In the Near Future
Despite the 100-man Chinese private military contractor (PMC) detachment guarding the restricted area within Venezuela’s La Guaira Port, a group of Arabic and Farsi speakers in civilian clothes passed the security barriers unchecked and boarded the Feedermax-class container vessel. Amidst the slowed economic growth triggered by U.S.-China trade tensions and increased energy prices due to the Gulf conflict, Chinese PMCs seemed the Communist Party’s preferred option to guarantee the safety of Chinese investments in the Venezuela of 2020. In the pre-dawn twilight, the ship’s crew of drug cartel pawns and their foreign “hijackers” slipped away from the terminal and set a course for the United States’ Joint Interagency Task Force-South operating areas in the Caribbean Sea.
At dawn, the USS Freedom (LCS-1) hailed its task unit leader, the USCGC Hamilton (WMSL-753), to discuss the unresponsive radar contact not transmitting on the automatic identification system (AIS). The Freedom deployed its MQ-8C Fire Scout drone to conduct reconnaissance on the approaching vessel and Combat initiated readiness checks on its Naval Strike Missile battery. Simultaneously, the Hamilton’s sniper equipped MH-65 Dolphin lifted off the flight deck and the maritime law enforcement detachment exited the cutter’s stern gate on their over-the-horizon-IV (OTH-IV) small boat. As the OTH-IV closed the merchant ship, the five-man marine law enforcement team began adjusting their new maritime variant of the Light Mobile Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS). As the Fire Scout, Dolphin, and OTH-IV reached visual range, the Houthi-run social media accounts began livestreaming the launch of 15 modified Qasef-1 drones launching from special purpose shipping containers. These independently targeted drones rose in a swarm and headed towards the Hamilton and Freedom. However, the sortied U.S. reconnaissance units could not warn their mother ships; voice communication frequencies were jammed.
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Today’s rapidly evolving operational environment presents three undeniable realities for future maritime conflict:
- U.S. forces will operate in contested spaces
- Unmanned systems will be ubiquitous
- The enemy’s initial attack will likely originate from the Gray Zone. The Gray Zone encompasses the range of belligerent actions that fall below the threshold for conventional military conflict.
These three factors will force legacy command and control (C2) structures to evolve, and combat leaders must be prepared to fight adversaries with near-peer capabilities. To meet these challenges, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard require a joint leadership development framework that will enable resiliency during an advanced adversary’s C2 denial. The former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson’s Design for Maritime Superiority already stresses the need for the USN to prepare at all levels for decentralized operations guided by commander’s intent, a concept known as distributed maritime operations. Similarly, the Marine Corps’ Commandant’s Planning Guidance calls all Marines to prepare to operate inside actively contested maritime spaces under the expeditionary advance base operations (EABO) concept. The Coast Guard Commandant’s Guiding Principles also emphasizes the complex and rapidly evolving maritime challenges posed by adversaries.
In his initial message to the joint force, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley asserted, “The future operating environment will place new demands on leaders at all levels.” To win, the Sea Services must adopt a joint leadership development framework that builds on the existing Navy Leader Development Framework’s (NLDF’s) core pillars of competence, character, and connections. However, the NLDF must be expanded to address competency requirements for combatting unmanned systems in denied environments, character challenges in the presence of casualties at sea, and the connections needed to achieve optimal lethality during joint and multinational operations.
Competency
Competent warfighters with designated specialties remain the cornerstone of the Sea Services, and all commanders must perpetuate battle efficiency. The sea demands the utmost of sea-going professionals at all times, and the future will require ever greater levels of skill in combat. In his book, Turn the Ship Around!, submarine Captain David Marquet calls commanders to establish conditions for unparalleled excellence. All personnel must be trained and empowered to use their rated specialties to develop innovative solutions to complex problems. Marquet places critical emphasis on competence in distributed operations and asserts, “Control without competence is chaos.” In addition, units in the past enjoyed the benefits of almost unlimited shore support though electronic communications, but future combat leaders must possess the competence to operate in denied environments without reach-back support. Finally, leaders must understand how their assigned distributed operation nests within the overall campaign plan. Then they can leverage the mission command mind-set after first contact with the enemy.
