Horses and Dogs, Land Ships and the Second Fight
Whilst at the International Armoured Vehicle Summit this week I read Singer and Cole's Ghost Fleet and Frank Ledwidge's Losing Small Wars. During the summit, industry showcased many of the technologies foreshadowed in 'Ghost fleet’ and some African nations and off beat companies discussed losing small wars. Three ideas struck me as I thought about the two books at the conference; Land ships, “second fight” and horses and dogs.
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, established the land ship committee in February 1915. Just as this transferred from the Navy to the Army, technology transfers from the air and sea domains to the land domain. For this reason the phrase “land ship” is an effective descriptor of the modern AFV. For example, AFV active defence systems are similar to the Close In Weapons System (CIWS) that ships have used for 30 years to automatically locate and destroy incoming missiles. Thinking about AFV through the land ship analogy infers some other possibilities for the future:
- Physical armour will be largely replaced by active countermeasures. Modern ships are not armoured because aircraft and missiles changed the primary vector of attack from the near horizontal to the near vertical. Concurrently the combat capability of a ship became vested in radar and antenna arrays that couldn't be armoured. Drone attacks like those recently observed in the Middle East, bomblets, programmable air and artillery munitions all use top attack because passive and active armour systems create a horizontal protective belt. Given this, Active Defence Systems will progressively compliment and replace passive armour.
- The Commanding General of the Manoeuvre Centre of Excellence introduced the phrase hyperactivity to the conference. Hyperactivity is a "temporary state when sensors and weapons enable dramatically more intense and lethal operations.” Hyperactivity has defined battle at sea since cannon was invented and Trafalgar, Jutland, Coral Sea, Pearl Harbour and the Falklands bear testimony to this. Hyperactivity isn't absent from the land domain but it's character tends to lag that of battles at sea. We can expect another iteration of land hyperactivity that will approximate the naval battles of the Falklands and land forces should expect to be engaged primarily by projectiles from other domains.
- Automated damage control. Damage control systems on ships automatically reroute power and essential services away from damaged systems. In service AFV do not do this but the next generation will.
- Combat Systems on AFV will integrate sensors and weapons internal to AFV and amongst other AFV of a unit just like they do in ships of the fleet. This capability will depend heavily on a network created between AFV and establishing and protecting this network will be a critical command function, just like it is at sea.
The Second Fight. Ghost Fleet, naval engagement in the Falklands and warfare in the Donbass suggest that the first fight in a future war will be one of countermeasures and automated systems. Each side will use unmanned systems to probe and attack and the countermeasures to defeat these attacks will be automated. The transition between the fight of the machines and second fight will be critical. Leaders must understand network performance and characteristics to mitigate damage and exploit opportunities.
The fight of the machines may create opportunities for "Old technology." A cyber attack to defeat the active defence systems of light AFV may expose them to old technology of passive armour and high velocity cannons. "Old skills" like land navigation, vehicle craft and fighting at night will remain critical and have new dimensions; does the ground that provides concealment from visual observation do the same for radar? Strategic leaders might learn that "second fight deterrence" can work. Could a state weak in the first fight, like Saddam Hussein’s 2003 Iraq, deter a powerful opponent with a strong show of a its "second, long fight" capability.
Thinking about dogs and horses puts unmanned AFV in context. Unmanned AFV are available now; India has autonomous BMP-1 to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance and an Armoured Engineer vehicle that autonomously breach. Australia will trial unmanned AFV for CSS in the immediate future. Don't be afraid; semi intelligent entities have been used for these roles before. Dogs have always conducted reconnaissance and provided early warning for their human masters. In many parts of the world logistics convoys feature a single human with a train of horses obediently in trail. The problems typically cited in relation to autonomous systems can also be characterised using the horse and dog lens. A lame or errant horse would be abandoned or destroyed and the same fate will befall lame or errant autonomous AFV. Unmanned AFV don’t need to be over thought because we already understand how to work with semi intelligent entities.
Many technologies are maturing in the next decade and combined arms leaders must move with them. At present we lack a deep understanding of autonomous systems, networking and the electromagnetic spectrum; all major components of the future combat system. But in case I got enamoured with technology Frank Lewidges book reminded me that weapon superiority does not guarantee strategic advantage. The earths surface, the electromagnetic spectrum and humans are fickle things. Combined arms leaders need to grow with technology to survive the fight of the machines whilst they remain prepared to fight in the dark with a dumb machine and a simple weapon.
