Asia-Pacific

Trump-Xi Summit, a Month Later – So What and What’s Next?

Leave a comment

By Tuan N. Pham

Who came out relatively stronger from the summit, what are the ramifications for the U.S.-China relations, what to expect when Trump visits China next, and where are the U.S. strategic opportunities?  

The heavily choreographed Trump-Xi Summit held on April 6-7 seemed more about atmospherics than substance and did not yield any concrete accomplishments beyond pledges of increased cooperation, new frameworks for dialogue, and a state visit to Beijing by President Trump later in the year. One month later, as the dust settles and more disclosures are made, what can be said now of the summit, and more importantly, so what and what’s next?

Part 1 of this two-part series outlined the perceived and actual outcomes from a Chinese, American, and international perspective. With this as a backdrop, Part 2 now discusses which leader came out relatively stronger, the ramifications for the U.S.-China strategic relations, what to expect when Trump visits China later in the year, and finally where the strategic opportunities lie for the U.S. and how Washington can leverage them.

Who Came Out On Top?

On the whole, Trump came out relatively stronger than Xi in terms of managing expectations and creating and shaping favorable visuals. From the beginning, Xi pressed for an early summit in the hopes that by acting first and boldly, he could seize the strategic initiative and set parameters for the new U.S. president who had yet to fully form his national security team and settle on his China policy. Xi’s advance team pushed hard for exacting protocol demands to make sure that Xi appeared to be a strong and resolute leader who could hold his own against the U.S. president on a global stage, and for China to project an international image of a rising global power that is equal in stature and standing to the United States, a declining global power.

All things considered, Xi gained little and Trump gave little away during the summit. Xi sought, but did not get Trump to publicly reaffirm the One-China policy, endorse China’s new model of great power relations, or give concessions in the areas of trade and commerce, North Korea (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system), Taiwan (arms sales), and maritime sovereignty (South China Sea). Xi did, however, lower heightened tensions, dampen the risk of a destabilizing trade war (for now), and secure an agreement for his proposed four dialogue mechanisms covering diplomacy and security, economics, law enforcement and cybersecurity, and social and people-to-people exchanges.

Still, Trump largely controlled the setting, atmospherics, and strategic narratives from start to finish due to what can essentially be boiled down to homecourt advantage. As the summit’s host, he arrived later and did not greet Xi when Xi first landed in Florida. The tone-setting slight, among other later maneuvers, incrementally diminished Xi’s stature as a world leader – a perception that Xi wanted to avoid at all costs. Hence, Xi calculatingly made a state visit to Finland, a stop-over en route to visit Trump in an initial attempt to sidestep such a suppliant visual. Then at the end of dinner on Thursday, Trump personally informed Xi that he had ordered missile strikes against Syria before announcing the action to the world moments later. Xi was left flat-footed and awkwardly expressed an appreciation for Trump for letting him know and providing the rationale, and indicated that he understood that such a response was necessary when people are killing children. Remarks had to be clarified later by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reiterating that China “opposes the use of force in international relations and maintains that disputes should be peacefully resolved through political and diplomatic means such as dialogue and consultation.” Xi’s perceived failure to stand up to Trump and defend his country’s interests on a global stage will likely have consequences back home. The charismatic Chinese leader rose to power by looking strong, but Trump, Xi’s political opponents will say, made Xi appear weak and consequently made China look weak.   

Another possible tell-tale sign that Trump got the upper hand was the subdued summit coverage by the Chinese media relative to their American counterparts. While U.S. media provided extensive coverage of arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world, Chinese media was surprisingly low-key. Normally when Xi travels overseas there is full press coverage as part of a larger public diplomacy campaign to dominate the strategic narratives. For a trip to the United States to meet his equivalent, greater coverage would certainly have been appropriate and warranted. Only after the conclusion of the summit did the Chinese media start to report more details of the meeting, albeit, with only basic information at first.

Yet another anecdotal indicator that Xi underperformed during the summit was the high level of interest among Chinese netizens on Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging platform, and Sina Weibo’s attempts to restrict online discussion on the topic by deactivating the comment function on some relevant posts and removing critical posts that attempted to link the U.S. missile strikes on Syria to the summit.

That said, the self-imposed media censorship may have been driven partly by Beijing’s hyper-concerns about Trump’s unpredictability and the high likelihood of an embarrassing atmosphere. Still, subsequent media reports, official public releases, and think tank commentaries in the weeks that followed appeared largely cautious and defensive, and in many cases, in full spin control. They expended an inordinate amount of attention on the intangible personal relationship between Xi and Trump, on the former’s proposed four dialogue mechanisms, and resumed their public diplomacy campaign to underscore the two countries’ economic interdependence, imperative of avoiding a destabilizing trade war, and the importance of preserving the China-U.S. strategic relations.     

Ramifications for U.S.-China Strategic Relationship  

The Trump-Xi Summit injected much-needed certainty and stability back into the strategic relationship. From Beijing’s perspective, Trump unhelpfully introduced unpredictability and friction to bilateral relations on trade deficits, the RMB exchange rate, North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, Taiwan, and the South China Sea (SCS). So, despite not yielding any concrete accomplishments beyond pledges of increased cooperation, new frameworks for dialogue, and a state visit to Beijing by Trump later in the year; the summit did indirectly bring some stability (albeit temporarily) into the strategic relationship in terms of dampening the risk of a disruptive trade war (for now), setting aside the contentious issue of Chinese currency manipulation (for now), tacitly reaffirming the One-China policy, and repeating the importance of adherence to international norms in the East and South China Seas and to previous statements on non-militarization.  

