CNO’s Design Week

By Christine MacNulty

Continuous learning environments, opportunities for multi-disciplinary research in warfighting concepts and technology, and expanded Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) training, as envisioned in the CNO’s FRAGO, provide important opportunities to master new skills. But do they do enough to prepare the force for the complexity and chaos likely to characterize the future maritime environment? Do they rely too much on mastering technology—which are likely common to all—and not enough on strengthening the core human abilities of the warfighters who will employ them? Will they do enough to enable warfighters to see through complexity and ambiguity?

Research in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience indicates that human beings are tapping only a small fraction of their potential. Numerous studies over the last 35 years suggest that individuals can be trained to access more of their brains’ capabilities and that such development can lead to enhanced performance of complex tasks—both physical and non-physical—under pressure. The field of neuroscience in particular has expanded our understanding of brainwave activity and how it shapes thoughts, emotions and behaviors, all which can affect warfighting capability.

Dr. Srini Pillay,¹ one of the leading researchers in the field, has discovered that when we are engaged in a focused task our level of brain activity is relatively low, but when we activate our brains differently and raise their “cognitive rhythms” by day-dreaming, doodling, mind-wandering and even self-talk, we become more creative and open to associations and possibilities – the kinds of things that mindfulness provides. This understanding is leading to methods to enable individuals to control the levels of brain activity at will—ranging from the deepest meditation to those levels that relate to processing information from different parts of the brain simultaneously.

Intuition and insight are regarded as core components of creativity. Gary Klein,² a leading cognitive psychology researcher who has worked with several senior Marines, including Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, investigated examples of intuition and insights, including how they happened, how they were accepted, and how they were used. He identified ways in which organizations can encourage and facilitate insight. He distinguished between “fixed” and “growth” mindsets, where creativity is prevalent in the growth areas. Graham Wallas, a co-founder of the London School of Economics, developed a four-stage approach for understanding how insight occurs—preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. These insights hold tremendous potential for developing warfighters.

Warfighter investments for both officers and enlisted must do more to directly address individual capacity for reading the situation, harnessing complexity as a competitive advantage, and creatively improvising to generate advantages throughout the force. The design for the future Navy should include focused warfighter development that focuses on expanding core human capacities.

Mind-Body Training is already taking place in the Military 

This idea is not new, though the most common applications have targeted ground forces. Richard Strozzi-Heckler³ reports teaching aikido and meditation techniques to Army Green Berets in the mid-1980s, and later developing a martial arts program to provide similar effects for the Marines. Navy SEALs train themselves to expand their sensory perceptions and emotional resilience. Many of them learn martial arts, mindfulness, and meditation. Would it surprise us to learn that some of our Asian adversaries are doing this, too?

A paper published in the journal Progress in Brain Research reports that Army infantry troops who went through a month-long training regimen that included daily practice in mindful breathing and focus techniques were better able to discern key information under chaotic circumstances and experienced increases in working memory function. The soldiers also reported making fewer cognitive errors than service members who did not use mindfulness. The recent study found that service members who train for four weeks experience significant improvement, but those who train for only two weeks do not.

Major General Walter Piatt, former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, reportedly attributes his best decisions to mindfulness⁴—the practice of using breathing techniques, similar to those in meditation, to gain focus and reduce distraction. His approach is based on work of Amishi Jha, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami. The Navy’s own Warrior Toughness Program, originating at Recruit Training Command, is a deliberate approach to making and operationalizing the connection of mind, body, and spirit.

SEALs and other SOF have demonstrated cognitive capabilities for situational awareness beyond those produced by mindfulness for many years.  Much of it seems inherent, although advanced training in martial arts – especially Aikido and Qi Gong – are recommended, and brain training and entrainment, using breathing, humming, music and other sounds with specific beats can have measurable effects on different parts of the brain by stimulating different brainwave activity.

Mindfulness is clearly becoming broadly accepted as a useful form of cognitive training, but it is only the beginning.

