Future War: Why Quantity Will Trump Quality

Quantity has a quality all its own.

While sounding like another errant Yogi Berra quote, this simple phrase has real meaning in modern warfare. While technology is a massive force multiplier, it is not always decisive on the battlefield. An explorer armed with a six shooter gun fighting against men with spears is still in deep trouble when there are more than six angry tribesmen. If he can add more six shooters or belt fed weapons, however, the explorer will maintain a distinct advantage. The problem arises when the number of angry tribesman exceeds the number of weapons and cartridges the explorer can afford.

Shifting to a more modern setting, the extremely capable F-22 Raptor will face the same problem should it find itself up against 10 older jets. The F-22 will simply run out of ammunition. While it still has the legs to get away, the F-22 can be tactically defeated by large numbers of cheap aircraft. Unfortunately, it was too costly to buy in sufficient numbers to overcome this deficiency.

The trend in U.S. defense spending toward ever more expensive systems began in earnest during the 1970s. Faced with overwhelming Soviet superiority in numbers, the Department of Defense decided to compensate by focusing on buying high-tech platforms. This decision led to a number of successful platforms, including the F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighter aircraft, Abrams tanks, and Bradley fighting vehicles. Since then, the United States has continued to pursue cutting-edge technology that has resulted in the extremely capable  F-22 and, when the testing and software development is complete, perhaps a highly capable F-35.

Unfortunately, rising costs have outstripped gains in capabilities. This in turn has severely constrained the numbers of platforms purchased. Initially, the U.S. planned to buy 750 F-22 aircraft. It ended up buying 187 operational aircraft. The B-2 suffered a similar fate. Of the planned 132 aircraft, only 21 were actually purchased.

Faced with this decline in numbers of platforms, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, recently provided a different way to assess future systems. He argued the focus should be on payloads not platforms. In doing so, he took the first step in derailing the trend of pursuing ever more exquisite capabilities in ever fewer platforms. This is particularly timely. Today, dramatic improvements in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, biology, and nano-materials are changing the cost/effectiveness calculation in favor of the “small, smart and cheap” against the “few and exquisite but extremely expensive.” The convergence of these technologies, and the steady decrease in costs even as capabilities increase, is rapidly expanding the destructive power, range, and precision of weapons that soon will be both widely available and relatively cheap.

Doubters about the future of small, smart platforms point to the limited payload of such systems. They note that even the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, essentially an autonomous system after launch, can only carry a 1,000 pound warhead. Currently available commercial systems carry much smaller payloads and most for much shorter distances. In fact, today’s drones are at about the same stage of development as aircraft were in the early 1920s: relatively fragile, limited range, small payloads, and low reliability. But like aircraft of that era, much of the investment and development is being done by commercial firms for business purposes and hobbyists for fun and bragging rights. This means that progress is very rapid. Despite their fragility in 1920, by 1940, aircraft, the small, smart and cheap  naval systems of the era, came to dominate the naval battle space. They did so despite massive state investment in the weapon the government saw as dominant: the battleship. Given that the rate of technological advancement has accelerated in the last century, we should expect small, smart, inexpensive drones to come to dominate the air and sea battle space within a decade or two. The ground environment is much more complex, and thus will take longer for drone type weapons to master.

Much like the 1920s to 1940s, the key for defense planners is to field the right mix of exquisite, high-tech systems and small, cheap and smart systems so that they can compensate for each other’s weaknesses.

To illustrate how the small, many and smart are beginning to transform warfare, we should start by examining why it is now possible to create small, smart and cheap platforms that have sufficient range and combat capability to fulfill the very challenging role of power projection. Then, we can turn to examining the implications of these developments for U.S. defense.

Small

While media attention focuses on expensive high-end drones striking terrorists, the most interesting developments in the field have taken place at the low cost end of the spectrum. In 1998, an industry/university consortium flew a composite drone from Newfoundland to Scotland on two gallons of fuel. In the intervening 16 years, governments, hobbyists, and businesses have steadily increased the range and capability of these platforms. Hobbyists and businesses have made use of rapid technological convergence to decrease the cost of long-range, autonomous systems by at least an order of magnitude. Today people routinely fly smart systems with intercontinental range. It is only the lack of a payload that separates them from long-range,  precision weapons systems. Their composite construction and low energy use mean they are very difficult to detect.

