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23 jan 2005

Military technology: Clipping the enemy's wings

Mar 6th 2003 - From The Economist print edition

American military technology has moved on a lot since the Gulf war

“The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud.” Walt Whitman's words sound surprisingly apt as America's forces gather in the Gulf to do battle with Iraq's. Cutting the Scud is something that they might well be required to do if the rattling of sabres there leads to hostilities. In theory, Iraq is supposed to have destroyed its Scud missiles, since their range exceeds that permitted by United Nations' resolutions. In practice, the government may have held on to some, and may also have some rather nasty warheads to put on them.

For the past half-century, America has been the world's leader in matters of military technology, such as shooting down enemy missiles. Yet sometimes its claims exceed its reach. For example, it turned out that the Patriot air-defence missiles which were deployed to knock down Scuds when the two sides met in 1991 were not as good at doing so as initial reports had suggested. Nor were the “smart” bombs—dropped from aircraft and guided by laser through doorways or down lift shafts into their target buildings—nearly as effective as some of the television footage shown might have suggested (though they were undoubtedly better than unguided “dumb” bombs). Indeed, America's General Accounting Office rapped the Pentagon on the knuckles for the way it overstated the effectiveness of these weapons.

For military technology, though, 12 years is a long time. Much has now changed. Some people, such as Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are fervent proponents of a “revolution in military affairs”, which will trade man for machine. That is an exaggeration, at least for now. But technological advances mean that any war fought against Iraq in the near future should resemble the American takeover of Afghanistan in 2001 more than Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Precise in every part

In Desert Storm, some 1,600 allied aircraft flew about 60,000 attack missions, dropping over 50,000 tonnes of explosives on Iraq. But only 8% of these bombs were guided weapons. Since then, the ratio of guided to unguided weapons has been more than reversed: 98% of the munitions dropped on Serbia in 1999 were “smart”.

More important than the fact that bombs are now guided is how they are guided. The laser systems used in 1991 had two disadvantages: they could not work in cloudy weather, and they required an aircraft or a ground controller to “designate” the target with a laser right up to the moment when the bomb exploded. In contrast, the joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) kit, which smartens up a variety of dumb bombs, and which is likely to account for the bulk of the explosions in any coming war, is guided by the Global Positioning System (GPS)—a satellite network originally designed to allow troops to locate themselves on the ground.

Using GPS location means that JDAM-enhanced bombs can function in all weathers, and also permits the aircraft involved in an attack to retreat in safety, rather than having to guide the bomb home. On top of this, because they convert dumb bombs that have no propulsion system, JDAM kits are cheap: a mere $20,000 a pop, as opposed to nearly $1m for a Tomahawk cruise missile of comparable explosive power and precision.

According to Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, the air wing of an aircraft carrier could attack 200 targets in one day in 1991. Because the increase in precision means that fewer bombs are needed to dispose of a single target, he says the same group of aircraft could now hit 700 targets. This substantially reduces America's reliance on regional allies, making that country's power to go it alone stronger.

The interception of missiles in flight has also got more precise. The most deadly attack on American forces in the Gulf war occurred when a Scud missile fell on a supply base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Twenty-eight Americans were killed and nearly 100 wounded. Scud attacks like this—and similar attacks on Israel—should be less of a worry this time around. The Patriot missile, retrospectively found to be ineffective in 1991, has been improved considerably. The new generation of Patriots travel half as fast again as the 1991 version, and have at least twice the range—greatly increasing their capacity to intercept incoming missiles such as Scuds.

This capacity is also increased because the new, smaller missiles have radars that can distinguish between different parts of a target missile, ensuring that if the target has broken up, the Patriot attacks the warhead rather than the debris. And the new Patriots can be steered with rocket thrusters as well as fins. This added manoeuvrability means that they can be aimed to destroy an incoming Scud by hitting it at high speed, rather than exploding nearby.

