By Geoff Fein
Looking to maintain its competitive advantage over adversaries in terms of command and control, information and intelligence, the Navy has officially merged the Director of Intelligence (N2) and the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Communication Networks (N6) into a single entity that will oversee information dominance, a top service official said.
While the nation and the Navy have a competitive advantage over potential adversaries in the areas of intelligence and networks, the challenge in the information age is to maintain that edge, Vice Adm. David Dorsett, director of naval intelligence, told reporters earlier this month at a briefing in Washington.
Dorsett added that unless the country makes bold changes in its information capabilities the nation and the Navy run the risk of losing that competitive edge.
“Unless you quite frankly alter the status quo, take some leap ahead and, in some cases, some risk by developing more comprehensive approaches to how to manage the electromagnetic spectrum and how you mange the flow of information, there’s the potential the U.S. and the Navy would lose that competitive advantage,” he said.
“So the changes the CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) is making involve the organizational structure of the Navy, the processes, the personnel that are involved to ensure we are maintaining that competitive advantage,” Dorsett added.
In a June 26 memo, CNO Adm. Gary Roughead tasked Dorsett with reorganizing the CNO staff to consolidate N2 and N6 into a single entity–the Director for Information Dominance (N2/N6).
Last week, Dorsett said another reason why Roughead ordered the realignment was because of the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Operational commanders have a requirement for information–what’s on the other side of the hill, what is the adversary at sea doing, what is the operational environment, the meteorological environment, going to be in the next 24 hours,” he said. “What we’ve learned in Iraq and Afghanistan from the operational commanders is that unquenchable thirst for information. You can see that in the demand signal for not only ISR platforms and sensors but fusion capabilities and the tremendous demand signals placed on all the services for information, intelligence, network management professionals, to deploy forward to be able to deliver that capability to the operational commanders.”
Dorsett sees the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan as an environment of tremendously increased availability of information and data and a need for people to make sense of it and have the architectures in place to flow it to the right place.
“While we are adequately positioned for the present day, we do not believe that we are well positioned for the future, hence the need to manage our resources across the information spectrum differently, the need to create a fleet cyber command to focus specifically on the cyber arena,” he said.
The entire information dominance corps will be comprised of approximately 44,000 uniform and civilian personnel, Dorsett noted. Additionally, Roughead has decided to grow the Navy’s cyber workforce by 1,000, although Dorsett pointed out it will be a zero sum game in the service’s total workforce.
“When we bring the various communities and disciplines together to an information dominance corps, there will be an opportunity to take a look at efficiencies,” Dorsett said. “That will occur but it won’t be the first thing we do. We need to organize first. We need to bring the strength of each of the individual communities and skill sets together, and we want to retain those strengths of community skills.”
But at some point there will be an opportunity to look at how efficiently aligned the Navy is, Dorsett added. “Have we got the right people?”
“I don’t know the right answers as to whether there will be some resources we can reclaim, from an efficiency review, but that will be a necessary function,” he added.
As far as concerns over treading into another organization’s territory, Dorsett said the realignment will break down barriers that have existed for the last seven decades between communications in the Navy and intelligence, and between signals intelligence and other forms of intelligence.
“So we are creating new opportunities quite frankly,” he said. “Undoubtedly, as you make change there will be challenges. But we [are creating] opportunities that have not existed previously in terms of how we operate together.”
There are other challenges the Navy will face as it establishes the new organization. In particular, how will the service keep the highly-skilled personnel it trains and brings up through the ranks of information dominance?
Dorsett said the Navy is contemplating a number of options.
One idea being floated is having the Navy partner with industry and create a mechanism where the service brings people on board, provides them some training, funds them, and then recognize the information specialists would leave after a period of time, for industry, Dorsett said.
“In the N2/N6 organization we have a flag officer responsible for creating opportunities for our manpower that focuses on evolving our workforce,” he said.
Another flag officer will be responsible for all elements of information, Dorsett added.
One of the things Roughead is looking for is to identify capabilities for the Navy that will improve the speed of delivery of information, he said.
“He’s looking to network more sensors together. He’s looking to ensure that our architectures permit the flow of information to commands that need it. We have architectures, we have sensors, but they are not all netted together, there is still ‘man-in-the-loop’ manual intervention,” Dorsett said. “What he is looking for is this resourcing organization to define the new concepts then develop a strategy and then ensure the architecture is developed. Right now the architectures are largely based on the platforms and they don’t connect as well as they need.
“So speed will be improved if we get the right concepts, strategies, architectures, and then ultimately resource the programs,” Dorsett added. “Right now, we go directly to resourcing the programs and that gives you gaps.”