Whatever You Want It To Be

There has been a trend over the last decade or two by the military to say whatever serves its purpose.  Kind of a vague statement, I know.  Let’s look at a few specific examples.  Maybe that will make my meaning clearer.

The LCS was originally sold to Congress and the public as a kick-butt littoral combat vessel that could conduct ASW, ASuW, and MCM without needing help from anyone else.  Why, a single LCS could win a war all by itself, it was claimed!  Later, after many failures, and with Congress showing signs of balking at additional purchases, the story changed to a much more limited mission set with the LCS being described as operating around the periphery of a conflict and under the protective umbrella of Aegis ships and carrier aviation.  Why are we committing a quarter of our future combat fleet to a ship that can only function around the periphery of combat?  But, I digress …

The Zumwalt DDG-1000 started life as the absolutely vital ship of the future, the Navy claimed, before suddenly being cast off as obsolete on the modern battlefield in the most amazing and abrupt change of story I’ve ever witnessed in the annals of weapons procurement.  Astoundingly, though, the Navy is building three of these obsolete ships and now claims that the ship is the wave of the future, maybe.  Yes …  No …  Well, let’s build it and then we’ll figure out what to do with it.  But, I digress …

You get the idea.

In similar fashion, AirSea Battle (ASB) started life as a way to defeat an adversary (China, though no one will say it out loud) who had the technology to implement an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy.  The original CSBA AirSea Battle document described a war of attrition resulting in the rollback of China’s A2/AD capabilities as a prelude to offensive operations.  Now, according to CNO Greenert and General Welsh (1), Chief of Staff of the Air Force, ASB is more of a defensive concept aimed at breaking the enemy’s kill chain, meaning the ability to stop an enemy weapon from hitting us by disrupting one of the steps (location, targeting, launch, impact) in the chain that leads to a weapon impact on target (US forces being the target).

As a secondary goal, ASB also encompasses a fantasy wish list of anything-can-do-anything capabilities such as using submarines to defeat airborne threats (in some mystical, unspecified manner), having F-22s retarget Tomahawk missiles (when, how, and why would an F-22 ever have better targeting information than the Tomahawk possessed upon launch?), having Army land units guide Navy surface-to-air missiles (when would they ever be in position to do that better than the Navy could?), and so on.

In short, ASB is morphing into something very different from what it started as.  Now, this alone is not necessarily a bad thing.  We should constantly be examining our weapons and strategies and changing them when necessary.  However, there is a difference between changing for valid military reasons and changing for political reasons. 

I see the latter happening with ASB.  What started out as a valid, though poorly articulated, military concept seems to be changing to support procurement wish lists of the Air Force and Navy.

Disturbingly, I also see a movement away from the original generalized combat philosophy document and towards a gold-plated, fantasy procurement wish list that bears a remarkable resemblance to the LCS technology wish lists that crashed and burned so badly.  Failing to learn from the LCS debacle, this latest offering from Greenert and Welsh calls for a host of non-existent, technically complex capabilities that are unlikely to be achieved in any relevant time frame and have little practical use that I can see, even if they could be achieved.

I’m firmly convinced that, whatever it started as, ASB is now just a marketing tool for the Navy and Air Force to pressure Congress into giving them more toys.  Keep a close eye on ASB and let’s see where it goes.  My bet is nowhere useful.

 (1)   http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/16/breaking_the_kill_chain_air_sea_battle?page=0,0

AirSea Battle Failings



AirSea Battle Report from the CSBA

Much has been made about the AirSea Battle document produced by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.  For those of you who are only casually familiar with it, the AirSea Battle (ASB) describes the scope and impact of Chinese Anti-Access/Area Denial (AA/AD) capabilities and attempts to provide a battle strategy for countering it.  The document does a fairly nice job of the former by providing a fairly explicit description of Chinese capabilities, objectives, and methods and for this reason alone the ASB is worth reading.  Unfortunately, the ASB fails to deliver on the latter.  The battle strategy is deficient on two counts, one practical and one conceptual. 

Again, for those less familiar with it, the ASB’s strategy envisions a two stage process whereby the Chinese capabilities are sequentially countered and then methodically rolled back during a period of prolonged combat.  The rollback will allow the Navy to operate closer and closer to China (the location of most of the U.S. military objectives, of course) over time.  The rollback phase is deemed necessary since the U.S. military, and Navy in particular, have only limited range weapons and must achieve a certain level of “closeness” in order to employ their weapons.  This is, essentially a war of attrition.

Thus, the ASB’s first failing becomes apparent.  In a war of attrition, the side with the most, wins.  Setting aside the adverse public reaction to a war of attrition and the resulting lack of support, the U.S. military does not have sufficient numbers of planes, ships, weapons, or people to successfully engage in a war of attrition.  While the U.S. may maintain a technological superiority enabling it to achieve a favorable kill ratio, the end result will be depletion of U.S. forces to a point where “victory” becomes impossible. 

The U.S. military has recognized since WWII that mutual attrition is not a desirable strategy.  Every battle doctrine and strategy since then has emphasized selective concentration of forces, maneuver, stand-off engagement, and so forth for the express purpose of achieving victory without mutual attrition.  To return to a strategy of attrition, especially against a numerically superior enemy is both simplistic and impractical.

Besides, what’s the point?  Is the purpose of a rollback strategy of attrition to kill every person in China?  Of course not.  But what, then, is the point of the rollback strategy?  This question reveals the second and most serious failing of the ASB.  It does not define what victory is.  What end result or set of conditions constitutes victory?  A certain number of people killed?  A certain level of degradation of Chinese military capability?  A level of destruction of industrial capability sufficient to ensure that the Chinese military can’t be rebuilt within a given time frame?  A simple return to pre-war boundaries?  What? 

ASB itself seems to recognize its own failing to certain degree with the statement, “As a doctrine for the operational level of war, AirSea Battle should not be seen as a “war-winning” concept in itself.”  Fair enough but if the authors don’t see their own strategy as “war-winning” then what is its purpose?

Without a definition of victory the suggested strategy has no frame of reference against which to measure its value.  This is analogous to describing how to throw a baseball.  Interesting in and of itself but without knowing the context the value is limited.  Is the throwing for the purpose of playing catch in the backyard?  Playing professional baseball?  The answer will determine the intensity of the effort, the amount of time that should be spent learning the skill, and the ultimate degree of skill required.

So, too, with a strategy of rollback.  To what purpose is it being applied?  To what degree and level of completion must it be taken?  If we know the victory conditions we can begin to make assessments of the amount and type of weapons that will be needed.  Without the victory conditions we can only describe vague generalities about warfare – and that is exactly what the ASB winds up doing. 

Now, having criticized the ASB, let me turn around and briefly praise it for what it does well.  It presents a though-provoking description of Chinese objectives, strategies, and weapons.  It’s a good start for a further, serious discussion of the issue.  To be fair to the authors, the title itself recognizes this, “AirSea Battle, A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept”.  Unfortunately, too many people within the Navy seem to believe that ASB is a complete and finished work of strategy.  It’s not and I’m waiting for someone to take the next step and define victory and begin matching strategy and force structure to the victory conditions.  Hmmm…..  sounds like another post about to happen!

For those interested, here's the link to the actual AirSea Battle document.