My work these days carries me into the networking field, significantly into an effort to extend global information grid connectivity to previously disadvantaged users like the E-2C Hawkeye. It wasn’t always true that command and control aircraft were considered disadvantaged – when I first started flying fighters on the tactical edge, I had very good awareness as to what was more or less directly in front of me at 30-50 miles, but much less situational awareness as to what was on my flanks, behind me or at extended ranges. The Hawkeye crews strove manfully to fill in the gaps between the picture I and my wingman assembled, and that which was out of our field of regard. We trained together, we trusted each other and we were held accountable for our actions.
The explosion of information technology into all sectors since the 1990s did not leave the military on the sidelines. Data contributions from multiple sensors, electronic, mechanical and human were rapidly processed, exploited and disseminated. Operational echelon commanders profited greatly from a synthesized, all-source picture of the battlespace while command elements just one notch up from the tactical edge became marginalized with each passing moment that they’d been airborne and disconnected from the data grid. This has proven both a blessing and a curse.
By the time I was a squadron executive officer, a one star flag officer that had flown single engine, single mission Skyhawks in Vietnam could look “over the shoulder” at a lieutenant on a strike mission in Iraq or Afghanistan. Sensor vehicles, manned and unmanned, could relay the battlefield picture and weapons effects even as events unfolded. The video pictures were compelling, even mesmerizing. It wasn’t long before strategic commanders at the three and four star level started looking in as well. And not long after that before the 12,000 mile screwdrivers came out to “help” the forward deployed forces make “smart decisions.”
Of course, when a three star commander is eyeballing the work of a fleet lieutenant as and when it’s happening there are a lot of three star tasks going unserviced, not to mention a lot of fleet lieutenants in the holding pattern waiting their opportunity to be mentored by the all-seeing eye. In a tough, high visibility and fast paced operational environment, it’s all too easy for senior commanders to fall back upon a previous level of comfort by attempting to do the work for which their subordinates are being paid. Don’t even get me started on video teleconferencing as a command and control tool.
In a perfectly networked, distributed system, data does do not merely flow up to the senior commander at the operational and strategic level, but down and out to those on the pointy end of the spear who actually do the killing work. It flows to the tactical edge, hopefully with a polished veneer of analysis that transmutes data to information, information to knowledge, knowledge to advantage.
The Army and Marine Corps, at least as personified in Generals Petraeus and Mattis, seem to understand this:
U.S. technological prowess has made it possible to centralize command-and-control functions in the military, to the point that a general sitting at the Pentagon can micromanage a war half a world away.
This may satisfy senior leaders’ yearning for efficiency but it also makes the U.S. military more vulnerable, especially in wars such as the ones it’s fighting today, says Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Joint Forces Command. Highly centralized and computerized command is not the way to go, he says, because the enemy could easily disrupt the network and cause chaos. “The U.S. military is the single most vulnerable military in the world when we overly rely on technical command-and-control systems,” says Mattis. “Centralized decision making equals single point of failure.” He cited Gen. David Petraeus’ mantra: “We must decentralize to the point of discomfort.”
Soldiers do not need to be micromanaged, says Mattis. They are capable of following a “commander’s intent,” or generalized instructions, without necessarily having detailed orders. “How’s that for change?” Mattis asks. “We’re going to have to restore initiative.”
The limitations of centralized planning in the chaos of an insurgency have led the generals back to where their organizations were born: Train your people well, trust them, hold them accountable.
I think the Navy – and who knows? Maybe the Air Force too – will find that the initiative is still out there on the pointy end, begging more for release than restoration.
Now that’s the kind of Change I’m talking about. The kind of Hope, too. Hyuk! Hyuk!
Subsunk
As a former mole I am all for C&C platforms and providing as much information as possible, but one thing I learned in my time was that in many ways the point of C&C is to provide strategic direction to a tactical asset that is specifically trained to handle the tactical issue – i.e – Dragon 302, vector 200, 2 bogies, angels 20. After that, it’s weapons status and wait for the BDA.
