Sea Control - Sea Control 393 - Beyond the CWC Concept with CAPT Bill Shafley

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Links 1. "A New Desron Staff - Beyond the Composite Warfare Commander Concept," by CAPT Bill Shafley, CIMSEC, Aug 18, 2022.2. "A New Carrier Strike Group Staff for Warfighting and Warfighters," by CAPT Bill Shafley, CIMSEC, February 24, 2020.3. "Put the Commander Back in Commander's Intent," by CAPT Bill Shafley, CIMSEC, May 13, 2020.4. "Sea Control 154: New Forms of Naval Operational Planning," with CAPT Bill Shafley and Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, January 27, 2020.5. "New Forms of Naval Operational Planning for Earning Command of the Seas," by CAPT Bill Shafley, CIMSEC, September 10, 2018.

Hey folks, it's Jared today. I'm welcoming back the first guest that I ever had on when we relaunched Sea Control, Captain Bill Schaftley. And we're going to discuss his thoughts on restructuring the Desron staff. The episode was edited and produced by Jonathan Selling. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean. Chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of our chapters and contact information on the website at simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of our own brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is one of the originals from when we restarted the podcast back in January 2020, Captain Bill Schaftley. Sir, welcome back. Could you tell the listeners again about your background, please? Yeah, sure. Career surface warfare officer. Commanded at the 05 level and most recently as the Commodore does on 26. I guess as I look at it, it's not so recent anymore. I think I've been out of command now for a couple of years. i'm a graduate of the advanced strategy program at the war college and wrap it up by almost 30

years of active duty year coming next spring so i'm excited to uh to move on to other things and see what other kinds of cool issues that i can tackle so um yeah look i'm really glad to be here again with you today jared well thank you again for coming on uh we're gonna be discussing your article, A New Desron Stat Beyond the Composite Warfare Commander Concept, which you published with us at CIMSEC back on August 18, 2022. There will be a link in the show notes. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. Mr. We'll start with, you started out discussing the Cold War, the construction of carrier battle groups. How were the battle groups of the Cold War actually

put together well i think our type characterize them i would i would say that they're not much different than the way that you would conceive of them today uh with the exception of a couple of big factors uh one was just the sheer amount of stuff that was in a carrier battle group uh and two was probably i would say the diversity of the platforms available um in that particular um you're in that particular mix set and no surprise you know what a carrier strike group of today is organized and you know what comprises it and how it's employed um you know i mean you're you're routinely steaming around with three to four um at least in the in the training phase of that whole thing but you know battle groups back then in the 600 ship navy i mean you double that sometimes

triple that you know i've heard from some great beards and you'd be steaming around with 12 ships in a battle group and then i think the other thing the big difference is is there was just so much so many different types of ships right perry classes thoughts classes ruins classes so i mean i think you had a a far bigger diversity of um a platform then as well but um the one thing that i think was pretty constant was this notion of the composite warfare concept um in the way that um that we structured those battle groups to operate at sea um so i'll pause there for a second and for anything that you might want to add yeah i mean i'm i'm going to have very little to add as someone who was born in 1980 and hopefully that doesn't make you or any of the listeners

feel particularly old or young um but yeah how does that carrier battle group of the cold war then morph into the carrier strike group of today and what are the approximate reasons for that transformation? Yeah, so I think, you know, I think there's a couple of them, right? You know, as the Cold War wrapped up, and, you know, we started to make some of those decisions to, you know, peel away that 600-ship Navy down to what it is, you know, or what it kind of morphed into. When I first came to sea in 1995, I think you kind of saw some of the relics of that, of that you know what that structure was so for instance you know in 1995 when i made my first cruise with the america um you know i think you you saw that you know what was left over was

you know um we we sailed with a uh with the cgn the uss south carolina um you know we had the uh the top of the line um taekwondo taekwondo road class cruiser at that point as well but you know I think, I think what ended up happening is, you know, you kind of had that middle phase there where you had America battle groups. And then I think what ended up happening was, you know, this whole idea of contesting sea control sort of, sort of becomes a thing of the past as the Soviet Navy kind of goes away. In fact, on that America battle group cruise,

one of the marquee events that we did was a, uh, a passing exercise with the Admiral Kuznetsov battle group. Um, you know, there was a, uh, a Naster Shemmy class, uh, or the Naster Shemmy, um, came out, uh, the Pilkey at Russian frigate and Kuznetsov, and then there was a picture on the bridge wing of all of us standing there, uh, with Kuznetsov, you know, and, you know, in the background had Russian officers on board the ship. We were doing get tax with them. It was just crazy.

