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Future Tech

Leading the Digital Fight: How the Navy’s IW Community Must Innovate to Win

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By Shane Halton and Adam Reiffen

“When companies spend millions of dollars on new information technologies but don’t change anything else, there are usually barely detectable productivity improvements. In contrast, when they also invest similar amounts in business process changes and in worker training, productivity can double or more.”-The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson

In the last year, Israel disabled all of Iran and Hezbollah’s senior military leadership at a stroke with a series of audacious precision strikes. Ukraine launched hundreds of small drones against Russia’s strategic air assets from clandestine launch locations deep inside Russian territory. Though the weaponry and tactics employed in these strikes varied wildly from explosive pagers to first person view (FPV) drones, one common thread tied these operations together – innovation in the realm of Information Warfare (IW). From the Levant to the Black Sea, the crucial role played by IW (hereafter used collectively to refer to the intelligence, cryptology, information technology, meteorology/oceanography, cyber, and space communities) has never been more impactful to warfighting than it is today.

The US Navy has adjusted accordingly to this changing character of war. In 2024, the Navy moved Information Warfare (IW) out of the Restricted Line officer category and into a newly minted Information Warfare Line (IWL) category, which serves to both acknowledge IW’s growing impact on operations and to open additional opportunities for leadership across the Fleet. This elevation offers the IW community an excellent chance to step back, assess its tactical strengths and weaknesses, and innovate where needed. 

If called upon today, could the Navy’s IW community deliver the same level of support to operations that the IDF and Ukrainian military receive from their respective military intelligence communities today? Surely it has the resources. The IW community has a workforce in the tens of thousands and close working ties with the national intelligence community. The DoW is making huge capital investments in AI solutions that should positively impact IW workflows. With all these resources available, is innovation even necessary? 

The answer is yes. Despite being well-stocked with talented personnel and appropriated funds, the Navy IW community aboard Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs), Amphibious Readiness Groups (ARGs), and at fleet-level Maritime Operations Centers (MOCs) still operate according to increasingly antiquated and inefficient business practices. Dozens of human analysts spend countless man-hours every day creating and editing PowerPoints. Others spend time using outdated search tools to answer requests for information (RFIs) from senior leadership, watchstanders, and other operators throughout the organization. Compounding these challenges is the structure of the information systems themselves, as critical information remains siloed in disparate databases, thwarting rapid retrieval, analysis, and automated fusion. The net effect of these overlapping issues is that the most data-centric part of the Navy, the Information Warfare Community, is today poorly postured to lead the Navy’s digital transformation and risks failing to effectively adapt to the modern maritime battlespace. 

Luckily for the Navy and the country at-large, there are several innovative initiatives underway across the naval IW enterprise that are showing us the way forward. These efforts, coupled with the thoughtful integration of commercially available AI solutions, offer Navy IW a once in a generation opportunity to increase productivity and output for relatively little cost. The solutions can be grouped into three categories: workforce, organizational reform, and technological solutions.

Workforce: Identifying and Cultivating Digital Talent

Walk into any MOC in the Navy and you may find an intelligent, bright-eyed young individual who identifies themselves as the command’s Chief Data Officer, or maybe Chief Technology Officer, or perhaps lead for Artificial Intelligence or Data Science. Press them a little further and they will happily explain to you that they started off at the MOC doing something entirely different but at some point they shared with their leadership that they had a technical background and could do some coding and voila they received a new job, a new set of responsibilities, and a direct line of communication to senior leadership. 

The positions of Chief Data Officer, Chief Technology Officer, AI Lead, etc. do not exist on any MOC manning documents. Still, those individuals are today found at every MOC in the Fleet. What is happening? The simplest answer is that the operational leadership at the MOCs realized they needed something that Big Navy was unable or unwilling to provide, then created new positions of their own accord by drawing from their own staffs. Every MOC did this independently, seemingly without coordinating across the Service. This is both an admirable example of deckplate innovation at the MOC-level and a fairly serious indictment of the Navy’s manpower challenges when it comes to manning a modern, digital workforce.

