Alice looked round her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”
“Of course it is,” said the Queen, “what would you have it?”
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else—if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” – Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll[1].
Introduction
After two years (1992 – 1994) of a full-scale war, Armenia was able to capture the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh only to lose most of the territory in the 44 days of fighting in 2020[2]. The second Nagorno-Karabakh war saw the wide spread use of drones, with great success, by the Azerbaijan Armed Forces. The second war serves as a reminder; evolve, adapt, or die. If something can be invented, it will. If you don’t keep up with technological developments you run the risk of losing on the battlefield. But if you do keep up with technological developments, it is all you can do, like the Red Queen, to run on the same spot. This article is in reply to Major-General Jonny Lindfors et al’s article on the implementation of new technology and tactics and is based on my experience and things I have learnt from working as an engineer. My background is not just military but I have worked many years with computer systems as an engineer and I find there are overlaps between engineering and the military.
More Haste, Less Speed
“Artikeln utgår från den tidigare argumentationen att armén snarast behöver anpassa sig till multi-domäna operationer (MDO) som doktrin och därigenom identifiera hur armén kan anpassa sig till detta koncept och operativa ramverk. För att möta dessa ansatser behöver armén förhålla sig till och möta den snabba teknologiska utvecklingen som nu manifesteras genom en förändrad operationsmiljö och utvecklade taktiska och operativa tillämpningar.”
One could argue that decades of political mismanagement of the defence and a “strategic time out” has led to the need of having to rapidly rebuild the defence. In the engineering world, commercial pressures lead to a similar need to produce a product rapidly. And it can be done, to a degree. Projects take a finite amount of time and they will take that time regardless. If you rush a project, however, what tends to happen, in my experience, is you end up with a quick and dirty solution that you can get out of the door fast but then you have to expend extra time to fix it as it is so full of errors (normally referred to as “bugs” from the expression “battling bugbears” meaning “tackling problems”)[3]. Anyone using modern technology will be familiar with the need to continually update their software. Could it be argued that in our haste we are building a defence that is going to be so full of problems that it won’t work effectively when called upon to do so?
Deep Roots Go Deep
“Historiskt har den svenska armén rönt stora militära framgångar som en följd av innovativa lösningar, där teknisk utveckling i kombination med taktisk tillämpning varit nyckeln till framgång på slagfältet.”
One could argue that Swedish industry has but has the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF)? It could be argued that SAF hasn’t done anything major since the age of muskets so we don’t know. As the article points out; “Sverige och Försvarsmakten har sedan Kalla krigets slut fullt befunnit sig i ett läge där vi varit out of contact.” But even during the Cold War SAF wasn’t really in “contact”. The battlefield is the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner. To my mind, not until SAF has been involved in a major war and actually fights battles will we really know. Is it not true that peace time operations take different skills than war fighting[4]? And I would argue that SAF is a very professional, very competent, peace time military.
“De materielsystem vi och våra allierade har att tillgå, och den taktik vi använder oss av, utgör således ett arv från ett tidigare utvecklingsparadigm.”
One could argue that the systems go back further in time. Not just material systems, but all the systems. Seldom are systems fully replaced. Instead, we tend to build on the old. So, if there is a need for SAF to change its view, then there is a long history that needs to be questioned. And deep roots that needs to be pulled out. One could also argue that there is a deep cultural problem as well leading to a maladapted application of the law of Jante.
Examples of deep roots that I would question can be found in the latest defence policy[5]. We have, for example, the idea of creating territorial units. But do territorial units make sense in an age where wars are fought under the eye of Sauron? Where the enemy can see everything and has a detailed knowledge of local terrain as well? Does the idea of territorial units counter the idea of flexibility and adaptability by tying units to a terrain rather than giving them the ability to move to where they will be needed? Isn’t the whole idea an out of date concept? One could argue that the idea of territorial units is reinventing the Home Guard, which, to my mind, hints at other deep roots that need to be pulled. The Home Guard, however, does have more flexibility but much the same questions could be asked of the Home Guard. Should we be rethinking the way the part time defence is done from a more modern, war fighting, battlefield focused, perspective[6]? This is especially true if we think of the need to play Red Queen where new technology and tactics can be introduced. How will the part time defence fit in with that? And how does it fit as a way to retain skills?
