Category Future American Wars

Interchangeability Of Fire And Multi-Domain Operations

Soviet “forces and resources” chart. [Richard Simpkin, Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii (Brassey’s: London, 1987) p. 254]

With the emergence of the importance of cross-domain fires in the U.S. effort to craft a joint doctrine for multi-domain operations, there is an old military concept to which developers should give greater consideration: interchangeability of fire.

This is an idea that British theorist Richard Simpkin traced back to 19th century Russian military thinking, which referred to it then as the interchangeability of shell and bayonet. Put simply, it was the view that artillery fire and infantry shock had equivalent and complimentary effects against enemy troops and could be substituted for one another as circumstances dictated on the battlefield.

The concept evolved during the development of the Russian/Soviet operational concept of “deep battle” after World War I to encompass the interchangeability of fire and maneuver. In Soviet military thought, the battlefield effects of fires and the operational maneuver of ground forces were equivalent and complementary.

This principle continues to shape contemporary Russian military doctrine and practice, which is, in turn, influencing U.S. thinking about multi-domain operations. In fact, the idea is not new to Western military thinking at all. Maneuver warfare advocates adopted the concept in the 1980s, but it never found its way into official U.S. military doctrine.

An Idea Who’s Time Has Come. Again.

So why should the U.S. military doctrine developers take another look at interchangeability now? First, the increasing variety and ubiquity of long-range precision fire capabilities is forcing them to address the changing relationship between mass and fires on multi-domain battlefields. After spending a generation waging counterinsurgency and essentially outsourcing responsibility for operational fires to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy, both the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps are scrambling to come to grips with the way technology is changing the character of land operations. All of the services are at the very beginning of assessing the impact of drone swarms—which are themselves interchangeable blends of mass and fires—on combat.

Second, the rapid acceptance and adoption of the idea of cross-domain fires has carried along with it an implicit acceptance of the interchangeability of the effects of kinetic and non-kinetic (i.e. information, electronic, and cyber) fires. This alone is already forcing U.S. joint military thinking to integrate effects into planning and decision-making.

The key component of interchangability is effects. Inherent in it is acceptance of the idea that combat forces have effects on the battlefield that go beyond mere physical lethality, i.e. the impact of fire or shock on a target. U.S. Army doctrine recognizes three effects of fires: destruction, neutralization, and suppression. Russian and maneuver warfare theorists hold that these same effects can be achieved through the effects of operational maneuver. The notion of interchangeability offers a very useful way of thinking about how to effectively integrate the lethality of mass and fires on future battlefields.

But Wait, Isn’t Effects Is A Four-Letter Word?

There is a big impediment to incorporating interchangeability into U.S. military thinking, however, and that is the decidedly ambivalent attitude of the U.S. land warfare services toward thinking about non-tangible effects in warfare.

As I have pointed out before, the U.S. Army (at least) has no effective way of assessing the effects of fires on combat, cross-domain or otherwise, because it has no real doctrinal methodology for calculating combat power on the battlefield. Army doctrine conceives of combat power almost exclusively in terms of capabilities and functions, not effects. In Army thinking, a combat multiplier is increased lethality in the form of additional weapons systems or combat units, not the intangible effects of operational or moral (human) factors on combat. For example, suppression may be a long-standing element in doctrine, but the Army still does not really have a clear idea of what causes it or what battlefield effects it really has.

In the wake of the 1990-91 Gulf War and the ensuing “Revolution in Military Affairs,” the U.S. Air Force led the way forward in thinking about the effects of lethality on the battlefield and how it should be leveraged to achieve strategic ends. It was the motivating service behind the development of a doctrine of “effects based operations” or EBO in the early 2000s.

