Responding to Capability Surprise A Strategy for U.S. Naval Forces (2013) / Chapter Skim
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7 Force Response (Preparation and Readiness)
7 Force Response (Preparation and Readiness)
Pages 112-130
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From page 112... ...
naval forces are preparing for response to anticipated and unanticipated capability surprises, as well as how they are developing and executing offensive strategies to surprise adversaries. This chapter discusses these topics by reviewing general preparedness, including quantitative and subjective measures of preparedness, and discussing what the committee has learned from its interactions with naval forces with respect to their current and planned actions.
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From page 113... ...
Several elements of readiness are quantifiable through set criteria such as equipment inventory, material status, personnel staffing, individual and crew training, logistics stocks, or adherence to directives. Other elements of readiness or preparedness do not easily lend themselves to being measured because they involve nonquantifiable judgments about leadership, unit/crew morale, personal interactions, mission execution, and the like.
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From page 114... ...
Within the naval forces, specific organizations are responsible for developing TTPs and CONOPS. For the Navy, the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC)
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From page 115... ...
Other naval organizations also contribute to CONOPS and TTPs development.5 For the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) has overarching responsibility for TTP and CONOPs development.
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From page 116... ...
SORTS for the most part did not use the commander's subjective assessment of the unit and graded its overall readiness based on the lowest individual rating or weakest link. For this report, the committee will focus on the potential of the Defense Readiness Reporting System (DRRS-N)
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From page 117... ...
Present readiness reporting captures the current and forecasted status of several quantifiable readiness elements that have, over time, proven to have merit when measuring readiness against traditional missions and capabilities. Because many quantifiable skills and capabilities are transferable, such data could permit war planners and commanders to explore readiness, or gaps in preparation, for nontraditional and/or surprise events.
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From page 118... ...
and multinational forces. The Marine Corps is currently expanding its exercise program for readiness including extending interactions with coalition forces, such as those of Japan and Australia, the latter to build coordination among amphibious forces.
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From page 119... ...
12 An experimentation campaign is "a planned and cohesive, multiyear program of experimentation built on a series of experiments and related activities to develop the knowledge needed to inform major decisions about future forces, explore the viability of potential or planned changes to forces or their capabilities, and/or confirm that planned developments and directions will enable forces to perform as expected." From National Research Council, 2004, The Role of Experimentation in Building Future Naval Forces, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., p.
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From page 120... ...
This limits the naval forces' preparedness to practice dealing with surprise effectively and in a timely manner -- and limits the development of CONOPS that would respond to anticipated and unanticipated capability surprises. More representative of the current status is that deployment schedules and a rigid training regimen are constraining, allowing little or no time to inject surprise into exercise and training scenarios.
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From page 121... ...
Examples of such exercises include Bold Alligator 2012 and Terminal Fury 2012, summarized as follows: • Bold Alligator 2012 was the largest naval amphibious exercise in the past 10 years and demonstrated a revitalization of amphibious operations. 14 All of the naval forces participated.
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From page 122... ...
Additionally there is no shared understanding of an information warfare CONOPS. Naval forces need to proceed more aggressively by using more with unpalatable but potentially realistic scenarios in exercises and training to establish and validate adequate procedures.
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From page 123... ...
Units are so busy with predeployment training and certification, it is difficult to find personnel or time on the training schedule to support a long range and centrally planned experimentation program. Additionally, the past decade of ground combat has created stressed naval forces because of their high operational 17 National Research Council.
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From page 124... ...
This path includes exercise and training time that allow local units the opportunity for excursions, and includes all types of surprise -- including those may be selfinduced, such as for conducting operations not currently envisioned. 19 To summarize, operational naval forces are not preparing adequately for surprise in current exercise and experimentation approaches.
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From page 125... ...
Finding 6a: U.S. naval forces are not preparing adequately for potential capability surprise in current exercises and experiments.
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From page 126... ...
This latter aspect helps organizations validate that students are not simply drilling and repeating by rote, but instead have understood underlying principles and are prepared to apply what they have learned to unexpected challenges. Naval forces can apply these same low-cost adaptive techniques to existing military distance-learning courses, adding capability surprise to the curriculum and, more importantly, to the distance-learning qualification tests.
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From page 127... ...
Since capability surprise is not integrated into daily naval forces activities and planning, it is essential that doctrine and training, especially for the commander, be established to ensure that leaders know how to exploit the information in DRRS. DRRS and NRRE are robust enough to incorporate additional data, 20 See, for instance, Recommendations 3 and 4 in National Research Council, 2004, The Role of Experimentation in Building Future Naval Forces, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
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From page 128... ...
However, it also believes that our naval forces can improve their ability to spring their own capability surprises on our adversaries. A number of surprise mitigation capabilities would be highly classified.
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From page 129... ...
To summarize, some key classified capabilities may not be disclosed to planners or operators and therefore will not be routinely incorporated into combatant plans or practiced by operators. 22 Clay Blair, Jr.
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From page 130... ...
Final Thoughts The committee believes that naval forces' preparation and readiness for capability surprise is insufficient. The current operational tempo has been a primary detriment to preparedness.
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