Open borders are here. You likely crossed the Rio Grande before breakfast this morning and you’ll sneak into China before you sleep tonight. Trons travel through cyberspace ignoring all manners of political boundaries. Technology doesn’t care where Ukraine ends and Russia begins, or about an air gap between China and Taiwan. The policy of cyber does; it shouldn’t.
Conceptualizing Cyber Borders
The national policy for cyber borders has been similar to conceptions of airspace: a vertical extension of geopolitical borders into the sky, or in the case of cyber, into the flowing infrastructure of the internet. If a plane is going to travel through the airspace of another country, that country has to agree to it or the flight has to go around. A long-range bomber aircraft might fly over a few countries for a raid on the other side. Packets or “trons” can travel continents’ worth of countries in a path of least resistance taking seconds. Furthermore, while borders stay the same, digital routes are totally dynamic. In order to prevent the unintended escalation of cyber operations, we must divorce the routes trons take from the effects they cause.
A Path Forward
Fortunately, an existing policy framework already exists for an effects-based policy in a new frontier. We need to rise above the airspace mentality, and draw inspiration from satellites. Satellites travel freely over countries and cross borders with impunity. The international community agreed to a borderless framework in space in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.1 The orbit a satellite is on and its position relative to political borders are irrelevant when it takes an action that causes an effect. The effect is all that matters. The group at the effect’s end may protest or retaliate, but the country under the satellite at the time of the action will have no issue. If, for example, China shot down a Russian satellite while the satellite was over Mexico, Russia would have no issue with Mexico for having allowed the attack above them, because they don’t own that space. Instead, China would be responsible for causing the malign effect.
The Department of Defense (DoD) has addressed this attribution issue. The DoD Law of War Manual specifically addresses “cyber operations that use communications infrastructure in neutral states.”2 This policy allows trons to be routed through neutral nations so long as the cyber infrastructure in that country allows innocuous information to be routed through it as well, if they route trons for the common World Wide Web. It also specifically acknowledges that it is unreasonable to expect other nations to review all cyber traffic for its content. These principles are fundamental to the spirit and design of the internet. Acknowledging those fundamentals will prevent future conflicts that will otherwise arise from misattribution during analysis of tron routes. Imagine Canada sends cyber attack trons to Russia via France, Thailand, and China. It is easy to see Russia determining that China may not have ownership of the trons that attacked them, but—unless we agree otherwise—they were complicit in the attack. A scenario where clumsy confusion leads to aggressive accusation, the likes of which we have not seen since the eve of WW1, is not far-fetched given the cyber domain’s peculiarities.
Many international cyber agreements are being written. One, the International Code of Conduct for Information Security, has already been signed by major players Russia and China. That agreement addresses the intent of cyber warfare and end effects, but leaves a grey area in between. A 2013 NATO report addressed this point indirectly, saying “demilitarized zones are not feasible in the context of cyberspace, due to its global scope.”3 NATO failed to separate the infrastructure itself from the use of the infrastructure. A United Nations report from 2015 (aware of NATO’s 2013 report) further departs in the wrong direction and declares “states of jurisdiction over the ICT (information and communications technologies) infrastructure located within their territory.”4 This policy direction simply does not pragmatically address the technology involved. The transnational spirit of the internet and the technology itself does not respect borders as the UN does. A failure to acknowledge this fact is dangerous. The focus on infrastructure and not on the transmissions and effects of the technology leaves a dangerous grey area.
The solution is an agreement among the international community to ignore cyber routes. The DoD’s cyber components must press this issue into international agreements. The Department is uniquely equipped to lead this effort. It is the center of our nation’s cyber warfare universe. The NSA, CIA, DIA, and others with less notoriety are led or staffed largely by military officers and enlisted, retired versions of the same, or DoD civilians. No other organization is as integrated into every aspect of offensive and defensive cyber operations. DoD’s outsized operational involvement gives us an equally outsized cyber policy voice, and we should use it to ensure a discussion on cyber routes.
The discussion should acknowledge, first, that attribution is the foundation of cyber warfare. Second, acknowledge that routing technologies use the communications equipment of neutral states to obscure the origin of cyber-attacks. After establishing those truths, the policy must focus on ensuring the analysis of digital forensic evidence acknowledges the inherent deceptiveness of cyber route analysis and delegitimizes the evidence as international policy. The international community must agree to focus on the information and effects of the trons and not attempt to hold accountable the infrastructure used for transmission. Absolve the owners of the infrastructure and the land on which it sits from responsibility for the trons it transmits, and inversely remove the standing they might have if they dislike the trons.
Conclusion
The publicly available cyber discussions in the international community have so far focused on intent, effects, and physical infrastructure while they ignore any agreement on cyber routes. To avoid a massive international misunderstanding in the fog of attribution we must internationally agree to ignore cyber routes. We have a framework for this. In space we own the object, not the orbit. In cyber we will own the information, not the route.
Travis Nicks is a nuclear submarine officer serving at the Pentagon. He is focused on finding precise fixes to complex problems. LT Nicks is interested in cyber policy and personnel performance issues. The views herein are his alone and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or any other organization.
References
1. Outer Space Treaty, 1967, Article II
2. Department of Defense, Law of War Manual, 2016, Section 16.4.1
3. Dr. Katharina Ziolkowski, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, Confidence Building Measures for Cyberspace – Legal Implications, 2013, Section 3.2
4. Group of Government Experts, United Nations General Assembly, report on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security, 2015, Section VI.28.a.
Featured Image: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Joel Melendez, Naval Network Warfare Command information systems analysis, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Rogerick Montgomery, U.S. Cyber Command network analysis, and U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jacob Harding, 780th Military Intelligence Brigade cyber systems analysis, analyze an exercise scenario during Cyber Flag 13-1, Nov. 8, 2012, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Lancaster)
Written by Terence Bennett, Naval Applications of Tech discusses how emerging and disruptive technologies can be used to make the U.S. Navy more effective. It examines potential and evolving developments in the tech industry, communication platforms, computer software and hardware, mechanical systems, power generation, and other areas.
“The most damaging phrase in the language is ‘We’ve always done it this way!’” — Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper in an interview in Information Week, March 9, 1987, p. 52
By Terence Bennett
Introduction
Philippines President Duterte announced last month that he wanted all U.S. forces out of the Philippines in two years, leaving U.S. policy makers to find an alternative naval basing strategy for the region. The presence of U.S. naval forces in the Philippines can be traced directly back to Commodore Dewey’s command, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” utterly shortly before a fleet of U.S. Battleships entered Manila Bay to liberate it from Spanish rule in 1898. At the time, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s work The Influence of Sea Power upon History had popularized the need for a strong U.S. merchant fleet, battle fleet, and network of naval bases. The taking of Manila Bay would give the United States its first taste of colonialism and the ability to operate U.S. ships from a homeport far away from the United States. With today’s political landscape changing in unstable ways, it is time to rethink any assumption about U.S. naval basing and power projection. Surface ships and naval basing platforms need to capitalize on unique forms of energy that surround them starting with solar, kinetic, and wind power.
