Compensating for Smaller Forces

Technology and Future
Contingency Requirements

by Anthony H. Cordesman

Technology and Future Contingency Requirements

The mix of contingencies for which the United States must design its forces is changing rapidly. The FY 92 Joint Military Net Assessment of the Joint Chiefs describes a wide spectrum of contingencies from low intensity to high intensity combat, and notes that while low intensity conflicts are the most likely conflicts, high intensity conflicts involve the greatest risks.

The Joint Staff, however, was focusing on the problems of optimizing forces for power projection while dealing with the risk of having to fight a major conflict with the USSR and Warsaw Pact. These problems have largely disappeared. The Warsaw Pact and the USSR no longer exist, the risk of a prolonged conventional war in the Central Region of Europe is negligible, and the remaining military R&D and production effort of the various former Soviet republics is far less threatening.

As a result, the United States is faced with the following kinds of "force sizing contingencies":

    Reemergence of a serious threat to Europe or the United States from the Russian Republic: This contingency is so drastic, and would involve sufficient warning in the case of a nonstrategic confrontation, as to allow the United States and its allies to restructure their spending and reconstitute their forces.

    Intervention in an East European or Soviet national conflict, ethnic conflict, or civil war This is more likely to be a peace creating mission than a war fighting mission, and is more likely to be performed by European than U.S. forces. Depending on the East European country involved, any use of U.S. forces would probably be a coalition operation involving ethnic warfare, some degree of urban warfare, difficult power projection conditions, major efforts to tilt U.S. actions towards a given side, and carefully tailored rules of engagement and limits on civilian casualties and collateral damage.

    A mid or high intensity conflict in Korea: In some ways, the most likely "worst case." The United States would have to reinforce a battle dominated by South Korean land forces with some potential for escalation to chemical or nuclear warfare. It would, however, fight a North Korea lacking the latest conventional weapons and short of most advanced C3I/BM, targeting, electronic warfare, and other high technology assets. It would also deal with a mass and unconventional warfare oriented force lacking in advanced night and all-weather combat assets, many aspects of combined arms and air-land operations, and a flexible command structure.

    A mid or high intensity conflict with Iraq or Iran: Any such conflict would involve engagement of a large force equipped with large amounts of modern armor, aircraft, artillery, air defense weaponry and with some ability to escalate to biological and chemical warfare. Both nations can be expected to learn from the Gulf War and to try to both develop countermeasures against the technologies and concept of operations the United States used during the Gulf War, and to improve their own ability to employ advanced technology. Both, however, have severe political, cultural, and acquisition problems in improving their ability to use advanced technology in maneuver warfare, beyond line of sight operations, air-land operations, and virtually all aspects of C3I/BM.

    A mid or high intensity conflict with Cuba: Such a conflict would also involve engagement of a large force equipped with large amounts of modern armor, aircraft, artillery, and air defense weaponry. It would differ from Iran or Iraq, however, in that it would require forced entry. Depending on the nature of the conflict, it might also involve warfare against a regime with considerable popular support in urban or highly populated areas.

    Intervention in a civil war to rescue a friendly regime: These highly political conflicts can vary sharply in virtually every dimension. They can involve situations where hours are critical or there are weeks of warning. They can be politically popular or highly unpopular. They can involve urban, jungle, desert, and/or mountain warfare. They can involve forced entry or friendly facilities. Such military actions will be political wars fought under highly unstable conditions where today's allies may be tomorrow's enemies, and ethnic and religious factors are likely to be critical. Sample test cases would be a Shi'ite uprising in Bahrain or restoring stability in Cambodia. There would be a major risk in some such conflicts of escalation to prolonged guerrilla or revolutionary warfare, and some risk of a need for evacuation or forced exit.

    Intervention in a major border conflict in the Third World: It is difficult to foresee a specific contingency at this time, but possible cases could involve an Algerian conflict with Morocco, a Libyan conflict with Tunisia, a hostile Burma or Cambodia attacking Thailand, a radical Malaysia attacking Singapore, or a Syrian attack on Lebanon or Jordan. Such conflicts would involve regular military forces but could involve unconventional forces as well. They would almost certainly involve coalition warfare. In many cases, the United States would be contributing high technology or high capability forces, rather than mass. Rather than fight in a direct force-on-force sense, the United States might often use soft strategic strikes to halt the aggressor by confronting him with a situation where rear area losses exceeded the benefit of continuing the war. Such conflicts could involve widely different mixes of terrain and climate, distance, and required reaction times. Most such conflicts would involve significant political complications and limitations on the conduct of the fighting.

