilities inherent to the maritime domain, it is arguable that the Navy should be the most comfortable with thinking strategically, as some have argued.36 Other advantages result from the Navy’s greater experience with cumulative as opposed to sequential strategies. The Army, for example, struggled to adjust to a non-linear battlefield during the Global War on Terror. By contrast, the Navy may possess a seamless ability to perceive and understand a kind of “spatial non-linearity” because its officers are comfortable with the ocean, which lacks an “obvious threat direction.”37 The Navy also has helped to contest “excessive maritime claims and practices,” a perspective useful for rising above military solutions. These experiences should position the Navy to think creatively about future warfare.

Yet this optimistic assessment of naval talent should be considered in light of the reality that naval officers “underperform” in graduate programs, although the Secretary of the Navy’s response to Education for Seapower indicates that important changes are underway.38 The study, however, stops short of identifying a holistic solution to the Navy’s strategic shortfalls.39

By contrast, Wylie’s career honed his ability to step outside of expected patterns of thought. In particular, his time serving on the USS Augusta in the Asiatic Fleet gave him an “appreciation of cultural differences” and useful experiences with diplomacy even if he could not participate in fleet exercises in home waters.40 In short, it broadened his vision. Assigned in World War II to instruct at a school for destroyers arriving in the Pacific theater, Wylie confronted “ingrained patterns of thought” in those crewmembers he had the responsibility for training.41

Wylie’s ability to command and control depended on creative communications solutions that he devised in opposition to the doctrine du jour while challenging accepted norms of naval warfighting culture.42 Rather than fight at the conventional steering position, he positioned himself at the radar scope so that he could better visualize the unfolding battle.43 His accomplishments—some of them working in tandem with his ship captain Commander William Cole—epitomize the challenges of integrating new technology seamlessly into an institution against ingrained ways of thinking.44 As has been recognized, technology is easy. People are hard.

Wylie acted similarly at the Naval War College by fostering new ways of doing things. As described by long-time instructor and supporter of the institution Rear Admiral Henry Eccles, Wylie “demonstrated his imagination and his independence of mind in a continuing challenge of conventional assumptions and routine formulations.”45 Much of his effort centered on encouraging a broader and more active study of naval history. Wylie believed that the U.S. should adopt the British model of producing strategists by widening their horizons, to include exploring connections with politics, the economy, and culture.46

The resulting program required participants to develop their thoughts on a weekly basis, writing a paper each week and then “defending” it in a seminar attended by various experts.47 This kind of habitual writing offered deep learning, providing the key foundational knowledge to engage in significant strategic thought. Indeed, it walked Wylie through a series of baby steps. Shorter articles eventually led to his work on naval strategy being published in 1967.

And, before the joint mandates of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, Wylie sought to understand other services’ perspectives, even beginning his work with such a discussion.48 Likewise, Wylie’s strategic vision anticipated the perspective needed to undergird multi-domain operations (although the Navy has not yet bought in fully).49

Multi-domain operations require naval strategists to balance an understanding of their own service’s capabilities and limitations with a holistic comprehension of other services, enlarging their own perspective outside of their own domain. Or, as one author describes it, “Multi-domain operations start with the recognition that maneuver in one’s domain is dependent upon actions, both friendly and adversarial, that occur within other domains.”50 Yet some naval officers already struggle to look beyond their own tribe within the Navy, much less beyond their own expertise in and familiarity with their own domain.51

Having taken important steps to improve its foundation of learning, the Navy need not create more administration or sponsor expensive studies to begin fostering creativity. It might sound trite, but more creativity occurs in the shower than at work.52 The simple act of walking, for example, physiologically improves creativity.53

Specific recommendations designed to target multiple aspects of naval culture and the DOD include:

  • Begin all Navy education courses with a discussion of creativity and how to channel it daily. Creativity is a way of thinking that more sailors must understand how to harness. Resident PME provides an ideal space for teaching creative approaches until they become habitual. Likewise, the Navy also must recognize those who genuinely crave intellectual engagement and have a “drive for exploration”—the best predictor of creativity—and place them in positions where they can create.54
  • Crowdsource ideas for naval strategy in conjunction with naval strategists screened for their creative potential who possess both depth and breadth.55 While this suggestion appears the most outlandish, it best reflects how creativity functions in the 21st century.56 Add to the mix a handful of graduate school interns to craft a holistic strategy for the Navy. Provide them the opportunity to engage with others on cultural fault lines like San Francisco or Calcutta.
  • The CNO must do something novel and attention-getting to demonstrate how the Navy truly cares about PME.57 The CNO should convey his message in a personal manner across the ranks of the Navy, including what has been called the Navy’s “frozen middle.”58 The Navy may not control budget battles, but it must control its own culture. The CNO should also provide an equivalent of the Rapid Innovation Cell for ideas to transform the Navy’s strategic thinking, which previously fell under his office and allowed for junior officers to bring diverse perspectives and opinions to his attention.59 Again, this is something being done with innovation more so than with ideas.60
  • In negotiating with the Army and the Air Force over the future of multi-domain operations, it is imperative that the Navy not buy in until it can get the other services to agree to a holistic strategy befitting the broadest tradition of naval thinking. As Wylie noted, for too long the U.S. has been dominated by the “comfortable and placid acceptance of a single idea, a single and exclusively dominant military pattern of thought” that could be characterized today as an emphasis on destruction.61