Of even more concern, these small, inexpensive drones are designed specifically to be used by people with no particular skills or in-house maintenance system. Most still require a remote human operator, but flying them has become so easy that Martha Stewart uses one at her home and farm. Industry has already taken the next step and provided farmers with inexpensive autonomous drones to monitor their crops. Ryan Kunde, a winemaker, uses drones to keep an eye on his vineyard. As Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and CEO of 3D Robotics and DIY Drones, has explained:

Whereas a traditional radio-­controlled aircraft needs to be flown by a pilot on the ground, in Kunde’s drone the autopilot (made by my company, 3D Robotics) does all the flying, from auto takeoff to landing. Its software plans the flight path, aiming for maximum coverage of the vineyards, and controls the camera to optimize the images for later analysis. … At the heart of a drone, the autopilot runs specialized software – often open-source programs created by communities such as DIY Drones, which I founded, rather than costly code from the aerospace industry.

Since air is the simplest environment, it is not surprising that fully autonomous, cheap, and long-range drones have emerged there first. However, maritime and ground systems are certain to follow quickly. Indeed, this year the U.S. Navy launched an underwater glider that harvests energy from the ocean thermocline. The Navy plans for the glider to operate continuously without having to be refueled for five years.

In short, small air and sea platforms have demonstrated intercontinental range while producing very little in the way of radar or heat signatures. While payloads remain small, they are rapidly increasing. And these technologies are still in early phases of development.

Many

Cost is obviously the primary driver of how many systems are purchased, and additive manufacturing (AM) is driving down the cost of many manufactured products. Today researchers in England have prototyped a printed drone with a unit cost of roughly $9. And AM is not only for low-end products. Mark Valerio, vice president and general manager of military space for Lockheed, suggests that AM will mean next generation satellites will cost 40 percent less than current models.

We don’t have to wait for AM either. The Navy’s aforementioned underwater drone is based on the commercially produced Slocum Glider. Such drones are being used globally and cost about $100,000. For the cost of one Virginia class submarine, a nation could purchase 17,500 such drones. If AM can achieve the same sort of cost reductions seen with satellites, that number increases to almost 30,000! Of more importance, the skills needed to build and employ a glider are much less advanced than those needed to operate a nuclear submarine.

Moreover, these cheap drones can be modified to be long-range autonomous torpedoes or even to position smart mines. In February 1991, the U.S. Navy lost command of the northern Arabian Gulf to simple moored sea mines. Much more sophisticated mines are widely available today. Both mines and torpedoes can now be equipped with sensors that use acoustic, magnetic, and other signals to attack a specific kind of ship. One can easily see China’s “self-navigating mines” and even rocket propelled mines being deployed by glider-type drones. Pairing mines with drones, even non-state actors could block sea ports of debarkation and perhaps even sea ports of embarkation.

Ashore, mobile land mines/autonomous anti-vehicle weapons are also under development. The natural marriage of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to inexpensive, autonomous drones is virtually inevitable. The obvious targets are parked aircraft, fuel and ammunition dumps, communication sites, and command centers. Non-state and state actors alike will rapidly transition to drones that can hunt even mobile targets such as fuel and ammunition trucks, as well as troop transports.

Smart

We can expect the inexpensive autonomy seen in today’s agricultural drones to soon enter the arena of conflict. As Chris Anderson explained, this autonomy has been made possible

…due largely to remarkable advances in technology: tiny MEMS sensors (accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers, and often pressure sensors), small GPS modules, incredibly powerful processors, and a range of digital radios. All those components are now getting better and cheaper at an unprecedented rate, thanks to their use in smartphones and the extraordinary economies of scale of that industry.

These same technologies can be applied fairly cheaply to military systems. While the Pentagon faces the Innovator’s Dilemma and will be severely challenged to keep costs low, other nations, start-up companies, and non-state actors will not face the same bureaucratic hurdles. They will produce cheap, smart, and deadly drones using commercially available parts. They will not seek high reliability or reuse.

