Category Archives: Strategic Outlook

Predictions and forecasting.

Enabling Distributed Lethality: The Role of Naval Cryptology

Distributed Lethality Topic Week

By LCDR Chuck Hall and LCDR David T. Spalding

The U.S. Navy’s Surface Force is undergoing a cultural shift.  Known as “Distributed Lethality,” this strategy calls for our naval combatants to seize the initiative, operate in dispersed formations known as “hunter-killer” surface action groups (SAG), and employ naval combat power in a more offensive manner. After years of enjoying maritime dominance and focusing on power projection ashore, the U.S. Navy is now planning to face a peer competitor in an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) environment. Long overdue, Distributed Lethality shifts the focus to one priority – warfighting.  Far from a surface warfare problem alone, achieving victory against a peer enemy in an A2AD environment will require leveraging all aspects of naval warfare, including naval cryptology.

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Naval Cryptology has a long, proud history of supporting and enabling the Fleet. From the Battle of Midway in 1942, to leading the Navy’s current efforts in cyberspace, the community’s expertise in SIGINT, Cyber Operations, and Electronic Warfare is increasingly relevant in an A2AD environment. Led by Commander, U.S. Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. TENTH Fleet, the community is comprised of officers and enlisted personnel serving afloat and ashore and who are well integrated with the Fleet, intelligence community, and U.S. Cyber Command. Given its past history and current mission sets, naval cryptology is poised to enable distributed lethality by providing battlespace awareness, targeting support, and effects, in and through the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace.   

Battlespace Awareness

Battlespace Awareness, as defined in the Information Dominance Roadmap, 2013-2028, is “the ability to understand the disposition and intentions of potential adversaries as well as the characteristics and conditions of the operational environment.”  It also includes the “capacity, capability, and status” of friendly and neutral forces and is most typically displayed as a Common Operating Picture (COP).  To be effective, however, battlespace awareness must seek to provide much more than just a COP. It must also include a penetrating knowledge and understanding of the enemy and environment — the end-user of which is the operational commander. The operational commander must be able to rely on predictive analysis of enemy action in the operational domain to successfully employ naval combat power in an A2AD environment.  

Naval Cryptology has historically provided battlespace awareness through the execution of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) operations.  During World War II, Station HYPO, located in Pearl Harbor and headed by Commander Joseph Rochefort, collected and decrypted the Japanese naval code, known as JN-25. Station HYPO’s exploitation of Japanese naval communications was sufficient to provide daily intelligence reports and assessments of Japanese force dispositions and intentions. These reports were provided to naval operational commanders, to include Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas. On May 13, 1942, navy operators intercepted a Japanese message directing a logistics ship to load cargo and join an operation headed to “Affirm Fox” or “AF.”  Linguists from Station HYPO had equated “AF” to Midway in March after the Japanese seaplane attack on Hawaii (Carlson, 308) and was thus able to confirm Midway as the objective of the upcoming Japanese naval operation.  Station HYPO was also able to give Nimitz the time and location of the Japanese attack point: 315 degrees, 50 nm from Midway, commencing at 7:00AM (Carlson, 352). This allowed Nimitz to position his forces at the right place, designated Point Luck, northeast of Midway, placing the U.S. fleet on the flank of the Japanese (Carlson, 354). Had Station HYPO’s efforts failed to provide this battlespace awareness, Admiral Nimitz would not have had enough time to thwart what might have been a surprise Japanese attack.  

Photo shows work being done on the Japanese Naval code J-25 by Station HYPO in Hawaii. The Japanese order to prepare for war was sent in J-25 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, but decoders had been ordered to suspend work on the Naval code and focus efforts on the diplomatic code. Later, enough of J-25 was broken to be used as an advanced warning to the Japanese attack on Midway. NSA photo.
Photo shows work being done on the Japanese Naval code J-25 by Station HYPO in Hawaii. The Japanese order to prepare for war was sent in J-25 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, but decoders had been ordered to suspend work on the Naval code and focus efforts on the diplomatic code. Later, enough of J-25 was broken to be used as an advanced warning to the Japanese attack on Midway. NSA photo.

Victory at Midway was founded on the operational commander’s knowledge of the enemy’s force construct and disposition. Currently the product of both active and passive, organic and non-organic sensors, achieving battlespace awareness in an A2AD environment will require more emphasis on passive and non-organic sensors, and increased national-tactical integration in order to prevent detection and maintain the initiative.  The “hunter-killer” SAGs will be entirely dependent upon an accurate and timely COP – not just of enemy forces, but of dispersed friendly forces as well.  Just as battlespace awareness enabled triumph against the Imperial Japanese Navy, so too will it be the very foundation upon which the success of distributed lethality rests. Without it, the operational commander cannot effectively, and lethally, disperse his forces over time and space.    

Targeting Support

Another key enabler of the Surface Navy’s shift to the offensive will be accurate and timely targeting support.  Though support to targeting can come in many forms, as used here it refers to the triangulation and precision geolocation of adversary targets via communications intelligence and radio direction finding (RDF).  In an environment in which options to “fix” the enemy via radar or other active means introduces more risk than gain, RDF presents itself as a more viable option.  Indeed, the passive nature of direction finding/precision geolocation makes it particularly well suited for stealthy, offensive operations in an A2AD environment.  Leveraging both organic and non-organic sensors in a fully integrated manner — RDF will provide “hunter-killer” SAG commanders with passive, real-time, targeting data.     

