The following is the 1st Place, Gold Prize-winning essay of the First Sea Lord’s Essay Competition and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.
By Chris O’Connor
In 1906, the battleship HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. An engineering marvel at the time, it completely changed the playing field of naval warfare and made previous classes of battleships and armoured cruisers obsolete overnight. Its advantage was not new technology but using technologies in a new combination that had never been done before. It created such an epochal shift in warship design that the battleships built preceding it were retroactively described as ‘preDreadnoughts.’1 In the next couple of years, a new HMS Dreadnought will go to sea. It will contain technologies that were the realm of science fiction when the battleship Dreadnought was commissioned – leveraging the atom for electrical power and weapons, operating with thinking machines, and using sound and radio waves to detect targets unseen by the eye.
The change of technologies between Sir Jackie Fisher’s Dreadnought of 1906 and its namesake two generations later (with the nuclear-powered attack submarine of the same name in between) did not make warships obsolete, rather, it completely changed the perception of what a warship was. Submarines were not considered ‘warships’ by many in the Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th century – when Sir Jackie experimented with them as the Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth. Dismissed as ‘Fisher’s Toys,’ they were considered ‘unmanly, unethical, and ‘un-English.’2 If this sounds familiar, it is because this same kind of thinking, a fear of the new technology being so different that it is not ‘right,’ is used today to describe uncrewed platforms and other autonomous systems instead of ships operated by stalwart human sailors. The battleships of today are museums and not the capital ships of nations because they were overcome by new technologies and operational concepts. Warships still exist, but they are markedly different.
This historical perspective of maritime warfare innovation calls for a rephrasing of ‘will warships be obsolete?’ Instead, we should ask ourselves ‘What will make current warships obsolete?’ That way, we can examine the technologies that are just coming to the fore and begin thinking now about how warships will evolve, and yes, their form and function will not look like anything before.
Modern missiles and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) alone will not bring about this change. New anti-ship missiles with longer ranges, smarter seeker heads, and hypersonic speeds will certainly force operational changes and necessitate new countermeasures for warships on the surface (and eventually below the surface). DEW will be part of every physical domain of warfare, as laser and microwave weapons will be employed from everything from satellites to Marines on the ground. These weapons will lead to an evolution in warship design to add magazines and launchers for the new missiles and increased power generation for the DEW. These ideas are all rolled into the ‘Dreadnought 2050’ concept that was publicised in 2015,3 but in the intervening years between then and now, a new forcing function has emerged that will cause a drastic rethink about the concept of a ‘warship.’
The new paradigm in naval warfare will be triggered by the simple fact that a warship of any size will no longer be able to hide on the surface of the oceans. Persistent multispectral sensing from space with military and commercial satellites already complicate efforts to create uncertainty for potential adversaries. Imagery taken daily of bases and harbours can discern with ever greater clarity the readiness and deployment schedules of navies. This pales in comparison to the ramifications of when these constellations of satellites are aided by deep learning algorithms that will be able to provide daily positions of warships at sea. In just the past year, Russian military equipment aiding the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine and a Chinese spy balloon were both tracked by these revolutionary means – satellites from the commercial company Planet feeding their image sets to generative artificial intelligence.4
When surface warships can be tracked this way, they will be constantly targeted and will most likely lose the element of surprise. Submarines are safe from this technology, for now. Even if a ship was able to develop some sort of countermeasure to hide itself and its various signatures (to include its wake), modern ships still rely on fuel for their engines, parts for their systems, and food for their crew. A carrier strike group (CSG) or surface action group (SAG) will give away its location simply through the replenishment ships they require to operate. To win the fight in this sensing environment, the warship will not be over a hundred metres long with scores of people onboard, it will have to be altogether different.
A warship is nothing more than a cluster of capabilities working in concert to fight. Sensors, weapons, propulsion, command and control, communications, and decision-making processes all linked together with a common set of missions and its embedded tasks. Modern warships have all of most of these functions physically located in one hull, but they do not have to be. Instead of a large ship that has offloaded weapons and sensors (like an aircraft carrier), a warship of many small optionally crewed systems would replace that big ship altogether. If hit with a hypersonic missile or fried with a microwave pulse, the ship would be able to reconstitute with varied components.
The crew and command structure would look very different, too:
“A small crew would embark a ship, or series of ships, serving in a variety of modalities as expert controllers, emergency maintainers, and expeditionary operators…moving from independent expeditionary command with a manned crew, to embarking on a mothership or series of motherships supporting unmanned operations.”5
These smaller distributed ships will build up to units that will have humans on the loop but will have to rely on autonomy to do a lot of the fighting. In doing so, a navy will be built of units that are closer to an aviation squadron with one commander, whose span of control is over many smaller assets. These together will be the ‘warship’ that will adapt every time they are employed, as the systems learn from past operations and enemy activity and will swap out with others of different payloads. The evolving capability would be akin to changing the battleship HMS Dreadnought’s turrets every underway – that is how integral these smaller vessels will be to the coherent whole of the unit. There are two benefits to this model; one, the ‘distributed force will pose a vast array of interlocking firepower, making it less clear to the adversary which elements… pose the most pressing threat,’ and two, ‘impos[ing] more kill chains for the adversary to manage.’6 This way of fighting at sea will be the only way to manage when larger warships will be rendered obsolete by their signatures.
When Sir Jackie Fisher recognised the disruptive potential of submarines he did not care if they were cowardly or underhanded, he only cared that they worked.7 He had the clarity of vision to examine warfare from the undersea while working on a super battleship that would be revolutionary in its own right. He was quoted as saying “I don’t think it is even faintly realised that the immense impending revolution with which submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war.” The crewmembers of the two submarines named Dreadnought realised this revolution. How soon will we realise the revolution of autonomous systems that will lead to a warship of the future – the Dreadnought after next?
Cdr. Chris O’Connor is a U.S. Naval Officer at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and Vice President of CIMSEC.
These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of any government or department.
References
1. Jesse Beckett, ‘The Enormous Early 20th Century Pre-Dreadnought & Dreadnought Battleships’, War History Online,
25/03/2021, https://bit.ly/3pRpS6K.
2. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House
Publishing Group, 1991).
3. Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Dreadnought 2050: Is this the Battleship of the Future?’, The Diplomat, 07/09/2015, https://bit.ly/45iFgJL.
4. Patrick Tucker, ‘A “ChatGPT” For Satellite Photos Already Exists’, Defense One, 17/04/2023, https://bit.ly/3IqtGTa.
5. Kyle Cragge, ‘Every Ship a SAG and the LUSV Imperative,’ CIMSEC, 02/03/2023, https://bit.ly/3Mpb32X.
6. Dmitry Filipoff, ‘Fighting DMO, Pt. 1: Defining Distributed Maritime Operations and the Future of Naval Warfare’, CIMSEC, 20/02/2023, https://bit.ly/42Vj0Ea.
7. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).
Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Sept. 23, 2019) Royal navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) transits the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 23. (Photo courtesy of HNLMS De Ruyter)
Read Part 1 on defining distributed maritime operations. Read Part 2 on anti-ship firepower and U.S. shortfalls. Read Part 3 on assembling massed fires and modern fleet tactics. Read Part 4 on weapons depletion and last-ditch salvo dynamics. Read Part 5 on salvo patterns and maximizing volume of fire. Read Part 6 on platform advantages and combined arms roles. Read Part 7 on aircraft carrier roles in distributed warfighting. Read Part 8 on China’s anti-ship firepower and mass firing schemes.
By Dmitry Filipoff
Introduction
Militaries are left with little choice but to design their forces regardless of how well they understand the details of future warfighting. Force design is an exercise in placing educated bets on the future relevance of current and emerging capability. Many of these bets are far-reaching and irreversible, setting in stone much of what will be a service’s capability for decades. But the services must be prepared to make radical changes if the future of warfare heralds decisive new methods.
