The top US Navy official has appointed a former surface combat officer to become an engineering duty officer to create a powerful, fully connected network service leader who believes they will need to fight against high-end enemies such as China and achieve victory. Admiral Michael Gildy, Commander in Chief of Naval Operations, tasked Rear Admiral Douglas Small with leading a mission to "develop networks, infrastructure, data architecture, tools, and analytics to support the operational and developmental environment, enabling us to maintain our maritime dominance." Gildy called this effort a "win," calling it the Navy's top priority after the Columbia class ballistic missile submarines. Gildy said, "Apart from adjusting our underwater deterrence capabilities, the US Navy has no higher development priorities. All other efforts are supporting you. Your goal is to have a navy assembled at sea, synchronously providing lethal and non lethal effects from near, far, various axes, and every field. "In the past, Gilday referred to the effort to build a powerful network as the" Manhattan Project, "going back to the rapid development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. The urgency behind the effort to establish this network highlights that as China moves towards its goal of achieving first-class military power status by 2049, the navy is increasingly uneasy about its position in the world.

Gildy said in the letter, "The Navy's ability to establish and maintain maritime control in the future is threatened. I am confident in enhancing unmanned driving capabilities through artificial intelligence and AI. I do not believe that we are establishing a naval combat architecture that connects and enables this future force as soon as possible." The network will be connected to the Air Force's joint all domain command and control work, with all branches of the military queuing up behind.

Small's career began as a surface combat officer, but he became an engineering duty officer in 1997. He has a background in electronic warfare and water sensors, and works at the Missile Defense Agency. In the memo dated October 1st, Gildy requested that he report after 60 days and every 90 days thereafter.

In another memo written to James Kilby, the Navy's top operational requirements officer, Gildy stated that he hopes the Navy can develop a combat concept and a coherent kill chain based on "any sensor, any shooter." This idea means that any trajectory obtained by any sensor can be transmitted to any ship or platform through missiles and killed with missiles, which is what Small's network can achieve.

' We don't have enough internet access; Gildy said in last year's comments that the Navy needs to urgently deploy to establish a strong network. Gildy said, "The biggest challenge we face is joining all major command and control. We are building networked weapons, networked platforms, and networked (command and control) nodes, but we don't have enough networks, which is a key part." The Navy has been working hard to implement a combat concept that connects ships, aircraft, and unmanned platforms through communication relay nodes (such as small drones) or entire ships (such as future frigates or high-tech aircraft like E-2D Hawkeye).

The purpose of doing so is to disperse the troops to a larger area, rather than concentrating around a single aircraft carrier, in order to maximize the burden on China's intelligence and reconnaissance resources. This decentralized and networked force will connect different shooters, so that if any node in the network sees something to kill, any naval or air force asset with weapons within range can kill it.

This has led to the push for missiles with longer ranges. But to make it work, all components must be connected to a reliable communication network. According to the Navy, given that China and Russia's investments in electronic warfare may interfere with communication, the current architecture is not sufficient to handle this task.