The Global Firepower Field: PLAN's Strategic Vision for Intelligent Maritime Warfare in the Indo-Pacific

Abstract

This paper, drawing from military studies by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), analyzes the Global Firepower Field Theory as a pivotal concept for revolutionizing maritime combat and preparing for future naval warfare in the Indo-Pacific. Traditional maritime operations, constrained by platform-centric approaches and limited two-dimensional scope, struggle against modern multi-domain threats. The theory advocates for a shift towards systemic coordination, integrating diverse platforms (surface, sub-surface, air, coastal, space) into a dynamic, multi-dimensional firepower field. By applying advanced metrics like gradient, divergence, and curl, this framework enables real-time situational awareness, dynamic resource allocation, and enhanced attack effectiveness. Critically, the deep integration of the Global Firepower Field with Artificial Intelligence (AI) is explored as a means to drastically shorten the OODA loop, facilitate autonomous node coordination, and move beyond conventional "system confrontation" to a "clash of intelligent systems." While acknowledging technical challenges in data management, AI interpretability, and system security, the paper concludes that this integrated approach is essential for the PLAN to achieve a decisive advantage in the evolving, complex maritime battlespace.

by Gabriele and Nicola Iuvinale

With the rapid evolution of modern warfare, the maritime combat environment is facing unprecedented complexity and multi-dimensional transformation. In this scenario, the Global Firepower Field Theory, originating from air combat, emerges as a fundamental inspiration for the innovative design of maritime combat systems. It not only redefines fire control but also aims to expand and reshape the entire naval combat space, paving the way for a future where superiority will be determined by a "clash of intelligent systems."

The Global Firepower Field Theory introduces a new principle of fire control for penetrating air dominance. By organically integrating "target-centric" and "aircraft-centric" omnidirectional attack fire control modes, it constructs a theoretical model that reflects the dynamic and comprehensive lethality of multiple fire nodes in coordinated combat. This encompasses the entire spatio-temporal domain with various platforms, weapons, and targets, both before and after missile launch.

Maritime Challenges and the PLAN's Urgent Need for a New Paradigm

Open sea operations, particularly in the Indo-Pacific scenario, present technical challenges that are both similar to and more complex than those in air operations. Maritime combat platforms are extremely heterogeneous, ranging from surface vessels to submarines and carrier-borne aviation. Their perception, attack capabilities, and maneuverability characteristics vary significantly, making coordination difficult with traditional fire control systems often optimized for a single platform. The maritime electromagnetic environment is inherently complex, and target characteristics are constantly changing, posing serious challenges to target detection, identification, and tracking. Finally, the vastness of the maritime combat area and the influence of natural factors like weather and sea conditions make it difficult to adapt traditional systems for precision attacks in all conditions.

For the PLAN, the Global Firepower Field Theory pushes beyond a "platform-centric confrontation" to embrace "systemic coordination." Whereas traditional maritime operations often see platforms operating independently with limited information sharing, this new theory emphasizes building a global situational awareness based on the fusion of data from multiple platforms. The goal is to integrate dispersed firepower nodes into an organic whole, achieving the capability to "see far, strike accurately, and control." This is the only way to achieve all-domain operations at sea, overcoming the limitations of fire control technology focused on individual platforms.

Building System Capabilities Based on the Global Firepower Field

The Global Firepower Field Theory provides a new theoretical framework and methodology for building the PLAN's maritime combat system capabilities. Its core lies in the organic integration of dispersed firepower nodes, through field theory, to form a dynamic fire control network. This network is not a mere collection of platforms but a complex adaptive system with global emergent properties. Its construction requires an innovative approach across three key dimensions: firepower field modeling, application of field theory, and system integration.