Distributed naval warfighting and massed fires offer a practical operational context for valuing the combat power of force structure. The broad fundamentals of these warfighting dynamics could provide an enduring basis for force design. By establishing criteria and frameworks based on lasting operational considerations, navies can preserve their relevance.
Critical Traits for Valuing Distributed Naval Force Structure
The factors that make forces concentrated, distributed, or stretched thin are closely tied to how those forces are packaged and postured. In physical terms, these different aspects can describe the density of capability in individual platforms, the way density is spread across a fleet, and how forces are spread across a battlespace. The concepts of force structure, force posture, and force packaging are intrinsically linked and come together to define an overall state of distribution. Consider how force density manifests differently across the following fleet configurations:
Concentrated force structure in concentrated formations, such as the main battlefleets of WWII, with large battleships and fleet carriers often massed together.
Concentrated force structure in distributed formations, such as spread-out surface action groups, with each consisting of a few large surface combatants.
Distributed force structure in concentrated formations, such as dense clusters of small surface combatants.
Distributed force structure in distributed formations, such as widely separated small surface combatants.
These configurations provide a frame of reference for the different shapes of fleets and how they could interact and compete. The distribution of one’s force structure should threaten to make the adversary’s force structure more concentrated or stretched thin by comparison. These disparities then allow the better distributed force to capitalize on its advantage by inflicting steep sudden losses against the more concentrated opponent, or inflicting cumulative defeat in detail against one who is stretched thin.
The fundamentals of mass fires and distributed naval operations translate into a set of traits for valuing the combat power of naval force structure. The fleet that exhibits a superior combination of these traits will offer better options for force employment and operational design.
Information and Decision Advantage. The informational and decision-making implications of force structure are more difficult to perceive and measure than physical manifestations of capability. But a distributed force’s ability to mass fires and strike effectively first is dependent on securing information advantage.
The physical structure of forces has a major influence over their methods of command-and-control, and how they challenge the command-and-control of the adversary. Force design should be mindful of the limits of command-and-control and the potential of force structure to overwhelm its own commanders. A distributed force structure may be of little use if the added complexity of wielding a wider distribution overwhelms commanders and corrodes the intended operational design.
Much of the decision-making challenge of attempting to mass fires stems from the burdens of sourcing firepower from across one’s own forces, and deciding how to apply that firepower across the forces of the adversary. A distributed force structure should strive to provide superior options for sourcing firepower, while making it more challenging for the adversary to apply their own fires across the breadth of one’s forces. Ideally distributed force structure sets the stage for mass fires to come together more quickly, with greater volume, and at longer ranges than the adversary.
It is not enough for a distributed force to field longer-range firepower, it must be able to out-scout and counter-scout the opposition. Much of a force structure’s ability to offer information and decision advantage will derive from its ability to field platforms with superior sensing, networking, and battle management functions. Each of these functions is critical in being able to find targets, cue fires against them, and maneuver those fires through retargeting functions and other methods. Aircraft in particular, such as high-endurance drones and 5th generation airframes, can do much to enhance to enhance these functions.
Having a superior ability to collect information is not the same as having a superior ability to decide on it. Ultimately much of the information and decision-making advantage will derive from the human element, and how warfighting procedure has been structured to support human choice. One of the more difficult challenges of force design is in perceiving how it will influence the human aspect.
Complexity of Threat Presentation. Distribution is meant to directly challenge the adversary’s ability to secure information and decision advantage, especially by complicating their ability to prioritize fires and interpret the battlespace. Complex threat presentation helps inflict paralysis by analysis, where an adversary’s decision-making is heavily consumed by making sense of the situation, and how the ensuing doubt slows their decision-making. It is a momentous operational decision to launch a large volume of fire and be willing to suffer the resulting weapons depletion. Complex threat presentation makes it more difficult to firmly commit to such irreversible choices.
Each type of platform and payload offers a specific form of threat presentation through its signatures, behaviors, and attributes that create demands for information and interpretation. The state of advantage can change depending on how assets come across on an adversary’s sensors and how easily they can be understood. Aircraft can employ fast maneuver, highly variable loadouts, and quick reload speeds to raise complexity. The steep magazine depth of surface warships can obscure a wide variety of potential weapon loadouts that may only be well-understood well after they launch fires. Submarines are aloof and hard to detect, forcing an adversary to scour for undersea contacts across wide ocean areas. Missiles with robust multimodal seekers and autonomous targeting logic can make it challenging to grasp their behaviors and devise real-time countermeasures. These many capabilities can integrate and overlap, creating interactions that are more difficult to understand than their standalone elements.
The complexity of one’s own force can also be self-defeating. There can be an assumption that a commander will have a better grasp of the complexity of their own forces in the battlespace compared to the adversary. But distribution and a fluid battlespace can challenge a commander’s ability to stay on top of how the complexity is evolving. Force complexity can also challenge units if a lack of familiarity with dissimilar forces hampers their ability to form combined arms relationships. There can also be an assumption that one’s understanding of the opposition’s complexity must be highly sophisticated to devise effective counters, but strong capability and effective tactics can compensate for lack of precise understanding.
There is a fundamental tension between presenting complex threats to the adversary and posing a simpler command-and-control challenge to one’s own forces, and force design must be mindful of striking a deliberate balance.
Longevity of Distribution. A distributed force should ideally maintain a high degree of distribution throughout the duration of the fight and ensure the distributed posture is enduring. It does not suffer from episodic fluctuations that sharply concentrate or stretch thin the force. Longevity of distribution is promoted by effective defensive firepower, deep inventories of weapons, higher numbers of long-endurance platforms, and robust logistical sustainment. It is also a factor of sustainable force generation practices and readiness cycles.
Longevity of distribution in a high-end battlespace will function differently than peacetime naval operations, where forces are continuously rotated to maintain a specific level of presence in the forward environment. The history of fleet-on-fleet combat strongly suggests there is little use for tactical reserves, unlike in land warfare.1 Rather, the fleet that can more quickly surge and concentrate greater forces and then deliver superior firepower first will be far more likely to succeed.
The longevity of distribution for an engaged fleet will be less a matter of devising a sustainable tempo of rotating forces through the battlespace, although that will still be an important function. Rather, longevity of distribution can be achieved by surging large numbers of forces and being able to maintain them for longer in the battlespace. Larger numbers increases the collective magazine depth of the distributed force, which allows the individual platforms to launch smaller increments of contributing fires, allowing them to persist for longer and contribute to a more enduring distributed posture on a force-wide level.
Inventory Breadth and Depth. A distributed force garners significant advantage by having a broader and deeper weapons inventory than its opponents. Inventory breadth is achieved by having a wide variety of numerous platforms that are compatible with long-range weapons. Inventory depth is achieved by having large numbers of weapons, both in the magazines within platforms and in weapons stocks that can be readily accessed for reloading. Deeper magazines allow commanders to diminish uncertainty by erring on the side of firing larger volumes of fire. Deeper weapon stocks reduce the major doubts and constraints that stem from concerns over depleting limited weapons inventory.
Firepower and Payloads. Information and decision advantage may count for little if they cannot be capitalized on with firepower. A distributed force aims to have superior options for massing fires by fielding missiles that have an edge in critical capabilities. These capabilities include long range, low time-to-strike, robust seekers, and waypointing and retargeting capability. Advanced networking and autonomous targeting logic is especially important for enabling missiles to optimize their own searches, defeat softkill measures, and leverage complex attack patterns during their terminal approach. These specific capabilities enhance the ability of weapons to combine into larger volumes of fire, preserve their lethality, and reduce the length of a firing sequence, even if they are fired from widely separated forces.
Much of force structure’s combat value is derived from its ability to deliver and withstand highly lethal payloads, making it vital to understand how different combinations of force structure result in different options for handling massed fires.
