[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 114-75]
GAME CHANGING INNOVATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF SURFACE WARFARE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
DECEMBER 9, 2015
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
98-280 WASHINGTON : 2016
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia, Chairman
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia RICK LARSEN, Washington
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Vice MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
Chair HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri Georgia
PAUL COOK, California SCOTT H. PETERS, California
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
JACKIE WALORSKI, Indiana GWEN GRAHAM, Florida
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma
David Sienicki, Professional Staff Member
Phil MacNaughton, Professional Staff Member
Katherine Rember, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy, a Representative from Virginia, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces................. 1
WITNESSES
McGrath, Bryan, Managing Director, The Ferrybridge Group, LLC.... 1
Solomon, Jonathan F., Senior Systems and Technology Analyst,
Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc............................. 3
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative from Connecticut,
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection
Forces..................................................... 21
Forbes, Hon. J. Randy........................................ 19
McGrath, Bryan............................................... 24
Solomon, Jonathan F.......................................... 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
GAME CHANGING INNOVATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF SURFACE WARFARE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, December 9, 2015.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:30 p.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. J. Randy Forbes
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. J. RANDY FORBES, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND
PROJECTION FORCES
Mr. Forbes. We would like to welcome our witnesses today to
this hearing on game-changing innovations and the future of
surface warfare.
As we have previously told you, we may be interrupted with
a vote. So Mr. Courtney and I both have agreed that we are just
going to put our opening statements in for the record so that
we can go ahead and begin and try to get all the testimony in
and then hopefully get to our questions and answers.
Today joining us are two thought leaders in the area of
surface warfare, Mr. Bryan McGrath, the Managing Director of
the FerryBridge Group, and Mr. Jonathan Solomon, Senior
Analyst, Systems Planning and Analysis, Incorporated.
And gentlemen, both of you, we appreciate you being here
today.
And Bryan, it is my understanding you are going to start us
off. So with that, we yield the floor to you.
First of all, Joe, did you have anything you wanted to add?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Forbes can be found in the
Appendix on page 19.]
Mr. Courtney. No--I waive my opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Courtney can be found in the
Appendix on page 21.]
Mr. Forbes. Okay.
STATEMENT OF BRYAN McGRATH, MANAGING DIRECTOR, THE FERRYBRIDGE
GROUP, LLC
Mr. McGrath. Great. Chairman Forbes, thank you. Ranking
Member Courtney, members of the subcommittee, thanks again for
the opportunity to testify with you on a matter of importance
to our Navy and to the Nation.
The discussion today revolves around game changers and
innovations in the future of surface warfare. And I have a few
of those in my written statement that I submitted. I'd love to
answer some questions about them if you have them later.
Some of those game changers include--they flow almost all
from the concept of Distributed Lethality which is something I
know you have heard a lot about lately, including long-range
surface-to-surface missile improvements, multi-source maritime
targeting and tracking, real-time ISR [intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance] vulnerability assessment,
electromagnetic spectrum warfare and medium-altitude long-
endurance UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles].
But I think before we jump into the sort of tactical and
operational stuff, I would like to elevate it back to some
first things.
I realize no one was being glib when the title of this
hearing was chosen, but I think it is important that we think
about exactly what game it is that we are seeking to change.
And as we watch China reprise its ancient role of dominance
in the East and we watch Russia exhibit its modern version of
its historic geographic paranoia, we are confronted with the
obvious reality of multi-polar, great-power competition.
This reality leads me to conclude that the game, for want
of a better term, is conventional deterrence. This is a game
for which I think the United States Navy is somewhat less
prepared than I would like.
There are many reasons for this, and we can discuss them as
you desire. Among them, however, is the accreted effects of
decades without a competitor and the Navy's slow realization
that this is no longer the case.
That this realization has occurred late is bad enough, but
it is compounded by the impact of ruinous resource constraints.
The second issue, and what I would like to close on in this
statement, is I think we have a little bit of a collective
fascination with technology. Senior officials in the Defense
Department will tell you with a straight face that the Third
Offset Strategy is not all about technology and then commence a
40-minute discussion about the Third Offset Strategy that is
all technology.
