Network Centric Warfare, COIN, and Naval Doctrine

We have been observing the various discussions of an article written by Noah Shachtman of WIRED’s Danger Room called “How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social - Not Electronic“. We were not initially impressed after the first read, in fact on page 5 when General Petraeus tells Shachtman he is missing the point, we agreed with Petraeus and moved on. However, after Thomas P.M. Barnett weighed in with his criticism in defense of Admiral Cebrowski, our interest in this discussion returned.

The full summery of the banter is available courtesy of zenpundit, who has his own observations and some excellent links. While we find some of the analysis by Shachtman to be interesting, we were left unimpressed by most of the analysis. However, the article does raise an interesting discussion regarding the balance between a warfighter theory like Network Centric Warfare and a peacemaker theory like COIN. In reading the comments of both Shachtman, Barnett, and some additional discussion over the Small Wars Journal we observe that Shachtman missed a real opportunity to highlight a critical point in the hindsight study of Network Centric Warfare, specifically it appears the failure had occurred in the Pentagon in attempting to transform Admiral Cebrowski's Naval Network Centric Warfare theories into an Army concept, when in fact we observe the Network Centric Warfare doctrine of Admiral Cebrowski still makes sense for the Navy, even today.

What specifically has been shaping our internal discussions is the distinctions between the peacemaker challenges the Army faces vs the peacemaker challenges the Navy faces, and the role of both COIN and NCW in the context of the Navy challenges. The Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa both offer interesting examples of how the Navy balances peacemaker (COIN) and warfighter (NCW) in peacetime, but it is in fact the emphasis of NCW that makes the largest measurable positive results.

Consider this article from Strategypage today:

In the Persian Gulf, the pirates operate more like common thieves, looking for isolated fishing boats or small cargo craft, boarding them, and stealing the GPS , radio, cash, and anything else the crew might have. These are maritime muggings. The only warships out in international waters, where most of the robberies take place, are U.S. and NATO ships guarding the oil transport lanes, and offshore Iraqi oil facilities. So the fishermen try to stay as close to these warships as much as possible, secure in the knowledge that the pirates avoid these warships as much as possible. Thus you will often see warships slowly patrolling, out in the middle of the Persian Gulf, followed by a gaggle of fishing boats, trolling for fish, and protection from the pirates.

The gaggle is a result of the human interaction between the Navy and the local population, part of the COIN side of doctrine. The Navy has released a number of stories that have emphasized the relationship between the US Navy and fisherman in the Persian Gulf and off the Horn of Africa, specifically the interaction taking place on a daily basis through VBSS teams during Maritime Security Operations. That interaction between the VBSS teams and fisherman from various nations represents the COIN element to peacemaking in the region. The regional international Navy coalition has built up trust through interaction, and as this story is evidence too, the local population is thankful for the security presence.

The Army and Navy operate in completely different conditions defined by the environment. At sea, the population is always distributed, the population is mobile, and the force structures define the capacity for distributed force. The Distribution of frigates offers limited advantage in interacting with local populations at sea, because the number of frigates are ultimately small and finite, and cannot distribute the human element beyond a limited range from the main warship, which by default acts the role of the local municipality in international waters. It is noteworthy the US Navy intends to increase distribution through unmanned systems, but such a plan ultimately will not increase the human interaction, or human intelligence gathered due to the lack of... humans.

The Navy coalition in the region is left with perhaps as many as 2 dozen human interaction nodes, warships ranging from 3000-9000 tons, covering areas of sea several dozen times the size of Iraq. When considering the environment difference between the conditions the Army faces in Iraq, and the conditions the Navy faces at sea, I find it difficult to find any value in Shachtman's theories that Admiral Cebrowski had it wrong with Network Centric Warfare.

In the fight against piracy, the Navy has been practicing daily COIN style operations through Maritime Security Operations (VBSS) off the coast of Somalia. However, after years of adding the human element and interaction off that coast it is difficult to say the Navy has produced positive results in decreasing pirate activity. The limited number of warships off the Somalian coast tend to make one think it will be by accident that COIN style peacemaker operations will be successful. This isn't because COIN doctrine is broken, rather because the environment and conditions are different. It is because of the design of western Navies that those Navies simply cannot replicate the presence of a large distributed area at sea the same way an Army can do so on land. In the Danica White incident, like every pirate incident, the French warship utilized Network Centric Warfare doctrine to put the USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) in position to engage the pirates, COIN doctrine was never a factor, nor could it be.

We believe Shachtman missed the point. Admiral Cebrowski wasn't wrong about Network Centric Warfare, rather the Pentagon did a poor job of identifying its advantages and limitations in each service branch based on conditions, and we believe the Pentagon could very easily repeat that mistake with COIN doctrine. At sea, Network Centric Warfare takes a collection of ships and organizes them into a unified fleet distributed over large areas enabled by shared information. Furthermore, western fleets, and specifically US Navy vessels are neither designed or equipped to distribute manned forces over large enough areas at sea to utilize COIN peacemaking doctrine when facing irregular challenges, thus must rely on the NCW warfighter doctrine Admiral Cebrowski discusses.

Apparently Shachtman failed to observe the irony that Admiral Cebrowski advocated large numbers of small manned systems at sea for the US Navy, which by design has the effect of being a force designed to offer both a Network Centric Warfare warfighter doctrine and a distributed human interaction COIN doctrine in peacemaking.

As we have noted many times, the requirement for many distributed, small manned systems at sea is something this blog believes will eventually become part of Naval operations in the 21st Century, and why we often say we believe the Mothership for many manned deployable sea systems will ultimately be to the 21st Century Navy what the aircraft carrier was to the 20th Century Navy.