Page 91 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

With regard to Triton and P-8, the US Navy will operate them as a dyad. The USN is approaching the P-
8/Triton combat partnership, which is the integration of manned, and unmanned systems, or what are now
commonly called “remotes”.

The Navy looked at the USAF experience and intentionally decided to not build a Triton “remote” operational
combat team that is stovepiped away from their P-8 Squadrons.

The teams at Navy Jax and Pax River are building a common Maritime Domain Awareness and Maritime
Combat Culture and treats the platforms as partner applications of the evolving combat theory. The
partnership is both technology synergistic and also aircrew moving between the Triton and P-8.

The P-8 pilot and mission crews, after deploying with the fleet globally can be assigned significant shore duty
flying Tritons. The number of personnel to fly initially the Tritons is more than 500 navy personnel so this is
hardly an unmanned aircraft. Hence, inside a technological family of systems there is also an interchangeable
family of combat crews.

These new systems are all software upgradeable which sets in motion the opportunity and a need to shape
new acquisition approaches to take advantage of software, which can evolve to deal with the threat
environment as well.

Software upgradeability provides for a lifetime of combat learning to be reflected in the rewriting of the
software code and continually modernizing existing combat systems, while adding new capabilities over the
operational life of the aircraft.
Over time, fleet knowledge will allow the US Navy and its partners to understand how best to maintain and
support the aircraft while operating the missions effectively in support of global operations.

The second example is being played our right now at sea with the first deployment of the USS America.

The Marines have deployed the Blackjack UAV at sea and are working its integration with manned assets
operating within the Amphibious Task Force.
The Blackjack is deployed from a San Antonio class LPD but it launches from that platform but contributes to
the entire situational awareness of the task force.

And a third example is the work the US Navy has done onboard the LCS with regard to integrating the Fire
Scout UAV with the MH-60S manned system.

The entire approach is to shape an operational experience with the two systems working together and then to
build forward from that experience.

Ideally, any future acquisition of new systems would build from this operational experience and inform the
evolution of fleet capability.

Although the LCS is currently the only ship in the US Navy set up to support integrated Fire Scout/MH-60S
operations, obviously this integration can be applied to current or future fleet assets, such as the new frigate.

And the integration effort, which is a work in progress, is part of the overall effort to distribute ISR, C2 and
strike and to off board sensors and strike elements.

Earlier this year, the dyad worked together for the Fire Scout to provide targeting data to an MH-60S to
then launch a Hellfire missile.

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