Tactics and Warfighting

Fighting DMO, Pt. 5: Missile Salvo Patterns and Maximizing Volume of Fire

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Read Part 1 on defining distributed maritime operations.
Read Part 2 on anti-ship firepower and U.S. shortfalls.
Read Part 3 on assembling massed fires and modern fleet tactics.
Read Part 4 on weapons depletion and last-ditch salvo dynamics.

By Dmitry Filipoff

Introduction

There is more to the lethality of a volume of fire than sheer numbers. Missile salvos can take on different patterns, both in how the missiles are arranged within a single salvo, and how multiple salvos can be arranged together into a combined volume of fire. These patterns reflect how the aspects of concentration and distribution apply to the weapons themselves, and how these configurations apply within salvos and between salvos. Different patterns will affect how a volume of fire takes shape and can multiply the threat it poses. Commanders and autonomous missiles can leverage these patterns to increase tactical advantage by changing how salvos are maneuvered throughout key elements of the fight. These patterns have considerable tactical implications for defending against missiles and maximizing offensive volume of fire.

Stream versus Saturation

It is infeasible for a warship to instantly fire a large volume of missiles all at once. While warships can certainly fire missiles rapidly, their rate of fire is typically limited to only a few missiles at a time from the whole of their launch cells.1 Because the entirety of a salvo cannot be fired at once, salvos often default to a stream pattern, where a long, vertical column of missiles travels toward a target (Figure 1). Each missile in the column is slightly further away from the target than the missile ahead of it, because each missile was fired slightly later than the missile before it.

Figure 1. Click to expand. A warship launches a salvo in a stream pattern. (Author graphic via Nebulous Fleet Command)

This typical salvo pattern has several disadvantages, such as how an attacking stream salvo can allow the defender to more easily defeat the missiles in detail. If the streaming missiles are flying closely enough along the same flight path, destroying missiles at the head of the stream can disrupt missiles further behind as they may have to fly through exploding shrapnel and debris. A stream salvo can also minimize the maneuvering and targeting readjustments needed to apply warship defenses that are more directionally limited, including mounted defenses such as laser dazzlers, rolling airframe missile launchers, and close-in weapon systems (Figure 2). 

Figure 2. Click to expand. A close-in weapon system engages multiple missiles of a stream salvo approaching on a single axis. (Author graphic via Nebulous Fleet Command)

Alternatively, a saturation pattern has greater tactical advantages. Instead of flying in a staggered sequence or vertical column, the missiles are traveling abreast of one another in a wide horizontal row. This salvo pattern poses a broad front of concentrated firepower compared to the long and narrow front of a stream salvo, where a saturation salvo takes the form of a multi-axial attack instead of the stream’s single axis. Once a saturation salvo crosses over the horizon, all of the missiles aim to be at a similar distance from the target warship, intensifying the challenges of defense. Directional defenses will need to traverse more angles to acquire new targets, and the attacking missiles run a lesser risk of having to fly through the exploding debris fields of their destroyed colleagues (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Click to expand. A close-in weapon system engages a saturation salvo’s missiles across multiple axes. (Author graphic via Nebulous Fleet Command)

Platforms that feature small magazines and larger numbers, such as aircraft, truck launchers, and small missile ships can more readily assemble into firing formations that generate saturation patterns from the onset. But the feasibility factors that bottleneck a warship’s rate of fire make a saturation pattern more unnatural for a warship to launch than a stream pattern, where warships can only launch large salvos in streams. The missiles will have to be maneuvered into a saturation pattern after the salvo is fired. Ideally this will be facilitated by networking and autonomy on the part of the missiles, rather than a complex firing scheme on the part of the launch platform. Modern anti-ship missiles will be able to be programmed to self-organize into a saturation pattern after they are launched from a warship, or outside retargeting and in-flight updates could provide similar instructions.2 By maneuvering weapons after they are launched, these capabilities serve the critical function of helping a salvo’s missiles maximize the overlap of impact timing regardless of the launch platform’s rate of fire.

In salvo combat, if a missile is not able to hit the target because it was shot down by defenses, the next best thing is that its destruction can buy a sliver of time for another missile in the salvo to have a slightly better chance of striking. This dynamic can continue throughout an engagement, where through their destruction, missiles are buying small consecutive improvements in striking opportunity for other missiles. The way impact timing is distributed across a salvo’s missiles will affect how much opportunity the destroyed weapons purchase for the survivors. A majority of a salvo’s missiles will likely be destroyed in the process of ensuring that only a handful have a real chance of striking the killing blows.

Stream patterns stretch the volume of fire thin with respect to the timing of impact. Each missile in the salvo would impact the target at a slightly later time than the missile ahead of it, where the distribution of impact times across a stream salvo is mainly limited to being a function of the launching warship’s rate of fire. If defenses are robust enough, a defender can even keep a stream salvo at a fixed distance away from the target until the salvo is fully destroyed. The ability for stream salvo missiles to buy time for one another is diminished by how destroying the missile at the head of the pack slightly rolls back the clock.

What a saturation pattern offers is a salvo that is always closing the distance regardless of the extent of attrition. Even if missiles are being destroyed, the minimum time to impact is steadily winding down. The volume of simultaneous defensive effects required to keep the whole of a saturation salvo at a fixed distance away from a target warship is far higher than that of a stream salvo, because it would require destroying the entirety of the saturation salvo simultaneously.

A saturation salvo epitomizes the principle of concentrating effects, where all missiles in the salvo are angling to strike the target at the same time, and bring the full weight of the entire volume of fire to bear at once. Saturation salvos improve efficiency by maximizing concentration, and can reduce the number of offensive weapons required to overwhelm warship defenses.

