Tag tactics

Drones And The U.S. Navy

An X-47 Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) drone lands on the USS Theodore Roosevelt during a test in 2014. [Breaking Defense]

Preamble & Warning (P&W): Please forgive me, this is an acronym heavy post.

In May 2013, the U.S. Navy (USN) reached milestones by having a “drone,” or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) land and take-off from an aircraft carrier. This was a significant achievement in aviation, and heralded an era of combat UAVs (UCAV) being integrated into carrier air wings (CVW). This vehicle, the X-47B, was built by Northrup Grumman, under the concept of a carrier-based stealthy strike vehicle.

Ultimately, after almost three years, their decision was announced:

On 1 February 2016, after many delays over whether the [Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike] UCLASS would specialize in strike or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) roles, it was reported that a significant portion of the UCLASS effort would be directed to produce a Super Hornet-sized carrier-based aerial refueling tanker as the Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System (CBARS), with ‘a little ISR’ and some capabilities for communications relay, and strike capabilities put off to a future version of the aircraft. In July 2016, it was officially named ‘MQ-25A Stingray’.

The USN, who had just proven that they can add a stealthy UCAV to carrier flight deck operations, decided to put this new capability on the shelf, and instead refocus the efforts of the aerospace defense industry on a brand new requirement, namely …

For mission tanking, the threshold requirement is offloading 14,000 lb. of fuel to aviation assets at 500 nm from the ship, thereby greatly extending the range of the carrier air wing, including the Lockheed Martin F-35C and Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet. The UAV must also be able to integrate with the Nimitz-class carriers, being able to safely launch and recover and not take up more space than is allocated for storage, maintenance and repairs.

Boeing has fashioned part of St. Louis Lambert International Airport into an aircraft carrier deck, complete with a mock catapult system. [Boeing]

Why did they do this?

The Pentagon apparently made this program change in order to address the Navy’s expected fighter shortfall by directing funds to buy additional F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and accelerate purchases and development of the F-35C. Having the CBARS as the first carrier-based UAV provides a less complex bridge to the future F/A-XX, should it be an autonomous strike platform. It also addresses the carriers’ need for an organic refueling aircraft, proposed as a mission for the UCLASS since 2014, freeing up the 20–30 percent of Super Hornets performing the mission in a more capable and cost effective manner than modifying the F-35, V-22 Osprey, and E-2D Hawkeye, or bringing the retired S-3 Viking back into service.

Notice within this quote the supposition that the F/A-XX would be an autonomous strike platform. This program was originally a USN-specific program to build a next-generation platform to perform both strike and air superiority missions, much like the F/A-18 aircraft are “swing role.” The US Air Force (USAF) had a separate program for a next generation air superiority aircraft called the F-X. These programs were combined by the Department of Defense (DoD) into the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. We can tell from the name of this program that it is clearly focused on the air superiority mission, as compared to the balance of strike and superiority, implicit in the USN program.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), wrote a letter to then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, on 2015-03-24, stating, “I strongly believe that the Navy’s first operational unmanned combat aircraft must be capable of performing a broad range of missions in contested environments as part of the carrier air wing, including precision strike as well as [ISR].” This is effectively an endorsement of the X-47B, and quite unlike the MQ-25.

I’m in agreement with Senator McCain on this. I think that a great deal of experience could have been gained by continuing the development and test of the X-47B, and possibly deploying the vehicle to the fleet.

The Navy hinted at the possibility of using the UCLASS in air-to-air engagements as a ‘flying missile magazine’ to supplement the F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-35C Lightning II as a type of ‘robotic wingman.’ Its weapons bay could be filled with AIM-120 AMRAAMs and be remotely operated by an E-2D Hawkeye or F-35C flight leader, using their own sensors and human judgment to detect, track, and direct the UAV to engage an enemy aircraft. The Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA) concept gives a common picture of the battle space to multiple air platforms through data-links, where any aircraft could fire on a target in their range that is being tracked by any sensor, so the forward deployed UCLASS would have its missiles targeted by another controller. With manned-unmanned teaming for air combat, a dedicated unmanned supersonic fighter may not be developed, as the greater cost of high-thrust propulsion and an airframe of similar size to a manned fighter would deliver a platform with comparable operating costs and still without an ability to engage on its own.

Indeed, the German Luftwaffe has completed an air combat concept study, stating that the fighter of the 2040’s will be a “stealthy drone herder”:

Interestingly the twin-engine, twin-tail stealth design would be a twin-seat design, according to Alberto Gutierrez, Head of Eurofighter Programme, Airbus DS. The second crewmember may be especially important for the FCAS concept of operations, which would see it operate in a wider battle network, potentially as a command and control asset or UCAV/UAV mission commander.

