By Robbin Laird

While it is important to think about 2030, the air-maritime force is in the throes of significant innovation NOW and laying the foundation for significant change in the near to the mid-term.

And this happening by reworking the integratability of key elements of the force and evolving the concepts of operations of key platforms working together in core functional warfighting areas.

A key case in point is the MH-60 Romeo helicopters as anti-surface and ASW assets shaping a way ahead to work more effectively in force integration with other key assets.

In the ISR world it is about reshaping ways P-8s and Romeos can work together.

This is a work in progress, but again, because these are EXTANT platforms the challenge is to focus on enhanced integrability to deliver enhanced capability in a key functional area, which is anti-surface warfare and ASW.

In part, this is allowing the Romeo helicopters to move away from a primary role of protecting the carrier projecting power to contribute to the land wars and returning them to blue water operations.  The advanced sensors on the Romeo are then used as part of the reshaping of blue water operational capabilities.

The Romeos are providing significant contributions to Air Wing and surface asset long range maritime strike packages, and will only result in enhanced lethality with added focus on training and interoperability with the P-8s.

The P-8s are ISR and C2 strike aircraft that also do ASW.

How best to integrate them with the strike force?

How best to work through how they can contribute to fleet wide maritime strike?

My discussions and recent visit to NAWDC highlighted how there is a clear interest and priority to better integrate the P-8 into fleet strike operations.

This is a work in progress, but again this is an EXTANT platform, whose software code is being rewritten based on operations to provide for a more integrable capability or to sort through its role within the integratable air wing which is reshaping how a kill web enabled fleet can operate more effectively in blue water operations.

The Romeos are part of working a new approach to what the NAWDC team refers to as blue water expeditionary operations.

In an earlier piece, I highlighted how CDR Nathaniel “Velcro” Velcio, the HSM Weapons School, Atlantic looked at the way ahead.

And now during my July 2020 visit to San Diego, I had a chance to get the perspective of Captain Jeffrey Melody, Commander, of the Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing, Pacific (i.e. HSM Community) on the way ahead as well.  

The Romeos deploy both to carriers as well as cruisers or destroyers. They deploy a 25-man detachment to cruisers or destroyers with two MH-60R helicopters; and for the carrier they deploy a five-helicopter CVN Element led by its Commanding and Executive Officers.

In addition, the HSC Community’s MH-60 Sierras are deploying for combat logistics and support as well as working with Fire-Scout detachments.

This means the community is working the concepts of operations of manned-unmanned teaming to deliver more persistent ISR in the extended battlespace.

There is a concerted effort to augment Romeo and P-8 integration.

According to Captain Melody, once a year there is a meeting held at Jacksonville bringing together the two communities where the junior officers who work the platforms can share operational experience and to work through ways to operate as a more integratable force.

And as I saw in a visit to Mayport in June 2020, there is an enhanced effort to work Seahawk and P-8 integration as well.

The West coast Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing works with the P-8s at Whidbey Island.

Obviously, the distance from San Diego to Washington is considerably greater than the short distance from Jax Navy to Mayport, which can enable the East Coast wing greater opportunities for integrated training.

This type of integration is clearly worked in Hawaii as well.

According to Captain Melody: “We look to overcome the distance hurdle by leveraging the long legs of the P-8 and have a standing invite for them to fly down to participate in the ASW portion of the basic phase certification exercises our Weapons School conducts throughout the year, along with an annual South American Navy submarine exercise, DESI-Ex, both on the SoCal Offshore ASW Range.”

This is a work in progress; but, again because these are existing platforms, they enhance the integrability of the fleet now and build out new capabilities as they work towards future operations as well.

Too often, there is the notion in defense public discourse which does not pay enough attention to the innovations in integratability going on right now.

This work is especially significant because working ISR integratability and third party targeting leveraging sensor networks is crucial now but a clear foundation for shaping an effective way ahead.

And as they do so, their ability to reach out to other elements of the sensor network, such as Triton allow, the Romeos and P-8s to do a better job supporting the strike fleet as well.

