Dr Robbin Laird, Building Combat Mass: An Air Force Perspective, 2 October 2024
The panel on combat mass was chaired by the former Air Commander Australia, AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie who provided an overview to the discussion.
AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie introduced the panel with a clear overview regarding the challenge.
This is how introduced the subject:
The definition of combat mass is widely agreed as overwhelming combat power at the decisive place and time. And it’s worth remembering that this is about massing combat effects, rather than massing combat forces.
It’s worth remembering that this concept is not new. To quote Clausewitz On War, the center of gravity is where mass is concentrated. We hear a lot of negativity in Canberra: There’s not enough money, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough strategy, there’s not enough drones, there’s not enough everything.
We need to uplift this conversation and talk about the great things that are happening in the fighting parts of our force. Between the two speakers, they command 40% of the Australian Defence Force, and it’s a rare opportunity to have the two operational commanders in front of you and talking about how they are thinking through the most complex problems facing the operational force.
AIRMSHL (Retd) Darren Goldie chairing a panel at the Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar September 26, 2024
After the presentation by Admiral Smith, the current Air Commander Australia, AVM Glen Braz, then spoke. Let me start with his presentation and then unpack some of his thoughts to discuss the challenge of ramping up the capabilities of the ready force.
AVM Braz highlighted a number of key themes in his presentation:
Building combat mass is front and center of all of our efforts across Air Command and Air Force at the moment, and I like to think of it across a few layers. And those layers are broadly the technology layer, the human layer, the operational layer, and finally, and perhaps most importantly for us in this context, is the organizational layer.
From a technology layer perspective, there is no doubt we need the enhancements of proliferated UAS and UAV systems that are collaborative in human and machine teaming, and we are working to build the basic steps of bringing that into service as soon as we can, pending the outcomes of the good work across MQ 28 and other similar systems.
I do need off-board weapons systems, and I do need off board sensor systems as part of a mass force.
We need to be able to concentrate massive force at the time and place of our choosing. And it’s going to be a relative measure, one that will be undoubtedly constrained by the physics of our force which remains small.
I absolutely need UAS for combat effects, but I also need them for survivable distributed logistics…
In developing agile operations concepts and to orchestrate the operation of the force, I need to understand what’s going on across the force. Situational awareness and resilience of communications are fundamental to how we achieve the tactical and operational effects that we need… to be able to synchronize and harmonize the mass effect that we need at the right time and place.
Cost effectiveness in terms of affordable and attritable systems need to be part of that concept.
We are outstanding at building long duration projects with exquisite platforms… But they’re not perfect, and they need ongoing investment. They need ongoing sustainment and upgrade to remain relevant, because even the major systems like F 35 need updates, and they need to be brought up to the latest standard.
It’s no different for the enhanced force in being, where we need to embrace the concept of more consumable capabilities that are more quickly adapted into the battle space and that can give us affordable and rapid mass if and when we need it.
And I’ll talk more to how we get after doing some of that in terms of manufacturing and adaptation, that is going to be key to generating and sustaining mass. And I have already mentioned that the ongoing ability to remain aware of the battle space where our own forces are in the distributed model will be fundamental to what we do.
If I look at the human layer, we have scaled up pilot training and the number of graduates. I’m actually at the point where I have to throttle the number of graduates for air force through the pilot training system at the moment, because I need to be able to absorb them downstream, and I need to sustain and operate them downstream as part of a broader force.
And while I can grow elements of the workforce as directed by the national defense strategy, I need to buy and grow all parts of the system with a degree of proportion or the system will be misshapen and will fail as a result.
So pilot training is a success story for us, but equally, we’ve ramped up our ability to scale initial military training and initial employment training across the air domain. There’s workforce allocations available across the department and in the air domain and I’m confident that we can success. We are attracting more people than ever. People want to come and join our Air Force and the ADF writ large. And I want to leverage that, and I would absolutely welcome the apportionment to the air domain to let me to continue to grow in the right shape and in the right proportion…
AVM Braz, Air Commander Australia, speaking at the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar on September 26, 2024.