Emerging clean technologies have presented many alternative forms of power generation, but none have been able to replace the energy dense and ubiquitous nature of diesel. Despite a strong commitment after World War II under Admiral Rickover towards a nuclear Navy, today’s over reliance on diesel is epitomized by the Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer (DDG). This modern destroyer was commissioned in 1991 with seven gas turbine engines used for propulsion and power generation. Although having an extremely high power to weight ratio, gas turbine engines are fuel hogs and have left the U.S. surface fleet tethered to supply ships. In the two-and-half-decades since commissioning, the Arleigh-Burke-class has been improved with better combat systems, faster projectiles, and even hybrid-electric drives. But the Navy has not fundamentally readdressed Mahan’s assumptions on resupply and fuel-burning energy generation. The Navy needs to find solutions that unburden U.S. national security from a dependence on countries with strategically-located deep water ports. The issue of naval basing on foreign soil isn’t a political problem, but rather a technological one.
Solar Energy
Solar power has been historically difficult to employ due to low efficiency, expensive equipment, and the need for a lot of space to gather sunlight. Successful application of solar has typically been to supply individual households with power. An Italian company has put a twist on this small-scale solar model by placing solar panels on floating platforms in residential lakes and ponds. This solution allows the arrays to rotate toward the sun, utilize otherwise unoccupied space, and cool equipment more efficiently. This year, researchers in Vienna have developed ocean wave dampening technology that will allow large floating platforms of solar arrays to be deployed with less risk of damage from waves at sea. Although floating solar arrays are not employed by the Navy today, this development may make sea-based solar arrays a project of interest in the future. When complete, the Heliofloat will be the size of a football field and generate solar energy for use on shore.
The Heliofloat’s solar panels use a giant platform that remains steady in rough seas. (UT Wien)
The Heliofloat is getting attention from the solar energy community because it aims to leverage a large expanse of unutilized space. This same attitude can be applied to ships at sea. We overlook the paradox of sailing tightly cramped ships on the vast openness of the ocean. Naval architects and engineers work to fit as much as possible onto ships, but this mindset leaves out the potential for employing the open space around the ship for a useful purpose. Ohio-based startup Xunlighthas developed large flexible roll-up solar arrays that could be used for solar energy generation outside the skin of a ship. Sailmakers have already started using this technology in the sails of commercially sold sailboats, demonstrating the material’s resilience and versatility. Like the solar sails of Jules Verne’s novels, Navy ships could employ large outriggers with quickly deployable solar arrays to collect the sun’s energy. Although impractical for many scenarios – in transit, in high seas, or winds – ships could make use of this solution during loiter operations. These solar sails could be designed to disguise ships from radar, or make them appear like an entirely different class of ship. A deployable roll-out solar array would be an easily prototyped green energy solution for ships today.
Kinetic Energy
The Navy is currently testing the Azura Wave device off the coast of Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii. This single device is capable of generating 20 kW from the motion of the ocean. To put that in perspective, the average Hawaiian consumes 17 kWh per day. This buoy, in optimal conditions, is offsetting the daily power consumption of one average Hawaiian resident in one hour. Although this may not seem like much of an impact, it proves that it can be done. Two more companies are planning to test similar devices capable of producing 500 kW. In the not so distance future, kinetic generators like this might be anchored in a grid and secured to Heliofloat-like platforms for combined kinetic-solar generation. Through the combination of different alternative energy projects, yields can be increased to levels competitive with fossil fuel systems.
Ocean Power Technology’s (OPT) Powerbuoy wave generation system. ( USMClife.com)
Wind Energy
At the time of writing, winds in the central Arabian Gulf
are blowing at 23 knots. This is just fast enough to produce 5,000 kW with a 282 ft long Sheerwind wind tunnel, roughly the equivalent power production of two Allison generators aboard an Arleigh Burke-class DDG. Minnesota-based Sheerwind has developed a system to capture, concentrate, accelerate and harvest wind power in a funnel. The tunnels happen to be very big, but the installation of towers to collect wind could fit at the top of a ship’s stacks and ideally installed in line with existing diesel generation systems. This setup could allow the ship to use wind power when it was available and shift to diesel generation as necessary. This technology would have to be integrated into the design of a ship, but would be ideal for vessels required to operate for extended amounts of time in a single area.
SheerWind’s INVELOX Wind Delivery system (Sheerwind.com)
Conclusion
When Mahan envisioned a battleship Navy, he was describing the prevailing example of concentrated seapower. When Mahan described the requirement for a nation to have a strong network of naval bases, it can be assumed that he was describing the need for sustained operations far from friendly coasts. Just as a Fleet in Being is useless unless it presents a legitimate danger of leaving port, a powerful Navy must be present to exert its will on the adversary. In maritime confrontation today, the challenge of finding and facing our adversary often becomes the key to success. For this reason, our current naval strategy of sea basing and sustained operations at sea will continue to be a central theme in the projection of U.S. military power. A glut of cheap oil may have slowed the progress of new Navy energy-related technology, but the emergence of a generation of cheap alternative energy sources and the clever employment of existing technologies can change this. The future of Navy operations is largely unknown, except that ships will always be required to spend long amounts of time at sea. High efficiency and ideally renewable sources like solar, kinetic, and wind energy should be an attractive addition to a ship’s power plant.
LT Bennett is a former Surface Warfare Officer and current Intelligence Officer. The views express herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity on his own initiative. They do not reflect the official positions of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or any other U.S. Government agency.
Featured Image: YOKOSUKA, Japan (Aug. 22, 2012) Capt. David Owen, left, commanding officer of Fleet Activities Yokosuka, inspects recently installed solar panels at Sullivan Elementary School. The solar panels are a building integrated photovoltaic system, which is estimated to contribute $297,000 in projected annual energy savings at the installation. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Matthew R. Cole/Released)
The following article originally featured in National Defense University’s Joint Force Quarterly and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.
By Brent Sadler
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. . . . This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
—Isaac Asimov
Today, the Department of Defense (DOD) is coming to terms with trends forcing a rethinking of how it fights wars. One trend is proliferation of and parity by competitors in precision munitions. Most notable are China’s antiship ballistic missiles and the proliferation of cruise missiles, such as those the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed to use to attack an Egyptian ship off the Sinai in 2014. Another trend is the rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics that are enabling the creation of learning machines.
Failure to adapt and lead in this new reality risks U.S. ability to effectively respond and control the future battlefield. However, budget realities make it unlikely that today’s DOD could spend its way ahead of these challenges or field new systems fast enough. Consider that F-35 fighter development is 7 years behind schedule and, at $1.3 trillion, is $163 billion over budget.1 On the other hand, China produced and test-flew its first fifth-generation fighter (J-20) within 2 years. These pressures create urgency to find a cost-effective response through emergent and disruptive technologies that could ensure U.S. conventional deterrent advantage—in other words, the so-called Third Offset Strategy.
