Naval Transformation 

Roadmap 

Power and Access...From the Sea 

Sea Strike

Sea Shield

Sea Basing
 

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Foreword 

Naval forces are unique in their contribution to the nation’s defense. Versatile naval 

expeditionary forces are the nation’s first responders, relied upon to influence the 

course of a crisis, control the early phases of hostilities, and set the conditions for 

decisive resolution. America’s ability to protect its homeland, assure our friends and 

allies, and deter potential adversaries depends on maritime supremacy and credible 

projection of combat power. The transformation of naval forces is dedicated to greatly 

expanding the sovereign options available worldwide to the President across the full 

spectrum of warfare. The result of our transformation will be a Navy -Marine Corps 

Team providing sustainable, immediately employable U.S. combat power, ready to 

meet any challenge. 

As directed in the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 

2003-2007, the Department of the Navy presents its Transformation Roadmap. The 

Roadmap describes the key naval concepts, capabilities, initiatives, processes and 

programs that will guide the transformation efforts of the Navy-Marine Corps Team in 

support of the critical operational goals of transformation described in the 2001 

Quadrennial Defense Review Report. Detailed descriptions of the transformational 

programs described in the Roadmap including development and fielding timelines and 

required resources will be provided with the Fiscal Year 2004-2009 Program Objective 

Memorandum. 

Gordon England 

Secretary of the Navy 

Vern Clark, Admiral, USN James L. Jones, General, USMC 

 Chief of Naval Operations Commandant of the Marine Corps 
 

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Department of the Navy Transformation Roadmap 

Power and Access...From the Sea 

I. INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 1

Tomorrow’s Navy and Marine Corps.............................................................................. 1

Sea Strike............................................................................................................................. 2

Sea Shield............................................................................................................................... 3

Sea Basing.............................................................................................................................. 4

FORCEnet ............................................................................................................................. 4

Naval Transformation Processes ...................................................................................... 5

II. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................ 6

Enduring Roles of the Naval Services in the Nation's Defense.................................... 7

III. TRANSFORMATIONAL CAPABILITIES ................................................................... 9

A. Sea Strike.................................................................................................................. 9

Persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) .................................... 10

Time Sensitive Strike ........................................................................................................ 11

Sea Based Information Operations ................................................................................... 14

Ship-to-Objective Maneuver ............................................................................................ 15

B. Sea Shield ............................................................................................................... 17

Theater Air and Missile Defense ...................................................................................... 17

Littoral Sea Control .......................................................................................................... 19

Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) ...................................................................................... 19 

Mine Countermeasures ..................................................................................................... 21 

Homeland Defense ............................................................................................................ 22

C. Sea Basing.............................................................................................................. 24

Compressed Deployment and Employment Times........................................................... 24

Enhanced Sea-borne Positioning of Joint Assets .............................................................. 25

D. FORCEnet............................................................................................................. 26

IV. NAVAL TRANSFORMATION PROCESSES............................................................ 28

A. Navy Transformation Process.............................................................................. 28

Sea Warrior: Maximizing Human Capital....................................................................... 28

Sea Trial: Process for Innovation...................................................................................... 32

Sea Enterprise: Maximizing Business Efficiencies........................................................... 34

B. U.S. Marine Corps Transformation Process....................................................... 36

Organizational Agility ..................................................................................................... 37

New Operational Concepts............................................................................................... 38

Leap-Ahead Technology.................................................................................................... 40

Business Reform ............................................................................................................... 41

Expeditionary Force Development System....................................................................... 43

V. CONCLUSION................................................................................................................. 45
 

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I. Introduction 

Naval transformation will support joint transformation by delivering new military 

capabilities that will greatly expand the sovereign options available to joint force 

commanders to project power, assure access, and protect and advance America’s interests 

worldwide in the face of emergent threat technologies and strategies. It will usher in new 

ways of deterring conflict, new capabilities for waging war, and new technologies leading 

to major increases in operational effectiveness. Today’s Navy and Marine Corps are a 

Total Force of Active Duty, Reserve and civilian personnel, transforming along a broad 

front exploiting the asymmetric advantages of the United States; including maritime 

dominance, mobility, decision superiority, stealth, precision, and persistence. 

This Naval Transformation Roadmap describes how naval forces will achieve nine 

transformational warfighting capabilities, organized by a family of concepts that optimize 

and maximize advantages that are uniquely naval. Naval transformation will be captured 

by capitalizing on innovative concepts and technologies, and by employing processes to 

rapidly develop and integrate innovations into these forces. Inherent in every aspect of 

transformation is that naval forces will be, first and foremost, committed to and built upon 

the principles of jointness. 

Tomorrow’s Navy - Marine Corps Team 

Emerging operational concepts, technologies, processes, and organizations will transform the 

capability of America's naval services of the 21st century to conduct multi-dimensional joint, allied, 

and coalition warfare. The transforming U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Team will be fully integrated 

into the Joint Team across the full expanse of a unified battlespace. Naval forces will provide 

unique and complementary warfighting capabilities from the sea to joint force commanders to 

support their ability to enhance deterrence; secure swift, decisive military victory; and strengthen 

the peace that follows in support of the critical operational goals outlined in the 2001 Quadrennial 

Defense Review and the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Planning Guidance. 

The 21st century sets the stage for unprecedented increases in the precision, 

operational reach, connectivity, and speed of decision of sea-based forces and weapons. 

This expansion of effectiveness will realize the fullest integration of the Navy-Marine 

Corps Team into the joint force. These enhanced naval capabilities -- as developed 

through the interdependent and synergistic operational concepts of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, 

A Networked, Jointly Integrated, Sea-Based Power Projection 

Force, Assuring Coalition and Joint Force Access and 

Protecting America’s Interests Anywhere in the World
 

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Sea Strike FORCEnet

Sea Basing

Sea Shield

Sea Strike

 Transformational Capabilities

• Persistent ISR 

• Time Sensitive Strike 

• Information Operations 

• Ship-to-Objective Maneuver 

and Sea Basing -- will produce and exploit a dispersed battlespace within which sovereign 

and sustainable naval, air, ground and space elements form a unified force that projects 

offensive power and defensive capability. These concepts will come alive in the hands of 

state of the art 21st century warriors enabled by FORCEnet, an envisioned architecture of 

sensors, networks, decision aids, 

weapons and supporting systems 

integrated into a single comprehensive 

maritime network. When combined 

with the capabilities of the other 

Services, these concepts will result in an 

integrated, multi-dimensional 

operational maneuver space within 

which the joint force commander will project power and protect joint forces from the most 

independent, exploitable, and secure portion of the battlespace -- the sea. 

Sea Strike 

Capitalizing on the strategic agility, operational maneuverability, precise weapons 

employment, and indefinite sustainment of naval forces, Sea Strike is a broadened naval 

concept for projecting dominant and decisive offensive power from the sea in support of 

joint objectives. Sea Strike incorporates and integrates multi-dimensional capabilities for 

power projection with new combinations of forces and platforms, such as the 

Expeditionary Strike Force. 

Transformational capabilities within Sea 

Strike are being pursued in four areas: 

Persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and 

Reconnaissance (ISR); Time Sensitive Strike; 

Information Operations; and Ship-toObjective Maneuver. Transformational 

improvements in ISR will come through 

connecting forward elements with timely 

intelligence collected by national, joint and 

naval sources, as well as significantly increasing the capabilities of those naval sources. In 

turn, this improved battlespace awareness will reduce the time needed to strike time 

sensitive targets by linking precision weapons with precise targeting information. Time 

sensitive strike will be further transformed by a dramatic increase in the precision and 

volume of sovereign firepower available to the joint force commander. 

• Project decisive and persistent offensive power anywhere in the world 

• Launch immediate, agile, and sustainable operations from the sea 
 

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Included in the array of transformational offensive capabilities is the ability to conduct 

maritime effects-based information operations in coordination and synchronization with 

other joint force operations. 

Finally, the transformation of Ship-to-Objective Maneuver will allow future Marine 

Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) to greatly increase operational tempo and flexibility 

by developing the ability to maneuver directly against objectives deep inland, without first 

establishing an initial beachhead or support bases ashore. In short, the transformational 

capabilities being pursued through Sea Strike integrate mobile, nodal forces and decision 

superiority to seize the initiative, disrupt enemy timelines, decisively defeat threats, and 

ensure the operational success of the joint force. 

Concepts under development such as the Expeditionary Strike Force facilitate the 

broad application of Sea Strike capabilities by reallocating a portion of the rapidly growing 

Navy strike capability to complement and support the strike capability of Marines 

embarked on amphibious ships. These new packages of surface combatants, submarines 

and Marine forces, called Expeditionary Strike Groups, will complement Carrier Strike 

Groups and double the number of places where naval forces can deliver and sustain 

effective striking power. 

Sea Shield 

Sea Shield exploits control of the seas and forward-deployed defensive capabilities to 

defeat area-denial strategies, enabling joint forces to project and sustain power. The ability 

to extend a protective umbrella far forward will assure access, reassure allies, and protect 

our homeland while dissuading and deterring potential adversaries. The increasing 

ability of naval forces to project network centric defenses in support of the joint force 

generates operational freedom of action, provides full spectrum dominance, and enhances 

strategic stability. 

 

Sea Shield transformational capabilities 

being pursued are Theater Air and Missile 

Defense (TAMD); Littoral Sea Control; and 

Homeland Defense. Over the next decade, 

TAMD will employ transformational 

technologies and concepts enabling new 

naval capabilities to provide networked 

mobile protection of joint forces, friends and allies, and critical infrastructure ashore from 

• Assure access throughout the battlespace for the Joint Force 

• Project a defense around friends, allies, coalition, and Joint Forces 

• Provide a sea-based layer of Homeland Defense 

Sea Shield

 Transformational Capabilities

• Theater Air and Missile Defense

• Littoral Sea Control 

• Homeland Defense 
 

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aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles. To assure access of the joint forces to any objective 

from the sea, concepts and capabilities are being developed to counter the threats from 

quiet diesel submarines operating near the coast and mines in and beyond the surf zone. 

Finally, and most importantly, Sea Shield capabilities protect the U.S. homeland, and in 

combination with the U.S. Coast Guard and other civil agencies.

Sea Basing 

Sea Basing will provide sustainable global projection of American power from the high 

seas at the operational level of war. Sea Basing transformational capabilities include the 

Accelerated Deployment and Employment Times of naval power projection capabilities 

and the Enhanced Sea-borne Positioning of Joint Assets. Sea Basing offers the potential 

for secure, sovereign, and mobile assembly areas and sanctuaries for key elements of the 

joint force, allowing the United States and its allies to most effectively utilize the 

international domain of the sea as maneuver 

space. Sea Basing will allow positioning 

networked joint forces for immediate 

employability. It will enhance maneuver ashore 

by reducing the need to move in major command 

and control elements, heavy fire support systems, 

or logistical stockpiles. By locating these critical 

functions at sea to the greatest extent possible, 

Sea Basing will strengthen international stability 

by reducing force protection requirements and demands on allied and coalition partners’ 

infrastructure, will enhance deterrence, and will provide the nation with unmatched 

operational freedom of action. 

FORCEnet 

FORCEnet is the architecture of warriors, weapons, sensors, networks, decision aids 

and supporting systems integrated into a highly adaptive, human-centric, comprehensive 

maritime system that operates from seabed to space, from sea to land. By exploiting 

Sea Basing 

Transformational Capabilities

• Accelerated Deployment and

Employment Time 

• Enhanced Sea-borne 

Positioning of Joint Assets 

• Project responsive forces worldwide with the capability to fight and win 

• Operate continuously from an expanded & secure maneuver area – the sea 

• Minimize vulnerabilities tied to overseas land support

• Connect sensors, networks, weapons, decision aids and warriors from 

seabed to space 

• Accelerate speed and accuracy of decisions across spectrum of command 
 

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existing and emerging technologies, FORCEnet enables dispersed, human, decisionmakers to leverage military capabilities to achieve dominance across the entire mission 

landscape with joint, allied and coalition partners. FORCEnet is the future 

implementation of Network Centric Warfare in the Naval Services. 

 

As an adaptable, naval mission-tailorable system that delivers timely information to 

decision makers in any environment, FORCEnet will provide the means for an exponential 

increase in naval combat power. It will be built to conform to joint architectural 

frameworks, linking current and future sensors, command and control elements and 

weapons systems in a robust, secure, and scalable way. Information will be converted to 

actionable knowledge and disseminated to a dispersed naval combat force, enabling the 

rapid concentration of the full power of the Sea Strike, Sea Shield and Sea Basing concepts 

with far less concentration of forces. 

