ComNavOps has long decried the US (and, to be fair, the
Western World) emphasis on precision guided munitions (PGM), believing that
dependence on such weapons is a fool’s path (see,
“Saturation Firepower”).
Why? Because another word for
precision guidance is expensive. Because
another word for precision guidance is scarce.
Because another word for precision guidance is unreliable.
ComNavOps, of course, is wise and knows all but how can the
rest of the world be assured that ComNavOps is right? The answer is by looking at the
Ukraine-Russia war.
Both sides have used precision guided weapons and what has
it achieved? Nothing.
What has the US policy of supplying precision weapons to
Ukraine demonstrated? That in a real war
we’ll run out of PGMs in short order and we lack the industrial capacity to
replace them in any useful time frame.
The main weapon on both sides is dumb artillery with both
sides expending tens of thousands of rounds per day, if reports can be
believed. That should be telling us
something.
Conclusion
The conclusion is stunningly obvious: we cannot wage a major war with PGMs as our
main weapon. If supplying Ukraine has
depleted our PGM inventories and strained our industrial capacity beyond the
ability to resupply in a useful time frame, how much worse will it be when we
engage China? We’ll expend ten thousand
PGMs in the first week and then … we’ll be out of PGMs and China will be 99%
unaffected. What do we do then?
Our current production capacity for PGMs is something on the
order of a hundred weapons per year per weapon type. In a war, our expenditure rate will be
something on the order of a hundred (or thousands or tens of thousands) weapons per day. Do you see the gaping mismatch between expenditure
and production?
We need weapons that can be produced at a rate of thousands
per day (or more!) at an affordable cost. You wage war with industrial capacity not a
handful of PGMs.
 |
| Fool's Weapons |
We need to end this worship of PGMs which are a weapon
suited for the luxury of peacetime usage and production rates. They are not a major war weapon. Sure, I’ll gladly take any that are available
but not at the expense of production rates and unaffordable costs.
ComNavOps is always cautioning about drawing lessons from
Ukraine-Russia but this lesson is crystal clear.
Unfortunately, if you cannot deploy PGMs, that means you have to use dumb bombs from aircraft - in essence, the pilot becomes the precision guidance. For a given value of precision and guidance.
ReplyDeleteThat is a less than ideal state of affairs when dealing with enemy air defenses. I certainly would not relish the idea of trying to fly a strike mission into the teeth of enemy AD - look at the historical USAF losses sustained in Linebacker and Rolling Thunder, and that was with 60 year old SAMs! Or trying to do bomb runs on Chinese warships.
I continue to be furious at CENTCOM wasting precious stocks of cruise missiles on attacking the Houthis, purely as a show. It was an utter waste of good missiles that we need for the China fight - but the problem is that combatant commands don't own their assets, are divorced from needing to raise and maintain them, and thus just call on assets and spend fires wily-nily without a care in the world.
We need combatant commands to husband their weapons carefully, and we need to get off our assets and get industry cracking to build up our stockpile.
Unfortunately, you're missing multiple key concepts.
Delete- You've assumed that PGMs are only the property of aviation. In reality, every branch and every type of unit employs PGMs of one sort or another. Thus, the choice isn't between dumb bombs and PGMs, it's between all manner of PGMs and all manner of less precise weapons.
-You've completely ignored the unaffordability of PGMs which means you can only wage a high level war for a few weeks and then you have no weapons. Thus, the real choice is not between PGMs and dumb bombs, it's between PGMs and no weapons.
- You seem to think the preferred (only?) method of strike is manned aircraft and I've repeatedly demonstrated the fallacy and folly of that. Our main strike weapon, currently, is the Tomahawk cruise missile. Thus, the choice is not between PGMs and manned aircraft, it's between PGMs and a much simpler, cheaper stand off (missile?) which we do not currently have.
-You seem to think that if we would not 'waste' cruise missiles on the Houthis we'd have enough for a war with China. Our total inventory of cruise missiles is on the order of a few to several thousand. That will suffice for a couple weeks of war with China. Thus, 'wasting' a few missiles on the Houthis is utterly irrelevant.
Reconsider your thoughts in light of what I've just pointed out and you'll understand the premise of the post.
I guess I should clarify on the off chance that you don't understand. I'm not calling for the abolition of all PGMs. That would be stupid. They do serve a purpose for a particular, very limited set of targets. I'm calling for refocusing away from PGMs as our main class of weapons and emphasizing simpler, cheaper, mass producible, reliable weapons instead. I'm calling for a practical approach to war instead of a fantasy, dainty, precise, 9-5 M-F approach to war.
DeleteMy point is more that in the Navy context, once we run out of cruise missiles, the only options we have left for attack beyond the radar horizon are aircraft launched bombs. And air-dropped bombs are iffy; the Russians made a lot of claims about how they didn't need PGMs because their bombing computers were as accurate as PGMs, but what they neglected to mention was to get that accuraccy, you have to bring your aircraft into point blank range of the target, running a gauntlet of long range, medium range and short range air defenses.