Where are we Going?
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.” – Seneca
“Dessa beståndsdelar består av ett skifte från inkrementell (stegvis) materielutveckling till innovativ utveckling, ett fortsatt perspektiv av utveckling som system av system (SoS), och slutligen ett bekännande till prototypkrigföring.”
The software development process has changed over the years. From a waterfall model, where projects were progressed from stage to stage, to rapid development, where parts were implemented incrementally, to agile development, where we make things up incrementally as we go along, to DevOps, where we make things up incrementally as we go along in parallel. The end result is fast production of code that doesn’t work well. I’ve come across DevOps teams that spend 90% of their time fixing bugs in the previous incremental release and 10% developing the next increment. From my experience, the more increments that are done the more problems you have until you end up having to have firefighting teams whose sole job is to go around fixing all the problems the developers have created in each increment. Quick and dirty gets quicker and dirtier.
But does that mean that this is the wrong approach? Needs must as the devil drives. And the current situation dictates. So, then, is there a way to rapidly develop and minimise the problem with producing poor quality? From my experience, I would say yes. As I see it, the main problem comes from lack of direction. There is a tendency in the software world to dive in and write code rather than spend time writing specifications and requirements and then designing. Design in the software world is like planning in the military world. As Eisenhower said: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” So, we have moved from software engineering to software development and software development, to my mind, is just a fancy way of saying hacking. From my experience a reasonably acceptable quality product can be produced reasonably rapidly. To do that, you would need to spend time on working out where you are going:
- Problem statement. There needs a clear statement of what you are trying to solve. In the military world this would be an understanding of the battlefield and war fighting theory.
- The vision gives you a view of the ideal solution to the problem. It is not necessary that the vision is realisable but it serves as a starting point for the next steps and those steps will make things more real.
- Specifications and requirements. These provide more formal statements of what is required to do and what limits there are for reaching the vision (or as close to it as possible).
- Use case analysis. This looks at a number of scenarios and describes what has to be done (but not how). Basically, it defines the inputs and the outputs to your SoS. In a military context that would describe various scenarios from peacekeeping to counter insurgence to total war and beyond to alien invasion (the alien invasion scenario is about thinking about future possibilities that may not be realise today but could be in the next 10 or 20 years).
- The design lays out how you will build your SoS. Not just SoS but these systems are systems within systems that also show some holonic attributes making them very complex.
If we have those steps, we have a well-defined direction that will minimise problems. You can set goals that fit with the overall vision and work towards those goals incrementally. At the moment, from my corner of the Universe, I’m not seeing this process. What I’m seeing is a lack of overall direction, panic reaction as we rushed to join NATO, and augmentation. On saying that, I do see that there are some elements of the above defined but what there is in not, to my mind, unified in a way to direct the future development of the armed forces. So, from what I see we have more haste and we will see more problems occurring.
Peer Review
In science, researchers publish their research for other researchers to review in a process called a peer review. Other researchers may redo the same experiments or put forward counter arguments. In doing so, scientists find the problems with their work, ideas, or approach. They can then make corrections. This all helps to get to a better understanding of the world around us. It is needed as we humans have a number of problems with our understanding of reality and we also go blind to our own work and our own mistakes. Having others look at our work helps us. Even if it is annoying and irritating but professional scientists come to learn to appreciate it.
A similar thing happens in the computer world. Here the peer review is called a code review. Software is presented and other engineers / developers will look at it to see if it comes up to standard or to see if they can find bugs in the code.
The military, traditionally, is not so good at peer review. Which makes this part very interesting.
