Informing the Army’s Future Structure

[Kirkhill]

It's both.

Doctrine is the sum of all lessons learned, documented, codified, and disseminated to others over a militaries operational experience.

Before that is the LL process, informal or otherwise. Where we fall down as an organization is turning Knowledge (personal experience, personal education, personal training, drills, etc.) into Information (PAMs, SOPs, TTPs, PARs(not the PaCE variety)).

Ofcourse technology is going to change faster than doctrine. It's meant to. What is the missing link is the documentation of the change from the individual working with the change and the people charged with revising the doctrine.

If there is a lack of information passed to those writing the doctrine, they rely o their own knowledge and experience to write it.

Depending on how far removed that writer is to the new technical leap, you're left with conducting a frontal on a MG42, because doctrine.

doc·trine
a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a Church, political party, or other group.

dog·ma
a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

It is the move towards the "incontrovertibly true" that concerns me.

....

With respect to the passage of information, this morning I saw this article in the Globe and Mail

Redacted and out of reach: Canada’s access laws keep the country’s history locked away

Researchers are often denied decades-old documents because there’s no process for declassifying them and poor records of what’s piled up in government warehouses

www.theglobeandmail.com

The pages of Canada’s past are buried in hundreds of thousands of cardboard boxes, stacked 16 shelves high, on rows that seem to go on forever, in a vast warehouse located just off the highway in Gatineau, QC.

To stand in the space, which has the same feeling as the cavernous military hangar shown in the final scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is to understand the impossibility of the challenge. This is why LAC brought a Globe reporter to the building, which is one of six archival storage facilities.

Emily Gusba, LAC’s Director General of Government Record Branch, said that as part of their continuing effort to pay for past sins, the institution executed a massive inventory clean-up.

“We located hundreds of thousands of items that had been essentially lost because they had been disconnected from their metadata. Poor past practices led us to not have a good handle on the information,” she said.

Librarians. Filing Clerks. Secretaries.

And then we all got computers and the keepers of the knowledge got jobs at Starbucks.

 

[BrianWL]

Peter MacKay: The urgent need to fix Canada's military — and how to do it

Advice from a former defence minister to one just starting

nationalpost.com

quick google for Peter MacKay's 6 years of being the MND did not lead to a whole lot of what he advocates for here in 2023. Stymied by Harper perhaps.

 

[FJAG]

quick google for Peter MacKay's 6 years of being the MND did not lead to a whole lot of what he advocates for here in 2023. Stymied by Harper perhaps.

MacKay took over in 2007 when Afghanistan was still in the fighting stage - his defence budget at the time was around US$17.5 bil (1.19% GDP). It stagnated a few years but grew to US$21.4 bil (1.19% GDP) in 2011 but then started to tailspin in 2013 to US$18.5 bil (1.0% GDP).

While the F-35 program made some headway under him (and we got a bunch more M777s on his watch) the later years were not kind to the army. It lost a lot of capabilities during his tenure.

 

[Kirkhill]

MacKay took over in 2007 when Afghanistan was still in the fighting stage - his defence budget at the time was around US$17.5 bil (1.19% GDP). It stagnated a few years but grew to US$21.4 bil (1.19% GDP) in 2011 but then started to tailspin in 2013 to US$18.5 bil (1.0% GDP).

While the F-35 program made some headway under him (and we got a bunch more M777s on his watch) the later years were not kind to the army. It lost a lot of capabilities during his tenure.

IIRC 2010 2011 was the year that Leslie's Transformation recommendations were made public and were largely endorsed by both MacKay and Harper. NDHQ, from what I recall of public discussions, responded with a loud "Meh" and carried on as usual. At that point they seem to have lost Harper's interest.

Canadian Military Journal Vol. 12, No. 1

 

[Kirkhill]

Towards are more automated future:

From 09/16/2021 - 2 years ago.

Army Leader-Follower Program Heading For Large Exercise; Nearing Production Readiness - Defense Daily

Ongoing testing of optionally-manned cargo trucks in leader-follower configurations that began two years ago has developed hardware and software to the

www.defensedaily.com

The current testing at Fort Polk in Louisiana of the M1075A1 Palletized Loading System (PLS) also includes an autonomy kit provided by truck manufacturer Oshkosh Corp. [OSK], Robotic Research, and DCS, as well as a robotic software technical kernel developed by the government for the user interface. Oshkosh’s work on the autonomy kit includes the by-wire design included in the vehicles, Robotic Research is working on autonomy, and DCS the use interface and communications.