DeleteThis really isn't viable for anybody when aircraft production times are so long. We really don't want to repeat what happened to the IJN's pilot force, who started the war as elite and ended the war as green, because all the skilled pilots got attritted away.
The Army has never really been that much into the PGM craze - the bulk of its guided weapons are GMLRS and ATACMS, but these aren't THAT lavishly fired away wily-nily, Army doctrine is that ATACMS and it's replacement, PrSM, are supposed to be held back for fires commanded by brigade and division HQ. The bread and butter rocket artillery mission is done by unguided rockets with some GPS-guided rockets, and the bulk of artillery fire missions, following closely behind the line of advance, are still performed by unguided tube artillery, so it's not really that changed.
We need to seriously study the biggest source of delay in making PGMs and see about addressing that. We know that the Boeing plant makes 150 JDAM kits a day, at a pretty low price of 25,000 dollars apiece. My gut feeling is that it's not necessarily the electronics that are the production bottleneck, it's the rocket fuel for these cruise missiles. I've been told that rocket fuel isn't something that can easily be whipped up, and needs careful processing on account of it's volatility.
"once we run out of cruise missiles, the only options we have left for attack beyond the radar horizon are aircraft"
DeleteHence, the point of the post - that the pursuit of expensive, irreplaceable PGMs is foolish.
" My gut feeling ... it's the rocket fuel"
Why don't you find some data on fuel production capacity and production time? That would be a tremendously useful piece of information and is exactly the kind of informative comment I look for from readers and then we'd know, one way or the other.
"Hence, the point of the post - that the pursuit of expensive, irreplaceable PGMs is foolish."
DeleteOn the other hand, when you've established that cheap, easily replaceable PGMs are not effective weapons...
What are the parameters you envision for these cheaper, simpler weapons?
"What are the parameters you envision for these cheaper, simpler weapons?"
DeleteYou've answered your own question:
'simpler weapons'
Instead of the cruise missile that can talk to any other asset or any other sensor - which adds expensive communications gear, transmitters, receivers, circuit boards, electronics, etc. - just make a missile that travels to a specified point. Forget mid-course updates or control handoffs; just get to the endpoint. If you chose the wrong endpoint then that's just too bad.
Forget image libraries that can choose which rivet to target (it won't work, anyway). Just pick the nearest. biggest target and hit it anywhere. Modern ships aren't armored so any hit, anywhere, will be fatal. The image library is an expensive waste.
And so on.
SIMPLIFY. Don't insist that every weapon be capable of doing every imaginable function.
Tomahawk is, in fact, that simpler missile. It costs one point five million a shot. No midcourse guidance, no datalink.
DeleteEven Harpoon, as simple a missile as one might ask for, costs 3 million per shot.
You have a point with no datalinks, but then that relegates the missile for attacking purely static targets. Enemy ships move, as do ours. It's wprth noting that China is investingnheavily into datalinks of its own in order to have its sensor assets guide ASBM shoots - I've seen an opinion that their intended use of their carrier air wings isn't to symmetrically contest USN air wings, but to call in ASBM shoots from the mainland, where their missiles are staged out of retaliation range.
"Tomahawk is, in fact, that simpler missile. ... No midcourse guidance, no datalink."
DeleteThat's not correct. You may be thinking of early versions.
The current versions, Block IV/V, include data links, mid-course retargeting, loitering capability, bomb damage assessment imagery, two-way communications, multiple sensors, moving target capability, etc.
Tomahawk costs $2M-$4M depending on the specific contract and quantity.
Wiki has a decent summary of capabilities and costs. You might want to check it out.
That's exactly what I was talking about. The early blocks of Tomahawk were significantly simpler than the current Bl9ck IV/V, they were intended to only attack stationary targets, and even then their cost exceeded a million dollars per shot.
DeleteIt should also be considered that the simpler a seeker is, the easier it is to defeat. Consider the progression of Sidewinder seekers - we went from a simple heatseeker that could be decoyed away by turning into the sun, to an imaging infrared sensor that sees the target, so as to be less susceptible to flares.
DeleteMultiple seekers obviously increase cost, but they increase the missile's resilience against enemy softkill and jamming measures. That's the price that has to be paid for effectiveness.
Nebulous is a good way of illustrating this concept.
"the simpler a seeker is, the easier it is to defeat."
DeleteYes and no. The simplest seeker is ... no seeker ... and it's impossible to defeat! So, your premise holds only to a limited extent. Conceptually, what's better, a trillion dollar missile with the most sophisticated seeker ever developed that can be defeated by jamming, spoofing, multi-spectral obscurants, flares, chaff, radar reflector targets, cyber attack, etc. or a thousand dollar, sensorless missile with just inertial navigation? The first MIGHT make it to the target. The second is guaranteed to make it to the target.