Scalable and Proportionate Combined Arms. Force structure must preserve the viability of combined arms relationships across the scope of its distribution. The force structure of a navy’s individual components should all ideally evolve in tandem and in proportion to one another to preserve their combined arms relations. If one dimension of a fleet’s force structure becomes more distributed while another remains relatively concentrated, combined arms relationships may not be as forthcoming.
As one example, the U.S. Navy would already be very hard-pressed to sustainably overlay carrier aviation’s critical enablers over multiple surface action groups that are widely distributed at a distance away from the carrier. If the force structure of the surface fleet becomes more distributed, but the carrier force does not, then many of those more distributed and smaller combatants may be well beyond the reach of naval aviation’s critical enablers. This then puts them and their salvos at greater risk of defeat in detail.
Uneven distribution across force structure can also increase risk to a force’s critical logistical enablers. Smaller ships typically have shorter range than larger ships, which makes them more dependent on logistical support vessels for regular refueling when operating over large oceanic expanses.2 The need to support small warships in a forward operating environment could drive critical support ships deeper into the contested battlespace and put them at higher risk. Or smaller ships would have to remove themselves far and away from the battlespace to meet up with support ships, which comes at the cost of diminishing force distribution.
A force design that plans on introducing large numbers of smaller combatants also demands a commensurate fleet of smaller support ships. Otherwise, the mismatch between the risk-worthiness of the small combatant and the large support ship could substantially increase the risk to critical enablers and force distribution.
Resilient degradation. The attributes that create advantage for a distributed force on a force-wide level should be able to gracefully scale downward if the distributed force fractures into isolated units, rather than allow an adversary to secure outsized leverage by severing links. If the cohesion of a distributed force fractures into standalone units and force concentrations, those isolated elements should still be able to muster substantial volume of fire independently, or be able to form enough proximate connections with nearby forces to mass enough volume on a local basis. Vital combined arms relationships should also be able to withstand force fracturing, or be quickly regenerated by isolated forces seeking each other out.
Last-Ditch Resilience and Effectiveness. Ideally the various elements of a distributed force cannot be easily manipulated into launching wasteful last-ditch fires that needlessly deplete inventory. This instability is minimized by information advantage and by having superior defensive capability at the local level. If elements of a distributed force must fire last-ditch salvos, those salvos are accurate, within reach of viable targets, and can be bolstered by well-controlled contributing fires. Units do not feel compelled to impulsively launch contributing fires to bolster a last-ditch salvo, either because the last-ditch salvo features considerable volume on its own, or due to adequate doctrine and command-and-control.
Critical Tactics and Methods. Aside from more general attributes and traits, specific tactics can create enduring requirements for dedicated force structure. Because sea-skimming salvos should be attrited well before they break over the horizon view of defending warships, the major tactical blindspot imposed by the horizon creates a strong force structure requirement for naval aviation. The desirability of using torpedo attacks to sink warships at far less cost compared to large missile salvos creates a strong requirement for submarines. Certain tactics offer outsized leverage in the battlespace and are deserving of specific force structure. Force structure ultimately exists to manifest the preeminent tactics of the day.
Debating Force Structure Through Small versus Large Surface Combatants
While force design encompasses the whole of the naval enterprise, offering a comprehensive rundown of specific force levels and platform requirements is not the intent of the analysis here. Part 6 assessed the various strengths and weaknesses of major naval platform types, and Part 7 examined the vital enabling roles of naval aviation. Major force structure implications can derive from those factors.
A more focused look at the variability of surface forces can yield broad takeaways for naval force structure. A critical aspect of considering naval force design is in debating the tradeoffs between small and large surface warships in the tactical context of distributed warfighting and massed fires. The comparisons offered here are mainly centered on the magazine depth of surface warships, which is perhaps the core factor in their ability for generating and withstanding mass fires. The average magazine depth of the individual surface force package can have outsized influence over the larger dynamics of mass fires and have cascading effects across combined arms relations.
Small surface warships can be understood as corvettes, fast attack missile boats, and surface warships with a magazine depth of 20 or less vertical launch cells. Large surface warships can be defined as warships with 60 or more vertical launch cells. Useful conclusions about force structure and force packaging can be drawn from how the tactical dynamics of mass fires shift in relation to these two widely separate degrees of magazine depth. A fleet that is more distributed and fields a lower average launch cell count per force package could face very different options and risks when massing fires.
Offense, Defense, and the Unstable Firing Sequence
Small combatants have tended to field smaller missiles with shorter ranges, such as 100 miles or less, and with relatively few missiles per platform.3 This stems from how many of these warships are too small to fit vertical launch cells into their hulls and accommodate the larger and longer-range missiles that would accompany these deeper launchers. Small combatants have instead often had box launchers mounted topside, which imposes major limits on magazine capacity and missile capability. This combination of low magazine depth and shorter-range weapons forces smaller combatants to closely concentrate around a target in larger numbers to achieve enough volume of fire to defeat warship defenses.
The shorter range of box-launched weapons makes it more likely small warships will have to withstand waves of fires if they are to eventually find themselves in a position to launch their own offensive firepower. But when it comes to defensive capability, many small warships that are confined to box launchers also tend to lack the magazine depth and hull space to mount the larger sensors and weapons that facilitate long-range air defense and early warning. Whatever organic air defense capability they field tends to be especially limited, potentially driving small warships toward concentration by the need for denser air defenses. And more warships firing defensive weapons at the same time within the same formation can mean more inefficient weapons depletion, unless those forces are tightly networked and integrated.
PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 13, 2019) The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) transits the Pacific Ocean. The warship’s anti-ship missile box launchers are visible aft of the main gun mount. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Josiah Kunkle/Released)
If small surface warships are to feature in massed fires, their force structure ideally should equip vertical launch cells at a minimum. Otherwise, a force will incur severe risks by attempting to mass firepower from short-range platforms carrying only a handful of short-range weapons. And even if those platforms do feature vertical launch cells, lower average magazine depth across force packages can have a major effect on the overall character of a mass firing sequence, especially with regard to susceptibility to last-ditch firing pressures, the distribution of timing across a firing sequence, and defensibility. Many of the same disadvantages that derive from box-launched weapons can also be incurred by the increased risk-worthiness of small combatants, where more risk-worthiness implies a capacity for more aggressive posturing in the battlespace.
Small combatants may be heavily dependent on larger warships to provide an enduring measure of air defense coverage. But the isolating effect of the horizon on naval defense tightly compresses the amount of space a warship of any size can defend. A destroyer protecting smaller combatants would only be able to offer meaningful defensive coverage to a relative handful of warships that are very proximate to the destroyer. If a larger number of small combatants want air defense coverage, the more tightly they will have to concentrate around larger combatants, and to perhaps very extreme degrees of concentration. This can create a denser and more distinct mass of signatures an opponent could exploit.
Having aviation provide air defense coverage could allow a wider distribution of small combatants compared to larger warships that are tightly confined by the horizon limit. But aerial assets tend to have more episodic presence compared to warships unless commanders are willing to pay the logistical price of maintaining constant aerial presence. A distributed formation of small combatants may have to hedge against the uncertain persistence of friendly air cover by remaining near larger friendly warships, which comes at the cost of more concentrated force packages.
While steady aviation support can offer more distribution space for small combatants, those warships can still constrain aviation’s maneuver space. In the combined arms relationship between aviation and surface warships, there is a dynamic where the range of the warship’s anti-ship firepower shapes the amount of maneuver space the supporting aviation can leverage in defending the warship and escorting its salvos toward targets. The typically short range of box launcher weapons considerably tightens the amount of space a friendly aircraft can maneuver within between two opposing naval formations. If aviation is to interpose itself in the small space between a formation of friendly small combatants and an opposing large surface warship, then the ranges involved are more likely to put the friendly aircraft within range of the large warship’s air defenses. The range is tight enough to where the aircraft will likely have to worry about its own survivability while also protecting the survivability of the small surface ships and their salvos. And if that target warship launches a last-ditch salvo against the small combatants, the aircraft will be sorely needed to reduce the volume of fire as it is only minutes away from threatening the small warships.
