Drones, Future Tech

Inspector Gadgets: Drones in the Hangar

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Checking an aircraft for damage can be arduous and meticulous work,  but last week’s issue of The Economist highlights an experimental commercial approach. In simple terms, the Remote Intelligent Survey Equipment for Radiation (RISER) drone is a quadcopter with LIDAR and forms the basis for a system to use lasers to automatically detect damage to airliners.

The obvious naval application for inspector drones would be for ground-, carrier, and surface vessel-based fixed-wing and helicopter units, although the configurations for each aircraft type and location might make some more practical than others. For example it probably makes more sense to consolidate expertise in inspector drones at regional maintenance and readiness centers than to try to outfit a unit in the small helicopter hangar of every destroyer. But there’s always something to be said for an operational capability.

While The Economist notes that the drones are allowed at Luton airport, UK, to “operate only inside hangars, and only when the doors are shut,” similar systems could be used during periods of extended surface ship and submarine maintenance, particularly while in dry dock to check for damage and wear and tear to those vessels’ hulls and systems.

We’ve speculated previously at CIMSEC on the utility of LIDAR-equipped shipboard robots and autonomous systems to engage in damage control, but external hull and airframe inspection drones add a wrinkle and join an ever-growing list of potential (and actualized) uses for drones.

Scott Cheney-Peters is a surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and founder and Chairman of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval War College, a member of the Truman National Security Project, and a CNAS Next-Generation National Security Fellow.

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Future Tech, Future War, Tactical Concepts

The Role of Swarm Intelligence for Distributed Lethality C2

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This article was submitted by guest author Marjorie Greene for CIMSEC’s Distributed Lethality week.  Ms. Greene is a Research Analyst with CNA.  Views expressed are her own.

What will distributed lethality command and control look like?   This article introduces a self-organizing approach that addresses this question.   The increasing vulnerability of centralized command and control systems in network warfare suggests it may be time to take an entirely new approach that builds on the human capacity to interact locally and collectively with one another. Building on the concept of swarm intelligence, the approach suggests that information could be “shared” in a decentralized control system, much as insect colonies share information by constructing paths that represent the evolution of their collective knowledge.

This article builds on a self-organizing system that was developed for military analyses aimed at finding out “who talks to whom, about what, and how effectively” in a wide range of operational situations featuring the involvement of naval forces and commands. In an effort to describe the content of message traffic throughout the chain of command during a crisis, a technique was used to associate messages with each other through their formal references. “Reference-connected sets” were constructed that required no interpretation of the subject matter of the messages and, when further analyzed, were found to uniquely identify events during the crisis. For example, one set that was constructed from crisis-related message traffic found in files at three command headquarters contained 105 messages that dealt with preparation for landing airborne troops. Other sets of messages represented communications related to other events such as providing medical supplies and preparing evacuation lists. The technique therefore provided a “filter” of all messages during the crisis into events that could be analyzed – by computers or humans – without predetermined subject categories. It simply provided a way of quickly locating a message that had the information (as it was expressed in natural language) that was necessary to make a decision [1].

As the leaders of the Surface Navy continue to lay the intellectual groundwork for Distributed Lethality, this may be a good time to re-introduce the concept of creating “paths” to represent the “collective behavior” of decentralized self-organized systems” for control of hunter-killer surface action groups. Technologies could still be developed to centralize the control of multiple SAGs designed to counter adversaries in an A2/AD environment. But swarm intelligence techniques could also be used in which small surface combatants would each act locally on local information, with global control “emerging” from their collective dynamics. Such intelligence has been used in animal cultures to detect and respond to unanticipated environmental changes, including predator presence, resource challenges, and other adverse conditions without a centralized communication and control system. Perhaps a similar approach could be used for decentralized control of Distributed Lethality.

Swarm intelligence builds on behavioral models of animal cultures. For example, the ant routing algorithm tells us that when an ant forages for food, it lays pheromones on a trail from source to destination. When it arrives at its destination, it returns to its source following the same path it came from. If other ants have travelled along the same path, pheromone level is higher. Similarly, if other ants have not travelled along the path, the pheromone level is lower. If every ant tries to choose a trail that has higher pheromone concentration, eventually the pheromones accumulate when multiple ants use the same path and evaporate when no ant passes.

