F-35 Magic Helmet

Defense Industry Daily website reports that Lockheed Martin received a $101.3M contract for production of 383 F-35 magic helmets (1).  That’s $256,000 per helmet.  It’s not clear from the contract announcement whether that is the total cost for the helmets or an incremental modification (2).  Previous estimates had put the helmet cost at $400,000 each.

Regardless, pilots, do not misplace your helmet!

The helmet, you’ll recall, is supposed to provide the magic that fuses all the F-35’s sensor data and allows the pilot to have 360 degree vision.  Of course, the helmet has been under development for a couple of decades and still has problems.  Hey, what do you want for a few hundred thousand dollars each?

(1)https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f-35-lightning-the-joint-strike-fighter-program-2012-07501/

(2)http://www.defense.gov/Contracts/Contract.aspx?ContractID=5583

D-Day, Part 3

This is a continuation of the previous D-Day lessons post based on the book, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Batle of World War II, by Stephen Ambrose. 

Here are some more tidbits from the book that offer lessons relevant to today’s amphibious assault concerns.

Communications were a key target.

“Communications was a factor in the German failure.  The American paratroopers had been told that if they could not do anything else, they could at least cut communication lines.  The Germans in Normandy had been using secure telephone and cable lines for years and consequently had become complacent about their system.”

Does this sound familiar?  The Navy has become complacent about its electromagnetic emissions, communications, GPS, etc.  We assume that everything will work just as well in combat as it does in peacetime and against third world countries or terrorists.  Unfortunately, the reality is that combat against a peer or near-peer will see the entire electromagnetic spectrum contested and our communications, data transfers, networks, etc. will be severely compromised.  We must begin designing equipment and training for degraded electromagnetic enviroments.

Allied airpower was counted on to deliver vast quantities of explosives, destroy many targets, and otherwise prepare the battlefield for the infantry.  In the event, little of this happened.  Weather and a fear of dropping on friendly forces resulted in the aerial bombardment being almost totally wasted with the bomb loads landing far from their intended targets.

“For the B-17 crews, flying mainly at 20,000 feet, … such bombing was clearly inappropriate to its purpose. … Eisenhower learned the lesson that the B-17 was not a suitable weapon for tactical ground support.”

This discussion continues today with advocates of bombers claiming their ability to provide precise close air support.  Certainly, the advent of laser guidance offers the possibility, under the right circumstances, of providing a limited and haphazard degree of support.  However, in an assault, there will be no one to provide the laser spotting.  The troops will not be calm, cool, well equipped, well trained, and ready with all necessary gear for precise direction of air support.  Instead, they will be panicked, disorganized, and lucky to have hung on to their rifles.  B-1/2/52 bombers will be of no use trying to provide direct, close support.

The effectiveness of naval gunfire was discussed.

“From the point of view of the soldiers going ashore, the great naval bombardment was as ineffective as the great air bombardment.  According to Admiral Morison, the reason was ‘not enough time was allowed,’ and the fault was the Army’s, not the Navy’s, because the Army did not wish the bombardment to start before daylight.”

So, dozens of battleships and cruisers, all with their big guns, failed to provide the necessary degree of destruction due, in part, to a lack of time and also to the physical strength of the German emplacements, many of which shrugged off major caliber hits.  What does this tell us, today?  It tells us that our non-existent naval gunfire and meager airpower will not significantly degrade an enemy’s defenses.  We need to drastically rethink our view of the delivery of large quantities of high explosives, in general, and naval gun support, in particular.  A handful of Tomahawk missiles will not suffice.

The failure of plans in the face of enemy contact was a notable feature of D-Day.  No operation before or, arguably, since, had been so carefully and meticulously planned, trained, and rehearsed as the D-Day assault.  Every minute aspect was accounted for several times over.  Unfortunately, the plan completely fell apart even before the first soldier landed.  The simplest and most fundamental aspect of the plan was to simply “drive” the troops straight ashore to their designated landing spots.  However, as demonstrated at Omaha beach,

“With the exception of Company A 116th, no unit landed where it was supposed to.”