By comparison, vertical launch cells afford supporting aircraft much more maneuver space by virtue of fielding offensive weapons of much longer range. Aircraft that are helping secure warships that are firing on one another hundreds of miles apart will have to worry far less about encountering warship air defenses while shooting down warship-launched anti-ship missiles. The limits of box-launched anti-ship weapons considerably increase the risk to supporting aircraft in this respect.
Shifting toward a more distributed force structure tends to mean a lower average launch cell count per force package, but more force packages overall. Yet this supposed promise of small combatants – fielding more forces across wider distributions – can be in tension with the limits of combined arms relationships. Vertical launch cells can offer small warships more space to distribute and still combine fires, but this increase in spacing and risk-worthiness may take them well beyond the range of friendly aviation support.
It is unclear how willingly small warships would want to venture beyond the umbrella of friendly air coverage, which would already be highly risky for even large warships. Their relatively little long-range air defense capability and the risk of being deprived of friendly aviation support makes widely distributed small warships more susceptible to being stalked, surveilled, and jammed by opposing aircraft. This can put these warships at critical informational disadvantages and make it much easier for the adversary to fire effectively first. If a force is unwilling to risk sending numerous small warships beyond the reach of supporting aviation, then the resulting force posture of those force packages may become more concentrated than what the force design had intended.
Distribution does not only describe the physical aspect of force density, but also the timing aspect of how launches are spread across a firing sequence. It is important to consider where small combatants may fit into a mass firing sequence and how this affects the risk posed to the platform and the firing sequence.
The short range of box-launched missiles typically gives them relatively low time-to-strike, which will likely place their launch platforms far later in a firing sequence, especially one that also includes plenty of Tomahawks. But a small combatant that plans to fire much later in a firing sequence may very well be the first warship to be destroyed by the enemy’s reaction. The longer a warship has to wait to launch during an active firing sequence, the more opportunity the adversary has to launch interruptive strikes against waiting archers. In the case of a small combatant waiting to fire Harpoons or Naval Strike Missiles, it could be forced to wait tens of minutes and even an hour or more while waiting a relatively short distance from the threatened adversary.
Small payloads typically translate into low time-to-strike, which can translate into launching later in a firing sequence, which then converts into more opportunity for a threatened adversary to launch interruptive strikes against the waiting archer. Even if they field longer-range weapons, these effects can also be suffered if the added risk-worthiness of small combatants translates into them being sent deeper into the battlespace and closer to the adversary.
Shortening the firing sequence for the sake of lowering the risk of interruptive strikes against small combatants would come at a steep price. A shorter firing sequence could be obtained by massing enough small combatants so their concentrated formation can launch a standalone salvo of sufficient volume of fire. A shorter firing sequence could also be achieved by combining fires from other domains and platform types, such as aviation, submarines, or stand-in forces that can earn enough proximity to the adversary. But it is debatable how much risk these platforms should assume to help the contributing fires of small combatants become more viable.
Small combatants that do not feature vertical launch cells that can accommodate larger weapons may struggle to put themselves into a more survivable place, both spatially within the battlespace, and temporally within the timeline of a firing sequence. Many of the risks of employing small combatants in mass fires will be mitigated by fielding vertical launch cells that allow them to hold the same long-range weapons that large surface warships can carry, even if their cell count is lower. However, fielding a lower launch cell count per force package still invites some risks with respect to salvo instability.
The relatively weak nature of small combatant defenses makes them highly unstable in a naval missile exchange. A major contributor to this instability is their higher susceptibility to last-ditch firing pressures, which adds instability to the broader mass firing scheme. A warship that can only shoot down a few anti-ship missiles before it is overwhelmed and destroyed may very well be operating on a hair trigger in a major war at sea. If it takes a very low volume of fire for a small warship to feel existentially threatened, then it may take relatively little to provoke these warships into wasting their weapons in last-ditch fires.
And a small volume of fire may not even be needed to be sufficiently threatening. A small warship may have so little defensive capability that methods of active sensing, jamming, posturing, and other actions that could be interpreted as a prelude to an attack could trigger a last-ditch salvo. These methods would allow an adversary to potentially trigger wasteful fires without having to expend any volume of fire of their own. By comparison, larger warships can hold their offensive firepower in reserve while being sensed or even while under active attack, because the incoming fires can have little chance of overwhelming their defenses without enough volume.
A small combatant’s higher susceptibility to last-ditch firing pressures could unravel the effectiveness of a force and its mass firing schemes more rapidly than that of a more concentrated force structure or force posture. In many circumstances a last-ditch salvo will struggle to achieve enough volume of fire, which puts pressure on other platforms to add fires. Because small combatants have smaller magazines, their last-ditch salvos are far less likely to reach meaningful volume without outside support. If small combatants are pressured to discharge last-ditch salvos, then other platforms may also feel strongly pressured to launch contributing fires to give those smaller last-ditch salvos enough volume. If the small warships are close to an adversary or are firing box launcher weapons, then the low time-to-strike would minimize the ability of outside forces to offer contributing fires. This adds further pressure on nearby small warships to launch contributing fires in support of the last-ditch salvos, and makes the firing scheme more unstable. These susceptibility and instability challenges are further exacerbated by the aforementioned difficulties in providing persistent air defense coverage to small combatants.
Larger platforms are less susceptible to last-ditch firing dilemmas by virtue of having denser defenses. It takes more firepower for them to feel existentially threatened, where larger warships are better able to defeat volumes of fire without having their decision-making forced into making irreversible actions. If they must fire a last-ditch salvo, their magazines are deep enough to where they may be able to launch a large enough volume of fire on their own, reducing the pressure on other platforms to contribute fires on short notice, and offering more stability to a mass firing scheme.
When it comes to preserving the longevity of distribution, small combatants can make a force more concentrated through inventory depletion dynamics. Small combatants typically field so few offensive missiles they may have to function like aircraft by firing most if not all of their entire offensive loadout in a single salvo to offer contributing fires. In this sense they combine the disadvantages of both air and surface platforms – the quick depletion of firepower of a small aircraft with the long reload time of a warship.
This can cause small combatants to have a profound influence on the longevity of force distribution in a battlespace. Small combatants could use their numbers to help maximize distribution in the early stages of a fight, but may sharply reduce a force’s distribution shortly after the initial salvos. The shallow nature of small combatant magazines can make their contribution to force distribution more episodic and transient.
After the first few rounds of massed fires, a force may become much more concentrated as its small combatants leave the fight to reload. The ensuing reduction in force distribution makes the remaining warships more vulnerable, and the small combatants may have fewer surviving forces to come back to when they reenter the fight. If a force is counting on a short, sharp war of intense salvo exchanges, small combatants may help frontload the distribution of the force, but then substantially diminish and fluctuate distribution later on.
With respect to complexity of threat presentation, the smaller the magazine, the easier it is for an adversary to ascertain a platform’s missile loadout and tell when it is out of firepower. Many small missile combatants only field one type of offensive missile at a time in their box launchers, simplifying the adversary’s challenge of tracking expenditures and reducing the complexity of threat presentation. Longer-ranged weapons that are fired and waypointed from standoff distances make it more challenging for an adversary to associate specific weapon expenditures with specific force packages. But the typically shorter weapons range and more risk-worthy nature of small combatants can draw them deeper into the battlespace and within easier view of the adversary. If a small combatant depletes itself and then remains in a forward area to maintain a degree of force distribution, it will be easier for the adversary to call the bluff.
Much of the comparison between large and small warships is contingent on specific tactical context. While large combatants have certain advantages over small combatants, it is a broader question of whether a certain force posture or operational design draws more enemy attention toward the larger or smaller combatants of a fleet. Many of the disadvantages of smaller combatants may not be incurred if an enemy believes the larger combatants are more deserving of their massed fires. Much of the drive toward distribution is also fueled by a concern that great power competitors will not struggle to muster overwhelming volumes of fire no matter how dense the naval target. But what is critical to understand is that smaller warships have certain drawbacks that can encourage them to concentrate among themselves and also form force packages with larger warships. And a large group of small ships is still a concentrated formation that can become a priority target for an adversary.
