39 years ago, in the October 1985 issue of USNI Proceedings, then-LCDR Joe Benkert and I questioned how the Navy structured the relationship between the carrier force and the surface fleet:
“Do non-carrier surface warships have any strategic significance? To listen to discussions of maritime strategy and naval force structure in the public arena, one would think that the only general-purpose naval forces with strategic significance in their own right are carrier-launched aircraft and nuclear-powered attack submarines, and that surface combatants are simply integral parts of larger, carrier-dominated structures. Reminiscent of Peggy Lee’s song, ‘Is that all there is?” Are surface combatants simply supporting players, or do they have a larger strategic role?”…the Maritime strategy suggests that naval forces would move forward as early as possible to take decisive, offensive action to neutralize the Soviet Navy and pressure the Soviet flanks. This strategy envisions the Soviet fleet being neutralized mostly by attack submarines and carrier-based aviation. The principal role for surface combatants in this task lies in providing defense for aircraft carriers.”
Is that still all there is? Fast forward to 2024 where we may be witnessing a role reversal. Are we reaching a point in which the surface fleet, with the long-range Maritime Strike Tomahawk missile, will become the preferred platform-weapon combination for U.S. anti-ship warfare? Could this subsequently shift the role of the aircraft carrier and its air wing to being the supporting platforms rather than the supported?
The looming introduction of VLS-capable anti-ship missiles across a wide range of untapped force structure within the Navy and the joint force deserves to trigger a rethink of the fleet’s combined arms doctrine, especially between the surface fleet and the carriers. The U.S. Navy is about to experience a historic firepower revolution, and it needs to think deeply about the implications.
Making Sense of the Firepower Revolution
CDR Jeff Vandenengel argues in his recently published book, Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy, that aircraft carriers are too vulnerable in certain threat environments to take on the strike warfare role, and that the surface fleet’s offensive potential has been hamstrung by traditional doctrinal roles that relegated it to supporting the carrier defensively. Vandenengel and others have argued that the age of the carrier has been surpassed by the age of the missile, which has become the principally dominant weapon in modern naval warfare. The question is whether the combined arms doctrine that integrates the various naval communities into a fleet has adapted to make the most of the principal weapon of the era.
The lethality of the anti-ship missile has greatly exacerbated the intense attrition that has long characterized naval combat and set it apart from other warfare domains. As Captain Wayne Hughes argued,
“It is demonstrable both by history and theory that not only has a small net advantage in force often been decisive in naval battles, but the slightly inferior force tends to lose with very little to show… every strategist must know the relative fighting value of his navy – so carefully nurtured and expensive to build and maintain in peacetime. When committed in battle, the heart of a fleet can be cut out in an afternoon.”
In war at sea, a slight tactical disadvantage in striking power can quickly snowball into major losses, strongly encouraging navies to make the absolute most of the dominant weapons of their era. As Dmitry Filipoff has argued:
“…no other service needs to be more invested in tactical superiority and solid warfighting doctrine than navies. If a carrier strike group falls prey to a single missile salvo, that’s about seven thousand lives and $20 billion dollars that is lost in a matter of minutes. By comparison, those numbers would get you about 2,000 tanks, but there is no plausible combat scenario where two thousand tanks are destroyed in a couple minutes. Modern naval warfare is an absolutely brutal form of combat, and because of that, nobody stands to lose so much so quicky from their tactical shortfalls than navies. In naval warfare especially, tactical shortfalls can rapidly escalate into strategic liabilities…”1
Accordingly, the Navy’s warfighting concept of DMO should be developing a better understanding of how fleet warfare is evolving with respect to the wide proliferation of long-range anti-ship firepower across both the force structure of the U.S. military and its rivals. Lying at the core of this transformation is the point that the Maritime Strike Tomahawk possesses a combination of traits that are especially suited for mass anti-ship fires – long range, broad platform compatibility, and eventually steep inventory depth. While several other new anti-ship missiles are also joining the joint force, including SM-6 and the Naval Strike Missile, no other anti-ship missile in the U.S. inventory fields this specific combination of mass firing traits to the same degree as MST. And arguably no other community will field this decisive weapon to the same extent as the surface fleet. This historic evolution in the U.S. Navy’s striking power should have major effects on the roles and missions of the aircraft carrier, its air wing, and the fleet as a whole.
