As the inimitable Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again!”
In August 1981 then Rear Admiral Robert Walters and then Lieutentant Commander Robby Harris published “Combat Systems to Meet the Threat” in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. The Cold War was raging, and many thought that the Soviet Navy was at least the equal of the U. S. Navy, if not its superior. Walters and Harris were assigned to Cruiser Destroyer Group Eight (today’s Carrier Strike Group Eight), were engaged in work-ups for a Sixth Fleet deployment and very much aware of the challenges the Soviet Navy presented. Upon reflection, Walters’ and Harris’ 1981 concerns regarding the Soviet Navy are starkly like the challenges our Navy faces today with respect to capabilities possessed by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and others.
In 1981 Walters and Harris characterized the Soviet threat:
“If the need should arise in the near future, U. S. ability to control the sea in support of a NATO war would be marginal.”
“…our experience since World War II has been that of projection of power by naval forces without significant opposition. The situation now, however, has changed dramatically. A major factor in bringing this about has been the availability of sophisticated anti-ship weapons systems at relatively low costs.”
“The development of the ship-launched, terminally homing anti-ship cruise missile has dramatically increased the risk to naval units…More than 50 nations either operate or have ordered surface combatants equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles, nearly 40 operate or have ordered diesel powered attack submarines, and more than 30 of these nations have or have ordered both types of systems.”
How does the saying go? History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
The Walters/Harris 1981 prescription:
- Real-time secure command/control/communications (C3) (we didn’t have C4I then)
“…current C3 systems are highly vulnerable to Soviet countermeasures. Data links, in particular, are vulnerable because of the present emphasis on and reliance on the high frequency rather than ultra high frequency spectrum. It is essential that that new, jam-resistant data links, communications, IFF, and TACAN be developed. Furthermore, the dependence on shipboard C3 and combat systems on a single, vulnerable computer must be alleviated…the decentralized C3 control concept employing the federated system paradigm must be advanced and improved…”
- Over-the-horizon targeting
“…but as Harpoon adds a new dimension to the U. S. naval surface warfare, it also adds new and demanding requirements for targeting which are beyond the pale of existing ships and submarines…one would also want to ensure that there are no friendly or neutral ships between the target and the launching platform or restrictively close to the target…over the horizon techniques must be improved. Accurate, secure, and jam-resistant external targeting sources must be provided which are not dependent on a cooperative (that is, radio frequency radiating) enemy.”
- Electronic support measures
“The need for secure, jam-resistant C3 equipment results from the sophisticated electronic countermeasures capability of the Soviet Navy. It is not sufficient for the U. S. forces to gain capability to defend against this threat. U. S. forces must gain the capability to exercise (active) electronic countermeasures against the Soviets in order to disrupt their attack and permit U. S. forces to seize the initiative. Experience and analysis of recent Soviet exercises point out the highly centralized nature of Soviet command and control of naval forces from Moscow. This type of command network is highly vulnerable to countermeasures. The U. S. Navy must ensure that it possesses the capability to exploit this vulnerability if the tactical situation so dictates.”
- Air capability
“But suffice it to say that battle groups and convoys urgently need air support for reconnaissance, to assist in over the horizon targeting…and for anti-ship missile defense.”
Distributed Lethality
Fast forward to 2016-17. Navy Lieutenant Andrew Kerr and Harris grappled with the Navy’s new distributed lethality operational concept. Kerr and Harris challenged themselves to better understand the new strategy, how it might be employed, and what capability gaps exist. The similarities between 1981 and today are stark.
