I know this isn’t a Navy matter but this is too important to ignore. Here’s a stunning admission of failure from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
In addition to reaching something of a stalemate, where the Taliban can’t conquer the U.S.-backed Afghan security forces, and the U.S. can’t bring the Taliban to its knees, Army Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday during a Brookings Institution event, the U.S. has probably done all it can do.
“We believe now that after 20 years, two decades of consistent effort, that we he have achieved a modicum of success,” he said.
Since the first boots hit the ground in October 2001, more than 2,400 American troops have died and nearly 21,000 have been injured, along with close to $1 trillion spent on trying to stabilize Afghanistan enough that it won’t again become a training ground for terrorist groups.
Are you kidding me???? Twenty years of effort and we have achieved a ‘modicum of success’? And you know he’s spinning that in the best possible way. The reality is much less rosy than even that marginal claim.
2400 deaths
21,000 wounded
$1 trillion
A ‘modicum of success’?
Let’s consider some of the issues this raises:
- Why are we pursuing high tech when we couldn’t even beat a bunch of goat herders with no technology? How would even more technology produce a better result? What’s going to happen when we go up against China?
- Is this an example of our misguided focus on technology, networks, and data at the expense of actually killing people in the most efficient manner possible – meaning with the greatest degree of overwhelming firepower?
- Is 20 yrs and a ‘modicum of success’ the standard of success for our professional military leaders? Shouldn’t heads be rolling by the dozens?
- Why are we continuing to jump into conflicts that have no possible successful outcome?
- Do we have the will to win these types of conflicts or has our military (and, to be fair, our civilian leadership) become so feminized that we no longer have the stomach to do what has to be done to achieve victory?
- Has avoidance of casualties, both ours and the enemy’s, become so ingrained in our military that we can’t be brutal enough to win? What will happen when we fight China?
- Why are we entering conflicts without clear victory conditions?
This reprehensible abomination of a result would be beyond the comprehension of our WWII military leaders. They would be in total shock over this. They won a world war in a few years and today we can’t even defeat goat herders in 20 yrs.
We’re paying for a standing military that can’t even defeat third world terrorist goat herders. We spend $700B/year to maintain a military that is, by the admission of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, manifestly incompetent and incapable. We could have abolished the military, saved all that money, not gotten involved in Afghanistan at all, and wound up in about the same place. What did our investment in the military get us?
We need to either drastically downsize the military or drastically upsize our standards and clean house of all current flag officers and then start demanding actual performance from the next group of leaders.
If Gen. Milley had an ounce of integrity he’d fire every flag officer and then resign in disgrace and embarrassment. That he doesn’t is symptomatic of what’s wrong with our military. This man disgusts me.
(1)Military Times website, “Military’s top officer says we’ve had a ‘modicum of success’ in Afghanistan”, Meghann Myers, 2-Dec-2020,
What do you consider a win in Afghanistan? The people there just fight each other all the time except when an outside invader comes along when they team up to drive them out.
ReplyDeleteThe British Empire, Soviet Union and now the USA have gone in and all achieved nothing for that effort.
"What do you consider a win in Afghanistan?"
DeleteBefore you can decide what constitutes a win you have to decide what national strategic interest lies there. What threat to our national security exists there? We shouldn't be jumping into conflicts that have no national strategic interest for us.
The only semblance of a national strategic interest for the US is eliminating the Taliban as a source of terrorism export - and that's a weak rationale that I would have to be convinced is valid. However, if that were the identified interest then the 'win' is to eradicate them in the most ruthless, efficient manner possible: no safe haven, no regard for collateral damage, so letup, no mercy - just death. Do it with overwhelming force in minimal time and then get out. It ought to be a 3-6 month operation. There would also be no nation building, at least not involving the military. The political arm of our govt can deal with that, if they're so inclined.
"The" Taliban doesn't exist. It's an umbrella name under which numerous different groups and factions were (temporarily) aligned.
DeleteMany (and almost certainly most) of those didn't support the hard line of the mullahs from the Pakistanis madrassas. It was an alliance of convenience. That's how it always works in Afghanistan. There are just too many disparate groups, sects and ethnicities in the country.
To have as the goal to kill everyone nominally aligned with the Taliban at the time (most didn't have much choice) is tantamount to advocating ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
It wouldn't work any way. It's not how Afghanis think. Their society is run on honour and blood debt, not western logic and rationale.
A good example was this small group of ethnic Uzbek fighters (from all ages, it included teenage boys and old men, and few of fighting age) who had been fighting with a Taliban group against government forces. The ethnic Uzbeks are amongst the most anti-Taliban groups in the country. So why did they fight with the Taliban?
Turned out they were from a very minor sub-clan who owed a blood debt to one of the larger clans. They in turn had a similar debt with another group who grudgingly supported the Taliban. They were obliged to provide them with a certain number of fighters (again, the debt thing).
So instead of sending their own people, they called upon the group who owed them to provide them. They did the same. They called upon the small sub-clan to provide the fighters to settle the debt they owed. And so a group of Uzbeks who were barely able to point a rifle ended up fighting for the Taliban, who they didn't support ideologically, didn't know any of them personally (before being send out) and didn't even speak the same language.
You cannot win a traditionally conducted western military campaign against them and hope for a successful outcome. The sort of pressure and threats that are at the core of it don't work against these people.
It takes a purely political solution. But that was made impossible BECAUSE of the military operations. Those continuously created blood debts that needed to be settled before any political solution could be implemented.
Nothing of the US failure in Afghanistan is surprising. It turned out almost exactly as numerous people who did understand the country predicted back in 2001.
R
"You cannot win a traditionally conducted western military campaign against them "
DeleteOf course you can. You isolate groups and destroy them. Why they're aligned with the Taliban is immaterial. If they're pointing guns at us, they die.
You cut off resources, eliminate safe havens, cut off communications, apply constant military pressure, blockade the villages that they might get support from, hunt them from the air, bombard their locations without letup, and so on.
AFTER THAT'S DONE, then you focus on longer term political solutions, if you wish although I suspect that would be a pointless endeavor in that region.
Of course, before any of that, we should be asking ourselves why we want to get involved in the first place given the extremely dubious rationale.
Whoever planned it should have at least read Caesar and Churchill.
Delete"What do you consider a win in Afghanistan?
DeleteBefore you can decide what constitutes a win you have to decide what national strategic interest lies there. What threat to our national security exists there? We shouldn't be jumping into conflicts that have no national strategic interest for us.
The only semblance of a national strategic interest for the US is eliminating the Taliban as a source of terrorism export - and that's a weak rationale that I would have to be convinced is valid. However, if that were the identified interest then the 'win' is to eradicate them in the most ruthless, efficient manner possible: no safe haven, no regard for collateral damage, so letup, no mercy - just death. Do it with overwhelming force in minimal time and then get out. It ought to be a 3-6 month operation. There would also be no nation building, at least not involving the military. The political arm of our govt can deal with that, if they're so inclined."
Exactly. If we are not willing to do that, then there is no military solution. Armies do two things well--kill people and break things. So go in hard and fast, kill everybody who needs killing, break everything that needs breaking, and then leave--after telling the people who are left in charge that if they don't behave we will be back to kill them.
If we are not willing to go in that way, then don't waste the life or limb of one American soldier, sailor, Marine, or airman.
"If they're pointing guns at us, they die."
DeleteThat there sums up the whole reason of the failure right there.
The Taliban weren't pointing guns at the US until the US started pointing guns at them. Guess what their attitude to that is? If you guessed 'if they're pointing guns at us, they die', you're right.
You kill an Afghani and now their relatives are honour bound to avenge them, in other words start pointing guns at you. And on and on it goes. Your take, under Afghani conditions, leads to near-genocide.
Ironically, the US had a very short window of opportunity where they could have achieved the goal of ending Taliban support for terrorism. Unfortunately, that wasn't actually the goal of the US at all, so they didn't seize it.
While the Taliban weren't responsible for 9/11, them harbouring Al-Qaeda did, from their perspective of honour and blood debts, put them in blood debt to the US to some degree.
After the initial bombardments had inflicted serious casualties on the Taliban military cadre, their hold on the other factions in the country was broken. To them, the losses were proportionate to the debt they owed the US. So after that, the scales were in balance again in their view.
Ever the pragmatists they are (which goes for Afghani in general), they offered negotiations, not just to the US, but to include the other factions and create a new government reflecting the new balance of power in the country (this was before the large scale US invasion and the imposition of the puppet government of Karzai).
That was unacceptable to the US because of their real objective, which was to put a fully pro-US government in charge (the real goal was control of the central asians former soviet republics for which Afghanistan was a springboard). Of the four main groups/factions, three were allied with adversaries of the US and the fourth was notoriously unreliable.
So the US forced a government on all of the other groups (even those not in conflict with the US) that didn't represent them, their people or their interests. Worse, they US used massive force to try and coerce them. That create new blood debts which the various clans were honour bound to avenge.
Thinking that more force would have solved the issue is extremely naive. The end result would be exactly the same, just with a lot more dead people on both sides.
R.
"That there sums up the whole reason of the failure right there."
DeleteYour entire comment hinges 100% on the validity of your 'debt' philosophy. IF … I REPEAT IF … it's valid then you've offered a very worthwhile comment - exceptional, even. I have no idea whether your view is valid or not so I'll leave the comment for readers to consider for themselves.
I thoroughly enjoyed your comment and my agreement, or lack thereof, is not a requirement for commenting. You write well and I hope you'll continue offering comments.
Thank you. Let me elaborate some more on this.
DeleteA society governed by a culture of blood debts and a clan based honour system is quite unstable and prone to outbreaks of massive violence. It is very easy to get into a vicious cycle of tit-for-tat killings, each side arguing they have to avenge the last one.