So, you know, once that all sort of evaporates you, you know, you start to think about how you employ those forces differently. And by the time I went back to see as a department head, you know, the name of the game was, you know, how long can you stay in the Northern Arabian Gulf and steam around CBO 8-4 and provide sorties to support what was going on in Iraq? So, you know, when you break that structure up and you start thinking about how you need to employ it, you know, changes occur. You know, when sea control is not your primary mission, you have a little bit more flexibility in how you organize and structure those forces. i don't necessarily know if we did it by design but um we certainly were looking for opportunities to advance or allow or provide um you know what we had what we had put to see to to better use in the g1 time frame so um that's kind of how i think we got there there are probably others out there with you know with a much better perspective on it but um just my own um my own experience would suggest that that was probably part of you know that's how it just kind of came about so

um i'll pause there i'm at least going to advance the position and you can tell me whether you you know concur don't concur that uh some of it is probably budgetary as well you mentioned the diversity of platforms and i always refer to like the opening aviation sequence at the beginning of The movie, The Final Countdown with Kirk Douglas and USS Nimitz traveling back in time. But that first about two minutes, you see like six different or seven different type of jet powered aircraft launching off of the USS Nimitz. Whereas, you know, for a time there, everything that flew off the deck of an American carrier looked like some variant of an F-18. And then you talked about the diversity of the surface escort force that sailed with the America from the Ticonderoga to Knox-class frigates, Perry-class frigates, the nuclear-powered cruiser. All that looks like an Arleigh Burke today for the most part as we start to decommission the cruisers to recapitalize the surface fleet.

So I don't know if you had any thoughts on that. No, I think you're probably, well, yeah, I mean, that's a great way to characterize it. I mean, I guess in some ways, budgets drive strategy and strategy essentially drives how we operationally employ and the TTPs, right? But, yeah, I mean, having that homogeneity, at least of platform type and, you know, from a procurement standpoint probably makes things easier. I'm not an AP, so I will pretend to think that that's an accurate statement. it but you know certainly right um that diversity or that homogeneity of today's stuff um pretends a lot of really interesting things if you wanted to walk that dog um and it you know i kind of touched a little bit on that in this particular piece but um you know if you you know if you look at the the strike group that puts to sea in 2030 right um that's pretty much an all burke class

pretty much an all-Burke class strike group when you think about it, right? We may get a consolation for it or two in there, hopefully. Yeah, you could. Yeah, I mean, I'm not quite sure on the time frame of that, right, whether we'll have consolation class frigates in those strike groups at that point. But yeah, I mean, granted, probably a massive difference between 2As and 3As in some ways, right? But it kind of does beg the question of um you know the structure of what that fighting that fighting element looks

like how you're going to command and control it and you know to what to what degree is the staff involved in that what does that staff structure look like and that's kind of um how we how i kind of stumbled upon when i really stumbled upon um how i really kind of started to think about how we would do this, or what, you know, what those, what those elements of employment would look like, right? How is the threat from China today different from the Soviet threat? I'm not sure that, I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could adequately describe that. I mean, at least in my, from my perspective, right? I'm sure that there's a bunch of WTIs out there that could probably better have that dialogue with you. But I think how you could at

least describe it, at least generally, I think that there's still a lot of anti-ship cruise missile stuff that's going to be required to be contended with. There's still going to be some sort of um asw threat um i mean i think the chinese are gonna you know continue to put to see some some really um for lack of a better term sexy stuff that um will probably look a lot like what the soviet navy put to see um but i think that the big challenge will be um the speed at which uh those threats can present the complexity of um you know the different spectral environments that uh that will end up operating in in those instances so um yeah that's a that's a really interesting question in terms of the degree of that threat and then of course how that's how

the plan would actually employ that you know employ that high-end combat force uh to achieve or apply it to some sort of an operational art objective, you know, but I run the risk of becoming, you know, I run the risk of getting out of my depth in that particular instance. You know, I'm sure there's a lot more smarter people in there in terms of how they would actually employ some of that stuff. But, you know, I think it's alike in some instances and different in others.

