CNO Visits Navy Warfare Development Command
13 April 2017
NORFOLK, Va. -- Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson visited Navy Warfare Development Command to hear how NWDC accelerates learning across warfighting development centers (WDCs). During his April 12, 2017, stop at NWDC Headquarters, the CNO was briefed on how the WDCs work together to identify of warfighting capability gaps and to integrate their capability development efforts to get at cross-domain solutions.
The Navy's five WDCs - Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center (NAWDC), Navy Expeditionary Warfighting Development Center (NEXWDC), Navy Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (NSMWDC), Navy Undersea Warfighting Development Center (NUWDC) and Naval Information Warfighting Development Center (NIWDC) - are focused on training for their community forces and the development of current, near-term and future warfighting capabilities in their areas of expertise.
NWDC in turns leads WDC cross domain warfighting integration all levels of naval warfare. NWDC does this in a variety of forums including flag level summits, tactical and operational level war games, and fleet experimentation initiatives that bring together all the WDCs in order to get at fully integrated, all-domain solutions.
NWDC Commander Rear Adm. Bret Batchelder also discussed with the CNO how the command is supporting the Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command recently published Fleet Design, which defines how the fleet, the Navy's highest tactical echelon, will fight and win the wars of the future. Specifically, the CNO was updated on NWDC's development of the Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) Concept, a central, overarching operational concept, that will weave together the principles of integration, distribution and maneuver to maximize the effectiveness of the fleet Maritime Operations Centers to synchronize all-domain effects.
"DMO will describe the fleet-centric warfighting capabilities necessary to gain and maintain sea-control through the employment of combat power that may be distributed over vast distances, multiple domains, and a wide array of platforms," explained Mark Coffman, DMO concept writing team lead, "The concept's action plan will drive the development of these new capabilities so that fleet commanders will be able to distribute but still maneuver the fleet across an entire theater of operations as an integrated weapon system."
NWDC is applying a proven problem-based process to validate DMO as it is being written through its core capabilities of war gaming, experimentation, and analysis, Coffman said. Significant effort will be leveraged from across the Fleet to include Type Commanders, Warfighting Development Centers and the Naval War College along with technical insight from the System Commands and Research Labs to develop the DMO Concept and supporting CONOPs that will be required to guide development and employment efforts.