Just as an ant leaves a chemical trace of its movement along a path, an individual surface combatant could send messages to other surface ships that include traces of previous messages by means of “digital pheromones.” One way to do this would be through a simple rule that ensures that all surface ships are kept informed of all previous communications related to the same subject. This is a way to proactively create a reference-connected message set that relates to an event across all surface ships during an offense operation.

In his book, Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener discusses the ant routing algorithm and the concept of self-organizing systems. He does not explicitly define “self-organization” except to suggest it is a process which machines – and, by analogy, humans – learn by adapting to their environment. Now considered to be a fundamental characteristic of complex systems, self-organization refers to the emergence of higher-level properties and behaviors of a system that originate from the collective dynamics of that system’s components but are not found in nor are directly deducible from the lower-level properties of the system. Emergent properties are properties of the whole that are not possessed by any of the individual parts making up that whole. The parts act locally on local information and global order emerges without any need for external control.

The Office of Naval Research has recently demonstrated a new era in autonomy and unmanned systems for naval operations that has great promise for Distributed Lethality. The LOCUST (Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology) program utilizes information-sharing

The Coyote UAV, developed by BAE, used by the LOCUST program
The Coyote UAV, developed by BAE, used by the LOCUST program

between UAVs to enable autonomous collaborative behavior in either defensive or offensive scenarios. In the opinion of this author, this program should be analyzed for its potential application to Distributed Lethality.

Professor Vannevar Bush at MIT was perhaps the first person to come up with a new way of thinking about constructing paths for information-sharing. He suggested that an individual’s personal information storage and selection system could be based on direct connections between documents instead of the usual connections between index terms and documents. These direct connections were to be stored in the form of trails through the literature. Then at any future time the individual himself or one of his friends could retrieve this trail from document to document without the necessity of describing each document with a set of descriptors or tracing it down through a classification tree [2].

The current response to the dilemmas associated with command and control in any distributed operation has led this author to embrace the concept of swarm intelligence. Rather than attempting to interpret the subject matter of information exchanged by entities in confronting an adversary, why not build control systems that simply track information “flows”? Such flows would define the subject matter contained in a naval message without having to classify the information at all.

Any discussion of command and control would be incomplete without including the concept of fuzzy sets, introduced by Professor Lotfi Zadeh at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965. The concept addresses the vagueness that is inherent in most natural language and provides a basis for a qualitative approach to the analysis of command and control in Distributed Lethality. It is currently used in a wide range of domains in which information is incomplete or imprecise and has been extended into many, largely mathematical, constructions and theorems treating inexactness, ambiguity, and uncertainty. This approach to the study of information systems has gained a significant following and now includes major research areas such as pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization, which all build on the theoretical foundations established in information systems theory [3].

Ultimately, the information paths constructed for the control of Distributed Lethality will be a function of organizational relationships and the distribution of information between them. Since a message in a path cannot reference a previous message unless its originator is cognizant of the previous message, the paths in a “reference-connected set” of messages will often reflect the information flows within a Surface Action Group. When paths are joined with other paths, the resulting path often reflects communications across Surface Action Groups. It remains to be determined whether the Surface Navy can use these concepts as it continues to explore the intellectual groundwork for Distributed Lethality. Nevertheless, it is very tempting to speculate that swarm intelligence will play an important role in the future. The most important consideration is that this approach concentrates on the evolution of an event, rather than upon a description of the event. Even if a satisfactory classification scheme could be found for control of hunter-killer Surface Action Groups, the dynamic nature of their operations suggests that predetermined categories would not suffice to describe the complex developments inherent in evolving and potentially changing situations.

Many organizations have supported research and development designed to explore the full benefits of shared information in an environment in which users will be linked through interconnected communications networks. However, in the view of this author, the model of “trails of messages” should be explored again. “Network warfare” will force an increased emphasis on human collaborative networks. Dynamic command and control will be based on communications paths and direct connections between human commanders of distributed surface ships rather than upon technologies that mechanically or electronically select information from a central store. Such an approach would not only prepare for Distributed Lethality, but may improve command and control altogether.

Ms. Greene is a Research Analyst with CNA. Views expressed are her own. 

