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Wargames should be taken seriously. They should be crafted with the proper planning assumptions and without an eye to a specific end. They should be used to test out COAs, not sell them.
They also shouldn’t show a suddenly new result when nothing drastically has changed. If that does happen, hard questions need to be asked. First one … where was this 5-years ago? 10 years? Why not?
RAND is a serious organization with serious people … but I’m sorry, this as reported by Syndey Freedberg at Breaking Defense just comes in off key.
The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink. But we could fix the problem for about $24 billion a year, one well-connected expert said, less than four percent of the Pentagon budget.
“In our games, when we fight Russia and China,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek said this afternoon, “blue gets its ass handed to it.” In other words, in RAND’s wargames, which are often sponsored by the Pentagon, the US forces — colored blue on wargame maps — suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China — red — from achieving their objectives, like overrunning US allies.
“Sal, ” I hear you say, “Why so grumpy. Isn’t this fully in line with what you and the other Antitransformationalists have been bleating about from the wilderness for years? Be happy!”
No. Smug perhaps.
Before the next pull quote, I want to take everyone down memory lane. Wasn’t too long ago when we were all told about the glories of a fully networked fleet – lots of PPT slides with lots of lighting bolts going everywhere – voice, data, tactical networks going ship to ship to aircraft, up to satellites and back, all in the shiny and chrome battle taking place in Tommorowland!
We have wargames that prove it!
“Ignore those people talking about redundancy, vulnerability, EW, & a diverse, long range strike toolbox!” – we were all told. “That is OldThink!” we were tut-tut’d to.
Well.
“If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein. And that’s it,” Work growled. “We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don’t have anything to protect our bases. so what different does it make?”
Worst of all, Work and Ochmanek said, the US doesn’t just take body blows, it takes a hard hit to the head as well. Its communications satellites, wireless networks, and other command-and-control systems suffer such heavy hacking and jamming that they are, in Ochmanek’s words, “suppressed, if not shattered.”
The US has wargamed cyber and electronic warfare in field exercises, Work said, but the simulated enemy forces tend to shut down US networks so effectively that nothing works and nobody else gets any training done. “Whenever we have an exercise and the red force really destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise,” Work said, instead of trying to figure out how to keep fighting when your command post gives you nothing but blank screens and radio static.
The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.”
This was all known for decades, but the Transformationalists told us this was nothing to worry about. They wouldn’t wargame this in public for much of this century though these exact results were known.
Yes, it was wargamed, but it had to be done underground and the results whispered between fellow conspirators after exchanging secret handshakes.
In public, we would have supremacy everywhere! We can move maintenance diagnostics, intel evaluation, administration, navigation – you name it – “offboard!” All we need is bandwidth and unquestioning belief, and it will all be ours!
Of course, it wouldn’t. Any team of historians, economists, and demographers would tell you that brief window of dominance post-Cold War would only last 5, or at best, 10 POM cycles.
Work was less worried about the near-term risk — he thinks China and Russia aren’t eager to try anything right now — and more about what happens 10 to 20 years from now. But, he said, “sure, $24 billion a year for the next five years would be a good expenditure.”
So what does that $24 billion buy?
To start with, missiles. Lots and lots of missiles. The US and its allies notoriously keep underestimating how many smart weapons they’ll need for a shooting war, then start to run out against enemies as weak as the Serbs or Libyans. Against a Russia or China, which can match not only our technology but our mass, you run out of munitions fast.
No. “We” did not underestimate it. “You” decided to accept the risk.
10 to 20 years ago many were warning that we would be right where we are today if we were not in control of our hubris – and yet, here we are.
Part of the reason we are where we are is we failed to hedge. We were always chasing that “generation leaping” shadow. While we ran through a field of rakes chasing that shadow, what did the Chinese and Russians do – in plain sight?
They mastered the fundamentals with evolutionary developments that have us in 2019 saying, in a panic, that we need to find $24 billion to fix – out of a largess of $750 billion.
Ideas? We need to be careful not to fall in to old habits or over correct.
Work was a little harder-edged. He said cutting a carrier and two amphibious ships over the forthcoming 2020-2024 budget “seems right to me.” He argued the US Army has way too many brigade combat teams — tanks and infantry — and way too little missile defense to protect them. And he bemoaned reports the US Air Force will retire the B-1 bomber, one of its few long-range strike aircraft: If the Air Force doesn’t want them, he said, give them to the Navy, revive the old VPB “Patrol Bomber” squadrons, and load them with Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles to sink the Chinese navy.
Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems, Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. …
Nope. That is just repeating our failure to hedge, rolled in to a foundation of overestimating our ability to have a future-perfect vision.
Here’s why I’m a “nope;” we don’t know today what would be the best solution tomorrow. We just don’t. The opening of every war proves that “we” never do. You have to have more than just one “solution” to your problem. What at peace looked like the third best, might actually be the best. What was thought best might actually not be the best – if it ever even makes it to the battlefield.
Never. Put. Everything. In. One. Basket – hope – program – promise.
There is a good point at the end;
The immediate problems could be fixed with technology already in production, Ochmanek said. For $24 billion, “I can buy the whole kit,” he said. “It’s all mature technologies and it would scare the crap out of adversaries, in a good way.”
That is smart. That is an idea based on learning. There is where I saw a silver lining. Let’s take that idea stated at the ending, and expand it not to just hardware, but how we think. How we plan. How we program.
Mature ideas will scare the crap out of adversaries even more.
There is an indication that much, but not all, of the bad habits that brought these vulnerabilities to the front are slowing bleeding out of our NATSEC intellectual infrastructure. After a couple decades of chasing revolutionary mirages, we now seem to be content with doing the hard, but fruitful work of evolutionary excellence.
Less Buck Rogers perhaps, hopefully more Wayne Meyer.