March 5, 2024 | International, Land
January 10, 2019 | International, Land, C4ISR
The Army and Marine Corps are looking at what troops will need to fight in megacities, underground
By: Todd South
A recent Army and Marine war game that included engineers, academics and other defense representatives evaluated how troops could use experimental technologies to fight in dense urban areas and underground.
The U.S. Army Subterranean and Dense Urban Environment Materiel Developer Community of Practice is a working group that has conducted three prior workshops that set the challenges of fighting in those environments.
“Fighting in dense urban environments and the unique challenges it presents is still not totally understood, and this study was the front-end look at identifying and defining those materiel challenges to drive where investments need to be for this operational environment,” said Bob Hesse, technical lead coordinator for the Community of Practice.
The most recent “tabletop” exercise looked at the gear troops might need to get through those intense battle scenarios, according to an Army release.
Soldiers and Marines worked as friendly and enemy forces during the exercise, evaluating 48 experimental future technologies.
One such piece of tech would be using sensors that attach to the exterior building wall to help troops visualize the interior layout.
And every advantage in these terrains can help.
“Everything that Marine formations or Army formations have to do is more difficult when you take it into an urban environment,” explained Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Christian Wortman, commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and vice chief of Naval Research.
The Marines recently launched Project Metropolis II, a five-year effort to better prepare Marines for likely future urban battles.
“Across the warfighting functions — whether it's intelligence, surveillance or reconnaissance, collections, maneuver, force protection, command and control, logistics and sustainment — all of those things are complicated and challenged by the compartmentalized terrain that's present in the urban environment and the three-dimensional nature of the urban environment,” Wortman said.
And that multi-dimension challenge grows with the subterranean.
For both above ground and underground, robotics will play a major role. The Squad X project by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for example, is blending robots into dismounted formations.
Soldiers with the 10th Mountain Division and 101st Airborne Division along with Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, are experimenting with four submissions for the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport gear mule that will carry fuel, water, ammunition and equipment for a squad through rough terrain over 60 miles on a 72-hour mission.
Lt. Col. Calvin Kroeger, battalion commander for the 35th Engineering Battalion, ran one of the blue teams during the tabletop exercise.
Participants ran scenarios such as a high-intensity fight, a traditional counter-insurgency and a security force-assisted mission, all under the conditions of a megacity.
But the wargaming went beyond simply clearing buildings and attacking objectives.
Teams countered enemy social media campaigns, communicated underground, and assessed the second- and third-order effects of engaging the enemy with lethal munitions, which could impact local power, gas and water networks.
“How we employ our capabilities changes as you move from a high-rise platform to urban cannons,” Kroeger explained. “But you're also looking at everything under the ground as well, where you can't use a conventional means like a mortar system to shape the battlefield, so that the enemy doesn't shape it for you.”
As team members fix on what materiel needs might best serve troops, Hesse said the subject matter experts will assess how well the tech will meet military goals.
For example, if there is an aerial technology that might help troops locate enemy forces, even though the troops can't see them because of the skyline, his team would then analyze that technology and determine how well it meets Army standards and if it needs to be modified.
“We will now transition from the workshop learning to live experiments and replicate the unique conditions in real venues. We're taking the materiel campaign of learning and now transforming that into action,” Hesse said.
