Context
Political, technological, military, and economic trends will affect the way naval forces are structured in the future and the weapons with which they will be equipped. The Panel on Weapons foresees that during the next 25 to 35 years, naval forces will be called on to provide part of the U.S. response to a variety of situations that vary from major regional conflicts (MRCs) to operations other than war (OOTW) that may involve anything from disaster relief to hostage recovery. Naval forces should be equipped with appropriate, effective, and affordable weapons to respond to the expected range of conflicts in which they may be involved.
The panel is mindful that there is a worldwide trend among potential adversaries in the proliferation of increasingly capable air defenses, antiship weapons, sea and land mines, better surveillance capabilities based on commercial and some national satellite systems, quiet submarines, modern land combat systems, and possibly chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons (conventionally grouped under the rubric of weapons of mass destruction [WMD]) with medium-range weapon-delivery capability. In the face of these potentially increased military capabilities of future adversaries, there remains a need for Navy and Marine Corps forces to be equipped to destroy large numbers of fixed targets, and an even larger number of mobile or relocatable targets, while maintaining an antisubmarine warfare (ASW) capability and an antinuclear posture in case a peer competitor resurfaces.
The strategy of naval forces to project power is often based on the insertion of Marine Corps early-entry combat forces. Threat environments will force insertion from a greater standoff distance from shore than before (to increase the survivability of the amphibious forces). Marine combat forces will have the option to select areas tactically preferred but previously not reachable and be supported with sea-based area surveillance and firepower. This is expected to reduce the logistic support the marines would have to take ashore with them and would permit deploying smaller forces to more strategic points to control a larger area in the initial phase of an operation. In its study of weapon mix to achieve these objectives, the panel took into account differences in requirements prior to landing troops from those required to support and sustain them afterward.
The Marine Corps concept of future operations will require weapons from the sea capable of delivering the following munitions:
Except for targets that can be engaged by gunfire (inaccurate and short range) or cruise missiles (limited in numbers, and expensive), the Navy's current capability to destroy these targets rests entirely with carrier-based aircraft. The panel believes that aircraft cost and vulnerability (except at sanctuary altitudes and standoff distances) will require that the Navy have alternative shipboard weapon systems to share the task of fire support from the sea. The long time of flight and high cost of the Tomahawk land attack missile (TLAM) also require that faster and cheaper long-range surface-to-surface weapons be developed.
Future alternatives include an arsenal ship, or perhaps an arsenal submarine, equipped with a deep magazine of long-range precision-guided rockets and the development of longer-range projectiles for naval guns. The panel concluded that there is no practical way that existing naval guns could be upgraded with new munitions to provide ordnance delivery to ranges between 200 and 600 km with the required warhead payloads. Thus, the panel concluded that fire support from the sea should be provided predominantly by precision-guided solid rocket-propelled long-range ballistic missiles. These missiles could be built with various calibers and equipped with a variety of warheads/payloads and terminal-guidance systems, all launched from vertical launch systems (VLSs).
As an interim measure until such weapons are developed, the panel concluded that the extended-range guided munition (ERGM) should be developed and the Navy's present 5-in./54 guns should be upgraded to 5-in./62 to increase the reach of shipboard guns to about 60 nautical miles.
Many nations are acquiring highly maneuverable, stealthy, subsonic, and/or supersonic antiship missiles. Many will be sea skimmers that reduce to a minimum the reaction time available to the defense. The panel concluded that with the use of networked surveillance and sensor capabilities and airborne antiair assets, and with the use of high-acceleration and agile surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), the Navy will be able to cope with at least modest antiship missile attacks expected from potential adversaries. However, to gain the maximum effectiveness from all available weapons, the Navy must pursue programs that provide for the required detection and tracking capabilities through the use of networked sensor systems and improved SAMs and air-to-air missiles (AAMs) all capable of dealing with advanced threat cruise missiles.
Defense Against Theater Ballistic Missiles
Many potential adversaries will possess theater ballistic missiles (TBMs) armed with conventional weapons and WMD, i.e., chemical, biological, and nuclear warheads. Without a competent defense, many forms of naval force power projection, such as amphibious operations, may incur unacceptable losses. The panel concurs with the Navy's plan for the initial development of a terminal defense against short-range TBMs with unitary warheads and later growth to a more robust hit-to-kill pre-apogee intercept system, if necessary, to counter long-range TBMs. Such a long-range system could become increasingly important to such missions as theaterwide air defense. The Department of the Navy has no plans to defend against TBMs that may be designed to deploy their submunitions shortly after booster burnout. This threat could prove to be a "showstopper" for Navy and Marine Corps landing operations, and the panel believes that the Department of the Navy should undertake a serious exploration of options for a naval boost-phase intercept capability.
