JOURNAL: Task Force ODIN and Cloud Power

'Cloud Airpower' -- a three dimensional blanket of microsensors and machines that can dominate a target zone -- is the future of the Air Force. It's how the Air Force will participate in the future of warfare (which will be mostly a form of special operations and not conventional warfare). However, the AF leadership doesn't want to acknowledge it. Instead, the US Army is doing the innovation/tinkering necessary (this is a rough early effort, but it is coming from the right direction - from the bottom up):

The battalion is called Task Force Odin — the name is that of the chief god of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry...

The Army cobbled together small civilian aircraft, including the Beech C-12, and placed advanced reconnaissance sensors on board. Also assigned to the task force are small, medium and larger remotely piloted Army surveillance vehicles, including the Warrior and Shadow, with infrared cameras for night operations and full-motion video cameras.

All are linked by radio to Apache attack helicopters, with Hellfire missiles and 30-millimeter guns, and to infantry units in armored vehicles.

Comments

[gmoke]

Over a decade ago, I heard the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs talk about the military's view of the future battlefield. He explained it as a 25 mile cube which was 25 miles wide and 25 miles long and 25 miles high. He said that the US military would be able to see and hear everything that moved within that cube and thus control it.

I got into an argument with his entourage after the talk because I thought the idea may be technologically feasible but the level of arrogance and hubris they displayed in their bragging about it struck me as dangerous. These folks were justifiably proud of their expertise and professionalism yet their inability to admit any possibility of a mistake shook me down to my shoes. If you never believe you can be wrong, everything you do MUST be right. That, to me, is a recipe for failure.

[jt23]

Cloud Airpower looks like a step on the way toward mesh warfare

(http://www.ndu.edu/inss/mcnair/mcnair28/m028ch02.html)

The problem is that this research, however useful, exhibits the "netcentric myopia," meaning that it appears to presuppose that future conflicts will be conventional and will play to what are already US strengths.

Intelligent adversaries would do well to avoid the vast toe-to-toe killing power of the US military at all costs, and instead to concentrate on other methods like those outlined in Unrestricted Warfare.

In a way this looks similar to an even more intelligence-heavy Firebox. The level of available firepower and mobility would no doubt make it highly effective against its intended targets, but any opponent's gameplan needs to revolve around denying the intended targets.

Many of these procurement programs seem to come from someone's fantasy world of setpiece armored engagements. I have to ask what the designers see as credible threats, and whether they're primarily motivated by realism or by perpetuating models and scenarios that are friendly to procurement pork.

Cloud Airpower and meshwar both amount to heavy intelligence preparation of the battlefield. But how many conventional battlefield fights are we going to be seeing in the near to mid future?

On the other hand, perhaps methods like these are force multipliers to such an extent that we'll be able to accomplish difficult battlefield tasks on a comparative shoestring (cf: success of Firebox) and thereby free up R&D and fighting power resources for elsewhere.

This method also looks very friendly to drone warfare. Using a system like this, force projection could come from a few airdropped shipping containers and could minimize human exposure. The US shift toward drone airpower has already started and is going to be proceeding on an exponential curve.

[zenpundit]

Somewhere, Arthur Cebrowski is smiling.