Dominant Battlespace Knowledge

The Winning Edge

Stuart E. Johnson, Martin C. Libicki

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839746635
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The Department of Defense has been successfully exploiting rapidly developing advances in information technology for military gain. On tomorrow's multidimensional battlefield—or "battlespace"—the increased density, acuity, and connectivity of sensors and many other information devices may allow U.S. Armed Forces to see almost everything worth seeing in real or near-real time. Such enhanced vision of the battlespace is no doubt a significant military advantage, but a question remains: How do we achieve dominant battlefield knowledge, namely, the ability to understand we see and act on it decisively?The papers collected here address the most critical aspects of that problem—to wit: If the United States develops the means to acquire dominant battlespace knowledge (DBK), how might that affect the way it goes to war, the circumstances under which force can and will be used, the purposes for its employment, and the resulting alterations of the global geomilitary environment? Of particular interest is how the authors view the influence of DBK in light of the shift from global to regional stability issues that marks the post-Cold War world.While no definitive answer has yet emerged, it is clear that the implications of so profound a change in military technology are critical to the structure and function of the U.S. Armed Forces. In working toward a definitive answer, the authors of this volume make an important contribution to a debate whose resolution will shape the decades to come.

♦ DBK and its Consequences — MARTIN C. LIBICKI

How would U.S. military operations be affected if we enjoyed DBK in an area associated with a major regional contingency? This question is addressed in several parts:

• What is the most optimistic but plausible assessment of how well (and by what means) U.S. forces can see the battlefield by the time new systems now being designed are fielded (roughly 2008)? What are reasonable expectations of what the other side can see by then?

• How could the U.S. military best exploit DBK?

• How do these conclusions fare in the face of selected sensitivity analyses: a larger battlespace, a defensive orientation (notably U.S. troops in place at the outset of conflict), and an enemy whose strategy takes our information dominance technologies into account?

The usual caveat applies, Specific analytic results will depend on the identity of the foe (e.g., wealth, size, sophistication, and extant information infrastructure), whether our allies or enemies own the turf at the outset, the terrain of the battlespace (e.g., relative ratios of blue water, brown water, desert, plains, forest, cities, and jungle), the strategies of both sides of the conflict, and the rules of engagement that they, but particularly we, operate under, None of this captures fully the effect of technological surprise, operational innovation, and dumb luck on actual outcomes.

Dr. Martin C. Libicki is a senior fellow of the Advanced Command Technologies program, INSS. He is a specialist in the application of information technologies to national security issues. He has written extensively on information warfare, information technology standards, and the revolution in military affairs.

How Much Battlefield Awareness?

As computer, communications, and associated sensor technologies improve in power, speed, and acuity, the ability to see everything within a given area continues to improve, in some cases, at very fast rates. If it improves enough, even perfect situational awareness may understate what U.S. forces can see. Situational awareness is knowing the disposition, location, and orientation of all hostile forces—e.g., seeing the tank columns, Such knowledge permits more effective mission planning, prevents being surprised, and permits imposing surprise on others. What militaries really want is the ability to see a target precisely enough to ascertain its location within the lethal radius of whatever munitions best kills it—seeing each tank precisely enough to order its destruction by coordinates, Implicit in this definition is information dominance, so that U.S. forces can see deeply without themselves being at high risk.

A good sense of the possible comes from analyzing four it factors:

• How visibility is sought

• What its limits are

• What we can see

• What the other side can see in comparison.

What Our Technology Permits

A discussion of how U.S. forces achieve DBK serves a few purposes: it helps explain why the limits of visibility are where they are, how the architecture of a system that would ensure visibility has to evolve, and what opportunities lie for the other side to evade our sight. Collection, itself, is only the start of visibility (synthesis (e.g., data fusion) and analysis are equally necessary), but it does set the limits of our capabilities and the requirements for integration software.

U.S. forces will be able to exploit a great number of sensors. Stand-off sensors can detect electro-optical, infrared, passive microwave, and reflected real or synthetic aperture radar. Close-in sensors can detect pressure, magnetic fields, gravity differentials, sounds, and certain chemicals.