The panel envisions that 25 to 35 years in the future, a greater percentage of air-to-surface ordnance delivery will be accomplished with standoff air-to-surface weapons. Although these weapons ultimately must be capable of receiving target information from off-board sensors, they also must have autonomous capabilities to continue their attack even in the face of countermeasures leading to target sensor information dropouts. In this respect, coupling an inertial navigator with the terminal guidance system has considerable merit. The panel noted that it is important that, for weapons employing seekers for target acquisition, the type of weapon sensor used should operate on the same physical phenomena as the acquisition and surveillance sensors, since a target detected by one type of sensor may not be detectable by another. It recognizes that if a surveillance sensor sees the target, there is a good chance that the weapon's acquisition sensor will see it also. However, the panel is concerned with the fact that if the available weapons on a given sortie have acquisition sensors that are different from the surveillance sensor (assuming only one sensor per weapon), the weapon may or may not acquire the target. All things considered, the panel believes that in most cases it will be desirable to have a common sensor. This will be particularly true in situations where the surveillance sensor is a ground observer that guides the weapon to the target with a correlation guidance system. For example, if a target is detected by foliage-penetrating radar, a weapon with an infrared (IR) seeker will not be able to engage. Moreover, if the operation of the weapon's fuse is based on radar, it may not function reliably in dense foliage. The trend toward long-range standoff air-to-surface weapons also has implications regarding the types of naval aircraft that will be needed in the future. The aircraft that deliver such weapons do not have to be high-performance aircraft; they must, however, carry large numbers of missiles, but still are restricted by the total payload weight of carrier-based aircraft. Future munitions should be highly common with surface-to-surface systems.
One type of air-to-surface weapon that the panel believes is critical to future operations is a standoff missile similar to the high-speed antiradiation missile (HARM) designed to suppress enemy air defenses. Precision targeting may reduce the need for an antiradiation homer; however, the panel believes that the utility of such a weapon is high and that its capabilities should be extended beyond those of the current HARM system. One reason for the continued retention of HARM-like weapons in the future weapon inventory is that external sensors that are used to geo-locate a radar from standoff distances generally do not provide a small enough error ellipse to allow the target to be attacked by a weapon that is vectored to a Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinate. Thus, unless there is an improvement in the location accuracy of future nonimaging standoff sensors, a residual HARM capability will be necessary.
The panel concluded that the emerging concept of networked integrated sensors providing fire-control quality information to all potential antiair weapon launch platforms—aircraft and others—represents a fundamental shift with broad implications for air-to-air weapons. The panel concluded that the future emphasis should be on long-range interceptor missiles enabled by networked target-acquisition sensors and advanced target-identification capabilities. Air-to-air weapons should also evolve to include greater counterstealth capability, particularly to counter low-observable (LO) cruise-missile threats, and should include multimode seekers capable of longer-range semiautonomous engagements. One nonmissile option offering real potential is the concept of an active close-in self-protection capability based on solid-state laser technology. One important implication of the panel's conclusions is that highly agile aircraft will be less desirable in the future as compared with aircraft capable of carrying relatively large inventories of standoff strike and air-to-air weapons. If supplemented with long-range ship-to-air missiles that the aircraft might forward pass, for example, the air-dominance capability would be enhanced even more.
Nuclear Weapons and Other Approaches
to the Negation of Hard-to-Defeat Targets
Based on current national policy, the Navy may expect to be directed to maintain a strategic nuclear weapons deterrent capability against the reappearance of a major global nuclear threat or other weapons of mass destruction. As the current stockpile ages, the Navy may be expected to be directed by national authority to replace existing weapons with either replicate weapons of new vintage or upgraded design depending on national policy. A low-yield (10 tons to 1 kiloton) nuclear warhead on a precisely delivered penetrating weapon may have an important and growing role because of the need to attack and destroy very hard and deeply buried targets that cannot be destroyed by even large conventional warheads. A logical hierarchy of approaches to destroying hard buried targets and minimizing the collateral damage would begin by considering attacking just the umbilicals of the target (power, communications, and air treatment). Next are the possibilities for the use of high-velocity kinetic-energy penetrators or penetrators containing explosive directional warheads. The possible use of multiple penetrating weapons with zero circular error of probability (CEP) that enter the target area at the same point and from the same direction in order to gradually dig out a deep facility should be considered. If none of the above approaches is a robust solution, national authorities should give due consideration to the deployment of low-yield nuclear warheads on precision, high-velocity, penetrating missiles. An adversary can elect to make the problem of destroying buried targets even more difficult by emplacing them under schools, hospitals, or heavily populated areas. In effect, an adversary might use his own population as a form of cover and protection for valid military targets.
