Mobility vs Armor In Irregular Warfare

Continuing yesterdays discussion, the lessons in Iraq have proven that many assumptions of conventional wisdom in warfare are inaccurate. The M-1 main battle tank represents better than any platform the ultimate land warfare technology. Clearly a main battle tank is a capable platform in war, but for those who do not follow the tactics in Iraq closely, the main battle tank has proven time and time again to be a vital weapon in counterinsurgency. The M-1 is the poster child for Armor being more desirable than Mobility in dealing with irregular warfare challenges. It is also an example where conventional wisdom is the first thing to be tossed out when approaching irregular warfare challenges.

In the development of new technologies specific to the irregular warfare challenges facing the military services in Iraq, armor has consistently been the most important requirement. While the Iraqi military forces were defeated by the speed, stealth, and mobility of the coalition forces in the warfighting phase in Iraq, it has been hardened, survivable presence that has won the peace. I believe the Navy must closely examine the characteristics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and learn the lessons of the other services if the Navy is to engage irregular warfare forces successfully in the maritime domain.

I believe the Navy must develop a well armored, well armed small craft intended to operate in the littorals, and I do not believe the LCS represents the right platform for this job. The LCS has a role, but it does not have the armor necessary to sustain attacks from irregular challengers. A dhow in the littoral could be a fishing vessel one minute, and a launch pad for rockets the next minute. Against the thin skin of the LCS, a rocket attack is going to do some serious damage, and even though the LCS could probably sustain such a hit and zoom away to safety, thus survive, the ship will not be mission capable if hit in several locations depending upon damage. The necessity to sustain blows that are common in the irregular warfare land campaign represented in both Iraq and Afghanistan highlight the folly of building thin skinned ships to operate in the littorals where those weapons are most likely to be found. There is a reason why Iran mounts anti-tank missiles on their small boats, because they know those weapons will cause serious damage to all but our most hardened combatants.

I believe what is required is something harder to hit, harder to hurt, and with the ability to hit hard back. The vessel I am talking about would range from ~400-600 tons, cost $100 million dollars, be as lethal as possible within 2 miles, armored like a tank, and would have some form of point air defense against missiles and aircraft. While speed is important, endurance and sustainability with armor is far more important, and given the choice between mobility and armor, armor should win every debate.

There are several important metrics, none that have anything to do with speed. The vessel must be able to survive without serious damage a direct hit from the gun of a main battle tank. If cage armor is required to make this possible, then it is required. If it requires three levels of armor, then it needs all three. The vessel must be capable of supporting a full squad of Marines, have the facilities to support 2 corpsman, and when necessary for law enforcement roles the platform must have additional berthing space available for a small detachment of Coast Guard in addition to the Navy and Marine crew. There will be no aviation facility or landing pad, but the platform needs to be capable of replenishment from helicopters. The RHIB is critical to the purpose and intent of the platform, and should be capable of being heavily armed if needed and also support beaching all 12 Marines in one trip. Each platform would join with 3 other platforms, 4 squads total, representing what amounts to a reinforced Marine rifle platoon. Maintaining unit integrity is important.

Why these metrics? The littorals are populated, and well trained manpower has consistently proven to be the most important capability in peacemaking populated spaces. Why do Marines need to be engaged at the squad level? Because the process begins with engaging the local population and building cultural familiarity, and that process begins at the point of engagement at sea with the local population there. Marines cannot operate on the ground in nations around the Horn of Africa today and build local population cultural understanding on the ground, if we were to apply the Horn of Africa as an example, the fishing communities and population at sea around the Horn of Africa represents the starting place for building that cultural understanding. As part of a national strategy in preventing war, we cannot wait to build cultural understanding until after troops are on the ground, it must begin long before, and this is vital in places where our troops are forbidden from access.

While there is plenty of room for developing specific technical metrics for the ships, the $100 million cost cap drives capability. The primary weapon is almost certainly going to be gun.

Building small platforms and operating them in littoral environments, no matter how well protected they are from challenges that might be posed by the most likely threats in that environment, still represents several C2 and logistical challenges. Luckily, both current wars give insight and lessons for dealing with those challenges as well.

If the Navy has ever conducted a wargame where the enemy team has not presented an irregular warfare challenge against logistics and transport vessels operating in the littoral, I would suggest that wargame was unrealistic. Why? Because in Iraq one of the most common uses of IEDs was the targeting of convoys, or put another way, the use of irregular warfare tactics against the logistics train of our land services represented one of the most common direct attacks against US forces during the war. In the littorals, the expectation of attack against logistics ships should be accepted as a guarantee. This expectation alone should immediately suggest several challenges facing naval forces attempting to operate in the littorals, after all, our naval logistics vessels are not only big unarmed platforms, but they are operated by civilian crews.

This is why conventional wisdom must be thrown out with the bathwater when approaching irregular warfare and the challenges facing the Navy in the littorals. Assume for a moment the Navy intends to operate forces in the littorals in the future, and forces in the littoral are facing a persistent, evolving series of irregular warfare tactical challenges. How will the Navy keep ships on station and logistically supplied in the littorals? Do we risk MSC ships bringing logistics to the warfighters in the littorals? Do we pull out the warfighters to deeper water to logistically supply, ignoring the intent of sustained presence? Do we seek some other solution?

In Iraq, convoys used tactics more akin to mobility and stealth in avoiding attack during supply delivery. Changing convoy routes when possible and irregular delivery schedules were among a few of the tactics used to limit attacks by irregular forces. In developing logistics strategies in the littoral to defeat irregular challenges against logistics forces, I think throwing out conventional wisdom approaches is step one, and using an armed platform with a combination of mobility and stealth with enough space to deliver full supply to a four ship squadron is important. Luckily for the Navy, they are currently developing a platform with exactly the right capabilities: the LCS.

People think I'm crazy to suggest the LCS represents a logistics solution instead of a warfighter solution, but that is only one of several solutions the LCS represents in the littoral warfare environment against irregular challenges. As a mothership for unmanned systems, it can afford to deploy and stand off further from the engagement point conducted by the smaller, better armored vessels. That is a terrible peacemaking tactic if the LCS was a stand alone platform for engaging the local population at sea, but brilliant tactically if it is supporting other forces closer to the shore doing that function for the fleet.

As a logistics ship, the LCS can move in quickly for delivery and get out quickly, leveraging the platforms combination of speed and space to effectively support forward operations without committing to the hostile battlefield. But LCS brings more than just unmanned platforms for supporting the scouting for smaller forces in the littoral, and more than just a logistical enabler, the LCS can act as a forward command node for the 4 ship force, a C2 enabling node in the networked littoral battlefield able to give the forward forces aviation support and information support so the smaller forces can do their work. This is critical, because if 4 ship squadrons have a unique C2, support, and logistics node, the regional dispersal can be larger and influence can be achieved over a larger regional area of the maritime domain.

Different ships are built for different roles. The industry, absent the lessons in Iraq, may see the LCS as the 21st century frigate, but those who observe the irregular warfare threat carefully know better. Just because the LCS isn't the 21st century frigate, or even a front line contact/engagement platform, that doesn't mean the platform is flawed. The combination of speed and space is a rare combination that solves many of the challenges our own land forces had difficulty with in delivering logistic supplies to front line forces during the Iraq war when facing an irregular warfare threat like IEDs, or targeted attacks by enemy forces in Afghanistan.

There is one consideration that anyone advocating for smaller vessels in the US Navy must account for. Without an effective, capable logistics, C2, and support strategy for smaller front line vessels; small vessels in the littoral will never come to be in the US Navy until the wartime requirement forces the issue, by which time obviously flawed strategies will have already produced casualties.