U.S. military forces are stretched to the limit, hardware is wearing out much faster than planned, and weapons inventories are dropping as a result of the series of operations short of war launched by the Clinton administration on a routine basis.
Last year's Operation Allied Force in Kosovo is are a case in point. Kosovo accelerated yet again the wear and tear on fleet assets, and depleted already meager ammunition stocks, thereby increasing the urgency of replacement programs. Each overseas adventure advances the timeline for the systems of the future, yet the administration's fiscal year 2001 budget request does little to fund this accelerated need. Even though total Department of Defense-wide procurement finally has reached the $60 billion figure expressed several years ago as the minimum necessary annual investment, that requirement today probably is closer to the $100 billion mark. Tables 1 and 3 document the major research, development, test and evaluation efforts and procurement programs under way, including the fiscal year 2000 budgetary process results and fiscal year 2001 requests.
Kosovo Weapons Lessons-Learned
Operation Allied Force, the 1999 aerial assault against Serbia as a result of Serbian actions in Kosovo, yielded a number of lessons in regard to weapon systems technology and operational employment. Some were intuitively obvious; others were surprises. What follows is how the Navy and Marine Corps responded to questions on the lessons learned for specific systems.
The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) proved to be a very responsive and flexible weapon against both fixed and relocatable Serbian targets. TLAM accuracy, all-weather capability, and 24-hour availability played a critical role in the early days of the conflict prior to the reduction of the Serbian integrated air defense system, and subsequently when weather prevented delivery of laser-guided weapons.
For the first time, TLAM was used as an on-call as well as planned weapon. Firing units, both surface and submarine, could prepare their missiles for launch prior to receipt of mission data, download the mission, and launch soon thereafter. The advent of Tactical Tomahawk will facilitate the on-call mission since extensive mission planning will not be required.
Submarines, both U.S. and Royal Navy, launched some 25% of the Tomahawks fired in the early portions of the action. Their performance increased congressional interest in the conversion of up to four excess Ohio (SSBN-726)-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines to cruise missile and special operations platforms (SSGNs). A 1999 congressionally mandated analysis on such a conversion was quite positive on the conversions, which would configure the two forward ballistic missile tubes on the SSBNs to lock-in/ lock-out trunks for use by special forces and fit the remaining 22 launch tubes with 7 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, for a total of 154. Up to 102 special forces personnel could be accommodated.
For fiscal year 2000 Congress provided $30 million for the initial design work, which would involve the first four units of the Ohio class: the lead submarine plus the Michigan (SSBN-727), Florida (SSBN-728), and the Georgia (SSBN-729). Program cost will depend on how arms control concerns are addressed; to avoid counting these platforms under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I (START I), total conversion costs for all four ships would be $4.48 billion. If the platforms remained countable as strategic weapon platforms under START, total costs would drop to $2.48 billion. Both cost estimates include refueling the submarines' nuclear reactors.
Meanwhile, given the almost routine expenditure of TLAMs by the administration, the Navy is running out of missiles. Production of the Block III models has ended, pending the production of the new Tactical Tomahawk variant. To rearm in anticipation of additional expenditures prior to the new missiles entering the fleet, Congress passed supplemental legislation in 1999, funding the remanufacture of obsolescent TLAM and Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missiles (TASMs) to the current Block III configuration. Table 2 shows which missiles are being remanufactured to which configurations.
Deliveries of the TLAM HC and HD conversions begin 23 months after contract award. TASM remanufactures begin delivery 29 months after contract award.
Events in Kosovo once again highlighted the importance of the EA-6B to air operations by all the services as well as participating NATO allies. In answer to a direct question on the subject, sources stated that EA-6Bs routinely vided support for F-1 17 and B -2 aircraft as well as for non-stealth missions. This high level of strained EA-6B resources to the limit. Operation Northern Watch of the no-fly zone over northern Iraq) effectively suspended when on 20 1999 three of the four Marine EA-6Bs, all Marine tankers, and a number strike/fighters from Incirlik, Turkey, reassigned to Aviano, Italy for Kosovo operations. Northern Watch operations resumed when the Marine EA-6Bs turned to Incirlik on 14 April. At point in the conflict, 75% of all EA-6B Prowlers were deployed in port of Kosovo operations.
Only 123 EA-6B airframes exist, funding to resurrect the 123rd from desert storage was approved year. Immediately prior to last year's Operation Allied Force, only 84 EA-6Bs were active in the fleet; by 2000, that number had increased to 102. The other 21 airframes are in depot-level maintenance, being winged, undergoing modification, or combination of all three.
The increase in operational numbers, however, is only a near-term Band-aid fix. The first EA-6B flew in 1968; the last one was delivered in 1991. Given their high operational tempo, many of these airframes are overdue for replacement. The analysis of alternatives for such replacement kicked off in February of this year, and is to report out in December 2001.
