Air Force-Navy integration in strike warfare: a role model for Seamless Joint-Service Operations

Naval War College Review, Wntr, 2008 by Benjamin S. Lambeth

In this regard, with the advent of the global command-and-control system, Link 16, and related cross-service connectivity improvements, the prospect has finally emerged of joint operations by the two services that entail what two early commentators on air-naval integration called "true interoperability, functional integration, and order-of-magnitude improvement in capability." (22) This welcome prospect has arisen in part from the Navy's development of cooperative engagement capability (CEC) during the waning years of the Cold War. Responding to the stress in that period on space-based surveillance and to the need to be capable of reacting to a common operating picture, CEC laid down the needed groundwork for closer operational convergence of the Navy with the Air Force. As early as 1993, the Navy demonstrated cooperative engagement and its potential by linking the Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, with the Air Force's Air Combat Command and the Army's Forces Command, and subsequently Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic as well. Thus were planted the seeds of a growing convergence by the Air Force with the Navy's concept of network-centric warfare. As the commander of Naval Air Systems Command remarked in 1999, "We have spent this whole decade concentrating on better interoperability. We learned a lesson in Desert Storm that we have to pay more attention to operating with our counterparts.... We must be able to communicate freely--both in planning and in operations--and many of the systems we have in development or deployed today are aimed specifically at improving that ability." (23)

As a result of these developments, the second Gulf War, in 2003, featured a more closely linked U.S. force than ever before. As one CENTCOM staffer put it, "everything that had a sensor was connected." (24) To note a representative example, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln had a joint "fires" network and CEC system that allowed strike-group participants to share radar information and fire missiles on the basis of off-board information provided by other ships in the battle group. This capability was expanded with the arrival of the carrier USS Nimitz and the first Navy E-2C Hawkeye aircraft equipped with the system. The joint fires network allowed carriers to receive imagery from airborne platforms and signals intelligence from the Air Force's RC-135 Rivet Joint. Similarly, the Multifunction Information Distribution System, a nodeless and secure, Link 16-based, jam-resistant tactical data link, also made a major difference, by enabling enhanced interoperability with other joint and multinational platforms equipped with that capability. (25)

As for other signs of progress toward greater cross-service integration in strike warfare, there have been steady improvements in joint operations and training between the Air Force and Navy since American combat involvement in Vietnam ended more than three decades ago. For years, naval aviators have routinely taken part in the Air Force's recurrent RED FLAG, a realistic large-force employment training exercise that began in late 1975 and continues to be conducted roughly six times a year on the instrumented range complex north of Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Also, the Air Force's and Navy's undergraduate pilot training (UPT) programs are now fully integrated, with Air Force officers commanding Navy primary UPT squadrons and vice versa. The two services continue as well to provide exchange officers to each other's line squadrons and flight-test units on a regular basis; a Navy lieutenant commander, for instance, was recently assigned to fly the F-22A Raptor fifth-generation Air Force fighter with the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis. In addition, Navy E-2C crew members regularly fly aboard the Air Force's E-3 AWACS *** whenever there is an operational need for their presence at the console. Similarly, ever since the Air Force retired its EF-111 electronic-warfare aircraft, not long after DESERT STORM, Air Force aircrews have routinely been assigned to full tours of duty with the Navy's EA-6B shore-based expeditionary squadrons.