Stand-off Sensors: Space sensors on heavy low-earth orbit (LEO) craft are likely to improve in resolution but still face tradeoffs with field of view, timeliness, and data transfer rates. Alternatively, today’s technology permits real-time coverage via staring sensors down to two meter resolution (e.g., via four Hubble-caliber spacecraft in middle-earth orbits). If sensor packages can be sufficiently reduced, a far larger fleet of very small satellites (e.g., the size of the $50 million MSTI or the $80 million Clementine satellite) can provide comparable coverage and much wider synoptic range. Fleets of small stealthy satellites are more robust against peer and near-peer threats with laser-blinding capability and other anti-satellite techniques.

If the locus of interest can be pinpointed finely enough, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), despite their weight limitations, can provide even better coverage and can be flown under clouds. A UAV with a relatively light and inexpensive package (e.g., a 1000mm mirror-lens camera feeding a 2000×3000 charge-coupled device on a 35mm frame) can resolve down to I cm from a kilometer away; a second camera placed 2m away from the first (e.g., on either wing, or one at the front and one at the back) can provide depth perception down to I meter (infrared sensors can work at night and detect heat signatures and synthetic aperture radar is useful but resolving power is usually only half as good). The UAV’s problem is supporting real-time communications without revealing itself. Even without real-time communications, turning lidar (light detection and ranging) on, which cuts through most stealth, can reveal its location to a sufficiently sophisticated enemy.

Active radar-based sensors can cut through foliage and under the right soil conditions can see into the ground. They do so, however, at greater cost, somewhat lower resolution, and being active, at the expense of platform stealth.

Passive sensors can also detect radio emitters and thus geolocate their source. A technologically competent foe can nullify such information by using focussed transmissions (e.g., line-of-sight or at least microwave), generating electro-C magnetic clutter, operating in a dense environment (one that produces echoes), or designing systems such that emitters are separated from more valuable targets (e.g., bistatic radars and relays to higher-power transmitters). Sooner rather than later the use of public-key encryption and digital signatures will limit our ability to exploit (other than detect) such radio-frequency or any other communications.

Close-In Sensors: These are good for supplementary information, making fine distinctions, defeating certain forms of stealth, and cuing long-range sensors. Any sensor that can fly can also be put on the ground; coverage is less, but resolution is better, and a collection of cheap devices can collectively produce powerful data.

Vibration sensors such as acoustic, seismic or pressure, particularly when placed in incompressible media such as ground or water, can sense reports of artillery or gunfire and detect the movement of large machines. Anti-noise devices (those that generate an acoustic signal equal and opposite of the original signal) may limit their future effectiveness.

Gravimetric and magnetic sensors are good for distinguishing otherwise identical vehicles by their weight or steel content. They are relatively hard to spoof (although magnetic fields can be cluttered), but their coverage is relatively small and they have to be placed near their quarry.

Chemical sensors, despite their limited range, are good for distinguishing among similar industrial activities, and for detecting the presence and movement of humans.

The Extent of Visibility

The value of DBK depends on who we are trying to see. Visibility is easier against likely enemies over the next 10 years, such as Iraq or North Korea, who are deeply schooled in the Soviet way of war but less so in the information revolution. Visibility is harder against possible enemies beyond 10 years if they appreciate what our systems can do and develop new forms of warfare to counter them. Industrial war can be beaten by informational tools; post-industrial war (which acquires many of its techniques from pre-industrial conflicts) is a far different challenge, as a discussion of the following limitations—bandwidth, intent, and denial—suggests.

Bandwidth: The raw data required to resolve down to even 0.1 meter over such a large terrain are daunting, even with tomorrow’s computers. A single eight-band multispectral eight-bit deep image of a 200nm by 200nm box at 0.1 meter resolution requires almost a hundred trillion bytes of information (e.g., 20,000 CD-ROMs worth even with low-loss 10:1 image compression or as much as NASA’s Earth Observation System takes 2 days to produce). Real-time updates requires retransmission anytime something moves. Advances in processing speed and storage notwithstanding, the communications bandwidth necessary to transmit these data for analysis runs into fundamental limits on radio spectrum (laser-based communications without the optical fiber may have to be developed for such purposes).