Inasmuch as the EA-6B has become a national, joint asset, its replacement has considerable joint visibility. An electronic warfare variant of the F/A-18F is a leading contender, and the Air Force has recently proposed modifying several B-52 bombers to fulfill this role. Given that both of its stealth assets—the $2 billion+ per copy B-2 bomber and the F-1 17 stealth fighter—demonstrated an absolute requirement for electronic countermeasures (ECM) support during Operation Allied Force, the Air Force has publicly expressed regret for giving up its own fleet of EF-I HA Raven ECM aircraft only two years ago.
The Marine Corps generated a long list of Kosovo ECM lessons-learned, principally in the areas of equipment, joint organization, and training. These lessons included:
- The need for night-vision devices, because Prowlers lack air-to-air radar (Congress added funds to the EA-6B program with $31 million to resolve this)
- The need for a joint electronic warfare cell at the combined air operations center (the one for Allied Force was not established until well into the conflict)
- A requirement for centralized data fusion for the Tactical Electronic Reconnaissance Processing and Evaluation System (TERPES) to mitigate the confusion inherent in Kosovo ECM mission planning
- An acute shortage of jammer pods, especially for lower-band transmitters, caused by an underfunded pod repair program (the depot in Crane, Indiana, had to go to extraordinary lengths to repair and ship pods to the warfighters)
- Inadequate air crew defensive tactics training (the Marine Corps recently implemented a new Prowler defensive tactics curriculum)
The Navy F-14 community also came away from Kosovo with important lessons, centered principally on its new precision strike capability. The Low Altitude Navigation and Targeting InfraRed for Night (LANTIRN) system, adapted from the one developed by the U.S. Air Force, gave F-14 crews the ability to discern and illuminate targets that other strike aircraft could not acquire. As a result, F-14 squadrons assumed the forward air controller (airborne) mission, enabling less-capable strike aircraft to hit their targets. In fact, the F/A-18C strike community came out of the Kosovo conflict with a reaffirmed requirement for an Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking InfraRed (ATFLIR) to replace existing F/A-18 target acquisition systems which were significantly less capable than LANTIRN.
The P-3 Orion community similarly executed missions for which their aircraft was not originally intended. Since the only threatening Yugoslav submarine did not sortie during Operation Allied Force, the P-3 s focused their maritime attention on providing a near-continuous antisurface combat air patrol over allied forces in the Adriatic. In addition, P-3s conducted offensive strike operations, firing SLAM missiles against a mix of fixed and mobile land targets.
Experimentation
In 1999, the Maritime Battle Center (MBC) of the Navy Warfare Development Command, in concert with commanders of the Third and Fifth Fleets respectively, executed Fleet Battle Experiments (FBEs) Echo and Foxtrot. As this issue goes to press, MBC and Commander Sixth Fleet are executing Fleet Battle Experiment Golf. Planning already is well under way for FBE-Hotel, which will have as partners MBC, Commander Second Fleet, and the Joint Forces Command J9 Experimentation Directorate. Joint Forces Command will overlay a joint experiment, Millennium Challenge, on top of FBE-Hotel, an Army Advanced Warfighting Experiment, the Marine Corps' Millennium Dragon experiment, and the Air Force's Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment 00, all in the August-September 2000 time frame.
All the Navy fleet battle experiments mentioned above have as their core, underlying objective the advancement of network-centric principles in naval warfare. Thus, their focus is on reducing the time it takes for an overall force to acquire and act upon information. FBEEcho, executed in concert with the Marine Corps' Urban Warrior Experiment (see below), specifically examined that issue in a littoral environment, operating in support of forces ashore. It took place in March 1999 under Commander Third Fleet in waters off the California coast. Specific lessons-learned have not been released. No information has been released on FBE-Foxtrot, executed in the Persian Gulf in early December 1999. FBE-Golf is examining net-centric operations in the context of time-critical targeting, joint and combined theater air missile defense with NATO participation, and information management. Experiments will take place in the Mediterranean as well as in simulation networks in the United States.
The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) manages all Marine experimentation. The Lab's largest effort last year centered on Urban Warrior, involving numerous limited objective experiments leading up to a culminating advanced warfighting experiment, executed in conjunction with FBE-Echo last March. Urban Warrior involved 6,000 sailors and Marines at two locations: the abandoned nine-story Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, and Monterey, California. The focus was on what are termed "three-block issues," or the problems of operating in urban terrain with little situational awareness beyond a three-block radius. Such operations are increasing in frequency given the Marines' humanitarian, peacekeeping, and urban combat missions. Overlaid on this principal focus was an examination of exercising command and control through a wireless internet system using squad leader-carried, hand-held computers.
Oak Knoll operations revealed that many Marine tactics fail in the urban environment. In several scenarios, Marines suffered 30% or greater casualties. As a consequence, the Lab undertook Project Metropolis, which focuses on company-level-and-below urban tactics. Begun in October of last year, the first experiment was conducted at Fort Ord, California, February 2000. The experiment examined new small-unit formations comprised of an infantry platoon reinforced with engineers, two tanks, two amphibious assault vehicles, and two light armored vehicles, and appropriate tactics for such formations. Experimentation continues.