REFERENCES:

  1. Greene, , “A Reference-Connecting Technique for Automatic Information Classification and Retrieval”, OEG Research Contribution No. 77, Center for Naval Analyses, 1967
  2. Bush, V., “As We May Think”, Atlantic Monthly 176 (1):101-108, 1945
  3. Zadeh, L.,” Fuzzy sets”, Information Control 8, 338-353, 1965
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Global Analysis

Distributed Lethality’s C2 Sea Change

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The concept of Distributed Lethality implies a simple command and control (C2) challenge: the surface fleet will field more ships with offensive weaponry, so more Commanding Officers will hold the ability to use deadly force.  Yet, today’s Navy does not grant individual ship CO’s enough autonomy to rapidly conduct offensive strike, nor can it rely on its world class tactical networks to always be available for a group commander to execute C2 remotely.  Even with the right C2, the Navy does not produce enough CO’s to fulfill the vision of Distributed Lethality.  To bring the exciting concept to life, the Navy will have to adjust the way it approaches maritime C2, and even its venerated notion of Command at Sea.

Maritime C2 is not “one-size-fits-all” and the roles, responsibilities, and authorities the Navy routinely assigns to its forces, particularly Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs), will have to be adjusted to capitalize on the real benefits of Distributed Lethality.  The Navy’s default approach to C2 – Composite Warfare Command (CWC) – would dictate that an Officer in Tactical Command (OTC) be designated, who would then assign specific warfare areas to individual Warfare Commanders.  The Surface Warfare Commander  (SuWC) is responsible for surface warfare, the Air and Missile Defense Commander (AMDC) responsible for air and missile defense, etc.  In a CSG, Composite Warfare Command works well.  The Strike Group Commander, onboard the aircraft carrier with all its staff and bandwidth benefits, is the OTC.   Normally, the Destroyer Squadron Commodore is the SuWC and Anti Submarine Warfare Commander (ASWC), and the CO of the Aegis Cruiser is the AMDC.  The OTC is ideally positioned to execute C2 of his or her forces and each Warfare Commander is ideally suited to defend the aircraft carrier.  There’s a reason CWC works so well in CSG operations…it was designed for CSG operations.  Over time, the Navy has come to apply CWC to almost every group of ships at sea (with varying degrees of success).  A simple scenario will show that, as the Navy begins to employ groups that look less and less like traditional CSGs, it will have to get back to its autonomous roots for Distributed Lethality C2.

Take, for example, a squadron of four next-generation Frigates with a primarily Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASuW) mission.  Applying CWC, the first step would be to designate an OTC.  Perhaps there is a Commodore located on one of the Frigates, making the decision easy (although the Commodore has no technical or equipment advantage in C2 over any of the other Frigates).  It’s also possible that the Commodore is located on some other platform outside the squadron.  This would require a highly networked force, but in today’s maritime operations such a force is not uncommon.  Lacking a Commodore, one of the Frigate CO’s could be designated OTC, in which case the decision is essentially a wash.  Let’s assume for argument’s sake that OTC is a Commodore is located onboard a nearby aircraft carrier.  He or she would have more than enough C2 capability and capacity, as long as the tactical network remained robust.

Next, specific warfare areas need to be assigned to Warfare Commanders.  Let’s start with Air and Missile Defense.  None of the Frigates have a particularly remarkable air defense capability, especially when it comes to defending a group of ships.  OTC could just designate one of the Frigate CO’s as AMDC to facilitate command and reporting, but it is doubtful the CO and his or her crew would have any kind of specialized training in AMD C2.  The assignment would be largely nominal with minimal value added to overall C2 (each ship would likely end up just defending itself from airborne threats based on each CO’s individual direction).  To get any real value, an Aegis DDG or CG would need to be assigned to provide an AMD umbrella over the squadron…a challenge but not impossible! After all, any deployed CG or DDG is charged with area air defense at one time or another.

Now, let’s consider the assignment of SuWC.  The squadron’s entire mission is to locate, track, and possibly destroy enemy surface assets.  Each ship CO has the ideal weaponry, adequate C2 capability, and probably specialized training to make him or her a fine candidate for SuWC.  Choosing one CO over another would essentially be an arbitrary decision, which could have detrimental impacts in the heat of operations.  For example, if a CO (not designated as SuWC) gains contact and a firing solution on an enemy surface combatant, that CO then has to reach out to a peer for permission to engage (naval tactical enthusiasts will cry foul here, citing “command by negation” as a central tenet of CWC.  Command by negation may be the intent of CWC, but it is most certainly not the execution…especially in offensive operations).  Assuming SuWC doesn’t have to reach back to OTC for further permission, this C2 construct still introduces a costly time delay which effective offensive maritime operations can rarely afford.  Worse, the targeting CO may simply disregard the CWC contruct altogether because it doesn’t make any sense in this context.  After all, the Navy has always prided itself in developing CO’s capable of making tough decisions on their own.