Modeling a Multi-Dimensional Heterogeneous Firepower Field

Creating a dynamic fire control network at sea, based on field theory, is fundamental to developing these capabilities. The maritime combat environment exhibits clear multi-dimensional heterogeneous characteristics, involving surface, underwater, aerial, and coastal combat platforms. This necessitates expanding the single-plane firepower field model into a multi-dimensional heterogeneous firepower field model. In this model, different types of combat platforms are considered "field sources" with their own characteristics, and their firepower projection capabilities form a "field" continuously distributed in space. For example, surface vessels can form a two-dimensional ship-centric firepower field, submarines a three-dimensional underwater firepower field, and carrier-borne aviation an aerial firepower field. These heterogeneous firepower fields achieve information sharing and field effect superposition through tactical data link systems, forming a three-dimensional fire control network covering sea, air, coast, and underwater domains.

In this network, the allocation and coordination of fire resources are no longer based on static plans and rigid command levels but are adaptively adjusted based on the real-time situation of the firepower field. By introducing intelligent algorithms, the system can automatically calculate the optimal fire allocation plan based on factors such as target threat level, the current fire status of each platform, and environmental conditions.

System Characterization Through Gradient, Divergence, and Curl

The three key indicators in field theory—gradient, divergence, and curl—provide scientific tools for characterizing system capabilities in maritime combat environments. These indicators have specific military meanings and application values in the field of maritime firepower:

• The firepower field gradient characterizes the spatial distribution characteristics of firepower lethality. Its direction indicates the direction of the fastest increase in firepower lethality, while its magnitude reflects the spatial rate of change of firepower lethality. By analyzing the firepower field gradient, commanders can intuitively identify "hot spots" with high fire intensity and "cold spots" with weak firepower, providing a decision-making basis for firepower deployment and tactical maneuvers.

  
  

  

  
  

• The firepower field divergence characterizes the changing characteristics of firepower coverage in the maritime combat environment. A positive divergence area indicates that the firepower field is diverging, and the lethality envelope is shrinking; a negative divergence area indicates that the firepower field is converging, and the lethality envelope is expanding. Through dynamic monitoring of divergence distribution, commanders can understand the expansion and contraction of their own firepower field and predict changes in the battlefield situation.

  

• The firepower field curl characterizes the direction and intensity of fire deviation in the maritime combat environment. The magnitude of the curl reflects the intensity of local rotation of the firepower field, while the direction of the curl indicates the direction of the rotation axis. In maritime formation operations, analyzing the firepower field curl helps identify "vortex structures" in the firepower field, which often appear at the intersection of different types of platform firepower fields or in areas with complex terrain.

By combining these three indicators, a comprehensive maritime firepower field characteristic characterization system can be built. This system not only statically describes the current state of firepower distribution but also dynamically predicts the evolutionary trend of the firepower field, providing comprehensive command decision support.

Systemic Advantages and the Expansion of Combat Space

The application of the Global Firepower Field Theory will significantly enhance the overall effectiveness of the PLAN's maritime combat system. Traditional maritime combat systems often suffer from "information islands" and "firepower fragmentation." While platforms are equipped with advanced equipment, system integration is often low, making it difficult to achieve overall combat effectiveness. The maritime combat system based on the Global Firepower Field Theory can achieve a leap forward in capabilities from the platform level to the system level, reflected mainly in the following aspects:

1. Overall enhancement of perception capabilities: By constructing a maritime situational firepower field that integrates multi-source perception information, each platform is no longer limited to the detection range of its own sensors but shares the perception resources of the entire system, achieving comprehensive perception of the "I use what I see, I use him to see, and he uses me to see" type.

2. Significantly improved decision-making efficiency: The decision support system based on firepower field characteristic representation can transform complex battlefield information into an intuitive firepower field image, helping commanders quickly grasp the battlefield situation, shorten the OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop time, and improve decision-making quality and efficiency.

3. Exponential growth in attack effectiveness: Through dynamic allocation and coordination mechanisms of firepower, the system can automatically generate the optimal firepower configuration plan based on target characteristics and battlefield conditions, avoiding firepower waste and improving attack effectiveness. At the same time, weapon guidance and control technology based on firepower field theory can achieve multi-platform, multi-weapon coordinated attacks, giving rise to a "systemic attack" effect.

