Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander and the Eagle One from Eagle
Speak at see or Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues and
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what's going on in this world. And on today's show, when you look
at for generations, something we were talking about a little bit in the pre
show. From our very senior leadership down to those that are leading in the
fields, we really have it. In the US and amongst our allies had
an opportunity to be all that concerned about for lack of raise receiving traditional fires
from opponents. Yes, we've had ied terror attacks, the odd one hundred
and seven millimeter rocket lobbed in from the hillside, but we haven't really been
on the receiving end of traditionally when you're at a pier our near pier operation
we've had to worry about. And as such, our desire to have all
domain awareness are whether you're looking at tactical level leadership or all the way up
to the four star headquarters. People like to have their full video, people
like to have that thousand yards crew driver nearby, and for that to take
place, it takes a big staff, It takes a lot of electrons and
a lot of habits to make it happen. And what we're going to do
today is we're gonna look at some of the lessons in this area that we've
seen over the course of last fifteen months during the Russia Ukrainian War. And
our guest today for the full hour to do that is thee penant Colonel Matt
Errol, US Army. He is the commandant of the US Army Joint Support
Team at Hulbert Field in Florida. And if you go to the show page,
you will see a link to the article that we're going to be using
as kind of the touch pace the starting place for our conversation over at Military
Review titled the Graveyard of Command Post that he co authored with two other individuals.
And Matt welcome, Midrats. Yeah, thank you so much. I'll
appreciate it and appreciate the opportunity to kind of talk about the article, talk
about command and control and this large scale combat operations, the environment and in
multip main operations. Is the understanding in the Army. I kind of wanted
to start off give your listeners a little more understanding about my organization kind of
what it does and why this article really is kind of significant coming out of
US. So, the Army Joint Support Team, we're a directorate under the
Army's Mission Command Center of Excellence, which is one of the one of the
centers of Excellence underneath the Army's Combined Arms Center. So if you think about
major Army commands, you have trade DOC, which is kind of our institutional
arm and then underneath yet that you have CATS, which you know is responsible
for integrating doctrine the entire dot NOPF and support of our operations. Mission Command
Center of Excellence is really responsible for C two and my organization is responsible for
integrating ARMYC two into Joint C two, specifically for air operations. And so
if you look at kind of the buyelines of my colleagues, General Slider and
General Beagle, you kind of understand this is really the leadership of the Army
on C two and on Combined Arms Operations, which are which are kind of
fostering this this discussion about command posts, because in the Army we are seeing
that, you know, as we transition from counterinsurgency into the current operating environment.
You know, we have gone through this transition of our operating concepts from
unified land operations to multimin operations. And there were a lot of good reasons
for why we did that. A lot of it had to do with threatened
environments, the recognition and really utilization of all of those domains plus uh,
you know, the dimensions of human information and uh and the material of physical
dimension. And so what we're trying to really articulate with this article is that
we have a real problem in our cqs in our command post right now between
survivability and effectiveness. We did a really good job under Coin of pushing power
down to the lowest possible level where it could interact with the civil populace.
And obviously, you know, we can argue about how effective we were with
overarching coin as a as a as a methodology, UM, but we did
a very good job was kind of pushing that type of CQ capability down to
the lowest possible level to interact with the populace. UM. But that the
outcome of that has been that our our command posts and our C two writ
large are out of balance right now for the operating environment which we find ourselves.
So as we looked at this article, UM, General Slider really be
in the individual responsible for SU two in the army had asked me, had
brought me on board and said, hey, Matt, I need you to
help craft and narratives that highlights this problem, brame that problem and and kind
of put it into the tenants and dimensions of the Army's operating concept. And
let's help propose a solution that can kind of move the discussion forward. So
you know it is it isn't doctrine, it is an article. Um.
But what we try to do is draw up those ideas and get folks in
the Army and elsewhere to stink in terms of what it takes to be successful
from a command post and from a two perspective in multi main operations. Yeah,
but before we go for it, I should point out that the opinions
expressed my mad in this show and in the article he and his co authors
are there are there opinions that don't necessarily reflect the doctrine or interests I mean
not interest the command to which they belonged. So he's a free agent for
this show purpose. Um. One of the things I think we have to
start with is, and this is the problem identified with the with the continuing
large growth of command posts. And I think you've described it pretty well in
the article. Could you kind of kind of set forth what prompts the concerns
U for the US Army and probably for our other services about this this increasing
number of people with have their fingers in the pie and and all the electronic
stuff they bring with that, and why it's why it's a problem and what
we're trying to avoid. We certainly don't. The lessons learn from Ukraine include
not having your senior leadership decapitated, so kind kind of run with it.
Yeah, So so honestly, you know, what we try to do in
the article is kind of phrase the evolution of command posts, you know,
going back to when it was just the commander in the saddle. Obviously,
you know, command posts served the commander in all respects, right, so
it there functionally as a tool to enable his decision making process. Um.
