By Robbin Laird

With integratability comes an opportunity to shape a kill web approach to platform modernization.

It is a question of how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and what each platform not only can contribute to the whole, but what it needs to be a robust and redundant part of the kill web.

This clearly can shape how to think about platform modernization going ahead.

Ensuring that the core platforms have the digital tools to work together, then there is the opportunity to think of the integratable task force and what the platforms operating within that task force can bring to the fight, and what they can leverage from other platforms, and what they can contribute.

A case in point is how to conceptualize the way ahead for the Viper attack helicopter.

Building in Link 16 and video links into the Viper allows it work differently with both Aviation and the Ground Combat Element within the USMC.

And allows it to operate differently within the Navy-Marine Corps team at sea as well.

As argued in an earlier article:

As the US Navy reworks how it is operating as a distributed maritime force, which is being reshaped around the capability to operate a kill web force, the question of how best to leverage and evolve the amphibious force is a key part of that transition itself.

This is a work in progress, and one in which a determination of various paths to the future are in evolution and will be subject to debate as well.

Part of that evolution are changes in other elements of the amphibious task force which can over time play roles different from how various “legacy” platforms can be reworked to provide for new or expanded capabilities for the US Navy overall.

A case in point is how the Viper attack aircraft can evolve its roles AT SEA with the addition of key elements being generated by the digital interoperability effort, as well as adding a new weapons capability to the Viper, namely, the replacement for the Hellfire missile by the JAGM. 

What this means is that the Viper can be a key part of the defense of the fleet while embarked on a variety of ships operating either independently, or as part of an amphibious task force.

Because the Viper can land on and operate from of a wide range of ships, thus enabling operational and logistical flexibility, and with integration of Link 16 and full motion wave forms as part of digital interoperability improvements, the Viper can become a key member of the kill web force at sea.

Additionally, with digital interoperability enablement, the Viper can be reimagined in terms of how it might work with other members of the at sea task force.

A key example would be how it might work with the Seahawks operating from the L Class ships as well.

As argued in an earlier article:

My interviews with NAWDC have underscored how the Navy is working through the question of how the integratable air wing will change when the MQ-25 joins the fleet, and working ways for the Romeo to work with MQ-25 and Advanced Hawkeye will inform Romeo as part of its fleet defense function.

“The Romeo community is already looking at how having sensors onboard the MQ-25 can expand the reach and range of what the Romeo’s onboard sensors can accomplish for the maritime distributed force.

“It is also the case that as sensor demands currently made on the Romeo can be shifted elsewhere.

“The Romeo can refocus its task priorities and enhance its contributions to broader mission sets such as ASW and to focus on contributing capabilities that other platforms within the strike group are not prioritized to perform.”

Clearly, integrating Romeos which fly onboard the amphibious class ships with the Viper would provide a significant enhancement of the flank defense capabilities for the amphibious task force.

And working a Romeo/Viper package would affect as well the evolution of the Romeos that would fly off of the L class ships as well.

And all of this, frees up other surface elements to support other missions at sea, rather than having to focus on defending the amphibs as greyhound buses.

Working cross modernization of Romeo with Viper is an example of how a kill web perspective built on digital integratability can provide a clear concept for providing both timely and cost-effective modernization.

In a follow up conversation with Major Thomas Duff and Mr. Michael Manifor, HQMC Aviation, APW-53, Attack and Utility Helicopter Coordinators, about the Viper maritime attack helicopter, we discussed some ways to think about a way ahead.

One aspect of a cross-modernization approach shaped by integratability is finding ways for Viper to leverage Seahawk.

They noted that the Seahawk has a surface radar which the Viper does not but with integratability, they could have access to that data in addition to what they have organically onboard the Viper.

Currently, Viper and Seahawk pilots go to flight school together.

But what is needed is moving beyond the initial experience to shape an integratable capability with the deployable force.

Another aspect is the emergence of “smart” aircraft which can work together more effectively in combat packages.

