Need SWO Input For Military Fiction Research

[Aluroon]

Top notch post.

Thanks.

How does the WTI pipeline screw with placement? Has PERS-41 mismanaged the WTI folks already?

With placement it's an issue of demand. There aren't enough WTIs because signing away your shore tour so you can get underway 2-3* months every year minimum and not get your graduate degree or a 'downtime' tour is a deal most people that would be of benefit to the program are smart enough to avoid. Which means the WTIs that are available for DH orders are getting orders almost exclusively to ships about to deploy or FDNF. Then, when they roll to shore on their next tour they're subject again to screening for the needs of the community.

The benefits on the other hand of substantially limiting your future duty stations and going through a (relatively) difficult course of study is you get to wear a patch. You tell me, why the hell would someone sign up for that?

*I've got friends that have been told (coming off FDNF orders that had them underway 250+ days a year) that they've already been signed up by their gaining command to support 6 SWATTS next year. That's 18 weeks underway, plus the academics, all of which is away from their 'shore' duty station. It's particularly bad if you get suckered into the 'accelerated warfighter' program, since those guys are on the hook for whatever WTI orders they give you post 2nd tour. You can basically read that as 'automatic orders to Dahlgren". I had another that supported almost 400 days underway during his 1st DH tour that got redirected right to his 2nd DH tour on a ship that was supposed to deploy like three months after he got there.

Noting your fact, above:

Do SWOs have a method or habit of tracking their "tactical watch hours" the same way pilots track flight hours?

My guess is no.

They rolled out a paper logbook for OOD hours this year. COs are also required to sign a memo at the end of an officer's tour annotating how many hours of OOD they stood underway.

There is no similar no tracking on tactical proficiency / CIC.

 

[Aluroon]

What would be the minimum number of watch hours required as part of the qual process to earn the SWO pin?

(We have seen before that if Big Navy makes a skill or function into a warfare pin, people will go the lengths required to complete it.)

SWO has no meaningful tactical prerequisites.

In addition, the required observed / performed watch tasks in general in the SWO community are frequently accomplished via walk through / talk through, since doing otherwise can hold up a division officer for literally months at a time as they wait for specific infrequent evolutions to come up (some of which may not even happen during their entire tour).

If you're asking what they should be, there's two problems I'd raise.

First, adding a handful of tactical watches to SWO (a Qualification most SWOs earn as Ensigns) that requires baseline tactical knowledge is unlikely to meaningfully translate to better knowledge down the line. This is especially true because depending on your platform / ship life cycle / tasking the value of those watches in the immediate or even down the line is essentially zero.

Second all the existing training requirements, even for watch stations like 'Surface', 'Air', and 'TAO' are themselves not really sufficient to produce people with a level of knowledge appropriate to be making any kind of meaningful decisions on the watches down the line. They represent minimum levels of knowledge required to stand the watch to the minimum standard required by the navy for operations (the ATG standard). Even standing that watch through an entire deployment may not actually mean you are meaningfully proficient in it, depending on what you do in that deployment / your ship class.

For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that the real answer is the SWO pipeline branching after a division officer's first your into three different career pipelines: tactical, engineering, and operations. Navigators and ATOs become operations, and are your dedicated ship drivers / operations people that go on to become OPS/FIRST. ASWOs/FCOs/TRAINO become future CSOs/WEPS/PTO, and DCA/MPA/ becomes your CHENG pipeline. Post DH for XO/CO you pair an XO/CO of opposite backgrounds to ensure broader coverage.

But that shit would require detailers to actually do their job and plan more than 5 minutes ahead, and will never happen.

 

[Scott M]

They use a few main ways to communicate- radios (not too different from what combat controllers use so the grunts can talk to airplanes... since you said you're USAF) both line of sight and satellite com, usually encrypted (but partner nation ships don't have our crypto if that's part of your story), MIRC chat started being a thing about 20 years ago and there was a big debate about ten years ago whether it was appropriate for kill orders. The old NATO data link systems were very labor intensive and the console operators on each ship had to be able to communicate with each other to manage all those different tracks (friendly, enemy, and neutral contacts in the air, on the surface, and subsurface). Datalink stuff is a lot more automated nowadays though.

If your story involves GPS not working then accurately tracking all the friendlies and bad guys gets more complicated. Each friendly ship's tactical plot is offset from the others by some margin of error. Dealing with that is kind of a lost art. If you want your subordinate ships to engage several enemy targets then coordination that can be complicated. The old Soviet doctrine was to shoot a crap ton of huge missiles and let the laws of probability sort it out. That was a pretty good doctrine for a WW3 scenario but not really appropriate for a limited war or a regional war scenario. Western doctrine, as far engagements that were not all-out war, has always been afraid of one of our anti ship missiles hitting the wrong target. What that means is you need really good targeting data before launching one- which means good comms and an accurate picture of everything else that is going on anywhere close to the bad guy you're going to shoot with the missile.

Just some ideas and broad, qualitative concepts for you. I think @AllAmerican75 will probably give you more useful gouge.

He did indeed.

