Robots and Reconnaissance: We May Never Be Stealthy and Deliberate Again

Spring 2020 Robots and Reconnaissance: We May Never Be Stealthy and Deliberate Again by COL J. Frederick Dente and CPT Timothy Lee From iron blades and crossbows to ar mored vehicles and precision-guided munitions, the character of war is con stantly evolving. Nations expend mas sive amounts of energy and capital to present new dilemmas for adversaries across multiple domains. Often these technical advances occur in a vacuum, and we fail to develop the tactics and doctrine to fully leverage the new ca pability. At an even more fundamental level, we often fail to examine how these new technical capabilities change the underlying assumptions about the character of war in the first place. Semi-autonomous ground-based ro bots, once a dream of the past, are the next change in warfare the U.S. mili tary and its adversaries are developing to gain and maintain dominance on the battlefield. However, the prolifer ation of advanced technology such as the Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) on the battlefield at the lowest level will fundamentally change the way Sol diers fight tomorrow’s battles, and it will call into question the very doc trine and methodology the Army uses to train its warfighters. While there are varying opinions on whether the use of RCVs will ultimately enable or hinder reconnaissance and security (R&S) operations, the Army must con tinue to address the inadequacies of its ability to execute ground R&S op erations to fight and win the next ma jor ground war. This article will highlight the foresee able changes in doctrine that must be considered by first examining the ad vantages and disadvantages of three long-standing ideas in cavalry doctrine and then describe how these ideas will inevitably change with the integration of the RCV to effectively move forward into the 21st Century. Tactical mobility Cavalry formations have long served as a catalyst to transform the concepts of maneuver warfare into a battlefield capability. As maneuver is the essence of U.S. fighting doctrine, it requires the means to seize or retain the initia tive and to create or exploit offensive opportunities. Commanders require a high degree of situational awareness and the time to mass and concentrate superior com bat power against the enemy at the right time and place for maneuver to be successful. For centuries, the pow er of mobility has enabled cavalry for mations to accomplish this task. By re maining mobile and retaining freedom of maneuver, cavalry formations can provide a continuous flow of combat information and intelligence to

Spring 2020 commanders, helping them cope with uncertainty, make contact under favor able conditions, prevent surprise and facilitate timely decision-making. Serv ing as the brigade commander’s “eyes and ears,” cavalry formations can de ploy quickly, fight for information and secure key terrain far in front of the main body to provide it with reaction time and maneuver space. However, commanders are frequently forced to sacrifice the amount of de tail collected about the operational environment to maintain their speed, as formations never seem to maneu ver fast enough. Moving quickly in creases the risk by forcing Soldiers to potentially expose themselves to en emy contact while trying to develop the situation. Yet moving more slowly may increase the risk to the mission, as the cavalry may not secure key ter rain before opposing forces begin their initial attack. This problem has plagued commanders for centuries. Stealth While reconnaissance doctrine in cludes the capacity for cavalry forma tions to fight for information, the best way to perform reconnaissance has long been argued to be by stealth. By remaining hidden and maximizing the use of cover and concealment to con duct R&S tasks, cavalry formations can detect and observe enemy develop ments well forward of the brigade combat team’s (BCT) main body while also retaining their mobility. Stealthy reconnaissance prevents the cavalry formation from becoming decisively engaged and greatly enhances its sur vivability. By only engaging the enemy when absolutely necessary, cavalry formations can gain and maintain con tact with the enemy from a position of relative advantage before executing a reconnaissance or battle handover as the relative priority between BCT ele ments shifts. Yet despite these advantages, even stealthy reconnaissance requires an ability to survive a chance contact or an ambush that may occur with little warning. Historical examples such as Operation Desert Storm provide an ex cellent study for this. Divisional caval ry organizations at the time lacked the combat power to conduct their tradi tional R&S roles. Because tanks were not organic to the squadrons, many commanders were forced to task-or ganize tank companies from the ma neuver brigades to provide the divi sion’s primary reconnaissance asset with the resources needed to fight for information and survive on the battle field. The experience in Desert Storm rein forced the lesson of the North Africa campaign during World War II – effec tive reconnaissance must often in clude fighting. Commanders in the