High/Low Mix Dilemma: Are Drones the Future?

"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit) 03/14/2014 at 09:26 • Filed to: Waropnik, Future Warfare

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The Russian T-90 Main Battle Tank (MBT) is the mainstay of the Russian Army, effectively replacing both the T-72 (from which lends the basic design of the T-90) and the T-80 (from which lends many systems and various components) in a "best of both worlds" package. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the T-90 is an important consideration for Western Armies not only because divisions using this MBT are lining up for potential battle in Crimea (and have been or are likely to be exported to other "OpFor" nations) but represent an approach that counters the Western's storied reliance on quality verses quantity. The financial numbers aside, a lighter yet effective MBT has significant tactical and mobile advantages particularly in light of what has kept the M1 Abrams MBT held back from achieving full tactical effectiveness in Iraq and Afghanistan. That said, the "always high" approach of the United States military is far from a completely invalid one, especially considering the political realities the United States military operates under - nor was it ever meant to be such in the first place. Technological realities eventually morphed the "low/high mix" into an "always high" format so quickly it caught military planners off-guard (the fact that said military planners had their heads in the sand certainly didn't help). Can technology restore the balance of the high/low mix? Once again, political realities dictate that it has to, or at least an attempt must be made.

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"High/Low Mix" Origins

The concept of the "high/low mix" was nominally born in the 1970s when two men, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (himself an Air Force officer) and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (himself an aircraft designer) developed the concept as part of a larger picture of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (which directly resulted in the F-16, but also indirectly gave the Navy the F/A-18, with both fighters exemplifying the "low" end of the mix). The true origins of the "high/low mix" go much further back then that, something both men undoubtedly appreciated.

The push for the United States military to have the best warfighting equipment available predates the United States military itself, when Revolutionaries !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as a technological innovation against the Royal Navy when a direct confrontation was nearly physically impossible by themselves. This has actually been a recurring pattern: the use of ironclads and more significantly !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the American Civil War; the performance of U.S. Navy warships in the Spanish-American War and the demonstration of the superiority of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! before WWI; and actual experimentation in mechanized warfare (albeit to a limited extent) including the extensive use of trucks and aircraft !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! On the eve of WWII, however, the U.S. armed forces - while second-to-none in the actual application of tactical doctrine and logistical implications of technology - lagged behind other nations in terms of how warfighting equipment stacked up one-on-one. The ultimate consequence is the now commonly accepted "fact" that weapons like the M4 Sherman were death traps requiring their crews to make literal suicide runs to defeat Nazi Panzers or U.S.A.A.F. P-40s conquering Imperial Japanese Navy Zeroes only through the magical guile of their pilots (though the apparent inferiority of such weapons doesn't exactly stand the test of reality). Whether true or false, the apparent lessons of being "stuck on suck" left an indelible impression on military planners who immediately vowed "never again."

The perceived Soviet doctrine of "always low" (or "always medium") also had those same military planners shaking in their boots when the Cold War first seemed hot in the 50s. In addition to remembering the horror tales of M4 "Zippos" living up to their namesakes, they also remembered stories of Stalin sending wave after wave of soldiers into the teeth of Wehrmacht machine guns without a single care, as long as Soviet soil stayed in Soviet hands at the end of the day, hour or even minute. The perception was that even Khrushchev saw it completely acceptable to amass staggering casualties as long as victory was assured. "Human Wave" tactics employed by the Chinese in the Korean War helped to reinforce this, where thousands of soldiers would storm the enemy in a mass-scale version of the "banzai" last-ditch charges employed by the Imperial Japanese Army. The scariest thing of all was that these "human wave" charges worked , pushing U.N. military forces back to the 38th parallel (it's no coincidence that this is where North and South Korea are divided).

