Challenges of the - The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics

JHU/APL Rethinking Seminar Series
Rethinking Global Security Constructs,
Threats and Potential Responses
www.jhuapl.edu/rethinking
March 28th 2016
Dr. David E. Johnson
RAND Corporation
Challenges of the "Now" and Their Implications
for the Future U.S. Army
Notes:
1. The opinions expressed by the speaker are solely his own and do not necessarily represent the
opinions of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
2. Below are informal notes taken by a JHU/APL staff member at the Seminar.
3. Dr. Johnson used an extensive set of slides for his presentations. Links to the presentation as well
as video, audio, and bulletized notes for this and past seminars can be found on
www.jhuapl.edu/rethinking and the JHU/APL YouTube Playlist.
Introduction
Dr. Johnson noted that the Army generally talks about its challenges programmatically as being 10-15
years away. However, some of these challenges are only 10-15 minutes away. He stated his concern that
he could not detect a sense of urgency within the acquisition system and elsewhere in the Army. The
Army should be talking about these problems with the urgency that was used with the IED problems in
Iraq. His talk would be based on his 20 years of work in the field, which he began by studying Lebanon,
Israel, and Gaza in terms of hybrid threats.
Future Challenges
 Russia really isn’t a hybrid threat – it went into Syria with cruise missiles, an air force and tanks
while Hezbollah went to Syria with RPG, MANPADS, and A2GMs.
 Bottom line: The Army needs to think more about specific adversaries and not about abstractions,
but there will be many challenges in the environment
 Indicators of the challenge: Russia has introduced 4 iterations of armored vehicles in the last 20
years while the US has not done anything serious about its armored vehicles in over 30 years
 This talk is intentionally provocative to make it clear that the Army and the Marine Corps won’t
be ready to face these challenges and other services also have problems
o Example: New fighters that can penetrate A2AD but are dropping 1970s missiles
Three Categories of Adversaries
 US has been focused on the bottom level of the following slide
o In the meantime it missed a lot of what has been happening in the middle and high end
 Much like after Vietnam when the US was surprised with the appearance of mobile SAMs and
ATGMs in the Yon Kippur war which changed the character of the battle
o Changed perspectives on stand-off and precision capabilities
o Generated the Big-5 (the last time Army had 5 successful big programs) and Air-Land
Battle (the model used up until 2003 and is still used in high-end doctrine)
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2003 Crisis – Army was designed for high-end battles but was thrust into an insurgency
o Low-end adversaries were characterized by their close-in weapons systems: small arms,
APGs, IEDs, and occasional rockets, mortars, etc.
Low-end adversaries don’t have state sponsors to provide them with more advanced weapons
o Lack the wherewithal to mass in large numbers
o Does allow the US to fight using small formations
On-going causalities debate: On only 3 occasions since 2001 has more than a platoon been at risk
The US and the Israelis have gotten very good at handling such situations and the US has been
innovative in weapons systems in last 15 years including:
o Had Manhattan Project-level effort with JIEDDO / Task Force Odin to deal with IEDs
o Upgraded thousands of MRAPs and put RPG screens and underbelly armor on Strykers
o Loaded a Navy Phalanx system on a tractor-trailer to shoot down an occasional mortar or
rocket round
o Made huge leaps providing capabilities to brigades that even a corps could not imagine
having 20 years ago
o Bottom line: The Battle of Sadr City report identified all the capabilities that one colonel
controlled for a months-long battle – an unprecedented situation
Problems with these advances
o Adaptations were made to handle problems that differ from what Army is now facing
o Upgraded a platform that was the principal weapon for the 82nd Airborne so much that it
can no longer be dropped out of an aircraft
o Stryker was designed to be put on C-130s but upgrades have now made that impossible
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MRAP, the principal C2 node for a brigade, cannot be picked up by a helo or carried on a
C-130, so it can’t support every mission that a brigade may have
Large command centers now sprout all kinds of wires and antennas with lots of
equipment emitting signals – all from a tent that makes a great target
 Also takes 6-8 hours to set up its NTC
Sadr City battle allowed the commander to simply plug into a network that had been
building for 5 years – can’t expect to see such a situation in future expeditionary
operations
High-End State Adversaries
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Problem 1: The Army may have forgotten how to handle this level of adversary
o Rand Corporation just had exercise about defending the Baltics – very dicey
o Starting to train for this again but not just a training issue – also a material and cultural
problem
 Have a generation that has never thought of anything but counter-insurgency and
low-intensity operations
Problem 2: Russia has been building different capabilities in the last few years including:
o Anti-access and area denial (A2AD) – integrated air defenses / advanced MANPADS
o Long-range rockets (beyond 100km) with precision and multiple warhead options (antipersonnel, top attack, mines, thermobaric, etc.)
