We live in an era of implausible deniability and ambiguous warfare

[davidbfpo]

I dip into War on The Rocks irregularly and this article may help lift the gloom that I see here.

It opens with:

The world’s largest constellation of satellites is not operated by the U.S. government, but rather by Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that uses satellites to gain insights for its commercial customers.....While principally focused on commercial applications, the dual-use nature of this technology is clear. Battles at sea historically favor the first effective attacker. Launching the first effective attack requires either superior scouting...

Link:https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/pe...ime-awareness/

Is this an example of how the non-state sector can help with an established system? No doubt the traditional response will be it is not built for warfare, e.g. insufficient, encrypted data down link capacity.

Could it be innovation comes from the bottom in the military, where the need can be clearer, even if the capacity to innovate may be small?

[flagg]

I dip into War on The Rocks irregularly and this article may help lift the gloom that I see here.

It opens with:
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/pe...ime-awareness/

Is this an example of how the non-state sector can help with an established system? No doubt the traditional response will be it is not built for warfare, e.g. insufficient, encrypted data down link capacity.

Could it be innovation comes from the bottom in the military, where the need can be clearer, even if the capacity to innovate may be small?

For building an array of micro-satellites, it may likely require an innovation programme such as Hacking 4 Defense developed at Stanford U by:

Steve Blank(the “godfather” of Lean StartUp)
Pete Newell(stood up the Rapid Equipping Force)
Joe Felter(now serving as Assistant Undersecretary of Defense)

It’s an awesome university based program(I’m biased) that is designed to solve big hairy national security problems.

I’ve used it as a basis to build short courses focused on teaching uniformed and civilian defence personnel how to innovate and support them in their efforts from the bottom up.

One of the problems we have identified after conducted this pilot course thru quite a few iterations in two countries now is the vulnerability that comes with organisations where too many people have the right to say no to bottom up innovation.

So stealing heavily from Steve Blank’s “Get to Yes” Memo: https://steveblank.com/2015/03/17/ge...te-innovation/

We are proposing the return of the Letter of Marque: https://groundedcuriosity.com/why-be...e-a-privateer/

[Bill Moore]

David,

Sometimes a little gloom drives innovation, nothing like necessity to drive change with a sense of purpose and urgency .

Innovative centers like Silicon Valley have spread around the world for better and worse. I'll take your point and raise you one. Non-state sectors are frequently the centers for military innovation, but frequently is military-industry teaming that leads to the big innovation wins. I suspect there are bureaucratic hurdles to expanding our ISR collection by leveraging existing private industry satellites, but those hurdles can be overcome during a crisis. Going back to my first point, a futuristic adversary may have a couple hundred $2 million armed/weaponized unmanned maritime vessels (surface and sub surface and hybrid). Assuming our ISR could detect these, now we have to destroy with million dollar missile. That is still an expensive proposition, so the economic asymmetry remains unless we apply a new paradigm. If it is a protracted conflict, then what opponent's industry can out produce the other? I assume it will be possible in the near future to produce small, unmanned vessels using 3D printing, and adding the software as the article I linked to above indicates is a pretty simple and inexpensive. This can play out in multiple ways over time, either in our favor or against us. I guess my point is after thinking about it a little more is we cannot assume technical superiority in future, as an example, even if we know our destroyers are superior to Chinese and Russian destroyers, innovation in other areas can neutralize that advantage. When I see net assessments that compare friendly to potential adversary forces, they are largely symmetric (plane to plane, tank to tank, ship to ship) and the assumption is the side with the mostest and bestest military toys has the decisive advantage. This process neglects comparing fighting strategies and how asymmetric technology and tactics and change the assessment finding.

[flagg]

David,

Sometimes a little gloom drives innovation, nothing like necessity to drive change with a sense of purpose and urgency .

Innovative centers like Silicon Valley have spread around the world for better and worse. I'll take your point and raise you one. Non-state sectors are frequently the centers for military innovation, but frequently is military-industry teaming that leads to the big innovation wins. I suspect there are bureaucratic hurdles to expanding our ISR collection by leveraging existing private industry satellites, but those hurdles can be overcome during a crisis. Going back to my first point, a futuristic adversary may have a couple hundred $2 million armed/weaponized unmanned maritime vessels (surface and sub surface and hybrid). Assuming our ISR could detect these, now we have to destroy with million dollar missile. That is still an expensive proposition, so the economic asymmetry remains unless we apply a new paradigm. If it is a protracted conflict, then what opponent's industry can out produce the other? I assume it will be possible in the near future to produce small, unmanned vessels using 3D printing, and adding the software as the article I linked to above indicates is a pretty simple and inexpensive. This can play out in multiple ways over time, either in our favor or against us. I guess my point is after thinking about it a little more is we cannot assume technical superiority in future, as an example, even if we know our destroyers are superior to Chinese and Russian destroyers, innovation in other areas can neutralize that advantage. When I see net assessments that compare friendly to potential adversary forces, they are largely symmetric (plane to plane, tank to tank, ship to ship) and the assumption is the side with the mostest and bestest military toys has the decisive advantage. This process neglects comparing fighting strategies and how asymmetric technology and tactics and change the assessment finding.

Bill you are correct in that we cannot assume technological superiority.

Post WWII? Yes. Most R&D was primarily(90% ish) military in nature with some trickle down to commercial/consumer applications.

1989? Yes. But Military R&D and Commercial R&D spend hit parity.

2018? No. Commercial R&D makes up approx 90% of total global R&D spend. Everyone has access to COTS(Commercial Off The Shelf). That 10% dedicated military R&D will only get you so far.

At the nation state level, not much is needed to build and deploy experimental armed drone swarms.

Some cash

Small, skilled, motivated team with latitude

The national/organisational will to experiment with and deploy/employ it.

[davidbfpo]

This is a link to a 2018 British Army Leadership Conference and a summary of the main speakers - via an ex-soldier and their blogsite. It opens with:

The conference theme was Successfully Leading through Change. Not every lesson was about leading change. There were some great insights no matter what you are leading. So, here are six lessons worth taking away from the day.

Link:https://thearmyleader.co.uk/change-leadership/

From my outside perch I am not convinced the UK, let alone the military recognises the pace of change and how to accept it. Conformity is still valued over non-conformity.

[davidbfpo]

First the good news:

General Andre Lanata, who took over as head of the NATO transformation command in September, told a conference in Berlin that his command demonstrated over 21 “disruptive” projects during military exercises in Norway this month. He urged startups as well as traditional arms manufacturers to work with the Atlantic alliance to boost innovation, as rapid and easy access to emerging technologies was helping adversaries narrow NATO’s longstanding advantage.

Then the traditionalists get in:

Participants also met behind closed doors with chief executives from 12 of the 15 biggest arms makers in Europe.

Link:https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKCN1NJ0PY

[Bill Moore]

First the good news:

Then the traditionalists get in:
Link:https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-br...-idUKKCN1NJ0PY

In my opinion, the West is almost solely focused on technological innovation and missing the larger issue of advanced gray zone strategies that are frankly resilient to any technological solution. In sum, our innovation is focused on winning the next conventional war, while our adversaries are defeating us now with innovative strategies in the gray zone far short of conventional warfare.

We need to innovation in our holistic understanding of the security environment, how to recognize other than military threats to our national interests, and subsequent innovation in our strategic approaches. Learning to do the wrong thing better is not value added innovation.