Offset strategies one and two occurred when the United
States dominated the technology world worldwide. And even
within the United States, technology was dominated by the
government and by the military. Neither of those conditions
applies today.
Technology has been commercialized and globalized. And
trying to pull a rabbit out of the technology hat again is
going to prove much more difficult this time. There is no
substitute for the Nation spending what is required in order to
see to its security and prosperity. There is no substitute for
the time-honored contributions of stockpiled weapons, powerful,
forward-deployed surface ships, combat-ready surge forces, and
a robust industrial base.
There is no substitute for the psychology of conventional
deterrence, which suggests to potential aggressors that not
only is your aggression going to be punished, but it is likely
to be unsuccessful.
I counsel against ignoring these simpler notions while we
search for technological silver bullets. World leadership
cannot be had on the cheap and we must decide whether we
continue to value our position and role in the world and then
resource it accordingly.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McGrath can be found in the
Appendix on page 24.]
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Solomon.
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN F. SOLOMON, SENIOR SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY
ANALYST, SYSTEMS PLANNING AND ANALYSIS, INC.
Mr. Solomon. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman Forbes----
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Solomon, can you pull that a little bit
closer and make sure it is turned on?
Mr. Solomon. First, I apologize. Okay, I thank you,
Chairman Forbes and Ranking Member Courtney, and all the
members of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee for
granting me the honor of testifying today.
I am going to keep my remarks about 3\1/2\ minutes because
I am very excited to go forward into the open question-and-
answer.
So a bit of background. I am a former U.S. Navy Surface
Warfare Officer and I served as Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer
and a fire control officer of destroyers during my two division
officer tours before leaving active duty.
My civilian job for the past 11 years at Systems Planning
and Analysis, Incorporated, has been to provide programmatic
and systems engineering support to various surface combat
systems acquisition programs within the portfolio of the Navy's
Program Executive Officer Integrated Warfare Systems.
This work has provided me an opportunity to participate,
however peripherally, in the development of some of the surface
Navy's future combat systems technologies. It has also enriched
my understanding of the technical principles and considerations
that affect cost and performance. This is no small thing
considering I am not an engineer by education.
Before I continue, I want to make clear that the views I
express today are presented solely in my personal capacity.
They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning
and Analysis, Incorporated, and to my knowledge do not reflect
the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Defense,
any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.
In recent years, and with the generous support and
encouragement of Mr. Bryan McGrath, I have taken up the hobby
of writing articles that connect my academic background in
maritime strategy, naval history and naval technology, and
deterrence theory, with my professional experiences.
One of my favorite topics concerns the challenges and
opportunities surrounding the potential use of electronic
warfare [EW] in modern maritime operations, a subject that I
first encountered while in active duty and later explored in
great detail during my master's thesis investigation, how
advanced wide-area oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance-
targeting systems of systems were countered in the Cold War and
might be countered again in the future.
Electronic warfare receives remarkably little attention in
the ongoing debates over future operating concepts and the
like. Granted, classification serves as a barrier with respect
to specific capabilities and systems.
But electronic warfare's basic technical principles and
effects are and have always been unclassified. I believe that
much of the present unfamiliarity concerning electronic warfare
stems from the fact it has been almost a quarter century since
U.S. naval forces last had to be prepared to operate under
conditions in which victory, not to mention survival, in battle
hinged upon achieving temporary localized mastery of the
electromagnetic spectrum over the adversary.
America's chief strategic competitors intimately understand
the importance of electronic warfare to fighting at sea. Soviet
Cold War-era tactics for anti-ship attacks have been leveraged
with what they termed ``radio-electronic combat'' and there is
plenty of open-source evidence available to suggest this
remains true in today's Russian military as well.
The Chinese are no different with respect to how they
conceive of fighting under ``informatized conditions.''
In a conflict against either of these two great powers,
U.S. maritime forces' sensors and communications pathways would
surely be subjected to intense disruption, denial, and
deception via jamming tactics.