We spend a great deal of treasure and blood training our JOs and NCOs for the specific reason that we want them to be able to think on their feet. If we’re going to totally centralize our command structure then we’re just going to end up looking like the USSR back in the 70s/80s – nobody could make a decision without checking back with their ground controller first. Do we really want that kind of military? Hell no!
Petraeus and Mattis have the right mind-set. Let’s hope it’s contagious.
I think both the navy and air force are doomed. They will “advantage” the force to the point where the admiral and staff will feel fully justified in attempting to wage war at the 03 level. That judgment might be due to having spent too many years at SPAWAR.
I spent a year on the NAVCENT staff in the mid-90s and we had, for example, a grand total of one Air Ops officer and one Strike officer. As I recall, Death didn’t have any enlisted support although he did have an LT who handled dip clearances and served as the aviation officer scheduling NAVCENT’s air assets, Ducks and C-12s. Strike had a larger handful of support staff.
We on the staff tried to ensure that the CVBG et al received the daily ATO and SPINS from JTF SWA and that was about it so far as I recall our staff level involvement in Southern Watch. We sort of fobbed all of that off to the CVBGC and staff. I thought it was one of the most sensible arrangements in command and management that I’d ever seen. It was also, of course, the only realistic option. OTOH, we used to interact with CENTAF and JTF SWA and they had a very different approach. I used to just blame their Deputy CDR but I was cynical back then.
I think that now, NAVCENT and 5TH Fleet staff size has quadrupled or grown even larger than that and if we could do the job back then with far fewer people, so many more people must feel the need to reach out and do more and more that was formerly left to the afloat forces. OTGH, perhaps they are now four times more effective than they used to be……but I doubt it.
Actually, I should’ve said, “…it’s weapons status and wait for the BDA, and then provide a steer to Texaco.”
It was an Hornets-only airwing. Fighters on fumes was a way of life.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the world needs more men like Gen Mattis.
Put me in, coach! I’m ready to play.
Lex, I’ve been watching this trend for nearly thirty years. What I find interesting are the similarities between the emerging network-centric battlefield and the Napoleonic battlefield. Both are environments in which commanders at all levels have a far broader view of the battlefield than in the 20th century.
What is interesting is to note that the Napoleonic era produced two supercommanders – Horatio Nelson and Napoleon Bonaparte. Both fearfully effective – and using diametrically opposed approaches. Napoleon preferred tight control, while Nelson fought and won Tralfalgar with two command signals…one of which was purely for morale.
The question is, who was right? And why?
Nelson. Musta been! He’s got that cool Square named for him.
And I recall the YouTube video from a few days ago with the AH-64 crew trying for 10 or 15 minutes to get a “Weapons Free” from ‘higher’, while they watched the bad-guys run away. It’s crap to think that someone 30, 300, 3000 miles away can run a tactical engagement.
Leave the judgment to the folks in the field. They have been trained for this.
Bureaucracy is not a tool of war, it will cost lives.
Cheers!
ChrisP
ChrisP/
Watched the same video, which I referenced in a prior post here with Jimmy T. You’re right, frustrating in the extreme. I ended up screaming “hose the F****rs!” at the screen in disgust. As I told Jimmy T., thanks to my my FAC experience I full well realize the need for clearances–even multiple ones to remove all doubt if time permits–but THAT was ridiculous!
“Highly centralized and computerized command is not the way to go, he says, because the enemy could easily disrupt the network and cause chaos.”
All your points about initiative and JO’s micro-managed by flags are true, but there’s the real fear, and it’s been demonstrated in exercise after exercise over the past several years. In a frighteningly short time the HQ reaches the point where it loses all confidence in any/ANY information it receives. At which point it falls into a situation very much like The Final Countdown, where the NIMITZ can’t reach any higher HQ but it sees the Japanese fleet coming and has to decide for itself what to do. If you’ve trained the Strike Group Commander to never act without HQ approval, through ROEs that require staffs of JAGS and OPORDS hundreds of pages long, it’s going to be damned hard for him to grow a pair once the nets go silent.
