Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the USAF

[daftandbarmy]

I wonder how our drone vs. drone doctrine is doing in comparison with what's going on in Ukraine right now

 

[FJAG]

Something new from the Wavell Room on thoughts for the future of air power.

Ready for a Fight? 5 Provocations for Change

Ready for a fight? Change needs to come to how Militaries operate, if they want to win the next war. Here's 5 ways to do it.

wavellroom.com

 

[Kirkhill]

I'm sure I have seen some of those arguments before.

 

[ytz]

Something new from the Wavell Room on thoughts for the future of air power.

Loved this. By the way cost asymmetry has been a concept for over a decade. And really came to the fore when the Israelis used a patriot missile against a drone that you could probably buy on Amazon. There have definitely been calls to incorporate the idea into doctrinal development. But most of us are too low on the totem pole to make a difference here.

 

[dimsum]

Loved this. By the way cost asymmetry has been a concept for over a decade. And really came to the fore when the Israelis used a patriot missile against a drone that you could probably buy on Amazon. There have definitely been calls to incorporate the idea into doctrinal development. But most of us are too low on the totem pole to make a difference here.

I would argue that now is the perfect time for “low folks on the totem pole” to revise doctrine, especially in light of lessons observed in UKR and elsewhere.

I guess it depends on what people see as “low folks” - is it the Cpl on the ground, or the Maj staff officer in CADTC or RAWC?

 

[quadrapiper]

I would argue that now is the perfect time for “low folks on the totem pole” to revise doctrine, especially in light of lessons observed in UKR and elsewhere.

I guess it depends on what people see as “low folks” - is it the Cpl on the ground, or the Maj staff officer in CADTC or RAWC?

Commodore/BGen and below?

 

[FJAG]

I would argue that now is the perfect time for “low folks on the totem pole” to revise doctrine, especially in light of lessons observed in UKR and elsewhere.

I guess it depends on what people see as “low folks” - is it the Cpl on the ground, or the Maj staff officer in CADTC or RAWC?

In my experience we've never had, nor do we now have, a shortage of bright and inventive "low folks" - from cpls to capts on up. Unfortunately the CAF is such a constipated bureaucracy that making their ideas into practical and timely applications has become virtually impossible.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

In my experience we've never had, nor do we now have, a shortage of bright and inventive "low folks" - from cpls to capts on up. Unfortunately the CAF is such a constipated bureaucracy that making their ideas into practical and timely applications has become virtually impossible.

In my experience we've never had, nor do we now have, a shortage of bright and inventive "low folks" - from cpls to capts on up. Unfortunately the CAF is such a constipated bureaucracy that making their ideas into practical and timely applications has become virtually impossible.

Need to teach the Space-X concept of positive risk and positive failures.

 

[Kirkhill]

A significant element of the Blue UAS effort is updating software, he said. DIU received “significant feedback from our Ukrainian friends that software is what defines success on the battlefield. In this space, to get the software, you have to be able to iterate quickly,” he said. In Ukraine, drone software has about a two-week lifespan before Russia develops a countermeasure.

“For DIU, in our processes it takes about 90 days for a software update to get a thumbs up,” he said, adding that in the Defense Department it’s 12-plus months. “Neither one of those time frames is acceptable, so we’re piloting a continuously monitored software approach.”

Over the next six months, DIU intends to establish and prove out the approach “and then be able to approve software for release within 96 hours. That’s still longer than we want,” he said. ND

Current bureaucracy takes 12 months to approve a software upgrade.
Novel process reduces that to 3 months, or 90 days.
Target process could reduce that to 96 hours or 4 days.

Useful life of any software revision is two weeks or 14 days.

4 days is 29%, or almost 1/3 of the useful life of a patch.
It is also the most useful portion of the patch's life given that the opposition is constantly upgrading and responding. The first four days are the days when the patch is most likely to be "a surprise" and thus most effective.

In addition, the cycle time between action and counter is only getting faster.

‘Our platforms are too expensive; our platforms aren’t good enough,’” he said.

“They want modularity, meaning we have a flying platform, but if they want to put a camera on or a different radar or different sensor, they want to be able to do that.”

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/7/17/diu-clearing-more-drones-for-military-use

....

Security is over-rated.

I ran into this in the civilian world years ago. The ancient world ran slowly. It was assumed that innovation could be vetted and catalogued and approved for release. It was also assumed that rules would be followed. This was the Patent process. Bright ideas had value and could be protected.

By the time I was wrapping up my career patent offices were closing down and companies were no longer filing patents. Patents took too long to file, gave away too much info in the public domain and were generally ignored both by local and international competitors.