Perhaps one of the best historical examples of Naval Cryptology’s support to targeting can be seen in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Third Reich had threatened the very lifeline of the war in Europe as Admiral Donitz’ U-boats were wreaking havoc on Allied merchant vessels throughout the war. Though America had begun intercepting and mapping German naval communications and networks as early as 1938, it was not as critical then as it was upon entry into the war. By the time America entered the war, the U.S. Navy’s SIGINT and cryptanalysis group, OP-20-G, boasted near 100 percent coverage of German naval circuits. Many of these circuits were used for high frequency (HF), long range shore-ship, ship-shore, and ship-ship communications. The ability to both intercept these communications and to locate their source would be necessary to counter the Axis’ attack. That ability was realized in an ever growing high frequency direction finding (HFDF) network.

The HFDF network originally consisted of only a handful of shore stations along the Atlantic periphery. Throughout the course of the war it grew to a rather robust network comprised of U.S., British, and Canadian shore-based and shipborne systems. The first station to intercept a German naval transmission would alert all other stations simultaneously via an established “tip-off” system.  Each station would then generate a line of bearing, the aggregate of which formed an ellipse around the location of the target.  This rudimentary geolocation of German U-boats helped to vector offensive patrols and enable attack by Allied forces — thus taking the offensive in what had previously been a strictly defensive game.  The hunter had become the hunted.        

German U-boats threatened the very lifeline of the war in Europe by wreaking havoc on Allied merchant vessels throughout the war.
German U-boats threatened the very lifeline of the war in Europe by wreaking havoc on Allied merchant vessels throughout the war.

Enabling the effectiveness of increased offensive firepower will require more than battlespace awareness and indications and warning.  Going forward, Naval cryptologists must be agile in the support they provide — quickly shifting from exploiting and analyzing the enemy, at the operational level, to finding and fixing the enemy at the tactical level. Completing the “find” and “fix” steps in the targeting process will enable the “hunter-killer” SAGs to accomplish the “finish.”

Cyber Effects

Finally, cyber.  Receiving just a single mention, the original distributed lethality article in Proceedings Magazine refers to the cyber realm as, “the newest and, in many ways most dynamic and daunting, levels of the battlespace—one that the Surface Navy, not to mention the U.S. military at large—must get out in front of, as our potential adversaries are most certainly trying to do.” Indeed, the incredible connectivity that ships at sea enjoy today introduces a potentially lucrative vulnerability, for both friendly forces and the adversary. Similar to battlespace awareness and targeting, Naval Cryptology has history, albeit limited, in cyberspace. Cryptologic Technicians have long been involved in Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and the Navy was the first service to designate an enlisted specialty (CTN) in the cyber field. According to the FCC/C10F strategy, not only do they, “operate and defend the Navy’s networks,” but they also, “plan and direct operations for a subset of USCYBERCOM’s Cyber Mission Forces.”  The combination of history and experience in cyberspace, coupled with the FCC/C10F designation as the Navy’s lead cyber element, clearly places the onus on naval cryptology. As the Navy seeks to protect its own cyber vulnerabilities, and exploit those of the adversary, the execution of effective cyber operations by the cryptologic community will be critical in enabling distributed lethality.

Going Forward

Today, through a wide array of networked, passive, non-organic sensors, and integration with national intelligence agencies and U.S. Cyber Command, naval cryptology is well-positioned to enable distributed lethality by providing battlespace awareness, targeting support, and effects, in and through the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace. Yet, similar to the surface force, a cultural shift in the cryptologic community will be required. First, we must optimize national-tactical integration and better leverage and integrate off-board sensors. The uniqueness of the A2AD environment demands the integration and optimization of passive, organic and non-organic sensors in order to prevent counter-targeting. Second, we must prioritize the employment of direction finding and geolocation systems, ensuring they are accurate and sufficiently integrated to provide timely targeting data for weapons systems. This will require a shift in mindset as well, from simple exploitation to a focus on “find, fix.” Third, we must continue to lead in cyberspace, ensuring cyber defense in depth to our ships at sea while developing effects that effectively exploit adversary cyber vulnerabilities. Finally, naval cryptology’s role in distributed lethality cannot occur in a vacuum — increased integration with the Fleet will be an absolute necessity.

Distributed lethality is the future of Naval Surface Warfare — a future in which the cryptologic community has a significant role. In order to ensure the Surface Force can seize the initiative, operate in dispersed formations known as “hunter-killer” SAGs, and employ naval combat power in a more offensive manner in an A2AD environment, Naval Cryptology must stand ready to provide battlespace awareness, targeting support, and effects, in and through the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace.

LCDR Chuck Hall is an active duty 1810 with more than 27 years of enlisted and commissioned service.  The opinions expressed here are his own.

LCDR David T. Spalding is a  former Cryptologic Technician Interpretive.  He was commissioned in 2004 as a Special Duty Officer Cryptology (Information Warfare/1810).  The opinions expressed here are his own.

