Shaping the C2/ISR Infrastructure for an Integrated Distributed Force

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Shaping the C2/ISR Infrastructure for an Integrated Distributed Force
10/19/2019

By Robbin Laird

Over the past thirty years, the United States and its core allies have gone through three phases of innovation with regard to conventional forces.

The first was air-land battle designed for the European theater and executed in the 1991 Iraqi War.

The second was the innovations associated with the land wars and the joint force support for COIN operations.

The third which is unfolding now is designed to deal with 21st century high intensity operations which can be conducted by peer competitors.

This new phase might be called shaping, exercising and building an integrated distributed force.

This entails interactive technological, force structure and geographical deployment dynamics.  We have argued that a new basing structure combined with a capability to deploy and operate an integrated distributed force is at the heart of the strategic shift, and not only in the Pacific.

This is a key part of the effort to shape a full spectrum crisis management capability whose con-ops is shaped to deal with adversary operations within what some call the “gray zone” or within the “hybrid warfare” area.

The nature of the threat facing the liberal democracies was well put by a senior Finnish official: “The timeline for early warning is shorter; the threshold for the use of force is lower.”

What is unfolding is that capabilities traditionally associated with high end warfare are being drawn upon for lower threshold conflicts, designed to achieve political effect without firing a shot.

Higher end capabilities being developed by China and Russia are becoming tools to achieve political-military objectives throughout the diplomatic engagement spectrum.

This means that not only do the liberal democracies need to shape more effective higher end capabilities but they need to learn how to use force packages which are making up a higher end, higher tempo or higher intensity capability as part of a range of both military operations but proactive engagement to shape peer adversary behavior.

In today’s world, this is what full spectrum crisis management is all about.  It is not simply about escalation ladders; it is about the capability to operate tailored task forces within a crisis setting – to dominate and prevail within a diversity of crises which might not be located on what one might consider an escalation ladder.

This means that a core legacy from the land wars and COIN efforts needs to be jettisoned if we are to succeed – namely, the OODLA loop. The OODA loop is changing with the new technologies which allow distributed operators to become empowered to decide in the tactical decision-making situation.

But the legacy approach to hierarchical approval to distributed decisions simply will take away the advantages of the new distributed approach and give the advantage to our authoritarian adversaries.

What is changing is that the force we are shaping to operate in the littorals has expansive reach beyond the presence force in the littorals themselves.  If you are not present; you are not present. We have to start by having enough platforms to be able to operate in areas of interest.

But what changes with the integrated distributed ops approach is what a presence force can now mean.

Historically, a presence force is about what is organically included within that presence force; now we are looking at reach or scalability of force.  We are looking at economy of force whereby what is operating directly in the area of interest is part of distributed force.

The presence force however small needs to be well integrated but not just in terms of itself but its ability to operate via C2 or ISR connectors to an enhanced capability.  But that enhanced capability needs to be deployed in order to be tailorable to the presence force and to provide enhanced lethality and effectiveness appropriate to the political action needed to be taken.

This rests really on a significant rework of C2 in order for a distributed force to have the flexibility to operate not just within a limited geographical area but to expand its ability to operate by reaching beyond the geographical boundaries of what the organic presence force is capable of doing by itself.

This requires multi-domain SA. This is not about the intelligence community running its space- based assets and developing reports. This is about looking for the coming confrontation which could trigger a crisis and the SA capabilities airborne, at sea and on the ground that would provide the most usable SA monitoring. This is not “actionable intelligence.”

This is about shaping force domain knowledge in anticipation of events.

This also requires tailored force packaging to take advantage of what the new military technologies and platforms can provide in terms of multi-domain delivery by a small force rather than a large air-sea enterprise which can only fully function if unleashed in sequential waves.

This is not classic deterrence – it is about pre-crisis and crisis engagement.

The force we are building will have five key capabilities:

  • Enough platforms with allied and US forces in mind to provide significant presence;
  • A capability to maximize economy of force with that presence;
  • Scalability whereby the presence force can reach back if necessary at the speed of light and receive combat reinforcements;
  • Be able to tap into variable lethality capabilities appropriate to the mission or the threat in order to exercise dominance.
  • And to have the situational awareness relevant to proactive crisis management at the point of interest and an ability to link the fluidity of local knowledge to appropriate tactical and strategic decisions.

The new approach is one which can be expressed in terms of a kill web, that is a US and allied force so scalable that if an ally goes on a presence mission and is threatened by a ramp up of force from a Russia or China, that that presence force can reach back to relevant allies as well as their own force structure.

A shift to a kill web approach to force building, training and operations is a foundation from which the US and its allies can best leverage the force we have and the upgrade paths to follow.

For this approach to work, there is a clear need for a different kind of C2 and ISR infrastructure to enable the shift in concepts of operations.

Indeed, when describing C2 and ISR or various mutations like C4ISR, the early notions of C2 and ISR seen in both air-land battle and in joint support to the land wars, tend to be extended into the discussions of the C2 and ISR infrastructure for the kill web or for force building of the integrated distributed force.

But the technology associated with C2 and ISR has changed significantly throughout this thirty year period, and the technology to shape a very different kind of C2 and ISR infrastructure is at hand to build enablement for distributed operations.

Recently, I had a chance to talk with an industry leader with regard to the evolution of C2 and ISR infrastructure. 

Marja Phipps currently is business development director for Cubic Mission Solutions (CMS), a business division of Cubic Corporation.

She has more than thirty year’s experience in the C2 and ISR areas and has lived through the thirty-year development of C2 and ISR with the cycles of innovation changing dramatically to create the new technological situation in which we find ourselves.

She has focused on providing C4ISR system offerings to military services, defense agencies, intelligence community and multinational partners. Her domain expertise includes communications and networking, knowledge-based systems, multi-INT Processing Exploitation and Dissemination tradecraft, and enterprise interoperability.

What she explained is that the earlier concepts of networking relied on hardwired networks, and single point networking solutions.  This meant that the network required careful planning and coordination with the particular platforms which were using the networks to get the combat or joint effect from a networked capability.

“Earlier we built a dedicated single network connection for a specific task, such as providing targeting information to the platforms involved in a specific operation.”

The “networked” force was built around platforms that would use networked information to create desired and often scripted events.

But the C2 and ISR revolution we are now facing is reversing the logic of platforms to infrastructure; it is now about how flexible C2 and ISR interactive systems can inform the force elements to shape interactive combat operations on the fly.

That is, the new capabilities are enabling tactical decision making at the edge and posing real challenges to traditional understandings of how information interacts with decision making.

It is about learning how to fight effectively at the speed of light in order to achieve combat dominance.

And these new capabilities are providing a real impact on force development, concepts of operations and force training as well.

“With the new technologies and capabilities, we are now reusing networks for multiple purposes and making sure that they can adapt to the changing con-ops as well.”

“We are seeing integration of the networks and the integration of the information management services and then the dual nature of the applications on top of those integrations.