These steps can begin changing institutionalized culture while paying strategic dividends at bargain-basement prices.

The Navy’s need to craft a creative and holistic strategy has not been so urgent in decades. Wylie’s vision of how one loses maritime superiority resonates powerfully in light of recent events in the South China Sea. He explains how:

“the exploitation of sea power is usually a combination of general slow stiflings with a few critical thrusts. These latter are frequently spectacular and draw our attention to the exclusion of the former, while in point of fact the critical thrusts would not be critical were it not for the tedious and constant tightening of the screws that make them possible.”62

Only a strategic vision cognizant of how the military is “inextricably woven into the whole social power fabric” can provide the necessary answers to help the Navy and the military as a whole be the global force for good it can be when focused on ends.63

Heather Venable is an associate professor of military and security studies at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College and teaches in the Department of Airpower. She is the author of How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

References

1. See, for example, Isaac Asimov, “The Eureka Phenomenon,” aharchaou.com/the-eureka-phenomena/.

2. Andrew, Krepinevich, “Get Ready for the Democratization of Destruction,” Foreign Affairs, 15 Aug 2011; https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/08/15/get-ready-for-the-democratization-of-destruction/.

3. Jamshid Gharajedaghi, Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity: A Platform for Designing Business Architecture, 3rd ed., (New York: Morgan Kaufmann, 2011), especially pp. 4-7.

4. For one example of this assessment, with others cited throughout this article, see Christopher P. Cavas, “Does the US Navy have a Strategy beyond Hope,” Defense News, 4 Jan 2018, “https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/surface-navy-association/2018/01/04/does-the-us-navy-have-a-strategy-beyond-hope/. In a related vein, the National Defense Strategy has come under fire for not even being a strategy. Gregory D. Foster, “The National Defense Strategy is No Strategy,” Defense One, 4 April 2019; at https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/04/national-defense-strategy-no-strategy/156068/.

5. For an innovative solution derailed by budgetary constraints, see Jason Knudson, “The Frozen Middle and the CRIC,” U.S. Naval Institute Blog, 19 Feb 2016, https://blog.usni.org/posts/2016/02/19/the-frozen-middle-and-the-cric.

6. Naval History and Heritage Command, “Joseph Caldwell Wylie Jr., 20 March 1911-29 March 1993,” https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/research-guides/lists-of-senior-officers-and-civilian-officials-of-the-us-navy/district-commanders/first-naval-district/wylie-jr-joseph-caldwell.html.

7. J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2014); reprint, 1967, p. 79.

8. Francisco Camara Pereira, Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: A Conceptual Blending Approach (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), p. 23.

9. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper, 2013), p. 90.

10. Secretary of the Navy, “Education for Seapower Decisions and Immediate Actions,” 5 Feb 2019, https://www.navy.mil/strategic/E4SSECNAVMemo.pdf. The percentage of flag officers who have attended the residence course at the Naval War College currently is a dismal 20 percent. Education for Seapower, p. 31.

11. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, p. 8; https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf;U.S. Navy, A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0, December 2018, pp. 5 and 9.

12. VADM T.J. White, RDML Danelle Barrett, and LCDR Robert Bebber, “The Future of Information Combat Power: Winning the Information War,” 14 March 2019, https://cimsec.org/the-future-of-information-combat-power-winning-the-information-war/39934?fbclid=IwAR3DF3vZthb_ipk1A57Uih7Vz1yht1_i9QBuDESLHzcZ8OtcOSl8Oh5i398

13. Quoted in Dave Lyle, “Fifth Generation Warfare and Other Myths: Clarifying Muddled Thinking in Our Current Defense Debates,” 4 Dec 2017, https://othjournal.com/2017/12/04/fifth-generation-warfare-and-other-myths-clarifying-muddled-thinking-in-our-current-defense-debates/. Also see Lt Col Dave Lyle, “The Foundations of Innovation—A Model of Innovative Change,” Part 2 of 7; https://community.apan.org/wg/aucoi/air-university-innovation/b/innovation-blog/posts/the-foundations-of-innovation-a-model-of-innovative-change-part-2-of-7. For more on the failure to innovate organizationally, see Lt. Gen. Michael G. Dana, “Future War: Not Back to the Future,” 6 Mar 2019, War on the Rocks; https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/future-war-not-back-to-the-future/.