o Advanced ground systems (6 km range ATGM for tanks with active protection)
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o Cyber
o Special operations
Bottom line: World War II is the last time US fought this type of adversary and haven’t even
thought about fighting such an adversary since the Cold War
o Russians have actually used some of these weapons in recent battles including flattening
cities from a distance with their TOS-1 MLR
US needs to think about preparing for such high-end weapons systems
o Must develop credible military capabilities to deter Russia and China and to assure allies
– can’t deter anyone if no one thinks you can win
o Russian or Chinese weapons may also be in the hands of state-sponsored hybrid actors
 See video of TOS-1 MLR, a Russian thermobaric weapon (creates overpressures
that cause internal injuries without burning targets) in use by Iraqi forces
o Army already has vulnerabilities when facing some of these weapons as documented in a
recent Rand report Comparing US Army Systems with Foreign Counterparts
o Expect the US to have problems even getting to the fight given adversary A2AD
capabilities
Study of the 2006 Lebanon War provides examples of existing problems
o Showed the proliferation of “state” capabilities and a more lethal adversary
o Israeli army made strategic mistakes and also looked ineffectual when it could not stop
the short range rocket attacks
 Big problem with short-range rockets that were well hidden in difficult terrain –
rolling hills with dense forests of trees that were not all that tall
 Terrain issues meant that one could not see the 15,000 rocket launchers from the
air – and there may be 30,000 now
 Hezbollah could shoot with impunity without ground action
 Israeli Army went in unprepared and started taking causalities
 Commander just stopped the operation and called in medevacs
 Problem: Israeli troops weren’t trained to this type of fighting since 1973
o While the war was not a defeat for Israel, the absence of victory was very problematic
and made the IDF look weak for the first time
o By 2006 Israel believed it was beyond era of major war and considered the main
challenge facing its land forces would be low intensity asymmetrical conflicts
 Based on Kosovo, OEF, and OIF, Israel believed that standoff attack by fires
(principally air power) can deter or defeat state adversaries
 Israel’s army concentrated on stopping return of intifada terrorist attacks in Israel
 First intifada was just sticks and stones, while the new intifada involved
suicide bombers attacking pizza restaurants
 Israel’s strategy made sense at the time but it was wrong
o Faced reduced defense budgets while training, etc. costs were
going up
o Depended on air strike and other ineffectual standoff capabilities
o Lebanon War lesson: competent adversaries with good weapons in complex terrain are
difficult to handle with existing low intensity conflict skills/mindsets/materiel solutions
o Of concern: Libya and the current campaign against the Islamic State show a similar US
aversion to committing ground forces
o For the US Army now, can see what not employing ground forces leads to
 Could be debated
 Once thought they would only expect to face armed squads or little larger units
 US has talked about these lessons but is not developing solutions needed to
address them (highly integrated air-ground ops, active protection, etc.)
