Scenarios for Nations to Gain Strategic Advantage in Military Force Generation

Strategic advantage through military might

Is it possible for a national state to gain strategic advantage over its confronting adversaries by investing in advanced sciences and military force generation? The following examples are promising:

• Gustavus II Adolphus (1594-1632) of Sweden, who manoeuvred with a combination of infantry, cavalry, and artillery (fire, manoeuvre, and protection) preferring movement and attack over fortification (Dodge, 1895). He was the first to use replication strategy when he standardised each arm to have pistols of the same calibre, same size swords with cavalry, same calibre muskets with infantry and first light, mobile, regimental artillery with a controlled variation of their calibre. (Lappalainen, 2001)
• Napoleon of France, who manoeuvred with army corps to allure enemy into the tactically weaker situation and used the combination of massed cavalry, infantry, and artillery to annihilate the superior adversary armies. (Clausewitz)
• Heinz Guderian of Germany, who combined panzer groups operational movement with close air support provided by the Stuka bombers of Luftwaffe exhausted and confused first Polish Armed Forces, then France and British combined forces and finally the Red Army of Soviet Union. (Guderian)
• James Abrahamson of USA got a task from President Reagan to gain strategic advantage against the Soviet Union in Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) posture. The advantage was called Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) or “Star Wars.” The initiative was to use ground and space-borne high-energy arms to counter all Soviet Ballistic Missiles before they would hit their targets. The initiative was later proved too ambitious, but in effect, it made Soviet Union try to invest even more money to defence R&D, exhausted their resources and eventually was one of the cause for the disintegration of Warsaw Pact. (Fitzgerald, 2001)

If the ambition to gain strategic advantage in a confrontation over the adversary is studied with Gattorna’s strategic postures, the situation may appear like the following.

The Blue side may choose a low risk and reactive posture of evolutionary force development. This means that the Blue will gradually improve its forces about the same pace as they perceive the Red to accomplish with relational pace to technical advances and their national resources.  Most Armed Forces in Europe have adopted this strategy as they seek only to sustain enough threshold to prevent others from escalating conflicts. 

The Blue side may also choose operational performance as their core strategic advantage if they are not able to renew their arsenal in the pace of technological evolution. Operational performance means that Blue can arm more soldiers with average arms and train them to function better than an adversary. This higher risk but the reactive strategy was a choice for Warsaw Pact countries and previously China.

If the Blue has already gained a strategic advantage, they may adopt a protective posture, where Blue uses all ways possible to prevent the Red to improve their Armed Forces and shut the gap. The Blue may use economic ways, embargo, or constraint arms selling. The USA has behaved from this posture after the Network-Based Warfare.

If the Blue is resourceful enough and willing to take more risks in gaining a long-term advantage, they may adopt a pathfinder posture. Pathfinder goes after the edge of the technological development, applying their population or cultural strengths in a way the adversary has difficulties to follow. SDI was one of these intentions in the USA since the MAD was perceived so desolate.

Force generation system as a provider of strategic means

The military structure has three primary functions: Force utilisation, generation, and support. This paper focuses on force generation since there the military development strategy is implemented. The force generation draws material, technology, information and people from its society and indoctrinates them through exercising e to a military force. 

The following simplified model is used to analyse the requirements for society and supply chain concerning the Armed Forces capability to generate capable forces to achieve their strategic goals. Each area of force generation is considered in a layered framework consisting the following:

• Basic sciences layer consists of natural, formal and social sciences. The research is long-term and happens mainly in relation to Universities. The information provided at this level is applied to the following layers.
• Education and applied sciences layer consist of sciences that apply information in areas for example of engineering, business, healthcare, education, military, agronomy, architecture, energy, computing technology, forensics, management, micro-technology, applied mathematics and physics, and spatial sciences. It also provides the foundational competency for conscripts, recruits or draftees.
• Research and Development and Engineering layer create ideas, prototypes, experiments, concepts, and models that may be developed further towards products. This establishes the essential ability for the defence industry to implement innovations.
• Manufacturing layer fabricates the ideas to marketable products whether goods, devices, services, or applications, etc. The military is using both defence industry and commercial industry products in generating military capabilities. This layer provides COTS, GOTS or MOTS to be integrated into existing and developing a military system of systems.
• Military organisations and their partnering organisations take products from the manufacturers and integrate them with other parts of a system of systems (SoS). Military compose troops from soldiers and SoS components, train them to work together and exercise them to deliver effect, i.e., change the adversary’s behaviour in operations.

Three scenarios of gaining advantage from today towards future

This article provides three scenarios for the modern Blue force in seeking strategic advantage following the above principles: 

1. Connected Force scenario is a continuum of the current conventional weapons and warfare ways. Connections and different use of information are providing an opportunity to gain dominant operational superiority over the enemy. This is gained through developing and implementing as seamless 4th generation C4ISTAR system of systems that will improve the abilities of conventional sensors and manned weapons platforms. It may take next ten years to build this operational performance, and the gained strategic advantage may not last longer than 20 years since adversary will copy the technology eventually.
2. Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS) scenario presents a pathfinder strategy using conventional kinetic effect but abandoning the legacy platforms and replacing them with unmanned autonomous systems. These systems should be used in masses to provide both tactical and operational dominance over the adversary that is following the more evolutionary path and conventional platforms. A considerable number of small, cheap & autonomous systems are used in operations (ISR, Target Acquisition, Engagement, Logistics, etc.)  in all Domains (Land, Sea, Cyber, Air & Space). A human would become obsolete on the battlefield. It may take more than 20 years to build and arm the forces, but most probably the adversary would need 50 years to close the gap.
3. High Energy and micro-/nanodevices to create an effect scenario follows a pathfinder strategy but abandoning the legacy of kinetic weapons. Instead, there will be two legs for military effect: 

