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Capability Analysis

An Information Dominance Carrier for Distributed War at Sea

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Future Capital Ship Topic Week

By Dmitry Filipoff

Introduction

“These three forces – the forces at play in the maritime system, the force of the information system, and the force of technology entering the environment – and the interplay between them have profound implications for the United States Navy.”- A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.1 

A capital ship’s capabilities has always revealed what is most decisive in naval warfare. In the next high-end fight, what will be most decisive is the ability to secure decision superiority in a contested information environment fraught with uncertainty and change. The understanding of how information will be contested and employed in future war remains in flux. The value of information in guiding fleet tactics and force structure is already being realized by China in unconventional ways. But what will emerge from an understanding of the future threat environment is that capital ships, especially aircraft carriers, can take the lead in contesting the electromagnetic domain itself. 

China’s Presence and Information Advantage

“U.S. Navy Warship 62, this is Chinese Navy Warship 575. Copy that, I will be staying along with you for the following days. Over.” Chinese frigate to USS Chancellorsville in the South China Sea.2

China is winning the battle of presence in Asiatic waters. According to the Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, the level of presence the U.S. Navy will reach this year in the South China Sea is on track for 900 ship days,3 and that figure is higher than usual due to an uptick in strike groups operating in the region. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) now shadows every U.S. warship that transits the South China Sea,4 FONOPs or otherwise, meaning the PLAN has likely surpassed the U.S. Navy in how much forward presence it maintains in key waters in Asia.

However, the PLA Navy is just the tip of the iceberg. China’s robust standing naval presence is augmented by coast guard units and potentially hundreds of paramilitary fishermen (maritime militia) and commercial vessels. China frequently leverages these forces for escalation, such as how the number of Chinese ships around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands’ contiguous zone surged to about 230 ships less than a month after The Hague ruled against China’s South China Sea claims.5 In recent years there has been a consistent presence of about 70-90 Chinese ships around disputed East China Sea waters, up from virtually nothing a decade earlier.6

Japanese Coast Guard data on the numbers of Chinese vessels that entered the contiguous zone or intruded into territorial seas surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Note the spike in activity in August 2016 and the virtually nonexistent level of presence prior to 2009 (Click to expand).7 (Japanese Coast Guard)

These paramilitary forces will readily provide escalation and wartime advantages for China, especially in the area of information. These units will likely exploit the protection rights of non-combatants to secretly contribute intelligence to China’s military in a theater of active hostilities. This will pose difficult legal, diplomatic, and military dilemmas and test the limits of rules of engagement. Fears over paramilitary units will exacerbate suspicions of thousands of civilian vessels and add new layers of complexity to the operating environment. Widely dispersed paramilitary units could provide early warning and conduct battle damage assessment without incurring the risk of emitting the unique signatures of military-grade equipment. Regardless of the fact that the majority of USN and PLAN assets reside outside forward areas during peacetime, this robust paramilitary presence would provide China with some sense of informational continuity in the transition between war and peace. It is an information-focused distributed fleet on the cheap.

The rise of China’s maritime might is causing a significant shift in the operating environment the U.S. Navy considered itself the lone master of for three-quarters of a century. This displacement is jeopardizing the credibility of U.S. security guarantees in the region and allowing China to more confidently intimidate its neighbors. It is also a direct challenge to the U.S. Navy’s core missions of upholding the fundamental principle of freedom of navigation and offering avenues of access for American power. The level of U.S. Navy forward presence will only grow more inferior as China continues its large-scale and comprehensive maritime buildup. America’s grip on maritime superiority in Asia is weakening, and the U.S. Navy must undergo a major transformation to stay on top.

Establishing a Vision of Networked War at Sea

“DO NOT – REPEAT NOT – BELIEVE WE SHOULD SEEK NIGHT ENGAGEMENT. POSSIBLE ADVANTAGES OF RADAR MORE THAN OFFSET BY DIFFICULTIES OF COMMUNICATIONS AND LACK OF TRAINING IN FLEET TACTICS AT NIGHT.”-Admiral Willis Lee responds to Admiral Raymond Spruance’s query on whether to attempt a night engagement on June 17, 1944, two days before the Battle of the Philippine Sea.8

A transformation is already underway as navies around the world seek to conceptualize what warfighting at sea will entail in the information age. A common vision must be founded on a basic understanding of how various aspects of war have been evolved or outright revolutionized by modern technology. Technology has turned the electromagnetic spectrum into the centrally contested domain that critical warfighting functions depend on across the entire breadth of their execution.

Networks are not only tools but battlefields. Winning in the electromagnetic domain will determine whether critical intelligence is transferred, instructions are conveyed, and if the complex process of accurately targeting modern weapons is completed. Electronic warfare, cyber warfare, and ISR will largely be directed at understanding, confusing, and then deconstructing the system of systems that forms the adversary’s battle network. The fundamental trust that operators place in their equipment and each other will be a prime target. Degrading this trust could cripple a force out of proportion to actual losses.

A key element of the U.S. Navy’s effort to adapt to this new environment will be widely distributing its combat power to gain sea control rather than closely aggregating units together as has been common practice for generations. Up until recently, fleet combat required physically concentrating forces for concentrating their firepower. Distribution reflects how the technology behind network-centric warfare has made it feasible to disaggregate ships yet still aggregate their capabilities. Distribution better postures a fleet for electromagnetic maneuver by deconflicting the electronic warfare capabilities of friendly units and forcing an adversary to spend more time localizing contacts across a large expanse of ocean.9 But managing the networked functions of a distributed fleet is a hard enough challenge that will grow even more difficult when the electromagnetic domain is contested in wartime.

Command and control grows more strenuous with greater distribution. U.S. and allied assets will already be dispersed throughout the battlespace in some manner at the onset of sudden war, and will have to be quickly maneuvered into some viable operational structure. The task of organizing a dispersed naval force across a large theater as hostilities break out will be critical not just for success but for survival against a near-peer opponent.

This challenge reveals how gaining momentary surprise at the onset of full-scale networked war at sea can reap strategically disabling blows. Even brief victories against networks will quickly translate into the sudden and decisive destruction that has always characterized war at sea. This grim possibility will be all the more important to guard against when the Navy is asked to project power against adversaries that will enjoy the benefits of operating close to home, such as land-based anti-ship capabilities that enjoy inherently steep logistical and survivability advantages over naval forces.

CSBA graphic from 2010 on China’s principal PLA air-defense units and anti-ship ballistic missile sites. (CSBA)10

Distribution enhances survivability by attacking left of the kill chain, the complex process of targeting modern weapons. By making the adversary’s information gathering and decision-making processes the focus, distributed warfighting emphasizes deception. Deception and distribution will exacerbate the severe challenge of processing the copious amounts of information gathered by powerful, modern sensors. For example, a P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft can generate up to 900 gigabytes of data in a single mission.11 Overstimulating sensors can fray nerves and induce an adversary to make decisions to their own detriment, such as radiating active sensors which can compromise stealth, unknowingly maneuvering into firing envelopes, and even firing salvos of hard-to-replenish missiles at ghost contacts. 