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Works cited:

Ballard, Robert. Return to Midway. Washington, D.C: National Geographic, 1999.

Parshall, Jonathan. Shattered Sword : The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway. Dulles, Va. Poole: Potomac Chris Lloyd distributor, 2007.

Carlson, Elliot. Joe Rochefort’s War: the Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute, 2011. Print.

A Tactical Doctrine for Distributed Lethality

Distributed Lethality Topic Week

By Jeffrey E. Kline, CAPT, USN (ret)

“…strike effectively first…”

–Wayne P. Hughes, Captain, United States Navy (ret)[i]

Introduction

In January of 2015 the U.S. Navy’s surface leadership publicly described the concept of distributed lethality.[ii] In broad terms, distributed lethality proposes creating small offensive adaptive force packages comprised of surface action groups (SAG) with a variety of support elements that operate  across a wide region and under an adversary’s anti-access sea denial umbrella. Its purpose is to confound adversary locating and targeting while introducing a threat to their sea control ambitions. It is an offensive concept for the U.S. surface forces. After decades of investment in defensive technology, systems, and training to counter cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and submarines, distributed lethality represents a course change for surface warfare, or at least a return to accepting a major role in sea strike that had been ceded to the carrier air wings. With several world powers developing challenging sea denial capabilities, establishing sea control in contested areas is again a concern of naval planners. A return to the offensive capability of surface action groups (SAG) is necessary to add resilience to a naval force structure operating in these contested areas. It also leverages the tactical offense, which in naval warfare is advantageous to overemphasizing defensive capabilities.

This paper describes a tactical doctrine to mature the concept of distributed lethality. By tactical doctrine we mean fundamental principles by which surface forces operate in the function-specific case of naval surface-to-surface engagements in a challenging electronic emission condition where adversaries may have an advantage in long-range detection of contacts.[iii] Its purpose is to guide efforts in providing surface forces with capabilities to conduct independent offensive actions and to develop specific combat tactics to employ organic surveillance assets, ships, and weapon systems to find, fix, and finish enemy surface ships in wartime.

thumb_Harpoon_Valiant_Shield_2014
Distributed Lethality empowers the surface navy to reclaim a role in sea strike. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem (DDG 63) fires a Harpoon missile during a sinking exercise as part of Valiant Shield 2014. (U.S. Navy photo).

The tactical doctrine’s essence is that continuous emissions will be fatal and allow the enemy to strike first. It is not meant to preclude use of additional capabilities provided by cross-domain contributions, but it does focus first on the ship as the basic unit to build a distributed lethality system. This is a key philosophy for surface ship survival in a modern missile surface duel and somewhat of a sea change: we must use networked systems when they are available, but not rely on them.  To do otherwise invites creating our own vulnerability for the enemy to exploit. 

This tactical doctrine is based on three principal objectives:

  • Out think the enemy
  • Out scout the enemy
  • Out shoot the enemy

Out Think the Enemy: Delegated C2 and Independent SAG Tactical Operations

Ensuring a Captain’s technical ability to exercise his ship’s entire kill chain, as well as the authority to employ his weapons under the general guidance of commander’s intent, relieves an external command and control burden, provides the fleet a faster search-to-kill decision cycle, and increases fleet resiliency to operate in the most demanding electromagnetic environments.[iv] Many individual SAG operations, each within their own operating areas controlling their own search assets, tasked with obtaining sea control in a restricted emissions control status, strive to achieve an overall cumulative sea control effect.[v] When a central authority can provide broad area targeting information, a blind broadcast across the operating area may be made. This concept mimics submarine independent operations to establish undersea dominance with each submarine having its own water space. It is not efficient in a network-centric sense, but it does complicate the enemy’s surveillance, search, command and control efforts and therefore enhances our fleet wide survivability.

Delegated command authority is not a new concept to the U.S. Navy. It empowers American initiative at the lowest level of command. We, however, must be careful that our desire for efficiencies in technological investments does not inhibit an individual Captain from exercising all his weapon systems and thereby restrict command initiative. For example, a communal surveillance resource like a maritime Global Hawk controlled from ashore provides cost-efficient sensor coverage usable by all in an operating area. But, if we rely on it, and it is lost due to enemy fire or intrusion, we blind all our SAGs. Instead, we should leverage its coverage when available, but rely on a SAG’s organic sensors to provide over the horizon targeting within its own operating area. Empowering American initiative at the lowest level of command is the most effective counter to a tactical surprise by an enemy.[vi]

This distributed lethality tactical doctrine implies each ship’s crew is trained to find, target, and kill without off-ship support, under a full range of emission control conditions. As ships are added to a surface action group, and other platforms added to the adaptive force package, the group must also be capable of fighting as a team, in any emission control condition. Specific techniques will be addressed in the scouting section.

Out Scout the Enemy: Fighting in the “Electronic Night”

Just as the U.S. land forces’ motto is “we own the night,” U.S. surface forces must be capable and proficient in fighting in the electronic night, or without the benefit of our powerful sensors and communications networks. Each additional electronic emission we rely on to find an enemy’s surface group increases the risk of counter-detection, and therefore being detected, localized and targeted by the enemy. The surface force’s objective must be to achieve this search-to-kill cycle faster than any adversary.

