IAMD 2020 Article 2: The Need for a Comprehensive Approach
(This is the second in a series of three articles on shifts shaping Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) in 2020, a significant area of opportunity and growth. Rapid threat development in 2019, including advances in mid-sized Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) by Iranian proxies demonstrated during the 14 September Saudi Aramco attack, are driving significant investment in IAMD and command and control (C2) architectures around the world. This three-part series addresses IAMD growth, partner requirements, and opportunities.)
The 14 September coordinated attack by over 19 air vehicles against Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility temporarily destroyed 5% of the world’s oil production and drove immediate changes in regional political dynamics. This attack illuminated advances in mid-sized Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) by Iran and Iranian-associated proxy groups that had been progressing for over a year, and also highlighted lessons for IAMD systems. Defense against these and other advanced air and missile threats demands that partners adopt a comprehensive approach that includes procuring and layering active defense systems, developing passive defensive measures to complicate enemy targeting and increase resilience, executing effective C2 based on a common operating picture, and actively reducing the threat through attack operations against the enemy.
Active Defense. Active defense is the capability to engage air and missile threat systems post-launch, and includes engagement by both kinetic and electronic warfare techniques. Active Defense is the most commonly-understood element of IAMD because it is the most visible, including Patriot systems, AEGIS radars, SM-3 interceptors, and counter-UAS jammers actively marketed by defense contractors. Because of improvements in guidance systems used by threat operators, systems that rely solely on electronic attack may not induce adequate navigational errors in threat UAS to defend critical assets, and kinetic engagement may be required. Therefore, kinetic engagement remains a critical component of any layered defense, and kinetic engagement capabilities are required to fully defend crtical assets from all types of UAS and missiles, including Group I-III UAS.
Active defenses should be layered to maximize effectiveness. During the 14 September Aramco attack, adversaries employed swarming tactics involving multiple attack vehicles, varied ingress routings, and timed arrivals that can overwhelm defenses. The new reality that precision attack vehicles are low cost, widely available, and easy to operate means that swarm tactics should be assumed during defense design, and layering active defenses is required to fully protect critical assets. Layering involves integrating fighters and long-range missile interceptors to take out the most capable attack vehicles, like bombers and ballistic missiles, at the furthest possible range, while short-range air defense (SHORAD) systems clean up the remaining attackers. Layering defensives decreases cost-per-intercept by avoiding wasted shots against early-use decoys, and reducing reliance on the most capable and expensive interceptors. Layering active defenses also protects against enemy suppression of air defense activities, and creates a healthy redundancy that increases overall defense system resilience.
Passive Defense. While active-defense radars and interceptors draw the most attention at air and trade shows, the most important investments partners can make are often passive measures that complicate an adversary’s targeting, enhance deterrence, and increase resilience after an attack. Passive measures include mobility, camouflage, dispersion, hardening, redundancy, and battle drills. Passive defensive measures are essential because threat advancements including precision guidance and swarm tactics mean no matter how effective the active defenses are, an attack vehicle is likely going to get through, and that passive measures will determine the overall resilience of the defense system.
Passive measures start with denying an adversary the ability to find and target your most critical assets. Easy access to commercial satellite imagery, social media, and human intelligence (HUMINT) mean that any state or non-state actor with internet access can find and target the areas where critical assets are located. However, to precisely hit and degrade those assets in a meaningful way adversaries need additional precision in their targeting data to provide the lev of GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, or INS accuracy to needed achieve the results shown in the Aramco attack. The most basic step in denying these precision coordinates is to periodically move, camouflage, or cover critical assets. For example, placing a simple sheet-metal cover over important assets frustrates enemy planning to determine accurate aim points, and also complicates fusing by detonating impact fuses early and dispersing their weapons effects. Simple, low-cost metal overhead covers have been used for the past 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide similar low-cost endgame protection against rockets and mortars, which carry similar sized warheads as small and medium-sized UAS.
Next, hardening is a passive measure that protects critical elements of larger facilities from strikes. Installing simple cement-based roof protection over generators, power supplies, network facilities, and fuel pumps protects the most vulnerable and hardest-to-replace capabilities of critical systems, and can limit damage to speed repairs following attacks. Similarly, guard posts should have strong overhead cover to protect entry points from quadcopters and other air vehicles, in order to avoid perimeter breaches during complex attacks. These threats were faced daily by Iraqi forces fighting ISIS in Mosul, and they quickly adapted by securing cement-based overhead cover, even during maneuver, as an essential element of force protection from mortar-carrying quadcopters.
