High Hurdles and Purple-Suit Questions

The Pros and Cons of Sea-Based Command and Control

By HUNTER KEETER

Hunter Keeter is a reporter for Defense Daily.

The U.S. Navy now favors a multimission, modular, and sea-based approach to developing a new joint task force command-and-control (C2) platform, the validity of which has yet to be approved by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Information technology-enabled C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence) has become the centerpiece of reformation in military organizational constructs and is considered the key to realizing more efficient and enduring operational effects, according to the DOD (Department of Defense) force-transformation strategy. The challenge is to discover new ways to manage joint and coalition C4I more efficiently by using new technologies, but this raises the question of whether a WWII-type command-ship concept remains relevant.

"Access to information is not the issue; it's the ability to translate that information into understanding. That is what we are talking about," Christopher Shepherd of the U.S. Joint Forces Command's experimentation directorate in Suffolk, Va., told Sea Power. "They [the Navy] now have to convince key people that ... there is an advantage to having a sea-based command and control platform. That case has yet to be made in today's context."

In June 2001 the Pentagon's then-new leadership team under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sponsored a series of studies into the status and future potential of U.S. military capabilities. One of those studies--focusing on measures that could be undertaken to transform and improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and relevance of some components of the armed forces--recommended the development of new C2 technologies that could support future joint and coalition task-force-level operations.

Drawing on lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War, the 1999 air war over Kosovo, and other conflicts of recent years, the Institute for Defense Analysis found that the development and improvement of joint command and control capabilities would be perhaps the most important step that could be taken to facilitate the operational and tactical transformation of all of the nation's armed forces.

Complexities and Capabilities

Joint and coalition C4I operations require information-management capabilities to dispel the "fog of war" and clarify what is becoming an increasingly complex battle space. Such capabilities include robust, reliable, and secure communications links; improved data-management and fusion tools; and high-resolution planning systems.

"Modern warfare is maturing to where it will not always be a military-only solution required," Shepherd said. "We have to figure out how to command and control our forces in that kind of environment, and this will require us to think in new ways. World War II [for example] is replete with examples where a single service planned and executed and was supported by another service. ... [But] many operations and support [missions] were disjointed in time and space, and very bad things happened. Then, the best thing to do was to get everyone together at one headquarters and plan. Even today, with modern telecommunications, we are still using the same staff organizations, in the same structures, that we used in World War II. We live and work and train as service-pure components."

The Navy was designated by DOD--largely because of that service's experience in task-force management--to serve as the lead service in the development of a deployable joint command and control suite of advanced capabilities that would improve overall efficiency and cross-service cooperation. The Navy embarked cautiously on a program to achieve that goal, while at the same time forwarding its own concept of a new maritime command platform.

Single-Mission or Multimission?

A new class of Joint Maritime Command and Control (JCC(X)) ships was envisioned, initially as an improvement upon the performance of current maritime command platforms such as the modified Austin-class command ship USS Coronado, the modified Raleigh-class command ship USS LaSalle, the Blue Ridge-class command ship USS Blue Ridge, and the Blue Ridge-class command ship USS Mount Whitney. The FY 2002 Defense Authorization Act anticipated that the Navy would build three new single-mission ships with the capability of managing joint task force (JTF) and coalition C4I requirements. The Navy's plan included an open competition for the design of the new ships, followed by award of a lead-vessel contract, and initial operational capability of the first ship as early as 2007.

The deployable joint command and control mission package was reconceived as the basis for the mission package that would be installed on the JCC(X) ships.

However, in what could be viewed as a significant strategic shift, service planners did not include funding for JCC(X) in the proposed DOD budget for FY 2003, effectively killing the development of a specialized platform conforming to the JCC(X) mission requirements. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark's executive board council has reviewed the ship and mission package concepts, and--apparently in lieu of the single-mission platform--has recommended several multimission alternatives to meet the C4I requirements set for the JTF.

After putting the JCC(X) concept through an analysis of alternatives, the issue was brought before the Navy Requirements Oversight Council (NROC)--a service-specific counterpart to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at which level all major defense acquisition programs are reviewed by a joint service panel to ensure compliance with overall DOD military requirements. Both the NROC and the CNO's executive board had previously reviewed the proposals for a single-mission JCC(X) and a multimission alternative.

Service requirements officers confirmed two months ago that the Navy is reviewing "a variety of options" to improve joint maritime C2 capabilities and that a joint command and control module is being "investigated" as one aspect of the MPF-F (Maritime Prepositioned Force-Future) analysis of alternatives, which is scheduled to being sometime next year.

