ARMOR Employment Doctrine

0 · Preamble

This is concept-stage doctrine. It is written so that a watch officer, a sector tasking authority, a program sponsor, and a qualification reviewer can read the same document and reach the same conclusion about how ARMOR is employed.

It is not sponsor-issued doctrine. It is not a CONOPS approved by any service. It carries no authority of its own. Its purpose is to make the ARMOR concept's operating intent legible and reviewable before formal doctrine is written.

Hard rule. Where this doctrine and a sponsor's issued doctrine disagree, the sponsor's doctrine governs. ARMOR adapts. This document changes.

1 · Purpose

ARMOR exists to extend continuous maritime awareness across coastal and littoral approaches that crewed assets cannot continuously cover. The purpose of this doctrine is to bound how that awareness is generated, who acts on it, and where the human-in-the- loop sits.

1.1 Mission outcomes

1. Coverage. A continuous calibrated picture of small-vessel traffic across named approaches.
2. Vectoring. Calibrated alerts that let crewed responders sortie when sortie is warranted, not on heuristic.
3. Pattern. A queryable record of small-vessel behavior over the box, usable for retrospective analysis and adversary-COA discovery.

1.2 What ARMOR is not

• Not a kinetic effects platform.
• Not a tasking authority.
• Not a sub-surface or anti-submarine platform.
• Not a blue-water deployment at concept stage.

2 · Authorities and Posture

The single most important doctrinal commitment in ARMOR is the authorities posture. It is the sentence on which the entire concept stands or falls.

Authorities posture. ARMOR observes. ARMOR classifies. ARMOR alerts. Humans task and act. ARMOR will not engage targets, will not direct other assets, and will not execute irreversible actions against the world without an in-the-loop human authorization.

2.1 What ARMOR may decide unattended

• Detection threshold crossing on its own sensors.
• Track association across its own sensor sources.
• Classification confidence assignment, with calibration.
• Alert dispatch (subject to calibration at the mission C2 tier).
• Station-keeping deviation within a pre-tasked geofence.
• Pre-tasked recovery navigation under comms denial.

2.2 What ARMOR may not decide

• Vectoring of any responding asset.
• Engagement, interaction, or contact with any tracked vessel.
• Movement outside a pre-authorized geofence except on a pre-tasked recovery path.
• Any action that is irreversible, kinetic, or politically consequential.
• Self-destruct, scuttle, or capture-deny actions (sponsor-tier decision only).

This authorities posture is a hard concept commitment. Relaxing it is not a tuning parameter; it is a different program with a different qualification path and a different customer story.

3 · Concept of Employment

3.1 Standard employment — Continuous Picket

A picket of four ARMOR platforms is positioned along a named approach lane, spaced approximately 18 nm apart, with sensor coverage overlapping at a designed redundancy. The baseline composition is four ARMOR-A (Picket-class) craft — the class the SD-2014 reference scenario was authored against. Two-tier picket variants (ARMOR-A watching, ARMOR-D investigating) are addressed in §10. Each platform runs radar, EO/IR, and a behavior classifier. Detections are fused on-platform; calibrated alerts are dispatched to the sector watch floor.

3.2 Tasking

Each picket assignment carries a tasking package issued by the sector tasking authority. The tasking package specifies:

• The geofence within which platforms station-keep.
• Priority lanes and contact-of-interest behavioral profiles.
• Alert-suppression hours (e.g., known-friendly traffic windows).
• Escalation thresholds for multi-platform alerts.
• Recovery posture under comms denial or platform loss.

3.3 Hand-off

A track surfaced by ARMOR is handed off to a responding asset (cutter, aviation, harbor patrol, partner) via the watch officer's tasking flow. ARMOR maintains the track until handoff is confirmed. ARMOR does not pursue the track outside the geofence on its own initiative.

4 · Operating Modes

Each platform operates in one of four well-defined modes, determined by comms duty cycle and pre-tasked posture. Mode transitions are observable on the watch floor at all times.

ARMOR will not transition modes silently. Every transition is logged, audited, and surfaced on the watch floor. Operators may forcibly recover a platform from any mode subject to comms.

5 · Command Relationships

5.1 Three tiers

1. Platform tier. The ARMOR platform itself: sensor → fusion → classifier → autonomy → buffer.
2. Mission C2 tier. Cross-platform track management, calibration, pattern-of-life store, audit. Sector-shore-resident or cutter-resident.
3. Watch tier. The sector watch floor. The human in the loop. The decision authority.

5.2 Authority flow

Authority flows down from the sector tasking authority through the watch tier to the mission C2 tier and into the platform tier as a tasking package. Information flows up from the platform tier through the mission C2 tier to the watch tier as calibrated alerts and pattern-of-life writes.

5.3 The override path

At every tier, an override path is present and is one click. The watch officer may suppress an alert, mark a track as false, or escalate a track to higher command. The mission C2 tier may redistribute coverage on platform loss. The platform tier may enter Recovery on its own without authorization.

6 · Rules of Engagement

ARMOR has no rules of engagement. ARMOR does not engage. The rules of engagement that govern responding assets (cutters, aviation, partners) are out of scope of this doctrine.

What ARMOR has, instead, are rules of alerting. These are the disciplines that bound when ARMOR may surface an alert to a human, and what an alert may contain.

6.1 Calibration discipline

• An alert shall not be dispatched at a confidence below the calibrated alert threshold.
• An alert shall present its confidence as a band, not a single number.
• An alert shall include a behavior summary, not raw sensor data.
• An alert shall include the platform identity and the time-on-track.