Capabilities of the Future Navy Warfighter

If we truly want to maintain maritime superiority then innovating in the human cognitive domain is an area we should be examining in depth, just as more cognitively powerful technologies like automation and decision aids advance. Indeed, it may be that our focus on technology and its use in decision-making could lead us to ignore our own natural abilities and intuitions, and even lose them.

A 2020 project on SOF operators that we undertook for USSOCOM a decade ago – one of several SOF innovation projects sponsored by the combatant commander himself – may indicate some initial areas of focus. Rather than considering types of future conflicts, weapon systems, technologies, or terrain, we focused on physical, emotional, and mental capabilities that would equip SOF operators with the ability to operate effectively under any conditions. Participating SOF operators recognized that warfighting is as much a mental and emotional activity as a physical one, and that incorporating mental and emotional training increased all warfighting capabilities.

Some of the key cognitive capabilities identified as desirable include:

Intuition/Insight: Being aware of all one’s senses, trusting one’s heart and gut, and using mental imagery to one’s advantage. Many SOF have had their lives saved by intuition about ambushes, buried IEDs, and incoming mortars and bombs. Interestingly, many scientists, inventors, and engineers attribute their successes to these same intuitive capabilities.

Ability to Operate at the Edge of Chaos: The term “edge of chaos” is used to denote a transition space between order and disorder that is believed to exist within a wide variety of systems. In our description of related competencies, it is a combination of the ability to make decisions under severe stress, operate in ambiguity, have emotional stability, and exhibit courage and fortitude.

Concentration: Ability to know when to focus, and then allocate attention using all senses.

Awareness: the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel or be cognizant of physical, mental, and emotional signals. This can include physical awareness – sight, sound, feelings. Acute, trained hearing can pick up sounds of engines and engine anomalies at very low decibels or long distances. And some troops with experiences of “knowing” where IEDs have been planted have indicated personal biomarkers such as a feeling of coldness across their shoulders.

Some of these were also inspired by the work of Richard Strozzi-Heckler (In Search of the Warrior Spirit – based on his work with Marines and SOF) and Commander Mark Divine,⁵ USN, (ret.) – a former SEAL (Unbeatable Mind ) – who has developed a leadership training program of the same name.

While originally conceived in the context of small unit engagements by special operations and ground forces, this list addresses advanced human capabilities that would benefit people operating in the multi-domain maritime environment. Education and training in these capabilities would be very different from that in the traditional RRL curricula, yet could be important to the force’s ability to deliver on many of the objectives described in the CNO’s FRAGO. Building on the Warrior Toughness Program and expanding its reach across the force is a place to start and reinforce the skills being developed among new accessions. Scaling up the methods that have been developed so far for delivering training and measuring effects will require continued research and innovation.

Combining the Best of People and Technology

As the world becomes more complex and chaotic, the faster Sailors can take in and make sense of information of all kinds that is bombarding them, the better. Fast reaction times and greater mental resilience equate to increased ability to manage risk and strike at the enemy.  

We believe that innovation in the human domain is as important as it is in the technological domain – and figuring out the right things to do morally, mentally, and physically is as important as doing them right. All ideas come from or through the human mind. Why not explore what it takes to operate at the edge of chaos—and win?

Christine MacNulty is the CEO of Applied Futures, Inc. and is a strategist, futurist and writer on the human dimensions of innovation, strategy and warfighting. She is the co-author of Strategy with Passion: A Leader’s Guide to Exploiting the Future, and many papers and monographs. She is grateful to VADM Patricia Tracey (ret). for her comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors were produced without help.

References

1. Dr. Srini Pillay, Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try, Ballantine Books, NY, 2017.

2. Dr. Gary Klein, The Power of Intuition, Doubleday, NY 2003, and Dr. Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don’t,  Public Affairs, 2013.