14. Education for Seapower, p. 110; “Memorandum for Distribution,” 19 April 2018, n.p. in Department of the Navy, Education for Seapower, Dec. 2018, https://www.navy.mil/strategic/E4SFinalReport.pdf.

15. Education for Seapower, pp. 5, 13, 15, 28, 32, 36, 39, 54, and 69.

16. The stool analogy has been borrowed from Art Lykke. See H. Richard Yarger, “Towards a Theory of Strategy: Art Lykke and the Army War College Strategy Model,” http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/stratpap.htm.

17. Scott Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (New York: Tarcher Perigee, 2016), p. 92.

18. For an assessment of what the authors call the Navy’s “strategic deficit,” see James A. Russell, James J. Wirtz, Donald Abenheim, Thomas-Durrell Young, and Diana Wueger, Navy Strategy Development: Strategy in the 21st Century, June 2015, p. 4; https://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/NPS-Strategy-Report-Final-June-16-2015-2.pdf#viewer.action=download.

19. Design 2.0, p. 3; Wired to Create, p. 182.

20. See, for example, Colin Clark, “Army Unveils Multi-Domain Concept; Joined at Hip with Air Force,” 10 Oct 2018, Breaking Defense, https://breakingdefense.com/2018/10/army-unveils-multi-domain-concept-joined-at-hip-with-air-force/.

21. See, for example, LTC Antulio J. Echevarria II, “An American Way of War or Way of Battle,” Parameters, 1 January 2004, https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=662.

22. Nick Prime, “On J.C. Wylie’s ‘Military Strategy’ with Nick Prime,” Strategy Bridge, 24 March 2019; https://thestrategybridge.libsyn.com/on-jc-wylies-military-strategy-with-nick-prime.

23. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 104.

24. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 126.

25. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 180.

26. Frederick Kagan, Finding the Target (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), p. 358; Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 181; Peter Haynes, Toward a New Maritime Strategy: American Naval Thinking in the Post-Cold War Era (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2015), p. 5.

27. Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 2.0, December 2018, p. 1.

28. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 183 and p. 188.

29. Wired to Create, pp. 93-94.

30. Wired to Create, p. 95.

31. For an example from the popular movie Princess Bride that Dolman discusses as well, see Mark McNeilly, “’The Princess Bride’ and the Man in Black’s Lessons in Competitive Strategy,” 2 October 2012, https://www.fastcompany.com/3001732/princess-bride-and-man-blacks-lessons-competitive-strategy.

32. Everett Carl Dolman, “Seeking Strategy” in Strategy: Context and Adaptation from Archidamus to Airpower. Eds. Richard Bailey and James Forsyth (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2016), pp. 5-37.

33. Dolman, “Seeking Strategy,” p. 18.

34. Paul McLeary, “CNO: New Strategy is to ‘Force Our Competitors to Respond,’” Breaking Defense, 29 April 2019; https://breakingdefense.com/2019/04/cno-new-strategy-is-to-force-our-competitors-to-respond/?fbclid=IwAR2m6UVcaBOc4ATAK7GEOgwPdkkI52VPEcfcFKpTqVe9k0JAZJpAad9WSrs.

35. See, for example, Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

36. Roger W. Barnett, Navy Strategic Culture: Why the Navy Thinks Differently (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009), p. 1.

37. Barnett, Navy Strategic Culture, p. 26.

38. Education for Seapower, p. 46.

39. Education for Seapower might better be titled Administration for Education for Seapower as its overarching conclusion recommends creating a Navy University. This recommendation has real merit in seeking to provide an overarching strategic vision; after all, the other services benefit from this administrative structure.

40. Wylie, Military Strategy, Kindle Location 89 of 3186 and 117. A short biography can be found here: “Joseph Caldwell Wylie Jr., 20 March 1911-29 March 1993,” Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/research-guides/lists-of-senior-officers-and-civilian-officials-of-the-us-navy/district-commanders/first-naval-district/wylie-jr-joseph-caldwell.html.

41. Wylie, Military Strategy, Kindle Location 211 of 3186.

42. Wylie, Military Strategy, Kindle Location 147 and 179.

43. Cole and Wylie Essay, available online at https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/index.asp?r=44500&pid=44504.

