Multi-tasking may come across as an information age phenomenon—people checking their cell phones during meetings or worse, texting while driving—but at sea, it is anything but a modern problem. A number of studies have outlined the hazards and ill effects of multi-tasking at the personal level,but organizations can face similarly adverse results.
In naval warfare, the issue of multi-tasking is not new. It has long been axiomatic that a fleet should not attempt to project power ashore while still fighting for sea control. Beyond that somewhat threadbare principle, the issue of multi-tasking has bedeviled navies at all levels of war, from the tactical to the strategic. A key responsibility of a commander at any level is to try and arrange things such that his subordinate forces are always able to engage the enemy on advantageous terms. One such term is that those forces should not be put in a position in which they have to multi-task, at least in a manner that is beyond their capability.
Navy doctrine is bereft of any definition or guidance on managing multi-tasking for a unit or force. In fact, the Navy’s Aegis weapons system was designed to handle simultaneous, multidimensional threats. While the Navy has developed both the physical capabilities and organizational structures to do so, it has not rigorously studied the matter of multi-tasking as an element of warfare art. This article will attempt to establish a baseline discussion of multi-tasking and how it ought to be considered as an element of planning and decision making.
To approach multi-tasking in a rigorous manner, this author will first establish a framework within which its nuances make sense. The most fundamental structure is the levels of war: tactical, operational and strategic. Defined briefly, the tactical involves units and formations in contact with the enemy, the operational encompasses a numbered or regional fleet, and the strategic involves the theater of war up to the national level. It is important to note that the logic of warfare shifts across ascending levels with the logic of a lower level often overridden by that of a higher level. This is the case with multi-tasking.
For successful multi-tasking to occur at any level, two components must be present: resources and capability. These are broad terms that encompass different things at the different levels of war, but generally “resources” refers to the forces available and “capabilities” refers to personnel and their training.
At the individual level, certain people are better at multi-tasking than others. This diversity of skills extends to organizations as well. However, without sufficient resources or capability, neither people nor organizations can multi-task effectively. Multi-tasking is generally not a desirable process for humans; it is better to focus on one task at a time. However, situations do arise where some degree of multi-tasking is necessary. This has been and will continue to be the case in naval warfare.
Tactical Level
Perhaps the classic case of failure at multi-tasking is Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The Japanese plan was for Nagumo’s carriers to strike the U.S. island base, catalyzing a response by the U.S. Navy with its carriers. The planned sequence of events was disrupted by U.S. codebreaking, which gave Admiral Chester Nimitz sufficient warning to dispatch three carriers to ambush Nagumo. Nagumo, not expecting U.S. carriers to be present, ordered a dawn attack on Midway with a substantial part of his available aircraft. The aerial strike leader advised his commander that a follow-up strike would be necessary, and Nagumo ordered his aircraft to rearm with land attack bombs. It was only after this process was well underway that Nagumo received word that American carriers had been spotted within striking distance. This prompted him to order his aircraft to be rearmed with anti-ship bombs, greatly delaying their launch. The delay gave the American dive bombers just the chance they needed to swoop down and destroy three of his four carriers.
Traditional analysis of the battle faults Nagumo’s delay and indecisiveness. In reality, the error centered on multi-tasking. Almost as an afterthought, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had ordered Nagumo to keep half of his strike aircraft armed with ship attack weapons just in case the need arose. This constituted an order to be ready to multi-task: maintaining the ability to conduct a ship strike available even while conducting shore attack. Nagumo disobeyed this order when he decided to rearm those aircraft with land attack bombs. However, at the time he gave the order, no U.S. ships had been discovered, and, given the attacks by Midway aircraft on his force that had already been fended off, the island base still seemed dangerous. At the same time, Nagumo’s fighter cover—the force defense aircraft—were running low on fuel and needed space on the carrier decks to land.