Gathering intelligence on the wide variety of unique signatures and capabilities that compose an adversary’s electronic order of battle will be pivotal in facilitating wartime adaptation. Threat libraries will be rapidly updated as adversaries reveal the true extent of their electronic capabilities. This intelligence will be fed into a fast-firing cycle of iterative adaptation where superior electronic capabilities will be fielded via something as quick as a software update. 

Operators will strive to understand the implications of a variety of actions and inaction amidst a constant struggle for electromagnetic context. Ships will carefully regulate emissions to avoid detection, yet emissions are paradoxically important for delivering effects, managing command and control (C2), and updating situational awareness. Employing a powerful emitter such as a SPY radar can pose a liability, and ships that feel compelled to radiate and communicate for the sake of enabling their own defense can compromise friendly units and become more susceptible to follow-on attack.

An analogy for surviving modern naval combat can then be drawn from Dr. Stephen Biddle’s description of the revolution in land warfare that transpired in the early twentieth century:

“…the complexity of the earth’s surface offers enough cover and concealment to substantially shield land forces from the increasing potential lethality of modern weaponry. However, to operate a mass military of potentially millions of soldiers in a way that can exploit the natural complexity of the earth’s surface for cover and concealment means accepting tremendous complexity in tactics and operational art. Relative to, for example, Napoleonic tactics where armies could be lined up in shoulder-to-shoulder linear formations and simply marched towards an objective, if you’re going to use the complexity of the earth’s surface to provide cover in ways those massed shoulder-to-shoulder formations couldn’t do, then you’re going to have to break down those massed formations into small handfuls of soldiers few enough in number that they can fit into the folds in the earth that create what militaries ironically call dead ground, where dead ground is of course where you can live…”12

The mass, attrition-based Napoleonic formations of today are the capital ship-centered strike groups, and the “small handfuls of soldiers” are a networked fleet’s dispersed surface action groups. The protective “folds in the earth” are the various nuances of the electromagnetic domain that is being contested and manipulated. Making sense of these nuances within the spectrum in order to recognize opportunities to deliver effects will define the competition.

The wartime implications of the latest technologies are often not fully understood before they are fielded, but having a common vision of future war at sea serves as a necessary foundation for training, equipping, and operating a navy. The extent to which such a vision is being jointly established and acted upon in a coordinated manner by the various communities within the U.S. Navy is unclear.

The surface Navy is in the early stages of operationalizing its distributed lethality concept that envisions numerous surface action groups operating offensively to achieve a cumulative sea control effect. This stands in stark contrast to the strike group constructs that have been the focus of surface ships for generations, where combatants specialized in escorting capital ships in mainly defensive roles. A new distributed operating concept for surface combatants should be facilitating a Navy-wide appraisal of what this means for all other communities and how the Navy interfaces with the joint force more broadly.

To the Navy’s credit, Naval Warfare Development Command recently convened stakeholders from across the naval enterprise to contribute to the development of a forthcoming Distributed Maritime Operations concept (DMO) that could serve as a focal point for force development.13 Where there is room for improvement is in articulating what role capital ships, especially aircraft carriers, will play in a distributed fleet.

Aviation-Centric Information Dominance CONOPS for the Distributed Fleet

“At sea better scouting  – more than maneuver, as much as weapon range, and oftentimes as much as anything else – has determined who would attack not merely effectively, but who would attack decisively first.” CAPT Wayne P. Hughes, Jr. (ret.)14

The idea of a distributed fleet aggregating its capabilities through networking is not itself new.15 What is novel is the confidence in the ability of the scouting and communication enterprise to provide the information needed to effectively use high-tech weapons at ranges that were once considered extreme. But confidence is not capability, as evidenced by the decision to pull the anti-ship Tomahawk missile from the Navy’s inventory due to a lack of such confidence in the 1990s.16 Now within a decade an anti-ship Tomahawk will be back in the fleet, featuring a 1,000 nm range and offering a widely distributed sea control capability alongside other forthcoming networked missiles.17 The question is whether the Navy will be able to scout and communicate well enough to employ these weapons at range, especially when distributing the fleet compounds the information-related challenges of operating within a contested electromagnetic domain.

As warships spread out to confound an adversary’s situational awareness and offer options to deliver fires, capital ships will make scouting, secure information transfer, and deception their primary missions. The natural advantages aviation enjoys in electromagnetic and physical maneuver will make the aircraft carrier central in conducting these critical missions. By taking the lead in contesting the spectrum, the capital ship will animate the networked fleet by securing decision superiority.

Aviation’s Key Advantage

Electronic action is still bound by physical limitations. Aviation can act as the connective tissue of an ocean-going battle network because altitude has a corresponding effect on detection and communication capability via a superior ability to peer over the horizon compared to a ship. This extra dimension of maneuver introduces more flexibility for managing the risks of sensing and communicating, making aircraft the scouting and information transfer asset of choice.

A high-flying aircraft with a powerful radar can sense surface contacts further out than surface contacts could sense one another over the horizon. An aircraft can emit or transmit, drop to lower altitude, and then relocate faster than a ship to mitigate risk and get information to where it needs to be. Aircraft can use their speed to maximize the use of line-of-sight communications whose considerable bandwidth and jam-resistant advantages will prove indispensable in a contested information environment.

These physical properties will allow aircraft to facilitate fleet connectivity by forming sensing and communication pathways through maneuver. Commanders will have a flexible means to augment the scope and focus of information that is being collected and shared throughout the force. Airborne sensor fusion will help commanders prioritize information flows to meet rapidly emerging needs. These characteristics hold significant tactical and operational implications for the distributed fleet.

Engage-on-Remote, In-Flight Retargeting, and Command and Control

The technology that makes distributed operations possible will be for naught if an evolution in tactical thought does not accompany it. A primary challenge of distributed warfighting will be delivering the information needed to employ the engage-on-remote and retargeting capabilities that are the hallmark of a distributed fleet’s combat potential.

Retargeting and engage-on-remote make weapons more reliable and fleets more flexible. The engagement process is transformed from a linear kill chain into an expansive kill web. Networked units can leverage capabilities from across the force to meet individual needs. Platforms will be able to fire without emitting, improving survivability. Salvos can build density as missiles from across the distributed fleet are aggregated. 

But engage-on-remote and the long range of potential exchanges means that sailors will have to get used to firing weapons with incomplete information. The passage of time and the dynamic nature of the contested spectrum means that the information that precipitated an engagement will often not suffice to complete it. Retargeting will prove decisive by allowing new information to be fed into a live engagement. It will help keep firepower discriminate, resilient, and long-range while mitigating the risks of operating with less information.
 

