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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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2

Creating the 2035 Naval Forces

NAVAL FORCE RESTRUCTURING

To meet the demands of the future environment with the capabilities technology will make available, the naval forces will have to be extensively restructured—not instantly, but over time. The results of this study suggest that the following steps will be necessary:

  1. The Navy and the Marine Corps must make joint modernization plans based on jointly formulated concepts of operation; their missions are overlapping and complementary, and they will be operating and fighting together much of the time.

  2. The new kinds of forces can be created by investing in “entering wedges” of capability (the main ones are outlined below) that the forces can work with and learn how to use. To manage technical, financial, and organizational risks, the new capabilities would initially augment today's forces; if successful, and as evolved from experience, they would then replace today's capabilities with the more advanced ones that technology will make feasible.

  3. The Department of the Navy and the naval forces must change the way they think about building and financing the forces. They must think in terms of life-cycle costs; people, platforms, weapons, and mission subsystems designed together as single systems; and investment in total and enduring capabilities, rather than system acquisition, support, and manning separately. “Affordability” must be thought about in terms of value received for money that is spent within allocated budgets to achieve a desired or necessary capability, rather than as simply spending the least amount of money in any area, as the term has often come to be used.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
  1. Even this gradual approach will mean a commitment to shifting resources from ongoing programs and operations to new and challenging concepts, and accepting the risk that there will be failures in some cases. There must obviously be a broad base of support for such actions within the Department of the Navy and throughout the Defense Department, the Executive Branch, and the Congress. Without it, the naval forces could not be confident that resources made available by enhancing efficiency or reducing some current capabilities of lesser priority could be retained for application to the desired new capabilities. Building the base of support will be part of the restructuring task.

Preliminary steps toward restructuring the naval forces have already begun, in approaches to using information in warfare, in the emerging Operational Maneuver From the Sea doctrine and concepts of operation, in personnel management, in new and proposed ships, aircraft, submarines, weapons, and their employment and logistic support, and in joint operations and usage. Review of an illustrative example (in Chapter 8 ) shows that a feasible evolutionary path, accounting for past and current investments in durable systems over their useful service lives, can be followed that will lead to the revolutionary new naval force capabilities that the force restructuring will bring into being. The resulting forces will be more capable and more adaptable to the unexpected challenges of an uncertain future than are today's forces, thus warranting the risks entailed.

The desired future capabilities identified in this study are in the areas of information, people, fleet combat systems, undersea warfare, Marines' combat capability, logistics, and modeling and simulation, with an essential, focused, steadily supported R&D program underlying all of them.

Priorities in creating these capabilities cannot follow hard and fast rules, but rather must reflect a flexible rationale based on progress in crafting the new forces. Priorities may change as programs go through various stages of planning, acquisition, and deployment. In addition, some investments will merit attention simply because technology advances will offer important opportunities for improved effectiveness at modest cost and risk.

The following approach for assigning priorities is suggested:

  • First are the technologies that lead to information superiority and more effective use of people. Without the information advantage, the forces will not know precisely where to go, what targets to engage, and how to fight. Technologies for effective use of people must be given priority because it is people, operating increasingly complex and automated weapon and support systems, who fight and win wars, or ensure that wars are deterred, and because the naval forces are especially seeking to make more effective use of people in their resource-constrained environment.

  • Next are the weapon systems that constitute the strength of the fighting forces: surface and air systems, undersea systems, and land-combat systems.

  • Once the capabilities and needs generated in the previous two areas are

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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known, related essential logistical support must be provided, since the forces will not be able to operate as visualized if the logistic system is not reengineered to support the new capabilities and modes of operations.

  • At a similar level of importance, attention must be paid to modeling and simulation (M&S), which is becoming fundamental to virtually all aspects of major modern enterprises.

  • Finally, focused, sustained research and development, similarly prioritized, to support all the above areas is essential—without it, progress in the other areas will be haphazard and difficult to sustain.

FUTURE NAVAL FORCE CAPABILITIES

The entering wedges of naval force capability identified in this study that can lead to the restructured naval forces are described below in the order of the priorities just suggested.