Even with hardened components, critical assets need redundant capabilities to continue operations during attacks. Redundancies are multiple sources for the same critical capability, which often involves securing multiple paths to power, cooling, fuel, and connectivity.
The last passive defensive measure is creating Battle Drills to increase threat detection and bring all hands to bear during crisis. Battle Drills start by making every Airman, Soldier, and employee a sensor by training them on the threats they face and standardizing reporting on threats, attacks, and damage they observe. With smaller attack vehicles like quadcopters, first awareness is often through visual detection by security and maintenance personnel working outside. Following detection and reporting, standardizing alarms and post-alarm Battle Drills brings all personnel to bear assessing damage and restoring operations to critical faculties. Training and exercising these activities instills teamwork and increases the overall resilience of the defensive system. Taken together, passive measures are an essential element of a comprehensive approach to IAMD.
C2. The key to executing active defensive operations is effective detection, shared understanding of commander’s intent, and C2 to reallocate resources and respond to challenges during attack. Effective C2 starts with developing shared understanding through a Common Operating Picture, or COP, that displays the air and missile situation based on the same data for all users. Operating off a COP allows air and missile defenders to work together to execute planned layered-defense contracts under high workloads, optimizes pairing of defensive pairing against threats, and preserves defensive capabilities by reducing the number of missiles fired per engagement. The opposite of a COP is operation of bifurcated or de-linked C2 systems, which can create multiple tracks for the same target, fail to fully develop tracks when no single sensor has all the data needed for a full system track, both of which can result in excessive missiles per target or missed engagements.
Creating a COP from multiple sensors and systems requires operating on a common network to share increasing amounts of data using common standards. A basic level of integration can be executed by sharing track-files, which are packages of fully synthesized information that IAMD systems need for target engagement. However, IAMD systems need to progress to sharing system-level data to improve detection and track quality against lower-cross-section threats and maneuvering threats, improve defenses against electronic attack, and improve system resilience. Increasing data sharing will also facilitate the operation of Artificial Intelligence tools to enhance detection and C2. To summarize, effective IAMD c2 depends on integrating networks to share data from multiple sensors on a common operating picture.
At the regional level, establishing a common operating picture between allies and partners also increases national IAMD system effectiveness by improving the threat detection and track quality for all national systems involved. Sharing data between countries improves detection and tracking of threats that attempt to hide using natural terrain and national boundaries, lower-cross-section threats, swarm attacks that use diverse ingress routes, maneuvering threats, and adversary use of electronic attack. Sharing data for a COP starts with establishing effective network standards and security, such as the U.S. government Risk Management Framework (RMF) to for physical, electronic, and procedural protection against cyber-security threats. The net effect of increased regional information-sharing is shared understanding and C2 that increases threat detection and layered engagement capabilities for all participating nations.
Attack Operations. Early airpower theorist Giulio Douhet observed that air battles can’t be won through defense, and no defensive system can fully protect from an adaptable adversary. Attack operations serve to degrade the threat and its adaptability to a level IAMD systems can handle. Attack operations involve attacking the enemy as a network, including its design, fabrication, logistics, C2, and operational capabilities. Because of the low costs, accessibility, and ease of operating small/mid-size UAS, attack operations involve targeting the humans in those networks to effectively degrade enemy air operations. Counter-ISIS Coalition targeting activities in 2017 are an example if successful counter-network attack operations, where leaders dedicated resources to the targeting efforts, and decimated ISIS’ UAS capabilities through deliberate targeting.
For base defense against quadcopters, Attack Operations involve effective liaison with local police and security personnel to secure the area around the base, and to respond to quadcopter launches. For longer-range threats, attack operations involve deterring attacks by demonstrating capability and intent to inflict costs on the adversary, generating intelligence to understand and target the enemy air and missile threat networks, and preparing deliberate and dynamic targeting operations for times of crisis. Developing the capabilities needed to conduct attack operations are an essential element of a comprehensive IAMD approach.
Partners protecting critical assets need to adopt a comprehensive approach to fully defend against threat capabilities showcased in 2019, including in mid-size long-range precision attack UAS. Executing a comprehensive approach involves layering kinetic and non-kinetic active defenses, adopting passive defensive measures that complicate enemy targeting and increase resilience, executing effective C2 based on a common operating picture, and preparing attack operations to deter and degrade the adversary’s capabilities. Taken together in a comprehensive approach, partner investments in IAMD in 2020 will provide the best protection of critical assets against attack, and provide the best conditions for security and prosperity in their regions.
(This was the second in a series of three articles on shifts shaping Integrated Air and Missile Defense. The first article covers threat and provides an overview. The final article will describe challenges and solutions to acquisition of IAMD capabilities through U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) tools.)