Mitigating Impact of
Weapons of Mass Destruction
The panel recognizes that the use, or threat of use, of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons on land and at sea can profoundly affect the ability of the United States to project its forces. The panel also realizes the many ways that WMD can be delivered: by TBM, cruise missile (CM), aircraft, and ships against sea targets and also by trucks, artillery, and special operations forces (SOF) against land-based targets. Defending against such diverse threats will require a variety of defensive measures that must be integrated if an effective defense is to be attained. There is uncertainty as to whether naval forces will be able to operate continually in a chemical and/or biological weapon effects environment, and there is thus a need for an overall naval chemical and biological warfare (CBW) doctrine. The use of active measures to deny WMD use is discussed elsewhere in this document, but emphasis should be given to the development of rapid and remote CBW detection to allow adequate time to implement appropriate passive defensive measures, as well as attack warning available from other radar and IR sensors. The importance of improved passive defenses against biological and chemical attack must also be recognized and supported programmatically.
Submarines in the hands of even less capable adversaries will remain a formidable threat to the conduct of naval (Navy and Marine Corps) operations near shore. Operations in shallow water near hostile shores make it difficult to conduct the multilayered (submarine barriers, patrol aircraft, and surface ship point defense) antisubmarine warfare (ASW) defense that was designed against the past Soviet threat. The Navy now has an inadequate capability to defend against a near-shore modern electric-drive submarine. Therefore, the ASW defense capabilities of naval forces must be improved. The panel believes that an aggressive antitorpedo defense must be a mainstay of such a capability.
Offensive weapons against hostile submarines have not received much attention in recent years since the previous Soviet ASW threat diminished. In the meantime, however, improvements in hostile submarine capabilities have continued. The panel believes that improvements on present submarine weapons can provide an adequate capability against the generally smaller submarines in the hands of potential adversaries.
U.S. offensive mining capabilities (against hostile submarines) are represented by the encapsulated torpedo (CAPTOR) mine. The panel concluded that a networked underwater sensor field (interconnected by acoustic communications), when coupled with an autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV) that can attack any target in the sensor field, may be a cost-effective approach for offensive mines to sanitize a fairly large volume of water. In such a system the less expensive sensors would be proliferated, whereas only a few expensive weapons would be needed to cover a given volume of water.
Other Naval Weapons and Techniques
Although there is an enduring need for weapons to destroy targets, there is also an emerging need to develop weapons that incapacitate the enemy and reduce his will to fight. During Desert Storm, some of these effects were achieved by conventional weapons that destroyed the will of the enemy army to fight, the enemy's electric power generation and distribution systems, and command-and-control capabilities. The panel sees an expanded need for weapons and concepts specifically designed for incapacitating the enemy's infrastructure and the enemy's will and ability to fight while causing minimal civilian fatalities or serious collateral damage.
Another important area for the Department of the Navy to pursue is the ability of the naval forces to conduct information warfare (IW), particularly at the outset of hostilities to confuse and deny an enemy's ability to command and control its forces. The successful implementation of IW could be seen as a force multiplier for the United States.
The Economics and Speed of Target Destruction
The panel compared the cost and time required to wage a successful campaign against some conceptual adversaries and concluded that even when taking into account the relatively high cost of smart weapons, the predominant use of smart weapons, launched from relatively safe standoff ranges, will minimize the cost and duration of a campaign and will minimize U.S. casualties and the expenditure of military assets.
The panel concluded that properly designed precision-guided rockets offer the advantages of supersonic speed and can provide the weapon ranges required along with a more benign launch environment for guidance electronics. In addition, they can easily be scaled to a variety of sizes. The panel notes that such weapons can have a steep learning curve (large cost reductions with increasing quantities) and commonality of components.
In such weapons, the cost of the guidance subsystem generally dominates the weapon cost. Typically, guidance electronics may be half of the total cost of the weapon. For this reason, the reduction of the cost of guidance electronics is of utmost importance. IR and video seekers, one-way (command) data links, GPS, and new, low-cost Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) weapon navigation systems tend to be low-cost components. Two-way, high-data-rate data links and long-range radar seekers are examples of high-cost components of a guidance system. System designs that utilize lower-cost components, standardized across weapons using similar components to achieve higher production volumes and (thus) lower cost, are approaches to the reduction of guidance-system cost and hence total weapon cost. The panel concluded that significant reductions in the unit cost of weapons can be achieved by a careful exercise of these principles, thus making the use of a higher percentage of smart weapons in future conflicts more affordable.
A more exhaustive and detailed list of the panel's findings, conclusions, and recommendations is provided in Chapter 10 of this report. In general, the panel concluded the following:
PRIMARY RECOMMENDATIONS—INITIATIVES FOR WEAPONS AND SPECIAL TECHNIQUES
The panel recommends the following new Department of the Navy initiatives:
The panel also recommends continued Department of the Navy emphasis on the
following:
|
||
|
|
|