Navy Officials Call for Tech ‘Mastery’ to Counter Emerging Threats

The evolving landscape of warfare requires speed, agility and human expertise in the face of rapid technological advancements, Navy officials said Tuesday at AFCEA West in San Diego, California.

“[The Navy needs] the expertise, the mastery and the warfighters — whether they be uniformed or civilian — who are able to integrate and understand all that technology and integrate the non-kinetic side of it and enable the command and control side of it,” said Vice Adm. Craig Clapperton, commander of Fleet Cyber Command, 10th Fleet and Navy Space Command, during an AFCEA West panel. “[They] protect and facilitate the movement and understanding of the battle space for the trigger pullers that are out there.”

Navy leaders are focused on speed to deploy disruptive capabilities throughout domains. Countering adversaries in the cyber domain requires harnessing information at the speed of technological innovation, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare and Director of Naval Intelligence Vice Adm. Karl Thomas said during the panel.

He cited Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti’s navigation plan that emphasizes the importance of speed to adapt quickly to emerging threats.

“[Franchetti’s navigation plan] harnesses many of the things that we’re looking at [and] is key to the future fight. If we think about the speed of information flow, … we recognize we need to work across all domains, and bring that information flow at the right time, to get the right effects,” Thomas added. “Harnessing all that at the speed of achieving battle space is one of our key challenges.”

Clapperton reinforced the importance of non-kinetic effects, battle space awareness and assured command and control in modern warfare. He added the fighting forces need to master integrating these capabilities between the enterprise, edge and across domains.

“If you can’t command and control, and you don’t have understanding of the battle space, you’re never going to get to the point where you can integrate kinetics and non-kinetics,” said Clapperton.

Capt. Colin Corridan, deputy director of the Navy’s Disruptive Capabilities Office, said that modern warfare requires agility, modularity and collaboration to adapt to the evolving threat landscape in places like the Middle East.

“Things change so rapidly. [It shows] how important it is to remain flexible,” Corridan said. “I was just coming from the Fifth Fleet area of operation, and what we were seeing there is how quickly the adversary is learning and the kind of tactics that they’re employing. It is really important for us to create a culture that we can stay agile, study modularity and understand how we can keep up with the adversary’s advances in their technology and respond accordingly.”

Clapperton said the “lack of agility in our acquisition process and the inability to bring the capabilities to the operations” is the biggest barrier to innovation, adding that industry partnerships can bridge the gap.

“With our industry partners, we are going to innovate and deliver and integrate those capabilities at speed we need … against the scale of adversaries,” said Clapperton

Corridan added that interoperability is critical to disrupt adversary activity, which has been critical in the recent Red Sea missions.

“We can not only talk within a joint force, but also with our partner nations,” Corridan said. “It’s huge — particularly out in the Red Sea right now — to be able to pass information. That’s the hard part.”