How real-world ops are informing Naval Information Forces’ modernization pursuits

SAN DIEGO — The recent U.S. military operations in Latin America that culminated in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro underscored the importance of “sequencing” cyber, intelligence, electronic and other weapons assets, according to the Navy’s so-called ‘IBoss.’

“I wish I could tell you more about that — but there’s goodness there that we’re going to unpack as we go forward,” Vice Adm. Mike Vernazza, commander of Naval Information Forces, told DefenseScoop last week.

During a meeting with a small group of reporters at the WEST conference, he discussed some of his team’s takeaways from that U.S. mission in Venezuela and shared new details about guidance updates and strategic initiatives that NAVIFOR is prioritizing in its near-term pipeline.

Headquartered in Virginia, NAVIFOR is the sea service’s Type Command (TYCOM) for Information Warfare. 

Its personnel are largely responsible for tasks associated with manning, training, equipping, and certifying the Navy’s IW forces to be combat-ready for modern conflict operations spanning the globe.

In the early hours of Jan. 3, the U.S. conducted the military and intelligence mission codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve. The raid involved around 150 aircraft, 200 special forces personnel, cyberattacks leading to power outages, and one-way attack drones deployed to neutralize air defenses.

Maduro and his wife were extracted from a secure compound in Caracas and now face drug-trafficking and other alleged charges in New York.

Much of the details about that operation remain classified in its aftermath.

But in response to questions from DefenseScoop, Vernazza suggested that NAVIFOR is studying “some of those lessons learned” with Air Force, U.S. Cyber Command and other “providers” of the electronic warfare, intel and related cyber capabilities that underpinned the operation. 

“So I will say this: When you team all these things together, you have to do it at the timing and the tempo of what the commander wants. But many of these things have to be sequenced. So, I think therein lies some additional discovery that we have to do,” he said. “And again, some of these will probably not come out into the open source press, but in any operation — whether it’s Iran or any of the most recent operations — we always take a look to see what worked well, what didn’t work well [and what we could] have done better.”

NAVIFOR plays a vital part in the Navy’s ongoing integration of IW capabilities into its Maritime Operations Centers, or MOCs, to ensure the fleet can operate across contested, data-driven environments from the seabed to space.

“There’s no substitute for learning with real-world events, but the point is you have to learn from them, and you have to run with them while they’re still hot,” Vernazza said. “And so my plan is to do that, because you know what worked there in terms of what they needed for people; systems; [tactics, techniques, and procedures; concepts of operation] and operating in a joint environment. That, to me, is crucial in understanding and helping the other MOCs get to that level as well. And it also helps eliminate redundancy and eliminates waste that I might go and spend time and effort on different systems that were just not necessarily of value, or we may not be able to accept risk in certain areas.”

More broadly, the command is working with some of its sea service counterparts to revamp shore manpower requirements and documentation across all 10 fleet MOCs. 

While that process historically focused on dispersing personnel in peacetime scenarios, he said this latest effort is unique in that officials involved are making plans for peace and “going into crisis and conflict.”

“We’re going to expect the results from that manning review to probably come out, I’d say, in July of this year. So, that’s going to be very helpful in informing the manpower we need at each of the 10 fleet locations,” Vernazza explained. 

Through that work, NAVIFOR is also making considerations about how to best adopt and implement artificial intelligence capabilities at the MOCs. 

“I think it’s going to be game-changing, once we put our arms around it and understand it better,” Verenazza said. “I think [AI] will synthesize tremendous amounts of data for the commanders.”

Backed by billions in investments and armed with new fighting instructions, the Navy is also currently hustling to integrate surface, undersea, and aerial drone swarms — or robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) — across its fleet.

Vernazza said NAVIFOR will primarily focus on training for sailors, and the payloads supporting the Navy’s RAS platforms as they come online.

“Are they ISR sensors? If they’re underwater, are they acoustic? What are they actually doing?” Vernazza said.

Further, he expects officials will need to puzzle out “who ‘TYCOMs’ these things,” or essentially coordinate the administrative, personnel, and material readiness requirements for specific RAS resources.

“Do they sit in a building somewhere? Do I need a sailor to come by and change out a battery? Do I need an over-the-air software update? Who verifies that? There’s always going to be, I think, a logistics tail to that that will fall under a TYCOM that will have man, train, equip, and sustainment kind of tied to that. And I think that’s work to be done, still, as we unpack [this], because every payload is going to be different,” Vernazza told DefenseScoop.