Compass Points - Innovation Cycles & Ships
What lessons from the Ukraine fighting?
Compass Points - Innovation Cycles & Ships
What lessons from the Ukraine fighting?
November 25, 2024
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Some say that with the new US administration just weeks away, that the fighting in Ukraine will soon be over. If the fighting does stop, it will intensify the efforts of students of warfigting to discover lessons from the hostilities in Ukraine. Among the lessons that will be sought is the question of surface vessels. Ukraine has used both missiles and water borne drones to successfully attack Russian navy ships. Does the fighting in Ukraine mean the end of navy surface ships?
Time reporter Simon Shuster has investigated, "The Drone Wars: How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea."
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. . . Though it has no large warships in its navy, Ukraine has used these drones to outmaneuver one of the greatest naval powers in the world. Produced at a cost of around $200,000 apiece, the weapons have damaged or destroyed about two dozen Russian warships—as much as a third of the Black Sea fleet, including large landing ships and missile carriers worth billions of dollars. These strikes have forced the rest of the Russian navy to pull back from Ukrainian shores, all but conceding defeat in the greatest sea battle Europe has seen since World War II.
Standing on that beach, nose to nose with the Magura, it was hard to believe this motorized dinghy could score such an epic victory. Russia’s status as a naval power dates back more than three centuries to the age of Peter the Great, the Russian czar who was so obsessed with battleships that he once traveled in disguise to the Netherlands to learn how to make them. Now, thanks to a drone conceived in a Kyiv garage, the Russian navy has begun to look useless along a critical front in the war. Vladimir Putin knows it. In February, he fired the commander of the Black Sea fleet; a month later, he sacked the head of the entire Russian navy as the Ukrainian drone strikes intensified.
-- Simon Shuster, Time
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In a related discussion, Dr. Robert Farley writing in The National Interest asks the question, "Does Cheap Missiles Mean the Era of Navy Surface Warships Is Over?"
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More than a year on from the sinking of RFS Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, we have few clear lessons for the naval architects who must build new fleets or the legislatures that must pay for them about the future of naval warfare.
Questions linger, and we don’t yet have all the answers.
Futurists consistently overpredicted the end of the surface ship over the 20th century. The submarine, then the aircraft, then the nuclear weapons were supposed to spell the end of surface warships. Submarines proved to be a serious but manageable threat, aircraft became part of a warship’s toolset, and against nukes warships were fortunately never tested in real combat.
-- Dr. Robert Farley
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Throughout history a nation or group of nations will develop some new technology, a new weapon of war. At first the technology seems unbeatable. At first the technology may actually be unbeatable. But soon opposing nations develop a variety of counters in training, tactics, and new counter technology of their own. What was once the new technology inevitably becomes the old technology. And weapons that once seemed unbeatable become just another factor commanders must deal with on the battlefield.
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Among those seeking lessons from the fighting in Ukraine is The Institute for the Study of War. For example, in one Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, the ISW reports that Russia and Ukraine are engaged in an "offense-defense innovation-adaptation race."
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[The recent] strike package is emblematic of the constant air domain offense-defense innovation-adaptation race in which Russia and Ukraine are engaged. Ukrainian air defense managed to shoot down the majority of the Kh-101/555/55 cruise missiles and Shahed drones, which may suggest that Russian forces fired the Kh-101 series missiles and Shaheds in order to distract Ukrainian air defense. Ukrainian forces did not shoot down any of the Kh-22 cruise missiles, Iskander-M ballistic missiles, or S-300 surface-to-air missiles, by contrast. Russian forces may have specifically designed this strike package to distract Ukrainian air defense with the Kh-101s and Shahed combination with the intention of helping the other missiles make it through to their intended targets. The unconfirmed reports of 3M22 Zircon strikes are also noteworthy as Zircons are typically fired from naval vessels at other vessels or coastal targets, so Russian forces may have had to adapt the Zircon launchers to strike targets so far inland. Russian forces additionally appear to have integrated North Korean missiles into their strike packages, which may have been harder for Ukrainian forces to detect and shoot down. ISW has previously assessed that Russia is experimenting with the strike packages it can launch at Ukraine to achieve the maximum desired effect, and that Ukraine in return continues efforts to adapt and respond to new Russian strike packages.
-- Institute for the Study of War
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The ISW finds that month-by-month Ukraine, "continues efforts to adapt and respond to new Russian strike packages." This is the way of war. A nation fighting to win cannot surrender when new technology arrives. The answer is to find a counter to the new technology.
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How does this continual "offense-defense innovation-adaptation race" apply to the Navy and Marine Corps today? The US Navy is not going to surrender its surface fleet just because of the development of precision munitions. Precision munitions are a threat to the fleet. Beyond that, hypersonic precision munitions are a significant threat. But the Navy is developing a variety of technology programs to counter precision munitions. The US Navy has not said and never will say, "this new technology is too powerful, we will have to stop sailing around the world and instead just stay in port." The Navy would never do that.
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But what about the Marine Corps?
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Unfortunately, beginning in the spring of 2020, the Marine Corps looked at the threat of precision munitions and decided the threat to the deployed MAGTF was so great that the Marine Corps should begin to retreat from worldwide offensive operations and instead withdraw to defense. The Marine Corps turned its focus toward a theoretical force of small units of missiles Marines that would be located on islands off the coast of China. These units would sit and wait for passing Chinese military ships and launch missiles toward them. The missile units would be small, isolated, narrow in capabilities, and difficult to reinforce, support, or evacuate.