It is one of the reasons why Afghanistan has remained relatively undeveloped and poor.
There are two primary mechanisms to deal with this problem.
The first is to segregate communities. Keep the people from the different factions away from each other. Incidents will still happen, but now they will be between people from the same clan/group which helps prevent it from escalating into a conflict between entire clans.
That's why the different groups and factions in Afghanistan are quite isolated from each other and highly autonomous. They have to be.
Now in comes the US which forces a government on all of them and worse, starts interfering in everyone's lives and day-to-day affairs. Even worse, people were drawn into the government from different groups (mostly emigrants to the US or other western countries), setting the stage for inter-clan conflicts. Politics is a vipers nest everywhere, but in Afghanistan, personal political rivalries can spill over into massive bloodshed. To the Afghanis, everyone there belongs to a clan, whether they want to or not, and what they do, or don't do, brings both honour and shame on the clan.
The second mechanisms to prevent the tit-for-tat killings is to have a third party (who is neutral to the conflict in question) adjudicate whether honour has been satisfied or if one side is still owed a debt.
With all the different factions (not just between clans but also within them), in most cases it wasn't hard to find such a party. They would be compelled to judge fairly, because sooner or later they would end up in a conflict themselves and need an adjudicator too.
But the US is both party in the conflict and claims the position of sole arbitrator. They will not condone any third party to mediate to find a mutually acceptable solution. The US way is to impose its will without restrcitions which is anathema to the Afghani way of thinking.
A blood-debt and clan-honour based society needs a very careful balance to keep functioning.
And in comes the US upsetting all the proper conventions and ignoring all the (by Afghani standards) normal forms of behaviour and ways to settle conflicts. Just about everything the US did there was wrong for the circumstances from the point of view of maintaining a stable society.
People in such a society have almost no freedom of choice, and this includes their leaders. Millennia of history compel them to act in certain ways in reaction to events. A leader who refuses to avenge an insult or slight to the clan will be disposed and replaced by one who will.
People who refuse to play by the prevailing rules are a threat to the safety of the clan. They will be shunned by the rest of the clan which is effectively a death sentence, given that there are not social services worth mentioning and no one will employ them.
To try and get into their mindset, try this thought experiment. If you're an American, recall the tragedy of 9/11. For non-Americans, recall a similar event happening to your country or imagine it had happened to yours.
Now with that in mind, imagine being told to let it slide. Not to do anything in response or not to retaliate in any way towards the perpetrators.
That is effectively what is being demanded from the Afghanis every day.
Could you have turned the other cheek after 9/11? If not, why are you expecting the Afghanis to do so to what in their view is something similar?
And it's not just that they won't because they're obstinate. They can't because of their cultural indoctrination. They have little choice in the matter.
R.
Your entire commentary flows logically from the central premise. I have no doubt that a degree of what you describe occurs in that region. Heck, it occurs in America - the Hatfields and McCoys, for example. My uncertainty lies in the degree. An occasional 'debt' issue for a serious offense is hugely different from an entire culture ruled by the concept of 'debt' in every aspect of life and for every action, no matter how minor. I'm skeptical that the philosophy exists to the extent you describe but I have no first hand (or second or third) knowledge to the contrary. I have to ask, what is your background that gives you this knowledge? I ask this not as a challenge but to understand the degree of confidence to place in your assertions.
DeleteAgain, very well written.
My academic background is in organisational theory (masters degree), which helps me to quickly see and grasp complex organised human behaviour and the way it is governed.
DeleteThe common misconception is that organisations are run by people. They're not. People are run by organisations (referring to every form of organised human behaviour, including religion and cultural doctrines). But that's a whole other debate right there.
I've always had an interest in international affairs, from a very young age, especially where military related, and in both the so-called 'art of war' and the sociology of warfare, more so than in the technical details. (I'm more into the 'why' and 'how' and less into the 'what' and 'when' of the history of war).
There's little doubt that Afghanistan is one of the most honour-driven societies on the planet, maybe even the most of all. Debts can even be exchanged like a form of currency.
But I should have made clear it not so much individually based, but clan based. It's like an onion, in the centre is your direct family where your freedom to act is greatest (for men at least). The further you go out the more restricted by honour codes your behaviour becomes and the greater the possible consequences are.
There are many different levels and degrees of clans which are organised along a fealty based system. But it's a two-way street, both parties owe loyalty to each other and have mutual obligations, but in differing degrees. It's pretty complex. And fealties can be traded too.
Also, don't forget that these people have had this systems for thousands of years probably. They know what they can and can't do so the risks for them aren't as large as they appear to us. As long as they and everyone else sticks to the societal rules, of course.
And what I find interesting is your referral to "no matter how minor". Whether something is minor or not is not a matter of fact but of opinion.
Bursting into people homes and forcing the women there to show their faces to the (male) soldiers who barged in may seem minor to us. It's not to them. Not understanding what matters to the other side is what gets you in the kind the trouble the US finds itself in again and again.
And I think you're underestimating the role honour plays everywhere. It certainly played a big role in how the US reacted to 9/11. As christian as the the US may be, turning the other cheek is not your strong point.
There are many different words used to describe it, but they all come down to an honour-code. It's quite deeply embedded into the American culture, but if you're an American, to you it's natural and you don't even see it as such any more.
We all have such biases when it comes to our own ingrained cultural behaviours. We don't normally contemplate that it isn't the default human behaviour and that other people are expected to act completely different under the same circumstances. It gives us all blind spots when dealing with other cultures.
Another culture which is deeply into the honour thing is Turkey. When dealing with them it is important to realise that a Turk will never openly admit that he was wrong. That's dishonourable. (It was Turkish immigrants I had befriended years ago who pointed that out to me and a lot of things suddenly made sense).
You just have to work and talk around it and not bring it up again. Pointing out their mistakes, especially publicly, is just about the worst thing you could do.
I guess the whole point I've been making is that by utterly failing to understand how Afghani culture differed from America's, the manner in which the US did behave towards them made it nigh impossible for any sort of serious settlement to be reached.
Just as the soviets and British and many others have experienced in the past.
R.
One of the things I've learned through life is that no one person's view is wholly correct. Ask ten different Americans to describe, say, American culture or behavior and you'll get ten different answers. There will, undoubtedly, be points in common but there will also be points of difference. All ten people are partially correct and partially wrong, if you want to view it that way.
DeleteI've had occasion, on this blog, to encounter people who profess to wholly represent a country or perspective and that simply isn't true. They may well represent some aspects and misrepresent others. No country or philosophy is monolithic, is another way of saying it.
So, long windedness aside, I wonder how truly representative your view is? If I ask ten different people about Afg, I'll get ten different answers. Your views may, or may not, be in the majority. That's why I asked about your background. If you were a native Afghan, your view would carry more weight than an outsider trying to interpret what they read. If you're an outsider who's lived in country, your view would carry more weight than someone who's never been to the region. And so on. The farther removed from the actual culture and country, the less weight the view would carry. Now, before you get insulted, I also recognize that an outsider's view (if that's you) can be substantially correct. Outside does not automatically equate to wrong. I'm trying to place your thoughts on the 'authority' scale. I have no reason to doubt you but neither do I have any reason to believe you other than what you say aligns with what little I've learned about the region. That's why I asked you to describe your background. Where/how did you gain your specific knowledge of the region?
So, with the ten different people exercise in mind, does your view contain many points in common or is it more of an outlier view? I can't determine that so I'm inclined to accept your thoughts at face value until/unless better information comes my way.
At the very least, your comments have been well written, interesting, educational, and thought provoking. I can't ask for more than that and I thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts. I value this kind of contribution.
Shifting gears slightly, the most disturbing aspect of your comments is that the US military supposedly has subject matter experts for every potential adversary country or group. It would be incredibly disappointing if your views are substantially 'correct' and the military so badly misjudged the situation or ignored their experts. That would say that we aren't doing our homework and are not acting professionally.
Again, many thanks for your contribution.
I would offer a thought related to the 'debt' philosophy. It's a two way street and the Afghans have to know that their actions do not exist in a vacuum and that they extend beyond their immediate clan/region … all the way to America.
DeleteIf they allow terrorists to set up shop and act against the interests of the rest of the 'peace loving' world, they have to know that, sooner or later, someone is going to come calling to shut them down and not bother distinguishing between those who are pointing guns because of some traded debt and those who are pointing guns because of true terrorism belief.
You've somewhat painted this as a wholly American failure to understand reality but it's also a failure of the locals to understand the consequences of their actions, as well.
If I allow criminals to set up operation in my home, I can't get too upset when the police eventually kick in my door with guns drawn.
There's blame to go around, I guess is what I'm saying.
"If you were a native Afghan, your view would carry more weight than an outsider trying to interpret what they read."
DeleteI fully disagree with this assumption. That's not to say I can't be wrong, but it's a fallacy to say an insider knows best. They rarely do.
Insiders are far more prone to fall for the biases inherent with the culture in general and with the very narrow scope of it that they personally experience in their life (vast regional differences in countries for example).
In order to properly assess 'large' matters, you need someone who stands outside of it. As you said yourself, ask ten Americans and you get ten different answers. But then you go and turn it around by claiming it doesn't apply to Afghanis? That somehow an Afghani insider can properly assess their country and culture where Americans can't do the same for their own?
Just about everyone is far more prejudiced about their own little slice of their own country than a foreign expert is.
"If they allow terrorists to set up shop and act against the interests of the rest of the 'peace loving' world,"
That's opinion, not fact. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. I'm not saying that they are the 'good guys', not at all. But the US with her allies have inflicted orders of magnitude more innocent deaths than the terrorists they claim to be fighting.
