Sea Control - Sea Control 502 - Wartime Command and Control with Admiral Scott Swift (ret.)

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Links1. "Wartime Command and Control," by Admiral Scott Swift (ret.), Proceedings, January 2024.2. Sea Control 254 - Defining Readiness with Admiral Scott Swift (ret.), CIMSEC, May 28, 2021.3. "Admiral Scott Swift on Leadership, Risk, and a Life in the U.S. Navy," by Christopher Nelson, CIMSEC, August 14, 2017.4.The American Sea Power Project.5. "To deter China, the US and Taiwan should seek asymmetric symmetry," by Admiral Scott Swift (ret.) Heino Klinck, Defense News, January 25, 2024. 

Hey folks, it's Jared. Admiral Retired Scott Swift returns today to discuss an article he wrote for Proceedings War of 2026 Scenario entitled Wartime Command and Control. This episode was edited and produced by Jim Jarvie. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for CIMSEC tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. Now, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International and Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control.

My guest today is retired commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, And we're going to discuss his article, which appeared in Proceedings entitled, Wartime Command and Control. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions expressed today are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. So, sir, for those of our listeners who aren't familiar, you're referencing the War of 2026 scenario in this, and it is part of a larger project that was put together by Proceedings. Can you explain a little bit more about this scenario for the listeners?

Yeah, so just a little bit of background and maybe a longer answer to your question, but I think the context is important. So USNI sponsored a project through Proceedings that's called the American Sea Power Project, and it actually started in January of 21. It is broken into three phases. The first phase is referred to as the ends. There were 15 articles that were written by a spectrum of people from, you know, folks just starting out in their career and living life at the tactical edge all the way to retired four stars. So that phase one, 15 articles focused on the ends of what naval warfare should be thinking about in the now term. Phase two was the ways and means to get to those ends. There were 15 articles written for that.

And then phase three, which I wrote this article for, is about five different domains that are discussed, typical naval domains of power. And I was asked to write an overarching article on, in the context of those five domains, how should we be thinking about command and control? And so I would encourage you to visit the USNI website. And then if you click on the proceedings link, there'll be a link in there to the American Sea Power Project where all those articles are available. And I can't speak for the other authors, but my motivation to write for this one, I hate writing. So kudos to Bill Hamlet to convincing me to write.

Been after me for some time, actually, since I retired to continue on the series of articles that I wrote just prior to my retiring. But I wrote really to generate dialogue. I'm not saying that I have the right answers. I'm not an expert on anything. I've just got a lot of experience. And from that experience, I bring a practitioner's view. Bill actually wrote, along with input from others, but Bill wrote the scenario.

And I think it's really important for your audience that has read the article. If they haven't read it with that scenario right next to them and referencing back to it, then I would encourage them to read the article again. And for those that may be enticed to read the article, I would suggest you do the same thing to print the scenario out and use that as a basis to inform your reading. It could be a different scenario that we face going forward, and there may be some adjustments in the command and control context and structure

if that turns out to be different. But having said that, and final answer to your question, what motivated me to write is how compelling I found that scenario. I mean, I first read it, but look how this is classified. But it's all from publicly available information, and Bill just did a fantastic job with that. And that scenario frames the 11 articles that are in that phase two of the American Sea Power Project. So we will have links for the listeners in the show notes to both the American Sea Power Project and specifically to that War of 2026 scenario. You kind of answered this, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about it. Were you asked to write about command and control specifically, or did you ask for that topic?

And if you did ask for it, why did you ask for command and control specifically? So I did not ask for it, but let me answer the second part of the question of why I wrote it. I'm absolutely convinced from my experience in the Navy and since the five years since I've retired that everything starts and ends with C2. If you get C2 right, that doesn't mean that things are going to go swimmingly well. But if you get C2 wrong, it's going to be very, very difficult to be successful. Any success will definitely be sub-optimized. And I thought I knew a lot about C2 until I went to be at the J3 at Indopaycom and worked for Admiral Willard. And I referenced Admiral Willard in the footnotes of my article.

