A combat management system (CMS) is often referred to as a naval vessel’s ‘brain’, linking the vessel’s sensors – its ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ – to its effectors – the ‘limbs’ that deliver the required kinetic and non-kinetic effects. Given the role of CMS in collecting data, processing this data into information, and distributing tasks and other commands, a CMS is perhaps more comparable to a human body’s central nervous system – which consists of the brain and spinal cord, and which assesses information, takes decisions, and directs activities and movement.
Just as the human body has evolved over time to respond to the demands of its environment, CMS capabilities must now evolve to respond to evolving operational needs. Moreover, with operational requirements in the naval environment now changing very rapidly, data collection and task direction capabilities within a CMS must enable navies to handle such change at pace.
Looking at the Euro-Atlantic theatre alone, across the full length and breadth of the theatre, navies are engaged in the full length and breadth of operational tasks. Conventional conflict ashore in Ukraine is having operational and strategic spill-over into the Black and Baltic Seas, and further afield. The current Middle East crisis is prompting greater Western naval presence in an Eastern Mediterranean region already busy due to NATO navies seeking to ensure access in the face of Russian efforts to use naval capabilities to help inflate anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) ‘bubbles’. In the North and Baltic Sea region, NATO navies are tracking Chinese and Russian ships, in particular watching Russian naval and other vessels they suspect may be seeking to target critical underwater infrastructure. In the High North, nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) joust for strategic position, while NATO navies continue to prepare (just as they are in the Baltic) for the need to reinforce NATO territory ashore from the sea.
Credit: Saab, FMV
Together, the Euro-Atlantic theatre presents a very complex geographical and operational environment, with this complexity enhanced by the emergence of maritime uncrewed systems (MUS) in all operational domains. While Western naval operators have been steadily easing MUS into their operational inventories to conduct mine countermeasures (MCM) and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks, Russia and Ukraine have been forced by the realities of warfare to introduce MUS across the full spectrum of military operations, from ISR to kinetic combat. Adding in command and control (C2) of MUS systems is another layer of complexity that the modern – and the future – CMS will have to handle.
One NATO navy dealing with increasingly complex operations in an increasingly contested environment is the Royal Swedish Navy (RSwN), which is focused on the Baltic Sea and waters through the Kattegat/Skagerrak straits round to Sweden’s west coast off Gothenburg. With Sweden a new NATO member, the RSwN may also wish to contribute more to NATO activities in the North and Norwegian Seas.
One key component of the RSwN’s future force structure designed to provide the operational and capability flexibility to meet this combination of enduring and emerging tasks will be the Luleå class surface combatant. In 2022, the RSwN announced that it would develop a class of larger, more capable surface ships to provide enhanced capacity to support NATO standing naval force and integrated air/missile defence requirements. Four Luleå class ships are due to be built, with two scheduled for delivery before 2030, and two before 2034.
Credit: Norwegian armed forces
In May 2024, it was announced that Babcock will provide engineering support (including in structural design and auxiliary systems) for Saab’s development of the Luleå class ships’ basic design. Several core capabilities for the new vessels are likely to be drawn from the RSwN’s in-service Visby class corvettes, with these capabilities being developed further through a mid-life upgrade (MLU) programme for the five Visby class vessels.
One such capability could be Saab’s 9LV CMS, which is fitted to the Visby class.
According to Saab, 9LV is designed for all types of naval platforms, including submarines. The CMS supports multi-domain operations (MDO) and decision-making, collating, analysing, and distributing data in support of tasks across the operational spectrum, ranging from: environmental control, and search and rescue (SAR); to peace support, border control, counter-piracy and wider maritime patrol and response operations; up to force protection/escort and A2/AD taskings. The open architecture-based system is also designed for ease of upgrade, and ease of integration with navies’ sensors and effectors: this in turn enables interoperability between allies and partners for coalition operations.
The 9LV CMS is deployed with navies operating across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres.