    Wars involving chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, and/or long range missiles and strategic air strikes: While it is tempting to think of weapons of mass destruction in terms of relatively orthodox MIC or HIC contingencies, the threat of the use of such weapons--and actual use by extremist groups or leaders--will be an increasing possibility in even the most limited or political contingencies. The need to deter or defend against missile and air strikes will grow with time. So, however, will the risk of terrorist or unorthodox (covert) delivery. The risk of a chemical or biological "Marine Corps Barracks" attack will affect many aspects of operations.

The end of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union eases some aspects of U.S. force planning, but the above list shows that the United States still faces a challenging range of contingencies. They cover the entire globe, and present major problems in terms of time and distance. They involve very different levels of warning, and mean that the United States must often rely on fully combat ready forces and rapid deployment. They involve a wide range of different tactical conditions in terms of climate, terrain, and weather, and mean that U.S. weapons and technology must be able to fight under a very wide range of conditions.

Above all, they involve the reality that the United States cannot plan only to fight popular wars, fight along purely military lines, or fight under "Weinberger rules." Most post-cold war contingencies are likely to involve high political risks, complex political constraints, and severe limits on civilian and collateral damage. At the same time, the United States may only be able to credibly threaten the use of force, engage in the use of force, and/or sustain the use of force to a successful conclusion if it can do so with extremely low casualties to its own forces and/or terminate the conflict relatively quickly.

Constant Risk

The United States will also face a constant risk that any perceived defeat would impose severe domestic or foreign unwillingness to support further U.S. military action. In this sense, the United States will be an extremely fragile "superpower" regardless of the size of the forces it employs, and must tailor its forces accordingly. In sum, U.S. forces must be capable of fighting highly political conflicts.

Exploiting U.S. Strengths and the Weaknesses of Potential Adversaries

There is no clear road to dealing with the military requirements of the post-cold war period, or to using technology to compensate for smaller forces. The United States must maintain a mix of forces and technologies with sufficient flexibility to deal with a wide range of different requirements and warning periods. It must have global strategic mobility and forward bases, seaborne assets, and prepositioning. It must be able to rapidly integrate different force elements from each service into task forces tailored to specific contingency needs.

At the same time, many of the previous contingencies do involve threatening forces which are likely to share several major weaknesses which the right mix of U.S. technologies can exploit:

Training and readiness: In virtually every case, order of battle or force strength intelligence will be a completely misleading picture of military capability. There will be critical weaknesses in training, particularly in terms of maneuver, large scale offensive operations., integration of high technology systems, and combined arms and combined operations. At the same time, there will be gaps in readiness in addition to gaps in training, imposed by a wide range of factors. These qualitative weaknesses will make a threat force far less capable than a U.S. force of similar size, and create windows of opportunity that U.S. technology can exploit.

Intelligence, reconnaissance, and damage assessment capabilities: Most threats will lack satellite and advanced intelligence/reconnaissance/damage assessment capabilities. In most cases, the assets they do have will be vulnerable to attacks, air defenses or countermeasures. The United States will often be able to partly "blind" the enemy.

Beyond visual range: For similar reasons, most threat forces will have only limited ability to match the United States in beyond visual range air-to-air combat, counterbattery, and artillery targeting capability. Even in some areas where direct line of sight target acquisition is possible, the United States may be able to acquire targets at longer ranges, particularly at night.

C3I/battle management/targeting: Most threats will lack high technology battle management, communications, intelligence, and targeting systems. In many cases, at least individual elements of potential threat forces will have critical shortfalls in C3I capabilities and/or critical vulnerabilities. This will restrict many aspects of maneuver and the tempo and intensity of operations will be restricted.

Air control and warning and air defense: Threat forces may have an air control and warning (AC&W)/air defense "system" but it will almost certainly be sharply inferior to U.S. levels of technology. Key weaknesses will include electronic warfare, electronic and other countermeasures, layering of different defenses, survivable sensors and command centers, area coverage, independence of action by individual aircraft (raid assessment, BVR, and multi-aspect radar/fire control/ weaponry). Counter-stealth, counter-UAV, and antimissile defenses are likely to be particularly weak.