Because defensive missiles typically have much less range and flight times than long-range anti-ship missiles, they have far less opportunity to be maneuvered into saturation patterns, especially when they must strike incoming missiles that are only miles or seconds away from impact. Saturation patterns can chiefly be a feature of attacking salvos, while a warship’s defending salvos are more likely to be relegated to stream patterns. This forms a critical asymmetry in the offensive-defensive balance and confers significant advantage to the attacker in naval salvo warfare.

Salvo Patterns and Tactical Information

One of the most critical considerations for preserving missile inventory and preventing wasteful fires is guarding against deception and maintaining quality targeting information while salvos are traveling toward distant targets. Salvo patterns heavily influence the tactics of missile search and deception, especially given how capable modern seekers have become.

Anti-ship missiles are difficult to evade and deceive when their onboard seekers feature a robust combination of sensor modes including infrared, electro-optical, active, passive, and others. These combined sensors are meant to work together to maximize their strengths while covering each other’s blindspots. They aim to simplify the challenge of terminal search while negating softkill capability. A passive radar receiver can often detect a target or radiating decoy at longer range than an electro-optical sensor, but the latter is much harder to deceive when the contact enters within visual range.3 At that range missiles will be especially challenging to deceive, where they are close enough to visually verify a target’s authenticity. And once they make their final approach, the missiles’ targeting logic can employ aimpoint selection capability, where they select the most lucrative impact points on a ship to maximize destructive potential, such as hitting a ship directly in its missile magazines.4 Aimpoint selection capability makes effective damage control a dubious proposition and helps ensure that only a single well-placed hit is enough to destroy a target, reducing the volume of fire necessary to inflict sufficient striking power.

These electro-optical and infrared sensors are major force multipliers by making it much easier for missiles to ignore the short-ranged warship-launched decoys that form a major portion of a warship’s softkill defenses. Even if these decoys pull a missile away from a ship at the last moment, an intelligent missile would know to circle back for another pass, where the decoy only buys the warship more time to shoot down the threat. Effective softkill deception against intelligent missiles therefore needs to occur at a distance that goes well beyond the horizon. Otherwise deception measures that occur within the horizon view of a warship will struggle to have an effect against missiles that can literally see the warship.

The seeker head of an IRIS-T air-to-air missile. (Photo via Airforce-technology.com)
PACIFIC OCEAN (July 11, 2018) – The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) launches an electronic decoy cartridge from an MK-234 Nulka Decoy Launching System while underway. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Devin M. Langer/Released)

Successfully deceiving these anti-ship missiles may be less likely to take the form of getting them to strike false targets. It may instead become more a matter of keeping them at arm’s length and pulling them in directions away from friendly forces until they waste enough time and fuel that they fall from the sky. But most of a typical warship’s decoy capability is very short-ranged, and warships are extremely limited in their ability to deploy decoys tens of miles away from the ship. They may have to rely on other platforms such as aviation to deploy decoys at a tactically meaningful distance away from the warship.

Once a salvo is fired against a warship, an area of uncertainty grows around the target, where the warship may have moved from its original position at the time of launch, and where decoys may be deployed within this area of uncertainty. This area of uncertainty remains relatively small for the speediest weapons and missiles with short times-to-target. But for long-range and subsonic weapons, this area can grow to include thousands of square miles.5 If the area of a missile seeker’s coverage can overlap most of the area of uncertainty, then the problem of terminal homing is somewhat simplified. But if the area of uncertainty exceeds seeker coverage, then missiles may need to rely more on their own search capabilities to find and discriminate contacts for attack in the final phases.

Saturation patterns maximize the ability of a salvo to search and find a target. A saturation pattern spreads missile seekers across a wide front, allowing each seeker to search a given axis (Figure 5). If a seeker acquires a target, in-flight networking and autonomy between missiles can allow them to converge on a specific contact. A stream salvo by comparison makes for a highly redundant search pattern by concentrating seekers along a single axis, which is hardly ideal for searching across an area of uncertainty (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Click to expand. The seekers of a stream salvo pattern search along a narrow axis. (Author graphic via Nebulous Fleet Command)

Figure 5. Click to expand. The seekers of a saturation salvo search across multiple axes. (Author graphic via Nebulous Fleet Command)

Missiles can be drawn to contacts that turn out to be decoys, which may need to be discriminated by much shorter-ranged seeker modes than radar, such as electro-optical or infrared sensors. The need for missiles to close the distance to more rigorously investigate and verify contacts can threaten the cohesion and range of the salvo. Relying on only a few missiles at the head of a stream to do most of the searching on behalf of the salvo runs a greater risk of having the whole salvo being led astray by false contacts, which will come at a significant cost to fuel, range, and time. Advanced networking and autonomy may do little to alleviate the inherent tunnel vision of a stream salvo, where the whole of the salvo can be made to suffer penalties if only the leading missiles are deceived. If the missiles lack the programming and networking to work together, a stream salvo encountering a decoy could fragment and lose its cohesion as some missiles take the bait and others do not.

In a primitive stream salvo, the pattern of searching for a target and attacking a target remains virtually the same, compared to the more dynamic expansion and contraction of a saturation salvo that widens while searching for a target and then converging on it. A saturation salvo is much better able to withstand the disruption decoys can inflict against the coherence of the volume of fire. When the salvo is searching across a wide front, a single weapon could investigate a contact and make sure to only cue the rest of the salvo to converge on the contact after it has been verified. This helps a saturation salvo reduce the cost of deception to a single weapon or a handful of weapons being led astray at a time, rather than larger segments of the salvo like a stream pattern. However, if the deception is effective enough to get networked missiles to cue convergence, then a saturation salvo that is made to repeatedly expand and contract as it converges on false contacts and then renews its search is a salvo that will be quickly running down its mileage.