Retargeting and engage-on-remote will dictate a fleet formation because a distributed force is not formless, but rather than an extended strike group of sorts. The ability to leverage engage-on-remote and retargeting capabilities from across the force will be a function of fleet connectivity and weapons range. The distance between platforms and payloads will affect the timeliness of information transfer, and weapons range will dictate the maximum extent to which forces can disperse from one another yet still combine their fires effectively.

https://gfycat.com/SkeletalZigzagAtlanticbluetang

An animation of a hypothetical scenario demonstrating the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC). (JHU APL)18

The wide-ranging tactical flexibility that can be gleaned from retargeting and engage-on-remote is directly correlated with the ability to transfer information. Ideally any sensor or communicator will support any shooter or payload, but passing information between them all will be difficult when that information is contested and loses relevance with time. The ability to fire and contribute information without radiating organic sensors opens up numerous tactical options, but using this capability will mean the man on the scene will have to rely on a man not on the scene. Therefore these capabilities combine to fundamentally change the perception of time, timing, and opportunity for a fleet.

This will aggravate the challenge of precisely conveying commander’s intent and delegating the appropriate level of initiative to networked forces. Much of the public writing on distributed lethality has argued for delegating authority to the man on the scene, but that man will be just one more node in a network. They may not fully realize the tactical possibilities at hand compared to someone with better situational awareness and a broader view of how the fleet’s combat power is distributed. The organic sensors of ships cannot be trusted to independently target payloads that need to travel hundreds of miles through a contested information environment, especially when ships operate under EMCON. Launching a salvo will be a momentous decision as a large amount of a ship’s or surface action group’s magazine could be depleted in a single exchange, requiring confidence in information and the larger operational situation.

Aviators will become the tactical controllers of warship-based capabilities in a distributed fleet because their maneuver advantage translates into a superior ability to facilitate broad situational awareness, sensor fusion, and fleet connectivity. They will have more context and ability to make decisions, execute quick workarounds, and gather additional information versus warships that are tightly controlling their emissions while proximate to the adversary. Aviation-based network nodes can shift schemes of maneuver to help commanders balance the need for information up the chain of command with the need for initiative down the chain of command. 

The fact that only aircraft can realistically trail and intercept missiles in real time means they can provide more inputs to facilitate retargeting, and could close with inbound enemy salvos to target their datalinks. Aviators (with automated decision aids) will manage information flows between sensors and communications to make numerous inputs into the engagement process as it is transpiring. Because corrupt information will be commonplace in the next high-end fight, and because autonomous machines cannot be entrusted with life-or-death decisions, humans must own this process. In-flight retargeting is a weapon’s insurance policy, and aviation can be its guarantor.

In this particular sensor-to-shooter construct, aircraft become the primary sensors and communicators because they can facilitate fleet connectivity through maneuver, and ships become the primary shooters. Since firing without emitting makes units less susceptible to detection, warships will become more survivable. This is preferable because aircraft are more numerous and replaceable than ships. But employing a dynamic ship-to-aircraft information interface will involve a steep learning curve. Speaking on the challenges of making the Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) capability a reality, then-Captain Jim Kilby remarked that it involves “a level of coordination we’ve never had to execute before and a level of integration between aircrews and ship crews.”19 

Aviation will also facilitate C2 by helping commanders with early-warning, battle damage assessment, and keeping tabs on one’s own forces. Having more time to react to threats will be key in crafting a tailored response from various tools that each have their own electromagnetic implications, rather than making commanders feel compelled to go all out to defend against the possibility of imminent destruction. Learning the status of dueling enemy and friendly ships can be risky, but when a ship under EMCON explodes in the ocean, does it make a sound?

Lastly, an aviation-centric C2 scheme will build upon the natural advantages of undersea forces. Submarines will be able to penetrate further into the battlespace than surface ships, improving their chances of discovering high-quality information about the adversary. Securely getting that information back to the fleet via aviation-based network nodes will make the risk worth it, and engage-on-remote and retargeting can impose a daunting tactical problem by forcing adversaries to localize a submarine that is firing missiles or deploying decoys at range.

Deception and Softkill Countermeasures

One of distributed lethality’s maxims is “If it floats it fights” but if it floats it should also deceive. Deception will enhance survivability, gather intelligence on the enemy’s electronic order of battle, and facilitate strikes. Superior deception earns decision superiority.

Deception-enabling capabilities can be distributed throughout the fleet by fielding a greater variety and quantity of decoys. These can include long-range decoy missiles that mimic the profiles of aerial platforms and conduct offensive electronic warfare, as well as shorter-range launched decoys and floatable payloads that can take on ships’ signatures. These systems often weigh less and take up less space than hardkill systems, making them easier to distribute en masse. For example, the ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) missile is about half the length and a tenth of the weight of a Tomahawk cruise missile, and has a 500-mile range.20 Such a decoy missile could enable an advanced fleet-wide deception capability by being fitted into launch cells, box launchers, and wing pylons.

Two Miniature Air Launch Decoys sit side-by-side in the munitions storage area on Barksdale Air Force Base, La., March 21, 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Micaiah Anthony)

Aviation can enhance fleet deception by flexibly deploying, retargeting, and transporting a large variety of decoys on demand. The extent to which the platforms themselves are actively at the forefront of deception should be minimized. Operators should strive to delegate as much deception as possible to decoys and unmanned platforms that can take on the risks of raising a higher electromagnetic profile. Deception plans involving decoy saturation would allow for momentary opportunities to break EMCON and gather information as an adversary reacts to the deception. Decoy missiles could act as penetration aids to improve the lethality of salvos and help aircraft scout risky areas. Aircraft can manage decoy missile datalinks in-flight to maximize their usefulness.

Lastly, softkill countermeasures can have far more favorable cost-exchange ratios against missiles compared to hardkill measures, allowing a distributed fleet to conserve munitions and improve survivability. Aviation assets could maneuver on short notice to deploy softkill payloads along the axis of an inbound salvo to dilute it at a distance from the intended target. These comparatively small and lightweight payloads would allow a capital ship, via an interoperable aviation platform, to flexibly deploy defensive countermeasures over a large area and replenish other ships’ decoy and softkill inventories on demand. This capability will be critical because a distributed fleet will often struggle to mass defensive firepower in a timely manner.

Wartime Adaptation and Augmentation

Capital ships themselves still possess unique advantages in information age warfare. Capital ships will play a key role in facilitating frontline wartime adaptation because they will field the largest afloat concentration of intelligence, cryptologic, and cyber expertise in the battlespace.21 As information is continuously gathered and transferred by aviation across the distributed fleet, capital ship-based expertise will lead the effort to process that information to discover vulnerabilities and devise fixes and exploits. Capital ships will in turn use their superior reach back capabilities to act as a conduit between the forward-most warfighter and national-level assets that can aid adaptation, such as Navy and DoD threat libraries.

