Events, New Initiatives

The Athena Project – A Roundup of Our Waterfront Event

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Athena eventA little over a week ago, a group of young innovators met in a brewery in Point Loma trying to change the U.S. Navy.

We hosted our third installment of The Athena Project at Modern Times Beer that Friday and for the first time, we opened it up to the entire waterfront. Even though the presenters were predominantly from USS Benfold, the birthplace of Athena, a few change-makers from other commands presented ideas. About 15 different commands represented in the crowd, many coming from the Basic Division Officer Course (BDOC) here in San Diego. In addition to the Navy contingent, representatives from the University of Southern California (USC) Institute of Creative Technologies, SPAWAR, Disruptive Thinkers, and Harris Corporation were among the more than 70 in attendance. We had a phenomenal turnout – better than we expected. It feels like just the beginning, though.

Before we get into the roundup of our last event, here’s a quick summary of how The Athena Project works. Presenters are given five minutes to pitch their projects to the crowd, who vote on each idea based on quality, actionability, and presentation. We’ve found that the short pitch time and lack of powerpoint forces each presenter to get to the heart of their idea quickly and to distill it down to the essential points. After every presentation, the floor is open for five minutes of questions and comments from the crowd. When all the projects have been presented, votes are tallied and the ADM Sims Award for Intellectual Courage is announced.

The winning project gets to form a small functional team and receives command backing to make their idea happen over the next quarter. That, and of course bragging rights.

So, we had our friends from USC select the first name, and away we went. Here’s a summary of each of the ideas presented:

Idea 1: Psychology-Driven Division Officer Assessments – LTJG Kaitlin O’Donnell, USS Benfold

The foundation for LTJG O’Donnell’s idea was trying to help junior ensigns develop their leadership skill set. She proposed working hand-in-hand with the Human Systems Integration department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, to generate a survey that could be given to an officer’s division to evaluate leadership traits. LTJG O’Donnell envisioned a breakdown similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to give young officers feedback and action items for strengthening traits.

Idea 2: Hydro Wave Power Generator – ET2(SW) Erika Johnson, USS Benfold

Petty Officer Johnson and her husband proposed utilizing cranks and netting in littorals to build a network of power generators that would double as a passive sonar system.  She explained the technology, then offered multiple design-types leveraging materials currently in use.

Idea 3: Peer Resource Sharing – LTJG Sarah Eggleston, Destroyer Squadron ONE

Citing a great deal of frustration in maintaining version control of current instructions and guidance, LTJG Eggleston proposed a sharepoint-like system in which naval personnel could share lessons learned, updated messages, and recent notices among other information. Feedback from the crowd suggested utilizing current channels such as Navy Knowledge Online to grow the database and function as a type of Navy Wiki.

Idea 4: Benfold University CLEP – STG2(SW) Gina Stevens, USS Benfold

Onboard USS Benfold, there is a program called Benfold University in which Sailors who have a passion and knowledge base for any topic can teach their shipmates about the subject. Since its establishment in early 2013, the program has hosted classes in writing, welding, photography, Spanish, finance, nutrition and Japanese. Petty Officer Stevens, the program’s first teacher, proposed using free resources provided by Navy College for the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) to teach Sailors the knowledge necessary to gain college credit for a course.

Idea 5: Active Sonar Defense – ENS Joshua Corpus, BDOC

A game-day addition to the presentation list, ENS Corpus proposed taking technology found in noise-cancelling headphones – reciprocal noise generation – and applying that concept to ships’ sonar to act as a defense against active prosecution. ENS Corpus defended his assertion following his presentation as engineers in the crowd questioned the technology. During a break in the action, the concept was a hot topic, bringing several innovators together to discuss the feasibility of the idea.

