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Human Capital

SWOs Assume Amphibious Command: Why it Matters

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By Captain Kevin Eyer, USN (Ret.)

Amphibious Command Reform

In an April 24, 2026 directive, Chief of Naval Operations Daryl Caudle ordered that, beginning in Fiscal Year 2028, command of all amphibious warships will be assigned exclusively to Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs). This includes Landing Helicopter Assault (LHA), Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD), Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD), and Dock Landing Ship (LSD) classes.

The decision represents a significant institutional realignment in naval command structure, ending a long-standing dual-community model in which both aviators and Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs) were eligible for amphibious command. The CNO’s rationale is grounded in sustained concerns over amphibious readiness, maintenance execution, engineering discipline, and material condition—areas that have remained below Navy standards for an extended period.

As articulated in the directive, effective amphibious command requires “exquisite knowledge of readiness, maintenance procedures, component design and failure modes, damage control, and operational procedures,” as well as the ability to remain in command long enough to impose sustained correction. The conclusion is clear: Surface Warfare Officers are purpose-built for that responsibility. 

Resistance from the Aviation community was immediate and significant, including among senior aviators within U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. Fleet Forces Command. While concerns centered publicly on career progression and institutional balance, the debate also reflected disagreement with the premise that aviator command contributed materially to amphibious readiness shortfalls.

Still, beneath the institutional friction lies a broader reality. This is, at least in significant part, a fight over major command billets—assignments understood as essential for any officer hoping to achieve flag rank. The change will unquestionably reduce command and major command opportunities available to aviators. At the same time, the Navy’s inventory of traditional SWO major command ships continues to shrink. As these opportunities contract across the fleet, in both communities, institutional pressure over how remaining billets are allocated was inevitable. Something ultimately had to give.

Yet beyond these parochial issues, the Navy appears to have reached a larger operational conclusion which renders that argument moot: the amphibious force is too important to the Marine Corps’ warfighting capability to continue treating these ships as shared command territory.

The Amphibious Force and Its Operational Role

The U.S. Navy operates approximately 31 amphibious warfare ships, including nine large-deck amphibious assault ships that form the backbone of the Expeditionary Strike Group construct.

These platforms are essential to the Marine Corps’ core mission: the ability to project combat power from the sea. Amphibious ships transport embarked Marines, vehicles, landing craft, and aviation assets into contested environments where shore-based infrastructure is unavailable, degraded, or denied. Additionally, amphibious ships serve as floating expeditionary bases capable of command and control, medical support, logistics sustainment, and crisis-response missions.

Depending upon the class, modern U.S. amphibious warfare ships routinely employ the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC), Landing Craft Utility (LCU), Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM-8), and Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC) to transport Marines, vehicles, equipment, and supplies from ship to shore during amphibious operations. In addition, and especially relevant to this discussion, they also embark MV-22B Ospreys, CH-53K heavy-lift helicopters, AH-1Z/UH-1Y rotary-wing aircraft, and F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing fighters to support expeditionary operations ashore. Together, these systems enable distributed maneuver, vertical assault, close air support, and sustained operations in contested environments.

There are, however, substantial operational differences among amphibious ship classes, particularly with respect to aviation operations. The large-deck LHA and LHD classes conduct highly complex fixed-wing and tiltrotor aviation operations involving F-35Bs and MV-22s, including high-tempo launch and recovery cycles, advanced aviation fueling and weapons handling, and the integration of tactical air operations with expeditionary objectives. As for the LPD, while the class does not currently support F-35Bs, it does carry MV-22s. Amongst the “amphibs,” the single class that embarks only traditional helicopters, whose operation is significantly less complex than sustained fixed-wing and tiltrotor aviation operations, is the LSD class.

This distinction explains why LHA, LHD, and LPD classes are categorized as “major command” ships commanded by Captains on their second at-sea command tour, while LSDs are “Commander command” ships led by Commanders during their first command tour at sea.

These ships are the Navy’s most important fleet assets supporting Marine Corps operations. Consequently, the material readiness of amphibious ships directly affects Marine Corps operational effectiveness. Degraded ship availability constrains embarkation, delays deployment cycles, and reduces the Marine Corps’ ability to execute its expeditionary mission set. Amphibious readiness is therefore not solely a naval concern—it is foundational to the Marine Corps’ warfighting capability.

The Marines’ Perspective

At the 2026 Sea-Air-Space Conference, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Eric Smith, indicated that the Navy and Marine Corps were determined to work together with a “unified sense of purpose” to increase the size and availability of the U.S. amphibious fleet:

“We’re in complete agreement that our current inventory of 31 amphibious ships is not sufficient to meet our new presence that our combatant commanders are requesting and requiring.”