“Ansatsen är att skapa en debatt kring arméns framtid och vägen framåt. För att lyckas med detta krävs ett öppet diskussionsklimat men också att vi som representerar armén tar oss tid och lägger kraft på att diskutera och debattera.”
I would argue that it is vital if you want a military to be able to innovate, adapt, and to be able to effectively play Red Queen. But it is a time consuming process and something people are not very good at doing.
When Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery was at Sandhurst it became a punishment to have to sit next to him during breakfast as all he would talk about was military matters. He had radical ideas for changing military thinking. It’s interesting that people join an organisation but are not so keen on talking about what that organisation stands for. But then, social psychology tells us that people join organisations for three reasons; social, status, and for what the organisation stands for. Of the three, social and status are the main ones with very few joining for what the organisation stands for. Anyone running a voluntary organisation will probably have noticed the phenomena where they find it hard to get members to turn up when there is work to be done but no problem getting members to turn up when there is a social event. People who will sit and talk about the technicalities of what an organisation stands for are the geeks and nerds and most people find them irritating. You can understand why sitting next to one could become a punishment and why organisations want them out[7]. SAF has its own fan club called MÖPs. Now think about SAF’s relationship with MÖPs. But if you want to innovate it is the geeks and nerds you need[8] [9].
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck.’” – Robert Heinlein.
From my experience, I would say there is also a cultural problem to think about; Swedes are extreme consensuses seekers[10]. You don’t rock the boat in Sweden. As Robert Heinlein said “being right too soon is socially unacceptable” as is being technically correct. A case in point Major General Anders Brännström[11].
To get a debate going you could try rounding people up, put them in a room and use a cattle prod on anyone who doesn’t contribute to the debate (although the ethics committee might complain about that). I have been to companies that have tried that (not quite literally with the cattle prod) and from my experience, it doesn’t work.
In addition to the articles, perhaps there needs to be other initiatives? Tactical Decision Games[12] are something that perhaps should be introduced in SAF for other reasons, but they could also be used as a way of sowing seeds to allow debate to occur naturally? There could be other ways to sow seeds of debate and discussion using the magazines that SAF already publishes?
People Win Wars Not Technology
“För att detta ska vara möjligt krävs en ökad mängd tekniska- samt organisations- och metodförsök vid samtliga förband i armén, ända ner till soldatnivån.”
To be able to do that, I would argue, there is a need to build expertise. As we advance, as new technologies and new tactics are formed, warfare becomes more complex. To deal with that, we would need well trained personnel all the way down to the soldier level. That will take time and then when we have spent that time as well as the necessary resources, we will need to keep that skill. So, we are looking at personnel with a long term commitment. Either full time or part time. Are we doing that?
From what I see from my corner of the Universe, we are not building the armed forces in a way necessary to handle innovation. We are rushing to rebuild the defence by creating an army of numbers. Quantity over quality. The fact that warfare is becoming more complex was already noted in the inter-War years by General de Gaulle. He pointed out the need for a professional army but was a lone voice. One could argue the events of 1940 demonstrated that de Gaulle was right. I would argue that if we are to look at new developments, introduce new technology, and think about the future of SAF then we really have to rethink this whole idea of building a conscript army and look again at building a professional army and how to retain skills. Retaining skills means to me that we need to rethink GSS and HV as well and even to think about an NCO core.