The solution, even for slow moving but reputable companies was to ignore the patent process entirely, the rule of law effectively, and run faster. Companies simply stopped worrying about securing their secrets and started implementing their bright ideas faster, pushing them out to the market place sooner, with less vetting, and opting to fix things on the fly. The process was made easier because of the ease of changing software to fix problems that previously people would have resorted to cutting metal to solve. Instead of having to ship a tonne of differently machined metal to a dissatisfied customer, many problems could be solved via a modem. We didn't even have to send a tech to the field.

And the modification was available to all subsequent deliveries whether it was needed or not.

This is the model being exploited by the likes of Elon Musk - fail fast and often.

.....

The world is becoming more transparent.

You will have to work with less security and less secrecy.

 

[ytz]

In my experience we've never had, nor do we now have, a shortage of bright and inventive "low folks" - from cpls to capts on up. Unfortunately the CAF is such a constipated bureaucracy that making their ideas into practical and timely applications has become virtually impossible.

Some exceptions. SOF. And the emerging Space and Cyber domains right now. Everywhere else is jammed up.

This is also in part a funding thing. Experimentation requires resources. From funding to personnel to staff officer time. Outside the designated doctrine and OT&E centres this is difficult. And even they don't sufficient resources or authority to do what they should.

Lastly, you don't get promoted for being the bright idea fairy. It's actually outright anti-intellectual when you consider that our officer SCRITS:

1) Give more points for SLT than post-grad.

2) Weigh an executive MBA and two years Graduate engineering the same way.

3) Give less points for staff jobs in those "think tank" positions.

4) Some trades won't promote anyone on obligatory service for a sponsored post-grad.

When you put together all of the above, the fastest way to get promoted is to do ops tours and Second Language Training and get your Masters of Defence Studies after Staff College.

Indeed the unwritten rule in Ottawa for those with high technical competency is that we want them to leave the CAF and become public servants.

 

[Kirkhill]

Every squad will get anti-drone gear, Marine Corps says

With “zero decision space” to deal with incoming UAVs, troops need tools to take them down.

www.defenseone.com

Every squad will get anti-drone gear, Marine Corps says​

With “zero decision space” to deal with incoming UAVs, troops need tools to take them down.​

BY SAM SKOVE
STAFF WRITER
JULY 23, 2024

The Marines plan to equip every squad—from logistics units to reconnaissance teams deep in enemy territory—with a suite of tools to protect them from drones, a Marine officer told Defense One last week ahead of a September competition to pick gear.

Marines deployed to the field are already set to receive some form of protection from powerful anti-air vehicles, such as the Corps’ L-MADIS and MADIS systems.

However, those systems’ protective bubble only goes so far, said Capt. Taylor Barefoot, the Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems Capabilities Integration officer at the Marine Corps’ Capabilities Development Directorate. And Ukrainian troops have found that large, vehicle-based air-defense systems can draw enemy fire—and attract more drones than they have weapons to shoot down.

The Corps therefore wants to provide every unit with a “rudimentary, essential, self-defense capability,” Barefoot said.

The goal of the September competition is to find squad-portable tools that identify drones within a half-mile and weapons to take down ones that weigh up to 55 pounds, Barefoot said. The price tag should be around that of the gear the Corps used to jam improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.


One solution may be to field firearms with smart optics designed to shoot down drones, said Barefoot. The Corps and Army already field some of these systems; troops also practice shooting down drones with normal sights.

However, Barefoot said he wants to find other solutions. As seen in many videos in Ukraine, a human’s natural reaction to a drone flying at them at 100 miles per hour is to hide, not to stand up and shoot, he said.

“I don't want shotguns and M4 [rifles] to be the future” even if they may be a “baseline” for basic anti-drone capabilities, he said.

Another option is low-end anti-air missiles like the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, Barefoot said. At under $30,000 a shot, APKWS is far less expensive than AMRAAMs or Patriots—though still far costlier than most adversary drones. The system has been used in Ukraine and, at least in tests, boasts a 100 percent success rate.

Barefoot said that Marine squads could field a stripped-down version of APKWS by mounting a small pod to a tripod, but that would still add about an 81mm mortar’s worth of gear to a squad’s load.

Barefoot said the Corps is also interested in establishing a multi-layered sensor network designed to identify drones before they get too close. Sensors that listen for radio communications might help, but you can’t ID the frequency-hopping drones used in Ukraine against a library of signatures. Visible-light sensors might be more useful, at least in some cases—“if you have an optic that can look at the thing and identify it, it gives you just an added layer of certainty”—but acoustic sensors may work better at night or even on cloudy days, he said.

