Mystics & Statistics

North Korea And The U.S. Navy

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects what is said to be a hydrogen bomb. [EPA]

This past week has seen some extraordinary events in the stand-off between North Korea, and it seems the rest of the world. North Korea continues to test its nuclear weapons, causing a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Evaluation of these events does indicate the strength of the weaponry used, however, some doubt exists as to the veracity claims of the technology used.

The force of the explosion, at 100-150 kilotons, could have been ten times bigger than North Korea’s previous test. But experts argue that is still not quite powerful enough to have been a genuine hydrogen bomb. Instead, they suggest it might have been an implosion device boosted by tritium and deuterium gas (hydrogen isotopes). If that was the case, making the device small enough to be turned into a warhead that could be carried on an ICBM would be technically difficult. On the other hand, if it turns out to have been a two-stage device, in which an initial blast is used to amplify the main detonation, then it probably was a small thermonuclear bomb, which could be miniaturised into a compact warhead. There is as yet no way of knowing which it was. Although experts are sceptical about the latter, they have been caught out often enough by North Korea’s nuclear programme advancing faster than most expected.

The United States has had several voices of response, including Defense Secretary James Matthis, who said “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea. But as I said, we have many options to do so.” Diplomatically, both China and Russia claim they are united against the nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, the U.S. has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, saying that North Korea is “begging for war.” China has apparently made the suggestion that the U.S. and South Korea cease military exercises in exchange for freezing missile and nuclear operations by North Korea. The U.S. demands the “strongest possible measures” be put into effect.

The previous post gives a link to a detailed chronology of North Korean ballistic missile developments. It has been a problem decades in the making, and not easily solved. Other posts have addressed the defenses that the U.S. and Japan have against a threatened strike on Guam, and also the different layers of defense that exist between a potential North Korean missile strike and his many potential targets.

One of these layers is of particular interest, the component provided by the U.S. Navy (USN), specifically the Arleigh Burke class destroyers, equipped with the AN/SPY-1D radar, and carrying the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM3), and this part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (Aegis BMD). The name Aegis is taken from ancient Greece, a shield carried by Zeus and Athena, and said to “produce a sound as from a myriad roaring dragons.” (Iliad, 4.17) This is intended to invoke a strong defense, and has been effectively branded as such by Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer. Lockheed continues to sell Aegis technology to the USN under the Aegis BMD program, and also to Japan under the Aegis Ashore banner. The powerful Aegis radars were first fielded on Ticonderoga class cruisers, authorized in 1978, built from 1980, and commissioned from 1983. Their targets were Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles and bombers that would hunt USN carrier battle groups during the Cold War.

This technology has evolved since then to offer some defense from ballistic missiles; per the Congressional Research Service, Aegis BMD

enables warships to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles … Aegis BMD-equipped vessels can transmit their target detection information to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system and, if needed, engage potential threats using the RIM-161 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) mid-course interceptors and the RIM-156 Standard Missile 2 Extended Range Block IV (SM-2 Block IV) or RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile (SM-6) terminal-phase interceptors. Aegis BMD does not have the ability to intercept ICBMs, although future versions may allow limited intercept capability.  [Emphasis added]

As retired F-35 and F-22 pilot Lt. Col. Berke so accurately noted before, information is the most precious commodity. The capability to detect a missile launch from the Sea of Japan, and transmit that through a secure network at the speed of light to every other component of the BMD network is the first and crucial step in the kill chain that hopefully results in a shoot down of each and every North Korean missile fired in anger, or even off-target. I would argue that the U.S. use the United Nations as a forum to define the parameters for any possible North Korean missile launch that should be intercepted with allied BMD assets If, for example, a North Korean missile looks likely to hit close to Tokyo, based upon the trajectory identified by Aegis ships at sea, then BMD should shoot it down. By making our rules of engagement public, this would provide a clear signal to China and Russia that the U.S. and its allies intend to use their BMD capabilities (and potentially learn from any failures) against live enemy missiles, but also temper the risk of escalation into any further missile volleys between any parties.

The U.S.S. John S. McCain after collision with a commercial tanker. [EPA]

Recently, however, the credibility of U.S. BMD deterrence has taken a large step backward due to self-inflicted wounds.  It is related to the concept of friction, as reported in this blog.  We can see the effects of friction on the U.S. Navy’s safety and navigation incidents, which have unfortunately cost of the lives of seventeen seamen, more injured, and perhaps some loss of prestige.