It’s been over two months since Trump took office, but leading up to the summit some pundits were still arguing that the U.S.-China relationship remained in transition. This is no longer the case. The summit signaled the reset of bilateral relations from a collaborative nature (Obama’s approach) to a more competitive one (Trump’s approach) as codified by the guiding principle of “America First.” Washington will now pursue foreign policies that unequivocally put U.S. national interests first, as evidenced by Trump’s inclination to change the status quo and possibly use Taipei as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Beijing (and possibly North Korea too), focus on the growing U.S.-China trade imbalance and Chinese currency manipulation that puts the U.S. economy at a competitive disadvantage, flexibility to re-prioritize the aforesaid economic interests below the more pressing North Korean nuclear and missile threat, and willingness to use military force to uphold international rule of law or when faced with threats abroad.          

What to Expect When Trump Visits China

The Trump-Xi Summit gave the United States “relative, tenuous, and transitory” strategic advantage over China in terms of initiative and narrative. Trump appears to have successfully co-opted Xi as a strategic partner in stabilizing the situation on the Korean Peninsula, in exchange for concessions in the areas of trade imbalance, currency manipulation, and Taiwan. If so, the partnership is strictly transactional. A North Korean buffer state will remain a core Chinese national interest, and Beijing will undoubtedly take steps in the near future to regain the initiative that it enjoyed for most of the past eight years. It will do so more cautiously and subtly this time around, perhaps at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing (14-15 May), Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore (2-4 June), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and East Asia Summits in Vietnam and the Philippines respectively (November).   

Xi may be under intense political and personal pressure to do much better at the next state visit to Beijing by Trump, especially if the meeting precedes the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in late 2017. There is widespread speculation that he is trying to build political momentum to ensure that more members of his faction are promoted to the Central Committee and the Politburo, a necessary interim step if he wants to change CPC’s rules to serve an unprecedented third term as president (and/or retain his other two titles of general secretary of the CPC and chairman of the Central Military Commission) and maintain power and influence beyond 2022.

If so, Washington can expect intense shaping and robust deal-making from Beijing in the coming months. Xi will do his utmost to reset the conditions in China’s favor to not only regain the strategic advantage (initiative) prior to the second summit but also to look personally strong and in control during the summit for his domestic audiences (Chinese people and fellow CPC members). He will certainly leverage his homecourt advantage to control the setting, atmosphere, and narratives much like Trump did. Hence, could this back-and-forth jockeying for relative strategic advantage be the start of a new Cold War between the United States and China? Or can Trump and Xi reach a strategic accommodation that manages strategic competition and avoids the Thucydides Trap?    

U.S. Strategic Opportunities and Ways Washington Can Leverage  

Embrace Strategic Competition. When two powers, one status quo and one rising, with competing regional strategies extend into one’s another security and economic spheres, the geopolitical landscape is ripe for friction. This competition is not to be feared but to be expected and embraced. If Beijing insists and persists on a “new type of great power relationship” with Washington, then give China what it wants – but on U.S. terms. Define, codify, and enforce the conditions of any negotiated bilateral relations such as no militarization of the SCS and balanced trade, and most importantly, be willing to redefine the relationship when necessary. Play the Chinese game of “go” and not the Western game of “chess.”

Leverage the Strategic Advantage. Both Washington and Beijing share the same strategic goals for the Korean Peninsula – strategic stability and denuclearization. Continue co-opting Beijing to exert pressure on Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear ambitions and return to the negotiating table. To be successful, Trump must be willing to give and take with Xi across the spectrum of strategic interests, while making sure Xi clearly understand the risks and implications of not playing an active role in moderating Kim Jong-un and stabilizing the Peninsula. This will allow the two presidents to build trust, which could, in turn, open opportunities in other areas of disagreement (trade, currency manipulation, Taiwan, SCS, etc.).          

Protect the Global Commons. In pursuing the aforesaid strategic opportunities, one area where Washington must be careful not to concede too much is in the contested and interlinked global commons of maritime, space, and cyberspace. Giving unwarranted ground in these strategic domains will undermine American preeminence and encourage China to press for additional concessions in return for vague and passing promises of restraint, while quietly and steadily expanding and strengthening its position in the global commons. Play the long game.       

Maintain the Strategic High Ground. Do not let Xi unilaterally set the conditions and impose his will when he meets Trump again in Beijing later in the year. Xi will have the homecourt advantage and will be pressured to put on a strong showing, so negotiate for everything to level the playing field and mitigate expected protocol payback from Xi for Mar-a-Lago. Or else, the United States will prematurely return the strategic initiative to China. Remain firm. China respects strength.