A key way to enhance the sensor network could well be to add passive sensors to some of the new assets coming into the fleet, such as the MV-22B, the MQ-25 or maritime remotes.

The key challenge is to ensure that those sensors provide information which can inform the strike force, rather than just accumulate information.

It is clear that the HSM community has worked hard the past few years to enhance their role in the high-end fight.

With regard to surface warfare core capability there has been a key shift to provide for such an enhanced role. In the period of support to the land wars, the HSM capabilities were primary used to for small boat warfare, primarily in the Restricted Waters transit arena.

Now they have transitioned to leveraging their advanced sensor suites to contribute to the long-range maritime strike and electromagnetic warfare arenas, which have become key areas of effort with great Power Competition and Distributed Maritime Operations.

Efforts such as greater integratability of the Romeo with the P-8 lay a solid foundation for further evolution of usable sensor networks which inform not debilitate decision making for the integrated distributed force.

This is a work in progress, but one which is delivering enhanced capability and lethality to the FLEET now, and not just a slide in a briefing about the 2030 future force.

Featured photo: LCpl. Denton A. Stewart, a flight equipment technician Marine assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (Reinforced) 164, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, watches an MH-60S Sea Hawk, assigned to the “Wildcards” of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 23, land aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8). Makin Island, homeported in San Diego, is conducting routine operations in the eastern Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Aaron Sperle)

By Robbin Laird

Earlier this year, in a visit with Vice Admiral Miller, the US Navy’s Air Boss, I was introduced to the coming of MISR, or the Maritime ISR Officer.

MISR officers are trained as ISR subject matter experts to operate at the fleet or CSG level and to work the sensor fusion for the integratable CVW.

According to the Air Boss: “I think of MISR as additive, not lessening of TOPGUN, but instead akin to a new phase which builds upon our historical experience in the development of TOPGUN in the first place.”

In effect, these are “6th generation officers” in the sense of working the C2/ISR capabilities which enable an integrated and distributed fleet to have its maximum combat impact.

I followed this introduction to MISR up over the past two months with discussions with officers from the Naval Aviation Warfighting Center or NAWDC with regard to how the focus on training for the integrateable air wing was shaping the way ahead. Two new warfighting training courses reflect the change.

The first is the information warfare training course which is focused on dynamic targeting.

And the second is MISR which is focused on providing the connective tissue between the operational platforms working as a integrated force to deliver the dynamic targeting effect.

The MISR effort is clearly a work in progress, but is laying the foundation for what is clearly ongoing innovations with regard to connectivity among platforms and how C2 is delivered at the tactical edge and aggregated into strategic decision making as well.

MISR is both a capability here now, but a dynamic driver for how to change the force as new ISR capabilities are added to the force, such as Triton and the upcoming revolutions in maritime remotes.

If one does not learn how to change the culture of how ISR is used and C2 redesigned then adding new ISR rich platforms or new ISR capabilities will not have the desired combat effect.

From this perspective MISR is an innovation, a new foundational element, and a plank holder in the strategic shift for force structure integratability, notably to deliver the desired political and combat effects necessary to prevail in the new strategic environment of engaging in full spectrum crisis management and escalation control and dominance.

Recently, I interviewed CDR Pete “Two Times” Salvaggio, Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC), Maritime ISR (MISR) Weapons School, Department Head (DH), MISR & EP-3E Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI).

The career of this officer spans the period prior to MISR, the creation of MISR and the maturation of the MISR and Minotaur initiatives.

The officers involved in the MISR Weapons School are the seed corn for the strategic change which MISR is introducing.

And during my visit to Jax Navy during the week of June 14^th, I had a chance to talk with the first MISR officer deployed to the fleet, LCDR Tracy Maddox.

Her call sign is “Mad Dog” and is as she described herself a “VQ” person by trade and an EP-3 operator.