Don’t Look Back, They Are Not Behind Us

Unfortunately for the West, autonomous drones will initially favor less technologically advanced actors because they don’t face the same targeting problems as advanced nation states. For instance, a non-state actor may not own armored vehicles or aircraft, so their autonomous drones only have to recognize and attack any armored vehicle or parked aircraft. It does not have to discriminate between different armored vehicles or aircraft, and instead can simply fly a pre-programmed route to a suspected target area and identify a target. Target areas for many locations in the world – including most airfield flight lines – can be determined using Google Maps. Cheap optical recognition hardware and software that provides rough target discrimination is also becoming widely available. If the software of a farmer’s autonomous drone can point and shoot a camera at grapevines, it can point and shoot an explosive device.

Clearly, commercial products have demonstrated the ability of autonomous drones to locate, identify, and engage a target, but what weapon could they use? Commercially available quadcopters can carry the 3 ounce GoPro camera and are achieving flight times of 30+ minutes. Against the thin skin of an aircraft, a simple point-detonating 3 ounce warhead will be sufficient. Against armor, the drone designer may choose the heavier and more complex explosively formed penetrator (EFP). This will obviously require larger quadcopters or drones but will also provide standoff distance. In 2009, the U.S. Army told CNN that such weapons can penetrate armor from 100 meters. This potential marriage of proven, cheap technologies represents a direct threat to a wide range of potential targets.

The addition of cheap persistent air-breathing and space-based surveillance will provide the information necessary to use these cheap drones. Sky Box Imaging, which was recently purchased by Google, is deploying cube satellites. Its goal is to sell half-meter resolution imagery with a revisit rate of several times a day and will include interpretation of what the buyer is seeing. A buyer could literally track any port, airfield, road, or rail system activity in near real time.

While the cheapest of these systems can carry only small payloads, the rapidly developing field of nano-energetics or nano-explosives will dramatically increase their destructive power. As early as 2002, nano-explosives demonstrated an explosive power twice that of conventional versions. Since research in this field is rarely made public, it is difficult to say what, if any progress has been made since that time. But even if no progress has been made since 2002, a doubling in destructive power for the same size weapon is a still a massive increase.

Implications

The convergence of new technologies and techniques is already producing small, smart, cheap and long-range drones capable of carrying significant payloads. Fuel gels and nano-explosives will increase the range and lethality of these commercially available systems. Additive manufacturing will dramatically reduce the costs. I have discussed elsewhere why the Pentagon needs to rethink the exquisitely capable but extremely expensive weapons procurement programs it is pursuing. While these systems were a major factor in the tactical successes of the last 24 years, the United States needs to think hard about the shift from exquisite and very few to cheap and plentiful.

Separate from, but integral to, procurement decisions is the discussion about how small, smart and cheap systems will change the battlefield. For the last 10 years, we have been subject to a first step in small, smart and many with the presence of a variety of IEDs. Using commercially available triggers and homemade explosives, these simple weapons dramatically changed the way U.S. and coalition forces fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These developments are the tip of the iceberg. To date, we have faced command-detonated and victim-detonated devices. We have seen the ingenious adaptation of garage door openers, home telephones, cell phones, and simple circuits in command-detonated devices. Victim-initiated devices have used everything from conventional pressure plates to fluids in garden hoses to trigger the explosive. In response, the U.S. has spent billions on better ways to hunt these devices and their development networks. Washington has also spent additional billions on better armor to protect its forces as they search for bombs. If the U.S. has had this much difficulty hunting IEDs, imagine how difficult it will be to deal with IEDs that hunt us.

While drones that can match a fifth generation fighter in air-to-air combat are a long way off, autonomous drones that can fly to a fighter base, seek out and destroy the same fighter on the ground are essentially available today. China has started the trend with its short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and it is accelerating it with long-range cruise missiles. It is logical to assume Beijing will experiment with cheap, long-range drones that use either GPS or inertial navigation systems to fly to a targeted airfield and then optical recognition to find and strike aircraft on the ground.

At sea, swarms of systems based on the Slocum Wave Rider technology will allow even small countries to hunt surface and subsurface targets at sea or in port. These systems can be dispatched to critical chokepoints such as straits or port entrances and programmed to wait for a specific class of target or even a specific target.

Because of the complexity of the ground environment (tens to hundreds of thousands of moving objects in a city) a mix of autonomous and remotely piloted systems will likely be most effective. Insurgents have already demonstrated the value of autonomous systems that wait (mines and IEDs). The potential for systems that hunt is rising.