Likewise, ill-disciplined electromagnetic transmissions by
U.S. maritime forces in the combat zone might very well prove
suicidal in that they could provide an adversary a bull's-eye
for aiming its long-range weapons.
To their credit, the Navy's senior-most leadership have
gone to great lengths to stress the importance of electronic
warfare in recent years, most notably in the new Maritime
Strategy.
They have even launched a new concept they call
electromagnetic maneuver warfare, which appears geared toward
exactly the types of capabilities I outline in my prepared
statement.
It is therefore quite likely that major elements of the
U.S. Navy's future war, surface warfare vision, Distributed
Lethality, will take electronic warfare considerations into
account.
I would suggest that Distributed Lethality's developers do
so in three areas in particular: command and control doctrine,
force-wide communications methods, and over-the-horizon
targeting and counter-targeting measures.
I want to be clear that the tools and tactics I advocate
for in my prepared statement will not serve as silver bullets
that shield our forces from painful losses, and there will
always be some degree of risk and uncertainty involved in the
use of these measures. It will be up to our force commanders to
decide when conditions seem right for their use in support of
particular thrusts.
Such measures should be viewed as force multipliers that
grant us much better odds of perforating an adversary's oceanic
surveillance and reconnaissance systems of systems temporarily
and locally, if used smartly, and thus better odds of
operational and strategic successes.
And with that, I look forward to your questions and
discussion that will follow. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Solomon can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mr. Forbes. Thank you.
Mr. McGrath, you have talked a lot about Distributed
Lethality as kind of a game changer for surface fleet
operations, especially with our carrier groups. There is a huge
risk to that, however, though. For Distributed Lethality to
work, we are going to have to distribute our force away from
the carrier where we have normally used it for protection.
Two questions I have for you. Describe that risk. How do we
know that that risk is worth taking? Because do we not increase
the vulnerability that we would have for a carrier in that
particular situation?
And the second thing is we don't get to tell the Navy how
to fight, we simply help provide them resources for them to
utilize when they have made those decisions. What shifts would
we have to make in our resourcing if we were to move to a
Distributed Lethality concept or operation of fighting?
Mr. McGrath. The risks, your first question, Chairman
Forbes, the surface leadership has been very clear from the
beginning that job one remains high-value unit protection, that
the anti-surface, anti-submarine, integrated air and missile
defense capabilities that they provide to the strike group
through the ships of the surface force cannot and will not be
diminished.
But there are other surface ships in the war plans that are
not necessarily allocated just to supporting high-value units.
It is with these ships and hopefully in a future where we build
more ships that Distributed Lethality will have its greatest
impact.
The second question with respect to where you might shift
your resources, long-range, surface-to-surface missiles, job
one, the quicker the better, more pressure on the Navy rather
than less. You don't get to tell them how to fight, but you can
ask really hard questions and make them give really hard
answers.
Why would we not harvest low-hanging fruit in order to take
our longest-range, surface-to-surface weapon from approximately
70 miles to a thousand miles in 5 or 6 years? That seems to me
like it is worth considering. That is turning the Tomahawk
land-attack missile into a hybrid surface and land-attack
missile.
So I would urge you to push hard on surface-to-surface
missiles, and I would urge you to push hard on closing the
grand fire control loop.
We have national technical means, we have UAVs, we have
battle group assets, theater assets, fleet assets. All of these
assets are creating data, taking measurements, information. We
need to make sure that that data is fused and that fire control
quality tracks are sent back out to the ships in a way that can
be tactically useful and relevant.
We have all the pieces, they are just not very well
connected yet. And you should make the Navy tell you how they
are going to do that.
Mr. Forbes. So let me just make one clarifying or add one
clarifying question. As I hear you, you are suggesting that we
are not taking away any of our defensive capabilities, we are
simply adding a supplement to that, which would have offensive
capabilities.
Because it was my understanding from most of the briefings
that I have gotten from the Navy on Distributed Lethality that
they were talking about something a little different, where
they were trading off current defensive capabilities for more
offensive capabilities.
But that is not the way you see Distributed Lethality?
