1. “Build and fight a modernized network” by adopting
artificial intelligence, incorporating a more mobile cloud, possibly bringing
software developers into the Marine Corps, and think about “maneuvering the network
in a contested environment”.
2. Institutionalizing information as a war-fighting function
by standardizing on terminology in discussions.
3. Building an integrated naval operations in the
information environment capability.
4. Modernizing multi-domain intelligence surveillance and
reconnaissance.
‘Maneuvering the network’?
Wow! She’s got some outstanding
buzzword bingo going, there. I wonder
how many focus groups it took to come up with that one?
Terminology is one of the General’s top four priorities????? She has nothing better to do with her time?
My main question is, where’s the boom? Where’s the destruction? Where’s the firepower? How is any of this going to chop up a Chinese
armored division?
Where’s the combat mentality? I see a lot of techno-babble department
building but no combat focus.
Hey, I’m all for recon [recon, recon], which this only
partly seems to be, but when is some poor sap of a Marine General going to come
out and say, hey, my priorities are killing Chinese faster and better and
making things blow up faster and better – you know, the stuff you do to win a
war?
I’m tempted to ascribe this non-combat focus to the inherent
pacifistic tendencies of women but I’ve got to be fair and say that no male commander
has shown any combat focus either so I’ll leave it at a Marine institutional
pacifist culture that prioritizes non-combat activities over death and
destruction.
So, what else is General Reynolds working on?
Reynolds
also talked about the progress made in establishing Marine Expeditionary Force
Information Groups. (1)
A Marine Expeditionary Information Group????? You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re leaving tanks behind when we deploy
Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU) but we’re establishing Marine Expeditionary
Information Groups??!!! What is it the Marines
always say? -when the country is least
ready, the Marines are most ready? To do
what, publish a newsletter?
Well, at least that’s the extent of the General’s idiocy,
right? Well, maybe not …
The
three Marine Corps groups established for the information environment declared initial
operational capacity in 2019 and Reynolds says she plans to formalize the
organizations in 2020. (1)
In the midst of budget cuts and the Commandant’s call for
hard choices about cutting legacy firepower, we’ve established no less than
three new, official, information groups?
Does that seem like a logical inconsistency there? Does that seem like a wise use of limited resources?
Well, it can’t get any worse. Or can it?
The
Marine Expeditionary Force Information Groups have been bolstered in the past
12 months with defensive cyber and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as
military information support companies and communications strategy companies.
(1)
I like electronic warfare capabilities but ‘communications
strategy companies’???? You can’t be
serious!
The Marines are supposed to be the most pointy tip of the
pointy end of the spear. Why are they
pursuing information groups and communications strategy companies? Even if one were to believe that slogans, newsletters,
and social media were a vital part of a high end, peer war, is that really the
Marine’s job? Don’t we have State
Departments and thousands of bureaucrats whose only job is to issue press
releases? Do we really need to cut tanks
and artillery to make room for pithy tweets?
I had my doubts about this Commandant but at least he seemed
focused on combat. Now, that doesn’t seem
to be the case. Hey, Commandant, is this
really the Marine Corps you want? If so,
you need to step aside and let a combat commander take over. If not, you need to get control of your Corps
and stomp on this kind of worthless waste that contributes little or nothing to
combat capability.
(1)Defense News website, “The Marine Corps’ 4 priorities in
the information environment”, Nathan Strout, 6-Jan-2020,
https://www.c4isrnet.com/information-warfare/2020/01/06/the-marine-corps-4-priorities-in-the-information-environment/
Not quite sure what to make of this "streamlining" of all this information warfare. To me, seems the offensive part (hacking, ECM, etc) should be separate from defensive measures (counter hacking, PR, news releases etc)...I'm afraid when you put everything under the same roof, you lose that "authenticity", how can you do PR and press releases (truthfully) and under the same group, do disinformation? Maybe I'm missing something here....I guess it should be coordinated so maybe that's why but I think we aren't doing enough offensively in that domain.
ReplyDeleteI think its important, just not sure why this is USMC mission....
I am a little surprised at your take on this as you have been rightly lamenting the lack of EW capability and real world EW experience. Information is just an extension of the old EW/SIGINT concpets to modern networks.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't expect EW/CT rates to give you a bang. But they could disrupt the enemies communication and make their plans go awry, or degrade sensors so the banger misses, protect your communication system so you plans can adapt, etc., etc.