Instead, the USN has decided to banish the drones into the tanker and light ISR roles, to focus on having more Super Hornets available, and move towards integrating the F-35C into the CVW. I believe that this is a missed opportunity to move ahead to get direct front line experience in operating UCAVs as part of combat carrier operations.

Russian Body Count: Update

Map of the reported incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian forces near Deir Ezzor, Syria on 7 February 2018 [Spiegel Online]

An article by Christoph Reuter in Spiegel Online adds some new details to the story of the incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian mercenary forces near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on 7 February 2018. Based on interviews with witnesses and participants, the article paints a different picture than the one created by previous media reports.

According to Spiegel Online, early on 7 February, a 250-strong force comprised of Syrian tribal militia, Afghan and Iraqi fighters, and troops from the Syrian Army 4th Division attempted to cross from the west bank of the Euphrates River to the east, south of a Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) base at Khusham. The Euphrates constitutes a “deconfliction” line established by the United States and Russia separating the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from those of the U.S.-supported SDF. The Syrian force was detected and U.S. combat forces fired warning shots, which persuaded the Syrians to withdraw.

After dark that evening, the Syrian force, reinforced to about 500 fighters, moved several kilometers north and attempted to cross the Euphrates a second time, this time successfully. As the force advanced through the village of Marrat, it was again spotted and engaged by U.S. air and artillery assets after an alleged 20-30 tank rounds impacted within 500 meters of the SDF headquarters in Khusham. The U.S. employed field artillery, drones, combat helicopters, and AC-130 gunships to devastating effect.

Speigel Online reported that U.S. forces also simultaneously engaged a force of approximately 400 pro-Assad Syrian tribal militia and Shi’a fighters advancing north from the village of Tabiya, south of Khusham. A small contingent of Russian mercenaries, stationed in Tabiya but not supporting the Syrian/Shi’a fighters, was hit by U.S. fire. This second Syrian force, which the U.S. had allowed to remain on the east side of the Euphrates as long as it remained peaceful and small, was allegedly attacked again on 9 February.

According to Spigel Online’s sources, “more than 200 of the attackers died, including around 80 Syrian soldiers with the 4th Division, around 100 Iraqis and Afghans and around 70 tribal fighters, mostly with the al-Baqir militia.” Around 10-20 Russian mercenaries were killed as well, although Russian state media has confirmed only nine deaths.

This account of the fighting and casualty distribution is in stark contrast to the story being reported by Western media, which has alleged tens or hundreds of Russians killed:

[A] completely different version of events has gained traction — disseminated at first by Russian nationalists like Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, and then by others associated with the Wagner unit. According to those accounts, many more Russians had been killed in the battle — 100, 200, 300 or as many as 600. An entire unit, it was said, had been wiped out and the Kremlin wanted to cover it up. Recordings of alleged fighters even popped up apparently confirming these horrendous losses.

It was a version that sounded so plausible that even Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg picked it up. The fact that the government in Moscow at first didn’t want to confirm any deaths and then spoke of five “Russian citizens” killed and later, nebulously, of “dozens of injured,” some of whom had died, only seemed to make the version of events seem more credible.

Spiegel Online implies that the motive behind the account being propagated by sources connected to the mercenaries stems from the “claim they are being used as cannon fodder, are being kept quiet and are poorly paid. For them to now accuse the Kremlin of trying to cover up the fact that Russians were killed — by the Americans, of all people — hits President Vladimir Putin’s government in a weak spot: its credibility.”

The Spiegel Online account and casualty tally — 250 Syrian/Shi’a killed out of approximately 900 engaged, with 10-20 Russian mercenaries killed by collateral fire — seems a good deal more plausible than the figures mentioned in the initial Western media reports.

Comparing the RAND Version of the 3:1 Rule to Real-World Data

Chuliengcheng. In a glorious death eternal life. (Battle of Yalu River, 1904) [Wikimedia Commons]

[The article below is reprinted from the Winter 2010 edition of The International TNDM Newsletter.]

Comparing the RAND Version of the 3:1 Rule to Real-World Data
Christopher A. Lawrence

For this test, The Dupuy Institute took advan­tage of two of its existing databases for the DuWar suite of databases. The first is the Battles Database (BaDB), which covers 243 battles from 1600 to 1900. The sec­ond is the Division-level Engagement Database (DLEDB), which covers 675 division-level engagements from 1904 to 1991.

The first was chosen to provide a historical con­text for the 3:1 rule of thumb. The second was chosen so as to examine how this rule applies to modern com­bat data.