So Nagumo had a multi-tasking problem with his flight decks, exacerbated by the subsequent news of U.S. warships sighted in the vicinity. Nagumo and his staff were hampered in their decision making in part because they had no experience with a situation like this—indeed, nobody had. The situation demanded multiple concurrent actions by his force: scouting, land strike, fleet defense, and anti-ship strike. Nagumo’s force might have been able to cope with the situation if it had possessed two more carriers—a force of the size he had during the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Yamamoto had assigned only four carriers to the strike force bound for Midway, in part because of an operational plan that involved multi-tasking at the operational level. The Midway attack was planned to coincide with a near simultaneous strike on the Aleutians, and the additional carriers were needed there. In this example, the two necessary elements of multi-tasking, adequate resources and capability, were lacking and the consequence was defective decision making and the loss of three aircraft carriers.
A more modern example of problems resulting from multi-tasking is the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988. Operating in the Strait of Hormuz to protect U.S.-flagged tanker traffic during the so-called “Tanker War” the captain of Vincennes decided to engage several Iranian gunboats that were harassing traffic. During this surface engagement, an Iranian airliner took off from nearby Bandar Abbas headed for Bahrain and crossed into airspace near the action. In the confusion, Vincennes’ combat information center (CIC) operators reported the aircraft as an Iranian F-14. When the civilian airliner failed to heed repeated warnings, Vincennes shot it down, killing 290 passengers and crew. Post-mortem analysis revealed among other things that an inexperienced tactical coordinator—amidst the overall confusion in the CIC—was calling out decreasing range as decreasing altitude, prompting the captain’s order to shoot.captain’s order to shoot.
Tactical multi-tasking is generally characterized by the need to make split second decisions. As illustrated by the Vincennes example, perhaps the most stressful environment for naval units is in the littoral. In littoral waters things can happen quickly, and units operating there must be ready to engage in any number of multi-tasking combinations. Israeli Admiral Yedida Ya’ari pointed out the challenges of operating in the littoral: “I argue that when warships designed for the high seas enter the confined waters of the littoral arena, the fundamental relationships of maneuverability and firepower are upset.” He goes on to say that for ships operating in the littoral “…deploying them in a playing field where, under the most optimistic assumptions, their survival requires as a normal operating mode the highest level of everything, all the time, [italics original] is unhealthy and unrealistic in the long run.” Ships will have to operate in the littoral, and thus attention must be paid to the resources and capabilities required for multi-tasking.
Operational Level
The nature of multi-tasking changes significantly at the level of fleet command. It has been an axiom throughout most of naval history that a fleet should not attempt to establish a beachhead if there is an enemy fleet remains undefeated in the vicinity. This is because the basis of fleet engagement is being able to maneuver to enter the fight at a tactical advantage. Effectively conducting such a maneuver in the days or weeks prior to battle requires that the enemy be unaware or unsure of where the fleet is. If the fleet establishes a lodgment ashore, its movements are circumscribed by the need to defend that beachhead. The enemy will always know where to find it and thus has the advantage in pre-battle maneuver. Violating this rule has been a recipe for losing ships even in cases when the battle has been won. In this large sense, projecting power ashore while at the same time fighting for control of the sea constitutes operational level multi-tasking.
Understanding the rule does not mean admirals do not have to violate it at times due to strategic circumstances. A prominent example was the Guadalcanal operation in 1942. Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, was anxious to take the strategic offensive in the Pacific. The victory at Midway coupled with the discovery of Japanese airfield building on Guadalcanal provided the impetus. Placing U.S. Marines ashore proved to be no problem because surprise was achieved; however, defending the beachhead after the fact proved to be problematic. Regardless of the specific factors that produced success or failure in each of the subsequent sea battles associated with the land campaign, many ships were lost. This can be regarded as a direct consequence of operational level multi-tasking in the maritime environment.
Multi-tasking at the operational level may also involve trying to do too much with too little force. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan for the Midway operation is an example. The plan featured a concurrent operation in the far north to seize several Aleutian islands, which required the diversion of two aircraft carriers. Had those been part of Nagumo’s force—or had the Midway operation been delayed until the two large fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku became available—he would have had the resources available to effectively multi-task and the battle may have turned out much differently.
A more recent example of the problem occurred during the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. The Royal Navy Task Force had hoped to neutralize Argentine capability to oppose a landing before having to commit forces to establishing a beachhead. However, political restrictions on attacking Argentine forces on the mainland coupled with the approach of inclement winter weather forced Admiral Sandy Woodward to order the landing while Argentine air forces still had the capability to strike. As might be expected, there were ship losses, which could have been much worse except for Argentine errors in bomb fuzing.
