Tuesday, August 11, 2009

COMTENTHFLT - Now as then

There was nothing like the Tenth Fleet in the U.S. Navy, nor for that matter in any navy of the world. ...it (is) was made up of some of the Navy's brainiest officers, both regulars and reservists; and even the petty officers and yeomen attached (are) were remarkable for their brilliance. The idea behind it (is) was to harness in a single, small and flexible, essentially intellectual unit the best brainpower to aid the combat elements of conventional seapower-to put teeth into the U-boat (cyber) campaign by fusing brains and brawn.

The Tenth Fleet (is) was, in the truest sense of the phrase, a cloistered "think factory" of chosen experts who play(ed) their anonymous part in the war around the clock, in the cold glare of incandescent lights in front of huge maps and charts behind the closed doors of their plot room, in the bay of cackling teletypes. Their job (is) was to analyze every aspect of the U-boat (cyber) war from all angles, to supply split-second intelligence to CINCLANT, to recommend tactical maneuvers for offensive actions, to develop new hardware along abstruse scientific lines.

From: The TENTH FLEET
Ladislas Farrago (Author of PATTON)

NOTE: The parenthetical notations above are mine.
---------------------Cut Line----------------------
It is remarkable that in World War II the U.S. Navy’s Tenth Fleet exercised network-centric antisubmarine warfare (ASW) operations in the Battle of the Atlantic against German submarines, characterized by Morison as “… a contest between systems of information …” (as quoted by Cohen, Eliot A., and John Gooch. 1990. Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan, Inc., New York and Collier Macmillan Publishers, London, p. 75).
The Tenth Fleet integrated information from distant direction-finding fixes with data from local high-frequency direction finder and radar contact from forces in the action area with decrypted messages and other intelligence from vessels attacked, and with the help of a strong operational analysis group directed the coordinated efforts of warships, aircraft, and convoy commanders, with time delays from initial detection to action orders of minutes to hours. The Tenth Fleet also shared its operational picture and coordinated actions with the British in charge of the Eastern Atlantic ASW operations and conducted information warfare in the form of psychological warfare messages directed specifically to the enemy submarines at sea.
From: NETWORK-CENTRIC NAVAL FORCES

1 comment:

Unknown said...

CNSG comes back! It is alive!!