The mantra of the AF for 40 yrs has been “centralized decision-making; decentralized execution,” which, when one thinks about it is a meaningless phrase. If all decisions are shoved to the top no mere mortal or a single staff of mortals can process all the information flows avail. today in a timely fashion. All of this originated with the nuke msn, of course, when such things had to be tightly controlled least some JO Capt start the end of the world on his own hook. The conventional command structure followed suit, aided in the course of things by rapid advances in comm. which foster the illusion of the all-knowing eye in the sky. The theory, of course, is that higher HQ with multiple data flows has the “big picture” the guy at the point of the spear lacks, and thus better decisions will be made. But as has been mentioned here by several, once everybody gets used to “holding” (another word for figuratively standing around drumming fingers on table tops) awaiting orders, bad things happen when the comm.is out and people have forgotten how, or are afraid to, use their own initiative.
Of course w.o. the F-22s the com. is going to go out a lot quicker when all the forward Hq and comm/intel nodes are wiped out once air supremacy is lost. Not to mention the other sides jamming and anti-satellite capabilities–I mean, those DO exist on the other side, don’t they? Yeah, I thought so.
(Historical note: In WWII radios/walky-talkees were so unreliable, Dad used to send runners back with all key intel, sitreps, etc., in Gregg shorthand–the Germans used a different version and few knew any short-hand anyway–and an Admin. officer at battalion who knew Gregg–a relatively rare thing even in those days, let alone today–would decode everything–sort of Dad’s one-man version of the Navajo code-talkers. LOL!)
Wasn’t it Admiral Grace Hopper who once said, “It’s easier to get forgiveness than to get permission?”
If you work for a stand-up commander you can pretty much do what you think best, and be prepared to crawl on the carpet if you’ve messed up that decision. That keeps you wary but allows the quickest response to the situation at hand.
Passing the buck on up the chain only solves the problem of how to cover your ass, and gives up any possibility of getting inside the enemy’s OODA loop or otherwise doing better than expected.
Wise folks give general orders then stand back and let their people impress them with their solutions.
– Max
Sure it works fine in the asymmetric conflicts the US is now engaded in, but what if the adversaries ELINT and SIGINT ever get close to yours?
Not to get into too much detail, but the transmission path from the UAV to the controller makes it pretty difficult to execute effective denial jamming. The path is a directed spot beam, and almost impossible to jam without an airborne jammer of pretty high power, pre-positioned close to the right place. Would be just another OCA target. HOJ anyone?
Someone please put the ECMO back in his box. In jest of course!
Keep in mind the radius-cubed rule, though. I only need enough power nearby to render your more-distant signal unreadable. The closer the bird is to me, the less power I need to do this.
With frequency-skipping and “digital” (nothing is digital in radio waves, but that’s a personal prejudice of mine) transmissions it’s a lot easier to filter out jamming, but pump out enough signal nearby and it’s impossible to filter.
At some point you cross the curve from signal to noise, and the jamming side is pretty much generating noise. I would not be suprised to find battery-powered kilowatt-energy narrow-beam jammers on the battlefield soon. That’s 1970′s CB radio technology, nothing that can’t be picked up in a few issues of any ham radio magazine and built in a cave with a few household tools. To combat it, we need to change the signal, the receiver, and the transmitter. Which, the transmitter is on a ComSat at 24 miles up.
Ponder the costs on that upgrade.
The advancement of battlefield technology has, historically, found that whatever expense was placed into a weapon or armor found it rendered neutral by a cheaper counter-technology. The benefit of hindsight allowing one to focus more clearly on the subject at hand.
One should still make the effort, of course, but don’t expect the advantage gained to remain forever.
– Max
On a lower level, what Lex is talking about is one of the main reasons why I oppose UAV’s for missions in all but a virtually safe environment. Once you remove the crew from the platform you have two more links in the chain, the incoming and outgoing data streams. It is now no longer necessary to attack the platform itself. You can attack one of the data streams and effectively negate the UAV. If the (remote) pilot cannot see what he’s doing, or control the platform, then that’s as good as a hard kill.
When you have a manned platform, all the C7C is effectively located onboard. You have to physically attack the platform, because even if you knock out his radio or data link, he can still visually acquire and engage a target. With a UAV, you don’t need that physical attack. You simply deny it one part of the control loop, it will simply keep flying, untended, uncommanded, until it runs out of fuel.