Information in Warfare

The display screen used by the commander, from the CINC to the unit commander, with the information on it, the links to sources of information, the sensors and processing nodes that acquire and develop the information, and the links to weapons and their guidance to targets constitute essential parts of a warfighting system just as much as the ships, aircraft, and combat battalions of the Navy and Marine Corps. Although the quest for information advantage is a factor in all engagements at all force levels, “information superiority” overall must be considered a warfare area analogous to antisubmarine warfare (ASW), antisurface warfare (ASUW), antiair warfare (AAW), strike, and others. The entire area must be treated in an integrated fashion. The ultimate description of system characteristics and the impetus to acquire and modernize the system represented by the commander's display screen must come from the operational forces, as do the requirements for the other warfighting systems.

It is essential to ensure compatibility and interoperability of the naval force systems and other Services', agencies', and countries' systems in the joint and combined information “system of systems” and their essential support for the naval forces, whether the other systems are in space, in the atmosphere, or on land. Therefore, the Navy and Marine Corps must ensure that they are represented in joint forums with the other Services and agencies, and, when relevant, other countries' agencies, at levels that will ensure attention to each Service's information needs. This representation is especially important in the space arena, where the naval forces field few systems but are users of many. There will have to be a cadre of people who remain knowledgeable about space systems to continue the effective liaison that has served the naval forces so well in the past.

In addition, the multiplicity of systems for providing information in warfare

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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has reached a level of importance that requires Navy and Marine Corps personnel with dedicated specialties in information systems and information warfare.1 Appropriate incentives are needed to ensure that the naval forces find and retain personnel with the high level of ability that the area demands.

Resource constraints and technological opportunity will require adoption of commercially furnished systems for much of the communication and other technology associated with information in warfare. The naval forces, jointly with other forces, must take steps (detailed in the main body of this report and in Volume 3: Information in Warfare of this study series) to adapt to using the commercial technology and systems for military purposes, and they must provide the additional protections needed to guarantee the freedom from interference and exploitation that military applications may require. Communications will be critical links in the information-in-warfare system, and no means should be spared to ensure that they cannot be disrupted.

The information-in-warfare system may well become so complex that there will be a serious risk of self-jamming and confusion that could flood users with unneeded information or render necessary information inaccessible when it is needed, or cause dynamic command-and-control instabilities in the system. Means for timely information recovery and information understanding by those who need it will be an essential part of the information-in-warfare system, requiting continuous attention as the system grows. System instabilities will have to be guarded against. Also, doctrine and procedures must be developed for sharing the wealth of information with coalition partners in critical situations where their performance can affect operational success.

People in the Naval Forces

All major naval force systems are being designed to operate with fewer people who have more technical capability at their disposal and more responsibility in using it. This system design trend will require a complete revamping of the naval force personnel system in the years ahead, to improve education and training, to enhance job productivity, to improve the health and medical care of

1  

“Information warfare” is a term that has increased in prominence in recent years as the information basis of our society has increased. It includes learning all that can be learned about our opponents, their dispositions, actions, and intentions, in as near to real time as possible; maintaining similar knowledge about our own forces and those of our allies, coalition partners, and neutrals who may affect our operations; and taking any steps necessary to deny such information to our opponents, to confuse them about friendly activities and intentions, and to keep them from exploiting our information activities for their purposes. Information warfare in this sense has always been a feature of warfare. In modern times, however, technology has changed the nature of information warfare significantly, and it continues to do so. Information includes classical intelligence, and information warfare includes classical electronic warfare with electronic countermeasures and counter-countermeasures; their inclusion in the larger aggregation does not imply a diminution of their importance.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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naval force personnel (including care of combat casualties), and to retain them in the force longer.

