Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is a US Navy operational concept that emerged in the mid-2010s in response to the proliferation of long-range precision-strike systems, particularly Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles and surveillance networks that threaten the survivability of concentrated carrier strike groups. Rather than fighting from a tight formation around a high-value unit, DMO calls for geographically dispersed forces — surface combatants, submarines, aircraft, and increasingly unmanned platforms — that can independently sense, decide, and strike while remaining tied together by resilient communications.
The concept rests on three intertwined ideas:
- Distribution of platforms and sensors over a larger battlespace to impose targeting costs on the adversary and reduce the payoff of any single missile salvo.
- Integration of those platforms through networks so that a sensor on one unit can cue a weapon on another, a practice often associated with the Navy Tactical Grid and concepts like Naval Integrated Fire Control–Counter Air (NIFC-CA).
- Maneuver to mass fires — not ships — at a time and place of the commander's choosing.
DMO is closely linked to the Marine Corps' Force Design (including Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations) and to the broader Joint Warfighting Concept and Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort. It is generally understood as the Navy's principal answer to the anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) challenge in the Western Pacific.
Then–Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson highlighted distributed concepts in A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority (2016), and subsequent CNOs, including Admiral Mike Gilday in the Navigation Plan 2022, formally identified DMO as a key operating concept. Critics note real constraints: vulnerable shore logistics, finite vertical-launch cells, dependence on space and cyber links that adversaries can contest, and the difficulty of command and control when units operate under emissions control. Allied navies, including Australia and the United Kingdom, have begun adapting elements of the concept to their own force structures.
Example
In Large Scale Exercise 2021, the US Navy and Marine Corps used DMO to coordinate dispersed surface action groups, submarines, and aircraft across multiple numbered fleets to simulate striking a peer adversary at sea.
Frequently asked questions
Traditional CSG operations concentrate combat power around a carrier protected by escorts. DMO spreads combat power across many smaller, networked formations so the loss of any single unit is less catastrophic and the adversary cannot easily target the whole force.
Keep learning