Feedback Request for "The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare"

Question

TRADOC G-2 would appreciate your feedback on our paper, "The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare". Please share your unclassified comments in the discussion thread below.

Mark Phillips · Answer

The wide array of potentially disruptive trends can be effectively countered through ongoing adaptive and agile innovation. The paper astutely calls out the power of innovation as a prevailing force. The US is outstanding at creating innovation and meeting uncertainty with capability overmatch/ opportunity. The challenge seems to be successfully making innovation readily available as an operational advantage. Changes in procurement mechanisms and overcoming cultural differences in government - industry relations may be the key to unlocking the power of US creativity and prevailing well into the future.

John James · Answer

An excellent overview of probable future trends and their effects on future warfare, assuming that the current trends highlighted in the paper prove to persist as predicted and also continue to dominate other trends. 
Of course, whether the postulated set of trends will actually dominate the future environments which will present themselves to future warfighters is impossible to predict. The paper rightly points out that the true need is to continuously assess the actual ongoing trends and update the expected outcomes. 
I personally agree with the comments concerning the majority of the trends impacting the two future eras described between now and 2050. However, I do believe that comments concerning outcomes of artificial intelligence technologies and blockchain technologies are unlikely to occur as assumed. It also seems to me that an emerging set of technologies which will have profound effects on future warfare are the various applications of cyber-physical systems (CPS) scientific and technical advances. The National Science Foundation has been investing in CPS technologies for the past ten years and estimates that “CPS technology will transform the way people interact with engineered systems -- just as the Internet has transformed the way people interact with information. New smart CPS will drive innovation and competition in sectors such as agriculture, energy, transportation, building design and automation, healthcare, and manufacturing.” For military applications the possibilities go far beyond current tradeoffs being considered between cyber offensive alternatives and kinetic alternatives for achieving a given effect. As indicated in the NSF quote above, CPS outcomes will affect the way in which humans will interact with machines. They will also affect how machines will interact with amchines. 
Concerning blockchain technologies, there are already very broad technology development efforts which will most likely enable the blockchain idea to support distributed processing and control activities in ways which no one can predict. For example, today the lowest level tactical commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot electronically share tactical data with coalition partners who are not “on the net” even though they are free (and encouraged) to provide paper copies of operations orders to counterparts, just as platoon leaders and company commanders and advisers were in Vietnam 50 years ago. However, the hyperledger effort which has just released version 1.0 of the hyperledger fabric, www.hyperledger.org/.../fabric , can be applied to enable platoon leaders and squad leaders to share operations orders electronically with selected coalition partners, even those who are not cleared to be “on the net.” 
Concerning artificial intelligence, the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC) society, http://www.ieeesmc.org/ , traces its origin back to the early ideas of the Norbert Wiener and Alan Turing during the 1940s and 1950s concerning the eventual ability of computers to effectively mimic or exceed human cognition capabilities. Also, the TRADOC Knowledge Engineering Groups (KEGs) of the late 1980s and early 1990s developed over 30 knowledge-based applications for various TRADOC activities, at least one of which is still being used today. However, the KEGs became the various Battle Laboratories of today and the KEG requirement that officers receive advanced civil schooling to participate in KEG efforts were not continued for the Battle Laboratories’ efforts to develop future warfighting capabilities. 
Since the 1940s various predictions have been made concerning the eventual dominance of machine cognition capabilities. However, those prediction horizons have consistently been advanced even as useful AI capabilities have been achieved. It does not seem to me that there is any technical basis for assuming that the continuing improvement of machine computational and data storage and network sharing capabilities will result in machines achieving “cognition” capabilities through some yet-to-be-discovered technical approach for artificial reasoning. 
In the general area of data, information, knowledge, semantics, and semiotics, it might be beneficial to predict those things which are not expected to change so much and to frame the discussion around how to mesh those attributes of warfare which will not be so different (perhaps warfighting doctrine) with those attributes of warfare which are expected to change dramatically (like situation assessment tools and engagement process tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) which are discussed in the paper). 
For example, one assertion attributed to Eisenhower is that “The plan is nothing, planning is everything.” That is, the dominant outcome of the planning process is that it enables each echelon of command to understand the intent of the commander for a given operation so that when the plan becomes useless as the situation changes, each echelon of command can exercise “good military judgement” to meet the intent of the commander. If that idea is expected to persist into the future, then the rule that “1/3 of the time available at each echelon is allocated for planning and 2/3 of the time available at each echelon is allocated for execution” can be used for assessing future decision support technology alternatives. That is, if this assumption is correct concerning effective planning for enterprise activities, then it provides a framework for analysis of how to exploit future technological advances to “get inside the decision cycle” of future opponents at each echelon of command. For example, if we assume that the “intent of the commander” is the only system invariant for a given operation, then for friendly forces we can frame future weapon system capabilities and command and control capabilities to exploit the “1/3 – 2/3” rule of warfare to remain as effective at each echelon of command into the future as it has proven to be in the past. Then we use the TDLOMPF tradeoffs to build, test and train units to enable each echelon of friendly forces to “get inside the decision cycle” of opposing forces. The primary technical change in the future would then be in possibly exploiting the machine version of the “sense-decide-act” situation assessment and decision cycle to exploit future capabilities. 
In that regard one trend that has continued for many years and will probably persist into the foreseeable future, and which is tangentially mentioned in the paper, is the ever improving ability to synchronize clocks to enable precision location, navigation, and timing outcomes for unit operations. The IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol committee is currently revising the precision time protocol (PTP) to enable distributed clocks to be synchronized to within a nanosecond of each other. The speed of light travels about a foot in a nanosecond. Thus, the expected widespread availability of distributed devices whose logical events can be coordinated to the nearest nanosecond means that it is feasible to build sets of distributed devices which can be logically coordinated to perform offensive and defensive activities orders of magnitude faster than humans can perceive the occurrence of the activity, much less analyze and decide about how to counter the activity.

