Publication:Plan Blue 2006/Future Maritime Operating Concept (FMOC) 2025 - Key Themes
32. Plan Blue 2006 builds upon its predecessor Plan Blue - Headmark 2025 which emphasised a 'concept-led' philosophy of capability management. This is consistent with CDF's guidance in Force 2020. The Future Maritime Operating Concept 2025 (FMOC) is the ADF's long term, maritime, joint warfighting capability aspiration. The FMOC informs and guides developing capability requirements for the Future ADF in the maritime environment. To do this the FMOC defines the future warfighting problem by articulating what missions future ADF maritime forces may have to undertake, where they may be required to undertake them and the anticipated warfighting conditions under which future maritime combat operations may have to be executed.
33. The FMOC asserts that the Future Navy, acting independently or as elements of a combined force, will be required to project force and gain local sea control from home port, across open ocean SLOCs, through choke points and across the littoral. The operating concept is titled Maritime Force Projection and Control.
34. Five Maritime Capability Enablers (MCEs) underpin the ability to project force and exercise local sea control in 2025. These are: Knowledge Command and Control (KC2); Assured Engagement; Maritime Manoeuvre; Sustained Presence; and Enduring Protection. A diagrammatical representation and précis of the FMOC MCEs is at Diagram 1.
Diagram 1: The Future Maritime Operating Concept
35. Knowledge, Command and Control (KC2) is the exploitation of superior battlespace awareness and, through people, innovatively applying operational art and adaptive command to gain decision superiority over an adversary. The KC2 MCE aims to enable the Future Navy to make superior decisions. Without effective KC2 the capabilities delivered by the other MCEs cannot be effectively orchestrated and brought to bear to generate a fighting edge. KC2 extols enhanced situational awareness and adaptive command and control (C2) to effectively deliver future maritime combat power.
36. Maritime Manoeuvre is the capability of maritime forces to move freely between the open ocean and the littoral environments and to project force through exerting local sea control to facilitate the delivery of support to the joint or combined mission. The Future Navy will employ a multi-dimensional manoeuvre approach for the conduct of operations. In part, this is driven by the necessity for a small to medium combat force to achieve disproportionate effects while avoiding attrition. The manoeuvre concept is based on using an indirect approach to defeat the adversary's will and aims to destroy their ability to fight as an integral force, rather than by destroying the force through attrition. Maritime force elements that are inherently adaptable and flexible are required to conduct combat missions and be able to adapt to concurrently support other activities such as law enforcement missions.
37. Assured Engagement is the capability of maritime forces to decisively engage target sets across the battlespace using networked systems to provide the required responsiveness, weight of fire, precision, and assure success by employing lethal and non-lethal weapons. Assured engagement provides the means for engagement of future targets at sea, in the air and ashore across the battlespace. Future targets are expected to be more elusive, have shorter targeting exposures and require a range of tailored engagement responses when applying lethal and non-lethal force.
38. Sustained Presence is the ability for a joint maritime force of significant combat weight to operate for an extended period at potentially long distances from Australia. The concept is for a Joint Task Force (JTF) that can be sustained with little or no support from a Forward Operating or Mounting Base. Future logistics in support of land operations will be delivered increasingly from the sea. Ships will provide logistic presence in the maritime approaches and beyond with a subsequent reduction in footprint ashore.
39. Enduring Protection is the ability of each maritime force element to successfully achieve designated missions and tasks through the combined capability of defensive, staying and fighting power. It allows units to deflect attacks, absorb damage if necessary, and be able to counter attack. A small to medium sized force, such as the Future Navy, has a limited number of platforms and units it can deploy, rotate or replace. Therefore the preservation of combat power within the Future Navy is a key requirement to be able to effectively and reliably project force and exercise local sea control. Further, to achieve this objective the Future Navy must attempt to disrupt an adversary's targeting cycle at every opportunity.
40. The FMOC has broadly described the way Navy will deliver future maritime combat power as part of a joint force. Attention must now be turned to describing a Future Navy that can deliver maritime combat power as the FMOC envisages.