3. Richard Strozzi-Heckler,  In Search of the Warrior Spirit, 1990 – latest edition, Blue Snake Books, 2007.

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/health/military-mindfulness-training.html

5. Mark Divine, The Way of the SEAL, Readers Digest Book, 2015, and  Mark Divine, Unbeatable Mind: Forge Resiliency and Mental Toughness to Succeed at an Elite Level.

Featured Image: South China Sea (August 22, 2019) – Junior Officer of the Deck Ensign Jasmine Walker, from Lexington, South Carolina, establishes bridge-to-bridge communications with another marine vessel while standing watch on the bridge aboard the amphibious transport dock ship USS Green Bay (LPD 20). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Markus Castaneda)

CNO’s Design Week

By Capt. Jamie McGrath (ret.)

Introduction

In his FRAGO 01/2019: A Design For Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday calls out three focus areas: Warfighting, Warfighters, and the Future Fleet. The CNO declares that “Together with the United States Marine Corps, our Navy is the bedrock of Integrated American Naval Power.” This level of USN/USMC Integration was last seen at the end of WWII. The path to that level of integration blazed in the interwar period provides a blueprint for integrating today’s Navy and Marine warfighting and warfighters.

Admittedly, the crucible of a world war played a significant role in forging the Navy-Marine Corps team into a virtually unstoppable amphibious juggernaut that systematically took over Imperial Japan’s Pacific empire. But the foundation for the integrated team began in the interwar period with three interrelated efforts: large-scale Fleet Problem exercises, which included amphibious operations, constant wargaming at the U.S. Naval War College, and all-out effort at the Marine Corps schools to develop and refine amphibious doctrine. Although not initially coordinated, by the mid-1930s, these efforts all focused on the plan to defeat Japan, commonly referred to as War Plan Orange.

Preparing for War

The Fleet Problems, the interwar equivalent of today’s Large Scale Exercises (LSE), allowed fleet and ship commanders to experiment and practice with their weapons platforms at both unit and fleet-level formations. This allowed the development of doctrine and the full exploration of the new capabilities as they joined the fleet. Fleet Problems even exercised future capabilities with the interwar years’ version of Live, Virtual, and Constructive training – the simulation of capabilities with surrogate and constructive forces. Following the Fleet Problems, robust conversations and formalized after action debriefs, which included dozens of senior commanders and junior officers of the fleet, critiqued the performance. The Fleet Problems identified some enduring lessons that can guide development of warfighting today: innovation requires time to mature; exercises and wargames should not be confused with reality; surrogates should not be mistaken for actual capability; annual large scale exercise foster openness, flexibility, and frankness; familiarity with tactics and operational concepts leads to internalization of these ideas; and the role of the Fleet Problem is to explore ideas, not necessarily technology; and candid critiques must be done immediately afterward.¹

The cost of the Fleet Problems, both in dollars and wear and tear on the fleet, meant they occurred only annually. Unconstrained by these costs, the Naval War College took the lessons from the Fleet Problems and incorporated them into a vast series of wargames. These wargames were also unconstrained by predetermined conclusions. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the officers who would eventually lead the American armada in its defeat of Japan spent time at the Naval War College participating in and learning from these wargames.² And the results of the wargames were fed back to the fleet, helping to inform the next Fleet Problem. It was these incessant wargames the prompted Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz to remark after the war, that “the war with Japan had been enacted in the game rooms at the War College by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war. We had not visualized these.”³

The Marine Corps of the 1930s realized that if it were to remain viable as a service, it needed a mission beyond is role as a constabulary force. Recognizing the need for island bases for the success of the Navy’s plan to defeat Japan, the Marines developed doctrine first to seize and then to defend island bases to allow the fleet to march across the Pacific. Initiated by Major Pete Ellis’ survey of the islands of the South Pacific, the Marines developed the Tentative Manual for Landing Operations (1934) and the Tentative Manual for Defense of Advanced Bases (1936) with the help of dedicated effort by the faculty and staff of Marine Corps Schools. Brigadier General James Breckinridge, Commandant of Marine Corps Schools, “temporarily discontinued Field Officers School classes so that the staff and students could devote their full attention to developing the new doctrine.”

