Navy and Marine Corps are building an integrated force for information warfare to pace China and Russia

Dec. 9, 2019
The Navy is playing a significant role in confronting China in the Pacific. China, according to scholars and government intelligence reports.

WASHINGTON – To keep up with the changing nature of war and in response to nations such as China and Russia restructuring their militaries around a consolidated information warfare discipline, senior leaders at the Navy and Marine Corps recently said they are looking to boost their own prowess in that area. C4ISRnet reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

9 Dec. 2019 -- Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, described in a new strategy document released Dec. 4 how he wants to build out a new dedicated information warfare cell within fleet maritime operations centers. The results from exercises, scheduled to be held in 2020, will refine requirements and timelines for these cells as part of the budgeting process for fiscal 2022.

It is still unclear exactly what these cells will do or how they’ll be staffed.

In addition, the new commandant of the Marine Corps issued planning guidance this fall that calls for greater overall naval integration, acting more of an extension of the Navy versus a second land Army. This integration extends to the information warfare realm as well.

“The Navy has an [information warfare] implementation plan. We’re about four meetings into turning that into a naval IW implementation plan,” Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for information, said in October. “We are looking at what our staffs need to look like at the fleet level, at the [Marine Expeditionary Unit] level or the [Amphibious Ready Group]/MEU level.”

Related: Navy to brief industry on information warfare, cloud computing, and network security

Related: How combat jets, submarines, and surface warships all could share targeting information in real time

Related: Bell-Boeing to upgrade weather radar, electronic warfare (EW) avionics in 9 Marine Corps MV-22 aircraft

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics

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