Flotilla Tactical Notes Series

By Chris Rielage and Spike Dearing

Tactical shiphandling is fundamentally different from merchant shiphandling – and navies need to teach both skills. Naval shiphandling curriculums currently tend to focus on safety of navigation and Rules of the Road situations, and for good reason. It is crucial that we are expert at this sort of foundational shiphandling. Warships must be able to navigate safely around merchant traffic, or else risk more maritime disasters like the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald collisions in 2017, or the HNoMS Helge Ingstad grounding in 2018. But this is only part of what a young Conning Officer or Officer-of-the-Deck must be expert in. Unlike merchant mariners, naval officers also need to be able to handle their ships in both crisis and combat.

First, officers should train for peacetime confrontations. Junior officers being sent to frigates and destroyers should focus on escort duties, shielding carriers, amphibious assault ships, or supply ships from harassing vessels. In particular, this module should teach “shouldering” – the art of placing your ship between the HVU and the harassing unit as a physical barrier, preventing them from collecting valuable intelligence or gaining propaganda victories. Junior officers on their way to larger ships should train in their specific warfare area – how to maneuver an unwieldy aircraft carrier for takeoff and landing, for example.

Second, officers should be trained in combat shiphandling. Every bridge officer should know how to drive to best support their combat systems, both hardkill and softkill. A Conn should know to unmask gun batteries and point defenses without needing instruction, angling their warship for the best firing arcs against a hostile surface ship or incoming missile salvo. Driving with the wind in mind should be second nature, with officers staying mindful of how to blow smoke away from their ship in a fire or drive away from the cloud of radar-reflecting chaff they just launched. Anti-submarine warfare will require bridge officers to make snap maneuvers to dodge incoming torpedoes. Minefields demand their own type of precision shiphandling – and the time for officers to learn how to keep to a safe route through them is not when encountering a minefield in real life.

In these and many other warfare areas, bridge officers with only one to two years of experience will make decisions that can set the ship up for success or failure. Just as every bridge officer should know how to execute a man overboard recovery, instead of waiting on the Captain or TAO to walk them through it, every bridge officer must understand how to fight their ship through tactical maneuver and shiphandling.

As navies invest in more modern and detailed bridge simulators to train Rules of the Road, they should also invest resources to train junior officers on tactical shiphandling. We operate warships, not merchant ships; our measure of effectiveness is not timely deliveries or fuel efficiency, but how effectively we deter or win wars at sea. Our introductory shiphandling courses should reflect that focus.  

ENS Chris Rielage serves aboard USS BENFOLD (DDG-65). He graduated from Stanford University in 2021, where he studied China.

ENS Spike Dearing serves aboard USS CHOSIN (DDG-65). He graduated from Michigan State University in 2019 with a degree in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy.

Featured Image: EAST CHINA SEA (July 28, 2020) A close-in weapons system is fired during a live-fire exercise aboard the amphibious dock landing ship USS Germantown (LSD 42). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Taylor DiMartino)

Flotilla Tactical Notes Series

By Robert C. Rubel

In the mid-1980s, the U.S. Army developed its concept of AirLand Battle and imported the Soviet concept of operational art. Soon after, the Naval War College shifted the focus of its military operations course from tactics to operational-level concepts. At the time I was a planning and decision-making instructor in the department. The imposition of joint education requirements only reinforced the focus on the operational level. Tactics became almost an epithet for contaminating discussions of operational-level matters.

Since the Naval War College was, and still is, the only place where students can study the combined operations of the various warfare communities, the deletion of tactics in its courses fragmented tactical development in the Navy and undermined the college’s purported operational-level focus. I remember vividly in the late 1980s when Vice Admiral Duke Hernandez spoke at the College and described his approach to using Third Fleet as a whole to counter a Soviet attack in the Pacific. His discussion of combined naval tactics mesmerized the student body, but tactics were still shunned by the College.