In addition to lethality in assigned competencies, future leaders must excel in human-machine teaming and maintain fluency in the enemy’s autonomous order of battle. As highlighted by David Mindell in Our Robots, Ourselves, leaders must create coupled dynamic systems between humans and machines as autonomous systems proliferate across all domains. For example, in 2017 an explosive-laden Houthi unmanned surface vehicle (USV) detonated against the Saudi Frigate Al-Madinah. In this situation, the Saudis failed to defend against the suicide USV, and two sailors lost their lives. In 2019, the USS Boxer (LHD-4) employed the Marine Corps’ L-MADIS to destroy an Iranian reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Systems such as L-MADIS demonstrate meaningful progress against enemy drones, but the September 2019 attacks against the Saudi facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais show the growing combat efficiency of coordinated UAV attacks. Tomorrow’s commanders must be prepared to deploy unmanned and counterunmanned systems against swarms of enemy drones. This task will be more difficult when operating against non-state actors or during Gray Zone conflicts with adversary nations.
Just like yesterday’s enemy orders of battle, combat leaders must possess an awareness of unmanned systems’ characteristics and capabilities. For example, systems such as L-MADIS can prevent small enemy UAVs from communicating reconnaissance and targeting data to fire controllers. By recognizing and denying the role small UAVs play in the enemy’s tactical plans, commanders will better maintain maritime superiority. On a broader scale, leaders must develop a sense of the computing power necessary to perform autonomous missions. As illustration, unmanned undersea vehicles like China’s HSU-001 must possess significant computing resources onboard or regularly communicate with its home station for further instructions. Commanders must prepare to deny, degrade, or destroy autonomous systems such as HSU-001 by the most effective means while preserving opportunities for intelligence gain on recovered drones.
Character
In his charge of command, former CNO Richardson established the standard, “A commander’s competence and character lead to trust and confidence.” All combat leaders who accept Richardson’s charge must fully grasp that contested battle spaces against near-peer adversaries may bring a shock to tomorrow’s Sea Services: U.S. casualties upon the sea. While many Marines, sailors, and Coast Guardsmen paid the ultimate price in recent years on land in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the Sea Services have not faced causalities at sea since U.S. intervention during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. In the three decades since, commanders have regularly enjoyed maritime supremacy without the threat of enemy fire. Contemplated conflicts against near-peer adversaries likely will inflict casualties, and leaders must possess the mettle to press the fight.
The Department of the Navy (DoN) recently appointed a chief learning officer (CLO) to optimize its vast academic enterprise. The CLO’s institutional portfolio includes the vanguards in combat leader development: the U.S. Naval Academy, Naval War College, Naval Postgraduate School, and Marine Corps University. Among the CLO’s top priorities, the Sea Services’ premiere institutions must produce leaders with the character to fight on the sea in the midst of casualties. This warrior ethos exists today across the services, but it is too often siloed in communities that saw heavy action during the land campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Navy special warfare, Marine ground units, and many individual augmentees faced the life-altering specter of combat casualties, but these lessons learned must be a critical element of every combat leader’s development. The CLO must systematically transfer these character lessons to every echelon of command across all communities. As Marine Corps veteran Karl Marlantes explains in What It Is Like to Go to War, leaders need the clarity of character to make effective decisions before, during, and after combat, especially in the presence of casualties.
Tomorrow’s combat leaders must possess the character necessary to operate within the Gray Zone. John Schaus from the Center for Strategic and International Studies defines Gray Zone actors as, “Those who challenge U.S. interests in ways designed to avoid direct U.S. military responses.” Russia, China, and Iran each provide myriad examples of provocative Gray Zone actions. Each of their probing actions fail to meet the standard of a casus belli, or an event justifying war declaration. However, provocative Gray Zone actions place combat units and their leaders at the highest levels of alertness. When acting within the Gray Zone, harassing UAVs such as the one disabled by the Boxer must be engaged with the lowest effective form of force to show resolve while simultaneously preventing unwanted escalation. Most importantly, Commanders must ensure that the Gray Zone’s consistent stressful state does not lead to complacency in the face of danger. The Sea Services must not forget the lesson taught by the USS Stark (FFG-31) during the Iran-Iraq War: Commanders must be prepared to respond with all appropriate means allowed by the Rules of Engagement when adversaries pose imminent threats.