Force packages of large warships can certainly invite catastrophic levels destruction if even a handful of salvos land their blows. Each successful enemy salvo would result in especially steep losses in capability, and where it could easily take 20 or more years of shipbuilding to regenerate major losses. Given the already tightly stretched nature of the U.S. Navy in meeting its existing peacetime commitments, if a single large naval formation falls prey to a salvo, then it could radically reshape the global force posture of the U.S. Navy for the foreseeable future.
A more distributed force structure may be perceived as being able to degrade more gracefully under fire than a more concentrated force structure. But a force that takes distribution to an extreme will be stretched thin, and it may be difficult to perceive the overextension until it is too late. Being stretched thin, whether as a matter of force structure or force posture, invites defeat in detail while making it more difficult for a force to combine its fires. Rather than suffer catastrophic destruction in one fell swoop like a more concentrated force, a force that is stretched thin could suffer rapid cumulative destruction as distributed elements are picked off through defeat in detail.
It is important to be mindful of how small combatants may figure into fleet-on-fleet massed fires, and consider what risks may come with mass firing options whose dependencies could often stem from small combatant disadvantages.
Network Degradation and Fracturing Distributed Forces
Network reliability has a tremendous effect on the extent to which forces and capabilities can be distributed and concentrated in combat. But the distribution and concentration of capability is also what force structure seeks to optimize. A fleet that is built on a vision of a well-functioning network could have a vastly different composition compared to a fleet that expects to mostly fight in the dark.4
Concepts of force employment and force design are heavily influenced by perceptions about the offensive-defensive balance and the hider-finder competition. These beliefs have trended in the direction that the finders and the attackers have been gaining the advantage as sensors and offensive weapons have grown more capable in relation to their counters. It is easier to be found, and once found, it is easier to be destroyed.
Regardless of the overall trends, these balances and competitions are still dependent on specific operational context. The state of advantage is markedly different when a fight is characterized by low emissions, probing scouts, and massed fires held at the ready, versus when the fight has erupted into a cacophony of signatures, networks are degraded or overwhelmed, and widely distributed forces are consumed with their local battles. The ability of a force to mass fires will degrade in combat, especially when command-and-control struggles to keep pace with the rapidly evolving situation.
Force design and force employment must account for how operations may take on a widely different character in these contexts, and how the state of advantage may change. It is especially critical to envision how a collection of widely distributed forces that were meant to combine fires can instead fracture into individual force concentrations that attempt standalone attacks, and what this could imply for designing resilient force structure.
When a network degrades and a distributed force fractures into smaller concentrations, defensive capability rises in relative strength against offensive capability. This is because the act of massing fires across forces is inherently more dependent on networks compared to warship self-defense. While degraded networks could challenge the ability of ships to leverage aviation for missile defense, the radar horizon has an isolating effect on warship defense regardless of the health of the network. An attacking volume of fire can be drawn from a variety of widely separated forces, but the defending volume of fire can be mainly limited to what the targeted warships can muster through their organic capability. A degraded network makes it harder for a ship to make use of its offensive firepower, but the ship’s organic defensive capacity is left relatively untouched. Because of this, the offensive requirement for massing enough volume of fire remains intact, but the ability to meet that requirement becomes much more difficult.
This can shift the character of naval salvo combat when the ability to mass fires is degraded. Standalone force concentrations that are isolated from the broader network may be compelled to seek out other isolated forces in a bid to pool enough capability so they can muster enough volume of fire. But the act of having to seek out and combine with other forces can cause isolated units to release emissions, travel beyond the familiar local battlespace, form denser force concentrations, and engage in other behaviors that increase their targetability.
Because their ability to muster enough volume of fire is more doubtful, isolated forces would also be more pressured to deplete much larger shares of their magazine depth per salvo. Their uncertainty would be especially worsened if they are unable to assess the effectiveness of their attacks against distant targets or track adversary weapons expenditure. This knowledge is valuable for calibrating weapons expenditure, and uncertainty would encourage a force to expend larger volumes of fire to err on the side of risking more overkill to ensure lethal effect. These isolated forces would then suffer quicker depletion than if they could combine their fires in smaller increments with broader forces. As isolated forces form ad-hoc force packages and improvise standalone fires, the distributed posture of the overall force would degrade as isolated units quickly deplete themselves in piecemeal fashion.
Isolated forces that retain a significant amount of capacity, such as larger warships or force concentrations, will be less likely to face these pressures. Larger warships will have deeper magazines, more robust sensors, and organic aviation detachments, where each helps preserve a warship’s ability to gather information and muster enough volume of fire when isolated.
Zumwalt-class guided-missile destroyer USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) leads a formation during U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem (UxS IBP) on April 21, 2021. (U.S. Navy Photo)
Isolated small combatants that are severed from the network will be less likely to launch enough volume of fire on their own. They will be more dependent on seeking out other forces to pool enough magazine capacity, and where the search for other isolated forces could invite more risk. And even if coherence is preserved, the dependence on outside forces and functioning networks is still greater overall for small combatants. A force that primarily fights as a collection of broadly distributed small combatants is a force that is fundamentally more dependent on network resilience.
Distribution of Fire Across Force Structure
Distribution is often described as a force multiplier through challenging command-and-control, especially by making targeting priorities less clear.5 But steep command-and-control burdens can also come with sourcing firepower from one’s own forces, organizing that firepower into a timely mass firing sequence, committing to seeing it through, and assessing the effects. The density of the opponent’s defenses can increase these command-and-control burdens. While a denser concentration of capability can add clarity to target prioritization, it can also add ambiguity by creating doubts about whether many different kill chains can be effectively harmonized into generating the necessary volume of fire on time. This allows dense defensive capability to also impose challenges on adversary decision-making, but through different mechanisms than force distribution.
When assembling massed fires, commanders have to make decisions about distribution in two key respects. Commanders have to decide how they will source firepower from across their force structure, and decide how to distribute that firepower across the force structure of the adversary. Different force designs will affect the distribution of how firepower is sourced and applied.
A commander who is assembling massed fires will have two primary options for growing the volume of fire. One option is to pull deeper from larger magazines, and another is to add more platforms to the firing sequence. With respect to the command-and-control burden, it should generally be easier to pull deeper from a larger platform’s magazine then it will be to add more platforms to the firing sequence. If a commander decides they need to quickly add more volume of fire to an imminent firing sequence, it may be easier to ask a large warship to fire 30 more missiles than originally planned, rather than source the same firepower by adding multiple new platforms and force packages to the firing sequence on short notice.
Each new platform and force package that is added to a firing sequence will make that sequence subject to more sources of friction, such as by hoping each unit’s local operational circumstances are favorable enough for it to launch fires on time. The more distributed platforms that are added, the more the firing sequence may incur interruptions, delays, and other challenges. A firing sequence that features many small and widely separated combatants and force packages will have more variability. A force that is mainly composed of small combatants is more likely to grow a volume of fire by adding more platforms to the firing sequence rather than taking deeper pulls on magazines.
By comparison, there is less command-and-control friction and less variability when asking a large surface warship, or a denser concentration of forces, to simply fire a larger volume of fire. This is not to suggest that one method of adding fires will always tend to be superior, but it demonstrates how the concentration of capability can simplify command-and-control in valuable respects, especially in a form of warfighting where a speedier ability to marshal volume of fire can be decisive in firing effectively first.