Aviation can take those exploits and fixes back to the distributed fleet and the enemy from the capital ship. This will be especially poignant for sustaining a deception advantage, where both sides will place priority on unmasking the other’s means of deceiving. Fresh updates based on the latest intelligence could be patched into modular decoy payloads at the capital ship, and then aviation can transport these enhanced decoys back out to the fleet via a platform that is interoperable with capital ships and surface combatants.

V-280 concept. (Bell Helicopter Image)

Such a ubiquitous and modular aerial platform will allow the capital ship to compliment warship needs in a variety of ways. Aside from aiding various warfare- and information-related missions, having an aerial platform that can land on almost anything will open up options for augmenting logistics and personnel on the fly. It will also enhance capital ship survivability by allowing the surface force to take on some of the burden of sustaining aviation assets.

Unmanned Systems

Unmanned systems can play a role by conducting a variety of the missions described, whether information transfer, sensing, or deploying decoys and softkill countermeasures. Because of their relatively small size and weight, the sensors and payloads required to conduct these missions can be fielded by unmanned systems in the nearer-term compared to heavier offensive weaponry. Additionally, automation alone will improve communications security because more automation means fewer operator inputs are needed. Because robotics has shrunken platform size, future capital ships will be able to easily host small undersea, amphibious, and surface unmanned systems to extend their reach into more domains than before.

Conclusion

“The competition is on, and pace dominates. In an exponential competition, the winner takes all. We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency that our previous advantages may have afforded us, and move out to build a larger, more distributed, and more capable battle fleet that can execute our mission.” The Future Navy.22

Wayne Hughes offers an important caveat to all of this, that “tactical complexity is a peacetime disease” and that “the temptation to equate complex tools with complex tactics will be almost irresistible.”23 As with what happened in WWII and elsewhere, the Navy and the U.S. military writ large will run the risk of employing tactics and technologies that are not yet fully inculcated into the force if war breaks out. Given the current pace of change, that risk may never go away.

What should be clear, at least for now, is that there is still a place for capital ships in high-end warfighting. The distributed fleet of tomorrow can become real if capital ships dedicate themselves toward prosecuting the most important and elusive target of all: information.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].

References

1. A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, Version 1.0, U.S. Department of the Navy, January 2016. http://www.navy.mil/cno/docs/cno_stg.pdf

2. Helene Cooper, “Patrolling Disputes Waters, U.S. and China Jockey for Dominance”, The New York Times, March 30, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/world/asia/south-china-sea-us-navy.html

3. Andrew Galbraith, “U.S. Commander says ships on course for more days in South China Sea”, Reuters, June 15, 2017. http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-usa-defense-idUKKBN1961GT

4. Anders Corr, “Chinese Warships Shadowing U.S. Navy: ‘New Normal’ In South China Sea”, Forbes, July 3, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anderscorr/2017/07/03/chinese-warships-shadowing-u-s-navy-new-normal-in-south-china-sea/#709a12186029 

5. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Protest Against the Intrusion of Chinese Coast Guard into Japanese territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands”, August 6, 2016. http://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_001227.html

6. Lyle J. Morris, “The New ‘Normal’ in the East China Sea”, RAND, February 27, 2017. https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/02/the-new-normal-in-the-east-china-sea.html

7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Trends in Chinese Government and Other Vessels in the Waters Surrounding the Senkaku Islands, and Japan’s Response – Records of Intrusions of Chinese Government and Other Vessels into Japan’s Territorial Sea”, August 3, 2017. http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/page23e_000021.html

8. James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide, pg. 171,  Bantam Books, New York, 2016.

9. Jim Loerch, “Empowering Electronic Warfare to Save Carrier Strike Groups”, Signal, September 2016. https://www.afcea.org/content/?q=Article-empowering-electronic-warfare-save-carrier-strike-groups

10. Jan van Tol, Mark Gunzinger, Andrew F. Krepinevich,  and Jim Thomas, “AirSea Battle: A Point of Departure Operational Concept”, pg. 65, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010. http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/airsea-battle-concept/publication 

11. Michael Glynn, “Information Management and the Future of Naval Aviation” Center for International Maritime Security, September 19, 2015. https://cimsec.org/information-management-and-the-future-of-naval-aviation/18870

12. Mina Pollmann and Matt Merighi, “Sea Control 130 – Stephen Biddle on Future Warfare in the Western Pacific”, Center for International Maritime Security, March 22, 2017. https://cimsec.org/sea-control-130-stephen-biddle-future-warfare-western-pacific/31485 

13. Naval Warfare Development Command Public Affairs, Advanced Warfighting Summit Focus On Enabling Distributed Maneuver, Naval Warfare Development Command, May 19, 2017. https://www.nwdc.navy.mil/PressRelease/10.aspx 

14. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, pg. 173, Naval Institute Press, 1986.

15.  Hughes, pg. 196. 

16. Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, “Naval Weapon of Choice”, Naval History Magazine, U.S. Naval Institute, February 2016, Volume 30, number 1. https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2016-02/naval-weapon-choice

17. Sam LaGrone, “WEST: U.S. Navy Anti-Ship Tomahawk Set for Surface Ships, Subs Starting in 2021, U.S. Naval Institute News, February 18, 2016. https://news.usni.org/2016/02/18/west-u-s-navy-anti-ship-tomahawk-set-for-surface-ships-subs-starting-in-2021 

18. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, “Air and Missile Defense: More than Two Decades of Sensor Integration Efforts at APL.” http://www.jhuapl.edu/ourwork/airdefense/CECvideo.asp 

19. Sam LaGrone, “The Next Act for Aegis”, U.S. Naval Institute News, May 7, 2014. https://news.usni.org/2014/05/07/next-act-aegis

20. Raytheon, “MALD Decoy.” http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/mald/

21. John Gordon et al. Leveraging America’s Aircraft Carrier Capabilities, pg. 15,  RAND National Research Defense Institute, 2006. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG448.pdf

22. The Future Navy, U.S. Department of the Navy, May 17, 2017. http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Richardson/Resource/TheFutureNavy.pdf

23. Hughes, pg. 191. 

Featured Image:  SOUTH PACIFIC (June 29, 2017) Ships assigned to Carrier Strike Group 5 sail in formation during a coordinated live-fire gunnery exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Burke/Released)

Capability Analysis

Return of the Sea Control Ship

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Future Capital Ship Topic Week

By Captain Pete Pagano, USN (ret.)

Breathtakingly disruptive technologies offer unparalleled and innovative possibilities for naval operating concepts, but a large, survivable hull in the water that is able to conduct sustained combat operations will continue to define the capital ship into the 21st century. Today, a confluence of events has made revisiting the Sea Control Ship a vital task for the sea services. From commissioning new, large-deck amphibious assault ships specifically designed to maximize aircraft operations, expanding ARG-MEU mission sets via the tiltrotor MV-22 Osprey, and most significantly the imminent deployment of the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), such a ship with its vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopters could conduct ASW and carry out other sea control missions such as surface warfare (SUW). Additionally its air group of F-35B aircraft could conduct strike missions in lower intensity conflict situations such as the U.S. in Libya in 2011. Such a platform is the key to the future of maritime warfare not because it is a replacement for the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft carrier, but rather because it is a complement that will free up the larger and all too few fleet nuclear powered aircraft carriers to focus on the power projection mission of striking enemy targets inland during a high intensity conflict.