Naval Transformation Processes 

Military transformation is a process that depends on a culture in which innovation is 

encouraged, nurtured and rewarded. The Navy and Marine Corps are a total force, 

committed to transformation to meet tomorrow’s challenges, and fostering the mental 

agility and institutional activities to sustain transformation. True transformation is about 

seizing opportunities to create transformational capabilities by radically changing 

organizational relationships, implementing different concepts of warfighting, and 

inserting new technology to carry out operations in ways that profoundly improve current 

capabilities and develop desired future capabilities. 

At its core, transformation is based on a willingness to constantly challenge old 

thinking and introduce new concepts. That means continuing to place people first and 

encouraging and rewarding them for innovative thinking and action. Agile and adaptive 

by nature, the Navy and Marine Corps will each foster the cultures of innovation needed 

to develop transformational concepts and capabilities to cope with a dangerous and 

uncertain today and tomorrow. 
 

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II. Background 

The naval services have a long and rich history of transformation in their operational 

concepts and weapons systems. Aircraft carriers, amphibious doctrine, nuclear-powered 

ships and submarines, vertical envelopment, sea-based nuclear deterrence, maritime prepositioning, Tomahawk strike missiles, and the Aegis weapon system were each, at the 

time of their introduction, transformational changes that led to greatly enhanced or 

fundamentally new naval capabilities. These capabilities have put the U.S. Navy - Marine 

Corps Team at the pinnacle of global naval power. To retain our position of preeminence, 

it is imperative that we look ahead with a renewed spirit of innovation to the new 

transformational changes necessary to meet tomorrow’s challenges. 

Naval transformation will deliver the increased military capabilities that will integrate 

into the future U.S. joint force in achieving the four main U.S. defense policy goals: 

• Assure allies and friends; 

• Dissuade future military competition; 

• Deter threats and coercion against U.S. interests; 

• If deterrence fails, decisively defeat any adversary. 

Our Naval Transformation Roadmap describes the concepts, capabilities and processes 

for achieving transformational goals. It explains how naval transformation will contribute 

to joint warfighting capabilities of the future and what changes are being implemented to 

promote a culture of innovation. These innovations are aimed at supporting the six critical 

operational goals of the U.S. military as identified in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review 

and the Defense Planning Guidance. They are: 

• Protecting critical bases of operations (U.S. homeland, forces abroad, allies, and 

friends) and defeating CBRNE weapons and their means of delivery; 

• Assuring information systems in the face of attack and conducting effective 

information operations; 

• Projecting and sustaining U.S. forces in distant anti-access or area-denial 

environments and defeating anti-access and area denial threats; 

Naval transformation seeks to achieve a broad, sustained and decisive

military competitive advantage over existing or potential adversaries. It

comprises those continuing processes and activities that foster a climate of

innovation in combining new and existing concepts, organizational

arrangements and technologies to result in profound increases in military

power. This is accomplished by substantially extending boundaries of

necessary military competencies and by discovering fundamentally new

approaches to military operations. 
 

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• Denying enemies sanctuary by providing persistent surveillance, tracking, and 

rapid engagement with high-volume precision strike, through a combination of 

complementary air and ground capabilities, against critical mobile and fixed targets 

at various ranges and in all weather and terrains; 

• Enhancing the capability and survivability of space systems and supporting 

infrastructure; and 

• Leveraging information technology and innovative concepts to develop an 

interoperable, joint C4ISR architecture and capability that includes a tailorable joint 

operational picture.

Enduring Roles of the Naval Services in the Nation's Defense 

The Navy -Marine Corps Team will carry out the enduring roles that protect and 

advance U.S. interests. Transformational concepts and capabilities will profoundly 

enhance our ability to fulfill these roles and change the way in which we execute them: 

Assurance and Deterrence

Assuring our allies and friends, as well as deterring threats and coercion against U.S. 

interests represent two key pillars of US defense policy, and are fundamental roles of 

naval forces. The continuous presence of American naval forces overseas, particularly 

in critical regions, is one of the most profound symbols of a firm US commitment to 

allies and friends. Persistent, sea-based forces deployed forward assure allies and 

friends that the Nation will honor its obligations as a reliable security partner. Potent, 

visible, and immediately employable expeditionary naval forces, deployed forward, 

also help to deter conventional conflicts by providing a wide range of military options 

to defeat aggression or counter any form of coercion. Finally, with their decisive-strike 

capability, stealthy, survivable nuclear-powered submarines, carrying nuclear or 

advanced conventional weapons, help underwrite effective strategic deterrence by 

holding potential enemies continually at risk. 

Command of the Seas

Command of the seas contributes to assurance and deterrence, and provides the 

springboard for the decisive defeat of any adversary, if deterrence fails. Combat 

credible naval forces operate in a vast maneuver area to ensure friendly use of the 

world’s oceans and seas while providing the capability to deny the same to 

adversaries. Netted naval battle forces can establish and maintain battlespace 

superiority in any maritime or littoral region, providing an asymmetric military 

advantage for the United States. Maintaining command of the seas is critical to the new 
 

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defense strategy built around a “capabilities-based” approach to defense. Because the 

United States cannot foresee all threats to our vital interests or those of our allies and 

friends, it is essential that we maintain freedom of action and maneuver through 

command of the seas. 

Power Projection

The ability to project naval power over great distances helps to deter threats to the 

United States, our allies and friends and, when necessary, to disrupt or destroy hostile 

forces. To do this, future naval forces, operating from a networked and interoperable 

enhanced sea base, must be able to rapidly task-organize appropriate power projection 

forces to respond as part of the joint force. They must be able to counter undersea, 

surface, and air threats to U.S. access to critical littoral regions. They must be able to 

conduct multidimensional strike and defensive operations to gain and sustain access 

for the joint/coalition force. They must be able to integrate into the joint force to 

decisively defeat the enemy. They must be able to mount forcible entry operations 

and, without pausing, maneuver rapidly to seize key centers of gravity, often located 

deep in enemy territory. Power projection will be transformed by Sea Basing 

capabilities to better support expeditionary naval and joint forces. Mobility, flexibility, 

stealth, and sustained offensive firepower will be critical features of this 

transformation. 

Homeland Security

A core tenet of the U.S. national security and military strategies is to defend the nation 

from an attack. Given the continuing proliferation of destructive technologies and 

technical expertise, naval forces will need to play a key homeland security role, both 

abroad and at home. Naval forces help defend America’s homeland by operating 

forward, serving as a first line of defense against both traditional nation-state and 

emerging non-state actors. Forward-deployed naval forces operating from sovereign 

ships deter, detect, and interdict threats to the homeland through maritime 

surveillance and interdiction as well as conducting missions ranging from strategic 

nuclear deterrence to strikes against terrorists camps and terrorist activity. In addition, 

active and reserve naval forces contribute to homeland defense by countering 

immediate threats to our shores. Acting in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard and 

other Services and Agencies, naval forces defend the coastal and maritime approaches 

to the United States. Through the application of Network Centric Warfare capabilities, 

Navy and Marine Corps forces can achieve profound improvements in homeland 

defense. 
 

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III. Transformational Capabilities 

The transformation of Naval forces seeks to dramatically expand the leverage that 

America's global maritime dominance offers our joint force commanders by assuring them 

theater access and a secure and sovereign base from which to mount devastatingly 

effective defensive and offensive operations. The emerging transformational capabilities 

described in this section reflect the creation of innovative operational concepts that will 

harness advanced technologies as well as changes across doctrine, organization, training, 

materiel, leader development, personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) to perform critical 

missions and tasks, but they do not represent an exhaustive list. Additional 

transformational capabilities will arise in the years ahead as new concepts and 

technologies are generated by service organizations that value innovation, promote 

change, and take advantage of opportunity. Often, these new ideas will depend, in part, 

on existing capabilities. 

Service life extensions, product improvements and modifications to current equipment 

and processes may offer significant returns on investment. These modernization 

programs are not transformational by themselves, but are necessary to maintain current 

core competencies and provide the supporting structure to deliver new transformational 

initiatives. Many current concepts and technologies, when combined in new ways with 

appropriate changes in personnel, training and organization, provide transformational 

capabilities. This Naval Transformation Roadmap plots the course to achieve nine 

transformational capabilities organized by an integrated family of concepts that address 

the Department of Defense’s critical operational goals, and to establish the environment 

necessary to capitalize on future innovation. 

A. Sea Strike 

Naval expeditionary forces, employing new combinations of forward-deployed, 

sovereign, mobile, and highly survivable aircraft Carrier Strike Groups, missile-firing 

surface and submarine Strike Groups, and Expeditionary Strike Groups, will exploit their 

positional advantage to project dominant offensive power from the sea. Sea Strike will 

also bring fully integrated naval aviation force packages that include Marine squadrons 

embarked on carriers and amphibious ships, and Navy squadrons operating from 

expeditionary shore bases. This integration will provide even more responsive and 

expeditionary forces, while achieving greater effectiveness and efficiencies. It will 

disperse sustainable naval combined-arms power far more broadly than today, providing 

joint combatant commanders with greatly increased operational flexibility to deliver lethal 

and non-lethal effects. 

The Sea Strike capabilities that these new naval packages will project include longrange and precise aircraft and missile fires, large-volume covert strike capability, hightempo decisive maneuver, and maritime special operations and information operations. 
 

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By providing full connectivity to, and the early in-theater backbone for a powerful grid of 

national, joint, and sea-based sensors, the immediately employable naval elements of the 

joint force will strike with speed measured in minutes, precision measured in meters, and 

volume measured in many hundreds of fixed or mobile aimpoints struck per day. 

Sea Strike supports the offensive projection of power with reduced dependence on 

tactical landbases through the development and application of the following key 

transformational capabilities: 

Persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR)

Persistent ISR provides, in conjunction with networked joint and national capabilities, 

prompt and precise battlespace awareness at any time and in any weather. This 

awareness provides commanders with a significant competitive advantage in the 

application of both lethal fires 

and decisive maneuver. Most 

critically, persistent ISR enables 

naval expeditionary forces to 

outmaneuver adversaries in the 

fourth dimension --- time. 

Persistent ISR capabilities for the 

Navy - Marine Corps Team are being transformed in two areas. First, the contributions of 

naval surveillance and reconnaissance assets to joint battlespace awareness will be 

significantly improved. Second, both services will dramatically enhance the links that 

enable forward-deployed forces to make use of timely intelligence information collected 

and, in many cases, assessed by national and joint collection systems; such as Space Based 

Radars, and intelligence analysis centers. 

Combined with joint, and national ISR systems in the Expeditionary Sensor Grid (ESG), 

naval ISR capabilities will be significantly increased by the next generation of multimission maritime aircraft as well as naval Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with 

mission-reconfigurable advanced sensors; by continued development of Unmanned 

Ground Vehicles such as the Dragon Runner prototype; and by a family of Unmanned 

Underwater Vehicles and a program to develop new payloads and sensors that can exploit 

the large open-ocean interface provided by SSGN. Deployment of UUVs and SOF 

insertion from VIRGINIA-class submarines and SSGNs will also provide critical close-in 

ISR capabilities. The Expeditionary Sensor Grid, which will extend from subsurface to 

space, will provide pervasive, persistent battlespace sensing to create shared awareness 

throughout the theater and support agile, adaptive battleforce operations. 

Persistent ISR will be supported by state of the art RF and cyber exploitation and other 

sensitive sources of information that contribute to an advantage in battlespace awareness 

and targeting. The deployment of a family of Navy and Marine Corps UAVs, equipped 

Transforming Persistent ISR

• Significantly improve naval contribution to 

joint battlespace awareness 

• Seamlessly link sensors to warfighters 
 

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with various sensors and networked via the Tactical Control System, will play a key role 

in extending the reach, coverage, and persistence of the naval ISR systems that provide 

information to the joint force. 

Naval organic intelligence data will be fused with that from the broader national and 

joint intelligence activities within the Distributed Common Ground Station – Navy 

(DCGS-N) program, the Marine Air-Ground Intelligence System (MAGIS), and the Naval 

Fires Network. This fusion will vastly expand the accuracy and speed of actionable 

tactical intelligence. The new DCGS-N family of systems features common components, 

open architecture design, and adherence to interoperability standards as well as excellent 

“reach-back” connectivity. Key components of the DCGS-N networked environment 

include: the Tactical Exploitation System for ISR management efforts; the Common 

Imagery Processor; the high-bandwidth Common Data Links for airborne data downlink; 

the Joint Service Imagery Processing System; the Maritime Cryptologic System-21; and the 

Tactical Control System. 

Marine Corps efforts such as MAGIS will dramatically improve the ground ISR 

tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination capabilities feeding its hub, the 

Intelligence Analysis System. The ability of maneuver commanders to access intelligence 

will be dramatically enhanced with the fielding of “Last Tactical Mile C4” capabilities, 

allowing wideband connectivity to battalion-sized units and increasing data connectivity 

to warfighters. 

