Swarms, Drones, and Decoys

Monday

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The Escalation of Integration

in Combined Arms Operations

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In separate posts that made no attempt at a comprehensive treatment I have written about the past, present, and possible future military use of swarms, drones, and decoys. I realize now that a tactical doctrine that could integrate swarm, drone, and decoy weapons systems and their tactics would be a powerful conceptual tool for future combat scenarios, and possibly also would point the way to an extended conception of combined arms operations that transcends that concept as it is known today.

If the reader is familiar with some of my other posts, you may be aware that I have some interest in what I call extended conceptions and have written about them on several occasions, most specifically in relation to an extended conception of ecology that I call metaphysical ecology and an extended conception of history that I call metaphysical history. You can readily understand, then, the intrinsic interest that I find in an extended conception of combined arms operations. From a philosophical point of view, we have an intellectual obligation to push our ideas to the very limit of their coherency and applicability to order to explore their outermost possibilities. That is what I have suggested (or attempted to suggest) in relation to ecology and history, and that is what I am suggesting here. But even a sketch of an extended conception of warfare — call it metaphysical warfare, if you like — would be beyond the parameters of a blog post, so at the present moment I will confine myself to mostly practical consequences for combined arms operations in the light of an extended conception of warfare, but I hope to return to this topic in more detail later. In fact, I hope someday to literally write the book on metaphysical warfare, but that remains a project for the future.

One of the distinctive aspects of combined arms operations is to recognize both the individual strengths and weaknesses of a given weapons system and its particular doctrine of employment in the battlespace and to integrate individual weapons systems in their doctrinal context with other weapons systems that can, in combination, uniquely facilitate the strengths of a given weapons system while compensating (to the degree possible) for the weaknesses of the same. This is a principle that admits of generalization both to smaller scales and to larger scales. It brings a certain unity to our conception of combined arms warfare when we can see this single principle expressed at different orders of magnitude in space and time.

An illustration of what I mean by combined arms warfare “expressed at different orders of magnitude in space and time” (and, I might add, integrated within and across different orders of magnitude, diachronically and synchronically) can be seen at the microscopic level with the trend toward integrated avionics in the F-22 and F-35A, which seamlessly bring together mission systems and vehicle systems in a tightly integrated package — this is combined arms (better, integrated arms) within a single weapons system. At the macroscopic level, combined arms warfare goes beyond the integration of many distinct weapons systems and naturally seeks the integration of distinct forces — this is usually called “inter-operability” — so that inter-service rivalries and differences in training, doctrine, and tactics among the services of one nation-state (in the case of the US, this means Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the Coast Guard) and among multi-national forces do not become obstacles to unity of command and clarity of the objective.

Neil Warner provides a clear definition of inter-operability that illustrates this macroscopic sale of combined arms that converges on the interoperability of distinct forces:

“Interoperability can be defined as the ability of systems, units or forces to provide to and accept services from other systems, units or forces and to use the services so exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together. Interoperability cannot solely be thought of on an information system level, but must include doctrine, people, procedures and training.”

Neil Warner, ADI Limited, Interoperability – An Australian View, 7^th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium

Given the realities of interservice rivalries and the disproportionate control that each service may have over particular classes of weapons systems (e.g., the Air Force has more jets than the Navy, but the Navy still does have jets), ideal interoperability must not only integrate the forces of distinct nation-states but also the various forces of a single nation-state.

Between the polar extremes of microscopic integration of individual weapons systems and the macroscopic integration of entire armed forces there lies the middle ground, which is what most people mean when they talk about combined arms operations — the integration of soldiers on the ground with man-portable systems, mobile fire, armored assets, air assets and so on in a single battleplan in which all act in concert under a unified command to achieve a clearly defined objective.

Combined arms operations are as old as warfare, which is in turn as old as civilization. The most famous examples of combined arms operations were those of mobile mechanized units with close air support that came of age during the Second World War and which are still the basis of military doctrine in our time. Rapid technological advances in weapons systems in recent decades, however, points toward a new era of combined arms operations.

In terms of air power, we are all aware of the rapid success of drones both for surveillance and combat roles, there have been many recent discussions of swarm warfare (something I have attempted to contribute to myself in The Swarming Attack), and decoys are, like combined arms operations, as old as war itself. I think that these three elements — swarms, drones, and decoys — will come together in a very power way in future military operations. Drones are more effective when sent out in swarms and accompanied by decoys to increase the numbers of the swarm; decoys are more effective when accompanied by drones and flying in a swarm; swarms are more effective when they combine drones and delays into an indistinguishable whole that descends upon an enemy like a plague of locusts.