“Rather than building a single purpose intel common operating picture, we are now capable of building an integrated intelligence and battlespace management common operating picture for the use of the combat forces engaged in operations.”

Chaos Theory Enabled C2

She argued that there are significant changes at each layer of the C2 and ISR systems becoming increasingly integrated for a distributed force.

“At each layer, we are making the technology more robust. For example, at the communications layer, the connections are more redundant and protected and are data agnostic.

“You don’t have a dedicated network for one piece of data or between specific platforms, you’ve got the ability to network anything essentially.”

In other words, “we are building an adaptable network of networks. In traditional networks, when data is brought in from a dedicated system, it needs to be repurposed for other tasks as needed.”

What the technology is allowing us to do, is to think about C2 and ISR in a very different fashion, and to think in terms of enabling a small force operations or Lego block approach to the buildup of forces.

The new C2 and ISR infrastructure allows one to think about force development differently.

Phipps noted: “Access data points are becoming ubiquitous and operating in conjunction with processing data services which are scalable across a highly redundant protected communications network.”

“We are putting communications capabilities understood in terms of being able to operate with scalable processing and data services at the tactical edge.

“The edge players are becoming key players in the decision making involving the distributed force.

“They are not just sending data back but they are making decisions at the tactical edge.

“The network gives you the access to not only the ISR data, but the C2 processes as well. The targeting data can be repurposed as well for additional decision-making, not just at the edge but back into the larger combat enterprise.”

This obviously requires rethinking considerably the nature of decision making and the viability of the classic notion of the OODA loop.

If the machines are fusing data or doing the OO function, then the DA part of the equation becomes transformed, notably if done in terms of decision making at the tactical edge.

The decisions at the edge will drive a reshaping of the information about the battlespace because actors at the tactical edge are recreating the information environment itself.

In effect, chaos theory becomes a key element of understanding of what C2 at the tactical edge means in terms of the nature of the fleeting information in a distributed combat space itself.

“With the new technologies, what you are calling the new C2 and ISR infrastructure enables new warfighting approaches which need to be shaped, exercised and executed, and in turn affect how our forces train for the high-end fight.”

She underscored a key difference from the earlier phase of network centric warfare.

“I think of net-centric as a hardwired con-ops. I think it’s preplanned. You can do it, but there’s no adaptability, there’s no protection, there’s no scalability as far as those architectures were concerned.

“Now we’re going to the next step where we’re making networks adaptable and scalable so that you can essentially re-plan on the fly and make decisions differently, in a distributed manner.

“It’s not a preplanned or scripted way of operating anymore.”

She went on to argue that the focus needed to be going forward on what she called “smart network management.”

What she highlighted is the importance of what might call information parsimony, or getting the right information, to the right person, at the right time.

One of the challenges facing analysts discussing networks is that assumption that too much information is being collected and data is overwhelming the human decision maker.  If that is the case, then we are talking about bad network architecture and information management.

She focused on how the key layers in the modern approach to networking interact with one another.

“In an adaptive network of networks, there are several layers interacting dynamically with one another, from a comms layer, to a data processing layer, to a data distribution layer with a network management layer able to dynamically provide for information parsimony.”

On the technology side, it is about both hardware and software solutions which are allowing new capabilities to emerge which allow for a smart networking capability to emerge.

“We’re talking about adaptability and upgradeability here. It’s not just about software upgradeability, it’s about hardware changes that allow for more flexible software solutions and more flexible cross-engagement solutions.”

With the new C2 and ISR infrastructure the opportunity to enhance the capabilities of the legacy force are significant.

“One can add information management and decision processes on an airborne platform with a small processing footprintt.

“You could make good decisions on what you do as far as control on that platform versus what you’re doing as far as control on another platform.

“And it’s across domains as well. We should not think of just a certain processing or information management activity taking place on the ground or in the air.

“We’re also talking space as well and figuring out how to basically connect across all those layers and the assets across those layers as well.”

And going forward we will look at new platforms quite differently. 

Rather than discussing generations of platforms, with the information and decision-making infrastructure building out an integrated distributed force, we will look at platforms in terms of what they contribute to the overall capability to such a force, rather than simply becoming autistic injections into the force.

Credit for the Graphic: Second Line of Defense

See also the following:

Combat Today: Kill Webs, and Fighting at the Speed of Light

Re-Shaping Australian Policy Towards China

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Re-Shaping Australian Policy Towards China
10/18/2019

By Michael Shoebridge

The post mortems on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s US visit and speech in Chicago on Chinese state trade distortions didn’t wait for the trip to finish. We’ve had the line from opposition leader Anthony Albanese that the big issue was that the speech was delivered in the US. And another from the Chinese Communist Party paper the China Daily that ‘Australia still needs to fine tune its perceptions of China’, which was echoed by some strident visiting Chinese university folk.

We’ve even seen a repackaging of the much loved ‘Australia needs to reset its relationship with Beijing by changing the tone and language’ mantra. It now appears to be necessary for a new reason—because, apparently, Australia has joined the US–China trade war.

The visit had its hokey moments and lots of Trumpian theatrics, certainly. It was an important demonstration that the Australia–US relationship is deep and as much an economic as a strategic one. But the big outcome of the trip is a further articulation of Australia’s emerging China policy.

On the Albanese call: there are two tests for any Australian prime minister speaking on a critical issue like China policy. The first is whether the same speech could have been given anywhere—in Beijing, Canberra, Delhi, Brussels, Jakarta, Port Moresby, Washington or Rockhampton. This one could have.

To focus on its being delivered in the US as an indicator of Australia’s alignment in the trade war is superficial and tactically political. Before rushing to such a judgement, it’s worth actually reading the speech, because Morrison did not endorse US President Donald Trump’s deficit-focused trade war. Instead, he called for international action on underlying issues. The more important question is whether Morrison will be consistent if and when he visits Beijing.

That brings us to the substance. Morrison’s speech sketched out the changes to China’s economy since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The case is well founded and consistent, with analysis from organisations like the OECD and the European Commission, as well as reports of the US Trade Representative. It also aligns with the views of almost all G20 leaders and finance ministers, and sits well with APEC’s unreleased communiqué of 2018 that all leaders agreed to except Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It’s based on some simple big things. Since 2001, the combination of China’s new wealth, the leadership’s prioritisation of trade and high-end economic development, and a comprehensive set of structural policies—including intellectual property theft at scale, forced intellectual property transfers, state subsidies and market protections—has distorted world trade to the disadvantage of many economies that engage with China’s. That’s because their own firms have been put at a competitive disadvantage by the Chinese state’s policies and practices.

China’s fabulous growth in recent decades has been enabled by other economies, including Australia’s, engaging with it on these terms. However, now China’s wealth, and its use of that wealth in its distorted international economic engagement, is a global problem that must be addressed.

It has resulted, for example, in Chinese ‘national champions’—like Huawei—using their home market protections and advantages to compete against firms that haven’t been given these state-derived boosts when bidding for work—such as building others’ national 5G networks.