Unmanned Combat Air System X-47B demonstrator flies near aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, first aircraft carrier to successfully catapult launch unmanned aircraft from its flight deck, May 14, 2013 (U.S. Navy/Erik Hildebrandt)
Narrowing Conventional Deterrence
In 1993, Andrew Marshall, Director of Net Assessment, stated, “I project a day when our adversaries will have guided munitions parity with us and it will change the game.”2 On December 14, 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that day’s arrival when arguing for a Third Offset during comments at the Center for a New American Security.3
An offset seeks to leverage emerging and disruptive technologies in innovative ways in order to prevail in Great Power competition. A Great Power is understood to be a rational state seeking survival through regional hegemony with global offensive capabilities.4 The First Offset Strategy in the 1950s relied on tactical nuclear superiority to counter Soviet numerical conventional superiority. As the Soviets gained nuclear parity in the 1960s, a Second Offset in the 1970s centered on precision-guided munitions and stealth technologies to sustain technical overmatch, conventional deterrence, and containment for another quarter century. The Third Offset, like previous ones, seeks to deliberately change an unattractive Great Power competition, this time with China and Russia, to one more advantageous. This requires addressing the following challenges.
Fast Followers.Russia and China have been able to rapidly gain and sustain near-parity by stealing and copying others’ technologies for their own long-range precision capabilities, while largely pocketing developmental costs. Lateral thinking5 is required to confound these Fast Followers, as Apple used with Microsoft when it regained tech-sector leadership in the early 2000s.6
Hybrid Warfare. Russia’s actions in Crimea and ongoing activities in Eastern Ukraine indicate both that Russia is undeterred and that it was successful in coordinating asymmetric and unconventional tactics across multiple domains.
Narrowing Conventional Advantage. The loss of the precision-munitions advantage increases cost for U.S. intervention, thus reducing deterrence and inviting adventurism. Recent examples include Russian interventions (Georgia, Ukraine, Syria) and increasingly coercive Chinese activities in the East and South China seas, especially massive island-building in the South China Sea since 2014.
Persistent Global Risks from Violent Extremists. While not an existential threat, left unchecked, violent extremism is inimical to U.S. interests as it corrodes inclusive, open economies and societies. As a long-term ideological competition, a global presence able to monitor, attack, and attrite violent extremist networks is required.
In response to these challenges, two 2015 studies are informing DOD leadership on the need for a new offset: the Defense Science Board summer study on autonomy and the Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program. From these studies, Deputy Secretary Work has articulated five building blocks of a new offset:
autonomous deep-learning systems
human-machine collaboration
assisted human operations
advanced human-machine combat teaming
network-enabled semi-autonomous weapons.
Central to all are learning machines that, when teamed with a person, provide a potential prompt jump in capability. Technological advantages alone, however, could prove chimerical as Russia and China are also investing in autonomous weapons, making any U.S. advantage gained a temporary one. In fact, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, predicts a future battlefield populated with learning machines.7
A Third Offset Strategy could achieve a qualitative edge and ensure conventional deterrence relative to Fast Followers in four ways: One, it could provide U.S. leaders more options along the escalation ladder. Two, a Third Offset could flip the cost advantage to defenders in a ballistic and cruise missile exchange; in East Asia this would make continuation of China’s decades-long investment in these weapons cost prohibitive. Three, it could have a multiplicative effect on presence, sensing, and combat effectiveness of each manned platform. Four, such a strategy could nullify the advantages afforded by geographic proximity and being the first to attack.
Robot Renaissance
In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, marking an inflection point in the development of learning machines. Since then, development of learning machines has accelerated, as illustrated by Giraffe, which taught itself how to play chess at a master’s level in 72 hours.8 Driving this rapid development have been accelerating computer-processing speeds and miniaturization. In 2011, at the size of 10 refrigerators, the super-computer Watson beat two champions of the game show Jeopardy. Within 3 years, Watson was shrunk to the size of three stacked pizza boxes—a 90-percent reduction in size along with a 2,700-percent improvement in processing speed.9 Within a decade, computers likely will match the massive parallel processing capacity of the human brain, and these machines will increasingly augment and expand human memory and thinking much like cloud computing for computers today, leading to accelerating returns in anything that can be digitized.10 This teaming of man and machine will set the stage for a new renaissance of human consciousness as augmented by learning machines—a Robot Renaissance.11 But man is not destined for extinction and will remain part of the equation; as “freestyle chess” demonstrates, man paired with computers utilizing superior processes can prevail over any competitor.12
Augmenting human consciousness with learning machines will usher in an explosion in creativity, engineering innovation, and societal change. This will in turn greatly impact the way we conceptualize and conduct warfare, just as the Renaissance spurred mathematical solutions to ballistic trajectories, metallurgy, and engineering for mobile cannons. Such a future is already being embraced. For example, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch recently concluded that robotics and AI—learning machines—will define the next industrial revolution and that the adoption of this technology is a foregone conclusion. Their report concludes that by 2025 learning machines will be performing 45 percent of all manufacturing versus 10 percent today.13 It would be a future of profound change and peril and was the focus of the 2016 Davos Summit whose founder, Klaus Schwab, calls the period the Fourth Industrial Revolution.14 As the Industrial Revolution demonstrated, the advantage will be to the early adopter, leaving the United States little choice but to pursue an offset strategy that leverages learning machines.
Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster and former world champion, speaking at Turing centennial conference at Manchester, June 25, 2012 (Courtesy David Monniaux)
Advantages of Man-Machine Teaming
Learning machines teamed with manned platforms enabled by concepts of operations will be a key element of the Third Offset Strategy. Advantages of this approach include:
Speed Faster than Adversaries. Staying inside an adversary’s OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop necessitates learning machines that are able to engage targets at increasing speed, which diminishes direct human control.15
Greater Combat Effect per Person. As extensions of manned platforms, teaming increases the combat effect per person through swarm tactics as well as big data management. Moreover, augmenting the manned force with autonomous systems could mitigate deployment costs, which have increased 31 percent since 2000 and are likely unsustainable under current constructs.16
Less Human Risk. Reduced risk to manned platforms provides more options along the escalation ladder to commanders and allows a more forward and pervasive presence. Moreover, autonomous systems deployed in large numbers will have the long-term effect of mitigating relative troop strengths.
High-Precision, Emotionless Warfare. Learning machines provide an opportunity for battlefield civility by lessening death and destruction with improved precision and accuracy. Moreover, being non-ethical and unemotional, they are not susceptible to revenge killings and atrocities.
Hard to Target. Learning machines enable disaggregated combat networks to be both more difficult to target and more fluid in attack. Some capabilities (for example, cyber) could reside during all phases of a conflict well within a competitor’s physical borders, collecting intelligence while also ready to act like a “zero-day bomb.”17
Faster Acquisition and Improvement. Incorporation of learning machines in design, production, and instantaneous sharing of learning across machines would have a multiplicative effect. However, achieving such benefits requires overcoming proprietary constraints such as those encountered with the Scan Eagle unmanned vehicle if better intra-DOD innovation and interoperability are to be achieved.
Realizing these potential benefits requires institutional change in acquisition and a dedicated cadre of roboticists. However, pursuing a Third Offset Strategy is not without risks.
Third Offset Risks
Fielding learning machines presents several risks, and several technical and institutional barriers. The risks include the following challenges.