However, in 2008, U.S. Joint Forces Command commander, U.S Marine General (and current Secretary of Defense) James Mattis ordered his command to no longer “use, sponsor, or export” EBO or related concepts and terms, the underlying principles of which he deemed to be “fundamentally flawed.” This effectively eliminated EBO from joint planning and doctrine. While Joint Forces Command was disbanded in 2011 and EBO thinking remains part of Air Force doctrine, Mattis’s decree pretty clearly showed what the U.S. land warfare services think about battlefield effects.

UPDATE: Should The U.S. Army Add More Tube Artillery To It Combat Units?

A 155mm Paladin howitzer with 1st Battery, 10th Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Task Force Liberty stands ready for a fire mission at forward operating base Gabe April 16, 2005. [U.S. Department of Defense/DVIDS]

In response to my recent post looking at the ways the U.S. is seeking to improve its long range fires capabilities, TDI received this comment via Twitter:

@barefootboomer makes a fair point. It appears that the majority of the U.S. Army’s current efforts to improve its artillery capabilities are aimed at increasing lethality and capability of individual systems, but not actually adding additional guns to the force structure.

Are Army combat units undergunned in the era of multi-domain battle? The Mobile Protected Firepower program is intended to provide additional light tanks high-caliber direct fire guns to the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams. In his recent piece at West Point’s Modern War Institute blog, Captain Brandon Morgan recommended increasing the proportion of U.S. corps rocket artillery to tube artillery systems from roughly 1:4 to something closer to the current Russian Army ratio of 3:4.

Should the Army be adding other additional direct or indirect fires systems to its combat forces? What types and at what levels? Direct or indirect fire? More tubes per battery? More batteries? More battalions?

What do you think?

UPDATE: I got a few responses to my queries. The balance reflected this view:

@barefootboomer elaborated on his original point:

There were not many specific suggestions about changes to the existing forces structure, except for this one:

Are there any other thoughts or suggestions out there about this, or is the consensus that the Army is already pretty much on the right course toward fixing its fires problems?

Status Update On U.S. Long Range Fires Capabilities

Soldiers fire an M777A2 howitzer while supporting Iraqi security forces near al-Qaim, Iraq, Nov. 7, 2017, as part of the operation to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. [Spc. William Gibson/U.S. Army]

Earlier this year, I noted that the U.S. is investing in upgrading its long range strike capabilities as part of its multi-domain battle doctrinal response to improving Chinese, Russian, and Iranian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. There have been a few updates on the progress of those investments.

The U.S. Army Long Range Fires Cross Functional Team

A recent article in Army Times by Todd South looked at some of the changes being implemented by the U.S. Army cross functional team charged with prioritizing improvements in the service’s long range fires capabilities. To meet a requirement to double the ranges of its artillery systems within five years, “the Army has embarked upon three tiers of focus, from upgrading old school artillery cannons, to swapping out its missile system to double the distance it can fire, and giving the Army a way to fire surface-to-surface missiles at ranges of 1,400 miles.”

The Extended Range Cannon Artillery program is working on rocket assisted munitions to double the range of the Army’s workhouse 155mm guns to 24 miles, with some special rounds capable of reaching targets up to 44 miles away. As I touched on recently, the Army is also looking into ramjet rounds that could potentially increase striking range to 62 miles.

To develop the capability for even longer range fires, the Army implemented a Strategic Strike Cannon Artillery program for targets up to nearly 1,000 miles, and a Strategic Fires Missile effort enabling targeting out to 1,400 miles.

The Army is also emphasizing retaining trained artillery personnel and an improved training regime which includes large-scale joint exercises and increased live-fire opportunities.

