How Afghanistan War soul-searching led to renaming of Navy expeditionary command

The decision to rename the Navy’s expeditionary forces command was a years-long pivot that began after the end of the Afghanistan War, according to the commander who led the effort. Rear Adm. Bradley Andros, who heads the recently rebranded Commander, Navy Expeditionary Forces, told reporters during a media roundtable Thursday that the quest to transition from a command to a type command began behind the scenes long before the official shift on Oct. 1. Whereas a command acts as a wing of the military or service branch and fulfills a myriad of roles, including deploying forces, a type command, or TYCOM, provides training for a specific class of sailor and oversight on the maintenance and management of unique weapons systems. Formed in 2006, the unit formerly known as Navy Expeditionary Combat Command was tasked with providing the service with individuals or units to U.S. Central Command that were not afloat, flying or subsea. “Five years ago the question that was asked was, okay, we built this command to do that in the last war and so we reflected on what do we need for the next war,” Andros told Navy Times. The commander admitted that he ran into some existential questions along the way. “Do we even need this anymore?” Andros said he asked himself at one point. That line of questioning required a broad overview of the command’s initial intent and whether it was adaptable and complementary to future combat environments. After the inception of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, its first job was to consolidate and manage disparate components within the Navy across different command and control alignments, Andros said. The managed assets, which included both reserve and active components, didn’t have the same organizational structure. Some reported directly to U.S. Fleet Forces Command or U.S. Pacific Fleet, while others fell under type commands. Then the U.S.-led Global War on Terror military campaign started. The U.S. military’s joint force suddenly needed multiple specific forces to support combat operations, a job that a type command usually handles. The Navy decided the NECC could fulfill those duties and ensure deployed combat forces could meet the specific requirements and capabilities the CENTCOM commander requested. From that point on, NECC became a Swiss-army knife, including training sailors to temporarily plug holes in personnel numbers, fill billets that required specialized skills and mobilize reserve service members. After the Afghanistan War ended, though, the command was forced to take a hard look in the mirror and forecast how the unit would figure into the Navy’s future, if at all. Following studies and analysis, the commander and other individuals in the Navy arrived at the realization that for the next fight, the Navy would need to continue to rely on expeditionary forces as key enablers to mobilize, sustain and move the fleet forward, Andros said. The service decided that the next step entailed designating the command as a type command, which aligned with many of its already proven capabilities. Part of the newly named type command’s efforts will be placed in tandem with the Navy’s ongoing efforts regarding research and fielding autonomous weapons systems. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, in a C-NOte that announced the command’s rebranding, said that the service’s expeditionary force was particularly important as the Navy developed new ways to employ unmanned systems in austere maritime environments and expand its seabed and subsea warfare capabilities. The Navy’s Robotic and Autonomous Systems Warfighting Development Center is currently headquartered at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, the same place Navy Expeditionary Forces calls home. The specific partnership between Commander, Navy Expeditionary Forces and the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems, Christopher Miller, was also a natural fit, according to Andros. “The way that robotic and autonomous systems are forming up, and the way that we have to man, train [and] equip these forces or these tools that are going to get inserted into the fleet, it looks more like what we do than what a ship or a submarine does to force generate,” Andros said.