A third, much-discussed technological change since 1991 is the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which promise casualty-free reconnaissance missions, and even (from the bomber's point of view) casualty-free bombing runs. One of these, the Predator, had its first combat outing in the Afghanistan campaign. The Predator, however, may be supplanted in any Gulf war by the Global Hawk, which can loiter for more than 24 hours at high altitude over a battlefield. Other systems, such as the X-45 combat UAV, which are said to be prototypes, may nonetheless see action in such a war. These aircraft might be most useful for ambushing fleeing commanders. A Predator strike in Yemen last November, for example, killed six suspected al-Qaeda members. But for the main part of a war, the value of combat UAVs is still more hype than reality. Smart aeroplane pilots are still indispensable.

More accurate munitions are valuable. But they still have to be dropped on the right targets. Another important advance since 1991 is the ability to choose these on the fly, as it were. Twelve years ago, “tasking orders” (ie, the assignment of particular targets to particular aircrew) were generally compiled day-by-day. A massive target list was assembled at headquarters and disseminated to squadron commanders who then divvied it up among their crews. By contrast, in Afghanistan, a large proportion of the planes took off without set targets and were routed in “real time” by air controllers in the battlefield.

This change is the result of deploying wireless broadband technology. The same underlying time-division technology that is used in GSM-based mobile phones is combined with techniques that rapidly “hop” between frequencies to make the military version resistant to jamming. Aircraft and tanks (and other military hardware as well) link up in a “nodeless” architecture—a battlefield internet—so that any individual need not be in direct communication with headquarters.

Such technology may have its downside, however. As Marcus Corbin of the Centre for Defence Information, another Washington-based think-tank, points out, the ability of headquarters to communicate directly with troops on the ground increases the risk that the general staff will stifle the initiative of field commanders, who are in a better position to assess unfolding situations.

Getting there is half the battle

If warfare has a glamorous side, guided missiles and smart bombs are surely part of it. Just as surely, logistics is not. Yet as Napoleon observed, armies march on their stomachs. They also march with weapons, ammunition, fuel and a mass of other matériel. Moving this in a timely fashion to where it is needed can affect the outcome of battle as surely as can the accuracy of artillery. And this, too, is being improved by technology. Getting a quarter of a million troops to Iraq's periphery is no simple task.

Since 1991, America has invested billions of dollars in new ships that travel faster and have “roll-on, roll-off” loading capabilities, allowing them to bypass time-consuming cranes. It has also started to keep track of its inventory with the sorts of systems used by commercial freight companies to follow consignments. The Joint Total Asset Visibility (JTAV) programme went into operation in October 2000. JTAV was developed in response to a plague of duplicate orders in the 1991 war. It marks items with bar-codes and RFID-tags (radio-frequency devices that shout back if called), and employs GPS-based systems that allow computers to keep track of where every bit of kit is.

This, plus the use of better databases, makes possible much faster deployment of troops, using fewer ships and aeroplanes. In some cases, it has taken half as many ships and a third as much time to deploy a division (4,000 soldiers) as it did for Desert Storm. Although JTAV cannot actually predict where troops will be sent, once they are in place it allows logistics to become “anticipatory”. For example, it notices when stocks of a given item are low, and automatically sends off replacements.

New vehicles are also part of the process. The C-17, a transport plane that entered service in 1993, can land on dirt airfields, and is more reliable than the rest of the transport fleet (much of which dates from the 1960s). But doctrinal changes are helping too. The Marines are modifying their cargo-handling procedures in order to allow them to unload supplies on an “as-needed” basis, rather than all at once. Previously, deployment was limited by poor-quality airfields or port facilities. That is no longer the case.

Logistics, instead of being a forgotten step-child, is now becoming a driving force. Indeed, the army is rejigging its entire structure around the “Stryker”, a new family of armoured vehicles. The ceramic armour of the Stryker makes it lighter, and thus easier to transport, than conventional tanks. Along with its capability to link seamlessly into the “battlefield internet”, this is a key selling-point of the Stryker. The first Stryker battalion is scheduled for deployment this May, so it could yet see action in Iraq.

Technology alone is but an instrument with which to wage war. America enjoyed a vast technological advantage in 1991, yet it still left Saddam Hussein in place. Satellites can guide bombs, but not policymakers. But technologies like these tilt the odds, already proven to be good in the past, that much further in America's favour. The Yankee clipper seems likely to cut the scud with ease.