Building A Beehive Observations On The Transition To Network-Centric Operations

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2000 by George Kasten

The obstacles to sensor solutions are immense because they are both programmatic and cultural. Sensors have long been integrated with platforms. Independent sensor programs are perceived to be in competition with platforms for funding and missions. Yet in the face of new and affordable technological threats to platforms, U.S. forces must not continue to pretend they will be allowed to sail or fly sensors on manned platforms to wherever they are needed in a modern battlespace. Offboard sensors may have presented a threat to manned platforms in the past, but in the future they will likely be the essential enabling factor that saves them from obsolescence. Viewed in this way, there will still be programmatic competition for funding, but progress should be possible when sensor and platforms missions are brought into coalescence. Both are essential elements of NCO.

EXPEDITIONARY SENSORS ARE DIFFERENT

Several general properties of effective sensors are critical to their successful employment: they must be affordable, available, and suitable for expeditionary operations. The uniqueness of expeditionary warfare and its special demands on the sensor system require further explanation.

"Expeditionary" is the defining quality of U.S. naval forces. Today, when an air strike against a distant target may be launched from the continental United States, it is important to understand that power projection by any single means does not qualify as expeditionary. Instead, an expeditionary force provides a flexible complement of military tools that can be speedily applied to a wide spectrum of situations and crises.

The expeditionary tool-set includes air strikes, but other tasking as well, from humanitarian assistance to air, ground, sea, or cyberspace forces in high-intensity combat. Expeditionary operations are constrained both in geography (size and location) and duration. Geographical size limitations are obvious; theaterwide expeditionary warfare is rarely discussed. U.S. forces deploy theaterwide in peacetime, however, because forward presence is the entry fee for early and meaningful access to potential adversaries in the event of conflict. An explanation of the limited duration quality of expeditionary warfare is that the force must be capable of sustaining its operations either to deter conflict, fight to victory on its own, or gain a military foothold and hold the line until less mobile, heavy ground and air forces can be brought into position. Another time-related point is that expeditionary forces are best used early in a crisis, when initial conditions are often not fully understood and the likelihood of s urprising events is high. They must be versatile and adaptable to limit the adverse effects of being surprised.

Despite the constraints of geography and duration, there are few restrictions on the intensity of expeditionary warfare, except those that could be imposed by default if the United States failed to organize, train, and equip its forces adequately. Such a failure could render U.S. forces unusable if the adversary is willing to risk high levels of violence.