Transformation or Persistent ISR?

Transformation or Persistent ISR?

By Colin Clark Monday, October 13th, 2008 1:44 pm
Posted in Air, Intelligence, Land, Naval

When that fella Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary we heard a great deal about transformation. At the beginning of his administration, even President Bush praised the concept, fuzzy though it was to many.

As Rumsfeld became more and more unpopular on Capitol Hill and in the military, so did transformation. On top of that, many people had a simple question: just what the hell does transformation really mean, anyway? For many in industry, labeling something as transformational simply meant they were grasping at another marketing tool to grab money during the budget process.

The classic definition offered by transformation advocates such as Andy Krepinevich, former Net Assessment guru and head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, is that military transformation results from a powerful combination of new technologies, doctrines that make them useful and people who understand what is possible. Development of the aircraft carrier battle group is often offered as one example. The German blitzkrieg — melding mobile radio communication, complex train networks, and tanks and other armored vehicles that could move as quickly as trucks during the attack — is another. Blitzkrieg is a very clear example. Virtually every major military in Europe had most of the individual capabilities needed but only Germany melded them together with doctrine and strategy.

Now we have the folks at “60 Minutes” running a pretty good piece about just what allowed the US to tag the bad guys in Sadr City and bring relative peace to the hotbed of insurgent activity. My colleague Christian Lowe watched the story yesterday (I watched it this morning, through the haze of the early winter crud) and he thought “the 60 Minutes piece titled The Battle of Sadr City is a pretty good explanation of where high-tech is crucial to enabling a counterinsurgency strategy that saves lives.”

Watching the piece, I’m reminded of a story I put together right after our invasion of Afghanistan which quoted several senior OSD types that the biggest lesson they learned during that fight was the overwhelming importance of “persistent ISR.” At the time, that pretty much meant Predator, combined with some national technical means that nobody really wanted to talk about.

What strikes me about the 60 Minutes piece is how well integrated at the brigade level are video and signals intelligence feeds from various unmanned systems. The intelligence is fed straight down and soldiers act on it with dispatch. The pictures of the insurgents regrouping after firing on the Green Zone, and getting blasted soon after speak ten thousand words. Left unsaid by everyone in the piece is the role of CIA and DIA human intelligence, combined with NSA, NGA and NRO data. CIA Director Mike Hayden and NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Murrett have both made very clear recently that intel teams integrated at the brigade level have helped make the enormous improvements in Iraqi security possible. This may be where the real transformation is happening, the blending of intel and military technologies and doctrines.

Join the Conversation

DensityDuck October 13th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

At StratSpace, Gen. Shelton suggested that there wasn’t as much need for analysis if you’re delivering video. He suggested that getting the data to the troops in a timely manner was more important than doing analysis to explain what it all meant in a strategic context.

James A October 15th, 2008 at 8:12 am

Funny they didn’t mention the UAV that the Army folks on the ground prefer to use for ISR…the Hunter UAV. The Hunter was the first ever UAV to deploy its munitions on the enemy.

WarNerd October 18th, 2008 at 4:58 am

Persistent Surveillance Dissemination System (of Systems). That’s my project and what it does is integrate many of those disparate sensors. The Army has approximately one bazillion ways of getting information, but the middleware of aggregating all that info and getting it to the right people apparently wasn’t in the original design spec. So we come in, mosh up the signals into one platform, make it more accessible and do some fun things to get more out of it. Guess I can add transformation engineer to my resume ;)

mojojojo October 18th, 2008 at 6:47 am

Andy’s answer is the marketing jingo and what Future Combat Systems brings to the playing field. But first you have to transform the infrastructure. In a nutshell (and for the rest of us) transformation migrates us away from the old proprietary or defacto standard point to point (p2p) communication systems in favor of a network centric approach based on accredited standards organizations standards. ESSENTIALLY, an internet like entity. Simple as that. Add some new services (that have been standardized for some time now) and wa-lah…network centric.

Now I know some of you will fire back and say it’s much more than that… and it is. the internet does not have the billions upon billions of $$$ worth of existing legacy infrastructure to contend with. But if I can get internet on my iphone we damn well sure can get it to the warfighter on the ground. Note the problem is analogous to the last mile problem for the internet several years ago. It will be solved. It is absolutely crucial the DoD transform.

I’d like to use this forum to further discussions. Any other transformation experts out there?

Cole October 18th, 2008 at 11:10 am

There are problems with too much information:

http://blog.mopsos.com/archives/Schrage_wp03-1.pdf

Many also understand that the fog of war, will never disappear. They believe that information transformation, and overreliance on technology (vs. scouts and security forces) is a dangerous practice.

There must be a middle ground. Some analogies may help to understand.

Picture a chess board where both players have a perfect view of the other player’s locations and moves. Yet clearly only one side can win (or both can draw) despite all that information. But warfare, unlike chess, seldom involves a start point where both sides have equally powerful pieces. And unlike chess, both players have opportunities to add pieces back to the board, up to a point.

One may argue that in warfare, unlike chess, one “player” may more clearly “view” the battlefield due to better sensors and communications. Local commanders with real time sensor information on armored vehicles, a common operational picture display showing friendlies and enemies, and with access to outside information through things like One System Remote Video Terminals may realize a significant advantage. But an opposing commander with less information yet stronger or more numerous “chess pieces” may still emerge victorious, especially if all our pieces have yet to arrive. In addition, an enemy commander with weaker but elusive, largely invisible chess pieces, may also drag the game on. The enemy may also recruit “pawns” in the form of civilians to hide behind and cry foul if our queen inadvertantly takes out the pawns by mistake.

But the chess analogy fails insofar as it involves just one play at a time by a single piece. Warfare involves multiple “pieces” on both sides playing simultaneously.

In warfare, even if both sides can see all the pieces moving at once, the side able to more rapidly discern and analyze the relevant, most critical moves, and respond accordingly, will often be the victor. One part of information transformation is an attempt to do a better job of managing information to preclude information overload, by filtering out information that is not relevant or not as critical. That is why commander’s create priority intelligence requirements…to tell others what they want to know. It’s why automated and semi-automated information systems and staff officers exist to filter and find only that info essential to the commander.

Football is one example of information management and rapid processing of visual information. Both sides are moving rapidly during each play. The success of the play depends on the strengths of the players, their ability to see/understand the play that is occurring, the deception involved, the focusing of power, and each side’s ability (coaches and players) to predict and be unpredictable. Replays of concluded plays can help coaches discover what went wrong or right. An elevated perspective from the upper coaches box can help see things the head coaches/players on the ground cannot see. But in the end, the success or failure of each play depends on the view at the player level seen in real time…analogous to the ground and helicopter scout, sensors on combat vehicles, and the M2 eyeballs/NVGs of the infantryman.

Warfare, unlike chess or football, also involves being able to get the chess pieces on the board or players on the field before the “game” starts. If the “game” started 20 days ago and you chose to take the bus instead of the plane to get there, you may arrive too late, especially if one team starts the “game” without announcing it to the other team.

War also involves requirements to sustain the pieces/players as they arrive and continue to battle it out. This is an essential but unheralded aspect of the game that also relates to training prior to the game. Unlike chess where the king’s capture ends the game, in warfare, the “game” is not necessarily over and the losing team may continue to fight a guerilla war. Unlike football, in warfare the clock never runs out, and the losing team may employ a strategy of waiting it out until all the spectators get tired and go home. Because unlike football, the spectators and players in war, continue to pay big bucks as long as the war goes on.

So transformation and a “revolution” in military affairs must involve a whole lot more than information.

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