WASHINGTON — The USA’ adversaries will likely goal the communications abilities vital to multi-domain operations in a future war, and military commanders could have to be able to operate during such disruptions, experts said Wednesday.
The U.S. military’s ability to fight a network-integrated war, wherein it could use vast arrays of sensors, satellites and communications nodes to deliver large amounts of integrated firepower, is considered one of its key benefits, said Andrew Metrick, a defense fellow on the Center for a Latest American Security think tank.
But potential adversaries reminiscent of China and Russia have zeroed in on that as a key ability they would wish to take out or disrupt in a fight against the U.S., Metrick said during a panel for the C4ISRNET Conference.
“We must always take it as a on condition that in places, our communications are going to interrupt and fail,” Metrick said. “When your adversary is as focused and as capable as [China] appears to be, you need to not take it as a given that you’ll have the identical degree of comms freedom that you simply had when that domain was not being tested.”
Adversaries’ advancements in jamming and electronic warfare capabilities have made it vital for the military to have a look at a “decentralized” approach to some operations, said Matt Farmer, an analyst for the operational level doctrine division on the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate.
The strong networking and communications systems of the American armed forces can provide a major advantage during war, Farmer said – but the way in which the military fights can’t at all times rely on those communication lines remaining up.
“We all know that the battlefield, now and in the following five to seven years, we’re going to be experiencing this degraded communications environment,” Farmer said. “Now we have to have the option to operate whenever you don’t have perfect communications or perfect information.”
If a unit cannot act autonomously, and its effectiveness on the battlefield will depend on talking to a command post to get permission to fireside weapons or coordinate with other forces, Metrick said, that operational concept will collapse.
“How we take into consideration how those units are in a position to still maneuver and generate effects in a degraded environment is crucial,” Metrick said.
Along with developing resilient communications systems that may withstand enemy attacks, Metrick said, the Defense Department must create “nodal,” almost self-contained systems. These units have to have the option to operate largely on their very own across battlefield domains, while only having sporadic, low-quality contact back to command posts, he said, though he acknowledged doing that can be difficult.
Metrick said the war in Ukraine has shown how vital it’s to have a versatile networking construct, though he cautioned not all lessons would apply in a possible U.S. war within the Indo-Pacific region.
Ukraine has taken advantage of resources reminiscent of Starlink satellites and ground terminals to assist manage command and control. Kyiv’s forces even have used quite a lot of small drones to beat back Russia’s invasion, he said.
“It’s very much a bootstrapped approach [in Ukraine], but it surely’s effective,” Metrick said. “In a whole lot of ways, you’ll be able to glean things in regards to the importance of tactical flexibility, about agility, and in regards to the unique combos of capabilities that produce asymmetric effects from the Ukraine example.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.