The Navy needs to expand its investments in the “kill chain” to include more focus on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as command and control, according to the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).
Additionally, the service needs to maintain its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) capabilities through acquiring advanced systems as well as maintaining the skills necessary to detect submarines.
“As I’ve looked at Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) and as I’ve looked at ASW, most of our investments are really stuck in what I consider the kill end,” Adm. Gary Roughead told sister publication Defense Daily in a recent interview.
While he acknowledges the “kill end” is important, Roughead adds the Navy also needs to start making sure it makes investments in the intelligence side, and command and control side, of the equation.
We never want to forgo the killing aspect, he said. “But we have to look at the whole thing…the kill chain…and the kill chain begins for me when you first start to get that [trickle] of intelligence that says there is something different or there is something happening,” Roughead explained. “Then you need an investment to be able to detect that, and then you need investments to move that information to the right places where decisions can be made.”
But the Navy has to look at the whole kill chain in its entirety, he added.
“I do believe we have been biased at the harder end of the kill chain,” Roughead said. “Don’t get me wrong, I think at the end of the day you want water going in [an enemy] sub where it doesn’t belong, and we are going to have that. But I think we can look at it a bit differently.”
One area of focus for Roughead is the Navy’s ability to conduct ASW. The Navy has moved forward on its plan to add a second submarine to the fleet beginning in FY ’11, but Roughead notes that ASW is really more than submarin “There is no question in my mind a submarine is the best ASW weapon that we have. But the fact of a matter is, the way we do ASW is really a force approach and I would say that the recent grounding of the P-3s is not helpful with respect to ASW,” Roughead said. “That’s why the P-3 re-winging is number one on my unfunded programs, because the robustness of that fleet is very important to ASW.”
The ability to train at varying force levels in ASW is also important, he added.
“You can easily become enamored about the coordinated ASW and the command and control, but at the end of the day, it’s how well does the ship, submarine or airplane kill the offending submarine? So there are individually needed skills that we have to go out and practice and be proficient in,” Roughead said.
“I want to make sure we have the right unit skills…competencies…in order to do that. So training, in that regard, becomes very important. The broader training exercises where you integrate it all are important.”
But training has become a significant issue for the Navy as the courts have issued strict guidelines for how the Navy conducts ASW exercises off the Southern California coast.
“We are having to deal with a series of lawsuits that affect our ability to responsibly put sound in the water,” Roughead said. “We have been challenged for well over the past year in Southern California with respect to using active sonar. We have never had an incident in Southern California and we have been doing ASW there for 40 years.
“Our desire is that the mitigations in place be science based and not simply be there to inhibit our ability to train,” he added. “So we continue to be challenged there.”
While the Navy has purchased good ASW systems in the form of more advanced sonars, airplanes, sonobouys, and weapons, it still comes down to the need to practice with all those systems, Roughead said.
“Because I maintain ASW is one of the more challenging mission areas that we deal in because it is not as black and white…it is very much science, but it is also an art form.”
The worldwide proliferation of submarines equipped with advanced propulsion systems begs the need for advanced ASW systems and the need to maintain ASW skills, he added.
“In the next two decades the number of submarines in the world is going to increase 50 percent, and if you look at our build rate we are not the ones doing that,” Roughead pointed out.
Other countries are either building or purchasing advanced, quiet, often times air independent propulsion systems submarines that are extremely hard to find, and that can stay under water for long periods of time, removing that vulnerable snorkeling period, he said.
“Some folks may think submarines are Cold War relics. The rest of the world doesn’t think that, and they are buying them like there is no tomorrow…and they are good boats,” Roughead said. “And it’s not all about China. The French have a very good submarine they are marketing. Of course the Germans have had very good submarines that they are marketing as well. The Swedes have introduced a new submarine that is quiet and has extraordinary duration…underwater duration.”
Roughead also said he “absolutely” sees a role for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in ASW.
“Rather than saying UAVs, I’d say the potential for unmanned vehicles. I think that we should be looking at unmanned underwater vehicles, surface vehicles, having UAVs with the right types of sensors on them that allow us to detect,” he said. “Can you put a UAV up that is a relay for some of the data coming off buoys or distributed arrays? That’s where I think we have to go.”
A loitering high-endurance UAV, for example, could save a couple of manned sorties that could then be used in the killing process, Roughead said. “That’s how I think we’ve got to go.”