The Concept

Naval Doctrine Publication 1 (NDP 1) and Joint Pub 3-32 define sea control as one of the core capabilities of naval forces – necessary to the accomplishment of all other naval missions and complementary to the mission of power projection. Sea control operations include destruction of enemy naval forces, suppression of enemy sea commerce, protection of vital sea lanes, and establishment of local military superiority in areas of naval operations.1  During his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral “Bud” Zumwalt advocated a High-Low mix of warship designs in order to affordably meet the numbers of ships required to counter the Soviet Union in any major war – specifically the building of smaller aircraft carriers to supplement the Carrier Strike Groups. In 1971, USS Guam (LPH-9) was selected as the test ship for a Sea Control Ship (SCS) concept. Testing began in 1972 and was completed in July 1974.2  Ultimately, the tests and concept were deemed unsuccessful and the Navy did not go forward with it. The short endurance and limited payload of the early model Harrier and the limited sensor capability of both the ship and the SH-3 Sea King ASW helicopter were the chief shortcomings of the concept.  However, today such shortfalls would be remedied by the fielding the LHD/LHA (which has a sensor and communications suite comparably to a Nimitz class aircraft carrier), F-35B JSF, the sensor-rich MH-60 multi-role helicopter, and the MV-22 Osprey with its myriad capabilities.

The Ship

Today’s Sea Control Ship could be based on the America-class already in production. At more than 44,000 and 42,000 tons of displacement respectively, the America-class amphibious ships and their LHD half-sisters of the Wasp-class are far from small. The Wasp and America-class ships are over 840 feet in overall length and both types have a 106 foot beam.3 In dimensions and displacement they are akin to, and actually exceed, the war-winning Essex-class aircraft carriers that the U.S. Navy employed to fight across the Pacific to victory in the Second World War. The Essex-class aircraft carriers were 872 feet overall with a 93 foot beam and displaced 27,100 tons in their WWII configuration.4 Coincidentally, the Wasp and America classes also bear more than a passing physical resemblance to these carriers as well. With some modifications, such as shifting the island superstructure outboard supported by a sponson, the flight deck area could be enlarged. Since a Sea Control Ship would only embark vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) and short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft, the catapults or arresting gear systems necessary for a conventional take-off and landing aircraft carrier would not be required. That saves weight, reduces costs – both construction and operating costs – and does not require as large a ship.

The chief argument often made in defense of big carriers versus small ones is that anything less than the supercarrier is not survivable – be it the Nimitz class of today, weighing in at 100,000 tons, or the earlier Kitty Hawk and Forrestal classes which ranged between 65,000 and 80,000 tons during their careers. However ,the combat record of the Essex class, which can be viewed as a surrogate for the LHA/LHD (and by extension the Sea Control Ship) in this argument, proves just the opposite. In World War II, not a single Essex class aircraft carrier was lost though several took punishing damage from aerial bombs and kamikazes. USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was hit in quick succession by two kamikazes while covering the Okinawa landings, experiencing widespread fires and 653 casualties.5 The ship steamed back to the United States for repairs under her own power. In March of 1945, USS Franklin (CV-13) became the most heavily damaged United States aircraft carrier to survive the war after a Japanese air attack inflicted extensive damage to the flight deck, hangar deck, two decks below them, and the CIC, resulting in 724 killed and 265 wounded.6  In post-WWII service, off Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, Essex-class carrier USS Oriskany experienced extensive fire damage through five decks with 44 killed when a flare inadvertently ignited and set off a chain reaction of explosions.7 Ample evidence exists that an aircraft carrier of 40,000 tons or so can take hits and survive.

On Essex-class carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10) crew stands at attention as the National Ensign is raised, during commissioning ceremonies at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 15 April 1943. Photographed by Lieutenant Charles Kerlee, USNR. (Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)

Another argument used against small aircraft carriers, and the adjective small here is used relatively, is that the embarked air component would be correspondingly small as well. This is true in part, but with precision guided munitions (PGM) and the types of missions envisioned for the Sea Control Ship, an air group of 30 or so STOVL fixed wing and rotary wing/tiltrotor aircraft would be appropriate and sufficient for mission execution. Both the LHA and LHD class ships are designed to support an air component of over 30 fixed and rotary wing aircraft. Both ships are also able to accommodate more than 20 fixed wing STOVL aircraft as an alternative load out. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, USS Nassau performed in this role of “Harrier carrier” and USS Bataan (LHD-4) served in this capacity as well during the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2013.

The LHD and LHA of today are not your grandfather’s amphibs. The command, control, computer, communication, combat systems and intelligence (C5I) capabilities are extensive and second only to a Nimitz class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) in capability, to include: two- and three-dimensional air search radars, an extensive satellite communication suite, and intelligence support facilities. The sensor and communication assets built into the big deck amphibious ships provide further proof that sufficient capability can be built into a carrier of 40,000 to 45,000 tons.

The Air Group

The Sea Control Ship’s air group would be built around the F-35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighter. With its advanced capabilities in sensing, stealth and weapons delivery, this aircraft is a game changer that puts to rest the argument that STVOL aircraft are a step down in capability vis-à-vis their CTOL aircraft relatives. Tiltrotor and rotary wing aircraft such as the MH-60R Seahawks and the MV-22 Osprey would support the F-35B. A tanker mission package is already being developed and tested by the United States Marine Corps for the MV-22 Osprey to further support the F-35B . Additional support would exist in the form of a tiltrotor airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft.

USS AMERICA, At Sea – An F-35B Lightning II aircraft completes Envelope Expansion Testing during a Short Take-off Vertical Landing aboard USS America, Oct. 30, 2016. (US Marine Corps Photo)

For the sea control mission, the main battery would exist in the form of an ASW-tiltrotor aircraft equipped with surface search radar, dipping sonar, sonobuoys, magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) gear and torpedoes. This aircraft would also be capable of surface warfare (SUW) missions if equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles. The MV-22 airframe, combined with technology and systems already in existence, make these variants well within the realm of feasibility and affordability. Rounding out the air group in the mission of sea control would be detachments of “Romeo” and “Sierra” models of the ubiquitous H-60 helicopter for use in the inner zone ASW/SUW mission set.