Weather, tides, German defensive barriers, sand bars, defensive fire, and general confusion combined to scatter the troops widely.  Units were intermingled and too far away from their specific objectives to act effectively.  If the simple act of landing can’t be counted on to happen as planned, what can?  The answer is nothing.  If anything does go right, we should consider it a blessing but not something we can count on.  Our modern tendency to allocate just the bare minimum assets to an objective with the assumption that all will go reasonably well is a recipe for disaster. 

The actions of naval destroyers was noteworthy.  Often in defiance of orders and doctrine, they moved right up to the beach and engaged in duels with German emplacements to good effect.  Lt. Joe Smith, Navy beachmaster, said,

“… the destroyers come right into the beach firing into the cliff.  You could see the trenches, guns, and men blowing up where they would hit.  They aimed right below the edge of the cliffs where the trenches were dug in.  There is no question in my mind that the few Navy destroyers that we had there saved the invasion.”

Contrast this use of destroyers with the Navy’s current doctrine of standing 25-50 miles off shore.  The infantry will be left without any heavy gun support (to the extent that a 5” gun can be considered heavy) during the critical initial phase of an assault.

We see, then, that the historical example of D-Day offers many lessons that are still relevant today.  Yes, technology may have altered a few of the lessons but the alterations are more a matter of degree than obsolescence. 

I’ll post a concluding piece on this book, shortly.  D-Day and its lessons are too important to leave in the dustbin of history.

D-Day, Part 2

This is a continuation of the previous D-Day lessons post based on the book, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Batle of World War II, by Stephen Ambrose. 

Here are some more tidbits from the book that offer lessons relevant to today’s amphibious assault concerns.

Rommel had an interesting view of the decisive moment to defeat an amphibious assault and how to accomplish it.

“Drawing on his experience in North Africa, Rommel told his chief engineer officer, Gen. Wilhelm Meise, that Allied control of the air would prevent the movement of German reinforcements to the battle area, so ‘Our only possible chance will be at the beaches – that’s where the enemy is always weakest.’  As a start on building a genuine Atlantic Wall, he said, ‘I want antipersonnel mines, antitank mines, antiparatroops mines.  I want mines to sink ships, and mines to sink landing craft.  I want some minefields designed to that our infantry can cross them, but no enemy tanks.  I want mines that detonate when a wire is tripped;  mines that explode when a wire is cut;  mines that can be remote controlled, and mines that will blow up when a beam of light is interrupted.”

Rommel’s focus was clearly on mines.  Even today, mines remain, arguably, the most potent, affordable, anti-assault weapon available.  Despite this, the USN has allowed its mine countermeasure (MCM) assets to dwindle to a nearly non-existent state.  The Navy has, currently, only 11 Avenger class MCM vessels and some helo squadrons to counter countries that are believed to have hundreds of thousands of mines available for use.

Consider the Navy’s current MCM resources versus those the Allies used to accomplish the D-Day assault.

“The first to move out were the minesweepers.  Their job was to sweep up along the English coast in case the Luftwaffe and E-boats had dropped mines in the area, then proceed to clear five channels for the separate assault forces (O, U, G, J, and S), marking them with lighted dan buoys spaced at one-mile intervals along the 400-meter-wide channels, and finally clear the area in which the transports would anchor off the beaches.  There were 245 vessels involved in this mammoth sweeping job.”

The D-Day assault used 245 vessels for just the minesweeping portion of the operation.  The Navy has 11 Avenger MCM vessels and some helos.  Does anyone see any hope of conducting an opposed assault by a country with thousands of deployed mines?  Also, note that the D-Day minesweeping operation had to be completed in just a few hours in order to get the troops ashore before the element of surprise was lost.  Contrast that to the current LCS minesweeping effort which clears mines at the rate of about one mine per hour per LCS.  Do the math.  We have absolutely no hope of executing effective minesweeping operations in a relevant time frame today.