Conclusion

From Beijing’s perspective, the Xi-Trump Summit at Mar-a-Lago achieved a great deal. It not only “charted a course and provided a roadmap for China-U.S. relations, but also established a new cooperation mechanism that will enhance and protect the all-important strategic bilateral relationship.” So how much of this narrative is congruent with Washington’s views of the summit? And more importantly, if the summit was as significant as Beijing claimed, then what and how much did it impact the U.S.-China relations? It may be too soon to fully answer this critical question. The latter half of the play has yet to unfold. Until then, it behooves Washington not to give too much ground in one area in exchange for gains in another without careful thought and consideration of any enduring implications. Otherwise, the United States risks inadvertently ceding its strategic position in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, undermining its roles and responsibilities as the global leader, and paving the way for China to become a regional hegemon.  

Tuan Pham has extensive experience in the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and is widely published in national security affairs. The views expressed therein are their own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Government.

Featured Image: President Donald Trump talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with their wives, first lady Melania Trump and Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan as they pose for photographers before dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, April 6, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Alex Brandon / AP)

Events

CIMSEC 2017-2018 Officer and Board of Directors Nominations Now Open!

Leave a comment

By Sally DeBoer

Nominations for CIMSEC’s 2017-2018 Officers and Board of Directors are now open! To make a nomination, you must be a current CIMSEC member. Nominees must also be members of CIMSEC. Read more about officer positions and volunteering with CIMSEC here. Use the form below to complete your nomination.

If nominated, you will be contacted during the week of 01 June to confirm your acceptance of the nomination. You will be asked provide a brief biography and description of your qualifications and goals for the year ahead. Elections will take place the week of 05 June.

Please direct any questions to president@cimsec.org.

Capability Analysis, Current Operations

Interwar-Period Gaming Today for Conflicts Tomorrow: Press ‘Start’ to Play, Pt. 3

Leave a comment

By Major Jeff Wong, USMC

Interwar-Period Gaming  Insights and Recommendations for the Future

The militaries of Germany, Japan, and the United States utilized gaming between the First and Second World Wars to help them overcome challenges relating to doctrine, organization, training and education, and capabilities development. The Versailles Treaty prohibitions prompted Germany to use means other than live-force exercises to study and mature its combined arms concept, test naval and air doctrine, and drive planning for the invasions of Poland, France, and the Low Countries in the European theater. Japan effectively used wargames to inform doctrine and war planning, but biases affected game outcomes and subsequent planning of future campaigns, particularly the Battle of Midway. Japan gamed both strategic and tactical elements of its ambitious Pacific campaign, studying in detail essential tasks as part of its Pearl Harbor and Midway operations plans. Game insights prompted planners to change parts of its Pearl Harbor attack, but failed to sway leaders to examine more closely a critical element of the Midway campaign. The United States, particularly the Navy, combined wargaming with analyses and live-force exercises to study upcoming likely threats and advance naval concepts and capabilities such as carrier aviation. In the United States, Naval War College games of different variations of Plan Orange exposed officers to the theater, operational, and tactical challenges of a conflict against Japan. Many games played over the years between the world wars created a baseline of understanding about how naval officers would fight when war broke out. Now, nearly a century later, today’s U.S. military should apply best practices from those interwar years to spur innovation and overcome the kinds of strategic, operational, and institutional challenges that plagued these adversaries before the Second World War.

This is the final part of a three-part series examining interwar-period gaming. The first part defined wargaming, discussed its potential utility and pitfalls, and differentiated it from other military analytic tools. Part two discussed how the militaries of Germany, Japan, and the United States employed wargames to train and educate their officers, plan and execute major campaigns, and inform the development of new concepts and capabilities for the Second World War. This final part offers recommendations, taken from effective practices of this period, to leverage wargames as a tool today to provide a strategic edge for the U.S. joint force tomorrow.

Wargaming for Today

First, the U.S. military must expand and deepen the use of wargaming at PME institutions as a training and educational tool. Similar to the interwar period, wargames should be used to train officers to make decisions from a commander’s perspective, gain insights into likely adversaries, and learn about the war plans to counter or defeat them. Wargaming design should be part of the regular curriculum to reinvigorate this technique within the uniformed military, since PME institutions are intended to broaden officers’ professional horizons and allow them to explore new ideas. 

At the interwar-period Kriegsakademie, some students had never experienced the brutal combat of World War I and never faced decision-making under fire. Wargaming woven throughout the curriculum gave these future leaders an opportunity to practice “commandership” from the commander’s perspective. Thus, students playing in wargames estimated situations based on given scenarios, outlined courses of action after assessing situations, executed plans, and then absorbed honest critiques of their decisions. In the 1920s and 1930s at the Naval War College, students also received a primer in commandership against the backdrop of a Pacific naval campaign. The students who played the games, as well as the faculty members who designed and umpired these events, shaped and fed a shared mental model about the strategic, operational, and tactical challenges of fighting the Japanese in the coming war. Officers returning to Newport as faculty members brought with them recent operational experiences, including fleet experiments that shaped carrier aviation and informed the requirements of new capabilities.  

Beyond the Naval War College and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, current U.S. PME students are not taught how to plan and develop wargames as part of their regular course work. At U.S. Marine Corps University, for instance, wargaming is taught during a six-week elective at Command and Staff College (if enough students express interest in the elective), but the course fails to relate how games are relevant to real-world war planning and critical U.S. defense processes such as capabilities development.