We’re working very hard to get better at how we apportion and appropriate relevant or minimum viable skills to the workforce…
The human layer is mindset. For example, with regards to the Combat Support Group, we are changing the mindset of that organization to be one that acknowledges that everyone is in the fight, not one wing over another, not a garrison wing versus a deployable wing, but the whole of Combat Support Group is adapting to the mindset that they will be needed to go forward to generate the mass and the resilience and the depth in the force to operate across the bases and places that we need them to function…
When you’re a small force with outstanding capabilities, you need the absolute most from your people, and you want to generate mass in time and place of your choosing, then having the ability to surge key parts of that workforce will be fundamental…
The design of how we would cluster and disaggregate and reaggregate is something that’s a core activity, mostly led by the Air Warfare Center, and I’ll come back to them in the organizational mindset in a moment, but they are working on the ideas of deception and and dispersal and how to maximize how to be survivable, including hardening and other elements that are very important to us.
Fundamental to all of this will be interoperability with our key allies and partners, and while we can generate interesting agile operations mindsets, unless they are well integrated and nested with our partners then our ability to collaboratively generate mass will suffer. I’m working very closely with Pacific Air Forces as one example, to enhance our interoperability across the c2 and across the weapon system that is the air operations center.
Finally, let me discuss the organizational layer. I want to see a pivot in our defense organization that is underpinned by what has been often mentioned this morning, namely a sense of urgency… I would love to see that permeate more broadly across the department.
The pivot that we need to take is one that moves away from the mindset of long term, very large, long duration, low risk, in some ways, projects to deliver exquisite capabilities, and one that is more adept, structured, organized, and has the risk tolerance to take on short term consumable capabilities that can rapidly and with relevance uplift the force in being.
That might take some time and will take commitment from across the organization to achieve that sense of urgency. [For the RAAF, one way to do so] is to leverage my Air Warfare Center which is a crucible for creativity and ideas and where we can bring new technologies into the force quickly. We can experiment with them. We can apply them to great training scenarios, and we can inform a rapid capability cycle inside the system in ways that will be tangible and meaningful for the enhanced force in being and help us generate mass….
Let me unpack some of these thoughts and make some comments.
As Air Commander Australia, Braz is charged with being ready for the fight tonight. He must be focused on a sense of urgency. One area where a lack of a sense of urgency is evident across the three AUKUS countries is getting at buying and deploying military kit and solution sets that are gap fillers.
Last year I interviewed a senior U.S. Admiral who put this challenge very well:
Rehearsal of operations sheds light on our gaps. if you are rehearsing, you are writing mission orders down to the trigger puller, and the trigger puller will get these orders and go, I don’t know what you want me to do. Where do you want me to be? Who am I supposed to check in with? What do you want me to kill when I get there? What are my left and right limits? Do I have target engagement authority?
This then allows a better process of writing effective mission orders. so that we’re actually telling the joint force what we want them to do and who’s got the lead at a specific operational point. By such an approach, we are learning. We’re driving requirements from the people who are actually out there trying to execute the mission, as opposed to the war gamers who were sitting on the staff trying to figure out what the trigger pullers should do.
We focused in that conversation on the need for the ready forces to be able to order short term capabilities to fill gaps. This will become crucial as we work the payloads on air and maritime autonomous systems to fill gaps.
Or put another, a sense of urgency at this time in history requires an ability for greater acquisition authority to shift to the ready force.
And the interview I did with this Admiral also highlighted that the U.S. and its allies working together could shape a division of labor to fill gaps in addition to acquisition of things, but this required training and operative force redesign among the forces working together.
This is what the Admiral emphasized:
We need to build a centralized planning organization in the Pacific, that has intelligence, future plans, future ops, current ops, ISR, logistics, all of those things included in the discussions. And it’s made up of all of anybody who has desires to participate. This will allow us to understand what allied objectives are, and what their limits are, too, and helps us to identify the barriers such as foreign disclosure, so we can start to break down some of those barriers.
We can recognize weaknesses in our operational forces, the gaps as we have discussed, and we can focus on closing those gaps ourselves or by interchangeability with an ally. There are places where allies have capability that we do not have which can fill the bill.
Another point raised by the AIRMSHL was the need to fund and execute in a timely fashion the upgrades necessary for the core combat programs. This is especially important as air platforms have become software upgradeable, and ways need to found not only to fund but to accelerate where possible software upgradeability.
For the ready force, there is an increasing need to be able to operate with significant software transient advantage, something that has been clearly demonstrated in the battles over electromagnetic spectrum in the Russian-NATO war in Ukraine.
