In World War II, U.S. submarines strangled the Japanese war machine. In the Cold War, U.S. planners feared an onslaught of Soviet submarines would prevent the U.S. military from successfully moving forces in theater to defend Europe. During the Falklands War, a few British submarines were able to keep the entire Argentine surface fleet in port. Since they came of age in World War II, submarines have been the central threat facing nations attempting to traverse the ocean during war.
Today, Russia is fielding truly impressive nuclear submarines that challenge U.S. undersea supremacy. The new Yasen-class has the capability of carrying 40 Kalibr missiles, providing the opportunity to reach targets 1,500 miles from the point of launch. This means that a single Yasen-class submarine unlocated in the Atlantic Ocean could target any critical military infrastructure on the East Coast of the United States with conventional weapons. Other Russian submarines, such as the Oscar class, carry antiship cruise missiles that are able to travel 300 nautical miles. This may endanger freedom of navigation for the U.S. merchant shipping industry, and could stop a carrier strike group from reaching the fight in Europe.
On a different front, China poses its own set of challenges to U.S. forces. While Russia may hold land-based forces and surface vessels at risk with small numbers of nuclear submarines, China’s approach is oriented toward fielding high-end diesel submarines in startlingly large numbers. In 2030, China estimates it will have around 100 fielded submarines, versus the United States’s 53. The discussion of antiaccess/area-denial technologies fielded by China focuses on ballistic missiles. But China’s massive submarine force is at least as large an obstacle to U.S. freedom of maneuver in the Pacific.
The threat today to U.S. military dominance across the world is real and urgent. Undersea infrastructure is at constant risk of destruction and espionage, and U.S. ships must operate under constant threat of attack
But U.S. forces have faced similar challenges in the past. In the Cold War, the U.S. Navy operated aircraft, ships, and submarines as cohesive units that worked together to find, fix, and maintain track of adversary submarines. They did this with the understanding that the order to transition from tracking to finishing those submarines could come at any time.
Today, some U.S. military leaders would contend that the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) blade is dull because of a lack of attention during the global war on terror. U.S. forces track adversary submarines with MH-60R helicopters, P-8 Poseidon aircraft, surface ships, and submarines. Together, this array of tools could pose a serious challenge to U.S. adversaries. But the U.S. Navy currently does not collate these tools into a sufficiently coherent unit. Each community tracks readiness individually and each of their simulators connect reliably only with their own, making coordinated training ashore difficult. The MK-54 torpedo, shared by MH-60Rs, ships, and P-8s to destroy submarines, was deemed inadequate five years ago during operational testing. And tactical communication is made more difficult by the fact that each community has its own language, culture, and approach to the ASW problem.
But U.S. ASW forces are not standing still.
The Counter
MH-60Rs, P-8s, destroyers, cruisers, and submarines all have large contingents that call Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia home. Taking advantage of that geographic proximity to build a more cohesive ASW force is the obvious answer for the U.S. Navy to become a more integrated fighting force. Thankfully, the maritime patrol and helicopter maritime strike communities, which fly the P-8 and MH-60R, have leaned forward to do so.
In 2018 and 2019, the two communities came together in a process called JAXMAN. The initiative consists of several months of coordinated exercises, tactics development sessions, doctrine synchronization efforts, and exchange flights where MH-60R aviators fly with P-8 aviators and vice versa. Over several months, the two communities generate significant lessons learned and improve community familiarity regarding capabilities, tactics, techniques and procedures.
At the end of this process, members of the larger communities gather for a symposium to present and discuss the work accomplished, discuss the current state of the ASW force, and determine where the communities move forward to advance capabilities and integration. In November 2019, Rear Admiral Matthew O’Keefe (deputy chief of Naval Air Forces Atlantic), Rear Admiral James Waters (Submarine Group 2), Rear Admiral Andrew Loiselle (Carrier Strike Group 8), and Rear Admiral Pete Garvin (commander, Patrol and Reconnaissance Group) all attended to share their personal perspective on the current state and desired future of the Navy’s ASW force.
Out of this effort came five takeaways to build the combined ASW force needed in today’s Navy. Implementing them will require combined efforts across the ASW enterprise which is comprised of maritime patrol, helicopter maritime strike, surface, and submarine communities.
Key Takeaways
- Payloads over Platforms. In the past decade, ASW forces have been reconstituted with the MH-60R and P-8. These ASW platforms were much needed improvements to the platforms that conduct ASW, but what is required next are the weapons that will finish the fight. The director of operational test and evaluation reported that the primary airborne ASW weapon, the Mk-54, was inadequate more than five years ago. New aircraft with the same old weapon will not provide the level of lethality required to match the threat.
The primary passive sensor used by ASW forces today is the SSQ-53 DIFAR sonobuoy. In 1969, the primary passive sensor used by airborne ASW forces was the SSQ-53 DIFAR sonobuoy. The Navy has fielded seven iterations of the SSQ-53, but it is still fundamentally the same tool used to track submarines in the 70s, which were many orders of magnitude less capable than the current threat.Just as is true across the force, the weapons and sensors we develop will have a more significant impact on our overall lethality than will the delivery platforms. ASW forces have corrected deficiencies in the platform category, now we must address the payloads.