John James · Answer

Cole,

Thanks for the comments. Computer-controlled and networked physical systems (cyber-physical systems) have been incrementally improving and it is reasonable to assume that they will continue to do so. I certainly agree with the NSF contention that CPS advances underway will change the manner in which humans will interact with machines. It is also reasonable to “think out of the box” concerning asymmetric warfare possibilities. However, in my opinion, it is not reasonable to assume outcomes for which there is no current path for achieving the assumptions. Planning that there will be sentient machines when there is no scientific basis for that assumption makes for good books and movies but will very likely not result in more capable combat units.

Probably the largest commercial manufacturing development activity underway today is the set of efforts by many (all?) of the car manufacturing companies to build autonomous driving vehicles. These efforts are underway partially due to the decades-long efforts at DARPA and other government agencies in many countries to create autonomous vehicle technology. TRADOC (Fort Benning combat developments) provided the requirements document back in 1988 which stated that the US Army needs an autonomous robotic capability for conducting intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance activities. Senator Warner of Virginia led efforts in the Senate to add target engagement capabilities to the set of existing requirements for autonomous robots. To date, autonomous robotic vehicles which provide ISR and target engagement capabilities to units remain largely a research effort. What has worked well for many tears is a direct extension of what worked during WWII using radio technology to enable humans to drive remote vehicles. Swarm technology has made dramatic advances recently to achieve patterns of air, ground, and sea movement. Swarm technology currently has no path for meeting ISR and target engagement requirements. However, success of the car manufactures autonomous highway vehicles will mean success of the ongoing efforts of the logistics community to have a group of autonomous resupply trucks driving down the road or autonomous pack mules following a squad through the woods. This will not be sufficient to enable lethal robots to join combat units and follow variable rules of engagement (ROE).

In fact, a persistent failure of robotic technologies has been a failure to enable machine understanding of human intent to be "close enough" to human understanding of human intent. The planning process for creation and dissemination of operations orders enables humans to understand the intent of the commander for a given operation. Humans adapt the plan "on the fly" to meet the intent of the commander. We have no technology or process (a TTP) for enabling machines to understand command intent for a given operation. To my knowledge, there is currently no approach, or a program for developing such an approach, which will enable machines to achieve that outcome. Thus, whether the operation is completing the set of Tasks, Conditions, and Standards for a mechanic to change a tire, or whether the operation is for one rifle squad to provide covering fire for another rifle squad during a tactical movement, there is no reasonable expectation that robots will function well as part of a combat team. That does not mean that we should not continue to investigate the possibility of making a revolutionary breakthrough in building sentient machines. However, for me it does mean that we should not plan for such an outcome. What does make a great deal of sense to me is to create scenarios of future warfighting outcomes which exploit the ongoing revolution in information system technologies, cyber physical system technologies, and the possible emergence of the "Age of Biology." Each of these possibilities are discussed in the paper. 
 
I do agree with your comments concerning the impacts on future outcomes of resource allocations by ourselves and by other nations. Certainly for most of our history we had a very small Army, Navy and Marine Corps between the various wars. After WWI the Army retained the largest force in our history but it was still less than 100,000 soldiers. Even after WWII we cut back the force structure to be very small compared to the millions who served during WWII. Only since the Korean War and the emergence of weapons of mass destruction have we retained a large standing force structure and the associated capability for building weapon systems which incrementally improve combat capabilities of that force structure. Building a future force while retaining sufficient capability for meeting current national security commitments will most probably continue to be a high risk endeavor. 
 
Cheers, 
John