Time Sensitive Strike 

Time sensitive strike brings precise, lethal effects to bear in decisive quantity on 

operationally significant targets within minutes, and ultimately within seconds of target 

detection. Transformational efforts will be largely focused in two areas. First, the time 

needed to strike targets will be reduced by more effectively utilizing improved ISR 

capabilities and by improving the self-targeting capabilities resident in attack platforms. 

Second, dramatic increases in the precision 

and volume of naval fires available to the 

joint force commander will give them 

decisive effect against a far broader range of 

threat capabilities. 

The rapidly increasing volume of 

precision-weapon firepower available from 

the new generations of sea-based strike 

aircraft as well as high-volume missile-firing ships and submarines and precision-gunfire 

ships will increasingly enable forward-deployed naval forces to have decisive impact. 

Transformational efforts will dramatically improve the ability of network centric naval 

forces to strike quickly against time sensitive targets such as mobile missile launchers, 

Transforming 

Time Sensitive Strike

• Dramatically increased speed 

• Decisively enhanced precision 

• Significantly higher volume 

• Greatly improved targeting 
 

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indirect fire capabilities, modern Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS), and a variety of 

hardened and deeply buried targets. Capabilities to execute time sensitive strike will also 

dramatically enhance the ability of ground commanders to integrate fires with maneuver. 

One approach being pursued focuses on improving battlespace awareness and reducing 

the time needed to carry out strikes against mobile targets by speeding the flow of 

information from intelligence and surveillance sensors to tactical controllers. These 

surveillance sensors include current theater standoff ISR platforms such as the EP-3, U-2, 

Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) and Global Hawk UAV, 

attack submarines on clandestine operations, or SEAL and reconnaissance teams inserted 

behind enemy lines. Future sensors will include systems such as the Space Based Radar, 

Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and penetrating “sensors” 

such as the Ground Weapons Locating Radars, Predator and Dragon Eye UAVs; and Navy 

Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV-N), all interoperable with the Naval Fires 

Network (NFN) and joint fires network. Design improvements slated for the new 

generation aircraft carrier (CVN(X)) will facilitate the ability to introduce UAVs and 

UCAVs into the battleforce of the future. 

The time needed to relay engagement assistance from controllers to appropriately 

positioned “shooters,” including tactical aircraft, will be dramatically enhanced as units 

become equipped with the Multifunctional Information Distribution System. On the 

ground, the Marine Common Aviation Command and Control System will provide 

common platforms and software to allow operators to rapidly integrate Marine aviation 

and ground command and control assets, creating speed of decision and engagement. 

Such rapid response execution concepts will benefit substantially from better 

intelligence preparation of the battlespace (IPB) that helps focus ISR collection efforts on 

the most likely enemy operating areas, provides dynamic cross-cueing of collection 

sensors, and performs timely fusion of the data collected by networked sensors. Speedy 

relay of this data into the NFN via systems such as the Navy Distributed Common Ground 

System (DCGS-N), the use of decision aids that will assist controllers in matching fleeting 

targets with on-call, quick response shooters, and rapid relay of engagement assistance via 

advanced data links will provide shooters the information they need to quickly locate and 

strike the target. 

The kill-chain timeline will be accelerated by reducing the time from the decision to fire 

on a target until the target is destroyed. Surface combatants and submarines, including 

the new SSGN, will soon begin to carry the Tactical Tomahawk (TACTOM), the first overthe-horizon strike missile to be retargetable in flight. TACTOM will be capable of loitering 

in an area where targets are expected. When a target is detected and its precise location in 

Global Positioning System coordinates is relayed to the airborne missile, it will react with 

drastically shortened flight time. Missile firing submarines add a covert capability to Sea 

Strike, preventing potential adversaries from accurately gauging the posture and 

composition of the strike force. Also, the addition of the Extended Range Guided 
 

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Munition for shipboard guns including the Advanced Gun System on the new family of 

surface combatants, beginning with DD(X), will provide fire support capable of killing 

targets with single rounds rather than massive salvos, and at ranges 10 times greater than 

previously possible. An organic integrated, mobile, and lethal MAGTF fire support 

capability, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, the Lightweight 155mm 

Howitzer, and the Expeditionary Fire Support System will also provide time sensitive 

strikes, just as they provide responsive fires in support of maneuver. 

A second approach to compressing decision time involves steps to greatly enhance the 

capability of attack platforms to detect targets. For example, the Advanced Electronically 

Scanned Array radar will allow tactical aircraft to “hunt and kill” fleeting targets in areas 

identified in the IPB process with little or no assistance from off-board sensors and tactical 

controllers, thus avoiding the delay involved with detailed coordination among sensors, 

controllers and shooters. Similarly, next generation electro-optical systems will allow 

rotary winged aircraft to locate, recognize, and identify targets at the maximum range of 

their on-board weapons. The Airborne Electronic Attack aircraft, capable of covering the 

full spectrum of electronic threats and, unlike previous electronic warfare aircraft, capable 

of striking as well, will significantly improve the effectiveness of each strike sortie. 

Naval forces are in the process of achieving a revolution in aggregate striking power 

against both fixed and mobile targets. This is the combined result of enhanced payloadcarrying capacity and higher sortie rates from more reliable sea-based aircraft launched 

from more capable amphibious ships and carriers including CVN(X); substantially 

increased numbers of vertically launched missiles from surface combatants, attack 

submarines, and SSGNs; the increased mobility and effect of the MAGTFs’ organic fire 

support; as well as larger inventories of precision air-launched weapons like the Joint 

Advanced Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Joint Standoff Weapons System, and Joint 

Direct Attack Munition. 

The introduction of new aircraft, missile systems, and precision weapons across the 

naval services now permits the destruction of multiple targets per sortie rather than 

requiring multiple sorties per target. This capacity will grow from the current capability 

to attack a few hundred aim points a day with precision weapons from Carrier Strike 

Groups and Expeditionary Strike Groups to over five times that number within a decade. 

It will double again in the following decade as miniaturized munitions significantly 

expand the strike capacity of individual attack aircraft. 

Additionally, in the rapid development of the Electric Warship begun with DD(X), the 

Navy is fielding the technologies to enable a transformation in ship design as dramatic as 

the development of the nuclear submarine. The Electric Warship will unlock excess 

propulsion power for electric weapons that will revolutionize capabilities for projecting 

power. Advanced sensor systems will also exploit the availability of significant pulsed 

electric power. The electric weapons and sensors integrated with the electric power 
 

 14

system of the ship will yield a warship with superior mission performance, enhanced 

survivability, and affordability. 

Information Operations

Information Operations (IO) provide, in coordination and synchronization with other 

effects-based joint activities, an asymmetric advantage to shape the battlespace from 

forward-deployed maritime forces by employing capabilities including electronic warfare, 

computer network defense and attack (CND/CNA), psychological operations (PSYOP), 

military deception, and operational security. Forward deployed naval forces provide joint 

force commanders with persistent platforms from which to execute joint information 

operations using embedded capabilities. The Navy and Marine Corps are developing 

transformational concepts and capabilities that will be employed to influence, affect, or 

defend information, information systems and decision-making in support of joint effectsbased operations. 

The Navy has taken several 

steps to invigorate work in this 

area. Efforts are underway to 

create a top-down Concept of 

Operations for IO laying out 

organizational responsibilities and 

guidance regarding the conduct of Information Operations. A Capstone Requirements 

Document for Navy IO is also under development. In addition, Information Operations 

has been designated a primary warfare area and a new career force is being created to 

develop and sustain IO professionals. New IO billets have been created at many levels, 

including the designation of a three star operational commander for IO at the newly 

established Naval Network Warfare Command, the posting of IO specialists in OPNAV, 

and the inclusion of an IO Warfare Commander within each battle group. 

The Marine Corps has initiated measures very similar to those in the Navy to transform 

IO into a core capability. The Marine Corps Concept for IO has been promulgated leading 

the way for IO policy and doctrine. A Universal Needs Statement is under development 

to provide a foundation for the Expeditionary Force Development System to develop 

enhancements across the DOTMLPF. A Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) for IO has 

been developed to provide structure for the Marine IO career force. These IO 

professionals will come from all primary MOSs in order to provide a wide range of 

warfighting and support perspectives to our IO force. Educational requirements are being 

developed to support this burgeoning career force. New IO billets have been created DoD 

wide to best leverage our developing cadre of IO professionals. 

Ongoing transformational IO capability developments include concept refinement 

testing for sea-based CND/CNA and PSYOP during several recent and planned Fleet 

Transforming IO

• Expand maritime offensive capability 

• Layered defense of vital networks 
 

 15

Battle Experiments, and the development of more agile and highly adaptive techniques 

and “smart” systems for electronic reconnaissance and jamming. These electronic warfare 

systems that can rapidly exploit, deceive, and disrupt enemy emitters will be carried on 

various manned and unmanned aircraft and surface ships 

The Marine Corps has developed a comprehensive list of Mission Performance 

Standards for IO that have been incorporated into Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special 

Operations Capable) (MEU(SOC)) training programs and will be incorporated in all 

MAGTF Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluations. In addition, MEU(SOC)s are 

experimenting with various developmental IO capabilities. 

Ship-to-Objective Maneuver

Ship-to-Objective Maneuver (STOM) projects a combined arms force from ships at sea 

directly against operational objectives, some located far inland. STOM is a 

transformational application of enduring concepts for Operational Maneuver from the Sea, 

allowing future Marine forces to maneuver in tactical array from the moment they depart 

the enhanced sea base until they reach their key objectives. These maneuver operations, 

supported from stable in-theater staging bases located outside the joint operating area, will 

be largely supported from the sea base, eliminating the need for vulnerable beachhead 

support. STOM will greatly increase 

the tactical flexibility and operational 

tempo of naval expeditionary forces. 

Transformed Ship-to-Objective 

Maneuver envisions expeditionary 

assaults in which both surface- and 

vertical-lift combined arms teams 

commence their attacks from over the 

horizon directly at their assigned 

objectives. Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles will provide armored, high-speed 

transport of Marine forces from ships over-the-horizon as well as tactical mobility and 

direct fire support once ashore. The MAGTF Expeditionary Family of Fighting Vehicles 

(MEFFVs) will provide a mobile, armored, direct fire, self-contained, combined-arms, 

multi-mission, and multi-role expeditionary family of fighting platforms capable of 

conducting rapid operational maneuver in varied terrain. Advanced Tilt-Rotor technology 

aircraft, such as MV-22, will accelerate the speed, survivability and range of delivery of 

troops, equipment, and supplies from the sea base. 

Stealthy, capable platforms, such as DD(X) and SSGN, will mount persistent, highvolume fires at unprecedented ranges in support of ground maneuver. Once ashore, new 

and highly mobile systems, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System 

(HIMARS), lightweight 155mm howitzers, and developmental initiatives such as the 

Transforming STOM

• Maneuver decisively from sovereign 

mobile sea bases directly against 

operational objectives 

• Eliminate “iron mountain” ashore 

• Project intense sea-based fires 

• Enable joint sustainment, and C2 
 

 16

SECDEF’s Critical Operational Goals Addressed by SEA STRIKE

• Project and Sustain Forces in Anti-Access Environments

• Deny Enemy Sanctuary by Providing Persistent Surveillance, Tracking and Rapid 

Engagement with High-Volume Precision Strike

• Protect Critical Bases and Defeat CBRNE Weapons and Their Means of Delivery

• Assure Information Systems and Conduct Effective Information Operations

• Leverage IT to Develop a Joint C4ISR Architecture and Operational Picture

• Enhance capability and survivability of space systems and supporting infrastructure

Expeditionary Fire Support System (EFSS) will provide organic fire support for the 

MAGTF. Additionally, stealthy tactical combat aircraft including naval variants of the 

Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) will provide a dramatically improved capability to operate from 

distributed, mobile bases at sea and ashore and to deliver increased numbers of weapons. 

This combination of lightweight, lethal, and expeditionary fire support capabilities will 

increasingly exploit digital connectivity, allowing commanders to rapidly integrate 

responsive fires with decisive maneuver and develop overwhelming combat power. 

Sustainment of the Marine forces from over-the-horizon will be provided by advanced 

concepts and capabilities, such as the Integrated Logistics Capability and the Common 

Logistics Command and Control System (CLC2S). CLC2S will provide the MAGTF with 

automated logistics planning and execution tools that will complement and be 

interoperable with current and emerging C2 processes and systems. CLC2S will not be a 

separate C2 capability, but the logistics feeder to the MAGTF’s Common Operating 

Picture. ILC and CLC2S will combine transformational processes and information 

technologies to provide seamless interaction and support between the shore-based 

logistics units, sea-based logistics functions, maritime ISBs, and the supporting 

establishment enabling unencumbered maneuver ashore while the majority of 

sustainment capabilities remain in the seaspace. 