A sobering numerical inferiority wasn't the only problem. Scores of M4 Shermans still saw service in the Korean War where they went up against T-34/85s, perhaps the most feared Allied tank of WWII. The MiG-15 posed a significant threat to the F-86 and made the war-winning atom-bombing B-29 Superfortress obsolete lunchmeat. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! kept admirals up at night merely by existing - which was particularly odd as it was an obvious anachronism by the time the first ship was commissioned. Almost as soon as Western generals vowed "never again," they found themselves at a frightening numerical and qualitative inferiority. The obsession at the Pentagon became the "fill-in-the-blank gap" - the "bomber gap," the "missile gap," the "cruiser gap" (the last one in particular resulting in some interesting mental and semantic gymnastics by the U.S. Navy worthy of its own article).

There was no way the United States could address the Soviet Union's numerical advantage numerically - Stalin may have been completely fine with sacrificing thousands if not tens of thousands of soldiers, but here in the U.S. we prefer our sons and daughters to come home intact and not in body bags. That left solely the qualitative approach. In the early Cold War, this meant supercarriers (and later, nuclear powered supercarriers), nuclear submarines and pushing the best minds in the U.S. aerospace industry to develop the best they can offer. This included the F-4 Phantom II, laden with missiles, radar and engines and being extremely unapologetic in its (for the time) technological excess and the B-52 Stratofortress, which at the time was an incredible speed machine (the J57 turbojet engine - eight of which powered the early B-52 - won the Collier Trophy in 1952 which basically says "this is the most important development in aviation technology for that year").

When it came time to fight the Vietnam War, the U.S. found itself on the flip side of this "always high" technology doctrine. The F-4 Phantom II encountered difficulty against the MiG-17, essentially an evolved MiG-15 with a slapped-on afterburner and thought wildly obsolete in comparison. Soldiers on the ground with their fancy, plastic and aluminum M-16s had no appreciable advantage over their Viet Cong and NVA counterparts with their heavy steel and wood-construction AK-47s. The U.S. Navy's expensive and Armageddon-bringing nuclear-powered missile cruisers had to more or less completely sit the war out as they had almost nothing that could actually effect the war - while, ironically, leftover big-gun cruisers and battleships from WWII including U.S.S. New Jersey found a new lease on life providing gunfire support (and giving rise to another annoying "brain bug" that persists to this day, but that's another article).

Boyd and Sprey (who themselves were and still are highly controversial - but once again, that's another article) argued for some sort of middle ground - the "high/low mix." The "high" component would be represented by the best American technology can bring - AEGIS cruisers, F-14s and F-15s, the most sophisticated submarines in the world - weapons that wouldn't just win one-on-one with anything else in the world, but two-on-one or even three-on-one. The "low" component would be represented by, well, everything else - principally in terms of air power in the form of the U.S.A.F.'s F-16 and U.S.N's F/A-18. For the Navy, this also meant the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (and yes, Hazard is literally the middle name here - !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) that would provide cheap convoy escort and submarine hunting. The Army didn't approach their armored development in a "high/low" end mix, instead once again adopting an "always high" doctrine with the M1 Abrams and Bradley series of armored vehicles. The reason probably revolves around wanting to minimize the number of body bags sent home by cocooning those bodies in the best armor available, no doubt influenced by the M4 "Zippo"'s legacy from WWII. As a side note, the Army did briefly toy with the idea of a "high/low" mix during the Vietnam Era no less with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! but found it extremely unsatisfactory (though mostly as a result of immature technology rather than actual tactical doctrine).

So What Went Wrong?

Actually, the story of the M551 Sheridan provides a microcosm of what generally goes wrong with America's developments in the "low" end lately. The idea was to develop a cheap, lightweight scout tank that would make up for its deficient armor with a highly technologically advanced combination gun-missile launcher with sufficient range and firepower to hit enemy tanks at such extreme distance their weapons wouldn't be able to hit back anyway. The gun-missile launcher ended up being ludicrously unreliable - anecdotal stories claim that launching the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! missile would sometimes completely burn out and destroy the gun-missile launcher's mechanisms rendering it completely useless. If you've read the article on the T-90 and its ability to launch missiles, and wondered why the M1 Abrams lacks that capability, you have the legacy of the M551 Sheridan and MGM-51 Shillelagh to thank for that.