Mr. McGrath. Not at all.
Mr. Forbes. Okay, good.
Okay, Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to the witnesses.
The title of the hearing is about game-changing
innovations. And I think, again, we have heard a good
discussion about offensive sort of game-changing innovations.
In terms of, you know, electronic warfare, in terms of
hardening, I think that was the term that Mr. McGrath used in
his testimony, our fleet, maybe you could talk a little bit
about that sort of piece of game changing.
Mr. Solomon. So I think it is twofold, it is both
technological and psychological.
From the technological standpoint, and this is my personal
opinion again, the Navy has not invested in electronic warfare
to the extent that it did during the Cold War over the last 30
years or so.
There is certainly fantastic capabilities out there and
certainly new fantastic capabilities in the development path.
But you get the sense that the Navy is a little bit behind in
terms of pacing types of threats that we are seeing right now
from other great powers.
So there is certainly a technological aspect to it, and
procuring new systems will give us the new capability. But I
personally see that the psychological is actually perhaps the
more disconcerting one. And that is, again, in 30 years we
haven't conditioned our forces for operations under opposed
electromagnetic conditions.
You know, back in the Cold War we routinely operated our
carrier battle groups at emissions control conditions, EMCON.
They would be dark for days on end driving around the Atlantic,
driving the Soviets nuts in terms of trying to find them.
During my research, I found that in 1981, this has, again,
not been confirmed by the Navy, but it is enough anecdotal
evidence to show that something like this probably happened, we
drove a combined U.S. naval battle force up into the Norwegian
Sea right out of Norfolk and the Soviets didn't find it until
we started running offensive drills right off of the Northern
Cape.
And the amount of discipline required to do that is just
kind of staggering. It is disciplining when we talk on the
radio, when we radiate, who radiates, flying an E-2 off the
carrier using an emissions control profile so it gets outbound,
pops up to make it difficult for the opponent to figure out
where it is actually flying from.
These are all tactics that you don't get proficient
overnight, it takes a long time.
And on the other side of the coin, it takes a long time to
build up the psychological hardening for when the adversary
starts jamming your communications, jamming your radars.
You know, we used to have drills where we would jam
ourselves harder than, you know, the Russians might have, you
know, so I have been told. And certainly they used various
tricks when they came out to visit us back in those days I have
been told as well.
And I am not sure we have done that type of training in the
last couple of decades. Certainly when I was on active duty we
didn't do that.
So if you look at what we would have to be able to do, both
in terms of hardening ourselves against the adversary's
electronic warfare and being able to do the kinds of things we
did to the Soviets, to great powers today, I am not sure we are
there.
I think it requires a great deal of training, a great deal
of experimentation, and a great deal of just basic conditioning
from the highest levels of the Navy on down where we let
captains and deckplate sailors and officers know that it is
okay to take some risk, it is okay to take the tactical mission
out.
You are not going to have some senior officer back on the
carrier even further away micromanaging your decisions over a
comms [communications] net because we know that net wouldn't be
survivable in the event of war.
And so we are willing to take some of those tactical risks
to do that. And I think that that is a big missing piece of
that.
Mr. Courtney. Okay.
Mr. McGrath, I mean, you were sort of alluding to the same
sort of innovation. It is not all about technology, it is also
about, I guess, a psychological frame of mind. I don't know if
you want to just maybe embellish on that.
Mr. McGrath. I have sort of a vignette for you. In March of
2014 when the Navy went up to the Naval War College to do the
LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] war game that was directed by the
Secretary of Defense when he first started to truncate the LCS
program, they played the game in a manner in which at some
point they gave the U.S. Navy side a medium-range, 130-or-so
nautical mile, surface-to-surface missile and put it on the
previously not-so-armed LCSs.
And they looked at the psychological difference between how
the blue commander operated that force and then also how the
red commander responded to that force.
And what was interesting about the blue commanders was
those ships were no more capable of taking a punch than they
previously were. They were capable only of delivering a punch
more effectively at a longer range.