Video of quadcopters racing in the forest illustrates both the incredibly complex terrain these systems can handle and the difficulty inherent in engaging such a target in urban terrain. In less complex terrain, autonomous systems can be programmed to fly to a specific point and use optical recognition to select a target to take out in Kamikaze style suicide attacks.

Historical Precedent

While the offense will remain dominant at the operational level of war, planners may have to study how to seize a locale that will force an enemy to respond, then dig in and take advantage of the defensive. There have been periods in history where the defense has dominated the tactical battlefield. The most recent is the period between the U.S. Civil War and the last year of World War I. The convergence of technology (small arms improvements ranging from rifled muskets to machine guns and improvements in artillery) and techniques (trenches, barbed wire, hardened machine gun bunkers) combined to make offensive action prohibitively costly and often ineffective. The rise of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) systems may place us in a similar, but at the same time different, tactical situation. History doesn’t repeat; it rhymes. From the Civil War to 1918, improving artillery and small arms created zones where men simply could not survive on the surface. The advent of swarms of small, smart drones will create much deeper zones in the air, land, and sea where many classes of vehicles, ships, or aircraft cannot survive. It may herald the advent of a period where the tactical defense is dominant.

Conclusion

Investment in highly capable and expensive new weapons systems represents a prediction of the future. Unfortunately, it is a truism that one can never predict the future with certainty. Thus, a hedging approach is more functional than a predictive approach. With the widespread commercial shift to small, many and smart systems as a substitute for a few, exquisite systems, it is time for the United States to rethink its equipment procurement approach.

The critical military functions will remain – but how they are accomplished will change. Rather than investing everything in a single type of fighter or long-range bomber, it makes more sense for the U.S. to limit its purchases of these systems and augment them with systems that conform to the concepts of small, smart and many. For missions like reconnaissance, strike, jamming, communications relay, and others, the United States needs to explore relatively cheap and even disposable systems.

Obviously, this will not be a rapid shift. For instance, the United States is already heavily committed to the F-35. But rather than buying over 2,400 F-35s and continuing to build Ford carriers, Washington should consider only purchasing 600-700 F-35s. These aircraft, along with the current inventory of approximately 180 F-22s will provide sufficient numbers of aircraft for high-end penetrating missions. For other missions, existing and upgraded F-15, F-16, and F-18s can carry the load – particularly when augmented with large numbers of inexpensive penetrating weapons (not platforms). Rather than expensive manned Wild Weasel SAM suppression platforms, the U.S. could employ cheaper but more capable versions of the Harpy 2. Washington also has to figure out how to stop swarms of cheap penetrators from striking its exquisite aircraft when they are on the ground.

Rather than decades long, monolithic procurement programs, the U.S. can return to the process it used in the early days of aviation, when the industry witnessed commercial innovation in a variety of fields, such as internal combustion engines, metallurgy, design, radios and ordnance. It was impossible to predict which designs would work best. The industry used a model of build, test, improve, test, improve; only afterward did the Navy or War Department actually field the systems. The cost was low enough that they could abandon an aircraft if it was not working. Despite investing a fraction of the money it spent on battleships during the interwar period, the Navy developed the carrier aviation team that dominated WWII naval warfare.

It is critical that the U.S. examine the few exquisite systems it is planning to buy to see if their envisioned missions can be accomplished by many, smart and cheap platforms. Given the inherent political advantages of large, complex and expensive systems, this will be a difficult step. The F-35 is a poster child for the difficultly of reconsidering a program of record. Built in 45 states at a cost of $399 billion for 2,443 aircraft and with expected lifetime operating cost of $1 trillion, the F-35 has powerful Congressional support. Moreover, U.S. doctrine and powerful service constituencies heavily favor these exquisite systems. This is natural since doctrine and preferences are usually based on experience, and current U.S. experience is based on exquisite systems. These two powerful factors will make it difficult to dispassionately examine other options.

However, the U.S. must overcome these obstacles – and soon. As the experience with the F-35 demonstrates, the decision to pursue a different path needs to be taken before new systems gain a powerful constituency that insists they be built regardless of actual capability.