The fact that per capita GDP in China is still well below that of other countries possessing large, highly developed economies like much of China’s is as much about how Xi and previous leaders have used China’s new wealth. They have chosen not to spread it broadly, but instead created a large middle class and a sizeable luxury class of ultra-wealthy individuals—the China Daily boasted last October that China had produced the most billionaires globally in 2017. Those decisions have resulted in a two-track economy: the developed bit is deeply engaged with the international economy, and the undeveloped portion is lagging behind.

Priority has also been given to increasing the capacity of the Chinese state’s internal security forces to confront and control their own citizens, and strengthening China’s external military, cyber, space and intelligence power.

Xi’s three signature programs—the Belt and Road Initiative, ‘Made in China 2025’ and military–civil fusion—continue his focus on growing strategic, technological and economic power to be used by the state. At the same time, the BRI will attempt to spread the economic largesse from China’s highly developed coastal regions inland along its spines, although not at the expense of internal security or the People’s Liberation Army.

The visiting Chinese university team, accompanied by embassy minders, reacted to Morrison’s Chicago speech by claiming Australia is the pioneer of a global anti-China campaign.

That statement contains a truth hidden in an obscuration: there is a global anti-China campaign—but it’s being led by Xi, not Australia.

Former CCP leaders, from Deng Xiaoping to Hu Jintao, were subtle enough to grow China’s economic and state power quietly and well. Xi, by contrast, is a man in a hurry, and since 2012 he has switched the national agenda to a much more aggressive, assertive and confident use of China’s newly built military, economic, technological and cyber power in pursuit of his ‘China Dream’ of a Sino-centred world.

Think of the military’s takeover under Xi of chunks of the South China Sea. And of the Chinese state’s aggressive cyber hacking, including into Australia’s parliament and our three major political parties. And of its large-scale foreign interference in other countries’ politics. And of the steps it has taken to establish military bases and a presence beyond the PLA’s first overseas base in Djibouti—for example, in Cambodia.

Xi is also galvanising international opposition over his increasingly repressive use of state security forces and technology against China’s own people. Xinjiang and Hong Kong are two obvious examples.

As Isaac Newton told us, for every action there’s a reaction. Xi’s actions have been the catalyst for a broad and growing international reaction to Chinese structural economic policies and practices and the Chinese state’s use of its power domestically and internationally. Again, 5G and Huawei are a prime example; the Indian, Japanese and EU nations’ considerations about their various national networks are being informed by this reaction. Who can tell what strategic adjustments are being urged on Xi or what pressures are developing within the CCP leadership?

Regardless, this is bad news, obviously, for China and the world.

But it also means that Australia is not alone in needing to manage this new kind of China. Morrison is in good company with the directions he set out in Chicago.

For the future, he will need to continue to centre his public policy engagement with Australians and with every other leader as he has to date—on Australia’s national interests.

That will become increasingly important if Albanese continues with his Chicago sound bite about Morrison’s China policy being an endorsement of the US in the Trump–Xi trade dispute. It’s more likely that Albanese is smart enough to see that any tactical political advantage to him from driving a bipartisan divide into Australia’s China policy isn’t worth the damage it would do to our national interests.

And he’ll have to get past shadow defence minister Richard Marles’s odd line that ‘ultimately, we have made a decision to engage. We made that decision back in 1972. We continue with that decision now’—as if we are somehow powerless to adjust how we engage in the face of the fundamental changes that have occurred since 1972 in China’s power and the way the CCP uses it.

Albanese has a ready solution to hand here, given his Labor colleague Penny Wong’s speech on the international economy, China and the US. As with Morrison’s speech, the shadow foreign minister’s remarks align pretty closely with the broader concerns expressed by G20 leaders, the OECD and the EU and so provide a continued basis for bipartisanship on this crucial set of issues.

All the handwringing from pro-CCP advocates about Australia needing to reset the relationship—which seems to involve apologising for and reversing decisions made in our national interest—needs to be seen in this broader context. No prime minister should apologise for acting in Australia’s national interests. And no political leader should fall into the trap of characterising tension in the relationship as attributable to the ‘vibe’ of Australian language rather than the facts of Chinese state actions.

There’s also the comforting and practical observation that fears of Xi’s state taking large punitive economic actions against Australia have simply not materialised, because our trade relationship with Beijing is one of interdependence. In fact, our two-way trade relationship has continued to grow and is now worth some $215 billion. The Chinese economy needs our resources and services, arguably even more at a time of growing economic challenges.

The Chicago speech put Australia’s approach to Chinese economic policies and actions right in the middle of the crystallising consensus in OECD and G20 nations. Australia is similarly in good company in pushing back on Chinese state conduct in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. None of this will make it any easier to deal with Xi’s strategic, technological and economic agenda, but it’s a good place to be.

Beyond economics, the prime minister and the opposition are both yet to craft a clear approach to domestic China policy. The Gladys Liu affair shows the problems in seeking to distill the diverse Australian Chinese communities of 1.2 million people into a single individual. And the government has yet to articulate a way to empower these diverse voices, so that public debate on China is informed by more than the ‘curated garden’ of groups and voices the Chinese embassy and its consulates manage.

Morrison also has yet to confront intrusive Chinese state interference—either by attributing the hacks on the parliament and political parties to the Chinese Ministry of State Security now that Australian agencies will have done the forensic work to allow this, or through prosecution when presented with the first case of an individual with undisclosed financial links to Beijing under Australia’s new foreign influence transparency scheme.

Unless those around Xi convince him to change course, the hard times for many states engaging with his China, for the 1.4 billion people living under party rule, and for Xi and the CCP in return, are yet to come. Australia has at least begun to build a framework for this new difficult era.

Michael Shoebridge is director of the defence, strategy and national security program at ASPI. Image: Feng Li/Getty Images.

This article was first published by ASPI on September 30, 2019.

A Key Element for the Future Evolution of the Integrated Distributed Force: Evolving Remote Maritime Capabilities

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on A Key Element for the Future Evolution of the Integrated Distributed Force: Evolving Remote Maritime Capabilities
10/17/2019

By Robbin Laird

In today’s world, full spectrum crisis management is not simply about escalation ladders; it is about the capability to operate tailored task forces within a crisis setting to dominate and prevail within that crisis.

If that stops the level of escalation that is one way of looking at it. But in today’s world, it is not just about that but it is about the ability to operate and prevail within a diversity of crises which might not be located on what one might consider an escalation ladder.

They are very likely to be diffuse within which the authoritarian powers are using surrogates and we and our allies are trying to prevail in a more open setting which we are required to do as liberal democracies.

This means that a core legacy from the land wars and COIN efforts needs to be jettisoned if we are to succeed – namely, the OODLA loop.

This is how the OODA loop has worked in the land wars, with the lawyers in the loop, and hence the OODLA loop.