So, you can see how the “cookie cutter” application of CWC falls apart pretty quickly in Distributed Lethality.  Certain elements, such as the assignment of an AMDC, can definitely be borrowed from CWC wherever they make sense; however, ship CO’s need to be empowered to perform their mission without excessive interference from higher headquarters.  If the squadron has robust tactical network connectivity – of which we already have the best in the world and we’re improving everyday – with the Commodore, then there’s no reason to deny him or her close control of the mission.  The Commodore has the experience, training, and staff support advantage over the individual CO’s.  When everything is clicking, Distributed Lethality with networked C2 can be achieved with lightning speed and violent effectiveness.  But what happens when the network breaks down?

As good as our tactical networks are, they can always fail, especially when our potential enemies are investing millions to make that happen.  To make Distributed Lethality work reliably, we need to shift from Network Centric Warfare to Network Optional Warfare.  The default C2 construct should be networked.  We have the capability and we’ve proven it can work.  But when a ship gets cut off from the network, the CO needs the training and authority to act autonomously and make the call.  This is more than just a call to return to Mission Command (hyperlink).  More appropriately, we need to practice Adaptive Mission Command.  Ship CO’s need to be well versed in playing as part of a team and taking tactical orders from a remote commander, but they need to rely on their own judgment when the time comes and higher headquarters is “unavailable for comment.”

Adaptive Mission Command implies a subtle, but monumental shift in the way the Navy views Command at Sea.  In Distributed Lethality, the basic unit of force application is actually not the individual ship, but the group of ships, whether that is a flotilla, a squadron, an ARG, etc.  Today, the pinnacle of a Naval Officer’s career is their first Command at Sea tour, typically “Commander Command.”  In the future, if we keep moving in the direction of Distributed Lethality, the pinnacle might be the command of a group of ships, which is treated as Major Command today.  Major Command tours as they are today, such as Commodore of a squadron, will be become more common within the vision of Distributed Lethality.  Consequently, the opportunity for command of ships with lethal capability will also grow.  Today’s manning and career development models don’t support producing enough “Commander Command” Officers to fuel Distributed Lethality.  Instead, we need to push the typical rank of first Command at Sea down, probably to senior Lieutenant Commanders, and view this as a predecessor to command of a group of ships (this does imply a need to field more inexpensive “low end” surface combatants such as Frigates or Patrol Craft, but I’ll stay away from the force structure aspect of Distributed Lethality for now).

The Distributed Lethality concept has the potential to revolutionize the American Naval way of war, but the Navy will have to radically change the way it approaches command of ships at sea.  Certain aspects of CWC, such as the AMDC, will work but CWC cannot be applied wholesale the way the Navy does so often today.  Instead, CO’s will need to be empowered to pull the trigger when they cannot reach back to the group commander, while being skillful in the art of networked group operations.  When the Navy begins to employ this sort of Adaptive Mission Command, it will find that it needs to re-examine one of its most fundamental pillars.  The flotilla or squadron will become the basic unit of force application, and the pinnacle of a naval career will become group command, not command of an individual ship.  CO’s may begin to view their first command tour as a stepping stone to group (or major) command…a chance to fine tune their warfighting and communication skills, and at times exercise their independent tactical judgment.  The venerated concept of Command at Sea may have to evolve with the advent of Distributed Lethality, but when we win the next war at sea, we will all ask the same question…what took so long?

LCDR Jimmy Drennan is a Surface Warfare Officer.  He is currently assigned as the Operations Officer in USS GETTYSBURG (CG 64).

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Capability Analysis, Future Tech

Missing an Opportunity for Innovation: A Conceptual Critique of Distributed Lethality

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100 years ago today, in bunkers and boardrooms across Europe, the military and political leaders of a Europe that was being drowned in its own blood were attempting to solve the stagnant enigma of the Western Front. The traditional narrative of the First World War places the inability of military and political figures of the time to adapt to the previously unimaginable efficacy of modern defensive technology deployed on the battlefields of France and Belgium. While the popular narrative of the conflict usually ends with a nod to the tank and aircraft as the great mobilizers of the sclerotic armies, Stephen J. Biddle effectively argues with quantitative data, in his book Military Power, that it was in fact force employment (and the innovative tactics of the German Army) that broke the stalemate in the West and brought mobility back to warfare (see the Michael Offensive). The “modern system” of land warfare was born.