In the testing at Fort Polk, which has run the gamut of environmental scenarios and used various load sizes in the vehicles, Hormann said the typical squad arrangement includes a manned leader vehicle trailed by nine autonomous vehicles that mimic the leader.

Hormann stressed that all the vehicles are optionally-manned.

In his presentation, Hormann said the leader-follower arrangement enables greater throughput and safer operations for moving cargo. Autonomous trucks “don’t need rest” and currently soldiers sometimes are driving for up to 16 or 17 hours a day. Taking the humans out also means more capabilities can be added to the vehicles, he said.

The Autonomous Missile Launcher program is also interested in the technology. Hormann pointed out that once missiles are launched from a vehicle, the enemy knows where they are, which puts lives at risk. But with optionally-manned systems, there doesn’t have to be anyone in the vehicle.

The missile launcher is a science and technology project led by DEVCOM’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center with the Army Aviation and Missiles Center and Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team. An Army spokesman said the launcher “will provide an autonomous cab-less HIMARS missile launcher to be remotely teleoperated or follow another leader HIMARS to a firing point for larger/long-range missiles to be deployed off a HIMARS platform due to the reduced footprint of a HIMARS cab.”

There is also interest from medical people in the Army in the leader-follower technology for field ambulances, Hormann said. This could take medics out of the driver’s seat, something not critical to administering aid, and let them attend to more patients, he said.

Hormann said his team is also working on the initial steps of introducing the leader-follower technology with the Army’s Remote Combat Vehicle (RCV) and Next-Generation Combat Vehicle program so that soldiers can use the technology with these systems. He said soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas will get RCV to conduct similar testing that is going on at Fort Polk with the optionally-manned PLS trucks.

Fast forward to Cancellation of the Leader-Follower Program (aka GEARS 5.0) June 05, 2023

Army closing down 'leader-follower' robotic truck development, eyeing commercial solutions - Breaking Defense

Although the service has awarded contracts to wind down leader-follower development and give the experimental trucks back to soldiers, a separate office has launched a prototyping competition.

breakingdefense.com

But ...

the service still is eyeing a new acquisition pathway for robotic drivers as part of its Autonomous Transport Vehicle System (ATV-S). However, this time it is not looking to help develop the technology, but is instead searching directly for commercial options via a prototyping competition dubbed the Ground Expeditionary Autonomy Retrofit Systems, or GEARS, run through the Defense Innovation Unit on behalf of the Army.

“The government is seeking vendors that can take existing military vehicles — including subsystems, such as trailers — and enhance them for safe, reliable, robust uncrewed operations through hardware and software integration,” the DIU wrote in a recent post about the initiative. For the prototyping competition, the Army is seeking both hardware and software components, and everything must be able to deploy onto the Army’s Palletized Load System (PLS), and possibly other tactical wheeled vehicles.

Short form: the military has decided that they don't have to spend their own developmental budget because the civil market has viable solutions already. (GEARS 6.0)

Which brings us to AUSA and Rheinmetall this October.

Rheinmetall Showcases Innovative Defense Solutions for the U.S. Army at AUSA 2023: One Partner for All Missions • Spotter Up

The AUSA Annual Meeting & Exposition takes place in Washington, DC from 9-11 October, with this year’s motto set as “Be All You Can Be”. The American Rheinmetall family of companies along with key partners from Rheinmetall’s global enterprise will be on-site (booth #1603) showcasing some of...

spotterup.com

Showcase items:

M109 with an L52 Cannon as already fielded in Ukraine (the cannon not the M109 with the cannon).
PATH Autonomous Kit (A-Kit) for full autonomous movement of vehicles.... rapidly integrated on existing vehicles
blackned’s TacticalCore solution ... communications across a disparate network of unmanned and autonomous platforms ... U(A/G/U/S)Vs as RRBs
Skyranger 30mm c-UAS Turret with Airburst Munition on the M5 Ripsaw RCV - highlighting both autonomy and the airburst ammo
The HX3 CTT – The Next-Gen Tactical Truck that Delivers
StrikeShield Active Protection System: Modular Protection with Lower Risk of Detection

And much much more.