Cyber Intrusion and Programming Brittleness. DOD relies on commercial industry to develop and provide it with critical capabilities. This situation provides some cost savings, while presenting an Achilles’ heel for cyber exploitation during fabrication and in the field. One avenue for attack is through the complexity of programming, which leads to programming brittleness, or seams and back rooms causing system vulnerabilities.18 Another is through communications vital to proper human control. Additionally, swarm tactics involving teams of machines networking independently of human control on a near-continuous basis could further expose them to attack and manipulation.19 Mitigating such threats and staying inside an adversary’s accelerating OODA loop would drive increasing autonomy and decreasing reliance on communications.20
Proliferation and Intellectual Insecurity. The risk of proliferation and Fast Followers to close technological advantage makes protecting the most sensitive elements of learning machines an imperative. Doing so requires addressing industrial espionage and cyber vulnerabilities in the commercial defense industry, which will require concerted congressional and DOD action.
Unlawful Use. As competitors develop learning machines, they may be less constrained and ethical in their employment. Nonetheless, the international Law of Armed Conflict applies, and does not preclude employing learning machines on the battlefield in accordance with jus in bello—the legal conduct of war. Legally, learning machines would have to pass the same tests as any other weapons; their use must be necessary, discriminate, and proportional against a military objective.21 A key test for learning machines is discrimination; that is, the ability to discern noncombatants from targeted combatants while limiting collateral damage.22
Unethical War. When fielded in significant numbers, learning machines could challenge traditions of jus ad bellum—criteria regarding decisions to engage in war. That is, by significantly reducing the cost in human life to wage war, the decision to wage it becomes less restrictive. Such a future is debatable, but as General Paul J. Selva (Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) suggested at the Brookings Institution on January 21, 2016, there should be an international debate on the role of autonomous weapons systems and jus ad bellum implications.
A New Fog of War. Lastly, the advent of learning machines will give rise to a new fog of war emerging from uncertainty in a learning machine’s AI programming. It is a little unsettling that a branch of AI popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s was called “fuzzy logic,” due to an ability to alter its programming that represents a potential loss of control and weakening of liability.
Seven teams from DARPA’s Virtual Robotics Challenge continue to develop and refine ATLAS robot, developed by Boston Dynamics (DARPA)
Third Offset Barriers
Overcoming the barriers to a Third Offset Strategy requires advancing key foundational technologies, adjustments in acquisition, and training for man–learning machine interaction.
Man-Machine Interaction. Ensuring proper human interface with and the proper setting of parameters for a given mission employing learning machines requires a professional cadre of roboticists. As with human communication, failure to appropriately command and control learning machines could be disastrous. This potential was illustrated in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssesy when the HAL 9000 computer resolved a dilemma of conflicting orders by killing its human crew. Ensuring an adequately trained cadre is in place as new systems come online requires building the institutional bedrock on which these specialists are trained. Because it will take several years to build such a cadre, it is perhaps the most pressing Third Offset investment.
Trinity of Robotic Capability. Gaining a sustainable and significant conventional advantage through learning machines requires advances in three key areas. This trinity includes high-density energy sources, sensors, and massive parallel processing capacity. Several promising systems have failed because of weakness in one or all of these core capabilities. Fire Scout, a Navy autonomous helicopter, failed largely due to limited endurance. The Army and Marine Corps Big Dog was terminated because its noisy gasoline engine gave troop positions away. Sensor limitations undid Boomerang, a counter-sniper robot with limited ability to discern hostiles in complex urban settings.23
Agile Acquisition Enterprise. As technological challenges are overcome, any advantage earned would be transitory unless acquisition processes adapt in several key ways. One way is to implement continuous testing and evaluation to monitor the evolving programming of learning machines and ensure the rapid dissemination of learning across the machine fleet. A second way is to broaden the number of promising new capabilities tested while more quickly determining which ones move to prototype. A third way is to more rapidly move prototypes into the field. Such changes would be essential to stay ahead of Fast Followers.
While acquisition reforms are being debated in Congress, fielding emerging and disruptive technologies would need to progress regardless.24 However, doing both provides a game-changing technological leap at a pace that can break today’s closely run technological race—a prompt jump in capability.
Chasing a Capability Prompt Jump
Actualizing a nascent Third Offset Strategy in a large organization such as DOD requires unity of effort. One approach would be to establish a central office empowered to ensure coherency in guidance and oversight of resource decisions so that investments remain complementary. Such an office would build on the legacy of the Air Sea Battle Office, Joint Staff’s Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons, and Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO). Therefore, a central office would need to be resourced and given authority to direct acquisition related to the Third Offset, develop doctrine, standardize training, and conduct exercises to refine concepts of operation. First steps could include:
Limit or curtail proprietary use in Third Offset systems while standardizing protocols and systems for maximum cross-Service interoperability.
Leverage legacy systems initially by filling existing capacity gaps. SCO work has been notable in pursuing rapid development and integration of advanced low-cost capabilities into legacy systems. This approach results in extension of legacy systems lethality while complicating competitors’ countermeasures. Examples include shooting hypersonic rounds from legacy Army artillery and the use of digital cameras to improve accuracy of small-diameter bombs.25 The Navy could do this by leveraging existing fleet test and evaluation efforts, such as those by Seventh Fleet, and expanding collaboration with SCO. An early effort could be maturing Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, which is currently being developed for aerial refueling, into the full spectrum of operations.26
Standardize training and concepts of operations for learning machines and their teaming with manned platforms. Early efforts should include formally establishing a new subspecialty of roboticist and joint exercises dedicated to developing operational concepts of man-machine teaming. Promising work is being done at the Naval Postgraduate School, which in the summer of 2015 demonstrated the ability to swarm up to 50 unmanned systems at its Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory and should inform future efforts.
Direct expanded investment in the trinity of capabilities—high-density energy sources, sensors, and next-generation processors. The DOD Defense Innovation Initiative is building mechanisms to identify those in industry advancing key technologies, and will need to be sustained as private industry is more deeply engaged.
DOD is already moving ahead on a Third Offset Strategy, and it is not breaking the bank. The budget proposal for fiscal year 2017 seeks a significant but manageable $18 billion toward the Third Offset, with $3 billion devoted to man-machine teaming, over the next 5 years; the $3.6 billion committed in 2017 equates to less than 1 percent of the annual $582.7 billion defense budget.27 As a first step, this funds initial analytical efforts in wargaming and modeling and begins modest investments in promising new technologies.
Conclusion
Because continued U.S. advantage in conventional deterrence is at stake, resources and senior leader involvement must grow to ensure the success of a Third Offset Strategy. It will be critical to develop operational learning machines, associated concepts of operations for their teaming with people, adjustments in the industrial base to allow for more secure and rapid procurement of advanced autonomous systems, and lastly, investment in the trinity of advanced base capabilities—sensors, processors, and energy.
For the Navy and Marine Corps, the foundation for such an endeavor resides in the future design section of A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower supported by the four lines of effort in the current Chief of Naval Operations’ Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. A promising development has been the establishment of OpNav N99, the unmanned warfare systems directorate recently established by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations on the Navy staff and the naming of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Navy for Unmanned Systems, both dedicated to developing capabilities key to a Third Offset Strategy. This should be broadened to include similar efforts in all the Services.