  • U.S.S. John S. McCain (DDG-56) collides with Alnic MC, a Liberian-flagged oil tanker of 30,040 gross tons, on [2017-08-21 05:24] east of the Straight of Malacca. (wikipedia), NavyTimes.
  • U.S.S. Fitzgerald (DDG-62) of 9000 gross tons collides with MV ACX Crystal, a Phillipines-flagged container of 29,060 gross tons.

As noted here, an interesting comparison is with a Russian naval vessel and its collision with a commercial ship in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, on 27 April, close to the busy sea lanes of the Bosporus. Warships don’t transmit an Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal, so the ship is not visible for AIS-connected shipping; however, it would be visible on radar within a certain range, as an unidentified object. Also, warships, in accordance with wide-spread practices, are not predictable in their movements, including speed and course.

As The Economist reports, in a critique of the USN

Critics argue that the 277-ship naval fleet is already overstretched, particularly in the Western Pacific, where naval competition with an increasingly capable China requires a high tempo of operations. The John S.McCain was on its way to Singapore after a “freedom of navigation” mission during which it had sailed through international waters near a reef where China has created an artificial island. The Chinese media have been cock-a-hoop over pictures of American warships limping into port with apparently self-inflicted damage.

The spate of accidents has raised questions about whether they are in some way linked to a common cause. Inevitably, there has been speculation that hacking of the ships’ computers or navigation systems by the Chinese or North Koreans might be responsible. The navy says it has seen nothing that suggests this might have happened.

It is far more likely that unrelenting operational demands on forward-deployed vessels and several years of Pentagon spending distorted by budget caps and sequestration have taken their toll. A report by the Government Accountability Office in 2015 found that the Navy was working on the basis that its Japan-based cruisers and destroyers would spend 67% of their time deployed and 33% in maintenance. That meant there would be no time left for training. Without training drills to remind sailors of the “basic seamanship” referred to by Admiral Richardson, it would not be surprising if some bad habits and sloppiness have crept in. [emphasis added]

Also, here is a great video, showing replay data, based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data source:

Structure Of The U.S. Defense Department History Programs

With the recent discussions of the challenges facing U.S. government historians in writing the official military histories of recent conflicts, it might be helpful to provide a brief outline of the structure of the Department of Defense (DOD) offices and programs involved. There are separate DOD agency, joint, and service programs, which while having distinct missions, sometime have overlapping focuses and topics. They are also distinct from other Executive Branch agency history offices, such as the Office of the Historian at the State Department.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense has its own Historical Office, which focuses on collecting, preserving, and presenting the history of the defense secretaries. Its primary publications are the Secretaries of Defense Historical Series. Although the office coordinates joint historical efforts among the military services and DOD agency history offices, it does not direct their activities.

The Joint History Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) provides historical support to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the Joint Staff. Its primary publications are the JCS and National Policy series, as well as various institutional studies and topical monographs.

The Joint History Office also administers the Joint History Program, which includes the history offices of the joint combatant commands. Its primary role is to maintain the history programs of the commanders of the combatant commands. Current guidance for the Joint History Program is provided by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Instruction 5320.1B, “Guidance for the Joint History Program,” dated 13 January 2009.

Each of the military services also has its own history program. Perhaps the largest and best known is the Army Historical Program. Its activities are defined in Army Regulation 870-5, “Military History: Responsibilities, Policies, and Procedures,” dated 21 September 2007. The program is administered by the Chief of Military History, who is the principal advisor to the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff for all historical matters, and is dual-hatted as the director of the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

The Air Force History and Museum Program is outlined in Air Force Policy Directive 84-1, “Historical Information, Property, and Art,” dated 16 September 2005. The Director of Air Force History and Museums, Policies, and Programs oversees the Air Force Historical Studies Office, and its field operating agency, the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

The Navy History Program is managed by the Director of Navy History. Its activities are described in OPNAV Instruction 5750.4E, “Navy History Programs,” dated 18 June 2012. The Navy’s central historical office is the Naval History and Heritage Command, which includes the Navy Department Library and the National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Marine Corps History Division, a branch of Marine Corps University, runs and administers the Marine history program. Its policies, procedures, standards, and responsibilities are outlined in Marine Corps Order 5750.1H, dated 13 February 2009.

In future posts, I will take a closer look at the activities and publications of these programs.

Human Factors In Warfare: Friction

The Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz identified the concept of friction in warfare in his book On War, published in 1832.

Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war… Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal… Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper… None of [the military machine’s] components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction [and] the least important of whom may chance to delay things or somehow make them go wrong…

[Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). Book One, Chapter 7, 119-120.]