U.S. forces will have to rely on cue-filter-pinpoint systems aboard sensors to report back on the battlespace selectively, Indeed, several laboratories are working on techniques that can pre-filter imagery by several criteria: e.g., industrial-age weaponry presents contours (e.g., straight lines) of the sort that are unlikely to occur in nature. Artificial intelligence will replace many human functions in recognizing objects and patterns, but a good system will have to be very large and the fate of large software projects is always difficult to predict.

Intent: To what extent does seeing constitute knowledge? In a high or mid-intensity conflict against an adversary such as Iraq or North Korea, this is not a serious problem. The presence of a tank where it is not supposed to be is sufficient to infer intent. In this case, detection of the target, coupled with the appropriate strike systems, is all we need to destroy the target. Detection is only part of the challenge in dealing with guerrillas and terrorists, however. Being able to detect a pickup truck from a stand-off distance is no mean feat; knowing that its occupants might be armed and hostile, however, is prerequisite to forming a military response. Some data, such as the identity of individuals (useful in distinguishing threats from bystanders), or their facial expressions and body language (which might determine their intent) cannot be discerned by any remotely plausible sensor scaled for wide-area coverage.

Broader data on the intentions of threats are likely to require humint. Such collection will be made easier by the information revolution (e.g., more detailed data bases on individuals, encrypted untraceable communications from behind-the-lines sources). Still, the fundamental determinants of such information flow (e.g., agent recruitment) are unlikely to change much over time.

Denial: Information collection capabilities are likely to outpace the parallel rise in the amount of clutter and the sophistication of stealth, but the latter will retard the onset of perfect visibility.

As the other side begins to see better (and shoot farther), the use of some of our sensors may be constrained, AWACS and JSTARS are wonderful tools, but they radiate like Christmas trees and will be at increased risk as the consequences of their visibility are made actionable.

How visibility is sought also matters. If we have the cooperation of those who occupy the battlespace, we can use infrastructure sensors. If we lack cooperation but our engagement is overt, we can dispense sensors into the environment. If our engagement is covert (e.g., we are not yet at war, or we wish to hide our fingerprints while helping one side of a conflict), U.S. forces cannot easily use sensors that can be captured and traced back us.

What Can We See?

Because no military information system can see everything to required detail at once, it has to rely on cuing, filtering, and pinpointing. Such systems are vulnerable to surprise because certain scanning possibilities are pre-excluded (the Inchon landing, the Nazis in Ardennes) or given short shrift (so that unexpected detail is treated as an anomalous artifact and ignored). Techniques can be developed to use systems of in-place sensors that can communicate among themselves, sift through their bitstreams, report only interesting data, and thus get around the bandwidth problem and limit the need for heavy manning of cue-filter-pinpoint loops. In practice, DBK will vary by target:

• U.S. forces should be able to detect the presence and movement of large platforms inside the 200nm by 200nm box in real time. When cued, our systems should be able to do gross identifications (e.g., distinguish Naval vessels from commercial ships). Large platforms include ships, widebodied aircraft, and probably even small SCUD launchers, tanks and armored personnel carriers (unless well concealed).

• When cued, U.S. forces should be able to determine the location and rough identification of military events such as small platform movement, missile firings, artillery rounds, and even most gunfire in real time and with sufficient accuracy for counter-fire.

• Most forms of stealth are not likely to work against U.S. sensor systems except perhaps stealthy missiles over their short flight time.

• Many opposing sensors, particularly passive ones, are not likely to be seen by U.S. forces. Similarly, weapons that silently await signals before activation are unlikely to be detected if sufficiently small or indistinguishable from background objects and if they are not concentrated in expected locations (e.g., non-metallic mines in straits or passes).

Finer gradations depend on the rules of engagement that U.S. forces (or their allies) can take advantage of. For instance, distinguishing a hostile infantryman from a civilian (friends can carry personal IFF devices) is not likely to be something a sensor can do. In a free-fire zone (or an environment where human activity is normally absent) it suffices to distinguish humans or civilian vehicles from their background; further distinctions are less important.

If military and commercial systems must be differentiated from each other before targeting, certain pieces of evidence can be used: weight, magnetic flux, radio frequency or chemical emissions, or even habits and tracks. However, a competent well-commanded enemy can be expected to mask all these features as best as possible. Forcing them to mask their signatures, however, has certain benefi...