The United States Navy

NAVY PROGRAM ASSESSMENT

In 1992 the Navy put in place an innovative and far-reaching reorientation to naval operations, which has affected every aspect of the service's decision-making, planning, and programming. Factors responsible for this new direction include political and economic changes on global, regional, and national scales, as well as the marketplace dynamics that increasingly drive how the Navy actually operates the "business" of shaping, providing, and sustaining naval forces. The reengineering of the Navy's program assessment processes — determination of requirements, allocation of scarce resources, and responsive decision-making — enables more flexible and timely responses in support of warfighting Commanders-in-Chief (CinCs) and the Naval Services' input to the Defense Department's Program Objective Memorandum.

OPNAV Organization

The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV), the Navy headquarters staff, is headed by the Chief and Vice Chief of Naval Operations. The OPNAV staff comprises the Assistant Vice Chief of Naval Operations, four Deputy Chiefs of Naval Operations (DCNOs), nine major staff office directors, and seven special assistants, as illustrated in Figure 7 [use "back" key to return here]. The DCNOs and major staff office directors are supported by several division directors. As a result of the 1992 OPNAV reorganization, it now mirrors the structure and functions of the Joint Staff, an important consideration in an era of joint warfare assessments, planning, and programming.

The single "Navy voice" for program direction is the DCNO for Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessments (N8), which includes the Navy's three major warfare resource sponsors — Surface (N86), Submarine (N87), and Air (N88). (Figure 8 [use "back" key to return here] shows the N8 organization.) Within N8, the Expeditionary Warfare Division (N85), led by a Marine major general, ensures that the Navy Department program assessment and budgetary processes address unique aspects of naval expeditionary, mine warfare, and amphibious operations. Likewise, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Division (N84) provides senior-level oversight of a highly complex and difficult warfare area that extends across all Navy "platform" communities and is a critical element in both littoral and open-ocean warfighting. The Commanders-in-Chief Liaison Division (N83), headed by a Navy rear admiral, ensures that Navy CinCs participate in key decisions involving the Navy requirements and assessment process.

Centralization of Navy programming in N8 ensures a streamlined assessment process — premised on eliminating barriers between individual naval warfare communities — that takes advantage of expertise from all Navy and Marine Corps platforms and warfare disciplines to reach the best overall decision from both the Naval Services' and joint service viewpoints. This assessment process assigns specific roles to many offices within OPNAV and requires embracing a broad perspective in reviewing naval capabilities in joint and combined warfare contexts. By eliminating traditional barriers among warfare communities and the services, Navy programs are scrutinized and then evaluated on their specific contributions to Navy-Marine Corps, joint, and allied/multinational coalition warfighting.

Requirements, Resource Allocation &
Responsive Decision-Making

Prior to the mid-1992 reorganization, the Navy's Total Obligational Authority (TOA) — all funds available to the Department of the Navy — was divided among Navy warfare areas, major platform sponsors, and Marine Corps sponsors, who allotted resources and developed programs according to priorities within their communities. This structure exacerbated the potential for inconsistencies and redundancies across the Naval Services, and created a Navy and Marine Corps whose total effectiveness could be significantly less than the sum of its parts.

The Navy-Marine Corps Team changed this approach by going back to basics — to the fundamentals used to build naval expeditionary forces. The Naval Services have thus discarded the "platform domination" approach that generated competition among ships, aircraft, and submarines. The tough decisions come first, then the services allocate funding based on a program's relevance and contribution to the …From the Sea and Forward…From the Sea strategic concept, thereby avoiding unbalanced and unresponsive programs. Likewise, novel operational concepts — the Marine Corps' Operational Maneuver from the Sea and the Navy's Operating Forward…From the Sea concepts — are addressed across all warfare "boundaries" to ensure the most unbiased assessments and allocations possible.

The vehicle for this determination is a broad-based assessment process, involving a matrix of eight Joint Mission Areas (JMAs) and four Support Areas (SAs), that reflects the complexity of naval warfare requirements and the need to integrate them fully with careful allocations of scarce resources. Both existing and candidate systems, platforms, and programs are assessed against their appropriateness in the joint service environment, ensuring balance and maximum value in future force structure decisions. These Department of the Navy assessment teams also provide the basis for much of the Department's input to the very similar, all-service Joint Warfighting Capability Assessment (JWCA) process led by the Joint Staff.

