It all starts on a dreamy Christmas morning. You open a present from your mother-in-law. You find a "multi-tool" with or without a "sturdy belt holster". You thank her for the thoughtfulness. You might even give her a mother-in-law hug. Later you can't find your pocket knife so you grab your new multi-tool and go hiking in Moab, Utah. 127 hours later, trapped and near death in a canyon, you hack through your arm with the dull blade of the multi-tool and cut through your nerve fibers with its crappy fold-out pliers. Multi-tools don't work. You might say, "Hey, that famous climber Aron Ralston saved his own life because he had a multi-tool and was able to successfully cut his arm off". He was lucky. And his luck was the kind that casts James Franco as his character in the Hollywood reenactment. The rest of us don't have that kind of luck. The rest of us die.
When we send troops into combat, we don't issue multi-tools. We give them weapons with singular lethal purpose. If more killing power is required we keep it simple. Last time I checked a fire team consisted of two riflemen, a grenadier, and a machine gunner. They may all be able to operate each weapon but when the fire-fight starts they stick to their specialty. Then they might add a mortar team, or heavy artillery, or close air support. This is the building block approach to effective warfare...and it works. The same goes for air power. We don't issue multi-tools to our Air Force pilots. Instead, along with their high performance jet aircraft, a fighter pilot is issued a hook blade knife. The hook pops out like a switch-blade. The hook is used to cut the parachute risers in case their aircraft ceases to fly properly and they must bale out. The smart ones open the hook blade in advance and tuck it into their flight suit. This way they have the right tool for the job and don't have to struggle to open it as they plummet beneath a tangled parachute.
Use the right tool for the job. Any mechanic, carpenter, infantry soldier, or fighter pilot will tell you having the right tool is a life saver. Why then is there a belief that tools can be bundled into more effective packages. The answer is, of course, cost. There is always a cost savings when you buy five tools in one, just watch late night television. There is a fallacy in believing this combination of tools does cost less, or is just as effective as the tools in their individual form, or even worse, believing they are better.
John Boyd successfully argued against the multi-tool in the 70's and made his point. The result was the F-16 fighter. This aircraft is the greatest pure dog fighting aircraft ever conceived. Here's another question that Boyd answered. How do you put a 30 mm cannon in the air? Ladies and gentleman we give you the A-10 Warthog...not very pretty but pretty damn effective. The A-10 was also a direct product of this proper tool for the job mentality. Fighter's fight, bomber's bomb, attack aircraft attack, and ISR aircraft...well, what exactly do ISR aircraft do? More on ISR aircraft later. First some preparatory thoughts.
The philosophy of the multi-tool goes deeper than cost. There is a belief that grouping things or aggregating them into communal living improves effectiveness too. What could be more effective then always having the right tool for the job at your finger tips? Well, for starters, having the right tool for the job. The multi-tool is rarely the right tool for any job. So why does everybody buy them? Well that's the magic of creative marketing and hopeful gift giving. Giving someone a plain screwdriver is somewhat unimaginative. But giving someone a tool that does everything is believed to carry more value. Here's a better idea. How about giving someone a non-conductive screwdriver? That's both thoughtful and could be a life saver. Last thing I want to do is poke around in a high voltage fuse panel with a screwdriver that unfolds from the handle of my multi-tool. That's candidate material for next year's Darwin award. Yet we still have leaders in our Department of Defense who think giving the troops a multi-tool will reduce the budget and enhance effectiveness. These leaders should also be on the short list for next year's Darwin award, except it's not those leaders who have to use the crappy pliers. It's the men and women in the trenches who get stuck with the bad Christmas gift. Ultimately our national security is eroded by the same faulty logic.
Some of this can be traced to an early belief in the power of network centric warfare. Twenty years ago, Andrew Marshall, in the OSD Office of Net Assessment, threw down a vision for a Revolution in Military Affairs in which the DoD could transform the way we fight wars, predicated by the coming advances in information technology. Much has been written and many things have been attempted. The promise of increased combat power, based on the power of the network alone, has not materialized. We do not have a single integrated air picture (SIAP). We do not have joint integrated fire control (JIFC). We do not have a cooperative engagement capability (CEC). At least not to the level envisioned by their proponents. We do have a few more unmanned systems in operation; remotely piloted aircraft have increased for instance. But we have always had unmanned satellites, rockets, big missiles, cruise missiles, and target drones. The unmanned technology is not new; just the attempt to apply the technology in a ubiquitous fashion is new. Technology has driven a belief in something ethereal, something strung together in network form, with an added social benefit. It is this communal effect applied to technology that fuels the promise of the multi-tool. It is the socialization of air power that we should work hard to avoid less we suffer a reduction in our effectiveness.