We decided that this should be tested to the RAND version of the 3:1 rule as documented by RAND in 1992 and used in JICM [Joint Integrated Contingency Model] (with SFS [Situational Force Scoring]) and other mod­els. This rule, as presented by RAND, states: “[T]he famous ‘3:1 rule,’ according to which the attacker and defender suffer equal fractional loss rates at a 3:1 force ratio if the battle is in mixed terrain and the defender enjoys ‘prepared’ defenses…”

Therefore, we selected out all those engage­ments from these two databases that ranged from force ratios of 2.5 to 1 to 3.5 to 1 (inclusive). It was then a simple matter to map those to a chart that looked at attackers losses compared to defender losses. In the case of the pre-1904 cases, even with a large database (243 cases), there were only 12 cases of combat in that range, hardly statistically significant. That was because most of the combat was at odds ratios in the range of .50-to-1 to 2.00-to-one.

The count of number of engagements by odds in the pre-1904 cases:

As the database is one of battles, then usually these are only joined at reasonably favorable odds, as shown by the fact that 88 percent of the battles occur between 0.40 and 2.50 to 1 odds. The twelve pre-1904 cases in the range of 2.50 to 3.50 are shown in Table 1.

If the RAND version of the 3:1 rule was valid, one would expect that the “Percent per Day Loss Ratio” (the last column) would hover around 1.00, as this is the ratio of attacker percent loss rate to the defender per­cent loss rate. As it is, 9 of the 12 data points are notice­ably below 1 (below 0.40 or a 1 to 2.50 exchange rate). This leaves only three cases (25%) with an exchange rate that would support such a “rule.”

If we look at the simple ratio of actual losses (vice percent losses), then the numbers comes much closer to parity, but this is not the RAND interpreta­tion of the 3:1 rule. Six of the twelve numbers “hover” around an even exchange ratio, with six other sets of data being widely off that central point. “Hover” for the rest of this discussion means that the exchange ratio ranges from 0.50-to-1 to 2.00-to 1.

Still, this is early modern linear combat, and is not always representative of modern war. Instead, we will examine 634 cases in the Division-level Database (which consists of 675 cases) where we have worked out the force ratios. While this database covers from 1904 to 1991, most of the cases are from WWII (1939- 1945). Just to compare:

As such, 87% of the cases are from WWII data and 10% of the cases are from post-WWII data. The engagements without force ratios are those that we are still working on as The Dupuy Institute is always ex­panding the DLEDB as a matter of routine. The specific cases, where the force ratios are between 2.50 and 3.50 to 1 (inclusive) are shown in Table 2:

This is a total of 98 engagements at force ratios of 2.50 to 3.50 to 1. It is 15 percent of the 634 engage­ments for which we had force ratios. With this fairly significant representation of the overall population, we are still getting no indication that the 3:1 rule, as RAND postulates it applies to casualties, does indeed fit the data at all. Of the 98 engagements, only 19 of them demonstrate a percent per day loss ratio (casualty exchange ratio) between 0.50-to-1 and 2-to-1. This is only 19 percent of the engagements at roughly 3:1 force ratio. There were 72 percent (71 cases) of those engage­ments at lower figures (below 0.50-to-1) and only 8 percent (cases) are at a higher exchange ratio. The data clearly was not clustered around the area from 0.50-to- 1 to 2-to-1 range, but was well to the left (lower) of it.

Looking just at straight exchange ratios, we do get a better fit, with 31 percent (30 cases) of the figure ranging between 0.50 to 1 and 2 to 1. Still, this fig­ure exchange might not be the norm with 45 percent (44 cases) lower and 24 percent (24 cases) higher. By definition, this fit is 1/3rd the losses for the attacker as postulated in the RAND version of the 3:1 rule. This is effectively an order of magnitude difference, and it clearly does not represent the norm or the center case.

The percent per day loss exchange ratio ranges from 0.00 to 5.71. The data tends to be clustered at the lower values, so the high values are very much outliers. The highest percent exchange ratio is 5.71, the second highest is 4.41, the third highest is 2.92. At the other end of the spectrum, there are four cases where no losses were suffered by one side and seven where the exchange ratio was .01 or less. Ignoring the “N/A” (no losses suffered by one side) and the two high “outliers (5.71 and 4.41), leaves a range of values from 0.00 to 2.92 across 92 cases. With an even dis­tribution across that range, one would expect that 51 percent of them would be in the range of 0.50-to-1 and 2.00-to-1. With only 19 percent of the cases being in that range, one is left to conclude that there is no clear correlation here. In fact, it clearly is the opposite effect, which is that there is a negative relationship. Not only is the RAND construct unsupported, it is clearly and soundly contradicted with this data. Furthermore, the RAND construct is theoretically a worse predictor of casualty rates than if one randomly selected a value for the percentile exchange rates between the range of 0 and 2.92. We do believe this data is appropriate and ac­curate for such a test.