It gives the other side legitimacy to point to the west as the real terrorists. It hard to see the drone strikes where the percentage of innocents killed ranges from 90% to 99,9% depending on the source as anything else than acts of terrorism.
"There's blame to go around, I guess is what I'm saying."
Absolutely. But the US has absolutely no sense of proportionality when it comes to 'payback'.
"It would be incredibly disappointing if your views are substantially 'correct' and the military so badly misjudged the situation or ignored their experts. That would say that we aren't doing our homework and are not acting professionally."
Were you really assuming that non-military expert knowledge could somehow sway political decisions made in Washington (including the Pentagon), or that ranking officers might consider that a (non-military) expert might know better than them?
The typical size of their egos doesn't allow for it.
R
" it's a fallacy to say an insider knows best. They rarely do."
DeleteI'm going to have to disagree with you on this. You've presented your view of it quite cogently so I'll happily leave it at that and readers can assess for themselves.
"One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter."
Rarely, if ever. Everyone understands that the difference. When you subjugate people, terrorize them, behead them, etc. you're not a 'freedom' fighter, you're a terrorist. When it walks like a terrorist, talks like a terrorist, and kills everyone who doesn't agree with it, it's a terrorist.
"It gives the other side legitimacy to point to the west as the real terrorists."
If you're looking for me to defend our involvements in the region, you should know that my level of support is pretty minimal.
"innocents killed ranges from 90% to 99,9%"
You might enjoy the post "Civilians"
"Were you really assuming that non-military expert knowledge"
I'm assuming/hoping/expecting that the military would thoroughly study EVERY facet of a contemplated operation including cultural characteristics. We wouldn't (I would hope) go into an operation without studying troop strength, enemy logistics, weather, and a thousand other factors. Why would we go into an operation without total knowledge of the area's culture? If we failed to do that, that's simply unprofessional. If we did do that and ignored it, that's simply unprofessional. If we did do that and just go it wrong, that's simply incompetence. Alternatively, perhaps we did understand what we were stepping into and maybe it's not quite as you presented. I have no way of knowing. The only 'evidence' is that we failed badly but that doesn't say why.
This is a genuinely fascinating discussion. One thing that immediately springs to mind, and is reinforced by discussions in other contexts, is the degree to which this underlines the historically "weird" nature of modern Western society.
DeleteTo a substantial degree this outline of Afghanistan as a clan/honor-based society is something that would be most likely be intrinsically understandable to 18th Century upper-class Europeans, or indeed foot-soldiers. But a Western "modern" just doesn't GET it. They may try to understand it but it largely remains an abstract concept. And of course most moderns want the world to be like us.
I suspect this, tolerance for traditional local patronage relationships and systems of spoils distribution (denounced by modern West as corruption), combined with a willingness to engage in traditional responses to rebellion that would very much be regarded as outright crimes against humanity in response to rebellion were all factors in the relative success of much of the West's efforts to create and sustain empires prior to WW2. That and a willingness to negotiate the nuances of dominance as experienced by the local population.
To circle mack to the question of success/failure and the problem of "modern Westerners" confronting clan/honor based societies there is an argument that the same pattern repeated in the Middle East. I recognize that there is a danger of over-simplification or over-generalization here, but at the same time the contemporary Middle East generally does not appear to have the same set of relationships with the state, or the same concept of the "individual" as an independent entity within a society of individuals.
1. The JCS doesn't have command authority over the CENTCOM (who ran the conflict in Afghanistan). JCS develops and provides forces, COCOMs execute missions.
ReplyDelete2. The military doesn't decide to go to war or set victory conditions. The civilian leadership does that. Blame Bush for getting us into Afghanistan without victory conditions.
3. We rarely lacked in firepower. Indiscriminate killing does more harm than good. The civilian leadership put hard limits on what we could bring into Afghanistan and what we could do there. The military didn't get a blank check.
4. We never adequately addressed Pakistan, which is a safe harbor for the Taliban. Again not a military failure. This was a political failure.
It is the responsibility of the professional military to present effective and efficient military strategies in support of the President's political goals. The military utterly failed to do so.
DeleteYou seem to have a misconception about the role of the military. It is not the role of the military to sit back, passively waiting for the President to formulate a military strategy. It is the responsibility of the military to formulate a military strategy - one which is EFFECTIVE and EFFICIENT. The military utterly failed to do so.
"The civilian leadership put hard limits on what we could bring into Afghanistan"
I am unaware of any item that the military requested that was refused.
"We never adequately addressed Pakistan, which is a safe harbor for the Taliban. Again not a military failure. This was a political failure."
Failure to offer a military strategy to seal the border and deny safe haven was a military failure, pure and simple.
"Blame Bush for getting us into Afghanistan without victory conditions."
I did. Did you read the post?
All I'm hearing in this comment is rationalization for a massive military failure.
Kabul fell in Nov 2001, two month to go across the world and take the capital. Do you consider that efficient ?
ReplyDeleteIs the Military expected to the job of a Colonial Office ?
Where was the Bell/Lawrence of MacArthur for Afghanistan ?
Anon2 has a point, Afghanistan is in the middle of Indian Pakistan rivalry.
"Do you consider that efficient ?"
DeleteGiven that seizing Kabul was not our victory condition and accomplished nothing, no, I don't. Given that we've been fighting there for 20 years, no I don't. Given that our own Chairman claims only a 'modicum of success', no, I don't. Given that it's cost us thousands dead, tens of thousands wounded, $1T, and we achieved almost nothing, no , I don't. DO YOU?????????
"Is the Military expected to the job of a Colonial Office ?"
No, they're not. Why do you ask? Did someone call for that?
"Afghanistan is in the middle of Indian Pakistan rivalry"
How is that relevant to the post? The military operated inside Afg (mostly).
The Military won the war, the killing people/breaking things part that the Military is tasked with.
DeleteWhy blame the Military for not knowing how to rule/control/manage the place ?
That would be the job of the Colonial Office.
With Military providing backup, not leadership.
"The Military won the war,"
DeleteThey most certainly did not. The objective - to the extent that there was any articulated objective - was to eliminate the Taliban. This was a complete failure. The moment we leave, they move back in. Total failure.
The nation building was a separate issue and only peripherally addressed in this post and it was also an abject failure.
"Kabul fell in Nov 2001, two month to go across the world and take the capital. Do you consider that efficient ?"
DeleteThe US didn't drive the Taliban out of Kabul, the Northern Alliance did. The US just walked into a (near) empty city.
R.
I'd say the results were a foregone conclusion from the start. We would have greater leverage had we struck and withdrawn immediately leaving the the threat to return at any time.
ReplyDelete"had we struck and withdrawn immediately"
DeleteStruck what? It's not like the Taliban were sitting in a large cluster somewhere. What would you have struck and left? What single strike would have removed the threat and eliminated the Taliban?
"What single strike would have removed the threat and eliminated the Taliban?"
DeleteThat was not achievable in a single "strike".
However, it could be argued that turning Kabul (or wherever) into a new Lidice might have deterred further terrorist attacks against the USA.
"Struck what? It's not like the Taliban were sitting in a large cluster somewhere. What would you have struck and left? What single strike would have removed the threat and eliminated the Taliban?"
DeleteKill Osama bin Laden (that took what, 10 years?).
Kill Mullah Omar (who apparently eventually died a natural death).
Kill as many of their underlings as possible.
Don't let worries about collateral damage prevent any of those.
To kill a snake, you cut off the head, not the tail.
And forget all the, "win their hearts and minds," stuff. Those people don't like us, or each other, and never will.
Kill whoever needs killing. Break whatever needs breaking. Tell whoever ends up in charge that if we don't like what they do, we will be back to kill them. And get out within two years, max, and stay out. If it lasts beyond two years, then we aren't going towing, ever, so stop.
Wars end one of two ways--you win or you surrender. If you're not fighting to win, you are fighting to surrender. Doing that makes no sense.
"might have deterred further terrorist attacks against the USA."
DeleteI am aware of no previous examples of Taliban executing attacks against the US. They were not a threat to our national security. To whatever extent they might have threatened the US, it was a very minor effort and highly questionable as to being worth a war.
One might argue that bin Laden was a threat to the US and worth a military action but that was a focused attack against one man, not an overall war.
"Kill Osama bin Laden … Kill Mullah Omar"
DeleteNeither of those 'killed the snake', if that's what you were arguing. The Taliban still exist and in significant numbers and are simply waiting for us to leave and then they'll move right back in. So, if that was your 'single strike' answer, it was a failure. I suspect that's not what you were saying.
Cutting off the head is NOT a successful strategy against terrorists, as has been repeatedly demonstrated. There is always another waiting to take their place. I'm not saying we shouldn't kill the head - we should! - but it won't kill the body. We need to recognize that and change how we engage terrorists.
Wow, I mean, what we did at the start and then leave. Airstrikes, special forces, use Afghans to fight the Taliban/Al-Qaeda. Diplomacy push for the competing neighbors to work out a solution without us in the middle of a place a naval power should never be.
Delete"Cutting off the head is NOT a successful strategy against terrorists, as has been repeatedly demonstrated. There is always another waiting to take their place. I'm not saying we shouldn't kill the head - we should! - but it won't kill the body. We need to recognize that and change how we engage terrorists."
DeleteI'm not saying that cutting off the head is sufficient, but I am saying it is necessary. And remember, we didn't do that first. Letting that next guy to step know that he is in our crosshairs immediately upon stepping up, and that he can surround himself with as many human shields as he wants and we will bite the bullet on collateral damage to get him, does alter the bidding quite a bit.
You start by killing the head, then you kill enough of the other leaders until they get tired of dying. As long as we are killing the mere lackeys in the field, they can find plenty more where those came from. Once we make it clear that we are after the guys at the top, and are being successful in killing them, enough that the guys at the top stop sleeping well, then we have some leverage.
