‘Remotely Crewed’ Systems Can Save Money, But Specialized Thinking Needed

March 26, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

Remotely-operated or autonomous systems could be a big money-saver for the Pentagon, but planners need to think about them in a more specialized way, because the category has diversified so much that broad policies are no longer applicable, experts said during a virtual Center for Strategic and International Studies event March 26.

“Remotely Crewed” systems can bridge the affordability gap between people and platforms “by substituting technology for labor,” said Todd Harrison, CSIS’s director of budget analysis, in the event. His coinage avoids applying a gender to the term and acknowledges that such systems may have significant personnel support needs, he said.

“As personnel costs get more expensive,” expanded use of such systems can be a force-multiplier, Harrison pointed out, “either to increase force structure without having to increase personnel, or to accommodate necessary reductions in personnel to save money without having to cut force structure.”

However, so far remotely operated systems have not diminished personnel needs because the demand for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance products has only increased, making the systems additive to existing “crewed” platforms like the U-2, he observed.

Even so, RPAs can’t be a big money-saver if they “remain very expensive to procure [and] … operate. We’ve got to get those costs down, and the key part of getting those costs down is reducing the number of personnel required,” including operators and maintainers,” Harrison said. “Or, if you can get the procurement cheap enough, make [the platforms] expendable.”

Scott Wierzbanowski, program manager for drones technology at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said specific tactics are needed for different types of drones.

“We have to start changing our tactics,” he said. A drone aircraft will be operated in a very different way than a crewed airplane, because the operators are concerned about “their lives, [or] the value of the system, …. but if you have an attritable or expendable system,” it might be acceptable to lose four out of five in penetrating an areas, “as long as one gets in.” They open up “a completely new way of doing business,” he said. Drones will offer an ability to “meet mass with mass,” particularly for countries that can’t afford a high-end air force.

Defending against such systems also requires different thinking, Wierzbanoswki said.

“Counter-swarms and counter-drones are two separate things. When you’re dealing with swarms, that’s a complicated problem, if the swarms are capable enough. How do you individually target these systems or do a mass protection of a particular area? That’s a tough nut to crack.” Whereas, shooting down something like a Global Hawk involves the same tactics as would be used against a manned aircraft.

Costs of remotely piloted aircraft tend to be lower per flying hour because “they fly so many more hours” per sortie and per year than crewed aircraft, Harrison noted.

Operating drones requires network resiliency, panelists said, and the drones themselves can help in this regard.

“That’s where remotely-crewed systems come in, because they can serve as nodes in those networks,” Harrison noted. “If we do it right, they can give us diversification of platforms, and a distribution of location that makes it much more difficult for an adversary to take down those battle networks.”

Jacqueline Schneider, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, said the services are “not investing rationally” to get full advantage out of remotely-crewed systems, because they aren’t putting enough money and emphasis on ensuring resilient communications with them. Harrison noted, though, that autonomy of such systems will help with this, because it must be assumed that such connections will be at times jammed or eliminated in a war, and autonomy will help with resiliency.

Schneider also said drones can be profitably used as a “cost-imposing” method on an adversary. Cheap drones could be “missile soakers” in a conflict, forcing an enemy to shoot at them with expensive, high-end missiles, she said. This is the thinking behind the Air Force’s Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, but she said the services aren’t spending enough on such an obvious application.

Swarm systems could also slow down an enemy by simply massing at the end of a runway, thus hobbling the field’s operators’ ability to launch and recover aircraft, Schneider said. Such devices wouldn’t need to be carrying sensors, so they don’t need to be expensive.

Services like the Air Force would be well-served by creating RPA-operating organizations—wings and even numbered air forces—so that specialists in the field can compete better for promotion, optimize training for their needs, and better advocate for their systems, Harrison suggested. As long as RPA pilots and sensor operators must compete with “crewed” aircraft pilots, they may be at a cultural disadvantage, he said.

Air Force Goes All in on Digital Twinning—for Bombs As Well As Planes

March 26, 2021 | By Shaun Waterman

Having successfully used “digital twinning” to design and prototype its latest jet trainer aircraft, the Air Force is moving to use the new technology to develop and test weapons, too—building an online Colosseum in which vendors’ systems can virtually fight each other.

Col. Garry A. Haase, head of the Munitions Directorate at the Air Force Research Lab, said AFRL plans to stage regular competition events in the Colosseum, each dealing with a different technology area.

