A guided missile support vessel

(By Captain R. Robinson Harris, USN (ret.))

Thirty-nine years ago, in the October 1985 issue of USNI Proceedings, then-LCDR Joe Benkert and I challenged the way the Navy structured the relationship between its aircraft carriers and its surface fleet:

“Do non-carriers have any strategic significance? To listen to discussions of maritime strategy and naval force structure in the public arena, one would think that the only overall naval forces with strategic significance in their own right are carrier-launched aircraft and nuclear-powered attack submarines, and that surface combatants are simply integral parts of larger, carrier-dominated structures. It is reminiscent of the Peggy Lee song, ‘Is that all there is?’ Are surface combatants simply supporting players, or do they have a larger strategic role? … the maritime strategy suggests that navies should move forward as early as possible to take decisive, offensive action to neutralize the Soviet navy and pressure the Soviet flanks. This strategy provides for the Soviet fleet to be neutralized primarily by attack submarines and carrier-based aviation. The primary role of surface combatants in this task is to provide defense for aircraft carriers.”

Is that still all there is? Fast forward to 2024, where we may witness a role reversal. Will we reach a point where the surface fleet, with the long-range Maritime Strike Tomahawk missile, becomes the preferred platform-weapon combination for U.S. anti-ship warfare? Could this then shift the role of the aircraft carrier and its air wing from supported to supporting platforms?

The looming introduction of VLS-capable anti-ship missiles into a wide range of unused force structures within the Navy and the joint forces warrants a rethinking of combined fleet arms doctrine, particularly between the surface fleet and the carriers. The U.S. Navy is on the verge of a historic firepower revolution and must think deeply about the implications.

Understanding the Firepower Revolution

CDR Jeff Vandenengel argues in his recently published book: Questions about the aircraft carrier: opportunities in fleet design for the US Navy, that aircraft carriers are too vulnerable in certain threat environments to assume the role of offensive warfare, and that the offensive potential of the surface fleet has been hampered by traditional doctrinal roles that have relegated it to defensive support of the carrier. Vandenengel and others have argued that the era of the carrier has been overtaken by the era of the missile, which has become the dominant weapon of modern naval warfare. The question is whether combined arms doctrine, which integrates the various maritime communities into a fleet, has been adapted to make the most of the era’s primary weapon.

The lethality of the anti-ship missile has greatly exacerbated the intense wear and tear that has long characterized naval warfare and distinguished it from other theaters of war. As Captain Wayne Hughes has argued:

“It is demonstrable by both history and theory that not only has a small net advantage in strength often been decisive in naval battles, but that the slightly inferior force tends to lose with very little to show for it… every strategist must know the relative fighting value of his navy – so carefully nurtured and expensive to build and maintain in peacetime. When engaged in battle, the heart of a fleet can be cut out in an afternoon.”

In a naval war, a small tactical disadvantage in striking power can quickly turn into major losses, strongly encouraging navies to squeeze the absolute maximum out of the dominant weapons of their era. As Dmitry Filipoff has argued:

“…no other service needs to invest more in tactical superiority and solid warfare doctrine than navies. If an aircraft carrier falls victim to a single missile salvo, that’s about 7,000 lives and $20 billion lost in a matter of minutes. For comparison, those numbers would give you about 2,000 tanks, but there is no plausible combat scenario in which 2,000 tanks are destroyed in a few minutes. Modern naval warfare is an absolutely brutal form of combat, and therefore no one can lose as much as quickly from their tactical deficits as navies. In naval warfare in particular, tactical deficits can quickly escalate into strategic liabilities…”

Accordingly, the Navy DMO’s warfighting concept should develop a better understanding of how fleet warfare is evolving with respect to the broad proliferation of long-range anti-ship firepower throughout both the U.S. military’s force structure and its rivals. At the heart of this transformation is the point that the Maritime Strike Tomahawk possesses a combination of attributes uniquely suited to massed anti-ship fire—long range, broad platform compatibility, and ultimately steep inventory depth. While several other new anti-ship missiles are also joining the joint force, including the SM-6 and the Naval Strike Missile, no other anti-ship missile in the U.S. inventory has this specific combination of massed fire capabilities to the same extent as the MST. And arguably no other community will employ this decisive weapon to the same extent as the surface fleet. This historic evolution in the U.S. Navy’s strike capability should have profound implications for the roles and missions of the aircraft carrier, its air wing, and the fleet as a whole.

