Compass Points - Precisely Mistaken?
Is precision warfare fading?
Compass Points - Precisely Mistaken?
Is precision warfare fading?
July 6, 2024
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Writing in Breaking Defense, author and Marine Mark Cancian asks, “Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away?"
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Precision munitions have given the United States a decisive combat edge for 50 years. From Desert Storm to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, “one bomb, one kill” has become the expectation. As the United States passed this capability to Ukraine for its struggle with Russia, HIMARS with GMLRS, Excalibur 155 mm artillery shells, Ground-Launched Small-Diameter Bombs, and JDAMs have had an immense impact on the battlefield.
Yet, Russia has used electronic warfare, decoys, deception, and dispersion to render some useless. And that raises a potentially destabilizing question for the US military: What if precision location and guidance are losing their battlefield dominance in the face of countermeasures? If so, the United States will need to change its concepts of operations and acquisition strategies to hedge against the possibility of operations with diminished location capabilities.
-- Mark Cancian
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Mark Cancian notes that while the US Army is taking steps to expand both precision and mass, the Marine Corps, to the contrary, seems stuck in the precision paradigm.
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The US Army is hedging its bets on mass and precision. As its operations field manual states, “Leaders generate firepower through direct and indirect fires, using mass, precision, or, typically, a combination of the two.” Thus, the Army is pursuing a variety of precision attack programs from the Precision Strike Missile to hypersonics. The Army is also increasing its production of “dumb” artillery shells by a factor of six, from a prewar level of 14,000 per month to 100,000 per month by 2025. It retains the artillery force structure to deliver a high volume of fires.
In contrast, the Marine Corps has emphatically rejected any reliance on mass and bet on long-range precision attack. It has eliminated most of its cannon artillery and about one-third of its airpower. Instead, it is standing up three long-range Tomahawk batteries and 14 anti-ship missile batteries.
-- Mark Cancian
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Another defense expert, Andrew A. Michta, has observed that the US Army is studying ground combat in Ukraine and is making changes to Army modernization plans.
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US Army officials are using the war as an opportunity to study what’s working and what’s not, and tweak modernization plans.
Some defense officials remain hesitant to cite specific “lessons learned” on the ground front but assert the war has shown that tanks and other armored vehicles remain relevant, as does maintaining a deep artillery magazine round and fielding new loitering munitions and counter unmanned aerial systems.
“There is still a place for tanks and armored vehicles on the battlefield: Yes, there are new threats but at the end of the day, if you want to take some ground away from someone and hold it, you’ve got to do it with armed forces,” US Army acquisition head Doug Bush told an audience at an International Armoured Vehicles conference last month.
-- Real Clear Defense
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Andrew A. Michta concludes that while precision matters in war, mass still matters, and the US needs to wakeup to the importance of mass.
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The United States needs to embrace the old principles of mass and redundancies that paved the way to victory in World War II and allowed it to successfully deter and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The war in Ukraine continues to show that one’s military needs mass to counter the adversary’s mass—a reality that has been all but absent from U.S. thinking about the nature of warfare since the end of the Cold War.
. . . There is, then, something to be said for old-fashioned systems in a future conventional combat against a near-peer adversary. While technology gives Western forces an edge, that edge will only go so far when confronted with sheer numbers. If NATO ends up at war with Russia or if the United States and its allies in Asia end up in a war with China, then the decisive factor may be manpower and production elasticity when it comes to weapons and munitions. In a protracted conflict, the decisive factor could be the capacity to reconstitute forces—both personnel and equipment—to compensate for those that have been attritted on the battlefield.
-- Real Clear Defense
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Marines in the long years of the desert wars performed heroically, often against irregular adversaries. Precision warfare was a big part of the desert campaigns. Now, however, more than two years of Ukraine fighting against a peer adversary, have shown military experts everywhere the limits of precision and the enduring importance of mass.
It is time to rebuild Marine expeditionary capabilities. Whether to deter, assist, and fight in global crisis response, or to fight on the ground in a campaign against a peer or near peer adversary, the Marine Corps will need the full MAGTF package, including armor, artillery, engineering, big battalions, and maritime pre-positioning ships that were so hastily and so rashly tossed aside. What needs to be done now? One good place to begin would be to rebuild the 3rd Marine Division. The 3rd Marine Division is required by Title 10 to be a fully equipped and capable Marine infantry division. But its combat infantry regiments have been turned into sitting and sensing MLRs.
Compass Points salutes Mark Cancian for asking "Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away?" and also salutes author Andrew A. Michta for his article, "Mass Still Matters: What the U.S. Military Should Learn From Ukraine." There is no expectation that precision weapons will disappear from future battlefields. New technology and new precision weapons will continue to be important, but it is also true that mass still matters.
It is urgent that Marine Corps leaders rediscover the importance of mass and strike a new balance between precision weapons and mass. The Marine Corps needs to rebalance its thinking, rebalance the 3rd Marine Division, and rebalance the MAGTF. Russia did not give warning and wait for Ukraine to get ready before attacking. Russia attacked in a time, place, and manner that was unexpected. Very soon the Marine Corps will find itself in an unexpected fight in an unexpected location. When that fight erupts, the Marine Corps must be, once again, light enough to get there and heavy enough to stay. In every clime and place, mass still matters.
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Breaking Defense - 07/02/2024
Is the precision revolution in warfare fading away?
By Mark Cancian
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Real Clear Defense - 10/04/2023
Mass Still Matters: What the U.S. Military Should Learn From Ukraine
By Andrew A. Michta
Any advantage is short lived. Precision has its place. But, by the air war over Serbia the utility of precision and stealth were clearly no longer magic bullets and invisible cloaks. Snipers do not replace machine guns. Stealth is visible to the eye and other detection methods while fooling older radars. Precision weapons are dependent on intelligence which can fooled. All changes are on the margins and evolutionary. Collateral damage avoidance was one of many motivators for precision weapons. That comes with many unintended but totally predictable consequences.
In the end, forget the headlines and observations of amateurs. Focus on the balance required to be lethal and effective. One of the myths of modern war theory is that the masses are neutral and the selective destruction of the bad actors is key. The most current example is Gaza. The destruction of Hamas, as if the population of Gaza are neutral victims, just begs for precision weaponry. It has its place but is not the compete answer. It is part of the answer.
I’ve said this before, relying on technology alone will not win us the fight to come. I agree that we need mass and technology, especially when and not if we slog it out with the Chinese.
Yes, and yes, and yes, 3rdMarDiv needs to be rebalanced with artillery, air power, engineering equipment and logistics and with required Amphibs necessary for maneuver and sustainment.
If Missile Defense is needed, the missile defense should be an add on to the MAGTF, not a replacement!
No doubt Marines will fight and will fight ferociously, let’s make sure they have EVERYTHING to fight and win!