Each vendor could submit a digital twin of a proposed weapons platform for evaluation in “a kind of a Gladiator showdown, if you will, across that particular technology area,” he said during an AFCEA Northern Virginia luncheon March 26.

Digital twinning involves creating a detailed virtual model of an aircraft, weapons systems, or other artifact, so that it can undergo initial testing without the time and expense of building a prototype. The Air Force’s new trainer jet, the eT-7 Red Hawk, was designed and underwent initial testing using the technology, with former Secretary Barbara M. Barrett boasting during AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference that it had flown “thousands of hours before it [took] off,” and it was “assembled hundreds of times before any metal [was] even cut.”

To operate their digital twins in the Colosseum, while maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of their proprietary designs, vendors will have to build them to conform to a Government Reference Architecture, Haase explained. “It’s not us owning all your intellectual property or the technologies necessarily, but it’s owning how we interface with those systems,” he said. The reference architecture provides data standards and defines the interfaces the digital model can use, “so that we can more easily plug other people’s systems and subsystems into a bigger system” like the Colosseum.

The online Colosseum will be the next step in the AFRL’s Golden Horde program—developing networked, collaborative, autonomous (NCA) systems like swarming drones or “fire and forget” weapons, which find their own targets and then attack them in a synchronized fashion. Golden Horde is a Vanguard program—one of a handful of high-profile research projects the Air Force sees as the most promising for delivering new warfighter capability most quickly.

The second real world test of Collaborative Small Diameter Bombs, a CNA weapons systems being developed as part of Golden Horde, took place earlier this year, but the Air Force has said it currently has no plans to deploy CSDB technology on the battlefield.

“I don’t have a good answer for you,” on when the first digitally developed weapons system might be fielded, Haase said, but he added the first one had already been developed. The Gray Wolf is an “expendable platform”—basically a low cost cruise missile—designed to be easy to integrate with other weapons systems through a modular design approach called WOSAA, or weapons open system architecture approach.

Gray Wolf was digitally designed “from the beginning,” Haase said. “We have a digital twin model of our Gray Wolf, which is what we have been playing in a lot of our scenarios.”

Networked weapons systems will play a key part in the vision of a connected military enshrined in the plan for joint all-domain command and control, or JADC2. “The concept,” Haase explained, “is everything being connected and able to share data and communicate.”

Weapons are an important element of that JADC2 vision, Haase explained, “Because they may—especially longer range systems—may be the first system to get close to a threat or [into a denied] area, and therefore have the best intelligence data that then can be passed back into the network.”

U.S., Canadian Aircraft Train to Protect Arctic Airspace

March 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

U.S., Canadian, and NATO aircraft trained together during Exercise Amalgam Dart to quickly position aircraft and protect the northern airspace as the Arctic becomes increasingly important.

A total of 27 aircraft and about 500 personnel trained together at multiple bases in Canada, Greenland, and the northern U.S. for a “multi-domain approach to Arctic security,” the Canadian NORAD region said in a statement.

“NORAD is committed to working with its allies and partners to strengthen global stability and security as we now face a much broader range of threats that are testing our security, and require innovative and tailored defenses,” said Royal Canadian Air Force Maj. Gen. Eric Kenny, commander of Canadian NORAD Region. “Exercise Amalgam Dart provides both Canadian and U.S. forces the opportunity to maintain and build on our capabilities.”

USAF F-16, KC-10, KC-46, KC-135, C-130, and C-17 aircraft participated in the exercise. Canadian aircraft include CF-18, CP-130 patrol aircraft, CC-130 tactical airlift and search and rescue aircraft, CC-150T aerial refuelers, and CH-149 Cormorant helicopters. A NATO E-3 AWACS also participated.

Aircraft deployed to Thule Air Base, Greenland, for the exercise and then operations extended from there to the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska and Canada, and Eastern Canada down to the coast of Maine.

NORAD declined to detail the specific scenarios involved in the exercise, but said it was designed to “address emerging challenges and emerging capabilities.”

“Ultimately, we seek an Arctic region that is stable and free of conflict, where nations act responsibly in a spirit of trust and cooperation,” the command said in a statement. “During Exercise Amalgam Dart, NORAD worked collaboratively with not only commands like Canadian Joint Operations Command, but all stakeholders in the Arctic region, including NATO, Greenland, and Indigenous communities and towns, underlining existing relationships while extending our capabilities into the High Arctic.”