Highly qualified, better educated people will be needed to meet the more demanding technical and operational conditions that future naval force systems and operations will impose. Some of them may be made available by lateral entry of personnel from populations not now in the recruiting pool. Known technology can be applied to speed training and improve job performance. Modern medical technology will make available advanced, technically aided support systems for enhanced health care, casualty treatment, and survival. These technologies are advancing rapidly in the civilian sector, and they are receiving attention at the management and research levels in the naval forces, but they are slow to reach the field. Vigorous and successful investment in these capabilities would lead to a “virtual increase” of considerable magnitude in naval force personnel.

Naval force program and personnel managers are aware that investment in an improved quality of life for Navy and Marine Corps personnel and their families is essential for retention and readiness. Current efforts by all the Services to establish models and quantifiable measures of quality of life will provide a basis for calculating the return on such investments (some examples of such measures are given in Chapter 7 ). Research and analysis are still needed to extend measures of quality of life per se to valid and useful measures of unit and force performance and cost, to inform investment decisions. Ongoing data collection mechanisms and data analysis capabilities must be embedded in organizations with the responsibility and capability to provide timely decision-making information across the spectrum of Navy and Marine Corps leadership.

Minimizing crew size through effective use of technology is a crucial goal for the future Navy. Success in accomplishing the necessary changes will require exceptionally effective training and exceptional reliability and survivability of the technical systems.

Fleet Combat Systems
Family of Land-attack Missiles

Based on the high responsiveness, rate of fire, and precision of rocket-propelled guided missiles, it is projected that achievable future advances in the missile technology and reduction of their costs will make it possible to greatly enhance the suitability and utility of such missiles for ship- and submarine-launched attack systems. A family of such missiles of different sizes (5-in., 10-in., and 21-in. diameters) for strike, interdiction, and fire support will give the fleet greatly enhanced firepower and surge capability, allowing effective engagement of large numbers of targets of many kinds at various ranges in very short times. With appropriate guidance the missiles could also be used against

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×

seaborne targets, and the smaller missiles in the family could be adapted to air launch.2

The proliferation of such attack missiles will affect the design of surface ships and submarines, and it will influence how combat aviation is used by the fleet. Because it can have such far-reaching effects, phased introduction of this capability is visualized. The missiles would be developed and used from available and currently planned launch tubes in the early phase. Commitment to major system, doctrine, and force structure changes would follow as the technology (including the anticipated cost reduction) proves itself and the forces gain confidence that the anticipated benefits will be realized.

The Navy's “arsenal ship” initiates and exemplifies the concept of a ship powerfully armed with missiles of the kind described, and others, to be available for the fleet to engage opposing forces pinpointed by the naval forces ' joint targeting system. Studies of the tradeoffs between efficiency and effectiveness, on the one hand, and the vulnerability of a large increment of military power embodied in one or a few ships, on the other, are needed to guide decisions about optimal numbers of such ships and of missile launch tubes on each such ship. After experience is gained with such ships, detailed studies of the comparative economics and effectiveness of aircraft- and gun-based systems and the missile-based systems, including consideration of all platforms and weapons in realistic scenarios involving the land, sea, and air forces, will be needed to design the mix of such systems in the overall forces.

Surface Ship and Submarine Design

All future ship and submarine designs will be able to take advantage of fully integrated, distributed sensors, actuators, and automation to minimize crew size and maximize system performance with the smaller crews. It will be possible to retrofit existing ships and submarines with these capabilities as well. A significant start has been made in this direction by the Navy's “smart ship” demonstration. In future ship and submarine designs, and in planning retrofits to the extent feasible, the crew, the logistic support, and integrated damage control will all have to be considered parts of the system from the start, and the entire system designed as a whole.

Additional design features made possible by advancing technology will include:

  • Passive signature reduction and capability for signature management in all regimes, for enhanced stealth and survivability;

  • Integrated electric power systems and advanced electric drive for more efficient and effective arrangement and use of ship volume;

2  

The Panel on Weapons of this study concluded that this family of missiles would be the preferred option, over many other missile, gun, and electromagnetic launcher possibilities, for surface-to-surface fire over the long term.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
  • Surface ship structures made of composite materials, for reduced signature and maintenance;

  • Advanced hull forms to enhance speed, seakeeping, and stealth for surface combatants; and

  • Open architectures with modular design to enable more rapid and less expensive maintenance and upgrading of weapon and other ship and submarine systems.