At the next-level PME institution, students of the Marine Corps War College (lieutenant colonels and commanders) participate in a wargame as part of the curriculum’s Joint Professional Military Education II (JPME II) requirement, but they are never taught how to plan, execute, and analyze a game themselves. Within the Air Force, the Air Force Materiel Command offers three-day introductory courses with curricula tailored to the needs of a client command or organization, but these courses fall short of the integral nature that wargaming fulfilled for the German Army, Japanese Navy, and U.S. Navy during the interwar years.

The Board of Strategy plots moves during a Naval War College wargaming session in the cabin of the USS Wyoming (BB-32). Such rigorous preparatory training during the interwar years. (U.S. Naval Institute Archive photo)

To yield substantive benefits, wargaming must be integrated into service PME starting with captain-level career courses. The first exposure should be at the rank of captain in order to give young leaders intensive, virtual decision-making experience before they assume company command. Company command is the appropriate time to introduce gaming to an officer’s development because his unit gets four times larger (a Marine rifle company has 182 personnel by table of organization, compared to 43 personnel in a Marine rifle platoon) and he must have the mental acuity and confidence to operate without constant supervision from superiors. Gaming gives leaders this experience.  

As an officer’s career progresses, the wargaming curriculum should teach students how to develop, plan, and execute wargames on a larger scale. At top-level schools, an officer should be expert at applying game insights into the vast U.S. military bureaucracy, feeding future-leaning commands and organizations within the supporting establishment that play a key role in developing future strategies, concepts, capabilities, and resource allocations. With its emphasis on decision-making and reflection on the implications of those decisions, wargaming provides a tool to foster imagination and intellectual growth inside and outside a formal schoolhouse setting. Teaching wargaming design to uniformed military members empowers them to create the intellectual venues themselves when they return to the fleet, flight line, or field – much like the officers of the German Army, Japanese Navy, and American Navy did during the interwar period.

Second, the U.S. military should more closely bind service-level wargaming, analysis, and live-force exercises to provide the intellectual and practical test beds to explore and develop new concepts, capabilities, and technologies to overcome unforeseen warfighting challenges. The games and exercises should be conducted as distinct events that are separated by weeks or months, unlike the infamous Millennium Challenge 2002 event, which attempted to synchronize a wargame, experiments, and exercises involving live forces around the world. 

Wargames, analysis, and exercises are complementary elements of a cycle of research that offered fresh approaches and shaped new capabilities during the interwar period. Wargaming provides an environment for players to make decisions and understand their implications without expending blood or treasure. Insights derived from games are generally qualitative in nature. Analysis uses mathematical tools – primarily computer-generated models in today’s military – in an attempt to duplicate the physical processes of combat. Insights derived from analysis are usually quantitative in Both wargames and analysis, however, are only abstractions of reality. Together, they can inform exercises that give real forces the opportunity to implement in the physical domain the new approaches and ideas suggested by wargames and analysis. (See Table 1, Comparison of Campaign Analyses and Wargames.)

Table 1. Attributes of campaign analyses and wargames.

U.S. Navy Commander Phillip Pournelle writes that each of the tools “suffer from their own biases, simplifications, and cognitive and epistemological shortcomings. When integrated judiciously, however, the cycle of research gives leaders at all levels critical facts, synthetic experiences, and opportunities to rehearse a range of events in their minds and in the Fleet or the field.” (See Table 2, Comparison of Exercises and Wargames.)

Table 2. Attributes of exercises and wargames.

The cycle of research has increased momentum at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s (MCWL) Ellis Group, which hosts weekly wargames to examine emergent Marine warfighting challenges. The games serve as an incubator for concepts and capabilities under development. During a game in 2015, dozens of uniformed officers and civilian experts gathered around a large sandtable separated by a barrier. A young Marine infantry captain explained how he planned to land his company.  On the other side of the barrier, red cell members – retired field-grade officers and staff noncommissioned officers – determined how they would oppose the landing. On the group’s periphery, analysts recorded observations made by the participants. Scribes filled whiteboards with insights from the game, which they matched against the command’s prioritized list of warfighting challenges. U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Dale Alford, MCWL’s commanding general, adopted the weekly games after observing the Naval War College’s Halsey Groups use operations analysis and wargaming to examine naval warfighting challenges. “It was mostly about getting the right people involved and in the same room,” he said.

Third, wargaming leaders must ensure an accurate and intellectually honest representation of the enemy. Most games played by the Germans, Japanese, and Americans during the interwar period featured two sides: friendlies and adversaries playing against one another. Some of today’s large service-level games are one-sided, with friendly “blue” actions being played against pre-scripted enemy reactions or a control group attention divided between representing “red” and running the overall event. However, if war is “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” as Carl von Clausewitz suggested in On War, these games must adequately portray the adversary’s will.  One-sided wargames lose the essence of the opposing will when the enemy’s actions are not represented by another human being seeking to win. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, who previously served as director of Command and Staff College, required all Command and Staff College games to be two-sided affairs. “You need two free-thinking wills … within the bounds of the problem,” said Van Riper, who has consulted on many joint and service games since his retirement from active duty in 1997 and served as the red cell commander during the Millennium Challenge event.