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Hezbollah was not 10-ft tall, just fought differently than Israel or the US then expected
o US Army was use to fighting close – engage when 100-200 meters away from adversary
 Would fix enemy with maneuvering fires and then finish with close combat or
with indirect fires from battalion resources
o Hezbollah used ATGMs and standoff missiles to ensure no way to initiate close combat
 Would have to fight through 4-5 km before could get to the close fight
 Getting to the fight requires combined arms, fire-maneuver, suppression – all
elements that used to be understood in Air-Land Battle and training
 US Army could no longer do this
o Wake-up call forced changes in US training: went from 25% to 75% high intensity,
combined arms fire, maneuver combat – but still some low end since it would be needed
 Realized that the Army would have to do it all
 The problem had been that they were not training adequately for high intensity
combat
o Key to near future combat operations being able to…
 Isolate the battlespace
 Find weapons such as well-hidden rocket launchers that might even be unmanned
and working on timers
o A way to visualize the problem is to consider a
commute in Northern Virginia from Fredericksburg
to Springfield.
 Imagine 4,000 adversaries with
MANPADS, IEDs, ATGMs, etc. who all
want to kill you and are hiding along the
way
 Generally where we will need to fight there
will be lots of villages – providing both
congestion and lots of places to hide
 Not like Libya or Iraq which are generally
flat and open
Hezbollah Rocket Launcher
o Dr. Johnson noted that he has been talking about
this problem for 5 years but nothing has been done
to make the necessary changes to improve training for such situations
Bottom line: If a regular force is equipped with stand-off weapons and a good supply chain, it
creates a radically different problem than an irregular force does
o Could see this from ISIS, Chechnya, etc.
Historic problems show this situation, too
o Russians lost over 300 helicopters in Afghanistan and the US lost over 5,000 in Vietnam
o The problem was not that they were losing aircraft, but rather that they couldn’t solve the
combat problem if they couldn’t use air assaults
Key problems
o Can’t use weapons normally used – not close air support, attack helicopters, air mobility
 Creates a stand-off problem that require counters to the adversary’s weapons
o Current adversaries create qualitative challenges, despite smaller size, because of their:
 Training, discipline, organization, C2
 Stand-off weapons (ATGMs, MANPADS, mortars, rockets)
 Use of complex terrain – natural and urban which is complicated by presence of
civilians
o Adversaries want to fight and know how to fight and now have useful weapons
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Suicide bombers grew out of Lebanon War and could be compared to the WWII Japanese
Kamikaze pilots
 Japan knew that they would probably lose most of the planes in any attack on a
US target anyway, so it made sense to send some directly into the ships
 Could be sure of at least some damage
o Examples on YouTube of the easy-to-use weapons that are causing problems
 Antitank Guided Missiles in Syria
 US supplied these missiles that are also easy to setup
 Russian Arena Active Protection System
 Israel, Germany, Korea all have these systems
 US beginning to test this active system
 Picks up on first incoming RPG, knocks it down, and gives the targeted
tank a chance to react
 US has nothing to stop this type of weapon currently beyond adding
more armor to tanks creating the urgency to find other methods
 GRAD Rockets in Ukraine
 Neither US or Europe wants to believe that Russians are operating these
weapons in Ukraine so they call it a hybrid or ambiguous situation
o If sure about Russian involvement, would have to react
 Not ambiguous to the Russians – they know what they are doing
 First of three systems that fire in the video are only found in the Russian
forces while the other two older systems are available in many countries
 Starting to use small UAVs with GPS and video to send back very good
target location / battle damage assessments used for adjustments
 System provides lots of ways to find adversaries and carries lots of
missiles to use on the adversaries they find
Another concern about Russia is tactical nuclear weapons
o The US no longer has equivalent tactical nuclear weapons
o In escalation, the US can only go from nothing to high end nuclear weapons
o Russia has an escalatory ladder – could use on own territory or Ukraine if they had to
o Russia has not said that they would not use them and has fielded some new versions
o US is still not training soldiers to operate in MOP gear for either chemical or nuclear
environments
Minding the Middle: Hezbollah, ISIS, and Ukrainian Separatists
 Type of adversary that the US Army and Marines will encounter in the future