800px-US_Navy_020623-N-5329L-007_Signalman_2nd_Class_Eric_Palmer_signals_the_U.S._Navy_mine_hunter_coastal_ship_USS_Raven_%28MHC_61
Passive electro-optic communications will need to be developed again between ships operating under the most restrictive emissions control (US Navy photo).

In Fleet Tactics, Wayne Hughes addresses both scouting and anti-scouting as methods to achieve a faster targeting cycle than the enemy.[vii] The U.S. surface navy’s current Distributed Lethality Task Force recognizes this and is exploring a concept of “deceive-target-destroy” to use both anti-scouting and scouting methods to gain the advantage.[viii] This paper will refer to these two broad categories while making tactical suggestions influenced by emission control conditions (or loss level of the EM spectrum) and number of platforms in an adaptive force package.

Single Ship Operation: Alone and Unafraid

Although adaptive force packages are envisioned as teams of several ship types with other support elements, the ability for each ship to operate independently in the most challenging emission control environment is a desired quality for force flexibility and resilience. In a truly contested environment friendly attrition may demand it. Technologies such as Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) radar operations, burst communications and bi-statistic active-passive operations using remote active sensors may allow for active emissions while limiting counter-detection. Nevertheless, we first address single ship operations in a completely passive condition with no organic air support or external targeting support. This is the most demanding scouting environment and is an effective anti-scouting technique particularly when combined with active decoys.

Completely passive scouting techniques for a single ship include visual, electronic surveillance, and acoustic surveillance. These techniques rely on the older concept of firing solutions being a function of the target’s relative position to the shooter, instead of requiring global positioning. Visual targeting is, of course, the least desirable as it exposes both forces to simultaneous targeting, but with many historical examples of combating forces “stumbling” upon each other, and as both surface forces may be conducting passive search, U.S. surface forces need to train for “quick response” firing. Technologies such laser target designators, long range guided gun munitions, wire-guided heavyweight torpedoes for surface ships, and visually fired missile systems may need to be developed to enhance U.S. combatants in the race to shoot first.

Passive and active search tactics with organic assets will need to be developed for each ship and helicopter pair (US Navy Photo).
Passive and active search tactics with organic assets will need to be developed for each ship and helicopter pair (US Navy Photo).

Beyond visual range, passive electronic and acoustic surveillance may be conducted with onboard electronic surveillance receivers and passive hull mounted and towed array hydrophones. Their information can be converted to a targeting technique through the use of Ekelund ranging and target motion analysis as used by the U.S. submarine force. [ix] Depending on atmospheric ducting and ocean convergent zone conditions, these passive techniques may allow detection as far as 50 nautical miles, with area of uncertainty for targeting dependent on line of bearing error and suspected target range. The decision to shoot passively either on a line of bearing or with a bearing-range solution rests on the factors of missile seeker capability, size of area of uncertainty, the risk of counter-detection, and the level of concern for clutter.[x]

Relaxing the tactical condition slightly by receiving information from off-board organic sensors, we add the use of organic tactical air reconnaissance from embarked helicopters or UAVs, and employment of sonobouys as trip-wires. These assets can either enable passive cross fixing for cooperative targets[xi], visual targeting, or in the case of an intelligent passive sonobouy trip wire design, range information. For air assets, use of off-axis, passive low flying and pop up techniques are anti-scouting tactics to mitigate the risk of enemy counter-detection.

As additional emission control relaxations are allowed like the use of LPI radar, dual use radar (military or civilian), or allowing organic air or unmanned surface assets to conduct active search while the host remains passive (bi-static active-passive operations), additional area may be added to the surface ship’s search space and its area of operations. Use of air asset active radar sensors will extend search areas, but expose manned helicopters to the risk of being engaged. Specific active-passive tactics combined with pop maneuvers should be a priority for each ship-helicopter pair to develop. Care to use off-axis operations and random active search with these remote assets to avoid counter detection must be a given. One advantage to remote active operations is the possibility of seducing an adversary operating in passive mode to risk active emissions for a better defense condition, thereby increasing the U.S. ship’s chance to combine active and passive targeting information. This is different than the anti-scouting use of active decoys to entice the enemy to misuse their own targeting and striking assets, which is another appropriate tactic in this contested environment. Both techniques  enhance the “Deceive-Target-Destroy” operating philosophy.

In addition to tactical deception using decoys, other anti-scouting techniques for single surface ship operations include concealment and evasion. Concealment may involve operations close to land to mask radar returns or confound missile seekers and electro-optic sensors; the use of commercial shipping or fishers to mask movement; or a combination of both. High speed evasion is used to increase the enemy’s area of uncertainty if we believe we have been localized by opening what is their datum on us.

As information is received from non-organic methods (national intelligence, higher command, or orbiting maritime aircraft) it may be silently fused with these other information to provide or enhance strike operations. Since these sources approach today’s normal methods of targeting they need not be expanded upon here.