This honest portrayal goes beyond using an expert versed on enemy (e.g., “red cell”) capabilities, limitations, and doctrine. During the Wehrmacht wargames before the invasion of France and the Low Countries, the red cell correctly suggested that French-led Allied Forces would be slow to respond to a German main effort thrust through the Ardennes – prompting planners to shift resources to the army group approaching from the forest. The red cell did not portray an idealized version of the French doctrinal response, which would likely have prompted German planners to shift resources to a different army group and resulted in a different course of action. From the Japanese wargames before the Battle of Midway, historians and professional gamers often cite the sinking – and revival – of two Japanese carriers as an admonition against biases, poor assumptions, and predetermined outcomes.

Fourth, future wargaming efforts should use different types of games for different purposes and desired outcomes. A greater variety of games can attack a problem from different perspectives. A larger number of games provides more opportunities to create fresh solutions. For a new, evolving subject, a wargame with more seminar discussion, less action-counteraction play, and fewer rules might be more appropriate in order to generate player insights and spur creativity. On a topic for which much is already known, a wargame with less seminar discussion, more action-counteraction play, and more rules based on hard data might be more suitable to refine players’ understanding of capabilities.

Back to the Future

The German Army, Japanese Navy, and U.S. Navy used wargaming to shed light on strategic, operational, and tactical uncertainty during the interwar period. In the German Army, wargaming formed the bedrock for the education of officers and provided opportunities for commanders and staffs to rehearse complicated operations such as the offensive against France and the Low Countries in 1940. For the Japanese Navy, planners utilized wargames to examine different ways to employ the Combined Fleet in the opening salvo of the Pacific campaign. The Germans successfully used red cells during their wargames to accurately and honestly portray French forces’ actions during the 1940 campaign, while the Japanese demonstrated the dangers of predetermined notions during wargames before the Battle of Midway. The U.S. Navy found wargaming to be an effective tool for educating officers as well, inculcating the practice among generations of officers who attended the Naval War College and fostering a shared mental model through hundreds of wargames that focused on a potential future war with Japan. Likewise, American naval officers also wargamed carrier aviation, discovering optimal ways to employ forces that massed firepower and extended the reach of the Pacific Fleet. These insights fed the cycle of research that allowed American naval officers to study, experiment, and develop new concepts and capabilities leading up to the Second World War.  

Interwar-period wargaming provided users with a chance to shed light on an opaque future. Although the threats are different, senior U.S. defense leaders face similar ambiguity now. The reassertion of Russia in world affairs, a militarily stronger China, and a multitude of powerful non-state actors have dramatically changed the strategic landscape. Fast-developing capabilities, nascent technologies, unmanned weapons platforms, 3D printing, and human-machine interfacing are among the potential factors of the next great conflict. With no cost in blood and minimal in treasure, wargames can empower U.S. military leaders to exert intellectual leadership and innovate to be better prepared for the future.

Major Jeff Wong, USMCR, is a Plans Officer at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Plans, Policies and Operations Department.  This series is adapted from his USMC Command and Staff College thesis, which finished second place in the 2016 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Research Paper Competition.  The views expressed in this series are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.  

1.  Commander Phillip Pournelle, USN (analyst at the Office of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense), interview by Jeff Wong, September 24, 2015.

2.  As discussed previously, wargaming is different from COA Wargaming, which is a phase of the joint and services’ planning processes, e.g., the Military Decision-Making Process and Marine Corps Planning Process.

3. Colonel Matthew Caffrey, USAF (Retired) (wargame instructor at the Air Force Materiel Command), interview by Jeff Wong, October 15, 2015.

4. Gary Anderson and Dave Dilegge, “Six Rules for Wargaming: The Lessons of Millennium Challenge ’02,” War on the Rocks, November 11, 2015 (accessed April 1, 2016): http://warontherocks.com/2015/11/six-rules-for-wargaming-the-lessons-of-millennium-challenge-02/.

5. Philip Pournelle, “Preparing for War, Keeping the Peace,” Proceedings 140, no. 9 (Newport, RI: U.S. Naval Institute, September 2014), accessed October 15, 2015: http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2014-09/preparing-war-keeping-peace.

6. Peter Perla, The Art of Wargaming, 287.

7. Brigadier General Dale Alford, USMC (commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory), interview by Jeff Wong, November 23, 2015.

8. Carl von Clausewitz, On War ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 75.

9. Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, USMC (Retired) (faculty member at Marine Corps University), interview by Jeff Wong, February 2, 2016.

10. Pournelle, interview by Jeff Wong, September 24, 2015.

Featured Image: NEWPORT, R.I. (May 5, 2017) U.S. Naval War College (NWC) Naval Staff College students participate in a capstone wargame. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jess Lewis/released)

Future Tech

Hyper-Converged Networks and Artificial Intelligence: Fighting at Machine Speed

10 Comments

By Travis Howard

Lieutenant Stacey Alto sits in the Joint Intelligence Center aboard the Wasp-class Amphibious Assault ship USS ESSEX (LHD 2). As the Force Intelligence Watch Officer (FIWO), her job is to absorb relevant information related to current and future operations of the Essex Amphibious Ready Group, as well as the general intelligence within the operating theater. Her zero-client, virtual desktop environment (VDE) 6-panel display at her watch station allows her a single-pane-of-glass into Unclassified, Secret, Top Secret, and Coalition enclaves through the Consolidated Afloat Networking and Enterprise Services (CANES) network.