Evolving Firepower, Evolving Roles
The air wing has a range of limits, including the range of its aircraft, the range of its anti-ship missiles, the wide scope of missions the air wing may have to perform simultaneously, the time it takes to arm and launch sizeable strike packages, and of course the risk that can be reasonably tolerated by putting carriers within reach of certain high-end targets. Long-range anti-ship missiles based on the surface force offer a useful alternative for circumventing some of these limits and risks, and providing a much more expansive array of options for fighting enemy fleets.
But the carrier will still be needed to leverage this wide scope of new firepower. An alternative combined arms relationship is offered in Filipoff’s “Fighting DMO” series. The carrier air wing can serve as a force multiplier to this potent mass firing capability by fulfilling the information demands required to take full advantage of the long range of these weapons and their broad scope of distribution across a theater. Carrier aircraft such as the F-35 can take the lead in penetrating the contested battlespace and facilitating the striking power of entire fleets. As Filipoff has argued: “aircraft are going to be very critical for managing the breadth of the offensive kill chain. This can go from scouting for targets, cueing fires against them, maneuvering those fires, and assessing those fires’ effectiveness.” As carrier aircraft call in anti-ship fires from across the joint force, they can be postured to provide crucial retargeting updates to in-flight salvos based on the dynamic awareness offered by sensor fusion, and allow aircraft to shepherd anti-ship missiles into cohesive volumes of fire against enemy fleets.
Sailors taxi an F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the “Argonauts” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), on Jan. 22, 2022. (US Navy Photo)
The ability of the carrier air wing to provide offensive information support for the maritime fires killchain is significantly enhanced by the sensor fusion and networking capabilities possessed by 5th generation F-35 aircraft. F-35 fighters possess multiple datalink options to share data with dissimilar platforms, such as F/A-18s and E-2Ds. These datalinks could also be used to dynamically command anti-ship missiles to fly various waypoints, flying formations, and sensor postures to maximize effectiveness in a complex battlespace. The P-8 community can also provide valuable command and control functions for the maritime fires process, and offer aerial C2 options that are not tethered to the location or risk profile of a carrier.
Aircraft can be empowered with the command-and-control of significant amounts of anti-ship firepower in the moments that could decide fleet battles. It is through these roles that the carrier can still very much serve as a decisive capital ship by focusing on the critical currency of modern warfare – information advantage.
Conclusion
Given the range advantage of surface fleet-based missiles, the range limitations of the carrier air wing, and the vulnerability of the carrier in certain threat environments, the role of the carrier and its air wing should evolve in tandem with the U.S. Navy’s changing firepower. The carrier and its air wing should serve as the force quarterback that scouts wide spaces, cues surface ship fires against targets, and provides crucial in-flight retargeting support to those salvos on their way through a contested battlespace. In this method, the air wing can be empowered to deliver much more than the force of the carrier – it can deliver the force of entire fleets.
This is only one possible concept of operations for harnessing the new possibilities that are on the horizon. The fundamental issue at hand is whether the Navy will truly recognize it is in the midst of one of the most sweeping transformations in offensive anti-ship firepower in its history, and whether it will give serious consideration to shifting the combined arms doctrine that has long defined how the fleet intends to fight. The U.S. Navy’s warfighting concepts, including DMO, should be the driving force behind experimenting with these alternatives and eventually articulating what these new combined arms roles should be. The firepower revolution and the DMO concept are also happening in the context of the Navy’s growing emphasis on fleet-level warfare and Maritime Operations Centers. All of these elements must be thoughtfully integrated, especially with respect to reforming combined arms relations to maximize the fleet’s overall striking power. That is the ultimate end, not elevating one platform’s primacy or another’s.
Captain R. Robinson “Robby” Harris commanded USS Conolly (DD-979) and Destroyer Squadron 32. Ashore he served as Executive Director of the CNO Executive Panel. He was a CNO Fellow in CNO Strategic Studies Group XII.
References
1. This quote is from a presentation delivered by Filipoff to the Strategy Discussion Group (SDG) and used here with permission.
Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (June 13, 2021) Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105), front, and Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) transit the Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Olympia O. McCoy)
This article is an authorized republication from the Center for International Strategic Studies. It can be read in its original form here.
By Muhammad Azam Khan
It is essential to know how a military doctrine differs from a maritime doctrine. The former embodies hard military power with defined set of principles for its application. The latter denotes sum total of sea power, the physical, demographic, geographic and military resources derived from or related to the sea. The sea power of a nation involves but is not limited to, mercantile marine (commercial shipping), marine or civil maritime industries, ports, harbors, shipyards, maritime zones (EEZ) with marine resources therein, seabed minerals, navies, coastguards, and where relevant includes contribution of land and air forces of a country. It further implies power both, at and from the sea. To sum up, a maritime doctrine is a combination of soft as well as hard power or the aggregate of a nation’s ability, inclusive of policy apparatus, to ensure control and safeguard of its maritime zones and other maritime interests during peace and war.
Put another way, while a military doctrine involves application of kinetic power alone, a maritime doctrine by contrast encompasses all elements of sea power including economic dimension (soft power) besides maritime military (combat) power (vested in navies, coast guard, coastal police etc.). A maritime doctrine must allude to national maritime interests’ preservation and protection of which both, at home and abroad is entrusted to a navy. Unlike an army or air force with combat operations restricted broadly within the geographical limits of a country, a navy largely operates in international waters just outside 12 nautical miles from a country’s coast and could carry a nation’s flag to farthest reaches of the planet. For the record, there is also a huge body of international maritime law that governs maritime operations which must also be complied with.
Founded on historical experiences and changes occurring in strategic environment, a doctrine serves as benchmark in policy making. A defense policy issued by the government dictates and drives the two elements of a military (land, air and naval) strategy i.e. developmental and employment strategies. In most countries while the title “maritime doctrine” has been retained, more often than not it is the respective navies that have lead and composed such a document. Therefore, Australian, British and Indian maritime doctrines have been devised by navies in each country.
A doctrine widely differs from Fleet orders, Compendiums, Temporary Memoranda, etc. In the Pakistan Navy, these are defined in Navy Regulations (NR) of 1988 as:
“Orders and instructions of the Chief of the Naval Staff on day to day administrative matters in the Navy. These are in addition to various books of regulations, PBRs, Navy Instructions and Joint Services Instructions. Government letters may also be reproduced in Fleet Orders.”
The first edition of Maritime Doctrine of Pakistan (MDP) was unveiled in 2018 by Mr. Arif Alvi, the President of Pakistan. The ceremony was held at Pakistan Navy War College (PNWC), the premier seat of learning in Pakistan Navy. The ownership of the Maritime Doctrine was and still continues to rest with Pakistan Navy War College. It was at this institute that over a period of some six years several drafts were constructed, extensively studied and deliberated by a range of accomplished practitioners, scholars as well as reputed international maritime experts before the first edition was formally authorized for release. The issue of ‘jointness’ with other services was widely contemplated as well. In Pakistan the joint (tri) services operations is nevertheless a progressing phenomenon. The first edition of MDP consequently restricts itself to brief discourse on peacetime and wartime operations by Pakistan navy.
The role of Pakistan navy during 1971 war is worth recalling here. It was PN submarine Ghazi which kept the bulk of Indian navy’s eastern fleet confined to fringes of Bay of Bengal until its own sinking. Another PN submarine Hangor meanwhile turned the strategic tide in favour of Pakistan in North Arabian Sea after it sank an Indian frigate Khukri. All this meant pushing the Indian navy to a defensive posture. These are classical cases in history which aided in improving overall freedom of action to the benefit of Pakistan’s military.
Given the cold war dynamics and a colonial legacy of so called martial races joining the armed forces, Pakistan has perennially suffered from what is called “maritime blindness” (also sea blindness). It is an affliction in which large segments of general population and governments remain ignorant of maritime future and matters related to oceans. It is not specific to any one country. Many advance countries too suffer from this disorder.
There was a widely held belief in the Pakistan Navy that despite its enormous contributions both, during war as well as in peace, the service is not well understood even at the inter-services level let alone in country’s north. The inextricable link between import driven national economy underpinned by sea based commerce particularly, critically important fossil fuels (oil, LNG, and coal) was never understood in major parts of the country. As a measure, at an average 2.5 ships disembarked energy related cargo at Pakistani ports on daily basis in 2020, according to credible statistics. In a crisis, without such fuel reshipments, the strategic reserves could deplete rapidly. In the event, no military tank, fighter aircraft, or other combatant will be able to mobilize.