I am very well aware that our approach to terrorists, and in fact to any form of asymmetric warfare, is basically incompetent. One of the reasons why I have favored giving asymmetric warfare to the Marines is because if you have a force that does that primarily, and perhaps that exclusively, then they have great incentive to figure out the way to do it right. Right now our special forces are tactical geniuses, but nobody figures out strategic end of the problem.
I am quite sure that the strategy that will evolve will be politically unacceptable in many circumstances. So if doing it right is not politically acceptable, then doing it at all is not politically acceptable.
"Why are we entering conflicts without clear victory conditions?"
ReplyDeleteThis is the core question right here.
What was America attempting to accomplish in Afg and Irak?
There was never a satisfying answer to that, just some vague stuff about "spreading democracy", which is literally impossible there (at least by any price the USA is willing to pay).
Thus, it became an impossible war and, not secondarily, a budgetary godsend.
The military has many responsibilities, but this one isn't entirely up to them.
But, the Taliban are not a collection of goat herders, they are much more sophisticated than that. They are organized group with dedicated followers who would gladly kill themselves in the name of their religion, which is a perversion of Islam. And, much like a criminal organization, they ran Afghanistan through intimidation and fear and severely punished those that helped us.
ReplyDeleteIts one thing to pacify a large city, where you can control who and what comes in and out. But, a country as large as Afghanistan with its complex terrain is another story. And, as in Vietnam and Korea, our enemy could retreat to nearby territory knowing they wouldn't be attacked. That is a difficult advantage to overcome.
After 20 years in Afghanistan, its long past time to wind things down. I don't support a complete withdrawal, as we need to help Afghanistan fight the Taliban and other extemist groups.
"That is a difficult advantage to overcome."
DeleteHogwash! It's a simple operational exercise BUT it does require the national political will to accomplish. If we believe a war is worth fighting then the ONLY way to fight it is 100%: no safe havens, etc. Fought that way, it's simple.
"I don't support a complete withdrawal, as we need to help Afghanistan fight the Taliban and other extemist groups."
So, having fought and bled for 20 years and achieved, at best, a 'modicum of success', you want to continue????? To what end? How is this in our national strategic interest?
Simple to fight through safe havens in nuclear armed countries?
Delete"But, the Taliban are not a collection of goat herders, they are much more sophisticated than that. They are organized group with dedicated followers who would gladly kill themselves in the name of their religion, which is a perversion of Islam."
DeleteThe lackeys would gladly kill themselves. The top dogs wouldn't. And as long as we are focused on killing lackeys and not top dogs, and as long as the top dogs can exploit the perversion of Islam, they're not going to run out of lackeys.
Make them start running out of top dogs, and things change.
"Simple to fight through safe havens in nuclear armed countries?"
DeleteLast I checked, Afghanistan was not nuclear armed. And IIRC, neither was Iraq.
Safe Haven = Pakistan
Delete"Simple to fight through safe havens in nuclear armed countries?"
DeleteYes, it is. We did it when we raided and killed bin Laden. We conducted UAV flights over Pakistan and conducted strike, as well.
Good grief, why are we so frightened of Pakistan? What can they do? What's happened to our national will and courage?
Pakistan may have nukes, but what about their delivery vehicle? If 20 Pakistanis each carrying heavy suitcases check into a hotel in NYC, maybe we have a problem. But if they have to launch from Pakistan, they don't have anything that can get here.
DeleteIf Pakistan ever wants to nuke a larger country filled with "infidels", India's name is at the top of the list.
DeleteIn fact, it's written so big there's no room for anything else in that list.
"Make them start running out of top dogs, and things change."
DeleteLike with any other organization, if a top dog is gone they get replaced and the replacement could well be more ruthless than the guy he replaced.
"Yes, it is. We did it when we raided and killed bin Laden."
The bin Laden raid was a one-off special where it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. But, once you cross their border and start killing Pakastani soldiers and civilians, you're going to end up with another enemy to fight. And, probably radicalize more young men to join the Taliban along the way.
And, we can't fight like we did in WWII and bomb civilian populations and flatten cities. Nor, can we bomb neutral countries.
"Make them start running out of top dogs, and things change."
Delete@CDR Chip: I disagree. If anything, the last 20 years has shown that it doesn't work like that. Of course, decapitating enemy leadership has an immediate tactical benefit - the enemy is leaderless, flailing about until they sort themselves out. But jihad is a franchise. Someone will always get promoted up, or come in to absorb the survivors into their command. It's the same thing the US Army does, promoting survivors up to fill empty command slots.
I think there is an aspect that the military may have consider incorrectly: Clausewitz's Center Of Gravity. For us, Center Of Gravity has always been leadership and we rightfully expend much ammunition and manpower to no avail.
DeleteMy rule of thumb approaching this issue is think about what is the underlying foundation that drives them to justify and to condone this behavior. With some consideration, the answer may sounds heartless but their religion is the center of gravity of this war. If we want to defeat ISIS or the Taliban, we must strike at the core of their religion. Now, I am not saying attack Muslims in general but the extremism of that religion. This is something that the Muslim community will lend their support behind and this is crucial to this effort. Through their support, we would educate people to be anti-extremism and we need to got public about this effort. We need to repeatedly show people why violence was never part of Muslim and those who failed to follow this logic will guarantee themselves a false believer. This is intended to alienate majority of possible recruits.
Now, another aspect I like to consider is their attack on US and Europeans belief on religion and freedom. I think this may take a lot of work but if we have the will to analyze and systemically breaking down every single of their claims, we would be able to destroy their belief. Of course, I am aware, like anything in life, some of their claims may remain correct and these last believers will cling on anything they can believe in. This is where the military needs to come in and eliminate and neutralize the last of these believers. Just my two cents.
"we would educate people to be anti-extremism"
DeleteThis is, essentially, the 'hearts and minds' approach which has failed wherever/whenever it's been tried. Why would this be different?
"The bin Laden raid was a one-off special "
DeleteNo, that's not even a little bit correct. The US conducted routine strikes into Pakistan.
From Wiki:
"Between 2004 and 2018, the United States government attacked thousands of targets in Northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) operated by the United States Air Force under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division."
I probably explain the political aspects a little bit because it is essential. The big wars that we have fought before are essentially wars of ideologies. WW2 was a war against fascism, the Cold War and proxy wars in it were wars against communism. Now our war is a war on Terror. Does that strike you as something that could be explained or systemically break down? As I see it, terror is manifestation, not the idea. This same logic may also applies to the old wars. Nazi Germany and Japan were manifestation of their respective fascism. And so on.
DeleteThe difference between a manifestation and an ideology is that ideology can't be changed significantly without losing a majority base of followers. For instance, applying this to extremist Muslims, there are variety of manifestations (or branches) of the same tree and they can be change differently. You cut one branch down and then another branch grow with a different interpretation than the first branch. Followers of the first branch could easily subscribe to the second branch because, essentially, it's beneficial for the same tree. We need to attack the root to have a chance at stopping the trees growing.
Now I certainly agree with you that it may seems like the hearts and minds approach. The difference here is ideology has a play book. There are rules and principles that govern the ideologies. An example like getting 72 virgins after they died could be broke down and proven wrong. If you want to ask for a specific approach that we could take, I suggest the way Germany taught facism. They systemically break down the claims and expand on it with real life examples and histories of wrongdoing. Of course, it isn't perfect and neo-facism is a very real thing in Germany. It just doesn't pose a large enough threat to national security. This means that if this could be successfully implemented, we may not need the military there at all. By then, intelligence agency should be able to keep the attacks at a bare minimum.
Maybe this is exactly what they have been doing but I haven't seen any real development. I have followed the development relatively well but I haven't seen any focus on Muslism. What I saw is a lack of focus. We are engaging in very generic world building (things that a nation could be doing themselves) and support them and fund them without giving them a reason to do so. My suggestion here is the effort we should be attacking the extremism instead. To be absolutely frank here, we don't need to do much with this shift. I have noted above about how we could employed the use of the global Muslim community in isolating them from tapping in and recruiting. The remaining should be small and isolated enough to represent any major threats.
DeleteI forgot to mentioned in the original response that the two most common ways that people get radicalized are through self-radicalization and radicalization through interactions and exposure. The intention here is to attack and reduce both of the avenues and make them as much limiting as possible.
I don't agree with @lpnam9114, but anyway is very difficult to fight Muslim extremism when the main source of that extremism in the world, Saudi Arabia, is your "friend".
DeleteJM
"@CDR Chip: I disagree. If anything, the last 20 years has shown that it doesn't work like that. Of course, decapitating enemy leadership has an immediate tactical benefit - the enemy is leaderless, flailing about until they sort themselves out. But jihad is a franchise. Someone will always get promoted up, or come in to absorb the survivors into their command. It's the same thing the US Army does, promoting survivors up to fill empty command slots."
DeleteBut here is the problem. We've bern out in the hinterlands shooting goat herders while the leaders operate with basic impunity. How many lackeys did we kill between 1991 and the time we finally got OBL. And Mullah Omar apparently died of natural causes before we ever got to him.
Yes, there are new leaders who can step up. But if those new leaders know we will kill them as soon as they step up, then maybe they aren't so excited about stepping up.
Maybe we can't do that. If we can't then a military solution is the wrong option.
"Maybe we can't do that. If we can't then a military solution is the wrong option."
DeleteNo, THAT military option is the wrong one but a different military option will work.