Ship losses are not the only result of multi-tasking on the fleet command level. Later in the Pacific War, the U.S. Navy was able to deploy a massive fleet that completely outclassed the remaining units of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Nevertheless, the Japanese still had significant striking power in their fleet. When the U.S. fleet invaded the island of Saipan in the Marianas chain, Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa sailed out to engage. Reports of Japanese naval movements produced a dilemma for Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At the time, Japanese naval aircraft significantly outranged their U.S. counterparts. Moreover, neither U.S. nor Japanese carriers could conduct flight operations at night. Thus, to be able to get in its own strikes against Japanese carriers, the U.S. fleet had to race toward the Japanese carriers through the night such that they would be in range by dawn.
On the night when the Japanese fleet was located, Admiral Spruance had to decide whether to allow his carrier commander, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, to run toward Admiral Ozawa or to instead keep his carriers tied to the beachhead, protecting it in case Ozawa managed to get behind U.S. forces. Spruance chose the latter course, which prevented Mitscher from effectively striking Ozawa’s fleet the next day. In the event, highly developed fleet defense measures defeated Japanese air strikes and submarines inflicted serious losses on Ozawa. However, the point remains that operational level multi-tasking can produce such dilemmas for senior commanders.
Several months later, a similar dilemma arose during the invasion of the Philippines at Leyte Gulf. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, now commanding Third Fleet, was tasked to cover the invasion. The Japanese invoked their Sho Plan to defeat the invasion from the sea. Consisting of multiple axes of attack, the complex plan featured a deception group consisting of those carriers Japan had remaining commanded by Admiral Ozawa. His mission was to lure Halsey north, away from the San Bernardino Strait where Japanese Admiral Takeo Kurita would then be able to pass through with his battleships to attack the beachhead.
Halsey faced a dilemma like that of Spruance but chose the opposite course; he ran after Ozawa and left the San Bernardino Strait open for Kurita to sail through unmolested. Fortunately for the Americans, heroic actions by light forces confused Kurita and he elected to retreat before reaching the beachhead. However, the episode again points out the dilemmas that can arise when operational level multi-tasking occurs.
The point of this discussion is not to condemn operational level multi-tasking. It is entirely likely that such situations will arise in the future as the imperatives of strategy dictate. Rather, the key issue is for commanders to remain aware of the concept and integrate it explicitly into planning. Here again, the factors of resources and capability are fundamental. At Saipan, Spruance did not have the resources to both protect the beachhead and chase after Ozawa. Although his carrier force was strong, splitting it in the face of Ozawa’s strength was inadvisable, so an either-or situation was generated. In terms of capability, meaning Spruance’s awareness of the situation and his decision-making capability, there seemed to be no deficit. In Halsey’s case, resources were not an issue as he had enough force to both cover San Bernardino Strait (with four new battleships) and chase Ozawa. However, Halsey appeared to be single-minded about carriers, and elected to focus entirely on Ozawa, even though he had made tentative provision for leaving the battleships at San Bernardino. Thus, capability includes mindset and intellectual skills of the commander.
Strategic Level
Multi-tasking takes on yet a different form at the strategic level. Things are always more complicated at this level and there are doubtless many manifestations that could be pointed out. The issue of multi-front wars is of particular interest. A key rule for continental powers is to avoid, where possible, multi-front wars. Germany violated that rule in both World Wars and paid for it with defeat. The United States, on the other hand, successfully embarked on a multi-front war in World War II, despite the decision to pursue a “Germany first” policy.
Due in part to Admiral Ernest King’s determination to undertake an early offensive in the Pacific, the United States fought two simultaneous wars in the Atlantic and Pacific. The country’s victories in these wars were due in no small part to the monumental production effort it mounted to build both merchant ships and warships. Having sufficient resources was a key to success in multi-tasking at the strategic level.