Already we have seen the utility of drones, and many have forecast that the F-35 will be the last generation of human-piloted fighter aircraft. Just recently, an F-16 was fitted out as a drone and was flown without a pilot. It ought be possible, in theory, to do exactly the same thing with an F-22 or an F-35. Drone warfare is not something that is coming soon; it is here now. But drones are vulnerable (as are all pieces of hardware), and the best drones are expensive and complex pieces of equipment. It would make sense to deploy a few expensive drones with offensive capabilities with a much larger number of cheaper drones that would be indistinguishable from the drones with offensive capabilities. A few combat capable drones together with a much larger number of decoys would constitute a swarm of drones and decoys, and a swarm has combat advantages of its own that would make this combined arms weapons system of drones and decoys all the more powerful.

Combined arms operations of swarms, drones, and decoys need not be limited to air assets. Most of the considerations above I mentioned in relation to aerial swarms, drones, and decoys are equally true for naval swarms, drones, and decoys — something that I discussed in Small Boat Swarms: Strategic or Tactical? and Flying Boat Swarms? Recent reports have also discussed the DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program, which includes a variety of distinct robots for land-based warfare (cf. Pentagon-funded Atlas robot refuses to be knocked over by Matthew Wall, Technology reporter, BBC News) including both two- and four-legged robots, some built to carry heavy loads and others built for speed. Land-based robots could also be deployed according to the combined arms principles of swarms, drones, and decoys.

While the robotization of warfare — drone aircraft, drone naval vessels (both surface and subsurface), self-driving vehicles, robots on two legs and four legs — presents significant opportunities for the most technologically advanced nation-states, their deployment would require a highly robust control architecture, without which unity of command would be impossible. The growing acronyms to describe the kind of control architecture necessary to automated combined arms operations have gone from command and control to command, control, and computers to C4 to C4I to C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). What this culminates in is now called the networked battlespace or netcentric warfare (something that I discussed in Epistemological Warfare).

Future wars will always be parallel wars, with one war being prosecuted in the actual battlespace and another war being prosecuted in parallel in the virtual battlespace (i.e., cyberwarfare or netcentric warfare). There has always been a parallel prosecution of wars on the homefront and on the front line, with the homefront being a war of propaganda, information, and ideology, while the front line is a war of men and machines thrown up against each other.

The opening of a virtual front is closely analogous to the advent of air power, which added the need for command of the air to the already familiar need of command of the ground and command of the seas. Douhet’s visionary treatise, The Command of the Air, set this out in astonishing prescience. It is impossible for me to read Douhet without being impressed by his clarity of vision of the future. This is a rare ability. And yet we know that by the time of the Second War War (and even more so today) the command of the air is not merely another front: command of the air is central to warfare as we know it today.

The fact that I wrote that it would be the virtual battlespace that hosts a parallel fight betrays my now-archaic point of view: the primary battle may well be in the virtual battlespace, while the actual combat in the actual battlespace is that which is fought in parallel. A first strike could come in the virtual battlespace; an ambush could come in the virtual battlespace; a war of attrition could be fought in the virtual battlespace. Command of cyberspace may prove to be as central to future warfare as command of the air is to contemporary warfare. This introduces yet another conception of integrated warfare: the integration of actual and virtual battlespaces.

Each party to a conflict will see to secure its own C4ISR capabilities while compromising the C4ISR capabilities of its adversary or adversaries. Each will develop its own strategies, tactics, and doctrines for this new front, and it is to be expected that in the attempt to overwhelm the enemy’s computer and communications systems that we will see that electronic equivalent of B. H. Liddel-Hart’s “expanding torrent” in cyberspace seeking the disruption of enemy computer networks.

It may be taken as axiomatic that computing power is finite. Although the upper bound of computing systems is not known, and may not be known, the fact that there is an upper limit is known. (I will observe that this is a non-constructive assertion, which demonstrates that non-constructivist thought is not abstruse but often has a direct applicability to experience.) A finite computing system can be overwhelmed. If a system is 99% effect, a swarm of a total of 100 drones and decoys may result in one getting through; if a system is 99.9 % effective, a swarm of 1,000 may result in getting through, etc. If you know the limitations of your enemy’s targeting computers, you can defeat them numerically.

In many cases, the operational parameters of a computerized targeting system may be known, or can be estimated with a high degree of accuracy. Continuous improvements in technology will continuously augment the parameters of updated or newly designed computerized targeting systems, but even the latest and greatest technology will remain finite. This finitude is a vulnerability that can be exploited. In fact, Leibniz defined metaphysical evil in terms of finitude. We can to better than a definition, however: we can quantify the metaphysical evil (i.e., the finitude) of a weapons system. More importantly — and this is one of those rare cases in which comparative concepts may be more significant than quantitative concepts — we can introduce comparative measures of finitude. If one party to a conflict can simply get the better of its adversary in a comparative measure of computing finitude, they will win the C4ISR battle, though that does not yet guarantee a win on parallel fronts, much less winning the war.

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