The three efforts discussed above were self-synchronizing, which is to say not synchronized, with no single authority directing their efforts. This led to inefficiency and a lack of common direction. Despite the excellent work occurring in Naval War College wargaming, the college struggled to stay open during the austere, Great Depression-era budgets of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The conclusions reached by fleet commanders and War College staff and students did not always agree, and senior navy commanders in charge of the fleet often did not want to yield to the academics. And despite the apparent utility of seizing island bases to the drive across the Pacific, the U.S. Navy initially invested little in amphibious capability, even when naval construction began anew in 1933.

There were still successes in integrating efforts. Fleet Problem III in 1924 provided the first opportunity to incorporate the Marines into fleet operations and demonstrated that “amphibious operations might have a role to plan in the navy’s sea-control mission.”⁴ In the mid-1930s, the Fleet Problems began to include a Fleet Landing Exercise (FLEX) component, but often the Marine’s desire to contribute to the sea control mission by seizing islands was superseded by the Navy’s focus on the decisive fleet engagement.⁵ The opportunity for integration was there, but without a common top-down coordinator, the two branches continued to focus on their independent priorities.

Integrating Today for Tomorrow’s Fight

Today’s Navy-Marine Corps team can learn from these efforts, modeling the commitment to Fleet Problems, Naval War College wargaming, and the single-minded development of amphibious doctrine, but today’s team needs to take it further. The first improvement is to ensure these efforts are integrated. The CNOs FRAGO and the Commandant’s Planning Guidance are a step in the right direction but cannot be the end of integration. An integrated Navy-Marine Corps steering group should be developed to synchronize integration efforts, identifying significant integration development activities, and ensuring alignment among them. A modern version of the Navy General Board as suggested in Joel Howlitt’s 2017 CNO History Award-winning essay could serve this role admirably. The steering group does not need to create additional events but instead would ensure existing events are linked together and align Navy-Marine Corps integration efforts and doctrine where appropriate.

Next, make these three powerful integration mechanisms a priority. Don’t allow LSE 2020 to be a one-off event. Like the Fleet Problems of the interwar years, make the LSEs annual, and make them a defined operational priority for the fleet’s ready naval power, getting as many ships, aviation units, and Marine formations to sea and into the exercise as possible. And for ships unable to sail or other units unable to join, connect them to the exercise via the Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE) and after action review mechanisms.

Once complete, consider how the lesson from the exercises will be used. Will they be squirreled away in a lesson learned database, or will they be turned over to these new, powerful brain trusts of the Naval War College and Marine Corps University? Like the interwar period, the Large Scale Exercise and Fleet Exercises should inform, and be informed, by the studies at the two institutions. Give the classified results, all of them, to the war colleges, and let the student and staff pick them apart.

To ensure quality analysis and feedback, the service must send the best officers from all warfighting and combat support communities to the Naval War College and Marine Corps University – not just the officers who happen to be available. There is a saying that if the loss of a liaison officer you sent to another command doesn’t hurt, you’re sending the wrong officer. The same should be true with the Naval War College and Marine Corps University. Accept the tactical risk at the unit level of losing an officer to this effort to buy down the strategic risk of an underprepared officer corps. This is exactly what is called for in the Secretary of the Navy’s Education for Seapower (E4S) Decisions and Immediate Actions memorandum from February of last year. In it, he directed that “All future unrestricted line Flag and General Officers will require strategically-focused, in-residence master’s degrees.” The Navy’s Chief Learning Officer further notes that “the critical months of in-residence study afford each officer a unique chance to read, think reflect, and interact with their future fellow Fleet and Marine Operating Force Commanders…”⁶