And so as we've gone over over time, over history, you know,
we've gone from you know, very small set piece battles to much larger um
much larger conflicts, world wars, all those types of things. And along
with that we have developed better and more ways of kind of reigning in the
chaos of the warfare. Right, and so we've done that through the proliferation
of staffs. We've done that to automation. You can kind of trace the
technical advancement and the evolution of command posts, you know, going back three
four hundred years to kind of get us to where we're at today, right,
And so you get through you know, the twentieth century, and you're
really getting into some areas where we've gone from basically you know, the maritime
domain, the land domain. Well then you started to have in the air
domain. Okay, so now we've got to think in three dimensions. Now
you start talking about cyber domain and space domain and all this additional stuff that
the commander has to be able to visualize, articulate, be able to direct
his forces. And with all of that, because it comes a bill,
right, he has to, regardless of circumstances, maintain decision dominance throughout right.
And so you know, as we've discussed in the article, that led
to the growth of staff subject matter experts being close at hand because that proximity
will always matter. But then on top of that, you're talking about all
the additional automation, all of the IT infrastructure, all of that that can
really put all of those different multi domain aspects in the hands of the commander
so it can make the best possible decision in the short shortest possible time and
maintain that decision dominance to achieve victory on the battlefield. And over time that
has you know, so technology has has contributed to his survivability in some respect
and it has hindered his survivability in some respects. And we've gone through this
period of about twenty years during during the counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan where you
really didn't have that pressure, that external threat environment, pressure to to keep
those command posts small, right, to keep those command posts survivable, because
they were able to deal from essentially a place of sanctuary, whether it was
behind you know, the t wall barriers of you know, major headquarters in
Iraq or Afghanistan, all those type of things. There wasn't necessibly existential threat
to command posts at echelon's above you know, the brigade level. But that
environment has now changed, and both the war in the Goono Carava and the
war obviously in the Ukraine has highlighted that. And so as we wrote the
article, we tried to pull on that that sense of urgency and say,
hey, look here is for the first time in a long time, real
empirical evidence that our command posts are not set for purpose. One thing about
any institution that has habits, tradition or just a lot of bureaucratic inertia,
is it can be immune to depend upon what area you're in. Inconvenient facts
are inconvenient, history are incomplete understanding the little lessons that are there being tapped
on the shoulder to look at. You mentioned the Nogno Correbak battle, and
you know, going one of the favorite examples I could use, because everybody
uses it, is, you know, all the things that we're new during
World War Two, we're actually demonstrated and hinted at during the the Spanish Civil
War. And the Russians obviously knew what happened in a royal Karolbak, but
when they invaded, amongst a lot of things that they perhaps didn't fully hoist
on board. They're also in Syria. You know, the Russians aren't like
a lot of militaries in the world that haven't had combat operations recently. They
have, but they also have that tradition and that mindset, in that bureaucratic
and leadership culture that manifest itself in such a way that they learned the hard
way themselves with the invasion of Ukraine. And you start off your article,
I thought, with a really eye opening demonstration of this that brought together four
or five different threads for the listeners. Describe that what happened at Shoraba.
I think I pronounced it right. Probably not not just the less that that
came from that, but how that one event had ripple effects throughout that theater.
Yeah, absolutely so. The village of Churnabyevka is in the Kershan Oblast
on the banks of the Neiper River. UM. So if you recall,
like the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, it was a multi access invasion,
with the Cursed On Avenue being kind of one of the southern approaches. Um,
they were able to the Russians were able to advance across the the Nipa
River uh and and kind of established a little bit of a foothold in Kershon
in Cherna by Eevka. But what they were opposed by, obviously was a
very determined Ukrainian army uh and that Ukrainian army had was reinforced by additional support
from the US and its allies to provide a level of of ISR coupled with
you know, uh moitoring munitions, drone capabilities, all of this additional kit,
despite the fact that didn't have at that point really a particularly strong air
arm, but they had the intelligence UH to be able to deliver effects in
a very systematic manner against those UH centers of gravity that the Russians needed to
be able to UH consolidate their games and push that that initial UM, that
that initial U lodgment outwards from persons. They were never able to really do
that on the western side of the Nieva River because they were never able to
get the commander control straight. So the Russians when they were having challenges at
Cherboa Cherabayovka, they do what Russians sometimes do. Then they don't have the
same side of mission command seek philosophies that the West does. They put leadership
down at the point of the problem. Right. So now you suddenly started
seeing generals from the battlefield. You started seeing a lot of of senior leaders
kind of coagulate, coordinating their operations in forward command posts UM. And some
of that obviously is a result of you know, kind of the way that
they conduct operations. But the problem with a lot of that is that those
all of those command posts were very visible because of the ISSR support that the
Ukrainians were getting from the US from the native allies UH, and they were
able to very quickly reduce those those command posts right um, delivering fires and
effects, sometimes through you know uabs, sometimes through UH coordinated UH fires from
from from mass artillery battalions. But it was all, it was all.
