The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls for the U.S. military to be “strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable” by exercising the Dynamic Force Employment concept. The Navy’s Design for Maintaining War Superiority 2.0 aligns the Navy with the NDS.
Director of Naval Intelligence and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare Vice Adm. Matthew J. Kohler described how the Navy is orienting itself around information warfare in order to support dynamic maritime operations and the Navy’s tactical grid Aug. 19, at the Defense Intelligence Agency DoDIIS Worldwide Conference in Tampa, Florida.
Kohler explained the importance of dynamic maritime operations and why it is important to the current warfighting construct.
“The warfighting construct challenge has gotten so complex in the maritime domain that we’re no longer focused just on tactical warfighting that we see ahead of us,” said Kohler.
Kohler added that units must operate over very wide geographic spaces in a distributed way and focused on delivering effects at the right time and tempo.
“To be able to do that requires everything that information warfare must deliver,” said Kohler. “That requires the type of networking capability that delivers exquisite information at the right time, at the right place in a [communications]-contested environment.”
Kohler explained how the Navy uses the Navy Information Warfighting Development Center as a TOPGUN equivalent for the information warfare community, which focuses on advanced training to develop and deploy advanced tactics, techniques and procedures.
Information warfare will help develop the Navy’s maritime design 2.0 or as it is called the Navy Tactical Grid.
“We’re given explicit direction in our maritime design 2.0 to develop this Navy Tactical Grid that’s designed to enable this DMO construct. To be fair, we have a Navy tactical Grid today. It just needs to be consistent with this conference of more resilient, redundant, and survivable type of construct. And that’s where we’re moving ahead,” said Kohler.
Kohler added that the 2.0 Navy Tactical Grid is a joint grid and focuses on how the Navy operates with international partners, which is considered essential to future operations.