JM, you provide a fascinating point. One that couldn't be made if we considered Saudi Arabia through the justification of terror. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan does not support and engage in large scale terror operations (at least not publicly enough). However, they do go public with supporting these idealogies and evidence can be found almost anywhere of these camps and exports of equipment. This change of focus means that we will engage it on all battlegrounds. Militarily, diplomatically and other aspects of war. If you consider destroying the root of the problem, I suggest it's better to force Saudi Arabia to stop supporting these terrorists or face consequences. We need to be real with these supply lines or face an endless uphill battle.
DeleteNow the reality is that we have to justify the costs of doing so. These terrorists do not pose a great threat to us by any means. I believe that if we want to contain them, supporting regional countries would have been more than enough.
"Yes, there are new leaders who can step up. But if those new leaders know we will kill them as soon as they step up, then maybe they aren't so excited about stepping up."
DeleteI dunno man, the real risk of getting killed doesn't seemed to have stopped Joes from stepping up to fill leadership slots in the US experience in WW2 and Korea. Majors become Colonels, Captains become Majors, Lieutenants become Captains, Sergeants become Lieutenants, Corporals become Sergeants, Privates become Corporals. People did step up when circumstances demanded it of them. This was the expectation for when WW3 went hot.
It just seems strange to me that we think the enemy's going to be scared of attrition and decapitation strikes on their leadership when the US military expects that thing to happen, which is why briefing the Commander's Intent and having people step up is a thing that happens.
"It just seems strange to me that we think the enemy's going to be scared of attrition and decapitation strikes on their leadership when the US military expects that thing to happen,"
DeleteThere is a difference. In an army, Filling an open rank carries no more, or less, risk of death than staying at one's current rank. In fact, at some point, higher rank means staying further from the fighting and may increase survival chances!
In contrast, specifically targeting a position - the top spot(s) in a terrorist organization - and anyone who fills it, carries a vastly elevated chance of dying, bordering on near certain. That would give any sane person pause - not that all terrorists can be accused of being sane.
Another factor is that the people who fill those top terrorist/dictator spots have a marked tendency to be less and less true believers and more and more pragmatists who want to enjoy the benefits of absolute power (SHussein, Kaddafy, the Iranian mullahs, etc.). Thus, they may be amenable to dialing back their more egregious activities if it means the US would not target them, personally.
"Another factor is that the people who fill those top terrorist/dictator spots have a marked tendency to be less and less true believers and more and more pragmatists who want to enjoy the benefits of absolute power (SHussein, Kaddafy, the Iranian mullahs, etc.). Thus, they may be amenable to dialing back their more egregious activities if it means the US would not target them, personally."
DeleteThat doesn't really jive with what I've been hearing. I was in a Q&A with Jon Chang, the producer-director of BCM's American Gunfighter video interviews and the creator of Black Powder Red Earth. Something that he said he'd learned from interviews with SMEs he consults with - Green Berets, SEALs, former and current Delta Force, serving Iraqi Counter Terrorist Force soldiers - is that the guys worth targeting, the leadership we're all speaking of, these guys are ready to meet the great camel in the palms. They know they're targeted, and they're just as willing to die as an American soldier getting promoted up to replace casualties.
This suggests to me that the kind of people who're amenable to dialing back to avoid getting drone strike'd, these people aren't going to be in leadership positions because they're avoiding being turned into a target. It's kind of a self-selecting process.
"Let’s consider some of the issues this raises:
ReplyDeleteWhy are we pursuing high tech when we couldn’t even beat a bunch of goat herders with no technology? How would even more technology produce a better result? What’s going to happen when we go up against China?
Is this an example of our misguided focus on technology, networks, and data at the expense of actually killing people in the most efficient manner possible – meaning with the greatest degree of overwhelming firepower?
Is 20 yrs and a ‘modicum of success’ the standard of success for our professional military leaders? Shouldn’t heads be rolling by the dozens?
Why are we continuing to jump into conflicts that have no possible successful outcome?
Do we have the will to win these types of conflicts or has our military (and, to be fair, our civilian leadership) become so feminized that we no longer have the stomach to do what has to be done to achieve victory?
Has avoidance of casualties, both ours and the enemy’s, become so ingrained in our military that we can’t be brutal enough to win? What will happen when we fight China?
Why are we entering conflicts without clear victory conditions?"
All of the above.
A simple maxim, "Never fight a war that you don't intend to win," would have prevented this. But we didn't abide by that.
War on terrorism and War with superpower (China, Russia) are different. Prolonged war on terrorism after Afghan and Iraq invasions varies Pentagon's focuses to deviate away from fighting another superpower.
DeleteFor Navy, LCS and DDG1000 are strategic blunders from this fighting regional powers supporting terrorist groups. They are not designed to be part of an aircraft carrier group.
For Army, ways to many. Just one example - M777 155mm artillery. It is very light thus can be transported by helicopter but has a key drawback - not a self propelled artillery thus after it fires, its position will be found by anti artillery radars but it cannot withdraw quickly after fire. Why? because Afghan's road conditions are terrible and Taliban has NO anti artillery radar. This pc artillery is useless in facing China as it has powerful anti antiallergy radars.
"This pc artillery is useless in facing China as it has powerful anti antiallergy radars."
DeleteTowed artillery is generally obsolescent in maneuver war, yes, but it's also cheaper and easier to move.
Anyhow this is part of the impetus behind the Army's 1000 mile railgun. Gives a greater margin of safety against counterbattery fire - at least, until the enemy makes their own railgun artillery.
Oh, and Pakistan is a Chinese protectorate nowadays, although it wasn't in 2001.
ReplyDeleteChina isn't going to start a nuclear war over a raid into Pakistan. When did we become frightened of our own shadow?
DeleteI'm not particularly scared of Pakistan, was merely pointing out how things have changed.
DeleteFair enough.
Delete"If Gen. Milley had an ounce of integrity he’d fire every flag officer and then resign in disgrace and embarrassment. That he doesn’t is symptomatic of what’s wrong with our military. This man disgusts me."
ReplyDeleteBut he doesn't. Neither do many other flag and general officers.
Blaming Milley, the JCS Chairman since only last year, for mistakes made over the previous 18 years, in areas outside of his command structure, is silly. The JCS doesn't have operational authority over Afghanistan. You might as well blame the Secretary of Education (yes, mild hyperbole. JCS still does have some influence).
DeleteIf you're going to blame anyone, blame the CENTCOM commanders going back to 2001, and the Bush, Obama and Trump Administrations.
Prior to becoming Chairman, Milley was Chief of Staff of the Army from 2015 until his appointment as Chairman. Prior to that, he held various high level command positions of divisions and Corps from 2011 until his appointment as Army Chief of Staff. So, wholly or partially, he is responsible for the Army failure from 2011-present.
DeleteArmy Chief of Staff is also outside the operational command hierarchy.
DeleteIf you blame Milley while he was a Corps or Div commander, are you going to blame every other Corps and Div commander in the Army who's served since 2001 too? Why call him out specifically?
Blame Franks, Abizaid, Fallon, Dempsey, Patraeus, Allen, Mattis, Austin, Votel and Makenzie.
You know, the guys who were actually in charge of the War in Afghanistan (CENTCOMs).
I do blame everyone who contributed to the failure! Milley just happens to be the top guy, at the moment, as well as a long time contributor to the failure.
DeleteIf you read the post carefully, you'll also note that I spread plenty of blame around. In fact, from your careful reading, you noted that of the entire post, only the last three sentences were specifically about Milley.
Anybody who wears stars is to blame. Anybody who has worn stars recently is probably to blame.
DeleteWe need to start holding people accountable for the disasters they provide over.
Afghan is NOT first US failure. Vietnam went before it. Like in Vietnam, US troops almost won every single battle but failed miserably.
ReplyDelete1990-91 Gulf War was a clear victory of US. Troops in to complete pre-set object and left once the goal completed.
Soviet Union also failed miserably in Afghan. UK also did.
Forced nation building won't work.
Our failure in Afghanistan stems from several decisions. Simplisticly, they are:
ReplyDelete1. No planning, besides the initial engagement and elimination of High Value Targets, mostly senior leadership, there wasn't a roadmap to short term or long term success. This was a punitive raid that mutated into an occupation.
2. The forces provided were insufficient, at stages. The "light foot print" strategy was an attempt to differentiate ourselves from the Soviet approach of the 80's, which ironically, was a "light foot approach." While the Soviets used somewhat indiscriminate firepower to overcome their manpower shortage, we attempted to use high technology to do the same.
Unfortunately, you can't bomb an enemy to the stone age when hes already there and you can't hack and monitor a non-existent entity. According to the Frunze military academy, to be successful, they needed around 300k troop levels to secure the country, which they never got close to meeting.
3. After the Iraqi invasion, the theatre became second hand. Once it became relevant again, an atmosphere of complacency set in. New theatre commanders just repeated what the last commander said and did. Any significant change in strategy would make previous, now senior ranking people look bad. Extremely restrictive rules of engagement and non aggressive plans are the result of that.
4. Our military operations do not result in any appreciable reduction in enemy strength. We dont kill enough combatants to outpace the number of potential recruits turning military age in even given year and the same for munitions. Eliminating senior leadership has had a darwinism effect, in that more capable leadership has either emerged or groups have become cells, making it impossible to negotiate or predict.
"Our failure in Afghanistan stems from several decisions. Simplisticly, they are:
ReplyDelete1. No planning, besides the initial engagement and elimination of High Value Targets, mostly senior leadership,"
Except we didn't eliminate the HV targets--OBL not until 10 years later and Mullah Omar died a natural death. So not only did we not have a plan, but we didn't follow what plan we had.
"2. The forces provided were insufficient, at stages." I remember when Rumsfeld was talking about doing into Iraq and saying 100,000 troops should be enough. Someone asked me how many I thought we needed, and I said 250,000. I was asked, "So you don't agree with Rumsfeld that 100,000 is enough?" To which I replied, "No, I think 100,000 might be enough, but enough is not what you take on a mission like this."
