Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Today’s edition of TDI Friday Read is a round-up of blog posts addressing various aspects of naval air power. The first set address Russian and Chinese aircraft carriers and recent carrier operations.
The last pair of posts discuss aspects of future U.S. naval air power and the F-35.
The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Debate Future Air Superiority
The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command has released a revised draft version of its Multi-Domain Battle operating concept, titled “Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century, 2025-2040.” Clearly a work in progress, the document is listed as version 1.0, dated October 2017, and as a draft and not for implementation. Sydney J. Freeberg, Jr. has an excellent run-down on the revision at Breaking Defense.
The update is the result of the initial round of work between the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force to redefine the scope of the multi-domain battlespace for the Joint Force. More work will be needed to refine the concept, but it shows remarkable cooperation in forging a common warfighting perspective between services long-noted for their independent thinking.
On a related note, Albert Palazzo, an Australian defense thinker and one of the early contributors to the Multi-Domain Battle concept, has published the first of a series of articles at The Strategy Bridge offering constructive criticism of the U.S. military’s approach to defining the concept. Palazzo warns that the U.S. may be over-emphasizing countering potential Russian and Chinese capabilities in its efforts and not enough on the broad general implications of long-range fires with global reach.
What difference can it make if those designing Multi-Domain Battle are acting on possibly the wrong threat diagnosis? Designing a solution for a misdiagnosed problem can result in the inculcation of a way of war unsuited for the wars of the future. One is reminded of the French Army during the interwar period. No one can accuse the French of not thinking seriously about war during these years, but, in the doctrine of the methodical battle, they got it wrong and misread the opportunities presented by mechanisation. There were many factors contributing to France’s defeat, but at their core was a misinterpretation of the art of the possible and a singular focus on a particular way of war. Shaping Multi-Domain Battle for the wrong problem may see the United States similarly sow the seeds for a military disaster that is avoidable.
He suggests that it would be wise for U.S. doctrine writers to take a more considered look at potential implications before venturing too far ahead with specific solutions.
Last week, Wesley Morgan reported in POLITICO about an internal readiness study recently conducted by the U.S. Army 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade Combat Team. As U.S. European Command’s only airborne unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade has been participating in exercises in the Baltic States and the Ukraine since 2014 to demonstrate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) resolve to counter potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe.
The experience the brigade gained working with Baltic and particularly Ukrainian military units that had engaged with Russian and Russian-backed Ukrainian Separatist forces has been sobering. Colonel Gregory Anderson, the 173rd Airborne Brigade commander, commissioned the study as a result. “The lessons we learned from our Ukrainian partners were substantial. It was a real eye-opener on the absolute need to look at ourselves critically,” he told POLITICO.
The study candidly assessed that the 173rd Airborne Brigade currently lacked “essential capabilities needed to accomplish its mission effectively and with decisive speed” against near-peer adversaries or sophisticated non-state actors. Among the capability gaps the study cited were
The report also stressed the vulnerability of the brigade to demonstrated Russian electronic warfare capabilities, which would likely deprive it of GPS navigation and targeting and satellite communications in combat. While the brigade has been purchasing electronic warfare gear of its own from over-the-counter suppliers, it would need additional specialized personnel to use the equipment.
As analyst Adrian Bonenberger commented, “The report is framed as being about the 173rd, but it’s really about more than the 173rd. It’s about what the Army needs to do… If Russia uses electronic warfare to jam the brigade’s artillery, and its anti-tank weapons can’t penetrate any of the Russian armor, and they’re able to confuse and disrupt and quickly overwhelm those paratroopers, we could be in for a long war.”
While the report is a wake-up call with regard to the combat readiness in the short-term, it also pointedly demonstrates the complexity of the strategic “identity crisis” that faces the U.S. Army in general. Many of the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s current challenges can be traced directly to the previous decade and a half of deployments conducting wide area security missions during counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The brigade’s perceived shortcomings for combined arms maneuver missions are either logical adaptations to the demands of counterinsurgency warfare or capabilities that atrophied through disuse.