The OODA loop is changing with the new technologies which allow distributed operators to become empowered to decide in the tactical decision-making situation.

But the legalistic approach to hierarchical approval to distributed decisions simply will take away the advantages of the new distributed approach and give the advantage to our authoritarian adversaries.

What we are seeing is a blending of technological change, with con-ops changes and which in turn affect the use and definition of relevant military geography.

In other words, the modernization of conventional forces also has an effect on geography.


As Joshua Tallis argued in his book on maritime security, the notion of what is a littoral region has undergone change over time in part due to the evolution of military technologies.

“Broadly speaking, the littoral region is the ‘area of land susceptible to military influence from the sea, and the sea area susceptible to influence from the land.’

“In military terms, ‘a littoral zone is the portion of land space that can be engaged using sea-based weapon systems, plus the adjacent sea space (surface and subsurface0 that can be engaged using land-based weapon system, and the surrounding airspace and cyberspace.’

“The littoral is therefore defined by the technological capability of a military, and as a result, the littoral is not like other geographic terms.”1

What is changing is that the force we are shaping to operate in the littorals has expansive reach beyond the presence force in the littorals themselves. 

If you are not present; you are not present. We have to start by having enough platforms to be able to operate in areas of interest.

But what changes with the integrated distribute ops approach is what a presence force can now mean. Historically, what a presence force is about what organically included within that presence force; now we are looking at reach or scalability of force.

We are looking at economy of force whereby what is operating directly in the area of interest is part of distributed force.

The presence force however small needs to be well integrated but not just in terms of itself but its ability to operate via C2 or ISR connectors to an enhanced capability.

But that enhanced capability needs to be deployed in order to be tailorable to the presence force and to provide enhanced lethality and effectiveness appropriate to the political action needed to be taken.

This rests really on a significant rework of C2 in order for a distributed force to have the flexibility to operate not just within a limited geographical area but to expand its ability to operate by reaching beyond the geographical boundaries of what the organic presence force is capable of doing by itself.

This requires multi-domain SA – this is not about the intelligence community running its precious space- based assets and hoarding material. This is about looking for the coming confrontation which could trigger a crisis and the SA capabilities airborne, at sea and on the ground would provide the most usable SA monitoring. This is not “actionable intelligence.”

This is about shaping force domain knowledge about anticipation of events.

This requires tailored force packaging and takes advantage of what the new military technologies and platforms can provide in terms of multi-domain delivery by a small force rather than a large air-sea enterprise which can only fully function if unleashed in sequential waves.

In the maritime domain, an evolving capability which will operate in concert with capital ships are unmanned maritime systems or remotes.

Such systems come in two forms: underwater unmanned systems and surface unmanned systems, which when the con-ops matures will work interactively with one another to extend the reach of the manned surface fleet to provide for perimeter defense via a flexible picket fence so to speak, and to provide a significant impact to the reworking of C2 highlighted above.

In many ways, the F-35 force package is directly forcing a significant revision of where D takes place in the OODA loop. Tactical decision making at the edge needs to be worked as the F-35 pushes decision making capability to the edge.

As that is worked through, the next phase will entail how remotes can provide not just SA and remote targeting capabilities, but share in the decision making with the humans in the loop.

For the Air Forces, this will be about sorting through how loyal wingman can work with manned combat air assets; for maritime forces it will be about how above and below sea remotes can be woven into the extended reach of a capital ship and become part of a force package, and, in turn, changing the nature of what a combat fleet looks like.

In other words, there are waves of learning how to work with remotes and to incorporate them into an integrated distributed force. 

Over the next five years, we will see a significant presence of maritime remotes and as operational experience is gained, the next wave of learning will go from treating these as platforms adding to the capability of the fleet, to becoming core parts of an integrated distributed force with significant changes in the concepts of operations of the combat fleets as well.

During my visit to the Chief of the Royal Australian Navy’s Seapower conference which was held in Sydney from October 8th through the 10th, 2019, I had a chance to discuss with officers of the Royal Australian Navy as well as defense industry leaders the evolving maritime remote capabilities currently available and on the horizon.

One of those industry leaders I met with was Daryl Slocum of L3HarrisTechnologies.

He has been involved with maritime remote systems since his graduate student days and as head of the OceanServer program, is based in Massachusetts at the L3Harris facility located there. He was at the conference engaging with various Navies attending the conference to discuss the capabilities which L3Harris has in the maritime remotes area.

I took advantage of his presence to discuss more generally how one might understand how maritime remotes are developing and might develop in the future, and their role and contribution to the maritime combat force.

Slocum views maritime remotes as force multipliers.

As the durability of the systems evolves and they can operate at greater range and operate with greater loiter times, the core question is what the fleet commanders want these systems to do.

This means that the focus is clearly upon payloads, and how to take the information on these remotes generated by the various payloads and to get that information in a timely manner to the users in the combat fleet.

Right now, unmanned underwater systems can operate with a variety of payloads, the most significant of which can provide remote mapping and situational awareness.

As the capabilities to do onboard processing on the remotes ramps up, information can be processed on the platform and with the aid of evolving artificial intelligence can determine provide for information parsimony.

This means that the systems onboard the platforms as their capabilities evolve will be able to send core information to users highlighting threats and opportunities for the combat fleet.

And as the ability of the remotes to work with one another evolves, surface and subsurface remotes will be able to work together so that the communication limits imposed by underwater coms can be mitigated by surface remotes working as transmitters.

We discussed the impact of these projected capabilities on capital ship design. 

It is clear that new capital ships need to have onboard processing capabilities and decision tools to be able to leverage what a deployed system of remotes might be able to deliver to that capital ship.

This means as well that maritime warriors will need to learn to work with thinking machines as decision making at sea will evolve as well.

Slocum highlighted that the Iver family of L3Harris underwater remotes were platform agnostic, which meant that they can work with a wide variety of users worldwide.

This means as well that they can focus on building a platform which is battery agnostic as well to incorporate changes in the evolution of battery capabilities, which are of course, crucial to durability, speed and range of the remotes.

We both agreed that is important to get these systems out of the labs and into the fleet to get the kind of operational experience necessary to drive innovation moving forward with essentially a software upgradeable platform.

Slocum indicated that they had this kind of relationship with the US Navy in San Diego as the US Navy gets read to tap into remotes as a key part of the counter mine mission.

As he described the goal of a remote platform which is payload agnostic:

“Today, I want to do a side scan mission; tomorrow, I might want to do an ISR mission; and the day after tomorrow, I might want to do a SiGINT mission.”

By having a small form factor platform, with a capability to operate with a diversity of payloads, the remote can be incorporated into a wide array of missions which can expand what the capital ship itself is capable of doing.

Indeed, the impact of remotes can expand what a support fleet can do. 

There is no reason that a U.S. Military Sealift Command ship cannot incorporate remotes and expand the concept of what kind of support MSC ships can provide, beyond physical things such as fuel and supplies.