Major shifts in strategic environment following events of September 2001 reinforced the belief that Pakistan navy must come up with a document which quintessentially serves dual purpose: educational cum informational as well as an introductory doctrinal source. The “purpose” of first edition of MDP is accordingly defined at the onset: “to provide understanding to all stakeholders on the distinctive attributes of national maritime sector and the role of Pakistan navy in national security” (pg. 3).
The first edition of MDP was formulated as part of maritime and naval outreach initiative by Pakistan navy. It provides introductory narrative for in-country and overseas readership. The elementary knowledge on the national maritime sector and variety of naval features is meant for academia, intelligentsia, and bureaucracy besides others. It is predominantly an “informative” endeavor to “educate” stakeholders and interested parties. As such MDP had little to demonstrate classical military doctrinal approach and embarked upon a course to be more “informational” and less “doctrinal”. The first five chapters in the MDP educate a reader with essentials like military instruments of sea power, distinctive characteristics of maritime environment, brief history of developments in Indian Ocean, various dimensions of maritime environment besides Pakistan’s maritime interests and myriad non-traditional threats and challenges like piracy, trafficking etc. which infest the maritime commons. This is of course beyond the pale of hard-core military threats that endure.
On the issue of ‘doctrinal and strategic’ ambiguity, readers may note that Pakistan’s overall strategic posture is one that remains ambiguous and indistinct for well-known reasons. Pakistan has not formally published any strategic doctrine either. The available material is only through formal statements of top officials rendered in national, international foras including local and overseas think tanks of repute. Weapons development is meanwhile an ongoing process in strategic posturing. Also, at the time of publication of first edition, strategic developments like AUKUS, Quad, BECA, LEMOA, COMCASA, and MSRA had not occurred. The geopolitical landscape too was quite different. The end of war in Yemen and Somali piracy, emergence of Israel as a player in the Indian Ocean, withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, INS Arihant, the Indian navy SSBN completing first deterrent patrol etc. are subsequent developments. Though apportionment of share in defense budget has undoubtedly been a concern for Pakistan navy, it is nowhere central to MDP. Given the innate dynamic attributes of strategic environment, MDP was envisaged to be reviewed only after five years.
The second edition of MDP currently under process is intended to build on the inaugural edition. It will dilate on the roles of Pakistan navy; what it does at and from the sea in much more eloquent manner and greater depth. It will also provide stakeholders with an extensive insight into military strategic environment in the Indian Ocean and its influence upon Pakistan’s maritime interests. The new edition will expound blue economy and its relationship with maritime security. It will explain Gwadar port under CPEC and prospective regional connectivity that it importantly offers. The benchmark for new edition will be National Security Policy of 2022-2026.
The narrative appearing in some recent papers examining MDP and carried by prominent publications is more or less regurgitation of worn out clichés without any breakthrough or noteworthy research critique. If access to a primary source is available and is not availed, in this case (PNWC), it unquestionably runs counter to the spirit of research ethics.
Muhammad Azam Khan is a retired naval officer with over 47 years of experience as practitioner in the field of maritime security and nuclear research studies. He can be reached at mazamkhan54@gmail.com.
Note: The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not necessarily that of Pakistan Navy or Pakistan Navy War College. The article aims to clarify some of the views expressed in, “Major power competition in the Indian Ocean and doctrinal development in Pakistan,” published in Comparative Strategy, Volume 42-Issue 4, authored by Dr. Khurram Iqbal & Muneeb Salman and, “Advocating by Doctrine: The Pakistan Navy’s Experience,” published by CIMSEC, October 16, 2023.
