Lots of solid links and comments to "The Networked Force." Time to add some stories and links of my own.
Federal Computer Week recently ran an article with a Lt. Col. combat leader. He did not turn on his "Blue Force Tracker" in Iraq until a sand storm showed up and left him no choice. After that, he was a "battlefield convert" to the new 'networked force'...
"How much of a difference did Blue Force Tracking make in Iraq? One simply has to ask Army Lt. Col. John Charlton. On March 17, 2003, two days before the start of the war in Iraq, Charlton and his M2A3 Bradley crew meticulously cut and pasted laminated maps inside their 35-ton armored personnel carrier. Before the war, the Army quickly trained 3rd Infantry Division soldiers how to use Blue Force Tracking. However, they did not feel confident using the computer, so they didn't turn it on when crossing into Iraq on their first mission.
"What I should have spent the entire time focusing on was the small screen attached to my door," Charlton said after the war. "It had been accurately tracking my location as well as the location of my key leaders and adjacent units the whole time."
But four days into battle, amid the Iraqi sandstorms, the Bradley crew finally turned on Blue Force Tracking. The computer's imagery and Global Positioning System capabilities let them use Blue Force Tracking similar to how pilots use instruments to fly in bad weather.
"The experience of being forced to use and rely on Blue Force Tracking during a combat mission under impossible weather conditions completed my conversion to digital battle command," said Charlton, commander of 1-15 Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division, in Army documents."
Read the whole article. It is this generational change in user acceptance in the field grade and higher US Army officer corps that will make networked American ground forces unbeatable in a 'stand up fight' for the forseeable future.
This tracks closely with the US Army after action reports and open press articles on the 4th infantry Division's first "Army 21" digital brigade rotations through the NTC in 1997.
The Colonel running the digital brigade literally turned off/ignored all of his visual/graphical displays of his unit locations and listened to his radio chatter instead to form his mental picture of the battlefield. The displays were not agreeing with the mental picture this Col had of the battlefield from the radio chatter, so he ignored it.
It turned out that the prototype Blue Force Tracker was right and his radio chatter mental picture was wrong. The After action report made that one clear, yet the professional training of 15 years made this combat leader ignore what he was seeing in favor of the familiar.
Meanwhile the Sgts, LTs and Captains were using and relying on Blue Force Tracker for land navigation at night to move between positions and meet resupply trucks. The old saw about 2LTs and maps was made obsolete by GPS and Blue Force tracker.
More Good Background Reading
My August 15, 2003 article on Blue Force Tracker and other army comm. systems in Iraq is also worth a read: "What One American Soldier Knows, They All Know"
The backwardness and insularity of USAF leadership on issues of technology affecting their service is also something I've covered before:
- JAN 16, 2003. Interview With a Weasel Pilot
- JAN 15, 2003. Afghanistan: A Bad War for the Fighter Pilot Generals
- MAY 28, 2003. Sic Transit Warthog!
- JUN 27, 2003. Air Force Doctrine by Steven Den Beste , USS Clueless
Stryker's Background Reading
In response, Air Force Sgt. Paul Palubicki of Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing added some links of his own from the Professional Journal of the Air Force. In response to this statement...
"Second, the key variable in future American military operations aren't platforms or precision guided munitions, but network bandwidth connecting intelligent people."
He wrote...
"This point can't be emphasized enough. I'll have to dig for a link, but an article in a recent Air & Space Power Journal went in-depth discussing bandwidth capability, prioritization and deployment. It looked at bandwidth loads during the Kosovo War and how they multiplied during the Afghan War (OIF was still a couple of months away), and lessons learned from each.
"The main point of the article was that with all these unmanned vehicles and datalinks deployed out there, the Bandwidth issue became the bottleneck --not only in terms of capacity, but in aquisition and prioritization. It's the same story as anything else: with a finite amount of resources, how do you decide who gets what, how much of it, and when?
Another interesting point is that DoD has to massively outsource to commercial companies for a majority of its bandwidth needs during a wartime situation."
Paul thinks the Air Force is farther ahead than I do, and he provided this MOAB of links:
- Needles in the Haystack: Hunting Mobile Electronic Targets
- Military Applications of Information Technologies
- Command and Control Doctrine for Combat Support
- A Change-Challenge: The Fire-Support Coordination “Box”
- What’s So Special about Special Operations? Lessons from the War in Afghanistan
For GP's:
- Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights
- Whither High-Energy Lasers?
- Organic versus Joint Organization
I still think I'm right, but this is a good collection.
On the Palubicki links:
"...Attention to Bandwidth" is a good analysis of the exponential rise in comms bandwidth requirements. What is unsaid is MILSATCOM's state of denial about this trend until after Afghanistan was over, and then they rented out the heavens in terms of commercial capacity. Ended that economic downturn for the commercial satellite operators.
The next four articles concern future vaporware. They are simply good ideas looking for a market.
"What’s So Special about Special Operations?
Lessons from the War in Afghanistan" has the memorable punchline:
'Like most revolutions, this one went from the bottom up- not from the top down. While the generals debated how to mandate a revolution, the captains and majors quietly implemented one.'
Moreover the article's subject occurred on a Joint, and not USAF initiated basis. Spec Ops is now directly DoD managed.