While these future operational commanders are in residence at the War College and Marine Corps University, make it worth their while to attend these prestigious institutions. Rather than sticking to a rigid curriculum designed to satisfy graduate school accreditation and Joint Professional Military Education wickets, give these officers the hard problems to solve. Give them the tools to “study strategy, policy, operational doctrine, and the effects of new technologies for national strategic advantage”⁷ that comprise the current curriculum, but then give them real-world tasks, at the appropriate classification levels, and let them apply that knowledge. Not just in select groups like Gravely and Halsey, but across the board – putting large numbers of minds against our hardest problems to come up with a range of solutions, just like the interwar period’s Naval War College did.

And while sending the best and brightest to in-residence programs, more integration is needed in each institution. A recent Proceedings article called for higher percentages of Marines at the Naval War College and filling all the Navy billets at Marine Corps University. This is spot on and should be implemented with urgency. If we are going to ask the Naval War College and Marine Corps University to tackle problems of integration, they must have an integrated staff and student body. Then allow wargaming departments, now with a significant pool of frontline operators available to run the games, refight the LSEs and determine were improvements can be made. And finally, feed the output from these wargames into designing the subsequent LSEs, to take advantage of the lessons learned from these multiple interactions.

Conclusion

The tools are in place and a roadmap is available for developing Navy-Marine Corps integration in peacetime. The interwar use of annual Fleet Problems, Naval War College wargaming, and Marine Corps amphibious doctrine development focused the efforts of all three on preparing for war against Japan. Using those same tools and the lessons learned from their shortcomings, Navy-Marine Corps warfighting and warfighters can achieve unprecedented levels of integration and be prepared for the next great Pacific war when it comes.

CAPT Jamie McGrath, USN (ret.), retired from the U.S. Navy after 29 years as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer. He now serves as a Deputy Commandant of Cadets at Virginia Tech and as an adjunct professor in the U.S. Naval War College’s College of Distance Education. Passionate about using history to inform today, his area of focus is U.S. naval history, 1919 to 1945, with emphasis on the inter-war period. He holds a Bachelor’s in History from Virginia Tech, a Master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and a Master’s in Military History from Norwich University.

References

1. Albert A. Nofi, To Train the Fleet for War: The US Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940 (Naval War College Press: Newport, RI, 2010), 303-315.

2. John R. Kroger memorandum to Secretary of the Navy, Graduate Strategic Studies for Flag and General Officers, dated 11 December 2019. On 07 December 1941, 83 of 84 active Navy flag officers were graduates of the US Naval War College in residence program at the beginning of World War II.

3. Chester W. Nimitz [FAdm, USN], speech to Naval War College, 10 October, 1960, folder 26, box 31, RG15 Guest Lectures, 1894–1992, Naval Historical Collection, Naval War College, Newport, RI,

4. Craig C. Felker, Testing American Sea Power: US Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923-1940 (Texas A&M University Press: College Station, TX, 2007), 94-97

5. Ibid., 104-109

6. Kroger memorandum.

7. Ibid.

Featured Image: Sailors and Marines of the USS Ronald Reagan stand at attention before manning the rails on the flight deck in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, June 28, 2010.
U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Oliver Cole

CNO’s Design Week

By Capt. Bill Shafley

Introduction

 The Chief of Naval Operations recently released FRAGO 01/2019, A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The CNO charged senior leaders to simplify their focus. Warfighting, the Warfighter, and the Future Navy are its tenets. At the nexus of these tenets rests the staff of the Carrier Strike Group, where this staff employs the combat power of the premier maneuver arm of the Fleet Commander, the Carrier Strike Group (CSG). To master fleet-level warfare and leverage the power of the integrated fleet as the CNO urges, this staff must be organized, manned, and educated for the complexity of the high-end fight.

