Tag U.S. Army

Tanks and Russian Hybrid Warfare

tanks-russian-hybrid-warfareU.S. Army Major Amos Fox, currently a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, has produced an insightful analysis of the role of tanks in Russian hybrid warfare tactics and operations. His recent article in Armor, the journal of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Ft. Benning, Georgia, offers a sense of the challenges of high-intensity combat on the near-future hybrid warfare battlefield.

Fox assesses current Russia Army tactical and operational capabilities as quite capable.

Russia’s contemporary operations embody the characteristic of surprise. Russian operations in Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate a rapid, decentralized attack seeking to temporally dislocate the enemy, triggering the opposing forces’ defeat. These methods stand in stark contrast to the old Soviet doctrine of methodical, timetable-and echelon-driven employment of ground forces that sought to outmass the opposing army. Current Russian land-warfare tactics are something which most armies, including the U.S. Army, are largely unprepared to address.

Conversely, after achieving limited objectives, Russia quickly transitions to the defense using ground forces, drones and air-defense capabilities to build a tough, integrated position from which extrication would be difficult, to be sure. Russia’s defensive operations do not serve as a simple shield, but rather, as a shield capable of also delivering well-directed, concentrated punches on the opposition army. Russia’s paradoxical use of offensive operations to set up the defense might indicate an ascendency of the defense as the preferred method of war in forthcoming conflicts.

These capabilities will pose enormous challenges to U.S. and allied forces in any potential land combat scenario.

Russia’s focus on limited objectives, often in close proximity to its own border, indicates that U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons will likely find themselves on the wrong end of the “quality of firsts” (Figure 4). The U.S. Army’s physical distance from those likely battlefields sets the Army at a great disadvantage because it will have to hastily deploy forces to the region, meaning the Army will arrive late; the arrival will also be known (location, time and force composition). The Army will have great difficulty seizing the initiative due to its arrival and movement being known, which weakens the Army’s ability to fight and win decisively. This dynamic provides time, space and understanding for the enemy to further prepare for combat operations and strengthen its integrated defensive positions. Therefore, U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons must be prepared to fight through a rugged enemy defense while maintaining the capability for continued offensive operations.

Fox’s entire analysis is well worth reading and pondering. He also published another excellent analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a General Staff College colleague, Captain (P) Andrew J. Rossow, in Small Wars Journal.

Back To The Future: The Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) Program

The MPF's historical antecedent: the German Army's 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz.
The MPF’s historical antecedent: the German Army’s 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz.

Historically, one of the challenges of modern combat has been in providing responsive, on-call, direct fire support for infantry. The U.S. armed forces have traditionally excelled in providing fire support for their ground combat maneuver elements, but recent changes have apparently caused concern that this will continue to be the case in the future.

Case in point is the U.S. Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program. The MPF seems to reflect concern by the U.S. Army that future combat environments will inhibit the capabilities of heavy artillery and air support systems tasked with providing fire support for infantry units. As Breaking Defense describes it,

“Our near-peers have sought to catch up with us,” said Fort Benning commander Maj. Gen. Eric Wesley, using Pentagon code for China and Russia. These sophisticated nation-states — and countries buying their hardware, like Iran — are developing so-called Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD): layered defenses of long-range sensors and missiles to keep US airpower and ships at a distance (anti-access), plus anti-tank weapons, mines, and roadside bombs to decimate ground troops who get close (area denial).

The Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Ft. Benning, Georgia is the proponent for development of a new lightly-armored, tracked vehicle mounting a 105mm or 120mm gun. According to the National Interest, the goal of the MPF program is

… to provide a company of vehicles—which the Army adamantly does not want to refer to as light tanks—to brigades from the 82nd Airborne Division or 10th Mountain Division that can provide heavy fire support to those infantry units. The new vehicle, which is scheduled to enter into full-scale engineering and manufacturing development in 2019—with fielding tentatively scheduled for around 2022—would be similar in concept to the M551 Sheridan light tank. The Sheridan used to be operated the Army’s airborne units unit until 1996, but was retired without replacement. (Emphasis added)

As Chris recently pointed out, General Dynamics Land Systems has developed a prototype it calls the Griffin. BAE Systems has also pitched its XM8 Armored Gun System, developed in the 1990s.

The development of a dedicated, direct fire support weapon for line infantry can be seen as something of an anachronism. During World War I, German infantrymen sought alternatives to relying on heavy artillery support that was under the control of higher headquarters and often slow or unresponsive to tactical situations on the battlefield. They developed an expedient called the “infantry gun” (Infanteriegeschütz) by stripping down captured Russian 76.2mm field guns for direct use against enemy infantry, fortifications, and machine guns. Other armies imitated the Germans, but between the wars, the German Army was only one to develop 75mm and 150mm wheeled guns of its own dedicated specifically to infantry combat support.

The Germans were also the first to develop versions mounted on tracked, armored chassis, called “assault guns” (Sturmgeschütz). During World War II, the Germans often pressed their lightly armored assault guns into duty as ersatz tanks to compensate for insufficient numbers of actual tanks. (The apparently irresistible lure to use anything that looks like a tank as a tank also afflicted the World War II U.S. tank destroyer as well, yielding results that dissatisfied all concerned.)