"Slumlords Aerospace Power in Urban Fights" is outstanding analysis which recognizes the import of updated info processing and comms capacity, but it is again looking at what should happen, not what USAF put into action and how to do it again with near term assets, and cites "the persistent inadequacy of operational concepts." Not a great kudo for the powers that run USAF today.
Concerning the high energy laser article, I work with these guys at Kirtland, and have watched the Starfire range shooting at satellites at 3-4 AM in the morning. Very StarWars. But this article is mostly spin which elides over the political issues which have prevented the ABL and SBL programs from becoming operational systems. The potential of any weapon is moot if the warrior choses not to wield it. Unfortunately, even in Air Power Chronicles, USAF doesn't feel safe to talk about why progress isn't being made in these areas. Instead the authors use 'coded phrases' like "One can anticipate a “window of opportunity” to open with the success of the ABL, ATL, and MTHEL, which will define high-energy laser-weapon activities for some time to come." Hunh?
The last article (by Poynor) was egregiously facile. Just how would Poynor have described the doctrinal basis of the USAF strategic components, either space or nuclear deterrant forces? Quite to the contrary, USAF has been historically as introspective as any of the rest of the services when it wanted to be. Poynor is being hopeful about what USAF wishes to be today, but he totally ignores from whence it came yesterday.
These articles show to me that USAF isn't oblivious in general to the issues Trent has brought up, but practically they are still behind the power curve in practical implementations. Perhaps this criticism is more pointed due to the fact that USAF would benefit the most of all the services from implementing this current RMA.
Incidently, one huge area of USAF operations given short shrift in all of these articles cited are independent space operations. Here USAF is just beginning to define what they want to do and present capabilities are virtually nil.
> However, they did not feel confident using the
> computer, so they didn't turn it on when
> crossing into Iraq on their first mission.
This reminded me of the newly-returned USS Enterprise ignoring its brand-new antiaircraft fire control radar at Guadalcanal. It's not enough to have the good stuff, you have to know now to use it, and be willing.
Kirk, the Army is very aware of the need to train for the use of these systems. FBCB2 (what Trent referred to as Blue Tracker) is now integrated into classes at West Point and in hands-on training.
Equally important, or perhaps even more so, the Army is starting to insert a lot more training on general information technology and networking skills and principles, so that officers will be familiar and comfortable with ANY future systems as they evolve. For instance, cadets at West Point take a plebe (freshman) course in IT that includes networking concepts and actual programming skills. (Their final team project consists of programming a robot to perform certain tasks, like maneuvering through a maze or using sensors to identify objects based on color.)
Most cadets now also take a junior year course that includes actually designing and building a secured network. FBCB2 plays an important role in that course. And the system is being integrated into the military tactics courses as well.
By far the largest cadet club at West Point is a student affiliate of the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group for information assurance / security. For the last 3 years the service academies have had cyber competitions in which cadet teams have tried to defend their own networks against hacking attacks / information compromise, while breaking into the other teams' systems. The NSA provides experts who judge the competition. The first year, the Army cadets managed to break into the computers the NSA used for that purpose. NSA hardened their monitoring network for the competitions after that. [smile]
Is there more to be done? Sure. Is it being addressed? Yes. I've sat in the auditorium with the corps of cadets while tank battalion commanders who were decorated in Iraq have discussed lessons learned, including how to use FBCB2 effectively and what other information systems they would like to have, how they might change tactical and even strategic doctrine etc. Our future leaders will be very comfortable with infomation systems and our current leaders gained respect - and have offered critiques and suggestions - based on experience in Iraq.
Sorry - that last sentence wasn't clear. What I meant to say is that the many current officers who used systems like FBCB2 in Iraq not only came to respect the value of these systems but also are offering suggestions on how to enhance them.
Ah yes - bandwidth.
If we control the airspace over the battlefield, then we should be able to deploy high altitude, long endurance aircraft that would mimic communications satellites as well as cell phone towers. I know we have used more primitive systems for many years for over-the-horizon tactical communications. Aircraft are a lot cheaper than satellites, if a system breaks down you can repair it. But boy, that kind of mission would REALLY turn a USAF pilot into a truck driver.
Deploying such a system for tactical communications would release bandwidth on the satellites for long-haul, inter-theater communications.
Bill,
A long endurance UAV for radio relay is currently in Army Aviation plans. The Army wants something in a couple of years.
The options being looked at include a longer endurance turboprop version of the Preditor with a satellite transponder.
The various service space components are not at all happy with this development.
I saw this link over on Lucianne.com this afternoon:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=business&story_id=032604d5_blimp
Friday, March 26, 2004
Unmanned border patrol blimp to be built
The Associated Press
AKRON, Ohio - Government officials and Lockheed Martin Corp. announced a $24 million plan yesterday to update an old blimp factory for construction of a high-flying, remote-controlled blimp prototype to monitor U.S. borders and scan the horizon for enemy missiles.
A prototype of the unmanned, helium-filled airship that would patrol at 65,000 feet is expected to be complete by summer 2006.
Another thing that they are designing for the blimp is mounting mirrors on it to allow ground based lasers to engage the missiles Trent mentioned.
Bill,
Ideally, you want to turn all of your warfighters (with the possible exception of SOFOR) into varying degrees of truck-driving specialists. It's one of the more bizzare cultural things I've seen, but the macho mounted knight BS is simply a good way to ask an illiterate peasant to plug you with a crossbow bolt.
Now, don't tell that to the folks wandering around with blood in their eyes and knives in their teeth...