RELEASED USS Benfold PAO
                             USS Benfold – incubator

The winners of the ADM Sims Award for Intellectual Courage, this group of Petty Officers dominated the peer voting in every category with their presentation. The group proposed building an integrated database that would combine information from existing sensors to assist in identification of surface contacts. Characteristics from ships such as radar cross-section, electromagnetic emissions and heat signature would be combined with new visual-profiling software to build an electronic profile. That profile could then be compared to a database of surface ships and ranked by probability, resulting in rapid identification of long range surface targets. They also gave many examples on how the system could be developed in future iterations, including integration with seaborne drone systems and crew served weapons mounts. The pitch was well received and engineers from USC immediately pounced on the idea, offering to work with the team to develop a rapid prototype for proof of concept.

Idea 7: Electronic Division Officer Notebook – LTJG Isaac Wang, USS Benfold

Trying to solve the problem of maintaining paper records for Sailors, LTJG Wang suggested leveraging existing technology, like Neat Scanners and handwriting recognition software, to digitize the contents typically kept in Division Officer notebooks. Documents like counseling sheets, signed evaluations, history forms and the like could be scanned and kept together. Many in the crowd viewed this idea as “low hanging fruit” and claimed it would be simple to implement onboard a ship. LTJG Wang took the recommendations in stride and aims to institute his plan onboard BENFOLD.

Idea 8: Cosmogator – LT William Hughes, USS Benfold

LT Hughes, the navigator onboard Benfold, developed a concept for a system that would automate celestial navigation. He proposed that the system, consisting of optical sensors and a database of stars, could provide accurate positional data to the ship’s weapons systems in the event of a GPS outage. LT Hughes tested several mobile applications through his research and claimed that the technology to make this system a reality was well within reach. The crowd agreed, and his project finished in second place overall.

Idea 9: SCAT Tactical HUD – ENS Robert McClenning, FC1(SW) William Steele, FC2(SW) Amanda Curfew, FC2(SW) Justin Lagenor, GM3 Jacob Niessen, USS Benfold.

This large group finished third in the peer voting for their proposed solution to the problem of command and control for ships’ crew-served weapons mounts. Citing difficulty in communications between the Anti-Terrorism Tactical Watch Officer (ATTWO) on the bridge and the machine guns on the weatherdecks, the team suggested utilizing augmented reality (AR) headsets for gunners and a touch screen tablet for the ATTWO to optimize the process. The team said that the headsets would be simplistic – only displaying commands such as “fire” and “ceasefire” – and would have to be hard-wired because a tactical wireless system would be easily exploitable by potential adversaries.

Idea 10: Metal Alloys for Energy – GSM2(SW) Robertson Acido, USS Benfold

The second of our game-day additions, GSM2 Acido proposed taking technology that’s being developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota to augment the power needs of surface ships. The engineers developed a new alloy that converts heat into energy. GSM2 Acido suggested using that alloy onboard ships – on anything the exhaust stacks for engines to solar-heated panels – to save fuel by allowing ships to have sufficient power without running their generators. GSM2 Acido formed a small team at the Athena event, including BDOC officers and SPAWAR engineers, to shape his pitch before presenting.

Overall, the event brought forth some tremendous ideas from the deckplates and provided some great networking opportunities, but the best part of it all: We had fun. The feedback on all the voting sheets was incredibly positive, and the support from the diverse crowd was amazing. It’s encouraging to know that there are so many people out there who want to make a difference.

We’re looking into scheduling the next waterfront Athena event for this spring, and hope that the innovation wildfire continues to spread – not only on the West Coast, but throughout the Navy. We’ll post all the updates you can handle on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/athenanavy or you can get information on Twitter by following @AthenaNavy. For more information and musings on innovation, you can check out our blog as well.

As The Athena Project continues to grow, so grows the chances that we’ll uncover the next big thing.

As Ben Franklin said, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”

Challenge accepted.

