“We have our fifty-second Congressional Roundtable presented to you today, with the Missile Defense North of the Arctic in the Formidable Shield 23 Exercise. It is a very relevant exercise in a very relevant world.”
“The Arctic is tremendous in its potential, for a lot of reasons, both for transportation, for the minerals underneath, for strategic positioning over the globe, and certainly, what’s going on in Europe, with Russia, and how this capability that we have, in enabled that is probably the most advanced in the world, if you look at 360-degree missile defense from space, all the way down to sea.”
“The U.S. Navy and its Aegis ballistic missile ships are the best platforms right now in the world, operational, to do that mission. Formidable Shield has been started off as an exercise by MDA way back in 2015, to start to look at moving information sensing, specifically, and working with different maritime ships and nations from NATO, from other than NATO, and the United States.
“It’s graduated to the Sixth Fleet, the very next one, I think, 2017, and it has been a Sixth Fleet MDA combination. This year, it goes every two years, and this year, it’s been a complete, basically, Sixth Fleet positioning on that, and it’s the first time the exercise has involved land, air, and sea, all elements together, all elements integrated and combined with multiple countries engaged, which include France and Netherlands, and Spain and others, that were with us in this aspect of it.”
“And it’s, for the most part, not the most part, for the real part, it is using real capabilities that we have today, and very exciting of it playing into the HIMAR position, which is a very important element of any of our deterrents, in any of our missile defense capabilities, or offensive strike capabilities around the world.”
- Mr. Riki Ellison, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
“So I think, certainly in the European context, if you take a step back and you look at the European continent, it’s a peninsula. And most people, to a certain extent, don’t look through that lens, but if you look at it at the European continent as a naval officer, it’s a peninsula bounded by the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic, and the High North. And so by not operating up there and generating the repetitions and the sets that we need to be comfortable to recognize the limitations of operating, we are unilaterally removing battle space. And I think that that is not where you want us to be as a force.”
“And the preponderance of capability that can be brought to bear, from a persistence and a sustainability perspective, is maritime forces there. It is maritime forces augmented by air forces, but principally, it’s going to be maritime forces that are able to generate the conditions and effects to support operations and freedom of maneuver and maximizing the front that we need in the theater. It’s those maritime forces, quite frankly, that are going to be able to provide for the sea lines of communication that, presuming a land war is an element of the conflict associated with a major peer competitor on the European front, the sustaining of those forces are absolutely vital and integral on the capabilities of the maritime force operations.”
“And so just at a quick snapshot, I would say that’s why it’s strategic. Now, the implications, going back to my Indo-Pacific days, one of the things that was very telling, operating at 73 degrees north latitude. The satellite look angles that you referenced are absolutely dependent upon where the operations of those normally geosynchronous satellites are over the alliance capabilities that are brought to bear. And so you go from satellite look angles that are measured in 20s of degrees of elevation and higher to satellite look angles that are measured in singles degrees of elevation, and all of the challenges that that can bring when you need maximum bandwidth associated with a modern architecture.”
“So at the end of the summary from a Formidable Shield, I think it’s the unprecedented demonstration of cutting edge capability and capacity that reflects the high-end capabilities that the alliance is able to bring to bear in the demonstration of deterrent and defense, but it is absolutely predicated on the network architectures that enable the battle space that allow us to do that across the joint force. To be able to integrate the sensors, the effectors, to augment the battle space that you need because of mach three targets, whether they are cruise missiles or anti-ship ballistic missiles, or they are anti-ship cruise missiles being used to strike land targets, as we see in the Ukraine, where they are ballistic missiles that have been modified to strike ships at sea, we have to be able to employ all of the sensors and all of the effectors. The only way that we can do that is to be able to ubiquitously share fire control quality data across the entire joint force.”
- Captain John Lipps, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
“All right, look, this exercise. First of all, I love Mike Gilday, the CNO of the Navy. Why he’s saying we need a RIMPAC in the Arctic when you’re actually running a RIMPAC in the Arctic is beyond me, except this isn’t RIMPAC because RIMPAC is the lowest common denominator exercise. This was literally a highest common denominator exercise. And look, should not watch this exercise and go, “Well, that’s it. Air defense in the handled list,” right?
“What we’ve really done here is show the very best of NATO. The very best of NATO in missile defense is cruise missile defense at sea. In cruise missile defense, we have capabilities and capacity on multiple, multiple hundreds of big NATO ships. I mean 81 cruisers and destroyers just from the Navy, or even more than that from our Navy. 90, just from our Navy. We have capable cruise missile defense in high capacity. And our allies and partners introduce another 40, 50 ships worth of cruise missile defense. 30, 40 ships in NATO. And some of our Asian allies, Japan, Korea, and Australia do as well. But just for the purpose of this. So we do have it. And look, we get to choose the battle space, geographically where we’re fighting by where our high-end naval assets are, and therefore our capacity is more than enough. Now, when you move to at-sea ballistic missile defense, the numbers go down a… Your capabilities are still there, but your capacity starts to go down and it becomes exceptionally US-centric. 80% plus of the forces that could be brought to bear would probably be US Navy in that ballistic missile defense at sea. Not 100%, but about 80%, so it’s a lot. And again, though, you get to pick where you put your high-value assets, so you’re in a little bit better position.”