The most challenging command decision for a Captain in this environment is when to switch from a passive offensive mode to an active defense condition in the face of a potential threat. If this is done too early based on only a few indicators we become susceptible to the enemy’s decoy seduction for us to provide targeting information to him. If too late, we mitigate our advantage in defensive hard kill systems. The Captain must weigh the timing and compounding of evidence and consider employing defensive soft kill systems first since these have been historically more effective than hard kill, and reveal less to the enemy’s scouting efforts. Activation of short range hard kill systems should follow and long range radar and hard kill systems employed last, all to give as little information to enemy scouts as possible. Of course, an active missile homing signal with a rapid increasing frequency shift is a red flag for all active defense systems. After an actual attack and successful defense when any electronic emissions are employed, passive high speed evasion should immediately follow.

Multiple Ship Operations: Better as a Team

Most capabilities for tactical employment of scouting  and anti-scouting in various levels of emission control for a single ship apply to a multiple ship surface action group or an adaptive force package. Additional ships require formation configuration to best capitalize on passive cross bearing fixes allowing for environmental and acoustic conditions. For example, a two ship SAG may steam in a staggered line of bearing perpendicular to a threat axis with a distance between ships that gives a good cross fix area of uncertainty[xii] while allowing for mutual defense and electro-optic communications.  Another example is a three-ship SAG steaming in roughly a triangular formation when no threat axis is available to cover a 360 degree passive surveillance area. Frequent individual course changes should be made along base course to put passive towed array beams in the best position to acquire acoustic information.

Exchanging information across a surface hunter-killer group in a strict emission control environment requires local C4I networks relaying on electro-optic communications such as laser, visual, or IR transmitters and receivers. Use of atmospheric layers by bending and reflecting signals may be explored to extend beyond line of sight, but intra-SAG communication that has no or little electromagnetic emissions will enhance SAG anti-scouting efforts.[xiii]

As emission control conditions are relaxed to employ organic off board sensors, helicopters, UAVs, or USVs may be positioned to either “complete triangles” in a two ship SAG, or be positioned forward to offset the threat axis and provide right angle passive surveillance. UAVs may be used as communication relays with low power emission or electro optic transmitters and receivers.

Options for dispersed SAG operations exist where one or two ships are sent miles ahead along a known threat axis in completely silent emission control. The ships in the rear are active on radar and control forward unmanned sensors, transmitting their information to ships in the van to create an opportunity for covert and surprise attack. This increases the intermittent risk to the active ships, but use of anti-scouting techniques of remote active decoys, LPI radar, and random active operations may be used mitigate the danger.

Multiple levels of active defense become an option with multi-ship SAG operations. Depending on indications and warnings of an attack, a SAG commander may decide the most capable air defense ship go active with hard kill systems while others employ soft kill only, or all go active, or some passively evade while others go active with hard kill. Again, these decisions are weighed against inadvertently providing targeting information to an enemy SAG too early in a defense cycle. The advantage of combat tactical doctrine is to permit training and rapid advances in tactical readiness through practice.

Out Shoot the Enemy: Don’t Take a Knife to a Gun Fight

Hughes writes “..the battle will be decided by scouting effectiveness and weapon range” and “the choice of tactics will also be governed by scouting effectiveness and weapons range.”[xiv] The obvious statement must be made that a SAG may kill no further than its longest missile system. Ship to ship missile systems should be designed for as much range as possible limited only by weight and size considerations for ship employment and possibly the ability to reload at sea. It is dangerous, and a bit arrogant for weapons systems designers to limit a missile range based on assumed future tactical situations.

Payload constraints of organic air assets limit the aggregate firepower needed to attack a capable enemy effectively, although they may be used to augment a shipborne attack, or attack independently with the purpose of making an uncooperative enemy go into active defense to provide better targeting data.

Traditionally, the key to effective surface missile attack is to penetrate enemy defenses by having missiles arrive while they are in a passive search mode (surprise), or to overwhelm his defenses with sufficient missiles arriving simultaneously. Another method is to attack with enough missiles, UAVs, and/or decoys to exhaust enemy weapon magazines and then follow with another attack. U.S. surface forces are susceptible to this tactic by nations with UCAV swarm capabilities.

ORD_LRASM-A_Mk41_VLS_Launch_Concept_LMCO_lg
Long range missile capability will be critical for effective surface action group offensive operations” Photo Information: LMCO artist conception of LRASM.

When U.S. missile systems have the same range, or greater range than an enemy, a simultaneous attack is best conducted when sufficient scouting information is available for a targeting solution. If U.S. systems are out ranged by an enemy, the dispersed SAG tactic of silent shooters along the threat axis with active ships in the rear may be employed to get ships silently within range of their quarry. [xv] In both cases it is preferred to conduct missile launches in an emission control constrained status to make the arrival of the missiles a short notice event for the enemy.

Conclusions

With the guidance that doctrine serves the glue of tactics, [xvi] this paper’s purpose is to provide direction for specific tactic development to employ ships and weapon systems under the distributed lethality concept. This includes specific passive target acquisition techniques informed by electronic and acoustic capabilities and environmental conditions, targeting methods informed by missile seeker capabilities, and passive defense measures informed by enemy missile seeker capabilities. By nature these tactics will be in the classified realm and modified as new technologies are introduced for the SAG or emerge as a threat from our adversaries. However, the general goals of out thinking the enemy by creating situations to allow a faster search to kill cycle and resilient operational employment; out scouting the enemy through the intelligent use of scouting and anti-scouting techniques; and out shooting the enemy through missile range and/or tactics provide a foundation for detailed tactic exploration, at sea experimentation, and refinement.