LT Dave Nobles is the weapons officer aboard USS Benfolds and a member of the CNO’s Rapid Innovation Cell. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Current Operations

Gibraltar – Getting Bumpy

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GibraltarJust a little news item from the BBC about the latest in a series of armed stand-offs in Gibraltar, this time resulting in a “minor collision:”

The Ministry of Defence has accused a Guardia Civil patrol boat of “manoeuvring in a provocative and dangerous manner in the vicinity of Royal Navy vessels”.

No shots were fired in the incident.

But there was a minor collision between the Spanish vessel and a Gibraltar Defence Police boat.

The incident happened on Wednesday while the Gibraltar Squadron was providing force protection to a Royal Navy Fleet Auxiliary tanker in Gibraltarian territorial waters.

According to the Gibraltar Chronicle, the Spanish patrol boat Rio Tormes sailed too close to a Royal Navy vessel after breaching a security cordon off the British territory.

Armed crew members on HMS Scimitar ordered the Spanish vessel to leave the area but the Guardia Civil vessel reportedly ignored the warning, resulting in a stand-off.

Cyber War, Future War, Long Reads, Tactical Concepts

Not Like Yesterday: David Kilcullen’s Out of the Mountains

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…and into the Littorals

In a 1997 speech to the National Press Club that will be familiar to many Navy and Marine Officers, General Charles Krulak, 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps, told the story of Roman consul Publius Varus. Consul Varus was a once successful general whose legions were decimated by Germanic tribes using what we might refer to as asymmetric tactics that left the Roman’s flummoxed. Varus’ last words were recounted as “Ne Cras, Ne Cras,” or “Not like yesterday.” The story presents a challenge to military leaders in our own generation to refrain from getting complacent in their own capabilities, and to continue to adapt their organizations to meet new and unexpected threats.

General Krulak’s went on to introduce the concept of an urban “three block war,” in which combat forces would simultaneously conduct humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, and high intensity combat operations in the space of three contiguous blocks of a complex urban environment. In many ways General Krulak’s words were more prophetic than he could know, as within six years U.S. forces were engaged against an irregular enemy in complex, densely populated urban terrain in Iraq.

American combat troops out of Iraq and on the cusp of departing Afghanistan. This makes it the perfect opportunity to examine old ideas about urban warfare with fresh eyes and look for  both the continuities and the differences resulting from a globally connected world and the proliferation of advanced weapons and technologies down to the sub-state level.

Dr. David Kilcullen, an Australian soldier and counterinsurgency specialist who advised U.S. leadership on strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, has taken a major step in this direction with his new book Out of the Mountains. Kilcullen’s new work analyses the major trends driving the future of conflict around the world. His findings will indeed have far reaching implications for the U.S. military, which has been focused for years on a rural insurgency based in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. Conflict will not be as it was yesterday. It will be fought in major coastal urban centers amidst tens of millions of people, and it will span all domains including land, sea, air, and cyber. These conflicts will be complex and will almost never have a purely or even primarily military solution, but their intensity will at the very least require military force to protect and enable other forms of power and influence as they are applied in support of U.S. strategic goals. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps will need to be adaptable and flexible in order to remain mission-capable in such an environment.

This article will examine the major trends that Kilcullen identifies, and attempt to delve deploy into their military implications. Dr. Kilcullen identifies four “mega-trends” that are shaping the future of humanity, and with it the future of warfare as a human endeavor. These trends include:

  • Increasing Population – The U.N. estimates that the global population will continue to increase, especially in developing nations, before leveling off around 9 billion people sometime in the latter half of the century.
  • Urbanization – For the first time in human history, more than half of the population worldwide lives in cities.
  • Littoralization – Most cities, and certainly the largest ones, are in coastal zones that provide access to seaborne transportation and thus access to the global economy. Kilcullen usefully defines the littorals as the portion of land and air that can be targeted by weapons from the sea, and likewise that portion of sea and air that can be targeted from land.
  • Digital Connectedness – Internet and mobile phone access are beginning to saturate markets worldwide, and in some countries access to communications technology outstrips access to sanitation facilities.