Choosing to organize and launch a large volume of fire against a naval formation is a momentous operational decision and inflection point. But the weight of decision may shift depending on the scale of the target formation and the volume of fire required to overwhelm it. The prospect of incurring substantial weapons depletion in a single firing sequence, while operating with an imprecise grasp of the offensive-defensive balance of naval salvo combat, may weigh more heavily on the minds of commanders when tasked with destroying denser naval formations compared to smaller, more distributed elements.
Conclusion
Decades of naval capability trends have encouraged high-end fleet design to focus on being able to generate and withstand massive volumes of missile firepower. While great power rivalry has set the stage for this incredibly resource-intensive form of combat to escalate, it has also set the stage for asymmetric counters and offsets that could radically reshape naval force structure. A squadron of small quadcopters could render a destroyer impotent where an anti-ship missile salvo could not, or microwave weapons could one day negate salvos that could not be stopped by advanced defensive missiles. Asymmetric counters are appearing on the horizon, but their long-term consequences for naval force structure are difficult to perceive.
The truth of what ultimately makes for superior naval force structure and weapon interactions is a moving target, something that is evolving rapidly and imperceptibly as technology changes and humanity’s ability to grasp the implications ebbs and flows. Much of this truth will remain unseen until it is violently unmasked by high-end warfare.
Part 10 will focus on force development efforts for manifesting DMO.
2. For reference, a 9,500-ton Arleigh Burke-class destroyer can travel 4,400 nautical miles at 20 knots on a full load of fuel, while a 3,500-ton Littoral Combat Ship can travel 3,500 nautical miles at 14 knots on a full fuel load.
Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (April 9, 2022) – Guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) steams behind amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LHA 7), April 9, 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter Burghart)
Much has been made about the threat of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) and its contributions to the burgeoning People’s Republic of China (PRC) maritime enterprise. However, the United States has an equally deep bench of maritime capacity in its troves of commercial and recreational mariners. The U.S. recreational boating community infamously entered the international zeitgeist ahead of the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections with the so-called “Trump Boat Parades.” In South Florida, hundreds of privately-owned civilian boats transited the Intracoastal Waterway to show their support for the one-time President. Similar protests in the Great Lakes and California followed suit. Many saw these demonstrations as political rancor manifest, however they illustrate latent maritime power within the United States. As the geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific region coalesce into a fully-fledged maritime flashpoint, maritime capability across the conflict spectrum is exactly what the United States needs.
While the suggestion that 30-ft recreational center consoles with price tags upwards of a half-million dollars would form maritime militias might seem ridiculous, there is well-trodden historical precedent. There are myriad suitable missions suitable in a conflict or near conflict for such a force. Missions could range from the conventional: intelligence gathering or the insertion of special operations forces, to the novel: anti-submarine warfare (ASW) or even electronic warfare (EW). In South Florida, where many of these capable recreational and commercial mariners have extensive experience navigating the labyrinthine cays and reefs that comprise the Bahamian archipelago (just 50 miles away from the United States), the littorals of the Indo-Pacific would be familiar territory.
Thanks to the flexible statutory constraints of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and the surprisingly low threshold of converting commercial and private ships to armed combatants, it is clear is that with minimal effort, the United States can tap into a significant reservoir of maritime competence and capital to bring to bear in the Indo-Pacific. This piece is not intended to be prescriptive, but rather, in light of the prolific activities of the PAFMM in the South China Sea highlight that there is historical precedent for mobilizing its own unconventional maritime auxiliaries and highlight areas where such a force could be useful in the Indo-Pacific.
Historical Precedent
History is replete with examples of incorporating civilian vessels into naval operations from the celebrated to the obscure. Famously, in World War II during the evacuation at Dunkirk, thousands of “little ships” were called to action to evacuate Allied forces from the jaws of the Nazi war machine in continental Europe. Less prolific, but equally as substantive, the “Shetland Bus” saw Norwegian fisherman employed as smugglers for vital materiel from Scotland to Norway to aid resistance there throughout WWII.
At the same time across the Atlantic, writer Ernest Hemingway added another chapter to his larger-than-life persona by hunting German U-boats in the Straits of Florida from his custom sport fishing boat, Pilar. Armed with a radio, several rifles, and home-made depth charges, Hemingway trolled the Straits of Florida ostensibly fishing, while on the prowl for U-Boats.
This phenomenon extended to the rich, as well as the famous. In 1938, Vincent Astor used his 263-foot yacht, Nourmahal, to scout the Japanese defenses of the Marshall Islands under the guise of an oceanic expedition. He wrote a detailed report on yacht stationary and dispatched it to the White House to his friend President Roosevelt. By this time, President Roosevelt was no stranger to cloak and dagger activities by civilian mariners. At the precipice of American involvement in World War I, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt undertook a quiet campaign “procure seagoing yachts for immediate war duty.” He sought to convince his well-heeled New York society peers and was by all accounts successful; 90 members of the New York Yacht Club donated their yachts to the U.S. and British Royal Navy.
During the Falklands War, several United Kingdom commercial fishing trawlers were hastily converted to makeshift minesweepers under “Ships Taken Up From Trade” or STUFT. STUFT was the legal mechanism used by the Admiralty to acquire British flagged ships for government use during the conflict to move men, materiel, and stores. From luxury liners converted to troop carriers to fishing trawlers converted to sub-hunters, 47 British commercial vessels were activated at the behest of the First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach who stated, “Man and support the Fleet. Money is no object.”
Modern Applications
There are numerous missions that a maritime militia force would be able to “plug in” and add instant value across the conflict spectrum. As luxury civilian small craft were once made with low-signature wood, today’s fiberglass vessels are also small and have a low-signature compared to most metal military vessels. By adding a simple towed array − especially the new generation of compact lightweight arrays like the thin line towed arrays − a civilian vessel could be leveraged as a remote sensor. Coupled with narcotics smuggling techniques such as tarping during daylight hours, maritime militia forces could be highly distributed, hard to find, and extremely useful, especially in a high-end conflict where a premium will be placed on capital assets.
Additionally, the low profiles, high maneuverability, and shallow drafts make militia forces well suited for special forces work. Here, vessels might be used to insert special forces with little to no modifications. While there are existing special forces delivery platforms that are meant to be clandestine, they tend to be overwhelmingly expensive. For a fraction of the budget, relatively low-profile fiberglass civilian vessels could undertake similar missions.
In addition to more “traditional” uses of maritime militia forces, the advent of surveillance and electronic warfare technology is an area where militia forces might also excel. With minimal “missionizing,” by adding small but robust sensor packages, these small platforms could be a boon to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) work. Additionally, as electronic warfare grows more ubiquitous, the size of equipment is decreasing substantially, which may allow smaller platforms to perform similar missions, distributing risk and capability across less visible assets. Adding electronic warfare suites to small militia craft would be a game-changer when considered in concert with their ability to blend in in the “gray zone,” where they could deliver decisive blows to critical enemy systems. While militia forces may not directly match local small vessel traffic, by virtue of their size, they would blend in with the mass of smaller vessels in hot spots such as the Strait of Malacca.One need only consider the density of maritime traffic U.S. ships must navigate in the Indo-Pacific to appreciate the costs U.S. maritime militia assets could levy were they properly outfitted with offensive electronic warfare and ISR equipment.
The current Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David H. Berger, has presided over transformational changes to the U.S. Marine Corps operating model since his tenure began in 2019. He has a knack for making headlines every time he gives an interview or speech due to his penchant for innovation. One of the particularly interesting comments he made within the context of his signature “Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations (EABO)” concept and the geography of the Indo-Pacific, was the need for “our forces to forage.” This notion has not been explored deeply, but a U.S. maritime militia force could present an interesting intersection with EABO. Theoretically, maritime militia forces would be drawn from highly competent civilian and commercial fishermen. They could act as “fleet foragers,” leveraging their existing fishing prowess to succor both stand-in forces or larger elements in the fleet. They could fish while simultaneously conducting sensor reliant reconnaissance or ASW missions, affording them a credible cover for plying the waters of the Indo-Pacific than as conspicuous combatants.
