The future battlespace is looking a lot like the battlespace of MIDN Salamander.
At the height of the Cold War there were a few assumptions; the electronic spectrum would be contested; to project power ashore, you needed long range strike packages that could fight their way in and still accomplish the mission with losses; you will have multiple threats from the ground and the air with peer to near-peer capabilities.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union we have in some respects become complacent, hedging, and forgetful.
In a slightly different context with different platforms, does this sound familiar?
A staggering 96 percent of the precision weapons the Pentagon has bought since 9/11 have been “direct attack” munitions. These weapons are relatively short-ranged. For example, the new Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) II has wings to glide up to 40 nautical miles from the aircraft that launches it. The older and larger Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) can glide just 13 nm.
Against a low-tech adversary like the Islamic State, a US aircraft 13 miles away might as well be on the moon. Against an adversary with modern anti-aircraft weapons, however, a US aircraft that comes within 13 or even 40 miles is begging to be shot down.
In brief, we’ve not bought enough smart weapons for a major war — and the ones we have bought are mostly the wrong kind.
Conversely, we have far too few long-range weapons such as cruise missiles, which can be fired from outside enemy air defenses’ range, and the ones we do have are far too expensive to buy in bulk. The average direct-attack bomb bought since 2001 costs $55,500; the average long-range precision-guided weapon costs $1.1 million, twenty times as much.
Replaying the 2003 invasion of Iraq with long-range weapons in place of all the direct-attack ones, Gunzinger and Clark write, “would cost $22 billion for the PGMs alone.” Even if we wrote a blank check in a crisis, they say, the industrial base probably couldn’t ramp up fast enough. Whatever we do about the smart bomb problem, we need to start working on it now.
While the CBSA study focuses of standoff weapons (again, not a new topic) – the reason is the same – reaching deep in to the enemy’s territory.
They have some ideas;
In the near term, there are modest modifications we can make to our existing direct-attack weapons, like adding wings and even small turbojets that boost their range dramatically. New explosive materials can make lighter weapons hit harder.
In the longer term, we can build new types of intermediate-range weapons in what Gunzinger and Clark call the “sweet spot” between cheap direct-attack munitions and expensive long-range ones. The vast majority of existing US weapons have ranges either less than 50 nautical miles or more than 400, they write, but weapons in the 50-400 band should be far more affordable than cruise missiles yet far more capable of penetrating advanced air defenses than unpowered gliding bombs. (The 200-nm-range JASSM, or Joint Air-To-Surface Standoff Missile, is one of the few weapons in this “sweet spot” currently).
While we are talking about distributed lethality – let’s also discuss distributed risk; program risk, tactical risk, technology risk. How has the world’s only maritime superpower found itself in this position?
One slow, late-20th Century ASCM that is only carried by a few capital ships? A deck full of short-range light strike fighters? A single, large, rather slow land attack cruise missile? No organic tanking (buddy tanking does not count)? Single main-mounts per ship? Limited self-repair and fragile forward-deployed repair facilities? One exquisitely priced, over-compromised jack of all trades aircraft? Glass-jawed, thinly armed, and undermanned ships?
Some think yet to be fleshed out drones are the answer – not so fast. From ROE to situational awareness, a limited platform gets more limited – part of the solution perhaps – but not the full answer or the easy answer.
What we do need are ideas and actions. The challenge is changing – the easy days are coming to a close. The shot term ideas offered in the study are good – nice payload ideas – but platforms still matter.
There is the rub – the medium and longer term. Are we changing out mindsets and habits? How do we build off of the capabilities of new payloads with platforms that enhance them?
The answer to the platforms is the same as the authors came up with for the payloads – range. Start there, and then let the engineers work the details – and don’t think that one can do it all.
That only works for accountants.