Adding sensors to a weapon MAY add capability but it CERTAINLY adds vulnerability. The sensor is a point of weakness - a vulnerability - which the enemy can attack and disrupt. Is the increased vulnerability worth the purchase price of the POSSIBLY increased capability? Well, that's what realistic testing would tell us but we don't do realistic testing so we don't know. Will our various smart weapons work in the face of peer level countermeasures and defenses? We don't know and we should be testing that but we refuse to. My suspicion is that when war with China comes we'll find out that many of our vaunted smart weapons and equipment won't work nearly as well as we think.
Conversely, dumb weapons which can't be spoofed, jammed, decoyed, or cyber hacked are foolproof. Sure, we won't be able to pick which window to fly into but does that matter? ANYTHING a missile hits will hurt the enemy so what does it matter which rivet on the ship we hit or which window the bomb flies into?
I'm NOT saying we should eliminate all guided weapons. I'm saying that we're foolish to make them our mainstays. They should be niche weapons for use against certain specific targets under specific, limited conditions. The rest of the time we should be producing and using much simpler weapons that we can afford to build in large quantities and QUICKLY.
My brother in christ, I am talking wholly about the usecase of attacking enemy warships at sea. Targets that move and have hardkill and softkill defenses of their own.
DeleteEven missile boats will still need a Paveway to take them out because trying to drop a dumb bomb on them is ass - but at least a Paveway is only 25 grand.
I really don't understand why you're belaboring this when you've gone to so much trouble to insist that JDAM is not an effective weapon, and you're arguing for multi million dollar cruise missile strikes over guided glide bombs.
"I really don't understand why you're belaboring this when you've gone to so much trouble to insist that JDAM is not an effective weapon, and you're arguing for multi million dollar cruise missile strikes over guided glide bombs."
DeleteYou could not have missed the basic premise more if you tried!
I'm not arguing for or against any particular weapon. I'm arguing AGAINST making ultra-advanced, ultra-complex, ultra-expensive weapons our mainstay. I'm arguing for an emphasis on simpler, cheaper weapons. I explicitly stated that there is a niche for advanced weapons.
Even in the case of advanced weapons, we don't need most of the features they contain. A basic cruise missile that simply goes from point A to point B and then attacks whatever is there is all we need.
A Paveway bomb might well be an example of a cheaper version of an anti-ship missile and, thus, be exactly the kind of thing I'm calling for.
You have either failed to grasp the premise or you're being argumentative for its own sake. Either way, you need to step up the quality of your comments. I'm looking for readers who can grasp and further the discussion.
I think y'alls focus on aircraft is the wrong place to look for cheap simpler weapons. Consider: a fighter can only carry, at best, maybe 4 LRASMs. Going to a dumber weapon smaller weapon, maybe we can get 6 (the F-35 can carry 6 JSM missiles, incidentally.
DeleteAt maximum JDAM payload, an F-35 carries ten 1000 lbs JDAMs. Strip out the guidance fins and revert them back to Mark 83 bombs, and that's still only ten weapons. And to deploy those ten weapons, we need a couple of hours of transit to the release point, and a couple more hours in postflight maintennance.
With dumber simpler weapons, we want higher constant thoroughput, and ten weapons every couple hours isn't that. As ComNavOps has pointed out years ago, battleship guns, over the same amount of time, in sustained firing, will deliver a greater weight of fire onto the target.
The answer therefore is we need to invest more in artillery. The Army's tube artillery is using short, 39-cal length barrels, while the Europeans and Russians are using long 52-cal length barrels, giving them greater range for attack and counterbattery. We have to drive our guns further in, spending a longer time dodging fire, and have a much further safe retreat distance than our adversaries.
Apart from the army's theater level guns, intended to hit targets 1000 miles away, there were also programs for 100 mile self propelled guns. This doesn't completely solve all the problems, but it gives us more options for long range fires beyond rocket artillery (HIMARS, MLRS) and tactical ballistic missiles (ATACMS, PrSM), the latter of which are these expensive precision weapons.
It's disappointing that the Army has put its long range artillery programs on ice, in favor of using that money to buy more replacement barrels and 155 ammo, but at the same time the technology isn't quite there yet. But if we don't develop the guns, they won't progress.
ComNavOps, someone might be listen to you. Apparently the Navy is attempting to source a cheap heavy weight torpedo that could be produced quickly in large numbers. Somehow this is still very controversial and people aren't certain it can be done...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.twz.com/sea/navy-wants-a-cheap-heavy-torpedo-that-can-be-stockpiled-fast
Great link. I hadn't seen that. Thanks!
DeleteHere's the key paragraph from the article:
"A key to the vision for RAPTOR, Polk said, is removing many of the high-end requirements that make the current ADCAP torpedoes the highly evolved multi-mission weapons that do "everything to the 10th degree." If the Navy can compromise on elite speed, depth, and mission requirements for these specific munitions, Polk suggests it could in exchange achieve a numerical advantage with a stockpile of weapons more limited in mission and scope."