One of her watch standers, an Intelligence Specialist Second Class, approaches her desk with new information from the Joint Operations Center (JOC), the nerve center of ARG operations, announcing new orders from the fleet commander to enter the Gulf of Oman, which represents a shift in operating theater from their current position in the Arabian Sea.

Stacey goes to work immediately, enlisting the help of two Intelligence Specialists and one of the Information Systems Technicians standing watch in the Ship’s Signal Exploitation Space (SSES). She queries the onboard widget carousel on her CANES SECRET terminal. Using a combination of mouse, keyboard, and touchscreen, she pulls together several ready-made widgets and snaps them into place, each taking advantage of a pool of “big data” information stored on the ship’s carry-on Distributed Common Ground System-Navy (DCGS-N) and off-ship sources from the intelligence cloud. Her development work gets passed to the next watch team, as they set the application’s variables for data parsing, consolidating inputs, and terrain mapping to put together a relevant, real-time intelligence picture.

By the time Stacey returns to her watch station almost 24 hours later, the IT personnel in SSES have put the new application through the automated cybersecurity testing process and have released it to the onboard “app store,” which Stacey can now install on her virtualized, thin-client desktop within seconds. She calls the JOC, the Marine Landing Force Operations Center (LFOC), and the ship’s Combat Information Center (CIC) announcing the system’s readiness with separate logins at the appropriate classification level for each watch station. By the time ESSEX enters the Gulf of Oman, the application has mapped adversarial positions and capabilities, pulled from several disparate databases afloat and ashore, all at varying levels of classification necessary for operational planning throughout the ship.

Building a More Maneuverable Network Afloat

The above scenario is almost a reality, representing several emergent advances in network technology and application portability (the “mobility” factor) that the Navy will soon capitalize on: a hardware and network-layer software architecture known as hyper converged infrastructure (HCI). The performance and cost efficiencies realized by this architecture will pave the way for disruptive changes to how we maneuver the network across the entire spectrum of operations: as a business system, as a decision support system, and as a warfighting platform.

Hyper-convergence is the integration of several hardware devices through a hypervisor, which acts as an intermediary and resource broker between software and hardware. Independent IT components are no longer siloed but combined, simplifying the entire infrastructure and improving speed and agility of the virtual network.1 The advantages of HCI seem obvious, but the real disruptive effect is how we can build upon it. The opening scenario describes on-demand application development at the tactical edge. This is achievable through HCI efficiency and another emerging network process known as Agile Core Services (ACS), a joint software development initiative being built into several programs throughout the Navy and Air Force, and one that CANES (as the afloat and maritime operations center network provider) is leveraging.

Hyper-Convergence in Network Hardware combines storage and processing power into a single appliance for simplified management, faster deployment, and could even lower acquisition costs ( Helixstorm.com)

ACS allows applications to use a common mix of services at the platform level, reducing cost and time of development but also forcing all applications to “speak the same language.” All that is needed to make on-demand, tactical application delivery a reality is a framework for plug-ins that takes advantage of big data we already have aboard ships and available at both the operational and tactical levels of war.

Previous articles in the United States Naval Institute’s magazine Proceedings have argued for thin-client solutions aboard warships,2 leveraging the CANES network program to ultimately achieve network efficiency that can remove “fat clients” (standard computer desktops) from the architecture to be replaced by thin or zero-clients (user workstation nodes with virtualized desktops and no onboard storage or input devices beyond keyboard and mouse). Removing clients from the equation eases the burden on shipboard technicians, consolidates the information security posture, and overall presents a more efficient network management picture through smart automation that makes better use of available manpower. HCI is the architecture solution that will eventually enable a full-scale, afloat, thin-client solution.

Hyperconverged.org is a website dedicated to delivering the message of advantages that HCI can bring,3 and lists ten compelling advantages that HCI brings to any IT infrastructure, to include:

  • Focus on software-defined data centers to allow faster software modernization and more agile vulnerability patching
  • Use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) commodity hardware that provides failure avoidance without the additional costs
  • Centralized systems and management
  • Enhanced agility in network management, automation, virtualization of operating systems, and shared resources across a common resource manager (such as hypervisor)
  • Improved scalability and efficiency
  • Potentially lower costs (caveat: in the commercial sector this may be truer than in the government sector, but smart contract competitions and vendor choices can drive down costs for the government as well)
  • Consolidated data protection through improved backup and recovery options, more efficient resource utilization, and faster network management tools

The advantages of HCI are numerous, and represent the true next step in IT architecture that will enable future software capabilities. How can we, as warfighters, take advantage of this emerging technology? It cannot be overstated that our current processes for procuring and delivering software-based services and capabilities must be revamped to keep pace with industry and take advantage of the speed and agility that HCI brings.