4. Overall improvement in survivability: The defense system design based on firepower field theory can optimize the allocation of defense resources, create a homogeneous defensive firepower field, effectively respond to saturation attacks and precision strike threats, and enhance the overall survivability of the system.

The Global Firepower Field Theory also inspires a fundamental rethinking of maritime combat, shifting from the traditional linear attack mode to a distributed, three-dimensional, and global coverage combat mode. The concept of "target-centric" and "aircraft-centric" fire control translates into a dual perspective of "target-centric" and "ship/platform-centric" in maritime operations. Dispersed platforms form a "maritime firepower field" that covers the entire domain.

The firepower field aggregation model provides a theoretical basis for multi-platform, multi-weapon coordinated operations at sea, allowing for quantitative evaluation of coordination effectiveness across different platform combinations. The expansion of the temporal and spatial dimensions of the Global Firepower Field Theory offers a new idea for overcoming the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional maritime combat units, moving from a static concept of weapon range circles to a dynamic and comprehensive representation of lethality that accounts for target maneuvers, environmental impact, and time-varying weapon performance.

Intelligent Transformation and the PLAN's Future Prospects

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, the PLAN's maritime combat system is facing a profound intelligent transformation, and the Global Firepower Field Theory provides an ideal integration foundation for this transformation. AI technology can significantly enhance the computational efficiency and accuracy of the global firepower field model, enabling real-time calculations and dynamic updates of the firepower field in complex multi-platform, multi-weapon, and multi-target integrated combat environments.

The intelligent decision support system based on the Global Firepower Field Theory can significantly shorten the OODA loop. With the introduction of AI technology, the observation-judgment-decision-action links can be highly integrated and processed in parallel. This AI-driven OODA loop can compress decision-execution time from minutes to seconds, thereby effectively out-cycling the enemy.

The Global Firepower Field model also provides a theoretical framework for the autonomous coordination of firepower nodes. In this mechanism, each firepower node is both an independent intelligent entity and an organic part of the overall firepower field. Through edge computing and distributed AI technology, each node can make autonomous decisions and actions based on local perception and global firepower field information, while maintaining information exchange and action coordination with other nodes via data links. This hybrid "central coordination + edge autonomy" architecture not only ensures overall system coordination but also ensures resilience in the event of limited communication or central node failure.

The application prospects of combining a global firepower field with AI are vast and crucial for the PLAN, aiming to dominate complex scenarios like the Indo-Pacific: from anti-ship operations with real-time analysis and optimized attack plans, to anti-submarine operations with underwater firepower fields and three-dimensional coordination, and to regional air defense operations with dynamically adjusted air defense firepower field configurations.

Challenges and the Path Towards Intelligent Systems Confrontation

Despite the immense promises, the intelligent transformation of the maritime combat system faces a series of technical challenges:

• Data acquisition and transmission: The need to develop anti-interference, low-bandwidth tactical data link technologies in complex maritime electromagnetic environments.

• Data standards and interface compatibility: The requirement to establish a unified data exchange standard between heterogeneous platforms.

• Interpretability and credibility of AI systems: Especially in key decision-making links, maintaining an appropriate human-machine collaboration mechanism is essential.

• System security: The establishment of multi-level network protection measures to prevent network attacks and electronic interference from adversaries.

In conclusion, the deep integration of the Global Firepower Field Theory and Artificial Intelligence technology represents the most important trend in the development of maritime combat systems for the PLAN. This integration will drive a paradigm shift in maritime combat from "platform-centric" to "data-centric" and then to "intelligence-centric," ultimately achieving a fundamental leap: from a "confrontation between systems" to a "confrontation between intelligent systems," gaining a decisive advantage for future naval combat, especially in the Indo-Pacific. With the expansion into new territories such as space, deep sea, and polar regions, and the introduction of new dimensions like the cognitive domain and the social domain, the Global Firepower Field Theory will provide scientific guidance for this complex evolutionary process of combat space.