The key is SIMPLIFY(!!!) performance requirements. Unfortunately, the Navy is still missing the boat (pardon the pun). They want to keep as much of the advanced functions as they can while reducing costs and that's the wrong approach. $500,000 is still 5-10x too expensive. What the should be doing is defining the MINIMUM requirements for a torpedo and designing to that standard. THAT is how you get a truly affordable, mass producible weapon. Trying to produce a Mk48 'light' is still wrong.
Bear in mind that it's not just a cost issue. The more advanced functions you keep (even if they're free!) causes increased complexity which means longer production times and greater unreliability. Low cost, easy production, enhanced reliability, and easier maintenance come from MINIMUM requirements not slightly reduced advanced requirements.
" Apparently the Navy is attempting to source a cheap heavy weight torpedo"
DeleteWhile that might be their stated goal, you know that the Navy just can't resist gold plating it. The features and cost will balloon and schedules will slip until it's just a slightly reduced Mk48.
Contrary to all the data, I still believe at some point the Navy will wake up to the reality of an impending conflict with China, putting fighting sailors in key positions and seriously preparing for war. As CNO King said after Pearl Harbor, "when things get tough they send for the sons a bitches." I just fear that it may already be too late...
Delete"at some point the Navy will wake up"
DeleteYou would think so but if they haven't yet, it seems unlikely to happen in any useful time frame. The Navy publicly stated that war with China would occur within the next few years and then they promptly retired the Aegis cruisers, Los Angeles subs, LCS, AFSB, and are planning to retire 2-3 ships for every one new construction. They've also held weapons procurement steady instead of embarking on an emergency procurement program. We're down to 9 active air wings so we can only equip 9 carriers. Does any of that sound like a Navy that's waking up? Even to their own warning?
I hope you're right but all the Navy's actions indicate otherwise. There is no urgency, whatsoever, about a Chinese threat.
Question - Russians have started slapping on 'glide bomb' kits to their old Soviet-era bombs (which they have thousands stockpiled) and have been using them to tremendous effect. That doesn't count?
ReplyDeleteIn essence, it is what you are requesting - fast, cheap and VERY much available resources to use at the frontline.
Also, check out this article by retired US Col. Vershinin -
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine
He's full of crap, right?
"That doesn't count?"
DeleteANY weapon that's cheap, mass producible, reliable, effective, and easily maintained is exactly what we want. If it also happens to be precision guided, so much the better! Whether that's true of whatever Russian equipment you're talking about, I have no idea.
"He's full of crap, right?"
Quite the contrary. It's a brilliant article and the author is largely spot on. In fact, I've posted something very similar. See, "Attrition Warfare - You Can't Avoid It"
At its core, ALL warfare is attrition. We can write fancy articles describing our fantasy of dainty maneuvers that bring the enemy, weeping, to their knees with no loss of life on either side but that's just fantasy. Sooner or later, you have to kill the enemy and destroy his industry and military.
When the enemy is willing to engage in attrition warfare, it's impossible not to be sucked into it. When a human wave attack is coming at you, you're in attrition warfare whether you want to be or not. When the enemy is willing to trade one-for-one ships and aircraft because they have more of them, you're in attrition warfare whether you want to be or not. Of course, you can opt not to engage, at all, thereby avoiding attrition warfare but that's a victory for the enemy, isn't it?
China currently has an overwhelming population advantage. From their perspective, they'd be foolish not to engage in attrition warfare. Their fleet is now larger than ours. Their air force is larger. Remember, they retain retired ships and aircraft in reserve whereas we generally don't (the boneyard not withstanding). We're going to come to regret that decision on our part.
You've seen the author's article. Now, read my post and reconsider your view.
I trust that answers your question?
I agree and will add some details on what makes PGMs expensive.
ReplyDelete1. Jet engines and rocket motors. These usually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, though there are some efforts to make sub-$50,000 mini turbojets like the TDI-J85. You can use cheaper propellors like many drones, but they are super slow and vulnerable to interception. Rocket motors are easier to produce than turbojets, but range suffers because they are less fuel efficient.
2. Sensors. Multi-modal sensors that resist jamming and can hit moving targets are very expensive, ranging from $50,000 to hundreds of thousands. Even GPS paired with controls and aerodynamic surfaces is in the five figures, like on PGK artillery shells.
3. Speed/Range. More speed or range use more fuel which makes the structure bigger, which uses more fuel, etc. Size and cost grow really fast as speed and range increase. Which again, is why many one-way drones are so slow.
A good example of a PGM class that avoids these issues is the glide bombs, like JDAM. They aren't highway robbery at <$50,000, use only GPS/INS and sometimes laser, and take advantage of aircraft speed and altitude to achieve a short but reasonable range. If they aren't super accurate within 1 meter that is ok because you can strap them on a 2000 lb bomb with big effects. Aircraft are expensive so giving them a little standoff and making their sortie more valuable is a good tradeoff for $30,000. Production capacity is in the thousands per month for single products like JDAM. Also not a replacement for artillery against serious opponents.