It created a very lethal, very hyperactive environment um which was very difficult for
the Russians to kind of deal with. So they were never able to kind
of develop the type of momentum that would be necessary to kind of push forward
from that. And so the Russians when they would lose a command post,
would you know, follow up failure with with more failures, so they would
compound their their efforts. And really what you saw in Turnabayevka was a series
of command posts getting struck at all echelons, you know, from from the
the from the senior levels where you were having lieutenant generals getting hit you know,
down to you know, the regimental levels within the divisions down though,
so there was once you took away that C two structure, it was very
difficult for the Russians to coordinate any sort of large scale combat operations which would
have had any success in the Ukraine. Um So, so you saw that
and Turno Bayevka is obviously a very unique case study because it happened to so
many and posts in such close proximity. But you've seen that reflected throughout the
rest of the Ukraine as well. And then in addition to that, you
know you continue to see that playout. You may not necessarily be seeing all
of the generals getting hit the way we did in the first three or four
months, because you know, the Russians are adversary. They learned lessons too,
but this limited ability for them to conduct commanding contull is a result of
the highly lethal, hyperactive environment that they're finding themselves in and the ability to
leverage outsourced ISSR effectively and US capability to make sure that there really is no
sanctuary on the battlefield anymore. Yeah. One of the stunning things about your
article was the images from Fort Irwin of the electronic signature of the of the
of the command post undergoing training there. And those of us who have been
around a while, when we used to do transits in the name across the
Pacific and other places, and we would go totally under emission control, we
shut everything down and try and reduce our emission signature. Now we could communicate
a lot of other ways, but um, what what and if if the
army is going to try and focus on reducing these signatures so that you guys
are on these big footprints and I assume try and be able to hide in
the ordinary clutter of the battle, uh and the other units out there?
Uh what what? What if you could say, so without revealing any great
state secrets, what kind of what kind of things are you looking at to
reduce the signature of these the command posts that we will have. Well,
I think the first step is just having awareness, right of what that signature
actually looks like. So you know, everything you see there in terms of
the year, the electromagnetic signature of our our command post, we weren't really
necessarily looking at that, you know, five ten years ago, right,
Um, we were, you know, and in many cases five ten years
ago, we would have brigades go out to the National Training Center. So
that's that's what the National Training Center is really good at training, is our
brigade level formations. But they would go out there and you know, they
may not even put up camouflage nets, right, And so there's the army
in general has gone through this kind of do change in terms of understanding,
Okay, this is a highly lethal environment that we're now going to be having
a face and we need to look at all of our signatures and how do
we go about you know, masking those right, whether it's distribution or you
know, additional camouflage. You know, we've we've always kind of had camouflage
ending, but we're now paying a lot closer attention to what our electrical signature
is looking like. You know, what our noise and visual signatures are looking
like. You know, those things are important, and we also have to
think about it in terms of not just what is the footprint of the command
post for the future going to look like, but what are those other tells
that are going to lead people to where our critical command post infrastructure is,
whether it's logistics, whether it's you know, additional support, all of those
signatures that we have that the forest worth of of of antennas, you know,
those are keys that an indicators that that the adversary can clew in on
to to to enable a strike against us. So the things that I would
expect to see and I don't know where we're at in terms of the development
of the pipeline is because first of all, our command posts have to get
more mobile, right. Um, we went through this period where we were
using these huge drash tents and used to call them tak mahles whatnot, and
you would coagulate your entire division or core staff inside these things, and it
just made for the hugest, most comfortable but juicy target ever. Um.
So we're going to have to, you know, scale down the size of
our command posts and we're going to have to make those things more mobile because
if you've ever put up like a rash in the desert, you know,
it probably takes me about forty eight hours to get in position. You know,
I'm using round numbers. But the challenge is obviously, you know one
of those things are up mobile at all, right, and as the second
piece is, you know, once they're in position, they offered no protection
whatsoever. Right, So you know, one five rounds, one up five
fragmentation, we'll go right through you know, anything that that's out there in
that turn of setup. So we've got to figure out how do we harden
these things, how do we make the more mobile, how do we reduce
that signature in terms of electromagnetic emissions, in terms of the noise emissions,
light emissions, and now as they're looking at you know, even quantum capabilities
like being able to trace the movements of organizations and the movements of vehicles based
at the atomic level. Right, that's kind of what we're looking at with
the quantum signatures. We're going to have to figure out how do we either
mask those signatures so that you know, our adversaries can't see them, or
distribute them to the point where they just kind of blend into the normal fabric
of what else is out there in terms of battlefield clutter. One of the
things that kept hitting me as I read the article is, yes, it's
very army focused, as one would expect, but the lessons and the concepts
day every maritime and air commander needs to be thinking along the same lines,
because you know, we're talking about precision fires and a lot of examples that
we see from the Russia Ukrainian War. When you back up and you look
at other potential theaters, especially those in the Pacific west of the International Dateline,
you have adversaries with precision fires that go through not just this short range
but intermediate and medium range ballistic missile range that brings a threat on the hope.
And I don't have to tell you this, but you know, one
of the things you always say, you know, don't don't put your airfields
under your enemies artillery. It's the same idea. If they if they can
reach you and they can find you, they can I And it's it's a
balance. It's one of the things we've talked about in other contexts. Here
is the eternal battle between um efficiency and effectiveness. And I think you also
outline the article well that as we look at this challenge, there's some things
you know, you just can't get rid of, but you've got to find
the right balance between effective and survivable. And there is on the Navy side
of the house, I know it is a joint project, there's this desire
to have complete multi domain awareness basically for the for the people up high.
But to do that you have to have reach back. There's a lot of
electronics, a lot of support to do that. And so the commander is
going to have a need for and I'm going to quote a little bit from
your article, quote a commander's need for control of knowledge across all these areas,
creating demand for human and technical decision support tools end quote. And then
a little bit later on it says, quote to increase survivability, commanders sought
to protect their command post by reducing their size, hardening them, splitting them
up, camouflaging them, increasing their mobility, and actively defending them against all
manner of threats, including air, cyber and electronic attack. End of quote.
