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Small UAS & Supply Constraints

On September 22, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Robots, Tactics

Just as firearms require ammunition and vehicles require fuel, small unmanned systems (SUAS, even if the “A” does stand for “air”) require electrical power. This allows us to make some predictions about the capabilities and tactics of small units with SUAS.

Tradeoffs & Alertness

SUAS and their power supplies have weight and volume. Since the capacity of any transport (including soldiers’ own two feet) is limited, either future SUAS will take up currently “extra” capacity, or they will replace something currently carried.

Soldiers can eat their boots, but tanks need gas.

General George S. Patton

Like fuel and ammunition, unit leaders must recognize SUAS operating time as a finite commodity to be expended for tactical effect. A unit equipped with multiple SUAS platforms will not have them all on at the same time for the same reason they don’t keep their soldiers awake, run vehicles, or fire machine guns 24 hours a day. Generally, a unit’s SUAS will either be “inert”, “alert”, or “engaged” — offline while the unit is either not threatened or covered by another unit, minimally operating to maintain awareness and detect threats, or at maximum capacity to neutralize a threat. This is exactly analogous to existing tactics and not difficult to understand.

The default “alert” SUAS will most likely be a fixed-wing flier, since these provide the most efficient power to operating time ratio. Ground vehicles (SUGS?) could have an even higher ratio since they wouldn’t need motor power when not moving, and might be an option for static units or to absolutely minimize aerial/EM footprints. However, they’ll be slower and easier to hide from. Note that the RQ-11 Raven is probably too large for a true light infantry platoon and certainly too large for a squad.

Get used to this thing.

Limitations

The tradeoff problem is most pronounced for light infantry. In general, these men carry as much as they can and not a pound less. Any “excess” load capacity ends up filled by extra ammunition. How much and what sort of ammunition a light infantry company, platoon, or squad ought to give up in favor of SUAS is an empirical question, but I highly doubt the answer is zero. Most likely, the lightest units will mostly use SUAS for detection and rely on external assets to kill, as they do now with artillery. Since the detection capability of SUAS-equipped units will increase, the ratio of infantry to “artillery” will likewise increase.

dismount_ew

The future is so bright for carrying heavy shit, you don’t need eyes to see it.

Armored units also have a problem. First, the effective movement and weapon ranges of armored fighting vehicles are higher than light infantry, so their “small” unmanned systems will generally be larger. A SUAS with a 5-km range is of limited use to a tank that can already see and shoot nearly that far, and is more likely located in unrestrictive terrain.

The more critical problem is that of crew load. Fighting a tank requires all of the crew’s attention; they don’t have any to spare for SUAS. While automation and control might allow this in the future, the problem is nontrivial. These two issues have frustrated attempts to integrate SUAS into mechanized and especially tank formations so far. In the short term, any integration of unmanned systems into armored units will probably require the use of a separate, dedicated control vehicle. In the long term, designers will have to start paying as much attention to crew load and systems integration inside fighting vehicles as in aircraft.

Motor-rifle type units (such as “Stryker” brigades) are best suited to take advantage of SUAS. They have ready access to electrical power and transport. Designers clearly anticipated something like this requirement in developing modern troop carriers, which can readily serve as mobile control stations.

Tactical Electronic Warfare

EM emissions discipline will become both more important and more complex. The likelihood of initial enemy contact being made on either or both side via identification of SUAS will be high. Small-unit commanders and soldiers should know the significance of enemy small unmanned platforms just as they now know the significance of other types of enemy equipment.

antenna_truck

A stopgap solution, gluing lots of antennas to a completely roadbound vehicle.

Mature SUAS will be well camouflaged and probably most easily identified through detecting their control and communication links. The ability to detect EM emissions across a broad spectrum will become as important even at the platoon if not the squad level as image intensifiers and near-infrared are now. Tactical electronic warfare units that specialize in detecting, spoofing, and obstructing these emissions beyond the capability of line combat units will return. The resulting arms race between tactical unmanned systems and electronic warfare will contribute to the unsuitability of amateur/civilian UAVs in combat.

Conclusion

Motorized infantry stand to gain the most from small unmanned systems because of their manpower and transport capability. Light infantry have limited payload, and current armored units are too specialized.