Much like the 1980s, the distributed lethality operational concept seeks to restore the Navy’s core mission of sea control, this time by disaggregating and more widely distributing the antisurface offensive power beyond aircraft carriers and their embarked air wings. By adding more offensive capability in more platforms, adversaries will be forced to perform more searching and targeting, and forced to deal with a more complicated command and control problem. Vice Admiral Tom Rowden, now Commander of Naval Surface Forces, writes that the new approach “…capitalizes on the inherent advantages of surface forces (mobility and persistence) to provide meaningful deterrents to adversary aggression and immediately available warfighting options should deterrence fail.” He also lists several technological improvements, including offensive weapons, ISR, and C2, that he considers value-adds to the concept.[1]
A Longer Stick
To date, the Navy appears as focused its distributed lethality efforts on offensive weapons, such as arming surface combatants with longer-range antisurface cruise missiles. Harpoon itself could be considered a development response to the proliferation of Soviet antiship missiles, highlighted by the successful employment of a Styx missile against the Israeli frigate Eilat in 1967.[2] Today, as Alan Cummings notes, China has far outpaced the United States in development and deployment of such weapons. The Peoples Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN’s) inventory likely outnumbers that of the U.S. Navy by a margin of at least 3 to 1. Perhaps more pressing is that China’s shortest-range antiship missile on its larger combatants, the YJ-83, outreaches the U. S. Harpoon by more than 30 nm.[3] As in 1981 when compared with the Soviets, the U.S. Navy is “out-sticked.” Last year, the Department of Defense responded within its FY17 budget request, setting aside sums for exploration of antisurface features of existing Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles and retooling of previously air-launched long-range antisurface missiles (LRASM).[4] Moreover, a request for proposal (RFP) is expected to be issued in 2017 for an over-the-horizon missile to be carried on board littoral combat ships and their improved frigate sisters.[5] The new surface forces strategy stipulates that by 2030 littoral combat ships and frigates will represent nearly half of deployed surface combatants.[6] It is vital to adequately arm these ships to further complicate an opponent’s ISR and targeting problems.
While it is fundamental to invest in more and longer-range antisurface weapons, other capability gaps must be filled to realize the full potential of distributed lethality. As the defense pendulum swings from suppression of insurgencies to competition with advanced nation states, warfare aspects both tactically and developmentally stagnated are needed again. The Navy and Department of Defense should take advantage of the renewed interest, invest in the highlighted areas, and maintain a steady strain.
Over-the-Horizon (OTH) Targeting
In the 1980s, Harpoon challenged the Navy to rethink its gathering and dissemination of information about the battlespace; so, too, will distributed lethality and its new weapons. Lengthening the deadly reach of each ship also requires improved targeting. Recent successes with the F-35 Lightning II as a sensor platform suggest that it could provide an offset in antisurface warfare (ASUW) targeting.[7] But, will F-35s always be available? Vice Admiral Rowden suggests that targeting should be done with or without carrier- or land-based aircraft. An ASUW shooter overly-reliant on non-organic targeting arguably is more constrained than a distributed formation of ships that possess capable organic targeting assets.
In the mid-1970s, the Navy’s initial solution to organic over-the-horizon targeting was updating the SeaSprite helicopter airframe, adding more thrust and the Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System. The next decade saw the SH-60B SeaHawk with a larger payload and improved sensors.[8] These helicopters could fly higher and radiate in benign environments for situational awareness. But they could also fly short distances at low altitudes to detect potential targets for the ASUW weapon at hand: Harpoon. In finding targets for longer-range weapons, however, today’s onboard aircraft are limited by their endurance. As our adversaries become more conscious of their radio frequency (RF) emissions, ISR assets will need to search longer and farther to gain signatures. Moreover, they must perform stealthier sensing to prevent counterdetection. Rotary-wing assets seem to lack the legs to fill this need without another source’s timely, accurate cueing (which may as well be targeting). It would not be realistic to suggest that an organic aircraft could help to deliver a thousand-mile Tomahawk to a maritime target, but to target its own LRASM, with a purported range of at least 200 nautical miles, would make a surface action group (SAG) more independently lethal. As the SeaHawk was born as an OTH maritime combatant aircraft, new targeting tools, like a small, high-endurance UAV, must also gestate. Persistent targeting platforms enabled by their endurance and quantity housed on board each ship make a SAG able to hunt as well as kill, and present a full threat to an adversary force.
Communications
Communication of targeting data presents its own challenges. Simple geometry prevents distant ISR assets from transmitting timely tracks via line-of-sight datalinks. Cross-domain relay networks and improvements in satellite communications data rates, interoperability, and ease-of-use can begin to solve this problem. Still more concerning are tenets of electronic warfare, noted in the 1981 Walters/Harris article, and apparently not forgotten by Russian military leaders. Since the Russian-backed incursion into Ukraine, jamming of surveillance assets and communications circuits has been a key part of hybrid warfare strategy.[9] One could expect the same in the Western Pacific with China’s Russian-built EW equipment on board their ships. This time, a shift in frequency range likely will not improve our datalink vulnerability. Rather, more emphasis should be placed on low probability of detection point-to-point networks in place of omnidirectional broadcast antennas and on C2 systems designed to function seamlessly through localized or transient disruptions of connectivity.