Stream salvos may offer some informational advantages when it comes to battle damage assessment and assessing the effectiveness of an attack. Missiles later in the stream could use their sensors to perceive that the target ahead has been destroyed and communicate fresh battle damage assessment information to the network. Or they could communicate that the vast majority of the missiles ahead them have been destroyed by defenses and strongly suggest that a salvo is on the verge of being defeated. In either case, missiles could deliver especially critical and time-sensitive intelligence on the effectiveness of attacks and defenses, assuming they are able to deliver such information through a network in those contexts. A saturation salvo that simply maintains several weapons to the rear of the main wave of attacking missiles could deliver similar information.

If the targeting and search capabilities of salvos are capable enough, they can lower the threshold of information required to precipitate a strike and speed the decision cycle. If the missiles are capable enough to sort out contacts and even decide their own distribution of fire across a target naval formation, then commanders can launch on less information knowing the missiles themselves can reliably sort out critical details. If an adversary is presenting a mass of cluttered signatures that makes target discrimination difficult from afar, saturation salvos could be fired into the mass in a bid to earn positive identification themselves and function as one-way scouts. Modern seekers that can visually identify a target based on robust onboard databases of warship designs should be capable enough to differentiate most warships from civilian vessels and minimize the ability of navies to use commercial traffic as human shields.

With respect to the vulnerability of the launch platform, a stream salvo can more easily betray the position of its launching warship by providing a clearly defined line of bearing back toward the vicinity of the platform. A warship under attack from a stream salvo could fire its offensive weaponry down this line of bearing in a last-ditch salvo and have a greater chance of striking back. Nonlinear flight paths and saturation patterns can help mitigate this risk through multi-axis attacks that can manipulate perceptions of where an attack originated.

But nonlinear attacks and saturation patterns incur penalties in range and fuel economy. Stream salvos will suffer less penalties than saturation salvos in this regard because it is more fuel efficient to maneuver a salvo across waypoints when maintaining a stream pattern. By comparison, saturation salvos will suffer a greater cost in fuel given how some missiles will have to cover more distance than others to preserve the abreast formation while traveling across waypoints. It may be more preferable to confine a saturation pattern to the terminal phase of attack rather than the cruise phase of missile flight, where a stream salvo only expands into a saturation profile just before breaking over the target’s horizon.

Salvo patterns can therefore be flexed during flight to emphasize search, fuel economy, or lethality depending on what is more applicable at various points in the engagement. The need for maximizing range and fuel may compete with the need to search and withstand deception, where these latter factors encourage a saturation pattern. If enough outside retargeting support can confidently convey information to a salvo during flight, then it can minimize the amount of fuel the salvo would have to expend in a broader search pattern. This can also improve the survivability of the salvo and improve its element of surprise, where a saturation pattern engaged in search could provide more early warning to an adversary by posing a radiating wall of missile seekers. Even emphasizing passive detection can reduce the element of surprise, since missiles may have to leave sea-skimming altitudes to broaden the reach of their sensors. Outside retargeting support is helpful toward improving the range and survivability for missile salvos on their way to the target by allowing them to maintain low-altitude stream patterns, and reduces the need for saturation patterns to only the final moments of attack.

A salvo of Soviet P-500 Bazalt anti-ship missiles (NATO reporting name: SS-N-12 Sandbox) is fired by a Slava-class cruiser against a U.S. Cold War-era surface action group. Demonstrated intelligent missile swarming behaviors include self-organization from stream pattern into saturation pattern, single high-altitude missile searching on behalf of larger sea-skimming salvo, target prioritization for distribution of fire, and weaving flight profiles in terminal attack phase. Blue trails mark offensive missiles, pink trails mark defensive missiles. (Work-in-progress developer video of forthcoming naval wargame, Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age.)

Patterns of Combining Fires

Saturation and stream patterns go beyond describing individual salvos, where they can also describe the broader aggregated salvo as a whole. Depending on how contributing fires are being amassed from distributed forces, the aggregated salvo itself may take on an overall stream or saturation profile, or some mixture of the two. The overall profile of an aggregated salvo may feature an amalgamation of waypointing and salvo patterns that generate especially complex threat presentation as a shapeshifting volume of fire closes in on a target (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Click to expand. A reverse range ring is centered on a REDFOR surface action group under attack by massed fires featuring a combination of stream and saturation patterns. (Author graphic)

It is easier to combine with stream salvos than saturation salvos. Because not all missiles in a stream salvo will hit the target at the same time, there is slightly more opportunity to overlap with the salvo, which can measure in the tens of seconds. A saturation salvo will pose greater challenges for effective aggregation because the salvo is already attempting to position all its missiles to strike the target at the same time. Outside salvos attempting to combine with saturation salvos will have to be very closely aligned in timing because of the minimum of opportunity for overlap.

In-flight retargeting and programming can play a critical role in ensuring aggregation can maximize opportunity for saturation. Multiple contributing salvos can approach a target as streams and then travel waypoints in a holding pattern beyond the target’s horizon until more contributing fires arrive. Once the final attack is initiated, the contributing fires switch to saturation patterns and converge on the target. The efficiency of the stream pattern buys more time to grow the volume of fire, and the lethality of the saturation pattern is reserved for the final approach.

As various contributing fires approach a target, the defenders may prioritize the destruction of specific salvos based on their patterns. Defenders may prioritize saturation patterns especially, believing them to be the greater threat. The more complex the flight profile and missile behavior, the more an adversary may assume that a set of contributing fires consists of more capable missiles, and prioritize those salvos for interception by its defensive airpower and other means.

Salvo patterns can be flexed to manipulate adversary threat perceptions and potentially open gaps in defenses. By flexing a combination of salvo patterns and waypoints, a set of contributing fires could expand into a saturation profile to draw adversary airpower away from a target and open opportunities for other salvos to make the strike. And as a salvo comes under attack from airpower, it can shift its flight profile as it senses radar illumination and notices that friendly missiles are disappearing from the local network. By shifting flight profiles while under aerial attack, a missile salvo can make defense more challenging and buy time for the overall strike. Primitive anti-ship missiles by comparison may hardly change their flight behavior when under attack or radar illumination, simplifying the defender’s challenge.

