By Dmitry Filipoff

Last week CIMSEC ran a special series of short notes to commemorate the first anniversary of the Warfighting Flotilla. In the Flotilla, warfighters and navalists come together to discuss naval warfighting, force development, and the naval profession. Over the course of its first year, this new naval professional society grew to more than 300 members and hosted dozens of virtual discussions on naval force development. Visit the Flotilla homepage to join our growing membership and learn more about this community, its activities, and what drives it.

Flotilla members submitted their thoughts on how to improve naval tactical learning and force development. From wargaming courses to enhanced combat training, these recommendations can help navalists and warfighters define opportunities to improve tactical excellence. 

We thank these authors for their contributions, listed below.

“The Navy Must Redefine Risk in Combat Training,” by Tom Clarity

“It is easy to put safety measures in place to prevent slips and falls, or to limit the minimum lateral separation of two aircraft at the merge. It is far harder to consider what risks are additive to the Navy’s overall warfighting readiness, but it is a crucial source of developing warfighting advantage.”

“The Cost of Delaying Wartime Tactical Adaptation,” by Jamie McGrath

“To rapidly assess and implement tactical adaptation based on combat lessons, the Navy must prioritize staffing its warfighting development centers in wartime, even if it means leaving some shipboard billets unfilled. Failure to rapidly capture, disseminate, and assess lessons from early combat will result in costly losses to our surface force before we can adjust to the character of the current war.”

“Building Sailor Toughness and Combat Mindset: What worked on USS JOHN S. McCAIN and USS VICKSBURG,” by Charles “Chip” Swicker

“When a team trains like a team and looks like a team, the energy really resonates with Sailors. Combat is a team sport. Train your Sailors with a stopwatch, and coach them toward a goal of flawless execution at speed. Train them day or night, rested or tired, so that their muscle memory carries them through in the confusion and terror of an actual sea fight.”

“Bring Back the Warfighting Flash Cards,” by Alan Cummings

“Like any learning resource, these flash cards are a tool—one that offers deckplate leaders a tangible and flexible way to cultivate warfighting mindset and know-how. It will depend on unit commanders and their subordinate leaders to make use of it.”

“Starting with a Step: Creating Professional Incentives for Continuous Tactical Learning,” by Benjamin Clark

“A culture of constant learning according to the practicing naval tacticians’ own analysis of necessity of deeper research, learning, and exploration of the aspects of warfare will naturally lead to a stronger understanding and application of tactics as a whole in the Navy.”

“Developing Technical and Tactical Skill for Warfighters,” by Ed Kaufmann

“If one does not know how a weapon system or a sensor functions technically, then they may not be able to employ it tactically. Once a warfighter has a grasp of how the underlying technology works, they can use that technical know-how to craft tactical solutions for the threat environment they are operating within.”

“Make Wargaming Central to Naval War College Education Once Again,” by Robert C. Rubel

“The Navy badly needs for the Naval War College command and staff course to become a year-long classified wargame-centric warfighting course. In such a course students would gain a fleet-level perspective on tactics and be able to link them to operational art and strategy.”

“Invest in Tactical Shiphandling for Crisis and Combat,” by Chris Rielage and Spike Dearing

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

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content and Community Manager of the Flotilla. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: OROTE POINT, Guam (Oct. 5, 2022) The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Springfield (SSN 761) departs Apra Harbor, Guam. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Eric Uhden)

Flotilla Tactical Notes Series

By Chris Rielage and Spike Dearing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flotilla Tactical Notes Series

By Robert C. Rubel

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

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

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

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

A wargaming-centric program of this sort was the essence of the College’s curriculum in the interwar years, where virtually every U.S. naval flag officer during WWII was a graduate of the College and its wargaming curriculum. This education was foundational to the wartime success of the Navy, and creating a cohort of senior leaders with a common understanding of fleet tactics and operational art. The College must consider how to broaden such warfighting education once more.

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

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