A retired naval officer with 26 years of service, Jeff is currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research department and holds the Chair of Systems Engineering Analysis. He teaches Joint Campaign Analysis, executive risk assessment and coordinates maritime security education programs offered at NPS. Jeff supports applied analytical research in maritime operations and security, theater ballistic missile defense, and future force composition studies. He has served on several Naval Study Board Committees. His NPS faculty awards include the Superior Civilian Service Medal, 2011 Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Award for Teaching of OR Practice, 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Homeland Security Award, 2007 Hamming Award for interdisciplinary research, 2007 Wayne E. Meyers Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering Research, and the 2005 Northrop Grumman Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering. He is a member of the Military Operations Research Society and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. 

[i] Hughes, Wayne.  Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, Second Edition, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, Annapolis Maryland, 2000

[ii] Rowden, Thomas,  Gumataotao, Peter, and Fanta, Peter.  “Distributed Lethality,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2015

[iii] For a discussion on functional specific doctrine see James J. Tritten paper “Naval Perspectives for Military Doctrine Development” at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/doctrine/research/p198.pdf

[iv] By resiliency I mean the ability for the fleet to absorb attrition yet still complete a campaign’s objective

[v] For a discussion on accelerated cumulative warfare see Kline, Jeffrey E. “Joint Vision 2010 and Accelerated Cumulative Warfare.” Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1997.

[vi] The caution of technologically constraining individual command initiative is raised in Responding to Capability Surprise: A Strategy for U.S. Naval Forces, National Research Council of the National Academies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C, 2013

[vii] Hughes, Wayne.  Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, Second Edition, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, Annapolis Maryland, 2000 pp 193,198

[viii] Personal communication with CAPT Joe Cahill, USN, Director U.S. Surface Force Distributed Lethality Task Force February 2016

[ix] While many sources are available describing Elelund ranging and TMA, a good unclassified overview is Coll, Peter F. “Target Motion Analysis from a Diesel Submarine’s Perspective” Master of Operations Research Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, September, 1994

[x] “Clobber” is a term for a sea skimming missile flying without seeker turn on  accidently hitting a ship that is not the target, but along the bearing of the flight path.

[xi] The term cooperative target here means one that is radiating either electronically or acoustically

[xii] “Good” here is defined as an area of uncertainty which a surface missile seeker can cover when it goes active or if passive, the area coverage of its sensor.  Depending on environment conditions, missile seeker size and passive sensor error, a distance between ships of 10 – 15 nautical miles and provide adequate targeting for a cooperative target to 100 nautical miles

[xiii] A team of Naval Postgraduate researchers including Bordetsky, Brutzman, Benson and Hughes are exploring a concept of “Network optional warfare” and proposing technologies to create a “mess network” for the SAG

[xiv] Hughes, p 270

[xv] Hughes, p 272

[xvi] Hughes, p 29

Distributed Lethality Week Kicks Off on CIMSEC

By Dmitry Filipoff

This week CIMSEC is hosting articles exploring the US Navy’s Distributed Lethality concept. The US Navy is investigating distributed lethality as a potentially game changing approach for the conduct of naval warfare. We at CIMSEC are grateful for the Distributed Lethality Task Force’s partnership in launching this topic week, for the thought-provoking insights of our contributors, and to the sustained interest of our audience. The Task Force’s call for articles may be read here. Below is a list of articles featuring during the topic week, which will be updated as the topic week rolls out and as prospective authors finalize additional publications.

A Tactical Doctrine for Distributed Lethality by Jeff E. Kline, CAPT, USN, (ret)
Distributed Lethality: Old Opportunities for New Operations by Matthew Hipple
Enabling Distributed Lethality: The Role of Naval Cryptology by LCDR Chuck Hall and LCDR David T. Spalding
Distributed Leathernecks by LCDR Chris O’Connor

The Legal Implications of Arming MSC Ships by Anthony Freedman and Mark Rosen
Distributed Lethality, Non-Traditional Fleets, and the Law of War by Chris Rawley
Implementing Distributed Lethality within the Joint Operational Access Concept by LCDR Collin Fox

Enabling Distributed Lethality by LCDR Josh Heivly
Reconfiguring Air Cushioned Vehicles to Enhance Distributed Lethality by John Devlin
The Elephant in the Room: E2-D and Distributed Lethality by LCDR Christopher Moran and LT Ryan Heilmann

Distributed Lethality: China is Doing it Right by Alan Cummings
Unleashing Unit Lethality: Revising Operational & Promotion Paradigms by ENS Daniel Stefanus

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. He may be contacted at Nextwar@cimsec.org

21st Century Maritime Operations Under Cyber-Electromagnetic Opposition Part Two

The following article is part of our cross-posting partnership with Information Dissemination’s Jon Solomon.  It is republished here with the author’s permission.  You can read it in its original form here.