However, pursuit of game-changing technologies is only sustainable by breaking out of the increasingly exponential pace of technological competition with Fast Followers. A Third Offset Strategy could do this and could provide the first to adopt outsized advantages. Realistically, to achieve this requires integrating increasing layers of autonomy into legacy force structure as budgets align to new requirements and personnel adapt to increasing degrees of learning machine teaming. The additive effect of increasing autonomy could fundamentally change warfare and provide significant advantage to whoever successfully teams learning machines with manned systems. This is not a race we are necessarily predestined to win, but it is a race that has already begun with strategic implications for the United States. JFQ
Captain Brent D. Sadler, USN, is a Special Assistant to the Navy Asia-Pacific Advisory Group.
Notes
1 CBS News, 60 Minutes, “The F-35,” February 16, 2014.
4 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2014).
5 Lateral thinking, a term coined by Edward de Bono in 1967, means indirect and creative approaches using reasoning not immediately obvious and involving ideas not obtainable by traditional step-by-step logic.
6 Shane Snow, Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 6, 116.
7 Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, stated in a February 27, 2013, article: “Another factor influencing the essence of modern means of armed conflict is the use of modern automated complexes of military equipment and research in the area of artificial intelligence. While today we have flying drones, tomorrow’s battlefields will be filled with walking, crawling, jumping, and flying robots. In the near future it is possible a fully robotized unit will be created, capable of independently conducting military operations.” See Mark Galeotti, “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War,” In Moscow’s Shadows blog, available at <https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/>. For Gerasimov’s original article (in Russian), see Military-Industrial Kurier 8, no. 476 (February 27–March 5, 2013), available at <http://vpk-news.ru/sites/default/files/pdf/VPK_08_476.pdf>.
9 “IBM Watson Group Unveils Cloud-Delivered Watson Services to Transform Industrial R&D, Visualize Big Data Insights and Fuel Analytics Exploration,” IBM News, January 9, 2014, available at <http://ibm.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1887>.
10 Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 4, 8, 125, 255, 280–281.
11 A learning machine, according to Arthur Samuel’s 1959 definition of machine learning, is the ability of computers to learn without being explicitly programmed.
12 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 188.
14 Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016).
15 Michael N. Schmitt, “War, Technology and the Law of Armed Conflict,” International Law Studies, vol. 82 (2006), 137–182.
16 Growth in DOD’s Budget from 2000 to 2014 (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, November 2014).
17 Richard Clarke, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 163–166.
18 Ibid., 81–83.
19 Katherine D. Mullens et al., An Automated UAV Mission System (San Diego, CA: SPAWAR Systems Center, September 2003), available at <www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA422026>.
20 Armin Krishnan, Killer Robots: Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons (Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2009).
21 James E. Baker, In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 215–216.
22 “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977,” Article 48, 57.4 and 51.4; Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 62–63.
The following article originally published at National Defense University’s Joint Force Quarterly and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.
“While the United States and our closest allies fought two lengthy wars over the past 13 years—the rest of the world and our potential adversaries were seeing how we operated. They looked at our advantages. They studied them. They analyzed them. They looked for weaknesses. And then they set about devising ways to counter our technological over-match.”
—Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work
By James R. McGrath
It is well established that both state and nonstate adversaries are gaining parity with current U.S. military-technological capabilities, and as a result adversaries are eroding the tremendous asymmetrical conventional warfare advantages once exclusively enjoyed by U.S. forces.1 This leveling of the playing field has been enabled through decreased costs of modern information technology and low barriers of entry to attaining precision weapons; stealth capabilities; sophisticated commercial and military command and control (C2) capabilities; advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); and relatively cheap access to commercial and government-sponsored space and cyber capabilities.2 As a result, in November 2014, then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the Defense Innovation Initiative to counter adversary technical and tactical progress that, if left unchecked, will ultimately hinder U.S. ability to project power across the globe and permanently challenge its aims of retaining its coveted status as a global hegemon.3 While there are many aspects to this initiative, the Third Offset Strategy, as outlined in policy, does not adequately address the need for advanced information operations (IO), particularly IO wargaming, modeling and simulation (M&S), and training systems. The purpose of this article is to make the case that increasing the investment in joint live, virtual, and constructive (LVC) IO wargaming and simulations will generate lasting asymmetrical advantages for joint force commanders and will significantly contribute to the achievement of the Third Offset Strategy.
U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeye 2000 aircraft assigned to “Wallbangers” of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 117 approaches flight deck of USS John C. Stennis while ship is underway in Pacific Ocean, July 13, 2006 (DOD/John Hyde)
Military Problem
The Defense Innovation Initiative is aimed at solving the problem of ensuring that lasting power projection capabilities are available to the U.S. military in pursuit of the Nation’s core and enduring national interests, most notably safeguarding national security, promoting democratic values, maintaining long-term economic prosperity, and preserving the current international order.4The solution to this problem—one that has yet to be fully articulated and bounded in scope, much less solved—has been named the Third Offset Strategy, meaning that there are a series of strategic capabilities that must be developed to give U.S. forces a decisive military-technological offset that generates lasting asymmetrical advantages over any potential adversary for the next 25 to 50 years. The strategy is so named because there already were two successful offset strategies in the 20th century.5 The first was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s New Look Strategy during the 1950s, which sought to develop advanced nuclear weapons capabilities to offset the Soviet Union’s overwhelmingly superior conventional forces and nascent nuclear capabilities. The second strategy was Secretary of Defense Harold Brown’s Offset Strategy during the 1970s, which was aimed at countering recent Soviet advances in both numerical and technical parity regarding its nuclear arsenal, coupled with sustained numerically superior conventional forces deployed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the globe. Essentially, the U.S. Offset Strategy invested in stealth technologies, precision weapons, sophisticated C2 capabilities, and advanced airborne and space-based ISR that were ultimately revealed to the world during the first Gulf War.
As outlined by Secretary Hagel and currently being championed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, the Defense Innovation Initiative emphasizes three key areas for sources of innovation: long-range research and development, new operating concepts, and reenergizing wargaming efforts and techniques.6 Currently, most of the discussion regarding this initiative is overly focused on purely technical, materiel solutions, such as unmanned autonomous systems and sources of new global strike and ISR capabilities. Regrettably, the appeal for the development of new operating concepts and wargaming techniques seems to be overlooked in the media and most defense policy think tanks.
What many analysts fail to realize is that the operating environment, specifically the information environment (IE),7 has changed, and our adversaries are undermining our asymmetrical advantages through innovative use of the information space, particularly by operating in the informational and cognitive dimensions on a global scale.8What should be obvious—but unfortunately is not to many military and defense planners—is that IO is precisely the tool set that joint force commanders already have to attack our adversaries’ newly found advancements in C2 warfare, ISR, and precision weapons. Unfortunately, for example, the Russians,9 Chinese,10 and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,11 to name a few, are now also demonstrating advanced forms of information warfare that continually undermine U.S. tactical prowess and enable successful antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies that are the root cause of the problem.12 For U.S. forces to achieve the Third Offset Strategy, the joint force must be able to achieve information superiority at the time and place of its choosing. To do that, the joint force must develop innovative operating concepts for IO, wargame them using a variety of computer-based methods, and then train to the newly discovered tactics, techniques, and procedures that are absolutely essential for 21st-century warfare—a type of warfare aimed at breaking the will of the adversary through control of the IE.