STOM calls for the exploitation of navigation and situational awareness capabilities 

provided by new technologies, allowing landing force tactical commanders to command 

and control the maneuver of their units beginning the moment they cross the line of 

departure at sea, not once they arrive at the beach. This aspect of command and control 

extends to the changing of littoral penetration points during the assault and use of 

supporting arms to facilitate the attack. Networked Unit Operations Centers (UOCs), the 

Marine Air Ground Intelligence System (MAGIS), and the Common Aviation Command 

and Control System (CAC2S) will support information exchange between ground and 

aviation units and provide the commander ashore with a Common Tactical Picture of 

combat operations.
 

 17

B. Sea Shield 

Sea Shield permits the joint force to operate effectively despite adversary efforts to 

deny theater access to U.S. forces. It achieves these goals by exploiting global sea control 

to defeat area denial threats including aircraft, missiles, small littoral surface combatants, 

mines, and submarines. Sea Shield extends precise and persistent naval defensive 

capabilities deep overland to protect joint forces and allies ashore. It is also key to 

protecting our nation at home. Sea Shield helps assure allies, deter adversaries, and 

generate operational freedom of action for the projection of naval and joint power. Key 

transformational capabilities include: 

Theater Air and Missile Defense

Theater Air and Missile Defense (TAMD) projects a protective and highly effective 

umbrella, over the horizon at sea or deep inland and from ground level to the exoatmosphere, against all forms of aircraft and ballistic or cruise missile threats. 

Transformation of naval TAMD will protect joint forces, friends and allies, and critical 

infrastructure ashore from the sea. This new capability will provide tremendous flexibility 

to national and joint commanders. 

Theater Air and Missile Defense

will employ transformational concepts 

for network-centric air defense. The 

Naval Integrated Fire Control – 

Counter Air (NIFC-CA) consisting of a 

"backbone" of the Cooperative 

Engagement Capability to network 

radar data throughout the battleforce, 

the new digital E-2C Radar 

Modernization Program, plus the world's first over-the-horizon surface-to-air missile, the 

SM-5; combined with the MAGTF capabilities including Tactical Aviation Operations 

Centers, Multi-Role Radar System and AN/TPS-59 radars, and the Complementary Low 

Altitude Weapons System, will within a decade form an integrated and seamless air 

defense capability that will permit lethal engagements of large numbers of cruise missiles 

and aircraft at hundreds of miles' range, over land or over water. 

Combining naval track data with that from other services in a Single Integrated Air 

Picture will permit profound advances in tactical decision speed and accuracy at extended 

ranges and allow significantly improved engagement opportunities. It will also permit 

employment of transformational changes in force doctrine, including reallocation of 

manned aircraft from defensive air patrol duties to strike missions and reallocation of 

AEGIS surface combatants from close-in force defense to distant stationing for ballistic 

missile defense or precision naval surface fires strikes. Additionally, the centralized 

Transforming TAMD

• Field new network centric 

capabilities against air, cruise 

missile and ballistic missile threats

• Provide sea-based defense for 

USA and allies 
 

 18

coordination resulting from the development of a Distributed Weapons Control system 

could greatly multiply the effectiveness of a tactical commander’s weapon inventory by 

allocating the optimum number of weapons force-wide to each target. 

This extended range air defense capability will be further enhanced on the next 

generation of warships, including DD(X), CG(X) and CVN(X), by development of the 

Volume Search Radar, which adds affordable, solid-state radar highly capable in the high 

clutter environment of the littorals. When this is combined with the emerging generation 

of highly effective inner-layer defensive systems, U.S. warships will be able to operate 

with near-impunity in areas of Anti-Ship Cruise Missile threat. 

Sea-based ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems will exploit the existing 

infrastructure of naval radars and missile launchers, while providing an unmatched 

sovereign flexibility for theater and homeland missile defense operations. Linked to a 

network of space and airborne sensors and directed by highly responsive command and 

control systems, a family of sea-based interceptor missiles will provide boost phase, midcourse, and, against theater-range missiles, terminal defense capability in close 

coordination with airborne, land-based, and space-based missile defense systems. The allelectric design of the next generation of surface warships will greatly enhance the fleet’s 

ability to meet the power demands of future generations of radars and other sensors for 

missile defense. 

Naval BMD efforts have historically focused on the development of a two-tiered 

defensive system for theater defense that uses upgraded variants of the AEGIS combat 

system and the STANDARD missile. Active defense capability against theater-range 

ballistic missiles is needed to provide initial protection of air and sea ports of debarkation 

and expeditionary force concentrations from attacks designed to impede the projection of 

U.S. forces. Although this assured access requirement clearly remains valid, the recent 

U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty removes restrictions that previously prevented the 

Navy from optimizing its theater systems or participating in prospective plans to defend 

the American homeland from ICBM attack. Both of these opportunities are now being 

actively explored by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). 

The Navy had planned to deploy two systems, both of which are necessary to engage 

the full spectrum of threat TBMs. A lower tier, Navy Area Defense system was required 

to intercept shorter-range theater ballistic missiles within the atmosphere during their 

terminal phase of flight. That development, which would have provided improved air 

defense capabilities as well, was terminated in late 2001 due to schedule delays which 

resulted in cost growth. 

MDA, which assumed responsibility for all ballistic missile defenses in January 2002, is 

currently planning a series of experiments, beginning this year, to assess alternative means 

of fulfilling the lower tier mission requirement. The sea-based upper tier system, which 

has recently been re-named the Seabased Midcourse Defense System, is designed to 
 

 19

employ a hit-to-kill warhead carried on the SM-3 missile to intercept longer-range missiles 

while they are in midcourse flight through space. The two most recent test flights, 

occurring in January and June of 2002, resulted in direct target hits by an operational 

cruiser at sea, building confidence in an early deployment of naval BMD capability.

Littoral Sea Control

Control of the seas near land assures the prompt access and freedom of maneuver of 

joint forces from the sea base. Transformation will be focused on defeating anti-access 

capabilities in the form of small, fast surface combatants, quiet diesel submarines and sea 

mines through the development of netted, distributed sensors and improving the 

command and control of these missions, 

primarily through linking sensors, 

decision aids and displays with attack 

forces. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), 

with its reconfigurable mission modules 

will figure prominently in the future 

control of the seas, especially near land. 

Small, fast surface combatants could 

present a challenge to ships operating 

near land. In the near term, CIWS 1B with a significant capability against them is being 

fielded on all ships to provide a credible capability against this threat. In the future, the 

Littoral Combat Ship, networked with distributed sensors and other platforms in the 

Strike Group, will use its speed, agility and ability to support manned and unmanned 

surface and air craft to contribute to the defense from small craft of all platforms in the 

network. The rapid response capability of the LCS will allow new concepts of operations 

in sea control ensuring continuous access by the Joint Force. 

Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW)

Naval forces operating forward must sustain maritime superiority, often in the face of 

vigorous area-denial efforts by the adversary. One of the most-favored area-denial 

systems is the modern, quiet diesel submarine. The objective of ASW is to gain maritime 

superiority by rapidly finding, destroying or, where necessary, avoiding enemy 

submarines. 

Transformational efforts in anti-submarine warfare are focused on developing new 

operational concepts that leverage advanced technologies to improve wide-area 

surveillance, detection, localization, tracking and attack capabilities against quiet 

adversary submarines operating in a noisy and cluttered shallow water environment. 

ASW is an integrated, combined arms effort, and improved capabilities center upon 

Transforming Littoral Sea Control

• Assure freedom of operations for 

coalition and joint forces 

anywhere, anytime 

• Assure access from the sea for joint

forces in the face of surface threats,

quiet submarines and mines 
 

 20

achieving greatly enhanced situational awareness as well as upon achieving high levels of 

operational proficiency through realistic simulators and training. Substantial efforts are 

being directed toward building a common undersea picture by networking widely 

distributed sensors, command elements, platforms and weapons to share information and 

to collaborate in near real-time mission planning and decision making. 

The Navy’s new operational concepts will take full advantage of the situational 

knowledge accumulated during peacetime surveillance missions. Preparation for ASW 

operations begins with covert surveillance of adversary submarine activities. Attack 

submarines equipped with next generation hull-mounted and towed sensor arrays, as 

well as mission re-configurable unmanned undersea vehicles and networked to fixed and 

mobile surveillance systems, will collect intelligence about the local undersea 

environment, technical characteristics of adversary submarine systems and where and 

how potential adversary submarine forces operate. Should regional tensions increase, 

these next generation systems will enable submarines to covertly monitor undersea 

activity for the theater commander. Should war break out or pre-emption be required, 

these surveillance missions can rapidly be converted into leading edge attacks. 

The Navy is fielding several acoustic and non-acoustic localization systems explicitly 

designed for networked operations. These include the Advanced Deployable System, a 

series of tactically-deployable bottom-mounted, passive, battery-powered hydrophones 

connected to one another and linked to a processing site ashore or afloat by fiber optic 

cables. The Navy is also developing a next generation off-board distributed acoustic 

system with both active and passive capability. Finally, a very high powered, low 

frequency active (LFA) acoustic array that can provide dramatically increased detection 

ranges, designed to be towed by manned or unmanned surface vessels, is nearing 

operational status. 

One of the primary, focused missions of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will be littoral 

ASW. The LCS will be capable of carrying unmanned air, surface and undersea vehicles 

and other sensors that complement the substantial ASW capabilities planned for DD(X) 

and the follow on Advanced Cruiser (CG(X)). Revolutionary advances in propulsion, 

materials, and hull forms are being incorporated into transformational design concepts for 

the LCS. It will have superior speed, maneuverability, sea keeping, signature reduction 

and payload modularity to perform focused or special missions in the littorals. 

By virtue of their speed, area of coverage, versatility and payload, manned and 

unmanned aircraft will continue to be indispensable against the submarine threat. The 

Advanced Low Frequency Sonar is being developed to dramatically increase the acoustic 

capability of ship-based MH-60R helicopters. In the near term, the Automatic Radar 

Periscope Detection system, which can be carried by aircraft as well as surface ships, 

could be deployed to detect exposed enemy periscopes. Over the longer term, S&T efforts 

are focused on the development of promising active and passive electro-optical techniques 

that could be integrated with systems carried on manned aircraft or UAVs. 
 

 21

Finally, as the Navy fields these transformational ASW capabilities, consideration is 

being given to initially concentrating the most advanced systems in a “vanguard” ASW 

force that would be deployed in the Asia-Pacific region. This transformational force 

would be used to refine operational concepts, tactics, techniques and procedures for 

employment of the new capabilities and would be available for routine surveillance 

activities and contingency operations throughout this critical area. 

Mine Countermeasures

Mine countermeasures (MCM) ensure that U.S. joint and combined forces can negate the 

employment of mines to impede the free movement of U.S. forces or supplies by sea or 

from the sea base. Transformational efforts will focus on emerging generations of mine 

detection and clearance systems. This will include systems “organic” to forward-deployed 

combat ships. Both dedicated and organic MCM systems will employ sophisticated, 

networked unmanned surface, air, and underwater vehicles equipped with advanced 

technology systems to detect and neutralize mines in the shallow water and surf zones, 

will be used to quickly avoid or enter and safely clear dangerous mined areas 

MCM operations will use networked sensors, command elements, and weapons that 

can be tailored to counter specific threats and to operate at particular water depths and 

within distinctive local environments. They will employ a “system of systems” approach 

to achieve success. This will involve innovative operational concepts that leverage 

commonality, modularity, and portability to integrate a variety of new technologies and 

systems 

New technology MCM systems currently being developed for possible fielding to 

support transformational operational concepts include: 

• In its dedicated MCM role, the Littoral Combat Ship will utilize the 

transformational multi-mission adaptability that will make it an exceptional ASW 

platform. Experimentation with a chartered High Speed Vessel is currently being 

planned to examine and accelerate new technologies in support of mine warfare. 

Lessons learned from these experiments will be applied to the LCS. 

• A variety of unmanned underwater vehicles designed to conduct undetected, high 

confidence, and rapid underwater reconnaissance to precisely locate and neutralize 

mines. 

• Advanced mine detection systems carried by patrol aircraft and UAVs that identify 

and locate sea and land mines with multi-spectral electro-optical imagery or laser 

detection systems. 

• A computer-based system that assists operators in locating mines by comparing a 

common undersea picture developed in peacetime via clandestine, underwater 

reconnaissance with an updated picture of the underwater battlespace, based on 

reconnaissance operations during crisis or conflict. 
 

 22

• Next generation organic magnetic and acoustic mine sweeping systems, specially 

designed to operate in very shallow waters and the surf zone, that are carried by 

sea-based helicopters and UAVs as well as manned and unmanned surface vessels. 

• More capable mine neutralization systems that employ enhanced underwater 

explosives, greatly improved directional explosive line charges, an airborne gun 

that fires supercavitating projectiles, and small, robotic vehicles, which would be 

released in large numbers to autonomously find and neutralize mines. 