But the need for an innovative solution only highlights a Fleet-wide problem. The Navy lacks the ability to identify, employ, and retain digital talent (hereafter “digital” will refer to data science, data engineering, and artificial intelligence, broadly defined). There is one Navy Additional Qualifying Designator (AQD) for Data Science and it is only granted upon graduation from the Naval Postgraduate School’s (NPS) Data Science Program. There are no equivalent AQDs for artificial intelligence or other information- and data- related fields of study. The Navy currently has a much better understanding of which Sailors speak Hausa than which can code in Python, C++, or Java.

The easiest way for the Navy to address this issue is to leverage work already done by the DoW. The DoW’s Digital Workforce initiative, started by the DoW Chief Data and Analytics Office (CDAO) in 2022, generated multiple highly readable reports and useful insights for how to develop “digital talent” across the DoW. CDAO already did the hard work by creating language that could easily convert to Navy AQDs and Sub Specialty Codes (SSPs) related to data science, data engineering, software engineering, AI, etc. Once established, these AQDs and SSPs should be called out explicitly in board convening orders and other promotion criteria, making plain to both promoters and promotees that such skills are as much Navy priorities as Operations Research and Financial Management. The IW community can further lead in workforce development by serving as the community sponsor for innovative graduate certificate programs and “stackable” degrees delivered asymmetrically, including the recently-launched Master of Applied Computing program at NPS.

The AQD/SSP approach has the advantage of increasing the Navy’s oversight of who has which digital skills without unduly disturbing existing career paths, and allows detailers, commanders, and other senior leaders to quickly find and fit talent to key roles in the Fleet. Formally recognizing digital qualifications would have positive impacts on URL communities as well. For instance, an E-2D pilot with coding expertise can still be a pilot, but the Navy will also be aware that he or she has coding expertise, allowing that person to fill relevant billets, liaison roles, or collateral duties. Over time, this AQD/SSP approach will allow the formal creation of billets like the MOC Chief Data Officer and ensure that those billets are manned by qualified personnel. We believe the above recommendations are in alignment with the “Talent” section of the DoW’s January 9, 2026 AI guidance.

Organizational Reform Afloat and at the Fleets

In November 2022, Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1), in collaboration with Project Overmatch, established the Navy’s first Data Science at Sea (DS@S) team empowered to use all available intelligence, battlespace, and operational data to address emerging warfare requirements. The DS@S team, cobbled together from volunteers around CSG-1 and its subordinate units, automated routine tasks and found novel ways to analyze, fuse, and visualize battlespace data over two deployments to the Western Pacific and the 2024 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii. This grassroots effort went on to inspire similar efforts through PACFLT and resulted in the generation of a classified TACMEMO from the Navy Information Warfare Development Center (NIWDC) detailing the initiative.1 

Over the teams’ nearly three years of operations on CSG-1, it partially or fully automated many IW processes across the Strike Group. The major lesson learned was not that you can do more IW work with fewer people – although this is true – but rather that the DS@S approach creates more bandwidth and time for meaningful human analysis. The DS@S team also developed several novel battlespace awareness and planning tools that are now commonly used by units across the Pacific.2

These teams cannot continue to operate on an ad hoc basis, however, and must be codified, trained, and employed with the same eye towards standardization as at any ESG or MOC across the Fleet. Activating reservists and peeling civilian shipriders away from other tasks has worked well enough to date but is not sustainable over time due to an ever expanding list of operational requirements with ever limited material and personnel resources. To generate consistent decision advantage, build skills over time, and be maximally responsive to the needs of the CSG, ESG, or MOC Commander, data science teams must have a permanent home, dedicated billets, and funding for both training and equipment. In May 2025, the Naval Postgraduate School hosted a summit with a variety of stakeholders to tackle these issues and explore how best to scale the DS@S initiative across the Fleet and “productionalize” the tools that the deployed teams develop.