I think he was certainly his time serving, and I don't think anybody has come close to his understanding of the nuances as well as the obvious qualities that need to be baked into any command and control structure. He talked about a point that I thought was extremely important to tease out in more detail in my article about the difference between command and control. And when I talk publicly about command and control, I'll often reverse the terms and refer to it as control and command because it makes people stop. They think it's one thing and it's not. What I broke out in the article is it is a generalization. It's not true in total completely. It's more like a Venn diagram. But the majority of command is the purview of operational commanders.

In the context of this scenario, that's Admiral Aquilino's domain. It's up to him to shape the command and control as he sees fit based on the conditions, both the red conditions and the blue conditions that he's dealing with, size of force, environmental conditions, whatever it might be. The other side of that Venn diagram, I think, is the purview of service chiefs, and that's the control side. This is what Project Convergence is about. This is what Project Overmatch is about. This is what BMC-2 is about on the Air Force side. This is about the mechanisms that allow the C-2 structures, the command and control side of the house to function.

It's the links. It's the protocols. It's all those enablers to command. And I think a lot of the frustration out there now amongst operational commanders is that we're on the wrong side of the learning and acquisition process. curve, I would say the acquisition curve, with respect to the control side. You know, the links are vulnerable. They're vulnerable to cyber attack. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy in executing them. It's very difficult to communicate in an open environment. I look at

Iraq and Afghanistan, much less in a contested environment. So I wanted to separate those two elements out and spend some time talking about it and hoping to generate some time in the audience mind to think about those. So if I could ask for an opinion then on one of the things you mentioned there, I think control in my mind, I kind of break it out into two things, methodological and technological means. And the technological means I think is what you're referencing with the means that you're using, but the technical means that you're using to transmit commander's intent from an operational commander to subordinates. The methodological means can take a lot of, there's a lot of different ways that you can get that message across,

whether it's via link or some more, we'll call them old-fashioned means of doing it. And if we're not where you think we need to be on the curve of the technical side, I think there are, again, some more old-fashioned means that you could use on the methodological sides. Do you think that we are on the right side of the training piece looking at that as like, okay, if this is denied to us, we could do these other things? I think we may be on the right side of the curve, but it's insufficient. I would argue a little bit about the terms because I think the structure of command and control, support or supporting, opcon, takeon, what that org chart looks like, there's a method that goes to that as well. But I take your point on the methodological and the technical side.

But the reason I paused a little bit when you said that, I think we need to be really careful with technical solutions that too oftentimes people would come to me when I was in uniform and they would hold a widget up and they would say, this is going to rock your world. And I would take that piece down or set the brief down and say, tell me about my world and the conversation would end. That's not on them. That's on us in uniform that we've got these policy barriers that because of acquisition

rules and all the rest of us, we can't talk to industry. And it's hamstringing our ability to move forward. I just wrote an article that was published yesterday, I think, in Defense News about that same, those policy. Policy should be enablers to warfighting, and we've got policy out there that is disabling. I used Taiwan and Iraq to make that point that we needed to be more thoughtful in that context. So technology is important, but technology should be focused on closing gaps and seams on the command side of the equation. Where are we at risk of being able to communicate? Where are we at risk at sharing data? Let me give you an example that may drive this point a little more clarity for the audience. I think I'm completely beyond a censor to shooter. That's old school. That's not going to get us to where we need to be today. Where we need to be is data to effect. And so there's a lot of effort.