Currently, IO is often treated as an ad hoc, additive activity during most joint LVC training events; therefore, IO is routinely ignored or underutilized despite being a major component of every real-world joint operation since Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm13 and arguably in other forms, such as psychological warfare and deception, throughout all of human history.14 Much of the reason for this routine omission and lack of prominence in major joint LVC exercises is that military information support operations (MISO, formerly known as psychological operations), public affairs, electronic warfare (EW), cyber warfare, military deception (MILDEC), special technical operations, and other information-related capabilities (IRC)15 are difficult to simulate over a relevant exercise time horizon. Even more challenging is the ability to realistically but sufficiently model the physical, technical, and cognitive complexities of the IE as a coherent whole whose sum is greater than its individual parts. If this can be achieved, U.S. joint forces would be able to train in synthetic environments that would ultimately enable them to effectively maneuver within the IE, counter recent adversary military-technological gains and newfound information warfare prowess, and provide the baseline for a newly defined technical, military, and psychological offset.
IO as the Solution
By acknowledging the fact that adversaries are reducing our operational advantages and conventional overmatch through innovative use of the IE, it becomes increasingly imperative that U.S. IO training, wargaming, and operating concepts be improved. It is also important to emphasize that this improvement should not only mirror-image the activities of our adversaries, but also provide joint force commanders with a comprehensive set of tools and concepts that allows them to outmaneuver adversaries within the cognitive, informational, and physical dimensions of the IE. As a starting point, a brief analysis of modern IO reveals at least six interrelated IO lines of effort (LOE), which if truly integrated with each other could facilitate the Third Strategic Offset. These primary LOEs or mission areas are psychological warfare, C2 warfare, denial and deception, cyber warfare, engagement, and IE situational awareness.16
While on the surface some of these IO LOEs appear well-established IRCs, that is not the intent or the case. These highly complementary and interdependent mission areas are IRC agnostic—meaning that no one particular IRC is necessarily required for a particular mission.17 In fact, multiple IRCs applied in a combined arms fashion are a prerequisite to achieving success in any one of these critical mission areas. This idea is consistent with the accepted Department of Defense (DOD) IO definition and is precisely why they are considered germane to any serious discussion of future IO.18 The following discussion briefly highlights the need for further development and implementation of these six mission areas, as well as their relevance to the future joint force.
Generally speaking, psychological warfare is defined as actions against the political will of an adversary, his commanders, and his troops, and includes inform and influence operations directed at any third party capable of providing sympathy or support to both the adversary or friendly forces.19 This mission area directly targets the cognitive dimension of our adversaries’ operations in the IE and ultimately attacks their will to resist. It should be the primary focus of the joint force in order to ensure lasting tactical, operational, and strategic success, especially while state and nonstate actors are simultaneously competing for dominance in this highly contested space. After all, by definition, war as a contest of political wills by other means is the primary basis of most warfighting philosophies.20 Therefore, increasing the effectiveness of joint operations in this mission area would certainly require improved MISO, EW, cyber, and MILDEC capabilities and authorities at all levels of war.
C2 warfare is about controlling the physical and informational dimensions of the IE by cutting off an enemy force from its commander, key decisionmakers, or automated control systems through attacking vulnerable control mechanisms or by simply attacking the commander and removing him or her from the C2 equation, ultimately resulting in the collapse of his or her subordinate forces.21 Applying IRCs for C2 warfare purposes is one of the few ways to overcome the joint operational access and A2/AD problems. Using a combination of physical destruction, EW, cyber, MISO, and MILDEC capabilities would be indispensable to the process of systematically unravelling an adversary’s integrated air and coastal defenses; undermining his ballistic and cruise missile standoff weapons; and blinding his advanced land, sea, air, cyber, and space-based ISR platforms. Furthermore, there is a defensive aspect of C2 warfare that requires advanced electromagnetic spectrum operations, information assurance, and defensive cyberspace operations to ensure assured C2 over friendly forces on a global scale. Without a modern, robust defensive C2 warfare capability, U.S. global power projection is nearly impossible.
Denial and deception operations are a combination of operations security and MILDEC activities, supported by a wide-range of IRCs, to protect critical information, facilitate surprise, and deliberately mislead an adversary to achieve a tactical, operational, or strategic advantage. Denial and deception operations provide force-multiplying advantages by enabling operational access and joint forcible entry operations under A2/AD conditions and contributing to the cognitive demise of an adversary as part of the psychological warfare effort. In addition, counter–denial and deception operations are critical to future conflicts, as demonstrated by our adversaries’ skilled use of deception in Syria, Iraq,22 and the Crimean Peninsula.23
Cyber warfare in the IO context is about controlling the content and flow of information within the information dimension of the IE. It includes the convergence of the cyber and EW IRCs, where cyber is enabled at the tactical level through radio frequency spectrum operations; cyber warfare in support of the other five IO mission areas; and offensive cyberspace operations in support of traditional kinetic operations. For instance, a prime example of this IO mission area in action is the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, during which the Russians executed the world’s first synchronized cyber attack in concert with major combat operations, likely using both state cyber capabilities and nonstate hackers to attack key Georgian communications, finance, and government nodes prior to and during combat operations to control the narrative and pace of the psychological war as well as demonstrate Russian resolve and future deterrence capabilities.24 Furthermore, there is tremendous opportunity for future cyber warfare operations to: 1) support C2 warfare in A2/AD conditions by creating gaps and seams in an adversary’s defensive system of systems from standoff ranges, especially during the early shaping phases of an operation; 2) enable the psychological warfare effort through focused and broad social media messaging; and 3) support both the engagement and IE situational awareness efforts as message delivery and ISR platforms.
Then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announces Defense Innovation Initiative and Third Offset Strategy during Reagan National Defense Forum at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, November 15, 2014 (DOD/Sean Hurt)
The U.S. Army has recently established engagement as a concept for a seventh warfighting function and defines it as influencing people, security forces, and governments across the range of military operations to prevent, shape, and win in the future strategic environment.25 While there are close similarities, in this context, engagement is an IO mission—not a warfighting function focused on the intersection between partnership activities and special warfare activities.26 In this context, engagement is about operating in the cognitive dimension of the IE through informing and influencing partner and adversary nations using a wide range of IRCs, including but not limited to media operations using public affairs and MISO. Engagement as an IO mission also includes public affairs operations to harden the friendly force against adversary psychological warfare. Moreover, for the foreseeable future, engagement will remain a combatant commander’s primary tool for Phase 0, steady-state, and theater security cooperation (TSC) operations, used to send signals to our adversaries and allies that we are committed to the current international order and a stable security environment. For instance, engagement could and should be used to amplify our TSC actions in the U.S. Pacific Command area of responsibility to ensure that Chinese psychological, media, and legal warfare27 are countered with the overarching goal of ensuring that our regional allies are able to observe our actions and interpret them as U.S. commitment to defend our common interests.
