Putting Maritime Autonomous Systems into the Hands of Warfighters: The Latest Version of Combined Arms Operations

I have just returned from Australia and have finished the report for the latest Sir Richard Williams seminar and the interviews associated with that effort.

We are focusing on the operational force and how to enhance its capabilities going forward in a resource scarce budgeting environment.

At the seminar held onn September 26, 2024, many of the speakers spoke of the need to blend in autonomous systems with the ready force to enhance the capabilities of the fight tonite force,

There were few examples of having done so, but the need was clearly identified.

When I conducted interviews around the subject while in Canberra, it became clear that the managerial barriers to doing so are formidable.

Here is how Vice Admiral (Retired) Barrett put the challenge:

The reality is that for autonomous systems to come into the current force, they need to be well practiced at the operational end – promotion of their adoption is a behavioral piece. New systems need to be in the hands of warfighters to ensure that these systems make the current force more agile and take actions that are effective in their application.

Operational success is still about the application of force in the mind of the person responsible for delivering it.  It’s about forcing them to think of operational success by whatever means they have available to them, and then having the courage to take those actions.

You are not necessarily after disruptive change in process, but disruption in the effect. In some cases you don’t want disruption in the efficiency of the process of operations. But, you want to be able to cause a disruption that has an effect on your adversary.

 With regard to the Ghost Shark, to fully achieve its potential, it has to quickly enter the operational world of those who are managing the underwater warfare space throughout the regions of our interests.  

To be effective as a disruptive technology, it will need to contribute to the operational effects being sought by those managing the undersea domain; in tactical terms this means it has to be of benefit to those managing the water column. It could generate strategic consequences but not simply because of its technology but in the way this it is used to produce disruptive operational effects.  

A successful water space management process is key to being able to determine where your adversary is, or, more importantly, where it isn’t, so that you can put the right forces in the right place.

Bureaucracies don’t necessarily think like that. Operators absolutely do so, because it’s their day-to-day business, and they’re in the practice of only putting in harm’s way those things that need to be there to affect a disruption to the enemy’s operations.

The disruptive effects that a Ghost Shark can produce should be determined by those who actively manage the battle space, the undersea battle space, rather than someone who’s programming from afar and doing so in complete isolation from the rest of the water space management concepts of operations.

I think one way to get on with this effort of teaming with autonomous and manned systems is to not think of this as teaming but as a new variant of a combined arms opertaion.

In an earlier set of articles, I articulated a way ahead in such terms.

In those articles, I explored the potential for using maritime autonomous systems alongside manned aircraft in military operations. I examined ways these systems can be conceptualized as teamed assets working in conjunction with manned aircraft, as mission threads executing tasks autonomously, and as combat clusters integrated into a combined arms operation.

I focused on the U.S. Marine Corps and its initiative to develop Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABOs). I argued that integrating maritime autonomous systems into EABOs could significantly enhance the Marines’ ability to deploy forces rapidly, reduce their signature, and improve their sensing and strike capabilities. I highlighted how a combination of manned Osprey and CH-53K aircraft could deliver autonomous payloads to EABOs which then could in turn deliver counter-ISR capabilities to the combat cluster.

Here is a podcost built from those articles which was generated by Google’s NotebookLM system.

And here are the articles:

Featured photo: A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion helicopter, assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One, executes an external lift of a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle during Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 1-24 at Auxiliary Airfield II, near Yuma, Arizona, Oct. 3, 2023. WTI is an advanced, graduate-level course for selected pilots and enlisted aircrew providing standardized advanced tactical training and assists in developing and employing aviation weapons and tactics. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Elizabeth Gallagher)