- It would provide valuable experience for our own offensive EW forces.
- It would make our forces learn how to function in a heavy EW environment when none of our networks, computers, GPS, comm links, and data sharing are working.
- It would reveal where our EW vulnerabilities are so that we can begin to correct them.
Instead, we train with only very limited EW application. Why? The rationale is that if we applied full EW the training would grind to a halt and be of no value. Do you see the stupidity in this view? The unmitigated, staggering stupidity? If EW can bring our training to a halt, that’s exactly what we need. That’s exactly what the Russians and Chinese, both purportedly more advanced in EW than we are, will do to us. What are we going to do in a real war when we encounter massive EW, stop because it’s too hard? Apparently so, because that’s what we’re doing in our training.
In a Breaking Defense article about wargames and exercises
and the impact of EW,
The
US has wargamed cyber and electronic warfare in field exercises, Work [Robert
Work, former Deputy Secretary of Defense] said, but the simulated enemy forces
tend to shut down US networks so effectively that nothing works and nobody else
gets any training done. “Whenever we have an exercise and the red force really
destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise,” Work said, instead of
trying to figure out how to keep fighting when your command post gives you
nothing but blank screens and radio static. (1)
It’s too hard to deal with EW in exercises so we
quit????? Here’s a wild thought: instead
of quitting, how about ramping up the EW even more until we figure out how to
deal with it. How about forcing our
military leadership to confront the ugly truth about our vulnerability?
Maybe we’re just overstating the threat? Maybe ComNavOps is just an alarmist? Well, former DepSecDef Work is saying the
same thing I am. Consider his warning,
The
Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack
the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it
all the time.” (1)
They practice it all the time.
They practice it all the time.
They practice it all the time.
And what do we do?
We quit.
The Russians are using their EW in the field, in real
combat, in Ukraine and Syria. They’re
seeing what works and what doesn’t.
They’re even applying it against our front line aircraft and, by all
accounts, quite successfully. Do you
remember our own Gen. Raymond Thomas making this statement?
“Right
now in Syria we are
operating in the most aggressive EW environment on the planet from our
adversaries. They are testing us everyday, knocking our communications down,
disabling our EC-130s, etcetera.” (2)
“Disabling our EC-130s”?????
Does anyone else find that just a tiny bit alarming?
Do you remember that claim some time ago that a Russian
aircraft ‘shut down’ the Burke class destroyer, USS Donald Cook in the Black
Sea? (3) We all dismissed it, at the
time, but since then we’ve seen the extensive and successful Russian EW being
applied in Ukraine and Syria and now I can’t help but wonder if there was an
element of truth to the story.
Regardless, it’s clear that our military has a ‘head in the
sand’ approach to EW. We aren’t good at
offensive or defensive EW so, instead of doing the hard work to get better, we
just stop our exercises. The sheer
stupidity is staggering to behold.
ComNavOps has long stated that our over-dependence on
networks is arrogant, misplaced, and foolish and is laying the foundation for
defeat by leading to a state of helplessness when our electronic toys stop
working. These statements from former
DepSecDef Work confirm my warnings. We
must relearn how to function when our toys die.
Every exercise should be conducted with no GPS, no network, no comm
links, and no data sharing unless we can do so in the face of full EW
attacks. It’s time to quit sniveling in
a corner crying ‘woe is me’ and put our big boy pants on and start relearning
how to fight without our precious toys.
(1)Breaking Defense, “US ‘Gets Its
Ass Handed To It’ In Wargames: Here’s A $24 Billion Fix ”, Sydney J.
Freedberg, Jr., 7-Mar-2019,
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-wargames-heres-a-24-billion-fix/
(2)Breaking Defense, “Russia Widens
EW War, ‘Disabling’ EC-130s OR AC-130s In Syria ”, Colin Clark,
24-Apr-2018,
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/04/russia-widens-ew-war-disabling-ec-130s-in-syria/
(3)Voltaire Network website, “What spooked the USS Donald
Cook so much in the Black Sea?”8-Nov-2014,
https://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html
Where are the fighting Admirals? This is leadership pure and simple. A leader has his command trained up and ready for the NEXT war not the past and pushes them to think and act on their own within the operational plan the lead has put out there.