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In developing the new defensive plan, the Marine Corps did not seem to ask, what are new counters to the threat of precision munitions? Instead, the Marine Corps began with the misguided premise that precision munitions made global MAGTF operations impossible. That foundational and mistaken premise led to a damaging chain of decisions and the reduction or elimination of much of the Marine Corps’ combined arms, global crisis response capabilities.
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If the fighting in Ukraine comes to an end soon, it will intensify the search for warfighting lessons learned.
Do cheap missiles and drones mean the era of Navy surface warships is over? Absolutely not.
Do cheap missiles and drones mean the era of the Marine global MAGTF is over? Absolutely not.
There is a constant "offense-defense innovation-adaptation race." The Marine Corps must get in that race and stay in that race, not by focusing on defensive operations, but by rebuilding, upgrading, and enhancing the uniquely powerful and uniquely flexible Marine MAGTF. Compass Points salutes Dr Farley and the Institute for the Study of War and salutes all those throughout the Marine community and in Congress helping to upgrade the Marine MAGTF with new technologies and new capabilities.
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Time - 08/26/2024
The Drone Wars: How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
By Simon Shuster
https://time.com/7013531/sea-drones-how-ukraine-beat-russia-in-the-black-sea/
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The National Interest (nationalinterest.org) 01/30/2024
Does Cheap Missiles Mean the Era of Navy Surface Warships Is Over?
Russia’s misfortune at sea does not necessarily mean that the rest of the world can rest upon the obsolescence of the surface warship. The U.S. Navy should however worry about the proliferation of cheap missiles.
by Robert Farley
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Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org) 02/07/2024
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment
By Karolina Hird, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, and Fredrick W. Kagan
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-7-2024
The pundits and their uniformed acolytes are quick to proclaim the demise of one weapon or another. Battleships, tanks, manned bombers, ocean mines, air craft carriers, tube artillery, infantry, helicopters. For every rat there is a cat.
The Marine Corps leadership reacted to the Chinese hypersonic missiles in complete ignorance of reality. Their reaction bordered on criminal. Ships can defend themselves with technology and we have yet to see a hypersonic Chinese missile hit a moving garbage barge. If the entire State of Israel can create an iron dome a ship most certainly can. We have the technology…. Modern tanks are being outfitted with their own self defense umbrellas.
The battleship was not obsolete despite mines, torpedoes or aircraft had the ocean going units been properly configured. As late as WWII a German battleship with air cover ran the English Channel. As much as war time propaganda wanted to indicate the Bismarck had been sunk, she was actually scuttled by the crew. The USS New Jersey saw service off of Vietnam and Beirut. A refurbished battleship with air defense and cruise missiles would still be formidable.
My contacts tell me that most Russian Drones in use in Ukraine have poor cameras and properly camouflaged infantry and armor are often bypassed, especially at night. Not every drone has infrared and comm links can be jammed. Like any weapons platform Drones can be lured into kill zones much like aircraft or helicopters.
If Amphibious ships are obsolete the entire surface fleet and fixed installations are too. Of course, neither is true. The amphibious force can move, advance, withdraw….. if the cruise missiles of their era, the Kamikaze did not prevail the range of anti ship missiles will not either.
When the Russians invaded Ukraine a smarter leader would have withdrawn his surface combatants into the southern regions of the Black Sea. But, there ships lack the logistics to bore holes into the ocean for weeks on end.
Berger’s Folly may have killed the Corps. If it has not, the reconstitution of three Marine Expeditionary Forces as MAGFTs requires some modernization in air defense and the return of MPS squadrons.
There are strong indications that Great Britain will dispense with their two new carriers. Buy them. Offer their crews US citizenship and rename then USS Anglo-Saxon and USS Thatcher. Then buy every ship and armored unit they will shut down. Crews and all. Buy the Royal Marines lock stock and barrel and make them their own Regiment in the US Marines. We do not have time. You can buy capability faster than you can grow it.
Right now a smug DoD is a deer in the headlights thinking that Russia or China will operate off of some mythical US Timeline. The US Army seems to get it with the USAF waking up while the US Navy is broken and delusional and the USMC is in the injured reserve with no prognosis as to when it might return to the field.
“ Over the bleached and jumbled bones of destroyed civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late, too late. “
The US sense of urgency at the moment is pathetic and soon to collide with DOGE which could be a debilitating storm of the worst sort.
“At first the technology seems unbeatable. At first the technology may actually be unbeatable. But soon opposing nations develop a variety of counters in training, tactics, and new counter technology of their own. What was once the new technology inevitably becomes the old technology? And weapons that once seemed unbeatable become just another factor commanders must deal with on the battlefield.”
EXACTLY!!! Developing “counters” in warfare goes back to after “Agincourt” when the French, as a counter, started cutting off the middle finger of captured English archers. Instead of countering the CCP A2/AD tactics, the Commandant copied them with the MLR development of land based short range anti-ship missiles. This is akin to the English cutting off their own fingers. Speaking of middle fingers, what is the US Navy doing to the US Marine Corps by not building and maintaining amphibious ships. It certainly is not enhancing the war fighting “lethality” of the Combatant Commanders. Instead of disassembling the MAGTF capabilities why not enhance them with a new idea? If the Commandant's worry was CCP ships, at a bare minimum, the Commandant should have realized the Marine Corps has the new stealthy F-35 coming into the FMF. Why not take a look at new anti-ship tactics and weapons for the F-35. Good strategy is not “rocket science”.