Cruise missiles and ballistic missiles are the opposite where they hit all three cost issues. Not suitable for everyday usage.
Artillery is super challenging because the rounds are so inexpensive. A PGK adds $10,000 to what should a $1000 shell. The Army's efforts with sensor fused, laser guided, and GPS guided are mostly failures. It makes way more sense to go with cluster munitions are have area effects for most targets while keeping costs of regular high explosive handy, too. Even though MLRS rockets are more expensive, a salvo of cluster munition rockets is roughly the same cost as one GMLRS and can do much more damage.
Air-to-air missiles and anti-ship missiles went almost 100% guided, but now we see with cheap drones (flying and floating!) that inexpensive guns and rockets are still pretty useful.
"short but reasonable range"
DeleteAgainst a peer defender there is no such thing as a short but reasonable range. The several to a few dozen mile range puts the launch aircraft smack in the heart of a defensive system of not just SAMs but also enemy aircraft. Also, remember that the enemy defenses may (and likely will) extend many miles out from the actual target location.
"details on what makes PGMs expensive"
I have a somewhat different take on this although, in the end, it amounts to the same thing. Precision guidance means complexity: circuit boards, electronics, mechanical workings, etc., all in hardened, packaged assemblies. These are not things that can be manufactured in a shop by a guy with a hammer and some nuts and bolts. They require sophisticated, highly advanced factories with highly skilled work forces and they take a great deal of time. This equates to cost.
In addition, these advanced components require exotic materials that are not readily available and will be even less available in war.
Even basic manufacturing techniques cost more money when they involve uncommon materials. Basic welding, for example, becomes a challenge when the materials are something other than common iron or steel.
Physical and EMP hardening add additional layers of complexity and cost.
Complex systems are, generally, more susceptible to countermeasures. For example, that 'simple' JDAM or Paveway is susceptible to GPS signal disruption, obscurants, etc. Dumb bombs aren't susceptible to any countermeasures.
And so on.
The more advanced the technology, the greater the cost. I'd advocate throwing rocks at the enemy except that the combat effectiveness is not great enough. We want the lowest technology that meets the minimum combat requirements.
The glide kits give them up to 80km, a little less if you toss them from low altitude. I agree the regular no-wings versions is best suited for undefended aerospace.
DeleteI agree on the complexity, it ends up being the same result because complexity is expensive.
Specifically on JDAM GPS, the actual GPS receiver is a small portion of the cost if it is a basic model. The inertial navigation still works pretty well, especially if GPS jamming is more localized. Within 50 meters of a target with a 2000 lb bomb can do a lot of damage! But I still agree in general which is why I said it isn't a replacement for artillery. Russia and Ukraine use them as a way to soften up hard points or other concentrations of men/equipment. They are effective in that limited role.
"The glide kits give them up to 80km,"
DeleteHigh above enemy defenses is no place to be! SAMs (and enemy aircraft) love high targets. It doesn't matter how cheap a JDAM type bomb is (it could be free) if it isn't combat effective. Having to send a plane high above enemy defenses is not combat effective. JDAM is great ... IF THERE ARE NO SIGNIFICANT DEFENSES. Of course, any weapon is great if there are no significant defenses.
"High above enemy defenses is no place to be!"
DeleteSuppose we attached a rocket (rockets being much cheaper than jet engines) to the glide bomb. Then the plane could release from low altitude and the rocket could boost it to high altitude, from whence it could glide to the target?
I think roughly half the range comes from velocity and half from altitude, so you could do a toss maneuver from deck and get around 40 km of range. That may still be too limited, but wanted to make sure we were on the same page there in that you can get some range without altitude.
DeleteBob,
The French have a weapon like this the Ukrainians are using lately. And Boeing has a concept for a powered JDAM that would have ~400 km of range using the TDI-J85. Basically a short range cruise missile at a 1/4 of the price. But doesn't have stealth profile features, etc. like the JASSM does.
"doesn't have stealth profile features, etc. like the JASSM does."
DeleteOne thing I haven't understood is why the glide bombs can't be shot down. A 2000 pound bomb is bigger than most drones, and made of metal, so as you stated, it should be visible on radar. And since it's dumb, it probably isn't doing much evasive maneuvering. So it ought to be possible to shoot it down with guns, much less fancy missiles.
" toss maneuver from deck"
DeleteOf course, that puts the aircraft low in enemy defended airspace and that's no place to be! That puts the aircraft in MANPAD and barrage fire range during the entire ingress!
You don't want to be high and you don't want to be low. This is why I constantly say that manned aircraft are no longer a strike option against defended targets. We need cheap, basic cruise missiles with 500+ mile range. Anything else is suicide.
"Boeing has a concept for a powered JDAM that would have ~400 km of range"
The manufacturers have proposals for anything and everything. Do I need to go through the endless list of failed claims? If Boeing wants to produce a fully functional prototype and demonstrate it, I'm sure the military would love to see it. Until then, it's just one more paper fantasy.