While recognizing this hugely significant intangible element, Clausewitz also asserted that “[F]riction…brings about effects that cannot be measured, just they are largely due to chance.” Nevertheless, the clearly self-evident nature of friction in warfare subsequently led to the assimilation of the concept into the thinking of most military theorists and practitioners.

Flash forward 140 years or so. While listening to a lecture on combat simulation, Trevor Dupuy had a flash of insight that led him to conclude that it was indeed possible to measure the effects of friction.[1] Based on his work with historical combat data, Dupuy knew that smaller-sized combat forces suffer higher casualty rates than do larger-sized forces. As the diagram at the top demonstrates, this is partly explained by the fact that small units have a much higher proportion of their front line troops exposed to hostile fire than large units.

However, this relationship can account for only a fraction of friction’s total effect. The average exposure of a company of 200 soldiers is about seven times greater than an army group of 100,000. Yet, casualty rates for a company in intensive combat can be up to 70 times greater than that of an army group. This discrepancy clearly shows the influence of another factor at work.

Dupuy hypothesized that this reflected the apparent influence of the relationship between dispersion, deployment, and friction on combat. As friction in combat accumulates through the aggregation of soldiers into larger-sized units, its effects degrade the lethal effects of weapons from their theoretical maximum. Dupuy calculated that friction affects a force of 100,000 ten times more than it does a unit of 200. Being an ambient, human factor on the battlefield, higher quality forces do a better job of managing friction’s effects than do lower quality ones.

After looking at World War II combat casualty data to calculate the effect of friction on combat, Dupuy looked at casualty rates from earlier eras and found a steady correlation, which he believed further validated his hypothesis.

Despite the consistent fit of the data, Dupuy felt that his work was only the beginning of a proper investigation into the phenomenon.

During the periods of actual combat, the lower the level, the closer the loss rates will approach the theoretical lethalities of the weapons in the hands of the opposing combatants. But there will never be a very close relationship of such rates with the theoretical lethalities. War does not consist merely of a number of duels. Duels, in fact, are only a very small—though integral—part of combat. Combat is a complex process involving interaction over time of many men and numerous weapons combined in a great number of different, and differently organized, units. This process cannot be understood completely by considering the theoretical interactions of individual men and weapons. Complete understanding requires knowing how to structure such interactions and fit them together. Learning how to structure these interactions must be based on scientific analysis of real combat data.

NOTES

[1] This post is based on Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon House, 1987), Chapter 14.

Deployed Troop Counts

Well, turns out we have a little more deployed troops in Afghanistan than is previously reported. Previously it has been reported to be 8,400. Turns out we have 11,000. This does not include the 3,900 that have been recently authorized to go there.

We also have officially 5,262 in Iraq and 503 in Syria. These figures are low with a couple of thousand more troops in both countries (not sure if that is supposed to a couple of thousand more in each of these two countries).

So potentially we are looking at around 15,000 troops in Afghanistan and may have around 8,000 troops in Iraq and Syria.

Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKCN1BA2IF

 

 

Book Review – Eastern Front 1943

Obviously, anything related to the Battle of Kursk gets my attention. This book review was just emailed to me: https://saberandscroll.weebly.com/blog-ii/germany-and-the-second-world-war-volume-viii-the-eastern-front-1943-1944-the-war-in-the-east-and-on-the-neighbouring-fronts-edited-by-karl-heinz-frieser

I wonder if Frieser’s book references my book (probably not, as I did not publish until 2015). Anyhow, there is not a review of my Kursk book on the Saber and Scroll website.

That book review is part of very interesting website that has two book review blogs: https://saberandscroll.weebly.com/

Fifth Generation Deterrence

“Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy… the FEAR to attack. And so, … the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand… and completely credible and convincing.” – Dr. Strangelove.

In a previous post, we looked at some aspects of the nuclear balance of power. In this Stpost, we will consider some aspects of conventional deterrence. Ironically, Chris Lawrence was cleaning out a box in his office (posted in this blog), which contained an important article for this debate, “The Case for More Effective, Less Expensive Weapons Systems: What ‘Quality Versus Quantity’ Issue?” by none other than Pierre M. Sprey, available here, published in 1982.

In comparing the F-15 and F-16, Sprey identifies four principal effectiveness characteristics that contribute to victory in air-to-air combat:

  1. Achieving surprise bounces and avoiding being surprised;
  2. Out-numbering the enemy in the air;
  3. Out-maneuvering the enemy to reach firing position (when surprise fails);
  4. Achieving reliable kills within the brief firing opportunities presented by combat.

“Surprise is the first because, in every air war since WWI, somewhere between 65% and 85% of all fighters shot down were unaware of their attacker.” Sprey mentions that the F-16 is superior to the F-15 due to the smaller size, and that fact that it smokes much less, both aspects that are clearly Within-Visual Range (WVR) combat considerations. Further, his discussion of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat is dismissive.