In other words, remotes can provide for con-ops diversification within the combat fleet, including the supply component of that fleet as well.

Clearly, such capabilities could provide significant enhancements with regard to perimeter defense in various ways, including masking what that remote actually is and what it is doing.

Currently, L3Harris has more than 300 Iver platforms operating worldwide, with 2/3 of them with military customers and 1/3 with civilian customers, including research centers as well.

We closed by discussing where the remote capabilities might be in five years’ time.

Slocum saw Iver as being able to operate for longer times, and taking onboard new payloads. He projected that onboard processing capability would take a leap forward which would lead to making more timely use of the data being collected by the remotes.

A key breakthrough point will be when remotes can make a decision about which data needs to be sent back home to the human decision maker.

Beyond the five year time line, Slocum saw that after working through operational experience in that time period, the ability of remotes to work together would become more mature.

And as that capability evolves, the entire reworking of the decision cycle will evolve as well.

In short, it is not just about remotes as a platform; they are being introduced at the same time as the military is undergoing a transformation to shape an integrated distributed force.

And for the maritime forces, remotes will provide a core capability to fleet enhancement.

Also see the following:

The Australian Approach to Developing and Deploying Remotes Systems in the Maritime Environment: The Perspective of Cmdr. Paul Hornsby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call for a New Approach to Shaping an Australian Defense and Security Strategy: The Perspective of Rear Admiral (Retired) Kevin Scarce

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Call for a New Approach to Shaping an Australian Defense and Security Strategy: The Perspective of Rear Admiral (Retired) Kevin Scarce

At the 45th Essington Lewis Memorial Lecture delivered this week in Adelaide, Rear Admiral (Retired) Kevin Scarce provided his perspective of the need for Australia to shape an “integrated and wholistic approach” to the threats facing Australia.

And in so doing argued that without a broader public engagement this would not happen.

As the sponsor of the event, the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, described the lecture in the run up to the actual event:

In this year’s lecture, Kevin will consider the premise that Australia yearns for national leadership with the vision and stature of Essington Lewis, to help navigate and then unify a nation through the complex and strategic issues facing the country today.

The combative and often visceral Australian adaptation of the Westminster system, with its incredibly short electoral cycles, has seen society seemingly incapable of initiating and sustaining meaningful policy debate. Discussion on critical issues, such as international security and low carbon energy generation, drift along without a meaningful, comprehensive and non-partisan debate taking place.

Following completion of the SA Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle in 2016, our eminent speaker has every confidence that the electorate can make long term decisions on seemingly intractable and complex matters, if provided with the time and the opportunity to do so.

And Chris Russell in The Adelaide Advertiser in an article published on October 17, 2019 provided further details on comments made by Rear Admiral (Retired) Scarce, former Governor of South Australia, who is now Chancellor of the University of Adelaide.

Scarce argued that changes in terms of both alliance partners and in competitors in the region were changing the Australian strategic position. “These issues are fast moving and complex. Yet our leaders, both political and military, seem outwardly reluctant to engage in fulsome public debate.”

As a consequence, “there is a general air of complacency in the community about the military’s strength and the intent of our major ally.”

“It will simply not be sufficient to assume that U.S. diplomatic and military strength will always come to our aid.”

He then went on to argue that Australia to be ready to act alone in certain conditions in the region without direct U.S. support.

He underscored the need for a broader public debate and discussion about how Australia conducts its policies and deploys its military. He noted that Australian forces were deployed throughout the world but there has been “scant discussion” about why and where.

“I am critical of the rather lackadaisical approach that our political leadership has taken to address the strategic challenges facing the nation.”

He then focused on what he saw as the core need for a strategic reset.

“The time has come for the nation to bring together its separate Defence, Home Security and Foreign Affairs planning approaches into a single, integrated National security strategy.”

It should be noted that the lecture honors Essington Lewis. And the career of Lewis, certainly underscores why the presentation by Rear Admiral (Retired) Scarce certainly fits the lecture series. Lewis was Director-General of the Department of munitions during World War II.

According to an article in Wikipedia:

After joining Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd (BHP) (now BHP Billiton) in 1904, he rose through the company ranks to become managing director in 1926 and chairman in 1950, a position he held until his death in 1961. For the whole of his period as M.D., he had a close working relationship and personal friendship with Chairman of Directors Harold Gordon Darling (1885–1950).

During his travels to Germany and Japan in the 1930s, he realised the threat of these countries to Australia. Accordingly, he helped establish the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and many munitions facilities meaning Australia was better prepared for industrialisation when the war started in 1939.

During World War II, he also served as Director-General of the Department of Munitions. He supported the establishment of the motor industry in Australia in 1948, being rewarded by being able to purchase the first commercially produced Holden 48/215.

He was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour on 24 September 1943 for his work as Director – Munitions & Aircraft Production in WW2.

And also see the following:

Australian Strategy at a Turning Point: Implications for the United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Scarce

 

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news100242.html

 

 

Re-setting Sustainment for the Royal Australian Navy Fleet (Updated)

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Re-setting Sustainment for the Royal Australian Navy Fleet (Updated)

Recently, I attended the Chief of the Royal Australian Navy’s Seapower conference being held in Sydney from October 8th through the 10th, 2019.

For five years, I have been attending the Williams Foundation Seminars and writing the reports on the transformation of the RAAF and its impact on shaping a “fifth generation ADF” or what I like to call, “building an integrated distributed force.”

The RAAF has done this over a decade and has done so by buying the best airpower platforms being built in Europe and the United States and by focusing on ways to integrate those platforms to operate as an integrated force. In my view, this has been a very cost-effective way to get a transformed force.

Although it is a work in progress, the challenge posed by rebuilding the Australian Navy is of a different scale and magnitude and the government and the Australian Navy are taking a very different course to force transformation.

The Navy and the government have in mind building a national infrastructure for “continuous shipbuilding” which when translated into non-defense English means building infrastructure to build, upgrade, maintain and support naval forces on a continuous basis.

This means building new facilities, shaping new workforces and keeping them regularly employed to sustain as well as build.

This is a costly and significant challenge, the magnitude of which significantly exceeds what has been done for the largely professional Air Force focused transformation.

This is about engaging the wider society and certainly taps into the national challenge of rebuilding national infrastructure to defend the nation against 21st century authoritarian powers.

In a session which focused on shaping a new sustainment approach for naval forces, Rear Admiral Wendy Malcolm, Head of Maritime Systems Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, highlighted the importance of ensuring that a new sustainment strategy be built into the build out of the next generation Australian navy.

She argued that the Australian government has committed itself to a step change in naval capability. Australia will be engaged in the most significant recapitalization of its Navy since the Second World War.

“We need to reshape the way we sustain our fleet as we go about a significant change in how we are doing Naval acquisition.”

“As a result, we need to future proof our Navy so that it is capable and lethal and available when and where they are needed.

“We need to build a sustainment model which ensures that we can do this as well.”