Featured Image: Pakistan navy frigate F-22P Zulfiquar visit to Port Klang, Malaysia. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
Technical talent is critical to the Department of the Navy’s bid for technological overmatch in modern warfare. More emphatically, Vice Admiral Loren Selby stated in the Navy’s Naval STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Strategic Plan, “Strong Naval STEM efforts are critical to America’s future, and are a matter of national security.”1 While technologies are crucial to enabling systems and processes such as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), technical talent that informs the development and employment of algorithmic warfare systems is equally important.2
However, the naval services – the Navy and Marine Corps – lack an implementation plan for how they will cultivate STEM talent. To succeed in 21st century naval warfare, the naval services must take a holistic approach to recruiting, education, and retention if they are to effectively compete with today’s advanced threats and the multitude of adversaries. Without clear actions and the right personnel, the naval services’ efforts to improve warfare today will remain, at best, aspirational.
Improving the Foundation
The foundation of a 21st century naval warfare workforce begins with recruiting. Recruiting a technically competent workforce lays the keel of future success. However, the naval services will likely need to improve recruitment of STEM degrees from their largest accession pool for officers such as Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) and other commissioning sources. For instance, the US Navy and the Marine Corps only obtain 19.9 percent and 15.89 of their officer accessions from the Service academies, respectively. Fortunately, all these officers graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree.3 Therefore, with majority of officer accessions deriving from non-military academy sources, the naval services need to do a great deal more for targeting their largest commissioning populations.
The demand for STEM degrees throughout the world is currently outstripping supply. The World Economic Forum reported that there is a global STEM crisis, causing many advanced countries to sound the alarm.4 In the US, a March 2024 brief published by National Science Board reported “We [the United States] are not producing STEM workers in either sufficient numbers or diversity to meet the workforce needs of the 21st century knowledge economy, especially if STEM talent demand grows as projected.”5 Joseph McGettigan, the Director of the United States Naval Academy STEM Center recently stated:
“In 2017 there were 2.4 million positions in the US workforce that went unfilled because there were not enough people with STEM degrees to fill them. It is expected that in 2027 that number will increase by ten percent.”6
Not surprisingly, the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that engineering and related degrees, along with computer and information sciences and support services, only make up a small percentage of all the degrees conferred as shown in Figure 1.7 Hence, these statistics do not bode well for the naval services recruiting and diversity goals for STEM education to support modern warfare. With a growing shortage of STEM talent, the naval services will have to increasingly compete for a smaller portion of this skilled population. Still, the naval services can improve their ability to recruit in a number of different ways.
Figure 1 – Number of college degrees by discipline. Source: US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
One way the naval services can improve their recruiting efforts is to influence and increase the pool of eligible candidates sooner. Specifically, the naval services should vector more resources towards their Junior ROTC (JROTC) programs.
Established in 1916, JROTC programs were established to inculcate citizenship and leadership for secondary school students.8 Currently, the JROTC programs are not explicitly designed for military recruitment.9 However in the 2015 Armed Forces Appropriations Bill, Congress voiced its concerns about JROTC’s connections to recruitment by stating:
“The Committee is concerned about the shrinking number of American youth eligible for military service. For nearly 100 years, the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps [JROTC] has promoted citizenship and community service amongst America’s youth and has been an important means through which youth can learn about military service in the United States. But evidence suggests that some high school JROTC programs face closure due to funding tied to program enrollment levels, adversely impacting certain, particularly rural, populations.”10
While recruitment is not an explicit end-state of JROTC programs, it nonetheless has implications for recruitment.11 For these reasons, the naval services are missing out on an important source of potential recruitment and greater influence over the types of skills needed to support the naval services.
One way the naval services could improve the JROTC program is by making it a more attractive and viable place to grow the next generation of technical leaders. For instance, JROTC programs should place less emphasis on traditional programs of drill and ceremonial activities that the rising generation may consider anachronistic. Rather, JROTC units could structure their programs around more of an Ender’s Game approach:12 creating opportunities such as drone racing leagues, robot building, hackathon coding camps, and E-sports. A more modern conceptualization of JROTC could help shed the stodgy drill and ceremony competitions and create more interest in STEM fields. Such a change would make the military more appealing while also cultivating the skills needed in modern warfare. As a result, the naval services would benefit by increasing the potentially pool for recruitment of this talent.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Oct. 30, 2018) Cmdr. Chris Swanson, officer in charge, Landing Signal Officer (LSO) School, participates in a final prototype demonstration of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) TechSolutions-sponsored Flight Deck Crew Refresher Training Expansion Packs (TEP). (U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams/Released)
If the Navy and Marine Corps are to recruit capable citizens to meet the demands of 2030 and beyond, the services need to also address their public-facing social media presence used for their JROTC recruitment. In fact, both Navy and Marine Corps recruitment platforms for their respective JROTC programs require a complete overhaul. The web presence found for these organizations are woefully uninspiring and uninformative. From webpages to social media, the NJROTC and Marine Corps ROTC (MCJROTC) media does not tell a compelling story of service to one’s country or anything remotely intriguing that would drive potential recruits to click, scroll, or swipe deeper into the content. For instance, the Navy’s own NJROTC webpage is a throwback to the way webpages were formatted in the mid-2000s with the content being almost completely text based. Furthermore, NJROTC content on such sites as YouTube is equally uninspiring along with no official Navy presence to speak of on Instagram or TikTok.