ReplyDeleteTo just quit in an exercise means that there is no common vision of what the blue force is trying to do, nor the ability to realize that maybe it will not be a combined arms assault or action, so the ship commander or force commander better be able to operate in ANY conditions.
The more I watch DoD, the more I become convinced that EVERY star should be relieved, along with 75% of the Captains. The LT. Commanders, Commanders, and remaining Captains would then be able to think and learn to operate and WIN.
The somewhat growing sense confidence that the talk of F-117 being taken out storage is true would support the impression of the Syria situation. Essentially that since it is equipped to navigate and target by self contained methods (no GPS for example) so the Russians could not spoof it - it was suddenly needed again.
ReplyDeleteBut rather than a learning point I would suspect the Pentagon probably just viewed as a passing annoyance.
We can’t even do exercise completely because it’s too effective and everyone can’t participate?
ReplyDeleteI don’t think war has participation trophies, just winners and losers.
It’s too effective but:
We want every ship linked together
We want $100 million planes that literally can’t fly without sophisticated code that is vulnerable to cyber attack.
We can’t pilot a ship without GPS and radar.
We want more and more drones that require data links that can be jammed.
We want a cyber command and each branch with cyber units, we just can’t let them train because they are too effective.
Madness.
The Navy worries endlessly about long range missiles, but crazy thought, why not make concerted ECM/cyber attack that reduces their effectiveness? Oh, that would require practice?
I don’t need to exercise as much, reading the DOD’s latest is enough to elevate my heart rate for a good 30 minutes.
"I don’t need to exercise as much, reading the DOD’s latest is enough to elevate my heart rate for a good 30 minutes."
DeleteOutstanding! A cardio-blog! That made my day. :)
The EW training would be good for the crows too,
ReplyDeletejust in case their awesome EW capability turns out to
be the Brewster Buffalo of WWIII.
Sparks
"just in case their awesome EW capability turns out to
Deletebe the Brewster Buffalo of WWIII."
You got it!
Breaking Defense:
ReplyDelete“In our games, when we fight Russia and China,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek said this afternoon, “blue gets its ass handed to it.” In other words, in RAND’s wargames, which are often sponsored by the Pentagon, the US forces — colored blue on wargame maps — suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China — red — from achieving their objectives, like overrunning US allies."
It's a RAND exercise/wargame...in a computer. Work too is clearly talking about past wargames and not field exercises. RAND got the result they wanted (i.e., the sky is falling and only we know how to fix it) so of course they stopped the exercise. Who knows what kind of assumptions were made as to the OpFor's capabilities, our own, and the extent to which they bare any resemblance to real-life capabilities.
This is what the Breaking Defense Article is based on:
https://www.cnas.org/events/panel-discussion-a-new-american-way-of-war
Yep, these "ivory tower" intellectuals sure have everything figured out. Just trust them with a few more billions of dollars and everything will be fine.
There is so little public information on the US's offensive and defensive EW capabilities that I'm not getting worked up about some thinktank's exercise. I assume that China and Russia can shutdown legacy low-power, omnidirectional communication networks. There are, however, plenty of commercial off-the-shelf solutions to those problems. I can look out my office window and see several different types of directional antennae that would make Chinese/Russian jamming attempts at least an order of magnitude more difficult. I'm sure the USAF would welcome some Chinese/Russian attempt to set up some multi-megawatt transmitter to try to jam a legacy network system from a thousand miles away.
"The US has wargamed cyber and electronic warfare in field exercises,"
DeleteNote the phrase, "field exercises". That denotes actual performance rather than computer simulations. It's the field exercise results that concern me. Add in the statements from US military leaders about our aircraft being adversely affected by Russian EW and the myriad emails I get from serving personnel who all have the same story, that EW is not practiced or, if it is, it's toned way down so as NOT TO DISRUPT the exercise and that's what I'm worried about.