The Army’s specific lack of readiness to wage combined arms maneuver warfare against potential peer or near-peer opponents in Europe can be remedied given time and resourcing in the short-term. This will not solve the long-term strategic conundrum the Army faces in needing to be prepared to fight conventional and irregular conflicts at the same time, however. Unless the U.S. is willing to 1) increase defense spending to balance force structure to the demands of foreign and military policy objectives, or 2) realign foreign and military policy goals with the available force structure, it will have to resort to patching up short-term readiness issues as best as possible and continue to muddle through. Given the current state of U.S. domestic politics, muddling through will likely be the default option unless or until the consequences of doing so force a change.
If you want to watch a breath-taking aerial maneuver by a Russian Sukhoi Su-35 Flanker-E fighter at the 2017 International Aviation and Space Show outside Moscow, click on the link below.
Действуют ли законы физики на Су-35? #МАКС2017 pic.twitter.com/przaI59G2l
— Вежливые люди (@vezhlivo) July 20, 2017
In his new book, On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle, Brett Friedman wrote:
[The] lack of strategic education has produced a United States military adrift. A cottage industry of shallow military thought attached itself to the Department of Defense like a parasite, selling “new” concepts that ranged from the specious (such as the RMA and effects-based operations), to the banal (like “hybrid” and “asymmetric” warfare), to the nonsensical (like 4th Generation Warfare and Gray Zone/Wars). An American officer corps, bereft of a solid understanding of strategic theory, seizes on concept after concept, seeking the next shiny silver bullet that it can fire to kill the specter of strategic disarray.
The U.S. military establishment’s general disregard and disinterest in theorizing about war and warfare is not new. Trevor Dupuy was also critical of the American approach to thinking about theory, especially its superficial appreciation for the value of military history. As he wrote in Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (1987):
In general, and with only a few significant exceptions, until very recently American military theorists have shown little interest in the concept of a comprehensive theory or science of combat. While most Americans who think about such things are strong believers in the application of science to war, they seem not to believe, paradoxically, that waging war can be scientific, but that it is an art rather than a science. Even scientists concerned with and involved in military affairs, who perhaps overemphasize the role of science in war, also tend to believe that war is a random process conducted by unpredictable human beings, and thus not capable of being fitted into a scientific theoretical structure. [p. 51]
Like Friedman, Dupuy placed a good deal of the blame for this on the way U.S. military officers are instructed. He saw a distinct difference in the approach taken in the U.S. versus the way it was used by the (then) Soviet Union. In a 1989 conference paper, he contended that:
The United States Armed Forces pay lip service to the importance of military history. Officers are urged to read military history, but given little guidance on how military history can be really useful to them. The fundamental difference between the Soviet approach and the American approach, as I see it, is that the American officer is invited (but not really encouraged) to be a military history dilettante. The Soviets seriously study, and use military history. Figure 1 summarizes the differences in approaches of the U.S. and the Soviet armed forces to military history analysis.
Dupuy devoted an entire chapter of Understanding War to the Soviet scientific approach to the study and application of warfare. There was a time when the mention of Soviet/Russian military theory would have produced patronizing smirks from American commentators. In truth, Russian military theorizing has a long and robust tradition; much deeper than its American counterpart. Given the recent success Russia has had in leveraging its national security capabilities to influence favorable geopolitical outcomes, it might be that those theories are useful after all. One need not subscribe to the Soviet scientific approach to warfare to acknowledge the value of a scientific approach to studying warfare.