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May 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Trump administration prepares to leave Open Skies Treaty
By: Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has made a final decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, sources confirmed to Defense News on Thursday. The news was confirmed by U.S. President Donald Trump midday, followed by a formal announcement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the administration will make a formal notification on Friday, kicking off a six-month clock before a formal exit occurs. “We may, however, reconsider our withdrawal should Russia return to full compliance with the Treaty,” Pompeo said in a statement. What “full compliance” means, however, is unclear. Chris Ford, assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, told reporters there are “many variables” as to what that would entail, particularly as a number of American complaints about Russian activities involve behaviors that, Ford acknowledged, are “not in fact violations of the treaty.” As an example of the latter, Ford pointed to restrictions on flights over Kaliningrad. Russia has in the past restricted the length of flights over the city, which is not a direct violation but contradicts the confidence-building nature of the agreement, Ford said. That Russia will sometimes loosen those restrictions, such as earlier this year for an Open Skies flyover by Estonian, Lithuanian and American observers, is proof that the Kremlin “clearly regards its Open Skies legal obligations as something akin more to guidelines, or options, for them,” he argued. “It's the combination of all those things that has led to this decision. And so were Russia to return to compliance, we would have to presumably make that decision at the time about what to do with it, do in response to that, on the basis of the circumstances that have changed at that time,” Ford said. “Just as our decision now has many variables, we have to sort of see what the net impact of Russian behavior at that time in the world is. But that's a conversation we would very much like to have, if Russia would give the world the opportunity to see that happen.” In a statement released online, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the move “very regrettable" and hit at the Trump administration's “general policy” of going after arms control agreements. International discussions The administration Thursday morning began informing the other 34 members in the agreement, which allows mutual reconnaissance flights over the member nations, including Russia. An emergency meeting of NATO members is scheduled for Friday in Brussels, per multiple reports. The move, first reported Thursday by The New York Times, was not a surprise, as administration officials signaled to European allies toward the end of last year that unless major changes were made to the overflight agreement, the U.S. would consider withdrawing. However, there had been little movement in the months since, giving advocates hope that a decision to exit the treaty had not been finalized. “It was pretty clear from meetings that it was basically a done deal and it was just a matter of when,” one European source said. Allies generally argue the treaty is a valuable channel for transparency and dialogue between Russia and the United States, the world's top two nuclear superpowers. Critics of the treaty have argued that the U.S. gets better intelligence from satellite systems and that the funding to replace the aging OC-135 aircraft can be spent elsewhere. A second European source acknowledged that Russia has not always complied with the treaty, but said there was a sense that those issues could be resolved. The source predicted that those NATO members who are also part of the treaty will remain, but was unclear what Russia will do next. “If you're Russia, you can stay in and take the moral high ground, say, ‘We still honor international treaties, even if America doesn't,' or you can say the treaty is diminished beyond usefulness and you pull out. I don't know which they'll do, but neither is good for NATO," the source said. The source added that while it is true the U.S. gets its best intelligence from its satellites as opposed to OC-135 flights, focusing entirely on that is “selfish” because “a lot of NATO allies rely on Open Skies for visibility into what goes on in Russia.” The Pentagon released a statement late on Thursday, saying “The United States has been in close communication with our Allies and partners regarding our review of the Treaty and we will explore options to provide additional imagery products to Allies to mitigate any gaps that may result from this withdrawal.” Key Democrats and arms control advocates quickly denounced the administration's withdrawal plans as dangerous and destabilizing to America's relationships with allies, with former CIA director Michael Hayden, a frequent Trump critic, decrying the move as “insane.” Conservative voices applauded the move as Trump standing up to Russia's violations of the treaty. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., expressed his belief the funding that would have gone into repairing the OC-135 should now go toward broader nuclear modernization. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., and House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., blasted the administration for defying a requirement in the 2020 defense policy law that Trump first give Congress 120 days' notice. Multiple communications with Congress on the issue had “gone unanswered,” they said. “The Administration's decision to withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty is a slap in the face to our allies in Europe, leaves our deployed forces in the region at risk, and is in blatant violation of the law,” they said in a joint statement. “This decision weakens our national security interests, isolates the United States since the Treaty will continue without us, and abandons a useful tool to hold Russia accountable." When signing the defense policy legislation into law, Trump indicated he didn't consider himself bound by the requirement, citing his executive powers. “I reiterate the longstanding understanding of the executive branch that these types of provisions encompass only actions for which such advance certification or notification is feasible and consistent with the President's exclusive constitutional authorities as Commander in Chief and as the sole representative of the Nation in foreign affairs," the president's Dec. 20 signing statement read. Throughout its term, the Trump administration has been skeptical of arms control agreements. The U.S. and Russia walked away from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty last August, and officials have expressed skepticism about renewing the New START nuclear agreement with Russia, which expires in 2021. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/05/21/trump-admin-to-withdraw-from-open-skies-treaty/
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January 25, 2024 | International, Naval
Naval Group pitches autonomous systems as key to underwater operations
But for high-end operations, "you need to have both manned and unmanned assets complement each other."