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Congressional Research Service
inf~rming the legislative debate s~nce 1914
Updated October 2, 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.
Term noog y Operat ng 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.
M0: A Brief Descr pt on
A 2022 Navy document refers to DMO as the Navy's
foundational operating concept (Chief of Naval
Operations, Navigation Plan 2022, p. 8). A Navy 2024
document states that DMO
describes the fleet tactics that capitalize on the
diverse capabilities provided by the Navy and our
unique partnership with the Marine Corps. As the
reach of missiles gets longer, and lower-cost robotic
systems make ship defense costlier, we must put
more munitions on more platforms in more places
to prevail on a globalized battlefield. [DMO]
animates our ecosystem, enabling the levels of
distributed warfare and mission command that we
need to gain and exploit sea control. As the Navy
Warfighting Concept describes Navy operational
integration up and out (with the Joint Force, Allies,
and partners), [DMO] describes the Navy's fleet
tactics down and in.
[DMO] means dispersing the fleet while
concentrating effects. The approach demands
distributing, integrating, and maneuvering people,
platforms, munitions, and data across time,
spectrum, and space. Supporting that fight requires
new ways of operating, from sustaining the fleet in
contested environments, to an understanding that
our installations and Maritime Operations Centers
are themselves warfighting platforms. Information
dominance is the key enabler in this new form of
maneuver warfare, by which we confound the
adversary's ability to find, fix, and attack our
forces. In other words, [DMO] is complex, fleet-
level warfare on a scale we have not executed in
nearly a century, blending decentralization and
unity of effort in a way that places intense new
demands on fleet commanders.
In response to our five-year campaign of learning,
we will refine [DMO] and its implications for fleet
tactics.
(Chief of Naval Operations, Navigation Plan 2024,
pp. 14-15. Emphasis as in original.)
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 Servkce Operatng Concepts
Other U.S. military services have their own operating
concepts for conducting their own operations in potential
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