As there are only 19 cases of 3:1 attacks fall­ing in the even percentile exchange rate range, then we should probably look at these cases for a moment:

One will note, in these 19 cases, that the aver­age attacker casualties are way out of line with the av­erage for the entire data set (3.20 versus 1.39 or 3.20 versus 0.63 with pre-1943 and Soviet-doctrine attack­ers removed). The reverse is the case for the defenders (3.12 versus 6.08 or 3.12 versus 5.83 with pre-1943 and Soviet-doctrine attackers removed). Of course, of the 19 cases, 2 are pre-1943 cases and 7 are cases of Soviet-doctrine attackers (in fact, 8 of the 14 cases of the So­viet-doctrine attackers are in this selection of 19 cases). This leaves 10 other cases from the Mediterranean and ETO (Northwest Europe 1944). These are clearly the unusual cases, outliers, etc. While the RAND 3:1 rule may be applicable for the Soviet-doctrine offensives (as it applies to 8 of the 14 such cases we have), it does not appear to be applicable to anything else. By the same token, it also does not appear to apply to virtually any cases of post-WWII combat. This all strongly argues that not only is the RAND construct not proven, but it is indeed clearly not correct.

The fact that this construct also appears in So­viet literature, but nowhere else in US literature, indi­cates that this is indeed where the rule was drawn from. One must consider the original scenarios run for the RSAC [RAND Strategy Assessment Center] wargame were “Fulda Gap” and Korean War scenarios. As such, they were regularly conducting bat­tles with Soviet attackers versus Allied defenders. It would appear that the 3:1 rule that they used more closely reflected the experiences of the Soviet attackers in WWII than anything else. Therefore, it may have been a fine representation for those scenarios as long as there was no US counterattacking or US offensives (and assuming that the Soviet Army of the 1980s performed at the same level as in did in the 1940s).

There was a clear relative performance difference between the Soviet Army and the German Army in World War II (see our Capture Rate Study Phase I & II and Measuring Human Factors in Combat for a detailed analysis of this).[1] It was roughly in the order of a 3-to-1-casualty exchange ratio. Therefore, it is not surprising that Soviet writers would create analytical tables based upon an equal percentage exchange of losses when attacking at 3:1. What is surprising, is that such a table would be used in the US to represent US forces now. This is clearly not a correct application.

Therefore, RAND’s SFS, as currently con­structed, is calibrated to, and should only be used to represent, a Soviet-doctrine attack on first world forces where the Soviet-style attacker is clearly not properly trained and where the degree of performance difference is similar to that between the Germans and Soviets in 1942-44. It should not be used for US counterattacks, US attacks, or for any forces of roughly comparable ability (regardless of whether Soviet-style doctrine or not). Furthermore, it should not be used for US attacks against forces of inferior training, motivation and co­hesiveness. If it is, then any such tables should be ex­pected to produce incorrect results, with attacker losses being far too high relative to the defender. In effect, the tables unrealistically penalize the attacker.

As JICM with SFS is now being used for a wide variety of scenarios, then it should not be used at all until this fundamental error is corrected, even if that use is only for training. With combat tables keyed to a result that is clearly off by an order of magnitude, then the danger of negative training is high.

NOTES

[1] Capture Rate Study Phases I and II Final Report (The Dupuy Institute, March 6, 2000) (2 Vols.) and Measuring Human Fac­tors in Combat—Part of the Enemy Prisoner of War Capture Rate Study (The Dupuy Institute, August 31, 2000). Both of these reports are available through our web site.

TDI Friday Read: Links You May Have Missed, 02 March 2018

We are trying something new today, well, new for TDI anyway. This edition of TDI Friday Read will offer a selection of links to items we think may be of interest to our readers. We found them interesting but have not had the opportunity to offer observations or commentary about them. Hopefully you may find them useful or interesting as well.

The story of the U.S. attack on a force of Russian mercenaries and Syrian pro-regime troops near Deir Ezzor, Syria, last month continues to have legs.

And a couple stories related to naval warfare…

Finally, proving that there are, or soon will be, podcasts about everything, there is one about Napoleon Bonaparte and his era: The Age of Napoleon Podcast. We have yet to give it a listen, but if anyone else has, let us know what you think.

Have a great weekend.

Aerial Combined Arms

In a previous post, I quoted Jules Hurst’s comparison between the medieval knights of old and modern day fighter pilots. His point was that the future of aerial combat will feature more combined arms. This I agree with; the degree of specialization that will be seen in the future will increase, although our ability to predict what this will be is uncertain. Hurst’s second point, that today’s aerial combat is akin to jousting and jovial knights looking to independently take down foes, I do not agree with at all.