All weather/night warfare: Threat forces are likely to have severe limitations in maneuver, firepower, and sustainability in poor weather or night operations. These problems are likely to grow steadily more severe as the tempo and intensity of U.S. operations are increased, and as threat operations are required to make effective use of combined arms or combined operations. They will be even more severe if the United States has the intelligence and targeting assets to detect the key problems limiting enemy all-weather or night operations in near real time.

In broad terms, most threat forces will have organization, tactical, and equipment driven rigidities that can be exploited by the United States. This will be particularly true of forces under tight central authoritarian control, and which are separated by religious, ideological, and ethnic rivalries.

Precision kill/smart munitions/lethal area munitions: Threat forces are likely to lag significantly behind the United States in virtually every aspect of munitions lethality. Even when they possess the actual weapons and munitions, they will generally lack the ability to integrate them into an overall force mix matching U.S. capabilities.

Maneuver. For similar reasons, threat forces will lack speed of maneuver and the ability to match the intensity of U.S. operations, with the possible exception of built-up areas and jungle/forested terrain.

Sustainability: Threat forces will often lack the capability to maintain equipment, recover it, conduct field or depot combat ,repairs, or allocate ammunition and spares. Sortie and operational availability rates will often be low, or depend on a few vulnerable facilities.

Hard target killing: Threat forces are unlikely to have the technology mix necessary to kill defended hard targets, and may often depend highly on hardened command and control facilities.

Loiter sensors/UAV killers: Threat forces are likely to improve their use of UAVs and long endurance sensors and kill platforms with time, but should generally be far behind U.S. forces in these areas.

Soft strategic attacks: In most cases involving hostile countries or regular military forces, the United States will be able to attack a wide range of soft strategic targets with near impunity. These include power plants, water facilities. bridges and tunnels, phone and radio facilities, etc.

Countermeasures: Threat forces are unlikely to match the United States in countermeasures at virtually any level, ranging from electronic warfare to infrared. Where threatforces have parity in individual areas, they are unlikely to have it on a broad spectrum basis.

Strategic mobility: Most threat countries will find it difficult to conduct major redeployments, as distinguished from maneuver. Most will be severely constrained in intra-theater lift and mobility. When they can move units, they often will lack the ability to move support and maintenance capability.

Vulnerable rear areas/logistics: Threat forces will also find it difficult to protect rear areas and key logistic facilities. Many will be over-concentrated or over-specialized in a few narrow areas.

Armor/anti-armor While threat forces may have parity with the United States in a. few aspects of armor and anti-armor capability, they are unlikely to have broad parity relative to fully deployed U.S. mechanized and armored divisions. Many will lack a balanced mix of tanks and other armor, others will lack advanced armor or fire control/sensor systems.

Each of these vulnerabilities sets priorities for U.S. use of technology to compensate for smaller forces. At the same time, the United States must exploit them with the clear understanding that these threat vulnerabilities do not depend on a given U.S. magic bullet, weapon system, or technology. All depend on U.S. ability to exploit a wide mix of combat ready technologies that are employed with effective operational concepts and integrated into superior U.S. force-on-force capabilities.

Compensating for the Long-standing Weaknesses in U.S. Forces and Power Projection Capabilities

At the same time, these threat vulnerabilities must be kept in careful perspective. The United States has vulnerabilities of its own, and any effort to improve U.S. technology must be coupled to an effort to correct major deficiencies in US forces.

The U.S. success in DESERT STORM can be dangerously misleading. Iraq allowed the United States to exploit similar vulnerabilities without forcing the United States to confront its limitations in terms of strategic lift, the readiness of its combat and service support units, or individual weaknesses like mine warfare capability. Iraq gave the United States nearly half a year in which to adapt its weapons to the specific problems of desert warfare in the Gulf, to restructure its maintenance and support systems, to bring in spare parts and munitions from all over the world, to retrain it forces, and reorganize its command and control and battle management concepts. If Saddam Hussein had immediately invaded Saudi Arabia, the limits to U.S. power projection capabilities might have produced a very different outcome.