I remember Lockheed and Austal once had concepts for small, cheap warships that would revolutionize the future of naval warfare using instantly swappable modules that could be customized for the mission. I wonder what became of that?
"why the glide bombs can't be shot down"
DeleteI assume it can. A C-RAM is designed to do exactly that. Of course, I've never heard of anyone actually testing that scenario. As you know, we don't do realistic testing anymore.
Yes, definitely can’t be low close to enemy lines. That is why both sides in the Ukraine war only use them to attack near the front line. So the plane is 40 km in friendly territory.
DeleteThere are videos of Ukrainians shooting down Russian glide bombs. So it can be done but they almost always near the front line so it seems to be more of challenge of having air defense near enough without getting shot up by artillery.
"We need cheap, basic cruise missiles with 500+ mile range. Anything else is suicide."
DeleteBut those are also easy to shoot down. See for example the latest Iran attack on Israel, where all of their cruise missiles and drones were shot down, and only a few of the ballistic missiles got through. Are you suggesting that we can somehow build thousands upon thousands of "basic" cruise missiles to saturate the defense? Because I don't see that being feasible.
CRAM isn't a miraculous defense; the mount only has a couple thousand rounds which are burned up real fast and take a long time to reload. CRAM could, conceivably, detect and sucessfully engage one glide bomb, but does it have enough time to defeat the second? The third? The fourth?
DeleteThat is, at least, one thing going for smart glide bombs - it's much, much easier and cheaper to setup a saturation attack with them vs cruise missiles.
With regard to JDAMs, if you believe in the Air Force's fanfiction, Wild Weasels are supposed to suppress long range SAMs and medium range SAMS so that the strike package can get in closer. Attacking at altitude from 50km would allow the strike package to engage with minimal threat from SHORAD and MRSAM.
Deletethis doesn't apply to the Navy, however, because there's not enough fighters in the air wing to suppress air defenses AND attack the enemy SAG. You launch 40 planes and that's it, not like the air force with its 100 aircraft Package Q style attacks.
"So the plane is 40 km in friendly territory."
DeleteWhich would rule out deep strike.
"See for example the latest Iran attack on Israel"
DeleteI don't view that 'attack' as anything resembling a real attack. Iranian weapons are poor copies, at best, of obsolete weapons and have minimal capabilities. The attack time was publicized, allowing Israel and allies to prepare a maximum defensive effort. The attack demonstrated nothing. It was just a live fire exercise all around.
"Are you suggesting that we can somehow build thousands upon thousands of "basic" cruise missiles to saturate the defense? "
Yes! As a point of reference, we launched around 70+ missiles at a small Syrian air base several years ago and that was just a partial attack (we didn't actually try to destroy the base) against an undefended base. We would need something on the order of 200 missiles to destroy a small, defended base. A larger base would required several hundred missiles to saturate the defenses and destroy the base.
We need to remember just how profligate weapons usage is in real war. We've forgotten.
"But those are also easy to shoot down."
DeleteWhich is why I've repeatedly called for a Tomahawk successor which is BASIC and stealthy.
"it's much, much easier and cheaper to setup a saturation attack with them vs cruise missiles."
Delete??? Quite the opposite! A glide bomb saturation attack requires enormous numbers of aircraft coordinated with tankers, fighter escorts, EW aircraft, etc. It also requires that a major base(s) be within strike range and it exposes the aircraft to enemy defenses.
In contrast, a saturation cruise missile attack can be launched from a thousand miles away and requires only a handful of SSGNs (154 missiles per sub) or surface ships (90+ missiles per ship). Safer and less resource intensive.
"CRAM isn't a miraculous defense"
DeleteDid someone other than you claim it was?
"Attacking at altitude from 50km would allow the strike package to engage with minimal threat from SHORAD and MRSAM."
DeleteThis is the kind of flawed, isolationist, one dimensional thinking that is so prevalent in military discussions today. You fail to consider the presence of enemy aircraft, realistic dispersion of SAMs, etc. An intelligent enemy isn't going to pile all their SAMs on top of the target. They'll be distributed for dozens of miles around. An aircraft that approaches the target within 10-20 miles or so will likely find itself right on top of SAMs. Enemy aircraft will defend the target hundreds of miles out. And so on.
You/we need to think in realistic operational terms rather than isolated, one vs. one scenarios. We need to stop thinking of one aircraft vs. one SAM and start thinking in terms of one strike package vs. one integrated defense.
"In contrast, a saturation cruise missile attack can be launched from a thousand miles away and requires only a handful of SSGNs (154 missiles per sub) or surface ships (90+ missiles per ship). Safer and less resource intensive."
DeleteWith the caveat that cruise missiles are, of course, significantly more expensive than JDAMs. You can buy 88 JDAMs for one NSM, or 40 JDAMs for one Tomahawk - but on the other hand, as you've also pointed out, there's no point having a cheap weapon if it is not an effective weapon.