If the naval services are going to battle other narratives that compete for attention and tell a compelling story, they must do battle on the same cyber terrain. Warfare knows no bounds and extends to the arena of recruiting the next generation of talent. If the Navy and Marine Corps do not recognize this, then they have already ceded the field of battle to other competing narratives, or worse, the enemy.
Educating for Decision-Making
To compete effectively with modern warfare technologies over the next decade, the naval services must educate and promote continuous learning for better decision-making. Decision-making at the pace of artificial intelligence (AI) is anticipated to be measured in seconds in future war. For instance, the US Army’s Project Convergence which is already testing many AI-enabled applications, advertised they were able to achieve target acquisition to target engagement within 20 seconds.13 Commenting on the challenges Navy destroyer captains face in the Red Sea against Iranian-back Houthis, Admiral Brad Cooper stated they only had nine to 15 seconds to make a decision in an intense environment.14 Therefore, reducing the amount of time to close the kill chains to seconds portends a significant increase in the pace of warfare in the foreseeable future, and by extension, the need for faster human judgments when humans are an integral part of the decision-making process.15 For these reasons, future leaders will not only need to have the best education but will require continuing education to ensure their skills are kept current and relevant to meet such demands.
The naval services must educate to adapt to the changing realities of the Cognitive Age,16 otherwise risk falling behind. However, educating personnel and not placing them in follow-on billets to use their skills and hone their education further through real-world application risks reducing the service’s return on investment in these critical skills. For instance, most US Navy personnel who graduate from the Naval Postgraduate School are not placed in billets that maximizes the use of their degree.17 This is problematic because it demonstrates that the Navy, as publicized in the comprehensive Education for Sea Power (E4S) report, does not have a rigorous selection process for assigning personnel to NPS.
This is clear from the E4S report that the Navy, in particular, is missing the mark on education in at least two ways. First, the E4S showed that the Navy has consistently selected personnel who were either already approved for retirement when entering school or retired from active duty immediately after graduation (p. 331). Figure 2, from the E4S, shows that in FY18 alone the Navy had 736 sailors who fit that description. Second, the E4S stated that, “The variances in training requirements/career progression/sea-shore rotation for each URL (Unrestricted Line) community do not support directly associating a career milestone with graduate education. Communities do not require post-graduation education at the same time within each respective career path” (p. 339). What’s worse is this practice was identified in a 1998 Center for Naval Analysis report, stating that only 37 percent of graduates were sent to utilization tours in relevant coded billets.18 Once again, this demonstrates that the Navy’s system of selection and employment of its most critical asset, its people, falls woefully short and requires an immediate course correction if it is to properly educate and subsequently employ its human talent.
Figure 2 – Number of Navy officers attended who were already approved for retirement when entering school or did retire from active duty immediately after graduation. From E4S report (p. 331).
To correct these shortcomings, the Navy should employ a more deliberate board process. For instance, they could adopt a similar approach to the Marine Corps’ graduate education board process.19 Next, both naval services need to identify all billets requiring Master’s-level education that are steppingstones to greater responsibility and promotability. For instance, the Marine Corps should zero-baseline its technical talent in order to realign billets to where they are needed the most.20 Under the Marine Corps’ current policy, units must identify three billets to compensate for a single technically educated service member.21 For this reason, periodically assessing where technical talent needs to reside is crucial for managing this critical talent.