“When you move this problem ashore, even though you bring some of the same countries with good capabilities, the capacity becomes a real problem in both cruise missile defense and ballistic missile defense because your adversary gets to pick the geography where he attacks the targets. Does he go counter value or counter target? Does he hit your systems or your people, your military infrastructure, your civilian infrastructure? After a while, it just becomes you need to defend everything from anything. And we don’t have that capability and… We don’t have the capacity, for sure. And in a few areas, this is where the US has let it down, we don’t have, and you and I have discussed this a million times, Riki, ground-based cruise missile defense capacity in the thickness that we have it in the maritime domain from the Navy.”
- RADM Mark Montgomery, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
“So Riki, let me riff off real quickly the Admiral’s observations there because I do think one of the serials that we had set the force up, this was an opportunity endearing Formidable Shield where the Norwegian, the U.S., and Spanish Aegis were all operating together and we also had the UK Type 45. And so, you have a diversity of sensors and effectors. You do have different network architectures, but in one of the serials, I’ll go back to the Mach 3 anti-ship cruise missile launch. So I’ve got a target that’s flying at the force 3 times the speed of sound and 10 meters or 30 feet off the deck. And the engagement times, I won’t go into details on, but to be able to share that track information in a raid scenario, which if the adversary is going to engage the force, most likely it’s not going to be a singular shot that’s launched, but it’ll be a raid scenario.”
“And I have to be able to maximize the depth of fire and the missiles in flight to be able to not only attrit that archer but defend the force as it was referenced earlier. In one of these serials that we had conducted, the force was set up where a Dutch ship engaged with SM-2 telemetry round, the Spanish ship engaged with the SM-2 telemetry round and then the French ASW frigate had splashed it with an Astor war shot. But what we were able to demonstrate, and this goes back to admiral, you and I growing up steaming around with fizz green from a force perspective and being able to have confidence in your doctrine and your weapons systems configurations and compatibility to operate in that manner for a significant amount of time. And so, any expansion of the battle space that I can provide my ship COs because or the land or the Air Forces enables greater decision making.”
“I think with the exercise, what I call a live fire mission rehearsal actually demonstrated was the ability to successfully integrate and employ the high end joint capability of the alliance in demonstrating deterrence and defense in the battlespace of both JFC Brunssum and Norfolk simultaneously. And so, when you think about that, every one of you that are listening should be very proud of the US contribution of capability. But just as important, if not more so quite frankly, are those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who are able to employ that capability, integrate it across the joint force. That was my big takeaway quite frankly. Over.”
- Captain John Lipps, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
“First of all, again, for the audience, if you didn’t know Captain Lipps ahead of time, you’d know that the Navy’s losing one of its really giants of naval ballistics of defense, posture, planning and now operations in this last tour. But definitely the establishment of those Aegis Ashore sites in Europe was among the hardest jobs we’ve assigned to any surface warfare officer and they were sure. And so, fantastic there. Look, this exercise is important. It demonstrates things we can do, it demonstrates the value of an alliance. It demonstrates that an alliance brings immediate capacity because they are… Yes, we have four destroyers growing to six and Rhoda and we sometimes have a Ford deployed moving through the theater.”
“But our European allies have in theater, 10 Aegis destroyers are growing and the numbers growing with the Spanish. And 15 to 20 other very capable cruise missile defense shooters, and four or five other ballistic missile defense use. So we have capabilities that give us capacity. And so, in the maritime, we’re doing great. But the other part of this lesson is we need an equivalent ground-based capability and capacity. And if we don’t get it, the maritime is of little value. The Russians are not going to attack you at your strength, they’re going to attack you at your vulnerability. And we have a gaping vulnerability that this exercise has shown is not at sea. So Riki, I’ll pass it over to you for the final call.”
- RADM Mark Montgomery, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
“I commend Jon Lipps. What a stellar individual for the missile defense community and that your run and what you’ve done has helped the missile defense community, has helped the world in that Navy aspect of the capabilities that you bring. So those years that you have spent as an officer, sir, thank you for your service to the nation to make the world a safer place. Formidable Shield is bringing diversity of strength together. It’s got to continue to do it. It is the way out and continuing to push that open architecture to enable all the players to play is what you’re doing. And you’re ahead of everybody else in Europe on this. And it was so cool to see you work with the offensive HMARS. I mean, to play into that game because we have to play in that game and we have to mix our offense with defense to have the best deterrence to prevent conflict and to win if we go in there and you’re demonstrating that.”
“And it’s great that you have the candor and the courage to say, “Hey, we didn’t do it all right. We got much more to do, but we are moving down that path.” And it was great to hear Mark say, “Hey, this is not RIMPAC. This is better than RIMPAC for what it does at the high end aspect of it.” So congratulations on that, sir. Congratulations on the exercise. And I think we as a world are getting better and being put in that domain that nobody wants to go really in and fight is an awesome ability to say, “Hey, we can play and we can play everywhere and we’re going to be able to deter you if you’re going to try and take us on.” So thank you. Thanks, Mark for coming in. It was great to focus on the Arctic and with this great exercise. So thank you, Jon.”
- Mr. Riki Ellison, Allied Joint Integrated Missile Defense North of the Arctic Circle- Formidable Shield, June 21, 2023
Speakers:
Captain Jonathan Lipps
Commander, Task Force SIX FOUR U.S. Navy
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
Executive Director Cyberspace Solarium Commission
Mr. Riki Ellison
Chairman and Founder Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Click here to read the transcript from the virtual roundtable
Click here to view the virtual roundtable event