• Space-based high energy weapons to create deterrence against state adversary. A threat of massive annihilation of live force or basis of society will keep potential adversary ambitions at bay.
• Bio-mechanical/micro-/nano-device-based delivery of precise effect to counter organic or non-organic threats, insurgency, terrorism, or immigration threats. Chemical or biological ingredient delivered by a bio-mechanical, micro-device or nano-device to affect the function of the organic or non-organic system.

Requires only highly competent core of people to operate and integrate the system of systems since it relies heavily on autonomous vehicles. It may take more than 50 years to build the capability, but most probably the strategic advance may last over 50 years.

The study presumes that strategic advantage in national defence may be gained improving military operational performance. The military operational performance to annihilate the adversary’s ability to use forces is simplified into following features:

• Situational awareness,
• Manoeuvrability,
• Massing of effect and
• Protecting the forces against enemy effects.

The study does not consider the abilities to project the force, readiness, or ability to sustain an expeditionary force. The three scenarios are opened in the following table as force generation and capability building effort.

Strategy	“C4ISTAR Wars” More out from conventional weapons	“Drone Wars” New tactical mobility and massing of effect	“Energy/Nano Wars” Quantum leap for new Assured Mass and Precise Destruction
Capability	Operational dominance by connecting conventional sensors and arms with next-generation C4ISTAR systems as a military system of systems.	Pathfinder strategy to use a large number of small, cheap and autonomous systems to deliver conventional warheads.	Establish deterrence with space-based high-energy weapons. Use nanosized biomechanical devices for precise targets.
Effect	Detect sooner, decide faster and shoot more precise with conventional platforms and their kinetic warheads.	Extract the man from the battlefield and mass the kinetic effect delivered by small, cheap and autonomous vehicles.	Networked satellites created centered high energy beams to annihilate enemy formations. Biomechanical or nanodevices deliver precise strikes against organic or non-organic targets.
Time to Build	Less than ten years since technology is here, but competent integration is hard to gain.	Takes over 20 years to establish. The technology is there, but legacy thinking and culture are preventing faster adaptation.	Takes over 50 years to establish. The technology is almost there in civilian side, but it is a considerable effort from legacy military to dismiss all the conventional armament and human-based forces.
Time to sustain the advantage	Less than ten years since technology is available to all.	May provide up to 50 years of a strategic advantage since culture change is a challenge.	May provide over 50 years of a strategic advantage because requires significant investment and getting rid of legacy culture.
Manufacturing	Defence industry needs to integrate the System of systems, improve the MMI, ensure the migration and life-cycle management.	Defence industry needs to master additive and synthetic manufacturing, software-defined everything, using COTS components, using composites, nano-coating.	Lightweight, composite materials, clean room, space assembly, biology, medical, chemical laboratory.
Engineering and R&D	Both Armed Forces and Defence Industry needs competencies in integration, the system of systems engineering, system life-cycle management, programme management, virtual and augmented reality, NLP, and smart buyer.	The system of systems Engineering, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, data analytics, modelling and simulation, big data, swarming intelligence, avionics.	System of systems engineering, energy harvesting and storing, biomedical engineering, nanomedicine, organic device engineering, bioengineering.
Applied Sciences and Education	Understanding and skills in the engineering of complex adaptive systems, software development, knowledge, and data management.	Information sciences, computer engineering, automation engineering, systems engineering	Beam propagation, laser beam production technologies, micro-electro-mechanical Systems, microfabrication, and nanotechnology.
Basic Sciences	No requirements	Artificial intelligence, quantum computing	Chemistry, biology, decision theories.

Conclusion

The aim of this short scenario building exercise is to show that a nation may adopt different approaches to its national defence but in the end only their cultural capabilities or massive resources can make things real. The cause for major friction is the mindset. Militaries seldom can adopt anything too far from their legacy since they are by nature sustaining and their appetite for risk is low.

In quest of building a strategic advantage, there needs to be a long-term strategy implemented through the society otherwise, for example, the investments at sciences level will appear futile if the acquired competencies are not applied eventually to generate force effects.

References

Bousquet, Antoine (2009): The scientific way of warfare. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-70079-5
Fitzgerald, Frances (2001): Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0023-3.
Gattorna, John (2010): Dynamic supply chains. 2nd Edition. Pearson Education Ltd. Harlow. ISBN 978—0-273-73040-8
Gharajedaghi, Jamshid (2011): Systems thinking, managing chaos and complexity. 3rd Edition. Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-12-385915-0
Guderian, Heinz (2001): Pantzer leader. Reissue edition translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306811012
Lappalainen, Jussi, T. (2001): A hundred-year war. (Original in Finnish: Sadan vuoden sotatie). Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki. ISSN 0355-1768
Von Clausewitz, Carl (1984): On war. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton University Press, New Jersey. ISBN 978-0-691-01854-6