A Ready-Made Solution
Fortunately, the legal underpinnings for galvanizing a flexible volunteer maritime force capable of operating in distant waters and executing low-end missions in concert with the broader U.S. joint force are readily found in U.S. Code Article 14 Section 3902:
(a)In General.— The purpose of the Auxiliary is to assist the Coast Guard as authorized by the Commandant, in performing any Coast Guard function, power, duty, role, mission, or operation authorized by law.
(b)Limitation. —The Auxiliary may conduct a patrol of a waterway, or a portion thereof, only if—
(1) the Commandant has determined such waterway, or portion thereof, is navigable for purposes of the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard; or
While the Coast Guard Auxiliary is currently limited in its range of Commandant-approved missions and functions, its underlying authorities essentially allow it to mirror the capability of its Active Duty and Reserve counterparts, given the right training and resources. In short, a combatant or theater commander need but ask the Commandant of the Coast Guard, and the basic legal authorities and organizational structures already exist to quickly develop an operational maritime militia. Notably, this maritime militia would be capable of performing any Coast Guard function wherever operations were authorized by law.
The requirements for operating under a flag as a combatant are by no means beyond the administrative capability of any private citizen. Convention VII of the 1907 Hague Conference articulates six-point criteria for any private or merchant ship to serve as a flagged warship:
Article 1 – The converted ship must be placed under direct authority of the Flag State it represents.
Article 2 – The converted ship must bear the distinguishing marks of a warship.
Article 3 – The ship’s commander must be duly commissioned in service to the state and listed among fighting fleet officers.
Article 4 – Crew members must be subject to military discipline.
Article 5 – Ship operations must follow the laws and customs of war.
Article 6 – Belligerents must announce ship conversions in their official list of warships as soon as possible.
In the event of a crisis, these criteria, alongside the statutory authorities granted to the auxiliary by Federal Code, could streamline the conversion of any number of private vessel types for use by the United States. Current strategic guidance indicates that the 23,500-member auxiliary prioritizes the augmentation of under-served administrative and operational roles, such as operational boating safety, incident management, and cyber.
Despite this inherently domestic maritime focus, these forces could be readily augmented and redirected such that the Coast Guard Auxiliary could serve as a “break glass” maritime militia force. If prepared in advance, operational plans and administrative procedures would smooth the transition for operational forces that are ready to “plug in” to a joint task force or fleet architecture. Central to this, the important infrastructure – vessels, manpower, and most importantly, statutory authority to do so, are all prepared.
Wrap-Up
Obviously, a proposal for a maritime militia is likely to have numerous objections, chief among them:
Why would the United States back such a fanciful proposal when there are plenty of maritime roles and responsibilities that will need filling in the advent of war?
Enemy combatant implications: Forces may be labeled as enemy combatants outright and therefore risk immediate destruction or capture.
Despite outward appearances, the historical record of using militia forces cleanly converges with modern needs in the Indo-Pacific region. To the first point, though there will undoubtedly be a need for maritime expertise in the advent of a conflict, the program outlined here would represent respectable savings in both time and money. A maritime militia force would leverage the existing expertise of patriotic mariners where they are, instead of forcing them into existing pipelines and structures, which would both cost money and take time. Essentially, they could function as a “ready-made” maritime force capable of filling gaps in the lower end of the conflict spectrum, which seems prescient, given the scheduled decommissioning of small surface combatants in the U.S. Navy.
To the second point, the designation of a maritime militia as enemy combatants is a possibility, though hard to gauge without understanding the character of the conflict. It is unlikely that an association with troop foraging would keep them out of the fight completely. However, if U.S. maritime militia forces were targeted, the People’s Republic of China assumes significant risk. Proportional responses will instantly place a target on their vast distant water fishing fleets and their less innocuous PAFMM. The decimation of their fishing fleet would exert intense pressure on the Chinese homeland which already struggles to meet growing protein demands, in conjunction with other domestic maladies.
Perhaps the counter to “why on earth would the United States undertake such a program?” is why would the United States not undertake such a program? Not making modest investments in such a program creates two significant risks. First, China is using their PAFMM to distinct advantage in gray zone operations. By neglecting to form similar capabilities, the U.S. loses the opportunity to meet PAFMM efforts and effects proportionally. Second, there are currently nearly twelve-million recreational motor vessels registered in the United States. While only a fraction of those vessels may be functionally useful within the envisioned context, if the robust size and capability of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary is any indication, many hundreds, if not thousands of capable, motivated mariners and vessels could be rapidly acquired and fielded.
A U.S. maritime militia force in the Indo-Pacific will not win a war outright, but it does offer the low-cost ability to impact the balance of power at sea. As storm clouds brew in the Indo-Pacific and long-term planning within the U.S. defense establishment continues to be fraught, low cost, high yield maritime capacity of any stripe should not be left on the table.
Jasper Campbellserved on active duty for six years in the afloat and C5I communities. He is the cofounder of simplevideo.io, a technology company that offers solutions for public safety and healthcare markets. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
Featured Image: Marina del Rey, California. (Photo by Pedro Szekely via Flickr.)
Amphibious and transport operations can play a vital role at all levels of war, but landing craft can do much more than just move things – they can also shoot. The global growth of anti-access/area denial capabilities favors smaller, harder to find, more numerous, and attritable vessels. At the same time, the potent evolution of missiles can be combined with the open cargo area on small and medium landing craft to shoot back against both sea and land targets. Civilian offshore support vessels suggest what tomorrow’s landing craft might look like, while the missions they could fulfill are only limited by the imagination.
A Question of What and How Many
Western navies with expensive and highly-trained crews typically focus on high-quality vessels as a deciding factor in contemporary naval operations. On the other side, Russian military thought and even Josef Stalin himself espoused that “quantity has a quality all its own.” Both considerations are important: quality plays a key role but there is a minimum quantity needed to perform particular task, particularly when considering combat attrition. A navy can have a single high-end warship, like a French aircraft carrier, that simply cannot be operationally available 365 days a year. The insufficient quantity of modern vessels is a widely known problem for many navies. Each vessel can only be in one place at a time, which periodically includes the dry dock for planned and unplanned maintenance.
Constructing and maintaining more high-quality and single-mission vessels is rarely the best option due to fiscal constraints. Instead, multi-mission vessels can help fill these gaps. One of the ways to fulfill this concept is to build a hull with possibility of changing its payload, such as the Littoral Combat Ship and Absalon-class support vessels – both frigate-like ships with replaceable modules. A more natural word association with “payload,” however, is “landing craft” rather than “frigate.”
Many naval discussions fixate on large, high-profile navies that mainly need expeditionary vessels to perform operations all over the world and to transit rapidly between theaters. So, even if a vessel class is dedicated for green water or littoral operations, it is usually designed with the range and seakeeping of a typical blue water warship to simply arrive in theater.
Maritime geography is vitally important for both warship and fleet design, but this applies to all navies, both large and small. Many small navies have a more focused area of operations – along their national coasts or within a particular inland sea, many of which are also strategic hotspots (e.g., the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Arabian/Persian Gulf and the South China Sea). Naval presence and potential conflicts in these regions require relatively smaller but more numerous vessels. Naturally, this does not mean that frigates, destroyers and cruisers are useless, but to fulfill missions close to coasts, larger numbers of smaller vessels are more optimal in many scenarios. Moreover, many of these smaller countries have land borders with their main potential enemies instead of extensive land or ocean buffers, and so with a more compelling national requirement for a standing army and tactical air force, small vessels may be the only affordable option for small navies.
Even then, truly numerous flotillas with several types of bespoke and single-purpose small vessels is not feasible. Budget cuts often target more complex and expensive warships programs over simpler, less expensive ones. For example, Poland has only 3 vessels of the project 660M (NATO code: Sassnitz-class) fast attack craft. Sweden, which is far wealthier, has a longer coastline, and more focused on naval matters than Poland, has only 5 Visby-class corvettes. They are far from sufficient in wartime. The Baltic States only have mine and patrol vessels.