What's the current construct for the Deseron and why do you think it's too limited for the potential threat? Yeah, so as I looked at the problem set, right, you know, and I've written a lot about this topic of strike groups going to sea and fighting, right? I think there's five or six articles on the, on SimSec. And, you know, the first time we talked, we talked about, you know, planning methodologies, right? Right. And, you know, if you look at the current Desron structure, I probably described it in that first interview, you know, two big missions and a staff structure that, you know, wasn't optimized for either of them. right um and then you know when you start to peel back um what you know how that how that staff is actually manned right and you find out that you know it it's not really staff to be a

battle staff and it's not really staff to be an issac staff it's um you know it's a you know it ends up reaching a you know a number around the 35 to 40 you know pack standpoint at some point you know, at some level, and you structure that into watch teams and the like, um, you know, but it's, um, it, it, it wasn't designed with the edge state in mind, right? You essentially take what you've got and you, and you do the best with, um, you know, with what you've got and you, and you figure it out, right. Um, and does run staffs have been figuring it out for, for, you know, 10 years. Um, so I, you know, the way I would describe it is, um, it was built, um at least from a tactical perspective to be embarked on the carrier uh it was built uh to

be able to satisfy a three-section watch um over a bunch of uh navy tactical tasks that if you look them up on the rock power are pretty pretty standard as you would suspect but um and then you have some niche capabilities in there that, you know, like, you know, the ability to embark, you know, a naval oceanographic and assessment team and NOAA team to come on board and help you with your ASW prosecutions. But, you know, if you look at it, you know, my, my contention in the article is that that's just,

it's not the right mix and it's probably not robust enough. um if you want to employ that thing in a different way so um it you know to me the fight of the future is going to be more distributed um and to be able to to be successful in that fight you're going to have to be able to break down your combat power into smaller uh smaller bites and you're going to need command elements to be able to go out and support those operations um and you know the defense of the carrier would be one of many things almost like an enabler right to whatever that degree of suit controllers that you're trying to establish and over you know how broad of an area is that going to be how much dispersion is that we're

does that require um so you know you have to you have to look at that destroyer squandering staff you have to look at it in a way i think that you know the current construct doesn't allow you the flexibility to to use it so so before we discuss the concept itself what assumptions are baked into your proposal yeah the assumptions well i think i kind of covered a couple of them the assumption on the front end is that um the carrier strike group as a unit of issue um will be employed uh after or in you know when when c control is at least established uh to a point where you've got a little bit more freedom of maneuver so that's you know assumption number one uh assumption number two is that um that uh degree of seat control in time and space um

you know will require that um you have smaller elements of combat power and those smaller elements will need to have some sort of you know task force command structure over it that can you know link into higher headquarters um into higher headquarters battle rhythms and uh operate a little bit more autonomously and then um the final assumption to me and i'm not sure i quite developed this in the article per se um my sense is that um that command and control structure um will need to have a bit of persistence and by persistence i mean um that it it's it's you're going to have to last uh into the second and third iterations of the uh of the engagement right um you know we're gonna we're gonna parry

back and forth a few times um you know as we you know seek to break into these different areas of where we're going to establish sea control so um you know that command and control structure is going to have to be robust enough to have some staying power. So you mentioned the staffing piece earlier and that the Deseron construct, as it exists, is not really appropriately staffed, in your opinion, to support either its ISIC oversight duties or its warfying duties. How would you update your concept from a personnel perspective? Yeah, I think you put a decent table inside the article that would kind of break through that. Um, so when we, um, you know, I had some help, um, you know, a couple of my staff officers

that I worked with, uh, when I was in command of Desjardins 26, Jason Lancaster, um, a contributor to SimSec and Chris Ragsdale, um, who's heading out to, uh, BDXO and I think one of the new LPDs, I believe. But we talked a lot about how we would do that differently. And I think that the biggest difference in the way that we structured that Desron staff model was the amount and type of watchstanders, right? So I think we wrote that up from a six-section perspective. If you were on the carrier, that would be ridiculously robust. I think we probably ran a four-section watch bill when we were on deployment.

So what you were able to do with that six sections of watch standards, and that would include staff TAOs and other station operators, operators at six sections, you know, you have flexibility, you know, that's two terms of three, or that's, you know, three teams of two. And you could, you could farm those things out. So, you know, and if you wanted to do port and starboard for a short amount of time, you know, we could carve out that watch standing cadre and have it in three different places. You know, if that's what the mission dictated, And similarly, when you take that up one more level, the subject matter expertise that you

would have from a COPS and FOPS perspective in terms of planters and operators, for lack of a better term, would allow you to have some flexibility there as well, shave off a couple of planners or shave off a couple of subject matter experts and get them out with you know one of those three teams or two teams depending on how you have them sliced up so you know there was a fair amount of 1110s in there that um were you know TAO level kind of folks department head level guys and then some um um some proven second third tour division officers that had some more fighting chops there as well to kind of help provide that level of flexibility and then when you went up from one level from there you kind of had the