deserts of North Africa in 1943 suf fered heavy casualties while employ ing light-reconnaissance formations to fight for information. With that histor ical lesson in mind, some commanders in the deserts of Iraq in 1991 simply chose not to use them. Economy-of-force Cavalry formations have long protect ed and preserved the BCT’s combat power during security operations, al lowing the commander time to decide where to concentrate forces. This time provided by cavalry formations pro vides the BCT with a critical capability based on a principle of war: economy-of-force. Economy-of-force is the prin ciple of employing all available combat power in the most effective way pos sible. The flexible capabilities of the cavalry allow commanders to conserve the combat power of their BCTs to use at a time and place of their choosing. By expending minimum essential com bat power on secondary efforts, com manders can maximize the most com bat power on primary efforts. In other words, by serving in an economy-of-force role, cavalry prevents premature deployment and attrition of combat power before the BCT reaches its ob jective. However, because an economy-of-force, by definition, is to expend the minimum amount of combat power on secondary efforts, the ability of a cav alry formation to shape the battle field, influence key actors and consol idate gains and efforts is severely lim ited. Although properly task-organized cavalry formations can produce effects that far outweigh the diversion of combat power from the main body, dedicating these additional capabili ties comes at the risk of fewer capa bilities for potential follow-on operations. As a result, cavalry forma tions often find themselves limited in what they can do for the BCT, reacting to the enemy instead of creating the conditions to create and exploit the initiative. Integration of RCV The proliferation of the RCV on the battlefield at the lowest level will fun damentally change these long-stand ing core beliefs in cavalry doctrine. They will potentially enable command ers to push past these previous restric tions that have plagued BCTs for cen turies while also imposing restrictions of their own. First, commanders have been fre quently forced to sacrifice the amount of detail collected about the opera tional environment to maneuver quickly; RCVs can effectively mitigate this gap entirely. Commanders, once limited not only by the enemy and ter rain but also by the human dimension, both physically and mentally, now find themselves able to consistently main tain their overall operational tempo. Unlike their manned fighting vehicle (MFV) counterparts, RCVs are not lim ited by Soldiers’ lack of sleep or endur ance to maintain speed. The RCV can move ahead of the MFVs and quickly secure key terrain, while scouts can move more deliberately behind the forward-line-of-robots (FLOR) and for ward-line-of-unmanned-aerial-vehi cles (FLUA) to collect on terrain, civil ian and even infrastructure informa tion requirements. (See Figure 1.) By allowing RCVs to make first contact with the enemy and secure key terrain in front of the BCT, commanders ulti mately can mitigate both the risk to force and to mission that was previ ously identified. Yet, while the RCV does enable commanders to maintain tactical mobility, it comes with its own mobility limitations that will funda mentally change how reconnaissance doctrine, specifically intelligence prep aration of the battlefield (IPB), is taught. Traditional instruction on IPB at the reconnaissance schoolhouse fo cuses on how to best use terrain and how to use intervisibility (IV) lines to conceal movement – whether mount ed, dismounted or even aerial to re tain a position of relative advantage.

Spring 2020 However, as stated, RCVs are being used in front of formations to reduce risk and increase situational aware ness. As a result, IPB on the type of terrain that best suits robots may need to be more emphasized than IPB for traditional mounted and dismounted maneuver. Furthermore, as these RCVs must operate within line-of-sight to the control vehicle, a greater empha sis must be placed on the three-di mensional aspect of the terrain and how it affects not just frequency-mod ulation communications but also con nectivity from the RCV to the control vehicle. This essential change in the way scouts are taught IPB may not only be relevant, but it’s absolutely necessary. Finally, because the basic capabilities for the RCVs used by the Army’s Next Generation Combat Vehicle-Robotic Combat Vehicle (NGCV-RCV) team in clude artificial intelligence-assisted target detection/recognition and antitank guided-missile capability, the ability for a cavalry formation to fight for information is greatly increased. Commanders may never need to oper ate “stealthy” again, as the RCV essen tially mitigates the risk for a com mander to expose his Soldiers to ene my direct fire. The RCV ultimately pro vides the squadron commander with his own reaction time and maneuver space and negates the need to be “stealthy.” Whereas current doctrine uses dismounts in front of vehicles in a covert manner to make first contact with the enemy, the RCV enables the commander to make first contact with