Sustainment has been largely thought of as the afterthought to acquisition of a new platform. She argued that with the new “continuous shipbuilding approach” being worked, sustainment needs to be built in from the start into this process approach.

“We should from the outset to consider the best ways to sustain the force and to do so with engagement with industry in the solutions from the outset.”

She noted that the acquisition budget is roughly equivalent to the sustainment budget, and this means that a new approach to sustainment needs to accompany the new acquisition approach from the outset to ensure the delivery and operations of the most lethal and capable combat fleet which Australia can provide.

“There are serious external and internal forces that are forcing change in our thinking about how we will use our fleet…. A major investment in shipyards, work force, and in new ships requires an appropriate sustainment approach to deliver the capability to do the tasks our navy is and will be required to do.”

The shift to “continuous ship building” entails a major shift in how Australia needs to think about sustainment as well. She argued that a number of technologies had emerged which allow from a more flexible and adaptative way not only to build but to sustain ships as well.

“We need to take a fleet view and to shape a continuous approach to sustainment as well.”

Rear Admiral Malcolm dubbed the new approach of a continuous sustainment approach or environment as Plan Galileo.

Similar to what the RAAF has termed Plan Jericho as suggesting that discontinuity was as important as continuity, she has argued that there is a need for significant relaunch of thinking and build out of sustainment.

Plan Galileo is built around three key efforts.

The first is an improved approach to capability life cycle management.

The second is the establishment of regional maintenance centers.

The third is associated with the first two. Industrial engagement is crucial to driving regional hubs with true sovereign capability that is complementary to the national shipbuilding effort.

She underscored the importance of shaping a sustainment capability which can provide for redundancy and to do damage battle repair in crisis situations.

And she added that the Australian navy will need to focus as well on sustainment away from Australian territory as well.

She argued that the rebuilt dockyards and work force need to become multi-mission competent rather than single platform focused.

In this regard, she highlighted the importance of building regional support centers which could support a wide variety of vessels and systems.

In short, Rear Admiral Malcom provided a significant cautionary warning – if a shift in the sustainment model does not occur, the capability of even a newly built navy will be undercut in the conflictual world into which we have entered.

She made a vigorous case that the “continuous shipbuilding” approach needed to have a sustainment approach built in as well.

Indeed, given the dynamics of change associated within each class of ships associated with dynamics such as software upgradeability and in terms of building an integrated force within which the Navy will operate, the cross-domain operational requirements will require a modernization approach that becomes part of what one might consider to be sustainability.

And with the return of the significance of national and regional geography, the last thirty years reliance on a globalization process in which 21st century authoritarian powers have been key participants needs to be rethought, modified and reconfigured.

Rear Admiral Malcolm and her staff have kindly provided her briefing for our readers.

Pacific 2019_RADM Malcolm Presentation

 

 

 

 

Naval Formations During UNITAS LX i

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on Naval Formations During UNITAS LX i
10/16/2019

Naval ships from Brazil, Peru, Argentina and the United States conduct naval formations during a training exercise for UNITAS LX in Brazil Aug. 24, 2019.

The exercise was done to test interoperability and communication between the partner nations. UNITAS is the world’s longest-running, annual exercise and brings together multinational forces from 11 countries to include Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Mexico, Great Britain and the United States.

The exercise focuses in strengthening the existing regional partnerships and encourages establishing new relationships through the exchange of maritime mission-focused knowledge and expertise during multinational training operations.

ILHA DA MARAMBIA, RJ, BRAZIL

08.24.2019

Video by Sgt. Daniel Barrios

U.S. Marine Corps Forces, South

21st Century Authoritarians Carve Up Syria

Posted on | by Robbin Laird | Leave a Comment on 21st Century Authoritarians Carve Up Syria
10/15/2019

By Robbin Laird

Syria is being controlled by Russia and Turkey, two elements of the rise of 21st century authoritarianism.

While the EU discusses and while the United States retreats or whatever it is doing, Turkey and Russia are shaping the territory from which the migration crisis is holding Europe at risk.

And let us be clear — Erdogan is blackmailing Europe over migration with the clear support of the Russians as well.

Earlier, I have published two pieces which looked at the way ahead for both Turkey and Russia in the region, and are reposting them in this article to highlight that the nature of what 21st century authoritarianism is all about.

While the US, the European Union and the UK go deeper into their constitutional crises, the 21st century authoritarian powers are increasingly collaborating with one another, and leveraging one another’s actions to shape a better national outcome for themselves.

The Turkish Dynamic

Turkey has been a bulwark of NATO’s Southern Flank during the Cold War and a key player afterwards in terms of shaping security and defense capabilities for NATO and the European Union over the past two decades.  This has changed dramatically as President Erdogan came to power and has navigated the Turkish political system to shape a sharp break from the secular Turkey and pro-Western power that was set in motion by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Erdogan has served as the President of Turkey since 2014 and is a key part of the strategic shift affecting European defense and security in the post-2014 strategic shift. Erdogan has worked to create greater Turkish independence and to do so by leveraging more fundamentalist Islamic forces in what has been for decades a strongly secular society. And he has looked to shape a foreign and defense policy which would expand the flexibility of Turkish partnerships and allies and embracing ways to restore in some 21stcentury manner a version of what he sees as modern Ottoman state.

The Turks under Erdogan have expanded their military reach into Africa and in the Middle East, and he has pursued a policy of expanded arms industrial autonomy as well.

The Syrian crisis has been a multi-headed forcing function for Erdogan as well. On the one hand, the outpouring of refugees has provided both opportunities and challenges to his increasingly authoritarian rule. On the other hand, after leveraging NATO contributions to defend Turkey against enhanced threats posed by the Russians operating in Syria, he is now pursuing an expanded working relationship with the Russians to enhance Turkey’s arms options to defend itself.

Erdogan has operated under the umbrella neither the European Union nor NATO posing a direct threat to his expanded authoritarian rule. He has leveraged having no threat at his back to focus on the dynamics East and South of Turkey to expand his options.

A “coup attempt” against Erdogan in 2016 has been a very useful event in Erdogan’s efforts to expand his power base. Notably, he used the failed coup attempt to go after the Turkish military, notably the Air Force, and to reduce its political impact and significantly reduced its fighting competence and capabilities as well.

The Turkish leader has been involved in constant conflict with the European leaders about a range of issues, notably those involving migrations. And his shift from Turkish interest in joining the European Union to playing off the Europeans for more global influence is simply the more obvious shift in the President of Turkey’s approach to shape in effect a more Islamic state which can provide for leadership in the Middle East and work with other global powers outside of Europe to enhance his position in the region.

In a period where the global impact of the various strands of Islam are clearly providing significant global impact, the President of Turkey has focused on emphasizing the Islamic side of Turkey, not its secular tradition and its role as a leader in the Middle East shaping a more effective democratic path forward in a troubled region. In place of Ataturk’s vision, we have the Erdogan vision of a partial restoration of the Ottoman Empire with an expanded role of Turkey as a leading Islamic state operating in Africa and the Middle East.  He has also overseen the significant economic decline of Turkey, which means that the focus on the restoration of Turkish “glory” is not going to be funded by a dynamic Turkish economy closely integrated with the West.