"3. After the Iraqi invasion, the theatre became second hand.' This. We should never have gone into Iraq until the job was done in Afghanistan.
"4. Our military operations do not result in any appreciable reduction in enemy strength." We don't really have a clue how to fight asymmetric wars. We need to figure them out, but Vietnam, Iraq twice, and Afghanistan have not taught us the lessons.
Just to chime in on Gen. Milley, back in 2017, he announced a new model of acquisition for the Army. Here is the actual quote:
ReplyDelete"Faster results will be obtained ... as we shift to a SOCOM-like model of buy, try, decide and acquire rather than the current industrial-age linear model that takes years to establish requirements, decades to test, and it may take a long, long time to go from idea to delivery," he said."
Suffice to say, this model is horrendous as its pretty skewed to whatever the current conflict is. This is the epitome of "Generals are always prepared to fight the last war."
Here is the link of an old article mentioning it: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/10/army-chief-modernization-reform-means-new-tanks-aircraft-weapons.html
Unrelated news but interesting: France replacement for CdG carrier will be nuclear powered too. Reasons cited: preservation of nuclear design capability and knowledge which sort of makes sense. Sounds like they might buy American EMALS. The interesting part is at the bottom: 75000 tonnes so bigger than CdG and Brit carriers....to carry 30 fighters? They expect the next generation fighter to be bigger than Rafale M but still, seems like a big increase to carry so few jets. Kind of like Ford, its huge and USN is carrying fewer and fewer jets onboard but the carriers get bigger???
ReplyDeleteLe futur porte-avion français sera à propulsion nucléaire annonce Macron
https://www.ledauphine.com/defense-guerre-conflit/2020/12/08/le-futur-porte-avion-francais-sera-a-propulsion-nucleaire-annonce-macron
"to carry 30 fighters?"
DeleteSo … what is your explanation?
The US is looking to build smaller carriers and the rest of the world is looking to build bigger carriers within the constraints of their budgets.
What is France trying to accomplish? You're a long time reader. Apply some ComNavOps-type analysis and tell us what's actually going on with this.
"Sounds like they might buy American EMALS."
DeleteWhy would anyone want that?
Or is it a "once someone else has paid to fix all the bugs and defects, we might be interested" thing?
Its a monopoly until China develops something.
DeleteNot worth the expense of EMALS R&D for 2 catapults plus by 2030s, you have to figure they work? Hope so!
DeleteFrance still has lots of foreign obligations so power protection in Africa and other parts of the world where they have interests make sense to me. Curious to find out more....that they weighed nuclear option with im guessing conventional carrier which would be cheaper and could they have done 2 carriers or 1 nuke but looks like they decided they needed to keep the nuke option for design and knowledge for their SSBN and SSNs. With just 1 carrier, they have obvious problems with time gaps when carrier is off for maintenance but I guess its still worth having at least 1 carrier than no carriers at all.
The two stupid wars - Afghan and Iraq have brought US into disaster. Not only Pentagon was led to focus on this kind of wars (include developing weapons for them), but also gave China precious time to build up without US interferences.
ReplyDeleteMany Americans, especially veterans, still live in past and believe that Pentagon can achieve whatever if top officials listen to them. Sorry, NO! US tech capabilities are fading. We are living on previous generation's estates of technology. F-22's R%D team had an average age in upper 50s while China's J-20 was below 40.
Less and less bright students choose STEM.
Disparaging Afghans as “a bunch of third world terrorist goat herders”, and bemoaning our inability to defeat them, reveals, along with some of the other posters’ comments, the sort of mindset that got us into this mess.
ReplyDeleteI expect the British regulars thought much the same of the Massachusetts Militiamen as they marched towards Concord in 1775.
I don’t disagree with the point of your post - that we’ve spent 20 years achieving nothing at all, at the cost of $1 trillion, and tens of thousands of casualties. But if the suggestion is that our failure was due to a lack of focus on efficient killing, or an unwillingness to go down that path, that would be in my view entirely wrong.
There are 60 million Pushtuns (or Pathans), and they all hate us like poison. We had no chance at all of winning that war (whatever ‘winning’ ever meant), and we’re lucky we didn’t get our butts kicked even harder than they were.
If the Russians had decided to teach us a lesson by doing to us what we did to them in the 1980s, and supplied the Taliban with MANPADS, that would have turned a disaster into a catastrophe.
But we knew all this before we went there, and still we decided, under three consecutive presidencies, that the best strategy was to ‘stay the course’.
Should we be more risk averse in how, where and when we commit our troops?
Hmmmm….. Here’s a risk averse comment last week from Heiko Maas, German Foreign Minister…
Maas: We will not leave a single German soldier there (in Afghanistan) if (his) security cannot be guaranteed.
I guess that means guaranteed by us. With allies like that, who need allies?
You missed most of the points of the post!
Delete"third world terrorist goat herders"
You completely missed this one. The sentiment was not that they were ineffective (quite the contrary!) or should be dismissed. It was a comparison of our mindless pursuit of technology versus a non-technological enemy. Here's the relevant quote from the post: "Why are we pursuing high tech when we couldn’t even beat a bunch of goat herders with no technology?" The point was that we are pursuing technology for its own sake when the real world rewards firepower and lethality rather than networks.
"if the suggestion is that our failure was due to a lack of focus on efficient killing, or an unwillingness to go down that path, that would be in my view entirely wrong."
Wrong? I think the result speaks for itself. As one obvious and major example, we had a major group of Taliban cornered (along with bin Laden) and allowed them to escape into Pakistan. That was a poorly constructed operation and an example of a very inefficient killing exercise. The examples abound of rules of engagement and incomplete commitment leading to inefficient killing.
"We had no chance at all of winning that war"
You again missed the point. We had every chance and expectation of winning IF WE HAD HAD AN ACHIEVABLE DEFINITION OF WINNING (victory conditions) BUT WE DID NOT HAVE ONE. The point of the post was that we cannot jump into conflicts without a clear concept of what victory would be and, if we do jump in, we need to do so with both feet and use overwhelming force with no operational limits like allowing safe havens. Had we done so, victory would have been quickly achieved. Or, we might have determined that there was no set of victory conditions worth the price and not jumped in at all!
Okay thanks.
ReplyDeleteI’m still not sure if I quite understand what you’re saying here.
"Why are we pursuing high tech when we couldn’t even beat a bunch of goat herders with no technology?"
This seems to be a total non sequitur.
We’re pursuing high tech because that’s how wars are won. We won WW2 because we had better high tech (aka “science”) than our enemies. We won the war with high tech code-breaking machines, high tech radar, high tech aircraft and bombsights, and, ultimately, high tech nuclear weapons. We certainly didn’t win the war because we were better soldiers.
Okay, as we learned in Viet Nam, weapons, technology, training and tactics designed to fight a peer war in Europe are not necessarily useful when we were fighting a guerrilla war in the jungles of SE Asia, or today in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. But a war with China will be a war of technology (at least let’s hope it is because that’s the only advantage we’ve got), so that’s why we’re ‘pursuing high tech’.
“As one obvious and major example, we had a major group of Taliban cornered (along with bin Laden) and allowed them to escape into Pakistan.” Yeah, that sounds like a SNAFU, and killing Bin Laden a bit sooner would have been a nice to have, but pretty much irrelevant in the scheme of things. However conducting “an efficient killing exercise” on a bunch of Taliban would have achieved nothing at all.
Our mistake wasn’t in failing to efficiently kill Taliban, but in making the Taliban into our enemies in the first place. Our enemy was al-Qa'ida; as soon as those guys had been defeated, killed or driven out of Afghanistan, we should have cut a deal with the Taliban to make sure they didn’t return, and then left them to run the country any way they wanted (much as we’re about to do now, as far as I can see.) But if that’s what you mean by ‘victory conditions’ then I guess we’re in agreement.
“…if we do jump in, we need to do so with both feet and use overwhelming force with no operational limits like allowing safe havens. Had we done so, victory would have been quickly achieved.”
Well I think both those statements are just plain wrong. Establishing e.g free fire zones in the 5 countries that border landlocked Afghanistan (some of them our allies), and bombing the whatever out of anyplace the Taliban hide out is far more likely to have meant a much longer and more costly war ending in an inevitable defeat, than in a quickly achieved victory. We’d probably also have driven the ‘Stans’ back into the arms of Mother Russia, and driven Pakistan even closer to China than it already is.
Life (and politics) are far more nuanced than you seem to believe, and our choices, fortunately, are not always binary ones.
"We’re pursuing high tech because that’s how wars are won."
DeleteThat statement could not be more wrong! Both history and your own subsequent statement/example proves it. We did not win WWII because of superior technology. We won it because we had a larger industrial base and a larger population to draw on. Radar played almost no significant role in WWII until the very end when the outcome had long since been decided. Germany had the most technologically advanced tanks and aircraft (first combat jet!) and yet they lost.
Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Korea.
Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Vietnam.
Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Afghanistan.
Even Desert Storm was a victory of overwhelming numbers moreso than technology.
Even you acknowledge this: "Okay, as we learned in Viet Nam, weapons, technology, training and tactics designed to fight a peer war in Europe are not necessarily useful when we were fighting a guerrilla war in the jungles of SE Asia, or today in the mountains of the Hindu Kush."
