The Navy has decided not to incorporate portions of its surface warfare and submarine organizations into its information dominance directorate, opting to keep them separate in order to ensure each shop remains focused on their particular portfolios, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said last week.
Roughead’s staff had been reviewing the potential reorganization that would have taken elements from the surface warfare (N86), expeditionary warfare (N85) and submarine warfare (N87) and put them under the information dominance (N2/N6) banner.
The move, as proposed, was intended to cut down on duplicative efforts in the information technology development, particularly in the area of unmanned systems that cut across the N85, N86 and N87. Since its inception, the N2/N6 has been tasked as the overall Navy authority concerning the creation of future unmanned system.
“So with the N2/N6, they are the ones that are controlling the total view of our information environment,” Roughead told reporters after his speech at an unmanned technologies symposium in Washington last Friday.
But aside from specific programs have been moved into the N2/N6 from those directorates, the Navy had largely abandoned the idea of changing the organizational structures. “We have taken some programs out of those shops and put them into [the N2/N6], but I really want the submarine and surface shops to really work on getting the submarine or ship put together [and] focus on total ownership costs,” the four-star admiral said.
While the Navy leadership has moved away from further consolidation of its warfighting directorates, Roughead pointed out the decision did not undercut the value of the N2/N6 shop has had to the sea service.
The N2/N6 directorate, he said, filled the Navy’s critical need to coordinate its efforts in the information technology arena.
“The information systems and the sensors and the communications systems really need to be centrally managed,” the CNO said. “Because if we are talking about operating an integrated fleet, and I am depending on other entities to make the right investments, and then we find out that after everyone else has made the investment, somebody just decides to reprioritize, the whole network comes apart.”
Even without the additional integration of service directorates into the N2/N6, the office maintains good communication and collaboration with the other service shops, via other collaborative tools.
The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance wing of the N2/N6 conducts regular “cross-functional team meetings” with the various heads of the other service organizations to review “any kind of seams…specifically in the unmanned realm.” Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, director for ISR capabilities at the N2/N6, told Defense Daily in March.
The ISR shop also participates in an “Undersea Dominance Steering Group” whose primary focus is development and guidance of unmanned underwater system capabilities, he added.