Page 17 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

A very simple filter to look at platform and weapon development within the integration of current weapon
systems and platforms is asking the largest questions possible and pursuing force design and operational
answers to these questions:

What does weapon or system add to fleet Pu?

How does this system help in TA?

How does this system help in TE?

What is the best weapon for the highest Pk against the target?
Is the TA, TE and Weapons (kinetic and Tron) carried together F-35 or separate?

If separate such as P-8 and fleet being aided by UAS Triton is the C&C robust enough to keep both the single
engagement and also the overall battle focused with “weapons free”?

The demonstrated performance of all weapons and systems working together becomes of paramount
importance because everything must be in support of a successful kill shot or what one might consider to be a
kill web, rather than a legacy kill chain.

Information collected without full understanding of the unifying driver of integrating the proven utility of all
payloads may simply lead to a disaggregated numbers game against the PLAAF and PLAN.

And in that game, the great but also true cliché comes into play: “Quantity has a quality of its own.”

Boyd had a very powerful message in his lecturing about advanced technology; he complained that it just
doesn’t work.

The corollary to that point is that he was 100 % correct but eventually American technological virtuosity and
diligence can produce the best weapons in the world that do work.

In this sense, quality has a significant impact all on its own as well.

My AIM-7 Sparrow was a perfect “water seeker” on a missile shoot but gave way to the excellent AIM-120
AMRAAM

Consideration of TA and TE in contributing to Payload Utility (Pu) allows an analysis of the appropriate
integration of people, sensors and weapons.

Understanding the technology and mission trade-off by platforms in the continuum of TA and TE could be a
structured way ahead for understanding and analyzing 21 Century man-machine information and learning
st
dynamics.

Beginning with the F-35 and branching out to all platforms in a fleet it is my working hypothesis that the F-35
can actually be the driver in moving from intellectually constrained linear thinking about “kill chains” into the
new dynamic of “kill webs.”

This is way beyond just effects based outcome analysis in that Pu incorporates consideration all systems
coming to the fight, inside a “Kill Web” driver.

Rear Admiral Manizer, the former N-9, nailed the shift in thinking planning training for empowering “Kill
Webs”:

Page 16