I think this ties in well with the following article from the New York Times I read this morning: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opinion/us-military.html
ReplyDeleteIt is almost like the author of that piece has been reading this blog.
Here is a part quote from the article: “Put simply,” Brose writes, “U.S. rivals are fielding large quantities of multimillion-dollar weapons to destroy the United States’ multibillion-dollar military systems.”
I can only hope and pray, we change our mindset.
I think it might be time to reevaluate our training exercises, simulations, war games,etc...or at least make sure we are increasing our knowledge and benefits because this and other anecdotal stories sure seem to me to make one wonder if we're learning anything at best or acquiring some real bad habits at worse.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem with canned or highly scripted scenarios, they have a purpose and provide training BUT we should have exercises where the end result isn't scripted and even maybe blue force loses....as far as I know, does Blue force ever lose? What kind of mindset is that? Shouldn't we want our officers to experience difficulty, losing, getting wiped out to learn from mistakes and learn some humility?
Losing comms, navigating, forces being at wrong place at the wrong time, surprises, etc aren't new, it's just fog of war, been around forever....maybe that's one bad acquired mindset US Forces have now: that our tech is so awesome, we dont have to worry about any of that....
"Losing comms, navigating, forces being at wrong place at the wrong time, surprises, etc "
DeleteOur amphibious 'exercises' are conducted with neat rows of AAVs swimming ashore under ideal weather conditions and then leisurely assembling for photo ops and perhaps a simulated humanitarian assistance mission.
What we should do, is field an equally strong OpFor who attacks our ships far out at sea. The exercise should be conducted in bad weather. Landing AAVs should be intentionally directed to the wrong spots (let them figure out what to do next!). Full ECM should be applied. The landing approaches should be 'mined' both in the water and on the beach (let's see how we deal with that). Enemy forces should have simulated cruise missiles, artillery, mortars, and attack helos (what? we don't have any Marine AAW!). Random Marine leaders should be declared 'dead' and the subordinates left to carry on. An OpFor armored unit should conduct a counterattack (how does light infantry Marines stop an armored unit?!). And so on. There's your worthwhile amphibious exercise.
CNO, I think you perfectly summed up all the reasons why USMC will never again hit the beach against anything other than CNN covering it....
DeleteHmm … Marines versus CNN - kind of a toss up at this point.
DeleteActually, I can see why the USN is doing training without EW. They have to learn to walk before they can run, and the recent history of navigational problems indicates that walking is a problem. They need to be able to sail the ship proficiently before they can try to do so without electronic assistance.
ReplyDeleteClearly, the USN needs to do a lot more training to be able to operate under wartime conditions. For that to happen, the USN needs to accept that its job is to fight peer opponents. Currently, it seems to feel that its main job is to spend money on new ships and aircraft. Oddly enough, that's what the Congress seems most interested in it doing.
"They need to be able to sail the ship proficiently before they can try to do so without electronic assistance. "
DeleteI would gently suggest that you have it backward. You first teach students their multiplication tables before you teach them calculus. With sailors, you first teach navigation using a sextant, charts, landmark bearings, dead reckoning, and lookouts. THEN AND ONLY THEN do you introduce electronic assistance. Electronic assistance is the LAST thing introduced.
You learn to sail proficiently WITHOUT aids.
The problem with training without EW is that you become dependent on aids that may well not be functional in a real war. What's the point of training using equipment that won't work in a real scenario?
DeleteYou train, right from the start, in a heavy EW environment and find out what works and what doesn't and you discard the equipment and tactics that won't work. What's left may, then, actually be useful in a real war.
An athlete wouldn't train with shoes that artificially enhance his performance (to make up a dumb analogy) when he can't wear them in an actual game. Likewise, why would sailors/soldiers train with aids that won't work in combat? That just builds bad habits and dependencies that will let us down.
"You learn to sail proficiently WITHOUT aids."