But in conjunction with my point I have highlighted the relevant submission - from this company, with Canadian connections, operating in Quebec, that has demonstrated autonomous solutions that have been purchased by 5 eyes and ABCA allies.

 

[FJAG]

Changing gears a bit and going back to napkin armies - With "With A Few Guns" finished I turned my attention back to all thinks old is new again and I did a major update of "Unsustainable At Any Price: The Canadian Armed Forces in Crisis". The 2nd edition of that is now in Amazon and should be accessible in paperback and eBook format. It always takes a day or three for the websites to update properly. If you search for it now you'll probably find a link to the old book which has been withdrawn. Look for "2nd Edition" on the cover. I'll post a link when it's up. The book goes heavily into the 30/70 concept and a hybrid, two-division army.

Anyway, for anyone who previously bought the original version of the book, drop me a line by pm and I'll send you a pdf copy for free.

 

[KevinB]

Changing gears a bit and going back to napkin armies - With "With A Few Guns" finished I turned my attention back to all thinks old is new again and I did a major update of "Unsustainable At Any Price: The Canadian Armed Forces in Crisis". The 2nd edition of that is now in Amazon and should be accessible in paperback and eBook format. It always takes a day or three for the websites to update properly. If you search for it now you'll probably find a link to the old book which has been withdrawn. Look for "2nd Edition" on the cover. I'll post a link when it's up. The book goes heavily into the 30/70 concept and a hybrid, two-division army.

Anyway, for anyone who previously bought the original version of the book, drop me a line by pm and I'll send you a pdf copy for free.

I’ll just buy the second one - simply as I prefer both paper book, and the righteousness of your work. Reading stuff on computers or phone isn’t my favorite thing.

 

[Rjgillies]

Changing gears a bit and going back to napkin armies - With "With A Few Guns" finished I turned my attention back to all thinks old is new again and I did a major update of "Unsustainable At Any Price: The Canadian Armed Forces in Crisis". The 2nd edition of that is now in Amazon and should be accessible in paperback and eBook format. It always takes a day or three for the websites to update properly. If you search for it now you'll probably find a link to the old book which has been withdrawn. Look for "2nd Edition" on the cover. I'll post a link when it's up. The book goes heavily into the 30/70 concept and a hybrid, two-division army.

Anyway, for anyone who previously bought the original version of the book, drop me a line by pm and I'll send you a pdf copy for free.

Copies now available on Amazon for $12 and this civilian is happy to pay for the hardcopy upgrade.


Unsustainable At Any Price: The Canadian Armed Forces in Crisis https://a.co/d/8hXE60T

 

[Kirkhill]

There is an ongoing debate in the US military establishment about the changing character of war. Officially, we acknowledge the need for significant change over continuity, yet very few agree on the details. Ongoing conflicts raise questions. In particular, just how will the rapid diffusion of low-cost unmanned systems and an array of accurate, lethal top-attack munitions impact warfare and US defense priorities? How should tomorrow’s landpower adapt to the purported changing character of war. What is now a legacy capability and what are the new priorities shaping US military investments? A new book, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century, gets to the heard of that debate, taking a forward-leaning look at these questions and urging adaptation. It races up to and past what a prior article in these pages called “the inflection point between evolutionary and revolutionary adaptation.”

The author’s thesis is clear: despite more than adequate evidence of the need to change how armies fight, they are not modernizing or restructuring their forces properly. Rather than transform the force coherently, “Armies today are largely seeking to retain tried and tested structures while adding new capabilities onto their platforms.” Bolting new capabilities onto existing platforms, the author contends, is inefficient and adds costs.

Imagining the Future of Landpower - Modern War Institute

Jack Watling, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, for the Royal United Services Institute, 2023) There is an ongoing debate in the […]

mwi.westpoint.edu

The book has two major sections. The first lays out the author’s projection of the future operating environment. In five concise chapters Watling details the transparency of the battlespace, the contested electromagnetic spectrum, the limitations of protection amid rising lethality, the complexity of combat support, and the enduring reality of urban operations.

Today improvements in lethality are improving exponentially. Improvements in protection by contrast have begun to advance logarithmically with smaller gains requiring ever-greater resource to achieve. This has far-reaching consequences for how militaries think about and design their fighting systems.

.....