I think that is stovepipe within Project Overmatch and the great work that Aval Small is doing, that BMC2 and the work that's being done there and Convergence. But it's not integrated in that. That integration is starting to happen with the folks in OSD staff and CDAO through a series of exercises, the guide exercises, they're not chasing technology. They're working to deeply understand by working with the services and with the COCOMs, what's the dissonance between command, what the intent is, what the shape of the command structures will be, and the control, the mechanisms that enable that command. So instead of chasing technology, we're chasing

those things that in the now term can start to close some of those gaps that we're seeing on the on the command side that's that's a longer question but foundationally the the intent of the article is to start a foundational discussion so we're not just chasing bright shiny objects we're beyond that you know and if you want to talk about the davidson window but i the davidson window is too far out that could happen tomorrow it's going to be a decision that's made by the Chinese Communist Party or Xi Jinping. And it could be based on an internal trigger. They feel the Chinese Communist Party is at risk. And I think there's a higher probability that they could make an internal decision to forcibly move towards reunification of Taiwan. So that's why I say it's

all about the now term. I think that's what Admiral Aquilino has been saying for a long time. Admiral Davidson has been saying it. Admiral Harris has been saying it. So there's this string of Indo-PACOM commanders that have been continuing to talk about the sense of urgency that action needs to be taken. And I do think that we're getting towards the right side of actioning that urgency in a direct answer to your question. So we spent a lot of that back and forth just now is really about the control side of it. What are your specific concerns regarding command for this scenario so command is is we need there needs to be a lot of time uh focused on command that is truly commander's work that work needs to be spread amongst the other commanders pure

commanders and subordinate commanders and it's constant work it needs to change as the fight changes it needs to change as the condition changes at least it needs to be considered for change we need to be careful about changing command and control because if you change it that's got to be communicated across the force especially with respect to why you're changing it if you can't explain why you're changing it then you're going to add more confusion than clarity into the force that uh that you're guiding so a quick history lesson here so i i asked this question often and some of your listeners may have heard it from other venues you may have heard it yourself jared so when we talk about who the primary commanders were in the pacific

But the most frequent response is, well, of course, it was Nimitz, but Nimitz largely delegated those authorities to Halsey and Spruance, and he would bring them back for three months. They were on basically a three-month rotation. Some of it was event-based, based on campaigns that were in the offing. And while one of them was back planning in Hawaii, deeply connected with what the other was doing warfighting out there to make sure that the learning that was occurring at the tactical edge was being applied to the planning that was being done back in Hawaii. And that also allowed Nimitz to interact with them. Okay, so that's the warfighting side of it. Who was the head logistician in the Pacific? I'll put you on the spot here, Jared. Does any name pop into your head?

No, I would have to go back to my bullets, beans, and black oil copy to remember this specific name. Well, you're not going to find it there. You're not going to find it there either. And the reason that people struggle with it is because my response is, based on the history that I've studied and the campaigns and the battles, the sea battles that have been waged, it was Nimitz. Nimitz was not willing to delegate logistics. That's why the battle of Coral Sea was so important. Yes, it was about preventing Japan from putting the relationship with Australia, Australia's support for the warfight at risk. But most important, the Nimitz is he couldn't afford to have that southern logistics supply line broken, and he knew it.

He had four carriers at the time. Two of them were off doing the Doodle Raid, Enterprise and Hornet, and the other two were reserved, Lexington and Yorktown. And he committed the reserve force, the only carrier she had down to the Battle of Coral Sea, and of course we lost Lexington, and Coral Sea was heavily damaged to the point that she still had undergoing repairs, shipyard workers still aboard as she steamed down the channel there in Pearl Harbor to join the formation forming north of Midway to counter the Japanese fleet that was steaming to engage in Midway. So that's what command and control is about. Command and control is shaping it. I mean, he had to change who he put in place, who is also important with structure to the Battle of Midway. It was going to be Halsey until Halsey came down with shingles,

and then he put Spruance in there, somebody that he had strongly considered and then rejected in favor of Halsey. So that is the C2 piece is commander's work. There are some basic rules that you need to be aware of. I talk at length about the danger of pursuing supportive-supporting relationships, but it is separate in your mindset about the control side of it. And then what are the mechanisms that enable the control, those being the control mechanisms, that enable the command, those being the control mechanisms. So, yeah, I was going to ask if you'd be willing to talk a little bit more about your feelings about this supporting-supported-commander relationship, because you came out very strongly against that. there's also sort of like a lot of world war ii data is like that was not a common relationship