44. Preface, CIC Handbook for Destroyers, Pacific Fleet, June 1943; available on at https://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/index.asp?r=44500&pid=44504; “USS Fletcher,” available online at http://destroyerhistory.org/fletcherclass/ussfletcher/.

45. Quoted in John B. Hattendorf, “Introduction,” Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 128.

46. Wylie, Military Strategy, Kindle Location 275; also see Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 83

47. Wylie, Military Strategy, Kindle location, 307.

48. Wylie, Military Strategy, pp. 67-68 and p. 99.

49. Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., “All Services Sign on to Data Sharing—But Not to Multi-Domain,” Breaking Defense, 8 Feb 2019; https://breakingdefense.com/2019/02/all-services-sign-on-to-data-sharing-but-not-to-multi-domain/.

50. Brian Willis, “Multi-Domain Operations at the Strategic Level,” 2 March 2018; https://othjournal.com/2018/03/02/multi-domain-operations-at-the-strategic-level/.

51. Education for Seapower, p. 29.

52. Wired to Create, p. 38.

53. Wired to Create, p. 39.

54. Wired to Create, p. 84; Education for Seapower, p. 118.

55. “The Role of the Knowledge Base in Creative Learning” in Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development¸ eds. James C. Kaufman and John Baer (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 139; available online. 

56. Steve Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (Riverhead Books, 2010). This theme runs throughout his work.

57. For how to institutionalize it, see, for example, Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs, Air Force announces selection process for officer instructor and recruiting special duty assignments,” 11 April 2019; https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1811802/air-force-announces-selection-process-for-officer-instructor-and-recruiting-spe/.

58. Jason Knudson, “The Frozen Middle and the CRIC,” 19 Feb 2016, https://blog.usni.org/posts/2016/02/19/the-frozen-middle-and-the-cric.

59. Jason Knudson, “The Frozen Middle and the CRIC,” 19 Feb 2016, https://blog.usni.org/posts/2016/02/19/the-frozen-middle-and-the-cric; U.S. Navy, CHIPS Magazine, “CNO’s Rapid Innovation Cell,” 27 Jan 2015; available online at https://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=5896.

60. See, for example, National Innovation Security Network at https://www.nsin.us/hacking-for-defense/.

61. Quoted in Haynes, New Maritime Strategy, pp. 25 and 170.

62. Wylie, “Appendix B: On Maritime Strategy” in Military Strategy, Kindle Location 2390. The quote does not have an endnote in the Kindle location, and it does not appear elsewhere in the book.

63. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 188.

Featured Image: NEWPORT, R.I. (June 27, 2017) James Giordano, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. gives a presentation at a symposium hosted by the Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG) at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. (U.S. Navy photo by Daniel L. Kuester/Released)

Capability Analysis

Human Intelligence: The Missing Piece to Comprehensive Maritime Domain Awareness

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By Jay Benson

The Challenge of Maritime Domain Awareness

To effectively govern the maritime space, states need an accurate picture of what is happening and where in order to establish normal “patterns of life” at sea. With this picture, states can identify suspicious activity and task assets to respond. This ability to collect, analyze, share, and respond to information in the maritime realm is often called maritime domain awareness (MDA).

This is a challenging task for any state, much less those with relatively limited resources and assets in the maritime realm. Combined territorial waters and exclusive economic zones are huge spaces to monitor and, for many states , this “maritime domain” is much larger than their total land area. What’s more, this maritime domain is an incredibly active space. Tens of thousands of shipping vessels, millions of fishing boats, and other vessels, registered and otherwise, traverse the seas on a daily basis for an incredibly diverse set of licit and illicit purposes. It can be an overwhelming scope of activity for many states around the world to monitor

States have largely sought to establish MDA through the use of high-tech, high-cost solutions like technical information collection platforms (e.g., coastal radar systems, and tracking shipping through AIS) and deploying costly air and sea patrols These are important elements of robust MDA, but few states possess the resources to implement all of these tools.

Given this strain on resources it may be useful for maritime security policy makers to make more effective use of another, less utilized, form of information collection in the maritime space – human intelligence.

Human Intelligence in the Maritime Space: A Force Multiplier

Human intelligence, which refers to the collection and analysis of information from a variety of human sources, is widely acknowledged as a vital component of all-source intelligence collection and national security. However, it is largely underutilized in the maritime space.

Human intelligence in maritime security could replicate the successes of community relations initiatives in counterinsurgent and policing operations onshore. Developing strong relationships between civilian populations and security forces can help improve the legitimacy of their operations in the eyes of civilians and begin to build a basis for information-sharing that enhances the effectiveness of law enforcement operations. This is no less true in the maritime space.