Officers should get used to viewing SUAS operating time as a supply constraint, and establish standard readiness postures for stand-down, baseline, and stand-to use of these devices.

Electronic warfare will become more important at all tactical levels.

How Small Drones Will Be Different

By sfoil

On September 14, 2018

In Military Theory, Robots, Tactics

A remote-operated aircraft flown into a target while the operator watches not only isn’t something new, but it’s already been done in volume and found wanting. An apparent attempt to assassinate the President of Venezuela by such means last month didn’t work.

venezuelan_assassination

Some guy scraped up after an attempted murder-by-drone.

A drone that can fly at 200mph for three kilometers, operated over an ECM-hardened control link, and delivering a 5+ lb armor-piercing explosive warhead has existed for ovr fifty years now. The AT-3 Sagger came, made its impact, and we all moved on. Visually flying your remote-controlled aircraft into a target is called Manual Command Line of Sight, and it’s not used for anything important (more discussion here). Small autonomous systems will change the battlefield, but flying a much smaller payload onto a target over a less secure control channel than primitive missiles is not going to be how it happens. Hit probability and kill probability are low, with high vulnerability to electronic countermeasures. Taping a grenade to your kid’s toy helicopter won’t going to give you the edge you need to win on tomorrow’s battlefield. The characteristics of such a line-of-sight weapon compare poorly to the currently dominant line of sight personal weapon, the rifle.

Anyway, what will change? The important factors are availability & control.

Nuclear Deterrents Probably Don’t Work the Same for City-States

By sfoil

On September 3, 2018

In Military Theory

Because decapitation strikes are too easy, or at least too dangerous. A large country can mitigate this threat through dispersal of strike/retaliation capability, and by building early warning systems. However, early warning only really works reliably when a strike can be detected a substantial amount of time (“a few minutes”) before it takes effect.

This is the logic behind bans on orbital weapons (de-orbiting weapons given less warning than ballistic weapons) and on the mutual withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Cuba and Turkey at the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is also the game theory logic behind countries like South Korea and Taiwan effectively outsourcing their nuclear deterrent to the United States. In The Dead Hand, David Hoffman quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski as saying that after detection, initial cross-checking, and message delay, the President has about seven minutes from launch to impact of a Russian (Soviet) ICBM to decide whether or not to order retaliation. That window might have gotten slightly larger since the 1980s, but not by much. The United States’ (and other existing powers’) nuclear strike capability is sufficiently dispersed not to be neutralized by local subterfuge, and highly likely to survive a a first strike. This further reduced the likelihood of a launch on false-positive early warning.

“Hanoi’s War” by Lien-Hang T. Nguyen

By sfoil

On August 27, 2018

In Book Review, Military History

Lien-Hang Nguyen used unprecedented access to Hanoi’s governmental archives to write her 2012 book Hanoi’s War, a political history of the Vietnam War from the northern perspective focused on two powerful key figures in the North Vietnamese government, Le Duan and Le Duc Tho — the most powerful man in the northern government and his protege and chief negotiator, respectively. The book had less insight into northern military operations than I’d hoped, but it’s still an excellent if somewhat preliminary work and I eagerly await Nguyen’s next major work.

9781469628356[1]

The ATGM Threat Part 3: Solutions

By sfoil

On August 9, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Tactics

I’ve previously posted about the history of antiarmor weapons and the current state-of-the-art. The takeaway: tanks have never been invulnerable, and they don’t need to be. Also, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles have become and are becoming longer-ranged, more accurate, and more lethal. Despite improvements in ATGM technology over first-generation weapons like the AT-3 Sagger, American tactics have remained essentially unchanged for decades, although armor protection has improved.

The ATGM threat profile is a combination of standoff and high kill probability (per launch). Remember, these don’t have to make ATGMs completely worthless, just make them less useful. I’ll look at standoff first.

The ATGM Threat Part 2: Early Countermeasures & Modern Developments

By sfoil

On August 5, 2018

In Military History, Military Theory

In the last post, I recounted the history of antiarmor weapons up to the development of the anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). Now I’ll look at early countermeasures, and how well they hold up now.