Now to do that while also you have this institutional desire that people will
have been back when I was a six guy in the late nineties, it
was even there that we want to have this all domain where you can't have
both. So you have to have a way to get that compromise there.
And you use a phrase that's been used maybe a little bit too much,
mostly at the unit tactical level level mission command. If you want to upscale
that a bit to the in theater operational operational level mission command, is it
going to require a rethink or a change of expectations in order to do kind
of what you outlined to command posts, because you still have to have that
function, but to make it such that it can survive more than D plus
one. Yeah, and I think that's a good point. You know,
we look at in the Army because of the complexity and the friction inherent in
the land domain, you know, mission commands, you know, and the
article just you know, gives it lays out the Army's definition for mission command,
but it really provides us with the ability to kind of, um make
the decisions closer to the point of need, right, we kind of push
authority down, uh into decentralized approach to executing operations UM. And we do
that out of necessity because you know, historically speaking, you know, we
can't be a sure that our commanders will have the ability to understand everything that's
going down at the lowest level. And so we have over the course of
the least you know, twenty years, we got into the situation where commanders
suddenly were able to see kind of what's going down at the tactical level.
And so we we acknowledge that mission command as an approach to command and control
that we're going to have to continue to utilize in the land domain. But
we also recognize that that the air component is adopting mission command as well.
So if you go back and you look at Air Force doctoral publication one which
came down I believe it was their last adjustment to that which I believe it
was in twenty one. Twenty twenty one, they introduced mission commands kind of
in the place where they used to have centralized control, decentral decentralized execution,
which was their approach to air operations and command and control. They introduced that
because they could no longer be assured that the Air Operations Center, which were
those central nodes for the execution of the air tasking order to a CEO to
spend all those pieces that kind of allow them to conduct centralized control. UM,
we're going to be survivable UM in an environment such as we're facing right
now, where you do have things like long range hypersonic weapons which can basically
reach any AOC. You know, within a given theater, right you're gonna
have adversaries that have capabilities that are going to be very difficult to UM to
defeat, and so you have to assume that there's going to be some attrition
in terms of the command and control. And so that's kind of the challenge
that we face when we're looking at command posts or vivability is um it's not
just you know, how do you mask, but how you maintain the same
level of effectiveness in an environment where you're you're having to do the trade off
between survivability and effectiveness. We propose in the article a way to kind of
break that paradigm, and from our standpoint, or at least from from the
author standpoint, kind of the way to do that, uh, really kind
of puts a greater focus and priority on the information dimension, which I fully
acknowledge is hard sometimes for the maritime component to to kind of adopt because of
the challenge of being at sea and not necessarily having you know, land based
servers and all this other kind of additional infrastructure that the air component, the
land component has you know, kind of inherent in how we conduct operations.
It's very much harder in my understanding, for the for the maritime component to
do that while at sea. But that said, you know, we look
at that as kind of the way in which we kind of break out of
that survivability effectiveness paradigm and kind of you know, get us to the point
where we can conduct distribute operations or command posts at different national ones can truly
be fundable where we can kind of allow a brigade commanders to operate out of
the division commanders or excuse me, allowing court commander to operate either the division
comanders CP or the division commanders to operate out of a brigade commander CP.
Those ideas, if you don't have the infrastructure and the it UH and the
information capability to support that, you're you're really locked into kind of the paradigm
that we've always historically found ourselves. UM. And so that that's a bit
of the challenge. You know, I recognize that a lot of the stuff
that we talked about in the article or are kind of you know, people
be well, that's you know, that's infeasible. The technology is not there.
It isn't it's not right. So, um, you know, we
talked about virtual reality, we talk about augmented reality and the role that that's
going to play in the future in terms of command and control U. But
it really comes down to like, how do we how do we maintain a
level of effectiveness necessary to sustain decision dominance, um, while not why fallen
into the survivability track. That's kind of as we see the challenger. So
I don't know if that answered your question or not. Well, it answers
a lot of questions. One of the one of the questions I have.
You know, you talked about it just now, and you talked about it
in the article that we had such great communications structures, which is why we
built these massive command posts and other devices. Where the were you know,
I mean, gosh, you in the Vietnam War we had the president United
States choosing targets. I mean, uh, how do we get in a
mission command environment which I understand is driven, should be driven? Uh?
And you correct me if I'm wrong by the commander's intent? How do we
get how do we get the senior people to back off a little bit and
not not micromanage and let the let the people in the field do their job.