We at the The Dupuy Institute love infoporn, those amazing, information-laden graphics that at once render dense, complex topics instantly understandable to the masses. Wired, Jalopnik, and Gizmodo have tags dedicated to sharing the best examples of it. Wiktionary defines infoporn as “Information which does not serve a purpose other than to hold the attention of its audience; information for information’s sake.” Perhaps so, but we at TDI feel that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Betsey Mason, a co-author of National Geographic‘s All Over The Map blog, has a profile of one of the greatest purveyors of infoporn, Charles Minard. Minard created what is considered by many to be the iconic work of information graphics, “Napoleon’s March,” or “the Minard graphic.” Created in 1869, Minard’s map depicts Imperial France’s doomed 1812-13 invasion of Russia. It traces the advance and catastrophic retreat of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee, while simultaneously showing its gradually dwindling manpower. At age 88, Minard conveyed an essential understanding of the subject with an imaginative combination of spacial and quantitative information that continues to resonate and astonish nearly a century and a half later.
As Mason writes,
Today Minard is revered in the data-visualization world, commonly mentioned alongside other greats such as John Snow, Florence Nightingale, and William Playfair. But Minard’s legacy has been almost completely dominated by his best-known work. In fact, it may be more accurate to say that Napoleon’s March is his only widely known work. Many fans of the March have likely never even seen the graphic that Minard originally paired it with: a visualization of Hannibal’s famous military campaign in 218 BC, as seen in the image [above].
Go check out the full article and marvel at the power of infoporn.
In the second week of July 2014, elements of four brigades of the Ukrainian Army Ground Forces were assembling near the village of Zelenopillya, along a highway leading north to the city of Luhansk, Ukraine. They were deploying along the border with Russia as part of an operation to cut the lines of supply to paramilitary forces of the separatist Luhansk People’s Republic operating in the Luhansk Oblast.
A combined Ukrainian Army and police operation in May and June had achieved considerable success against the Separatist forces and the government of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had declared a unilateral cease-fire in late June. Ukrainian forces resumed the offensive at the beginning of July and fighting broke out around the Luhansk International Airport on 9 July
At about 0430 on the morning of 11 July, a column of battalions from the Ukrainian 24th and 72nd Mechanized Brigades and 79th Airmobile Brigade was struck with an intense artillery barrage near Zelenopillya. The attack lasted only three minutes or so, but imagery posted online of the alleged aftermath reported a scene of devastation and scores of burned out vehicles (see below). Ukraine’s Defense Ministry admitted to 19 killed and 93 wounded in the attack, though other sources claimed up to 36 fatalities. No figures were released on the number of vehicles lost, but a survivor reported on social media that a battalion of the 79th Airmobile Brigade had been almost entirely destroyed.
Video of the aftermath of the attack on Zelenopillya. [LiveLeak]
The Ukrainians quickly identified the perpetrators as “terrorists” using short-range BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launch systems (MLRS) firing across the border from Russian territory, which was only nine kilometers from Zelenopillya. Independent analyses by various open-source intelligence groups amassed persuasive circumstantial evidence supporting the allegation. On 16 July, the U.S. government instituted a round of additional sanctions against Russia, including Russian arms manufacturers and leaders and governments of the Separatist People’s Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic.
Video of Russian MLRSs allegedly firing from the same location as the 11 July 2014 strike on Zelenopillya. [YouTube]
Western military analysts took notice of the Zelenopillya attack and similar strikes on Ukrainian forces through the summer of 2014. What caught their attention was the use of drones by the Separatists and their Russian enablers to target Ukrainian forces in near-real time. The Ukrainians had spotted Separatist drones as early as May, but their number and sophistication increased significantly in July, as Russian-made models were also identified.
Analysts also noted that the Zelenopillya rocket strike incorporated a Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) mix of air-dropped mines, top-down anti-tank submuntions, and thermobaric fuel/air explosives to achieve a devastating effect. They surmised the munitions were delivered by Tornado-G 122mm MLRS, an upgraded version of the BM-21 introduced into the Russian Army in 2011.