The lure of using technological developments to have "low end" assets make up for their deficiencies and be competitive with "high end" assets while still being cheaper never went away with the failure of the M551 Sheridan. Hence the spiraling costs of the F-35 Lightning II and the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship. Both of these are supposed to be "low end" assets, the F-35 complimenting the F-22 Raptor and the LCS complimenting the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class AEGIS destroyer. Both of these are supposed to cover the exact same missions of their predecessors - the F-35 picking up where the F-16, F/A-18 and AV-8B Harrier II left off, and the LCS also taking over the Oliver Hazard Perry -class frigate's duties of convoy escort and sub hunting. Both also tacked on extra missions - in the F-35's case, it combined the missions of three separate airframes, and in the case of LCS, it also added the eponymous mission of littoral combat which includes, well, honestly, whatever admirals at the time thought sounded good. It's more than just vague, it's attributing an almost magical "it can get anything done" mentality to a vessel (or rather, pair of distinct designs) that have ye to prove almost anything with the only caveat being that "it take place near shore" (which in turn is rather ill-defined). And both the F-35 and LCS were supposed to use technology to ensure that the people onboard those things were brought home safely - even though there are doubts that both can even do that, too.

In all fairness, the F-35 does incorporate a lot of advanced technology - at the price tag one would typically expect advanced technology. Yet it doesn't hold a candle to the F-22 (which itself has been put into doubt, especially with Russian and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). The LCS has ended up a mess - which shouldn't be a surprise given how vague the requirements have been. At the same time, it carries the same high-technology price tag that has addled the F-35. To pin down the blame on one specific scapegoat is to make the same mistake that caused these programs to spiral out of control in the first place; an exact answer is simply non-existent, and is complex enough for not books but entire libraries. That said, a significant factor of the mismanagement of these programs is greatly overestimating not only how technology can make these weapon systems affordable, but survivable.

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Making "low end" weapon systems less survivable is certainly one possible solution towards making these systems cheaper, but in the current political environment that is simply untenable - and if you ask me, that's a good thing and that's how it should be . Out of all the post-WWII conflicts the U.S. participated in - Korea, Vietnam, the Grenadian and Panamanian interventions, Desert Shield/Storm, the Bosnian intervention, Iraq and Afghanistan and the larger War on Terror - only the Caribbean/Central American and Bosnian interventions and Desert Storm had truly successful, victorious resolutions and anything resembling majority public support (the War on Terror certainly began on a wave of popular support given the 9/11 attacks but is now seen by large sectors of the population as a massive waste of young lives with little to show for it) - and even in those cases, mass protests manage to capture significant media attention. The change of fortunes in the War on Terror especially - and the many young lives lost with little or completely no strategic gain in return - has now mandated an ethical component into initiating military campaigns even when in response to a direct mass attack on a civilian population center, lest all the lessons learned so far be completely lost. Not only has the U.S. had to contend with the direct aftermath of 9/11, but the aftermath of the economic downturn as well. This has meant hundreds if not thousands of men and women, many still teenagers and very, very few over the age of 25 at the time of sign-up, enlisting into U.S. military service solely out of economic or employment desperation. Questions about motivation or the quality of these troops aside, it brings in ethical concerns of exposing these people to the horrors of combat when many of these people are poorly equipped to do so regardless of readiness or training level. Many of these young people feel too much economic pressure to truly think through the consequences of placing themselves in a combat situation, or overestimate their likelihood of getting a "desk job" instead of being in harm's way. If nothing else, being a dad who receives a note from the government that his daughter is KIA (and I don't mean she won a raffle for a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) is not only the greatest personal loss imaginable, but a tremendous loss for the community as a whole.

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So if Technology is the Problem, How Can it be the Solution?

Weapons technology development often highlights two sides of the same coin: adopting technology before it's fully matured, and then completely abandoning it altogether as an abject failure without any chance to actually mature (Ref: the present lack of any gun-launched missile for the M1 Abrams after the M551 Sheridan fiasco despite Russia's successful adoption of the same exact technology). This two-sided, compounding failure often gets in the way of fielding weapons platforms that are either or both affordable and survivable. As noted above, weapons platforms that ensure user survivability are a must, not only from a political but also from a practical standpoint. The U.S. also must avoid military overspending lest it end up just like the Soviet Union - spending so much GDP on military expenditure that the nation itself politically fractures into a multitude of disparate entities and doesn't recover for decades on out.