Salvo Patterns: A Forthcoming U.S. Advantage?

The ability to leverage the tactical advantages of salvo patterns may be one of the key advantages the U.S. will have over China by fielding the anti-ship capable variants of the Tomahawk missile, assuming China does not develop similar weapons. The Tomahawk missile’s especially long range gives it great flexibility for maneuvering through various patterns and along many waypoints. Greater range also improves the missile’s ability to recover from deception by false contacts and extend its search for real targets. These capabilities are magnified by another dimension of salvo patterns, that of sea-skimming versus high-diving attacks.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles can take on saturation patterns by virtue of being launched by multiple platforms with shallow magazines, such as truck launchers. But despite having similar range as Tomahawk, anti-ship ballistic missiles are heavily disadvantaged when it comes to reconfiguring their salvo patterns in real time. The fixed nature of a ballistic trajectory strongly constrains the ability of these weapons to alter the disposition of their salvos while in flight, and the steep high-diving nature of their final approach constrains the scope of ocean their onboard seekers can search across.6 A ballistic missile on its terminal descent cannot decline a false contact and then default back to a wider search pattern as easily as a cruise missile. A ballistic missile locked into its terminal descent is only moments away from hitting the ocean regardless of whether its targeting information is viable or not, whereas a cruise missile has more margin for error. By their nature, ballistic missile attacks attempt to minimize the area of uncertainty around a target not so much by coordinating search across a salvo’s seekers, but more by having tremendously high speed that helps preserve the viability of the original targeting information given at launch.

The differences in terminal search and attack patterns between ballistic missiles and cruise missiles is somewhat similar to that of the attack profiles of WWII dive bombers and torpedo bombers, respectively. The dive bomber, like a ballistic missile, makes its final approach from a steep angle at higher altitude, exposing itself to a broader array of sensors and defensive firepower, while having relatively little leeway to shift to new targets midway through its high-speed dive. The torpedo bomber by comparison is usually traveling more slowly, but its flight profile is at a flatter angle that affords it much more maneuverability, even in the terminal attack phase. This flatter flight profile offers a broader scope of opportunity to investigate contacts, recover from deception, and shift targets, while giving the platform more options in when it begins its terminal approach.

A sea-skimming cruise missile is therefore better able to employ a wider search pattern across the area of uncertainty around a target than a weapon locked into a high-diving flight profile. While the visibility of sea-skimmers is more deeply affected by horizon limits than high-divers, a high-diving platform or missile may struggle to radically reorient itself toward a new contact during its dive, and the smaller size of the seekers used by missiles can limit how much those weapons can leverage the broader visibility for search. However, sea-skimming attackers may have to break through successive layers of defending warships and aircraft before they can threaten a priority target in the interior of a formation. In exchange for some disadvantages, high-diving attackers can threaten those priority targets directly.

Conclusion

Sharpening the intelligent swarming behaviors of anti-ship missiles will be a key area of naval competition, one with significant potential for building offensive advantage. These capabilities should be expected to proliferate and magnify missile threats. Navies should take care to assess the programming and autonomous targeting logic of their salvos to consider how this may make their striking power concentrated or stretched thin during an attack. When warship salvos have little in the way of effective networking or autonomy, they default to more primitive stream salvo patterns and suffer major disadvantages. They become more susceptible to deception, struggle with long-range search, and raise the cost of attack.

As a distributed force masses its fires, it will attempt to maximize the saturation effect. In those final phases of attack, the greatest offensive advantage will be gained when saturation patterns characterize how salvos are arranged as they converge on a target. What these salvo patterns make clear is that in the missile age, the weapons themselves have become a chief maneuver element.

Part 6 will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of platform types in distributed warfighting.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content and Community Manager of its naval professional society, the Flotilla. He is the author of the “How the Fleet Forgot to Fight” series and coauthor of “Learning to Win: Using Operational Innovation to Regain the Advantage at Sea against China.” Contact him at Content@Cimsec.org.

References

1. Factors that bottleneck a warship’s rate of fire from vertical launch systems include exhaust gas limits and safety risks of launching numerous missiles in very close proximity to one another. The minimal unit of a MK41 vertical launch system takes the form of eight-cell module, with each module sharing a common exhaust gas system. 

For module and exhaust gas design of MK 41 VLS, see:

Eric Fiore, “A Promising Future for US Navy Vertical Launch Systems,” DISIAC Journal, Volume 1, Number 2,, pg. 35, Fall 2014, https://www.dsiac.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/dsiac-journal-fall-web-1.pdf.

2. John Keller, “Lockheed Martin to build six more LRASM anti-ship missiles with GPS/INS, infrared, and radar-homing sensors,” Military and Aerospace, March 23, 2022, https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14248345/multimode-sensors-antiship-missiles.

3. Wayne P. Hughes and Robert Girrier, Fleet Tactics And Naval Operations, Third Edition, pg. 188, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2018.

4. For aimpoint selection capability, see: 

“JSM: Joint Strike Missile,” Kongsberg, https://www.aerocontact.com/public/img/aviaexpo/produits/catalogues/92/Brochure-Joint-Strike-Missile.pdf. 

5. Jeffrey R. Cares and Anthony Cowden, “Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat,” U.S. Naval Institute Press, pg. 30-42, 2021.

6. Gerry Doyle and Blake Herzinger, Carrier Killer: China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st Century, Helion & Company, pg. 42, 2022.