The United States cannot count on similar advantages in the future. If it is to use technology to compensate for smaller forces, the United States must devote the resources to correct the following problems in its current forces and capabilities:

Intelligence: The effective exploitation of threat weaknesses requires highly sophisticated political intelligence, detailed intelligence on the pre-war vulnerabilities and shortcomings of threat forces, and sufficient theater assets and 'analysis capability after the war begins to update the original assessments. The United States has never provided such analytic assets in the past and often relies on order of battle intelligence-a shortcoming revealed in DESERT STORM. Unless the present intelligence community and user "culture" is changed, the United States will experience severe problems in using many of its potential technical advantages.

Lack of strategic, tactical, and amphibious lift and prepositioning: The United States can move light divisions quickly, and can deploy air assets even more quickly. It does, however, have major shortfalls in strategic lift if it has to operate for long periods from unimproved airfields and move mechanized or armored divisions. The present Future Year Defense Plan also has major shortages of intra-theater lift and leads to block obsolescence of many key amphibious ships in

Lack of combat ready armored and mechanized expeditionary forces: The U.S. Army lacks mechanized and armored expeditionary forces that are tailored for power projection, fully combat ready, and self -sustainable. Over-dependence on Reserve and National Guard combat support, service support, and logistic units is a critical problem in scenarios requiring immediate deployment. The U.S. Marine Corps is still tied to the concept of amphibious forced entry, too light in armor and artillery, and lacking sustainability. These deficiencies greatly increase the "time-distance" problem the United States faces in power projection for most scenarios.

Inadequate combat damage and human threat assessment capability: U.S. capabilities in C3I/BM/targeting are far superior to its capabilities to accurately assess damage. The United States also has done far less to improve its technology in assessing human movements, targeting, and losses than to improve equipment tracking and targeting. This reflects a previous orientation towards the Warsaw Pact threat, but it also reflects a reluctance to come to grips with the "body count" issue. Unfortunately, many probable contingencies will be dominated by political or revolutionary combat in which accurate data on human numbers, movements, activities, and losses will be far more critical than attacking equipment or hard targets.

Mine warfare and naval fire support: The United States still lacks effective mine warfare capability, and the phase out of the battleship deprives it of effective ship-based fire support. Coupled to aging amphibious lift and a lack of modern Marine Corps theater airlift, the United States has significant force-wide limitations in amphibious and naval operations.

Force-wide sustainability problems: Seven years of real defense cuts have been accompanied by 7 years of disproportionate draw downs of munitions and major spares. The Gulf War exacerbated this situation, and current funding does not permit recovery of munitions, major spares, and a number of maintenance and support activities through the end of FY 97-even if further unprogrammed cuts do not take place considerably harder to quantify than the problems of the 1970s, but is becoming no less real.

Armor, anti-armor, and artillery programs: The United States leads the world in armor, anti-armor, and artillery programs. It is important to note, however, that virtually every aspect of U.S. Army and Marine Corps armor, anti-armor, and artillery programs are now in a state of disarray. All aspects of armor development will have to be restructured, and funding of anti-armor and artillery programs has been cut back to the point where TO&E will need to be significantly readjusted to absorb the JSTARS, and to decide on a future mix of tube artillery, ATACMS, and the MLRS.

Lack of advanced and long-range attack aircraft: For different reasons, both the Navy and Air Force have been forced to delay deployment of an A-X through at least 2010, unless a radical change takes place in funding. The A-6, F-16, and F-18 all exhibited serious range-payload, high performance attack, and air defense evasion problems during the Gulf War. The F-15E has only been procured in limited numbers, the F-111 is aging. Air Force and Navy procurement of next generation multirole fighters is likely to be significantly delayed beyond current plans and far fewer aircraft are likely 'to be procured. The two-seat version of the F-18F is likely to be canceled. At the same time, plans to upgrade the A-10, F-14, F-15, and F-16 are being progressively cut back, and the B-2 will not be procured in sufficient numbers to offset the lack of an advanced attack aircraft. While the United States will still retain a global lead in attack aircraft capability, it will experience severe shortfalls in meeting any of the procurement goals of the 1980s.