In 2025, amphibious ships’ readiness rate dropped to 41 percent, according to Navy Times. This metric is derived from a lack of ships deployable that caused a five-month delay in Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) deployments —critically impacting the Marine Corps’ ability to execute its mission. 

To address this, General Smith spoke to optimizing maintenance schedules, as well as investing in service life extensions for a number of ships. Moreover, he stated that the Navy-Marine Corps team is moving forward with the procurement of new and more capable ships. While the form that these new ships takes, beyond perhaps the now-planned Landing Ship Medium (LSM), remains to be seen, what is plain is that the Marines are keenly interested in the sustainability of the amphibious fleet, and specifically, availability of these ships when called upon. 

What is an Air Boss?

Aviation-capable amphibious ships have an Air Department Head or “Air Boss” assigned to them. This officer serves as the Commanding Officer’s principal aviation authority and senior manager of all flight operations.

Operating through Primary Flight Control (“PriFly”), the Air Boss oversees launch and recovery operations, flight deck sequencing, aircraft movement, fueling and arming cycles, sortie generation, airspace coordination, and aviation safety enforcement.

The Air Boss integrates continuously with the bridge, Combat Information Center, Marine aviation elements, and embarked air traffic control personnel to ensure safe and efficient aviation operations. He or she translates the Commanding Officer’s intent into executable aviation activity while maintaining strict control of flight deck risk and safety. This structure ensures that aviation expertise remains continuously embedded within the ship’s command organization at the Department Head level.

This is central to the Navy’s revised command logic: aviation execution aboard amphibious ships is already fully professionalized and continuously managed. The Air Boss construct therefore provides the operational depth and specialization required without necessitating an aviator in command.

In practical terms, aviation is not removed from command—it is delegated to a dedicated expert authority within a now SWO-led command structure. For this reason, it is imperative to the success of this new construct that the Aviation community assign only its best and brightest post-command aviators to this billet going forward. To do other is to court failure of the Marine mission.

In short, the Air Boss position effectively obviates the need for a uniquely assigned Aviator as commanding officer of the ship. This is analogous to the Reactor Department Head aboard an aircraft carrier being a nuclear-trained SWO. In that case, the SWO responsible for overseeing the carrier’s immensely complex nuclear propulsion plant eliminates the need for a SWO Commanding Officer solely to provide engineering and reactor expertise. Extending the analogy further, while every CVN Commanding Officer is nuclear-qualified, every SWO Commanding Officer has likewise spent an entire career intimately involved with the operations of helicopters from the decks of surface combatants across the fleet.

How Aviators Got to Amphibs

Over time, aviators were increasingly assigned to amphibious ship command primarily as part of the Aviation community’s officer development pipeline.

As the Navy’s largest unrestricted line community among SWOs, submariners, and aviators, the Aviation community has long relied upon amphibious ship command opportunities—both at the Commander and Captain level—to provide upward career progression for its most promising officers.

Squadron command is the standard Commander-level milestone for Naval Aviators. Officers selected for further operational command may proceed into major aviation leadership billets or into deep-draft command pipelines. aviators — particularly rotary-wing and tiltrotor officers associated with amphibious operations — have commonly served as Executive Officer/Commanding Officer (XO/CO) of LHAs and LHDs via the fleet-up process, while tactical jet aviators have more often followed the aircraft carrier and carrier strike group command track. However, there is considerable overlap and flexibility depending on community, timing, and Navy needs.

At the same time, LHA and LHD ships increasingly evolved toward aviation-centric operations, particularly with the introduction of the F-35B and expanded MV-22 integration. This has, with time, strengthened the Aviation community’s argument for continued command of large-deck amphibious ships.

The bottom line is that amphibious ships became an important career-development mechanism within the Aviation community, while the increasing sophistication of the aircraft embarked on some amphibs justified these assignments.

Still, it is important to distinguish between the aviation complexity of LHA and LHD operations and that of the remainder of the amphibious fleet. Commanding Officers aboard LHAs and LHDs oversee high-tempo fixed-wing and tilt-rotor flight operations in densely congested deck environments, including the integration of F-35B and MV-22 operations into expeditionary combat missions. By contrast, LPDs and LSDs, while fully aviation capable, conduct comparatively limited helicopter operations and do not execute sustained tactical fixed-wing aviation missions.