Until now, the CSG-1 DS@S team has been housed within the Admiral’s staff, but the most natural fit for such a group is within the Information Warfare Commander (IWC) afloat construct. At present, the IWC is the senior member of the IW community embarked with the CSG, but as a member of the Admiral’s staff is without ADCON of any personnel and OPCON of only a select few. The exact nature of the IWC’s roles and responsibilities varies between CSGs based on commander’s discretion. The lack of job standardization and formal authorities (i.e., budget, NJP) for IWCs across the Fleet has hamstrung the role. 

There is an effort underway to address the structural weakness of the current IWC construct. In December 2025, Naval Information Forces (NAVIFOR), the TYCOM for IW across the fleet, established two Information Warfare Squadrons or IWRONs. These IWRONs are designed to “addresses the increasing complexity and sophistication of global threats, which actively seek to exploit vulnerabilities from seabed to space.”3 It is critical that these new IWRONs establish DS@S teams as a Department within the command. Should these pilot IWRON initiatives succeed, they should be replicated both ashore at the MOC (as previously discussed) and afloat at the Navy’s Amphibious Readiness Groups (ARGs). In this construct, the DS@S team would have the personnel, budget, hardware, and authorities to operate continuously as a digital innovation hub for the entire CSG. The IWC could even dispatch the team to work with allies and partners, as the CSG-1 DS@S team did with its French counterparts aboard ships within the CHARLES DE GAULLE Strike Group during the PACIFIC STELLER series of exercises in early 2025.4

Technological Transformation: Leveraging AI and Data

First airing in 1966, Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek imagined a future where technology had completely redefined the human experience, allowing us to explore the universe with a fleet of massive spacecraft. One thing that the starship Enterprise did not have was an Intelligence Officer. If someone wanted to know a specific scientific fact, the capabilities of Klingon ships or the location of the nearest spaceport, they asked “Computer.” The US Navy is not quite there yet, but we’re much closer now than ever. In July 2025, the DoW announced it was granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.5 Not all of that money will directly impact Navy priorities, nor will it be immediately available to afloat units, but we are getting very close to the day when almost all classified RFIs can be answered by a Large Language Model (LLM) connected to every SIPR and JWICS on a ship. Secretary Hegseth’s December announcement of GenAi.mil is a welcome step towards realizing this vision.6

The deployment of LLMs on classified datasets across the Fleet is unlikely to lead to the wholesale replacement of IW personnel but will likely change the nature of their work. LLMs on warships will need to be optimized to operate in denied or degraded communications environments, meaning they likely need to be installed and run locally onboard ships. This will improve daily performance by removing the need for an internet connection, but it also means that over the course of a deployment the datasets feeding the LLM will become out of date and questions like “when is the last time Country X’s ship operated here” will go from being accurate and useful to inaccurate and misleading after a few weeks. 

This means that the role of deployed IW personnel will be ensuring that the datasets feeding LLMs are accurate and up to date. This includes the tactical data that is collected by the ship during the course of a deployment, whether that is intelligence, METOC, or SIGINT data. As this data management and LLM curation will be a cross-IW enterprise it should become a core function of the nascent IWRON structure discussed above. Some learning and experimentation will be required as the knowledge management practices onboard most ships today do not extend beyond maintaining Sharepoint sites, Collaboration at Sea (CaS) pages, or share drive folders.

Of course ships themselves must also be considered in the execution of this concept, particularly regarding space available for hardware and power output to run LLMs as described. Operating the aforementioned equipment requires specialized–or at least dedicated–compute, which will have to be installed likely in classified spaces already at a premium on smaller classes of warship. Furthermore, both the ship’s Engineering and Information Warfare teams must be engaged to determine what capabilities could be lost or degraded if LLMs are integrated into the ship’s technology stack, including hardware, software, power supply, maintainers, and operators. These conversations and their solutions fall squarely in the wheelhouse of NAVIFOR’s IWRON program, currently being piloted on both the east and west coasts. IW Commodores and their staffs should work directly with both operational and training DESRONs, along with AIRLANT/PAC and CSG staffs, to ensure hardware, software, and manpower training and operational needs are met going into workup and deployment cycles. Integrating these solutions into routine operations as quickly as possible will be key to fully implementing an AI strategy that is set up for success.