New MCM capabilities organic to deployed naval forces in combination with a 

balanced force of more capable, dedicated MCM assets will enable naval forces to 

maneuver in potentially mined areas while executing other combat missions. MCM will 

increasingly use off-board and standoff detection and neutralization systems to decrease 

the exposure of Sailors and Marines to mines, thus reducing the danger of mine 

countermeasures operations and increasing freedom of maneuver. 

Homeland Defense

Effective Homeland Defense deters potential aggressors, detects threats and defends 

the U.S. homeland against asymmetric attacks. It requires effective forward presence, fully 

integrated intelligence, and seamless interagency cooperation. Forward deployed naval 

forces buy time and space for the detection, tracking, and interdiction of threats to our 

homeland. Transformational naval capabilities supporting homeland defense include 

networked anti-terrorism collaboration with civil and law enforcement agencies and, in 

the future, sea-based ballistic missile defense. 

Networked collaboration with 

the Coast Guard, civil and law 

enforcement agencies will 

provide enhanced protection 

from asymmetric attacks 

launched from the seas 

surrounding the United States, 

including our ports and harbors, 

and provide incident response 

capability should an attack occur 

within the country. Efforts are underway to explore ways to create automated information 

sharing systems that can assimilate, correlate and display the vast quantities of intelligence 

data needed to produce actionable Maritime Domain Awareness. Such information would 

be used to ensure that suspicious vessels and aircraft are interdicted in a timely fashion. 

Coastal surveillance could also be enhanced through the use of the Broad Area Maritime 

Surveillance UAV. Also, the Navy will continue to develop the Deepwater Combat 

System in coordination with the Coast Guard, with the goal of enabling maximum 

Transforming Homeland Defense

• Provide first layer of defense at farthest 

reaches of the globe 

• Develop Maritime Domain Awareness 

through networked interagency 

collaboration 

• Field sea-based ballistic missile defense 
 

 23

SECDEF’s Critical Operational Goals Addressed by SEA SHIELD

• Protect Critical Bases and Defeat CBRNE Weapons and Their Means of Delivery 

• Project and Sustain Joint Forces in Anti-Access Environments 

• Leverage IT to Develop a Joint C4ISR Architecture and Operational Picture 

• Enhance capability and survivability of space systems and supporting infrastructure

interoperability between the two Services to maintain long-standing capabilities against 

more traditional threats. 

The Anti-Terrorist capabilities of the Marine Corps’ 4th MEB (Anti-Terrorism) will 

deter, detect, defend, and be able to support initial terrorist incident response throughout 

the homeland, as well as overseas. Combining existing capabilities of a Marine Security 

Guard Battalion; Marine Corps Security Force Battalion; and Chemical, Biological, Incident 

Response Force, with a specialized Anti-Terrorism Battalion under a brigade Command 

Element creates an immediately employable capability effective in training for, and 

employing against, terrorist threats. 

Additional capabilities will be developed to support the naval role in homeland 

defense. The Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO), a partnership 

between the Marine Corps and the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, is conducting an 

assessment of USMC organization and training and is providing recommendations 

concerning capabilities that contribute to Anti-Terrorism and homeland security missions. 

Additionally, Reserve units, “forward-deployed” across America, will support federal 

response efforts as required. 

Finally, as sea-based ballistic missile defense is developed, it will become a critical part 

of the defense of the homeland. 
 

 24

C. Sea Basing 

Sea Basing is a transformational concept that revolutionizes the projection, protection, 

and sustainment of sovereign warfighting capabilities around the world. The inherent 

mobility, security, and flexibility of naval forces provide an effective counter to emerging 

military and political limitations to overseas access. Sea Basing is also efficient, reducing 

the need to build up logistic stockpiles ashore that burden or endanger our allies and 

require force-protection measures, and reducing the early demands on the nation’s lift 

capability. Sea Basing will maximize the ability of the naval services to conduct sustained, 

persistent combat operations from the maritime domain and minimize limitations 

imposed by reliance on overseas shore-based support. 

Sea Basing enables the accelerated projection, protection, and sustainment of all 

dimensions of networked naval power, providing joint force commanders with 

unprecedented speed and flexibility of employment and expanded operational reach. As a 

primary enabling concept for Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare, Operational Maneuver 

From The Sea (OMFTS), Ship-To-Objective Maneuver (STOM), and other expeditionary 

concepts, Sea Basing supports the principles of: 

• Pre-emption or striking with surprise from the vastness of the sea; 

• Use of the sea as maneuver space for naval and joint forces; 

• Creating and sustaining overwhelming operational tempo and momentum through 

maneuver; 

• Enhancing strategic, operational, and tactical mobility; 

• Rapid force closure and at-sea reconstitution; 

• Capitalizing on the force protection inherent in the naval command of the sea. 

Capabilities and concepts supporting Sea Basing and permitting accelerated 

deployment and employment times will be achieved by the combination of forwarddeployed elements of the enhanced sea base, intra-theater high speed sealift, and rapidly 

deployable forces. These capabilities will leverage real time reachback for logistics 

support, enabled by integrated Navy and Marine Corps logistics systems and collaborative 

decision tools provided by FORCEnet. 

Accelerated Deployment and Employment Times 

One major objective of Sea Basing is to compress deployment and employment times to 

permit ground combat power projection within days rather than weeks or months, 

without reliance on ports or airfields ashore. Integrated combatant and auxiliary naval 

forces, including Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) (MPF(F)), will become a single 

fully netted force to greatly enhance the speed and effectiveness of expeditionary warfare 

from the sea. New developments in high-speed vessels, high-speed lighterage, vertical lift 

assets, landing craft, and advanced amphibious assault vehicles will enable phased at-sea 
 

 25

SECDEF’s Critical Operational Goals Addressed by Sea-Basing

• Protect Critical Bases and Defeat CBRNE Weapons and Their Means of Delivery

• Project and Sustain Forces in Anti-Access Environments

• Deny Enemy Sanctuary by Providing Persistent Surveillance, Tracking and Rapid 

Engagement with High-Volume Precision Strike

arrival and assembly of a MEBsized force. Other 

transformational attributes of the 

sea-based force include: highspeed vessels that will move 

personnel and selected equipment 

at dramatically higher closure 

speeds from distant and secure land bases and ports to the sea base to assemble with their 

equipment for subsequent operations; rapid, selective offload, enabling logistics 

sustainment from a secure sea base, providing tailored support packages for movement 

directly to dispersed forces ashore; in-theater reconstitution of Marine Air Ground Task 

Forces at sea, providing the joint force commander with an immediately available 

exploitation force and operational reserve; and en-route collaborative planning and 

rehearsal capabilities that will be enhanced by the distributed, networked tools provided 

by FORCEnet. 

New-generation, higher-capacity combat logistic ships will sustain a secure, sovereign 

at-sea resupply pipeline from land depots and ports outside the area of operations to the 

sea-based forces within that area. They will also seek to provide improved fleet forward 

munitions reload capability through continued research into innovative reload systems 

and technologies. 

Enhanced Sea-borne Positioning of Joint Assets 

Sea Basing presents the joint force commander with 

the ability to expand the battlespace beyond enemy 

reach, moving critical command and control, fire 

support, logistics, and other assets to the most mobile 

and secure operational area – the sea. Capabilities 

protected at sea include robust, survivable, and flexible 

C2 with global connectivity; highly responsive, precise, 

and far-ranging fires from guns, missiles and aircraft; 

and vital logistical support to include supplies, medical 

and repair capabilities. The modular capability of MPF(F) may allow the flexibility to 

configure these ships to serve in a Joint Command and Control role utilizing the 

Deployable Joint Command and Control system, as a forward medical facility, or even as 

an Afloat Forward Staging Base for Special Operations Forces (SOF).

Transforming

 Accelerated Deployment & Employment

• At-sea arrival and assembly 

• Selective offload 

• Reconstitution at sea 

Transforming 

Sea-borne Joint Assets

• Fires, connectivity, and 

sustainment from the sea 

• Secure base for joint C2 and

SOF springboard 
 

 26

D. FORCEnet 

FORCEnet will emerge as the next generation of Network Centric Warfare (NCW). It 

will provide the architecture and building blocks that integrate sensors, networks, decision 

aids, weapons, warriors, and supporting systems into a high adaptive human-centric, 

comprehensive system that operates from seabed to space and from sea to land. It will 

support well-informed, geographically dispersed forces in their execution of missions 

across the entire range of military operations. It is focused on accelerating the speed and 

accuracy of assessment, decision and action at every level of command. Leveraging 

profoundly improved situational awareness and understanding of the adversary, we will 

shape and control the information environment to dissuade, deter or decisively defeat any 

enemy. 

FORCEnet will provide: 

• The maritime component of the Family of Interoperable Pictures, fully 

interoperable with the Single Integrated Air Picture, Single Integrated Ground 

Picture, Single Integrated Space Picture, etc, and the Global Information Grid. It 

will create a new basis for network centric coalition and joint military operations. 

Interoperability and synchronicity require that all systems and the data that feed 

them adopt a common, standard geospatial and temporal reference frame -- a 

concept called the 4D Cube. 

• Integration of all force elements throughout the battlespace , including: satellites, 

manned aircraft, ships, submarines, UCAVs, USVs, UUVs, unattended space, air, 

ground and sea sensors and most importantly the warfighters, afloat and ashore. 

• The operational and logistics information that is critical to sustaining the warfighter 

and maintaining the required levels of logistics support in-theater. 

• Synchronized evolution of battlespace ISR tasking, processing, exploitation, 

dissemination and multi-sensor fusion capabilities to support both targeting and 

maneuvering. 

• An open architecture that provides the basis for interoperability with joint, allied 

and coalition forces. 

• A state of the art naval enterprise data network – fully interoperable and seamlessly 

integrated – to provide information superiority in direct support of the warfighter. 

• The “last tactical mile C4” capability to allow a substantive increase in wideband 

communications connectivity to maneuver battalion-sized units. 

• Defense in depth protection to ensure that networks are available reliable, and 

resistant to disruption or corruption. 

Major programs that will support FORCEnet, include: 

• Expeditionary Command and Control, Communications, Computers, and Combat 

Systems Grid (EC5G) - the initial effort to transform the concepts for FORCEnet into 

operational practice. The EC5G will define and field the enabling technologies 
 

 27

SECDEF’s Critical Operational Goals Addressed by FORCEnet

• Assure Information Systems and Conduct Effective Information Operations

• Deny Enemy Sanctuary by Providing Persistent Surveillance, Tracking and Rapid 

Engagement with High-Volume Precision Strike

• Leverage IT to Develop a Joint C4ISR Architecture and Operational Picture

required for Battle Force Command and Control through the deployment of an 

expeditionary-focused network backbone, integrated across all Naval missions and 

functional areas. 

• Expeditionary Sensor Grid (key initiative for Persistent Organic ISR) -Pervasive, 

persistent battlespace sensing through the use of national, joint, and naval manned, 

unmanned and unattended multi-spectral active and passive sensors to build 

shared battlespace awareness and support responsive, effective battleforce 

operations. 

• Sea-based joint command and control - The capability to support the initial intheater operations of a JTF Commander from a mobile, self-deploying sovereign 

command center at sea, potentially exploiting the MPF(F) hull as a host.

• Real-time Meteorological and Oceanographic Battlespace Characterization for 

gaining asymmetric advantage by collecting, processing, and exploiting 

environmental data on-scene in synchronization with the battle forces. This will 

employ UUVs, UAVs, and USVs, satellite downlink, tactical radar, and high 

capacity computing capability. 

• A web-enabled Navy allowing collaborative planning and execution, facilitated by 

the Navy Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI) ashore and IT-21 shipboard networks that 

provide satellite access for shipboard users to ashore classified and unclassified 

Wide Area Networks. This concept can be further expanded by integrating allies 

into the battleforce network with the Coalition Wide Area Network. 

• Advanced EHF Satellite Terminals that dramatically increase the bandwidth 

available to and needed by mobile maritime forces. 

• The Marine Corps Shared Data Environment incorporates the standards, models, 

and data warehousing technologies required to establish the “common language” 

that enables Marine Corps systems integration and interoperability. Within these 

SDE architectural constructs is the capability to achieve information superiority by 

accelerating the availability, accuracy, and timeliness of data existing in Marine 

Corps systems, needed by the decision making process at every level of command. 

• The Joint Tactical Radio System will provide a wireless, self-organizing mobile 

network built on software programmable radios and will be a key component of the 

expeditionary maneuver communications architecture. 
 

 28

IV. Naval Transformation Processes 

The Department of the Navy is committed to establishing the environment, culture and 

processes required to generate and sustain transformational thinking and action. Coevolving the emerging technologies and innovative operational concepts, while aligning 

organizational relationships to exploit them, will allow us to develop new dimensions of 

military capability. 

