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After recommendation from Matt Fisher, who caught the author's presentation, I read "Trading the Saber for Stealth: Can Surveillance Technology Replace Traditional Aggressive Reconnaissance?" by Major Curtis D Taylor. The document can be found on the ILW site and is a highly recommended read:
http://www.ausa.org/pdfdocs/LWP_53.pdf
The paper is highly critical of the Modular Force design which focuses almost entirely on passive surveillance assets that rely upon stealth to find out information about the enemy. Using case studies from actual military campaigns (Operation Torch, Gulf War, Iraq), Taylor questions the rationale behind many popular notions of information dominance based upon the idea of stealth surveillance that are so prevalent in military dialogue today.
His conclusions are summed up in 6 themes:
I feel the themes that he explores have a high degree of relevance to how the Canadian Forces is approaching many different ideas, especially with the Armoured Corps. This relevance can be put into two broad themes that are the focus of Major Taylor's study.
First off, Maj Taylor is not critical of surveillance systems per se (in fact the opposite appears true, he has praise for the LRASS system and the capabilities it offers) but rather he is critical of their abilities due to how they are employed. This includes both ground based sensors (such as our vaunted Coyote mast) and UAVs.
His reasoning is deduced from the relationship of a few factors that were prevalent in the case studies he looked at. The first big one was tempo. As you go up the Spectrum of Conflict to all out warfighting, the tempo of the battle increases (tempo is defined as "the rate at which a commander must solve tactical problems"). Maj Taylor found that the tempo was simply too much to allow surveillance assets to be properly employed, especially when the vehicle they were employed by was concerned. From this, he derives the fact that Light "Mud" Recce is almost useless in high-tempo war.
The tempo of a fast-moving gunfight at the far end of the Spectrum of Conflict was too much for lightly armoured vehicles as they risked being destroyed by being rushed into getting surveillance in manner inappropriate for their capabilities. Commanders had three options: slow the tempo down, put their "stealth" recce vehicles at extremely high risk, or use another method/platform to gather intelligence. They used the third option, fighting for their information; slowing the tempo down was unacceptable as it was driven by the plan and was a key asymmetrical advantage for US forces and putting recce vehicles at high risk gain was unacceptable for a variety of reasons (questionable ability to get what was needed, low tolerance for casualties, etc).
The second big factor was that of "battlefield density", to which he breaks down into 2 components; terrain density and and enemy distinctiveness. A battlefield that is more dense in these two factors means that the terrain acts as a larger inhibitor of sensor capability. The first one is obvious - a physically cluttered or sheltered battlefield (cities, mountains, jungles) will be one in which the ability of sensors will be degraded. As well, if the enemy seeks to avoid our strength by dispersing, taking on indiscreet dress, and using insurgent hit-and-run tactics then he is less liable to be properly "templated" (the alter of templating is amusing derided in the paper as "iconology"). This relates very closely to what the Australians are working with regarding complexity and the notion of the "ISTAR Threshold" - in order to avoid our strengths an adaptable enemy will use complex physical, human and informational terrain to get under our ISTAR threshold. From this, we can derive the notion that Sensory Surveillance has limited utility in high-tempo, complex operations.
They only way to get around these problems? Humint and the good old-fashioned advance to contact - yes folks, the US military in Iraq in 2003 still had to fight for its information. This leads me to some following thoughts on our own Army:
1. Is our Army Reserve chasing the lame duck with the notion of "Armoured Recce" with the G-Wagon? Maj Taylor states the the HUMVEE should be taken entirely out of reconnaissance tasks. His assertions in the paper seem to indicate that "Light, Mud Recce" as a concept is largely useless, which I guess entails our own G-Wagon, the French VBL, the Eagle, or even the German Fennek.
2. The Coyote seems to be on the lower-end of vehicles that are acceptable in high-tempo operations (definitely better than a HUMVEE); are we limiting its utility by using it as a surveillance vehicle? The tempo of Peace-support operations seems slow enough to allow its superb surveillance suite to be gainfully employed, but it seems to me that the LAV/Coyote must be given a role/doctrine that is useful and appropriate for it capabilities in wartime - from Major Taylor's case studies, it seems we simply won't have the time to properly employ the surveillance suite. Although the Coyote seemed to excel in warfighting operations in trials at the NTC (see here for details; it now appears that Maj Taylor's essay seems to completely undermine this article), Maj Taylor has pointed out that case studies from Iraq show that the tempo of warfighting was higher in orders of magnitude over that experienced by commanders going through the NTC. I feel that a LAV-CAV model that we have explored here would be the correct avenue to pursue.
3. Is our doctrine being lulled/influenced into the notion of "perfect situational awareness"? MarkC's excellent criticism of exercise "Perfect Kill" along with other things I've seen (ie: The Army Force Employment Plan) seems to indicate that we are and that we are wrong to do so. Advance to contact and HUMINT were the two biggest factors in developing and idea of the enemy ("templating") in both conflicts in the Gulf. And it is not a factor of not enough sensors - low level commanders stated that they simply had too much junk information passed down from above.
4. I know we've went over this before, but I think this serves to underline the point that we are foolhardy to lose our MBT capability. Major Taylor explicitly states that Advance to Contact is still the premier method of fighting for information and getting a tempo that is faster than the enemies Decision Cycle. This is an asymmetric advantage of our high-tech, professional military forces and we are foolhardy to sacrifice it to an enemy who knows how to fight us. Woe to us, I guess :-\.
Anyways, very interesting paper with some (what I feel) valid conclusions. Time for a little PD; read the article and contribute your thoughts and criticisms.