Innovation is Necessary to Retain IW’s Warfighting Edge

As McAfee and Brynjolfsson note, investments in both workforce training and improved business practices are more impactful than technological investment alone. The Navy IW community must therefore be proactive in addressing its productivity challenges by taking a round turn on training and innovation. We must organize our forces both afloat and ashore to identify current talent, train new innovators, and ensure they are accounted for throughout their time in uniform. We must prioritize our operational forces both afloat and ashore. This means the IWC must be resourced, staffed, and authorized appropriately to operate afloat, while their MOC counterparts must be similarly taken care of ashore. And we must incentivize our most innovative personnel–the Navy’s greatest strength–to learn, train, fight, and stay Navy.

Taken together, these improvements are critical to the Navy’s future and certainly greater than the sum of their parts. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, after all. The Navy has reorganized itself to adapt to technological change time and again – steel over wood, steam over wind. Now the Navy must absorb, understand, and harness the power of the digital technologies to maintain its warfighting edge. 

Lieutenant Commander Shane Halton is an Intelligence Officer currently serving in Washington DC. He previously served as a Requirements Officer at the Navy’s Digital Warfare Office and helped create the Navy’s first Data Science at Sea team aboard CSG-1.

Lieutenant Commander Adam Reiffen is an Intelligence Officer currently serving as a Federal Executive Fellow at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. He previously served as a Requirements Officer at OPNAV N2N6 and was Officer-in-Charge of the Navy’s Data Science at Sea team aboard CSG-1 from 2024-25.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or policy of the U.S. Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government. No federal endorsement is implied or intended.

References

1. Rear Admiral Carlos Sardiello and Lieutenant Commander Shane Halton, U.S. Navy, and Annie Voigt, CNA, “The Case for Data Science at Sea,” CNA In-Depth, June 2024, https://www.cna.org/our-media/indepth/2024/06/the-case-for-data-science-at-sea.

2. Lieutenant Commanders Adam Reiffen and Shane Halton, U.S. Navy, “Lessons Learned in Year One of Data Science at Sea,” Proceedings, May 2024, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2024/may/lessons-learned-year-one-data-science-sea.

3. Joshua Rodriguez, U.S. Navy, “A Paradigm Shift: Navy Establishes First Information Warfare Squadron, ” navy.mil, Dec 2025, https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/display-news/Article/4353901/a-paradigm-shift-navy-establishes-first-information-warfare-squadron/  

4. Ensign Rachael Jones, U.S. Navy, “U.S. and French Host First-Ever Military Hackathon at Sea,” DVIDS, May 2024, https://www.dvidshub.net/news/492989/us-french-host-first-ever-military-hackathon-sea.

5. Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., “Anthropic, Google and xAI win $200M each from Pentagon AI chief for ‘agentic AI’,” Breaking Defense, July 14, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/07/anthropic-google-and-xai-win-200m-each-from-pentagon-ai-chief-for-agentic-ai/ 

6. C. Todd Lopez, ”Hegseth Introduces Department to New AI Tool,” war.gov, Dec 2025, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4355797/hegseth-introduces-department-to-new-ai-tool/.

Featured Image: GULF OF ALASKA (Aug. 23, 2025) Lt. Michael Zittrauer works on a terminal in the combat information center (CIC) aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. (DDG 121) during exercise Northern Edge 2025 (NE25). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Christian Kibler)

Asia-Pacific

Asymmetric Maritime Diplomacy: Involving Coastguards, Maritime Militias in China Dealings