command deck and I think the biggest difference in the command deck was that the whole notion of a of a fleet of model with the commodore and the deputy you know kind of go back to the old way looking at it which was um it was a you know a commodore and then a chief staff officer and that chief staff officer was typically post xo pre-command um so you have an opportunity there to um you know to to bring a different flavor of person in there but the other thing that i would say there that i kind of mentioned in um in the bit two was the was the level of qualification those folks right so um you know at the officer level you um getting asw asuw wtis on board that team huge uh having um you know some flavor of an iw wti amongst the you know information

professional 1800 series officers you know in that mix would be super helpful and then um you know at that command level uh having you know maritime advanced war fighting school graduates um you know in that cadre you know helps have it helps bring that um you know a higher level of expertise at least in the um in the principles of the operational art and you know having those commanders having been proven in those environments right um i think just sets you up to have a A more robust understanding of how those numerous units of issue inside that particular squadron structure could be employed and the staff experience to be able to lead in those environments. So it is much different than the way you would look at it now. A lot more first class petty officers in different rates to be able to support a watch bill versus a couple of first classes here.

know, a couple of chiefs there. We tried to focus it a lot more on experience and expertise at the right level. I think the number ended up to be about 45 to 50, which is, you know, just minorly larger than what ends up getting put to see in a strike group staff or in a desert staff that employees on a 30 or not. I think I had 40-ish when I deployed. So, I mean, the number isn't that much different, but the type and level of experience is, that's something that would need to be managed over time. Yeah, I think you're talking about a fit versus a fill type argument there. Oh, absolutely. 100%. What sort of limitations do you see on implementing what you're describing? I'll give you an example of one that came up as I read through. You were

calling for an o6 with a wti background but we're probably 10 plus years away from having one of those in the navy as as far as i know that wti is a very young program at least in the in the surface navy um it's an awesome program i love every wti i've interacted with and like the level of knowledge and the enthusiasm that they have for their subject matter uh but those are all junior folks i think the most senior one i've met is a brand new o4 so yeah they're they're Actually, I'm calling for an 06 MAAS graduate, which I would say are almost as unique as the WTI that they're speaking of right now. Yeah, absolutely. That's going to take a minute to develop. And I think the Smitty guys would be salivating at the mouth to have one more demand signal placed upon it to be able to provide at that level. You know, I'm sure that it's not necessarily a quality thing that they're looking for.

So there's a quality cut there. And the WTIs in the IW community are even more hard to come by. But, yeah, so, I mean, I think you're going to have all kinds of those arguments, right? You know, I think there were six, seven, eight, you know, STG1s and OS1s on a staff. um you know you're just going out and setting that demand signal and then applying that to you know do you want to do you want your stg ones on ships or do you want them on a staff do you want your os ones on ships or do you want them on a staff i mean i think we're in a kind of a zero sum game mentality on this you know i think you have to you have to make some choices um

you're clearly going to take a going to take a minute for for wti's to flow through the system and you know you're going to have more and more of them as as time progresses yeah so i kind of see this i think i wrote it in there this is a bit of problem you know but you don't have to eat the apple all at one in one bite right um you know and maybe it's still uh you know for a few years as you get to the goal right the point is is that you give you'll give these folks focused training almost career path like in some ways and understand that training somebody to be a staff watch officer or training somebody to be a staff planner or bringing somebody with that kind of subject matter expertise is different than just pulling, you know, having a sailor

roll off of sea duty on a ship and just automatically assume that they're going to be a good fit in that staff environment. You know, certainly doing better than we had in the past and the level of expertise that I had on my team was probably better than they had five years ago, but I think we can do even better than that. So, you know, I kind of set a pretty high bar there as I was describing that organization, but if you're going to employ it in the manners that I suggest, you know, I think you need that level of expertise. Yeah. And I guess when I say limitation in particular with the WTI stuff, I mean, that's really a function of where we are in our particular timeline here, right?

So yeah, we don't have O6s with a WTI background in the surface fleet right now, but in eight to 10 years, we're gonna have more than a couple of them. There's gonna be a bunch of them running around is that very first crop who went through is like senior lieutenants, junior lieutenant commander types age into that role.

And they were already identified for WTI because they were outstanding performers. If you extrapolate the outstanding performance, well, there's very good chance that they're going to advance through 05 command, become 06s, be out there and available to command the formations that you're talking about. So what appears to be a limitation today is not necessarily a limitation moving forward. It's just a matter of like, OK, well, we got to wait until we get that point in the timeline.

You could have your first, you know, Commodore guy with those bona fides, right? You know, leading a organization like that, probably cover down on Des Run 15 tomorrow and lead that organization to victory or Deseron 60 out in Rota, which from what I understand and feedback since I've done the article, are the closest organizations out there right now structured to operate, trained to operate, and operate in this task force commander kind of approach to a Deseron staff. So, you know, could be there in three years, right? So we've got some of the pieces.