"Well I think both those statements are just plain wrong. Establishing e.g free fire zones in the 5 countries that border landlocked Afghanistan (some of them our allies), and bombing the whatever out of anyplace the Taliban hide out is far more likely to have meant a much longer and more costly war ending in an inevitable defeat,"
You have not thought through the conduct of a war. If you opt for war, you do so with overwhelming firepower and you give the enemy no respite. If they try to run to a neighboring country you cut them off and prevent it. If any make it, you hunt them down and kill them. Once you've established that you will not allow a safe haven, they'll likely stop running there. Despite your hyperbole about 5 countries, the ONLY country the Taliban ran to was Pakistan because they believed - correctly - that we wouldn't pursue them there. So, it was only on country and they did it BECAUSE WE ALLOWED IT. We have conducted hundreds to thousands of strikes into Pakistan, by the way, generally with the tacit approval of the Pakistan govt so your fears are completely unfounded. Pakistan has not rejoined Russia. Pakistan is aligned with China not because of any US actions but because of India.
Life (and politics) are far simpler than you seem to believe and our choices, fortunately, are generally fairly black and white, IF WE HAVE THE WISDOM AND COURAGE TO MAKE THE RIGHT ONES.
No, I think that much of this is incorrect, and ‘high tech’ was indeed the key determinant of allied victory in WW2.
Delete“Radar played almost no significant role in WWII until the very end when the outcome had long since been decided.”
The Brits developed their Chain Home radar-based air defense system in 1937, and it was absolutely key to their victory in the Battle of Britain (1940).
Radar’s close cousin Sonar, or Asdic as the Brits called it, was equally critical to victory in the Battle of the Atlantic which ran from 1939.
If either of these battles had been lost, the outcome of WW2 would have been very different.
In 1939 the Brits also developed the small, short range, doppler radar-based proximity fuze, which was played an important role in the defense of London, and was used (later in the war) very effectively in the Battle of the Bulge.
So I would argue that your suggestion that Radar played only an insignificant role in WW2 until the outcome had been decided is completely wrong, and that radar was in fact one of the chief keys to victory.
Equally important was the development in 1940, of the high tech “Bombe” - an electro-mechanical decoding computer - which allowed the reading, in close to real time, of German sigint. It’s pretty much agreed I think that the ability to read both German and Japanese codes was another high tech key to victory; no code reading; no Midway!
“We did not win WWII because of superior technology. We won it (WW2) because we had a larger industrial base and a larger population to draw on.”
It would be more accurate to say that we had a very large industrial base which, because of our superior technology, was immune to disruption by the enemy. Our superior technology also allowed us to deploy these resources across oceans without fear of interdiction by our enemies. Yes, we had a larger population on which we could potentially draw, but we didn’t need to draw on it, because of our superior technology. In terms of per capita mobilization, we mobilized fewer than the Brits, in terms of military deaths we lost about the same number, who had less than 1/3rd of our population.
“Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Korea.”
Our superior technology prevented us from being defeated in Korea, and allowed us to hold the line at Pusan. Examples would be high tech (for the time) walkie talkies, and the radar/computer/communication system for ground directed bombing that allowed day/night traget acquisition and prosecution, while high tech-based sigint allowed Walker to shift his beaten down units from one point to another, and high tech SIGABA and M-209 encryption kept his own comms secure.
Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Vietnam.
It didn’t, but it could have done. By 1972 our F-111s were carrying Paveway laser-guided bombs, and were taking out bridges, missile sites, gun-pits, and anything else we cared to target. The fighter-bomber losses during Linebacker 2 were minimal (unlike the losses of the B52s). Our problem in Viet Nam wasn’t a failure of high tech, but a failure of will and resolve.
I’ll acknowledge that the TURDSID was a (slightly humorous) example of Viet Nam era high tech failure :)
“Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Afghanistan.”
I’d say our superior technology gave us a clear and critical victory in Afghanistan. It happened between 1986 and 1987, when we supplied the mujahideen with high tech Stingers, which allowed them to target Soviet helicopters. In 1989 the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, and 2 years later; no more Soviet Union.
“Even Desert Storm was a victory of overwhelming numbers moreso than technology.”
Not really; In 1990 Baghdad's 900,000-strong army was exceeded in size only by those of China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam. It had 10,000 AFVs and more than 3,000 artillery pieces, most of it of Soviet bloc origin. We didn’t deply anything like those numbers — instead we destroyed Saddam’s armed forces with hi tech airstrikes, before we committed our ground forces.
Delete“…the ONLY country the Taliban ran to was Pakistan because they believed - correctly - that we wouldn't pursue them there.”
Yes, of course. But if we had pursued them there they would have found refuge somewhere else. Each of the 5 countries that surround Afghanistan hosts a sizeable population of Pushtun, and it’s a central tenet of Pushtun culture “Pushtunwali” to provide help and shelter when needed. “We have melmestia, being a good host, nanawatai, giving asylum, and badal, vengeance. Pashtuns live by these things”
“Pakistan has not rejoined Russia”
I didn’t say this. I said “We’d probably also have driven the ‘Stans’ back into the arms of Mother Russia, and driven Pakistan even closer to China than it already is.”
Life and war are both more complicated than you seem to think, and they both have a lot of moving parts.
"No, I think that much of this is incorrect"
DeleteYour view of this is so out of step with reality that I'm not even going to bother refuting it. You're welcome to your opinion.
Thank you, as are you of course, especially on your own blog!
DeleteWith great respect however, while opinions can be disagreed with, and arguments refuted, facts can only be ignored or denied.
“Radar played almost no significant role in WWII until the very end when the outcome had long since been decided.”
DeleteThe Brits developed their Chain Home radar-based air defense system in 1937, and it was absolutely key to their victory in the Battle of Britain (1940).
This is exactly right. Radar was a war winner. I would add Penicillin to your list - saved my Dad's life when he was shot in the Huertgen Forest.
"Our superior technology did not give us a victory in Korea."
ReplyDeleteSeems like victory to me. the ROK is alive and fine today. Not every US war is a war of absolute total victory.
It's more of a stalemate condition than winning. We really didn't have any goals (aside from prolonging this stalemate!) and still don't have them now (we are still there!). Now, a decisive military goal would be a total eradication of North Korea. In reality though, we chose to support Korea to the point that they could sufficiently protect themselves. It's just lucky that the people and the government of SKorea accept our support and does not repeatedly stab us in the back. Suffice to say, same couldn't be said to Vietnam or Afghanistan.
Delete"Seems like victory to me."
DeleteAnd THAT'S what's wrong with our military entanglements, today!
"And THAT'S what's wrong with our military entanglements, today!"
ReplyDeleteThat is not an answer that is defection. So first map out victory in Korea for me. What do think it would could should have been? It not like the US was holding anything back but war with China which would have fun sure right? We certainly had none of the restriction on force that you rail about in the actual setting of North Korea.
Pre war policy was not a US aim to reunite the peninsula other than perhaps by negotiations. We can debate endlessly if Dean Acheson made a mistake in his speech that omitted the ROK. But The simple fact is the US had until Stalin green lighted an invasion no particular interest in anything else than the status quo.
The US restored that that are realistically could have easily sat on the defensive without ever provoking a Chinese intervention by not ignoring their warning they would intervene. Realistically the US could likely have stopped short and had a larger ROK and smaller rump Communist buffer state. Since Ridgway proved that if the US had stopped it was when well managed was able to bleed China to a point of negotiation. What if the US had stopped short of the short of Yalu but north of the 38th and just dug in?
Stalin certainly was not likely to send troops and China might happy with a smaller buffer state that was its puppet not Stalin's.
@lpnam9114
ReplyDelete"We really didn't have any goals (aside from prolonging this stalemate!) and still don't have them now (we are still there!). Now, a decisive military goal would be a total eradication of North Korea"
Outside of the various US war on First nations exactly how often was total eradication a US war goal at the start of a war?
I haven't seen your comment so pardon me for the late reply.
DeleteThe idea is there are no real first world and third world countries, just a label that we like to put on to underestimate the situation at hand. Our underestimation in outlasting the Vietnamese, the Afghani all comes to mind. Hell even at this point, we are not sure if we are gonna outlast North Korea.
The bigger problem at play here is that war shouldn't taken very lightly. War means death and unprecedented destruction. War means all diplomatic options have been tried and failed. War is a last resort survival option. We should only INITIATE wars if any entities threaten our INDEPENDENCE and our PEOPLE (directly or indirectly). The objective of all wars should be succinct, decisive and intended to solve the problem that brought us into war the first time. What we are doing now is more of a target practice.
We are fighting wars that is perpetually stuck in limbo. We have no desire to solve the problem. Presence doesn't deter anything! The only question left to ask is when do they eradicate South Korea? We are pushing the responsibilities to solve this issue every year to younger generations and the cost will get proportionally higher and higher until we can't possibly save South Korea.
Kinda like how Taiwan now is firmly in China's grasp and any US responses are very unlikely.
I guess the answer to your question is absolute none! That's where we failed in comparison to our past leaders.
They retire to abject luxury and post-career profit. Resign in shame? Fat chance. Good post, Skipper.
ReplyDeleteBTW, The Drive had an interesting post on Naval spending, found here (looking for your take, CDR):
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/38086/navys-new-controversial-master-shipbuilding-plan-raids-the-air-force-and-armys-piggy-banks?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=spotim_recirculation
First, particularly with a new administration, there is no way they are going to get anything remotely approaching that much money. They will do well to get $20B a year. Over 6 years, this plan is $42B over that ($47B including unmanned vessels), so totally absurd even to consider it. The Navy has to learn how to live with a budget, and they don’t like that.
DeleteSecond, I see too many too expensive ships producing fewer numbers overall. The Navy has shot itself in the foot with the Fords, Zumwalts, and LCSs, but doesn't seem able to think differently.
Going through it line by line (realizing that budgeted costs include lead costs for some ships and completion costs for others, so cost/ship is a guideline, but not exact):
• Carriers—$12B to finish 2 under construction. If we had built a mix of Nimitzes and conventional CVs after Ford, we would have saved $20B on CV79-CV82, enough to build 3+ Kitty Hawks, but that’s not happening.
