We’ve all seen photos released by the U.S. Navy that show a number of naval ships in tight formation, with helicopters or fighter jets overhead. These images are incredibly impressive and enticing for anyone considering enlisting in the Navy. They’re intimidating for our enemies who might see them. And that’s what they’re intended to accomplish, because in today’s environment the fleet simply cannot operate in that fashion. The truth is, Navy ships and aircraft will probably never be seen in that tight of a formation, and if you’ve ever played a game of Battleship, you probably already know why. Putting all your vessels together is an effective way to get them targeted and destroyed.
For their safety, naval vessels are almost always spread out in theater, a concept called Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). This approach to conducting maritime operations is in direct response to changes in warfare, advancements in warfighting technology, and a need to stay ahead of more advanced, increasingly capable adversaries with weapons systems and technologies on par with our own.
What does the DMO concept involve? To understand that we first have to understand the threat facing today’s military in the maritime domain, and the capabilities that a new generation of peer and near-peer adversaries bring to the battlefield.
All-Seeing, More Powerful
The proliferation of satellites in orbit and the advancement of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies is not limited to just the U.S. Department of War (DoW). Our adversaries – especially Russia and China – have also invested heavily in advanced ISR capabilities, including satellite surveillance and Earth Observation (EO) imagery.
With satellite manufacturing and launch becoming more affordable and accessible, the sheer amount of EO data available via both military and commercial satellites is staggering. Because of this, it’s relatively safe to say that our most sophisticated adversaries know where our naval surface vessels are and where they may be headed as they leave port.
Let’s say a naval ship leaves San Diego and heads due west towards the INDOPACOM theater. Satellite surveillance would enable an adversarial military to monitor its movements across the ocean until its long-range, over-the-horizon radar systems could pick up the ship’s location and movements. Combine this advanced ISR capability with a new generation of long-range effectors, and it makes it possible for a peer adversary to identify our vessels and engage them long before they’re ever in a position to hold their defensive systems under threat.
The DMO concept aims to solve this operational problem with a healthy dose of confusion.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Today’s DMO concept effectively distributes the Navy’s forces across a much larger area and will now leverage swarms of unmanned surface vehicles (USV) as a force multiplier to hold adversary defensive systems under threat.
The concept is quite simple. Proliferating the Navy’s forces and the sheer number of vessels in the fight through the use of USVs significantly confuses the enemy’s targeting calculus. Instead of a handful of large, expensive, exquisite naval vessels coming straight towards the enemy’s defenses, they’d face an overwhelming force of attritable unmanned vehicles approaching from all directions, making it nearly impossible to identify the highest-priority threat and to neutralize all threats before they could launch effective attacks. This also opens the door for the Navy to move its sensors and vehicles more freely into contested areas.
The proliferation of forces would create confusion and disorientation, while the wider operational area would challenge the adversary’s ability to have domain and situational awareness. Attacks would come from every direction, from numerous weapon systems, all at once, making it nearly impossible to mount an effective defense.
This is a more effective way to attack a near-peer or peer adversary in the maritime domain, ultimately resulting in fewer lives lost and fewer expensive surface vehicles lost. But there are technological advancements needed to make the DMO concept possible, and changes needed to how the military trains its sailors to make it a reality in theater.
More Vessels, Better Comms, and Culture Changes
For the DMO concept to function, the Navy needs enough surface vehicles to confuse the adversary’s targeting calculus. But the Navy has struggled to rebuild its aging fleet and to rapidly build new ships in recent years, even with expanding shipbuilding budgets. This means a renewed focus on developing and manufacturing affordable, attritable USVs is paramount for the success of the DMO concept.
However, proliferating the number of attack, ISR, and resupply vessels also requires connectivity and communications. Many of today’s USVs are still remotely piloted, and many military decision-makers want humans in the loop when deploying more autonomous unmanned systems. This means that the simple command-and-control of USVs requires networks capable of connecting these platforms, even in network-denied and network-degraded environments. Connectivity is also needed for the real-time aggregation of video and imagery from deployed ISR sensors.
This communication requirement is driving the need for resilient and assured networks that can extend connectivity to the tactical edge and continue operating in the face of advanced electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.
There are also command-and-control challenges that result from decentralization and the emergence of more sophisticated adversaries.
Adversaries looking to debilitate America’s capabilities in the maritime domain could aim to destroy its maritime operations centers. Distributing naval vessels across larger areas is effectively useless if the destruction of a handful of maritime operations centers could debilitate the entire force. This means that more mobile maritime operations centers need to be developed – ones that are more difficult to target and destroy.
Finally, cultural change is needed. With distributed ships deployed across a larger region, there will invariably be times when more junior officers need to make important decisions. The Navy and the larger DoW are working to ensure that even lower-ranking officers and sailors have the ability, knowledge, and authority to make important operational decisions and empower them to do so. Without this authority and ability, the DMO concept will fail out of the gates.
Today’s peer and near-peer adversaries are posing challenges to our Navy and to our traditional approaches to naval warfare. With impressive ISR capabilities that make it possible to know the location of every surface vessel, and the sophisticated effectors needed to hold them under threat, our ability to project power from the sea is being challenged. Worse, terrain shaping with mines and other weapons makes it possible for our adversaries to dictate where they’ll fight, and where our surface vessels can go.
DMO is one solution for an evolving and increasingly challenging maritime domain. But there are other solutions needed. In our next article, we’ll look at mine-hunting technologies needed to ensure maritime supremacy for the U.S. Navy moving forward.
The author, Paul Mehney is the Vice President of Strategy and Communications at Thales Defense & Security, Inc.