Revised Long Range Fires Doctrine

But better technology and training are only part of the solution. U.S. Army Captain Harrison Morgan advocated doctrinal adaptations to shift Army culture away from thinking of fires solely as support for maneuver elements. Among his recommendations are:

  • Increasing the proportion of U.S. corps rocket artillery to tube artillery systems from roughly 1:4 to something closer to the current Russian Army ratio of 3:4.
  • Fielding a tube artillery system capable of meeting or surpassing the German-made PZH 2000, which can strike targets out to 30 kilometers with regular rounds, sustain a firing rate of 10 rounds per minute, and strike targets with five rounds simultaneously.
  • Focus on integrating tube and rocket artillery with a multi-domain, joint force to enable the destruction of the majority of enemy maneuver forces before friendly ground forces reach direct-fire range.
  • Allow tube artillery to be task organized below the brigade level to provide indirect fires capabilities to maneuver battalions, and make rocket artillery available to division and brigade commanders. (Morgan contends that the allocation of indirect fires capabilities to maneuver battalions ended with the disbanding of the Army’s armored cavalry regiments in 2011.)
  • Increase training in use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assets at the tactical level to locate, target, and observe fires.

U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy Face Long Range Penetrating Strike Challenges

The Army’s emphasis on improving long range fires appears timely in light of the challenges the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy face in conducting long range penetrating strikes mission in the A2/AD environment. A fascinating analysis by Jerry Hendrix for the Center for a New American Security shows the current strategic problems stemming from U.S. policy decisions taken in the early 1990s following the end of the Cold War.

In an effort to generate a “peace dividend” from the fall of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration elected to simplify the U.S. military force structure for conducting long range air attacks by relieving the Navy of its associated responsibilities and assigning the mission solely to the Air Force. The Navy no longer needed to replace its aging carrier-based medium range bombers and the Air Force pushed replacements for its aging B-52 and B-1 bombers into the future.

Both the Air Force and Navy emphasized development and acquisition of short range tactical aircraft which proved highly suitable for the regional contingencies and irregular conflicts of the 1990s and early 2000s. Impressed with U.S. capabilities displayed in those conflicts, China, Russia, and Iran invested in air defense and ballistic missile technologies specifically designed to counter American advantages.

The U.S. now faces a strategic environment where its long range strike platforms lack the range and operational and technological capability to operate within these AS/AD “bubbles.” The Air Force has far too few long range bombers with stealth capability, and neither the Air Force nor Navy tactical stealth aircraft can carry long range strike missiles. The missiles themselves lack stealth capability. The short range of the Navy’s aircraft and insufficient numbers of screening vessels leave its aircraft carriers vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.

Remedying this state of affairs will take time and major investments in new weapons and technological upgrades. However, with certain upgrades, Hendrix sees the current Air Force and Navy force structures capable of providing the basis for a long range penetrating strike operational concept effective against A2/AD defenses. The unanswered question is whether these upgrades will be implemented at all.

U.S. Army Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) Program Update

BAE Systems has submitted its proposal to the U.S. Army to build and test the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle [BAE Systems/Fox News]

When we last checked in with the U.S. Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program—an effort to quickly field a new light tank lightweight armored vehicle with a long-range direct fire capability—Request for Proposals (RFPs) were expected by November 2017 and the first samples by April 2018. It now appears the first MPF prototypes will not be delivered before mid-2020 at the earliest.

According to a recent report by Kris Osborn on Warrior Maven, “The service expects to award two Engineering Manufacturing and Development (EMD) deals by 2019 as part of an initial step to building prototypes from multiple vendors, service officials said. Army statement said initial prototypes are expected within 14 months of a contract award.”

Part of the delay appears to stem from uncertainty about requirements. As Osborn reported, “For the Army, the [MPF} effort involves what could be described as a dual-pronged acquisition strategy in that it seeks to leverage currently available or fast emerging technology while engineering the vehicle with an architecture such that it can integrate new weapons and systems as they emerge over time.”

Among the technologies the Army will seek to integrate into the MPF are a lightweight, heavy caliber main gun, lightweight armor composites, active protection systems, a new generation of higher-resolution targeting sensors, greater computer automation, and artificial intelligence.

Osborn noted that

the Army’s Communications Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) is already building prototype sensors – with this in mind. In particular, this early work is part of a longer-range effort to inform the Army’s emerging Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV). The NGCV, expected to become an entire fleet of armored vehicles, is now being explored as something to emerge in the late 2020s or early 2030s.