The first three of these trends are not news. Kilcullen notes that sociologists have been writing about population and urbanization for decades, and urban conflict was a major focus of military thinking in the 1990s. However, the acceleration of these trends, combined with the burgeoning level of digital connectedness not widely foreseen in the 1990s, means that urban conflicts will take on a new level of violence and intensity that will be broadcast around the world instantaneously. This will provide our adversaries with powerful commercial tools to enable command and control  (C2) of independent networked cells in a dynamic battlespace.

Operation Iraqi FreedomAt the operational level, planners can expect warfare to range from the multiple-battalion level assault on Fallujah at the high-end to complex “urban seige” attacks such as Mumbai and Nairobi in the mid-range to the persistent urban violence of the drug wars in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas at the low-end. In each instance, the enemy will be a small, networked, and extremely well-armed group. It will reside in a sea of millions of civilians and be able to call upon commercial digital networks from cell phones to Twitter to collect intelligence, post propaganda, and act as ad hoc C2 nodes to coordinate operations. It will also be able to draw on a massive global transportation system to transport people, weapons, and finances around the world in short order.

1127-for-webMUMBAImapfIn order to flesh out the capabilities of modern networked urban terrorist groups, Kilcullen analyzes in detail the 2008 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Mumbai assault. LeT’s ground-breaking tactics, which displayed a level of free-flowing swarming ability that is at the very least rare for a sub-state actor, are worth examining. The attack was carried out by multiple cells of just a few individuals each who had conducted a thorough reconnaissance of their targets for nearly a year.  The attackers used maritime ratlines normally employed by smugglers to move from Karachi to the port of Mumbai, making landfall in a slum neighborhood with little police presence.  Once the assault began, their actions were coordinated via cell- and satellite-phone by a LeT command team operating their own combat operations center in Pakistan (likely with some support from Pakistani ISI). The team used broadcasts from CNN and other media networks to inform their battle tracking and develop an open-sourced understanding of the Indian police response. This allowed the LeT cells to remain several steps ahead of Indian security forces for several days, killing civilians at several high-profile public locations around Mumbai before they were finally surrounded and neutralized.

Digital connectedness is also allowing insurgent groups to expand their presence into the global information space that was once the sole purview of states and large corporations. Regular readers of this blog will likely remember that al-Shabaab live-tweeted the recent Navy SEAL raid in Barawe, and after the special operators withdrew, were able to claim victory before Western news outlets even knew the operation had taken place. The militants then followed up by posting pictures of equipment that the SEALs had left behind during their extraction from the firefight.  While seemingly trivial, this allowed al Shabaab to stake its claim to the information available on the attack, and perhaps shatter some of the aura of invincibility surrounding the SEALs since their assault on Osama bin Laden and rescue of Captain Richard Philips from Somali pirates.

It is beyond the scope of a single blog post to analyze all of the future trends that Kilcullen examines in detail. Indeed, the book itself is likely just the first of a great deal of research that still needs to be done on the future of urban conflict against evolved irregular or hybrid adversaries in mega-slums and other dense and highly complex urban environments. Much of that research will, of necessity, have to focus on non-military aspects of conflict prevention and mitigation, due to the unavoidable fact that future urban conflicts will be driven by sociological factors inherent to the urban systems where they are being fought. Under Kilcullen’s formulation, urban design and development will in many ways become as important to American policy as foreign aid, governance and economic development, and security sector reform.

The implications for military doctrine and organization will be significant as well. It will impact Naval doctrine, organization, and ship-building plans even as Navy leadership seeks to focus its efforts and budgetary priorities towards AirSea Battle. The same is true for the Marine Corps’ efforts to reposition itself as the nation’s amphibious crisis response force following a decade of warfare in landlocked environments. In following articles, we will examine these implications in depth, and attempt to achieve a better degree of resolution on the future of urban littoral combat and the steps that the Navy and Marine Corps will need to take to remain mission-capable in that environment.

