https://crsreports.congress.gov
Updated July 3, 2024
Defense Primer: Navy Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO)
Concept
Introduction
Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is the operating
concept of the Department of the Navy (or DON, which
includes the Navy and Marine Corps) for using U.S. naval
(i.e., Navy and Marine Corps) forces in combat operations
against an adversary, particularly China, that has substantial
capabilities for detecting and attacking U.S. Navy surface
ships with anti-ship missiles and other weapons. An issue
for Congress is whether Congress has sufficient information
about DMO to assess its merits, and whether DON has
adequately aligned its programs and budget with DMO.
Terminology: Operating Concept
An operating concept is a general idea for how to use
certain military forces (in this case, U.S. naval forces) to
conduct operations, particularly in combat situations. An
operating concept can support the implementation of a
strategy or war plan for fighting a specific conflict, and the
tactics used by individual military units (such as Navy ships
and aircraft) can reflect an operating concept.
DMO: A Brief Description
A 2022 document from the Chief of Naval Operations
refers to DMO as “the Navy’s foundational operating
concept” (Chief of Naval Operations, Navigation Plan
2022, p. 8). DON has not released a detailed unclassified
description of DMO. Statements by DON officials indicate
that a key aim of DMO is to improve the ability of U.S.
naval forces to counter China’s maritime anti-access/area-
denial (A2/AD) systems (i.e., its capabilities for detecting
and attacking U.S. Navy surface ships and aircraft) and
thereby permit U.S. naval forces to operate effectively
during a conflict with China in waters that are within range
of China’s A2/AD systems. Key features of DMO appear to
include the following:
• Dispersing Navy units over a larger area within the
theater of operations, so as to make it harder for an
adversary to detect and target Navy units, while still
permitting Navy units to support one another and
concentrate their fires on adversary targets.
• Spreading the Navy’s sensors and weapons across a
wider array of ships and aircraft, so as to reduce the
fraction of the Navy’s sensors and weapons that would
be lost due to the destruction of any one Navy ship or
aircraft (i.e., avoid “putting too many eggs into one
basket”).
• Making greater use of longer-ranged weapons,
unmanned vessels, and unmanned aircraft in support of
the previous two points.
• Using resilient communication links and networking
technologies to knit the resulting widely dispersed force
of manned and unmanned ships and aircraft into a
coordinated battle force that can withstand and adapt to
enemy attacks on Navy communications and networks.
One observer writing about DMO (see the first Filipoff
citation in the Other Resources box below) states that “the
concept suffers from a wide variety of interpretations across
the service and needs more specificity regarding what
warfighting approaches it is concentrating on. While the
concept describes mass fires and decision advantage as core
themes, DMO lacks sufficient coherence and concrete focus
to effectively guide the Navy’s development.”
Other U.S. Military Service
Operating Concepts
Other U.S. military services have operating concepts for
conducting their own operations in potential future
conflicts. The Air Force concept is Agile Combat
Employment (ACE), and the Army concept is Multi-
Domain Operations (MDO). Within DON, the Marine
Corps has a concept called Expeditionary Advanced Base
Operations (EABO) that is complementary to DMO. The
services’ operating concepts have certain elements in
common, including increased use of unmanned systems and
the use of communications and networking technology to
knit dispersed units together into coordinated battle forces.
For more on these concepts, see the CRS Products box
below.
Some Navy Acquisition Programs
Associated with DMO
Some examples of Navy acquisition programs that appear
associated with DMO include the following:
• Programs for acquiring longer-ranged weapons, such as
the Maritime Strike Tomahawk (a new anti-ship variant
of the Tomahawk cruise missile) and the Long-Range
Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).
• The Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV), which is
to be equipped with a Vertical Launch System (VLS) for
storing and firing anti-ship missiles and other weapons.
LUSVs are intended to act as adjunct missile magazines
for manned Navy surface combatants.
• The Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV),
which is to be equipped with radars or other sensors.
MUSVs are intended to help form a distributed sensor
network for supporting Navy operations.