Distributed and Agile

A key advantage of an air group comprised exclusively of STOVL and rotary wing aircraft is the tactical flexibility in basing that they permit. Not only would the air group be able to be based on smaller aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibious ships, but they can also be based in detachments across a number of even smaller ships, to include non-traditional ones such as modified container ships in a further expression of distributed lethality. Additionally, the air group could be shore-based on expeditionary air strips in austere locations. With this capability the air group could conduct shuttle missions between their sea control ship home base and these expeditionary sites. Vulnerability to this type of shuttle bombing operation was always a concern by Admiral Nimitz and his commanders when planning operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy and its network of island bases and mobile striking fleets. It is a vulnerability we can impose on a future adversary in a theater of operations where the geography features many islands.

Complement not Replacement

In a major combat/high intensity conflict, CTOL aircraft carriers like the Nimitz class will be fully engaged in strike-oriented power projection missions and seeing to their own fleet defense. However, the supporting missions of sea control will still need to be accomplished and will require a significant amount of air support. Enter the Sea Control Ship. Sanitization of chokepoints to allow the passage of shipping and the protection of convoys are two examples of missions for the SCS. Much like the Independence-class light aircraft carriers (CVL) that supplemented the Essex-class aircraft carriers in World War Two, Sea Control Ships could be employed to provide ASW, SUW, and assist in air defense of the carrier strike group, acting as a force multiplier to maximize the offensive punch of the CTOL carriers.

In lower intensity conflicts and small scale interventions, the Sea Control Ship and its air group may be a sufficient instrument of national power to accomplish the mission. Two recent examples of intervention operations bear this out: the employment of Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG)/26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) in Operation ODYSSEY DAWN in 2011 and Wasp ARG/22nd MEU in Operation ODYSSEY LIGHTNING in 2016.

Opponents of the Sea Control Ship will correctly state that smaller aircraft carriers lack the sortie generation rate of the CTOL carriers and STOVL aircraft and don’t match CTOL aircraft in range, ordnance load out, and ordnance bring-back capability. However, for the missions envisioned and with employment of PGMs, the SCS and its STOVL air group do not need to exactly match the CTOL carrier and its air wing in these performance metrics. Additionally, the STOVL F-35B comes quite close to CTOL high-end tactical aircraft in performance and outclasses almost anything our potential adversaries currently field.

The Way Forward

The last decade has been described as budget-constrained and an opportunity for experimentation and innovation similar to the interwar period of the 1930s. As such, the United States Navy and Marine Corps should seize the opportunity to experiment with the Sea Control Ship concept. In this lean budget climate, it is especially appealing that nothing further need be designed or purchased to pursue this experiment. A point to consider is whether, and for how much longer, the appetite for the purchase of nuclear-powered supercarriers will exist in Washington. Developing a lower cost alternative now rather than later that can supplement the CVNs would maximize the utility of the existing carrier fleet.

The LHA-6, F-35B, MV-22 and MH-60 series are all in service. Now is the time to use these assets to develop and refine the concepts of operation and employment for a future Sea Control Ship. The Navy and Marine Corps should conduct a robust and iterative series of experiments and exercises to fully develop the concept of operations and employment and then use the results to develop a design for a purpose-built Sea Control Ship class. The America-class would be an obvious and appropriate starting point for this design. The AEW and ASW tiltrotor variants could be fielded in a fairly rapid fashion accordingly using existing off-the-shelf technology.

Much like during Admiral Zumwalt’s era, we are once again in an era of constrained budgets and rising international threats. Then, like now, innovative thinking needs to be applied to affordably generate the necessary numbers of ships and aircraft to meet the threat and accomplish the mission. The Sea Control Ship is easy to implement, as flexible as it gets, and requires very little research and development. It is the immediate solution to the Navy’s future needs.

Captain Pagano is a retired surface warfare officer who commanded the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group as Commodore of Amphibious Squadron Four. Prior to that, he was commanding officer of USS Carr (FFG-52). Currently he is employed as a senior analyst and instructor at Tactical Training Group Atlantic.

Notes

1. Joint Pub 3-32, 07 August 2013, I-3, 4

2. Norman Polmar, The Ships of the U.S. Fleet, 14th Edition, (Naval Institute Press, 1987), 193

3. Jane’s Fighting Ships online (IHS Global Ltd, 2016)

4. Paul H. Silverstone, U.S. Warships of World War 2, (Naval Institute Press, 1989), 42

5. Dictionary of American Fighting Ships online (Naval Historical Center)

6. Ibid

7. Wynn F. Foster, Fire on the Hangar Deck – The Ordeal of the Oriskany, (Naval Institute Press, 2001), 69

Featured Image: The amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) performs flight operations while underway to Rim of the Pacific 2016. (U.S. Navy photo by Demetrius Kennon)

Capability Analysis

The Network as the Capital Ship

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Future Capital Ship Topic Week

By Robert C. Rubel

Introduction

From the galleasses at the Battle of Lepanto to the aircraft carriers of today, the capital ship has been that ship type that is capable of defeating all other types. That is the general and simplistic definition of the term, but to speculate on the future capital ship, we must understand the underlying characteristics of a capital ship and its role in fleet architecture and design. We will start with the ship itself and then move outward to its context and implications for maritime strategy.

The Core of the Fleet

The adjective “capital” is used because the ships to which it has applied have been the biggest and most expensive of the naval vessels of their day. This was the case due to the armament they carried; the most and biggest guns available and later the most and most capable aircraft. Whether smooth bore cannon versus rams, number of guns available for a broadside or the caliber of rifled guns, the name of the game has been weight of fire and hitting at distance. The protection of capital ships required significant amounts of investment, first in armor, then in escorts. The expense and the difficulty of building capital ships meant that they were the least numerous ship type. However, their number was important in determining overall naval power. Generally, the capital ship inventory of the most powerful navies was in the dozens.

The physical characteristics just discussed had a powerful influence on fleet design and by extension on maritime strategy. The capital ship was the tool by which a nation could contend for command of the sea, either globally or regionally. Thus a nation’s fleet was designed around the capital ship in various ways.

First, they had to be supported by a variety of lesser ship types that performed functions such as scouting and protection. In this sense the capital ship was the pivot of fleet design. Given the existence of other, potentially hostile capital ship fleets, distribution of capital ships was a key issue. If there was a sea invasion threat to the nation, a “home fleet” of capital ships was necessary. On the other hand, depending on the threats to a nation’s maritime commerce, there was frequently a need to deploy capital ships, individually or in small squadrons, to counter or eliminate these threats, but that raised the danger that they would be caught by a larger force and destroyed. The British concept of the battle cruiser, a heavily armed but lightly armored and fast ship, was intended to address this dilemma. As additional threats such as the torpedo boat, submarine, and aircraft emerged, additional protective measures had to be taken such as escorts and design changes including torpedo bulges and dense anti-aircraft secondary batteries.