The CSG Staff

The CSG staff could benefit from an overhaul. The complexity of the future fight in terms of surveillance, maneuver, and fires call for a level of synchronization and expertise in planning that the current staff is unprepared for. This organization violates the warfare principles of simplicity and unity of effort. The Destroyer Squadron staff, Carrier Air Wing staff, and the niche capability of air defense expertise in the CSG’s resident cruiser provide some hedge against those capability gaps. Yet that expertise comes with a tax of an additional layer of command that adds little tactical value. Every platform in the Carrier Strike Group is multi-mission capable. A destroyer commander has air defense responsibilities to provide the air defense commander. She also has responsibilities as the strike commander and the sea combat commander. Experts in tactics, techniques, and procedures are part of their planning and watch teams. All the while the CSG commander and his staff are inundated with up to three different commander’s views and requirements for the accomplishment of a single mission. This distracts from warfighting. The Composite Warfare Commander (CWC) structure is fit for purpose as a way to “fight a strike group.” But as a manner of planning for combined and coordinated operations, standing warfare commanders and their staffs may be an artifact of the past.

The amount of warfare areas that must be managed and the density in which they can present in any given tactical scenario require the logical organization of the CWC construct. The point is not to argue that the CWC in execution is flawed. Any given operation requires a C2 structure and a doctrinal manner in which to conduct key tasks in the accomplishment of a mission. As the majority of the units in a CSG (from aircraft to surface ships) are multi-role, multi-function and task organized as such, it may be time to leave the CWC organization to the execution of missions and tasks not as a manner in which to “staff” operations at sea.

If the CSG in a wartime environment is the primary maneuver arm of a fleet-level engagement, the CSG staff in its current organizational construct may not be robust enough in manning and experience to integrate at the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander (JFMCC) level. The Fleet staff is organized in a MOC-MHQ construct. It is designed to link into the theater level where campaigning is the order of the day, and operational art (the sequencing of operations in time, space, and force) is truly practiced. A CSG staff is nowhere near organized in the same manner. It may become quickly overwhelmed as the pace and density of operations increases. Without augments, its ability to stay ahead of the Fleet’s fight, synchronize at the operational level of war, or take advantage of tactical opportunity may be overcome.

Today the CWC is the organizing principle behind CSG operations. Common resources are “coordinated” and warfare areas are “commanded.” The CWC organization doesn’t delineate who is responsible for maneuvering the force into position to achieve effect. The CWC organization doesn’t clearly delineate who is responsible for coordinating fires on an objective area and simultaneously protect the carrier from multiple threats in multiple domains. Current practice would suggest this is achieved through warfare commanders working through warfare coordinators in supporting and supported roles. The CSG staff would look for ways to salami slice tasks to the IAMDC, the SCC, the IWC, and CAG. But those structures matter little at echelons above the CSG where in the future fight close coordination will be necessary for managing and resourcing the high-end fight. These stovepipes create missed opportunities for synergy and potentially leave valuable tactical and operational questions unexplored.

Recommendation

The premise behind a new organizational framework lies in the notion that planning for and conducting operations is central. Operations consume readiness and finite resources provided from a common pool. Radar resources, aircraft, fires, intelligence, voice and data communication are necessary components required to place a combat ready, protected Carrier Strike Group in position to achieve an effect. To enable mission command, the commander must have a staff that can translate his understanding of the operational environment and the theory of the fight into actionable orders and tasks across the warfighting functions that can be assessed to ensure mission accomplishment. A new structure for a CSG staff may hold the solution.

A fresh structure should make the warfare commanders and their staffs dual-hatted. Upon completion of the maintenance and basic phases at the unit level, the Air Wing, Destroyer Squadron, and Senior Information Warfare Officer assume the duties as one of four Deputy Commander billets: Deputy Commander for Operations, Deputy Commander for Readiness, and Deputy Commander for Support. The Senior Warfare Commander assumes duties as the Chief of Staff. The Cruiser and CVN COs retain duties as unit Commanding Officers. The squadron and wing staffs round out the existing CSG staff with subject matter tactical, technical, and planning expertise.