Featured Image: US joint forces conducted a sinking exercise on the decommissioned guided missile frigate ex-USS Ingraham in the Hawaiian Islands Operating Area, 15 August 2021. (US Navy photo MCS David Mora Jr)

Podcast

Sea Control 420 – Building an Ancient Naval Ram with Stephen DeCasien

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By Ed Salo

Stephen DeCasien, a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University studying Nautical Archaeology, discusses his team’s effort to build a naval ram based on ancient techniques. The ram DeCasien and his team produced is the first of its type built in 1,500 years.

Download Sea Control 420 – Building an Ancient Naval Ram with Stephen DeCasien

Links

1. The Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation (CMAC), Texas A&M University.
2. “How a Grad Student Resurrected an Ancient Naval Weapon Not Seen in 1,500 Years,” Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, January 31, 2023.
3. Stephen DeCasien Website.
4. Stephen DeCasien Twitter.

Ed Salo is Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at Seacontrol@cimsec.org.

This episode was edited and produced by David Suchyta.

Commentary

The Navy Isn’t Too Woke—It Is America

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By Bill Bray

When I attended a small Catholic high school in the early 1980s, several teachers tried to dissuade me from pursuing a military career. In the shadow of the Vietnam War, some questioned whether military service could be reconciled with the moral demands of the Catholic faith, while others simply opposed me serving on social or political grounds. A Jesuit reassured me that a military protecting a free society must be led by virtuous men and women of conscience—the type the high school endeavored to cultivate.

Today, the U.S. military’s strongest domestic critics are not on the political and social left, but the right. There is a growing chorus of voices who claim the military is too “woke,” that it has become a vehicle for progressive social experimentation at the expense of developing warfighting toughness and skills.

Historically, woke was a term used in Black communities to signify a general social consciousness. Today, when I hear or read critics of progressive policies using the term as a pejorative, it is rarely clear what they actually mean. What I do know is that there is no such thing as a coherent woke ideology, just as there is no such thing as “woke capitalism.” Opponents of change in the military—specifically, diversity and inclusion initiatives—often ascribe whatever bothers them to the term. And they often fail to realize that many of their preferred politicians are deliberately capitalizing on the acute outrage the term “woke” provokes in certain constituents, and how these politicians are purposefully repeating and cultivating the term to simply harness these constituents’ outrage for political benefit. The supercharged emotions the term “woke” incites among its critics has proven ripe for political exploitation.

It is hard to make an argument against such generalized, unspecific attacks. In fact, as an editor it is not my job to do so. But it is my job to carefully consider counterarguments to articles promoting diversity and inclusion initiatives, and we will continue to publish well-considered, thoughtful counterarguments. We will not publish fact-free rants. What we get is mostly the latter.

Social policies are always being debated across the country. In that sense, the U.S. military has always been changing. And many, if not most, changes were vigorously opposed by traditionalists, who viewed them as paths to warfighting incompetence, indiscipline, or moral destitution (or all the above). All too often, however, resistance to change rested on strawman arguments, and traditionalists wound up arguing with themselves while the country moved on. This is true of momentous changes, such as racial and gender integration, and those of less consequence and controversy (although, I assure you, plenty of mid-1800s Navy officers believed abandoning “the lash” would lead to a plague of indiscipline and mutiny). In any event, the military adapted and moved forward, responding, as it must in a representative democracy, to the demands of the public as articulated through their elected representatives.

What is important, I believe—and I make this case as a retired Navy officer and not as an editor—is to address the ostensibly growing call from many on the right to discourage young people they know from joining the military. While reliable, hard data is never presented, in recent months some commentators claim progressive social policies are at least partially responsible for the military’s recent struggles with meeting recruiting goals. In October, Meghann Myers at Military Times dug into this problem. As you can read for yourself, while the charges of a “woke” military float free of any factual basis, the myth is gathering legs.

Recently, former Navy officer J. A. Cauthen attacked the U.S. Naval Academy’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and directives as “ideological (re)education” and “wokeness.” The essay is poorly supported by real data, embarrassing in its frequent digressions into partisan jeremiads, and infused throughout with absurd assumptions and well-worn exaggerations, such as that they are teaching that America is “irredeemably racist.” It also features non-sequiturs, such as how any diversity training is at the expense of warfighting training and weakens warfighting culture (while there is a multitude of other things the Navy has done that have come at the expense of its warfighting training and culture). Former naval officer and undersecretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey made a similar argument more recently in the National Review.

Since I also teach an ethics course at the Academy, I found both Cauthen and Cropsey’s description of its curriculum and culture completely unrecognizable. And they, like so many likeminded critics of the Academy, dismiss the Brigade of Midshipmen, some of the brightest college students in the nation, as incurious followers incapable of earnestly considering all sides of an issue, thinking critically about it, and making up their own minds.

The Training Sailors Actually Get

Curious about what had changed in the Navy that is triggering charges of wokeness, I looked at what a typical sailor gets in terms of formal training in his or her first two years in service. Between eight weeks of basic training, follow-on special skills training (what the Navy calls A-school, or military occupational specialty training), and one full year of mandatory general military trainings (GMTs) at their first ship or command, I could not locate anything that qualified as “woke” training beyond annual equal opportunity training (EEO training). Perhaps some would include sexual assault prevention and domestic abuse training, but I have never heard or read a complaint against those in the context of wokeness.

EEO training is one of seven mandatory GMTs (another 11 can be assigned at commanding officers’ discretion, and most are probably held annually). EEO training is a thorough review of current U.S. law, Department of Defense, and Department of the Navy policy on equal opportunity and discrimination (based on race, color, religion, gender, age, etc.). It would be hard to argue that sailors and officers should not be educated on what the rules are, and what they can and should do if they believe the rules are being violated. Perhaps the only part of EEO training that could be controversial is the final barriers section, which aims to illuminate more subtle obstacles to minority opportunity and advancement. In a rough approximation, in the first two years in the Navy, less than two percent of a sailor’s formal training could even be remotely described as progressive social training.