The capital ship has been the ultimate arbiter of command of the sea, both in war and peace. Command of the sea can be most usefully thought of as the balance of strength among contending navies. The navy with command of the sea is free to disperse its forces to exercise control in various localities and more broadly, has various strategic options open to it that are closed to the navy and nation that has lost command. The expense of capital ships and their consequent relative scarcity, the time required to replace losses and their intimate connection with command of the sea, coupled with the strategic importance of such command, led national leaders and admirals to be cautious about committing their capital ship fleets to the test of battle. Even a small perceived imbalance of power has caused admirals to try and avoid pitched battle; like going “all in” in Poker, one must be very confident of one’s hand.1 Thus decisive naval battles have been rare and most of those that have occurred involved the weaker force being surprised, cornered or forced into battle by their national leader.

Since the age of sail, the capital ship has been the unit of measure for naval power. When a nation seeks great power status, it starts building a powerful navy, this being true even of historically continental powers such as Germany, the Soviet Union, and now China. This has produced naval arms races and wars. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was an attempt to suppress naval arms races by limiting the total tonnage of warships and imposing a hiatus on building capital ships among the U.S., Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.

Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Kaga (Colorized by Lootoko, Jr.)

After World War II, the U.S. Navy found itself with near absolute global command of the sea but retained a significant number of its capital ships for the purpose of exercising command of the sea in peacetime. Such exercise consisted of deploying carrier battle groups around the periphery of Eurasia in order to enforce the international order the U.S. desired. In this case the necessary number of capital ships became a function of the combination of deployment demands, maintenance requirements, training, and personnel tempo. 

Capital Capabilities

The large deck aircraft carrier has been the capital ship since the start of World War II. Its hold on this status is based on the effectiveness and utility of its embarked tactical aircraft. The question is whether it will retain that status or be replaced by something else. We will take on this question based on the characteristics and factors that have been discussed.

Let’s start with weapons. The advent of micro circuitry, new forms of sensing and artificial intelligence have transformed missiles, in all their forms, into perhaps the dominant and decisive type of weapon at sea, both for offense and defense. Most ship types carry them and countries such as China have developed land-based ballistic missiles of very long range that can seek ships. Advanced surface-to-air missile systems now constitute a lethal threat to any aircraft except  perhaps those possessing the most advanced stealth technology. Modern anti-ship missiles are increasingly sophisticated and hard to defend against.

All of this has difficult if not dire implications for the continued status of the aircraft carrier as capital ship. Certainly, additional measures can be taken to enhance the defense of both tactical aircraft and the carrier, but these will add to the expense of the total system to the point that it could outweigh the value of the offensive capability it possesses. At that point, according to George Friedman, it becomes “senile.”2 If indeed the missile becomes the key weapon, many different ship types can carry them, for both war at sea and shore bombardment. The question then becomes whether missiles are best concentrated in a large “arsenal ship” or distributed out among a lot of different ships. If concentrated in a few large hulls, it is possible that these “missile battleships” (BBM?) would be the new capital ship. Such concentration would certainly make it easier to coordinate missile salvos.

However, looking beyond the ship itself reveals some factors that militate against concentration. The first is the inherent risk in concentrating offensive firepower in a single ship. Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski articulated the concept of tactical stability which states that as we pack more offensive capability into a ship, there is a point at which its defensive capability ceases to increase proportionately. At that point, escorts are needed.3 Moreover, if a task force has a key capability installed on one or a few ships, their loss would neutralize the whole force, and thus it is tactically vulnerable and subject to catastrophic failure rather than graceful degradation. For this reason, the Navy is developing the concept of distributed lethality: mounting offensive missiles on as many ships as possible in order to complicate enemy targeting and reducing the risk of catastrophic degradation to the force as a whole. 

Another issue is the distribution dilemma. For today’s Navy, it takes two forms: global and regional. Globally, having only ten available aircraft carriers limits the presence the U.S. can generate in multiple regions simultaneously. Moreover, strategic adjustments to deployment patterns must be made on the basis of carrier groups, which is a rather coarse methodology, sort of like trying to draw a precise, detailed picture with a large-tipped magic marker. Regionally, deploying carrier groups must “starburst” into individually operating ships to accommodate all the Geographic Combatant Commander’s engagement commitments. This prevents routine training to maintain combat readiness skills and of course opens individual ships, especially the carrier, to surprise attack. There is also the risk involved in operating carriers in the threatened littoral. This risk is manifest not only at the tactical level in which attacks are more likely to be successful, but in the strategic risk of losing a precious capital ship. Again, the emerging concept of distributed lethality promises a way to avoid or at least moderate the dilemmas and risks.4

The emergence of the missile as the “weapon of decision” both at sea and ashore has a couple major implications. First, since missiles can be mounted on almost anything, the relationship between ship size and characteristics and weapon power is broken. It would seem to make little difference if a salvo of missiles is launched from a single ship or many. Second, the distribution of offensive power among a lot of different ships promises to reduce both operational and strategic risk in various ways and eases the distribution dilemmas.5 This would seem to spell doom to the capital ship concept, and in this writer’s opinion, it does, at least in the conventional sense of a single ship type.

There is, however, another way to look at the matter. The key capability of a capital ship has been to deliver a superior weight of fire at a longer range than anything else. Certainly, our “BBM” would have plenty of missiles to fire, but that is not enough. Those missiles must be fed targeting information to be of any use. International law doesn’t permit firing missiles down a line of bearing and letting them open up their sensors at a certain point and hit the juiciest-looking contact. That makes them “indiscriminate” and therefore illegal. So, without targeting, the BBM or any missile ship intending to fire over the horizon, is useless.

Guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70), during a joint Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Navy ballistic missile flight test.  (U.S. Navy photo)

Missiles are getting smarter, but there are a couple of reasons that it is tactically and operationally inadvisable to just light off a salvo with incomplete targeting and identification. First, if facing sophisticated defenses, the salvo must be timed precisely to saturate or at least confuse defenses so that at least some missiles get through. Second, missiles themselves will likely be at least somewhat scarce resources and so must be used efficiently. To achieve both objectives, an area-wide network of sensors, processing and decision making must exist beyond the hulls of the fleet. Granted, individual ships will have their own targeting capabilities, but these likely will not be sufficient for getting full kinetic range from their missiles.

Merging Capital Ship and Networked Force Concepts

Putting it all together, it seems useful to regard the fleet battle force network as the future equivalent of the capital ship. It and it alone allows the delivery of a useful weight of fire at long range in a naval fight. The application of the capital ship term may not be absolutely necessary, but it does confer some useful organizational effects.

First, if the network becomes the pivot of fleet design, certain new perspectives emerge. A key one is a fresh understanding of how existing and potential ship types relate to each other. There isn’t room in this essay to tease out all of these threads, but there are several insights that can be mentioned.

First, since the network consists of physical nodes and connectors (sensors, communication relays, etc.) it must receive physical as well as cyber protection. This is an important potential new role for aircraft carriers. Using a new air wing composition, the carriers can provide air superiority over distributed lethality forces and protect airborne assets like P-8s and Tritons, provide communications relay in the event that satellites are knocked out, and perhaps provide targeting services to missile ships. Thus, carriers would become escorts for the network. An advantage of this new function is that they would not have to operate as close in to the enemy shore as they would if their air wings constituted the key offensive strike capability and the risk to aircraft is reduced. This would allow carriers to remain viable and useful for the foreseeable future.