Oddly enough there is one piece of highly exotic technology that the U.S. military has not only adopted but successfully used for decades, that promises not only complete user survivability but affordability as well: drones.

Drones aren't the end-all be-all solution to every military problem, but they can provide the missing "low-end" to the "high/low mix" without putting people in harm's way (save for the people who deserve it - i.e., the enemy).

XM1219 and MULE - The Army's Unmanned Low-End

The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (featured in the copyright-free image at the top of the article) is a larger part of the U.S. Army's !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which seeks to develop unmanned vehicles for both combat and miscellaneous use. Both the XM1219 and the larger MULE program were canceled by 2012 over mobility concerns - but that doesn't mean the story can (or should) end there. Even if such a vehicle were confined to city streets, such an unmanned "low-end" vehicle would prove to be a powerful lifesaver - in fact, perhaps especially on city streets.

Even a rudimentary, relatively "dumb" drone can be a useful asset to a platoon of troops in an urban environment. Such a "dumb" drone would be highly limited, however. In fact, pretty much limited to the following:

- actively sniffing out the enemy with onboard sensors

- passively sniffing out the enemy by acting as an impervious small-arms bullet sponge

But these two functions alone would be a powerful asset for troops. Sent far ahead, it can call in airstrikes if collateral damage were a non-issue without any fear of having any "blue-on-blue" bombing. By being large and armored enough to simply be a bullet sponge, it can provide cover for friendlies and distraction against the enemy. Just in having a large, mobile sensors platform, it will increase the situational awareness of troops, perhaps the most critical component of proper urban tactical doctrine.

An unmanned vehicle that is armed and able to identify threats and shoot back would be exponentially more powerful for allied commanders. Here, the "low" contribution to the "high/low" mix becomes more obvious in the type of "traditional" armored open warfare that generals planned for in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Drones armed with anti-tank missiles would take up the traditional "tank destroyer" role, hitting the enemy's armored assets without putting allied manned assets (and the men [and women] that man them) in harm's way. The qualities that make the T-90 a viable "medium" asset would actually be magnified in an anti-tank drone. By being small, light, and most importantly, perfectly expendable, armor considerations may very well be non-existent - which would further aid the drone's mobility and therefore lethality.

MQ-170B Combat Sentinel - The U.S. Air Force's Unmanned Low End

The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is a stealthy unmanned reconnaissance drone that remains largely secretive - not quite on the level of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , it is more at the same technological level as the more familiar MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. One example crashed and was consequently captured by Iran; that said, the program remains highly classified. What makes the RQ-170 most interesting, however, is that it purportedly uses rapid prototyping and fabrication technology to produce a highly effective, high-stealth drone at a very affordable cost.

An enlarged version of the RQ-170 outfitted with a more powerful engine (or multiple engines) and weapons bays may be a practical solution to the U.S.A.F.'s "low-end." Such a craft could default the "high-end" to almost any manned aircraft acting as a drone controller - F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, F-16s, even decidedly non-combat types that nonetheless offer a wide degree of battlefield "situational awareness" such as the E-8 J-STARS or other AWACS assets. The "high end" can even be represented by other drones such as the RQ-4 or the operational version of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! The true beauty in such a cheap combat drone is that its usefulness is apparent regardless of the exact war scenario. Like the armed versions of the Predator and Reaper, such a drone can observe the battlefield and even attack targets directly with Hellfire missiles or other guided munitions. In a more intense, "conventional" war scenario (such as, say, attacking Russian warships in the Black Sea or Chinese airbases across the Strait of Taiwan) swarms of RQ-170-like drones can sacrifice themselves against air defense networks without putting any allied personnel in harm's way as well as using their own inherent stealth characteristics to penetrate said networks and achieve their mission objectives.