The second part of The Arms of the Future is devoted to exploring the implications of the projected security environment for force design. Dr. Watling devotes separate chapters to each component of a modern combined arms system. His task organization is illustrative but not prescriptive. Watling offers an inherently integrated and mutually supported force design with four subsystems. The first is the maneuver system, which the author tasks with reconnaissance, screening, and counterreconnaissance. The battle group he proposes for screening is comprised of four companies—support (including headquarters), reconnaissance, mechanized infantry and light cavalry. The second is the fires system, comprised of four components—command and control, target acquisition, lethal fires, and nonlethal fires. For fires, Watling develops a formation with three layers: long-range rocket artillery, cannon, and loitering munitions. Third is the assault system. Watling frames his design for this component on an urban assault battalion that has three armored assault companies, an engineering company, and a robotic autonomous systems company. Each assault platoon includes six vehicles—two tanks with smoothbore cannon (fifty-four tons or less) and active protection for kinetic vertical attack and four vehicles with 30- to 60-millimeter cannon for suppression and countering unmanned aerial systems. Finally, there is the support system. This includes command and control, mobile combat support elements, force/hub protection assets, and electronic warfare and information operations resources.

At first glance, the lack of a system for command and control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance seemed jarring. However, the author argues that command is more of an enabling function and tied more to ensuring alignment, sustainment, and coordination. Here the author embraces some insights from Exeter Professor Anthony King, who argued in Command: The Twenty-First Century General for less directive leadership models and for more distributed and participative decision-making.

 

[Kirkhill]

The Watling Solution

Watling Army of the Future
Maneuver System
Recce, Screening, Counter-Recce
HQ & Spt Coy
Recce Coy
Mech Inf Coy
Lt Cav Coy
Fires System
Command and Control
Target Acquisition
Non-Lethal Fires
Lethal Fires
	LR Rocket
	Cannon
	LAM
Assault System
Robot Coy
Eng Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
	Armd Aslt Pl
		2x 54tonne MBT-120 with APS
		4x 30-60mm IFVs for C-UAS
Support System
Command and Control
Info Ops
EW
Force Protection
Mobile Combat Support Elements

 

[WestIsle]

The Watling Solution

Watling Army of the Future
Maneuver System
Recce, Screening, Counter-Recce
HQ & Spt Coy
Recce Coy
Mech Inf Coy
Lt Cav Coy
Fires System
Command and Control
Target Acquisition
Non-Lethal Fires
Lethal Fires
	LR Rocket
	Cannon
	LAM
Assault System
Robot Coy
Eng Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
	Armd Aslt Pl
		2x 54tonne MBT-120 with APS
		4x 30-60mm IFVs for C-UAS
Support System
Command and Control
Info Ops
EW
Force Protection
Mobile Combat Support Elements

So am I reading correctly here that there are little to no dismounts in the Assault system?

 

[markppcli]

The Watling Solution

Watling Army of the Future
Maneuver System
Recce, Screening, Counter-Recce
HQ & Spt Coy
Recce Coy
Mech Inf Coy
Lt Cav Coy
Fires System
Command and Control
Target Acquisition
Non-Lethal Fires
Lethal Fires
	LR Rocket
	Cannon
	LAM
Assault System
Robot Coy
Eng Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
Armd Aslt Coy
	Armd Aslt Pl
		2x 54tonne MBT-120 with APS
		4x 30-60mm IFVs for C-UAS
Support System
Command and Control
Info Ops
EW
Force Protection
Mobile Combat Support Elements

What is this formatting, sweet lord above who hurt you?

 

[Kirkhill]

Some Yankee thoughts from Breaking Defense

High-tech trench warfare: 5 hard-won lessons-learned for the US from Ukraine - Breaking Defense

From expendable drones, to ad hoc battle networks, to hacker “armies” of volunteers, the war in Ukraine has shown the big-spending US military new ways to fight in the Information Age.

breakingdefense.com

Fires, AI and human-machine prototype unites: Army gears up for Project Convergence - Breaking Defense

A trio of Army generals recently described the service's plans for two-part Project Convergence event that will include new sensor-to-shooter integration, two formations with added robots, and a USMC autonomous watercraft.

breakingdefense.com

How we fight: Army issues all-new handbook for multi-domain war - Breaking Defense

Now, “just like [new] weapons systems, we want to get it into the hands of our soldiers and commanders” to test it out, Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said of the new FM 3-0.

breakingdefense.com

 

[Kirkhill]

So am I reading correctly here that there are little to no dismounts in the Assault system?