For example, aircraft working together in a USMC assault package that could share information on the nearest fuel sources via wave form links, and sharing onboard information such as fuel state and fuel burn rates with such links, can lead to more effective integrated operations.

One such “smart aircraft” is the CH-53K. It as an all-digital aircraft with significant flexibility within its data management systems could, if properly configured, proactively know that an H-1 was in need of fuel and give them a time buffer to establish a FARP site, which would lead to more effective combat operations as well.

Another aspect is the modernization of the EW capabilities onboard the Viper.

There clearly needs to be enhanced organic EW capability provided for the Viper, but if done in the kill web manner, of being able to leverage the integrated distributed force, it is clearly a case of no platform fighting alone, but being able to both enhance the Viper’s survivability, but being able to provide data, and strike capabilities to support the kill web force.

Another aspect is working future weaponization from a kill web perspective.

A key aspect with regard to weaponization is the coming of directed energy weapons within the fleet.

Directed energy weapons reduce logistical footprints, extend ranges and allows for effective engagement across many targets.

It is clear that ships have significant advantages over aircraft with regard to the ability to operate directed energy weapons.

This means that the aircraft which fly with a directed energy enabled fleet will be able to tap into those capabilities as part of the kill web without having to operate them onboard their particular aircraft.

Third party targeting is enabled by a kill web; and with the enhanced impact of both directed energy weapons and the fusing of weapons and remote carriers, there is an expanded role which a modernized Viper can provide.

With directed energy weapons in the fleet, which is clearly coming, the airborne assets working with the fleet can focus more broadly on longer range strike opportunities. This is especially the case as targeting data becomes available from assets operating within the kill web that could inform a shooter like Viper, even though the Viper will not carry directed energy weapons itself.

The question then is putting longer range strike weapons on the Viper itself.

With the coming of low cost, collaborative, and tube launched systems like the Coyote UAS, the Viper can fire at greater distance with targeting data provided by C2 at the tactical edge from a partner platform. Swarms can be created by a system like Coyote UAS, but the swarm does not have to be generated by a single platform, but integratable platforms operating as a wolfpack.

A final point is the absolute centrality of common weapons throughout the kill web force.

A Viper needs to land at a FARP, or FOB, or on a Navy ship and be able to fly with common weapons and expendables. With a distributed missile and swarm UAV capability deployed to mobile or expeditionary bases, an asset like Viper can provide integrated strike capability which empowers a kill web.

The Viper has the ability to land virtually anywhere which means that it can tap into a widely dispersed weapons load outs on ships and FARPs throughout the extended battlespace.

In short, as the kill web approach gains traction, it can clearly affect the way ahead for platform modernization as well as to find ways to get best value out of legacy and evolving platforms, and shape the kind of new platforms that will come into the force.

The Viper is a case in point.

The featured photo shows United States Marine Corps AH-1Z Vipers and UH-1Y Venom helicopters landing  on HMAS Adelaide during a multi-spot exercise.  

By Robbin Laird

I have been focusing in a series of articles on the mobile basing role of the USMC within the evolving maritime kill web approach.

Earlier articles highlighted key requirements to perform expeditionary basing, as well as challenges facing sustainment and support for such a force.

A key element of the challenge which must be met is the command and control required to operate a distributed force which is integratable with the appropriate air-maritime force.

This allows the expeditionary force  both to make its maximal contribution to operations as well as to enhance its survivability.

As I noted in the discussion with Major James Everett, head of the Assault Support Department at MAWTS-1: “With the shift from the land wars, where the Marines were embedded within CENTCOM forces, C2 was very hierarchical.

“This clearly is not going to be practicable or efficacious with a distributed insertion force.

“Working mission command for a force operating in a degraded environment is a key challenge, but one which will have to be met to deliver the kind of distributed mobile based force which the Marines can provide for the joint and coalition force, and not just only in the Pacific, but would certainly provide a significant capability as well for the fourth battle of the Atlantic.”