Second, since physical concentration would not be necessary for combat effectiveness, the risks associated with the regional distribution dilemma would be substantially avoided. Globally, since combat power would be distributed among a larger number of ships, a finer strategic distribution picture could be drawn, assuming that each forward fleet has its own battle force network established.

A network-enabled distributed lethality force would also mitigate the strategic risks associated with the traditional capital ship concept, especially in an era of renewed naval competition. A fight for command of the sea using such a force would not necessarily entail an “all in” decision, providing some strategic decision making flexibility for fleet commanders. Crises or perhaps limited conflicts that occur within the range arcs of major power denial systems could produce a risk dilemma for the U.S. if its offensive power remains concentrated in traditional capital ships. This is precisely what, for instance, the Chinese hope to create if conflict breaks out over any of their contested island claims or even war on the Korean Peninsula.

Missile technology appears to give a decisive edge to the tactical offensive at sea – the historically normal state of affairs. In the early years of the Pacific War, aircraft carriers dealt with this condition by attempting to strike effectively first, the paradigm being the Battle of Midway. However, if the enemy’s offensive power (missiles, say) is dispersed and hidden, then such a remedy is unavailable. Thus capital ships, in attempting to intervene in some littoral conflict would be excessively vulnerable; that is, their loss would be incommensurate with the strategic gains promised by the operation. Capital ships should only be risked when the potential strategic gain, usually command of the sea, is worth such risk. The point is that in the emerging world it may not be worthwhile to employ traditional capital ships even when regional command of the sea is at risk, as they could be lost without prospect of meaningful gain. Network-enabled flotillas would substantially obviate the dilemma.6

Without going into the murky world of cyber warfare, it is worthwhile to point out that the network has offensive and defensive potential beyond supporting missile warfare. Offensive cyber attacks can disrupt enemy command and control and targeting. It would make sense to have such capabilities inside the lifelines of a fleet battle force network in order to achieve effective coordination with missile and other forces. In terms of network design, we may yet be in the “pre-Dreadnought era” awaiting that breakthrough concept that makes all other approaches obsolete. Applying the capital ship framework to the battle force network may help us develop or at least recognize that breakthrough when it comes along.

There are other capital ship-related concepts such as staying power7 that could be useful when applied to the design and operation of battle force networks. Capital ships were built to take hits and still fight. Obviously no ship can endure multiple hits indefinitely, so the notion of staying power helped designers figure out how much protection was needed and make the necessary tradeoffs with armament, speed, sea keeping, magazine capacity, etc. How long the ship needed to hang in there was a valuable determination and so it might be with the network. Staying power might not be measured in minutes as it was with battleships, but some other criterion such as confidence or available bandwidth might be adopted.

Conclusion

This article does not advocate reducing the number of aircraft carriers or for constructing any new class of ship; the designation of the battle force network as the modern instantiation of the capital ship is a way of establishing a new logic that underpins fleet design. If fleet design is regarded as the prerequisite and precursor to fleet architecture, the logic of network-enabled missile warfare will clarify what kinds and numbers of ships the Navy should have.8 There are, of course, many other considerations and influences on fleet architecture, but achieving institutional focus via the network as capital ship concept would go a long way in helping the Navy rapidly enhance its offensive lethality and use its available resources efficiently.

Emerging technology and shifting geopolitical conditions are changing how naval warfare will be conducted in the future. The U.S. Navy must adapt or find itself strategically outmaneuvered. Effective adaptation will require more than updates to current ship types; it will require totally new approaches to fleet design. Instead of thinking outside the box, it might help the Navy to think outside the hull.9 Adopting the network-as-capital ship idea is one way to do that.

Professor Emeritus Rubel is retired but serves as an advisor to the CNO on fleet design and architecture. He spent thirty years on active duty as a light attack and strike fighter aviator. After leaving active duty he joined the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College, serving as Chairman of the Wargaming Department and later Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In 2006 he designed and led the War College project to develop the concepts that resulted in the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. He has published over thirty articles and book chapters dealing with maritime strategy, operational art and naval aviation.

1. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Lessons of the War With Spain and Other Articles, (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1899), p. 31. Mahan discusses the effect of the loss of a single ship on the naval balance with Spain before the war.

2. George and Meredeth Friedman, The Future of War, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), p. 26 and Chapter 8, “The Aircraft Carrier as Midwife,” pp 180-204.

3. Wayne P. Hughes Jr, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2000), pp. 286-291. Prof. Hughes influenced Admiral Cebrowski’s thinking, and the discussion of massing  for defense on the cited pages provides a more in-depth look at the logic of instability.

4. Robert C. Rubel, “Deconstructing Nimitz’s Principle of Calculated Risk,” Naval War College Review, Autumn 2015, (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press), pp. 31-45. The article contains a detailed discussion of the various risks and distribution dilemmas inherent to aircraft carriers using the Battle of Midway as a case study.

5. Hughes. Chapter 11, “Modern Tactics and Operations,” pp. 266-309. Prof. Hughes offers a detailed and mathematical discussion of modern missile combat through the lens of operations research.

6. Rubel, “Cede No Water: Naval Strategy, the Littorals and Flotillas,” Proceedings, September 2013, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute), pp. 40-45.

7. Hughes, pp. 268-274.

8. Hughes, “The New Navy Fighting Machine: A Study of the Connections Between Contemporary Policy, Strategy, Sea Power, Naval Operations, and the Composition of the United States Fleet” (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School).

9. Rubel, “Think Outside the Hull,” Proceedings, June 2017, (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute), pp. 42-45.

Featured Image: USS Yorktown (CV-10) Crew stands at attention as the National Ensign is raised, during commissioning ceremonies at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 15 April 1943. (Photographed by Lieutenant Charles Kerlee, USNR. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives)

Capability Analysis

Future Capital Ship Topic Week Kicks Off on CIMSEC

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By Dmitry Filipoff

This week CIMSEC will be featuring articles that discuss future capital ship concepts in response to a Call for Articles from the U.S. Naval War College’s Institute for Future Warfare Studies. Below is a list of articles featuring during the topic week that will be updated as the topic week rolls out and as prospective authors finalize additional publications.

The Network as the Capital Ship by Robert Rubel
Swarming Sea Mines: Capital Capability? by Zachary Kallenborn
Return of the Sea Control Ship by Pete Pagano
An Information Dominance Carrier for Distributed War at Sea by Dmitry Filipoff
Capital Ship 2035: The Mission Command Vessel (MCV) by Harry Bennett
Pitfalls in New Capital Ship Creation by Steve Wills
Capital Uncertainty by J. Overton

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].

Featured Image: British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth II sails under the Forth Bridge. (Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS.com)