And if the commander's intent is clear, it shouldn't matter. I hate
to say this, It shouldn't matter if the if the echelon above the you
know, it gets wiped out, that we still know what we're supposed to
be doing. Am I off base here? No? I think you're I
think you're right on point in it. And I think that same challenge is
felt by by all the services equally, right, So, you know,
I think it comes back to commanders need to kind of understand what their role
is within the capabilities and limitations that are made available to them. There are
certain things that you're going to want the President of the United States, you
know, making a decision on what targets are going to you know, we're
going to strike as a country, right in terms of capabilities that have the
ability to escalate warfare indirections that nationally we don't necessarily want to go. Those
are decisions that you know, he should probably control at his level. And
so what you've kind of kind of get to is a bit of a sliding
scale of mission command where you say, okay, yes, we know you
have all of these different capabilities at your level. You know, we're going
to give you access to be able to utilize you know, these different multidimensional
capabilities, but only in certain in certain contexts. Right. Um, So
if you look at, you know, some of the capabilities that are coming
on board for the army right now, you have the multi demand hask Force
and it's multi Main Effects Battalion, which has like access to cyber and space
and some of these different things without the proper guard rails, without you know,
from a fire supporters perspective, the proper fire support coordination measures, you
know, maneuver coordination measures or whatever multimain effects coordination measures associated with those particular
assets. You know, you can get out of your ahead of your skis
relatively quickly. Um And so even within mission commands, it's not a free
for all, you know, it is bounded by the commanders intent and that
commanders intent and reflected in the various control measures that ensure that that people are
do stay within their length. But I do acknowledge that, you know,
sometimes the commanders don't understand their role in some of those situation and find themselves,
you know, getting fixated. You know, we used to call it
during the Iraq where we used to call it predator porn. They get fixated
on the TV show that's on their their you know, command post display showing
a predator about rady to strike a vehicle or something like that, and not
focused on the things that as a commander they should really be focused on,
which is, you know, maybe operational level things, high taxicle level things,
those kind of things that they should really understand. I like to think
that that will kind of take care of itself as the complexities of dealing with
large scale operations overwhelm the commander's ability to do that kind of micromanagement. I
like to think that's going to happen. I'm not entirely confident that. I
think that's going to be person specific. And you're going to have those commanders
that do it really well, and you're going to have those commanders that are
hopefully going to find themselves out of a job for doing it portly. And
back when I was a NATO guy doing an army guy's job, and we
would do exercises and these late Cold War bunkers way underground where you literally are
designed that oh yeah, we could have a Hiroshima sized new clickoff about one
hundred meters from the entrance and we'll be okay. I mean, they're pretty
well designed. And then you'd go to Kabul and you look at the watch
floor and you go, okay, one of those dumb one hundred and seven
millimeter rockets gets lucky, kind of like the Iraqi's got lucky with the scud
at the end of the Gulf War. In this place, disappears what's planned
B, and everybody would just look at each other and we go, we
have no plan B. I was like, well, that's interesting. I'm
sure somebody did somewhere, but nobody on the watch floor actually did. And
kind of the question I had is the Russians have gone through in Ukraine multiple
cycles of attention on deck. Here's the general reef them poof, he and
his staff are gone. What have we seen from the Russians as with each
iteration as a as a learning institution of learning army. I assume because they
thought this is going to be one of those seventy two hour wars that they
were probably caught flat footed when they got punched in the face a few times
at the senior leadership level. But what have we seen how they've adjusted their
their approach to command in the field. Well, I think what we've seen
is you're not seeing the massive conferences of senior Russian leaders getting together the way
they had been in the early months of this thing. They've learned some lessons
too, clearly, um, but I think you know that has come at
a pretty steep cost for them. They've they've lost some from some what I
think many people would consider a kind of first line leadership in the course of
that happening, and it has had some significant attrition in what we would consider
first line units, right, so you know, just off you know,
top of mind, the first Startist tank army was very highly regarded in the
West prior to the war, and that has been you know, essentially made
combat and effective in the first year of this war. So you know,
if you can really start taking off, you know, key pieces centers of
gravity, you know, taking those pieces off the table has an effect.
Part of the reason why we're in this level of attrition warfare is that both
sides are exhausted at this point, right, um, and we're not necessarily
maybe able to you know, provide our allies with the stuff that they need
quickly enough in order to be able to tip the scales and kind of go
back over to the offense. We anticipate that's going to happen later on this
spring, and we should see a decent a decent counter offensive coming out of
the Ukrainians here, you know, really any time now. But the challenge
obviously is you know, with with a with an organization, with with a
UM, with a country like Russia, with the country like China, they're
pretty deep, right, they have a deep bench, right um. And
it's one where we're going to have to be able to continue to go back
and pound them right until we can kind of get to them to the point
where where you know, they just they don't have anything more, can't contribute
anything more to fight. UM. But that truly is a nutrition style of
warfare. And it's not you know, it's not something we want to get
ourselves, you know, involved in if we can possibly help it. So
I don't love that it's actual question or not. But but yeah, that's
kind of my take on and do is that's where we're at right now.
The Russians are are um, are improving, UM, but you know kind
of they they they paid a price for some poor decisions up front. And
you know, I loud it to this in the article as well. You
know, as the as the Americans and as the West UH in the mid
two thousands kind of pushed all their combat ability down to the brigade level to
really to conduct expeditionary operations you know in the Middle East and Afghanstand and elsewhere.
Um, the Russians is the same thing, only instead of their you
know, uh expeditionary operations being too you know, Iraq and Afghanistan. While
they were to Syria or they were to Georgia or they order these other places
live and so forth right. What that did was it pushed capability away from
those formations of the division and core level and the command post the division and
core level that would be necessary for conducting and coordinating large scale combat operations.
So that was kind of, you know, where they took it in the
teeth, you know, going directly into the Ukraine with a command post and
a F two structure that was not fit to large scale combat operations. So
they're they're redesigning as they go, and I think we'll see going toward what
the results that are going to be. I love the term predator forum.