The fall of the Soviet Union turned the numbered fleets into area administrators and fleet tactics evaporated, being supplanted by security cooperation plans and the tactics of individual platforms. Now that China constitutes a substantial threat to U.S. command of the sea in the Western Pacific, the Navy must rediscover fleet tactics, and reinvigorate the College’s role in warfighting education.

The Navy badly needs for the Naval War College command and staff course to become a year-long classified wargame-centric warfighting course. In such a course students would gain a fleet-level perspective on tactics and be able to link them to operational art and strategy. Joint aspects would necessarily be included, but not in the abstract way they are in current JPME. Classified capabilities and tactics must be included. The development of multi-domain and distributed maritime operations cannot be properly accomplished without fleet-level tactical logic.

Robert C. Rubel is a retired Navy captain and professor emeritus of the Naval War College. He served on active duty in the Navy as a light attack/strike fighter aviator. At the Naval War College he served in various positions, including planning and decision-making instructor, joint education adviser, chairman of the Wargaming Department, and dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He retired in 2014, but on occasion continues to serve as a special adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. He has published over thirty journal articles and several book chapters.

Featured Image: MEDITERRANEAN SEA (Aug. 24, 2022) An F/A-18E Super Hornet attached to the “Fighting Checkmates” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 211 prepares to launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jack Hoppe)

Flotilla Tactical Notes Series

By Ed Kaufmann

Navies can improve tactical learning by ensuring they are technologically proficient with their various warfighting systems and platforms. If one does not know how a weapon system or a sensor  functions technically, then they may not be able to employ it tactically. Once a warfighter has a grasp of how the underlying technology works, they can use that technical know-how to craft tactical solutions for the threat environment they are operating within. This can include knowing when and where to employ a particular weapon system and to avoid costly tactical mistakes, such as launching an SM-6 at a target when an ESSM would be more practical. Tacticians must understand when technical implications suggest tactics where maximum efficiency is the desired outcome, and to also know when the most efficient method is not always the most effective one.

The tactician should have a working technical knowledge of the various systems and weapons, but not be too immersed in the details. Certain technical details do not readily lend themselves toward tactical implications, and the skilled tactician can discern the difference. Officers need to wear many hats that not only represent their official skillset, but the additional duties that come with their particular rank, i.e., OOD, repair locker, and others. The bulk of especially detailed technical know-how should be left to the enlisted operators.

Skilled naval tacticians are not an inherent result of spending years in the Navy. They must be deliberately developed. Classroom instruction and focused mentoring are excellent, but warfighters have to be able to apply what they have been taught to actual hands-on scenarios or exercises conducted out to sea and in high-fidelity simulators. Tactical skill is primarily a product of learning by doing.

Another way to develop skilled tacticians and advanced tactics is lean on retired naval officers. Most of them would be willing to impart their knowledge and experience to newer personnel, especially Cold War-era experiences that highlight the challenges of a threat environment dominated by great power rivals. Much of that high-end know-how atrophied in the fleet during the past 30 years, and the retired community can help reconstitute it.

Navies must be both technically and tactically proficient so they can understand their systems, adapt their warfighting methods, and dominate any adversary in a conflict.

Ed Kauffman started his military career with the U.S. Navy in 1992, spending eight years as an Avionics Technician in the F-14 radar shop 63A at NAS Oceana Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department (AIMD). He made deployments on board USS America (CV-66), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), and USS Enterprise (CVN-65). He spent a year in the USNR in VP-64 based at NAS/JRB Willow Grove, PA, and four years in the National Guard. He spent the rest of his career in the U.S. Army as 13F (Forward Observer/Fire Support Specialist) and retired as an SSG (E-6). He graduated from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in May 2020 with a Master of Security and Disaster Management (MSDM), concentrating in Arctic Security. He is currently a member of CIMSEC’s Warfighting Flotilla, RUSI, RUSI(NS), and other organizations.

Featured Image: EAST CHINA SEA (Oct. 20, 2022) A CH-53 Super Stallion, assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 262 (Reinforced), takes off from the flight deck aboard amphibious assault carrier USS Tripoli (LHA 7). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter Burghart)