One of the interesting aspects of the D-Day assault was the debate concerning the use of airborne troops (paratroops).  Eisenhower’s view on airborne troops was,

“… an airborne force well inland would not be self-contained, would lack mobility, and would therefore be destroyed.  The Germans had shown time and again, in the war that they did not fear a ‘strategic threat of envelopment.’  Using the road nets of Western Europe, they could concentrate immense firepower against an isolated garrison and defeat it in detail.  …  An inland airborne force, cut off from all supply except what could be brought in by air, without tanks or trucks, immobile and inadequately armed, would be annihilated.”

Again, this a warning to the modern strategist/tactician that airborne assaults such as the Marine Corps is now proposing are a very risky proposition and suited only for very short, very low end combat operations.  The Marines need to carefully re-examine their desire for aviation based assaults.

The role of naval gunfire was recognized by the German defenders.  Responding to Rommels desire to entrench the Panzer divisions on the coast rather than use them for mobile and powerful counterattack forces, Gen. Heinz Guderian, Hitler’s panzer expert, had this to say to Rommel.

“He advised Rommel to pull the tanks back out of range of Allied naval guns.  He insisted that the lesson from the Sicily and Salerno landings was crystal clear – the Germans could not fight a decisive battle while they were under those naval guns.  Guderian knew that an amphibious force is not at its most vulnerable when it is half ashore, half at sea.  It is at its most powerful at that time, thanks to those big naval guns.”

Thus, we see the power of naval gunfire in the minds of the German defenders (at least some of them!).  While this lesson would and should apply today, the sad reality is that the Navy has NO naval gunfire capability.  Even the paltry 5” guns on Burkes are useless in an amphibious assault scenario since doctrine has the ships standing 25-50 miles out to sea, beyond the range of the guns! 

British Gen. Montgomery summed up the requirements for success in the assault at a pre-assault planning meeting,

“Montgomery said, ‘We have the initiative.  We must rely on:

(a)  the violence of our assault.

(b)  our great weight of supporting fire from the sea and the air.

(c)  simplicity.

(d)  robust mentality.’ “

It’s interesting that the first two requirements are about providing an overwhelming degree of explosives, to put it bluntly.  This is nearly opposite of today’s combat philosophy of focused, narrow power with an emphasis on minimizing collateral damage.  Further, we are designing smaller, less powerful weapons rather than larger, more powerful ones.

Equally fascinating is the requirement for simplicity.  Again, this is completely at odds with today’s dependence on exquisitely aligned networks, data, databases, communications, and coordination.  Of course, come combat, none of that will work and we’ll revert to simplicity but we seem unable to grasp that concept today, preferring to focus on our fantasies of clean, analytical, surgical combat with minimal effort and no casualties.

We see, then, that the historical example of D-Day offers many lessons that are still relevant today.  Yes, technology may have altered a few of the lessons but the alterations are more a matter of degree than obsolescence. 

I’ll offer a few more posts of this nature based on this book.  D-Day and its lessons are too important to leave in the dustbin of history.

LCS-2 Class - What's the Problem?

While not a success by any measure, the Freedom class variant of LCS has at least deployed twice (admittedly, more PR deployments than anything).  What’s the Independence class variant doing?

Let’s check the history.  The first Independence class vessel began construction in Jan 2006.  Since then, 11 more of the variant have been built, are under construction, or on order.  Two vessels have been commissioned, the Independence, LCS-2, and the Coronado, LCS-4.  So, in nine and a half years we’ve commissioned two ships and none have yet deployed. 

Nine years and not a single deployment.

Nine years and not a single deployment.

Yeah, I know I repeated that sentence but it seems noteworthy.