In fact, you needn’t attack the data stream itself. You can attack, either physically or electronically, the control center, the pilot’s location, or anything else in the control loop. Does it not occur to anyone else that in case of war, one of the primary targets will be the flight control facilities at Nellis? Why deal with attacking the UAV’s when you can take out the entire system with a small force on the ground? Heck, just cut power to the facility and the whole system goes dark.
There are places and times for UAV’s. However, I would venture that, in the majority of cases, those times and places are those where the enemy (or target) has no ability to fight back, other than small arms or light AAA capabilities.
respects,
Actually, the command and control links are more robust than you think. There’s a high levle of redundancy…and everything beyond the R/C-model-with-camcorder stage has autonomous RTB capability.
What would worry me more is somebody infiltrating the rear areas and trying to kill the operators.
A UAV crewmember may wind up finding that skill with personal weapons is a necessity.
It is now no longer necessary to attack the platform itself. You can attack one of the data streams and effectively negate the UAV. If the (remote) pilot cannot see what he’s doing, or control the platform, then that’s as good as a hard kill.
I think the opposite. Send in the UAVs where it is most dangerous. Or dull. Or dirty (NBC). UAVs are programmed to deal with loss of command, and command can be via many different channels, from local beneath their wings (the tactical ground commander) to satllite and then back to folks on Nevada. They can have an infinite variety of behaviors programmed in for losses of command, which will most likely not be on/off but levels of degradation anyway. And extremely rare is the airborne platform that does not require connectivity to the grid to execute its mission, whether to pick up the real time targeting or to provide the feeds back to wherever the decisions are being made. Those cases where the connectivity is not required are easy.
For example, the whole whiz-bang about the F-22 is not its aero properties, stellar as they may be, but its networking. That’s what we waited 20 years for. And that is subject to all the attacks that a UAV’s command links will be subject to also.
What is often misunderstood and easily dismissed is just how much of the information technology we enjoy everyday exists precisely because of the military R&D investments to make it happen, or to accelerate its development on a pace highly unlikely to occur in the commercial market space.
As IP (as in Internet Protocol)s the underpinnings of almost all networking technologies today it is hard to remember that as recently as twenty years ago all major computer manufacturers had proprietary protocol stacks to enable their systems to communicate (remember Bi-Sync, SNA, Burrough’s Poll Select, etc.?)with little to none interaction. Before ARPAnet and ongoing DARPA funded research (with help from the National Science Foundation) none of it would likely exist. Anti-trust laws and competitive realities prevent this sort of broad based R&D from happening in many cases.
And that nice windows interface you are staring at is based on DARPA funded work at Xerox PARC. And on, and on….
So the next cocktail party conversation you get dragged into where some know-it-all goes on about how we need to stop wasting money on the military a brief histroy lesson might be in order.
So the military is keeping up? In some very real ways the rest of us are the ones following.
Of course when you look around the globe you can quickly see just how much we have contributed to building the global economies of our major international competitors – another result of a generous nation (or stupid depending on your point of view) not likely to get acknowledged by those invested in the worldview that anything military is evil.
Wasn’t it Georges Santyanna who said “Those who do not learn from the past are domed to repeat it.”
During the late unpleasentness in Southeast Asia it was well known that the President frequently mandated the ordnance loads for individual missions and there are numerous stories of young platoon leaders suddenly finding the president of the United States on thier tactical net.
Don’t we all know how well that turned out?
This tends to be a systemic problem. The role of higher, at all levels of command, is to ensure that your subordinates are properly trained and equipped, to give appropriate guidance, and to fully support them when you turn them loose to do their jobs.
I remember LBJ’s micromanaging all too well. Heard many, umm, pungent remarks about it at the time. Mostly from people who had a personal interest in the “late unpleasantness”, and these from people whose contribution was more on the pig side than the chicken side -so to speak.
With the increasing reliance on data flow and connections, how much more of a threat is EMP? In decades past, this was an issue, though the oft mentioned reply was, don’t worry, all military hardware is hardened. Called BS on the “all” then, and cannot believe that it has changed since that time. Guess I have the gift of making myself beloved that way.