The wireless internet system assessed during Urban Warrior proved promising for command and control. This concept and other similar ones, such as the experimental combat operations center and the integrated Marine multi- agent command and control system, will be carried forward into, the third phase of the Lab's five-year experimentation plan, Capable Warrior.
Capable Warrior will focus on operational maneuver from the sea (OMFTS). Within this concept, ship-to-objective maneuver is the focal point of a series of assessment events. Six limited-objective experiments already have taken place under Capable Warrior, examining the experimental combat operations center, expeditionary command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition tactics and methods. Subsequent events will assess over-thehorizon communications, command and control, sea-based fires, sea-based logistics, and mine countermeasures. Millennium Dragon, the Marine experiment subsumed under Joint Forces Command's Millennium Challenge event, also is part of Capable Warrior.
The Lab also is experimenting with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Dragon Drone completed a 1999 UNITAS deployment with the embarked Marine air-ground task force. The results of that deployment are still being assessed, but in general, the drone's capabilities were found to be useful. Though the Dragon Drone itself will not transition into an operational system, the payloads it has been employing will transition into the follow-on Dragon Warrior tactical UAV. Dragon Warrior is a small, shrouded-rotor, vertical-takeoff-and-landing UAV, designed to provide battle space information and intelligence at the battalion level and below. Last September, the Lab awarded Sikorsky Corporation a $5.46 million contract to provide two Dragon Warriors for experimentation. A third UAV under development, the Burro, is an unmanned, full-sized helicopter for conducting aerial resupply. Kaman has the contract.
Miscellaneous Milestones
On 27 October 1999, the Navy announced the award to GEO-SEIS helicopters of a three year contract to provide two Eurocopter SA-330J Puma helicopters in the vertical replenishment role from Atlantic Fleet Military Sealift Command combat store ships (T-AFSs). The contract allows for an 18-month extension. The first deployment, on board USNS Sirius (T-AFS-8) in February 2000, is the first commercial outsourcing of what had hitherto been a distinctly Navy task.
A two-year study on a multimission maritime aircraft was completed in October 1999. The second year's effort consisted of a technical and economic feasibility assessment of several airframe alternatives including two new-design aircraft (a turbofan and a turboprop), a military derivative (C- 130J), a civilian derivative (Boeing 757), and a remanufactured P-3. The effort included development of an extensive technical database. The study provides a foundation for the analysis of alternatives now underway and due to be completed by late Spring 2001.
A requirements study also is under way for a common support aircraft for logistics, tanking, airborne early warning, battle management, sea control, and precision targeting.
With Navy approval, Boeing has developed a Harpoon Block II upgrade package using the SLAM-ER guidance and navigation unit and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) inertial navigation system to create a new Harpoon guidance control unit. Though the U.S. Navy has no plans to upgrade existing Harpoons to Block II configuration, Boeing has been granted approval to market internationally both Harpoon Block II all-up rounds and Block II upgrade retrofit packages to earlier Harpoon customers.
The Navy has no new heavyweight (submarine-launched) torpedo under development. Current focus is on improvements to the Mk 48, the latest improvement program being the stealth torpedo enhancement program. Early discussions have begun on a next-generation torpedo, and technology discovery funds are being applied to investigate high-speed, supercavitating weapons and their warfighting potential. The objectives of this investigation are to understand the physics of super-cavitating flows, develop vehicle control and guidance methodology for such weapons, and design and build a test bed to evaluate candidate control and homing concepts. Russian engineers claim that super-cavitating torpedoes can operate at speeds in excess of 200 knots.
The Army-led Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensors (JLENS) program is investigating the integration of aerostats into the Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) system. The JLENS system consists of two aerostats tethered to a single mobile mooring station, with an associated mobile data processing station. One aerostat will carry a surveillance radar and the second aerostat a fire control radar. JLENS would extend the Navy's CEC system well inland.
Under the category of good idea with no money is the Littoral Sea Mine (LSM). Conceived as a wide-area coverage, multi-influence, antisubmarine/anti-surface, medium-depth sea mine with remote control capability, the LSM started life in fiscal year 1999 as an Office of Naval Research technology demonstration effort. Navy funded a follow-on engineering and manufacturing development program to start in fiscal year 2001, but that fell to the budgeteer's ax before it was executed. Some of the technologies demonstrated for LSM will likely be transitioned to an antisubmarine warfare, remote-controlled, moderate-area coverage, medium depth version of the Mine Mk 60 (CAPTOR), which the Navy is considering for funding in Program Objective Memorandum 2002.
Captain Kennedy is a member of the Center for Naval Analyses research staff, and is currently CAN representative to Commander, Submarine Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.