The Navy and Marine Corps also pared down their review process by disbanding ten formal headquarters boards. Instead, a three-tier committee review constitutes the Naval Services' senior program and policy decision mechanism. Two lower-tier committees make Navy program decisions with the Chief of Naval Operations resolving differences among various constituencies. This process is described below.

Navy Assessment Process

A primary objective of the assessment process is to develop a thorough understanding of how naval forces contribute to the nation's joint force capabilities. …From the Sea outlined four key operational capabilities required to execute new direction: Command, Control, and Surveillance; Battlespace Dominance; Power Projection; and Force Sustainment. To review these capabilities from a programmatic perspective, the assessment process relies upon analytical and assessment tools in considering the eight Joint Mission Areas and four Support Areas. The process thoroughly examines the Naval Services' contributions to joint warfighting, and explicitly incorporates naval doctrine and warfare innovation proposals. Naval forces will continue to conduct fundamental naval warfare tasks such as strike, air, surface, and submarine warfare. But the Navy and Marine Corps recognize that naval warfare doctrine, operational art, terminology, tactics, techniques, and procedures common to all services are essential to effectiveness of joint operations. The JMAs and SAs are thus linked to development and articulation of naval doctrine for the 21st century, and, in turn, stimulate ideas for innovation and experimentation. This assessment process broadens the perspective by examining Navy and Marine Corps programs in the context of all services' roles, missions, and functions.

In short, Joint Mission Area and Support Area assessments establish explicit links between required joint operational capabilities and Navy-Marine Corps programs and budgets.

JMA and SA assessment teams are chaired by Navy flag or Marine general officers and comprise a "horizontal cut" of senior officers throughout the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations to provide warfare and programmatic experience and expertise. Also included are representatives from Headquarters, Marine Corps and the Fleet CinCs. The teams employ seminars, wargames, analyses, simulations, and outside expert opinions to examine and discuss warfare requirements, emerging issues, and programmatic alternatives.

The assessment process is iterative and continuously refined to address emerging operational requirements, evolving naval strategies and doctrine, and fiscal reality. The objective is an integrated investment strategy that will ensure the future readiness and capabilities of the Naval Services to carry out all roles and missions.

The OPNAV Assessment Division (N81) oversees the assessment process for N8 and provides analytical resources to support the JMA and SA assessment teams. N81 is also charged with integrating assessment results into a single investment strategy, the Investment Balance Review (IBR). (Figure 9 [use "back" key to return here] illustrates the "basket weave" of assessment tasks and the team members who conduct area assessments to arrive at an integrated program for consideration.)

Joint Mission Areas

C4 & Information Warfare

satellite
Timely and readily accessible information is critical to effective network-centric C4ISR operations. Information warfare is part of Information Operations (IO), which involves actions taken to affect an adversary's information and information systems while defending our own information and information systems. IO capitalizes on the growing sophistication, connectivity, and reliance on information technology. Offensively, IO seeks to affect all information-dependent processes. Defensively, IO seeks to protect our information and information systems.

Information Warfare (IW) is Information Operations waged in crisis or conflict within and beyond the traditional military battlespace. IW may be conducted to shape the battlespace and prepare the way for future operations. Elements of IW that are associated with attacking and defending the C2 target set is known as Command and Control Warfare (C2 W) and consists of the following disciplines:

In a period of reduced force structure and constrained budgets, it is important to fight smart and leverage technology. Information Warfare, coupled with efficient and appropriately protected systems, is a vitally important element of the Navy's warfighting capability

Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance

arial view
Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance provide for the systematic observation and exploitation of multi-dimensional theater battlespace by all available sensors within a joint framework. A prerequisite for success, information dominance is key to maximum effectiveness and economy of resources. Joint forces require flexible, distributed, and integrated command and control. Similarly, to target critical vulnerabilities or maximize the lethality of precision weapons, joint forces will need access to sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.

unmanned arial vehicle

Forward-deployed naval forces are uniquely well-positioned to exploit these capabilities throughout the spectrum of operations. Processed data are transmitted to the operational commander in near real-time to support the decision-making process. Joint surveillance begins well before hostilities commence and continues well after cessation of hostilities to monitor compliance.

Indications & Warning (I&W), operational employment, and Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) must be melded across land, sea, air, and space systems to provide a single coherent picture.

Strike

missile launch
Strike warfare is intended to damage or destroy targets at sea or ashore. The joint task force commander has a variety of naval weapons from which to choose, including smart munitions delivered from aircraft or sophisticated cruise missiles launched from surface warships and submarines. The essence of this capability is aircraft carriers equipped with F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats, and the vertical-launched weapon systems in surface warships and submarines capable of launching Tomahawk land-attack missiles and future strike systems.