Counter Targeting
Targeting is no less complicated for the adversary, but it is arguably easier and more well-established in their near seas. Therefore, counter-ISR is critical in inserting delays in our adversaries’ kill chain and enabling our own. Analysis corroborates that emissions control (EMCON) significantly aids our forces in remaining undetected. We’ve known this to be the case since the 1950s when the Haystack exercises sought to and succeeded in proving the value of “running quiet.” The Uptide exercises in the late 1960s, focusing on active deception, developed tactics to conceal carriers.[10,11] China seems to be improving its centralized ISR structure, overcoming bureaucratic barriers in information sharing.[12] Thus the importance of deception for distributed lethality operations. Perhaps one of the best near-term distributed lethality deception solutions would be the growing number of unmanned, optionally-manned, and autonomous vehicles which could serve as nuisances to complicate an adversary’s targeting problem. If equipped with acoustic or electromagnetic emulators and sent to distant sectors, they could divert enemy resources. Larger vehicles with enough power could perform jamming and prepare the battlespace for incoming friendly forces.
Command and Control
As Lieutenant (j.g.) Andrew Beeler pointed out in a recent issue of Proceedings, surface combatant commanders will need the authority to act as independent nodes in the distributed lethality concept.[13] They also need the systems and tools that will help them sort through the flow of information and assess the battlespace in new ways. When Walter’s and Harris’ 1981 article was published, the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47), first with the federated Aegis weapon system, had just been launched. Generated in response to the guided missile threat, Aegis shortened the timeline by integrating onboard systems on a single ship. There is still much to do in that domain, but attention needs to be paid to connecting, if not integrating, systems on multiple ships. In a distributed framework, ASUW combatants with varying magazines and attack axes may hold the same group of surface targets. This information needs to be passed quickly and accurately among SAG units. Commanders then need a way to determine the salvo that best exploits target vulnerabilities, uses the most efficient blend of weapons, and husbands the SAG’s “distributed magazine,” keeping their ships in the fight.
Conclusion
As in the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. Navy finds itself playing catch-up. In focusing on missile development and deployment, distributed lethality in the short term forces the adversary to respect each ship’s offensive power. However, added capabilities focusing on scouting and disrupting the adversary kill chain are crucial to cementing the strategy. Navy and government leaders ought to work fast in development, lest our combatants find themselves experiencing jamais vu: finding something they should know from experience to be strangely unfamiliar.
Footnotes
- Thomas Rowden, Peter Gumataotao, and Peter Fanta, “Distributed Lethality,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2015, Vol 141/1/1343.
- Lon O. Nordeen, “Antiship Missiles Create New Challenges,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2001, Vol 127/1/1175.
- Alan Cummings, “A Thousand Splendid Guns,” Naval War College Review, Autumn 2016, Vol. 69, Number 4.
- Aaron Mehta, “Pentagon Budget Requests $2B for Tomahawks, $2.9B for SM-6,” DefenseNews, 3 Februrary 2016, http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2016/02/03/pentagon-fy17-budget-tomahawk-missiles-billion-raytheon/79770278/.
- Richard Scott, “USN primes industry for OTH-WS RfP,” Jane’s Missiles & Rockets, 6 December 2016, janes.ihs.com.
- Thomas Rowden, Surface Forces Strategy, January 2017.
- Sam LaGrone, “Successful F-35, SM-6 Live Fire Test Points to Expansion in Networked Naval Warfare,” USNI News, 13 September 2016, https://news.usni.org/2016/09/13/video-successful-f-35-sm-6-live-fire-test-points-expansion-networked-naval-warfare.
- Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, janes.ihs.com.
- Paul McLeary, “Russia’s Winning the Electronic War,” ForeignPolicy.com, 21 October 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/21/russia-winning-the-electronic-war/.
- Robert G. Angevine, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” Naval War College Review, Spring 2011, Vol. 64, N. 2.
- Narushige Michishita, Peter M. Swartz, David F. Winkler, “Lessons of the Cold War in the Pacific: U.S. Maritime Strategy, Crisis Prevention, and Japan’s Role,” Wilson Center, March 2016.
- Andrew S. Erickson, “China’s Near Seas Combat Capabilities,” Chapter 7, U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Number 11.
- Andrew Beeler, “Distributed Lethality Requires Distributing Authority,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2017, Vol 143/1/1367.