The Air Force is placing a growing emphasis on the region, following the release of its first-ever Arctic Strategy last year.

DOD Expects Vaccines Available to All Troops by May 1

March 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

The Pentagon expects the broad military population to have access to the COVID-19 vaccine by May 1, with the entire Defense Department vaccinated by July.

Defense Health Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald J. Place, in a March 26 briefing at the Pentagon, said the DOD has vaccines underway at 343 sites, in addition to the 3,000 military personnel working at Federal Emergency Management Agency mass vaccination sites as part of the country-wide push to ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations.

So far, the DOD has administered 1.8 million doses of the shots to 1.1 million military members, families, civilians, contractors, and retirees. Of that total, about 600,000 service members have received a shot—about 30 percent of the force, Place said.

The Defense Department, like the rest of the nation, has prioritized the populations who received the vaccines first. The initial focus was on “lowering operational risk and those most vulnerable.” About 60 percent of service members are in the “final tier” or general population that will be last to be open to receive the vaccine.

Place said the broad supply chain has been “working well, with shipments arriving on time.” The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which unlike the Moderna and Pfizer versions does not require extreme cold storage, has been especially helpful for the military to inoculate service members deployed in remote environments.

As more service members receive the vaccine, the Defense Department has noticed a higher take rate among those troops who declined to receive it when they were first offered. Some troops have been offered the vaccine three or four times, and eventually decided to receive it, Place said.

Senior military leaders have been encouraging service members to receive the vaccine as soon as possible. For example, Acting Air Force Secretary John P. Roth visited multiple Air Force bases recently, and encouraged Airmen and Guardians to get the shot when it is available to them.

B-1s, B-2s Wrap Up European Bomber Task Force Deployment

March 26, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

B-1s and B-2s wrapped up a bomber task force deployment on March 25, which included several firsts in the Arctic and across Europe.

B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., flew the final sortie of the task force deployment out of Lajes Field, Portugal. While the B-2s were in the Azores, B-1Bs from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, were deployed to Orland Air Base, Norway, for the first time.

During the deployment, the B-1s flew nine sorties, including training with Norwegian F-35s, Swedish JAS-39 Gripens, Danish and Polish F-16s, and German and Italian Eurofighter Typhoons, according to a U.S. Air Forces in Europe release.

The Lancers conducted a hot-pit refueling in Europe for the first time, and trained with U.S. special operations forces along with Norwegian and Swedish joint terminal attack controllers.

The B-2s deployed to Lajes Field on March 16, and flew four missions, including flights with the B-1s and Norwegian F-35s in Iceland, according to USAFE.

“Looking back at everything our Airmen have accomplished in the past month is pretty incredible,” USAFE boss Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian said in the release. “This iteration of BTF demonstrated our unwavering commitment to the security and stability of Europe, provided vital opportunities to strengthen our bonds with allies and partners, and allowed our Airmen to develop and refine skills that are necessary for the future success of our air operations.”

Army, Calling Itself an ‘All-Domain’ Force, Prioritizes Long-Range Strike

March 25, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak

The Army’s new vision dubs it an “All-Domain” Army and envisions “expanding … into the maritime, air, space, and cyber domains” while seizing new roles in long-range strike and suppressing enemy air defense.

A new white paper released March 16 declares that, while part of the Joint force, the Army holds a pre-eminent role in combat by virtue of its size, and surmises that the other services should adopt its methodologies.

Titled, “Army Multi-Domain Transformation: Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict,” and released by Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville, the paper envisions a “bold transformation” of Army organizations, weapons, and strategy, to “provide the Joint Force with the range, speed, and convergence of cutting-edge technologies that will be needed to provide future decision dominance and overmatch required to win the next fight.”

The paper asserts a multi-domain Army “will set the conditions for the Joint Force to fight and win integrated campaigns necessary to defeat state actors.”

Speaking in a Brookings Institution webinar March 25, McConville expanded on the vision laid out in the paper. He said the Army has a “need to penetrate” enemy airspace, and must therefore have its own long-range precision fires, such as hypersonic missiles, to deter attack and respond when needed. In his vision, such missiles would make the Army the key instrument for negating “what some of our competitors have done with anti-access/area denial” by means of air and missile defenses.