Forget the Washington newspeak. This really describes how to I keep MY network up when they target nodes for either blocking, Denial of Service, or destruction. If you think every node on the battlefield knows the routing to every other node dynamically well welcome to one REALLY hard problem to solve. Just imagine your ISP having a DNS server go up and down randomly or the data in it obselete. Your surfing, e-mail, texting, etc. would just return errors.
That is why it is important to warfighting.
"surprised at your take on this"
DeleteI'm all for EW. I'm totally opposed to Marines doing public announcements, information campaigns, communications strategy, institutionalizing information warfare, standardizing terminology, and setting up groups dedicated to news management. Whatever need there might be for these tasks should be done by some other organization than the Marines.
Another flawed aspect to this is the attempt to build a better network. It is inherently far more difficult to keep a network running than to degrade it. Therefore, trying to build a better network is doomed to a significant degree of failure and building a warfighting strategy based on having fully functioning networks is, therefore, doomed to a significant degree of failure. Struggling to keep an inherently flawed system running is a losing proposition and is utterly illogical, don't you think?
I've got a post coming on how to properly approach networks, by the way, so that they can aid in warfighting while failing significantly. You'll likely find it fascinating.
Classic EW is an operations role, at least in the Navy. Same Operations team as Radar, Sonar and Weapons.
DeleteSigint is much more backroom, and Sigint isn't typically real time.
The same thing applies to networking. The Operations group keeps things going and fixes things in real time while Development creates new systems in the background.
I absolutely don't see the logic in the announcement, it seems to be blurring roles that should never be together regardless of the value of the individual role but maybe I'm just hearing it wrong.
@George. Yes, I understood too as blurring of roles. Think its mistaken to bunch all together.
Delete"EW is an operations role"
DeleteAs I stated in the post, I'm all for EW. However, you seem to be missing the array of non-EW capabilities that the Marines are building: public announcements, information campaigns, communications strategy, institutionalizing information warfare, standardizing terminology, and setting up groups dedicated to news management. Are we preparing for war or a public relations contest? We're dropping tanks and adding this stuff. Does that sound right to you?
We are talking at cross purposes.
DeleteI was complaining about co-mingling EW with a bunch of non-real-time disciplines that won't mix.
It doesn't even make sense to me to merge combat EW with Sigint as they don't function in a similar time frame. In my experience people that are good at combat EW are not the same people that are really good Sigint analysts.
As far as most of the rest of the nonsense, its ridiculous. None of it is a front-line function, and pretty much none of it has any immediate effect on the ability to break things and kill people. Yet another sign of incompetent waste of taxpayer's hard-earned money.
One of the things I particularly loathe is the terminology standardization BS. All that does is encourage "groupthink" which is disastrous when your enemy isn't a member of your "group" and probably has completely different ideas about how to ruin your day.
Possibly like yourself, I've had to fix three companies that were stupid enough not to separate IT operational roles from the development and test groups. I can't believe I'm watching this happen again with the Marines.
"We are talking at cross purposes."
DeleteFair enough.
To be clear, I'm focused less on the organizational aspect and more on the mindset that the priorities reveal about Marine Corps leadership. It's a mindset that has become increasingly less focused on combat and more focused on public relations. Do you recall a post awhile ago about MEUs deploying with female interaction teams (I forget the official name)? All of this is simply more signs of a loss of combat focus.
Now, if you're saying the same thing in a different way then I apologize and agree.
"EW"
DeleteI would also point out that the General did not explicitly mention EW in her list of priorities. I find that noteworthy. We're sort of inserting EW into the discussion because we assume it ought to be included but the good General did not explicitly include it. EW was mentioned only in passing in the referenced article and was clearly not a priority. Again, that betrays a mindset that is not combat focused.
It is remarkable how closely the General's priorities mirror those of, say, a presidential candidate trying to organize a public relations staff. 'Communications strategy'? Are we running a war or running an election campaign?
Yup. We're saying the same thing, just looking at it from different angles.
DeleteI've been an operations guy all my life and I see disaster looming from a bad organizational policy. I wasn't looking as closely at the individual bad elements that were being combined.
"It is remarkable how closely the General's priorities mirror those of, say, a presidential candidate trying to organize a public relations staff. 'Communications strategy'? Are we running a war or running an election campaign?"
DeleteAgreed. We obviously are running little more than a PR campaign. I'm not even sure I would dignify it as a working model for a successful election campaign.
I'm not sure what its going to take for top management to actually focus on combat. Probably a war we get get a severe ass kicking.