However, capability in terms of devising effective strategy was also a critical component. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Joint Chiefs of Staff worked with their allied counterparts to coordinate military operations on a global basis. The naval element of this coordination fell substantially to Admiral Ernest King. King had to balance the needs of two simultaneous wars: the counter-submarine war in the Atlantic and the carrier-centric war in the Pacific. Both wars also involved amphibious operations and a whole array of supporting naval functions. Despite the overall Allied strategy of “Germany first,” King firmly believed that the Pacific War should be prosecuted aggressively, leading to the decision to undertake the Solomons Campaign in August 1942. This division of forces between theaters ensured that Admiral Nimitz and his subordinates would have to undertake operational level multi-tasking.
Relationships Among Levels
The examples of multi-tasking examined here illustrate a key issue: choosing to engage in multi-tasking at higher levels of war can produce situations at lower levels that require multi-tasking by subordinate commanders. King’s strategic decision to buck the Germany first strategy and speed up the schedule for taking the offense in the Pacific forced Nimitz to engage in operational level multi-tasking. Yamamoto’s operational decision to simultaneously strike the Aleutians and Midway forced Nagumo into tactical multi-tasking. There is no mechanical linkage among the levels, but if the issue of multi-tasking is not recognized, it is more likely that commanders and their forces will find themselves in a multi-tasking situation with neither the resources nor the capability to do it effectively.
The Need for Doctrine and Education
Without explicit doctrine and education, multi-tasking becomes a warfighting snake in the grass, showing up unexpectedly and insidiously just when it can be least accommodated. The U.S. Navy is painfully short of warships and has been engaged for decades in maximizing the diverse capabilities of individual hulls and airframes, relying on a decreasing number of platforms to serve as “jacks of all trades”. This pattern of behavior increases the odds that commanders and their forces will have to multi-task. At least in the short term, the solution is to increase the capabilities of Sailors and their leaders to anticipate and deal with multi-tasking situations. Strategic and operational multi-tasking should also be the subject of research and education at the Naval War College, and tactical multi-tasking research and training integrated into the syllabuses of the warfare centers of excellence. Ameliorating the risks of multi-tasking is also a potentially fruitful avenue of artificial intelligence research and development. There are many more aspects to the problem than have been addressed in this article, and it is of utmost importance that the Navy take multi-tasking seriously.
Captain Robert C. Rubel is a retired U.S. Navy Officer.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Robert C. Rubel
Multi-tasking may come across as an information age phenomenon—people checking their cell phones during meetings or worse, texting while driving—but at sea, it is anything but a modern problem. A number of studies have outlined the hazards and ill effects of multi-tasking at the personal level, but organizations can face similarly adverse results.
In naval warfare, the issue of multi-tasking is not new. It has long been axiomatic that a fleet should not attempt to project power ashore while still fighting for sea control. Beyond that somewhat threadbare principle, the issue of multi-tasking has bedeviled navies at all levels of war, from the tactical to the strategic. A key responsibility of a commander at any level is to try and arrange things such that his subordinate forces are always able to engage the enemy on advantageous terms. One such term is that those forces should not be put in a position in which they have to multi-task, at least in a manner that is beyond their capability.
Navy doctrine is bereft of any definition or guidance on managing multi-tasking for a unit or force. In fact, the Navy’s Aegis weapons system was designed to handle simultaneous, multidimensional threats. While the Navy has developed both the physical capabilities and organizational structures to do so, it has not rigorously studied the matter of multi-tasking as an element of warfare art. This article will attempt to establish a baseline discussion of multi-tasking and how it ought to be considered as an element of planning and decision making.
To approach multi-tasking in a rigorous manner, this author will first establish a framework within which its nuances make sense. The most fundamental structure is the levels of war: tactical, operational and strategic. Defined briefly, the tactical involves units and formations in contact with the enemy, the operational encompasses a numbered or regional fleet, and the strategic involves the theater of war up to the national level. It is important to note that the logic of warfare shifts across ascending levels with the logic of a lower level often overridden by that of a higher level. This is the case with multi-tasking.
For successful multi-tasking to occur at any level, two components must be present: resources and capability. These are broad terms that encompass different things at the different levels of war, but generally “resources” refers to the forces available and “capabilities” refers to personnel and their training.
At the individual level, certain people are better at multi-tasking than others. This diversity of skills extends to organizations as well. However, without sufficient resources or capability, neither people nor organizations can multi-task effectively. Multi-tasking is generally not a desirable process for humans; it is better to focus on one task at a time. However, situations do arise where some degree of multi-tasking is necessary. This has been and will continue to be the case in naval warfare.