Evolving firepower, evolving roles

The air wing has a number of limitations, including the range of its aircraft, the range of its anti-ship missiles, the long range of missions the air wing must perform simultaneously, the time it takes to arm and launch large strike packages, and of course the risk that can reasonably be tolerated by bringing aircraft carriers within range of certain high-end targets. Long-range anti-ship missiles based on surface forces offer a useful alternative to circumvent some of these limitations and risks, and provide a much broader range of options for engaging enemy fleets.

But the carrier will still be needed to harness this broad range of new firepower. An alternative combined arms relationship is offered in Filipoff’s “Fighting DMO” series. The carrier air wing can serve as a force multiplier for this powerful mass fire capability by meeting the information requirements necessary to take full advantage of the long range of these weapons and their wide range of distribution across a theater. Carriers like the F-35 can take the lead in penetrating the contested battlefield and facilitating the striking power of entire fleets. As Filipoff has argued, “aircraft will be very critical in managing the breadth of the offensive kill chain. This can range from scouting for targets, calling fire against them, maneuvering those fires, and assessing the effectiveness of those fires.” When carriers call in anti-ship fire from the joint force, they can be positioned to provide critical updates on the reorientation of salvos in the air based on the dynamic awareness that sensor fusion provides. Aircraft can also direct anti-ship missiles in coherent volumes of fire against enemy fleets.

The carrier air wing’s ability to provide offensive information support to the maritime fires kill chain is significantly enhanced by the sensor fusion and networking capabilities of the 5th generation F-35 aircraft. F-35 fighters have multiple datalink options to share data with various platforms, such as the F/A-18s and E-2Ds. These datalinks can also be used to dynamically direct anti-ship missiles to fly various waypoints, flying formations, and sensor positions to maximize effectiveness in a complex battlefield. The P-8 community can also provide valuable command and control capabilities to the maritime fires process, providing air C2 options that are not tied to a carrier’s location or risk profile.

Aircraft can be equipped with the command and control of significant amounts of anti-ship firepower in the moments that can decide fleet battles. It is through these roles that the carrier can still very well serve as a decisive capital ship by focusing on the critical currency of modern warfare: information advantage.

Conclusion

Given the range advantage of surface fleet-based missiles, the range limitations of the carrier air wing, and the vulnerability of the carrier in certain threat environments, the role of the carrier and its air wing should evolve in tandem with the changing firepower of the U.S. Navy. The carrier and its air wing should serve as the force quarterback, scouting wide spaces, calling surface ship fire against targets, and providing crucial in-flight retargeting support to those salvos as they move through a contested battlespace. With this approach, the air wing can be empowered to deliver far more than the power of the carrier – it can deliver the power of entire fleets.

This is just one possible concept of operations to exploit the new capabilities on the horizon. The fundamental question is whether the Navy will truly recognize that it is in the midst of one of the most dramatic transformations in offensive anti-ship firepower in its history, and whether it will seriously consider changing the combined arms doctrine that has long defined how the fleet intends to fight. The U.S. Navy’s warfighting concepts, including DMO, should be the driving force behind experimenting with these alternatives and ultimately articulating what these new combined arms roles should be. The firepower revolution and the DMO concept also take place in the context of the Navy’s increasing emphasis on fleet-level warfare and maritime operations centers. All of these elements must be carefully integrated, particularly with respect to reshaping combined arms relationships to maximize the overall striking power of the fleet. That is the ultimate goal, not the elevation of one platform or another.

Captain R. Robinson “Robby” Harris commanded USS Conolly (DD-979) and Destroyer Squadron 32. Ashore, he served as Executive Director of the CNO Executive Panel. He was a CNO Fellow in CNO Strategic Studies Group XII.

This article is from CIMSEC and can be found in its original form here.