Last night, I watched the History Channel documentary “Dogfights of Desert Storm,” a wonderful summary of several selected dogfights from the first Gulf War (1991, US and coalition vs Iraq), which included:

1. A furball between an unarmed EF-111 and a Mirage F1. Eventually, an F-15C came to the rescue, but the EF-111 crew was apparently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for its actions that day. Ultimately, the F1 hit the ground, and the F-15C got the credit.

2. A complex dogfight between a flight of two F-15Cs against 2 Mig-25s and 2 Mig-29s. This was a hairy affair, with lots of maneuver. The MiG-25s were able to decoy many heat-seeking AIM-9’s, so the AIM-7 radar guided missiles needed to be used to shoot them down.

[As previously reported, an F/A-18F had problems trying to down a Syrian Su-22 Fitter with an AIM-9 missile due to the effectiveness of Russian-made flares and had to resort to an AIM-120 radar-guided missile. Also a strategy from Soviet days, the preference to carry more than one type of seeker types seems to be quite good advice. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has traditionally adhered to the concept of a beyond visual range (BVR) medium range, radar guided missile, the AIM-7 and the AIM-120 successor. This coupled with the short range AIM-9 infrared missile. The gap that this leaves is the long range, infrared guided missile.]

3. A well-run dogfight pitting a flight of four F-15Cs vs. a flight of four F-1s. Of the F-1s, one turned back to base, either for fear, prudence, or mechanical difficulty, it is difficult to say. The three other F-1s were all downed by AIM-7 missiles, fired at beyond visual range. What was noted about this engagement was the patience of the USAF flight leader, who did not immediately lock-on to the F-1s, in order to avoid triggering their radar warning receivers (RWR), and giving up the element of surprise by notifying them of the impending attack.

The statistic given was that 60% of the aerial victories in the entire conflict were from BVR.

The coalition’s triumph was an emphatic boost for current air war strategy. Multiple aircraft with specific roles working on concert to achieve victory. Air war in 1990, as it is today, is a team sport.” Multiple weapons disrupted the Iraqi capability to deal with it. It was information overload. They could not deal with the multiple successive strikes, and the fact that their radars went offline, and their command and control was shut down … jamming … deception – it was like having essentially a ‘war nervous breakdown’. (emphasis added).

Larry Pitts, a USAF F-15C Eagle pilot (retired), said

aerial victory against an enemy airplane was a career highlight for me. It’s something that I’ll never be able to beat, but you know in my mind, I did what any fighter pilot would have done if any enemy fighter had been put in front of him. I relied on my training, I engaged the airplane, protected my wingman as he protected me, and came out of it alive.

One key element in all of the combat recounted by the USAF pilots was the presence of airborne early warning aircraft, at the time the E-3C Sentry. Indeed, this form of combined arms—which is effectively an augmentation of a fighter pilot’s sensors—has been around for a surprisingly long time.

  • In February 1944, the United States Navy (USN), under Project Cadillac, equipped a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber with an airborne radar, and the resulting TBM-3W entered service with the Airborne Early Warning (AEW) mission.
  • In June 1949, a joint program with the USN and USAF resulted in the EC-121 Warning Star, a conversion of a Lockheed L1094 Super Constellation airliner. This aircraft entered service to reinforce the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, across the Arctic in Canada and Alaska to detect and defend against Soviet Air Force bombers flying over the pole. This was also the plane that played the “AWACS” role in Vietnam.
  • In January 1964, the E-2 Hawkeye was introduced into service with the USN, which required a carrier-based AWACS platform.
  • In March 1977, the first E-3 Sentry was delivered to the USAF by Boeing.

Indeed, the chart below illustrates the wide variety of roles and platforms flown by the USAF, in their combined arms operations.

[Source: Command: Modern Air & Naval Operations]

In addition, the USAF just released its FY2019 budget, fresh from budget action in Congress. This had a few surprises, including the planned retirement of both the B-1B and the B-2A in favor of the upcoming B-21 Raider, and continuing to enhance and improve the B-52. This is a very old platform, having been introduced in 1955. This does match a shift in thinking by the USAF, from stating that all of the fourth generation aircraft (non-stealthy) are entirely obsolete, to one in which they continue to play a role, as a follow-up force, perhaps in role of a “distant archer” with stand-off weapons. I previously discussed the Talon Hate pod enabling network communications between the F-22 and F-15C systems.

More on this to come!

Russian Army Experiments With Using Tanks For Indirect Fire

Russian Army T-90S main battle tanks. [Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation]

Finnish freelance writer and military blogger Petri Mäkelä spotted an interesting announcement from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: the Combined-Arms Army of the Western Military District is currently testing the use of main battle tanks for indirect fire at the Pogonovo test range in the Voronezh region.

According to Major General Timur Trubiyenko, First Deputy Commander of the Western Military District Combined-Arms Army, in the course of company exercises, 200 tankers will test a combination of platoon direct and indirect fire tactics against simulated armored, lightly armored, and concealed targets up to 12 kilometers away.