I’m reminded of Biddle’s illustration of the birth of the “modern system” when considering Distributed Lethality, not because I view the US Navy as antiquated as the armies of the old Europe, but because Distributed Lethality seems to be an intelligent effort at bypassing the tough and expensive learning curve associated with fighting the previous war by reorienting existing resources to meet new challenges. Within it appears to be the tacit recognition of the end of the aircraft carrier as the main instrument of maritime power in the types of 21st century A2/AD environments the US Navy is most likely to find itself fighting for dominance. Carriers will continue to be essential for the support of operations during the fight for dominance, and after it has been achieved in the maritime realm, but their time at the center of naval combat, contesting control of the world’s oceans, may well be over. Distributed Lethality is an attempt at defining the Navy’s future operational flexibility in the complex future of highly contested environments that preclude overuse of its most prominent investment.

At the same time, the reorientation of the surface fleet around the concept of increasing the fighting ability of individual craft within the current system may be too simple a concept to fully address the increasing complexity of the modern maritime environment, especially when that environment is seeing a proliferation of the number of actors able to potentially upset the capabilities of today’s Navy, with more advanced and capable anti-ship missiles, underwater sensors, and unmanned technology likely to be on the way. If the US Navy will have to engage in combat with a low to medium tier opponent within the next 17 years (the technology development timeline cited by Admiral Peter Fanta), then Distributed Lethality will be able to easily carry the day in the same way the Navy has been able to do in similar conflicts (maybe even at a lower price point). If the Navy is faced with a much more complex and determined threat (represented by a recent addition to the rank of top tier naval competitors, even just a regional one), then the concept of Distributed Lethality may be little more than a patch on the inadequacies of the contemporary Navy in considering the operational imperatives of facing and neutralizing that particular set of threats. It would seem to me that Distributed Lethality is, in fact, more a response to the emergence of a high tier threat (within a constricted budgetary environment) than a low to mid-tier threat, so its efficacy must be evaluated within this context.

The Navy, in its current state, could be considered the product of post-Cold War dominance (as Vice Admiral Rowden and Rear Admirals Gumataotao and Fanta explain in their Proceedings piece) and the attempts to take advantage of the concepts of network centric warfare and the revolution in military affairs (RMA) of the 1990s. This was done within the technological confines of the time period, and through the budgetary struggles of a US Navy competing for funds and defining itself within the budgetary narrative of the Global War on Terror. Its difficulties are manifest in the Navy After Next’s loss of its key platforms to cancellation and production truncation along with the discussions surrounding how the Navy will take on the A2/AD capabilities of today, let alone the future.

The US Navy now has a tremendous opportunity (in the face of rapidly evolving threats in the Asia-Pacific), that of being able to define itself within confines of its own primary operational environment, without the time and resource constraints of being actively engaged in combat. While the aircraft carrier’s time as the dominant maritime platform may be nearing the precipice of its decline, the rumblings within the military services and think tank sphere seem to point to the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, and the promise of additive manufacturing in the service of US operational and strategic needs, if the effects of their application can be grasped with full appreciation. If the US is to truly begin to push towards achievements that will open up the promise of network centric warfare and increase the ability to disrupt the defensive systems of the adversary (with acceptable costs in terms of equipment, money and lives) then we should be looking for cheaper ways to do that than through the Navy’s existing platforms, whose survivability and ease of replacement is questionable within the context of type of operational environment Andrew F. Krepninevich lays out in his excellent Maritime Competition in a Mature-Precision Strike Regime.

While Distributed Lethality is an important concept that should inform short and medium term planning (within the 17 year range that it takes to develop and deploy a new system), long range planning must begin now that takes into account the potential coming industrial revolution and advancements in AI and robotics that will bring about the full conceptual realization of networked warfare and unmanned systems. Their development could prove to be the real advantage in naval combat that will no longer feature a dominant aircraft carrier platform and will likely be the key to maintaining American maritime primacy in areas that have the potential to be seriously contested. Unlike the armies of 1917-18, the US Navy currently has the (limited) luxury of time and space to experiment. While the accusing finger of Kitchener, a draft notice, or more efficient bureaucracy could slowly make up for operational shortfalls during the Great War (still, at great human and financial cost), today’s strategic, technological and industrial imperatives are more exacting in terms of lost opportunities.

Ryan Kuhns is a master’s student at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. He studies International Security and Commerce, focusing on defense economics, strategy, and the social/political organization of war.

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Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.