- Acquisitions need to be user-oriented and integrated across platforms. It is not enough to consider requirements for new technologies from strictly an aviation, surface warfare, or submariner perspective, as OPNAV currently is structured. The ASW fight depends on overlapping capabilities. If the different stakeholders are not coordinating their pieces of that overlapping effort, it is very likely communities will invest in the same areas, leaving gaps at the seams. If every stakeholder invests heavily in tracking capabilities, for instance, but nobody invests in weapon lethality, we cannot complete the kill chain.
Additionally, the acquisition process must work more rapidly and with the end-user in mind. East coast MH-60Rs and P-8 operational squadrons reside in Jacksonville, Florida, but the acquisitions organizations that buy technology for these communities lie 700 miles to the north, in Patuxent River, Maryland. This makes it easy to work with the Pentagon and Congress to secure funding, but the distance from where U.S. forces train and operate makes it arduous for acquisition professionals to build technology in an agile manner. Constant interaction with the end-user results in delivered technology that could be much more useful. Industry learned this lesson 25 years ago. ASW forces need to catch up.
At a minimum, operational test squadrons should have ongoing colocation with operational squadrons to ensure a short feedback loop. This could take the form of wholesale relocation, or long-term detachment operations. Testing should not end at first fielding, but rather be a continuous process throughout the lifetime of a program of record. Co-location is the only way to ensure this happens.
- Connect different platforms’ simulated training environments. The Navy needs to train in a realistic manner with the same coordinated command and control structures used at sea. Ships, submarines, MH-60Rs, and P-8s all have high-fidelity simulators that they use to train and maintain readiness. But none of these simulators can reliably link with those of their ASW playmates. This means that coordinated training happens solely in the air and at sea. This training is good, but simulators can model the high-end fight in ways the Navy cannot off the coast of the United States. Anybody can observe tactics we practice in international waters. Secure, simulated environments eliminate this problem.
Without connected simulators and with only limited integrated training during the work-up cycle, valuable training opportunities are lost. The rest of the Navy has recognized the need to simulate the coordinated fight and is investing in LVC (live, virtual, and constructive) training environments. Left uncorrected, the Navy’s inability to simulate the coordinated ASW fight is a strategic liability.
- Accept failure in training. The training that is conducted often unrealistically avoids failure. ASW is a probabilistic endeavor. U.S. crews, no matter how talented and well-equipped, will fail from time-to-time. Submarines will escape through screens or break contact from tracking forces. The ability to recover from failure is therefore imperative. Our current readiness process does not force crews to hone this ability.
Our ASW forces’ wartime readiness is tracked by completion of qualifications. A crew will go into a flight or simulator, face a scenario, and meet specific standards while accomplishing their mission. While there are many qualifications that require crews to successfully find, track, and kill adversaries, there are none that require crews work through failure.
As a result, crews face this kind of adversity much more in real life than in the simulator. This is the opposite of what one would want, and means that crews are unpracticed in responding to adversity. Changing readiness metrics to encourage fighting through adversity is an easy, administrative fix that could have an enormous impact on force-wide effectiveness. The Navy needs to make it not just possible, but mandatory, to face failure while achieving qualifications.
- Establish a permanent organization responsible for integrating ASW forces. There is no organization whose primary mission is to develop coordinated tactics for the ASW fight. Undersea Warfare Development Center (UWDC) primarily is focused on submarines; Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC) focuses on ships’ contributions; Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Weapons School (MPRWS) focuses on P-8s; and Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC) hones MH-60R tactics. UWDC often makes efforts to be the coordinating organization, but it lacks teeth to make change outside of the submarine community.
UWDC should look at its current force structure and consider allocating assets towards a permanent detachment for an ASW school of excellence in Jacksonville. This establishment would combine sailors from the helicopter, maritime patrol, submarine, and surface communities to develop and teach integrated ASW tactics to the fleet. Beyond coordinating cross-community efforts, this organization could run a weapons and tactics instructor (WTI)-level school for theater ASW (TASW) planning. This is badly needed to strengthen the command and control of TASW efforts.
The Way Forward
No single asset can tackle the multifaceted threat posed by Russian or Chinese submarine forces alone. The JAXMAN process has identified several critical areas in which ASW forces need to invest to solidify their dominance. It is now up to the stakeholder communities to follow through on those investments.
Over the next year, maritime patrol and helicopter maritime strike personnel will act on our identified areas and find new ones. Additionally, the JAXMAN team cannot stay solely focused on MH-60Rs and P-8s. It needs to bring submarines and ships into the effort to more broadly build a lethal ASW team.
When we look at the landscape of entities building new ways to tackle the ASW mission we see UWDC, SMWDC, NAWDC, and MPRWS all working on their own capabilities. JAXMAN is the method through which the Navy will synchronize these efforts, ensure they are applicable in the coordinated environment, and spread the word about newly devised tactics and technologies to the combined fleet.
The Navy can more than pace the growing threat posed by its adversaries. We just have to ensure we are working together to do it.