The F-15 has an apparently advantage inasmuch as it carries the Sparrow radar missile. On closer examination, this proves to be little or no advantage: in Vietnam, the Sparrow had a kill rate of .08 to .10, less that one third that of the AIM-9D/G — and the new models of the Sparrow do not appear to have corrected the major reasons for this disappointing performance; even worse, locking-on with the Sparrow destroys surprise because of the distinctive and powerful radar signature involved.

Sprey was right to criticize the performance of the early radar-guided missiles.  From “Trends in Air-to-Air Combat: Implications for Future Air Superiority,” page 10

From 1965 through 1968, during Operation Rolling Thunder, AIM-7 Sparrow missiles succeeded in downing their targets only 8 percent of the time and AIM-9 Sidewinders only 15 percent of the time. Pre-conflict testing indicated expected success rates of 71 and 65 percent respectively. Despite these problems, AAMs offered advantages over guns and accounted for the vast majority of U.S. air-to-air victories throughout the war.

Sprey seemed to miss out of the fact that the radar guided missile that supported BVR air combat was not something in the far distant future, but an evolution of radar and missile technology. Even in the 1980’s, the share of air-to-air combat victories by BVR missiles was on the rise, and since the 1990’s, it has become the most common way to shoot down an enemy aircraft.

In an Aviation Week podcast in July of this year, retired Marine Lt. Col. David Berke (also previously quoted in this blog), and Pierre Sprey debated the F-35. Therein, Sprey offers a formulaic definition of air power, as created by force and effectiveness, with force being a function of cost, reliability, and how often it can fly per day (sortie generation rate?). “To create air power, you have to put a bunch of airplanes in the sky over the enemy. You can’t do it with a tiny hand full, even if they are like unbelievably good. If you send six aircraft to China, they could care less what they are … F-22 deployments are now six aircraft.”

Berke counters with the ideas that he expressed before in his initial conversation with Aviation week (as analyzed in this blog), that information and situational awareness are by far the most important factor in aerial warfare. This stems from the advantage of surprise, which was Sprey’s first criteria in 1982, and remains a critical factor is warfare to this day. This reminds me a bit of Disraeli’s truism of “lies, damn lies and statistics” — pick the metrics that tell your story, rather than objectively look at the data.

Critics beyond Mr. Sprey have said that high technology weapons like the F-22 and the F-35 are irrelevant for America’s wars; “the [F-22] was not relevant to the military’s operations in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya — at least according to then-secretary of defense Robert Gates.” Indeed, according to the Washington Post, “Gates called the $65 billion fleet a ‘niche silver-bullet solution’ to a major aerial war threat that remains distant. … and has promised to urge President Obama to veto the military spending bill if the full Senate retains F-22 funding.”

The current conflict in Syria against ISIS, after the Russian deployment resulted in crowded and contested airspace, as evidenced by a NATO Turkish F-16 shoot down of a Russian Air Force Su-24 (wikipedia), and as reported on this blog. Indeed, ironically for Mr. Sprey’s analysis of the relative values of the AIM-9 vs the AIM-7 missiles, as again reported by this blog,

[T]he U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet locked onto a Su-22 Fitter at a range of 1.5 miles. It fired an AIM-9X heat-seeking Sidewinder missile at it. The Syrian pilot was able to send off flares to draw the missile away from the Su-22. The AIM-9X is not supposed to be so easily distracted. They had to shoot down the Su-22 with a radar guided AMRAAM missile.

For the record the AIM-7 was a direct technical predecessor of the AIM-120 AMRAAM. We can perhaps conclude that having more that one type of weapon is useful, especially as other air power nations are always trying to improve their counter measures, and this incident shows that they can do so effectively. Of course, more observations are necessary for statistical proof, but since air combat is so rare since the end of the Cold War, the opportunity to learn the lesson and improve the AIM-9X should not be squandered.

USAF Air Combat Dominance as Deterrent

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. – Sun Tzu

The admonition to win without fighting is indeed a timeless principle of warfare, and it is clearly illustrated through this report on the performance of the F-22 in the war against ISIS, over the crowded airspace in Syria, from Aviation Week on June 4th, 2017.  I’ve quoted at length, and applied emphasis.

Shell, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and Raptor squadron commander who spoke on the condition that Aviation Week identify him only by his call sign, and his squadron of stealth F-22 Lockheed Martin Raptors had a critical job to do: de-conflict coalition operations over Syria with an irate Russia.