The Deputy Commander for Operations leads a team of watchstanders and planners across multiple disciplines to manage the current fight, plan for tomorrow’s fight, and resource the plans of the more distant future. This staff section is the engine that affords the CSG commander the space to execute the mission at hand. It is manned by cells organized around the joint warfighting functions of maneuver, fires, sustainment, protection, and ISR. The operations team is organized along the COPS, FOPS, and plans construct. It is structured to support the Main and Future Planning Groups and staff TFCC, Sea Combat, IAMD, Strike Cell, and Supplot. The COPS, FOPS, and Plans teams are lead by O5 officers with command and/or significant aircraft type, model, and series experience. The team has Weapons and Tactics Instructors from all the communities and advanced trained operational planners. These subject matter experts form the backbone of a planning team has the capability to synchronize resources in time and space employed in a tactically relevant manner.

The Deputy Commander for Readiness leads a team of operators and logisticians charged with ensuring the Carrier Strike Group’s operational reach is effectively sustained to see mission accomplishment through. The readiness team takes a similar approach to the operations team. It is tasked to look at sustainment across platforms, sources of supply, and time horizons. It has a COPS and FOPS team that support the operational tasking framework described above. These readiness cells are staffed with platform-familiar operators and subject matter experts that understand the technologically advanced systems the CSG takes into combat. The team is also manned with the traditional N1 personnel team and the Senior Medical Officer. These functions serve to ensure that the force is manned and cared through steady state operations and in the event of casualties. The readiness team is staffed with temporary TYCOM liaisons that work hand-in-hand with the strike group maintenance officer for emergent and planned mid-deployment voyage repairs. The strike group’s safety and standards officer is also a part of this team and is charged with maintaining operational safety programs and standards keeping.

There are two remaining staff functions in this plussed-up Carrier Strike Group staff. The Deputy Commander for Support leads a team of subject matter experts among the warfighting functions that provide support for operations and readiness. These subject matter experts include Strike Warfare, Ballistic Missile Defense, Anti-Terrorism, and Force Protection. The senior intelligence officer, the senior communicator, and cryptologist join this team. This team also has a tactical development cell charged with forecasting areas for tactical improvement. The strike group training officer is assigned to this staff section and is charged with maintaining a cadre of trained watchstanders, planners, and subject matter experts during the off-cycle. The training officer also introduces and inculcates a formalized after action review process that feeds back to the team lessons learned to foster continuous learning and trend spotting.

The staff is rounded out by the command group. The flag secretary serves as the staff XO. The flag LT, flag writer, and flag mess along with the judge advocate, chaplain and public affairs officer round out this team. The staff XO reports to the chief of staff as his principal assistant. The flag XO maintains the staff tasker list and staffs all routine CDR-level communication up echelon. The chief of staff is the designated deputy CSG commander.

Conclusion

This new staff organization is designed for high-end operations at-sea. It is an operations-centric organization that is designed to take advantage of maneuver and disaggregation to achieve effects. It blends the subject matter expertise of the Navy’s best junior tacticians and planners with its most experienced commanders. It flattens command and control within the strike group in a manner that allows for true task organization, mission command, and recognizes the multi-mission nature of our platforms. This staff will be robust enough to take full advantage of developing over-the-horizon weapons and surveillance technologies. Finally, it creates a staff where the CSG plans for and executes strike group operations holistically without the lenses of the air wing, the boat, and the small-boys. Warfighting functions break down the current community barriers and make operations truly agnostic. To win in the high-end fight requires a staff structure that puts its best and brightest in a position to produce, execute and assess mission orders. This new structure provides an option.

Captain Bill Shafley is a career Surface Warfare Officer and currently serves as the 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.

Featured Image: Air traffic controllers assigned to the carrier air traffic control center aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman keep a close watch on flight operations. (U.S. Navy photo/Seaman Ryan McLearnon)