Dan Dewit is a researcher with the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. From 2009- September, 2013 he served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

History, Strategic Outlook

The Rise of the Social-State

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As the clock struck midnight on December 31, 2000, at the start of a new millennium, there were approximately 360 million unique internet users. Just 1/1000th of the populations in the Middle East and Africa had access to the internet. Facebook was still but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.

Thirteen years later, this has changed dramatically. At nearly 2.5 billion people, the internet is used by more than 1/3 of the world’s population. More than 15% of Africans now have access to the internet – the majority of them getting it through mobile data via cell phones – while a whopping 40% of Middle Easterners are now online. That represents a growth of over 3000% (that’s three thousand) in just over a decade.

At the same time, social media use has risen exponentially. If all the Facebook users in the world were assembled into one place, they would make up the third-largest country on Earth with over 1.1 billion citizens (behind only China and India). While not nearly as numerous, there are over 500 million users of 140-character Twitter, with over 10% of those people in a single country:  China.

A Different World

You forgot the "@" before Mubarak.
You forgot the “@” before Mubarak.

People are no longer left to rely on the state-sponsored dictation of events, or even a few media outlets reporting what they’ve seen. With Twitter, first-hand accounts and pictures can be passed quickly; with Facebook, users can share and collaborate on growing trends; on YouTube, we can see with our own eyes exactly what is happening in Syria, Egypt, or on the streets outside Washington, DC.

The most enduring reality of the past decade has been the rise of the global individual. In 2006, Time‘s “Person of the Year” was the individual (“You,” to be specific). In response to old, slow, unresponsive regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and a host of other countries, leaders were either deposed in a violent way or forced to make significant concessions antithetical to the totalitarian norm.

Global individualism has led to a prioritization of individuals and ideologues over the traditional concept of “nation.” When you can “like” the Syrian Free Army on Facebook or “follow” al-Shabaab on Twitter from the comfort of your own home, it doesn’t matter that you live in the land known as “Pakistan” or “Egypt” or even “the United States of America.” Individuals across the globe are organizing themselves more now by ideas and preferences than by borders or nationality.

This notion is not new in religious lore. In Islam, the organization of Muslims everywhere is known as the “Caliphate.” Before it was a UN-recognized state, Israel was the name of the global community of Jewish people. Today, we might call all fans of the Dallas Cowboys a “Facebook group” and all the internet subscribers of Muqtada al-Sadr his “Twitter followers.” In the 21st century, the diaspora is connected via wi-fi.

The Decline of Nationalism

At a recent gathering of more than 150 American citizens with at least some level of college education, I asked the assembled crowd to identify the corporate logos of Starbucks, Shell, AT&T, McDonald’s, and Fed Ex. 100% of the crowd was able to correctly identify at least 4 of the logos, while around 90% were able to identify all 5.

Immediately afterward, I asked the same 150 people to identify the national flags of Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Libya, and Chad. Approximately 80% could identify 1 flag, 60% could identify 2 flags, 33% could identify 3 flags, 10% could identify 4 flags, and only 1 person (an African studies major in college) could identify all 5 flags.

In an effort to drive the point home, I flashed the flags of five U.S. states: New York, Alabama, Delaware, Indiana, and Massachusetts. If you can believe it, the percentages were actually worse; not a single person was able to correctly identify all five state flags (to be honest, if I hadn’t researched for the event, I doubt I would have been able to guess more than three or four either).

This erudite experiment, though anecdotal and far from scientific, points to a larger global trend:  the decline of nationalism, and the rise of global individualism.

The Ideological Basis of Armies

In light of the recent revolutions that comprised “the Arab Spring,” one must ask:  how are armies fielded? In our textbooks, we are taught that armies are the property of nation-states, who field them in defense of their borders or broader national interests.

But isn’t the original concept of the nation-state simply an ideal? At its basic level, an army is stood by people coming together to protect themselves from harm by a common enemy. It follows, then, that the armies of the 21st century will follow this natural law—that they are fielded to defend ideals—and with that comes a monumental shift in the global political paradigm: the rise of the social-state.