… one of the most critical missions the F-22 conducts in the skies over Syria, particularly in the weeks following the April 6 Tomahawk strike, is de-confliction between coalition and non-coalition aircraft, says Shell. … the stealth F-22’s ability to evade detection gives it a unique advantage in getting non-coalition players to cooperate, says Shell. 

‘It is easier to bring air dominance to bear if you know where the other aircraft are that you are trying to influence, and they don’t know where you are,’ says Shell. ‘When other airplanes don’t know where you are, their sense of comfort goes down, so they have a tendency to comply more.‘

… U.S. and non-coalition aircraft were still communicating directly, over an internationally recognized, unsecure frequency often used for emergencies known as ‘Guard,’  says Shell. His F-22s acted as a kind of quarterback, using high-fidelity sensors to determine the positions of all the actors on the battlefield, directing non-coalition aircraft where to fly and asking them over the Guard frequency to move out of the way. 

The Raptors were able to fly in contested areas, in range of surface-to-air missile systems and fighters, without the non-coalition players knowing their exact positions, Shell says. This allowed them to establish air superiority—giving coalition forces freedom of movement in the air and on the ground—and a credible deterrent.

Far from being a silver bullet solution for a distant aerial war, America’s stealth fighters are providing credible deterrence on the front lines today. They have achieved in some cases, the ultimate goal of winning without fighting, by exploiting the advantage of surprise. The right question might be, how many are required for this mission, given the enormous costs of fifth generation fighters? (more on this later).  As a quarterback, the F-22 can support many allied units, as part of a larger team.

Giving credit where it is due, Mr. Sprey has rightly stated in his Aviation Week interview, “cost is part of the force you can bring to bear upon the enemy.”  His mechanism to compute air power in 2017, however, seems to ignore the most important aspect of air power since it first emerged in World War I, surprise.  His dogmatic focus on the lightweight, single purpose air-to-air fighter, which seems to shun even available, proven technology seems clear.

Economics of Warfare 19 – 4

Continuing with a fourth and final posting on the nineteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture continues the discussion of terrorism, looking at whether poverty or poor education causes terrorism. The conventional wisdom, supported by a book by Alan Krueger, is that they do not. Dr. Spagat explores this in more depth and the data tends to support this theme, although there are exceptions.

On slide 39, Dr. Spagat leaves us with a gem of a quote. The data he had been looking at was responses to surveys about terrorism. As he notes: “It is one thing to voice support on a survey for terrorism or attacks–it is another matter entirely to strap on explosives and blow oneself up. In other words, suicide bombers have to be really committed individuals.”

He then goes to show Palestinian suicide bombers are generally less impoverished and better educated on average than the population they are drawn from. He sees a similar observation when looking at deceased Hezbollah militants (pages 39-41). This is not surprising if you are familiar with the history of revolutions and insurgencies.

The link to his lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2019.pdf

Military History In The Digital Era

Volumes of the U.S. Army in World War II official history series published by the U.S. Army Center for Military History [Hewes Library photo]

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released a draft strategic plan announcing that it will “no longer accept transfers of permanent or temporary records in analog formats and will accept records only in electronic format and with appropriate metadata” by the end of 2022. Given the widespread shift to so-called “paperless” offices across society, this change may not be as drastic as it may seem. Whether this will produce an improvement in record keeping is another question.

Military historians are starting to encounter the impact of electronic records on the preservation and availability of historical documentation of America’s recent conflicts. Adin Dobkin wrote an excellent overview earlier this year on the challenges the U.S Army Center for Military History faces in writing the official histories of the U.S Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. Army field historians on tight deployment timelines “hoovered up” huge amounts of electronic historical documentation during the conflicts. Now official historians have to sort through enormous amounts of material that is often poorly organized and removed from the context from which it was originally created. Despite the volume of material collected, much of it has little historical value and there are gaps in crucial documentation. Separating the useful wheat from the digital chaff can tedious and time-consuming.

Record keeping the paper age was often much better. As Chris wrote earlier this year, TDI conducted three separate studies on Army records management in the late-1990s and early 2000s. Each of these studies warned that U.S. Army documentation retention standards and practices had degraded significantly. Significant gaps existed in operational records vital to future historians. TDI found that the Army had better records for Red Cloud’s War of 1866-1868 than it did a hundred years later for Vietnam.

TDI is often asked why it tends to focus on the World War II era and earlier for its analytical studies. The answer is pretty simple: those are the most recent conflicts for which relatively complete, primary source historical data is available for the opposing combatants. Unfortunately, the Digital Age is unlikely to change that basic fact.