Page 4 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

INTRODUCTION

Airpower and naval power emerged from World War II as integrated components able to fight in a single
battlespace. For the navies, carrier aviation was the key element for air enablement along with land based
air which could operate from key land based choke points to provide for key capabilities to assist in
controlling the sea lines of communication.

With the emergence of fifth generation aviation, the manned-unmanned dynamic and the evolution of
weapons, a new version of operating in the integrated battlespace is emerging.

The US Navy refers to this as the kill web, a capability to move from a linear kill chain to a distributed fleet
able to tap into capabilities available throughout an integrated force. This is an aspiration more than the
current reality, but the US and its core allies are working hard to move aspiration to reality.
1
This special report looks at the emergence of the kill web from the perspective of the maritime and air forces.

We first look at some conceptual issues in terms of how to characterize the way ahead for the fleet as it
integrates with land and sea based capabilities to deliver its combat effect.

A key element of the change is shaping a more distributed C2 structure with a mission command approach,
rather than the kind of hierarchical structure which can be used in slo mo war.

The shift from the kinds of land wars fought in the past decade and a half to operating across the range of
military operations to insert force and to prevail in a more rapid tempo conflict than that which characterized
counter-insurgency operations carries with it a need to have a very different C2 structure and technologies to
support those structures.
The shift to higher tempo operations is being accompanied by platforms which are capable of operating in an
extended battlespace and at the edge of the battlespace where hierarchical, detailed control simply does
not correlate with the realities of either combat requirements or of technology which is part of a shift to
distributed operations.
Distributed operations over an extended battlespace to deal with a range of military operations require
distributed C2; not hierarchical detailed micro management.

In effect, the focus is upon shaping the commander’s intent and allowing the combat forces to execute that
intent, and to shape evolving missions in the operations, with the higher level commanders working to gain an
overview on the operations, rather than micro-management of the operations.

Unfortunately, the relatively slow pace of COIN, and the use of remotes (UAVs or RPAs) in the past decade
have led to a growing practice of growing the level of command in order to try to exercise more detailed
control. This has led to the current situation in the air operations against ISIS where you have more members of
the CAOC than you have actual air strikes!

According to one of the architects of Desert Storm, Lt. General (David) Deptula, the CAOC for Desert Storm
was quite lean, and the goal was to get the taskings into the hands of the warfighters to execute, with a later
battle damage assessment process then informing decisions on the follow on target list.

It was not about micro managing the combat assets.

1 The photo on the cover shows USMC F-35Bs operating with USAF strategic bombers in a strategic deterrent mission in South Korea. These aircraft can come
from sea or land to work with land-based aircraft and that ultimately is the point of an air-enabled kill web. Credit: PACOM for the photo.
Second Line of Defense

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