Per Mäkelä, the exercise will involve T-90S main battle tanks using their 2A46 125 mm/L48 smoothbore cannons. According to the Ministry of Defense, more than 1,000 Russian Army soldiers, employing over 100 weapons systems and special equipment items, will participate in the exercises between 19 and 22 February 2018.

Tanks have been used on occasion to deliver indirect fire in World War II and Korea, but it is not a commonly used modern tactic. The use of modern fire control systems, guided rounds, and drone spotters might offer the means to make this more useful.

Aerial Drone Tactics, 2025-2050

[Image: War On The Rocks.]

My previous post outlined the potential advantages and limitations of current and future drone technology. The real utility of drones in future warfare may lie in a tactic that is both quite old and new, swarming. “‘This [drone swarm concept] goes all the way back to the tactics of Attila the Hun,’ says Randall Steeb, senior engineer at the Rand Corporation in the US. ‘A light attack force that can defeat more powerful and sophisticated opponents. They come out of nowhere, attack from all sides and then disappear, over and over.'”

In order to be effective, Mr. Steeb’s concept would require drones to be able to speed away from their adversary, or be able to hide. The Huns are described “as preferring to defeat their enemies by deceit, surprise attacks, and cutting off supplies. The Huns brought large numbers of horses to use as replacements and to give the impression of a larger army on campaign.” Also, prior to problems caused to the Roman Empire by the Huns under Attila (~400 CE), another group of people, the Scythians, used similar tactics much earlier, as mentioned by Herodotus, (~800 BCE). “With great mobility, the Scythians could absorb the attacks of more cumbersome foot soldiers and cavalry, just retreating into the steppes. Such tactics wore down their enemies, making them easier to defeat.” These tactics were also used by the Parthians, resulted in the Roman defeat under Crassis at the Battle of Carrahe, 53 BCE. Clearly, maneuver is as old as warfare itself.

Indeed, others have their own ancient analogies.

Today, fighter pilots approach warfare like a questing medieval knight. They search for opponents with similar capabilities and defeat them by using technologically superior equipment or better application of individual tactics and techniques. For decades, leading air forces nurtured this dynamic by developing expensive, manned air superiority fighters. This will all soon change. Advances in unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will turn fighter pilots from noble combatants to small-unit leaders and drive the development of new aerial combined arms tactics.

Drone Swarms: A Game Changer?

We can see that the new technologies come along, and they enable a new look at warfare, and often enable a new implementation of ancient tactics. There are some who claim that this changes the game, and indeed may change the fundamental nature of war.

Peter Singer, an expert on future warfare at the New America think-tank, is in no doubt. ‘What we have is a series of technologies that change the game. They’re not science fiction. They raise new questions. What’s possible? What’s proper?’ Mr. Singer is talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics and big-data analytics. Together they will produce systems and weapons with varying degrees of autonomy, from being able to work under human supervision to ‘thinking’ for themselves. The most decisive factor on the battlefield of the future may be the quality of each side’s algorithms. Combat may speed up so much that humans can no longer keep up. Frank Hoffman, a fellow of the National Defense University who coined the term ‘hybrid warfare’, believes that these new technologies have the potential not just to change the character of war but even possibly its supposedly immutable nature as a contest of wills. For the first time, the human factors that have defined success in war, ‘will, fear, decision-making and even the human spark of genius, may be less evident,’ he says.” (emphasis added).

Drones are highly capable, and with increasing autonomy, they themselves may be immune to fear. Technology has been progressing step by step to alter the character of war. Think of the Roman soldier and his personal experience in warfare up close vs. the modern sniper. They each have a different experience in warfare, and fear manifests itself in different ways. Unless we create and deploy full autonomous systems, with no human in or on the loop, there will be an opportunity for fear and confusion by the human mind to creep into martial matters. An indeed, with so much new technology, friction of some sort is almost assured.

I’m not alone in this assessment. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said “You go all the way back to Thucydides who wrote the first history and it was of a war and he said it’s fear and honor and interest and those continue to this day. The fundamental nature of war is unchanging. War is a human social phenomenon.”

Swarming and Information Dominance

Indeed, the notion of the importance of information dominance plays upon one of the most important fundamental aspects of warfare: surprise. There are many synonyms for surprise, one of the most popular these days is situational awareness (SA). In a recent assessment of trends in air-to-air combat for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), Dr. John Stillion described the impact of SA.

Aerial combat over the past two decades, though relatively rare, continues to demonstrate the importance of superior SA. The building blocks, however, of superior SA, information acquisition and information denial, seem to be increasingly associated with sensors, signature reduction, and networks. Looking forward, these changes have greatly increased the proportion of BVR [Beyond Visual Range] engagements and likely reduced the utility of traditional fighter aircraft attributes, such as speed and maneuverability, in aerial combat. At the same time, they seem to have increased the importance of other attributes.