DeleteThat would, indeed be a good idea. But it doesn't seem to be what the USN is doing, and you stand a better chance of convincing them to dispense with the shiny toys as a kind of really hardcore training, than overturning their whole training regime and making liars out of the recruiters who promise lots of technology to people thinking about joining.
It's always a poor idea to try to intentionally implement a bad idea to try to make an even worse idea less bad. You do it right or you don't do it. When the Navy gets tired of running aground or into other ships, I'll be here to tell them how to properly go about teaching navigation. Until then, they can flounder around (and sink!) all they want.
DeleteThis is a little bit of a moral courage issue on our part, too. You stand for what's right, not what's easy or convenient.
As my father constantly told us, if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing right.
The west is better at this stuff. Rivals will also be paralyzed. Australia and America are upgrading jammers on the growlers. Australia's OOB. JSF with loyal wingmen (which are sensors), backed by MC55 (translate from the JSF's MALD to Link 16 for the rest of the fleet), Growlers, Poseidons MPA and Tritons, AEW Wedgetails. With a few Super Hornets. That is one electronic punch. This is backed by Plan Jericho https://www.airforce.gov.au/our-mission/plan-jericho which is basically AI and sensor net (with human in loop) that provides situational awareness. Australia has been working on hypersonics for decades. America, while having a large legacy fleet, has the same equipment. Rivals should be worried.
ReplyDeleteThat's actually another very dangerous mindset: we take it for granted that we (west) are better at it. I would say EW in Syria and Chinese hacking proves that they reached at least parity with us....the fact that for the past couple months, US DOD and services have increased all their talk about EW,cyber,etc tells me somebody has woken up to that fact.
Delete"The west is better at this stuff."
DeleteAre we? How do we know? Have we ever practiced it against any real opposition? Not that I'm aware of. Is it just a theoretical assumption on our part? I think it is until we test it.
My point is not to disagree with your assessment but to suggest that the assessment is, for the time being, unproven and we might want to test it first, if it's going to be the basis of our future combat capabilities. I'm sure I don't need to remind you about the WWII torpedoes!
It the impending sense of doom. The west spends 4 times as much as China. The US alone spends 2½ times as much. China needs to send their students overseas to be educated as they can't do that themselves. We need to acknowledge that we are the strong power and they are the weak (if numerous). The weak often win so no arrogance.
DeleteLink for previous post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
DeleteWith respect, China is a sponge. They send their best students overseas to soak up the best of Western thinking in well respected universities and research labs. Then they take it home and incorporate into their own programs, educational and corporate/military.
DeleteWe might do better were we to adopt some of that same thinking. I've worked with the Chinese both in IT and the oil business. Didn't take long for my sense of "Western Superiority" to crawl off into a hole somewhere. Having a huge population and excellent basic education for all encourages some very bright minds to come to the forefront for further development.
We spend too much money very poorly. The Chinese are arguably spending their money a little more wisely with a little less graft and corruption. Being shot by a firing squad for corruption tends to focus the mind. Pity we can't do the same for a few Admirals, Industry Executives and Politicians here.
If the Russians etc are so keen to use EC against us every time we get near then, surely it makes sense to deliberately probe them and make them use their countermeasures. We .can then see what works and what doesn't. Saves us guessing what they can do.
ReplyDeleteThere have been airforce elint airctaft flying off the coast of syria for about 3 years now. I am sure they are not waisting there time flying in circles for no particular reason.
DeleteHigh, been browsing your blog for awhile but haven't actually decided to sign in and comment till now. As an EW in the USN I feel I should give some input. First off, you state it as EW is seen as essential part of the ships combat systems. We're just off in our own corner running scenarios. Most scenarios have to do with aegis and missile/hvu defense. On another note, as you know, capabilities of these ew systems are very classified. People are always watching, so I know in certain scenarios we don't jam in whichever way we're gonna jam. at least not in real life, its simulated. We're not gonna know the full effect of ew until a real battle where both sides capabilities are really tested in a scenario where its not in our best interest to hide the capabilities.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate you jumping in here and lending your expertise. You raise a couple of really good points that I'd love to see you expand on.