But what that did for the risk calculus in their minds was
for them to say it is harder and he is going to pay a higher
cost if he initiates conflict. Therefore, I can take more risk
with my force. I think that is important.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Bridenstine is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am a Navy pilot myself. Loved your discussion about the
E-2 Hawkeye. I was one of those guys that flew off the carrier.
And of course, we did tactics so that they wouldn't know where
we were coming from necessarily.
And then, of course, doing the EMCON recoveries required
high-intensity operations from the Hawkeye because we would
offset a pretty significant distance and then control the
recovery.
I would just share with you, one of the challenges we faced
over and over again with network-centric warfare as a
capability was the interoperations of all the different
systems.
We would have, you know, one kind of system for the E-2
Hawkeye, and then the other systems weren't necessarily
interoperable with what the Hawkeye was using at the time.
Is there evidence today that there is more interoperability
and integration in this network-centric capability that we are
developing?
Mr. McGrath. Sir, I think you and I are probably--I am
probably a little bit older than you are.
Mr. Bridenstine. Not probably much.
Mr. McGrath. But we probably served as contemporaries. And
I underwent the same nightmare that you did.
It is primarily a function of the way we buy and develop
systems and the way we implement standards, technical
standards. This ship, this version of this ship implements the
Link 16 standard to this degree.
Mr. Bridenstine. Yes.
Mr. McGrath. The E-2C to this degree, the AWACS [Airborne
Early Warning and Control System] to this degree. Where there
are implementation differences, there is mischief.
Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
Mr. McGrath. And my ship shows the track as a neutral,
yours shows it as an unknown, assumed friend. These are things
that take operator time.
We work through that. I think you are seeing more
integrated development, more adherence to standards, better
what we used to call SIAP, one and only one track per object.
Mr. Bridenstine. Single integrated air picture.
Mr. McGrath. Right, single integrated air picture. That
sort of thinking is much more well-established in the fleet and
in the joint force.
One of the things that really drove that was CEC
[Cooperative Engagement Capability].
Mr. Bridenstine. Right, which was the Hawkeye initiative.
Mr. McGrath. The Hawkeye, what you had were a bunch of
nodes in the system who had the same exact computer algorithms
in their combat systems.
Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
Mr. McGrath. And they were sharing data so that they all
reached the same conclusion. That is not the way it happens in
most combat systems out there in the fleet and in the joint
force. But within CEC, the Cooperative Engagement Capability
developed in the early 1990s and worked out through the 1990s
and 2000s. That is what we got to use during that time.
Mr. Bridenstine. So when we network together sufficient
target information to where we have got actually fire control
coordinates that we can launch on from a non-associated
platform, obviously that extends the stick out a lot further,
which is optimum given the threats that we face. We need to be
able to effect lethality much further away.
And the challenge that we have in that environment is ID
[identification], whether it is maybe emitting something, we
can ID it, there are non-cooperative means that we can ID. But
as you push, you know, the engagement further away, the ID
piece gets more and more difficult.
Are there thoughts about how to solve that issue?
Mr. Solomon. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. One of the
chief problems with the Soviet approach, which was to try and
build a remote picture using electronic signals, direction
finding, remote radar, they had their radar ocean
reconnaissance satellites during the 1970s and 1980s, was, you
know, they wanted to be able to build their picture remotely
and shoot from a distance, because they knew if they got close
they would get whacked.
Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
Mr. Solomon. But they couldn't do it because the technology
wasn't there and their command and control architecture wasn't
there. And so they had to rely on Pathfinders. These suicidal
bombers were tattletale surface combatants that they pushed in
and really would only work in peacetime once, where it is
marking the carrier, marking whatever important surface force
that they see important in the given area and passing the
coordinates and the contact identification back to a
centralized controller, who then uses that to generate the ray
targeting.
Well, like I said, it only works once. And if you are
reliant on long-range exploitation of someone's emissions,
maybe they won't oblige you.
Mr. Bridenstine. Right.
Mr. Solomon. If you are reliant on a radar picture, well,
radars can be deceived. You know, jamming a radar is one
option. You can, you know, throw out a lot of noise, but there
are ways of overcoming that. Deception is a lot harder.