The expanding and elevating levels of naval contest across these theatres, and the increasing availability of new technologies and capabilities, raise the question of how CMS capabilities could be adapted and evolved in response, for example: while current CMS capabilities are state-of-the-art systems, what more can be done with them to enhance their output; what are the likely next-generation developments in CMS capability and integration; and how does CMS capability need to be developed to address emerging threats and integrate new technologies?
Credit: NATO
Requirements and capabilities
The ongoing Russo-Ukraine war is a very current example of what the future battlefield may look like, with existing and emerging technologies involved in integrated operations. Thus, the war also provides a very relevant illustration of what CMS technology, capability, and operational requirements may be.
“One thing that the conflict in Ukraine has shown is that the future tactical situation is unpredictable,” Johan Hägg, Saab’s Product Manager for 9LV Combat System Solutions, told European Security & Defence/Maritime Defence Monitor in a written interview on 20 September. “There, we have seen a major part of a fleet denied access to a huge sea by small, hastily developed remote controlled or autonomous vehicles.”
In this particular instance, the Ukrainian Navy has managed to effect an A2/AD ‘bubble’ of its own across a large part of the Black Sea by using missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and – especially – unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to target Russian ships at sea and in port, driving Russia’s Black Sea Fleet back across the Black Sea to its own coastal waters.
While Western armed forces and defence industries will work on tackling emerging threats – such as those being demonstrated in Ukraine – within capabilities developed for CMS systems, at the same time they need to keep looking beyond what is known today, said Hägg. A key question, he explained, is: “How do we prepare a CMS for future missions and not just handling today’s threats in five years’ time?”
MUS will be a central factor in such considerations, Hägg continued; “Uncrewed systems will become increasingly advanced at an accelerating pace. They will carry payloads we currently are not seeing them equipped with. Different uncrewed systems will communicate with the help of new technologies … [and] thus the autonomous decision loops will get significantly shorter.” “This is an environment it would be hard to send crewed systems into. We know that, in MCM operations, the ‘removing the operator out of the minefield’ doctrine is growing; one thought might be a development move towards an ‘operator out of the battlefield’ approach,” he added.
The arrival of MUS also will see fleet mixes – and their supporting operational infrastructure – change. “Will we see a ‘ship ashore’; a CMS/combat information centre (CIC) in a hidden facility, solving tactical missions at sea by uncrewed systems operating in ‘hot’ zones, whilst crewed vessels are drawn back to supportive roles?” asked Hägg. “Escort duties will be conducted by crewed vessels as long as the merchant ships being escorted are crewed, even though the crewed [naval] vessel might be complemented with uncrewed systems for reach and pre-warning.”
In critical maritime regions such as the Baltic Sea, the underwater world will continue to remain challenging, including in coastal waters where the hydrography is complex. This, said Hägg, will prescribe accelerating use of surveillance operations and covert activities.
“Across these scenarios, a CMS is not likely to be the sole solution – but it will be key to co-operative engagement, be that by sub-systems of different kinds, or ships and other assets,” Hägg explained. “Leading words like optimisation, decision loops, shared pictures, and ‘operator in/on/out of the loop’ will put pressure on new [CMS] functionality.”
Credit: Saab
Engineering functionality
The requirement for continuous capability evolution mandates a parallel need for continuous engineering development in CMS systems.
“Continuous engineering is an absolute necessity, as the sub-system developments will be very quick,” said Hägg. “You cannot define an uncrewed system for the next ship class, because developments in, for instance, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are very quick. So, you will have to come up with a way to deal with constant change.” Here, he explained, “New standard interfaces, well-isolated application layers, and – notably – new procurement processes to cope with this [fluid] reality will need to be implemented if you want to stay on top of the naval battle.”
In terms of new procurement processes, Hägg added that there is a need to find the ways and means of achieving a balance between, and mitigating the competing demands of, peacetime navies’ requirements for both cyber security and achieving the necessary operational effects. “The pressure of having a secure system is hampering the flow of data required to achieve the full effect of sensors, weapons, and sub-systems,” said Hägg.