Raising the educational bar and the prestige of such billets will pressurize the system to demand the education and performance necessary to place such billets on par with other career-enhancing positions. This is necessary to ensure only the best and brightest remain in critical leadership roles across all warfare communities.
Retention Requires an Idiosyncratic Approach
It’s no secret that retention is a major concern for the naval services. From the Marine Corps’ efforts to mature the force under Force Design 2030 to the Navy’s own efforts to keep top talent, the naval services will likely continue to struggle given the additional pressures operating under the current recruiting crisis.22 Therefore, all warfare communities should consider several measures that could help with retention. First, all communities should have a clear path to the admiral and general officer levels. For instance, it has been noted that the Navy fills top-level leadership posts in the information warfare communities with unrestricted line officers and not information warfare personnel.23 Such practices not only demonstrate that information warfare leaders may not get to command at the highest levels, but it also demoralizes the community as a whole because it signals technical competence and intimate community understanding are not required to excel.
Second, retention should become more appealing the longer one stays within their community while making meaningful contributions. For instance, bonuses could follow a more tiered system in which the longer one stays, the larger the bonus becomes. This approach can be further incentivized by structuring choices around loss aversion rather than simple lump sum bonuses. This would potentially increase the incentives for receiving a larger bonus the longer one stays.
SAN DIEGO (Sept. 17, 2019) U.S. Navy Information Systems Technicians assigned the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) provision more than 1,500 computer workstations for integration into their shipboard Consolidated Afloat Ships Network Enterprise Services (CANES) system in Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific’s Network Integration and Engineering Facility. (U.S. Navy photo by Rick Naystatt/Released).
While there are many additional incentives the services could offer to retain their technical talent, retention still remains idiosyncratic and inducements are not a one-size fits all. Rather, the services need to have the flexibility to provide a range of more bespoke incentives that can be aligned with individual interests. Combinations of geographic preference, additional leave, and bonuses should merit consideration. In short, retention is an important leadership issue that commanders are in a position to positively influence and help shape on a case-by-case basis. Anything short of this will not provide the flexibility needed to help retain the service’s technical talent.
Conclusion
Warfare in the 21st century will demand new approaches for recruiting, education, and retention for the naval services to excel and prevail in battle. As more technologies incorporate AI, autonomy, and even quantum computing, leaders will need to hold the line on sustained investment in technical talent to reap the benefits of both a technologically competent and mature force. Furthermore, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence states that, “the human talent deficit is the government’s most conspicuous AI deficit and the single greatest inhibitor to buying, building, and fielding AI-enabled technologies for national security purposes.”24 Moreover, as the pace of warfare increases, technical talent will have to equally keep apace to ensure the domains they operate in are not ceded to the enemy.
Technically demanding fields require the resources and manpower to have a true force in readiness. Without a clear implementation strategy to address these issues, technical talent will likely exit their service for greener pastures.25 To maintain the United States’ competitive advantage throughout the spectrum of armed conflict, the naval services need to recognize that talent management is a continuous fight and that its people will remain the key driver for winning now and in the future.
Scott Humr, Ph.D. is an active-duty Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps with more than 26 years of service. He has worked at every level of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force and has multiple deployments spanning the spectrum of operations. He currently serves as the Deputy for the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems office under the Capabilities Development Directorate in Quantico, VA.
8. Goldman, Charles A., Jonathan Schweig, Maya Buenaventura, and Cameron Wright, Geographic and Demographic Representativeness of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1712.html, p.ix.
11. Goldman, Charles A., Jonathan Schweig, Maya Buenaventura, and Cameron Wright, Geographic and Demographic Representativeness of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1712.html, p.x.
12. Bryant, Susan F., and Andrew Harrison. Finding Ender: Exploring the Intersections of Creativity, Innovation, and Talent Management in the US Armed Forces. National Defense University Press, 2019.
25. Nissen, Mark E., Simona L. Tick, and Naval Postgraduate School Monterey United States. “Understanding and retaining talent in the Information Warfare Community.” Technical Report NPS-17-002. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA (February 2017), 2017. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1060196.pdf.
Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Dec. 13, 2021) An unmanned MQ-25 aircraft rests aboard the flight deck aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brandon Roberson)