That's the real dilema here. Multimillion dollar cruise missiles are far too expensive to procure in bulk, but cheap JDAMs procured in bulk are not effective weapons against actively defended targets.
"Both sides have used precision guided weapons and what has it achieved? Nothing."
ReplyDeleteI could easily say of WW1 that, "the central powers and the allies have both fired tens of millions of rounds of artillery, and what has it accomplished? Nothing."
Instead we could say that PGMs of various kinds have enabled Ukraine to hold off a nominally superior force to limited gains
WWI ended in four years. The Ukraine-Russia war is now over two years old and shows no sign of ending despite the use of miraculous precision guided munitions.
DeleteOr we could say that a Russian military with the overwhelming advantage of all kinds of precision guided munitions failed to conquer a small state with almost no military to begin with.
Do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion?
In war, it's not the weapons that have the most bells and whistles, but rather the weapons that work best and are most reliable in degraded wartime environments. And, as the Russians like to say, quantity has a quality of its own.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the Russians' big successes have been by using their own precision guided munitions. Their HIMARS and Patriot kills were done using their hypersonic cruise missiles, so...
Delete"Russians' big successes"
DeleteBig successes???? Are you suggesting that destroying an occasional launcher of some sort constitutes a 'big success'?
Are you suggesting that Russian PGMs have destroyed more targets than artillery?
Do you have any data to back any of this up?
I completely agree about the need for sufficient stocks of weapons to fight a peer war between industrialized nations, but I have to say something about the myth of "expensive" PGM's. Precision guided weapons are only expensive when the cost of the number needed to 'neutralize' a target is more than the cost of the number of 'dumb' bombs or shells needed to do the same task. When the total costs of thousands of conventional bombs and hundreds of sorties is more than the cost of a couple of guided weapons and a few sorties to accomplish the mission, (see Thanh Hóa Bridge) then PGM's are not expensive. I agree that figuring out how to procure these weapons in the amounts needed should be part of the cost of procurement when making the calculation, but even if adding in the cost of building a big factory to make lots of them is factored in they may still be cheaper.
ReplyDeleteFor a war of attrition, it was a sobering article, we will need more of everything, especially PGM's of all sorts.
" only expensive when the cost of the number needed to 'neutralize' a target is more than the cost of the number of 'dumb' bombs"
DeleteYou point out a valid consideration, however, you may be overlooking some costs. There are, grossly, direct, indirect, and opportunity costs.
Direct costs are fairly straightforward. What did it cost to produce the item?
Indirect costs are less obvious but no less valid. The cost of building highly advanced chip and circuit board factories, for example, or the cost of maintenance. There's also the cost of the ultra-sophisticated guidance mechanisms such as GPS (what did the entire GPS satellite system cost?) or the advanced communication systems required to provide mid-course guidance. And so on. All those costs need to be included in any evaluation.
Opportunity costs are the weapons/munitions that opt NOT to produce with the time and resources we instead devote to PGMs. We can produce a hundred missiles per year. With the same investment, how many 'dumb' (or simpler) weapons could we produce in the same time for the same cost and resources? Another way to put it is, if we only have one factory do we want it producing a hundred smart weapons per year or a million dumb ones?
Finally, a caution: PGM accuracy is NOT what it's popularly thought to be. We saw this after Desert Storm where the initial claims of 95% accuracy were later found to be more on the order of 30-50% (still good compared to, say, high altitude, conventional, aerial bombing but nowhere near the one PGM equals one destroyed target claim).
PGM accuracy will further decrease when peer war constraints come into play. The accuracy of a PGM during peacetime or low threat combat will be much better than when the attack is competently opposed with vigorous defenses and countermeasures; when GPS is disrupted, multi-spectral obscurants are employed, extensive decoys (flares, 'chaff', radar decoys, physical decoys, etc.) are present, guidance signals are jammed or spoofed, etc.
So, to sum up, your point is perfectly valid but I suspect your assessment is incomplete. Consider these points and see if they modify your assessment.
"We can produce a hundred missiles per year." No, we could produce thousands of these weapons a year, if we wanted to. We don't because people have taken into account the perfectly reasonable factors, like indirect costs and opportunity costs, that you have pointed out and decided that it's not worth it. That calculation might change in a major war.
DeleteIn 1914-18 artillery shells, and their associated fuses and delivery systems, were not low tech. They were expensive precision guided high tech weapons. British shells were not as good as U.S. shells in that time period, they were made of thicker metal and held less explosive. The bulk of British machine tools could not work to as fine tolerances on the same hardness of metal as U.S. tools. The Brits traded a certain amount of effectiveness in exchange for mass production using available industrial abilities. They did not start making cannon balls, no matter how easy it was to make a lot of them because they simply couldn't do the job.
It may be that we will have to make the same kind of trade offs between ease of manufacture and effectiveness but this is just another part of the calculations that go into determining the real cost of a weapons system.