Read part one of this series here.

By Jon Solomon

Candidate Principle #2: A Network’s Combat Viability is more than the Sum of its Nodes

Force networking generates an unavoidable trade-off between maximizing collective combat capabilities and minimizing network-induced vulnerability risks. The challenge is finding an acceptable balance between the two in both design and operation; networking provides no ‘free lunch.’

This trade-off was commonly discounted during the network-centric era’s early years. For instance, Metcalfe’s Law—the idea that a network’s potential increases as the square of the number of networked nodes—was often applied in ways suggesting a force would become increasingly capable as more sensors, weapons, and data processing elements were tied together to collect, interpret, and act upon battle space information.[i] Such assertions, though, were made without reference to the network’s architecture. The sheer number (or types) of nodes matter little if the disruption of certain critical nodes (relay satellites, for example) or the exploitation of any given node to access the network’s internals erode the network’s data confidentiality, integrity, or availability. This renders node-counting on its own a meaningless and perhaps even misleadingly dangerous measure of a network’s potential. The same is also true if individual systems and platforms have design limitations that prevent them from fighting effectively if force-level networks are undermined.

Consequently, there is a gigantic difference between a network-enhanced warfare system and a network-dependent warfare system. While the former’s performance expands greatly when connected to other force elements via a network, it nevertheless is designed to have a minimum performance that is ‘good enough’ to independently achieve certain critical tasks if network connectivity is unavailable or compromised.[ii] A practical example of this is the U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), which extends an individual warship’s air warfare reach beyond its own sensors’ line-of-sight out to its interceptor missiles’ maximum ranges courtesy of other CEC-participating platforms’ sensor data. Loss of the local CEC network may significantly reduce a battle force’s air warfare effectiveness, but the participating warships’ combat systems would still retain formidable self and local-area air defense capabilities.

Conversely, a network-dependent warfare system fails outright when its supporting network is corrupted or denied. For instance, whereas in theory Soviet anti-ship missile-armed bombers of the late 1950s through early 1990s could strike U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups over a thousand miles from the Soviet coast, their ability to do so was predicated upon time-sensitive cueing by the Soviet Ocean Surveillance System (SOSS). SOSS’s network was built around a highly centralized situational picture-development and combat decision-making apparatus, which relied heavily upon remote sensors and long-range radio frequency communications pathways that were ripe for EW exploitation. This meant U.S. efforts to slow down, saturate, block, or manipulate sensor data inputs to SOSS, let alone to do the same to the SOSS picture outputs Soviet bomber forces relied upon in order to know their targets’ general locations, had the potential of cutting any number of critical links in the bombers’ ‘kill chain.’ If bombers were passed a SOSS cue at all, their crews would have had no idea whether they would find a carrier battle group or a decoy asset (and maybe an accompanying aerial ambush) at the terminus of their sortie route. Furthermore, bomber crews firing from standoff-range could only be confident they had aimed their missiles at actual high-priority ships and not decoys or lower-priority ships if they received precise visual identifications of targets from scouts that had penetrated to the battle group’s center. If these scouts failed in this role—a high probability once U.S. rules of engagement were relaxed following a war’s outbreak—the missile salvo would be seriously handicapped and perhaps wasted, if it could be launched at all. Little is different today with respect to China’s nascent Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile capability: undermine the underlying surveillance-reconnaissance network and the weapon loses its combat utility.[iii] This is the risk systems take with network-dependency.

Candidate Principle #3: Contact Detection is Easy, Contact Classification and Identification are Not

The above SOSS analogy leads to a major observation regarding remote sensing: detecting something is not the same as knowing with confidence what it is. It cannot be overstated that no sensor can infallibly classify and identify its contacts: countermeasures exist against every sensor type.

As an example, for decades we have heard the argument ‘large signature’ platforms such as aircraft carriers are especially vulnerable because they cannot readily hide from wide-area surveillance radars and the like. If the only method of carrier concealment was broadband Radar Cross Section suppression, and if the only prerequisite for firing an anti-carrier weapon was a large surface contact’s detection, the assertions of excessive vulnerability would be true. A large surface contact held by remote radar, however, can just as easily be a merchant vessel, a naval auxiliary ship, a deceptive low campaign-value combatant employing signature-enhancement measures, or an artificial decoy. Whereas advanced radars’ synthetic or inverse synthetic aperture modes can be used to discriminate a contact’s basic shape as a classification tool, a variety of EW tactics and techniques can prevent those modes’ effective use or render their findings suspect. Faced with those kinds of obstacles, active sensor designers might turn to Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) transmission techniques to buy time for their systems to evade detection and also delay the opponent’s development of effective EW countermeasures. Nevertheless, an intelligent opponent’s signals intelligence collection and analysis efforts will eventually discover and correctly classify an active sensor’s LPI emissions. It might take multiple combat engagements over several months for them to do this, or it might take them only a single combat engagement and then a few hours of analysis. This means new LPI techniques must be continually developed, stockpiled, and then situationally employed only on a risk-versus-benefit basis if the sensor’s performance is to be preserved throughout a conflict’s duration.