We’ve documented the weight problems with the LCS in general and the Independence variant, in particular.  Further, the Navy performed heavy seas testing on the variant and discovered cracks in the mission bay supports.  As a result, the ships have had performance limits imposed on them.  USS Independence, itself, has never completed acceptance trials.

I’m beginning to think that there are further, serious problems with this variant that have not yet been made public.

Nine years and not a single deployment.

D-Day Lessons

ComNavOps is currently reading the book, D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climatic Batle of World War II, by Stephen Ambrose.  The book is quite extensive at over 600 pages and is more of an oral history than a pure academic study, however, there are strategic and tactical lessons packed in throughout the book if one reads between the lines and can do a bit of self-assembly of the events and lessons.

Here  are some tidbits from the book that offer lessons relevant to today’s amphibious assault concerns.

Discussing the concept of defense of the western European coast from the anticipated Allied amphibious invasion, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, Western European Commander, argued against dependence on fixed fortifications.

“He argued that the Germans should hold their armored units well back from the coast, out of range of Allied naval gunfire, capable of mounting a genuine counteroffensive.”

This was a potentially devastating strategy that the Germans failed to implement thanks in large measure to Hitler and Rommel's personal obsession with fortification defenses.  This strategy offers a warning to us, today.  A peer defender will, undoubtedly hold back reserves and we must be prepared to deal with them.  Simply winning a foothold on the beach (or inland location in the case of vertical assault) is not enough.  Just as there will be defense in depth, so too must there be the ability to apply offense in depth. We must be prepared to attack not only the immediate assault site but the defender’s depth as well.

Not only will defenders withhold troops and armor from the immediate assault point but the existence, today, of long range rockets and missiles adds an additional element of defense in depth.  Given the extreme range of today’s missiles, we must be prepared to extend the assault for hundreds of miles – no easy task.

The importance of combat engineers is emphasized.

“Almost one-quarter of the American troops going in on the morning of D-Day would be engineers.  Their tasks, more less in this order, were to: demolish beach obstacles, blow up mines on the beach, erect signs to guide incoming landing craft through cleared channels, set up panels to bring in the troops and equipment (the color of the panel told the ships offshore which supplies to send in), clear access roads from the beach, blow gaps in the antitank wall, establish supply dumps, and act as beachmasters (traffic cops).”

Contrast this to today’s lack of emphasis on engineering tasks and the lack of specialized equipment for the engineering tasks.  Among other needs, the US desperately needs a modern, specialized Combat Engineering Vehicle (CEV).

The debilitating effects of sea-sickness are pointed out.

“Bingham [Maj. Sidney Bingham, CO, 2^nd Battalion, 116^th] did an analysis of what went wrong for the first and second waves.  Among other factors, he said, the men were in the Higgins boats far too long.  ‘Seasickness occasioned by the three or four hours in LCVPs played havoc with an idealism that may have been present.  It markedly decreased the combat effectiveness of the command.”

Consider that time frame of 3-4 hours rendering troops significantly less combat effective and then consider the Navy/Marine’s desire to move the assault starting point out to 25-50 miles with the resultant possible increase in transit times.  Yes, an LCAC can travel at high speeds but LCACs are not doctrinally considered as initial assault transports.  At the moment, we only have AAVs.  Various ideas have been put forth for dealing with the extended transit but none have yet been adopted.  Transport to the beach is a serious shortcoming today.

Mobility, on both sides, is discussed.

“Once in France, the Allied paratroops and seaborne troops would be relatively immobile.  Until the beachhead had been expanded to allow self-propelled artillery and trucks to come ashore, movement would be by legs rather than half-tracks or tires.  The Germans, meanwhile, could move to the sound of the guns by road and rail – and by spring 1944 they would have fifty infantry and eleven armored divisions in France.”