o Hybrid adversaries rising from ongoing turmoil in North Africa, the Middle East, and
Ukraine (and could elsewhere—North Korea)
 Their strategy: protracted conflict causing large numbers of casualties, influencing the media, and
destroying the populace’s will to fight
o Compounded by reluctance of Western states to put “boots on the ground” or cause
civilian casualties
 Not necessarily “insurgencies”—irregular warfare, COIN, and “stability operations” may be
largely irrelevant
o Fighters often go to ground in urban areas to hide amongst the people
 Systems designed to deal with these threats could also be used against state adversaries
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Lessons for Armor in Recent Wars
Maneuver Leaders Must Know How to Employ All Arms
Conflict
• Joint combined arms fire
and maneuver—with armor
—key to defeating
dispersed hybrid
opponents, particularly in
urban fights
• Must fight through and
neutralize stand-off fires
(ATGMs, MANPADS,
mortars, rockets) to be able
to get into the close fight
Use of Armor—Hybrid Wars
Vietnam
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Medium armor (M113s) useful throughout theater
Tanks useful as assault guns
IEDs/mines: 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (June
1969 to June 1970) lost 352 combat vehicles
Chechnya
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Russians use armor throughout conflict
Grozny’s Urban canyons present issues
Combined arms and training key; tank—infantry
coordination key (relearn WWII lessons)
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Hezbollah stand-off requires combined arms
Being good at low end does not prepare force
Stand-off fires (air/artillery) do not solve problems
posed by Hezbollah’s defense and short-range
rockets
Key IDF lesson: only armor can operate on this
type of battlefield
Add more Merkava IV tanks and the NAMER IFVs to
the IDF
Lebanon
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Gaza
• Responsive artillery key for
•
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Tanks and APCs used throughout the operation
Brigade-centric combined arms approach with
integrated air power
Armor used for battlefield logistics
Used modified T-55 IFVs (Achzarit) pending fielding
of Namer
fires—attack helicopters
and close air support may
be limited by MANPADS
and ADA
Chechnya
Gaza
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There is a belief that there is no place for armor anymore
o Every war since Vietnam has been bad for armor
Ukraine has shown that medium- and thin-skinned vehicles cannot survive
To close the gap to stand-off systems, need to do it with heavy systems
US forgot how to do responsive artillery for repressing enemy systems
o Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided (TOW) missiles are vulnerable since they
are not armored
o Can stop the threat fairly easily if you can locate and stop the first one
Priorities for Combat Development
 Joint combined arms fire and maneuver
 Mobile protected firepower—with active protection—to maneuver in high-end ATGMs/RPG
environment
 A counter-fire system that can find and destroy rockets beyond 100 kilometers
 A counter Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) and counter rocket defenses
 A counter high-end MANPADS systems
 Short-range air defenses in maneuver units
 Mobile and survivable headquarters
 Backup to GPS for timing and location
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Cyber/jam-proof communications
And…there are likely more
Recommendations for a Joint Force for the Future
 Army has a program called the Big Eight Initiatives which detail desired capability areas
 Army has spent a lot of time in the last 10 years talking about the human domain and human
performance
 There are existing systems that the US is very behind in and would keep the US from operating
the way it is used to doing
 Then add cyber, and electronic warfare (EW), etc. to complicate operations
 Need to develop a greater sense of urgency since platoons and companies are being put at risk as
they have not been since Vietnam
QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION
Re: Acquisition Issues
 US has not bought any new systems for many years
o Has tried to field new systems with little success
o Look how long the F-35 has been in development
 Problem #1: US has clear capability gaps but Acquisition officers are not aware of what went on
in Lebanon and what sort of capabilities that the Russians have, especially active protection
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Problem #2: Federal Acquisition Regulations themselves cause problems
o Individual regulations may be there for good reasons, but …
o Various commissions have recommended changes and all seem to add things to the
regulations rather than making them smaller and simpler
Much talk about how the system is not agile enough – has never been like commercial technology
Re: Training Gaps