A final point which I will highlight is training. The relationship between training and experimentation and inclusion of the outcomes of this effort INTO the ready force rather than on the conveyer belt of science projects for some future force is central to enabling a sense of urgency to lead actually to enhanced capabilities for the ready force.
Several years ago, I talked with Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn about this challenge.
This is how we discussed the challenge in this 2017 interview:
During my visit to Canberra, I had a chance to discuss with Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn how the training approach could be expanded to encompass and guide development.
“We know that we need to have an integrated force, because of the complexity of the threat environment will will face in the future. The legacy approach is to buy bespoke pieces of equipment, and then use defined data links to connect them and to get as much integration as we can AFTER we have bought the separate pieces of equipment. This is after-market integration, and can take us only so far.”
“This will not give us the level of capability that we need against the complex threat environment we will face. How do we design and build in integration? This is a real challenge, for no one has done so to date?”
Laird: “And the integration you are talking about is not just within the ADF but also with core allies, notably the United States forces. And we could emphasize that integration is necessary given the need to design a force that can go up an adversary’s military choke points, disrupt them, have the ability to understand the impact and continue on the attack.
This requires an ability to put force packages up against a threat, prosecute, learn and continue to put the pressure on.
“Put bluntly, this is pushing SA to the point of attack, combat learning within the operation at the critical nodes of attack and defense and rapidly reorganizing to keep up the speed and lethality of attack.
“To achieve such goals, clearly requires force package integration and strategic direction across the combat force.
“How best to move down this path?”
Blackburn: “We have to think more imaginatively when we design our force. A key way to do this is to move from a headquarters set requirements process by platform, to driving development by demonstration.
“How do you get the operators to drive the integration developmental piece?
“The operational experience of the Wedgetail crews with F-22 pilots has highlighted ways the two platforms might evolve to deliver significantly greater joint effect. But we need to build from their reworking of TTPs to shape development requirements so to speak. We need to develop to an operational outcome; not stay in the world of slow-motion requirements development platform by platform.”
Laird: “Our visit this year to the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center at Fallon highlighted the crucial need to link joint TTP development with training and hopefully beyond that to inform the joint integration piece.
“How best to do that from your point of view”?
Blackburn: “Defence is procuring a Live/Virtual/Constructive (LVC) training capability.
“But the approach is reported to be narrowly focused on training. We need to expand the aperture and include development and demonstration within the LVC world.
“We could use LVC to have the engineers and operators who are building the next generation of systems in a series of laboratories, participate in real-world exercises.
“Let’s bring the developmental systems along, and plug it into the real-world exercise, but without interfering with it.
“With engagement by developers in a distributed laboratory model through LVC, we could be exploring and testing ideas for a project, during development. We would not have to wait until a capability has reached an ‘initial’ or ‘full operating’ capability level; we could learn a lot along the development by such an approach that involves the operators in the field.
“The target event would be a major classified exercise. We could be testing integration in the real-world exercise and concurrently in the labs that are developing the next generation of “integrated” systems.
“That, to my mind, is an integrated way of using LVC to help demonstrate and develop the integrated force. We could accelerate development coming into the operational force and eliminating the classic requirements setting approach.
“We need to set aside some aspects of the traditional acquisition approach in favor of an integrated development approach which would accelerate the realisation of integrated capabilities in the operational force.”
Let me close by examining more closely the AVM’s comments on off-boarding.
When I worked for Secretary Wynne as a consultant beginning in 2004, I was focused primarily on the challenge of building a F-35 global enterprise. Wynne often made the point that a major problem for fighter pilots with fifth generation was that often they would not be delivering the kill shot, for their role was to identify targets for other shooters.
The off-boarding of weapons and sensors is at the heart of the kill web force, whether manned or inclusive of unmanned or autonomous systems.
This strategic shift to off-boarding is what allows one to consider massing force from different locations, from different platforms, from the joint force or the coalition force.
But how does the emergence of off-boarding affect the future of platform acquisition or the design of “next generation” core manned platforms?
In other words, adding new autonomous systems is not simply additive but goes to the core of weapons design and I would argue will change significantly future force design. That is why I would argue that adding autonomous systems to a ready force which is built around a kill web con-ops of off-boarding is not simply a gap filler but a strategic shift in next generation platform design.
Featured Image: AIRMSHL Braz with Rear Admiral Smith at the September 26, 2024 Sir Richard Williams Foundation Seminar.
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