She became a MISR officer through her engagement at NAWDC and worked with “Two Times” there as well.  She was involved in the standing up of the MISR cell at NAWDC which has now become a full warfighting course. She now is with VPU-2, a heralded squadron in the US Navy involved in “special projects.”

An October 2, 2018 article by Richard Burgess of Seapower Magazine highlighted the squadron as follows:

The Navy has established a new unit to sustain a special mission capability in its maritime patrol community with the coming retirement of the P-3 Orion aircraft.

A Sept. 10 internal directive from the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations directed the establishment on that date of Fleet Support Unit One at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, one of two sites that serve as home bases for the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon maritime patrols aircraft.

According to the directive, Fleet Support Unit One “will configure and operate P-8 aircraft to provide a follow-on special mission capability in place of [special] projects patrol squadron (VPU) P-3 aircraft due to sundown in 2019.”

The mission of the unit will be to provide “oversight, training, operations, maintenance, and configuration management for the P-8 quick reaction capability aircraft,” according to the directive.

Fleet Support Unit One will have an officer in charge rather than a commanding officer, who will report to commander, Patrol Reconnaissance Wing 11, at Jacksonville.

The Navy’s sole VPU squadron, VPU-2, operates several specially configured P-3C Orion aircraft from Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. The squadron is scheduled for deactivation in fiscal 2019 in concert with the phase-out of the P-3C from operational active-duty patrol squadrons.

LCDR Maddox noted that the EP-3 community works closely with the USAF, so this has carried over for the MISR community and in terms of NAWDC working with Nellis as well.

But she clearly highlighted the challenges to getting the USAF and the USN to work fully together in shaping enhanced integratabilty but clearly the MISR standup was an important step in moving in that direction.

LCDR Maddox was posted to the USS George H. W. Bush CSG-2 under the command of Rear Admiral Kenneth Whitesell, now Deputy Commander of the US Pacific Fleet and soon to be the next commander of Naval Air Forces and and commander of Naval Air Force Pacific

During that deployment, the Admiral explored ways that a MISR approach could enhance the lethality of the fleet.

The experience shaped a demand side as well where as Vice Admiral Miller put it, there is desire to have MISR officers in every carrier strike group and at the fleet level as well.

And technology needs to be shaped to allow for this kind of innovation.

A case in point is Minotaur.

As Rear Admiral Garvin put it: “The Minotaur Track Management and Mission Management system was developed in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

“Minotaur was designed to integrate sensors and data into a comprehensive picture which allows multiple aircraft and vessels to share networked information.

“It is basically a data fusion engine and like many software capabilities these days, doesn’t physically have to present on a platform to be of use.

“These capabilities ride on a Minotaur web where, if you are on the right network, you can access data from whatever terminal you happen to be on.”

LCDR Maddox underscored from her point of view that bringing the various wave forms into a single screen via Minotaur allows those data streams to come together and to shape a common operating picture.

She underscored that with different assets using different operating pictures the full value of the ISR streams was not being realized.

“With the Minotaur web everyone has access to the same COP regardless of whether you are airborne or onboard a ship.”

In my view, the MISR incorporation in the fleet, plus the coming of Triton are opening the aperture in understanding of how to widen the scope of what a fleet can achieve within the extended battlespace.

And this is clearly a cultural shift as well.

As LCDR Maddox put it: “It’s a very different mindset shift.”

With regard to the carrier strike groups, the core focus has been upon the fast jets and kill chains.

But with the ISR/C2 revolution and the ability to do third party targeting, the kill web is becoming a reality.

But this means that the Admirals who have come through the fast jet community are facing the challenge of changing their approach as well to incorporate MISR and dynamic targeting, ultimately in a joint capability environment.

In my view, the standing up of MISR is significant in and of itself, but lays a foundation for the way ahead.

And quite an honor to meet the first MISR officer assigned to a carrier strike group.

This is also a significant generational change as the digital natives become more prevalent within the fleet, and who experienced rapid apps upgrades and want to see the same being delivered in terms of knowledge to the fleet operating in a dynamic combat environment.