Then there is Task Force One Navy, established in 2020 in the wake of nation-wide social justice protests to take a comprehensive look at the Navy’s progress and continued challenges in diversity and inclusion. It is beyond the scope of this essay to comment on the entire report. It contains many recommendations along five lines of effort. Not all will be implemented, but many will have at least some effect on Navy policies and processes in the future. It should be noted that the report contains many positive findings, acknowledging much progress the Navy has made in the past 20 years. Its fiercest critics seem to anchor on implications the service still harbors systemic barriers to inclusion, as evidenced by disproportional equity outcomes in promotion demographics and the like. However, for the Navy to acknowledge these outcomes and continually examine itself seems a responsible and unavoidable approach, not one beholden to any ideology. Warfighting in defense of a free society is not just about competence, training, and technology. It is about the will and support of the population, and that requires a military in whose ranks the population is more broadly represented.

Service before Politics

Whatever one thinks of the Navy’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, attempting to equate patriotism and service with partisan politics is wrong and harmful to national security. Unfortunately, it is becoming all too common by those who should know better. Anti-woke warriors such as Cauthen give away the game when he writes the following to explain the Naval Academy’s implementation of diversity and inclusion policies and programs, “Willing collaborators all too eager to appease their political masters are accomplishing this transformation through directives, policy, training, and the creation of new offices and positions staffed to advance the agenda of wokeness.” It seems Mr. Cauthen would have no problem if the Navy’s willing collaborators appeased political masters for whom he voted and approves. In his warped understanding of civil-military relations, civilian control is conditional—it depends on the political masters’ affiliation and viewpoint.

That a Naval Academy graduate who took a commission and swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution would write such a line is unfortunate. But he is one of many who cannot see, or refuse to see, the problem with such a view. My generation of Academy graduates from the 1980s has no business lecturing on this point. The shift to an all-volunteer force nearly 50 years ago always had the potential of a military gradually cultivating leaders who supported the political party that favored it more, both fiscally and culturally. This seems to have happened during the Reagan years.

Indeed, what today’s right wing seems most furious about is that they can no longer count on the military being a reliable constituency for their political positions and views. For years it counted on this, routinely trotting out claims that a socially conservative military would be weakened and possibly even destroyed if progressive policies infect it (never were such claims based on anything remotely close to real evidence). There is some truth to the view that military personnel tend to be socially conservative, but that often obscures how the views of servicemembers shift over time in step with society’s shifting views. The drastic change from the early 1990s until the 2010s of the percentage of Americans in favor of gays serving in the military is a case in point. As young Americans from different backgrounds join year after year, the military is constantly changing its makeup in many ways. The military is not some monastery insulated from society. It is society.

For those that claim wokeness is hurting recruiting, they should examine the demographic data from the 2022 midterm elections, even in the reddest states. Younger voters skew progressive, in some states more than 60 percent. Also, as Risa Brooks recently noted, 41 percent of military personnel identify as coming from a minority group. Not all minorities favor progressive policies of course, but they are statistically more likely to at least be more open to them. The notion that the military can solve its recruiting problem by renouncing wokeness and targeting red constituencies is fanciful, and a move that would harm its nonpartisan ethic.

What the Navy needs—what it has always needed—is patriotic Americans from all walks of life willing to serve with the comfort of knowing their personal political views are irrelevant. Servicemembers are free to believe what they want and vote any way they want. They are not free to cherrypick the policies and initiatives they will support.

Yet so little of what happens in the daily life of a Navy sailor can be attributed to a woke agenda. Even those with the most socially conservative views should have no trouble elevating the virtue of service above partisan politics. That many conservative commentators believe they should not (or cannot) do so speaks far more to those commentators’ fragile sensibilities than to a real problem.

It is worth reminding those who claim a woke military is a hostile place to serve the nation that at one time many Black Americans still chose to serve their nation in a segregated military, where discrimination was overt, entrenched, and legalized. Yet today, are socially conservative Americans actually going to refuse to serve because they must take EEO training or an FDA-approved vaccine, or are encouraged to use a gender-neutral pronoun as an act of respect, or must report to a ship or base no longer named for a Confederate traitor to the United States? While critics of wokeness in the military often claim they want to depoliticize the military, what they really want is to politicize it in their favor. This can even feature partisan loyalty tests, particularly for senior officers. This is inappropriate and dangerous, and military leaders have correctly resisted it.

Conclusion

In the 1970s and early 1980s, it was not uncommon to find critics on the left disparaging military servicemembers in terms that cast them as immoral and bloodthirsty agents of the American war machine. These attacks were unjustified and well beyond reasonable debate about the size and shape of, or even the need for, the armed forces. They fed a distorted narrative about American military life that deterred many young people from even considering service. Critics on the right who claim without evidence that the military is now corrupted by wokeness are committing the same sin. In fact, the military is full of smart, dedicated, and tough men and women. The true corruptors are those who refuse to rise above partisan politics to serve the nation and a greater cause.

Bill Bray is a retired Navy captain. He is the deputy editor-in-chief of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine.

Featured Image: Sailors man the rails aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in June 2021. (U.S. Navy photo)

Information Warfare

Gaining the Operational Intelligence Advantage through Data Literacy

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By Andrew Orchard

The U.S. Navy’s history is rich with inspiring achievements in information warfare, from Station Hypo’s successes in World War II to supporting raids against high-value targets during the Global War on Terror. Inspiring as U.S. Naval Intelligence history has been, achieving victory in the next fight will require specific training focused on developing the skills required to cope with all the data available to today’s information warriors.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has greatly expanded its data-technology and collection capacity to meet analytical needs, creating a challenging paradigm:  a data glut and an information deficit. Data literacy is key to reducing the disparity.1

Data literacy centers on reading, analyzing, and communicating with data. It is not a science:2 Reading requires understanding what data is and the aspects of the world it represents. Analyzing data refers to aggregating, sorting, and converting it into useful information. Finally, communicating with data means using that data to support a logical narrative to a particular audience, and is of the utmost importance to any navy’s information warriors.3 A naval intelligence example of data literacy at work is determining adversary reconnaissance aircraft sortie schedules and maintenance days, and then effectively communicating the derived intelligence to improve and better inform the Warfare Commander’s decision space.