QF-16 Combat Drone - The U.S. Air Force's Unmanned Low-End Alternate

Another approach would be to simply remove the manned aspect from the current crop of "low-end" assets. F-16s are currently being pulled from the Boneyard and converted for target drone duty - and the concept of using QF-16 drones in an actual combat role is not new. Compared to current operational drones, the F-16 represents some pretty high-end capability - Mach 2+ top speed, the ability to use the AMRAAM and other air-to-air munitions, and by itself being able to truck a bombload that would make a WWII B-17 feel embarrassed. Best of all, there are thousands of F-16s already in the inventory so they're plentiful and cheap. Combat QF-16 concepts have run the full gamut of complexity from simply unbolting the seat and putting computers in its place, to scrapping the old wings in favor of carbon composite ones to take full advantage of a new flight envelope unhindered by considerations for living tissue, to just stuffing a big old giant warhead into the cockpit and convert it into a massive kamikaze-style cruise missile.

LCS Remote Weapons Stations - The U.S. Navy's Unmanned Low-End

Unfortunately for the U.S. Navy, having unmanned ships is too complicated a prospect for the foreseeable future. There's simply too many things to keep track of for a single massive mainframe to do, including the physical need to move from one part of the ship to another. That said, there are unmanned solutions that can help protect the people in those ships, particularly for the LCS. Many, if not most or even all of them are already slated for eventual adoption.

In the above (copyright free) image, 3rd Class Gunner's Mate Travis Hoffman uses a Mk 38 weapons station onboard USS Mitscher, an Arleigh Burke -class AEGIS destroyer. Obviously, this is a manned weapons station, but notice the spherical object on top of the weapon that looks like the exact same type of electro-optical sensor used on unmanned weapons - which is precisely what it is. The Mk 38 has the unique ability to be both manned and unmanned, depending on what the situation calls for. As indicated in this very photo, it's already in U.S.N. service and will be standard on the LCS regardless of the model.

At left is a test firing of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! multi-mode weapons system. It's "multi-mode" in that it can be used against a variety of targets (including airborne threats in much the same way the T-90's gun-launched missile can) from a variety of launchers. AGM-176s on an LCS can not only provide (limited) fire support for friendlies on-shore but can also help defend the vessel against various threats, particularly asymmetrical threats (such as those that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). Moreover, the missile can fit inside the LCS' already extant !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (though at the cost of anti-ship missile protection).

At left is an image (courtesy of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) of another unmanned defense option for the LCS, the SIMBAD remote weapons station. Firing a Mistral anti-aircraft missile, it provides close-in protection from low-flying aircraft, helicopters, drones, and even a limited amount of protection from incoming munitions. The Mistral can theoretically be modified to engage sea-borne threats as well, in much the same way AGM-176 Griffin can. Since Mistral is functionally identical to the FIM-92 Stinger that currently serves the U.S. military, a Stinger-based unmanned/remote weapons station can be theoretically developed as well. Such a dedicated launcher would be, as evidenced in the photo above, small, installable virtually anywhere deck space is available, and would not require sacrificing anti-ship missile protection.

Even these solutions would be far from perfect for correcting the wayward course the U.S. military's "high/low mix" doctrine has morphed into, but at least theoretically promises a better application than the status quo while putting fewer people in harm's way. The recognition of the importance of the "high/low mix" remains essential, and as the face of warfare continues to change, the application of drone technology into the "low" end if not (at least eventually) into the "high" end becomes a greater necessity. With the adoption of drones into the "low" end, greater operational flexibility is achieved, tactical parity with our potential adversaries is restored, and more of our sons and daughters get to return safely if not even being exempted from military service altogether.

doodon2whls > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 03/14/2014 at 10:11

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Neat piece. Should be in Foxtrot Alpha.

Victorious Secret > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 03/14/2014 at 10:31

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I think drones of all sorts will replace a lot of things.

Soldiers, vehicles, hell they could automate entire ships at one point.

The real question is will they still be controlled by humans OR will true AIs come into the mix? And that, as we all know, is a completely different bag of crazy to deal with for humanity.

People are just barely accepting the idea that Lt. Commander Victorious can sit on a padded seat and pilot a drone to get my work done. I don't want to know how people would react to the idea that said drones can think and act for themselves.