This is a potentially profound lesson for today’s proponents of aviation vertical assaults.  Once on the ground, the troops have little mobility and become, in essence, a fixed target.  The enemy can move large amounts of troops (and armor!) to the attack point fairly quickly.  An aviation assault, with its utter lack of armored vehicles must succeed in its mission quickly or risk being overwhelmed by responding enemy troops.  Further, additional support to interdict enemy troop movements by road or rail is mandatory, requiring that the aviation assault be much larger in scope than the mere assault element, itself.  How to provide that additional support at a, presumably, far inland location is a question not answered by current doctrine.

It was recognized that the initial assault was not the only or even the biggest challenge.  Sustainment of the assault was vital and problematic.

“So the Allies really had two problems – getting ashore, and winning the battle of the buildup.”

As we’ve discussed, sustainment of an assault is the real challenge and is a real shortcoming for US amphibious forces today.  We lack the numbers and types of transports and connectors to sustain a major amphibious assault.

The logistics of moving troops from ship to shore was the major impediment to the assault.

“… the chief limiting factor in planning the invasion was lack of sufficient landing ships and craft.  Indeed, that was the single most important factor in shaping the whole strategy of the war, in the Pacific, in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic.  Churchill complained with some bitterness that ‘the destinies of two great empires … seemed to be tied up in some goddamned things called LSTs.’”

In a similar vein, General Eisenhower is quoted in the book as crediting the Higgins boat with winning the war.

“If Higgins (the inventor) had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach.  The whole strategy of the war would have been different.”

The US has allowed its fleet of LSTs and other such vessels to nearly vanish.  We lack the means to get a sufficient number of troops and, more importantly, armor and artillery ashore in a useful time frame to say nothing of the follow on (sustainment) munitions, food, fuel, etc.

We see, then, that the historical example of D-Day offers many lessons that are still relevant today.  Yes, technology may have altered a few of the lessons but the alterations are more a matter of degree than obsolescence. 

I’ll offer a few more posts of this nature based on this book.  D-Day and its lessons are too important to leave in the dustbin of history.

Scattered Across the Pacific

USNI News website has an article about Marine Commandant Dunford suggesting that the Marines must fundamentally shift the way they operate in response to their new preference for force disaggregation across the Pacific (1).  The Marines are looking to put small forces in several locations:  Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Guam, and Australia.  These would all be elements of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) and would result in the MEF being scattered across the Pacific. 

As suggested in the article, two questions come to mind.

1.    What useful purpose can small packets of Marines serve?

2.    How can the overall force be reaggregated when the need arises?

While small packets can offer some benefit for non-combat or very low end peacetime operations such as embassy evacuations or humanitarian assistance, you have to wonder if that benefit justifies both the cost of multiple bases and the breaking up of a coherent force.

Further, these disaggregated forces presumably have little or no heavy equipment with them.  How will they marry up their equipment?  What kind of relevant training can they do while disaggregated without their equipment?

Consider the basing of Marines in Australia.  There is no need for Marines anywhere near Australia.  I guess they’re closer to China if that ever became a need but that type of need would not materialize overnight and an extra thousand lightly equipped Marines wouldn’t make much difference anyway.

More important is the issue of re-aggregating.  Part of the rationale for disaggregating the force is the supposed lack of amphibious vessels.  I don’t believe that claim but we’ll accept it at face value for the sake of this discussion.  So, if we haven’t got enough ships to keep the force together and afloat, how will we transport those Marines when we need to re-aggregate them, presumably to face a Chinese or N. Korean threat?  A fleet of JHSVs (which haven’t got the numbers or the range), tugs, barges, or small commercial ships would not only be a slow, logistical challenge but would be defenseless if any enemy opted to contest the movement. 

The entire disaggregation movement appears to be an attempt to claim a piece of the Pacific Pivot budget pie more than an operationally useful deployment of forces.  There are highly useful missions for the Marines within the context of the Pacific Pivot and AirSea Battle but it’s not scattering small packets of Marines across several thousand miles of Pacific ocean.