This is not a new idea. In his book Jihad Joe, J.M. Berger estimates that more than 1,400 American citizens have taken part in some form of militant jihad over the past 30 years. As our communication and connectivity brings us closer, our money and internet history drive our future more than the votes we drop in the ballot box.

Yet simple connectivity cannot supplant real action from Internet users. In “Tweeting Toward Freedom,” the Wilson Quarterly noted that, “More than a million people have joined a Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition, but few among them have taken any additional action to help those in Sudan.” The most effective ideologues in this century will be those who can turn words on a computer screen into reliable action from their followers.

The Social State

In a Small Wars Journal article, Richard Lindsey wrote, “There comes a point in any insurgency where it must move beyond the reach of social media, and tangible gains must be made on the ground – positions occupied, personalities deposed, systems replaced, logistics realized, and governments overthrown.” Yet if insurgents and individuals can defend themselves from governments while operating within that government’s borders, they have already made “tangible gains…on the ground.” The positions, personalities, systems, logistics, and governance are provided through wireless or ether connections and supported via the “social compact”—namely, some form of user agreement.

If I can get access to the internet, I can pledge to a cause, fund that cause, and become indoctrinated to that cause. We might call this process “assimilation.” My physical location is only important insomuch as I can carry out actions for that cause in my specific locale or travel to a nearby location to do the same. The “social-states” created by this reality are the future of the world, where citizens are arranged by borders of thought, ideology, and preference.

On its face, this may seem like a unique solution to so many conflicts throughout the world. However, the “borders” created by such a reality are much more fluid, volatile, and confusing, and they will drive our concept of conflict. In the book Warrior Politics, visionary author Robert Kaplan surmises that “the spread of information in the coming decades will lead not just to new social compacts, but to new divisions as people discover new and complex issues over which to disagree.”

Rather than access to weapons and land, the ability to control the electromagnetic spectrum and access to the internet will define future battlefields as the “strategic high ground.” Cyber strike and defense will be the most critical mission sets as friend and foe alike use this medium to achieve not only kinetic effects against their enemies–including CBRNE—but important non-kinetic effects as well, especially those encompassed in the concept of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD).

Without respect for nation-state political borders, these effects will be felt indiscriminately by both supporters and opponents of the cause. Therefore, those who can develop the ability to discriminate their effects will find the most success and support.

The Tough Sell

A new global paradigm isn’t limited to the shores of Africa or the Middle East; it can be seen here in America. The government shutdown is a case study in the inability of governments to respond to large-scale discord in a way that maintains credibility – and in this century, credibility and confidence is currency. Those who cannot control the 24/7 opinion and social media reality will quickly cede their control to the growing social-state underneath.

Therefore, it will be in the best interests of major nations like the USA, China, Germany, United Kingdom, and France, among others, to counter these tendencies and find a way to “sell” the nation-state in a 21st century marked by individual power. More than Nazism, fascism, or communism, the synergistic effects of non-state actors, insurgents, and individuals through social media and collaboration will be the greatest existential threat to freedom as we know it—the kind of freedom nation-states enjoy—that the world has ever witnessed.

In his New York Times piece “The End of the Nation-State?” Parag Khanna reminds us that “[t]his isn’t to say that states have disappeared, or will. But they are becoming just one form of governance among many.” In an age where information and products consume our daily routines, nation-states are faced with a very tough sell, indeed. There are many questions that partisans, policy makers, and populations must answer: Is the nation-state worth fighting for, or is the social-state a better alternative? Are the two mutually exclusive? Is the paradigm shift inevitable?

We will shape the answers to these questions over the coming decades. In the meantime, the only certainty seems to be that we will be uncertain.

LT Roger L. Misso is a Naval Flight Officer (NFO) in the E-2C Hawkeye, recent MAWTS-1 WTI graduate, and former director of the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference (NAFAC). The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.