By generating a large number of lethal missile and air operations on demand, and by massing the effects of naval strikes and fires without the need to mass forces off shore, naval expeditionary forces provide opportunity for the United States to vary the intensity as well as focus, direction, and duration of attack. They can make the scale of a joint strike sufficient to shock adversaries into submission or to paralyze their ability to react; and they can sustain the strikes long enough to weaken an aggressor's resolve.

Navy-Marine Corps forces — acting independently, jointly with the Army and Air Force, or combined with allied forces — can project devastating power at any place and any time.

Littoral Warfare

divers with mine
Littoral warfare is the ability to mass overwhelming joint and allied military force and deliver it ashore to influence, deter, contain, or defeat an aggressor. Amphibious forces, naval fire support, Marine Corps divisions and air wings, mine warfare forces, and Special Operations Forces provide the joint task force with the ability to conduct military operations anywhere in the world that is within several hundred miles of the sea. Supporting U.S. naval forces provide anti-submarine, anti-surface, and anti-air capability. The area of control extends from the open ocean, to the shore, and to those inland areas that can be attacked, supported, and defended directly from the sea.

The Navy and Marine Corps Team's capabilities in the littoral environment provide the backbone of America's ability to project credible and effective military power throughout the world.

Sea & Air Superiority

Sea and superiority encompasses specific surface, undersea, and air operations inherent to maritime dominance and to the theater dominance — sea and area control — roles of naval forces in joint, allied, and coalition operations. This includes area and theater missile defense systems, which extend a protective umbrella over land-based forces and areas as well as naval forces operating off shore, and anti-submarine warfare.

Sea and air superiority is an essential, core mission that the Navy must perform to ensure that the nation's joint forces retain freedom of maneuver and the capability to deploy and project power using the sea.

Strategic Mobility

ship with vehicles
Strategic Mobility — the specific naval surface and air logistics functions enabling the movement and sustainment of U.S. combat forces and other friendly forces afloat and ashore — remains an area of intense interest. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, sealift transported nearly 95% of all supplies and equipment. This mission area also includes the Combat Logistics Force, hospital ships, the fleet hospital program, afloat medical/dental assets, Maritime Prepositioning Force ships, and Ready Reserve Force strategic sealift assets.

Marine Corps Assault Echelon and Assault Follow-On Echelon operations are supported by prepositioned ships and surge sealift. Sealift also carries Navy sustainment and ammunition from storage sites to forward logistics bases where CLF shuttle ships pick up and deliver this material to combatant forces at sea. Likewise, sealift is vital to Army and Air Force regional operations, as the nation's land-based services are almost totally dependent upon the "steel bridge" of sealift ships to deliver everything a modern fighting force requires to accomplish its missions. Sealift and the protection of in-transit ships by naval expeditionary forces allow joint and allied forces to deploy and sustain operations. The Navy and Marine Corps are thus committed to Defense Department strategic mobility and logistics requirements to ensure the Naval Services' ability to support forces ashore.

Innovation in Naval Warfare & Engagement

The Innovation in Naval Warfare and Engagement JMA is a broad-based team designed to explore possible future strategic environments and the changing nature of warfare, as well as to consider innovative operational and organizational concepts and technologies. This team also examines innovative concepts for forward engagement and deterrence. This JMA is one forum for examining the implications of these changes and proposing strategies to take concrete steps toward implementing in programs the innovative concepts that the Navy's "futurists" develop. Innovation is a critical element if the Navy and Marine Corps are to reap the benefits of the Revolutions in Military and Business Affairs.

Nuclear Deterrence & Counter-Proliferation
of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Deterrence connotes the ability to influence a nation's leadership's decision-making and actions based on a perceived credible military threat. It is the use of a clear, convincing, and precisely tailored military capability to hold potential opponents' most-valued assets at risk so that they will reassess the cost of aggression or escalation and conclude that their best option is to remain at, or return to, peace. Counter-proliferation is the use of political, economic, and military capabilities to create a credible threat of unacceptable counter-action that causes an adversary to decide against acquisition or use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons of mass destruction.

