The U.S. Navy’s Submarine Warfare Development Center established in 2019 a select special unit consisting of the best of the best Submarine leader trainers, called the Aggressor Squadron (AGGRON) to train crews in US Navy submarines, war tactics to be used by its opponents in the event of an armed conflict.
The Aggressor Squadron (AGGRON) collects and gathers the latest timeline information on how its potential rivals, China, and Russia, are fighting their Submarines and makes use of this information by applying submarine combat tactics by taking the position of the adversary to apply as an attacker in exercises against American Submarines.
The purpose is twofold:
1. To drastically reduce the time that the crews of the American submarines will need to assimilate the tactics of the enemy in the event of a future conflict.
2. Given the acquisition of specific knowledge regarding the enemy’s battle tactics American submarine crews to gain the required comparative and significant advantage for the way the enemy operates by drastically increasing their victory and survival rates in the event of under surface war.
In this context, the special unit AGGRON uses as the attacker in these exercises, all types of submarines available to its potential enemies. The choice of these submarines is based mainly but not only on the propulsion characteristics that exist in the submarines. In other words, they use submarines that run on diesel, with nuclear reactors, electric or a combination of diesel and electric propulsion.
It should not escape the reader that the best submarine hunter is another submarine.
The special unit AGGRON resembles the “attacking” squadrons of USAF trainers at Top Gun, who train fighter pilots. The AGGRON unit is part of a trend that “permeates” the entire US Armed Forces doctrine of training as they should fight in practice.