I remember during the coast, during the Coast of Adventure, UH, that
was also a factor then, and I think we called it pretty much the
same thing. But you know, because the big boss can see what's going
on in the ground and he wants to direct where things go. Um and
that that I want to get into that you talk about data driven the process
and how we need to move away from the current UH structure into into cloud
and AI and all kinds of stuff. Can you kind of expound on that
little bit? Yeah? Absolutely, And so I don't want to say like,
well, the armies or the military doesn't use data, but you know,
we do use data. We use it all the time. We're just
not very efficient at using it. I guess that's what I'm saying. So
you know right now, uh, you know, with their server stacks and
all that kind of stuff, there's a lot of infrastructure associated with getting access
to that data. UM. And you know, there is the potential that
you know, data that we need to make decisions, UM, whether it's
whether it's data for for petting targets, or whether it's whether it's data that
we need for other types of decisions. We just don't have a system set
up where we can easily access that data when we need to, you know,
in order to be able to make those decisions in the timeline OUs man.
So utilizing things like the combat cloud um, you know, as an
example, utilizing different techniques that we you know, we bring in from you
know, the cviiling community. We have to be a little bit careful with
that because you know, business they use different techniques that may not hold up
necessarily under the under the rigors of combat and types some of the types of
things that the military institutes. We do have to be a little bit careful
with that, UM, but but you know, the ability to access that
and make sure that when our units are isolated, their information is isolated,
because that's going to happen in an environment going forward, you're going to have
units that are isolated. They're going to have to operate isolating UM. So
you're going to have to be able to provide there. They're not only going
to have to be able to endure to sustain themselves under that type of under
that type of pressure, but they're also going to have to continue to get
the information that they need to be able to continue to survive and make good
decisions and operate effectively when they're no longer in physical contact with friendly forces UM.
And so, movement to the cloud, greater reliance on satellite communications,
other types of communications. The ones that are going to bear the burden for
all of this going forward is the IT community is a communications community. They're
going to ones that are kind of, as they always have in the past,
kind of take it on the chin in order to kind of move the
command and control you know, steam forward, and so, yes, greater
emphasis on the information dimension in order to be able to accommodate that. In
the end, it's going to be better off for everybody. Yeah. The
old old cliche is, you know, the four shops, the logistics always
get a veto. I think we need to modify that. Uh in this
in this century, that the six shops get a veto too. It's uh,
all you gotta do is come up with this this great plan and then
you you ask for the input from the six shop and they go, we
have no points for presence. We can't do that. There's no satellite access.
Did you go, okay, well, let's let's let's talk about that
for a bit. Um. It's developed and I don't want to, oh,
go go ahead. No. What I was gonna say is is you
know what is that require? Right? We We've spent you know, years
and years and years spending time with our commanders talking to them about the importance
of logistics and how those are constraining on their operations. Um. I would
argue that we have not done due diligence on with our commanders, and and
and and and pointing on him the importance of their data, the importance of
communications, you know, s six. You know, I've had commanders who've
been you know who's talked about. You know, I don't know what the
common the ex does or what the commo guys do, but I know what
when it's not there, you know, it's kind of like oxygen, right,
Um, but it's But it's one of those where like we're going to
have to really inform and educate our commanders on how they utilize data, what
that data is for, what are the considerations they need to you know,
develop in terms of how they plan operations. Um, because ultimately I think
their operations are going to depend upon how they use that in making decisions.
Yeah, that that that bandwidth thirst can get a little bit out of control
depending upon where you are. And I don't want to scare people by using
the d word doctrine, but doctrines and important words mean things. You know,
people joke that, well nobody reads that crap. Well, people that
matter and who write checks and they do read that stuff because they have to
justify what they're trying to do. And uh, words mean things too,
and you know how you define them, how you look at them, and
especially in a in a combined operations you get us side the joint world,
we very rarely do things by ourselves. Um, you know, one of
the one of the funny exchanges. It was usually it was a Dutch our
German. Somebody would quote Classwitz about something and then you have twenty minute discussion
about how terrible the English translations of the original German. It's a very dangerous
game with those guys. But you mentioned that the Army their their capstone document,
the Field Manual three Tax zero Operations, was updated back in October,
and you took some time, not by accident, to to to to find
these four words when they were talking about what the direction the command code post
need the go because you know, I get the depression by looking at at
the Army is going, hey, this is an issue, we need to
resolve it. And they put four words there, agility, convergence, endurance
in depth. And I think that applies to more than just you know,
the Army. That is a joint concern about our major C two nodes.
You know, talk a little bit inside three tag zero how they define the
core that agility, convergent, endurance and depth. So and I try to
lay it out in the article the Army's definition of each of those. But
what's interesting is that those those tenets of what we're what we're characterizing as multiple
main operations in the current three days zero. If you look at earlier iterations
of FM three days our catch stone operating doctrine, he'll see those terms applied.
Right. Depth is not a new term for the Army. Endurance is
no new term. Agility is not a new term. But in multiple main
operations we think of those kind of in a different contexts, right, So
you know, agility obviously no speed, but also nimbleness, the ability to
change quickly. When we think about that in terms of command and control,
you know, and what the point that I try to make in the in
the article is that it's not just the ability to you know, displace in
place all those different types of things move a command post quickly. We need
to think about it in terms of the ability for command posts to take on
different roles, um, whether that's a brigade doing a division's job, or
a division doing a coorse job, or or maybe you know, up to
the Army Service Component command of the R four level, you know, doing
different roles based upon you know, what we need that command supposed to do,
based upon maybe something has happened on the battlefield or something that we need
to think about agility in different terms than perhaps we have in the past.