The Navy and Marine Corps are mutually supporting fighting forces. As such, they 

employ complementary organizations, structure, and warfighting methods. These 

complementary methods influence the transformational processes of each service, as they 

organize, train, and equip their total forces as part of their Title 10 responsibilities. In 

order to adequately capture these unique transformational processes, these efforts and 

methods are described separately below. 

A. Navy Transformation Process 

While the transformational capabilities of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing 

supported by FORCEnet, comprise the focus of naval transformation, developing the 

culture of innovation requires putting in place processes that ensure continuous 

innovation. A supporting triad represents those processes: Sea Warrior, Sea Trial, and Sea 

Enterprise. 

Sea Warrior: Maximizing Human Capital

The hallmark of the Navy has always been and will always be the professional men 

and women of its ships, squadrons, stations and staffs. But each successive family of 

ships, submarines and aircraft being built, designed and conceived today requires a higher 

degree of intellect and experience from these professionals. We face a continuing 

challenge of growing a more technical, educated and experienced force while still 

manning a legacy fleet that requires too 

much unskilled labor. In order to be 

competitive in retaining our highly skilled 

Total Force in this new century, we must 

place the Navy professional, active duty, 

reserve and civilian, at the center of all that 

we do in human resources. 

The Navy Sea Warrior process bridges this future where fewer Sailors, each of 

whom needs to be more capable and better trained, will need to perform more tasks and 

operate in more complex environments. It relies on human systems integration to enhance 

Sea Warrior

Enhanced assessment, assignment, 

training and education of our most

valuable asset – our people. 
 

 29

productivity and effectiveness by equipping the man and not just manning the equipment. 

It focuses on Sailors’ aptitude, skills and knowledge and couples them with their 

preferences, interests and personalities to enable an all-volunteer force to realize its full 

potential. It will develop naval professionals, including new naval space and information 

operations professionals, who are highly skilled, powerfully motivated, and optimally 

employed for mission success. 

At the heart of Sea Warrior is “Sailor Advocacy,” a fundamental change in the career 

management and detailing processes that gives each Sailor a stronger voice and greater 

control over their career decisions. It relies on command leadership and mentoring 

relationships as well as teaming between individual commands and the Navy Personnel 

Command (NPC). This works to develop a comprehensive picture of each Sailor’s 

preference and capabilities and to shape realistic, career enhancing options. Enabling 

web-based technologies, including intelligent software agents and a single, integrated 

manpower and personnel relational database, will provide a leap-ahead capability to focus 

on the individual while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the personnel 

system. 

Today’s Sailors entered the Navy with approaches to recruiting, training and job 

assignment best served in conscription or downsizing eras. Sea Warrior starts the 

individual Sailor’s career management at the initial entry point and then follows a path of 

lifelong learning to maximize growth and development. Portability of skills across job 

assignments and geographic areas is central to the continuous personal and professional 

growth in the Sea Warrior Navy. 

Recruiting Navy Personnel

While this is an all-volunteer Navy, we still must recruit our Sailors in an environment 

where increasing numbers of high school seniors surveyed indicate intentions to go 

directly to college. Incentives to join the Navy are mostly monetary, but offering job 

opportunities that align with an individual’s desires is also essential. The Navy will 

increasingly use high-technology systems to match people to Navy jobs. We will utilize 

every technology to better fit the Navy’s needs with the individual’s abilities and interests, 

using a Whole Person Assessment (WPA) approach to guide the right individuals to the 

right jobs. This is expected to improve job satisfaction and reduce attrition, which can lead 

to reduced recruiting requirements. WPA allows us to know more about the Sailor’s 

aptitude, their personality and their interests before making definitive skill classification 

decisions. The intent is to better enable career success and to bring more satisfied Sailors 

into a first term reenlistment window. 

Web-based Marketplace for Sailors and Jobs

Project SAIL – Sailor Advocacy through Interactive Leadership – moves the Navy to a 

technology-enabled, web-based, incentive driven distribution system. This new approach 
 

 30

couples each command’s retention team with the NPC headquarters in “Team Detailing.” 

This will result in better pairing of every Sailor with the right job. 

 

Web-based detailing, new technologies and comprehensive descriptions of each 

Sailor’s knowledge, skills and abilities, are being combined to expand assignment options, 

improve the quality of job matches, and simplify the detailing processes for Sailors. A 

Sailor’s agent will understand the desires of the Sailor and also know their professional 

requirements (resume), career needs and look for the best assignment option to satisfy 

these criteria. Likewise, a command’s agent will be aware of the needs of the command 

and search for the optimal Sailor to fill its requirements. Both agents will exploit more 

detailed descriptions of Sailor’s knowledge, skills, certifications, personal attributes and 

jobs, as well as career path descriptions. 

The online marketplace will use dynamic, real-time incentives packages to encourage 

Sailors to take specific assignments. Incentives such as assignment pay, applied in 

response to dynamic needs of commands and claimants, will drive the web-based 

marketplace into conformity with fleet priorities. 

Educating Navy Personnel

New approaches to professional education are being implemented to develop Sailors 

who can optimally adapt to new operational concepts. Such initiatives will develop 

Sailors who are better prepared to exploit the opportunities offered by "flattened" 

organizational structures and dramatically broadened access to information in netted 

battleforce operations. 

Included in this effort are the expanded use of the Navy College Program, the Program 

for Afloat College Education, Joint Professional Military Education, the Naval War 

College, the Naval Postgraduate School, and assignment of selected officers to civilian 

graduate schools. 

Training Navy Personnel

A “Revolution in Training” known as Task Force EXCEL (Excellence through our 

Commitment to Education and Learning) is underway to dramatically increase the use of 

onboard training/simulation packages and computer-based distance learning. This 

initiative will augment traditional schoolhouse training and reduce infrastructure costs 

and time to train. Task Force EXCEL is leading the way in designing a continuum of 

education that will enrich Sailors throughout their careers, helping them realize their full 

personal and professional potential. 

Central to this effort is adopting civilian industry-accepted classification credentials. 

Such credentials increase the value of Navy experience by underlining the equivalency 

between military and private-sector technical skills training. 
 

 31

Additionally, regarding operational training in the fleet, we are aggressively 

investigating the latest simulation technologies, to more fully replicate tactical conditions, 

sharpen combat skills, and save wear and tear on expensive hardware. 

Effectively Employing Navy Personnel

New methods for manning ships -- including rotational crewing -- are being explored 

to maintain ships on station for longer periods without overtaxing crews. The Navy will 

shift to manning its units using a dynamic scenario-based standard that is derived from 

rigorously analyzed fleet manning experiments and optimized workload measurement. 

Manpower considerations are also being emphasized in the acquisition of new weapon 

systems to reduce total ownership costs. For example, the new design aircraft carrier 

(CVNX) has targeted a 40 percent reduction in manning requirements, reducing total 

ownership costs by nearly $5 billion. 

Finally, a Navy Space professional community is being identified, and an Information 

Professional Officer community has been established to support our evolution toward 

Network Centric Operations. The rapidly expanding scope and complexity of information 

management and technology emphasizes the importance of establishing a career path to 

ensure the development and retention of such technically skilled professionals. 

Human Resources 

In order to better meet the needs of our people across the human resource enterprises 

of the Navy, two important initiatives have taken place. First, is the creation of a new 

officer Human Resources (HR) community. This HR community will build a professional 

cadre of experts who will lead the policy and program development to ensure we recruit, 

train and retain the best and brightest. Second, is the Human Resources Board of Directors 

(HRBOD), chaired by the Chief of Naval Personnel and comprising representatives from 

Manpower and Personnel, Training, Medical, Shore Facilities, Resourcing and the Fleet, 

which works together to close any Human Resource gaps that exist across these 

organizations. 
 

 32

Sea Trial: Process for Innovation

Sea Trial is the Navy process of integrating emergent concepts and technologies, 

leading to continuous improvements in warfighting effectiveness and a sustained 

commitment to innovation. It is based on the mutually reinforcing mechanisms of 

technology push, concept pull, and spiral development, integrated into an enduring 

process for transformation. It puts the Fleet at the heart of innovation and provides a 

mechanism to more readily capture the fruits of their operational excellence and 

experimentation. 

Technology Push

The rapid pace of advancement across the entire range of military technologies 

provides a continuous stream of innovative systems. Most of these systems provide the 

warfighter with improved capabilities to more readily fulfill traditional missions. At 

certain intervals, however, new technologies emerge that generate unforeseen mission 

opportunities. Sea Trial is designed to constantly survey the changing frontier of 

technological development, identifying 

those candidates with the greatest potential 

to provide dramatic increases in warfighting 

capability. These technologies are then 

incubated with targeted investment and 

guided through a rigorous process of 

modeling and simulation, rapid prototyping 

and fleet experimentation. The result is a 

process that discovers and aligns emergent 

technologies to deliver next-generation 

equipment into the hands of the warfighters 

with greater speed and efficiency. 

Under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Science and Technology (S&T) programs 

focus on the complete time-spectrum of naval requirements ranging from issues relevant 

to our operating forces, developing technologies that address current acquisition 

programs, and long-term science and technology that will impact the naval forces of the 

future. The use of Science advisors assigned to fleet operating commands and programs 

such as TechSolutions, enable the S&T community to address near-term or operational 

issues that require S&T efforts. The Future Naval Capabilities S&T Program is being used 

to develop and demonstrate technology solutions for critical capabilities and transition 

those technologies into acquisition programs. ONR’s newly established Naval 

Transformation Initiatives S&T program will be used to develop transformational 

technology and concepts that might not yet have an acquisition program for transition. It 

will enable leap-ahead capabilities and help open totally new concepts of operation 

Sea Trial

 Puts the Fleet at the heart of 

innovation 

 Exploit innovation to capture

operational excellence and 

experimentation 

 Rapidly delivers technology, 

doctrine and capability 
 

 33

Concept Pull

Military leaders confront a dynamic set of challenges in their global operations. These 

challenges generate emergent mission requirements under constantly changing geopolitical and politico-military conditions. The Sea Trial process responds to these 

demands with rapid action. Following the warfighter's lead, supporting centers for 

concept development propose innovative operational concepts to address emergent 

conditions. These concepts are then refined in Navy wargaming centers and, once 

mature, paired with state-of-the-art technologies to produce optimum operational 

systems. These systems are then pushed to the fleet for experimentation as quickly as 

possible, leading to rapid insertion into forward-deployed forces. 

Spiral Development

A basic premise of the Sea Trial concept is that new capabilities must be delivered to 

the fleet quickly and efficiently. Global conditions are changing more quickly than our 

technology process cycle, threatening the warfighting effectiveness of fielded fleet 

systems. 

To retain technological superiority, we are shifting to spiral development of systems. 

Spiral development employs evolutionary modular insertion techniques to ensure systems 

remain effective in the face of emergent threats. Under the spiral development 

philosophy, systems are designed to receive technological updates at regular intervals 

without disrupting production or performance. Spiral development controls costs while 

decreasing cycle times for technology insertion by using features such as open 

architecture, module interface standards, and commercial processors in conjunction with 

strict configuration control. Use of spiral development allows cutting-edge technologies to 

be fielded more swiftly via a phased-flight approach to engineering andproduction. 

Institutionalizing Transformation

The Navy has tremendous intellectual capital resident in its many development, 

doctrine, and systems offices. These people and organizations are uniquely valuable 

catalysts for innovation. They have the skills and resources to achieve major advances in 

naval warfighting effectiveness. A primary goal of Sea Trial is to more fully integrate the 

technological and conceptual centers of excellence in the Systems Commands and 

elsewhere, along with testing and evaluation centers, so that their combined efforts result 

in significant advancements in deployed combat capability. 

The Sea Trial process is fleet-led. Under the guidance of Commander, Fleet Forces 

Command (CFFC), the Navy Warfare Development Command will serve as Project 
 

 34

Coordinator for the Sea Trial process. Assigned responsibility for development of Sea 

Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing, CFFC will reach throughout the military and beyond to 

coordinate technology and concept development in support of the future Navy vision. 

This effort will result in a menu of technological and conceptual options to further 

development of the Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing concepts. NWDC will work 

closely with the Program Executive Offices, Systems Commands and designated units to 

integrate these options into practice, developing and testing the capabilities in Fleet Battle 

Experiments and joint exercises, culminating in operational deployments. Only by 

pushing new capabilities to the operational fleet will they be fully tested and their 

transformational implications completely understood. Thus the fleet commander, 

NWDC, and designated fleet units form an interactive team that carries innovation from 

the laboratory to deployment with focus, speed and efficiency. 

Working closely with the fleet, technology development centers, systems commands, 

warfare centers and academic resources, NWDC will align wargaming, experimentation, 

and exercise events so that they optimally support the development of transformational 

concepts and technologies. As the operational concepts of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea 

Basing mature, NWDC will codify them as doctrine in the Naval Doctrine Publication 

(NDP) series, providing guidance for dissemination throughout the fleet. 