Recently a high ranking DoD official stood up at a conference and said, "The DoD will never again buy a single aircraft with a single mission purpose". This DoD official has a lock on a job with television infomercials upon their retirement. The myth of the multi-mission aircraft remains strong within the Department of Defense. Although the Navy is still building the MP-8 multi-mission aircraft, the Air Force abandoned hopes for their version of a large multi-mission aircraft several years ago. Thank God. Back then it was called the E-10A and was destined to cost the country close to $500M dollars per copy. Oddly the multi-tool concept of lower cost broke down with the E-10A. Seems like bundling the capability should reduce its cost right? Not if you are placing two unique $200M dollar systems on a $100M dollar aircraft. But the real confusion existed in the operational concept for this multi-mission aircraft. Where would it fight? And which mission would have priority? Combining the mission of the JSTARS with the mission of the AWACS on a single platform seems, on the surface, to be a worthy goal. Until you realize the missions are vastly different. The JSTARS looks at what’s moving on the ground while the AWACS keeps an eye on what's flying in the air. Both missions must happen continuously. They fly two completely different radars both in frequency, power, and utilization. But of even greater importance is the fact that the two missions operate in separate areas of the battlefield. This operational information was lost from the very beginning. Sure, the technology could be made more comparable, after all both systems are radars. But to fly one to cover the JSTARS mission means a second one would have to be flying to cover the AWACS mission. Instead of two multi-tool jets costing the country $1B dollars, we could buy two dedicated jets (1 radar system a piece) that would cost a total of $600M thereby saving the country $400M, for which we could purchase a third jet and still return $100M to the national treasury. What were they thinking? The word we are searching for is multi-tool.
And it is this multi-tool mindset that continues to inspire our dreams and cloud our judgment. Here is another example. Dedicated mission aircraft, such as the JSTARS and AWACS have served proudly for decades. The promise of lower cost remotely piloted aircraft, serving a general purpose, non-dedicated aircraft has crept into our imagination. The highly publicized KC-X tanker has also raised the spectra of possibility to do more general purpose service in more mission areas. Using general purpose aircraft to fly non-dedicate missions has been a goal of transformation advocates for many years. If more of our mission systems could be placed into pods then any aircraft could be used to fly any mission. The flexibility of air power seemingly rises to the infinite in possibility. There is of course no free lunch as many would wish to believe. One senior Air Force official has said with regard to the application of a non-dedicated concept to the ISR mission, that, “…they [non-dedicated ISR concepts] have been the bane of my existence".
Non-dedicated operations break down because there are too many variables to control. We dedicate things when the mission is too important to delay, screw up, or fail…like fighting a war. Will there be an aircraft available? Have the generic systems on the aircraft been maintained? Will a higher priority mission bump our mission at the last minute? Many of these issues could be solved with proper technology. But we are talking about more than technology. People are involved. The technology could be ubiquitous. To a computer a one or a zero is still the same tomorrow as it was today. But it's the people who fight the wars. You wouldn't tell Mario Andretti to go out into the parking lot and pick a random car to drive in the Indianapolis 500. When we ask Air Force personnel to fly and operate sophisticated machinery, it's not just at a race on Sunday; it's in a war zone. It would be nice for them to have taken a few laps around the track first. Yes there is the right stuff mentality prevalent in all pilots, and Mario Andretti could probably smoke us all driving a Ford Focus, but that's not the right way to organize, train, and equip people for mortal combat.
We have to stop thinking with a one-size-fits-all mentality. We might think the benefit of technology is to enable one-size-fits-all. It does not. Technology may provide the infantry soldier an M-16 that is lighter, more powerful, and less likely to misfire. But it will not reduce the requirement to have an M-16 with a dedicated soldier behind the trigger. It will not reduce the reality that certain missions cannot be made stronger by combining them with those that are less strong. And those that are weak can be strengthened by combining them with those that are less weak. To think that technology enables every system to contribute according to its capability and every need can be filled with whatever capability is available sounds suspiciously like a failed system of government. It is not in any way like any war that has ever been fought and won. Warfare is not a social experiment nor is it a system of government. You win with weapons that work effectively applied with overwhelming force, and a whole lot of intelligence. Then one bullet must be fired from one rifle. Just ask Osama bin Laden. Giving Seal Team 6 a multi-tool doesn’t work.
The Socialization of Air Power
by Jim Muccio
No comments:
Post a Comment