Stillion, famous for his RAND briefing on the F-35, proposes an interesting concept of operations for air-to-air combat, centered on larger aircraft with bigger sensor apertures, and subsonic UCAS fighters in the “front line.” He’s got a good video to illustrate how this concept would work against an adversary.

[I]t is important to acknowledge that all of the foregoing discussion is based on certain assumptions plus analysis of past trends, and the future of aerial combat might continue to belong to fast, agile aircraft. The alternative vision of future aerial combat presented in Chapter 5 relies heavily on robust LoS [Line of Sight] data links to enable widely distributed aircraft to efficiently share information and act in concert to achieve superior SA and combat effectiveness. Should the links be degraded or denied, the concept put forward here would be difficult or impossible to implement.

Therefore, in the near term, one of the most important capabilities to enable is a secure battle network. This will be required for remotely piloted and autonomous system alike, and this will be the foundation of information dominance – the acquisition of information for use by friendly forces, and the denial of information to an adversary.

Air Power and Drones, 2025-2050

[Credit: Financial Times]

In the recently issued 2018 National Defense Strategy, the United States acknowledged that “long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department [of Defense], and require both increased and sustained investment, because of the magnitude of the threats they pose to U.S. security and prosperity today, and the potential for those threats to increase in the future.”

The strategy statement lists technologies that will be focused upon:

The drive to develop new technologies is relentless, expanding to more actors with lower barriers of entry, and moving at accelerating speed. New technologies include advanced computing, “big data” analytics, artificial intelligence, autonomy, robotics, directed energy, hypersonics, and biotechnology— the very technologies that ensure we will be able to fight and win the wars of the future… The Department will invest broadly in military application of autonomy, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, including rapid application of commercial breakthroughs, to gain competitive military advantages.” (emphasis added).

Autonomy, robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning…these are all related to the concept of “drone swarms.” TDI has reported previously on the idea of drone swarms on land. There is indeed promise in many domains of warfare for such technology. In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the future of warfare, Mr Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments argued that “America should apply new technologies to four main areas of warfare: undersea, strike, air and electromagnetic.”

Drones have certainly transformed the way that the U.S. wages war from the air. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) innovated, deployed and fired weapons from drones first against the Taliban in Afghanistan, less than one month after the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. homeland. Most drones today are airborne, partly because it is generally easier to navigate in the air than it is on the land, due to fewer obstacles and more uniform and predictable terrain. The same is largely true of the oceans, at least the blue water parts.

Aerial Drones and Artificial Intelligence

It is important to note that the drones in active use today by the U.S. military are actually remotely piloted Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). With the ability to fire missiles since 2001, one could argue that these crossed the threshold into Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs), but nonetheless, they have a pilot—typically a U.S. Air Force (USAF) member, who would very much like to be flying an F-16, rather than sitting in a shipping container in the desert somewhere safe, piloting a UAV in a distant theater of war.

Given these morale challenges, work on autonomy is clearly underway. Let’s look at a forecast from The Economist, which follows the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in both the commercial and military realms.

A distinction needs to be made between “narrow” AI, which allows a machine to carry out a specific task much better than a human could, and “general” AI, which has far broader applications. Narrow AI is already in wide use for civilian tasks such as search and translation, spam filters, autonomous vehicles, high-frequency stock trading and chess-playing computers… General AI may still be at least 20 years off. A general AI machine should be able to carry out almost any intellectual task that a human is capable of.” (emphasis added)

Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the U.S. military (or others) will not field a fully automated drone, capable of prosecuting a battle without human assistance, until roughly 2038. This means that in the meantime, a human will be somewhere “in” or “on” the loop, making at least some of the decisions, especially those involving deadly force.

[Credit: The Economist]
Future Aerial Drone Roles and Missions

The CIA’s initial generation of UAVs was armed in an ad-hoc fashion; further innovation was spurred by the drive to seek out and destroy the 9/11 perpetrators. These early vehicles were designed for intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance (ISR) missions. In this role, drones have some big advantages over manned aircraft, including the ability to loiter for long periods. They are not quick, not very maneuverable, and as such are suited to operations in permissive airspace.

The development of UCAVs has allowed their integration into strike (air-to-ground) and air superiority (air-to-air) missions in contested airspace. UCAV strike missions could target and destroy land and sea nodes in command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) networks in an attempt to establish “information dominance.” They might also be targeted against assets like surface to air missiles and radars, part of an adversary anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capability.