Connections
To effectively execute distributed maritime operations, EABO, or any future combat concept, Sea Service leaders must possess the connections and charisma to work in a team of teams. In May 2010, then General James Mattis clearly outlined this necessity, “If you cannot create harmony on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.” Not only do joint and multinational environments provide increased combat power, but different services and partner nations possess unique legal authorities. For example, U.S. legal code endows the Coast Guard with many law enforcement authorities not held by the Navy. As a result, a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment operating on board a Navy ship can leverage expanded authorities to perform unique law enforcement functions against transnational criminal organizations, which multiplies the battle efficiency of a given hull. Combat leaders must understand the connections among the services to develop innovative plans that exploit and maximize these efficiencies.
Beyond joint operations, commanders must understand the different connections the Sea Services maintain through multinational agreements. As written by former Joint Chiefs Chair General Joseph Dunford, “Allies and partner nations are the U.S.’s strategic center of gravity.” Continuing the previous transnational crime organization illustration, the Coast Guard maintains more than 60 bilateral law enforcement agreements to pursue these groups. Thus, the Coast Guard law enforcement detachment operating on board a Navy ship across the globe could arrest smugglers on behalf of partner nations. Extensive partner networks deliver critical capabilities, but more importantly they provide the contact layer necessary to win in the complexity of tomorrow’s battlespace. Well-developed connections and charisma with partners will ensure leaders successfully navigate the complexities imposed by failing states, transnational crime organizations and near-peer adversaries operating in the Gray Zone.
The Sea Services must assess and promote its cadre of leaders based on their ability to develop and maintain connections outside their assigned unit. The Senior Executive Service’s (SES) Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ) provide a conceptual model of the attributes leaders need to build coalitions across all levels of government, non-governmental organizations, partner nations, and international governmental organizations. The ECQs state the leader is required to to develop partnerships, wield political savvy, and influence other parties toward the organization’s goals. SES ECQs monitor senior civilians with organizational ranks equivalent to flag officers, but the services must emphasize the importance of building coalitions at the lowest echelons of command. The DoN’s experience with the Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratory (STRL) Personnel Management Demonstration Project provides a scalable template for overlaying the ECQ principles across the different echelons of command. By defining clear expectations and metrics for assessment and promotion, tomorrow’s leaders will seize the initiative on the development of this critical skill set.
A Spider to a Starfish
The competence, character and connections of tomorrow’s combat leaders must be resilient in contested environments, amid proliferating autonomous systems, and among the political complexities of the Gray Zone. The networked warfare concept popularized during and after Operation Desert Storm enabled senior executives to maintain high levels of tactical control over the frontlines, but the dark side of networked warfare establishes an expectation of senior leader involvement during contact with the enemy. Unfortunately, tomorrow’s operational environment will paralyze any C2 structure reliant on constant communication links. In The Starfish and the Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom outline the key leadership traits needed to flourish in distributed martime and EABO environments. Today’s C2 structure closely resembles the spider, which can be disabled by striking the central node. Tomorrow’s leaders must emulate the starfish’s decentralized neural structure and ability to regenerate when a limb is severed from the body.
Gray Zone operations in contested domains with ubiquitous unmanned systems will force leadership models to evolve from a spider to the starfish model. Combat leaders must maintain the highest levels of warfighting competency with complementary knowledge of how unmanned systems impact their domain. In addition, commanders’ character must be forged in the lessons learned from combat casualties in recent land campaigns. Leaders in the Sea Services must possess the character to press the fight upon the sea even in the presence of casualties. Finally, leaders must understand the importance of personal and institutional connections, and acknowledge their responsibility to develop and maintain these connections over their career.