“People, ideas, machines — in that order!” – Colonel John Boyd
“Humans will always be our most important platform.” – Sergeant Major Mike Weimer, Sergeant Major of the (US) Army[13]
The Difference Between Fantasy and Reality
Prototyping is another technique used in engineering, along with laying the foundations of design, prototyping allows you to make mistakes and correct them at less cost than if you had made those mistakes in the real system. Human beings are not very good at understanding how the world around us actually works. We have a lot of inbuilt biases[14] and it is far easier to make mistakes than to get things right. Building prototypes allows us to see how things work in reality. Reality is a harsh mistress. It is best to do as she says. But one could argue that the only way you can ever really test anything military out is to test it in a real war. However, we can’t keep starting wars for every new innovation (the ethics committee will complain, again). We, then, need a way to prototype as realistically as possible to provide as useful results as possible. To do that there are some problems with prototyping that are important to be aware of:
- The physical grounding problem. The physical grounding problem comes from making simulations. You can basically simulate whatever you like. So, you can write a simulation to test an idea only to find that when you put the idea into practice the results differ from the simulation. That would result if your simulation didn’t match reality well enough. A similar problem can occur in prototyping physical systems.
- Leaky abstractions. By necessity, a prototype is an abstraction of the real system rather than a full implementation. If you find that your prototype has to be patched up to get it to provide usable results then it is leaking. If your prototype leaks too much it becomes overly complex and you will need to rethink your prototyping.
Step Into My Parlour …
“Förutom att utveckla och förändra vår syn och våra metoder för förmågeutveckling behöver vi också identifiera och följa de tekniska och taktiska trender som kan påverka krigföringsförmågan och operationsmiljön.”
I would say that you then want to look not just at how to use such trends but also how to counter them. I think this gets at the core of what it is to play Red Queen. The countering, from what I see, is often missed. But is it more of interest to look at what trends are coming and how to use them or is it more of interest to look at what is coming and how to nullify them?
“Artificiell intelligens har utvecklats genom forskning och framsteg inom främst datavetenskap. Det är först under de senaste tio åren som militära visioner och strategier kring hur AI ska användas militärt utvecklats. USA och Kina ligger längst fram inom militär tillämpning av AI.”
As my PhD was in AI and Robotics, this is an area that interests me greatly. But I do wonder if this is an area where we should think more about countering than applying? Imagine two great armies each with their own AI system finding the optimal technical move. Wouldn’t each of the AI systems be able to second guess the other and bring the war to a stalemate? But then, this might just be a problem of how we use and develop AI. It comes back to the point that it is people that fight wars. Even in an age of AI and robot warriors.
“RAS representerar en tydlig disruptiv teknologi inom modern krigföring, med potential att i grunden förändra hur vi löser uppgifter. Vissa menar att autonoma drönare (swarming technology) kommer att vara den största utmaningen att hantera på framtidens stridsfält.”
Drones, Swarm AI, and the like was actively being researched in the 1990s. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 15 years for an applied research project to produce useful results. By that measure, drones are a bit slow in getting on the battlefields and they haven’t reached their full potential. But this is another area where I think countering is more profitable. Make drones obsolete before they can even reach their full potential. If we can do that, then we really have mastered the art of playing Red Queen. But, shouldn’t nullifying any new technology be a major goal?
“Naturligtvis finns det utmaningar som måste hanteras. En självklar utmaning är den etiska aspekten avseende nyttjandet av autonoma vapensystem. Här är det ytterst viktigt att utveckla handlingsregler som säkerställer mänsklig kontroll, det vill säga definiera man-in-the-loop.”
If something can be invented, it will be invented. Can we guarantee that any opponent will act so gentlemanly?
“Försvarsmakten och armén kommer oundvikligen att genomgå samma process under de kommande åren. … Rymddomänen skapar nya möjligheter men med möjligheter tillkommer nya begränsningar.”
And is this not again highlighting the need to develop skill based armed forces that retain those skills? Again grounds for rethinking how we are building SAF and how we handle the part time defence? And look again at those deep roots?
In these new trends, and future possibilities one thing I think was missing in the article and that is sustainable technologies. SAF runs on energy. Where will that energy come from in the future? Can we rely on oil?
Are Concrete Ships a Good Idea?
Or is pink a good camouflage colour?
“Därmed måste också synen på misslyckande förändras, från att vara något som man vill undvika för att slippa kritik till något som ses som ett tecken på att man vågar testa gränserna för möjlig teknik-, stridsteknik/taktik- och/eller organisationsutveckling.”