during world war ii it may have been codified one way or the other to be supporting supported but the person who could break any ties was right there on site and not somewhere off site so supported supporting is when if we make it if there's a decision by a commander to pursue a supported supporting relationship in the in the war fights that we've been engaged in since world war ii less so korea but certainly those since then vietnam and and all you know oef oaf the rest of them um this is an oversimplification but i would say they have become command relationships of convenience because it's easy to say oh we'll just do supportive supporting when you're in the planning process, it's easy. Okay, we'll just do that and we're done. That's why I wrote the

article, is to point out that these core elements are critically important, especially if you're talking about a pure war fight that we haven't seen since World War II. So they are conventions of convenience, I would say. On the other side of the extreme, I do think that supported, supporting command relationships have their place out of necessity if there's just not enough resources to go around. So I'll use the example of, I touched on logistics and Nimitz feeling that he had to maintain that at his level because it was so critical to the war fight. You know, the big argument about where naval forces would be focused, whether it would be in the Atlantic in the European fight or it would be in the Pacific as an example of those tensions. And that was

managed by king back and he didn't delegate that to others underscores the importance of of logistics but what has happened since then in less consequential fights non-peer fights as we turn to supported supporting as command structures of convenience we have logistics that is sufficient but uh not sufficient enough to to commit uh opcon take on those logistics formations to a specific commander, either a commander that has a specific mission or has mission responsibilities or has geographic responsibilities. So we pursued supported-supporting relationships. Made sense in a lot of ways, but it has become too much of a switch. We'll just do supported-supporting. We've lost sight of, you know, have your audience ask the question,

what is the document that defines supported-supporting relationships? And that is a a convening document that describes what those relationships are. Because most supported supporting commanders have multiple, I'm sorry, implementing directive is the correct term for the order. So every supported-supporting relationship should have a implementing directive written by the commander that owns both the supported-supporting relationships describing the authorities that are resident within that that supportive supporting relationships oftentimes the supporting commander has multiple commands that they are supported to those supported commanders often only have one so the supported commander may have a supported

commander A has logistics commander B. Supported commander C has logistics commander B. Supported commander D has logistics commander B. Again, structures of convenience because we don't have enough logistics command to have a op-con take-on relationship with the operational commands. And that puts us at risk because if all three of those commanders who are being supported by one commander need logistic support at the same time, you can't do it. There's got to be a graceful degradation of who doesn't get what when. And it's got to be condition-based. It's got to be based on what's happening at the time. It can't be this JTF commander is always going to have primacy for logistic support.

that that may put a campaign at risk that wasn't envisioned when those command structures were first formulated back to my comment before is that we should always be reviewing command constructs and control constructs to make sure that they're still valid but be very careful about changing them because once you change them you got to communicate why you instituted that change because invariably it's about managing risk within the force now i don't know what the flash to bang on starting the article and publication was typically those things are usually written and written and edited over a couple of months my guess is the conflict in the red sea kicked off after you started writing this how has that conflict uh affected any of your

thinking on this subject i've been surprised at the seeming level of a thought of autonomy me giving the commanders at the scene to have batteries release in a way that i i didn't necessarily anticipate it was a definite concern when uh we're sending ships out there so i i'll just keep continuing to stress how much i hate to write so i maybe i'll curtail those people that asked me to to write things but like i said bill hamlet's a good friend he's he's an awesome editor anybody wants to write for proceedings i would encourage you to do it despite my aversion to writing. Bill will make it easy for you. He made everything I wrote way better than what I initially sent him to consider. But the writing piece, this has been an ongoing debate between

he and I, and I committed to doing it about a year ago, started pulling some thoughts together, and then finally pulled it together in the last six months. Uninformed by the Red Sea piece, as you said, but fully informed by Ukraine. And I don't see any dissonance between what is in the article and its application to Ukraine or the Red Sea for that matter. I'm not fully informed on what's happening in the Red Sea. I've gotten some briefs based on the things that I do for the Navy, but not detailed enough to have an unclassified opinion other than a top level one. But I am pleased at the autonomy that the units, the engaging units, have had with respect to firing authorities. And I think that is captured in the article when I talk about how important it is to delegate authorities down to the tactical edge.