The newest one, the newest tenant that they've come up with for for multimine
operations for the current FM three, I said that virgins you know, really
that kind of builds upon the uh, the old principle of mass, right,
where in the past we use mass to overwhelm the an adversarious capabilities and
understanding convergence we're talking about, you know, an outcome created by the concerted
deployment of capabilities from multi domains and nationals against combined combinations of decisive deployments in
any domain to create effects against systems. So it's still it's still very closely
aligned to affect the way that mass was. However, what it what it
tries to convey here is the multi domain aspect of it. We're now attacking
not just like singular centers of gravity, but multiple center centers of gravity from
with employing assets from different domains at different national ones. So it really isn't
you know, mass as you know, new wine and an old bottom.
Right. What we're really saying here is we're gonna take a system's approach to
warfare and convergence is going to be the tool that we that we go to
to get after that. And so kind of see your point earlier we were
talking about, you know, reliance on adallies. You know we can,
we can, we fully intend to use allied capabilities to help enable that convergence.
So I am as a fire supporter, I'm completely uh, you know,
agnostic as to whether you know that one five five round comes out of
a US Triple seven howitzer or whether it comes out of a A saysar,
a friend says are done, or whatever. Right, So you know,
we need to kind of look at conversions as you know, the totality of
the joint force plus you know, our our allies contributions to get after not
just attacking one point of presence on the battlefield, but all points of presence
relatives of a particular system that we're trying to take out, whether that's an
indirect whether that's an integrated fire control or an integrated fire system, whether that's
an IAD threat, whether that's something else. Right, So that's kind of
what we're talking about. You discuss, you know, convergence. When we
think about endurance, you know that that has some you know, historical connotations
in terms of our ability to you know, persevere over time. UM,
so that's kind of your survivability aspect, but it's also your ability to sustain
the fight going forward to you know, and that's you know, through time.
In the debt sudden operational environment, endurances is something that you know,
historically we've kind of thinking, well, that's kind of a sustainment. You're
going to be limited in terms of your operational uh, in terms of your
ability to conduct operations by your logistics. You may get to a point where
you have to culminate and then transition. You know, we're trying to kind
of get out of just a sustainment viewpoint of endurance inn and kind of expand
that uh into not just you know, demonstrating resilience and persistence, but also
you know, be able to do that through through time as well. So
that's kind of what we're talking about with that, And then we we're thinking
about depth. Uh. You know, really we kind of view depths is
our ability to extend our operations through time and space and through talking to the
purpose. Um. You know, we used to think of depths purely in
terms of how do we extend the battlefield, right, you know, in
terms of AirLand battle, we're going to strike second national enforces or we're gonna
you know, it had a very geographic approach to things, um, but
now you know, we view, we're viewing depth because depth used to be
attendant under under those operating concepts as well. Now a view and depth has
not just you know, how are we able to do that in space?
But you know through you know, uh, cyber means or into like space
space or across time. You know, how do we how do we create
some sort of advantage or exploit you know, our opportunities, uh, and
kind of allow us to make decisions faster within our command posts so that we
actually buy the commanders some time to make decisions, right, and so we're
able to kind of take apart pieces of our adversary systems in detail versus kind
of dealing with everything right up front. So that's kind of what we're talking
about when we discuss those four tenants. And and if you if your your
listeners really want to get a good feel for multi main operations. One of
the main videos that I'd encourage everybody to go out on the internet and look
for there's a YouTube video out there presented by Rich Creed, the director of
the Combined Arms Doctrine director that for eleven with which really does a good job
of laying out the differences between multi main operations and the tenants that I just
describe, and kind of what came before that and why those changes exist,
because they all exist for for really good reasons based upon the threatening environments.
Everybody's kind of gotten on the band right wagon the last few years looking at
the challenge of the Western Pacific and geography doesn't change, and so the same
challenge our grandfathers and great grandfathers had with the battle west of the International Dateline
east of India are going to repeat themselves again. And that's that's a terrain
whether you're you're at sea or ashore or in the air. That's very different
than the Russia Ukrainian environment. It's more more lectoral, much smaller, little
tiny islands here and there. The Alliance networks are a little bit different.
And I was interested on your perspective the Marine Corps, but they're the expeditionary
mindset that General Burger, the Commandant, has been pushing recently involves having various
units located on a vastly dispersed type of environment in different islands to present different
talent challenges, And I think one of the larger challenges there is just being
able to do your basic communications much less any type of command post operation that
especially in armies looking at and though the army is looking hard and how they're
going to be able to support any potential contingencies out in the Pacific. If
we if we look too much at the Russia Ukrainian challenge, are there some
some issues you see that perhaps we would encounter trying to maintain effective command and
control throughout the Pacific theater that maybe or not directly connected to things that we're
looking at trying to learn as we see what's going on in Ukraine. Yeah,
so, Um, that the Western Pacific is a huge problems that for
the for the army, but it's obviously one that we take extremely seriously.
And if there's if there's one upside to the geography of the Pacific is that
it goes both ways and that the Chinese will have to deal with that same
geography go in the other direction. Um. Obviously I think the Chinese are
looking at what's happening in the Ukraine right now, they have to be right,
UM and kind of trying to figure out, Okay, you know,
we just saw you know, all of their command posts get struck in very
close order, and we don't obviously want that to happen to us as well.