High risk helicopter and close air support programs: The Comanche and AH-G4 Longbow programs are critical to upgrading the U.S. Army attack helicopter capability, and the Air Force now depends on two wings of A-10s for the close air support mission and eventual upgrading of the F-16. Sophisticated UAV programs to supplement part of the mission capabilities of these aircraft or to support them, are long delayed and still in development. Significant force cuts are likely in these programs which are disproportionate to cuts in other forces.

Crew-sized heavy weapons: U.S. advances in many areas of technology have led to only limited advances in crew-sized heavy weapons. U.S. forces tend to be tied too heavily to small arms or armored vehicles.

Urban and built-up warfare capabilities: Only selected units have had tailored training and improved equipment for urban and built-up area warfare. The overall mix of equipment and weaponry has provided improved combat capabilities for urban warfare, but the MOBA efforts of the 1960s and 1970s have led to only limited advances in deployed dedicated systems.

Jungle, forest, and mountain warfare: The United States has a number of targeting and killing systems capable of greatly improving the ability to find and kill equipment in covered and rough terrain. It has far less capability to deal with infantry or guerrilla forces. These aspects of technology have received significantly lower priority since Vietnam, although a number of advances have occurred in sensors, navigation and troop management, and area weapons suited for such combat.

IFF/Identification of friend or foe: The United States has already begun to react to the friendly fire problems of the Gulf War. More is involved, however, than dealing with U.S. forces. The United States does not have land and air warfare that easily lends itself to working with non-NATO coalition partners. More broadly, significant countermeasure and IFF gaps exist in dealing with forces equipped with U.S. and NATO European weaponry.

Integrated and open C3I/BM architectures: The Gulf War revealed significant problems in integrating the C3I/BM activities of all four services. At the same time, many systems lacked the ability to adapt to close cooperation with Third World forces that are not standardized-as were the Saudis-on U.S. systems and operating procedures.

Reliability and maintenance: The high operational readiness rates reached for land and air equipment in the Gulf War were only possible through a massive series of work arounds, crash adaptations, increases in maintenance loads, cannibalization, and use of civilian contractors. Substantial modification and reengineering of U.S. equipment is needed to ensure such readiness levels can be reached without long preparation times and increases in maintenance efforts and resources.

Fuzing and practical lethality: Many bombs and submunitions did not function reliably during the war, often revealing a systemic failure to properly test and field quality bomb fuzes, air ordinance, and submunitions that affected many of the same categories of munitions in Vietnam.

Operational feedback and fixes: One of the most disturbing lessons of DESERT STORM was the need to bypass virtually all existing service procedures to get rapid turnarounds on technical problems and tailoring weapons and technology to operational needs. In some cases, emergency fixes were substituted for problems whose solution had been well known for 2-5 years. Technical fixes and procedures also were often not shared with the Reserves or National Guard or done so on a basis that had no way of measuring compliance.

Air and missile defense: The United States has good man portable surface-to-air missiles, and the PAC 3 version of the Patriot should combine good anti-air and anti-ATBM capabilities. The United States does not, however, have modern vehicle mounted medium air defenses, and the long history of program failures in this area means that major new deployments are unlikely to occur before 2005, even if current programs are successful.

Chemical and biological defenses: The United States scraped together a reasonably adequate mix of CBW defenses for DESERT STORM, but did so only on a crash basis, and with significant gaps in capability and poor overall ergonomics in much of the equipment deployed. The United States will need substantially improved equipment to deal with toxins, dusty mustard, advanced biological agents, and "cocktails" of different CBW agents.

This list of limitations must be kept in careful perspective.

The United States will lead the world in many areas of deployed technology in spite of these problems. The Gulf War did, however, reveal that several of these limitations can only be overcome by significant changes in the U.S. force mix and mix of deployed technologies. Further, the last half decade has led to a cumulative and accelerating set of imbalances in force structure and procurement plans that need to be reshaped into a balance suited to the previous contingencies.

More broadly, the United States will always face the limitation that technology cannot compensate for favorable political conditions where the issue is not the size or effectiveness of U.S. forces, but the limits placed on the use of force. The United States enjoyed military and technological advantages in Vietnam that allowed it to win virtually every battle or large scale engagement of forces, but operated under political conditions that led to a decisive defeat. Similarly, the United States had every military advantage in Lebanon, but the political conditions shaping U.S. military action prevented it from using military force to achieve a decisive result.

Compesating for Smaller Forces Continued

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