Given the sophistication of Russian and Chinese A2/AD networks and air forces, some focus should be placed upon developing more capable and advanced drones required to defeat these challenges. One example comes from Kratos, a drone maker, and reported on in Popular Science.

Concept art for Mako combat drone. Based on the existing BQM-167 aerial target, this drone can maneuver at forces that could kill a human pilot [Image courtesy of Kratos/Popular Science]

The Mako drone pictured above has much higher performance than some other visions of future drone swarms, which look more like paper airplanes. Given their size and numbers, they might be difficult to shoot down entirely, and this might be able to operate reasonably well within contested airspace. But, they’re not well suited for air-to-air combat, as they will not have the weapons or the speed necessary to engage with current manned aircraft in use with potential enemy air forces. Left unchecked, an adversary’s current fighters and bombers could easily avoid these types of drones and prosecute their own attacks on vital systems, installations and facilities.

The real utility of drones may lie in the unique tactic for which they are suited, swarming. More on that in my next post.

The Principle Of Mass On The Future Battlefield

Men of the U.S. Army 369th Infantry Regiment “Harlem’s Hellfighters,”in action at Séchault on September 29, 1918 during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. [Wikimedia]

Given the historical trend toward battlefield dispersion as a result of the increasing lethality of weapons, how will the principle of mass apply in future warfare? I have been wondering about this for a while in the context of the two principle missions the U.S. Army must plan and prepare for, combined arms maneuver and wide area security. As multi-domain battle advocates contend, future combat will place a premium on smaller, faster, combat formations capable of massing large amounts of firepower. However, wide area security missions, such as stabilization and counterinsurgency, will continue to demand significant numbers of “boots on the ground,” the traditional definition of mass on the battlefield. These seemingly contradictory requirements are contributing to the Army’s ongoing “identity crisis” over future doctrine, training, and force structure in an era of budget austerity and unchanging global security responsibilities.

Over at the Australian Army Land Power Forum, Lieutenant Colonel James Davis addresses the question generating mass in combat in the context of the strategic challenges that army faces. He cites traditional responses by Western armies to this problem, “Regular and Reserve Force partnering through a standing force generation cycle, indigenous force partnering through deployed training teams and Reserve mobilisation to reconstitute and regenerate deployed units.”

Davis also mentions AirLand Battle and “blitzkrieg” as examples of tactical and operational approaches to limiting the ability of enemy forces to mass on the battlefield. To this he adds “more recent operational concepts, New Generation Warfare and Multi Domain Battle, [that] operate in the air, electromagnetic spectrum and cyber domain and to deny adversary close combat forces access to the battle zone.” These newer concepts use Cyber Electromagnetic Activities (CEMA), Information Operations, long range Joint Fires, and Robotic and Autonomous systems (RAS) to attack enemy efforts to mass.

The U.S. Army is moving rapidly to develop, integrate and deploy these capabilities. Yet, however effectively new doctrine and technology may influence mass in combined arms maneuver combat, it is harder to see how they can mitigate the need for manpower in wide area security missions. Some countries may have the strategic latitude to emphasize combined arms maneuver over wide area security, but the U.S. Army cannot afford to do so in the current security environment. Although conflicts emphasizing combined arms maneuver may present the most dangerous security challenge to the U.S., contingencies involving wide area security are far more likely.

How this may be resolved is an open question at this point in time. It is also a demonstration as to how tactical and operational considerations influence strategic options.

TDI Friday Read: The Validity Of The 3-1 Rule Of Combat

Canadian soldiers going “over the top” during the First World War. [History.com]

Today’s edition of TDI Friday Read addresses the question of force ratios in combat. How many troops are needed to successfully attack or defend on the battlefield? There is a long-standing rule of thumb that holds that an attacker requires a 3-1 preponderance over a defender in combat in order to win. The aphorism is so widely accepted that few have questioned whether it is actually true or not.

Trevor Dupuy challenged the validity of the 3-1 rule on empirical grounds. He could find no historical substantiation to support it. In fact, his research on the question of force ratios suggested that there was a limit to the value of numerical preponderance on the battlefield.

Trevor Dupuy and the 3-1 Rule

Human Factors In Warfare: Diminishing Returns In Combat

TDI President Chris Lawrence has also challenged the 3-1 rule in his own work on the subject.

Force Ratios in Conventional Combat

The 3-to-1 Rule in Histories

Aussie OR

Comparing Force Ratios to Casualty Exchange Ratios

The validity of the 3-1 rule is no mere academic question. It underpins a great deal of U.S. military policy and warfighting doctrine. Yet, the only time the matter was seriously debated was in the 1980s with reference to the problem of defending Western Europe against the threat of Soviet military invasion.

The Great 3-1 Rule Debate

It is probably long past due to seriously challenge the validity and usefulness of the 3-1 rule again.