These evolving requirements are already impacting the Army’s approach to fielding MPF. It originally intended to “do acquisition differently to deliver capability quickly.” MPF program director Major General David Bassett declared in October 2017, “We expect to be delivering prototypes off of that program effort within 15 months of contract award…and getting it in the hands of an evaluation unit six months after that — rapid!“

It is now clear the Army won’t be meeting that schedule after all. Stay tuned.

“Quantity Has A Quality All Its Own”: How Robot Swarms Might Change Future Combat

Humans vs. machines in the film Matrix Revolutions (2003) [Screencap by The Matrix Wiki]

Yesterday, Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and prolific writer on the future of robotics and artificial intelligence, posted a fascinating argument on Twitter regarding swarms and mass in future combat.

His thread was in response to an article by Shmuel Shmuel posted on War on the Rocks, which made the case that the same computer processing technology enabling robotic vehicles combined with old fashioned kinetic weapons (i.e. anti-aircraft guns) offered a cost-effective solution to swarms.

Scharre agreed that robotic drones are indeed vulnerable to such countermeasures, but made this point in response:

He then went to contend that robotic swarms offer the potential to reestablish the role of mass in future combat. Mass, either in terms of numbers of combatants or volume of firepower, has played a decisive role in most wars. As the aphorism goes, usually credited to Josef Stalin, “mass has a quality all of its own.”

Scharre observed that the United States went in a different direction in its post-World War II approach to warfare, adopting instead “offset” strategies that sought to leverage superior technology to balance against the mass militaries of the Communist bloc.

While effective during the Cold War, Scharre concurs with the arguments that offset strategies are becoming far too expensive and may ultimately become self-defeating.

In order to avoid this fate, Scharre contends that

The entire thread is well worth reading.

Trevor Dupuy would have agreed with much of what Scharre’s asserts. He identified the relationship between increasing weapon lethality and battlefield dispersion that goes back to the 17th century. Dupuy believed that the primary factor driving this relationship was the human response to fear in a lethal environment, with soldiers dispersing in depth and frontage on battlefields in order to survive weapons of ever increasing destructiveness.

TDI Friday Read: Lethality, Dispersion, And Mass On Future Battlefields

Robots might very well change that equation. Whether autonomous or “human in the loop,” robotic swarms do not feel fear and are inherently expendable. Cheaply produced robots might very well provide sufficient augmentation to human combat units to restore the primacy of mass in future warfare.

Is The End Of Stealth Neigh?

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor [Creative Commons]

Michael Peck made an interesting catch over at The National Interest. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting input on potentially disruptive technologies for future warfare. With regard to air warfare, the solicitation baldy states, “Platform stealth may be approaching physical limits.” This led Peck to ask “Did the Pentagon just admit that stealth technology may not work anymore?”

A couple of years ago, a media report that the Chinese had claimed a technological breakthrough in stealth-busting quantum radar capabilities led me to muse about the possible repercussions on U.S. military capabilities. This was during the height of the technology-rooted Third Offset Strategy mania. It seemed to me at the time that concentrating on technological solutions to the U.S.’s strategic challenges might not be the wisest course of action.

The notion that stealth might be a wasting asset seemed somewhat far-fetched when I wrote that, but it appears to have become a much more serious concern. As the DARPA solicitation states, “Our acquisition system is finding it difficult to respond on relevant timescales to adversary progress, which has made the search for next generation capabilities at once more urgent and more futile.” (p. 5)

Er, yikes.

Security On The Cheap: Whither Security Force Assistance (SFA)?

