Category Conventional warfare

Betting On The Future: The Third Offset Strategy

Image by Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
Image by Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).

In several recent posts, I have alluded to something called the Third Offset Strategy without going into any detail as to what it is. Fortunately for us all, Timothy A. Walton, a Fellow in the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wrote an excellent summary and primer on what it as all about in the current edition of Joint Forces Quarterly.

The Third Offset Strategy emerged from Defense Strategic Guidance issued by the President and Secretary of Defense in 2012 and from the results of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review. As Walton outlined,

The Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) articulated 10 missions the [U.S.] joint force must accomplish in the future. These missions include the ability to:

– deter and defeat aggression

– project power despite antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) challenges

– operate effectively in cyberspace and space.

The follow-on 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review confirmed the importance of these missions and called for the joint force to “project power and win decisively” in spite of “increasingly sophisticated adversaries who could employ advanced warfighting capabilities.”

In these documents, U.S. policy-makers identified that the primary strategic challenge to securing the goals is that “capable adversaries are adopting potent A2/AD strategies that are challenging U.S. ability to ensure operational access.” These adversaries include China, Russia, and Iran.

The Third Offset Strategy was devised to address this primary strategic challenge.

In November 2014, then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced a new Defense Innovation Initiative, which included the Third Offset Strategy. The initiative seeks to maintain U.S. military superiority over capable adversaries through the development of novel capabilities and concepts. Secretary Hagel modeled his approach on the First Offset Strategy of the 1950s, in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower countered the Soviet Union’s conventional numerical superiority through the buildup of America’s nuclear deterrent, and on the Second Offset Strategy of the 1970s, in which Secretary of Defense Harold Brown shepherded the development of precision-guided munitions, stealth, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems to counter the numerical superiority and improving technical capability of Warsaw Pact forces along the Central Front in Europe.

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has built on Hagel’s vision of the Third Offset Strategy, and the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget is the first major public manifestation of the strategy: approximately $3.6 billion in research and development funding dedicated to Third Offset Strategy pursuits. As explained by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, the budget seeks to conduct numerous small bets on advanced capability research and demonstrations, and to work with Congress and the Services to craft new operational concepts so that the next administration can determine “what are the key bets we’re going to make.”

As Walton puts it, “the next Secretary of Defense will have the opportunity to make those big bets.” The keys to making the correct bets will be selecting the most appropriate scenarios to plan around, accurately assessing the performance of the U.S. joint force that will be programmed and budgeted for, and identifying the right priorities for new investment.

It is in this context that Walton recommended reviving campaign-level combat modeling at the Defense Department level, as part an overall reform of analytical processes informing force planning decisions.

Walton concludes by identifying the major obstacles in carrying out the Third Offset Strategy, some of which will be institutional and political in nature. However, he quickly passes over what might perhaps be the biggest problem with the Third Offset strategy, which is that it might be based on the wrong premises.

Lastly, the next Secretary of Defense will face numerous other, important defense challenges that will threaten to engross his or her attention, ranging from leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to countering Chinese, Russian, and Islamic State aggression, to reforming Goldwater-Nichols, military compensation, and base structure.

The ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq show no sign of abating anytime soon, yet they constitute “lesser includeds” in the Third Offset Strategy. Are we sure enough to bet that the A2/AD threat is the most important strategic challenge the U.S. will face in the near future?

Walton’s piece is worth reading and thinking about.

 

XM-25 “Punisher”: Not Dead Yet

"Bring out your dead!" Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
“Bring out your dead!” Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

As I mentioned recently, the U.S. Army is in the process of deciding whether or not to proceed with the XM-25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, a precision targeted, shoulder-fired 25mm grenade launcher. The Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office released a pointedly critical evaluation of the weapon nicknamed “the Punisher” in August. Among the negative reviews the report cited was one from the Army Capabilities and Integration Center, directed by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. McMaster’s office has had a change of heart about the XM-25 since that evaluation, however.

“My initial assessment from 2013 did not reflect 30 additional months of testing and improvements to the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System,” McMaster told Military.com in an email.

“The Army has worked closely with the system’s prime contractor to address the safety issues on the XM25 through engineering design changes and improvements to the system. Prototypes employed during two Forward Operational Assessments allowed the Army to learn from and correct system shortcomings, and feedback has been positive.”