The oceans, and coastal waters in particular, are not empty spaces. Shipping vessels, industrial and artisanal fishing fleets, ferries, offshore hydrocarbon installations, and ports are all active across a wide geographic area and around the clock. Individuals working in offshore and coastal spaces develop an intimate knowledge of the normal pattern of life at sea in their areas of operation. They have the potential to be the eyes and ears necessary to develop stronger MDA for resource-constrained states around the world. They can see the signs of potential IUU fishing, human trafficking, piracy, and other forms of maritime crime that might evade sparse patrols and technical information collection platforms designed to monitor larger vessels. These civilians in the maritime space have a vested interest in its security. By building stronger relationships with members of this community, maritime enforcement authorities can improve maritime security while using scarce resources more efficiently.

The Path Forward: Building Relationships and Reporting Channels

States can realize the potential of expanded human intelligence for MDA by increasing positive interactions with relevant maritime and coastal communities and developing quick and effective reporting mechanisms.

If the only reason a coast guard vessel ever approaches civilians is to fine them for fishing practices or confiscate irregularly exchanged goods, they are unlikely to develop into a source of information. The relationship must be more than punitive. Friendly welfare checks on vessels engaged in fishing and small-scale trade would increase positive interactions and build trust.

States can also build positive relationships with more inclusive policy-making. Consultations with coastal communities on fishing, environmental, and maritime infrastructure policies can help ensure the resulting regulations respect the needs of the communities they impact and reflect input from relevant stakeholders. This community involvement helps build the legitimacy of the rules of the road in the maritime space, which navies and maritime law enforcement entities must then administer. As a result, maritime communities will be much more likely to be willing to provide valuable information to enforcement entities regarding potential illicit activity at sea.

In addition, states can develop convenient and efficient mechanisms for reporting information to maritime enforcement agencies. Civilians active in the maritime space cannot effectively contribute to the situational awareness of maritime enforcement entities if they do not know how to report information on suspicious activity. Clear, easy, and secure reporting platforms will be critical.

One example of this can be seen in recent efforts undertaken by Malaysia. In 2017, the Malaysian Navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency launched the K3M app which was intended to facilitate instantaneous reporting of maritime incidents with the goal of shortening response times. When an incident occurs, the app can provide the user’s exact location and creates a direct link between civilians in the maritime space and coastal communities with a Malaysian maritime security operations center. The app can also be used to communicate news and safety warnings to the maritime community. It has an estimated 4,000 users and plans are in place to increase the coverage of this reporting platform through the use of satellite signals.

Another unique example is the “Caught Red-Handed” project. A joint civil society-UNODC initiative, the project seeks to help states in the Western Indian Ocean collect and analyze human intelligence related to fisheries crime. The project focuses on how to collect human intelligence on fisheries violations systematically, communicate this intelligence to the appropriate maritime enforcement entities in a given jurisdiction, and ensure the intelligence can be utilized as evidence for prosecution. While this project focuses explicitly on fisheries crime, such training could be useful for improving the efficient and responsible use of human intelligence to combat the wide variety of crimes navies and maritime law enforcement entities face, including illicit trades, maritime migration and human trafficking, piracy and armed robbery, and environmental crimes.

Creative efforts of this kind have the potential to be a cost-effective means of ensuring that maritime enforcement agencies are responsive to the needs of the maritime community, strengthening the relationship between law enforcement and civilians in the maritime space, and enlisting the maritime community to actively contribute to maritime domain awareness.

Conclusion

The scope of security challenges that exist in the maritime domain requires the use of all possible options to collect information and intelligence to inform the efforts of maritime enforcement agencies. To this point, much of the attention and resources channeled toward enhancing MDA have gone to expensive technical collection platforms. These platforms provide valuable intelligence, but they are only a part of all-source maritime intelligence and a comprehensive approach to MDA development.

Tapping into the extensive presence of civilians in the maritime space for information collection can help complete the picture. Such information collection from the maritime community may be a particularly important and cost-effective way of building MDA for the many states around the globe without the resources to acquire and operate expensive technical collection platforms. For these states in particular, building strong relationships with maritime and coastal communities and providing them with clear reporting channels can be a force multiplier which allows them to more effectively respond to incidents and prioritize preemptive measures. 

Jay Benson is the Project Manager for the Indo-Pacific at Stable Seas, a non-profit research organization which provides empirical research on maritime security issues. Jay is responsible for driving Stable Seas research and engagement work in the Indo-Pacific region. 

Featured Image: A patrol boat provided to the Philippines by Japan. (Japan Coast Guard photo)