The Navy now appears to have concluded that while aviation expertise remains indispensable aboard amphibious ships, the commanding officer’s foremost responsibility is the sustained readiness and fighting condition of the ship itself. That responsibility aligns more naturally with the professional orientation and career-long preparation of the Surface Warfare community. As for the increasing complexity of air operations in major command amphibs, high-grade Air Bosses will ensure the safety and effectivity of those.

Carrier Command: A Structural Distinction

This naturally raises the question of why SWOs are not permitted to command aircraft carriers.

Unlike amphibious ships, command of nuclear aircraft carriers is restricted exclusively to Naval Aviators who are also nuclear-qualified. This is not simply a matter of tradition. It reflects the carrier’s unique identity as both a nuclear-powered warship and a floating aviation combat platform. More than that, it is the law.

Since the Act of June 24, 1926, federal law has required that officers commanding U.S. Navy aircraft carriers be qualified naval aviators. The original provision, enacted as part of early naval aviation legislation and formerly codified at 34 U.S.C. § 735, was intended in part to ensure that naval aviators had a viable path to senior operational command within the fleet. Through later recodifications of federal military law, the requirement became 10 U.S.C. § 5942 and is now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 8162. The current statute provides that, to be eligible to command an aircraft carrier, an officer must be “an officer in the line of the Navy who is designated as a naval aviator or naval flight officer and who is otherwise qualified.” As a result, non-aviator Surface Warfare Officers are legally barred from commanding active U.S. aircraft carriers. In the case of nuclear-powered carriers (CVNs), Commanding Officers must additionally meet nuclear propulsion qualification requirements established under Executive Order 12344 and subsequent statutory authorities governing the Naval Reactors program. 

In order to command a carrier, an officer must understand nuclear propulsion operations, ship-wide engineering integration, reactor safety oversight, navigation, combat systems, and full-spectrum warship command responsibilities. Aviators selected for carrier command therefore undergo nuclear power training, complete demanding XO tours aboard carriers, and typically command another ship at sea before assuming CVN command.

Yet the technical explanation alone does not fully answer the question. A Surface Warfare Officer can be trained to understand aviation operations to the level necessary for safe ship command. What a SWO can never fully possess, however, is the lived cockpit perspective that defines naval aviation.

That distinction matters because, unlike the amphibious ship, the entire purpose of the aircraft carrier is the launch and recovery of aircraft and the projection of aviation combat power. Every major operational function aboard the carrier ultimately serves the air wing. The commanding officer must therefore possess not only technical competence as a warship commander and nuclear operator, but also an instinctive appreciation for what is occurring in the cockpit during launch, recovery, tanker operations, bolters, emergency procedures, and combat tasking.

Carrier aviation involves judgment about risk, weather, fatigue, deck cycles, aircraft performance margins, and human decision-making under extreme operational pressure. Those realities cannot be fully learned from outside the Aviation community.

Accordingly, the Navy’s judgment has long been that while a SWO can learn enough about aviation to safely command a carrier, only an aviator can fully understand the operational and human dimensions of carrier aviation combat operations. For that reason, aircraft carrier command remains restricted to aviators who are also nuclear-qualified through specialized training and career preparation.

The amphibious force is different. Aviation aboard these ships is critically important, but the ship itself exists primarily to deliver and sustain Marine combat power ashore. Aviation supports that mission; it does not wholly define it in the way aviation defines the aircraft carrier.

The Flight III DDG Issue 

Today, with the retirement of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, there is a sudden shortage of major command opportunities available for SWOs.

While the assignment of major command is being experimented with using Flight III destroyers, significant questions remain regarding whether those ships possess the capability and capacity to meaningfully fill the role once occupied by Aegis cruisers. The cruiser was not only larger and possessed greater magazine depth, but was also specifically designed to support the commanding officer’s duties as Air Warfare Commander (AWC) for a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) or Area Air Defense Commander (AADC) for a joint force. In an era of rapidly evolving air and missile threats, AWC/AADC remains the most critical warfare commander function within the CSG for the Surface Warfare community.

To fulfill those responsibilities, the Ticonderoga-class cruiser was built with an especially large combat information center and extensive command-and-control systems. Flight III DDGs remain highly capable warships, but they do not fully replicate the cruiser’s command-and-control capacity. Compounding the issue, destroyer production rates remain too slow to offset the loss of cruiser major command billets.

Amphibious command under SWO leadership therefore also serves to preserve leadership depth and major command opportunities within the Surface Warfare community. Critics will reasonably argue that this institutional reality influenced the decision. They are likely correct.

Yet this does not invalidate the operational logic behind the reform. If anything, it reinforces a broader truth: these are surface warships, and the Navy increasingly believes they should be commanded by officers whose professional expertise centers on sustaining and fighting surface ships.