One of the great tricks we used in the Cold War was putting
an integrated cover-and-deception system package onboard
destroyers. It is called, I believe, the AN/SSQ-74. It is not
really talked about much, but existed.
And this trailer was able to emulate the, later versions,
acoustics, but even the electronic emissions.
Mr. Bridenstine. Well, I am out of time. But I want to get
this on the record just so everybody is aware and for the
chairman's sake as well.
The greatest network-centric capability pushing the threat
out as far as we can get it, we all love that.
At the end of the day, if you have to send a pilot to the
merge in order to get a VID [visual identification], that is
not the answer we are looking for. So we have got to have
solutions for that.
And with that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. I thank the gentleman for his questions.
The gentlelady from Hawaii is recognized, Ms. Gabbard, for
5 minutes.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks, gentlemen, for being here.
You know, Mr. Solomon, you made a lot of references to the
Cold War and some of the things that we were able to do then.
Can you talk about the contemporary environment that we are
operating in with both our advanced technology and others and
either really what the differences are when you are talking
about deception, between now and, you know, a previous
generation?
Mr. Solomon. Well, the focus hasn't changed. We are still
dealing with electronic emissions exploitation, direction
finding. Perhaps they have become more accurate in their
ability to refine areas of uncertainty, where a given emitter
might be.
Certainly during the Cold War, the Russians only had a
couple of satellites up at a time. Now it looks like various
competitors might have satellite constellations capabilities,
these types of triangulations up more regularly.
We are still looking at space-based radar, the use of
synthetic aperture radar to build a picture. But it only visits
a certain area of ocean space for a given period during the
day. And so that really hasn't changed, it depends upon how
many satellites you have up there.
The ability to use unmanned vehicles, whether surface,
subsurface, aerial, that is kind of different. You know, there
might have been a little bit more hesitance perhaps to use a
manned bomber in that role, although the Soviets didn't seem to
have that hesitance.
Now that you can perhaps use an unmanned system in that
role, that is a major concern. But it also flips it around,
from our perspective, and getting back to the gentleman's
point, you know, if I can't be absolutely sure of what I am
targeting using remote means, using an unmanned system to do a
relatively close range, whether visual, infrared, electrical
optical, whatever identification, make sure I am looking at a
real contact as opposed to a decoy or someone pretending to be
something that they are not. That is a bit of a difference.
And the technology in that realm is certainly more advanced
than it was during the Cold War. I am not sure who is ahead in
that regard. I certainly think that is an area of important
investment for us. I don't have a sense of where potential
adversaries are on that.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you.
Mr. McGrath, with the Distributed Lethality concept, what
are the major points of resistance within the Navy to adopting
this? And building off the chairman's question, how do those
changes really come about?
Mr. McGrath. You know, the more I hear it talked about, the
more it seems like the surface guys are pushing on an open
door.
I think there are some bureaucratic and budgetary rice-bowl
issues. If we spend X amount of dollars on increasing the
lethality of the surface force, those dollars have to come from
somewhere, where will they come from, whose ox gets gored in
that process?
So I think that would be--but you know, that is the
Pentagon, you know, that is just overhead associated with the
way that the Department is run. That sort of stuff gets worked
through. It is pretty much an open door.
Ms. Gabbard. I think the Navy Institute has a quote, saying
that there are no leaps of technology required, no massive
funding increases necessary. Do you think that that is
accurate?
Mr. McGrath. I think it is accurate to a point. I think
there are a whole slew of technologies and capabilities that
are 7 years and in that the surface force could integrate that
aren't--there is no magic involved, there is no, you know, leap
of faith required.
There are leaps of faith in the 2030, 2040 force that we
have to invest in S&T [science and technology] and R&D
[research and development] to get to. But a good, solid
instantiation of Distributed Lethality in the 2025 timeframe is
not a budget breaker.
Ms. Gabbard. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Conaway is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Conaway. All right. Thank you, Chairman.
Can you talk to us about where lasers and electromagnetic
railguns and even improvements in powder projectiles fit within
this innovative timeframe? And are those something that the
Navy is serious about? Where do they fit?