The setting is a large inland bay with, normally, plenty of room for all manner of deep water traffic. There is a large waterfront with several piers large enough for everything but a carrier plus a commercial port. You mentioned GPS and that's a good point as it's completely gone in this scenario. Because Reasons (sci-fi), all wireless comms over approx 300 meters, even with line of sight, are hashed. It's arbitrary and heavy-handed on my part as the writer, but I had a few narrative requirements and that ended up being the best way to handle it. I'm trying to set up a believable blue vs blue where the fog of war and completely lack of higher command, to each other, GPS, and to local civilians is completely gone. Also, as you mentioned weapon use, with the apocalyptic nature of the event, the bay will be filled with waterborne refugees of all makes/models, up to cargo container ships. My original source from the naval war college mentioned that with that fact in mind, even at short ranges (less than 5 miles) it would be very difficult to actually hit something with missiles. I like the Soviet tactic you mentioned above and given the situation, one captain might be close enough to the end of his rope to try it.

 

[Aluroon]

My original source from the naval war college mentioned that with that fact in mind, even at short ranges (less than 5 miles) it would be very difficult to actually hit something with missiles. I like the Soviet tactic you mentioned above and given the situation, one captain might be close enough to the end of his rope to try it.

Your source is wrong about modern capabilities, even without any modern datalinks, at least so far as it speaks to US vessels.

For a lot of reasons blue on blue warships is exceedingly unlikely, even with pretty heavy handed plot contrivances for a whole lot of reasons in so far as how surface navy is taught to operate and the 'lessons' that are beaten into COs during their pipelines. Blue on blue surface to air is significantly more plausible though without any datalinks available. Ultimately though you're telling a story, and one in which a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population will have the knowledge necessary to poke holes in it. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[AllAmerican75]

What would be the minimum number of watch hours required as part of the qual process to earn the SWO pin?

(We have seen before that if Big Navy makes a skill or function into a warfare pin, people will go the lengths required to complete it.)

Like @Aluroon said, I'm not sure hours of watch stood directly translates to better proficiency. What we really need is to figure out how to better train our SWOs. You need to put each officer through multiple different scenarios over and over again with somebody who's extremely knowledgeable to coach them and provide critiques and guidance. This is hard to do in the real world due to a lack of OPFOR and funding.

I think there's something to be said about the implementation of virtual training environments to accomplish this training. Again, that takes money and an organization that is forward-leaning and open to new ideas. Also, we need to groom officers to be able to hold specific jobs. I really think we need to return to a job specialization path like @Aluroon mentioned. Nearly every other Navy in the world does it this way but we don't because of personnel problems that date back to the turn of the 20th Century.

 

[Hair Warrior]

I’m on board. Love the virtual idea. What would the SWO paths be? I could guess but would like to hear others.

 

[AllAmerican75]

I’m on board. Love the virtual idea. What would the SWO paths be? I could guess but would like to hear others.

Essentially, at the end of your sea tours you would branch off into either Engineering or a Topsider specialty with engineers becoming experts in how to operate and maintain the engineering plant while the topsiders focus on driving and fighting the ship. The Merchant Marine and Coasties already do something similar and so do every other Navy. The issue that took us away from this was the engineering types complained about not being able to hold command and being discriminated against for promotion since they couldn't hold command at sea. I think the idea of mixing and matching COs and XOs would fix this problem.

@Aluroon broke it down into a three branch system with the differentiation between Ops, Weps, and Eng, but it's the same idea. The three branch system would likely gain more traction since these are already tracked via AQDs and there are unspoken specializations based upon those AQDs. The other issue with the Topsider/Engineering approach is that there's no career option for major command equivalency for Engineering types since big deck CHENGs are EDOs and the SWO community would need to radically alter it's accessions path and retention policies to recruit engineering types and would run afoul of career programming for EDOs (Essentially removing career opportunities for our equivalent of O6 major command at sea for carrier construction and industrial maintenance specialists).

 

[Scott M]

Your source is wrong about modern capabilities, even without any modern datalinks, at least so far as it speaks to US vessels.

For a lot of reasons blue on blue warships is exceedingly unlikely, even with pretty heavy handed plot contrivances for a whole lot of reasons in so far as how surface navy is taught to operate and the 'lessons' that are beaten into COs during their pipelines. Blue on blue surface to air is significantly more plausible though without any datalinks available. Ultimately though you're telling a story, and one in which a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population will have the knowledge necessary to poke holes in it. I wouldn't worry about it.

I think that's what bugging me...I know how implausible it is and the "hey, this is really freaking cool" hasn't beat out "hey, this is highly unlikely to happen" in my head. Truth is, these captains/bridges aren't even featured in the narratives. The blue vs blue action is viewed by the main characters, a rifle company of marines.

Given what you said about missiles at close range and with so much water traffic that you could (exaggerating slightly) walk across the bay from boat to boat, lol, you're saying they would still function? Related question...a cargo container ship would seem to be a massive target and hard to miss. Given the comms hash and all the traffic, how do the missiles lock on target and hit what they're supposed to?

 

[Jim123]

The technical-tactical problem of getting the missile to hit the right ship in crowded seas (or airplane when there are a lot of good guys, bad guys, and a few civilians in the sky) is a lot like a dodgeball game when you're trying to hit a specific person... or pass the basketball down the court to the guy who might or might not be "open" either right now or in two seconds when the ball gets there.