Barefoot said the September competition is expected to attract several companies with AI-enabled cameras to test.

Ideally, data from all types of sensors—acoustic, visual, and electronic—would be merged and displayed via the Tactical Android Kit, he said. The TAK is open-source software used in the military to visualize a battlefield and share information.

The Corps is also hoping to solve the problem of identifying friendly and enemy drones, said Barefoot. The problem has similarly plagued Ukrainian forces, who routinely shoot down their own drones.

Emitters can be placed on drones to help with IFF, but the devices tend to make drones large to be easily portable by a reconnaissance unit, Barefoot said.

Units could coordinate with air control stations to identify their drones, but a unit under attack by speedy loitering munitions may not have time.

“That is zero decision space,” he said.

Barefoot said artificial intelligence may have a place in counter-drone work. For example, an AI-enabled sensors could help units more quickly identify if they’ve spotted an enemy UAV or just a bird.

AI could also direct 30mm cannons at drone swarms, he added.

“I want to be able to take a block of [electronic emission] tracks off of a sensor screen, and—just like you would select multiple icons on your desktop—just drag and drop across [the drones], and then tell the computer to kill everything in this box,” he said. “The interface is there, all of the components to make that happen are there, I just need the AI to come in and drive the bus.”

Following the trials, the Corps hopes to field some systems to a Marine Air-Ground Task Force, likely in the Pacific, sometime in the next 12 months, he said.

Ukraine’s cheap sensors are helping troops fight off waves of Russian drones

Sub-$500 rig helps save expensive air-defense missiles for bigger threats.

www.defenseone.com

Ukraine’s cheap sensors are helping troops fight off waves of Russian drones​

Sub-$500 rig helps save expensive air-defense missiles for bigger threats.​

BY AUDREY DECKER
STAFF WRITER
JULY 20, 2024


RAF FAIRFORD, England—Ukraine has a network of almost 10,000 acoustic sensors scattered around the country that locate Russian drones and send targeting information to soldiers in the field who gun them down.

Dubbed “Sky Fortress,” the concept was developed by two Ukrainian engineers in a garage who put a microphone and a cell phone on a six-foot pole to listen for one-way UAVs, said Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Africa.

“They put about 9,500 of these within their nation and now they get very accurate information that is synthesized in a central computer and sent out to mobile fire teams. And on an iPad, they get a route of flight of these one-way UAVs coming in, and they have a triple-A [anti-aircraft] gun and a person with six hours of training can shoot these down,” Hecker told reporters at the Royal International Air Tattoo on Saturday.

About three months ago, Russia sent a salvo of 84 UAVs into Ukraine, and the system helped the defending troops shoot down all but four, Hecker said.

The system was so effective that the engineers behind the system were invited to demo it at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Hecker said. Other countries are looking at acoustic sensors, he added, noting that Romania recently did a demo with the system.

Each sensor costs about $400 to $500, he said, which suggests that the entire network costs less than a pair of Patriot air-defense missiles.

Hecker said the U.S. and allied militaries should look for their own ways to dramatically lower operational costs. In April, the U.S. expended missiles worth millions of dollars to take out $30,000 drones launched at Israel from Iran and Iranian proxies.

“That's why I challenge industry, I challenge the NATO air chiefs to come up with cheaper, more creative solutions that will put us maybe, hopefully on the right side of the cost curve, but if not, an equivalent cost curve. Likewise, we need to develop equipment at NATO to put Russia on the wrong side of the cost curve, should we have an Article Five situation,” he said.


Patriot and other heavy-duty air defenses remain vital for Ukraine, whose forces and civil infrastructure have been increasingly hammered by Russian ballistic missiles.

“What we're seeing from the Russians is increased use of ballistic missiles, and that's primarily because of North Korea providing ballistic missiles to them, and that obviously concerns us, but we are making sure that we equip Ukraine so that they can deal with that threat,” Hecker said.

Hecker was asked about Ukraine’s prospects for survival.

“A couple months ago, I was a little bit nervous because the Ukrainians were starting to run short on some of the munitions that are required for defense as well as offense. But through the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group, Secretary Austin and the other defense ministers have stepped up to the plate and recently given Ukraine a lot of equipment that they really needed. So that gives me a little bit more hope as we go on,” he said.

APKWS, 30mm and Acoustics and EO/IR sensors may not be the answer for the Squad/Section but they would seem like a match for the Platoon.

A small platoon with 4 to 6 vehicles, armed with the LW 30mm Pre-Fragmented Programmable rounds and a couple of APKWS launchers, all netted with EO/IR and Acoustic sensors and netted via AI might work.

A poor man's L-MADIS.


Someplace between here



And here