USS Boxer - A Second Drone

It is now being widely reported that the USS Boxer, which reportedly downed an Iranian drone using jamming, also engaged a second drone, at the same time.

U.S. Central Command says that one Iranian drone crashed into the sea after the USS Boxer took what Central Command called "defensive action" against it last Thursday. It said the Boxer also "engaged" a second Iranian drone at the same time, but could not confirm it was destroyed. (1)

Set that aside, for a moment, and recall that the Navy wants to operate a distributed lethality concept which is based on a vast network of all-seeing, all-knowing data links assembled into a master picture and then distributed to all the ships in the region.  Thus, every ship, whether it uses its own sensors or not, will know, with unerring accuracy, the location and targeting information about every enemy asset in the region.  This will allow the distributed ships to co-ordinate and mass their fires on the unsuspecting and hapless enemy fleets.

The Navy is applying the same basic concept of vast networks and data links to AAW defense in the form of an advanced co-operative engagement capability (NIFC-CA).

Now, let’s return to the Boxer engagement.  According to the Navy, one drone was downed and the Navy doesn’t know what happened to the other.  Consider the implications of that statement … they don’t know what happened to the other drone.  The ship had all manner of radars, sensors, optical sensors, EW equipment, Mk1 Eyeballs, and who knows what else applied to a drone that was, by all accounts within a thousand yards so of the ship, and they don’t know what happened to it.

Recall the Burke destroyer that supposedly engaged several incoming anti-ship missiles off Yemen a while ago?  Despite Aegis and all manner of other sensors, the Navy couldn’t say whether any of their missiles hit any targets or what happened to the targets.  In fact, careful analysis of the reporting revealed that they couldn’t even say for sure that there were any actual incoming missiles.

Recall the giant hulking cargo ships that two Burke destroyers never saw and collided with.

Are you seeing the pattern?  Despite the manufacturer and the Navy’s claims of omniscient sensing, we can’t actually keep track of ships, UAVs, and incoming weapons right next to us!  So, how are we going to achieve this regional, distributed lethality, all-seeing, all-knowing master sensor picture or the perfectly networked NIFC-CA AAW defense?

We’re basing our naval offense and defense on a claimed capability that has been proven, time and again, to be woefully inadequate.  When you can’t keep track of a drone a thousand feet from you under non-combat, perfect conditions, how are you going to track every enemy asset in a regional distributed lethality network under electromagnetically challenged conditions?  The answer is obvious – you’re not!  And yet, we’re proceeding with the assumption that we can and will.  At what point do you stop believing unfounded claims and start believing actual field performance evidence?  I think that point is now.  The Navy needs to stop believing in Unicorns and Fairy Dust and start looking at reality.

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(1)Miami Herald website, “US now says it ‘engaged’ 2 Iranian drones, not 1”, Associated Press, 23-Jul-2019,

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article233033167.html

Testing Reality

USNI News website reports that the Navy and Raytheon conducted a test of an over-the-horizon engagement of a supersonic target by an SM-6 missile (1).  No test details were released and there’s apparently nothing special about the test.  Navy tests are highly scripted and every effort is made to ensure test success.  The interesting part is the hype surrounding the data sharing using remote sensors linked through the Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air (NIFC-CA) system.  Even this is nothing particularly noteworthy.  This is just an outgrowth of the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC).

However, consider these comments.

“ ‘This weapon multiplies the amount of defended space the U.S. Navy can protect,’ Mike Campisi, Raytheon’s Standard Missile-6 senior program director, said in a company statement.

“ ‘The ships can now use data from remote sensors to support the engagement of targets. Sailors can now launch at threats much sooner than ever before.’ ”

So what’s the problem?  The ability to incorporate off board sensor data to allow engagements far beyond the horizon is a good thing, isn’t it?  Well, yes, it is.  If the enemy obligingly allows us to spread our sensor platforms all over the battlespace without hindrance and allows us to communicate between the various sensor platforms and the launch platforms without interference, jamming, ECM, or other electronic disruptions then we’ll be in great shape. 

On the other hand, if the enemy opts to shoot down our slow, marginally stealthy UAVs, BAMS, and defenseless E-2 Hawkeyes and sink our far ranging (almost didn’t get that one out without laughing) LCS network nodes or blanket our communications with electronic noise, jamming, and all manner of ECM and cyber disruption, then I can’t help but wonder how well our NIFC-CA dream will work.

The logical reality is that our sensor platforms won’t be able to penetrate very far in the direction of a likely enemy attack and their data relays will be severely degraded.  Thus, the peacetime promise of AAW intercepts occurring hundreds of miles away, cued by a vast network of sensors, will likely remain an unfulfilled promise.  Our engagement window will not be hundreds of miles away but will be not too far beyond the horizon.

The larger issue, here, is the constant focus by the Navy on highly unlikely scenarios in which advanced technology is allowed to operate unhindered by enemy action.  We’re becoming dependent on unrealistic scenarios that can’t and won’t be realized in actual combat.

Instead of conducting the test they did, the Navy and Raytheon would have been better served conducting the test in the face of an “enemy” that could find and eliminate the off board sensor platforms and apply the full spectrum of electronic countermeasures.  Let that be the test scenario and see what works.  I think we would quickly realize that we’re wasting our time on a lot of fantasy projects.

Now, the wasted time and money is bad but what’s worse is that we’re “growing” a generation of soldiers and sailors who believe that this technology is going to work just as they’ve seen it used in these unrealistic, scripted tests.  Our future combat leaders are learning tactics that are not based on reality.  We need to drastically increase the realism in our testing.

Consider this simple test.  Had we conducted it under realistic conditions, as I’ve described, we would probably conclude that we need to drastically alter our sensor platform approach (maybe many, many more smaller and shorter ranged UAVs flooding an area?), significantly enhance our electronic resistance and communications security, and, the big one, perhaps realize that long range intercepts may not be a realistic expectation and that medium to short range intercepts are what we should be concentrating on.

The Navy desperately needs to begin injecting realism into their tests and stop obsessing over fantasy technology that won’t work in the face of enemy actions.  We need to start designing against the worst case instead of the ridiculously optimistic best case.

(1)USNI News, “Navy, Raytheon Test Standard Missile-6 Against Supersonic Over-the-Horizon Threat”, Megan Eckstein, June 17, 2015

http://news.usni.org/2015/06/17/navy-raytheon-test-standard-missile-6-against-supersonic-over-the-horizon-threat