I continued the discussion of the C2 challenges associated with expeditionary basing with Maj Tywan Turner Sr., TACC Division Head, Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron 1. The Tactical Air Command Center, or TACC, provides oversight and direction of aerial battles and aircraft movement in an operational environment and at WTI plays a key role in integrating aviation assets from the West Coast, East Coast and overseas.

The digital interoperability effort which I have focused on in a number of articles earlier is a central piece of working C2 for mobile basing.

The challenge has been that the legacy approach has been to make C2 and ISR capabilities inherent to specific platforms, and then the task is to do after market integration and to work these disparate platforms together for operations.

And during the land wars, the size of the C2 capabilities evolved over time, but the reduction in size of the servers is providing a significant opportunity to bring C2 to the tactical edge as well.

Moving forward, combing enhanced digital interoperability with much smaller footprint server capabilities to manage C2 data will provide a way ahead for working to deploy more efficacious expeditionary deployable C2.

The Aviation Command and Control System is referred to as “Common” because all MACCS agencies either have or are planning to adopt the software and equipment suite.

Prior to the hard the shift toward Naval Integration, it was a major step toward digital interoperability.

But the baseline Common Aviation Command and Control System (CAC2S) during the land wars has operated from a Humvee frame, which obviously is not the best way to work the ship to shore concepts of operations which expeditionary C2 will require.

As Major Turner put it: “We need a smaller mousetrap to do C2 in the expeditionary basing environment.”

The Marines are working with a CAC2S smaller form factor to meet the evolving needs for force insertion.

They are experimenting with decreasing the footprint of the server-software configuration to make it more deployable and overcome mobility and sustainment limitation (lift required, power requirements & fuel, cooling).

According to Major Turner: “CAC2S small-form factor SFF, also has also shown early promise in being incorporated aboard naval vessels.”

It could provide enhanced digital interoperability between expeditionary bases and Naval strike groups as well.

With regard to working the CAC2S deployable system, a correlated effort is working new ways to handle the wave forms which the ashore force would need in a variety of expeditionary environments.

And along with this effort, clearly signature management is a key consideration as well.

In my view, a key element revolves specifically over which wave forms need to be deployed with an expeditionary basing force, for those wave forms will determine with which force elements the Marines can integrate with both to achieve their mission but also to support the broader integrated distributable force.

In an earlier article, I focused on the central significance of the strategic or tactical mission assigned to an insertion force to an expeditionary base.

And that mission set will be highly correlated with which wave forms are available to the insertion force either afloat or ashore.

Clearly, a major challenge facing USMC-USN integratability revolves precisely around how best to ensure integratable C2.

Are the Marines decision makers operating from expeditionary bases or are they nodes in a fire control network?

Notably, the potential expansion of the role of the ampbhious task force to play an enhanced role in sea control and sea denial, which I have discussed earlier, and will build out in future articles, clearly requires C2 which allows for the Marines to be decision makers within the kill web force, not just working as a transmission belt in the firing solution set.

With the new computational technologies, which allow for the enablement of the internet of things at the tactical edge, the capability for the Marines to play the decision-making role with an extended kill web can be emphasized and enhanced going forward.

For the Marines to play a decision-making role from mobile basing, there is a key challenge as well associated with the evolution of the wave forms enabling deployed integratability.

There needs to be management of the various wave forms to deliver what one might call a 360-degree waveform delivery system to the deployed Marines, to have both the situational awareness as well as the decision space to support the proper scheme of maneuver from the mobile base.

By 360 degree, I am referring to an ability to manage wave forms which provide management of the ship to shore to airborne platform space to deliver the kill web effect. Such a a 360-degree solution should also support all-domain access (specifically the space and cyberspace domains) to information that is normally held at the operational level.

If the Marines are deploying strike teams to expeditionary basing, how best to ensure that they have the 360-degree waveform capability to achieve mission success?