The sophistication and effectiveness of the attack, in combination with other technological advances in Russian armaments, and new tactics demonstrated in the conflict with Ukraine, prompted the U.S. Army Capabilities Integration Center, then led by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, to initiate the Russian New Generation Warfare Study to look at how these advances might influence future warfare. The advent of new long-range precision strike capabilities, high-quality air defense systems, maritime anti-access weapons, information operations and cyber warfare, combined with the adoption of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategies by potential adversaries led into the technologically-rooted Third Offset Strategy and development of the Army and U.S. Marine Corps’ new Multi-Domain Battle concepts.
As the U.S. Army and Marine Corps work together to define multi-domain battle, their joint concept for waging warfare in the near future, will they redesign their force structures? This seems possible for the Army at least; Congress has already ordered it to evaluate proposed changes. In the context of the ongoing debate over U.S. Army readiness, Daniel L. Davis, a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities at The National Interest, highlights one idea whose time may have come: the Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG).
The RSG concept is the brainchild of Douglas Macgregor (LTC, U.S. Army, retired), a Gulf War combat veteran, military thinker, and author who has acquired a reputation as a gadfly for his forceful critiques of U.S. land warfare doctrine and recent combat operations. Macgregor has been an outspoken advocate since the 1990s for reorganizing the Army to fully exploit the advantages promised by the Revolution in Military Affairs and maneuver warfare.
Congress Gets Involved
Macgregor’s arguments have received renewed attention following sobering assessments of the implications of Russia’s successful military operations in the Ukraine. He gained a powerful patron after briefing Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in January 2015. McCain subsequently arranged for Macgregor to brief other senators and Congressional staff on his assessments of relative U.S. and Russian military capabilities as well as the RSG concept.
In January 2016, the National Commission on the Future of the Army, created by the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, recommended that Congress mandate that the Army assess alternative combat force design and operational concepts, including the RSG. Section 1091 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Barack Obama in October 2016, directed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the Army to separately report on “alternative Army operational concepts and organizational designs, known as the Reconnaissance Strike Group.” (It is not clear from this wording if this applies only to the RSG or to other concepts and designs as well.)
In consultation with the United States European Command commander, the JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff are each to appraise operational merits, feasible force mix under programmed end-strength, estimated costs for assessed potential force structure changes, and strategic force sufficiency and risks. Their findings are then to be each independently reviewed and evaluated by a Federally Funded Research and Development Center of their choice. The final reports, independent reviews, and JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff recommendations are to be submitted to the Senate and House armed services committees no later than October 2017.
The RSG and Multi-Domain Battle
Since the passage of the 2017 NDAA, the Army has publicly unveiled its multi-domain battle operational concept and committed to developing it in conjunction with the Marine Corps. What impact this may have on the RSG concept evaluation is not clear. On the face of it, the RSG appears tailor-made for multi-domain battle. However, while Macgregor was lobbying on its behalf in 2015, LTG H. R. McMaster, then commander of the U.S. Army’s Capabilities Integration Center (now currently the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs) was reported to be a skeptic. McMaster appeared to disagree with Macgregor’s assertions that the current Army Brigade Combat Team structures were too heavy and ponderous to fight effectively in hybrid warfare environments. He suggested that Macgregor’s proposed RSGs were insufficiently manned to conduct vitally important stabilization operations and were too lightly supported logistically.
These disagreements were likely more apparent than real. McMaster’s subsequent emphasis on cross-domain fires as one solution to the challenges of Russian military capabilities and anti-access/area denial environments sound strikingly similar to Macgregor’s “all arms/all effects” RSG concepts. The capabilities Macgregor advocates and claims for the RSG comport very closely to the current conceptualization of multi-domain battle. If the Army does not adopt the RSG, it will probably develop come up with very similar.
That is not to say that multi-domain battle and the RSG do not face some serious opposition within the Army. The changes they portend will have serious repercussions on the armor and airborne branches and more traditional warfighting concepts. I will take a closer look at the RSG concept and its possible implications in my next post.
U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and U.S. Marine General Robert Neller recently signed a joint white paper to be sent for review by Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr.,outlining the collective views of their services on what has been termed “multi-domain battle.” The Army and Marine Corps have also established a joint task force to develop tactics applicable to the concept.