I think it's just, you know, there's an opportunity there. We just have to put these folks in the right space and then give them some tools and, you know, they'll lead it quite well. So what would the optimized fleet response plan in its various phases, basic, intermediate, advanced, maintenance, et cetera, look like for this new Desron staff? Yeah, so, again, you know, I spent a little bit of time talking about how you would do that, right? You know, I think it all kind of starts in sustainment. that group of squadron guys that and gals that that made that last appointment you know they're going to start to matriculate folks that were you know coming up on PRDs etc and I think what I tried to do as I described that was is that you know sustainment begins the kind of begins the

tailored training for the next amount of stuff that you know that particular staff is going to need to take on. So, you know, I talked about in the article, you know, about setting a, you know, setting up a, you know, kind of a bespoke and curated training plan led by the WTIs on staff. You know, the guy that was the COPS officer, you know, COPS ops, her COPS officer fleets up to be the FOPS. And, you know, he kind of becomes the senior, you know, he or she becomes senior warfighter on the team and kind of you know sets the um you know sets the structure and the agenda um and then i think you know once that you know maintenance phase you spend a whole bunch of time um kind of going through that training plan doing staff rides uh going and

visiting different um uh different enabler type organizations um you know doing um you know spending some time at TAC-TRADE-GRU-LAND and TAC-TRADE-GRU-PAC. We're getting, you know, going through basic level simulations and things like that. And then I think in the basic phase, you know, that staff is really starting to kind of congeal. My sense would be that you would want to try to have as many of the folks that you would be going on your next employment with, you know sort of you know filled out and on that team so that you know training can begin in earnest so you know in the current construct um you know i didn't get all of my people um you're just like everybody else until you know right as we were getting ready to go for group sale and swat

you try to get as many of those new teammates on board and you know kind of fleshed out and And, you know, everybody understands what their role is. And then, you know, kind of go through different tailored training bits for watchstanders, for planners, for the specialty officers that were listed there in the table, like the NFL from the PA community, the Romeo guy, the 1120, the Intel, you know, the Intel officer and, you know, leading some specific training and development for those particular teams in those environments. And then, you know, with the goal of, you know, essentially, you know, being ready to embark that carrier or embark the destroyer of choice for group sale and SWAT and being able to, you know, run an effective watch team plan, you know, at the level of complexity necessary to execute group sale and SWAT. Um, I think that, um, you know, a big difference you're, we would have to sort out as well would be, um, how do you certify that, that, that bigger staff and it's, and it's subordinate or, and it's, it's different states. I think there would have to, there would have to be some sort of syllabus written to be

able to do that. You could clearly do it, you know, in a tactile environment, but, you know, as anybody knows, as soon as you embark the staff on your ship, it changes a lot of things. And there's a bunch of very detailed things that have to take place to, you know, essentially embark a DDG as part of a, as part of a Desron staff. So, you know, doing that physically, I think is important. So you would have to work that into the contract syllabus as well to be able to certify that that team could operate as a sum of its parts, so to speak. So, yeah, I think, you know, again, not out of the realm of the possible, it would just take some smart, you know, some smart lieutenants and lieutenant commanders to sit down and figure out how that would all work. You can have it and run at least piecemeal, I would say, a lot sooner rather than later if you put the right level of effort to it with the right leadership support. Well, I'm sorry. That's all that we have time for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Captain Bill Schaffley.

Sir, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? um what am i working on next um you know i am on linkedin um one got quite a bit of bounce thanks to john cordell um you know the old surf plant captain that many of us know um so i'm on linkedin and um i think i may try to do um one more article and you know in this series and kind of wrap it up. And I think that one, as I'm kind of considering it, is there's a human capital component to all of this that I think we may be missing.

And I'll probably focus it on the officer side of the continuum. But the prototypical, how do we career path you know to the point where we could get um you know that you know commander with that type of that type of well-developed and honed mind to be a commander at this level right and if you think through that for a second you know that has a amazing amazingly interesting third order effects for um future strike group commanders and um in their war fighting acumen so um got some water to uh got some water to go over to the dam on that one but um i think that's kind of the uh the final piece to this uh this train of thought that i've been messing with here over the last two or three

years so thanks for having me uh this afternoon jared i appreciate your time well thanks again for joining us sir to the listeners thank you for tuning in we'll see you next time © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Oh, help me, Bob, I'm bullying the addicts. Why are they bullying the addicts? Help me, Bob, I'm bullying the addicts. Bullying addicts, you moron.