Tactical Level
Perhaps the classic case of failure at multi-tasking is Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The Japanese plan was for Nagumo’s carriers to strike the U.S. island base, catalyzing a response by the U.S. Navy with its carriers. The planned sequence of events was disrupted by U.S. codebreaking, which gave Admiral Chester Nimitz sufficient warning to dispatch three carriers to ambush Nagumo. Nagumo, not expecting U.S. carriers to be present, ordered a dawn attack on Midway with a substantial part of his available aircraft. The aerial strike leader advised his commander that a follow-up strike would be necessary, and Nagumo ordered his aircraft to rearm with land attack bombs. It was only after this process was well underway that Nagumo received word that American carriers had been spotted within striking distance. This prompted him to order his aircraft to be rearmed with anti-ship bombs, greatly delaying their launch. The delay gave the American dive bombers just the chance they needed to swoop down and destroy three of his four carriers.
Traditional analysis of the battle faults Nagumo’s delay and indecisiveness. In reality, the error centered on multi-tasking. Almost as an afterthought, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had ordered Nagumo to keep half of his strike aircraft armed with ship attack weapons just in case the need arose. This constituted an order to be ready to multi-task: maintaining the ability to conduct a ship strike available even while conducting shore attack. Nagumo disobeyed this order when he decided to rearm those aircraft with land attack bombs. However, at the time he gave the order, no U.S. ships had been discovered, and, given the attacks by Midway aircraft on his force that had already been fended off, the island base still seemed dangerous. At the same time, Nagumo’s fighter cover—the force defense aircraft—were running low on fuel and needed space on the carrier decks to land.
So Nagumo had a multi-tasking problem with his flight decks, exacerbated by the subsequent news of U.S. warships sighted in the vicinity. Nagumo and his staff were hampered in their decision making in part because they had no experience with a situation like this—indeed, nobody had. The situation demanded multiple concurrent actions by his force: scouting, land strike, fleet defense, and anti-ship strike. Nagumo’s force might have been able to cope with the situation if it had possessed two more carriers—a force of the size he had during the attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Yamamoto had assigned only four carriers to the strike force bound for Midway, in part because of an operational plan that involved multi-tasking at the operational level. The Midway attack was planned to coincide with a near simultaneous strike on the Aleutians, and the additional carriers were needed there. In this example, the two necessary elements of multi-tasking, adequate resources and capability, were lacking and the consequence was defective decision making and the loss of three aircraft carriers.
A more modern example of problems resulting from multi-tasking is the shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988. Operating in the Strait of Hormuz to protect U.S.-flagged tanker traffic during the so-called “Tanker War” the captain of Vincennes decided to engage several Iranian gunboats that were harassing traffic. During this surface engagement, an Iranian airliner took off from nearby Bandar Abbas headed for Bahrain and crossed into airspace near the action. In the confusion, Vincennes’ combat information center (CIC) operators reported the aircraft as an Iranian F-14. When the civilian airliner failed to heed repeated warnings, Vincennes shot it down, killing 290 passengers and crew. Post-mortem analysis revealed among other things that an inexperienced tactical coordinator—amidst the overall confusion in the CIC—was calling out decreasing range as decreasing altitude, prompting the captain’s order to shoot.captain’s order to shoot.
Tactical multi-tasking is generally characterized by the need to make split second decisions. As illustrated by the Vincennes example, perhaps the most stressful environment for naval units is in the littoral. In littoral waters things can happen quickly, and units operating there must be ready to engage in any number of multi-tasking combinations. Israeli Admiral Yedida Ya’ari pointed out the challenges of operating in the littoral: “I argue that when warships designed for the high seas enter the confined waters of the littoral arena, the fundamental relationships of maneuverability and firepower are upset.” He goes on to say that for ships operating in the littoral “…deploying them in a playing field where, under the most optimistic assumptions, their survival requires as a normal operating mode the highest level of everything, all the time, [italics original] is unhealthy and unrealistic in the long run.” Ships will have to operate in the littoral, and thus attention must be paid to the resources and capabilities required for multi-tasking.