6.2 Non-overclaim discipline

• Where a track is below alert threshold but anomalous (e.g., suspected mimicry), the track is logged to pattern-of-life with a flag, but no live alert is dispatched.
• The watch officer is never told that a track is illicit; the watch officer is told the classifier's confidence that it matches an illicit pattern.
• ARMOR shall never present an uncalibrated probability as if it were truth.

6.3 Coexistence discipline

• ARMOR observes COLREGS at all times in U.S. coastal water and partner-equivalent rules in allied theaters.
• ARMOR does not interfere with civil maritime traffic.
• ARMOR does not enter restricted areas without authorities-cleared geofence inclusion.

7 · Operator Workflow

7.1 The watch-officer cycle

1. Calibrated alert appears on the watch floor: confidence band, position, behavior summary, last-seen, suggested action.
2. Watch officer triages the alert: Mark False, Suppress 1 hr, Escalate, or Open track.
3. If actionable, watch officer vectors a responder via the existing sector tasking flow.
4. ARMOR maintains the track until handoff is confirmed by the responder.
5. The watch officer's action is logged; the audit trail is queryable by the chain of command.

7.2 The analyst cycle

A separate, latency-tolerant query surface is available to the sector intelligence analyst. The analyst queries pattern-of-life by lane, time, classification, behavior, or platform. ARMOR's classifier disagreements with operator overrides are surfaced for retrospective review.

7.3 Burden parity

Burden parity is a hard floor. The watch officer's cognitive load with ARMOR fielded shall be less than or equal to today's load. If burden testing fails, the concept fails.

8 · Risk Tolerance and Override

8.1 Loss tolerance

The picket is designed to survive the loss of a single ARM-site platform per fielded year without mission failure. Coverage degrades to ~75% on single loss; mission C2 redistributes coverage across surviving platforms.

8.2 Cyber posture

8.3 Capture and tamper

At concept stage, ARMOR has no platform-resident anti-tamper or self-deny posture. Capture-risk decisions are made at the sponsor tier. Disposition under capture is a sponsor-issued doctrine item.

8.4 Sea state and weather

9 · Theater Variants

9.1 Domestic — USCG primary

Authorities under Title 14 USC. Tasking integration with USCG District watch floors. COLREGS-compliant operation. No Title 10 authorities required. Concept-stage primary fielding theater.

9.2 USN variant

Authorities under theater-specific OPLAN. Tasking integration with USN OTC. Adds optional acoustic / passive-RF sensor kit. May handle classified contact data; classification handling specified by sponsor.

9.3 Allied / partner variant

Authorities under partner-issued doctrine. Release-controlled classifier baseline. Partner-comms compatibility (NATO STANAG or theater-specific). Export-controlled subset of fusion algorithms. Deployed under partner force commander.

9.4 Sequencing

Variants are sequenced, not parallel: USCG primary, USN second, Allied / partner third. Each variant's deployment is gated on the preceding variant's qualification readiness.

10 · Sustainment Doctrine

10.1 Launch and recovery

Primary launch from a sector-resident shore facility. Forward launch from a cutter is concept-acceptable where authorities and platform compatibility allow. Launch-and-recovery crew of four or fewer per launch event.

10.2 Maintenance cadence

Preventive maintenance every 30 days at refit. Sensor and compute boards are line-replaceable. Software updates apply over the air with dual-boot rollback. Cryptographic key rotation per sponsor policy.

10.3 Spares and logistics

Sensor heads, compute SBCs, and comms terminals are spared as line-replaceable units. Voyager-class platform support is provided by the platform vendor; sensor and compute support is the ARMOR program's responsibility.

10.4 Refit cycle

On-station mode targets ≥ 30 days of continuous operation. Transit cycles target ≥ 7 days. Refit cycles target ≤ 5 days at the shore facility.

11 · Open Doctrine Questions

This doctrine does not yet resolve the following. Each is an explicit doctrine-level decision required before ARMOR transitions to a sponsor-issued doctrine.

1. Capture / tamper disposition. What is the doctrinally-correct disposition of a captured platform?
2. Multi-service unified command. Under joint-task-force tasking, who owns ARMOR — the supported component or the supporting component?
3. Allied data sharing. Where on the data-sharing spectrum (raw track / classifier output / alert only) does each partner sit?
4. Override-fail audit. When the operator overrides ARMOR and the override turns out to have been wrong, who reviews and what is the remedy?
5. Pattern-of-life retention policy. 90 / 365 / 2555 days is a placeholder; the sponsor sets the policy.
6. Classifier-disagreement disposition. When two ARMOR platforms classify the same track differently, what is the doctrinal resolution?
7. Public release of pattern data. What pattern data may be released to civil partners, and on what cadence?

12 · Glossary

ARM-site

A single ARMOR platform on station. Identifiable by call-sign (e.g., ARM-2B).

Calibrated alert

An alert whose confidence has been calibrated such that the probability claimed reflects the empirical positive rate.

Coasting

Operating mode used when comms are intermittent. Alerts buffer; flush on link recovery.

Denied

Operating mode used when comms are sustained-low. Pre-tasked station / recovery; no alert dispatch until link recovers.

Geofence

The pre-authorized boundary within which a platform is permitted to station-keep or maneuver.

Linked

Operating mode used when comms close continuously. Real-time alert flow.

Mission C2 tier

The cross-platform track-management and calibration layer. Sector-shore-resident or cutter-resident.

Override

A one-click action available to the watch officer to suppress, mark false, or escalate an alert.

Pattern-of-life

The accumulated record of small-vessel behavior over the box, queryable by analyst.

Picket

The standard ARMOR formation: four platforms along an approach lane, ~18 nm apart.

Recovery

Operating mode used when pre-mission tasking instructs return.

Tasking package

The set of pre-mission instructions that bound a platform's behavior on station.

Watch tier

The sector watch floor. The human in the loop. The decision authority.