Mr. Solomon. Okay. Well, I personally think the Navy is
very serious about those technologies. You know, the Navy
leadership is very, very excited, from what I have seen in the
open press, about railgun in particular and there are plans to
demo it onboard, I think, the JHSV [Joint High Speed Vessel]
Millinocket next year.
And there are certainly, you know, people looking at how to
get that into the fleet sometime in the late 2020s. I think it
is to be determined what type of combatant you put that on, you
know, whether you might use a DDG-1000, in my personal opinion,
or whether we look to a new combatant sometime in the late
2020s that, if this technology proved out, that you could put
that on.
But for railgun, I think we alluded to this earlier, that
the projectile itself is probably even more important, the
ability for the projectile to survive these electromagnetic
forces in the barrel and do all kinds of things we want it to
do, whether it is land attack or missile defense, that is an
open question.
As for laser, I think the Navy is also very much in support
of that. You see the talking points on what we have done out in
the Persian Gulf on AFSB [Afloat Forward Staging Base]. And I
certainly think that the Navy is looking at, you know, solid-
state laser technologies that might be used for point defense,
because that is really what it seems like laser would be best
capable of doing, especially, in my opinion, for unmanned
aerial vehicle defense.
You don't want to be burning up hard ordnance shooting a
bunch of UAVs out of the sky. So I think there is a lot of
enthusiasm for that in Navy leadership.
Mr. Conaway. So where do both these technologies fit in the
existing structure? I mean, are there--you said the DDG-1000
for the railgun or whatever. Is that adaptable to everything
that is in the fleet now, or do we have to have a whole new
class of ships to make this deal work, make those weapons work?
Mr. McGrath. I don't think we need a whole new class of
ship, we need to bring the integration costs down. The railgun
is not a cheap capability. It is a wonderful capability and it
is something that will and should join the fleet, but it is
expensive.
And when you start to look at the trades and what you could
get, what other things you could get, those trades sometimes
look less attractive.
Mr. Conaway. So in terms of the weapon itself, but not the
usage? Because the idea with the railgun is that you could
shoot a lot of them for less than----
Mr. McGrath. And you would wind up spending less per shot
than you would with a missile, that is for sure.
Mr. Conaway. Okay.
Mr. McGrath. And that, in the long run, it is hard to get
organizations in the Department of Defense to think life cycle.
They like to think acquisition and they like to think, you
know, the budget that is in front of them like this.
But when you start to bring in those longer-range life
cycle things, they make a compelling case for both lasers and
the railgun.
Mr. Conaway. Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Russell is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Russell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And you know, I had almost identical questions, so along
that vein, and then I will add an extra in.
It would seem to me in a 40- to 50-year overmatch capacity,
you know, we are going to continue to have diminishing budgets,
China will continue to have increasing budgets. That will
create a delta that will be double between now and 2030
probably of $2 trillion.
Given that, we have got some great potential with the
railgun technologies. So when you talk expenses, are you saying
is that based upon the power generation piece of this? Is it
based upon the ordnance piece of it? Where would that be?
Mr. McGrath. It is an expensive piece of gear to buy and
integrate. Over the cost of operating it over 20 or 30 years,
its per-shot versus a missile system is a great savings. And we
have to think more like that. I am not saying that the railgun
shouldn't be integrated. I am trying to give an idea of why it
isn't happening faster.
Mr. Russell. But don't you think it would even go beyond
that when you look at terms of versatility? You can use it for
air defense. You can use it for direct fire. You can use it for
long distance. You can use it for land-based interservice use.
It would seem that if it had the appropriate level of,
look, as you say, to look at life cycle, that there would be
great utility, great overmatch and, in the long run, maybe even
a cost saving.
Mr. McGrath. My personal view is that the railgun's
greatest contribution is going to be in missile defense.
Mr. Russell. Yes, which is our number-one threat towards
our carrier fleet--newsflash.
Mr. McGrath. You know, as a direct fire weapon from the
sea, even at the energy levels that we are talking about and
the biggest railgun that we are talking, I think we are talking
about something like 200 miles.
