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A big 'amen' to that Dr. Singer!
Tactical Generals
Leaders, Technology, and the Perils
of Battlefield Micromanagement*
Dr. P. W. Singer
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/sum09/singer.html
Editorial Abstract: In 1999 Gen Charles Krulak coined the term “strategic corporal” (i.e., a junior member trained and empowered to make time-critical decisions in response to the dynamic ground fight). In this article, the author examines a similar phenomenon occurring among senior officers, observing that modern technology allows generals to personally engage on the tactical level from remote locations. How the military manages this phenomenon will become a core leadership question in the years ahead.
The four-star general proudly recounts how he spent “two hours watching footage” beamed to his headquarters. Sitting behind a live video feed from a Predator unmanned aircraft system (UAS), he saw two insurgent leaders sneak into a compound of houses. He waited as other insurgents entered and exited the compound, openly carrying weapons. Now, he was certain. The compound was a legitimate target, and any civilians in the houses had to know that it was being used for war, what with all the armed men moving about. Having personally checked the situation, he gave the order to strike. But his role in the operation didn’t end there; the general proudly tells how he even decided what size bomb his pilots should drop on the compound.1
The Rise of the Tactical General
In The Face of Battle, his masterful history of men at war, John Keegan writes how “the personal bond between leader and follower lies at the root of all explanations of what does and does not happen in battle.”2 In Keegan’s view, the exemplar of this relationship was Henry V, who inspired his “band of brothers” by fighting in their midst during the Battle of Agincourt.
With the rise of each new generation of communications technology, these connections between soldiers in the field and those who give them orders grew distanced. Generals no longer needed to be on the front lines with their men but operated from command posts that moved further to the rear with each new technological advance. Yet, the very same technologies also pushed a trend “towards centralization of command, and thus towards micromanagement.”3
For instance, when telegraphs were introduced during the Crimean War (1853–56), generals sipping tea back in England quickly figured out that they could send daily plans to the front lines in Russia. So they did. With the radio, this went even further. Adolf Hitler was notorious for issuing highly detailed orders to individual units fighting on the Eastern Front, cutting out the German army’s entire command staff from leading its troops in war. Even the US military has suffered from this problem. During the rescue attempt of the American cargo ship Mayaguez in 1975, the commander on the scene received so much advice and orders from leaders back in Washington that he eventually “just turned the radios off.”4
These leaders of the past, though, never had access to systems like today’s Global Command and Control System (GCCS). As one report describes, “GCCS—known as ‘Geeks’ to soldiers in the field—is the military’s HAL 9000. It’s an umbrella system that tracks every friendly tank, plane, ship, and soldier in the world in real time, plotting their positions as they move on a digital map. It can also show enemy locations gleaned from intelligence.”5
This tracking system is reinforced by video feeds from various unmanned systems blanketing the battlefield. The growth in America’s use of robotic systems has taken place so fast that many people seem not to realize how big it has gotten. US forces initially went into Iraq with only a handful of unmanned systems in the inventory; indeed, just one UAS supported all of V Corps. By the end of 2008, however, there were 5,331 UASs in the total US inventory.6 In Iraq, some 700 drones supported that same V Corps just a few years later, while the sum total of Army and Air Force UASs was logging almost 600,000 annual flight hours.7
Rapid growth in ground robotics has occurred as well. Zero unmanned ground vehicles took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq; a year later, 150 were in use. By 2008 the inventory in Iraq had approached the 12,000 mark, with the first generation of armed ground robots arriving that same year.8 And the technological development is moving so fast that all of these systems are outdated the very moment they hit the marketplace and battlespace. These are just the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage.
With these trends in play, warfare is undergoing a shift that may well parallel that which occurred in World War I. Amazing new technologies, almost science-fiction-like in their capabilities, are being introduced. (Indeed, the number of unmanned ground systems now in Iraq roughly parallels the number of tanks used in 1918.) Yet, as in World War I and the ensuing interwar years, the new technologies are not “lifting the fog of war” or ending friction, as some of the acolytes of network-centric warfare would have it. Rather, in everything from doctrine to the laws of war, they are presenting more questions than we can answer.
Issues of command leadership offer just one example of the ripple effect now under way. The combination of networked connections and unmanned systems enables modern commanders as never before, linking them closer to the battlefield from greater distances and changing the separation of space. But the separation of time has changed as well. Commanders can transmit orders in real time to the lowest-level troops or systems in the field, and they have simultaneous real-time visibility into it. Previously, generals may have been distanced, but they could never “see” what soldiers saw in the crosshairs of their rifle sights—or do anything about it. With a robotic system such as a Predator UAS or Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (a ground robot, the size of a lawn mower, armed with a machine gun), commanders can see the same footage that the operator sees, at the same time, and even take over the decision to shoot or not.