Lastly, IE situational awareness is defined as understanding past events within all three dimensions of the IE, tracking ongoing events, and being able to adequately model and reliably predict (or at the very least wargame) a wide variety of possible outcomes in support of the other five IO mission areas. These activities include not only all traditional intelligence disciplines but also the use of a broad range of IRCs operating on the battlefield as sensors, processors, and actors. In addition, IE situational awareness requires advanced M&S to aid IO planners and commanders in the extremely difficult task of understanding the dynamic, nonlinear, and ever-changing IE. Furthermore, IE situational awareness requires a detailed understanding of individuals, social groups, behavior dynamics, communication architectures, exploitation of narratives, and target audience vulnerabilities, as well as the newly emerging techniques of real-time, live big data analytics, social media scraping, and memetic warfare.28
IO M&S Requirements
As discussed, there is a known gap for joint force commanders to exercise their IO cell within the six mission areas outlined above. There is also a gap for exercising both supporting organic and non-organic IRCs and then integrating them with traditional kinetic fires. Closing this gap with computer-based M&S would ensure that joint forces are well trained in a repeatable and expandable synthetic environment prior to employment across the full range of military operations. This is particularly important because IO mission areas and their supporting IRCs are highly sensitive in nature, and live IO training events are nearly impossible to conduct. For instance, certain EW, cyber, and special technical operations capabilities must be well protected to achieve any form of technical surprise, and MISO, EW, cyber, MILDEC, and special technical operations also have uniquely strict political and legal sensitivities.
Achieving repeatable, scalable, and fully integrated simulation of the IE is not an easy task. However, if the Third Offset Strategy is to be realized, the Services and DOD must invest in materiel solutions to enable the joint force to train its IO forces in a synthetic environment. There are several key additional requirements for any useful automated M&S of the IE and IO for advanced wargaming purposes:
Must encompass a system-of-systems approach that includes training for individual IO and IRC mission essential tasks through the highest levels of a joint force’s collective-level training events. Examples include a range of immersive virtual environments for individual and small-unit IRC tactical trainers through high-level constructive simulations supporting strategic- and combatant command–level wargaming, capable of seamlessly integrating with each other as well as other kinetic and legacy M&S systems.
Must incorporate the full array of possible effects that can be generated by organic and non-organic IRCs from the strategic to the tactical level of warfare.
Must be interoperable with other joint and Service-level LVC M&S networks and systems.
Must be compatible with all major constructive M&S programs of record in order for IO M&S to be fully integrated into a single common tactical and operating picture.
Must be interoperable with current command and control systems and classified intelligence systems up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information and other high-level operational security control measures to be integrated into a single common tactical and operating picture.
Must incorporate open source media and the replication or emulation of social and traditional media for analysis, using advanced forms of data analytic techniques to simulate actions in the IE.
Must incorporate advanced decision support M&S techniques, including but not limited to artificial intelligence–enabled augmented reality, chatbots, and other expert systems to facilitate understanding of actions in the IE.
Must leverage state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms, machine-learning software, and advanced M&S paradigms, such as agent-based modeling, systems dynamics, and game-theoretic modeling in a federated architecture, to accurately model complex, adaptive systems with the goal of replicating the behaviors and communications conduits of a vast array of thinking target audiences and their highly automated information systems.
Ultimately, the desired endstate for developing an advanced IO M&S capability is to ensure that there are highly trained forces ready to design, plan, rehearse, execute, and assess operations within the IE, particularly when confronted with a sophisticated, technologically enabled 21st-century adversary. This can and should be implemented via a family of tactical- through strategic-level M&S systems that adequately model and simulate friendly, neutral, and adversary decisionmaking capabilities, behaviors, and information systems as well as the complex feedback loops that comprise all relevant aspects of the physical, informational, and cognitive dimensions of the IE.
IO Considerations
There are five prominent counterarguments that immediately come to mind for not developing advanced IO M&S capabilities. These arguments range from the cost of IO M&S materiel solutions, the presence of other existing solutions, widespread doubts regarding the efficiency and efficacy of IO across the full range and spectrum of military operations, and the complex framework of legal and policy restrictions governing most joint force IRC employment.
The first counterargument is that developing IO M&S systems would be expensive and that the technology for simulating the IE is not mature. However, this is exactly the type of investment that the Defense Innovation Initiative is calling for: an investment that leverages advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, agent-based modeling, and big data analytics that our adversaries would not likely have ready access to exploit. This investment in IO M&S would also lead to new operating concepts that would be tested during high-level joint wargames using the very same systems, which is precisely the intent behind the second and third key areas for innovation outlined by the Defense Innovation Initiative.
The second counterargument is that the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense are already investing in IO M&S through the use of the Joint IO Range and other cyber and EW initiatives. While that is a first step, the Joint IO Range is only a stovepipe capability for cyber warfare effects rather than a capability that truly exercises all relevant IRCs in support of joint operations—that is, something more than cyber and EW operations are required to realize the true potential for full-spectrum IO, specifically how to assemble a relevant array of IRCs aimed at placing an adversary on the horns of a dilemma and then inducing a complete collapse of their will to resist our aims and objectives. Without being able to model and integrate the cognitive, informational, and physical aspects of the IE in a coherent simulation, influencing adversary decisionmakers and their supporting systems would not be achievable to the level of what is required for the Third Strategic Offset.
Soldiers from Britain’s Royal Artillery train in virtual world during Exercise Steel Sabre 2015 (MOD/Si Longworth)
The third counterargument is that IO is not suited for major combat operations, and thus many military planners perceive it as a tool only for counterinsurgency or irregular warfare, whereby keeping the violence threshold low or controlling the attitudes and the behavior of the local populace is paramount. This is not the case, however, since IO and IRCs have routinely been employed by U.S. forces throughout all phases of operations and all types of conflict, from World War II through Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Additionally, there is considerable evidence that increasing the lethality of operations using information warfare is central to the strategy of our 21st-century adversaries, most notably and recently demonstrated by the Russians operating in Ukraine and Syria.29
The fourth counterargument is that IO is not well suited for the strategic shaping and deterrence missions required by the Third Offset Strategy, or at least not as effectively as the physical advantages that the Second Offset capabilities have provided. However, in some sense, the luxuries that were afforded by the unprecedented freedom of movement, maneuver, and firepower that successfully held our adversaries in check for the past 25 years are also the root cause of our current military problem—namely that U.S. joint forces routinely win tactically and sometimes operationally, but continuously have their victories ultimately overturned at the operational and strategic levels, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, it has been the overdependence on our physical, conventional superiority that has led the U.S. military to neglect the mental and moral aspects of warfighting, a deficiency that IO, by definition and if sufficiently raised to the appropriate level of prominence within U.S. warfighting doctrine, can immediately address.30In addition, to further discredit the notion that IO is an ineffective strategic shaping and deterrence tool, it is a well-accepted fact that due to international legal, diplomatic, and political constraints, IO and a handful of select influence-oriented IRCs are our military’s only available tools to successfully prevent, deter, initiate, or close a conflict.