The XM25 is not a simple grenade launcher, McMaster maintains. The sight has an integrated day/thermal sight, a laser range finder, and a ballistic computer working in unison to allow the shooter to effectively engage enemy targets under cover.

The weapon is semi-automatic with a five-round magazine that ensures effective fires and rapid re-engagement, as necessary, in all operational environments — jungle, urban, day/night, woodland, subterranean and desert, McMaster said.

“Worldwide urbanization, coupled with the extensive proliferation of rocket propelled grenades and machine guns, allowed our enemies to exploit our desire to end engagements with minimal collateral damage,” McMaster said.

“The XM25 provides an innovative capability that mitigates this vulnerability and minimizes operational risks facing our soldiers, limiting collateral damage in the surrounding area while allowing our dismounted squads to decisively end firefights.”

The Army has indicated that it will make a determination on the XM-25’s future by the end of September.

War by Numbers is in UK

War by Numbers is available in the UK for pre-order through Casemate: War by Numbers

I gather this is where the European customers can order the book. There is some restrictions as to who can sell where.

Interesting marketing blurb. Parts were pulled from the intro to my book and parts from the conclusions. Still no book cover picture, although I have seen a draft. Has a tank on the cover (tanks always sell).

U.S. pre-order sales are here: War by Numbers (U.S.)

Armata Tank vs M-1 Abrams and TOW: Who Wins?

vdayrehearsal05052016-24_0

Nice four page article from the National Interest: Russia’s Armata Tank vs America’s M-1 Abrams and TOW Missile: Who Wins?

A few points:

  1. The Russia’s Armata family of armored combat vehicles (Tank, IFV and SP Artillery) sort of takes the approach we were using with the Future Combat System (FCS)…(which we did some work on for Boeing, oddly enough using Kursk data).
  2. The Armata has an unmanned turret (it really does help to be able to stick your head out and look around).
  3. They then compare it to the M-1 (still on page 1)
  4. “The tank that sees the enemy first almost always wins the fight”
  5. “Further, there is the question of whether the T-14 can be produced in numbers….given the state of Russia’s economy.”
  6. They then compare it to the U.S. TOW missiles (early on page 2 and covers the rest of the article)….and the Javelin.
  7. Syrian FSA rebels have TOW missiles (but not Javelins).
  8. TOW-2A is wire guided and probably can be defeated by the Armata.
  9. “If only the notorious F-35 could boast a similar record.” (to tie this article back to a previous posting).
  10. TOW-2B can probably defeat an Armata, because of its top attack capability.
  11. I am guessing that so to can the Javelin (they actually don’t address that).
  12. Right now, only 100 Armata’s are slated for production.

 

Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever? [UPDATE]

XM-25 Counter-Defilade Engagement SystemIt appears that the Army’s XM-25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement System, a shoulder-fired 25mm grenade launcher, may not get the opportunity to fulfill its destiny as the Weapon That Will Change Infantry Warfare Forever after all.

Military.com reports that the Department of Defense’s Inspector General’s Office has recommended that the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Katrina McFarland, “determine whether to proceed with or cancel the XM25 program after reviewing the results of the 2016 Governmental testing,” which will be completed this fall. The Army has indicated that it concurs with the recommendation.

The Army delayed acquisition funding and extended the XM-25’s development phase in 2014 in response to problems encountered during field testing and critiques of the weapon by the 75th Ranger Regiment and the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence. During a live-fire exercise in 2013, an XM-25 “experienced a double feed and an unintentional primer ignition of one of the 25mm high explosive rounds,” which fortunately, caused only minor injuries to the soldier testing it, but potentially could have been much worse.

More consequentially for the XM-25 program, the Rangers found that infantry squad soldiers assigned to wield it could not also carry a rifle due to the extra weight. This limited the ability of the XM-25 bearer to perform battle drills and deprived the squad of a rifle in close range combat. The XM-25 also quickly depleted all of its 36 rounds in action. As a result, the Rangers declined to use an XM-25 in an assault on a fortified compound in Afghanistan in 2013, on the grounds that the weapon’s limited utility did not justify leaving out an M4A1 carbine.