Finally, Navy headquarters (OPNAV) will support Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea 

Basing concept development by working directly with NWDC and fleet elements to 

ensure operational priorities and lessons learned are accurately reflected in budgetary 

resourcing. Specifically, Mission Capabilities Package (MCP) teams under the Deputy 

Chief of Naval Operations (Warfare Requirements and Programs) will assist in 

development, resourcing, and implementation of these concepts, and in making the 

linkages from concepts and technologies to acquisition programs and fleet forces. 

Sea Trial will better align effort throughout the Navy, the implement an enduring 

process of transformation, and -- most importantly -- improve delivery of enhanced 

warfighting effectiveness to the fleet. 

Sea Enterprise: Maximizing Business Efficiencies

Sea Enterprise is an initiative to improve organizational alignment, refine 

requirements, harvest efficiencies, and reinvest savings in targeted areas to enhance 

warfighting effectiveness. By doing so, it will reinforce the Department of Defenses' goal 

of instituting better business practices as part of the transformational process. 

Sea Enterprise will employ process mapping techniques and other lessons from the 

business revolution to assess Navy organizations, target areas for improvement, prioritize 

investments, and fund them accordingly. Sea Enterprise will accelerate naval 
 

 35

transformation by strengthening a culture of productivity and balancing investments in 

the future with the demands of today’s operations. 

Our long-term shipbuilding and 

aircraft recapitalization plans require 

maximization of scarce resources 

through rapid implementation of 

DoD’s Business Initiatives Council 

(BIC) and other DON business 

initiatives. These include the 

divestituture or disinvestment of legacy systems and expensive platforms that are no 

longer critical to our mission or to the success of our transformation plan. Also included is 

the development and implementation of new ship and aircraft designs, as well as changes 

in acquisition processes to enable more rapid employment of needed warfighting 

capabilities while generating the most efficient investment of our Nation's resources. The 

top business priority is to identify and protect the required resources to sustain the core capabilities 

needed by our naval forces. Improvement of business practices to achieve end-to-end 

capabilities in the most economical fashion possible will be central to effective 

transformation. 

To accomplish the foregoing properly, we must harvest savings and reapply them 

where they will best support the warfighter. This means aggressively reducing overhead, 

streamlining processes, enhancing networking, scrutinizing procurement plans and 

contracting strategies (with an eye toward vertical cuts, where necessary and where it 

makes sense to do so), ending non-value added activity, and most importantly, creating 

meaningful incentives for our people to help us do this. 

Examples of current and ongoing DoN initiatives to realize business efficiencies 

include; the DD (X) program, NMCI, LPD/DDG construction yard swap, and "self-help" 

savings thru divestitures and disinvestments to support new programs. Legacy platforms 

such as DD-963 class ships and F-14 aircraft are being retired earlier to free funds for 

reinvestment and recapitalization. Legacy computer applications are being retired as part 

of NMCI implementation. In DoN's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Program 

initiatives, we are examining multiple pilot programs such as linking contracting and 

financial systems, new business management processes, supply chain management, 

regionalized maintenance, and eBusiness initiatives. 

DoN will also continue USN/USMC integration where consolidation of common 

functions makes sense and can produce significant savings for reinvestment. The 

integration of Navy and Marine Corps strike fighter aviation assets will yield not only 

operational benefits, but significant resources for reinvestment and recapitalization of our 

total naval aviation force. 

Sea Enterprise

 Sustain core capabilities 

 Optimize investments 

 Apply selected business reform to 

our organizations and processes 
 

 36

Considerable effort is expended in the development of our budget and fiscal plan for 

the future years. The same level of effort needs to be put forth examining current year 

operations in order to ensure the most effective expenditure of our resources. We need to 

identify and prevent hidden or additional costs before they occur by developing plans on 

how best to freeze current, and eliminate future, cost overruns on major acquisition 

programs. All aspects of the Department will be critically and continually examined to 

determine how we might reap economies across all acquisition, research and fleet/field 

support activities, including non-operational parts of the DON. 

Additionally, the Secretary of the Navy is leading a DPG directed SEC effort to 

streamline the PPBS system, its connection with requirements determination and the 

acquisition process, and make PPBS more responsive to our needs. 

B. U.S. Marine Corps Transformation Process 

 The Marine Corps has always been at the forefront of innovation. Throughout its 

history, the Marine Corps has changed and evolved – from ship security, to naval 

constabulary, to light infantry, to an amphibious assault force, to an air-ground 

expeditionary team. In the past, Marine development of close air support, amphibious 

warfare, vertical envelopment, Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing technology, and 

maritime prepositioning have benefited the nation’s joint warfighting capability. Today, 

the total force Marine Corps remains true to its warrior culture and continues in a tradition 

of anticipatory change. Drawing on a history of innovation, Marine Corps transformation 

can be viewed as founded on four broad and interdependent pillars. First, opportunity 

can be created and exploited best by agile organizations, ready to adapt institutions to 

maximize the potential of both Marines and their units. Second, operational changes, first 

expressed as concepts, will alter the means by which the operating forces project power 

and influence. Third, leap-ahead technology will create new opportunities for warriors of 

tomorrow. Finally, the Marine Corps will promote changes in business and acquisition 

processes, enabling the more rapid development of effective capabilities while generating 

the most efficient investment of the nations resources. 

 These changes will take place within 

the framework established by the Marine 

Corps’ capstone concept, Expeditionary 

Maneuver Warfare (EMW). EMW is a union 

of the Marine Corps’ core competencies, 

maneuver warfare philosophy, 

expeditionary heritage, and concepts for 

organizing, deploying, and employing 

forces. The single process by which the Marine Corps develops, evaluates, and captures 

change to support EMW is the Expeditionary Force Development System (EFDS). While 

the focus of this Roadmap is the development of new capabilities, the fundamental Marine 

ethos will not change. Ultimately, it is people, not machines, who determine success in 

Four Pillars

• Organizational Agility 

• New Operational Concepts 

• Leap-ahead Technology 

• Business Reform 
 

 37

peace and war. Therefore, every development will be evaluated based on its ability to 

maximize the potential of the Corps’ most powerful resources: United States Marines. 

 

Organizational Agility

The first fundamental transformation within Marine fighting forces begins with the 

individual Marine. The manner in which Marines are recruited, trained, and developed is 

an essential aspect of the Corps’ organizational and institutional transformation. Today’s 

force is an all-recruited force, comprised of some of the best and brightest young 

Americans. The transformation from civilian to Marine begins with the defining 

achievement of the “Crucible”, and continues with the newly instituted Marine Martial 

Arts Program. The Corps continues to “Make Marines” through a constant effort across an 

individual’s career. These programs are fundamentally focused on developing 

comprehensively educated, mentally astute, and physically tough Marines, ready to 

succeed in chaotic combat environments. The warrior ethos is instilled in individual 

Marines by rigorous and challenging training that transforms them into intelligent and 

disciplined warriors, and mirrors the Marine Corps’ own institutional transformation in 

equipment, doctrine, and structure. 

Recognizing and expeditiously adjusting organizational arrangements to take full 

advantage of transformational capabilities made possible by new technologies and the 

adoption of new operational concepts, is a key aspect of military transformation. Building 

on its institutional legacy of adapting to match the threats and missions of a given time 

and adversary, the Marine Corps can reorganize its structure to capitalize on the 

transformational concepts and technologies of tomorrow. Ongoing organizational and 

institutional initiatives include: 

• Developing leaders and staffs who function in an environment of ambiguity and 

uncertainty and make timely and effective decisions under stress. 

• Developing leaders by improving their capacity to recognize patterns, distinguish 

critical information, and make decisions quickly on an intuitive basis with less than 

perfect information. 

• Enhancing leaders' decision-making skills with investments in education, wargaming, 

combat simulation activities, and battlespace visualization techniques within a joint or 

multinational framework. 

• Developing manpower policies that devolve authority away from centralized staffs to 

promote rapid and effective decisions to lead today’s all-volunteer force. 

• Increasing the ability of the supporting establishment to serve as the fifth element of 

the MAGTF, as exemplified by the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity’s reach-back 

support to the warfighting requirements of Task Force 58 during Operation Enduring 

Freedom. 

• Developing the innovative logistics processes comprising the Integrated Logistics 

Capability (ILC) to increase support to the MAGTF and enhance both garrison and 

expeditionary operations. 
 

 38

• Generating opportunities to align Marine Corps Reserve units with Marine 

Expeditionary Forces in order to develop day-to-day working relationships between 

Active and Reserve forces, maximizing the diverse civilian-acquired expertise that 

enhances military capabilities. 

• Integrating aviation capabilities across the Navy and Marine Corps to generate 

increased capabilities for projecting power from the sea. 

• Developing the complementary and reinforcing capabilities of special operations forces 

(SOF) and forward-deployed MAGTFs, including assignment of Marine forces that 

broaden the capabilities available to both SOF and MAGTFs. 

• Creating and institutionalizing innovative units dedicated for special missions or tasks 

such as the 4th MEB (Anti-Terrorism) by relying on the adaptive, decentralized 

organization of Marine Corps warfighting units. 

The scalable, sustainable, interoperable, expeditionary, combined-arms Marine AirGround Task Force (MAGTF) -ready to fight and win America’s battles- remains 

inherently flexible and uniquely suited for rapid organizational agility. 

• The Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), capable of limited forcible entry operations, 

may be quickly combined and integrated with other MEUs or fighting units to create 

potent, capable warfighting forces, as exemplified by Task Force 58 in Afghanistan. 

The MEU and its partner Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) provide the nation with 

immediately employable forces, available either as an on-scene force of choice or to 

enable the introduction of other naval, joint, or combined forces. 

• The Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB), scaled and task-organized to respond to a 

full range of crises, will be developed as the centerpiece of sea-based power projection. 

Able to deploy rapidly by a variety of means for employment “From The Sea”, Naval 

Expeditionary Forces organized with a MEB will provide the nation a powerful 

capability to project and sustain forces with minimal dependence on immediate 

landbases. 

• The Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) with its inherent sustainability will remain 

capable of concurrent sea-based operations and sustained operations ashore, operating 

either independently or as part of a joint warfighting team and able to meet multiple 

joint requirements for Major Theater War. 

New Operational Concepts

Our operational concepts stand at the core of the Expeditionary Force Development 

System process. These formal documents articulate a Marine Corps vision for future 

warfighting and the operational changes that will be required to execute them. They look 

forward in time – beyond the concerns of today’s programming and budgeting – and 

provide the spark that initiates a focused process of proposal, debate, and 

experimentation. The Marine Corps uses this participatory dialogue as the means to shape 

the initial concepts, ultimately molding them into requirements that will provide the 

warfighting solutions needed. Tested and validated through rigorous joint and service 
 

 39

experimentation, new operational concepts will result in far-reaching changes to Marine 

capabilities that support joint warfighting. 

Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare (EMW), as the Marine Corps’ capstone concept, forms 

the basis for the development of Marine Corps concepts. Built on the twin pillars of the 

Marine philosophy of maneuver warfare and an expeditionary culture, EMW provides a 

framework for the development of transformational concepts to meet the requirements of 

today and tomorrow. In doing so, the Marine Corps’ conceptual transformation focuses 

on warfighting changes to achieve the following enhanced capabilities identified in EMW: 

• Strategic Agility to ensure rapid and fluid transition from a pre-crisis state to full 

operational capability in any distant theater. 

• Operational Reach to rapidly project, support, and sustain relevant and effective power 

across the battlespace in conjunction with other forms of national influence. 

• Tactical Flexibility to conduct multiple, concurrent, and overlapping missions, creating 

an overwhelming tempo of action through the coordinated application of combinedarms, and responsive and adaptive command and coordination that erodes an enemy’s 

cohesion. 

• Support and Sustainment to enable the enduring expeditionary logistics capabilities of 

naval forces in order to project influence. 

• Joint/Multinational Enabling to enable joint, interagency, allied, and coalition 

operations by blending the unique combined-arms capabilities of Marine forces with 

the complementary capabilities of others. 

Warfighting changes may necessitate changes in EMW’s integrating concepts of 

organization, deployment and employment. The synergizing influence of these concepts 

ensures that transformational warfighting changes are balanced, supportable, and 

effective: 

• Organizational structure must be mission oriented to ensure the effective deployment, 

employment, sustainment, reconstitution, and redeployment of forces. The Marine 

supporting establishment must be postured to facilitate situational awareness of 

worldwide operations, leverage information technologies, and exploit modern logistics 

concepts in order to anticipate and respond to MAGTF requirements. The adaptable, 

scalable, and tailorable to any mission MAGTF will remain our warfighting 

organization. 

• Deployment of forces will involve any combination of enhanced amphibious platforms, 

strategic sealift and airlift, prepositioned assets, and self-deployment options to rapidly 

project forces throughout the world. 