Delete1. Real combat is not going to see isolated functions. We won't do missile defense without defensive EW and, almost certainly, offensive EW from on-board missile EW and, possibly, supporting aircraft EW. Thus, our Aegis/missile defense will actually be Aegis/missile/EW defense against incoming missile/EW. So, since EW, offensive and defensive, will be such a big part of any missile action, why would we want to run missile exercises without both sides of the EW active? The only way to find out how enemy EW, our defensive EW, and our missile defense interact (positively or negatively) is to try it. Any yet we seem to isolate those functions, as you note.
2. I would hope that someone has at least tested to see that our own EW doesn't interfere with our own missile/Aegis/illuminator/guidance systems? I'm sure you can't speak publicly about that but, ominously, I'm unaware of any such testing.
3. You raise the question of hiding capabilities or not? Is it better to hide capabilities and be unpleasantly surprised to find out in combat that they don't work or to show the capabilities and have a better of what will work but also reveal those capabilities to the enemy. Russia seems to be revealing/testing a lot of actual capabilities in the field in Ukraine and Syria so the seem to settled on the show/test side of the question. What's your personal view of the preferred approach?
4. Training. How do you think we should be going about training and, specifically, integrating EW into training?
On a somewhat related note, I remain absolutely fascinated by the COBLU system and upgrades. The hints I've gotten of its capabilities is amazing. Again, I don't expect you to comment on that.
Please, expand on any of this that you feel comfortable talking about. I hope we'll see more discussion from you.
1. I 100% agree, my speciality is asmd so I know what you mean, it is an integrated part of that defense. But in the case of scenarios the only way to test how the jamming would work against said missile is case by case basis, only real test missile i know of is the coyote which is wildly expensive. On a realist note, most modern missiles have some type of HOJ feature anyways so we wouldnt jam a missile unless we were 100% sure of the missile fired at us. If your talking about ew countermeasures, seduction rounds have been pretty extensively tested and used in prior conflicts. Distraction hasn't so much outside of devleopmental testing to my knowledge, mostly because the rounds are crazy expensive as well. So lots of "simulated" firing.
Delete2. To be honest, I'm not sure either. Thats never been brought up as a disadvantage to jamming so I'd imagine it doesn't.
3. I do feel that the capabilities should remain more hidden, what you don't know, you cant prepare for. I know honestly next to nothing about that cook incident, but the US now knowing that a situation like that is possible can now better prepare to prevent it. I know specific cases of adversaries building weapons systems around our capabilities, so it happens.
4. Honestly, I think its integrated about as well as it can be without real life launching of missiles at us, we have simulation programs that integrate with everything so it appears fairly realistic. Of course no live ammunition is being expended though. It would cost the navy way too much money to train the crews up on live missiles being fired and live ammunition being expended against them prior to every deployment. or however often. I read your post on the australian essm test. I'd really like a higher hull number/fwd deployed ddg to participate in something like that so we know where we're at in real life. We have some real life incidents to draw on but results usually end up just short of inconclusive.
5. Like I said earlier, I specialize in asmd so thats not really my side of the spectrum. We have two rates that deal with ew, CTT and CTR's. Thats more of a CTR's realm
"the rounds are crazy expensive"
DeleteThis is a fallacy. Cost has to be looked at relative to what it accomplishes. If testing a million dollar (or $2M or $5M or whatever) item enables us to learn how to save a multi-billion dollar ship then the cost is cheap, by comparison. Coyote drones cost almost nothing relative to the cost of a ship that might be saved by better testing. This is the classic case of penny wise, pound foolish!
On a somewhat related note, here's a post from a few years back that you might be interested in, if you haven't already seen it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Soft Kill CEC
We used to train against Machine Guns and Artillery, but it kept disrupting our orderly formation march across the battlefield, so now we train exclusively against RedFor armed only with tasers and batons, since then, our exercises have been far more successful.
ReplyDeleteSounds stupid doesnt it?
But thats exactly whats happening.