The DOD IG criticized the Army for not specifying the exact costs of the extended development and for declining to state how many XM-25s it is considering initially procuring. Stay tuned…

U.S. Tank Losses and Crew Casualties in World War II

Attrition-CoverIn his 1990 book Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War, Trevor Dupuy took a look at the relationship between tank losses and crew casualties in the U.S. 1st  Army between June 1944 and May 1945 (pp. 80-81). The data sampled included 797 medium (averaging 5 crewmen) and 101 light (averaging 4 crewmen) tanks. For each tank loss, an average of one crewman was killed or wounded. Interestingly, although gunfire accounted for the most tank and crew casualties, infantry anti-tank rockets (such as the Panzerfaust) inflicted 13% of the tank losses, but caused 21% of the crew losses.

Attrition, Fig. 50Casualties were evenly distributed among the crew positions.

Attrition, Fig. 51Whether or not a destroyed tank caught fire made a big difference for the crew. Only 40% of the tanks in the sample burned, but casualties were distributed evenly between the tanks that burned and those that did not. This was due to the higher casualty rate in the tanks that caught fire (1.28 crew casualties per tank) and those that did not (0.78 casualties per tank).

Attrition, Fig. 52Dupuy found the relationship between tank losses and casualties to be straightforward and obvious. This relationship would not be so simple when viewed at the battalion level. More on that in a future post [Tank Loss Rates in Combat: Then and Now].

Three Presentations

I will be giving two presentations at the October meeting of The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI) and Shawn will be making one presentation there.

On Monday, 3 October, I will be doing a presentation on my book War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat, that is going to published in June/August 2017.  This presentation will describe the book. In addition, I will be discussing four or five other book projects that are on-going or I am considering.

The same day I will being making presentation called “Data for Wargames.” This was a course developed for a USMC White Team for a wargaming exercise.

On Tuesday Shawn Woodford will be presenting “Studying Combat: Where to Go from Here.” As he describes it:

Studying Combat: Where To Go From Here?

With Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Robert Work’s recent call for a revitalized war gaming effort to support development of a new national military strategy, it is worth taking stock of the present state of empirical research on combat. I propose to briefly survey work on the subject across relevant fields to get a sense of how much progress has been since TMCI published The Concise Theory of Combat in 1997. This is intended to frame a discussion of where the next steps should be taken and possibilities for promoting work on this subject in the defense and academic communities.

So You Still Think You Want A Revolution In Military Affairs?

The Paladin M109A7 next-generation artillery system being manufactured by BAE Systems is a significant upgrade to the combat-proven M109A6 Paladin cannon artillery system. [www.army-technology.com]
Even as the U.S. Army examines ongoing “hybrid” conflicts and tries to conceptualize what wars of the near future are going to be like, it’s leaders continue to believe that a technology-driven Revolution in Military Affairs remains in the cards.

“I think we are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of ground warfare,” U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “It will be of such significance that it will be like the rifling of a musket or the introduction of a machine gun or it will have such significance impact as the change from horse to mechanized vehicles.”

Revolutionary new technologies such as nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence will drive that fundamental change. But while Milley said that a revolution is coming, how exactly the character of ground warfare will shape up remains an open question. “Exactly what that’s going to look like, I don’t know,” Milley said. “I just know that we’re there. We’re on the leading edge of it. I think we’ve got a few years to figure it out—probably less than ten. But I think by 2025, you’re going to see armies—not only the American Army but armies around the world—will be fundamentally and substantively different than they are today.”

Whether technological change will radically change the nature of warfare remains to be seen. The Army is nevertheless pushing forward with changes in training and force structure to adapt to new tactics and technologies already being used by other combatants.

In related news, the Army’s Paladin Integrated Management program to upgrade 133 M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers to M109A7’s to improve the weapon’s reliability, maintainability, performance, responsiveness, and lethality has run into problems. The Department of Defense Inspector General found the M109A7 failed to meet maximum rate-of-fire requirements in tests and requires additional fire extinguisher capabilities in crew compartments. Army observers have warned of recent advances in Russian artillery technology and the need for effective countering capabilities. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cancelled the Army’s proposed next-generation XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer in 2002.