Cheers,
Infanteer
http://www.ausa.org/pdfdocs/LWP_53.pdf
The paper is highly critical of the Modular Force design which focuses almost entirely on passive surveillance assets that rely upon stealth to find out information about the enemy. Using case studies from actual military campaigns (Operation Torch, Gulf War, Iraq), Taylor questions the rationale behind many popular notions of information dominance based upon the idea of stealth surveillance that are so prevalent in military dialogue today.
His conclusions are summed up in 6 themes:
- Tempo drives reconnaissance
- The Movement to Contact is the most common type of offense
- Adaptive enemies often do not fit doctrinal templates
- Commanders require human intelligence more than imagery
- Most useful intelligence is bottom up
- Lightly armoured scouts cannot support high-tempo operations
I feel the themes that he explores have a high degree of relevance to how the Canadian Forces is approaching many different ideas, especially with the Armoured Corps. This relevance can be put into two broad themes that are the focus of Major Taylor's study.
First off, Maj Taylor is not critical of surveillance systems per se (in fact the opposite appears true, he has praise for the LRASS system and the capabilities it offers) but rather he is critical of their abilities due to how they are employed. This includes both ground based sensors (such as our vaunted Coyote mast) and UAVs.
His reasoning is deduced from the relationship of a few factors that were prevalent in the case studies he looked at. The first big one was tempo. As you go up the Spectrum of Conflict to all out warfighting, the tempo of the battle increases (tempo is defined as "the rate at which a commander must solve tactical problems"). Maj Taylor found that the tempo was simply too much to allow surveillance assets to be properly employed, especially when the vehicle they were employed by was concerned. From this, he derives the fact that Light "Mud" Recce is almost useless in high-tempo war.
The tempo of a fast-moving gunfight at the far end of the Spectrum of Conflict was too much for lightly armoured vehicles as they risked being destroyed by being rushed into getting surveillance in manner inappropriate for their capabilities. Commanders had three options: slow the tempo down, put their "stealth" recce vehicles at extremely high risk, or use another method/platform to gather intelligence. They used the third option, fighting for their information; slowing the tempo down was unacceptable as it was driven by the plan and was a key asymmetrical advantage for US forces and putting recce vehicles at high risk gain was unacceptable for a variety of reasons (questionable ability to get what was needed, low tolerance for casualties, etc).
The second big factor was that of "battlefield density", to which he breaks down into 2 components; terrain density and and enemy distinctiveness. A battlefield that is more dense in these two factors means that the terrain acts as a larger inhibitor of sensor capability. The first one is obvious - a physically cluttered or sheltered battlefield (cities, mountains, jungles) will be one in which the ability of sensors will be degraded. As well, if the enemy seeks to avoid our strength by dispersing, taking on indiscreet dress, and using insurgent hit-and-run tactics then he is less liable to be properly "templated" (the alter of templating is amusing derided in the paper as "iconology"). This relates very closely to what the Australians are working with regarding complexity and the notion of the "ISTAR Threshold" - in order to avoid our strengths an adaptable enemy will use complex physical, human and informational terrain to get under our ISTAR threshold. From this, we can derive the notion that Sensory Surveillance has limited utility in high-tempo, complex operations.
They only way to get around these problems? Humint and the good old-fashioned advance to contact - yes folks, the US military in Iraq in 2003 still had to fight for its information. This leads me to some following thoughts on our own Army:
1. Is our Army Reserve chasing the lame duck with the notion of "Armoured Recce" with the G-Wagon? Maj Taylor states the the HUMVEE should be taken entirely out of reconnaissance tasks. His assertions in the paper seem to indicate that "Light, Mud Recce" as a concept is largely useless, which I guess entails our own G-Wagon, the French VBL, the Eagle, or even the German Fennek.
2. The Coyote seems to be on the lower-end of vehicles that are acceptable in high-tempo operations (definitely better than a HUMVEE); are we limiting its utility by using it as a surveillance vehicle? The tempo of Peace-support operations seems slow enough to allow its superb surveillance suite to be gainfully employed, but it seems to me that the LAV/Coyote must be given a role/doctrine that is useful and appropriate for it capabilities in wartime - from Major Taylor's case studies, it seems we simply won't have the time to properly employ the surveillance suite. Although the Coyote seemed to excel in warfighting operations in trials at the NTC (see here for details; it now appears that Maj Taylor's essay seems to completely undermine this article), Maj Taylor has pointed out that case studies from Iraq show that the tempo of warfighting was higher in orders of magnitude over that experienced by commanders going through the NTC. I feel that a LAV-CAV model that we have explored here would be the correct avenue to pursue.
3. Is our doctrine being lulled/influenced into the notion of "perfect situational awareness"? MarkC's excellent criticism of exercise "Perfect Kill" along with other things I've seen (ie: The Army Force Employment Plan) seems to indicate that we are and that we are wrong to do so. Advance to contact and HUMINT were the two biggest factors in developing and idea of the enemy ("templating") in both conflicts in the Gulf. And it is not a factor of not enough sensors - low level commanders stated that they simply had too much junk information passed down from above.
4. I know we've went over this before, but I think this serves to underline the point that we are foolhardy to lose our MBT capability. Major Taylor explicitly states that Advance to Contact is still the premier method of fighting for information and getting a tempo that is faster than the enemies Decision Cycle. This is an asymmetric advantage of our high-tech, professional military forces and we are foolhardy to sacrifice it to an enemy who knows how to fight us. Woe to us, I guess :-\.
Anyways, very interesting paper with some (what I feel) valid conclusions. Time for a little PD; read the article and contribute your thoughts and criticisms.
Cheers,
Infanteer