Operational Level
The nature of multi-tasking changes significantly at the level of fleet command. It has been an axiom throughout most of naval history that a fleet should not attempt to establish a beachhead if there is an enemy fleet remains undefeated in the vicinity. This is because the basis of fleet engagement is being able to maneuver to enter the fight at a tactical advantage. Effectively conducting such a maneuver in the days or weeks prior to battle requires that the enemy be unaware or unsure of where the fleet is. If the fleet establishes a lodgment ashore, its movements are circumscribed by the need to defend that beachhead. The enemy will always know where to find it and thus has the advantage in pre-battle maneuver. Violating this rule has been a recipe for losing ships even in cases when the battle has been won. In this large sense, projecting power ashore while at the same time fighting for control of the sea constitutes operational level multi-tasking.
Understanding the rule does not mean admirals do not have to violate it at times due to strategic circumstances. A prominent example was the Guadalcanal operation in 1942. Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, was anxious to take the strategic offensive in the Pacific. The victory at Midway coupled with the discovery of Japanese airfield building on Guadalcanal provided the impetus. Placing U.S. Marines ashore proved to be no problem because surprise was achieved; however, defending the beachhead after the fact proved to be problematic. Regardless of the specific factors that produced success or failure in each of the subsequent sea battles associated with the land campaign, many ships were lost. This can be regarded as a direct consequence of operational level multi-tasking in the maritime environment.
Multi-tasking at the operational level may also involve trying to do too much with too little force. Admiral Yamamoto’s plan for the Midway operation is an example. The plan featured a concurrent operation in the far north to seize several Aleutian islands, which required the diversion of two aircraft carriers. Had those been part of Nagumo’s force—or had the Midway operation been delayed until the two large fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku became available—he would have had the resources available to effectively multi-task and the battle may have turned out much differently.
A more recent example of the problem occurred during the 1982 Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina. The Royal Navy Task Force had hoped to neutralize Argentine capability to oppose a landing before having to commit forces to establishing a beachhead. However, political restrictions on attacking Argentine forces on the mainland coupled with the approach of inclement winter weather forced Admiral Sandy Woodward to order the landing while Argentine air forces still had the capability to strike. As might be expected, there were ship losses, which could have been much worse except for Argentine errors in bomb fuzing.
Ship losses are not the only result of multi-tasking on the fleet command level. Later in the Pacific War, the U.S. Navy was able to deploy a massive fleet that completely outclassed the remaining units of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Nevertheless, the Japanese still had significant striking power in their fleet. When the U.S. fleet invaded the island of Saipan in the Marianas chain, Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa sailed out to engage. Reports of Japanese naval movements produced a dilemma for Admiral Raymond Spruance, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At the time, Japanese naval aircraft significantly outranged their U.S. counterparts. Moreover, neither U.S. nor Japanese carriers could conduct flight operations at night. Thus, to be able to get in its own strikes against Japanese carriers, the U.S. fleet had to race toward the Japanese carriers through the night such that they would be in range by dawn.
On the night when the Japanese fleet was located, Admiral Spruance had to decide whether to allow his carrier commander, Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, to run toward Admiral Ozawa or to instead keep his carriers tied to the beachhead, protecting it in case Ozawa managed to get behind U.S. forces. Spruance chose the latter course, which prevented Mitscher from effectively striking Ozawa’s fleet the next day. In the event, highly developed fleet defense measures defeated Japanese air strikes and submarines inflicted serious losses on Ozawa. However, the point remains that operational level multi-tasking can produce such dilemmas for senior commanders.
Several months later, a similar dilemma arose during the invasion of the Philippines at Leyte Gulf. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, now commanding Third Fleet, was tasked to cover the invasion. The Japanese invoked their Sho Plan to defeat the invasion from the sea. Consisting of multiple axes of attack, the complex plan featured a deception group consisting of those carriers Japan had remaining commanded by Admiral Ozawa. His mission was to lure Halsey north, away from the San Bernardino Strait where Japanese Admiral Takeo Kurita would then be able to pass through with his battleships to attack the beachhead.
Halsey faced a dilemma like that of Spruance but chose the opposite course; he ran after Ozawa and left the San Bernardino Strait open for Kurita to sail through unmolested. Fortunately for the Americans, heroic actions by light forces confused Kurita and he elected to retreat before reaching the beachhead. However, the episode again points out the dilemmas that can arise when operational level multi-tasking occurs.