"we could produce thousands of these weapons a year, if we wanted to. ... using available industrial abilities"
DeleteYes and no. You summed up both the yes - we could, theoretically, make thousands of PGMs per year - and the no - we don't have the available industrial abilities and cannot quickly acquire such capacity. It takes years to build a factory of any type and longer to build advanced technology factories. For example, it is estimated that it takes about a decade to build and commission a chip factory. Admittedly, we could probably shorten that timeline somewhat in the event of war but we can't magically shorten it to a few months. It would still take years and, in a war, you don't have years to build industrial capacity.
Further, even if you could, somehow, magically, create a factory in a day, you'd have no one to work it. Training advanced workers is not as quick and easy as training Rosie the Riveter. Our commercial sector is screaming for qualified workers as it is. Where would the millions of additional workers come from? We can draft soldiers but we can't draft factory workers and certainly not skilled workers.
"cannon balls"
Of course not. We cannot simplify weapons to the point being combat-ineffective. You can only simplify as long as you retain a minimum level of combat effectiveness. I've stated this repeatedly in past posts and comments. What we can - and must - do is simplify by eliminating every capability that is not minimally mandatory to accomplish the weapon's function. A major example is mid-course guidance. It's simply not needed. You had a valid target when you launched. There's no need to update. If you didn't have valid targeting, you were stupid to launch and hope for mid-course data. Eliminating that function would eliminate all kinds of communications equipment, receivers, electronics, and millions of lines of code. Huge savings. Huge simplification.
The chinese seem to be heavily investing in midcourse guidance provided by sensor assets to their ASBMs. Based on the most recent demonstration launches they've performed, we can see that they're staging missiles at the coast and also deep inland, far beyond the range of a CVBG's retaliation, but also far outside the launcher's own eyes to see.
Delete"Against a peer defender there is no such thing as a short but reasonable range."
DeleteThis seems a strange comment to make when you've previously argued that the short range of battleship guns and the army's 155mm guns - 40km - is not an issue.
"heavily investing in midcourse guidance provided by sensor assets"
DeleteAnd that's the same weakness we have. In a peer war, there is simply no way to get sensor assets within range of targets. Unless the Navy is complete idiots (and that's a highly debatable conjecture!), we won't allow ANY Chinese asset within a thousand miles of a ship. No target, no attack. We had this all figured out in the Cold War. Whether we remember those lessons is a separate question but we'll relearn them quickly enough after we lose some ships.
"This seems a strange comment to make when you've previously argued that the short range of battleship guns and the army's 155mm guns - 40km - is not an issue."
DeleteReally??? You can't see the difference between a nearly defenseless aircraft (a few flares/chaff) trying to survive in the face of extensive SAM and enemy aviation versus a heavily armored battleship surrounded by dozens of Aegis destroyers and, likely, air support? The one has very poor odds of survival whereas the other has a near-certainty survival.
Reread the entire blog. We've discussed this extensively.
What do individuals who think the short range of a battleships guns make them useless / irrelevant..... feel about the fact that most graduates of infantry schools.... literally world wide..... are given small arms with ranges (not necessarily even effective ranges) barely beyond 500m? The world wonders.
Delete"the short range of a battleships guns make them useless"
DeleteIt's the failure to recognize the basic principle of division of labor or, in this case, division of firepower. We don't ask every infantry weapon to be universal in range from zero to infinity. Similarly, we don't (or shouldn't) expect every naval weapon to be universal in range. Each weapon has a specific function and is optimized for that function. Trying to cram multiple functions (and ranges) together just makes for giant, bloated, unaffordable weapons.
What about a simple change to doctrine. US Army says to shoot two missiles per target. An aircraft might evade the first one, but not a second one arriving three seconds later. I think USN doctrine is the same.
ReplyDeleteUkraine is out of anti-air missiles and NATO has no more to send. This is why the Russians are pounding them with glide bombs. Perhaps doctrine should change. Fire one missile per target and hope for the best.
The exchange rate of million dollar missle for thousand (hundred?) dollar drone is/will be impossible to sustain. It's unfortunate the navy will spend a king's ransom on the "next generation of network centric, joint projected power" wonder anti-drone weapon, when the solution is obvious. The age of the kamikaze has returned (albeit unmanned) and its time to mount cheap but effective AA all over the ship again. Remote Bushmasters, and other simailar systems already in existence for armor, additional CIWS, etc.
ReplyDeleteAgainst military tech weak nations, a few PGM make work well. The Iraqi War and anti terrorist strikes are examples.
ReplyDeleteAgainst powerful nations, numbers of PGM is important. Current Ukraine War displays this. Initially, Russia's fly over bombing with many unguided bombs ended up with SU-34 been shotted down. After modified old bombs to PGM, SU-34 throw them some distance away and hit precisely on targets.
China has PGM, lots of them plus manufacturing capacity and R&D capabilities thus can make PGM most useful.