Other armies again copied the Germans during the war, but the assault gun concept was largely abandoned afterward. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed vehicles intended to provide gunfire support for airborne infantry, but these were more aptly described as light tanks. The U.S. Army’s last light tank, the M551 Sheridan, was retired in 1996 and not replaced.

It appears that the development of new technology is leading the U.S. Army back to old ideas. Just don’t call them light tanks.

U.S. Tank Losses and Crew Casualties in World War II

Attrition-CoverIn his 1990 book Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War, Trevor Dupuy took a look at the relationship between tank losses and crew casualties in the U.S. 1st  Army between June 1944 and May 1945 (pp. 80-81). The data sampled included 797 medium (averaging 5 crewmen) and 101 light (averaging 4 crewmen) tanks. For each tank loss, an average of one crewman was killed or wounded. Interestingly, although gunfire accounted for the most tank and crew casualties, infantry anti-tank rockets (such as the Panzerfaust) inflicted 13% of the tank losses, but caused 21% of the crew losses.

Attrition, Fig. 50Casualties were evenly distributed among the crew positions.

Attrition, Fig. 51Whether or not a destroyed tank caught fire made a big difference for the crew. Only 40% of the tanks in the sample burned, but casualties were distributed evenly between the tanks that burned and those that did not. This was due to the higher casualty rate in the tanks that caught fire (1.28 crew casualties per tank) and those that did not (0.78 casualties per tank).

Attrition, Fig. 52Dupuy found the relationship between tank losses and casualties to be straightforward and obvious. This relationship would not be so simple when viewed at the battalion level. More on that in a future post [Tank Loss Rates in Combat: Then and Now].

Mass Fires vs. Precision Fires on the Battlefield of Tomorrow

Photograph of Russian T-90 tank following a hit by a U.S.-made TOW missile in Syria. [War Is Boring.com]
Photograph of Russian T-90 tank following a hit by a U.S.-made TOW missile in Syria. [War Is Boring.com]

For anyone paying attention, it is no surprise that the U.S. Army is intently watching Russia’s military operations in the Ukraine. What they have seen is sobering. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker recently highlighted the preliminary findings of The Russia New Generation Warfare study directed by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, who heads the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center.

According to McMaster, “the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of UAVs for tactical effect. Should U.S. forces find themselves in a land war with Russia, he said, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening.”

The Army evidently envisions a future clash between U.S. and Russian or Russian-backed forces will begin with long-range missile exchanges.

“We spend a long time talking about winning long-range missile duels,” said McMaster. But long-range missiles only get you through the front door. The question then becomes what will you do when you get there.

The tactics of Russian-backed irregular forces in the Ukraine have demonstrated effective leveraging of the new technological capabilities.

“Look at the enemy countermeasures,” [McMaster] said, noting Russia’s use of nominally semi-professional forces who are capable of “dispersion, concealment, intermingling with civilian populations…the ability to disrupt our network strike capability, precision navigation and timing capabilities.”

The implication of this, McMaster contends, would be that “you’re probably going to have a close fight… Increasingly, close combat overmatch is an area we’ve neglected, because we’ve taken it for granted.”

One big reason for the perceived Russian overmatch is a due to an advantage in artillery, both in terms of range and in power.

[Phil] Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation, went on a fact-finding mission to Ukraine last year, and returned with the conclusion that the United States had long overemphasized precision artillery on the battlefield at the expense of mass fires. Since the 1980s, he said last October, at an Association for the United States Army event, the U.S. has given up its qualitative edge, mostly by getting rid of cluster munitions.

Munitions have advanced incredibly since then. One of the most terrifying weapons that the Russians are using on the battlefield are thermobaric warheads, weapons that are composed almost entirely of fuel and burn longer and with more intensity than other types of munitions.

“In a 3-minute period…a Russian fire strike wiped out two mechanized battalions [with] a combination of top-attack munitions and thermobaric warheads,” said Karber. “If you have not experienced or seen the effects of thermobaric warheads, start taking a hard look. They might soon be coming to a theater near you.”

McMaster believes that the combination of heavier, longer-ranged artillery abetted by the targeting capabilities afforded by hordes of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provides the Russians with a significant battlefield advantage.

“We’re out-ranged by a lot of these systems and they employ improved conventional munitions, which we are going away from. There will be a 40- to 60-percent reduction in lethality in the systems that we have,” he said. “Remember that we already have fewer artillery systems. Now those fewer artillery systems will be less effective relative to the enemy. So we need to do something on that now.”

One potential solution is to develop more flexibility in existing U.S. Army fires capabilities.

To remedy that, McMaster is looking into a new area called “cross domain fires,” which would outfit ground units to hit a much wider array of targets. “When an Army fires unit arrives somewhere, it should be able to do surface-to-air, surface-to-surface, and shore-to-ship capabilities. We are developing that now and there are some really promising capabilities,” he said.

It remains to be seen how pervasive and permanent these new Russian military capabilities are and whether they will result in changes in the existing system for modern conventional combat. The advantages the Russians derive from mass fires would appear to directly challenge the U.S.’s investment in precision guided munitions and strike capabilities going back to World War II. Precision strike, networked capabilities, and information warfare were fundamental aspects of the technology-driven Revolution in Military Affairs concept that dominated U.S. military thinking in the 1990s and early 2000s. Leveraging technology is also a foundational aspect of the Defense Department’s current Third Offset Strategy.