Strategic deterrence is applied to the entire spectrum of aggression — including WMD use — and is effected through the threatened use or actual use of U.S. nuclear and conventional weapons. However, WMD proliferation remains a major concern of U.S. planners, and may pose strategic threats in the future that are very different from the Cold War Soviet threat. A growing number of countries and terrorist groups could have such weapons and the means to deliver them against U.S. forces or possibly the United States, itself. Given these trends and dynamics, the Navy's contribution to strategic deterrence addresses two different conflict levels:

There is the need to ensure an enhanced strategic and conventional deterrent that can influence an adversary's decision to use weapons of mass destruction. The United States' strategic nuclear forces — strategic ballistic missile submarines, land-based long-range bombers, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles — have kept the peace for more than four decades. With recent arms-control initiatives and significantly reduced Russian nuclear threat, the U.S. total strategic force structure has been scaled back. Recent arms-reduction agreements have increased the nation's reliance on the seaborne leg of the U.S. nuclear triad; the Navy's SSBNs will remain the backbone of the U.S. strategic deterrent. And, the Navy will continue to address requirements for future submarine-launched weapons beyond current systems.

Nuclear-capable naval forces and conventional-strike capabilities remain essential in supporting America's strategic deterrent posture and our ability to hold at risk an adversary's key centers of gravity.

Support Areas

Readiness

The Navy is changing the way it does business — finding innovative and less costly methods while supporting the critical training, supply, and maintenance programs that are essential to readiness. This assessment team evaluates these future methods and reviews current readiness indicators to ensure that readiness is maintained. Included in the readiness area are Navy and Marine Corps operating funds, equipment, war reserve stocks, ordnance, force operations, flying hour/steaming hour programs, all levels of maintenance, spares, environmental compliance, and safety and survivability.

Training

sailor with mooring line
Training includes the instructors, facilities, equipment, and services used by training accession programs, specialized skill training programs, undergraduate flight training programs, and Navy and Marine Corps education programs to maintain fleet and shore establishment readiness. A delicate balance is required between implementing innovative concepts to reduce the support structure and maintaining the quality of America's Sailors and Marines … the Naval Services' most important assets.

Manpower & Personnel

This support area involves diverse "people" issues — the composition of the civilian and military work force and achieving needed personnel reductions without adversely affecting the morale and welfare of the Navy's people. Included are issues such as recruiting, proper funding of the personnel and student accounts, and employment of the reserves. Integration of active and reserve forces under the Total Force concept has become increasingly important in fulfilling Navy-Marine Corps missions within reasonable limits of deployment time and workload on the active force.

As the Navy looks to the future, the morale and welfare of the nation's Sailors, their families, and the service's civilian work force, will continue to be a central concern.

Support & Infrastructure

This mission support area comprises the material and physical side of the Navy and Marine Corps that undergirds Joint Mission Areas. Support encompasses the activities, programs, and personnel that furnish resources to or provide for Navy and Marine Corps operating forces in the areas of acquisition support, environmental protection, headquarters and commands, information support, and installations. Infrastructure represents the largest portion of this area and includes all the functionally organized activities that furnish resources for management of defense forces, facilities or bases from which these forces operate, centrally organized logistics, personnel support, and medical services. A key part of these are the housing and family support programs that support quality of life for the Navy's premier asset — its people. Overall, shore infrastructure costs are a sphere of intense scrutiny in this era of fiscal constraint. The Support and Infrastructure SA has recently added a new functional area for evaluation of anti-terrorism and force protection requirements at bases and installations.

The Navy and Marine Corps will continue to make hard decisions to reduce infrastructure in greater proportion than force structure, thereby ensuring effective recapitalization of the Fleet.

Assessment Outbriefs

The flag and general officer leaders of the Joint Mission Area and Support Area Teams report the results of their assessments to a senior executive board chaired by the DCNO for Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessments and the Marine Corps Deputy Chief of Staff for Programs and Resources (DC/S P&R). This panel includes flag and general officers and senior executives from OPNAV, Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC), and Navy Department Secretariat representation. The assessment teams report on their recommendations for program modification or cancellation, identification of new programs required to meet current and emerging warfare requirements, and cost-saving initiatives and monetary offsets. The panel, led by N8 and DC/S P&R, sets direction and provides guidance regarding the recommendations arising out of the assessment process. This provides the basis for the subsequent Department of the Navy Investment Balance Review.

Investment Balance Review

The IBR, the product of matching fiscal resources with required capabilities, combines assessment results into an overall investment strategy. Navy Fleet CinCs and Marine Corps Forces Commanding Generals, whose inputs are reflected in the final product, are briefed on the IBR. Thus, the assessment process ensures that the Navy program addresses warfighting requirements, is properly funded, and is balanced across all warfare and support areas.

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