The Multi-Domain Battlespace

(Source)

There's a YouTube channel I watch frequently, the title, Smarter Every Day, illustrates something I strive to do, that is, get smarter every day. It's an uphill battle at times, you can teach an old dog (moi) new tricks, but sometimes it makes his head hurt. The way I figure it, if you don't learn something new every day, you either weren't paying attention, or you did absolutely nothing of interest on that particular day.

Anyhoo, a fellow Lexican (thanks CG-23 Sailor!) posted the video I've included down near the bottom of this post (now, now, don't run down there yet, it's a longish video, almost half an hour and I have thoughts I wish to share first, so patience, and yes Beans, I know you're not a doctor) on our super secret Lexican Facebook page. I also saw it the very next day over at Paw Paw's House. As he's a smart guy (don't let him convince you otherwise) and a former tanker (no, no, no tanks today) and I respect his opinions, well I had to post the video as well, not knowing if y'all had seen it yet. (Wait for it...) I reckon all the cool kids are posting it...

As we've seen over the past week or so (that would be Tank Week, if you missed it) warfare evolves, some things stay kind of the same, some things evolve in ways we perhaps didn't expect. One thing that struck me in the video (other than the fact that Destin, the guy who made the video, is very, very good at explaining things) is when Destin was sitting down in General Brown's office. (General Robert B. Brown is the commander of the United States Army's largest Service Component command, U.S. Army Pacific - USARPAC.)

Destin likened the modern battlespace to a game of 3-D chess, with the additional caveat that the pieces in the game are able to think for themselves. As General Brown explained, he lays out the goal, the objective that the National Command Authority wants to achieve, the commanders under him are left to devise the ways and means of achieving the overarching objective. In the U.S. military a lot of emphasis is placed upon initiative, smart troops make smart decisions, leaving commanders in the hierarchy to keep track of the big picture.

Now as a long-time wargamer, I remember back in the day when we played with unit counters on a map, you could see everything the other guy had, you could see every move every unit in the other chap's force made. There were no secrets. We often thought of how cool it would be to actually have the fog of war present in our wargames.

With the advent of computer wargaming the fog of war is present and makes for a lot of surprises, most of them not good.

"Oh look, an empty field with only a light covering force up on that ridge!"

"Charge, charge, go get 'em boys!"

WHOOM!

Crap, the field isn't so empty, there are mines everywhere. Now we're stuck in a minefield and that light covering force is calling in artillery on our units. We move and BOOM we might trip a mine. We don't move and BOOM, we get plastered by artillery. (Or an airstrike, I hate sitting still when hostile air shows up, and there is never enough friendly AAA around when you really, really need it.)

So now we have the fog of war in our computer wargames. You can't see what the other fellow is doing all the time (with good reconnaissance you can see some of what he's doing) and you often have no idea where the next blow is going to fall. Or if that open field is really empty?

But you still need (in most games) to move all of your units individually. We're not yet to the point where our computerized soldiers are savvy enough to give them a general objective (seize that ridgeline) and expect them to carry it out intelligently. Some games are getting close. Often the computer's Artificial Intelligence algorithms are smart enough to beat the casual gamer a lot of the time. But if you know what you're doing, you can make the computer look pretty stupid. Play a game often enough and you'll notice, "If I do A, the computer always does B, so this time I'll try C." The computer may or may not know how to handle that.

Human beings can be trained in the various aspects of warfare and as they gain experience, in real combat or in wargames at places like the National Training Center out at Fort Irwin in California, where our military trains in very realistic exercises against an extremely competent opponent. Human beings also have a sense of their own mortality and typically won't do something that they know will get them killed. (You can order computer units to their deaths all day long and they'll go, they don't "know" any better.)

Anyhoo, enough of my blathering, take it away Destin.

I have the sense that he's going to have follow on videos to this one, I'll keep you posted.

Interesting stuff, and yes, I'm a little jealous, what an awesome job!