Future tactical submarines will embody much advanced technology, especially in sensors, stealth, power density, and efficiencies attending the development of electric drive and continuing research in nuclear plant design. They will have multimission capability oriented toward support of expeditionary naval force operations. This will include the ability to launch and recover auxiliary vehicles. The submarines will be able to fire large numbers of land-attack missiles from appropriately designed vertical launch systems, and they will need the ability to communicate with the combat information system to enable them to carry out sustained attack missions against targets on land when hostile detection and land-based defenses pose unacceptable risks to the surface fleet or its missions.

Fleet Aviation

Piloted aircraft for attack will continue to be needed in situations requiring the pilot's adaptiveness on the spot, visual target identification, delivery of larger warheads than the land-attack missiles will be able to carry, and sustained campaigns where the prospect of aircraft losses remains low. Defensive counter-air will be able to take advantage of networked, multistatic targeting techniques, enabling longer-range engagements with air-to-air missiles and surface-to-air missiles in the “forward pass” mode and alleviating the predicament, which is expected to persist, that foreign short-range air-to-air missiles will closely match those of the United States in performance. Aircraft providing close air support will add locally to the high volume of surface-launched fire support to help sustain the rapid pace of future ground operations.

New aircraft engine, structures, and flight-control technologies are expected to reduce the weight penalty for the short or vertical takeoff and vertical landing capability of fixed-wing aircraft. Thus, special emphasis on short takeoff and landing (STOL) or short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft capable of flexible operation from a variety of ships and land bases is warranted for the next generation of fixed-wing naval force combat aircraft.

Preservation and enhancement of stealth in aircraft design will continue to be essential. Greater attention will be needed to reducing infrared signatures of aircraft to mitigate the threat of shoulder-fired, infrared (IR)-guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at low altitude and of IR-guided air-to-air missiles in air combat, and there will be technologies to help in this area; the problem will

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×

intensify as staring IR arrays are introduced into the weapons. Advanced aerodynamics, microsensor activated controls, and materials permitting higher aircraft engine operating temperatures will offer the opportunity to expand the aircraft flight envelope, while new design and manufacturing technologies are expected to reduce production costs significantly.

There will also be a mix of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in fleet aviation. At one end of the mix will be high-altitude, long-endurance craft that may operate from carriers or be refueled from them in the air to provide the equivalent of a surveillance satellite in stationary orbit over naval forces at sea. At the other end of the mix, UAVs flown and recovered from carrier decks will be used for targeting opposing ground force elements and for other combat-related applications.

Aerial elements of amphibious operations, including attack helicopters, may be launched from large-deck carriers as well as from amphibious ships. Finally, the carriers will continue to operate ASW airplanes and helicopters, and other aircraft involved in surveillance and logistic support.

Carriers will thus become increasingly versatile as multipurpose air bases at sea. Carrier design can be expected to evolve in diverse ways with the need to operate all the existing and new kinds of naval force aircraft. All of the technology advances in crew reduction, signature management, and lightweight superstructures that will shape the next generation of surface combatants will be applicable to and beneficial for carriers.

Undersea Warfare

Antisubmarine warfare (ASW) research and development (R&D) budgets have been allowed to decline markedly in the post-Cold War years. However, capable and quiet nuclear and nonnuclear submarines are proliferating worldwide, many to nations that may become antagonists. U.S. naval forces will be operating in waters along the littoral in modes that favor the submarine, where detection is difficult and with increased dependence on timely logistic support concentrated at sea. At some point, in less time than it will take the United States to catch up again, hostile submarines in this environment could be in a position to seriously inhibit operational maneuvers from the sea. Attention and funding to a level sufficient for the following tasks will have the greatest payoff for ASW:

  • Extending the opportunities for passive detection, by taking advantage of advances in microsensors and fiber optics for very large sensor arrays and advanced computing to perform coherent signal processing;

  • Applying the array signal processing mathematics and computing developed thereby to multistatic, active detection and tracking;

  • Pursuing multispectrum active and passive nonacoustic sensors in parallel with acoustic sensor development;

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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  • Netting all the fixed, surface, air, and submarine ASW assets in a cooperative engagement mode, and providing the essential tactical communications with submarines, both underwater and on the surface; and

  • Improving antisubmarine weapons and counterweapons, with special attention to advanced warheads and performance in adverse littoral environments against sophisticated countermeasures and tactics.