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By Alex Calvo

Any objective assessment of developments in the South China Sea over the last few years cannot but conclude that Beijing is successfully expanding and achieving its goals, the ultimate being complete mastery over this body of water. Please note that we can no longer talk about “dispute” since this word fails to capture the essence of the conflict. There is also no point in demanding a “clarification” of Beijing’s objectives in a wishful attempt at integrating China into the post-war liberal order. Third, and most crucially, given that China is deploying a combined force made up of the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy), a number of Coastguard-like agencies, and a maritime militia, military to military contacts involving only the former are not only useless, they are counterproductive. By engaging the PLAN, in a bid to build trust and work toward agreements, such as the much touted Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, maritime democracies are dangerously ignoring China’s playbook. The PLAN does not operate in isolation. Instead, it follows a carefully orchestrated script featuring an internal division of labour, the coastguard agencies, and the maritime militia. Each has its role, and in some situations and missions they act separately, while in others they work as a team. Broadly speaking, most of the “dirty work” is carried out either by militia-crewed (or at least coordinated) “civilian ships” or by their coastguard counterparts, with the PLAN free to play the “good guy” role in a discreet second line.

This division of labour extends to diplomacy and military to military contacts: PLAN officers meet foreign counterparts, coast guard personnel keep a much lower international profile, and the maritime militias remain a domestic affair. This means that the objectives of these contacts are impossible from the start. What is the point of in engaging only the PLAN when it is just one part of the Chinese forces expanding in the South China Sea? How can we dream of integrating the PRC’s naval and maritime forces into some semblance of an international liberal order when the vast majority of their forces do not even take part in the exchanges and activities designed to bring this about?

Heated altercation between a Chinese Coast Guard Cutter and a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea.
Heated altercation between a Chinese Coast Guard Cutter and a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea.

One of the eternal principles of war is the need to seize the initiative. For too long maritime nations in the South China Sea have simply been reacting to Chinese moves, playing into Beijing’s script. The solution is not to complain more loudly every time Beijing expands, or to rearm at the conventional level only, the solution involves seizing the initiative, playing by different rules (not China’s), and forcing the PRC to react for once. This has already happened in some instances, most notably the Philippines’ lawsuit under UNCLOS, but must now become the norm, not the exception.

In accordance with this need to seize the initiative, the following changes are necessary in military to military contacts and negotiations:

A) Maritime nations must refuse to take part in any negotiations where China’s Coastguard agencies and maritime militias are not represented. Dealings must take place only with delegations made up of the full range of institutions involved in territorial aggression in the South China Sea.

B) In order to make the above possible (and prevent Beijing from claiming that they are only sending PLAN personnel because they are just meeting naval officers), maritime nations must also include all equivalent agencies in their own delegations.

C) Third, when a maritime democracy does not have a maritime militia, it must be created. This can be accomplished, for example, by resorting to reserve personnel, maritime industries, and yacht owners associations.

Maritime democracies may also need to adopt measures to grow their fishing and merchant fleets in order to acquire the necessary dual-use assets to wage the non-lethal confrontation seen in the seas near China. 

Adopting an integrated approach to military to military contacts with China may require some cultural and institutional changes. It may be understandable for a naval officer to prefer the company of a fellow officer from another country to that of a fisherman. Equally understandable may be an officer’s somewhat detached view of clashes among fishing boats, or landings by civilian “activists,” but the nature of the mixed warfare being waged by China means that superior conventional naval forces cannot simply wait for war to break out in order to defeat the enemy in a conventional battle. A war may be lost while waiting for it to break out. In theory, Chinese expansion could be checked by drawing a line in the sand and employing conventional force if necessary. However, this is politically unrealistic, given that not even economic sanctions have been discussed in Washington and pacific rim capitals. If the United States and her partners are not even ready to make China pay an economic price for aggression, can they be expected to go to war? The answer cannot be any other than a clear and loud no, and the Chinese are fully aware of it. Hence their “salami slicing” strategy.

coast-guard-june14
US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer and US Coast Guard Hamilton-class High Endurance Cutter at sea.