Marine6,
“2nd verse, same as the 1st” – “Acting with President Obama’s authorization and in the belief that the hostage, Capt. Richard Phillips, was in imminent danger…”
Bill K,
That’s exactly the sort of Presidential micro-management that got a bunch of good folks killed on their way to Tehran.
AW1Tim/
The guy/jerk AF O-6 that planned that msn was the DCO (Dep Cmdr for OPs–#3 guy) at my Wing at RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge for a while. If anyone had asked us, we could have predicted..
The other contributing factor was the “all-aboard!” mindset that said every service ought to be represented. To my mind, that was a real DS move. I don’t care WHICH service got the tasking, but expecting all 4 branches to coordinate effectively on such short notice, was just asking for trouble.
I mean, we didn’t even use the same COMM frequencies, for heaven’s sake. That should have been a one-service mission from the get go. Ah well…
respects,
The land guys got it right- for this enemy. Due to terrain (look at a topo map of Afghanistan) and the unpredictability of the status quo enemy of today (plus the Army just lost FCS). Skirmishes of today are routinely led by 1st LTs and senior NCOs empowered with ROE and judgment. Comms are never ass-umed. Their battlefield is more often ten times more chaotic than a sky full of dogfighters.
Gee Lex I hope that “San Diego Agency” can someday develop systems that actually work when integrated in air systems..It sometimes seems it is more important that they guarantee information assurance first. LOL. Example? Army/Marines have a radio that works and is common to both services, the PRC-117. A man can carry it, a tactical vehicle can carry it and a command forward can reposition it fast. Old SOF like the Snakeater would be amazed by it. On the other hand the Navy and AF keep making stovepipes…
b2
Sir, You are so right! I was a Program Manager at SPAWAR and I had to leap through flaming hoops of fire to buy 6 AN/PRC-117F Radios back in 1999. It was SPAWAR stupidity but it was also SECNAV stupidity which put out a directive/policy that forbade buying any radios except NTDR and DMR until the JTRS radios came on line and this idiotic directive had been signed in 1996.
Mike,
It is impossible to compare and contrast 18th century army commanders with 18th century navy commanders. One commander is in total command of a fluid and dynamic battle built around a center of gravity. The other is setting up a pure artillery duel that revolves around the aggressiveness and competence of the various ships all of whom can avoid battle unless flanked. It is a problem for the student as to what it meant to be flanked at sea. As a hint, the fleet in a land war were the cavalry which frequently screwed the pooch for their commander by running off but in the naval engagement the ones that could run away were least vital in fleet engagements when it came down to blowing the other guy to pieces.
Historically, a certain level of decentralized decision-making was *forced*…in business and government as in warfare…by limitations of communications technology. From the telegraph onward, these limitations have been going away, creating a temptation toward excessive centralization. It’s a temptation that too few organizations are resisting.
In business, much of the talk about “delayering” and about eliminating those bad ‘ol hierarchies really means, in practice, concentrating authority at the top and particularly concentrating authority among staff peope with no accountability.
David Foster/
But it’s just not the accountability part–as important a factor as that is–it’s about the QUALITY of the decision-making as well. For as organizations grow ever more “flat” in attempts to eliminate what seem to many as excessive layers of bureaucracy, rather than empowering those at the point of the sword with information heretofore only available at higher hq in order to enhance the quality of decision-making for those AT THE TIP, instead increasing amounts of data is shoved upward upon ever fewer people. And as I originally pointed out above, no mere mortal can properly devote the time to these overwhelming information flows to make quality decisions in an expeditious manner.
So today–as compared to say, WWII–we have Majors making the decisions 2/lts used to make, Cols making decisions Majors used to make, and 2-star generals making the decisions the Cols used to make. All this would be fine, if the quality and timeliness of the decision-making were shown to be improved on the order of a quantum leap in nature. Unfortunately the physics seems to be running the other way.
VX…totally agree about the “quality” part. Also, I think part of the problem in the mortgage debacle is that decisions once made by on-the-spot loan officers were removed from their control and given to algorithms developed & maintained by central organizations.