The concept turns on its head the conventional air-land arrangement, where air power clears the way for ground maneuver; McConville said land-based hypersonic missiles could enable the Army to “certainly suppress air defense, which could open up a gap if we needed to put aerial maneuver into place.”

The talking points built on recent comments in which McConville claimed that Army’s Apache helicopters opened corridors for fixed-wing aircraft to attack Iraq at the outset of the 1991 Gulf war. His exaggeration ignored the Air Force stealth aircraft that had already penetrated Iraqi airspace and were destroying its command and control apparatus. McConville cited the same example at Brookings, describing the Apache mission as “illustrative” of what the Army has in mind for future long-range fires.

“Long Range Precision Fires is very important,” he said. “We feel we need to have that. … We’re going to have the … anti-ship capability, the capability to suppress air defense systems at very, very long range…the ability to do strategic counter-fire, the ability to do anti-access/area denial.”

Asked about the roles-and-missions implications of his concpet, McConville declined to answer. He promised a fuller doctrine document next year.

“We need speed in the future,” McConville said. This is “the big idea” for the Army. “We know we need range. … But it’s really about convergence and how we bring all these systems together to get decision dominance.”

McConville also asserted that the Army is the right entity to develop a Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control system (CJADC2), not the Air Force, which pioneered the concept. The difference is that the Army is bigger, he said.

“We’ve had this discussion with the Air Force,” McConville said. “Bringing together thousands of airplanes that can talk to each other is a different task from what the Army has to do, with over a million systems on the ground that have to pass information.” The sheer scale of the Army challenge means that what “works fine” for thousands of airplanes “may not work fine” for that larger Army force. However, McConville acknowledged that his forces “may not need as much information.”

McConville’s goal is to transform the Army by 2035, with 2028 as a “waypoint” to re-assess and adjust. The paper lays out the “big six” Army modernization priorities:

Long Range Precision Fires to “penetrate and neutralize” enemy A2AD capabilities and “ensuring overmatch at every echelon”
Next-Generation Combat Vehicles to increase firepower speed and survivability while allowing them to team with robotic vehicles
Future Vertical Lift programs to enhance speed, range and lethality
Army Network Modernization to command and control forces “across vast terrain” and converge effects from multiple domains
Air and Missile Defenses to defend the Joint Force, Allies, and partners against manned and unmanned air and missile threats
Soldier Lethality systems to help individual soldiers quickly understand and react to emerging situations while making them more precise, survivable, and lethal

The new vision paper insists that “winning the first battle or prevent a fait accompli in crisis will be necessary to prevent prolonged conflict and escalation.” It sees “ground forces [seizing the role to] decisively shape the first battle by leveraging positional and capability advantage.” The Army sees itself as operating and persisting “inside” enemy air defense zones, and creating “corridors for air, maritime and all-domain forces to exploit.” The Army will also establish “robust, resilient webs of communication, protection and sustainment that enable to the Joint Force to prosecute conflict.”

Using long-range fires from the ground, it says, the Army would be uniquely suited to “protect strategic deployments,” provide rapid availability of the Joint Force, facilitate deployments “from the contested homeland to the point of employment,” establish lines of communication, and maximize inter- and intra-theater transition capabilities.

That vision is duplicative, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The Army, he said, is “putting on a full-court press to duplicate long-range strike, air- and space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and command and control capabilities that already exist in the other services.”

Jointness, Deptula continued, requires “each of the services to dominate in their respective domains—not encroach into the domains of the other services.” Just because a service depends on another for its core competencies—long-range strike being an example—that doesn’t mean the others “should rush to replicate what already exists.”

If more long-range strike is required, Deptula said, “then the additional investment should be made in the service with the most competency in that function; in this case, the Air Force.” If surface-to-surface missiles “are deemed appropriate to enhance air-delivered strikes,” then that capability should be assigned to the Air Force, he argued.

“It would be much more cost-effective since the Air Force already has the command and control and ISR architecture to operate weapon systems across an entire theater of operations, as well as globally,” he said.

The new Army hypersonic missiles are, “unfortunately …. prohibitively expensive, non-reusable and require extensive deployment logistics support,” he asserted. “The bottom line is that our nation can ill afford to proceed with programs that replicate effective, proven weapon systems and C2ISR architectures, merely to bolster a single service’s ‘footprint’ in the battlespace.”

