The Navy also planned for the new force structure to implement the evolving operational concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) — having many sensors and shooters, widely dispersed, all linked through a network. (Breaking D readers know that, although the Navy doesn’t like to talk much about multi-domain operations, this will have to be one of their main contributions to it.) This concept, with its implication for building more numerous, smaller, and more vulnerable platforms, breaks with the Navy’s previous operational concept that concentrated capabilities in a small number of extremely capable, but extremely expensive, carrier battle groups.
Ah, DMO is the concept term of art for something I've been droning on about--pre-TDR--since it was network-centric warfare.
Under the conditions of today’s platform-centric warfare, dispersal weakens a force and makes it slow to respond and mount a concentrated attack. In order to concentrate effect in an attack with platforms, forces need to be collocated or, if dispersed, near the enemy (or collocated with or near the friendly asset to be defended). Aircraft carriers overcome this problem of delivering massed effect by collocating a powerful air wing on a mobile airfield that, on its own, can deliver strong blows. While a carrier may be assisted by outside sensors and weapons systems, the carrier's and associated battle group's organic capability to fight enemy assets is substantial and greater than any other individual naval platform. Before Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles entered service with the fleet’s escorts, the carriers were the sole means of offensive action and represented “the highest value seaborne target against which an enemy could aim.” These newer weapons allowed any surface action group to conduct offensive warfare.
According to the United States Navy, the basic advantage of network-centric warfare is that the Navy will be able to deploy widely dispersed units that mass effect in a timely manner without needing to mass the components themselves, as platform-centric warfare requires, for coordinated action. Superior surveillance, communications, mobility, and weapons effectiveness and range will allow this geographic dispersal of units. Even before the dawn of network-centric warfare, the widespread deployment of surface-to-surface missiles throughout the Navy made the aircraft carrier an important asset rather than one vital for offensive missions. By allowing all the units in the network to fight as a physically dispersed but tactically unified force, networks will make the carrier platform’s ability redundant. Concentration of effect will no longer rely on concentration of forces. In addition to the evident offensive value, this characteristic has defensive value by reducing the footprint of our forces, thus avoiding giving the enemy an attractive, high-value target. Dispersed small units that can fight as one yet remain dangerous despite the loss of even many of the individually less capable platforms will confound the enemy's efforts to deliver a decisive strike against the Navy.
Now we have DMO, which dashes my hopes of getting the capability in our fleet before we got a new name for the concept:
I hope it gets to our fleet before it gets to the Chinese fleet. We've had concepts of "network-centric warfare," "cooperative engagement," the "tactical cloud," and "distributed lethality." Am I missing any? Could we get that capability before the Navy gets a new name?
Perhaps the Army will save the Navy for dropping the ball on the rail gun.
UPDATE: I'm hopefully up-to-date with concept terminology with this late addition of "kill web."
It is true that new technology that increases our naval capabilities should lead us to adjust how we count our ships to measure our naval capabilities. It is also true that gaming that definitions game has been used to hide reductions in naval capabilities. What to do?
Maybe we should count the launch cells on our ships, with a definition that considers ease of reload and how you define aircraft on an aircraft carrier as more easily reloadable "launchers."
As I recall, near the end of the Cold War the Army was defining its division power, in part, by the number of anti-tank weapons, and was aiming for 1,000 anti-tank weapons per division able to absorb and destroy massed Soviet tank attacks. So there is that precedent.
We need the concept in the fleet before we get a new term for the concept. Seriously. Now.