Operational Intelligence Center

Pressured by advances in the speed, precision, and destructive force of naval weapons, operational intelligence (OPINTEL) is critical, and empowering U.S. Naval Intelligence through data literacy may be the key. This is not a new concept. Analysts harnessed these techniques during the Cold War when Navy Ocean Surveillance Information Centers (NOSIC) developed and employed databases of prior Soviet activities to inform analyses of ongoing operations.4 These successes in data literacy facilitated a favorable Cold War OPINTEL asymmetry that proved a key advantage over the Warsaw Pact.5 Available battlespace awareness technology is already making this task easier. However, making sense of the battlespace requires more than just using automated OPINTEL applications.

Data literacy, not science or analytics, is the answer, as it provides Naval Intelligence professionals with the ability to synthesize information and further aid tactical commanders in making informed decisions. OPINTEL centers can become tailored centers of excellence through data literacy. To streamline scouting the positions of Soviet forces in the 1970s, Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility (FOSIF) centralized collection, exploitation, analysis, and dissemination, as scouting is not complete until the collected information is delivered to the tactical commander. Fusing information from national and tactical sensors, FOSIF’s dedicated support provided the intelligence needed for the fleet to operate further forward resulting in more efficient scouting.6, 7, 8

What and Why … Data-Driven Decision Making

Advances in digital technology produced exponential data growth, and the private sector began to develop essential technology and skills to understand this ever-expanding resource. This development mirrored similar operations analysis and research advances during World War II. Adding data and analysis in the private sector built an innovative school of thought: data-driven decision-making, emphasizing data literacy over science.9

Data literacy is an essential component of an organization’s strong data strategy. It promotes understanding and fosters workforce incorporation of data into daily operations. Not laying such a foundation and skipping right to higher-end approaches like data science will not achieve the macro-level result of making data more useful across the entire organization. The “godfather” of data literacy, Jordan Morrow, notes: “One doesn’t go from not being a runner to racing a 50-mile ultra-marathon the next day.” 10

Instead, Morrow emphasizes the three Cs: Curiosity, Creativity, and Critical thinking. Morrow’s proven approach promotes literacy and data “democratization.”11 An entire workforce using data can lead to a more adaptive and successful organization, as highlighted by a ThoughtSpot and Harvard Business Review study. The report found that successful companies enable all employees through data literacy to make more informed decisions resulting in higher customer and employee satisfaction and higher productivity.12 This increased productivity reduces the glut and bottlenecks by enabling data use among frontline workers.

Data experts recommend a three-step framework: defining literacy goals, assessing the workforce’s current skills, and laying out a learning path.13 Naval Intelligence’s goal should be to create a confident and curious force that can critically think with data to support better and faster decisions throughout the spectrum of conflict. This simple goal focuses on people, as they matter most.

The assessment process aims to set measurable goals and lay the foundation for making Naval Intelligence more data literate. Assessing baseline data skills begins with examining how Naval Intelligence uses data in battlespace awareness, assured command and control, and integrated fires. Understanding how data is applied across the community identifies core skills and helps foster a culture that appreciates the value of data literacy.

The assessment process should also include examining data tool usage and functionality. Experts believe such analysis is crucial to improving return on investment and developing a tailored learning path that fully leverages technology. The final part of the assessment process is surveying the force by testing a sample of personnel on their ability to read, work with, analyze, and communicate with data in ways that support better warfighting.

Informed by the assessment, the data literacy-learning path will align with the Naval Intelligence training continuum. A data-literate cadre begins with exposing personnel to data during accession schools. Initial instruction will teach new personnel the value of data by introducing common concepts and language. The foundational education cultivates the three Cs by building confidence and demonstrating data’s possibilities while reducing barriers. Training will continue throughout accession and intermediate schools as personnel will receive instruction on data tools and functionality.

The learning path will not end at the schoolhouse. Each step of the Fleet Response Training Program (FRTP) will reinforce data literacy by teaching information warfare teams afloat how to use data.

The Three Cs: Applied to a Taiwan ADIZ Case

Data literacy empowers a workforce to see the world differently. Economist Tim Harford wrote: “Whatever we’re trying to understand about the world, each other, and ourselves, we won’t get far without statistics.” 14 Applying these skills to publicly available Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (TADIZ) data can exemplify the power of data literacy.

Taiwan Ministry of Defense publicly released presentation on PLA TADIZ incursions for the day of Speaker Pelosi’s Taiwan arrival.

Since September 2020, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has publicly reported on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) air operations inside the TADIZ. The PLA flew 3158 TADIZ sorties as of 5 March 2023, likely as part of a larger effort to erode Taiwan sovereignty and message against outside interference. 15, 16, 17 This begs the question, is there an operational objective that aligns with the strategic intent?

PLA aircraft reportedly entered the TADIZ on 67% of days between 9 September 2020 and 5 March 2023.18 Most (77%) of the daily incursions involved less than the mean number of aircraft (5.04), and about a third (34%) of daily incursions had only one aircraft enter the TADIZ. The majority of single sortie missions (63%) occurred between October 2020 and September 2021. Reconnaissance aircraft primarily (95%) flew these missions. Such domain awareness sorties also normalized incursions and reinforced Chinese interests while challenging Taiwan’s ability to enforce its declared ADIZ.19

These actions likely forced Taiwan to choose between either not responding to the incursions or expending finite military resources (aircraft and pilot hours), thereby achieving China’s goal of pressuring Taiwan, according to Dr. Ying Yu Lin.20 If Taiwan did not respond, the flights could be perceived as legitimizing Chinese claims and eroding those of Taiwan.