The other piece I picked out is this: What on earth is someone as senior as a Lt. General doing messing around with this stuff? Its all fiddly bits. There is nothing really worthwhile and strategic in the whole bunch that a Lt. General should be involved with.
Funny, was thinking the same thing: is the USMC going to war or political campaigning? Or is this the fall back plan when US military gets it's ass kicked that we "manage" the message to US public better?
Delete"is the USMC going to war or political campaigning? "
DeleteSetting aside the well deserved mocking of the Marines, I seriously think we're seeing a phenomenon of the Marines trying to conduct an entire war, single handed. Recall the posts I've done about the Marines moving into other service's areas of responsibility? Well, public relations ARE a part of an overall war effort. Once again, it's as if the Marines are trying to take over the non-military government's job of managing a war's public relations. They're trying to do EVERY job in a war instead of just concentrating on their own.
I don't have any inside information so my speculation may well be wrong but if that's not what the Marines are trying to do … then what are they trying to do?
@CNO. Very good observation!!! Yes,maybe because they have lost there "raison d'etre" of hitting the beaches hard and being the tip of the spear, it's almost like know they are trying to justify their existence by becoming an all in one force....I would say that if this continues, they are almost like private mercs: you pay them and you get a package deal: war, food, human resources,PR, reconstruction, etc....it's "dial an armed force, we'll take care of the rest!" Sad for such a proud service....
DeleteI don't know how old you are so I don't know whether you lived through the time period but at the onset (planning) for Desert Storm, the concern of the various services wasn't, how can we best help the war effort, if at all, but, instead, every service scrambled for the biggest 'piece' of the war regardless of whether they were best suited for it or not. It was pure budget-motivated jockeying for their slice of the war so that they could, post-war, demonstrate to Congress just how important they were. Gen. Schwarzkopf discussed this in several of his post-war analyses and discussions. Special ops forces were one of the worst, according to him. He had no use for them in his battle plan and considered them a detriment but they called in every favor any Congressman ever owed them and forced Schwarzkopf to use them.
DeleteI see the marines as well as a lot of armies/navies/airforces trying to avoid being caught in a new environment like armies were at the start of WW1. A marines brigade trains with Australian forces at Darwin 6 months a year.
ReplyDeleteAustralia is tripling its combat weight. They must know why we are doing that. I suspect their is an over reaction here and they won't dump every tank.
In WW1 an Australian offensive of a few thousand soldiers and sailors took out all German wireless and coaling stations in the Pacific. The German Pacific fleet went somewhere else.
The South West Pacific theatre in WW2 was comprised eventually of amphibious landing operations not assaults. The US Army and us landed where the enemy wasn't. And attacked by land or left them to wither on the vine. Everything was geared to seizing airfields.
If we assume that again the Pacific will become a geographic board. The marines concepts mat start to make sense. The goal may be to cut off resupply to isolated enemy bases without assaulting.
The fact they are thinking is to be applauded.
"The goal may be to cut off resupply to isolated enemy bases without assaulting."
DeleteWhat isolated bases does China have that would figure in a war with the US?
"What isolated bases does China have that would figure in a war with the US?"
DeleteWoody and Paracels are the obvious answers that come to mind. Take them off the board, and China loses its forward airbases in the Spratlys, pushing back their airborne surveillance. Although that's less "cut off" and more "eliminate".
I was thinking of Solomon Islands as a provincial government gave an big island to China. The Federal Govt quickly vetoed it. They tried to lease PNG's Manus Island - now PNG, Australia and the US are upgrading the base. The same scenario is playing out in India's sphere in the Indian Ocean with small island countries.
DeleteIn the Antarctic China has built a series of bases on Australian claimed territory. Together the bases give them the ability to annex a large part of Australia's Antarctic territory. See https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/whats-china-up-to-in-antarctica/ and https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/antarctica-a-cold-hard-reality-check/. For an Australian view on AI see https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/editors-picks-for-2019-ai-and-autonomous-systems-are-urgent-priorities-for-todays-defence-force/.
Delete"Woody and Paracels"
DeleteThese are neither isolated nor would they figure in a war with the US for more than a few moments.
"Solomon Islands … China has built a series of bases"
DeleteChina is doing via fraud, finances, and bribes what the Japanese did with military invasion and occupation in WWII. China is expanding their empire and establishing a world wide series of bases (Indian Ocean, Africa, Middle East, etc.). The difference between Japan's approach and China's is that Japan's actions triggered a war and China's are not because they aren't using blatant, kinetic military firepower. By being patient, they're achieving all their objectives without provoking the rest of the world into war. While they are totally evil, you have to admire their masterful execution of their plan. It's up to the rest of the world to recognize what they're doing and stop it.