• Submarines—$76B for 14. We are seeing cost creep for both Columbias ($30B for 2 ships, $15B per sub, has to include some lead costs for future ships or else we are in truly deep doodoo) and Virginias (up to $3.9B per sub). Would add numbers by building some cheaper subs like French Barracudas and possibly SSKs. Agree with decision to extend lives of Los Angeles class.
• Surface combatants—$37B for 25, $1.5B/ship. I’d build a surface fleet of 10% cruisers (enlarged Ticos, $3.5B), 20% AAW destroyers (could be Burkes, $1.8B), 30% GP escorts (probably more like FREMMs that FFGXs, $1B), and 40% ASW frigates ($500MM). That force would average something like $1.2B-1.3B per ship, so you could get 25 ships for $33B (or maybe a few more by extending Ticos and Burkes and emphasizing smaller ones), and perhaps more importantly, you would have some ships to do serious ASW.
• Amphibs—building 1 LHA/LHD and 2 LPDs for $7.3B, and 10 LAWs for $1.5B. Too much money for 3 overpriced ships that can’t do an amphibious assault, and 10 LAWs that are pretty much useless and that the Navy can never get built for $150MM/ship. I really don’t agree with any of our amphib CONOPS. I would spend $8B on two of my proposed PhibRons and I would get the Navy and Marine brass in a room and tell them that they need a whole new approach because what they are planning makes no sense. As my new amphibs came into the fleet, I would convert existing LHAs/LHDs to interim “Lightning Carriers” to augment the carrier force until the CVs came along, and the LPDs to the ABM/BMD ship designed by HII on the same hull.
• Auxiliaries—from 12 ships for $6.5B to 30 ships for $13.2B. Addresses a major need for more service force ships. I’m not a huge fan of the expeditionary fast transport, but that’s only $1.6B of the total. Otherwise, the rest of this is badly needed and I would just slow it down to reduce annual cost.
• Drones—Small expendable drones are useful in ISRT (intel/surveil/recon/targeting) roles, but large drones are at best poor replacements for manned ships. I would build my cruiser to operate a wide variety of smaller, expendable drones, and maybe build one each of these larger drones to test extensively and figure out if there is a CONOPS for using them effectively.
Faced with an expected need to cut $47B from that proposal, I would say:
$4B from drones, build one to test instead of several
$6.5B from slowing down auxiliary construction
$1B from amphibs with reconfiguration of amphib fleet
$4B from surface combatants, as discussed
$12B from submarines ($5B from cutting Columbia back to PB21 costs, $7B from building 8 Virginia and 8 Barracudas instead of 12 Virginias)
I would have saved $20B on carriers, but too late for that.
That saves roughly $28B of the $47B. The rest would come from slowing things down and/or small increases in annual spending. My plan is to build 15 ships averaging $1.4B per year, $21B/year total, growing fleet to 350 by 2040, 450 by 2050, and 600 by 2060.
"I would build my cruiser to operate a wide variety of smaller, expendable drones"
DeleteHave you thought through the combat CONOPS of this? I ask because, on the face of it, you're planning to be broadcasting continuously between your cruiser and your drones (whatever those are). Assuming you intend for them to operate over the horizon, that means you're going to need omnidirectional, general broadcasts or some kind of relay ships/planes, all broadcasting. That's a lot of broadcasting! Even in WWII, we operated with radio silence (what we now call EMCON) because general broadcasting gives away your position. I've seen nothing that suggests that in the modern war we would want to differently. I think we'll quickly remember why EMCON was a good idea in WWII and the Cold War. So, how do your constantly broadcasting drones figure into this? I'm not sure the Navy has thought this through, either.
You may recall that the post about the battle of Heligoland Bight. The Germans were able to deduce the British battle plans just from radio detection. They didn't need to actually break any codes. Our comms are not as secure as we seem to think.
I'm very well aware of the EMCON issues with all drones. That's basically why I think drone ships will be a complete failure. I would think that for recon drones, you send it to a spot and then it transmits back to you or to a satellite (if any of those are left) and so the transmission is basically one-way. The drone will get knocked out, which is why they are expendable, and when it gets knocked out you will learn something about the enemy--that they have the ability to knock out your drone, if nothing else.
DeleteI think you can operate scouting drones with less need to communicate both ways, but any kind of warship drone is going to need to communicate a lot, unless you are way more trustful of AI than I am.
I honestly prefer this concept that you are proposing. This does mean that our maneuvering is limited to what has been preprogrammed. Not necessarily mean it's a bad thing, probably even good for lowering down the costs for the aircraft. Further testing would prove or disprove the concept.
DeleteThe best I could come up with is an (Optionally manned?) submarine-launched communications node ship. Any surface groups employed the use of attack submarines (how many?) and similar to deploying SEAL insertion vehicle, I could imagine a team gets deployed from their submarine. Now I imagine that a Dry Combat Submersible modified to carry communication nodes could fill this function. I don't know how heavy is communications equipment really is so I can't comment more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Combat_Submersible
CNO's comment did remind me of the fact that much information could be learned from mere increased radio activity. To the Army's credit (not sure about Navy), they operate in short transmissions to avoid detection. I hope that an algorithm could be developed to transmit in short burst of criticall-needed information so that they wouldn't be out of line. COBLU in a sense is taking advantadge this even further through triangulation of radar sources. I worried that any Chinese developments similar to this would be fatal to the Navy's reliance on network.
"you send it to a spot and then it transmits back to you"
Delete???? Do you mean it will fly/sail to a spot, take a snapshot look, and transmit the data, ignoring (not even looking at) all the territory it sailed/flew over to get to that single spot? If so, that's an extremely limited value of recon - one pinpoint of data.
Or, do you mean that it will continuously sense and collect data as it travel to a spot and then transmit all of that data at once? If so, and setting aside data storage capacity issues, you'll wind up with a massive data transmission (long transmission time equals easy detection) period and you run the very real risk of a target that was sensed at the beginning of the flight/voyage not being reported until hours later, by which time it is likely too late to be useful. The host ship could be attacked and sunk by a target that was detected but not reported for hours!
The third option, of course, and the only one that makes sense, is continuous data transmission but that pinpoints not only the drone's location but also the drone's path with can be reverse plotted to pinpoint the host ship's location!
As I said, have you carefully thought through the CONOPS for these drones? It's all too easy to become enamored of the technologies of ships, aircraft, and drones without carefully considering the combat CONOPS.
There is a fourth option, in which the drone gets a certain distance away from the ship before it starts transmitting, and then transmits continuously. That will, of course pinpoint the drone's location, so it probably won't last long, which is why drones need to be cheap and expendable.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have a question for you. In your proposed fleet structure, you are proposing 6 UAV carriers, each carrying 100 UAVs. What is your proposed CONOPS for the UAV carriers and the UAV drones? How do you propose to address the issues that you have raised?
"How do you propose to address the issues that you have raised?"
DeleteA combination of heavy dependence on PASSIVE sensors (so no pinpointing the UAVs location), high UAV search density (you don't send out one or two UAVs, you send out one or two dozen because passive sensors can't cover the same large area as a radar - that's why I propose UAV carriers with 100+ UAVs!), and 'smart' data 'concentration' and transmission.
Smart data concentration means that the UAV interprets its own data and then transmits ONLY the end result (target type, location, course, speed) instead of the immense data load of the live sensor data stream. Also, the UAV transmits ONLY when it has detected something, not continuously. So, the UAV's transmissions are limited to occasional transmissions of very, very, very, very limited bits of data, not huge bandwidth live image, full color, 3D, holographic, data like the Navy wants to do. So, we're talking an occasional micro-burst of communications.
Another advantage of passive sensing is that if you do find a target, the target won't know it's been found. In contrast, if you find a target with radar, the target knows it's been found and is alerted.
For it to work that way, you're going to have to put a fair amount of AI on it to do the interpretation, and that will obviously drive up the price a bit. That's not necessarily a reason not to do it, it just needs to be figured in the overall calculus. I like the concept, just realize that it's going to add some cost.
DeleteI think this is another one of those areas where we are in pretty close agreement--small drones for ISRT, and possibly some drones for delivering missiles, but no drone ships.
"No, not really. The only cost would be the development cost of the target spotting software and that wouldn't add a single penny to the UAV cost. Further, the development costs would be spread over several hundred UAVs - a good deal!
DeleteWhat's more, there shouldn't be ANY software development costs to speak of. We already have missiles whose sensors/software can supposedly pick a particular warship out of a crowd of commercial and naval vessels AND target specific features of the target. The work is already done!
Finally, you're falling prey to the same thinking the military has: that we need to be able to determine the number of rivets on the target, its serial number, whether the people are right handed or left, etc. In reality, as a minimum, all we need is to be able to recognize that the sensor has detected something that's not normal. If we can ID it, so much the better but at a minimum all we need is location, course, and speed. Awfully simple!
My idea for a cruiser is a Des Moines hull with Makin Island plant (it drives a 40,000T box hull through the water at 25+ kts, should be able to drive a 18,000t cruiser hull somewhere above 30), keep the 3x8" in the A and Z positions, put 96-cell VLS in the B and Y position, and then in between shift superstructure to starboard and have a flight deck port for helos and UAVs. I don't know what the UAV capacity would be, but if we could get your 100, that would seem a good number. I would have the area under the flight deck as a hangar, for helos and UAVs and also able to launch and recover ship's boats and small USVs/UUVs over the side.
DeleteI like using the cruiser for this because it can pretty much take care of itself, where a purpose-built UAV carrier would probably have little or not armament, even self-defense, and would thus require escorts. I'd also have this cruiser crawling with CIWS, probably at least SeaRAM fore and aft, and at least 2 Phalanx to each side.