A U.S. Army Special Forces weapons sergeant observes a Niger Army soldier during marksmanship training as part of Exercise Flintlock 2017 in Diffa, Niger, February 28, 2017. [U.S. Army/SFC Christopher Klutts/AFRICOM]

Paul Staniland, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has a new article in The Washington Post‘s Monkey Cage blog that contends that the U.S. is increasingly relying on a strategy of “violence management” in dealing with the various counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and stability conflicts (i.e. “small wars”) it is involved with around the world.

As he describes it,

America’s “violence management” strategy relies on light ground forces, airpower and loose partnerships with local armed actors. Its aim is to degrade and disrupt militant organizations within a chaotic, fractured political landscape, not to commit large numbers of forces and resources to building robust new governments.

…Violence management sidesteps politics in favor of sustained military targeting. This approach takes for granted high levels of political disorder, illiberal and/or fractured local regimes, and protracted conflicts. The goal is disrupting militant organizations without trying to build new states, spur economic development, or invest heavily in post-conflict reconstruction.

…It has three core elements: a light U.S. ground force commitment favoring special forces, heavy reliance on airpower and partnerships of convenience with local militias, insurgents, and governments.

…Politically, this strategy reduces both costs and commitments. America’s wars stay off the front pages, the U.S. can add or drop local partners as it sees fit, and U.S. counterterror operations remain opaque.

Staniland details the risks associated with this strategy but does not assess its effectiveness. He admits to ambivalence on that in an associated discussion on Twitter.

Whither SFA?

Partnering with foreign government, organizations, and fighters to counter national security threats is officially known by the umbrella terms Security Force Assistance in U.S. government policy terminology. It is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations. The U.S. has employed this approach in various forms since World War II.

Has it been effective? Interestingly enough, this question has not been seriously examined. The best effort so far is a study done by Stephen Biddle, Julia Macdonald, and Ryan Baker, “Small Footprint, Small Payoff: The Military Effectiveness of Security Force Assistance,” published the Journal of Strategic Studies earlier this year. It concluded:

We find important limitations on SFA’s military utility, stemming from agency problems arising from systematic interest misalignment between the US and its typical partners. SFA’s achievable upper bound is modest and attainable only if US policy is intrusive and conditional, which it rarely is. For SFA, small footprints will usually mean small payoffs.

A Mixed Recent Track Record

SFA’s recent track record has been mixed. It proved conditionally successful countering terrorists and insurgents in the Philippines and in the coalition effort to defeat Daesh in Iraq and Syria; and it handed a black eye to Russian sponsored paramilitary forces in Syria earlier this year. However, a train and advice mission for the moderate Syrian rebels failed in 2015; four U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers died in an ambush during a combined patrol in Niger in October 2017; there are recurring cases of U.S.-trained indigenous forces committing human rights abuses; and the jury remains out on the fate of Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army’s proposed contribution to SFA, the Security Forces Assistance Brigade, is getting its initial try-out in Afghanistan right now. The initial reports indicate that it has indeed boosted SFA capacity there. What remains to be seen is whether that will make a difference. The 1st SFAB suffered its first combat casualties earlier this month when Corporal Joseph Maciel was killed and two others were wounded in an insider attack at Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province.

Will a strategy of violence management prove successful over the longer term? Stay tuned…

Should The Marines Take Responsibility For Counterinsurgency?

United States Marines in Nacaragua with the captured flag of Augusto César Sandino, 1932. [Wikipedia]

Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr recently reported in Breaking Defense that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), led by chairman Senator John McCain, has asked Defense Secretary James Mattis to report on progress toward preparing the U.S. armed services to carry out the recently published National Defense Strategy oriented toward potential Great Power conflict.