Even with the increasing attention being given to countermine warfare by the naval forces, rapid minefield clearance to protect shipping areas and to facilitate over-the-shore naval force operations remains a difficult problem. Still needed are better means to rapidly focus countermine operations, and means for rapid minefield clearance, especially in the surf and craft landing zones. The former can best be accomplished by attention to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that will allow mine interdiction, minefield avoidance, and concentration of mine countermeasures (MCM) assets only where mines exist. The Global Positioning System (GPS) aboard all MCM and transiting ships and craft will permit significantly narrower cleared channels. Many small (e.g., 30 tons or less) sea and air MCM platforms supported by a suitable amphibious-type “mother ship,” and use of some expendable mine clearance vehicles, can provide rapid mine neutralization and clearance capability organic to amphibious forces, equivalent to as many as 20 MHC-51 3 mine-hunting vessels. Rapid clearance in the surf and craft landing zones prior to a landing can be done by “brute force” methods. The most promising of those is the air delivery of large, precision-emplaced and -detonated explosive charges in an analog to a line charge that creates a channel through surf zone and beach defenses by simply throwing them out of the way if they are not destroyed. Finally, today's mine clearance systems must stand down during night hours. If they were equipped to operate effectively at night, that would in essence double the available MCM capability of expeditionary forces.

These enhancements to the ongoing mine warfare programs can, by the middle of the next decade, bring the naval forces much closer to the much-sought capability for clearing mines rapidly in preparation for an amphibious landing, and for keeping strategic waters mine-free. Their value in the forces would persist for decades longer.

Ground Force Operations in Populated Areas

The recent Naval Studies Board report on the Navy and Marine Corps in regional conflict4 described many steps that the naval forces should take to be better able to operate in populated areas against various kinds of opposition. This report elaborates on some of them, emphasizing means for conquering pop-

3  

Mine hunter, coastal—a class of ship.

4  

Naval Studies Board. 1996. The Navy and Marine Corps in Regional Conflict in the 21st Century, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×

ulated areas without incurring very high friendly and collateral casualties and destruction, and also means for disabling the war-supporting capability of populated areas without occupying them. Much of what is discussed in this report is “in work” in Navy Department and Defense Department programs. Two aspects of such operations especially merit top-level attention:

  • Making certain that there is adequate and accurate intelligence preparation to enter unfamiliar foreign areas where the local leaders and tactics could surprise and defeat U.S. forces. This will require some “educated guesses” about where such areas might be, as well as years of advanced preparation of plans and reading-in of potential commanders, along with the willingness to have some of that effort wasted because the need to use it may not arise.

  • Extending the techniques and the intelligence preparation to terrorism and other nonconventional means of warfare.

Although these are joint and combined responsibilities that extend beyond the military, they are important for the naval forces because those forces are likely to be first on the spot in many crises.

Logistics

Logistics can be the limiting factor in military force operations at the best of times. The new doctrines and methods for “lean” force operations will increase that risk because they call for reducing dependence on large and usually overstocked forward supply bases in the theater of operations, and increasing reliance on delivery of supplies from their source when needed and as needed. The 1996 regional conflict study referred to above describes in some detail how the logistic system must be reengineered to accomplish this during operational maneuvers from sea to shore and for some period thereafter. The present report extends those observations beyond the immediate area of operations. Key areas for attention and application of modern technology include:

  • Providing for distributed, computer-assisted readiness support, moving many support functions from sea to shore in the continental United States (CONUS) or a few forward bases, and taking steps to reduce personnel and use them more efficiently in shore installations and operations, just as is planned for shipboard;

