Tuesday, March 5, 2019

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!



24 comments:

  1. Did the same as you off the Lexican link, and have forwarded it to a few of my former shipmates and some co-workers. I also noticed that Destin has at least one video up on his channel about parts of the RIMPAC exercise used as the foundation for this video (his Helo dunker training).

    Always something cool at his site.

    /
    L.J.

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    1. He's got some great vids. I have to watch the one on the helo dunker, always fun to watch. (Have friends who have "been there, done that" - they don't find it nearly as entertaining as I do.)

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    2. I was a Water Survival Instructor at Naval Aviation Schools Command when we brought the first helo dunker online and put it into the training syllabus. It was fun for me, not so much for the students.

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  2. You get one guess as to the one political party who is openly aiming to divide this country. What will happen when those attempts ramp up enough to counter the political grace he offers? Smart has always counted on the battlefield, seems to be more important nowadays especially with the cyber domain becoming so prevalent.

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    1. Um, does it start with a "D"?

      But at the lower levels of human interaction he's right about the political grace thing, though it will never happen in the upper circles, I make an effort to get along and educate, always try to educate. Even if it is sowing seed on infertile ground.

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  3. I have followed Destin's Smarter Every Day YouTube channel for a while. Never gave a second's thought as to his day job other than he is obviously an Engineer somewhere.

    Then he was able to post the inside scoop of what he does to earn his living and I was floored.

    Then when he got into his interview with General Brown, I knew I had to share to the Lexicans.


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    1. Glad you did, I love Destin's stuff, never knew about his day job, but like you say, knew he had to be an engineer.

      The interview with General Brown was, simply put, awesome.

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  4. You touched on an issue that was always a sore point with me. Why don't all US Marines go through the same drown-proofing that Navy teaches? Marines that can't swim? Ok, but they should be drown-proofed before they go onto evolutions like the helo-dunker, etc. And what's this - take a breath or two of compressed air before you exit the helo?? That sort of training is unrealistic. Great video.

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    1. Boggles the mind, Marines who can't swim?

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    2. Well, to be fair to the Marines, it's the NAVY's job to keep the ships afloat and get the Marines ashore.

      Plus, as overloaded as our troops are, can't they just walk across the bottom like the dead pirates in "Pirates of the Carribean" did?

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  5. Looked up that Augmented Reality Sandbox, almost seven K to buy the cheapest model.......but it is neat, uses paper pulp.

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    1. Ah, so you noticed that too. Would love to have one, doubt that The Missus Herself would concur. Especially at that price tag.

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  6. General Brown was part of my Team when I was at CinCPac. He was a Major then. I thought I recognized the name in your post, but as soon as he popped up in the video I recognized the face. He was/is a good man and a valuable member of the team. Glad to see the Army recognized that also.

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    1. I was kinda wondering if your path had ever crossed his. Glad to know that the way he came across on the video (a good man in the right spot) is the way he is.

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  7. Re: Marines and sailors who can't swim, it doth boggle the mind. I used to see the occasion, large red stamped notation "NON-SWIMMER" on enlisted service records. Made me wonder which genius ordered said bottom-dweller to a ship, fer cryin' out loud.

    Re: AI 3-D warfare, at what point will we be forced to stand aside and watch the robotniks carry on without us? And at what further point do said devices turn on us? Cue Skynet et al.

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    1. Way back in the day (think wooden ships and iron men), it was rare to find a sailor who could swim. Most felt that it was rather futile.

      As to robots doing the fighting, the software isn't sophisticated enough at this point in time. One would hope that the human stays in the loop and machines won't be allowed to operate autonomously. But I'm sure there will be that one person who thinks it's a "great idea" and doesn't think it through to its logical conclusion. Which happens far too often these days. Self-driving cars, bah, humbug.

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    2. Back in those days, swimming was not nearly as widespread in the first place? European culture just didn’t really have the infrastructure for swimming as a leisure activity. (I learned at the Y as a kid. No Y swimming pool in 1770 Britain.) Where would the average Jack Tar have learned to swim? The open garbage dump sewer that’s the Thames? Or the “you’ll die in 10 minutes” North Atlantic?

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  8. I watched that video yesterday and commented on it in the Lex FB page. The term "civil war" is being tossed around pretty casually these days and I was watching the video in the mindset of a law enforcement perspective. The recognition that such a video is unavoidably part of PsyOps made me wonder how a civilian (or civilian group) with the potential to "go kinetic" would view (and respond to) that philosophy. I wondered what capabilities a large metropolitan police chief would view as necessary to be capable of applying those philosophies to their responsibilities. A law enforcement entity would have restrictions upon it that the military would not, yet would be just as motivated to defeat a civilian adversary with a minimal loss of life and assets. It seems to me that intelligence and the ability to intercept communications to civilian adversary groups would be critical and it made me wonder if that was driving some of the focus on legislative/policy issues such as The Patriot Act. Just thinkin'...

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    1. A good point Unk. It seems like a good idea, until you realize that the politicians get to decide who is the adversary. Witness the current witch hunt in DC.

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  9. A thought on AI war gaming - as I remember it, when the Lord of the Rings movie was being made and they roughed out the software handling the computer generated orcs, they increased the AI on the individual entities and ended up with a lot of the same behavior as green troops getting their first look at the elephant.
    I wonder if someone, somewhere took that idea and has started to run with it?

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    1. Now that right there is fascinating.

      And not a little scary!

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