The transition to a more distributed fleet in the U.S. Navy has commonly been characterized in terms of reach, magazines and networked fires. What is more difficult to face is the fact that only distribution will pay off when the fleet has the ability to regulate its perception. Whenever sensors on an adversary have the capability to locate, identify, and monitor vessels over a long distance, the added firepower is in comparison to the capability to control the targeting cycle.
The question of whether a force will be able to sever the pathway between detection and engagement in the modern sea control is becoming more and more a matter of concern. A more recent argument based on the Navy itself posits this as the necessity of disrupting the killchain between satellites, radars, networks, and long range weapons into a unified strike architecture. The last element in that model is missiles; the decisive effort is made earlier, by continuous surveillance and also the command systems that keep the tracks always “fresh” to shoot.
The meaning of “distributed” is altered by that logic. A scattered group that continues to spurt like a procession of high-value units becomes a group of individualized bullseyes. A scattered organization capable of creating confusion: having several possible images, inconsistent lines, and empty classifications, obliges a combatant to waste time and limited weaponry capacity in ratifying what is true. Fraud transforms distribution into survivability.
One method of producing that scale of ambiguity is by manufacturing maritime autonomous systems in the form of mesh fleets. In an elaborate notion of operations, autonomous nodes are defined as “attritable mission packages” that grow manned ships rather than emulate them, providing redundancy and immunity both in sensors, communications relays, electronic warfare, and even weapon mass. In that context, a commander is not adding more platforms, the commander is adding more ways of being perceived more contacts, more emissions patterns, more opportunities to have an opponent allocate attention and fires in the wrong place.
The ability of the unmanned systems to carry missiles is not as crucial a benefit, the important benefit is that they can carry signatures. A grid of independent ships will broaden the electromagnetic signature of the fleet until the recognizable shape of the capital ship is lost amongst a multitude of responses. Co-ordinated nodes are also capable of giving convincing false groupings: decoy arrangements that appear to be worth shooting, and the real maneuvers of the force in other locations. That is an extension of a broader understanding that the adversaries have learned to utilize electromagnetic signatures to trace the units and the U.S. forces had allowed deception equipment to fall out of use. With one passage of Marine Corps planning guidance being quoted, it states the fact that friendly forces have the ability to conceal actions and intentions, not to mention deceiving the enemy, using decoys, signature management, and signature reduction.
Not only is deception not a niche tactic, but it is a network design requirement. Experiments in connected-battlespace have focused on accelerating moving targeting and situational awareness through the bridging beyond-line-of-sight networks to tactical links, reducing decision cycles. In a write-up of a Kadena based exercise it is indicated that a goal was to reduce a “72 hour air tasking order cycle” to minutes with the assistance of gateway devices that deliver machine-speed updates between command nodes and airplanes. “Friendly forces must be able to disguise actions and intentions, as well as deceive the enemy, through the use of decoys, signature management, and signature reduction.”
This is where the gamble of the fleet comes into reality. Networked sensors can provide defenders with a single actionable picture and integrated air and missile defense architectures can be strong. However, when the picture is erroneous, untimely, or doctored, then a single picture can be a “single point of failure.” A dispersed fleet which thinks deception to be an afterthought stands the danger of developing a fantastic network which rapidly targets adversaries as it does friends.
The lasting lesson is that of the organization not just technical. Distribution requires regular training to vanish, doctrine that signature management is an art, and procurement that appreciates cheap, disposable decoys and high-end sensors. Any fleet capable of creating uncertainty will be able to endure long enough to be able to bring its firepower to bear. A fleet that will not will carry on being visible, trackable, and, dispersed or not, predictable.