Passive direction-finding sensors are confronted by an even steeper obstacle: a non-cooperative vessel can strictly inhibit its telltale emissions or can radiate deceptive emissions. Nor can electro-optical and infrared sensors overcome the remote sensing problem, as their spectral bands render them highly inefficient for wide-area searches, drastically limit their effective range, and leave them susceptible to natural as well as man-made obscurants.[iv]

If a prospective attacker possesses enough ordnance or is not cowed by the political-diplomatic risks of misidentification, he might not care to confidently classify a contact before striking it. On the other hand, if the prospective attacker is constrained by the need to ensure his precious advanced weapons inventories (and their launching platforms) are not prematurely depleted, or if he is constrained by a desire to avoid inadvertent escalation, remote sensing alone will not suffice for weapons-targeting.[v] Just as was the case with Soviet maritime bombers, a relatively risk-intolerant prospective attacker would be compelled to rely upon close-in (and likely visual) classification of targets following their remote detection. This dependency expands a defender’s space for layering its anti-scouting defenses, and suggests that standoff-range attacks cued by sensor-to-shooter networks will depend heavily upon penetrating (if not persistent) scouts that are either highly survivable (e.g., submarines and low-observable aircraft) or relatively expendable (e.g., unmanned system ‘swarms’ or sacrificial manned assets).

On the expendable scout side, an advanced weapon (whether a traditional missile or an unmanned vehicle swarm) could conceivably provide reconnaissance support for other weapons within a raid, such as by exposing itself to early detection and neutralization by the defender in order to provide its compatriots with an actionable targeting picture via a data link. An advanced weapon might alternatively be connected by data link to a human controller who views the weapon’s onboard sensor data to designate targets for it or other weapons in the raid, or who otherwise determines whether the target selected by the weapon is valid. While these approaches can help improve a weapon’s ability to correctly discriminate valid targets, they will nevertheless still lead to ordnance waste if the salvo is directed against a decoy group containing no targets of value. Likewise, as all sensor types can be blinded or deceived, a defender’s ability to thoroughly inflict either outcome upon a scout weapon’s sensor package—or a human controller—could leave an attacker little better off than if its weapons lacked data link capabilities in the first place.

We should additionally bear in mind that the advanced multi-band sensors and external communications capabilities necessary for a weapon to serve as a scout would be neither cheap nor quickly producible. As a result, an attacker would likely possess a finite inventory of these weapons that would need to be carefully managed throughout a conflict’s duration. Incorporation of highly-directional all-weather communications capabilities in a weapon to minimize its data link vulnerabilities would increase the weapon’s relative expense (with further impact to its inventory size). It might also affect the weapon’s physical size and power requirements on the margins depending upon the distance data link transmissions had to cover. An alternative reliance upon omni-directional LPI data link communications would run the same risk of eventual detection and exploitation over time we previously noted for active sensors. All told, the attacker’s opportunity costs for expending advanced weapons with one or more of the aforementioned capabilities at a given time would never be zero.[vi] A scout weapon therefore could conceivably be less expendable than an unarmed unmanned scout vehicle depending upon the relative costs and inventory sizes of both.

The use of networked wide-area sensing to directly support employment of long-range weapons could be quite successful in the absence of vigorous cyber-electromagnetic (and kinetic) opposition performed by thoroughly trained and conditioned personnel. The wicked, exploitable problems of contact classification and identification are not minor, though, and it is extraordinarily unlikely any sensor-to-shooter concept will perform as advertised if it inadequately confronts them. After all, the cyclical struggle between sensors and countermeasures is as old as war itself. Any advances in one are eventually balanced by advances in the other; the key questions are which one holds the upper hand at any given time, and how long that advantage can endure against a sophisticated and adaptive opponent.

In part three of the series, we will consider how a force network’s operational geometry impacts its defensibility. We will also explore the implications of a network’s capabilities for graceful degradation. Read Part Three here.

Jon Solomon is a Senior Systems and Technology Analyst at Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. in Alexandria, VA. He can be reached at jfsolo107@gmail.com. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity on his own initiative. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency. These views have not been coordinated with, and are not offered in the interest of, Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. or any of its customers.

[i] David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, and Frederick P. Stein. Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, 2nd Ed. (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense C4ISR Cooperative Research Program, August 1999), 32-34, 103-105, 250-265.

[ii] For some observations on the idea of network-enhanced systems, see Owen R. Cote, Jr. “The Future of Naval Aviation.” (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program, 2006), 28, 59.

[iii] Solomon, “Defending the Fleet,” 39-78. For more details on Soviet anti-ship raiders dependencies upon visual-range (sacrificial) scouts, see Maksim Y. Tokarev. “Kamikazes: The Soviet Legacy.” Naval War College Review 67, No. 1 (Winter 2013): 71, 73-74, 77, 79-80.

[iv] See 1. Jonathan F. Solomon. “Maritime Deception and Concealment: Concepts for Defeating Wide-Area Oceanic Surveillance-Reconnaissance-Strike Networks.” Naval War College Review 66, No. 4 (Autumn 2013): 88-94; 2. Norman Friedman. Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-Centric Warfare. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 365-366.

[v] Solomon, “Defending the Fleet,” 94-96.

[vi] Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,” 95.