Featured Photo: Tactical air defense controllers and air control electronics operators with Marine Air Control Squadron 24, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing run simulations on the new Common Aviation Command and Control System (CAC2S) Sept. 12, 2013. The Marines received training on the new systems during their fielding of the new system, which was the final fielding in Phase I of the CAC2S program.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA, UNITED STATES

09.12.2013

Photo by Sgt. Scott McAdam 

Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command

See also, the following:

C2, the Knowledge Base and the Kill Web

Working Mobile Basing: Defining the Challenge

The Digital Interoperability Initiative and Mobile Basing: A Key Enabler

The USMC and Mobile Basing: The Contributions of Forward Arming and Refueling Points (FARPs)

Fighting with the Force You Have: Moving Forward with Mobile Expeditionary Basing

By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake

We had the opportunity to work with and for Secretary Wynne when he was in the Defense Department. He was involved in many innovations which revolved around shaping an information force before the term became fashionable, which involved pushing information to the edge of the tactical force, shaping distributed decision making and ISR enablement for what can be called the integrated distributed force.

Part of this effort revolved around the coming of the fifth-generation aircraft, first F-22 and then F-35; and the realization that these platforms had battlefield management capabilities beyond their well-known platform capabilities. 

Feedback enhanced this view, as when an F-22 expended all of its weapons during an exercise, and the force commander directed it to remain on station distributing targets to other platforms from prior generations.

Secretary Wynne was a key mover in the shaping of a coalition F-35 which, because of its multination and multidomain usage could provide for historically unparalleled shared ISR and theater level decision-making capabilities.

We lived through the critical comments about the Secretary and the COS of the USAF, General Mosely, for being too committed to future war with what President Obama came to refer to as a “Cold War” airplane.

And it is clear that for far too many defense analysts, the fifth-generation revolution, with its inherent platform capability to have deeper penetration for a prolonged period is still not viewed as a driver for transformation with regard to shaping the kill web force.

What the war game commander (referred to above with regard to the initial F-22 experience) had learned was that the aircraft could provide target acquisition for the force, and had the ability to share across multi generation platforms and potentially multi domain systems.

But this did not become ground truth for the Air Force and the joint force.

And the full impact of the coming of fifth generation aircraft, still remains too compartmentalized.

For example, at the International Fighter Conference 2019, held in Berlin last November, the entire discussion of the way ahead for the combat air force as a multi-domain force and the challenges and opportunities for shaping a way ahead really was conducted with a discussion of what the impact of fifth generation aircraft HAVE already delivered.

Notably, the presentation on F-35 given at the conference seemed more like a separate discussion related to its platform capabilities rather than being part of the challenges and dynamics of overall force transformation.

Fifth generation aircraft are not a cult; they are a force for the renorming of airpower and a driver for the creation of a kill web force.

The other driver for the Kill Web future which Wynne was associated with has been the Rover system.

Rover, which was first conceived as a means on a better, more direct transmission of information from unmanned Aircraft, ultimately became a communication device for all sorts of airborne platforms for use in battlefield elements and in first responder situations such as fire and flood.

We would note as well that the baseline Rover briefing included in our 2012 article on Rover has been downloaded thousands of times from our sister website where we provide for briefings. And it continues to be downloaded on a regular basis. 

In the world of information based warfare, this ability to transmit images and actually produce calls for fires led to the democratization of the battlefield,  which the introduction of the AC-130 Gunships and helicopter support and integration operations first generated.

Rover has led to a dramatic shift in how C2 and ISR were becoming distributed.

In many ways, the coming of Rover is a key part of the legacy of the land wars which is being taken forward into a more sophisticated and complex kill web force development and concepts of operations efforts for the joint and coalition force.

In a recent discussion we had with Secretary Wynne, we went back over his time at the birth of the kill web and the integrated distributed force. 

A key point which he highlighted was that a major challenge to hierarchical culture had to be addressed within the land wars as the introduction of JTACs into the Army.

This created  dramatic change from the top down distribution of battlefield fire assets, as it led to small unit commanders controlling seemingly theater level assets.

According to Wynne, “the US Army had a difficult time adapting to how and where they would fit into their division, battalion, company or platoon units.