The new Army hypersonic missiles will cost millions of dollars per shot, versus thousands of dollars per shot for weapons released from stealth aircraft, which can be re-used, Deptula said.

“The next few years will see hard choices in the defense budget,” Deptula said. “Finite dollars must be directed toward programs that optimize combat options and capability across all the services. Not just one.”

SOCOM: ‘Stretched Thin’ Forces Need New Armed Overwatch Solution

March 25, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

U.S. special operations forces need a new armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft to fully support all its missions, Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 25.

“In many remote areas, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and close air support assets are stretched thin and come at high cost,” he said. “We continue to work with DOD to address this issue.”

SOCOM wants an armed overwatch system to provide “sustainable support” to activities fighting violent extremist organizations. SOCOM is seeking 75 armed overwatch aircraft that could deploy to remote areas and provide both ISR and attack capabilities to special operators. These aircraft would replace the Air Force’s U-28 Draco, an unarmed ISR platform.

“This program will provide cost-effective, multipurpose aircraft to support operations in remote, austere areas for the foreseeable future,” Clarke said.

Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, who heads Air Force Special Operations Command, said Feb. 25 that remotely piloted aircraft could compete, though the current MQ-9 might not meet requirements.

SOCOM must sell Congress on the idea, which was not funded in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Neither SOCOM nor USAF have disclosed how much they propose to spend on the program. The Pentagon’s 2022 defense budget request is not anticipated on Capitol Hill until May. The command hopes to have a demonstration this year, but no date has been set, Slife said.

About 5,000 SOCOM personnel are deployed today in 62 countries, down about 15 percent from last year and the smallest number since 2001, Clarke said. Increasingly, however, those deployed forces are shifting from counter-terrorism to “great power competition requirements,” Clarke said, with 40 percent of SOCOM’s deployed forces focusing on those efforts.

Clarke said SOCOM’s modernization priorities now reflect this change, and increasingly focus on next-generation ISR, mobility, and data networks “to ensure we have precision strikes in the future.”

This story was updated at 10:45 am on March 26 to correct the date of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Biden: Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline ‘Hard to Meet,’ but Troops Will Leave Soon

March 25, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

President Joe Biden on March 25 reiterated that it will be difficult for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by the May 1 deadline, but said American troops will come home soon.

“It’s hard to meet the May 1st withdrawal deadline,” Biden said during his first press conference in office. “We are working with our allies. We are not staying a long time. We will leave, the question is when we leave.”

When asked if U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan next year, Biden was definitive, saying, “I can’t picture that being the case.” U.S. forces already have drawn down to 2,500 in the country.

Defense Department officials have repeatedly said Taliban violence is too high, and withdrawing too soon will limit Afghan forces’ ability to defend themselves. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week visited NATO to discuss the way ahead in the country, and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III visited Kabul to meet with senior Afghan officials.

“We’ve been meeting with our allies, those other nations that have troops in Afghanistan as well, and if we leave we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way,” Biden said.

Earlier on March 25, Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee the Taliban has “not upheld what they said they would do. It is clear they took a deliberate approach and increased violence since the peace accords were signed.”

While Afghan forces have made progress, U.S. and other international support is still “critical to their success,” Clarke said.

US Prepared to Respond If North Korea Escalates After Ballistic Missile Test

March 25, 2021 | By Brian W. Everstine

President Joe Biden said the U.S. will “respond accordingly” if North Korea continues to escalate following the March 25 test launch of two short-range ballistic missiles, which he said violated a United Nations resolution.

During his first press conference in office, Biden said the test launches show that North Korea is the top foreign policy crisis the U.S. faces. His administration is consulting with allies, and he is “prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization,” he said.

The two missiles were fired at 7:06 a.m. and 7:25 a.m. on North Korea’s eastern coast, and flew about 450 kilometers before landing in the sea, the Associated Press reported.

“This activity highlights the threat that North Korea’s illicit weapons program poses to its neighbors and the international community,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command spokesperson Capt. Mike Kafka told the AP.

The test comes just one day after North Korea launched two presumed cruise missiles into the sea to its west.

North Korea has traditionally ramped up its missile activity in the early stages of a new White House administration. The Biden administration is undergoing a review of the North Korea policy, which could include the resumption of exercises with South Korea.

A senior administration official said March 23 these exercises are “necessary” and that stopping them was “antithetical to our position as the keeper and the maintenance of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.”