Faster, More Efficient Application Development is the Next Step

In our current hardware development methodology, programs of record within the Department of Defense (DoD) have little difficulty determining a clear modernization path that fits within the cost, schedule, and performance constraints outlined by the DoD acquisition framework. However, software development is an entirely different story, and is no longer agile enough to suit our needs. If we can iterate hardware infrastructure at near the speed of industry, then software and application development becomes the pacing function that we must address before we can realize the opening scenario of this essay.

The key term when discussing the speed of system development is agility, defined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as “the speed of operations within an organization and speed in responding to customers…or reduced cycle times.”4 The federal government, DoD in particular, has been struggling with acquisition reform for some time, and with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act in fiscal year 2010, Congress placed renewed emphasis on the need to transform the acquisition process for information technology. Several programmatic changes to acquisition helped (such as the approval of the “IT Box” programmatic framework in the joint requirements process), but the agility of software development and modernization remains challenged. Ensuring proper testing and evaluation (T&E) methodology, bureaucratic approval processes to ensure affordability, joint interoperability testing, and lengthy proof-in testing are just some of the processes facing software applications prior to gaining approval for full-rate production and fielding to the warfighter.

Matthew Kennedy and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Ward (U.S. Air Force), in a 2012 article for Defense Acquisition University, argued for agility in system development by discussing flaws in the current “agile software development” model.5 Developed in the early 2000s, this model is not as agile as the name would imply, and still defines requirements to be developed in advance, which doesn’t leave room for innovation or rapid, iterative changes to keep pace with the speed of industry. Exciting initiatives are being fielded in the commercial sector, such as cloud-based development and learning models, and mobility technology that many of the services would use to great effect. Innovative prototyping of disruptive technology at the service or component level of DoD, such as the now-disbanded Chief of Naval Operation’s Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC), proved that there are operational advantages to emerging tech such as wearable mobile devices, if only we could “turn a tighter circle” within our acquisition framework and work with agility to field newer and better versions to the force.

Thankfully, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel when implementing a more agile software development framework; we must take lessons from industry and apply them to the unique needs of each of the DoD components. This may be easier said than done, but Kennedy and Ward, and indeed likely many other acquisition professionals and scholars, would agree that it is entirely possible if leadership demanded it, and the policies, procedures, and resourcing followed suit to support it. Kennedy and Ward offered a common set of software and business aspect practices to support agile practices that would allow a predictable, faster software refresh cycle (not just patches, but cumulative updates) to ensure software remains agile and relevant to the warfighter. Using small teams for incremental development, lean initiatives to shorten timelines, and continuous user involvement with co-located teams are just some of the practices offered.6

Improving our software development and modernization framework to be even more agile than it is now is necessary considering the recent industry shift to software-as-a-service and cloud-based business models. No longer will software versions be deliberate releases, but rather iterative updates such as Microsoft’s “current branch for business” (CBB) model. With this model, Microsoft envisions that Windows 10 could be the last “version” of Windows to be released, which will then be built upon in future “service pack-like” updates every 12-18 months. Organizations that do not update their operating systems to the latest CBB will be left behind with unsupported versions. Not only does such a change demand a rapid speed-to-force update solution for DoD, but it represents a disruptive process change that will ultimately allow us to reach the opening scenario’s on-demand tactical application process, leveraging big data in a way that units at the tactical edge have never done before – and in a way that may never have been imagined by the system’s original developers.

Hyper-convergence infrastructure, together with agility-based application development and modernization, represents a near-term possibility that will enable true innovation at the tactical level of war and put the power of information superiority into the hands of the warfighter. While re-developing the acquisition framework to achieve this may be difficult, it is entirely possible and, many would say, necessary if DoD is to keep pace with emerging threats, take advantage of emerging technology and innovation, and ultimately retain its status as the best equipped and trained force the world has ever known.

Artificial Intelligence: The Next AEGIS Combat System

Now let’s imagine another scenario. USS LYNDON B. JOHNSON (DDG 1002), last of the Zumwalt-class destroyer line and used primarily to test emergent technology prototypes in real-world scenarios, slips silently through the South China Sea in the dead of night. She is the first ship in the U.S. Navy to possess Nelson, a recursively-improving artificial intelligence (RIAI). Utilizing an HCI supercomputer core, Nelson acts as an integrator for the various shipboard combat systems in a similar concept to today’s AEGIS Combat System, except much faster and with machine-speed environmental adaption.

American relations with China have broken down, resulting in a shooting war in the South China Sea that threatens to spill into the Pacific proper, and eventually reach Hawaii. In an effort to change the dynamic, DDG-1002 forward deploys in stealth to collect intelligence on enemy force disposition and, if the opportunity presents itself, offer a first-strike capability to the U.S. Pacific Command. JOHNSON is spotted by a surface action group of three Chinese destroyers, who take immediate action by firing a salvo of anti-ship cruise missiles followed by surface gunnery fire once in range.

At the voice command of the Tactical Action Officer, Nelson goes to work, taking control of the ship’s self-defense system and prioritizing targets in a similar fashion to Aegis, only much faster, while constantly providing voice feedback on system readiness, target status, and battle damage assessments through the internal battle circuit, essentially acting as a member of the CIC team. Nelson’s adaptability as an AI allows it to evolve its tactical recommendations based on the environment and the sensory input from the ship’s 3D and 2D radars, intelligence feeds, and even the voice reports over the battle circuit. Compiling the tactical picture on a large display in CIC, Nelson simultaneously responds to threats against the ship while providing a fused battle management display to the Captain and Tactical Action Officer. The RIAI does much to lift the fog of war, and automates enough of the ship’s defensive and information-gathering functions to allow the humans to focus on tactically employing the ship to stop the threat rather than reacting to it.