In these conditions, designing a small naval vessel several roles is an attractive proposition. The basic question is what roles are essential and which of them could be put together in a single small hull that can satisfy the various required operational capabilities. Although major NATO navies have largely abandoned small surface combatants, often called fast attack craft, these vessels remain popular on a global scale because they are simple to construct, inexpensive to build and operate, and have a relatively good size-to-weapon power ratio. Of course, they have many disadvantages, including poor seakeeping and limited sensor suites, but these are not crucial for operations in coastal waters while protected by a land-based air force and receiving off-board targeting data.
However, such combatants have one particular feature that is problematic for countries that share land borders with their main potential enemies. The lack of land attack capability means that these vessels could be entirely useless, or useful only as a “fleet in being” during the most critical phases of a potential war. Although most of the modern ship-launched surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs) have a land attack mode, this use is generally sub-optimal because it wastes the expensive and complex anti-ship targeting capabilities and specialized anti-ship warhead to hit a fixed land target. A better solution would be to use containerized versions of missiles, and more carefully pair the missile type with the target. Rather than a dedicated launcher fixed onboard the vessel with one kind of anti-ship missile, containerized missiles launchers in the form of standard 20- or 40-foot containers would allow them to be deployed and launched from nearly any surface platform. There are many simulations and concepts showing how such system could work on the deck of a cargo ship or an ocean-going patrol vessel, but deploying one or more of such containers on a ship-to-shore connector with an open cargo hold would be even simpler.
Moreover, some of these vessels could also deploy with self-propelled coastal defense missile or rocket artillery systems, rather than craned-aboard containerized missile launchers, allowing this class of vessels to distribute and support mobile long-range fires in addition to launching its own missiles. Although the U.S. Marine Corp’s Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO) concept for stand-in forces is mainly envisioned for the Pacific theater, it also could also have application in the Baltic and other confined seas.
The Multi-Role Landing Craft
The concept of using a ship-to-shore connector as a missile launching platform suggests an evolution into a multirole vessel based on the hull of a medium landing craft – a vessel with obvious utility for small coastal states outside of combat operations. Such a multirole vessel should have enough space and displacement for a single main battle tank or 3 – 4 lighter vehicles, or at least two 40 foot containers, along with permanently installed weapon systems, passive decoys, and sensors adequate for basic self defense. Conceptually, this means a single light naval gun, short-range self-defense missiles, and a light rotary 3D radar system. With that in mind, the hull should be on the larger side of ship-to-shore connectors, around 130 – 170 feet, or 40 – 50 meters long, have shoal draft, high speed, moderate range (as compared to a fast attack craft) and moderate seakeeping. The proposed multirole vessel could fulfill three main missions:
Tactical landing and transport operations
Surface attacks with standard container versions of both anti-ship and land attack missiles, including rocket artillery
Mine laying
A landing craft-based vessel would be capable of refueling and reloading from unprepared beaches and navigating rivers.
Traditional displacement-type landing craft are not known for their speed. However, recent shipbuilding trends suggests a suitable approach for the proposed vessel, called a surface effect ship (SES), or less often, a sidewall hovercraft. Such a vessel is a mix of a hovercraft and a catamaran, forming an air cushion between twin hulls to minimize resistance. The most famous naval design is the Skjold-class corvette, but with the full displacement of 274 tons and remarkable speed, this design is better classified as a fast attack craft. With its speed of 60+ knots, draft of 1 m, a range of 800 Nautical miles at 40 knots, and relatively wide beam, the Skjold-class corvette is an attractive basis to design the proposed multirole vessel. Moreover, it has an option of transporting 50 combat-equipped soldiers instead of missiles. Norway also has two older SES naval designs, the Alta-class and Oksoy-class minesweepers. Any of these vessels would lend a promising basis upon which to design the proposed vessel, but the civilian Aircat 35 Combi, designed for offshore service sector, would be even better. Although it is a civilian design and it is slightly shorter than the envisioned design, it shares the most valuable features – speed, range and draft – with the Skjold-class corvette and also has a large cargo space on a near-waterline level deck. A militarized variant could be easily adapted from it.
The proposed SES concept – essentially a landing craft upgraded with self-defense capabilities and offensive options, so call it a fast multirole craft – would be an attractive solution for most Baltic and Black Sea navies. Sweden and Finland have many islands that require fast deployment of high mobility troops between them as well as capable and flexible anti-ship capabilities to counter enemy landing operations. The concept would also incorporate minelaying capabilities, which is strong emphasized in Finnish naval strategy. For the Baltic States, the proposal for small naval vessels with survivable and long-range land attack capabilities could provide strong fiscal justification for acquiring vessels beyond inshore patrol and mine warfare vessels – vessels which would provide Baltic navies with significant combat capabilities.
Unfortunately, the geopolitical situation of certain Baltic Sea states may also require a reverse landing operation, or evacuation, which is yet another factor in favor of a fast landing craft. In Poland there is an opinion that mobile land batteries of anti-ship cruise missiles are more optimal than shipborne ones because of the exposed seacoast where a fast attack craft does not have many places to hide. However, the proposed fast multirole craft moves faster than a truck, but is always ready to launch a missile. Landing capabilities may be required by the Polish Navy to support its Baltic Allies if Russia captured the Suwalki Gap or otherwise interdicted land lines of communication with the Baltic States. In such case, moving troops across the south east part of the Baltic Sea would be much more risky in the large, slow Lublin-class (project 767) landing ships, which the Polish Navy operates today, than in a numerous flotilla of small and very fast vessels. Poland, Romania, and Ukraine could use such flexible vessels on their big rivers – Vistula, Odra, Dnieper, and Danube. Finally, these vessels would be well-suited for inland seas.
Bigger Applications for Small Craft
Bigger navies could also deploy these vessels in green and brown waters as well – either by transporting them in amphibious warfare ships or permanently forward-deploying them in-theater. Although the U.S. Navy, needs more true blue water warships, it should be remembered that during WWII the U.S. Navy had large numbers of motor torpedo boats and all sizes of landing craft – including those equipped for shore bombardment with rocket artillery. A future war would likely require a similarly large, dispersed, and hard-hitting force. As previously proposed on CIMSEC, missile-equipped SES landing craft would bring the perfect mix of speed and flexibility.
Of course, not all of these small, fast, and heavily armed vessels would necessarily be manned. The proposed vessels could be easily designed as optionally manned and become incorporated into the U.S. Navy’s fleet architecture plan. The US Navy’s need of fast attack craft was discussed in the June 2019 USNI Proceedings article, which proposed a very interesting concept of using LHDs and LPDs as corvette-carrier mother-ships for Skjold-class-like vessels.
Both China and Russia, the main potential enemies of the United States and its Allies, invest in fast attack craft and small landing craft, for example the Houbei-class and the Dyugon-class. Now especially the PLAN has great numbers of true blue waters vessels as well as the fast attack craft. To counter these threats, the United States and its Allies may need both kinds of vessels as well. The SES design seem to meet the needs of numerous green and brown waters flotillas nearly perfectly.
In 1982 none other than Tom Clancy himself proposed firing strategic nuclear missiles from hovercraft – repurposed ship-to-shore connectors that could scatter on alert. The vessel concept described above is not revolutionary or even wholly novel, but an evolutionary case of form following function.
Przemysław Ziemacki is a freelancer journalist and photographer from Poland. He currently writes for Polityka, one of the largest Polish weeklies. He previously worked for the local press and has also published in National Geographic Poland. He has a long-standing avocational interest in naval matters as reflected in his first CIMSEC piece, “Is the Moskva-class Helicopter Cruiser the Best Naval Design for the Drone Era?”
Featured Image: Skjold-class fast attack craft KNM Storm of the Royal Norwegian Navy (Wikimedia Commons)