• Employment of Marine operating forces will be focused on the operational synergy 

created by fully integrated MAGTFs. Immediately employable naval forces, forwarddeployed with flexible and powerful MAGTFs, will continue to be the JFC’s optimal 

enabling force, prepared to open ports and airfields and to establish expeditionary 

airfields and intermediate staging bases in either benign or hostile environments. In 

addition, the Marine Corps can provide specific forces and capabilities according to the 

needs of the JFC. 
 

 40

New operational concepts provide a roadmap for the transformation of the Marine 

Corps. These concepts ensure unity of effort within the service, articulate the vision of the 

Marine Corps leadership, and effectively guide progress toward that vision. Warfighting 

concepts for the future, supported by functional concepts, include: 

• Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) is an approach to expeditionary, littoral, 

and amphibious warfare that describes the maneuver of naval forces at the operational 

level, a bold bid for victory that aims at exploiting a significant enemy weakness in 

order to deal a decisive blow. What distinguishes Operational Maneuver from the Sea 

from all other species of operational maneuver is the extensive use of the sea as a 

means of gaining advantage, an avenue for friendly movement that is simultaneously a 

barrier to the enemy and a means of avoiding disadvantageous engagements. This 

aspect of Operational Maneuver from the Sea may make use of, but is not limited to, 

such techniques as sea-based logistics, sea-based fire support, and the use of the sea as 

a medium for tactical and operational movement. 

• Ship-to-Objective Maneuver (STOM) employs the concepts of maneuver warfare to 

project a combined arms force by air and surface means against inland objectives. 

STOM takes advantage of emerging mobility, fires, sustainment, and command and 

control systems to maneuver landing forces in their tactical array from the moment 

they depart the ships, replacing the ponderous ship-to-shore movement of current 

amphibious warfare with true amphibious maneuver. 

• Enhanced Networked Seabasing is a concept describing naval capabilities, based in a 

family of systems and platforms afloat, that maximize Naval Expeditionary Force 

combat power and influence, afloat and ashore, while facilitating the employment of 

that combat power by JFCs. Enhanced Networked Sea Basing constitutes the 

conceptual thread that ties current combat capabilities and future expeditionary 

warfighting concepts together and capitalizes on the maneuverability and protection 

afforded by the sea. Sea Basing maximizes naval capabilities for projecting power and 

assuring access. 

Leap-Ahead Technology

With a foundation drawn from its innovative concepts and organizations, the Marine 

Corps is transforming its weapons systems and assets throughout the five elements of the 

Marine Air-Ground Task Forces – the ground, aviation, logistics, and command elements 

as well as the supporting establishment. This transformation seeks to exploit the potential 

of leap-ahead technology and institutes a robust program of experimentation with new 

concepts, capabilities, and operational prototypes while actively pursuing forward-looking 

science and technology efforts. 

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) conducts experimentation and 

prototyping of innovative concepts, tactics, techniques and promising technologies. 

Through a series of dedicated warfighting experiments, advancements are being made in 
 

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target selection and tracking, weapon selection and employment, friendly unit position 

identification, command and control, and staff planning. Military Operations in Urban 

Terrain, a vital, yet challenging, environment today and in the future, is one of the focus 

areas for the MCWL. This includes the aggressive development of tactics, techniques, and 

procedures for the employment of aviation capabilities in urban terrain. All system 

developments will be closely coupled with the co-evolution of needed doctrine, training, 

education, logistic support and organizational reconfiguration, in accordance with new 

acquisition initiatives set forth by OSD. 

Marine Corps technology innovations will continue to focus on the expeditionary 

concepts and complementary nature of MAGTF capabilities by pursuing the following 

objectives: 

• Procure realistic and easy to use information technology (minimum training, no 

specialized/unique equipment requirements) to support deployed and combat 

operations. 

• Capitalize on the inherent maneuver space and protection of the sea through highspeed lighterage and amphibious fighting vehicles. 

• Support vertical envelopment and access to distant objectives via advanced tilt-rotor 

aircraft. 

• Decrease reliance on built-up and easily targetable airfields and facilities through Short 

Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft. 

• Increase situational awareness, gain tactical information advantages, and support 

maneuver forces with the use of tactical unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. 

• Forge the way ahead for the development of tactics, techniques and procedures for 

effectively employing new non-lethal technologies via the Marine Corps-led Joint NonLethal Weapons Directorate. 

• Promote technology that simplifies operational sustainment including advanced C4 

systems; intermodal and unitized containerization; advanced packaging and 

repackaging capabilities; and improved reliability, maintainability, and fuel efficiency. 

• Develop systems that support enroute planning and rehearsal, permitting the 

immediate employment of forces upon arrival. 

• Create training systems that provide a simultaneous link between live, virtual, and 

constructive training and more fully integrate the MAGTF’s command and control 

systems in a joint context. 

 

Business Reform

Just as it is transforming along conceptual, technological, and organizational lines, the 

Marine Corps is also transforming its business practices. The Marine Corps’ warfighting 

readiness is a reflection of balancing the demands of current requirements around the 

globe with the imperative to invest and be prepared for the future. The programmatic and 

budget challenges faced today are greater than the past. Therefore, it is imperative that 

the Marine Corps continue to improve its business information through the application 
 

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and refinement of Activity-Based Cost/Management (ABC/M) models, and that this 

information be used to make fact-based decisions that continuously improve support to 

the operating forces while drastically reducing resources consumed to provide that 

support. 

In the Marine Corps, “Business Reform” is the fundamental transformation of USMC 

Business Enterprise processes to create dramatic increases in effectiveness, efficiency, 

resilience to change, and the capacity and inclination to innovate. This transformation is 

accomplished by changing the Business Enterprise culture. The Marine Corps will 

contribute to cultural change through: 

• Education and Communication. The development of effective and comprehensive 

strategic plans, training and education of the workforce, and improved management of 

organizational knowledge. 

• Accountability. Improved management information systems associated with reform 

will provide commanders the information to make improved fact-based decisions and 

to hold their subordinate leaders accountable for expected goals and targets defined in 

strategic plans. 

• Skill Development. A suite of business skills is required to equip the Marines and 

Civilian-Marines responsible for managing the Business Enterprise to achieve expected 

business outcomes. A primary tool in improving accountability at all levels is the 

scorecard. Use of the scorecards will provide an unprecedented ability for 

commanders to define and view progress towards accomplishment of strategic goals, 

to monitor progress against performance measures, to compare installation 

performance against strategic goals and baselines, to compare installation performance 

with other installations, and eventually to compare installation performance with other 

Department of Defense, public, and private entities. 

• Incentives. Future Marine Corps plans will increase focus on incentives to change 

culture and positively drive reform. 

The USMC is working to leverage its investment in ABC/M to strengthen installation 

resource management. The potential value of installation activity-based information for 

resource allocation will improve over the FYDP with the addition of performance 

measures and products and services into cost models. ABC/M has been used successfully 

in the private sector to determine and analyze capacity limits given set resource 

availability, and the Marine Corps expects the same. The Marine Corps ABC/M effort is a 

business management system using world-class commercial off-the-shelf technologies 

(COTS) to facilitate improved, fact-based decisions. 

Perhaps the most important driver of performance/cost consistency and continuous 

improvement is the progressive development of installation benchmarks and clear 

definition of standards of excellence. The USMC will partner with other services to obtain 

comparable benchmark data. Benchmarks and best practice analysis will be shared in 

order to help installation commanders understand what others have done to improve 

performance and reduce costs. The Marine Corps will augment benchmark/best practice 
 

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analysis with a clear definition of performance excellence for its installations. This 

definition will most likely be based on existing criteria such as Baldrige, Six Sigma, ISO 

9000, and the Maxwell School of Government. 

The foundation of business reform is not addressed here, as it is inextricably linked to 

direction and processes outside the service. Instead, the focus of this Roadmap is on 

transformational efforts that directly affect the warfighting capabilities of the Naval force. 

Nevertheless, the savings gained from business transformation will support other aspects 

of military transformation. This Roadmap can serve as a catalyst for further change to this 

necessary element of transformation. 

Expeditionary Force Development System

The Expeditionary Force Development System (EFDS) is the single integrated system 

of dynamic processes and functions that produces and sustains integrated capabilities that 

meet the needs of the Marine Corps and the combatant commanders. The Marine Corps 

Advocates for ground combat, aviation combat, command and control, and combat service 

support, as well as the Marine Requirements Oversight Council (MROC) are key 

participants in the process. EFDS continuously examines and evaluates current and 

emerging concepts and capabilities to improve and sustain a modern Marine Corps. EFDS 

is compatible with and supports the naval and joint transformation effort and integrates 

transformational, modernization, and legacy capabilities and processes. 

The development of future Marine Corps capabilities in concert with naval capabilities 

requires a systematic, concept-based approach. EFDS provides the Marine Corps with a 

standardized methodology to translate future transformation goals into fielded integrated 

capabilities. 

EFDS supports the requirement generation role of the Advocates by translating 

concept-based capabilities identified by the transformation effort into valid requirements 

and acquisition documentation. As transformation concepts are developed and integrated 

into the Marine Corps family of concepts, the capabilities identified can then be developed 

by the Marine Corps Advocates in an integrated fashion. EFDS ensures that these 

transformation capabilities are validated, prioritized, resourced, and integrated across the 

spectrum of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leader development and 

education, People and Facilities (DOTMLPF). 

EFDS supports the requirements validation role of the MROC, thereby increasing the 

capability of the Marine Corps leadership to define, review, and validate the concepts, 

capabilities, and requirements associated with naval and joint transformation. The 

individual processes that comprise EFDS are grouped into four phases: 

• The Force Capability Development Phase identifies desired capabilities. 
 

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• The Requirement Development Phase translates capabilities into validated DOTMLPF 

requirements. 

• The Prioritization and Resourcing Phase supports the prioritization and funding of 

validated DOTMLPF requirements. 

• The Capability Fielding and Transition Phase supports the integrated fielding of new 

capabilities. 

The Force Capability Development Phase of EFDS incorporates the key processes that 

support the transformation effort such as Mission Area Analysis (MAA), Wargaming, 

Experimentation, emerging naval and Marine concept development, Joint Concept 

Development and Experimentation (JCDE), and Science and Technology (S&T) 

development. These processes support Advocate decision-making concerning the 

application of warfighting capabilities and allow focus on specific transformation goals 

and objectives. 

As the objectives of the transformation effort become focused, the Force Capability 

Development Phase of EFDS supports the incorporation of specific transformation related 

capabilities into the comprehensive Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare (EMW) Capability 

List (ECL). 

Through road mapping of the CMC Vision and Strategy, Marine Corps and Naval 

Transformation Vision Objectives are identified and linked to individual ECL capabilities. 

These near, mid, and long term individual capabilities are addressed in the Marine Corps 

and Advocate Campaign Plans. The Advocates will generate Universal Need Statements 

(UNSs) to develop the capabilities required to integrate the transformation effort. These 

UNSs are developed into fielded capabilities by being processed through the other three 

EFDS phases. In the Requirement Development Phase the UNSs are analyzed with respect 

to the pillars of DOTMLPF to determine specific solution sets. In the Prioritization and 

Resourcing Phase and in the Capability Fielding Transition Phase, capabilities are 

prioritized, resourced and fielded. EFDS is the single system for developing and 

integrating the Marine Corps’ concept-based transformation. 
 

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V. Conclusion 

The security environment of today and tomorrow will be characterized by uncertainty, 

chaos, surprise, and conflict. The nature of conflicts, and the requirements for naval 

forces, will be wide in scope and difficult to predict, but will undoubtedly involve action 

to deter or defeat asymmetric threats. Naval forces must exploit the power of information 

to seize the advantage over potential adversaries, and must be postured, through 

technological advances, changes in organizational structures of forces, and 

experimentation with innovative concepts of operation, to sustain and advance a broad 

competitive advantage. 

Naval transformation will seek to take advantage of rapid advances in technology, but 

the real advantage will come from co-evolving concepts of operation, concurrent changes 

in organizational arrangements, and the conduct of warfare in innovative ways with both 

new and legacy systems. This Roadmap describes the particular focus for naval 

transformation: achieving the capabilities for a networked, sea-based power projection 

force which will enable joint force operations and assure access throughout the world. 

Naval Transformation is a continuous process, tailored by each naval service to its 

particular missions and culture, culminating in a set of complementary total force 

capabilities in support of joint forces. In addition to seizing the opportunity to achieve 

transformational capabilities today, the processes required to establish and maintain a 

culture of innovation must be encouraged, nurtured and rewarded. The naval services are 

embarked today on a wide range of initiatives to radically change organizational 

arrangements, adopt fundamentally different concepts for military operations, and alter 

existing operational concepts with the incorporation of advanced technologies to achieve 

profound increases in military capabilities. Agile and adaptive by nature, the Navy and 

Marine Corps are fostering the culture of innovation required to achieve transformational 

operational concepts and capabilities.