And that is why we are tripling our combat weight in all our vehicles (both combat and logistics), ships, subs, and becoming the highest tech airforce in the world (by buying American and dumping legacy platforms which the second part of it America can't afford). And as I've said before on this blog we will strategically deny bases to China anywhere near us. Our biggest neighbour has let their Navy loose against the Chinese Coast Guard and a fleet of fishing boats. See https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/can-indonesia-lead-maritime-tensions-china-escalate.
DeleteThe other thing recently is diplomatic not bases. China has taken two Island states off Taiwan. See https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/pacific-links-dividends-diplomatic-switch-o-neill-warrant-more. Now there is nothing the west can do. Our position is China - Taiwan dispute should be solved by the two parties PEACEABLY.
DeleteThe other thing I mentioned at the beginning was WW2 South West Pacific. It differed from the Central Pacific in geography. To seize a base you could land where there were no japs and build an airfield. But all landings were done within 200 km (or maybe miles) of an existing airfield.
DeleteSo the US Army and us advanced 200 km at a time (until McArthur decided to race the US Navy for glory and left for the Philippines). The distances in the Central Pacific were far larger.
What I do professionally is about as far away from being a General/ whatever as I could imagine. But I look at those top priorities and wonder why the first one wouldnt be "training and drilling every tool available to meet any realistic scenario I may have to employ them against."
ReplyDeleteAlongside that would be intense auditing and assessment of that training to find gaps, look at how to close them, etc.
After that would be looking forward, what is coming that we have to counter/ adapt to/ adopt. But theres little point in looking forward if what you currently have doesnt work.
After that would come things like how can I integrate better with other teams like air force/ marines/ etc. But first I would want my own house in order.
If I can see this, why cant this General? My gut says to point the finger further up the chain - the leadership sets the priorities/ KPIs, and based on what I've read - they're wrong currently.
You've summed it up nicely!
DeleteThank you, I appreciate that. However, I cant see what the solution is - political will? Cultural issues? Org structure?
DeleteMaybe thats why you started this blog - to do what you can to spread awareness of the problems you can see in lieu of any better idea?
Perhaps the most effective (not best) solution would be a short, hard conflict to drive home some lessons. Unfortunately the price for those lessons gets paid by the wrong people in that scenario - as history has taught us.
It sort of seems like the Marines themselves do not know what they should be doing so they're trying to do everything.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a very real element of that. They were scared of missing out on a Pacific Pivot and Chinese war that would be mostly air and naval so they're desperately looking for ways to be [budget] relevant.
DeleteCan you please stop using the term 'combat focus' as it reminds me to much of the related term 'focus group'.
ReplyDeleteIn fact avoid the buzzword 'focus' all together. As a 'key stakeholder' in reading this blog I would love to know what ' maneuvering the network' actually means.
Does it mean creating a local area network in each combat unit that moves with the unit, so that everyone in the battalion knows what is happening in a battle and can respond accordingly or does it mean something else.
"Can you please stop using the term 'combat focus' as it reminds me to much of the related term 'focus group'."
DeleteSo what alternative term would you suggest that denotes a focus on combat?
It was meant to be humorous.
Delete" love to know what ' maneuvering the network' actually means. "
DeleteI have no idea. Here's some pure guesswork: I've previously heard military spokesmen describing a 'mobile cloud'. I don't know what that means. It could refer to portable servers. Just guessing.
In any event, I suspect that 'maneuvering the network' is linked to 'mobile cloud'.
If our military were half as good at actual readiness as they are at Powerpoint buzzwords, we'd be in great shape.
You asked "what about China?"
ReplyDeleteThe machiavellian side of me says "war with iran and blow up the gulf gas station". Indirect, use what we have, pure econo-geopolitical without direct mil.confrontation against a nuke power. Of course, with that being said, world economy will crash and Trump loses 2020.
Then again, maybe start the gulf-war-3 the Monday after the election weekend.
We seem to have forgotten that the basic purpose of the military is to put ordnance on target.
ReplyDeleteWhat's really sad is that, of all people, the Marines have fallen into gobbledy-gook land. Why do we even have a Deputy Commandant for Information, and why would such a position have personnel assigned to it? Are we now more worried about manipulating the narrative than winning the war?