What the QDR Should Be Asking, But Isn’t
What the QDR Should Be Asking, But Isn’t – Armed Forces Journal Op-Ed by Peter W. Singer.
When today’s leaders compare our turbulent times to the drawdown era of the 1990s, they’re missing the target for a more useful historical lens. In the years surrounding World War I, fundamental political transition was accompanied by a wave of technological progress that seemed to leap from science-fiction novels. Just as submarines, tanks, and airplanes disrupted tactics, doctrine and organizational identity in the early 20th century, so today we are struggling with deep changes wrought by the likes of drones, cyber and lasers. And, strategically speaking, the U.S. at present is akin to Great Britain then: no longer a rising power but a status quo empire of global commitments, striving to maintain dominance in a changing world. Our military, like Britain’s during the Boer Wars and other colonial endeavors from Iraq to Afghanistan, has been fighting a series of tough, painful and exhausting deployments. But they have been “small wars,” not on par with the challenges from rising peer competitors…
I don’t share Mr. Singer’s optimism that fleets of UAS/RPA or ground unmanned vehicles/sensors are the long-term exclusive solution to anything. I will offer that the potential for manned-unmanned integration or teaming is pretty extraordinary. Sans a pilot or Soldier on board, why have the same level of stealth or survivability as the manned system. Long-range penetrating stealth unmanned systems are a solution in search of a problem unless accompanied and/or controlled by manned systems with the human judgment and adaptive observation to decide whether and how to attack a target.
OK, but while speculating about an uncertain future, introspectively consider ethical issues of DoD Directive 3000.9 regulating autonomy for unmanned systems. If we end up without human boots on the ground, who will find ground-to-ground or air-to-ground targets? Will we control autonomous air vehicles by satellite or from the back of an AWACs or special stand-off C-130? Is a FOBBIT going to control ground systems despite ground line-of-sight issues? If we remotely maintain men/women in the loop, what if those data links and communications are targeted by triangulation? How many different frequencies are anticipated and will they interfere with each other? High-powered jamming? Satellites at risk of becoming single points of failure? Greater potential for cyber intrusion?
In contrast, what if the link is between an F-35 and a teamed nearby unmanned wingman, a low-flying AH-64E and elevated Gray Eagle, or between a tank and his nearby unmanned scout vehicle.
Singer implies that if you see a place for high tech, stealthy or advanced manned aircraft that you are a Luddite like cavalrymen of old. First of all, a horse and its rider were highly vulnerable to machine guns, and direct/indirect fires. The armored component differentiated the horse from the tank, not to mention on board guns. Survivability and mission effectiveness disparities between manned and unmanned aircraft are not comparable, nor are there UAS advantages in surviving air-to-air encounters, strafing ground targets, or conducting shows of force.
The primary UAS/RPA advantage is their superior endurance and range. Yet superiority in dealing with the dull and distant is not equaled by claims that UAS are superior in the dangerous and dirty. Do you want to be in a squad inserted into a hot LZ by an unmanned pilot not sharing the risks and therefore landing despite withering fire?
As for UAS/RPA, those aircraft are anything but unmanned given an equal number of manned and unmanned aircraft in a squadron. Any attempt at exploiting that added endurance and range would require instead of 1.5 pilots per aircraft, more like 3-6 such pilots or enlisted personnel per aircraft. No personnel savings there unless you plan to violate DoD Directive 3000.9 with fully autonomous systems. Once ordnance is expended much of that endurance will be spent returning some distance to rearm at the same airfields or carriers theoretically endangered by A2/AD. Given equally complex aircraft, the UAS likely requires similar maintenance personnel if not more given data link related systems to control and guide the UAS/RPA.
Today, given continuing threats unlike the peace dividend following the USSR’s demise, the services are being forced to balance needs of a very real “now” with the theoretical and unlikely “nextwaritis” AirSea conflicts of the future. Acting like a third World War (WW) is imminent or probable despite nearly 70 years without one indicates a selective emphasis on which histories we are doomed to repeat. Given nuclear deterrence’s place in that 70 year WW hiatus, we overstate the historical chance of that type of war, while ignoring recent smaller war history ongoing all around us.
No major conflict has occurred between superpowers armed with nuclear weapons. No major superpower navies have battled at sea, nor have major amphibious assaults been attempted against distant shores ala Normandy or Inchon. No extensive dogfighting has occurred since Vietnam and many realistic foes still fly fighters of that era while we do not. No “aces” with five air-to-air kills are flying these days regardless of which service you fly for but ample instances exist of air-to-ground fires aces in smaller conflicts.
I have always enjoyed Peter Singer’s presentations and his book “Wired for War.” In this article he presents six questions:
1. Are you changing by learning?
2. Are you protecting the new from the old?
3. Are you spreading your bets and ignoring sunk costs?
4. Does your personnel system link to your strategic priorities?
5. What kind of leader will you be?
6. What trends are you watching?
This five page article is worth your time to request access to AFJ is you’re interested in innovation. A couple of points made that I found of interest are:
He explains how the proliferation of technology is altering the strategic environment. 87 militaries now have UAVs, and more than 100 have cyberwarfare programs. More interesting, the low barriers to acquire technology are making non-state actors more relevant, and in some cases more powerful than states with large bureaucracies. He quotes one unidentified Army General, “The threat’s ability to take the technology and innovate with it is higher than ours.”
He identified what many of us have discussed in the SWJ, and that is the old is privileged by tribes of people who believe their careers and professional identity are linked to a particular system or specialty. For example, the U.S. Air Force asked to reduce spending on UAVs by 33% (4x the cuts recommended to the rest of the force). SOF has the same issues, and I still think one of my former mentors was right when he said every SOF unit should be disbanded after 20 or years, then build a new one based on current and projected requirements instead of constantly trying to trying to justify legacy requirements. I realize our bureaucracy won’t allow us to do this, but in a perfect world we would be much more adaptive than we are now.