A Difficult Time Frame

The MPF-F is envisioned as a follow-on to the current MPF fleet of leased and purchased ships used to provide prepositioned logistics support for the Marine Corps. The MPF-F is expected to be developed by 2009, a time frame that raises the question of whether inclusion of the JCC(X) mission package could be achieved within an already aggressive schedule.

Construction of a new class of MPF-F ships has been under consideration since the Navy launched an analysis of alternatives to current MPF capabilities in fiscal year 2000. The Navy and Marine Corps have endorsed MPF-F as a necessary and enabling component of both the CNO's sea basing concept--based on the Sea Power 21 strategy--and the Marine Corps' resurgent Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

The MPF-F vessels--as envisioned in the current strategy--would remain essential units of new Navy and Marine Expeditionary Strike Groups, which would marry combat forces with their prepositioned equipment and supplies more efficiently through improved helicopter/ship--or V-22 tiltrotor/ship--interfaces. The MPF-F ships also would carry an unspecified number of Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCACs).

What the Navy is now evaluating, apparently, are ways to engineer the MPF-F vessels to host modules--including the deployable JCC(X) C2 mission package--that would provide alternate and/or additional mission capabilities. Under one alternative, MPF-F squadrons could deploy to carry out their primary logistics and support missions, but would have the latent capability (and internal configuration) to host a joint or coalition command staff should the Navy be called upon to form a joint task force.

But making the case today for a new type of command-and-control ship--whether single-mission, multimission, or modular--to take the place of land-based sites, or even airborne platforms, in enabling JTF operations is becoming increasingly more difficult, according to some observers.

"The JCC(X) program has a couple of high hurdles to get over. One is ... [persuading] some congressional and OSD staffers that the information age will allow us to 'remote' certain planning and command and control functions--that we don't have to have our headquarters right where the battle is," Shepherd said. "That has yet to be proved and will require the export of information two ways. ... We found that out with the early experiments in telemedicine. Unless [the operator] can be there to get a feel for what is really going on, he has no way of treating the patient. The question to us [at Joint Forces Command] is why [build and deploy] a ship if we can remote these functions to a land base somewhere ... [where there are] no maintenance or deployment [considerations], no limit on size, and no need to protect it?"

From Torch to Grenada To an Era of Transformation

Another hurdle for the sea-based JCC(X) option is that advanced information technology--including the network links to other service and coalition assets as well as to national command authorities--requires significant bandwidth access to the ship via wireless connections.

Historically, the reason a ship has made an effective C2 platform was its logistics capabilities. Because of the large mass and volume of communications gear required to communicate on different RF frequencies for different services and operational elements, a large staff was needed, so the command ship became a necessity.

"The first command ships came out of World War II, from Operation Torch [the Allied landings in North Africa] in 1941 and were used to and through the invasion of Normandy in 1944," said Jack Green of the Navy Historical Center. "[This enabled complex] operations like the invasions of Sicily and Anzio. ... In the Pacific you had joint-service Army and Navy operations, and at times the two services did not see eye to eye. In particular, they had very different philosophies about how amphibious operations should be conducted."

But Operation Torch was a painful learning experience in many ways, an example of sometimes ineffective and/or unresponsive command and control. One result was the requirement for improved organizational guidelines and closer joint-service cooperation in all aspects of multiservice operations.

Nonetheless, U.S. and allied forces were starting to recognize the benefits provided by a joint command center afloat. This realization led to a Navy mission-capability transformation not too far removed from the one undertaken by today's Pentagon leadership.

Prior to World War II, the U.S. Navy possessed only a primitive landing capability, Green noted. The tank landing ship evolved after Operation Torch, as did other innovations in projecting and sustaining effective combat power ashore. That transformation in power projection itself required reliable and effective centralized C2 capabilities within or relatively close to the combat theater.

During the Cold War era, the Navy and its sister services were confronted again by a lesson in the perils of undertaking joint operations without adequate command and control.

"The problem [persisted], for example in Grenada in 1983 ... [when] all the major players were on different radio channels and, instead of having a task force commander [forward-deployed], all the orders came out of Washington. ... Grenada is the best modern example of how the lack of on-site command hurt the campaign," Green said. "The invasion of Panama [Operation Just Cause in 1989] took these lessons from Grenada and helped to illustrate the idea of a 'Purple Suit' environment. The question is, with new technology, whether we need a command ship. We have high-speed communications, Global Positioning System satellites ... and other new technologies. ... Does this negate the need for joint command and control right offshore?"

The answers to those and other questions that might be asked could be an important factor in determining the future of not only sea-based command and control, but also major aspects of the Sea Power 21 concept. *