If you wish to innovate and explore new ideas (which I think we must) then mistakes will be made. There are more ways to get it wrong than there are to get it right. The product of a research project is knowledge (if your research is producing a product you are doing development not research) and most of the knowledge is along the lines of “that wasn’t a good idea, don’t do that again”. But through finding what doesn’t work, we eventually find our way to what does. You don’t need to be right anyway. You just need to have something that is workable. And workable in this context means workable on the battlefield. But there are mistakes and then there are MISTAKES. Although we should accept the former, we really want to avoid the latter.
Part of the reason for the sinking of HMS Sheffield during the Falklands war was the UAA1 sensor being blocked because of a radio transmission using the satellite communications systems[15]. Another part of the problem was the use of non-fire retardant material which meant the ship caught fire rather than being destroyed by the missile that hit the ship. The US Army wasted a lot of time and money on their Universal Camouflage Pattern[16]. One could argue that SAF’s acquisition of half cut helmets is another such mistake.
In software engineering lives are seldom lost when mistakes are made. Worst case scenario is typically a lot of irritated customers[17]. Fixes are made and an update done. In a military context lives are very much at stake, battles could be lost, wars could be lost, and future generations will write nasty things about you in their history books if serious mistakes are made. So, in a culture that tolerates mistakes and sees them as necessary, how will you avoid the really serious mistakes?
Part of avoiding the big mistakes is laying the foundations (as above). You can check back. One could argue that the mistakes listed, HMS Sheffield, UCP, and half cut helmets to SAF, above resulted from a lack of battlefield focus and could have been avoid if a check had been made; will this work on the battlefield? Things like fashion and comfort took priority instead.
Are concrete ships a good idea? Is pink a good camouflage colour? We can start to answer those questions by checking if they fit in with the vision, with the goals, and with the requirements and specifications. If so, then we can look at testing those ideas out. At prototyping. Other techniques involve applying the scientific method, and critical thinking as well as evidence-based thinking etc.[18]. But to do so is time consuming and can be costly.
Experts and Ideas
“B H Liddell Hart uttryckte att det enda som är svårare än att implementera nya idéer är att bli kvitt de gamla.”
To try and avoid the really big mistakes we can also seek expert opinion from within SAF or from outside SAF (academia, industry or other NATO armies) but this can lead to another problem; the expert in the room. Experts by definition are in the minority and minorities tend to get overruled by the majority[19]. The Titan submarine disaster gives an example of that, where expert opinion was overruled in the name of innovation[20]. And aren’t we trying to innovate? As another example, much of the modern computer age was invented at the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) in the US. PARC was run by Xerox but today we don’t associate Xerox with the modern computer. This, it can be argued, was due to the failure of the management at Xerox to understand the ideas presented to them[21].
Liddell Hart is well known today because of his ideas about combining infantry and tank formations. Ideas that were not accepted by the British military establishment but were later discovered independently by the Germans and used to great effect during the blixtkrig of the Second World War. Part of the reason why Liddell Hart’s ideas weren’t accepted by the British military establishment was because Liddell Hart was a captain and why would a general want to pay any attention to what a captain has to say? It is an example of Planck’s principle:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck.
Ideas are seldom accepted on their own merits. A bad idea from a general will be accepted but a good idea from a private will be rejected.
But if we listened to every idea out there we would spend a lot of time listening to ideas that are worthless. Not all ideas are realistic, possible or of equal value to others. There has to be some kind of filter. Laying the foundations (as above) is one way of filtering. But another way is to create a sandbox. A playground where ideas can be explored at little cost. It’s a bit like prototyping but on a smaller, simpler scale. How can that be done?
In addition to domain experts, I would argue that we will also need inter-domain experts if we wish to innovate as we are dealing with a complex systems composed of many different domains. Domain experts tend to focus on one aspect and inter-domain experts can help to glue things together.