Among a series of questions that challenge existing service roles and missions, Freedberg reported that the SASC wants to know if responsibility for carrying out “low-intensity missions,” such as counterinsurgency, should be the primary responsibility of one service:

Make the Marines a counterinsurgency force? The Senate starts by asking whether the military “would benefit from having one Armed Force dedicated primarily to low-intensity missions, thereby enabling the other Armed Forces to focus more exclusively on advanced peer competitors.” It quickly becomes clear that “one Armed Force” means “the Marines.” The bill questions the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) and suggest shifting that role to the Marines. It also questions the survivability of Navy-Marine flotillas in the face of long-range sensors and precision missiles — so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) systems — and asked whether the Marines’ core mission, “amphibious forced entry operations,” should even “remain an enduring mission for the joint force” given the difficulties. It suggests replacing large-deck amphibious ships, which carry both Marine aircraft and landing forces, with small aircraft carriers that could carry “larger numbers of more diverse strike aircraft” (but not amphibious vehicles or landing craft). Separate provisions of the bill restrict spending on the current Amphibious Assault Vehicle (Sec. 221) and the future Amphibious Combat Vehicle (Sec. 128) until the Pentagon addresses the viability of amphibious landings.

This proposed change would drastically shift the U.S. Marine Corps’ existing role and missions, something that will inevitably generate political and institutional resistance. Deemphasizing the ability to execute amphibious forced entry operations would be both a difficult strategic choice and an unpalatable political decision to fundamentally alter the Marine Corps’ institutional identity. Amphibious warfare has defined the Marines since the 1920s. It would, however, be a concession to the reality that technological change is driving the evolving character of warfare.

Perhaps This Is Not A Crazy Idea After All

The Marine Corps also has a long history with so-called “small wars”: contingency operations and counterinsurgencies. Tasking the Marines as the proponents for low-intensity conflict would help alleviate one of the basic conundrums facing U.S. land power: the U.S. Army’s inability to optimize its force structure due to the strategic need to be prepared to wage both low-intensity conflict and conventional combined arms warfare against peer or near peer adversaries. The capabilities needed for waging each type of conflict are diverging, and continuing to field a general purpose force is running an increasing risk of creating an Army dangerously ill-suited for either. Giving the Marine Corps responsibility for low-intensity conflict would permit the Army to optimize most of its force structure for combined arms warfare, which poses the most significant threat to American national security (even if it less likely than potential future low-intensity conflicts).

Making the Marines the lead for low-intensity conflict would also play to another bulwark of its institutional identity, as the world’s premier light infantry force (“Every Marine is a rifleman”). Even as light infantry becomes increasingly vulnerable on modern battlefields dominated by the lethality of long-range precision firepower, its importance for providing mass in irregular warfare remains undiminished. Technology has yet to solve the need for large numbers of “boots on the ground” in counterinsurgency.

The crucial role of manpower in counterinsurgency makes it somewhat short-sighted to follow through with the SASC’s suggestions to eliminate the Army’s new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) and to reorient Special Operations Forces (SOF) toward support for high-intensity conflict. As recent, so-called “hybrid warfare” conflicts in Lebanon and the Ukraine have demonstrated, future battlefields will likely involve a mix of combined arms and low-intensity warfare. It would be risky to assume that Marine Corps’ light infantry, as capable as they are, could tackle all of these challenges alone.

Giving the Marines responsibility for low-intensity conflict would not likely require a drastic change in force structure. Marines could continue to emphasize sea mobility and littoral warfare in circumstances other than forced entry. Giving up the existing large-deck amphibious landing ships would be a tough concession, admittedly, one that would likely reduce the Marines’ effectiveness in responding to contingencies.

It is not likely that a change as big as this will be possible without a protracted political and institutional fight. But fresh thinking and drastic changes in the U.S.’s approach to warfare are going to be necessary to effectively address both near and long-term strategic challenges.

Senate Armed Service Committee Proposes Far-Reaching Changes To U.S. Military

Senate Armed Services Committee members (L-R) Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) and ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (R-RI) listen to testimony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 11, 2017 in Washington, D.C. [CREDIT: Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images]

In an article in Breaking Defense last week, Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr. pointed out that the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has requested that Secretary of Defense James Mattis report back by 1 February 2019 on what amounts to “the most sweeping reevaluation of the military in 30 years, with tough questions for all four armed services but especially the Marine Corps.”