And there's a reluctance to do that. People talk about the importance of delegating authority but retaining responsibility. i i think it's important to retain responsibility that's a whole that's a leadership discussion that's completely different but in the context of a decentralized control decentralized execution centralized control i think both have to be decentralized you have to delegate both the control and and the authorities down to subordinate levels so we're better than where we are now i go back to my bmd days and and i was a air wing commander at the time and there was discussions about the, you were going to control BMD fires out of TFCC, the strike group commander is going

to control them. And it took a long time. I mean, it took four months of exercising to convince the strike group commanders writ large. I'm not talking about one in particular. It was a general appreciation across all those strike group commanders based on their view of command and control, what they had brought up and the environment had changed that the shot opportunities were so fleeting. You had to delegate that authority down to the individual unit. It couldn't even be held by the air defense commander. It had to be delegated down to the individual unit. So I think we're seeing that in execution in the Red Sea. The one thing I will say is I still think that we're too risk adverse as a force. You need to

embrace risk as a resource. This is a discussion I thought was unique to the military and my experience there, but I find it's the same often with the discussions I have with some of my clients in industry and beyond the defense industry. There's some interesting writing that's coming out from innovation that we need to embrace risk as a resource. The innovation board that just met with DepSecDev and SecDev mentioned this in their report out yesterday, I think it was from their winter meeting. The one thing I will say is that we need to move to a point where more latitude is given to the tactical commander

about which weapons to use. I don't, and I'm hijacking your podcast a little bit here, Jared, to make this point. People talk about us being on the wrong side of the cost curve when we're shooting down $40,000 drones with $2 million missiles. I disagree with that. You have to think about what is the context of the effects that the Houthis are trying or Iran are trying to create that we are trying to counter with military capabilities. So think about if that if any of those drones had got to Gaza, regardless of the effect, the effect is created when they get to Gaza.

And now you've got a strategic victory potentially for the Houthis or for Iran. So that's what the cost is of not being successful. successful. So I'm less concerned about the cost curve from in this Red Sea scenario, shooting $2 million SM2s at $40,000 drones. That said, I would hope that there was a discussion that was occurring within each one of those firing units of, do we want to shoot them with an SM2 or do we want to shoot them with a five-inch gun? Because 100% mission success is limited. And if If we run out of X weapon and we have got to go out of the theater to rearm back to logistics, what does that effect have on theater balance of power if we're taking that

weapon system out of theater with all the weapons and effects that it has in its magazine? So as I say, I close the article by saying we should make everything as simple as possible and no simpler. C2, command and control, is very, very complicated. The Red Sea example is highlighting that, and we need to deeply consider all those vignettes as we structure that C2 and decide what is it that we're going to decentralize of both control and of command. All right, sir, we're far afield, and I'm going to keep going here because you presented me the opportunity by affording me your second article, which you mentioned you had written with Heinel Klink. And I was trying to pull it up on my phone as you were giving me that last answer, so we'll drop that in the show notes as well. But you were talking about symmetry, asymmetry, and it's really about opening the policy window on some of the weapons sales to Taiwan.

