Warfare Analysis

Program Highlights—2004

The role of warfare analysis has taken on increasing importance as the Services and the Joint Staff individually and collectively continue the process of Transformation.  The Defense Department faces critical decisions during this transformation process as it strives to develop a Force capable of dealing with asymmetric threats, conducting irregular and counter-insurgency warfare, and effectively pursuing the Global War on Terrorism (the nature of which suggests the need for strengthening collaboration with agencies at all levels of government, and with multinational partners)—while at the same time constituting an effective and credible conventional warfighting capability.  APL’s Warfare Analysis Business Area conducts studies and analyses for the Defense Department at the policy-making level and at the government planning level, to assist the Department decision-makers as they address these critical challenges regarding future defense needs and capabilities.

G. Melcher, Warfare Analysis Business Area Executive and Assistant Department Head

Sea Power 21. Sea Power 21 is the Navy vision composed of four core Naval Capability Pillars: Sea Shield, Sea Strike, Sea Basing, and FORCEnet. The Naval Capabilities Development Process (NCDP) is organized according to these four core naval capabilities and is the evaluation process used for recommending the alignment of warfighting requirements and programs to provide required future warfighting capabilities and force structure. APL continues as the prime architect for the Sea Shield Capability Pillar analytic process. In this role, APL developed and facilitated two war games, including the principal game involving over 30 flag officers, which provided the basis for the development of the Sea Shield PR-07 Focus Issues; is responsible for the development of study objectives and methodologies, product definitions, and coordination of these studies; and overall integration of results. Senior Navy officers are using the results of these Sea Shield assessments to establish funding priorities for the next six years.

To implement the Sea Shield concept, the Navy is developing a small, fast warship called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that can conduct anti-submarine (ASW), mine (MIW), and surface (SUW) warfare near hostile territory. APL supported this effort by developing and analyzing multiple operational scenarios, to aid in the development of an analytic-based set of concepts-of-operations (CONOPS) for this new ship. The APL team developed a set of tactical situations suited for the analyses, developed and evaluated a family of ASW, SUW, and MIW CONOPS including off-board system employment tactics, and provided a report detailing these analyses and recommendations.

APL analysts also contributed to an OPNAV-sponsored Future Surface Combatant study whose objective is to develop requirements for the next-generation Cruiser within the construct of the new OSD Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process. The APL Analysis Team participated in the development of the technical approach and the analysis study plan and led the development of the tactical situations (TACSITs) to be used for the analysis. APL analysts prepared the proposed operational tasks, conditions, and standards for the Functional Area Analysis (FAA) and participated in writing the FAA report as well as facilitating a Campaign Seminar in the Warfare Analysis Laboratory (WAL) to review the TACSITs and FAA with Navy and Joint service representatives. Continuing assessment efforts will be incorporated into the next major JCIDS-process product, a Functional Needs Analysis (FNA) report.

Joint Force Capabilities. The Laboratory supports The Joint Chiefs of Staff in its implementation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) Process, a capabilities-based approach that better leverages the expertise of all government agencies, industry, and academia to identify improvements to existing capabilities and to develop new warfighting capabilities. APL provides analytical, technical, and modeling and simulation expertise to identify prioritized capability gaps and integrated material and nonmaterial solutions to resolve those gaps. Solutions are developed, evaluated, and prioritized based on their contribution to future joint operations.

APL most recently led analytic efforts for the development of the Functional Needs Analyses for Joint Forcible Entry Operations (JFEO) and Joint Undersea Superiority. APL analysts identified or developed appropriate operational scenarios, identified critical capabilities and attributes, specified appropriate measures of effectiveness, and performed quantitative analyses to identify and prioritize gaps, shortfalls, and redundancies as part of these joint capability based assessments.

Recent operational experience continues to demonstrate a need for a more effective system for tracking of U.S. and other friendly forces. To this end, USJFCOM has been charged to develop a comprehensive plan for fielding a Blue Forces Tracking (BFT) System. APL has provided technical leadership and oversight for this effort, comprising a series of joint experiments and joint exercises focused on demonstrating and evaluating current systems capabilities and the interoperability among these systems, and providing the data and analytic underpinning for proposing a comprehensive plan for fielding a functional near-real-time BFT system. In this role, APL analysts have led efforts to define testing objectives, identify measures of performance and measures of effectiveness, coordinate test objectives among a number of experiments and exercises, develop data collection and analysis plans, and collect, evaluate, and analyze data from the various test events. APL is currently assisting in developing the final assessment report, which will lay the groundwork for potential down-select of BFT systems and provide a recommended way-ahead for developing, acquiring, and fielding an improved BFT capability.

The challenges of developing and operating a future fully networked joint force in hostile littoral areas was the focus of an APL study to identify individual and collective technologies that would allow unimpeded joint force access through a contested littoral. The Chief of Naval Operations and the Director of DARPA entered into an agreement to explore future concepts for a Littoral Naval Force Architecture that will enable unimpeded joint force access into a contested littoral in 96 hours.

The objectives of the study were to identify the individual technologies necessary for successful operation in areas defended by forces ashore, by mines, submarines, small craft, and anti-ship missiles; and to define the desirable and achievable performance characteristics of various manned and unmanned systems useable in a Littoral Naval Force. The study produced a Littoral Naval Warfare architecture and associated CONOPS, a description of the capabilities required to implement them, and a recommended set of new technology investment decisions.

APL is supporting a joint effort of the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance Integrated Battle Command (IBC) processes that drive U.S. joint and coalition military force actions. The APL study team conducted and provided a description of a baseline of key and current, joint, crisis action and deliberate military planning, execution, monitoring, and assessment processes associated with the USJFCOM Standing Joint Force Headquarters (SJFHQ) prototype model.