In a critical but insightful article by Alon Ben-Meir on Erdogan , the author hihglights the psedo-Ottoaman approach being followed by the President.

“With little or no opposition at home, Erdogan moved to promote his Ottoman penchant to establish military bases in Qatar and Somalia, and military ties with Tunisia. Now he is scheming to build another military installation on the strategically located Sudanese Island of Suakin. Erdogan intends to utilize the island as a military outpost, as it had been during the Ottoman era. Egypt and Saudi Arabia believe that Erdogan’s military adventure will upset the regional balance of power, which is the recipe for instability and incessant violence.”2

Erdogan has acted if his membership in NATO is a birthright which allows him significant room for maneuver to expand South and East. The time is fast approaching when he needs to learn that he has significantly less room for maneuver if he continues to stab the West in the back.

An excellent example of how Erdogan is operating is his recent exploitation of the horrific slaying of Muslims in New Zealand. During his 2018 electoral campaign, he thought it acceptable to threaten the ANZAC community if they did not do whatever he thought was appropriate.

Ataturk was a brilliant Turkish military leader who defeated the allies in World War I when the attack was made on Turkey; he was respected because of his combat brilliance and because he went on to make Turkey a great nation. Erdogan who has no such pedigree seems to think that standing on the dead bodies of World War I soldiers and threatening their descendants will have no consequences.

In the summer of 2019 a key flashpoint was reached with the U.S. and NATO whereby the Trump Administration decided to terminate the Turkish involvement in the coalition-based global F-35 program.

The Turks are part of the F-16 European community and as such joined F-35. The issue which triggered this U.S. decision was the pursuit of the S-400 air defense system with the Russians.

This would mean that in an era where the U.S. and its allies are looking to shape greater integration of defensive and offensive systems and to enhance their ability to work together, the Turks proceeded down the path of not only not participating in such an approach, but are bringing the Russians directly into the air defense effort within Turkey and thereby NATO itself.

This is a key turning point and raises fundamental questions about the future of Turkey not only in NATO but more generally to how it will operate to defend itself and if whether in pursuing its independent course will leave the Southern Tier of Europe and the Southern Flank of NATO open to increasing conventional and hybrid war threats.

In other words, rather than Turkey being part of a comprehensive solution to sorting through the way ahead with regard to Southern Tier security and Southern Flank defense, Turkey is putting in motion the dynamics of change which could well change for a generation how Europe and the United States approach Mediterranean defense and security, and how to deter a growing range of authoritarian powers, of which clearly Erdogan is on the path to join the global trend.

Whether in NATO or not or whether allied with the European Union or not, Turkey is geographical located as it has always been at the critical juncture between the Middle East and Europe. This means that the European Union has worked and will continue to work with Turkey on the question of migrants as part of a broader security challenge.3

With more than three million Syrian refugees in Turkey, these expats have become important potential supporters of the new authoritarianism and also useful currency to negotiate with European nations and the European Union about as well.

Erdogan has openly embraced an agenda based on the greatness of the Ottoman Empire, a mix of religious and nationalist elements. His agenda has met with less than open enthusiasm by players in the region. As Zvi Mazel put it in an op-ed published in the JerusalemPost on August 1, 2019:

Dubbed neo-Ottomanism, a mix of religious and nationalist elements, this agenda led the president to embark on an aggressive foreign policy to assert Turkish domination in the Middle East on the basis of Islam, the common denominator of the region. It failed dismally. Only Qatar, which supports the Brotherhood, is still on friendly terms with him. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, as well as Iraq, mistrust him, and Syria sees him as an enemy. Relations with Egypt were cut following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood’s President Mohamed Morsi.4

The response of Erdogan to his strategic shift has not been to go back to the previous Turkish strategy of siding with the West, but rather seeking new ways to enhance his flexibility and to leverage that flexibility to tighten his grip on Turkey itself. Combining his policy of leveraging the migrant crisis with deepening his military relationships with 21stcentury authoritarian powers has been his next round of policy innovation.

This approach puts the alliance structures in play in a very significant manner, not just the European Union and NATO but the Gulf Cooperation Council as well. Erdogan is unhinging Turkey to give himself greater strategic flexibility and to find ways to enhance his own control within his own society.

The Russians clearly see an opportunity here. 5

And this Russian challenge is the latest one to operate within NATO Europe itself, but also builds off the gains made by militarily engaging in Syria and building out a permanent military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In his significant book on Erdogan, fittingly entitled The New Sultan, Soner Cagaptay provided an overview of the rise of Erdogan and the significance of that rise to power and his shaping of power in driving a fundamental shift within Turkey itself. And because of fundamental shifts in Turkey, clearly the alliances with which Turkey has historically been part and have been important to the domestic evolution of Turkey itself are in the process of significant change as well.

Unlike previous Turkish leaders, such as Ozal, who saw himself as a conservative Muslim and a Westerner, Erdogan views himself as a conservative Muslim but not a Westerner. Accordingly, he no longer regards NATO as central, seeing it not as a club of nations with shared values, but rather as an outlet where he can purchase security through transactional deals. Whether or not the Turkish leader is the partner that the United States and the EU want, he is the ally they have been dealt at a critical juncture.6

In blunt terms, this means that alliance relationships are in flux in the most vulnerable region within Europe and which poses the most significant challenges to shaping an effective defense and security approach as the challenges of direct defense return to Europe. And unlike during the Soviet period, Turkey is not a stalwart barrier to Russian advances into the region; but at best an interlocutor with the Russians with regard to what and how effective those advances might be in the coming years.

As Cagaptay adds:

In any case, Erdogan’s transactional view of the NATO alliance will limit US ties with Turkey. Erdogan’s dim view of the EU and its liberal-democratic values will endow the EU with even less influence in Turkey. At best, Turkey’s Western allies can hope that the security they provide to Turkey against ISIS, Russia, and the Assad regime will be enough to keep Erdogan on their side. They can also dream that, in Erdogan’s wake, liberals will run Turkey one day, pivoting the country toward its traditional allies in the West—a long-term vision and hope.7

 The Russian Dynamic

With the Western reactions to the seizure of Crimea, Putin was blocked from further incorporation of the “near abroad” directly in the Russian republic.

He certainly has generated continued pressure on the “near abroad” states and is leveraging the turn to the right in new member states in the European Union, like Hungary to position himself for ways to enhance his ability to pressure the European Union states, more generally.

But the major moves after Ukraine in 2014, clearly has been the intervention in the Syrian Civil War. 

Here he has backed a long time Soviet ally, the Syrian government, and used various military means to punish the opponents of Syria having painted the intervention as Russia’s contribution to the war on terrorism.