If we rule out appeasement and surrender, then the only alternative left is to fight. Not to fight the war we would like, a war that is simply not on the menu, but the existing war being waged, and the one, we must regrettably say, which is being lost to date. In this war, the enemy is not simply using conventional forces, but a mixture of naval, non-naval state, and dual-use private assets. It is this complex reality that must be engaged with in attempts at confidence building and agreements negotiations. If it is not just PLAN officers working to conquer the South China Sea, what is the point in just talking to them? Shouldn’t we also be talking to their coast guard and militia counterparts?

This broad approach to military to military contacts is the only realistic approach to the current situation in the South China Sea (and the wider Indo Pacific). If actually resulting in agreements, they will be more likely to be respected, given that they will have been negotiated by the whole range of actors involved. If unsuccessful, then naval and maritime personnel from the nations of these contested waters will have gained a much better understanding of their foes. This will not only give them a clearer picture of the opposition, but will also help them make the necessary but often difficult and even painful cultural transition from leaders used to thinking in terms of conventional sea power to officers equally at ease when facing a trawler or a submarine, a missile fired in anger or a ramming fishing boat. Successful riverine operations in South Vietnam are a good example of a similar cultural and organizational change brought about by the need to fight a dual war, and the resulting transformation is a reminder that this is indeed possible.

Alex Calvo, a guest professor at Nagoya University (Japan), focuses on security and defence policy, international law, and military history, in the Indian-Pacific Ocean Region. He tweets at Alex__Calvo and his work, which includes “China’s Air Defense Identification Zone: Concept, Issues at Stake and Regional Impact”, Naval War College Press Working Papers, No 1, US Naval War College, 23 December 2013, available at http://www.usnwc.edu/Publications/Working-Papers/Documents/WP1-Calvo.aspx, can be found here.

North America, Podcast

Sea Control 114 – South China Sea with CAPT James Fanell

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seacontrol2For a discussion on the South China Sea, Sally DeBoer, our Book Review Editor, brings in CAPT James Fannell (USN, Ret), the former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations (N2) for the US Pacific Fleet.  During the course of his thirty year career, CAPT Fanell specialized in Indo-Asia Pacific security affairs, with an emphasis on the Chinese navy and its operations. CAPT Fanell is an experienced public speaker noted for his candor and expertise. He is currently a government fellow for the Geneva Center for Security Policy and the author of Red Star Rising.

Download this week’s episode here!

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Asia-Pacific, Capability Analysis

Pakistan’s Navy: A Quick Look

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By Alex Calvo

Traditionally the junior service, operating in the Army’s shadow and receiving a ten percent share of the 2015 defence budget of $6.6 billion, Pakistan’s Navy personnel numbers more than 22,000 active, plus 5,000 in the reserve. This secondary role stands in contrast with the economy’s dependence on the sea, with the port city of Karachi contributing 25 percent of GDP and the proposed China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) raising the country’s maritime profile even further.

Much of the Navy’s backbone, including its seven submarines, five French-made ‘Khalid’ class conventional hunter-killer (SSKs) acquired in the 1990s plus two ‘Hashmat’ class SSKs from the 1970s, is nearing retirement. The Navy is working to acquire new surface and undersea combatants, boosting domestic shipbuilding in the process and in cooperation with Beijing.

Plans include procuring an additional four 3000-ton F-22P/’Zulfiqar’ (Sword) class frigates with improved sensors and weapons (including HQ-17 surface-to-air missiles, developed from Russia’s Tor 1/SA-N-9), as well as six Type-022 Houbei stealth catamaran missile boats. State-owned shipbuilder Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works (KSEW) is responsible for these programs, and is expanding its facilities with a new foundry, manufacturing areas, and two dry docks of 26,000 and 18,000 dead weight tons, spread over 71 acres. Islamabad had been hoping to procure six Perry-class frigates from the US on easy terms, but congressional hostility has prompted greater reliance on China, a country heavily committed at all levels to Pakistan, being a key to Beijing’s strategy of securing access to the Indian Ocean and keeping New Delhi distracted by a regional rival.

Sword class frigate of the Pakistani Navy.
Sword class frigate of the Pakistani Navy.