The composition of aerial incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ. (Author graphic)

The PLA transitioned to predominantly fighter incursions (a mean of 64% of monthly TADIZ activity) in September 2021, further bolstering its claims of control over the airspace while increasing the pressure on Taiwan. Fighter sorties also accounted for an even more significant portion (89%) of TADIZ incursions in reaction to then Speaker Pelosi’s 2 August 2022 Taiwan visit.

During the month-long response to the Speaker’s visit, the PLA persistently flew a larger volume of incursions. The daily mean (15) number of aircraft throughout the response was well above the mean (11) number of aircraft flown in reaction to other international engagements with or exercises near Taiwan. Previous reactions also only lasted 1-3 days. The PLA likely increased its sorties to explicitly demonstrate airspace control and force Taiwan to expend more resources as punishment.

The Need for Data Literacy

Applying the Three Cs to recognize patterns like the transition to predominantly fighter TADIZ incursions increases operational awareness in near real-time and can support ongoing analysis similar to the NOSIC’s databases. This renewed emphasis on data can improve fleet operations by providing tactical commanders with objective facts, increasing OPINTEL support and understanding of adversary objectives.

Achieving such an OPINTEL advantage requires a data-literate U.S. Naval Intelligence community that can rapidly turn the glut into usable information. An entire force able to discover critical insights and efficiently communicate will tightly couple intelligence and analysis to the engagement of targets during distributed maritime operations. As ADM Gilday noted: “Information has become the cornerstone of how we operate.”21 Gaining favorable OPINTEL asymmetry enables the decision advantage by providing commanders with the information required to “…decide and act faster than anyone else.”22, 23, 24

Andrew Orchard is a U.S. Navy intelligence officer and selected Mansfield Fellow, currently serving as the Officer in Charge of the Joint Reserve Intelligence Center New Orleans.

The views expressed in this article is that of the author and does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Endnotes

1. Sharman, CAPT Christopher. China Moves Out: Stepping Stones Toward a New Maritime Strategy. Washington D.C.: Nation Defense University, 2015.

2.  Morrow, Jordan. Data Literacy – The Human Element in Data United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology. 25 November 2020.

3. Brown, Sara. “How to Build Data Literacy in Your Company.” 9 February 2021. MIT Sloan Management School. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-to-build-data-literacy-your-company.

4.  Rosenberg, Christopher Ford and David. “The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy.” The Journal of Strategic Studies (2005): 397.

5. Ibid, 402.

6. Hughes, CAPT (ret) Wayne. Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000. 175.

7. Rosenberg, Christopher Ford and David. “The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy.” The Journal of Strategic Studies (2005): 402.

8. Ball, Desmond Ball and Desmond. The Tools of Owatatsumi: Japan’s Ocean Surveillance and Coastal Defence Capabilities. Canberra: ANU Press, 2015. 93-96.

9. Stobierski, Tim. “The Advantages of Data-Driven Decision-Making.” 26 August 2021. Harvard Business Review. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/data-driven-decision-making.

10. Morrow, Jordan. Data Literacy – The Human Element in Data United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology. 25 November 2020.

11. Morrow, Jordan. Jordan Morrow and Qlik’s Mission to Create a Data-Literate Workforce. 15 April 2020. https://medium.com/digital-bulletin/jordan-morrow-and-qliks-mission-to-create-a-data-literate-workforce-c450a01714f5.

12. ThoughtSpot and Harvard Business Review. The New Decision Makers. Cambridge: Harvard Business Review, 2020.

13. Brown, Sara. “How to Build Data Literacy in Your Company.” 9 February 2021. MIT Sloan Management School. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-to-build-data-literacy-your-company.

14. Harford Tim. The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. New York: Penguin Random House, 2021. 16.  

15. All TADIZ data is derived from public releases by the Taiwan Ministry of Defense. Military News Updates. 10 November 2022. https://www.mnd.gov.tw/English/PublishTable.aspx?types=Military%20News%20Update&Title=News%20Channel. 

16. Kenneth Allen, Gerald Brown, and Thomas Shattuck. Assessing China’s Growing Air Incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ Bonny Lin. 1 April 2022.

17. U-Jin, Olli Pekka Suorsa and Adrian Ang. “China’s Air Incursions Into Taiwan’s ADIZ Focus on ‘Anti-Access’ and Maritime Deterrence.” The Diplomat 20 July 2021.

18. TADIZ analysis based on publicly available data and conducted by Andrew Orchard in private capacity.

19. Silva Shih, Shuren Koo, Daniel Kao, Sylvia Lee, Yingyu Chen. “Why the Chinese Military Has Increased Activity Near Taiwan.” CommonWealth 2 November 2021.

20. Deutsche Welle. “China’s Taiwan Military Incursions Test the Limits of Airspace.” Deutsche Welle 4 October 2021.

21. Gamboa, Elisha. “CNO in San Diego, Meets with Project Overmatch Team on Fleet Modernization.” Navy.mil 23 February 2021.

22. Ibid.

23. For an additional collated form of the Taiwan Ministry of Defense publicly available data please see Gerald C. Brown’s and Ben Lewis’ google sheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qbfYF0VgDBJoFZN5elpZwNTiKZ4nvCUcs5a7oYwm52g/htmlview 

24. The author wishes to thank Christopher Underwood and Ryan Meder for advice on this article.

Featured Image: SOUTH CHINA SEA (Feb. 6, 2023) U.S. Navy Ensign Bradley Davis stands watch aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mykala Keckeisen)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.