Given that the Russian intervention in Chechnya was characterized the same way, the Syrian intervention fitted into a long-standing Putin narrative about Russia and its legitimate role in the world.

As part of the payment for the Russian intervention, Russia now has a permanent air and naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean which provides an important access point into the region, and as European dynamics unfold in the Western Mediterranean,

Putin is looking to establish more Russian presence there, with the possibility of Russia becoming a major player in the fate of the Mediterranean region.

We argued at the time of the initial intervention that this was a significant strategic turning point for Putin’s approach to global engagement.

The Russian intervention in Syria crosses a strategic threshold. Russia has used a small but decisive air and naval force to side with Assad to protect his regime and specifically Damascus.

So far the introduction of a relatively small number of combat aircraft in comparison to U.S. and Allied airpower has operationally secured a new air base –Hemeimeem — and equally important bolstered their ability to expand the Syrian naval port of Tartus in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In doing so, they have used airpower decisively in a way the U.S. has not, and have expanded their ability to influence outcomes in the region. While the Russians are delivering a relatively high tempo of air sorties from a small force and delivered weapons against targets, the U.S. tempo of sorties and weapons delivered against targets has been reduced to a trickle.

The Russians are backing a sovereign government, with that government’s approval.

This means that U.S. actions prior to the Russian engagement, whereby aiding “rebels” and inserting special forces was part of the effort takes on a new meaning. U.S. actions now face the threat of Syrian government or Russian attacks protected by international law, custom and practice. In other words, the Russians are in a military partnership with Syria their joint forces have every legal right to direct combat action against all enemies including the U.S. military…..

Significantly under-appreciated Russian diplomatic and political initiative is a new agreement with Israel.  Putin invited the Obama-shunned Israeli leader Prime Minister Netanyahu to Moscow in September to forge a deconfliction agreement between Israel and the Russians. The Israeli diplomatic mission to Moscow included senior Israeli military officials. Consequently, both political and military issues were on the table from the start and the agreement has provided the basis for Israel expanding its capability to defend its interests in Lebanon.

Since then Jordan, America’s closest ally behind Israel has also signed such an agreement.

And during this Russian Israel strategic and military process President Obama pulled Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Power out of the UN Speech being given by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

It appears that the legacy of President Kennedy is long gone “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

In other words, decisive Russian military actions is more in line with 21st century insertion forces then the ever evolving Counter-Insurgency (COIN) nation building military mantra.  Since the Powell characterization of the “if you break it you fix it doctrine,” the U.S. military has been on the path of operations on the ground to reshape political and economic systems, regardless of the inability of an outside power to do so.

In contrast, regardless of the size it is the intangible of combat decisiveness that forms the basis for the Russians expanding their diplomatic role in the region. Russia is being recognized by the key players in the region as a force to contend with….

Putin clearly has looked at the limited air campaign in Libya, the no-reaction to the Benghazi strikes, and our slow motion air campaign against ISIS and has concluded that a much shorter, decisive and brutal air campaign will get the kind of political diplomatic results he wants.

Put in other terms, while the Obama Administration and the neo-cons remain wedded to the COIN and slow-motion air campaign approaches of the past, the Russians are breaking out a new approach to achieve diplomatic power to reassert Russia’s role in the region.8

Of course, the Syrian conflict has led to an outpouring of refugees into the Mediterranean region and into the European Union.

And there is little doubt that the migratory pressures from North Africa and Middle East have been accelerated by the results of Russian action sin Syria, something which provides an indirect contribution to ramping up the direct defense challenge to Europe as well.

In a 2018 published book by the Russian analyst, and head of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, Dmitri Trenin, the author provides an insightful assessment of what Putin is up to in the Middle East with the Syrian intervention.

Trenin underscored the core significance of the Russian military intervention in Syria in terms of what it meant for the Russian military as a tool of Russian foreign and security policy.

“The Russian military operation in Syria is not only the biggest combat employment of Russia’s armed forces abroad since the Afghan war; it represents a very different kind of warfare in comparison to anything Russia had practiced before.

“First, this is an expeditionary war: Russia is fighting in a country with which it has no common border.

“Second, this is predominantly an air war: Russian ground forces are not fighting, though the navy is occasionally engaged.

“Third, this is a coalition war: in order to achieve the war’s aims, Russian airstrikes have to be exploited by the non-Russian forces operating on the ground.

“Fourth, this is a limited war very closely tied to the diplomatic process.”9

Put in other words, the intervention places Russia into the diplomatic game in a volatile region where Russian interests are clearly involved, not the least of which in terms of Russia’s energy business.

But it also provides a learning event for sorting through how to interactively use new and older Russian military capabilities to support Russia’s version of crisis management, which is a key element of what direct defense for Europe entails as well.

The political objective of the Russian intervention was clear from the outset. According to Trenin:

“Although the Russian military operation in Syria was billed from the start as “anti-terrorist,” it was mostly directed against Assad’s various armed opponents rather than the Islamic State group. This was fully consistent with the immediate objective of the Russian military operation in Syria: to stabilize the Assad regime, which was besieged by the forces of the opposition, not those of IS.10

The intervention has cleaerly placed Putin in a more central position within the region, which has reach outside of the Middle East as well. 

According to Trenin:

“Moscow also emerged from its military engagement in Syria as the player with the most connections in the region. During the war, President Putin stayed in close touch with virtually all regional leaders, including those of Turkey, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Lebanon.

“Russia managed to avoid the risk of falling into the cracks of Middle Eastern divides: Shia versus Sunni; Saudi versus Iran; Iran versus Israel; Turkey versus the Kurds, and so on.

“It is this ability to promote one’s interest in a conflict-infested environment that is particularly useful for a country aiming to be a global player. It is negotiating those divides that would test Russia’s ability not only to promote its own interests, but also to deliver public goods—a mark of a true great power in the twenty-first century.”11

Trenin’s interpretation of Putin’s engagement in Syria is in part that the crisis allowed him a chance to breakout from European stalemate to reassert Russian flexibility in political-miiltirary-diploamtic activity through the venue of the Syrian crisis.

As Trenin put it:

“It is not just a return to an important region, but a comeback to the global scene after a twenty-five-year absence. This breakthrough for Russia’s foreign policy has contributed to the ongoing change of the global order—away from U.S. dominance and back to some sort of a balance of power among several major players, including Russia.

“Moscow has demonstrated that a combination of a clear sense of objective, strong political will, area expertise and experience, resourceful diplomacy, a capable military, plus an ability to coordinate one’s actions with partners and situational allies in a very diverse and highly complex region can go a long way to help project power onto the top level. This was exactly what Putin was aiming for.

“His main foreign policy objective has been to bring Russia back to the top level of global politics, and he chose the Middle East as the area for that breakthrough.”12

The featured photo shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosting in Ankara his Iranian and Russian counterparts Hassan Rouhani and Vladimir Putin, April 4, 2018. (Photo: Anadolu Agency)