Emerging capability
The continuing capability evolution is reflected in the range of emerging technologies that must be integrated into a CMS for the dual purposes of using these technologies in offensive operations and defending against them. Alongside MUS, such emerging technologies include hypersonic missiles and directed energy weapons.
There is also the question of new concepts of operations (CONOPS) that may accompany such new technologies, for example the use of swarming tactics with MUS. A CMS system will need to be able to both conduct and counter such CONOPS.
Hägg argued that the arrival of MUS will bring technological requirements that in turn will underline the central role of the CMS, and will present opportunities to take advantage of CMS functionality, particularly through the system’s integration of communications capabilities including data collection, analysis, and dissemination.
“The CMS will have an increasing weight in the functional chain, especially when optimising the array of sub-systems developed, in sensor, effector, and communications terms,” said Hägg. Here, he explained, uncrewed systems working with each other and/or with crewed platforms will need a co-ordination ‘hub’ if they are to be able to solve the required task together. A CMS is this ‘hub’.
Moreover, the integration of MUS can bring more capability in turn to the CMS. Being connected to MUS systems – systems that will be present in greater numbers, and deployed more widely across the area of operations – will extend the reach of a CMS system’s capability. “The ‘tactical range’ of a CMS will increase,” said Hägg.
Continuing capability developments in turn raise the question of what a CMS needs to do to tackle or harness these developments, including how CMS technology and infrastructure must be adapted. In particular, there are developments that need to be integrated with CMS technologies and infrastructure to enable the use of and defence against such new technologies.
“CMS technologies and infrastructure are in constant change, and the patterns visible today will cater for new threats. The requirements will change of course – more speed, higher accuracy, more decision support etcetera,” said Hägg. “The continuous engineering approach will be a necessity to be able to keep on top. This in turn will drive update frequencies, over-the-air changes, and an assured way of compartmentalisation without disturbing operational functions – which is a challenge in itself.”
“Given a true open architecture, the integration of new capability is relatively easy,” Hägg continued. “Huge dataflows might require major design changes [, although] non-real-time data handling will always be possible to take on as a separate sub-system that will be expandable in itself.”
Future integration
Hägg shared some thoughts on ideas for developing state-of-the-art CMS systems to take advantage of the improving integration within ‘systems of systems’, how other technologies can enhance what can be done with a CMS, and where such a development process might take CMS capability in the near term.
“One idea would be to become increasingly agile on a higher system level, which would require new ways of interaction between manufacturers and procurers,” said Hägg. For example, he asked, “Would it be possible to buy, sell, and develop a combat system with framework requirements only, finding another more agile way of agreeing on the effect that the system should bring?”
As regards new technologies that could enhance CMS capability, “artificial intelligence is a maturing technology, and is already in today’s CMS systems with different uses. In defined areas, it is highly effective, for instance in [some] sonars, imaging etcetera,” said Hägg.
“Unpredictable creativity is a key strength for winning a naval fight, and as yet it is unclear what support a CMS could give in this regard,” said Hägg. Yet he highlighted some key development areas. “Let’s say a ship contracted today will be delivered in five years’ time, within the boundaries of the procurement process established at the outset. We will expect to see [in the CMS] better handling of swarm threats, increasing functionality to handle fast-moving targets, and some kind of handling of multi-static requirements – but no major changes.”
Nonetheless, Hägg noted that the 9LV CMS could provide even more capability for ship’s companies in the short term, given Saab’s position at the forefront of developing naval CMS technologies and effects.
Dr Lee Willett
Dr Lee Willett is an independent writer and analyst on naval, maritime, and wider defence and security matters. Previously, he was editor of Janes Navy International, senior research fellow in maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, London, and Leverhulme research fellow at the Centre for Security Studies, University of Hull in the UK.