“Over time they were guided by the utility that the Special Forces got from what JTACs could bring to a distributed force. But, at the outset, the Army saw their main contribution as being part of reconnaissance patrols, surfacing information to senior commanders.”

Over several years of innovation, the JTACS introduced a new way of war, information driven, with demand for fires and responses from air and ground support provided farmore rapidly at the tactical level.

Wynne noted that he took a film on this new way of war to West Point to show “the next generation of officers that information warfare is where it was at, and that a new approach, namely, being able to operate with Tactical units on the Z axis was a key way ahead.”

That presentation was in 2006.

He also sent small UAV’s and experienced JTACs to both the Air Force Academy and West Point to summer camps to gain traction with the cadre of seniors enlisted assisting in the training.

The introduction of the JTAC and an ISR officer as part of the maneuver force was a foundation for change.

Now maneuver forces can operate with new technologies to aggregate in larger combat effects, through the revolutions in computational power, C2 wave forms, and cyber capabilities to distribute into the battlespace.

The Army now leads the way in integrating both large and small UAV’s.

And with the impact of the F-35 on the joint and coalition force, a new axis of development, the Z axis is a key driver of change for the emergence of a kill web force.

Secretary Wynne argued that fifth generation aircraft would push forward a significant change whereby every shooter could become a sensor and some sensors as shooters in every domain.

It was about shaping a knowledge set in the battlespace that could inform targeting decisions, but as well to provide for a very different dynamic for battle damage assessment.

With the F-35s operating as a package, the force can deliver a strike or provide the information for a strike, can provide real time battle damage assessment, and continue target prosecution as required.

The emphasis here being to further minimize bombs on target that has been a hallmark of precision weaponry.

This Battle Damage cycle can be a major change for operating a sequential airpower operation with a C2 hierarchy informing the sequential aircraft coming into or operating in the area.

Whereas with the legacy approach, continued strikes would occur even without a need to do so, with a fifth generation enabled force, more effective use of assets can be generated.

There is a key tension built into the evolution of C2 for the kill web which was already evident in the work being conducted when Wynne was in the Department of Defense. The tension continues to ripen between strategic acquisition of information and tactical use of information.  This extends a key tension between tactical decision making at the edge, and the need for strategic direction of the combat forces.

With the new technologies, tactical decision making at the edge is empowered by computing and wave form technologies.

At the same time, determining the impact of the distributed force on desired combat outcomes is crucial for crisis management.

How to best manage the inevitable tension between tactical decision making at the edge, and the right kind of strategic decision making to manage the force to get the desired combat effects?

Wynne described this as a tension between the process owners and the implementers of the process, whereby the later are gaining enhanced knowledge resources to shape the process, while the process owners have so much information available that they now need to step back and look at the strategic picture rather than delving into detailed management of the combat process at the tactical edge.

This is a very difficult situation for command authorities to ensure that they are acting on the most salient and trusted information.

In short, as we examine the way ahead for the kill web force, working how best to manage the distributed shooters and sensors is a core challenge.

That challenge can be understood in part as the ability to provide the most effective decision making at the edge but also guided by effective strategic process assessment.

That shift started with changes made in the land wars with JTACs, and Rover introductions, and is accelerating with the growing impact of the information made available for the entire Joint and Coalition Force by the fifth-generation aircraft.

But leveraging this past, and working the with a fifth generated enabled force, we are seeing a broad transformation of the joint and coaliton force into an integrated distributed force able to operate as multiple interactive kill webs.

The featured photo:Chief Master Sgt. Keith Hunt prepares a 9-line to transmit over the radio during a Remotely Operated Video Enhancement Receiver (ROVER) Internet Protocol Network, or RIPN project field test at the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing in Southwest Asia, Sept. 24, 2013. With the assistance of the 9th EBS and Hunt, the RIPN team from the Pentagon fielded the first test of the RIPN system forming a network through the B-1B Lancer’s sniper pod to several ROVERs on the ground. Hunt is the 504th Expeditionary Air Support Group chief enlisted manger and was the JTAC during the demonstration. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Bahja J. Jones)