What is this formatting, sweet lord above who hurt you?

Might-Could have been better, eh?

As I understand the article Watling was proposing Four Systems.

System 1 was his Manoeuvre System responsible for Recce, Screening and Counter-Screening
It was made up of an HQ and Support Coy, a Recce Coy, a Mech Infantry Coy and a Light Cavalry Coy.

System 2 was his Fires System - this System seems to be a very large system comprising a number of "batteries"
Command and Control element, a Target Acquisition element, a Non-Lethal Fires element (EW?) and a Lethal Fires element.
The Lethal Fires element included Long Range Rockets, Cannons and Loitering Munitions.

System 3 was his Assault System - how many of these might be fielded was not clear from the info I read
Command and Control element, a Robot Coy of drones of all sorts, an Engineer Coy and 3 Assault Coys.
The basis of the Assault Coy is the Assault Platoon of 6 vehicles, 2 tanks and 4 IFVs.
The tanks are lighter than the current fielding and the IFVs are armed primarily for self defence against the air threat. The tanks supply intimate fire support.
How many assaulters can you get in 4 IFVs? 24 to 40? Or one 1917 platoon.

System 4 was his Support System
Command and Control, Info Ops, EW, Force Protection and Mobile Combat Support Elements.

 

[Kirkhill]

The future of Long Range Reconnaissance?

This article refers explicitly to Ukrainians wandering into Russia on their own recognizance and using their initiative but....

Mykola also explained the optimum conditions for a cross-border mission into Russia, such as low cloud that hides the moon and stars.

“They will dress in civilian clothes, carry fake papers, no phones, use a compass, a map and count their steps to orient themselves,” he explained.

That sounded a lot like an antidote to the electronic battlefield. Especially in a world of green men, gray zones and hybrid warfare, and one where the Geneva Conventions are honoured more in the breach than in their application.

Ukrainian special ops commandos are freelancing top-secret sabotage missions and assassinations in Russia

Ukrainian special ops commandos are being trained to carry out sabotage and assassinations during secret missions that their superiors don't know about, a military source told The Times of London.

www.sandboxx.us

 

[Kirkhill]

Related to the above?

“There are certain radars that blend into the operating environment better in the Baltic Sea, that are going to stick out [in the Pacific] and become very, very obvious because they’re not the types of radar that are used in the [area],” he said. “Usually it has to do with blending into the electromagnetic spectrum so that our collections don’t stand out from the normal environment itself,” allowing enemy forces to find and target the Marines at expeditionary bases.

Using locally available commercial radars to hide their signal in the civilian clutter.

US Marines test radars, networks for expeditionary base operations

The 31st MEU continued the Marine Corps' push to experiment with expeditionary advanced base operations during its two deployments in 2023.

www.defensenews.com

Meyer said he experimented with Shield AI’s V-Bat drone to provide live video feeds and with Simrad commercial boating radar to build maritime domain awareness.

Danner said his forces used a couple models of the Furuno boating radar, as well as a top secret-level communication tool called Athena’s Trident.

 

[KevinB]

The future of Long Range Reconnaissance?

This article refers explicitly to Ukrainians wandering into Russia on their own recognizance and using their initiative but....



That sounded a lot like an antidote to the electronic battlefield. Especially in a world of green men, gray zones and hybrid warfare, and one where the Geneva Conventions are honoured more in the breach than in their application.

Ukrainian special ops commandos are freelancing top-secret sabotage missions and assassinations in Russia

Ukrainian special ops commandos are being trained to carry out sabotage and assassinations during secret missions that their superiors don't know about, a military source told The Times of London.

www.sandboxx.us

That is actually textbook UW work.
What used to be Army SF Groups bread and butter.

That was the entire plan for 10th Group, to create guerrilla groups to be able to do that behind Russian lines.

 

[Kirkhill]

That is actually textbook UW work.
What used to be Army SF Groups bread and butter.

That was the entire plan for 10th Group, to create guerrilla groups to be able to do that behind Russian lines.

UW? Help.

 

[KevinB]

UW? Help.

Unconventional Warfare
Sabotage, Assassinations etc

 

[Kirkhill]

Unconventional Warfare
Sabotage, Assassinations etc

Seen. Thx.