Beyond Iraq

CHIPS, April-June, 2005 by Walter F. Doran

I'm going to give you a picture about what the U.S. Pacific Fleet is doing beyond Iraq and how we are getting transformation right.

Keeping the direction the Chief of Naval Operations has given in mind, I would like to outline some of the contributions that the Pacific Fleet is making to our nation's defense. Specifically, how we are working to prevent the development of a strategic void by changing our behavior patterns while concurrently conducting a wide array of missions across the security spectrum.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps remain heavily engaged in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom--and for good reason. They are doing exceptional work and making tangible progress every day. Our national and military leadership are dedicating tremendous energy to supporting these critical missions, and you see this reflected daily in the media worldwide.

Others read and hear this same media coverage and might be inclined to view this focus of American attention as an opportunity for malevolence in other potentially volatile regions of the world. This would be a grave miscalculation. The current U.S. level of effort in Iraq must not be misinterpreted as a diminishing of focus elsewhere.

Beyond Iraq, today's U.S. Navy holds significant strategic relevance to the defense of our nation. We are providing "presence with a purpose," preventing any would-be adversary from making the mistake of perceiving that a strategic void exists in U.S. military policy or capability. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Western Pacific, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet is actively working to "dissuade and deter" any potential threat.

To this end, we continue to transform our Navy into a more persistent and agile force for the 21st century, a force better prepared to overcome future security challenges. As a result, we have changed our behavior patterns to increase our visibility in the Western Pacific, and we are preparing and operating our forces much differently than we have in the past.

For the last decade, the preponderance of Pacific Fleet units have trained and worked along the western coast of the United States, then sailed straight through the Pacific en route to the Arabian Gulf region. This is no longer the case. Pacific Fleet training and deployment efforts are now focused on our most difficult, potential theater warfighting scenarios. Across naval warfare communities, and with the close coordination of our Numbered Fleet Commanders 3rd and 7th Fleets we are conducting increasingly complex training at both the unit and integrated levels to refine the skill sets necessary to execute these challenges.

This new deployment pattern displays our commitment to maintaining a responsive, highly credible, persistent presence in the Western Pacific. The 2004 deployment of the John C. Stennis Strike Group was the vanguard of this multifaceted effort. Following completion of an intensive pre-deployment workup, Stennis participated in a series of exercises: Northern Edge in the Gulf of Alaska, RIMPAC in the Hawaiian area of operations, and the Joint Air Sea Exercise (JASEX) in the Western Pacific. Each exercise had increasingly complex tactical elements embedded in the event.

Additionally, the exercises demonstrated U.S. support for multilateral/combined maritime operations. Forty ships and submarines from seven nations participated in a robust RIMPAC exercise showing our capacity to conduct advanced dual-carrier strike group operations forward in the Pacific as displayed in JASEX. To ensure we continue to enhance the effectiveness and reach of naval forces, we have instilled an equally strong commitment to technological experimentation and rapid technology insertion.

During the Stennis deployment, we operated with several emerging technologies that industry provided, and they are helping improve the coordination, integration and implementation of our warfighting efforts. Some examples of what we were able to operate and train with are the variety of new sensors and equipment particularly in the area of antisubmarine warfare (ASW). These included the Automated Rapid Periscope Detection and Discrimination (ARPDD) System, Low Frequency Active (LFA) Sonar, and net-centric programs such as the Composeable FORCEnet and the Undersea Warfare Decision Support System, to name just a few.

The results were encouraging and will provide invaluable vectors for future programmatic decisions, for example, accelerating investment in sonar processing improvements and training, such as Advanced Active Analysis Adjunct (A4I) for PC Interactive Multisensor Analysis Training (PC-IMAT) to reduce false contact generation rate over legacy systems. I observed A4I in action aboard Stennis Strike Group ships and it works; moreover, our Sailors believe in it based on performance at sea.

The Undersea Warfare Decision Support System facilitated sonar planning in the Stennis Strike Group, and it is an excellent example of a system with the potential to improve the flow of in formation, environmental modeling and prediction, data fusion and contact correlation. These tools and applications will allow us to better integrate our ASW assets and get the best use from our sensors in the water column of interest. I'm encouraged by our technology progress and hungry for further developments.