Problems for Agile Combat Employment

The U.S. Air Force has implemented agile combat employment (ACE) as its scheme of maneuver to increase the survivability of aircraft on the ground during a peer conflict. Under this doctrine, planes disperse and operate from a variety of forward locations at a tempo fast enough to outpace an adversary’s targeting cycle.¹ However, enemy use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to rapidly analyze data from persistent space-based sensors threatens this doctrine by dramatically shortening an enemy’s kill chain. For ACE to remain credible, the Air Force must pair it with deception techniques to delay and confuse the enemy’s ability to identify and target parked aircraft.

Two Conditions for Success, Two Problems 

ACE has rapidly gained traction, and exercises have generated iterative improvements to the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Unfortunately, the echo chamber effect makes airmen hesitant to acknowledge that ACE’s success is predicated on wishing away enemy capabilities—especially those of China. For ACE to succeed, two unlikely conditions must be met: 

 • The enemy must not have enough long-range fires to disrupt many operating locations simultaneously. The problem is that, according to Army Techniques Publication 7-100.3: Chinese Tactics, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) is “the largest missile force in the world, operating well over 1,000 short-range, medium-range, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and over 300 long-range cruise missiles.” More significant, the publication says the PLARF may use hundreds of short-range missiles to support tactical-level missions.² 

China’s doctrine and resources support a capability to strike parked military aircraft at all seven U.S. military installations with runways in the Pacific and any aircraft displaced to the 14 airfields in the Pacific under U.S. control (excluding Alaska and Korea).³ Synchronized long-range fires are an unanswered problem that threatens the validity of ACE.  

• The enemy’s kill chain (the ability to find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess targets) must be slower than the Air Force’s ability to launch the next sortie.⁴ The problem here is that by using AI, an enemy kill chain could be capable of outcycling ACE. An appropriate planning factor for ACE is a maximum sustained rate of one sortie per fighter per day using ACE tactics.⁵ Figure 1 shows how the enemy could use commercially available technology to replace time-intensive analyst work and shrink its kill chain to under 24 hours. Compared with the unassisted kill chain, the automated process lacks the judgment and experience a human analyst provides, but the process undoubtedly will be tuned over time by human guidance to achieve comparable results.  

An AI-assisted kill chain depends on widespread and near-real-time data from space-based sensors, but access to space and persistent sensors has increased dramatically in the past decade. Public databases show 1,184 Earth-observation satellites in operation, 331 of which are owned by or operated from China.⁶ Only 50 low Earth orbit satellites are required for full coverage of the Earth, so enemy overhead reconnaissance in a near-peer conflict is a near certainty.⁷ Chinese Tactics surmises that the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force “will likely work very closely with the China National Space Administration and the country’s space industry partners to develop dual-use space capabilities.”⁸ As a result, every space launch from China should be assumed to carry a military capability—including the payloads from the 67 PLA launches in 2023.⁹ 

In addition, advances in on-orbit synthetic aperture radar have demonstrated the ability to see through visual camouflage and will be used by the enemy to increase its observation confidence.¹⁰

An automated imagery analysis program can conduct the find, fix, track, and target steps of the kill chain using the imagery database from space-based sensors. Figures 2, 3, and 4 show the maturity of this imagery analysis technology, suggesting the unique shapes of military aircraft will almost certainly be identified by AI.¹¹

New TTPs Required

ACE requires new TTPs. Ground-based camouflage, concealment, and deception (CCD) is cost-effective and would increase the survivability of aircraft. The Air Force should fundamentally change airfield ground operations, update aircraft paint schemes, and implement a range of decoy aircraft.

Ground operations: The Air Force must be more deceptive in its airfield ground operations. It should park tactical aircraft exclusively in hangars, shelters, and sunshades when operating in contested areas. If this is not possible, airfield authorities should randomize parking to prevent the enemy from easily discerning the number of aircraft at an operating location. This costs nothing and may confuse and delay the enemy’s ability to track aircraft location in a database. 

Paint schemes: The Air Force should implement low visibility roundels and insignia on all aircraft. Large block labels and numbers that can be read from space (as seen in Figure 4) help an adversary identify and track aircraft movements. Insignia could be replaced at the next major maintenance cycle with minimal cost and should be repainted only on the lower half of the fuselage and underside of the wings.

Decoy aircraft: The Air Force should implement a range of decoy aircraft—both two- and three-dimensional—that could be deployed during an escalating crisis. Simple decoys could confuse automated systems, and if they were rapidly identified as decoys, might make the more realistic three-dimensional decoys seem more credible. At a minimum, this could delay the enemy’s kill chain; at its most successful, it might draw fire away from real aircraft or hangars and allow counterbattery fire. Decoy use and sensor deception on the ground fell out of use during the war on terror because the enemy largely lacked the capability to observe or target air bases with exquisite assets. As a result, the Air Force is behind in fielding CCD measures. It must use the current interwar period to rebuild its deception techniques.

Effectiveness 

It is hard to quantify the effectiveness of CCD, so many will not be comfortable employing ACE with only passive defenses.¹² Changing airfield operations to be more deceptive or playing a “shell-game” with hangars might not work on its own; if the enemy observed only hangars, shelters, and sunshades but no aircraft, it might logically assume the aircraft are inside those facilities. It could attack the facilities and get the same effect as if it targeted the aircraft themselves. However, robust passive defenses including overhead visual cover and a deception plan with many decoy aircraft could be effective at scale—when they are comprehensive enough to confuse the enemy’s automated tools and large enough that real and decoy targets cannot be saturated by fires. Even at a small scale, passive defenses could increase aircraft survivability and are far cheaper than active defenses.

Another counterargument is that decoys are not realistic enough to fool modern sensors that can observe throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Even visually they are vulnerable to stereoscopic imaging.¹³ While this is true, there are decoys with thermal and radar signatures comparable to fighter aircraft. An after-action report of Operation Allied Force on the Serbian use of decoys against the U.S. Air Force noted that it raised “questions about the ability of even advanced sensors to distinguish between more realistic and advanced forms of decoys and real targets.”¹⁴ CCD might only delay an enemy’s kill chain slightly, but a slight delay may be enough to maintain the utility of ACE. 

The gaps in the ACE TTPs are troubling enough that the House Armed Services Committee has mandated a report on its deficiencies, noting, “With the proliferation of threats and the Air Force’s plan to deploy in remote locations independent from other major service elements, the committee is concerned these critical assets will lack sufficient air defense.”¹⁵ If no changes are made, ACE risks becoming encumbered by active air defense systems and unnecessary mission support functions, with the resulting loss of its advantage of tempo. 

“When all other factors are equal, the more deceptive player or team will always win,” noted deception expert Barton Whaley.¹⁶ The Air Force must practice CCD to allow tactical aircraft to maneuver and fight inside the enemy’s weapon engagement zone.