As an example, I don't think that was probably the only thing mentioned in the article, but that was kind of like what you used to describe it. So do you want to talk a little bit about that article, sort of what your point was, and where you think we may be missing the boat a little bit? Yeah, so I think this is connected with both control and command. the article piece. So there is an area that is not the purview of military commanders, and that's policy. Policy is at its core about civilian authorities' control over military commanders and the operations they conduct. The best example in my mind is ROE. ROE is civilian control over military operations. But ROE has to be able to change rapidly. And what those branches and sequels of ROE need to be deeply considered before those changes are

required. Because that ROE is meant to be restrictive on the applications of military power. So that military power and its application doesn't outpace civilians' authority to control what that fight looks like. Uncontrolled escalation is an example. So we have a policy with respect to Taiwan, which I think is correct, is that Taiwan should be pursuing an asymmetric strategy. And U.S. has interest there. We have lots of interest in Taiwan, being careful about the actions that Taiwan takes to make sure they're not escalatory, and to be careful about actions that the PRC takes, that they're not escalatory as well. I think that's the whole premise behind FONOPS and a lot of the things that, you know, PACOM command structure gets after in a day-to-day

business. That being said, in the application of that policy, we're treating allegiance to this important approach of asymmetry down to the weapons system. So I call out in the article that HIMARS is not an asymmetric system at all. And for a while, it was off the table because it wasn't asymmetric as an option for Taiwan to consider for purchase. It's a great example because look at what the Ukrainian military has done

with HIMARS in Ukraine. That thing weighs a ton. The support mechanism to rearm it is complicated. It's got specific vehicles that carry the multiple rocket launchers with specific structures on them to allow them to rearm the rocket launcher itself. It weighs tons. It's very difficult to execute those operations in terrain, especially seasonal terrain when the ground is unstable. But Ukraine has an asymmetric strategy, and they're using that weapon to support that asymmetric strategy.

So in the article, I call out these concerns with respect to MH-60s, with respect to MQ-9, with respect to E2D, with respect to HIMARS, with Taiwan, and to say we need to be much more open-minded about the application of asymmetry. It's not about the weapons system. It's what effect can that weapons system create? And is that supportive of an asymmetric strategy? Is that something that would be a deterrent to Russia in the case of Ukraine or China in the case of the Philippines? So as with the C2 article, we need to be more thoughtful when we're talking about a peer competition than just these binary applications of policy, strategy, or structure. Well, thank you very much for your time, Admiral. Unfortunately, that's all that we have time for today. Sir, where can we find you online? And then what are you working on next? I know I asked you earlier, you said you're kind of doing these same things here. What is Mr. Admiral Hamlet to ask you to write that we'll be seeing next year at this time? That is a great question. Probably not much if I had my way. It's really important to write because it's lasting and it creates debate.

But I spend all my time is spent in the national security domain. I've got a lot of people that have reached out to me based on things that I've said or ideas that I've shared. So I will be very active in that space. You know, I'm an adjunct professor at the War College and I'm a senior fellow at CNA. I've got a relationship with the Center for International Studies at MIT. I mean, there's a long spectrum of what I would characterize them all as clients and what underscores you said at the opening. These are all my views.

I'm not representative of any of them. But I would ask your audience that it's one thing to be educated. It's another thing to participate. So writing is a way of participating. Engaging in a dialogue, commenting on articles about what your informed opinion is, I think is important. So you'll see me participating in a lot of venues. I'm hosting a panel at West with numbered fleet commanders and with the various MEF

commanders. So I stay engaged and I would encourage your audience to stay engaged. And I very much appreciate that you stay engaged here on a Saturday morning when you should be with family and we're having this great conversation between the two of us. So thank you very much for that, Jerry. Absolutely. Are those meth commanders going to jump you about your thoughts on supporting supported? That's kind of like a Marine Corps. I don't think I think they're.

I've heard from a lot of people. I haven't heard from my Marine friends. That is what their concern is, is because they are so dependent on logistics if they're at risk with supportive, supporting relationships. I think that's what you see. General Henkel's a great guy. He made a comment recently about amphibs and being able to support the mobility of Marines. So it's really all about risk apportionment. It's not about command apportionment or control apportionment. And it's about the resources available to support that pipe. I'm looking forward to it.

I know I'm going to learn a lot on that panel. It'll be good. Yes, sir. Well, thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon We'll be right back.