 Without having active protection can never even get into the fight
 Without really responsive artillery can never suppress this type of adversary
 Army beginning to think about these adversaries
 Problems go beyond training issues
Re: Problems for Higher Echelon Forces
 Biggest problems now related to cyber and EW
 Also must worry about not being found while emitting all sorts of signals
 No longer have area munitions that can take out large arrays of radars for SAMs and may also
take out launchers at the same time
o Have lost the understanding that some collateral damage is sometimes desired
 Became enamored with precision targeting – which has been very important in recent wars
o Issue is you can’t just plan to kill one tank at a time – need to blanket an area to get a
large number of attackers immediately
o Widely dispersed enemy now shoots and then quickly moves
 Bottom line: US no longer has in its inventory capabilities to handle these threats and that could
leave open the opportunity for decapitation of a headquarters’ C2 capabilities
Re: Reactive Armor Protection Systems (i.e., Israeli Trophy System)
 US only recently has recognized that it has a direct fire problem
 Beginning to work on the solution
 Can have infantry protecting tanks but only when they are not moving
 Almost all high end armies moving toward these systems and the US is, too – albeit slowly
Re: Use of Armor in Afghanistan
 Marines used armor correctly in Afghanistan
o Sent in 14 tanks (2 squads)
 It was not an escalation
 Tanks are the most precise anti-ambush system that can be used against low-intensity adversaries,
as was done in Vietnam, Lebanon, etc.
o Adversary has to be pretty gusty to even contemplate such an ambush
o Tanks provide a precise immediate direct fire system that could be used immediately
against a threat 1,000m away or wait for close air support or an Apache to come in with a
500lb. bomb
o Tanks provide a really good rival to a sniper because they are immediately responsive to
the commander
o Tanks change the dynamic of what the enemy thinks is possible – would have to be
serious about not being a fighter and instead becoming a suicide bomber if taking one on
 US did not rely on tanks in Vietnam because early on we were convinced that tanks did not
contribute to a counterinsurgency
o However, US found out later that 75-85% of the country was accessible to one or another
type of tank
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Re: Mobility Standards
 A Chinese view of the US: It either underwhelms or overwhelms
o Would be really dangerous if it just learned to “whelm”
 MRAPs were forced on the services
o Created to solve a political, not tactical problem - trying to protect soldiers’ lives and
keep the US populace from losing its will to stay in the fight
o Been doing discretionary ops for 15 years – if it looks like there will be IEDs there, then
don’t go there or get more ISR, or conduct the patrol tomorrow, etc.
 This is not like the invasion of Normandy when all must go at once
 Stakes are not that high
 Canada used tanks as recovery vehicles in Afghanistan while the US remained road-bound
 Must think about who you will be fighting
 Successful innovation starts with an in-depth understanding of the problem you are trying to solve
o In WWII everyone knew what technologies were available and nearly all the forces had
the same sort of weapons
o Only the Germans managed to develop the combined arms concepts of integrating
different elements to create the Blitzkrieg
o Everyone else has been using the concepts since then
Re: Future of the “Big Eight” Programs
 Basic premise is that the Army must have combined arms to fight today’s enemies
o Some complain that it can’t afford combined arms now
 However, there is still is plenty of funding available, but Army must have a good argument to get
a share of the funding
o When on Capitol Hill, Army needs to talk about capability gaps in a compelling way
 If Army leaders don’t talk about problems (which they are reluctant to do), they won’t get help
solving them
 Chief of Staff of the Army is now talking about these problems
 Need a professional assessment of what the problems are
Re: Korea Problems
 Problem: N. Korea has had 70 years to get ready to fight
 Current estimates are that Seoul could be attacked with 40,000 rounds of artillery a day in a war
 Plus there is no adequate counter-fire capability in place now since the North will be firing from
places it has been building for 70 years
o The North has stockpiled ammunition there
o Will roll out, fire, and roll back into hiding
o Air Force says they will take care of the problem but how long will that take?
 In the meantime Seoul will be destroyed
o 28 million people would be at immediate risk
o Nuclear attacks also possible with an unstable N Korean leader
 DoD doesn’t like to talk about the issue because there may be no good solution
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