AVIATION FROM THE SEA (AFTS)

Innovation & Evolving Requirements via Operational
Prototyping & Experimentation

Re-posted Sunday, March 02, 2008

Note:  This HTML version has been edited to emphasize concepts applicable to business.  The original is also available in PowerPoint (690 KB) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf 350 KB)

(Comments on applications to business by Chet Richards)

Strategic Changes Accompanying the End of the Cold War

U.S. Forces in W.W.I, W.W.II, and the Cold War were shaped primarily to counter power imbalances in Europe and to lesser extent in East Asia.

Collapse of the Soviet empire restored the balance of power among European countries and obviated the strategic need for massive forward deployment of heavy air/land forces.

End of the Cold War neutralized organizing dynamics of bi-polar rivalry and unleashed a welter of nationalist, ethnic, religious, tribal, and criminal conflicts, all taking place in a multi-polar, multi-cultural, political context.

Techniques of 4th generation warfare are spreading as “state” and “non-state” actors learn to exploit weaknesses of hi-technology, fire-power intensive, conventional forces.

• The Lesson of Gulf War -- if you fight the West, don’t mass conventional forces in open or in static defensive positions, where it is easy to separate friend from foe.

• Increased reliance on irregular/urban combat (Hue, Beirut, Mogadishu, Grozny), with intermingling of friendly, hostile, and neutral parties.

  - Rise of different forms of warfare -- Arabs achieved more with intifada and rocks, backed up by Hamas, Hizbollah & CNN, than in 4 wars with Israel.
  - U.S. Driven out of Somalia, in part because Aideed won the infowar.
  - Heavy Russian forces defeated by tribal irregulars in Chechnya & Afghanistan.
  - Loose nuclear & chemical/biological weapons magnify the leverage of irregular forces.

Implications for Future Capabilities

Restored balance of power implies that US military operations are evolving toward a modern variation of 19th century intervention operations, at least in near term.

• Increased focus on littorals (within 100 miles of sea), where most of world’s people, wealth, commerce, instabilities, and U.S. interests are concentrated.

• Decreased need for large standing land/air forces (=> A big shift to reserves).

• Decreased need for heavy naval forces configured for global war at sea and heavy bombing (=> shift to sea & air control in littorals to support interventions).

• Still need intervention and extraction capabilities to protect lives, property, commerce, & other interests (=> evolution toward higher speed, lighter forces, configured for autonomous operations in hostile regions).   Comment

Rise of 4th generation warfare implies an increased need for irregular warfighting skills/capabilities in close quarters combat and small unit operations among state/non-state actors.

• Decreased reliance on firepower/attrition in ground warfare

• Decreased reliance on deep strike/strategic bombardment in air warfare.

• Increased reliance on fast-transient littoral penetration operations, infowar operations, special forces operations, political/military operations, counter-drug/anti-terrorist/anti-nuclear operations, and increased occurrences of urban/suburban combat.

Increased Resource Constraints - Growing internal competition for resources.

• For example, need to fix decaying national infrastructure & pay for an aging population.

Observation

The world seems to be evolving in a direction that implies a requirement for fast-moving, easily inserted/extracted, sea-based, intervention forces. …Yet… The current status quo (ideas, doctrine, high cost hardware) is oriented toward countering conventional heavy ground threats and fighting a global war at sea. …And to make matters worse… The supporting technology program aims to maintain that status quo out to 2010, because its proponents argue “new” technology is necessary to “leap-frog” an emerging conventional peer competitor (China? India? Iran?) who is now far behind us in technological development.

Raises Question: How do we begin to reorient our maritime forces to the variety of real threats emerging in the nearer term?

Comment

Nature of Change

Two Generic Approaches

1.  Top-Down (Argument from design via scholastic hypothecating)

All Knowing Designer Makes precise predictions of future threats, requirements, & interactions among components of untested internal structures.

• For example, Joint Vision 2010/RMA - global template of the future specifies requirements and detailed designs of future weapons and doctrines for year 2010 (and beyond).

• Decreased variety: global hypothesis is a “point design” that makes experimentation difficult, and increases costs & strategic risks of mis-specifying the “vision.”

2. Bottom-Up (Empirically-based evolution via scientific method)

Designer searches for & evolves requirements, internal structures, and designs via trial & error, beginning with small variations and experiments at low levels of organization and building slowly toward the macroscopic level of organization.

• For example, Pete Quesada and employment of tactical aviation in support of 3rd Army in W.W.II.

• Increased variety: multiple microscopic hypotheses make experimentation easier and reduce the costs and systematic evolution reduces strategic risks of mis-specification.

Comment

Maneuver Warfare - Key Concepts

Comment

Commander’s Intent

• Commander’s long-term vision of what he wants to do to the enemy.

Surfaces & Gaps (Strong & Weak Points) and Multiple Thrusts

• Reconnaissance-Pull: Forward screen finds or creates gaps & larger units follow in an expanding torrent.

• Idea: infiltrate and penetrate enemy with multiple thrusts, flowing through gaps and around surfaces.

Mission Tactics

• Contract -- subordinate agrees to make near-term actions serve superior's intent & superior agrees to give subordinate wide freedom to determine how intent is to be realized.

Main Effort

• Unifying idea to shape commitment and harmonize subordinates’ initiative within superiors’ intent.

• Permits decentralization of tactical command within centralized strategic guidance at all levels from theater to platoon. (E.g., company commander assigns main effort to one platoon, other platoons shape their actions to support main effort).

• Commander of each unit can change main effort at any time (maintains operational fluidity).

Large Reserve to Cope with Uncertainty & Exploit Opportunities

• Always held in defensive and offensive combat, and when committed, it either supports or becomes the main effort.

Combined Arms

• Hit enemy with 2 or more arms simultaneously in a way that defense against one arm makes him more vulnerable to other.

Maneuver Warfare is Not a List of Principles,
It is a Way of Thinking That Focuses on the Enemy.

A common outlook for speeding up and harmonizing the differing tempos and rhythms of the observation - orientation - decision - action cycles (OODA loops) at each level of organization, without establishing rigid uniformity.  Comment

Essence of Maneuver Warfare