  • Ensuring total asset visibility from source to user, to reduce waste through excessive supplies in the system and to speed delivery of supplies;

  • Building the system around containerized supply delivery5 compatible with commercial intermodal transport systems;

5  

“Containerized” supply refers to packaging of supplies in containers that are not opened between origin and destination, that are tracked by the use of electronic markers and databases, and that are standardized in size and packing modes. Use of such containers is now standard in commercial intermodal shipping.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
  • Improving the capability for ship-to-shore transport, especially for movement over the beach, and for “retail delivery” to users beyond the beach; and

  • Ensuring compatibility with civilian systems, since they may be called on to help when military capacity runs short.

Munitions constitute a large fraction (on the order of 40 percent) of the wartime logistic load. Shifting much of the strike and fire support from unguided bombs and shells to more frequent use of guided weaponry, and from air-launched to tube-launched weapons, is expected to significantly reduce the time required to defeat large target complexes and is therefore likely to affect ammunition resupply requirements for ships at sea and forces ashore in currently unpredictable ways. An exploration of the potential changes in resupply requirements entailed in the extensive use of precision weapons must be undertaken as part of the planning for the reengineered logistic system.

Logistics and support, in addition to communications, are areas in which commercial services will be used extensively for the foreseeable future.

Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation (M&S) demands attention, support, and participation by the top Department of the Navy command and management levels because it affects every aspect of military force design, equipment, and operation. Although many steps are being taken at lower command levels to manage the growing use of M&S, many critical loose ends remain. The necessary integration of viewpoint and utilization cannot “just happen” without such attention and support. Especially needed is attention to the following:

  • Compatibility, consistency, and seamless interfaces between Navy and Marine Corps approaches to using M&S, and inclusion of the implications of the joint environments of expeditionary warfare;

  • Coordination of inputs to the Joint Staff Simulation System (JSIMS) and Joint Warfare System (JWARS) simulation programs that will drive much of DOD planning, including that of the naval forces; and

  • Ensuring that existing models and simulations are upgraded or, if necessary, replaced (1) to give them a sound theoretical basis in accord with current knowledge and theory describing adaptive behavior of systems and forces in combat and in other aspects of modern warfare; (2) to account for uncertainty in threats and planning; and (3) to incorporate new ways of programming the behavior of networked systems. At present there is little or no empirical support to attest to the credibility of models and simulations used to make major system acquisition and military operational decisions. The M&S community must provide that support as part of an ongoing M&S R&D program by testing their models against real-world events and data wherever feasible. Databases to support such validation efforts must be built.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
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RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

The section titled “Focused Research and Development” in Chapter 7 of this report, and the eight panel reports that constitute the main output of this study, describe the many areas of research and development needed to create the force capabilities that will shape the naval forces of 2035. Without a strong and sustained R&D program, few of the desired advances will be achieved.

The research and development section in Chapter 7 describes the areas of technology that especially require concentration in Department of the Navy R&D. Within other areas, the preponderance of R&D may be performed by civilian commercial enterprises, so that the Department of the Navy can concentrate its R&D efforts on military applications of a product. However, since civilian enterprises are coming to have a short-term view in today's competitive environment, the Department of the Navy must first ascertain that the civilian world will indeed meet its basic, long-term research needs before giving up such research in any key area.

Aviation has benefited strongly from sustained Navy Department and joint R&D efforts such as the Integrated High Performance Turbine Engine Technology (IHPTET) program. Such programs are especially needed now in surface ship and submarine R&D. These areas are all similar in that they make timely and sometimes rapid progress by steadily building on successive advances in specific technical areas, with periodic application of the advances to a major product development when new levels of capability have been achieved. Other unique areas requiring special Navy efforts in R&D include oceanography and ASW. The needed advances in these and the other areas listed in “Focused Research and Development” in Chapter 7 will be much more difficult to achieve without such a focused, sustained, and coordinated R&D program.

Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Creating the 2035 Naval Forces." National Research Council. 1997. Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 1: Overview. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5838.
×
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