Artillery: Small But Versatile

Since few American troops are in combat at the moment, and most of them are SOCOM (Special Operations Command) commandos and Special Forces in Iraq and Syria, their requests for special equipment are promptly taken care of. Earlier in 2017 SOCOM requested a rush shipment of 350 LMAMS (Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System) UAVs. LMAMS is the much delayed second generation of the existing Switchblade system. The original Switchblade was a one kilogram (2.2 pound) expendable (used only once) UAV that can be equipped with explosives. The Switchblade is launched from its shipping and storage tube, at which point wings flip out, a battery powered propeller starts spinning and a vidcam begins broadcasting images to the controller. The Switchblade is operated using the same gear the larger (two kg/4.4 pound) Raven UAV employs. A complete Switchblade system (missile, container, and controller) weighs 5.5 kg (12.1 pounds). Switchblade was very popular with troops in Afghanistan and with SOCOM in all sorts of places they won’t discuss in detail. Swithblade was a very popular combat tool. The LMAMS order was delivered by May and promptly put to work watching the enemy and attacking them if needed. LMAMS is the second generation of what was originally called Switchblade, which is still widely used (with over 4,000 produced) since it first saw combat in 2009.

The United States sent some Switchblade UAV systems to Afghanistan in 2009 for secret field testing. This was very successful and the troops demanded more, and more, and more. That was unexpected because initially, Switchblade was mainly used largely by Special Forces and other special operations troops. In 2011, after a year of successful field testing, the army ordered over a hundred Switchblade UAVs for troop use and every year more had to be ordered because regular infantry units in combat got their hands on it and demanded more. By 2012 the U.S. Marine Corps were using Switchblade as well.

Users regarded Switchblade as a micro-UAV/cruise missile. It was both aerial surveillance and a weapon. More importantly it could be carried by individual troops;. Switchblade has been so successful that the army passed on user comments to the manufacturer and asked for a Switchblade 2.0. That was delayed by budget cuts and technical problems. Meanwhile improvements were made to Switchblade.

The new version was called LMAMS and it was ambitious. It was heavier (up to 2.2 kg/5 pounds) with up to 30 minutes endurance and a 9 kilometer range. The sensor must have night vision and be stabilized. It must also be able to lock onto a target and track it. The warhead had to be capable of disabling light vehicles as well as being harmless against people 10 meters (31 feet) from detonation but lethal within 4 meters (12.4 feet). All this was possible with current technology and the Switchblade manufacturer (who also makes the Raven) had a head start but not a lock because there is nothing exotic about the basic tech. The trick was getting it all into one package and working.

The complete LMAMS system weighs about 8 kg (17 pounds). Budget cuts delayed LMAMS but Switchblade continues to be in big demand. In 2015 the marines successfully tested using Switchblade from an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. This showed that Switchblade could be used from helicopters and other slow moving aircraft wanting to know what’s on the other side of the hill while avoiding getting shot at by any bad guys who are there.

Switchblade can also be launched from the existing 70mm rocket tubes used on army helicopters. Moving at up to a kilometer a minute, the Switchblade can stay in the air for 20-40 minutes (depending on whether or not it is armed with explosives). The armed version can be flown to a target and detonated, having about the same explosive effect as a hand grenade. Thus, Switchblade enables ground troops to get at an enemy taking cover in a hard to see location. Technically a guided missile, the use of Switchblade as a reconnaissance tool encouraged developers to refer to it as a UAV. But because of the warhead option, and its slow speed, Switchblade also functions like a rather small cruise missile. The troops were particularly enthusiastic about the armed version because it allowed them to easily take out snipers or a few bad guys in a compound full of civilians. It was these sort of situations that apparently led to the request for LMAMS.

Others noticed Switchblade. In 2015 An Israeli firm has introduced a new loitering UAV, portable enough (weighing 3 kg/6.6 pounds) for the infantry to carry and use. The Hero 30 has 30 minutes endurance and has a small warhead that can use used to turn it into a weapon if the onboard vidcam indicates a target that has to be taken care of immediately. Otherwise it can be landed and reused. Hero 30 is based on the older Hero 400 which weighs 40 kg and has an 8 kg (18 pound) warhead. This UAV has a four hour endurance and can operate up to 150 kilometers from the operator. But Israel noticed that the United States was having lot of success (and demand from SOCOM and infantry units) for the similar (to Hero 30) Switchblade.

It appears that military doctrine is on the verge of another paradigm shift.

It is a commonplace to dismiss the generals of World War I as mindless butchers who assaulted machine guns with their soldiers breasts but the reality was not quite so simple. The lessons of the Franco-Prussian war had not been entirely dismissed by the general staffs of the future belligerents of 1914. For example, they were aware of the power of the railroads to deliver troops to the critical point of contact before the enemy could do likewise. Hence, once mobilization of one of the great powers (Russia) commenced, this doctrine required Germany to do likewise. The imperative to mobilize and get the troops onto trains according to a split second timetable was in keeping with the maximum Nathan Bedford Forrest, to get there first with the most. Once one country began the process the generals warned that there own armies follow suit or lose the war.

Likewise, the general staffs were not ignorant of the power of artillery, they had seen the great advantage gained by the Prussians around Paris 45 years earlier with their superior rapidfire artillery and superior ranging capabilities. The solution to virtually every military thinker at the time was to simply overwhelm the adversary immediately with a mass of troops and matériel. Hence, the massive mobilization and the tyranny of the railway timetable.