Multi-domain battle is a concept that has evolved as a response to challenges posed by anti-access/area-denial capabilities fielded by potential U.S. military rivals, such as Russia, China, and Iran. Its proponents argue that in it’s broadest application, the concept seeks to expand the principles of combined arms tactics beyond the traditional air/sea/land service boundaries and apply them to joint operations and newly emerging domains such as cyber warfare and information operations. Trevor Dupuy postulated that the employment of combined arms on the battlefield was one solution armies have historically adopted to adapt to increases in weapon lethality over time.
When the Army officially introduced the concept last year, General Milley said “This is pretty much the beginning of a new way of thinking.” General Neller echoed Milley’s comments. “We’ve been shoulder-and-shoulder on multi-domain battle and land concepts. We can’t afford to waste any resources on duplication when it’s not necessary. We see the problem the same way; we have the same conclusions.” U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) commander, U.S. Navy Admiral Harry B. Harris commented last fall that
We need a degree of jointness, in my opinion, in which no one military service dominates and no domain has a fixed boundary. A combatant commander must be able to create effects from any single domain to target in every domain in order to fight tonight and win. [I need] a true land-based cross-domain capability [that] offers us an integrated joint force capable of deterring rising powers by denying them the domains in which they seek to operate.
U.S. Army, Pacific (USARPC) is currently working with USPACOM to finalize exercises scheduled for this spring to test multi-domain battle warfighting concepts. Similar exercises are being planned for Europe in 2018.
There is a sense of urgency regarding multi-domain battle in the Pacific, given ongoing tensions with North Korea and recent comments by Trump Administration officials regarding the South China Sea. USARPC commander General Robert Brown recently stated “This isn’t something 10 years from now. If Kim Jong-un goes south tomorrow, I will need some of this tomorrow.'”
Even as the Army and Marine Corps move forward with integrating multi-domain battle into their combat doctrines, the concept is not without its discontents. Aside from Admiral Harris, the Navy has had little to say about multi-domain battle. The U.S. Air Force has also expressed skepticism that U.S. land combat forces will reduce their dependence on air power anytime soon. When the Army raised concerns last year about capabilities Russian forces had demonstrated in the Ukraine, some in its sisters services and the national security community accused it of alarmism in support of its lobbying for an increased share of the defense budget.
Whether mutli-domain battle survives as an organic concept, it seems to be spurring useful thinking about warfare in the near future. In addition to stimulating new technological research and development (Third Offset Strategy), it is leading to new ways at looking at command and control, planning, and notions of “jointness.”
Earlier this week, Björn Stritzel, a journalist who covers the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa for the German newspaper Bild, reported via Twitter that Daesh claimed to have destroyed a Russian T-90A tank near the town of Khanaser in northwest Syria. The claim, which has not been officially confirmed, was made through the release of a Daesh propaganda video which shows what appears to be a T-90A with a fire steadily burning from the commander’s cuppola and machine gun ammunition “cooking off” in the flames. (Video at the link below.)
@bjoernstritzel pic.twitter.com/ENkFOQ0ha7
— marksmith (@Dyrti_Fly) January 23, 2017
The tank was alleged to have been struck by an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), though by which type of missile and the circumstances are as yet unknown.T-90s are equipped with the latest generation of reactive armor and active protection systems.
The vehicle is flying a flag attributed to the Fatima Brigade (Liwa Fatemiyoun), a unit recruited from Afghan Shi’a but trained and equipped by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Fatima Brigade was alleged to have been sent to fight in Syria in 2014, although Iran denies this. It is believed that Russia and Iran have equipped non-Syrian loyalist fighters with their latest generation of weapons, including the T-90A.
UPDATE: Twitter user Jonh pointed out that the T-90A is not the same as the newer T-14 Armata. Jonh is correct and the post has been edited to correct the mistake. I regret any confusion. — Shawn Woodford