(1)USNI, “Dunford: Marines Must Fundamentally Rethink Deployment Strategies, Training”, Megan Eckstein, June 25, 2015,

http://news.usni.org/2015/06/25/dunford-marines-must-fundamentally-rethink-deployment-strategies-training

Burke Flt III Shortcomings

The most recent Congressional Research Service report on the Navy’s DDG programs has an incredibly damning statement concerning the Navy’s surface combatant roadmap(1).

You’ll recall that the Burke class has pretty well used up its growth margins and, therefore, the announcement that the Navy would use the Burke as the foundation for the new AMDR radar system was a bit of a head scratcher.  The Burkes lacked internal volume and ship’s utilities to properly support the Navy’s stated AMDR requirement.  Despite this lack, the Navy opted to go with the Burke class (Flt III) as the AMDR host with the predictable outcome that the installed AMDR will be significantly less capable than the Navy’s stated requirement.  The Navy’s response to the shortfall is that the smaller AMDR will meet the immediate needs but may be inadequate to deal with future threats. 

Thus, we see that the Navy is committing to building a ship with little growth margin at a time of blossoming new technologies such as lasers and rail guns which will have voracious appetites for ship’s volume and utilities.  Further, the Navy is committing to building a ship that they have admitted is inadequate for dealing with future, reasonably foreseeable threats.  The Navy is committing to a 35 year lifespan ship that it acknowledges won’t be able to meet the threats over that time period.  Is this wise???

Anyway, here is the report’s statement on the subject.

“The Navy’s pre-2008 plan to procure DDG-1000 destroyers and then CG(X) cruisers based on the DDG-1000 hull design represented the Navy’s roadmap at the time for restoring growth margins, and for introducing into the cruiser-destroyer force significant numbers of ships with integrated electric drive systems and technologies for substantially reducing ship crew sizes. The ending of the DDG-1000 and CG(X) programs in favor of continued procurement of DDG-51s leaves the Navy without an announced roadmap to do these things, because the Flight III DDG-51 will not feature a fully restored growth margin, will not be equipped with an integrated electric drive system or other technologies that could provide ample electrical power for supporting future electrically powered weapons, and will not incorporate features for substantially reducing ship crew size or for otherwise reducing ship O&S costs substantially below that of Flight IIA DDG- 51s.”

So, not only will the Flt III Burkes have little growth margin, less than desired radar performance, and known shortfalls over the course of their lifespans, but they will not be equipped with the Navy’s Holy Grail of propulsion/power, integrated electric drives, and will not be minimally manned.

Does anyone have any idea how this sounds like a good idea to the Navy?

Of course, if you’ve followed this blog you already know the answer.  The Navy has purposely chosen an unwise course strictly to avoid Congressional oversight that would come from a new ship design.  The Navy has passed the Burke Flt III off to Congress as a minor upgrade of an existing design.  Setting aside the fraudulent nature of that maneuver, the Navy is knowingly accepting a very poor design just to avoid critics and critical review of a major acquisition program. 

They were burned so badly with the LCS that they’ll do anything, no matter how unwise, to avoid more criticism.  That doesn’t need to be the case, though.  If the Navy would simply be upfront with Congress and run a disciplined program they could have their new design and reasonable oversight, too.  Consider the Zumwalt program.  That’s a major undertaking and the Navy is receiving no undue criticism so it can be done (we’ll set aside the value and wisdom of the Zumwalt for the sake of this discussion).

When the criticisms are being formally written into Congressional Research Reports, you have a problem.  Assuming the Navy was being honest with us about the need for the full version of the AMDR (and that’s a big assumption given the Navy’s habit of manipulating the truth!) they need to terminate the Flt III immediately and move the AMDR to some other platform.  The Internet has offered plenty of alternatives any of which would be an improvement over the worst option which is the Flt III.

(1)Congressional Research Service, “Navy DDG-51 and DDG-1000 Destroyer Programs: Background and Issues for Congress”, Ronald O'Rourke, Jun 2015