Two hundred miles from a land target in some of these
fights that we are talking about in the future is pretty close.
So I would like the IMD [integrated missile defense], the
missile defense, capability as fast as we can get it.
Mr. Russell. And I will waive the UAV laser question
because that got answered.
But in terms of capability and capacity, we hear at all of
these briefings about, you know, the 11th carrier and the
turnaround, and now we are seeing allies, fortunately, like
Great Britain to launch a couple, and France maybe they are
going to get a different look at adding carrier number two, we
don't know.
But regardless, with the amphibious assault ships and the
last iteration of the Wasp class and then the America class
that is rolling out, under terms of sea control and forward
staging, you know, particularly in the Pacific, there is a lot
of versatility there. These are Midway-size carriers. You know,
in appearance they certainly provide an awful lot of capacity.
What thinking is the Navy doing with regard to that, if we
have forward staged-based stuff and now we can have sea control
with the amphibious assault ships? Is that even part of the
equation when looking at carrier structure and presence?
Mr. McGrath. The amphibious assault ships with the F-35B
embarked are going to be incredible assets in the Navy and
Marine Corps--the maritime fight.
That plane is a fantastic combat vehicle for doing a whole
lot of things. It is not just air-to-mud. This stuff that it
can do in terms of this anti-surface, integrated air and
missile defense, there are all sorts of things that the Navy
and the Marine Corps need to cooperate much more closely in
order to get the benefits out of that to the warfight. They are
thinking and working in that regard.
I think, and I have written pretty widely about this, it is
not correct to think of the America class with F-35Bs as a
substitute. And I am not saying you said this----
Mr. Russell. No, that is the versatility.
Mr. McGrath. It is a----
Mr. Russell. And a gap filler which we hear all the time we
need.
Mr. McGrath. It is an extender, a gap filler, it is a
capability that we are going to get a whole lot more out of
than we can get currently out of the AV-8Bs in that.
Mr. Russell. Okay, yes, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. McGrath, Mr. Solomon, thank you so much for
your testimony.
Ms. Graham has waived any questions she might have for you.
And you heard the bells, they toll for us. But we want to
make sure that we have given you a last couple of minutes for
any wrap-up that either of you might have before we adjourn.
Mr. McGrath.
Mr. McGrath. I would like to thank Mr. Courtney, in his
absence, for using the phrase ``hardening.'' The Air Force,
when we talk about air bases we talk about hardening, hardening
air bases, air bases that aren't going anywhere, they are just
going to stay there.
We talk about survivability with respect to ships. And I
think it levies a rhetorical weight upon the Navy that I am
personally trying to change by using the word ``hardening,'' we
want to harden the surface force, make it fight through damage
and deliver more damage to the other guy. And I thank Mr.
Courtney for using that word.
Mr. Forbes. Mr. Solomon.
Mr. Solomon. I think that it is important to view
Distributed Lethality as a set of options; it is not purely
offensive, or at least it shouldn't be.
And I don't believe, as Mr. McGrath said earlier, that it
is going to be subtracting from defensive unless we, you know,
make a mistake in how we define the concept.
I see Distributed Lethality as a tool for our force
commanders, for our theater commanders, to give them more
options at every stage of the conflict spectrum. And to the
extent that electronic warfare supports that, you know, there
are certainly less things you can do during phase zero, phase
one, the shaping, the turns that you can do when you are
actually in combat, but there are things you can do there.
I think there are a lot of rich historical examples of how
we did psychological shaping of the Soviets during the late
Cold War to help deter them from any belief that they would be
successful in a first salvo. I think that is pretty crucial.
And so to the extent that the Navy can look at that rich
history, which is still largely classified, and derive new
ideas for how we might condition some of our great-power
adversaries or potential adversaries, that today is not the
day, using tools like these, I think that is very important to
think about.
Mr. Forbes. Okay.
I thank you both for being here today and for the
contributions you make to the national defense of our country.
And with that, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
December 9, 2015
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December 9, 2015
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