It has raised more than a few eyebrows that U.S. forces apparently suffered a miserable defeat in a recent high-profile wargame over Taiwan. Tara Copp has a rundown of some of the conclusions by the Joint Chiefs. This includes a series of changes that the military leaders see necessary to improve the preparedness for a war against China.
For example general John E. Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advocates for a centralized yet highly connected virtual cloud network to provide hacker-proof information superiority and allow for unprecedented coordination of joint fires across multiple domains.
And then there is this tremendously weird suggestion, where CDR Salamander’s reaction is spot on. The excerpt is from his Substack post titled We’re Designing Ourselves to Lose:
Yes, I’m blogging tired and pissed off. You should be tired and pissed off too. Tired of being lied to, and pissed off at what has been done to the greatest military power the world has seen by a generation of ill-focused, poorly selected, perversely incentivized leaders. Then when they can’t hide it anymore, they expect you to give the system a pass.
Bullshit.
Just look at the state of it all; we have a CONOPS that two fundamentals of warfare teamed with two laughably intellectually prolapsed pipe dreams.
Earlier this month, Hyten released four directives to the services: one each for contested logistics; joint fires; Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2; and information advantage. On Monday, he revealed new details about these “functional battles.”
This is just painful.
Contested logistics. Creating new ways to deliver fuel and supplies to front lines. U.S. Transportation Command and the Air Force are working on using rockets and a space trajectory to get large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields.
First of all, logistics in warfare has always been contested. Also – how about we invest in airlift, sea lift and land transport what can support and sustain a long war with attrition west of Wake by mid-decade first … then … for the love of Pete … who lets this get proposed …. just look at it again.
…large cargo spaceships into and out of battlefields…
I’m sorry, but go fire yourself. That is along the lines of the worst ideas of the post-Korean War nuclear Army.
Sal is right: Cargo spaceships and a centralized virtual combat cloud are hopeless ideas to prepare for a war with a near peer adversary. If your systems depends on a “hacker-proof” information hub and full availability of the electromagnetic spectrum, you are lining up for defeat.
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