The fifth and final counterargument is that there are insurmountable legal and policy restrictions for the joint force to conduct full-spectrum IO. This is simply not the case. However, the two primary supporting counterarguments either revolve around U.S. Code Title 10, Armed Forces, versus Title 50, War and National Defense, arguments, or claim that the current review and approval processes for IRCs are too complicated to achieve timely and relevant effects in the IE. The first supporting argument is false because Title 10 and Title 50 issues have already been solved and are deconflicted on a daily basis using a highly complex but extremely effective ISR and strike network. This network is enabled by intelligence professionals and operators working side by side, both physically and virtually, and allows the lowest tactical formations to receive the benefits of strategic assets and vice versa. There is some truth to the second supporting counterargument that the review and approval processes are overly complex. Many IRCs do, in fact, require DOD- and national-level approvals. This is not true for all IRCs, however, and there are numerous IRC-unique programs already in place for military planners to immediately implement. In addition, all IRCs can be and already are implemented with great effect for those commanders with well-trained IO staffs. Hence, developing an IO M&S and training capability is actually part of the solution to the military problem and not an impediment. Lastly, as joint forces continue to demonstrate their increased proficiency for fighting and winning in the IE—and as our adversaries do the same—it is inevitable that over time, many of the authorities for certain sensitive IRC activities, currently held at the strategic level, will naturally be delegated to operational and tactical commanders.
Soldiers from U.S. Army’s 350th Tactical Psychological Operations, 10th Mountain Division, drop leaflets over village near Hawijah, Iraq, on March 6, 2008, promoting idea of self-government (U.S. Air Force/Samuel Bendet)
Future Innovation
In the long run, creating the necessary technical innovation in the field of advanced IO M&S and training would no doubt lead to the maturation of capabilities and tactics needed to achieve the goals of the Third Strategic Offset. Furthermore, the gaps that IO M&S could immediately close are also the first steps in the necessary research, design, and development of an integrated global effects network that could and should act as the primary intellectual engine for an advanced, semi-autonomous global strike and ISR network—a network that has been considered the “holy grail” by those who already offer solutions to the Third Strategic Offset problem and that is a solution that is eerily similar to nefarious systems of science fiction literature and movies, such as The Terminator’s self-aware “SkyNet” and “Genisys” programs.31 The flaw in this popularized global strike and ISR network solution—other than the obvious science fiction connotations—is that it is short-sighted and deals only with the current problem within the physical dimension of the operating and information environments. The real solution is something far more complicated and worthy of the forward thinking required by the Third Strategic Offset problem set.
A better solution is an advanced, semi-autonomous hybrid kinetic and nonkinetic weapons system fully enabling the warfighter to, at a moment’s notice, conduct highly integrated, cognitively focused operations that are also simultaneously synchronized with other ongoing joint actions across the globe, as well as concurrently facilitating long- and short-term influence campaigns. Continuously and consistently striking at the will of our adversaries through the use of carefully selected physical, information, and cognitive-related capabilities should be the ultimate goal of this advanced weapons system concept. This system would facilitate maneuver warfare and mission command by integrating, synchronizing, and coordinating many different capabilities by different commanders at all levels directly against an adversary’s physical, moral, and mental critical capabilities. Again, this is something that clearly cannot be accomplished without advanced IO M&S accurately and continuously modeling the complex, nonlinear, and ever-changing IE. While the fusing of kinetic and nonkinetic modeling into a semi-autonomous global effects network might seem like material for science fiction, in the current era of machine-based learning and artificial intelligence–enabled autonomous vehicles, these capabilities are not too far over the horizon and are worthy goals for the ambitions of the Third Offset Strategy.
The military-technological gains of our adversaries over the past several decades are apparent and alarming. To counter this threat and meet the intended objectives of the Defense Innovation Initiative, a robust set of research and development programs, concept development activities, and wargaming efforts has begun to uncover a series of technologies required to achieve the Third Strategic Offset. While an advanced family of IO LVC M&S systems is not the only capability required to achieve this ambitious offset strategy, failing to recognize the prominence of IO in this new era would be a serious mistake. In addition, these IO M&S capabilities should be the foundation and focus of any future advanced, semi-autonomous global effects system. Therefore, advanced IO M&S is an absolutely indispensable capability that will fully enable the joint force to achieve lasting asymmetrical advantages over our newly emerging, emboldened, and technologically savvy 21st-century adversaries. JFQ
Lieutenant Colonel James R. McGrath, USMC, is the Information Warfare Department Head for Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Atlantic.
2 Robert Martinage, Toward A New Offset Strategy: Exploiting U.S. Long-Term Advantages to Restore U.S. Global Power Projection (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, October 2014).
3 Chuck Hagel, “Secretary of Defense Memo: Defense Innovation Initiative,” November 2014.
7 The information environment is an environment that is an aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information as defined by Department of Defense (DOD) Directive 3600.01, Information Operations (Washington, DC: DOD, May 2013), available at <www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/360001p.pdf>.
8 The information environment is comprised of three interrelated dimensions: cognitive, information, and physical. See Joint Publication 3-13, Information Operations (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, November 20, 2014), x.
14 Jon Latimer, Deception in War (New York: Overlook Press, 2001), 6.
15 Information-related capabilities are tools, techniques, or activities employed within the dimensions of the information environment and can be used to achieve specific ends as defined by DOD Directive 3600.01.
16 Martin C. Libiki, What Is Information Warfare? (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 1995); Darczewkska; Wortzel; TRADOC.
17 Agnostic in this sense is based on the information technology context, where software and other processes are independent of hardware or various platforms. In this case, for example, psychological warfare objectives could be achieved outside the traditional doctrinal military information support operations construct with kinetic effects, maneuver, and other information-related capabilities (IRCs). Similarly, cyber objectives and denial and deception objectives could be achieved or supported outside the current cyber and joint military deception doctrinal framework using a variety of IRC effects—not to circumvent current DOD policy and authority framework but to simply acknowledge that there are other, perhaps more innovative means and ways to achieve the same ends.
18 Information operations are generally defined as the integration, coordination, and synchronization of IRCs to deny, degrade, disrupt, or usurp an adversary’s decisionmaking capabilities, people, and systems in support of a commander’s objectives as defined by DOD Directive 3600.01.
19 Libicki, 34.
20 Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, trans. J.J. Graham (London, 1909), chapter 1, available at <www.gutenburg.org>.
28 Memetics and memetic warfare are used in the context of discrete ideas or units of culture being rapidly transferred to wide audiences, particularly over social media—that is, things “going viral” and their influence on cognition and behavior. See Jeff Giesa, “It’s Time to Embrace Memetic Warfare,” Defense Strategic Communication1, no. 1 (Winter 2015), available at <www.stratcomcoe.org/download/file/fid/3956>.
30 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Navy, June 7, 1997). Mental, moral, and physical aspects of maneuver warfare and the Marine Corps’ warfighting philosophy are discussed throughout the text.
31 Martinage.
Featured Image: MEDITERRANEAN SEA (Aug. 25, 2016) Sailors stand watch in the combat information center aboard USS Ross (DDG 71) Aug. 25, 2016. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Theron J. Godbold/Released)