Implications for the Aviation Community

For naval aviation, the policy reduces at-sea major command opportunities outside the carrier force.

Rotary-wing, and to a lesser extent Patrol Squadron (MPA) Aviators are most directly affected, as amphibious ships historically represented a key pathway for MPA, helicopter and tiltrotor officers to achieve major command.

The situation for aviators was already worsening prior to the loss of amphibious ship command opportunities for aviators. A major blow came earlier with the Navy’s transfer of its auxiliary fleet—including oilers and replenishment ships—to Military Sealift Command control, a transition completed in 2010. Since then, nearly the entire Combat Logistics Force has been operated by MSC rather than by commissioned Navy crews, eliminating a significant number of traditional command billets for aviators. Today, the only auxiliary-type vessels still under direct Navy Sailor command are a small number of highly specialized ships, such as submarine tenders and command ships.

To offset this, aviators will continue to be assigned to command selected platforms such as Amphibious Command Ships (LCCs), Expeditionary Sea Bases (ESBs), which were shifted from MSC control to Navy commands in 2019, and selected auxiliary ships. These assignments preserve meaningful at-sea command experience, particularly for aviators selected for future carrier command.

The objective is to ensure that aviators selected for carrier command possess not only aviation expertise, but also a comprehensive understanding of ship operations prior to assuming command of a nuclear-powered warship. Having said that, in any decision of this sort, there are winners and losers, and the plain losers in this, in terms of major command billets, are helicopter aviators. 

Conclusion

It is worthy of note that the Navy has tried this before. In the post–Cold War period, particularly during the 1990s and early 2000s, the Navy effectively attempted to phase aviators out of amphibious ship command by increasingly favoring Surface Warfare Officers as amphibious platforms became more maintenance-intensive and aligned with surface warfare competencies. The intent was to concentrate command responsibility with SWOs who were viewed as better suited to long-term material readiness and ship stewardship. However, the effort did not fully take hold because amphibious ships simultaneously evolved into increasingly aviation-centric platforms, especially with the growth of MV-22 and F-35B operations. As a result, the dual-path command structure persisted, and aviators remained integral to amphibious leadership rather than being fully displaced. 

This of course begs the question as to whether this effort will be fully and persistently implemented. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the Navy’s interest in aligning command authority with the primary determinants of amphibious ship readiness and operational availability, it appears to be the right decision for the health of the ships and ability of the Marines to accomplish their mission.

Amphibious ships are to be increasingly treated as surface warfare commands in which long-term material condition, engineering discipline, maintenance execution, and readiness management are the Commanding Officer’s central responsibilities. Aviation remains fully integrated, but is professionally executed through the Air Boss structure, ensuring operational effectiveness without requiring aviator command authority.

The change carries real and acknowledged costs for the Aviation community, particularly among rotary-wing aviators whose command opportunities are reduced. It also reshapes long-standing cross-community pathways at sea.

At the same time, the policy does not diminish the importance of aviation expertise. Rather, it concentrates that expertise where it is operationally most valuable. On aircraft carriers, the Commanding Officer must possess a deep appreciation of what occurs in the cockpit because the carrier exists fundamentally to enable aviation combat power. That is why only aviators command aircraft carriers.

Within the amphibious force, meanwhile, the Air Boss becomes even more important under this new command structure. Particularly aboard LHA and LHD platforms conducting complex MV-22 and F-35B operations, the Air Boss is not a secondary billet but a central warfighting function. The Aviation community must therefore ensure that only top-tier, post-command aviators are assigned to these positions. They must be fully capable of advising—and when necessary, forcefully challenging—a commanding officer who will not inherently possess cockpit-level understanding of aviation timing, risk, and execution.

The Surface Fleet must help maximize the Marine Corps’ ability to execute its mission from the sea. That mission remains the foundation of the amphibious force, and every institutional decision surrounding amphibious command must be judged—without stint or reference to parochialism—against that standard.

Captain Kevin Eyer is a retired Surface Warfare Officer who served on active duty for 27 years. He deployed in seven cruisers and commanded three Aegis cruisers—the USS Thomas S. Gates (CG-51), Shiloh (CG-67), and Chancellorsville (CG-62). He completed tours on both the Navy Staff and Joint Staff and attained a Master of Arts from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Author of the Year in 2017, and three-time winner of the Surface Navy Association’s Literary Award.

Featured image: USS Ashland Returns to Naval Base San Diego,” 01 June 2026. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Aja Campbell)

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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