While hyper-convergence, coupled with agile and rapidly-developed software innovation, is the emerging technology, recursively-improving artificial intelligence is the ultimate disruptive technology in the near to medium-term and represents the giant leap forward that many research and development efforts are striving towards. AI has often been relegated to the work of science fiction, and while many futurists see it as the inevitable “singularity” to happen as soon as the mid-21st century, it has not quite gained acceptance in the mainstream technical community. What must be focused on from a warfighter’s perspective is the near-term (within the next 30-50 years) prospects of advances in quantum computing, neural networks, robotics, nanotechnology, and hyper-convergence. These advances could put us on a path towards artificial intelligence within the lifetime of generations currently serving or about to serve in the armed forces.

The debate over whether recursively self-improving artificial intelligence is possible continues,5 with some theorists stating that such an AI cannot be achieved because intelligence could be “upper bounded” in a way that transcends processor speed, available memory, and sensor resolution improvements. Others suggest that intelligence “is the ability to find patterns in data”7 and that, regardless of the more fringe theories surrounding AI, transhumanism, and the ontological discussions of the singularity, “a sub-human level system capable of self-improvement can’t be excluded.”8  It is the sub-human AI, capable of adapting to changing data patterns, that makes a combat system AI an exciting near-future prospect. 

Conclusion

This article presented two hypothetical scenarios. In the near-term, a Navy watchstander takes advantage of a hyper-converged infrastructure network environment onboard a U.S. Navy warship to rapidly develop a tactical application to take advantage of disparate databases and cloud data resources, ultimately producing a battle management aid for the ship’s next mission. This scenario took advantage of two emerging technological concepts: hyper-convergence in hardware infrastructure, a reality some major defense acquisition programs such as the Navy’s CANES has already resourced and on-track to field in the coming years, and agile software development in defense acquisition, which is a conceptual framework that must be developed to ensure more rapid and innovative software capabilities are delivered to the force.

The funding for these technological advances must remain stable to deliver HCI to our operating forces as a hardware baseline for future development, and policy makers must continue to find efficiencies in IT acquisition that lead to agile software development to really take advantage of the efficiencies HCI brings. Additionally, DoD IT leaders must think critically and dynamically about how future software updates will be tested and fielded rapidly; our current lengthy testing and evaluation cycle is no longer compatible with either the speed of industry’s vulnerability patching, a fluid content upgrade schedule, or the pace of adversarial threats.

The second scenario describes a near-future incorporation of recursively-improving artificial intelligence within a combat system, which builds upon hyper converged hardware and recursively improving software to deliver a warfighting platform that can defend itself more rapidly and learn from its tactical situation. The simple fact is that technology is changing at a pace no one dared dream as early as 20 years ago, and if we don’t build it, our adversaries will. A recent (2016) article in Reuters, and reported in other media outlets, showcases the People Republic of China’s (PRC) desire to build AI-integrated weapons,9 citing Wang Changqing of China Aerospace and Industry Corp with saying “our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation.” DoD must adapt its processes to keep pace and remain the world’s leader in incorporating emerging and disruptive technology into its warfighting systems.

Travis Howard is an active duty U.S. Naval Officer assigned to the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington D.C. He holds advanced degrees and certifications in cybersecurity policy and business administration, and has over 16 years of enlisted and commissioned experience in surface warfare and Navy information systems. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

References

1. Scott Morris. “Putting The ‘Hyper’ Into Convergence.” NetworkWorld Asia 12.2 (2015): 44. 28 Jan 2017.

2. Travis Howard, LT, USN. “’The Next Generation’ of Afloat Networking.” Proceedings Magazine, Mar 2015, Vol. 141/3/1,345

3. Hyperconverged.org. “Ten Things Hyperconverged Can Do For You: Leveraging the Benefits of Hyperconverged Infrastructure.” Retrieved Feb 2 2017, http://www.hyperconverged.org/10-things-hyperconvergence-can-do/

4. Matthew Kennedy & Lt Col Dan Ward. “Inserting Agility In System Development.” Defense Acquisition Research Journal: A Publication Of The Defense Acquisition University 19.3 (2012): 249-264. 4 Feb 2017.

5. Ibid

6. Ibid

7. Roman Yampolskiy. “From Seed AI to Technological Singularity via Recursively Self-Improving Software.” Cornell University Library. arXiv:1502.06512 [cs.AI]. 23 Feb 2015.

8. Ibid

9. Ben Blanchard. “China eyes artificial intelligence for new cruise missiles.” Reuters, World News. 19 Aug 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence-missiles-idUSKCN10U0EM

Featured Image: Electronic Warfare Specialist 2nd Class Sarah Lanoo from South Bend, Ind., operates a Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) console in the Combat Direction Center (CDC) aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as it conducts combat operations in support of Operation Southern Watch. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Patricia Totemeier)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.