Tactical Countermeasures

As stated previously, ATGMs allowed standoff both for aircraft and ground troops against armored vehicles. The Israelis, facing these weapons for the first time in 1973, struggled to counter the new threat of the AT-3 Sagger ATGM. The Yom Kippur War only lasted about three weeks, so all combatants were stuck with the equipment they had at the outset with no time to develop or even purchase new weapons. With no hope of a technical solution, the IDF settled on three basic tactics: suppression, evasion, and obscuration.

The ATGM Threat Pt 1: A Brief History of Anti-Armor Weapons

By sfoil

On August 2, 2018

In Military History, Tactics

Right now, I think that anti-armor weapons have gained an upper hand over tanks and other armored vehicles, and that the United States is falling behind in anti-anti-armor measures. They can take several courses to correct this. First, however, I want to lay out the history of the threat and how the current situation developed.

The First Tanks

Although it wasn’t the first battle in which tanks took part, the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 is the first major combined arms attack with a significant armored component, the use of armored vehicles beforehand having been relatively piecemeal. Together with the infantry of the 51st Highland Division, 476 British armored vehicles took part, of which 350 were combat vehicles (the rest were supply carriers and mobile radio stations, with perhaps some engineers in the mix). The attack succeeded, although as usual in the First World War the attackers proved unable to exploit their gains over the following days.

Are Paratroopers Good For Anything?

By sfoil

On July 30, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military History, Military Theory

Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security.

– From Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson

Inspired by a recent discussion at Naval Gazing.

“When Failure Thrives”

Airborne operations have not, historically, proven very successful. The current size of airborne forces in Russia (VDV) and the United States is purely the result of institutional inertia and parochialism. Read this and weep.

To briefly recapitulate the linked article: The most successful airborne assaults, launched by the Germans in 1940 (e.g. Eben Emael) in hindsight relied on the total novelty of parachute infantry. Even by later in WW2, airborne operations became less likely to succeed and more costly when successful than the Happy Time of the early war. At any rate, advances in air defenses and increases in the numbers of light armored vehicles (which lightly armed paratroopers have difficulty fighting) in rear areas made a repetition of operations like Neptune (Normandy jump) suicidal after WW2. Airborne operations, being useless against serious militaries, were increasingly confined to “interventions” against weak or non-state forces.

fallschirmjager

The 82nd Airborne owes more of its existence to the Nazis than NASA does.

Women in Combat: Conclusions

By sfoil

On July 24, 2018

In Current Affairs

This is the fifth post in a row I’ve written about integrating women into combat units; I originally intended three. So what do I think?

Review

Women are definitely too physically different from men, and combat too demanding, to make suitable combat soldiers. The disparity is enormous. Also, the social dynamics of mixed-gender organizations make them even less effective as combat outfits.

Feminism and careerism, the primary motives behind the push for integration, will pressure military organizations to lower physical fitness standards for entry, retention, and promotion.

The services can fight this by having their public affairs organs manufacture glowing puff pieces about token women. They could also consider raising the organizational prestige of career fields where barriers to female entry are lower by appointing members of those fields to strategic positions traditionally held by maneuver officers. The Air Force and Navy aviation have managed to avoid lowering standards, but this is fundamentally more difficult for ground forces.

Women in Combat Pt 4: Concentration vs Dispersion

By sfoil

On July 23, 2018

In Current Affairs

I intended to include this in the last post but I seemed like a slightly different topic. If a small number of women are allowed into combat arms units, should they be concentrated into specific units or dispersed thinly across the entire service?

The Thin Film

Women soldiers in combat arms units will either be spread in a thin film throughout the entire service branch or concentrated into specific units. The latter can be done either with the goal of having all-female units, or not.

If spread out evenly, each combat arms company will have 1-5% women members. The biggest concern the services currently have with this is making sure a given woman has at least one other female “buddy” so she’s not left completely to the mercy of the men around her in various ways. The low concentration does mean that not every sub-unit will have a female member e.g. only one platoon or even squad in a company might have a woman in it. If this woman turns out to be unfit for “line” duty, which is quite likely, their low density means the company or battalion commander can squirrel them away in their headquarters without serious loss. This already happens on a routine basis as things stand now in all-male units. The chain of command must avoid, or at least avoid publicizing, “disparate impact”-style analysis of such assignments in the integrated force, since they will reveal that such “relegation” occurs far more often to women.