Freedberg identified SASC chairman Senator John McCain as the motivating element behind the report, which is part of the draft 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. It emphasizes the initiative to reorient the U.S. military away from its nearly two-decade long focus on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to prioritizing preparation for potential future Great Power conflict, as outlined in Mattis’s recently published National Defense Strategy. McCain sees this shift taking place far too slowly according to Freedberg, who hints that Mattis shares this concern.

While the SASC request addresses some technological issues, its real focus is on redefining the priorities, missions, and force structures of the armed forces (including special operations forces) in the context of the National Defense Strategy.

The changes it seeks are drastic. According to Freedberg, among the difficult questions it poses are:

  • Make the Marines a counterinsurgency force? [This would greatly help alleviate the U.S. Army’s current strategic conundrum]
  • Make the Army heavier, with fewer helicopters?
  • Refocus Special Operations against Russia and China?
  • Rely less on stealth aircraft and more on drones?

Each of these questions relates directly to trends associated with the multi-domain battle and operations concepts the U.S. armed services are currently jointly developing in response to threats posed by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military advances.

It is clear that the SASC believes that difficult choices with far-reaching consequences are needed to adequately prepare to meet these challenges. The armed services have been historically resistant to changes involving trade-offs, however, especially ones that touch on service budgets and roles and missions. It seems likely that more than a report will be needed to push through changes deemed necessary by the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman and the Secretary of Defense.

Read more of Freedberg’s article here.

The draft 2019 National Defense Authorization Act can be found here, and the SASC questions can be found in Section 1041 beginning on page 478.

U.S. Army Invests In Revitalizing Long Range Precision Fires Capabilities

U.S. Marines from the The 11th MEU fire their M777 Lightweight 155mm Howitzer during Exercise Alligator Dagger, Dec. 18, 2016. (U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Zachery C. Laning/Military.com)

In 2016, Michael Jacobson and Robert H. Scales amplified a warning that after years of neglect during the counterinsurgency war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was falling behind potential adversaries in artillery and long range precision fires capabilities. The U.S. Army had already taken note of the performance of Russian artillery in Ukraine, particularly the strike at Zelenopillya in 2014.

Since then, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have started working on a new Multi-Domain Battle concept aimed at countering the anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities of potential foes. In 2017, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley made rapid improvement in long range precision fires capabilities the top priority for the service’s modernization effort. It currently aims to field new field artillery, rocket, and missile weapons capable of striking at distances from 70 to 500 kilometers – double the existing ranges – within five years.

The value of ground-based long-range precision fires has been demonstrated recently by the effectiveness of U.S. artillery support, particularly U.S. Army and Marine Corps 155mm howitzers, for Iraqi security forces in retaking Mosul, Syrian Democratic Forces assaulting Raqaa, and in protection of Syrian Kurds being attacked by Russian mercenaries and Syrian regime forces.

According to Army historian Luke O’Brian, the Fiscal Year 2019 Defense budget includes funds to buy 28,737 XM1156 Precision Guided Kit (PGK) 155mm howitzer munitions, which includes replacements for the 6,269 rounds expended during Operation INHERENT RESOLVE. O’Brian also notes that the Army will also buy 2,162 M982 Excalibur 155mm rounds in 2019 and several hundred each in following years.

In addition, in an effort to reduce the dependence on potentially vulnerable Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite networks for precision fires capabilities, the Army has awarded a contract to BAE Systems to develop Precision Guided Kit-Modernization (PGK-M) rounds with internal navigational capacity.

While the numbers appear large at first glance, data on U.S. artillery expenditures in Operation DESERT STORM and IRAQI FREEDOM (also via Luke O’Brian) shows just how much the volume of long-range fires has changed just since 1991. For the U.S. at least, precision fires have indeed replaced mass fires on the battlefield.