In 1914 a war of maneuver settled into a war between troglodytes, masses of troops forced into trenches by barbwire and machine guns but mostly by artillery. Indeed, it was artillery it would cause the majority of the casualties in that war.

The stalemate on the Western front caused by these new technologies endured for nearly the remaining four years of the war until a war of maneuver was restored by the Germans in the spring of 1918. Ironically, the breakthroughs achieved by the Germans was built upon a new doctrine of penetration by highly trained infantry engaging under concentrated and closely coordinated artillery barrages delivered by guns which had been registered without alerting the enemy. This new science of artillery had been perfected by the Germans on the Russian front.

One can see in these new tactics the beginning elements of the so-called "blitzkrieg" which were implemented so effectively in 1939/1940/1941 when the Germans coordinated armor and air and restored the art of war to a contest of maneuver. Interestingly, the Germans had virtually no tanks in World War I and fewer and inferior tanks in 1940 as compared to the French yet they revolutionized warfare, enabled the soldiers to emerge from the trenches by their new doctrine of combining armor and air in support of infantry, or vice versa, and coupling that with the doctrine of penetration and bypass which they had employed in the spring of 1918. Eventually, the limits of the power of blitzkrieg to prevail on the battlefield were defined at el Alamein when the power of massed artillery reasserted itself.

Now we see a new kind of artillery in these drones brought to us by the wonders of technology all grounded in the chip which combines air with artillery, focuses it is precisely and is obviously coordinated with the infantry because it is the infantry which is deploying this new technology. Will these drones drive soldiers back underground? Will it combine on a massive level with other elements and produce a new kind of blitzkrieg? Will it evolve into a kind of her war between drones in the air as we saw the years of World War I? In effect, will we have a war of robots?

Since much of the technology currently being deployed is almost off the shelf, one can expect enemies to launch their own drones, indeed, we have seen at least one example of that already. The question is will we maintain a substantial technological lead and control the battle space or will we lapse into a kind of parity which produces a stalemate, a war of attrition which is a war which will not long be supported by the American people. As a people we have become allergic to casualties to a degree never before experienced and it has been the doctrine of our enemies since Korea and Vietnam to involve America in a war of attrition until it is lost at home.

The upside? A war of robots, if confined to that technology, is a war of limited casualties to our own population but one which is potentially devastating to those who play host to terrorists. It is the kind of war we can wage by exchanging dollars for lives, the kind of war which is more reminiscent of the British at Rorke's Drift than our GI's struggle for Hamburger Hill, a kind of warfare in which technology so dominates a technologically inferior culture that it is hardly a contest.

But LOOK AT THE “PROBLEM” the Pentagon is causing/is creating!<>

They HAD a “good enough” system. It was NOT perfect, but “it worked” and could be carried by one man and, most important, “it existed”.

Then the “Pentagon” weapons systems experts got into it, and now they have a “very complex”, “too elaborate” that is “too expensive to buy enough of” and “too perfect” a system that weighs “too much” and is NOT BEING PURCHASED!

I can think of no rebuttal to your complaint in a situation in which the quantity of drones required is really not that great and therefore not that expensive to offer real advantage to our limited number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq with cheap but effective weapons.

Yet, we are faced with the eternal debate about quantity vs. quality. One thinks of the Soviet T 34 tank and the Kalashnikov rifle which are among the finest weapons of their type if only because of their ubiquity. On the other hand, the British spent of their national treasure to launch HMS Victory about the equivalent of what it costs us to build a super carrier. I believe the age of the super carrier is drawing to a close, that is, in about 30 or 40 years from now they will be too vulnerable and too expensive. But that quality in class enjoyed by the British fleet was vital to winning the battle of Trafalgar and ultimately to the defeat of Napoleon. If they had done otherwise Napoleon might well have forded the channel. It was not just one identifiable advantage which favored victory, such as the British fleet's ability to site guns in a rolling sea, it was everything not excluding training, morale, seamanship and leadership. So Britain committed its treasure to build warships but it did not create a land army to match the great continental powers. History has shown that Britain won its bet in staking all on its Navy.

The difficulty, even when one decides whether to go for quality or quantity, is to predict 20 years from now which one of the elements of quality will prove decisive at the next battle of Trafalgar. The Brits found themselves on the wrong end of the equation in the battle of Jutland when their battle cruisers were inadequately armored and simply blow up, as did HMS Hood in the next war in the Denmark Straits. They bet they could trade armor for speed but they bet wrong.

I take your point, however, when it comes to a proven weapon that the troops are clamoring for which can be provided them for minimal cost. That can and should be done today, robot wars are not quite upon as yet and we have time to get it right or satisfy our craving for pork which seems to be our preference lately.

I worked with a “former Yugoslavian”.

He said the enemy looted the local military base and absconded with all the good stuff at the beginning of hostilities.

Later, when his town was being threatened and he was conscripted they went to the base and looked for scraps.

All they could come up with was some kind of antiaircraft gun, circa WW2 or early Soviet era, maybe a quad, I forget.

When the first tank came to probe them they somehow got it aimed down into the valley and fired. The rounds just popped/bounced off the tank. My friend knew that their antiaircraft gun was the most powerful thing they had, and that its failure meant the death of him and his fellow townspeople, so he and they were pretty bummed out.

The thing that saved them was the enemy was surprised at that level of resistance and withdrew. They could have easily overrun that town and killed everybody.

Also in my office and working with this guy was a lady who was on the other side during that war. They were both damaged people. It was sad. They rarely discussed events in the old country.

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