The point of this discussion is not to condemn operational level multi-tasking. It is entirely likely that such situations will arise in the future as the imperatives of strategy dictate. Rather, the key issue is for commanders to remain aware of the concept and integrate it explicitly into planning. Here again, the factors of resources and capability are fundamental. At Saipan, Spruance did not have the resources to both protect the beachhead and chase after Ozawa. Although his carrier force was strong, splitting it in the face of Ozawa’s strength was inadvisable, so an either-or situation was generated. In terms of capability, meaning Spruance’s awareness of the situation and his decision-making capability, there seemed to be no deficit. In Halsey’s case, resources were not an issue as he had enough force to both cover San Bernardino Strait (with four new battleships) and chase Ozawa. However, Halsey appeared to be single-minded about carriers, and elected to focus entirely on Ozawa, even though he had made tentative provision for leaving the battleships at San Bernardino. Thus, capability includes mindset and intellectual skills of the commander.
Strategic Level
Multi-tasking takes on yet a different form at the strategic level. Things are always more complicated at this level and there are doubtless many manifestations that could be pointed out. The issue of multi-front wars is of particular interest. A key rule for continental powers is to avoid, where possible, multi-front wars. Germany violated that rule in both World Wars and paid for it with defeat. The United States, on the other hand, successfully embarked on a multi-front war in World War II, despite the decision to pursue a “Germany first” policy.
Due in part to Admiral Ernest King’s determination to undertake an early offensive in the Pacific, the United States fought two simultaneous wars in the Atlantic and Pacific. The country’s victories in these wars were due in no small part to the monumental production effort it mounted to build both merchant ships and warships. Having sufficient resources was a key to success in multi-tasking at the strategic level.
However, capability in terms of devising effective strategy was also a critical component. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Joint Chiefs of Staff worked with their allied counterparts to coordinate military operations on a global basis. The naval element of this coordination fell substantially to Admiral Ernest King. King had to balance the needs of two simultaneous wars: the counter-submarine war in the Atlantic and the carrier-centric war in the Pacific. Both wars also involved amphibious operations and a whole array of supporting naval functions. Despite the overall Allied strategy of “Germany first,” King firmly believed that the Pacific War should be prosecuted aggressively, leading to the decision to undertake the Solomons Campaign in August 1942. This division of forces between theaters ensured that Admiral Nimitz and his subordinates would have to undertake operational level multi-tasking.
Relationships Among Levels
The examples of multi-tasking examined here illustrate a key issue: choosing to engage in multi-tasking at higher levels of war can produce situations at lower levels that require multi-tasking by subordinate commanders. King’s strategic decision to buck the Germany first strategy and speed up the schedule for taking the offense in the Pacific forced Nimitz to engage in operational level multi-tasking. Yamamoto’s operational decision to simultaneously strike the Aleutians and Midway forced Nagumo into tactical multi-tasking. There is no mechanical linkage among the levels, but if the issue of multi-tasking is not recognized, it is more likely that commanders and their forces will find themselves in a multi-tasking situation with neither the resources nor the capability to do it effectively.
The Need for Doctrine and Education
Without explicit doctrine and education, multi-tasking becomes a warfighting snake in the grass, showing up unexpectedly and insidiously just when it can be least accommodated. The U.S. Navy is painfully short of warships and has been engaged for decades in maximizing the diverse capabilities of individual hulls and airframes, relying on a decreasing number of platforms to serve as “jacks of all trades”. This pattern of behavior increases the odds that commanders and their forces will have to multi-task. At least in the short term, the solution is to increase the capabilities of Sailors and their leaders to anticipate and deal with multi-tasking situations. Strategic and operational multi-tasking should also be the subject of research and education at the Naval War College, and tactical multi-tasking research and training integrated into the syllabuses of the warfare centers of excellence. Ameliorating the risks of multi-tasking is also a potentially fruitful avenue of artificial intelligence research and development. There are many more aspects to the problem than have been addressed in this article, and it is of utmost importance that the Navy take multi-tasking seriously.
Captain Robert C. Rubel is a retired U.S. Navy Officer.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.