If you can write a computer program that can do that 99% of the time in the real world and in a really difficult environment (with a lot of factors working against it) then you could get pretty rich working on missiles in the defense industry. Most video games make targeting look really simple, your archers/catapults/laser blaster riflemen always hit what you told them to aim at...

 

[AllAmerican75]

I think that's what bugging me...I know how implausible it is and the "hey, this is really freaking cool" hasn't beat out "hey, this is highly unlikely to happen" in my head. Truth is, these captains/bridges aren't even featured in the narratives. The blue vs blue action is viewed by the main characters, a rifle company of marines.

Given what you said about missiles at close range and with so much water traffic that you could (exaggerating slightly) walk across the bay from boat to boat, lol, you're saying they would still function? Related question...a cargo container ship would seem to be a massive target and hard to miss. Given the comms hash and all the traffic, how do the missiles lock on target and hit what they're supposed to?

It really depends upon what is physically happening to take out comms. Is the entire sub-light RF spectrum schwacked? Then the radars and all of our IFF stuff won't work either. Something to actually take out the entire sub-light RF spectrum would be SciFi indeed.

If it's just radio comms being jammed, then radars would likely still work but target discrimination becomes difficult. This is a broad generalization and simplification of how the systems work but going into detail will likely get into classified territory very quickly. Here's a quick overview of IFF and how it works: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ide... and civilian,and range from the interrogator.

 

[Scott M]

It really depends upon what is physically happening to take out comms. Is the entire sub-light RF spectrum schwacked? Then the radars and all of our IFF stuff won't work either. Something to actually take out the entire sub-light RF spectrum would be SciFi indeed.

If it's just radio comms being jammed, then radars would likely still work but target discrimination becomes difficult. This is a broad generalization and simplification of how the systems work but going into detail will likely get into classified territory very quickly. Here's a quick overview of IFF and how it works: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe#:~:text=Identification, friend or foe (IFF,designed for command and control.&text=It enables military and civilian,and range from the interrogator.

All sub-light RF. Funny that you described it that way as that's exactly the phrase I used lol. Do current weapons systems allow anything like laser target designation? Given the ranges (over the horizon) that any theoretically missile shots at enemy ships would take place, that doesn't seem likely, but it's one way around an RF hash. Bonus points for the IFF being knocked out. I had hoped that's the case, but it's good to have it confirmed.

 

[Hair Warrior]

The technical-tactical problem of getting the missile to hit the right ship in crowded seas (or airplane when there are a lot of good guys, bad guys, and a few civilians in the sky) is a lot like a dodgeball game when you're trying to hit a specific person... or pass the basketball down the court to the guy who might or might not be "open" either right now or in two seconds when the ball gets there.

If you can write a computer program that can do that 99% of the time in the real world and in a really difficult environment (with a lot of factors working against it) then you could get pretty rich working on missiles in the defense industry. Most video games make targeting look really simple, your archers/catapults/laser blaster riflemen always hit what you told them to aim at...

Iranian ship hit by missile in friendly fire, kills 19

An Iranian missile fired during a training exercise struck a support vessel near its target, killing 19 Iranian sailors and wounding 15, Iran’s state media said.

www.usatoday.com

 

[Hair Warrior]

Essentially, at the end of your sea tours you would branch off into either Engineering or a Topsider specialty with engineers becoming experts in how to operate and maintain the engineering plant while the topsiders focus on driving and fighting the ship. The Merchant Marine and Coasties already do something similar and so do every other Navy. The issue that took us away from this was the engineering types complained about not being able to hold command and being discriminated against for promotion since they couldn't hold command at sea. I think the idea of mixing and matching COs and XOs would fix this problem.

@Aluroon broke it down into a three branch system with the differentiation between Ops, Weps, and Eng, but it's the same idea. The three branch system would likely gain more traction since these are already tracked via AQDs and there are unspoken specializations based upon those AQDs. The other issue with the Topsider/Engineering approach is that there's no career option for major command equivalency for Engineering types since big deck CHENGs are EDOs and the SWO community would need to radically alter it's accessions path and retention policies to recruit engineering types and would run afoul of career programming for EDOs (Essentially removing career opportunities for our equivalent of O6 major command at sea for carrier construction and industrial maintenance specialists).

Roger. I think you would want another SWO track for Coastal/Riverine/VBSS, leading to PC command?

The mission need would be to develop the small boat skill sets to avoid another Farsi Island incident.

I understand some of these are perceived as collateral duties (VBSS) or dead end career paths (PC CO)... but as an outsider looking in, maybe that’s part of the issue?

 

[Jim123]

Iranian ship hit by missile in friendly fire, kills 19

An Iranian missile fired during a training exercise struck a support vessel near its target, killing 19 Iranian sailors and wounding 15, Iran’s state media said.

www.usatoday.com

That was only six months ago and I'd almost forgotten about it.

 

[Hair Warrior]

That was only six months ago and I'd almost forgotten about it.

That’s 2020 for you, brother.