Tactical Generals
Leaders, Technology, and the Perils
of Battlefield Micromanagement*
Dr. P. W. Singer
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/sum09/singer.html
Editorial Abstract: In 1999 Gen Charles Krulak coined the term “strategic corporal” (i.e., a junior member trained and empowered to make time-critical decisions in response to the dynamic ground fight). In this article, the author examines a similar phenomenon occurring among senior officers, observing that modern technology allows generals to personally engage on the tactical level from remote locations. How the military manages this phenomenon will become a core leadership question in the years ahead.
The four-star general proudly recounts how he spent “two hours watching footage” beamed to his headquarters. Sitting behind a live video feed from a Predator unmanned aircraft system (UAS), he saw two insurgent leaders sneak into a compound of houses. He waited as other insurgents entered and exited the compound, openly carrying weapons. Now, he was certain. The compound was a legitimate target, and any civilians in the houses had to know that it was being used for war, what with all the armed men moving about. Having personally checked the situation, he gave the order to strike. But his role in the operation didn’t end there; the general proudly tells how he even decided what size bomb his pilots should drop on the compound.1
The Rise of the Tactical General
In The Face of Battle, his masterful history of men at war, John Keegan writes how “the personal bond between leader and follower lies at the root of all explanations of what does and does not happen in battle.”2 In Keegan’s view, the exemplar of this relationship was Henry V, who inspired his “band of brothers” by fighting in their midst during the Battle of Agincourt.
With the rise of each new generation of communications technology, these connections between soldiers in the field and those who give them orders grew distanced. Generals no longer needed to be on the front lines with their men but operated from command posts that moved further to the rear with each new technological advance. Yet, the very same technologies also pushed a trend “towards centralization of command, and thus towards micromanagement.”3
For instance, when telegraphs were introduced during the Crimean War (1853–56), generals sipping tea back in England quickly figured out that they could send daily plans to the front lines in Russia. So they did. With the radio, this went even further. Adolf Hitler was notorious for issuing highly detailed orders to individual units fighting on the Eastern Front, cutting out the German army’s entire command staff from leading its troops in war. Even the US military has suffered from this problem. During the rescue attempt of the American cargo ship Mayaguez in 1975, the commander on the scene received so much advice and orders from leaders back in Washington that he eventually “just turned the radios off.”4
These leaders of the past, though, never had access to systems like today’s Global Command and Control System (GCCS). As one report describes, “GCCS—known as ‘Geeks’ to soldiers in the field—is the military’s HAL 9000. It’s an umbrella system that tracks every friendly tank, plane, ship, and soldier in the world in real time, plotting their positions as they move on a digital map. It can also show enemy locations gleaned from intelligence.”5
This tracking system is reinforced by video feeds from various unmanned systems blanketing the battlefield. The growth in America’s use of robotic systems has taken place so fast that many people seem not to realize how big it has gotten. US forces initially went into Iraq with only a handful of unmanned systems in the inventory; indeed, just one UAS supported all of V Corps. By the end of 2008, however, there were 5,331 UASs in the total US inventory.6 In Iraq, some 700 drones supported that same V Corps just a few years later, while the sum total of Army and Air Force UASs was logging almost 600,000 annual flight hours.7
Rapid growth in ground robotics has occurred as well. Zero unmanned ground vehicles took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq; a year later, 150 were in use. By 2008 the inventory in Iraq had approached the 12,000 mark, with the first generation of armed ground robots arriving that same year.8 And the technological development is moving so fast that all of these systems are outdated the very moment they hit the marketplace and battlespace. These are just the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage.
With these trends in play, warfare is undergoing a shift that may well parallel that which occurred in World War I. Amazing new technologies, almost science-fiction-like in their capabilities, are being introduced. (Indeed, the number of unmanned ground systems now in Iraq roughly parallels the number of tanks used in 1918.) Yet, as in World War I and the ensuing interwar years, the new technologies are not “lifting the fog of war” or ending friction, as some of the acolytes of network-centric warfare would have it. Rather, in everything from doctrine to the laws of war, they are presenting more questions than we can answer.
Issues of command leadership offer just one example of the ripple effect now under way. The combination of networked connections and unmanned systems enables modern commanders as never before, linking them closer to the battlefield from greater distances and changing the separation of space. But the separation of time has changed as well. Commanders can transmit orders in real time to the lowest-level troops or systems in the field, and they have simultaneous real-time visibility into it. Previously, generals may have been distanced, but they could never “see” what soldiers saw in the crosshairs of their rifle sights—or do anything about it. With a robotic system such as a Predator UAS or Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (a ground robot, the size of a lawn mower, armed with a machine gun), commanders can see the same footage that the operator sees, at the same time, and even take over the decision to shoot or not.