So we have to kind of understand that they're probably going to be changing
up their methodologies for how they can command and control. UM and in the
same way that we're looking at, you know, how how we're going to
be there. We have to suspect, I think, and plan for the
fact that the that the Chinese are not going to look like the Russians when
they when we encounter them, right they're gonna have learned some lot of them.
They're going to come to us, probably with with some better kit I
think than what we're seeing on the battlefield right now, uh in in uh
eastern Ukraine. UM, And it's an entirely different that's an entirely different operating
environment. UM. That's it. I think that that that C two problem
set, that command post problem set is very challenging in the Pacific because of
the distances that you're talking about, UM and from a land perspective, you
know, where we're largely reliant online of sitcoms and things of that nature.
We're going to have to become a lot more comfortable dealing with, you know,
alternative forms of communication, whether that's dot com, whether that's you know,
hf U H, all those type of things where you know, we
have not you know, spend a lot of time and effort and energy,
you know, kind of exploring those options for enabling our command and control.
I think we're going to have to really start taking a look at that in
a little bit more depth and then figuring out how we work with our partners
in the Navy, in the Marine Corps to kind of come together. I
think all of us, whether it's the Army, the Air Force, Nabe,
Marine Corps, we all have challenges in terms of survivability of our command
posts. Um. You know, we've seen the capabilities of you know,
the Chinese in terms of their ISSR, their ability to collect and we kind
of have to assume that this isn't going to be you know, the fight
that we have with China isn't going to be like the Battle of Midway where
we just lost complete you know, pract of where strike groups are and things
of that nature. That I think we're going to know, you know,
with some significant lead time what our adversaries are doing. Um, the question
is going to be, now that they know what we know and we know
what they know, that how how does that play out? Right? You
know? What survives first contact? Is it going to be where I think
the rudder is going to meet the road on that one. So we have
to be prepared to you know, absorb that first strike wherever it comes from,
and be able and effective to respond in kind so that you know,
we don't get into you know, the situations where now we're reconstitute an entire
CTU structure, you know, in contact at great distance. That's a very
dangerous environment for me. Um. I'm sorry I dropped off because the lectural
storm just took all the power out or where I'm sitting, Um, and
we're getting close to the end of the hour. We told you we'd keep
you for uh where working our other than the article? Where can our listeners
find more information about what you're talking about? And what do you have plans
to write more about it in the future, and what can we look forward
to? Yeah? Absolutely so as it so happened. Um, I'm actually
transitioning out of the Army right now, so I'm I'm leaving h TO,
but I will continue to be working on Commander Control. I'm actually going up
to to Huntsville, uh TO to work with the Rapid Capabilities Critical Technologies Office
for the Army. UM. But I'll stay very tied in with with the
CTWO community going forward, both here in the local area and elsewhere. UM.
You know, I've written a couple of articles. This isn't my first
article related to C two and in fact, I think one of the reasons
why they're all slider reached out to me was because I was kind of looking
at some of these ideas with regard to training and education in a previous article.
I'm going to try to continue to write. UM, you can get
in touch with me on Twitter. It's the Army Joint cqu pro at Army
Joint tqu pro. That's my handle, so I all occasionally post on there,
and then obviously folks can reach out for Matt Errol on LinkedIn, and
you know, I hang my articles there as well. But you know,
very eager, you know, I continue to try to, you know,
keep in in touch with the cqu community. Written large has been very good
being down here at Hurlbert because we have so many joint leaders in the CPU
communities, flow through the schoolhouse down here at the Fivelist Command and controlling m
that I really have benefited, I think from the opportunity to interact with so
many of my partners in the joint force and kind of get a truly multi
service and allied perspective on things, which you know, I find this work
very, very valuable, very rewarding, and it's it's one I'm I intend
to continue to support it, you know, even into retirement. Well,
Matt, we really appreciate it's been a great hour, real informative. I
appreciate you being patient with a couple of Navy guys that is trying to figure
it out. But as we've discussed everything in this article, it doesn't just
apply to the army. This is really joint in the best sense. And
I would copy because you did mention the article. A lot of our allies
too have developed similar habits, and hopefully their militaries are hoisted on board some
of the changes they need to make in this area that we got a little
bit too settled with. And I wish you the best of luck in your
next position. We'll be keeping track of you and look forward to the next
opportunity to talk with you with what you're working on. All right, thank
you so much, really appreciate it. Thank you, Matt enjoyed talking to
you, yea, and we appreciate everybody for joining us for another edition a
Midrat. Just to give you a heads up, we're gonna be taking a
couple of weeks off. His life gets kind of busy, but we're gonna
be back here on the twenty first of May, and our guest on the
twenty first coming back. One of our favorites, Claude barrabay third novel is
out. It's just got available this weekend over on Amazon, called The Philippine
Pact. That's another Connor Stark novel that everybody's been waiting a few years for.
And we look forward to talking to Claude about that. And until next
time, I hope everybody has a great navy and what the heck, good
army day too. Cheers your king, like my lonely want to marry me
and live brand that be can believe for your being to blame for lovely WoT
me silly faulting your the Dame. It's a long way to differ, It's
a long way. It's a long way to differently. The greenes I know
gone by becodealing well, listen to where it's a long long way to dipper
Ram. It's but my heart blind them