This is fire. I remember reading about the concerns around incrementally adding onto old tech in 2018 not long after the then-latest NSS came out. We obviously seemed to think it was fine and let the roof continue leaking. I think this piece gets right to the heart of the fact that we need to make a lot of ctrl+alt+delete style moves if we're really taking LSCO seriously. I'd also like to add that self-respecting line companies in the regular Army are still using PVS 14s... and what iteration of the Abrams are we even on at this point?
To oversimplify Lazar Kagaovich the Train Commissar* style:
Take LUCAS team.
They are now acquisitions.
All of it.
Promotions obviously.
Rest of 20301 enjoy your retirement. Attempting to get good results from the same people will simply get the same bad results. We must change the people, if they cannot be fired they can be bypassed.
*He moved the factories to the Urals in 1941, transformation in contact indeed.
These are some very good insights on our innovation-to-fielding bottleneck. However, we should be cautious about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As mentioned, many of these older systems have undergone significant upgrades and remain competitive, especially in uncontested environments where mass is a key driver of strategic goals.
For example, in the past, electronic warfare platforms were replaced by newer models that, despite being more modern, were often less capable and took years to catch up, such as the EF-111, F-4G, or EA-6B, being replaced by the F-16CJ and EA-18G or not at all, relying on future passive detect systems, which was a consequential effect in Afghanstan and Iraq.
While collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) are an important part of our future capabilities, autonomy is not there yet and, on its own, will not define warfare today or in the near future -- we have yet to discover the problems with it, and we will, painfully. We must be careful not to equate current trends with military success in incomparable battlefields (i.e., Ukraine).
Undoubtedly, we need reform in acquisition and procurement, especially for large-ticket items like fighters and frigates. We are heading in the right direction, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution in war. Although autonomy will continue to replace manned systems, it's not there yet, which is why legacy systems still serve us well.
Innovation, technology, capabilities, and scale set us apart; what needs to change is the pace of these advancements.
For the Army at least, there seems to be a dearth of service-level ConOps to support the UGCRV effort. Even if there were ConOps, the technical description seems to be for a "tactical truck" type vehicle to move with or follow an ABCT combat formation. There does not seem to be any holistic ConOp to describe who the service sees autonomy across a theater from port/marshaling area to point of penetration.
The continued fascination with specific tactical-level activities (breach, carrying 1 ton within a combat formation [but without specifics], long-haul cargo) without an overarching operational ConOp that cascades down seems a weakness. There are myriad tasks and missions autonomous systems could perform as an integrated formation member, but that integrated approach does not seem to have serious attention from senior leaders leading to a rather haphazard approach in material solutions.
Where is an Army Operating Concept that describes, at echelon, the employment of crewed and unscrewed systems in heterogeneous formations with distributed capabilities that avoid burdening crewed assets with the full protection or network requirements? Where's the discussion of how to focus crewed systems on core functions that require human action while off-loading enabling functions that can better be performed by autonomous systems?
Unlike other services, the Army is formation-based and not system-based and simply having high functioning autonomous systems to perform discrete functions may not be enough to support closing with and destroying adversary formations on the ground.
This is fire. I remember reading about the concerns around incrementally adding onto old tech in 2018 not long after the then-latest NSS came out. We obviously seemed to think it was fine and let the roof continue leaking. I think this piece gets right to the heart of the fact that we need to make a lot of ctrl+alt+delete style moves if we're really taking LSCO seriously. I'd also like to add that self-respecting line companies in the regular Army are still using PVS 14s... and what iteration of the Abrams are we even on at this point?
To oversimplify Lazar Kagaovich the Train Commissar* style:
Take LUCAS team.
They are now acquisitions.
All of it.
Promotions obviously.
Rest of 20301 enjoy your retirement. Attempting to get good results from the same people will simply get the same bad results. We must change the people, if they cannot be fired they can be bypassed.
*He moved the factories to the Urals in 1941, transformation in contact indeed.
These are some very good insights on our innovation-to-fielding bottleneck. However, we should be cautious about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As mentioned, many of these older systems have undergone significant upgrades and remain competitive, especially in uncontested environments where mass is a key driver of strategic goals.
For example, in the past, electronic warfare platforms were replaced by newer models that, despite being more modern, were often less capable and took years to catch up, such as the EF-111, F-4G, or EA-6B, being replaced by the F-16CJ and EA-18G or not at all, relying on future passive detect systems, which was a consequential effect in Afghanstan and Iraq.
While collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) are an important part of our future capabilities, autonomy is not there yet and, on its own, will not define warfare today or in the near future -- we have yet to discover the problems with it, and we will, painfully. We must be careful not to equate current trends with military success in incomparable battlefields (i.e., Ukraine).
Undoubtedly, we need reform in acquisition and procurement, especially for large-ticket items like fighters and frigates. We are heading in the right direction, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution in war. Although autonomy will continue to replace manned systems, it's not there yet, which is why legacy systems still serve us well.
Innovation, technology, capabilities, and scale set us apart; what needs to change is the pace of these advancements.
For the Army at least, there seems to be a dearth of service-level ConOps to support the UGCRV effort. Even if there were ConOps, the technical description seems to be for a "tactical truck" type vehicle to move with or follow an ABCT combat formation. There does not seem to be any holistic ConOp to describe who the service sees autonomy across a theater from port/marshaling area to point of penetration.
The continued fascination with specific tactical-level activities (breach, carrying 1 ton within a combat formation [but without specifics], long-haul cargo) without an overarching operational ConOp that cascades down seems a weakness. There are myriad tasks and missions autonomous systems could perform as an integrated formation member, but that integrated approach does not seem to have serious attention from senior leaders leading to a rather haphazard approach in material solutions.
Where is an Army Operating Concept that describes, at echelon, the employment of crewed and unscrewed systems in heterogeneous formations with distributed capabilities that avoid burdening crewed assets with the full protection or network requirements? Where's the discussion of how to focus crewed systems on core functions that require human action while off-loading enabling functions that can better be performed by autonomous systems?
Unlike other services, the Army is formation-based and not system-based and simply having high functioning autonomous systems to perform discrete functions may not be enough to support closing with and destroying adversary formations on the ground.
Are the Service Chiefs really the problem? Or 700,000 civilians with civil service protection?
It’s power not numbers
(Of course 700K thats too many for 2 million military lol ).