Military Monday: Transparent Battlefields

Predicting the future of warfare is far more likely to result in miscalculation than accurate prognostication.

However, some trends seem very likely. One of those is the trend towards increased transparency.

In recent history, we’ve flooded the battlefield with drones that conduct missions of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—or ISR. We’ve placed unmanned sensors on the ground, in the sea, and in the air. And these sensors have increased in sensitivity, discrimination, and accuracy. 

As states and actors continue to proliferate these sensors, we should expect the level of transparency to continue increasing, resulting in nearly or completely transparent battlefields where all belligerents are able to see (nearly) everything happening on it.

The result is that some of the “fog of war” is being burned away, creating ever increasingly faster decision loops but creating new challenges in how we fight.

History: The 28th Infantry Division and The Battle of Huertgen Forest

Following the success of Operation Overlord and the allied landing at Normandy, an all-out pursuit of German forces entailed. Within several months, the Germany army had withdrawn back to the pre-war borders of Germany and the relative safety of the Westwall—known to the U.S. as the Siegfried Line.

The Siegfried Line was a highly prepared defensive line that ran the length of the western border of Germany, opposite France’s Maginot line. One particular area of the Siegfried Line, east of Belgium, north of Luxembourg, and near Aachen, ran through the Huertgen Forest. 

The official U.S. Army history describes the forest saying 

Looking east from the little German border villages southeast of Aachen, the Huertgen Forest is a seemingly impenetrable mass, a vast, undulating, blackish-green ocean stretching as fears as the eye can see. Upon entering the forest, you want to drop things behind to mark y path, as Hansel and Gretel did with their bread crumbs.

In November 1944, the task of clearing the forest in order to secure the right flank of the VII Corps as it attacked through the Siegfried Line fell to the 28th Infantry Division, under the command of Maj Gen Norman “Dutch” Cota.

Cota was a highly decorated and regarded officer, who earned a Distinguished Service Cross during the cross-channel attack on D-Day for gallantry and heroic leadership. He also famously and accidentally created the motto of the 75th Ranger Regiment by exhorting men of the 5th Ranger Battalion to leave the safety of the sea wall and attack, exclaiming

Well, God damn it, if you’re Rangers, then lead the way!

Back at Huertgen though, Cota argued against his superiors’ plans, noting the difficulty in fighting in the difficult and close terrain created by the the forested hills.

It’s important to note as well that the difficult terrain made it nearly impossible to know what was happening the forest without physically being there.

Cota greatly damaged his sterling reputation during the battle through ignorance of the fight. He only visited units in the field once, near the end of the battle. Further, his staff and subordinate commanders didn’t provide him the necessary information. Again, the official U.S. Army history tells us

Part of the reason for dalliance no doubt lay in the fact that General Cot all day long was ill informed about the condition of his vital main supply route across the Kall. Most reports reaching 28th division headquarters repeatedly asserted that the trail was open. Neither the 112th Infantry [Regiment] nor General Cota had a liaison officers on the spot.

This failure to see the battlefield resulted in 6,184 casualties to the 28th Division and its attached units and the failure to secure the right flank of the VII Corps. The 28th Division was ordered back out of the fight.

Modern Warfare: Proliferation of Sensors

Drones—or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs)—began their role in modern conflict during the Yom Kippur or Ramadan War of 1973. Israel flew these drones in reconnaissance roles and as decoys to trigger Egyptian air defense systems.

Through the 1980s, the United States and Israel jointly developed the RQ-2 Pioneer, even as Iran and Iraq developed and flew their own drones during the Iraq-Iran war.  Operation Desert Storm (the first Persian Gulf war) saw the first conflict with “persistent” UAV coverage—meaning that at least one drone was airborne at all times from the start of the war to its conclusion.

During our military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001-2021, our use of drones exploded. They shifted from being strategic assets (like the MQ-1 Predator) to tactical level ISR assets (e.g., RQ-7 Shadows at the brigade level and RQ-11 Ravens at the company level in the U.S. Army). 

We’re at a point where every platoon leader can watch the feed of various UAVs in the area through tactical, digital links. 

We’ve created remotely controlled ground robots (such as the PackBot). Originally, these robots were designed to allow explosive ordinance disposal teams to remotely interrogate possible bombs from a safe distance. Since then, we’ve started using them to explore the interior of buildings from a distance.

We’ve created unmanned ground sensors and persistent threat detection sensors on tethered balloons. 

Now, we’re starting to connect these various platforms creating systems-of-systems, like DARPA’s revolutionary research into allowing and controlling swarms of aerial and ground systems. 

And, we’ve outfitted these drones with sensors that range from visible light to acoustic to infrared to radio frequency. In other words, we’ve flooded the battlefield with multi-spectral sensors and we can detect what’s happening just about anywhere at anytime.

But, it’s critical to keep in mind that we are NOT alone in this. Our allies, partners, and adversaries all have developed similar fleets of sensors.  Over three dozen countries have armed drones, and many more have unarmed drones for ISR.

Perhaps, no where is this as true as in Ukraine where both parties are rapidly testing and fielding drones and other sensors, as they seek to gain an advantage over the other side. Ukraine plans to spend half a billion dollars this year on acquiring new drones. When coupled with satellite-based sensors, human intelligence, and other forms of collection, it’s easy to see that we’re on the verge of a truly transparent battlefield.

Fighting in a transparent battle space

The idea of fighting against an enemy that is capable of watching your every move should seem daunting. 

It’s a terrifying thought that every action we take can be viewed in real-time.

Traditional methods of camouflage and obscuration are quickly becoming obsolete.

So, how do we counter this reality?

This is a very tricky and complex problem to address. Perhaps, the easiest thing to do will be to adopt the mindset of a judoka, and converting the enemy’s greatest strength into a weakness by redirecting the momentum. 

What I mean is, as adversaries become more reliant on sensors, we focus on those sensors and overwhelming them so that the adversary no longer knows what is true.

This can be accomplished through several means: data poisoning, overwhelming sensors, spoofing, and similar methods. Imagine connecting to 20 ground robots speakers capable of replicating the acoustic signature of M1A4 Abrams tanks and driving that through a forest, where you know the enemy has acoustic sensors. You could easily convince the enemy of a pending attack, causing them to commit forces there, drawing from an area where the real attack would take place. This can also be done replicating other signatures: RF, holographic, etc.

We can also temporarily blind specific sensors. For example, we can “dazzle” with lasers an adversary’s electro-optical sights. The strong, coherent light can blind the sensor, and this can be done across specific wavelengths of light to create custom effects.

We must reduce the real signatures (particularly electro-magnetic or EM) of our systems. Currently, our forces produce massively observable EM signatures. We lag some of our competitors in terms of electronic warfare, including the ability to sense, target, and jam across the EM spectrum.

Finally, we must also conduct counter-counter-sensor operations. As adversaries proliferate more electronic warfare systems, they emit radiation at specific frequencies. We must invest in a new generation of anti-radiation weapons, similar to the HARM (and UK’s ALARM) missiles. We should be able to target and attack (preferably autonomously) the radiation necessary to jam our own systems.

The reality is that the battlefield of tomorrow will likely continue the trends that we’ve observed in modern warfare and continue to observe in Ukraine. Transparency will only increase to a point that our adversaries can watch our every action. We must be creative in addressing the challenges this transparency creates and we must enable faster decision making to outpace the threat.

If you’re working on a product that contributes to transparency in warfare or if you’re working on a product that counters it, please reach out to me to discuss! 

And until then…

Keep building!

Andrew