robots. By operating in a more “force ful” capacity, these RCVs develop the situation through action and can po tentially suppress or fix the enemy while the commander maneuvers his scouts to a position of relative advan tage to engage and destroy the enemy. Also, the RCV provides the cavalry commander with more firepower while still maintaining economy-of-force to prevent decisive engagement. However, despite these advantages, RCVs operating in a “forceful” manner are not without their own inherent limitations. While future RCV capabil ities must adhere to stringent require ments and at least mirror their manned counterpart in terms of mo bility and thermal signature, using RCVs ahead of Soldiers and MFVs in a “stealthy” manner may not even be possible. While the RCV may possess the same or even less thermal and noise signature of their manned coun terparts, it becomes extremely diffi cult to mimic the same physical and electromagnetic signature as a dis mounted scout moving in front of his vehicle to observe an IV line. Conse quently, the cavalry commander may never actually be able to specify “stealthy” as a reconnaissance tempo because he must account for the RCVs. The impacts of this change would be astronomical; forcing cavalry forma tions to operate solely in a forceful tempo increases the risk that RCVs were designed to mitigate. Further more, organic task-organization to cav alry formations may also need to be reconsidered, as they may need more firepower to serve only in a forceful tempo. Conclusion When rifled muskets were first intro duced, no army recognized how the dramatic increase in range and lethal ity would impact massed formations of infantry. Few armies recognized the impacts of the telegraph and railroad on modern war until it was too late. Too often, our tactics and doctrine lag far behind the dramatic advances in lethality and mobility. Like these pre vious advances, the integration of RCVs into our scout platoons and cav alry troops must fundamentally change the way leaders conduct R&S operations in the near future. To win the next major ground war, our R&S doctrine must adapt. Not only should we incorporate these new sys tems into our current organizations and our existing training models, but we must also be prepared to challenge the underlying assumptions that drive our current tactics. It is only through this rigorous and professional dialogue that we can fully leverage the new ca pabilities and opportunities the RCV offers. COL Frederick Dente commands 316th Cavalry Brigade. His previous assign ments include senior cavalry trainer, Figure 1. RCV zone reconnaissance.

Spring 2020 Fort Irwin, CA; commander, 1st Squad ron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, Fort Riley, KS; executive officer, 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 10th Mountain Divi sion, Fort Drum, NY; operations officer, 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment; and commander, Company A, 1st Bat talion, 63rd Armor Regiment, Fort Riley. COL Dente’s military schools include the U.S. Army War College, Command and General Staff College and Armor Captain’s Career Course. He holds a master’s degree in adult education from Kansas State University and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. COL Dente’s awards include the Bronze Star Medal (four oak-leaf clusters), Defense Meritorious Service Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal (four oak-leaf clusters). CPT Timothy Lee is the Cavalry Lead er’s Course (CLC) director, assigned to 3rd Squadron, 16th Cavalry Regiment, 316th Cav Brigade, Fort Benning, GA. His previous assignments include CLC instructor, 3-16 Cav; commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 6th Squadron, 1st Cav Division, Figure 2. The Army’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center and NGCV cross-func tional team demonstrate the mission-enabling technologies demonstrator and RCV surrogate at Camp Grayling, MI, Aug. 22, 2019. (From a video by Douglas Halleaux, Combat Capabilities Development Center’s Ground-Vehicle Systems Center) Fort Bliss, TX; commander, Troop E, 6-1 Cav, Fort Bliss; assistant S-3 (Plans), 6-1 Cav, Fort Bliss; and platoon leader, Troop C, 1st Squadron (Airborne), 40th Cav, Fort Richardson, AK. CPT Lee’s military schools include CLC, Ranger School, Maneuver Captain’s Career Figure 3. RCVs on display at Camp Grayling, MI. Acronym Quick-Scan IV – intervisibility IVO – in vicinity of LD – line of departure LoA – line of advance MFV – manned fighting vehicle NGCV-RCV – Next Generation Combat Vehicle-Robotic Combat Vehicle BCT – brigade combat team CLC – Cavalry Leader’s Course FLOR – forward-line-of-robots FLOT – forward-line-of-own-troops FLUA – forward-line-of-unmanned-aerial-vehicles FWD – forward IPB – intelligence preparation of the battlefield OP – observation post PL – phase line R&S – reconnaissance and security RCV – Robotic Combat Vehicle UAS – unmanned aerial system Course and Airborne School. He holds a bachelor’s of science degree in sys tems engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy. CPT Lee’s awards in clude the Bronze Star Medal (with oak-leaf cluster) and Meritorious Service Medal.