Karachi is the traditional home of the Pakistani Navy, and remains of the utmost importance, despite diversification into other bases, among them PNS Siddique (in Turbat, in the south-west, close to the strategic deepwater port of Gwadar and the border with Iran), Pasni, and Jinnah Naval Base (also in the south-west). Asked whether security is considered by the Pakistani Navy as a reason to push for further diversification away from the city, Zoha Waseem (PhD Candidate at King’s College London and an expert in Pakistani security and policing) explains that “the situation in Karachi in terms of the ongoing operation is linked with the need of the military to keep investing in Karachi. The construction of military bases, infrastructure, and training centres and accommodation does not appear to be decreasing. Karachi is an ATM machine, and a prime location for any stakeholder to have its assets here.”

PNS Badr, a British-built Type-21 frigate, was decommissioned in 2014. Despite being the junior service and the country facing a difficult fiscal position, Pakistan's Navy has been pushing for ambitious plans in terms of both surface and undersea combatants. Source Flickr.
PNS Badr, a British-built Type-21 frigate, was decommissioned in 2014. Despite being the junior service and the country facing a difficult fiscal position, Pakistan’s Navy has been pushing for ambitious plans in terms of both surface and undersea combatants. Source Flickr.

While new ships are seen as essential in terms of maritime security and the fight against piracy, it is Pakistani plans to acquire new submarines that have met with the greatest concern in New Delhi. In March 2015, Islamabad announced plans to procure eight new Chinese submarines, and in October 2015 confirmed that four would be purchased from Beijing and four built at KSEW. The package includes a training centre in Karachi and probably includes access to China’s Beidou-II (BDS-2) satellite navigation network. Thanks to similar designs, Beijing, in turn, gets to enjoy the necessary maintenance personnel and facilities enabling her to operate her own submarines much more efficiently in the Indian Ocean, home to vital SLOCs (sea lanes of communication) for China. Ideally the Navy would like a total of 12 new boats. These Chinese-designed submarines will probably be based on the air independent propulsion (AIP) equipped Type 39B Yuan SSK (known as S-20 in its export version). Displacing 2,300 tons, they can fire both cruise missiles and 533 mm torpedoes, and can also deploy mines and special forces. Pakistan, already working on a version of the National Defence Complex Babur missile capable of launch from her old Khalid submarines, sees the S-20 as more than a conventional platform, although preventing an Indian blockade is certainly a major goal in and by itself. A sea-based deterrent would provide Islamabad with a second strike capability, while avoiding perceptions of falling behind India in the nuclear sphere. The resulting improvement in survivability is seen by Mansoor Ahmed (Stanton Nuclear Security junior faculty fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center), as providing greater strategic stability to South Asia, given that India could not be sure of completely destroying Pakistani nuclear forces and thus escape unacceptable damage herself.

Work on a sea-based deterrent may also be closely linked to the Navy’s status within the military. According to Scott Cheney-Peters (US Navy reserve officer and CIMSEC founder) “Unless Pakistan’s Navy can develop an at-sea strategic nuclear deterrent it is likely to remain the ‘junior service.’ This means it has a strong institutional incentive to pursue an SLBM second-strike capability. But just as this incentive may not be enough to bring the capability to fruition any time soon, so the second-capability may not be enough to remove the perception of the Navy as a junior partner in the nation’s armed forces.”

Alex Calvo is a guest professor at Nagoya University (Japan) focusing on security and defence policy, international law, and military history in the Indian-Pacific Ocean Region. A member of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) and Taiwan’s South China Sea Think-Tank, he is currently writing a book about Asia’s role and contribution to the Allied victory in the Great War. He tweets @Alex__Calvo and his work can be found here.

Featured Image: MAYPORT, Fla. (Aug. 31, 2010) Pakistan sailors parade their country’s colors during the decommissioning ceremony of the guided-missile frigate USS McInerney (FFG 8) at Naval Station Mayport. During the ceremony, McInerney was commissioned into the Pakistan navy as PNS Alamgir (F 260). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gary Granger Jr./Released).