Military Ops in the Urban Littorals PME (160413)

Military Operations in the

Urban Littorals

Mr. Scott Packard

18 April 2016

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Agenda

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● Marine Corps Tactics & Operations Group (MCTOG)

● Urban Terrain

● Urban Operations and the Threat

● Urban Operations and the GCE/MAGTF

● What Must Be Done?

Marine Corps Tactics

& Operations Group

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Marine Corps Tactics & Operations Group

Role, Mission, Initiatives

Provides training to Ground Combat Elements:

– At the battalion and regiment level

– Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) operations

– Combined arms training

Synchronizes doctrine and training standards IOT enhance

combat preparation and performance of ground combat element

units in MAGTF operations.

Serves as the Lead for the USMC Urban Operations Community of

Interest and chairs the NATO Urban Operations Training Working

Group.

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Urban Terrain

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Urban Terrain and the Impacts

The Four Elements

Urban Triad to

Urban Quad

● Manmade

physical terrain

● Population of

significant

density, and

varying socio-

economic groups

● Dynamic

infrastructure

(Flows)

● Information and

connectivity

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Manmade Terrain

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• Airspace

• Supersurface

• Interior

• Exterior

• Surface

• Subsurface

• Space

• Cyperspace

• Maritime

• Land

• Air

• Information

Environment

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Urban Terrain and the Impacts Manmade Terrain – Finding Gaps & Seams

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Suburbs Urban-Rural

Interface

Contiguous Urban

Corridors

Edgeless Cities

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Manmade Terrain – Peri-urban areas

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The Unstructured and

Informally Governed Urban

Space

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Manmade Terrain – Isolating battlespace

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Boundaries

- Political

- Ethnic

- Social

class

- Political

- Religious

- Economic

Do we isolate terrain or the battlespace? Do we isolate “the jungle” or the

battlespace within the jungle?

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A Dense Population

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The urban environment is unique largely due to the

presence of a sizeable, dense population.

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Dynamic Infrastructure

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Complex

Adaptive

System of

Systems

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Dynamic Infrastructure

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Urban flows that react and adapt to the presence of the GCE

and in turn influence and impact GCE operations.

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UNCLASSIFIEDUrban Terrain and the Impacts

Information and Connectivity

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City Information

Infrastructure Allow—

- Proliferation of mobile

devices

- Egalitarian access and

upload – a basic right

- Constant observation

of, and collection on,

GCE operations

- Instant, real-time

situational awareness

- Seams for mis- and

dis-information

- Room for ambiguity

- Worldwide connectivity

- Resiliency and

redundancy

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15http://www.independent.co.uk/news/pictures/artists-in-pakistan-target-drones-with-giant-posters-of-child-victims-9245831.html


Information and Connectivity

Urban Operations

and the Threat

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Urban Operations and the Threat

● Technological Parity or Advantage

– Use of commercially driven innovation, out-cycling

DoD procurement process

● Ambiguous and Unrestricted Warfare

– Hybrid approach and methods

– Gerasimov Doctrine in Crimea

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● Mitigate U.S. Strengths

– Maximize ambiguity/anonymity

– Avoid mass and open maneuver

– Operate within the MAGTF kill chain

– Avoid information networks while exploiting urban and

subterranean lines of communication

Dig in fiber optic cables

Hide in commercial network “white noise” and encryption

Mission-type orders and prowords

– Conduct technological “hugging”

– Induce MAGTF mistakes in the employment of force

– Work in the seams (unit boundaries, kill chains, coalition

caveats, international law)

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● Exploit U.S. Weaknesses

– Choose fires over maneuver – target mass and static positions

– Generate area denial effects

– Target critical logistics nodes and lines of communication

– Master 21st Century combined arms (fires, maneuver, and

information operations)

– Operate to message

– Exploit Western behaviors (necessity, discrimination,

unnecessary suffering, proportionality)

– Exploit outsider ignorance of urban flows and cultures

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The Expectation of Precision and the Expectation of Restraint

Urban Operations

and the GCE

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Urban Operations and the GCE –

Command and Control

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How do they gain intelligence, look “up and out,” maintain

situational awareness and connectivity, while maneuvering and

fighting?

The Key Question –

“How do we increase

dispersion and make

smaller units more

capable without

overly burdening and

leaving them open to

defeat in detail?”

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Command and Control

● Command and Control Challenges– Training small unit leaders

– Trust and authority at lower levels

– Willingness to accept risk

– Ad hoc organizations, instride aggregation, and coalitions

– Battlespace organization within a “living urban system.”

– Dense electromagnetic spectrum

– Impacts of urban terrain on connectivity

– Impacts of dispersed forces from communications to fire support

coordination

– Exploiting existing city data and communication systems

– Competitive airspace (commercial and military drones)

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Intelligence

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Does not give you

this...

How do we use commercial big

data and ubiquitous

“everything a sensor” networks

in the urban area?

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Intelligence

● What is the mission and what do we need to know?

● How do we get that information in a timely manner?

– The warm-start – pre-conflict sensing

– Build as you go; the role of discovery learning

● How do we build real-time, situational awareness?

– Augmented reality – What the squad leader needs to know, five minutes

before he or she needs it

– Intel sharing relationships at the city vs. national level

– Mapping and a common operating picture

● Operate to Know – Where do we employ limited combat forces?

– Reconnaissance

– Other ISR

● Identification of groups, allegiances, persons, vehicles, and

ability to collect biometric data

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Intelligence

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Mapping the Urban Space

- Can we GRG the entire

world’s urban spaces?

- Alternatives to the GRG

such as pixel-based

location systems?

- Can we use warm-start

and advanced, long-loiter

systems, to begin

mapping prior to the

introduction of forces?

- Can we field “ubiquitous”

sensors and find the

bandwidth to make such

technologies work?

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Intelligence

● Intelligence Challenges– Opening the aperture of analysis beyond the threat

– Limitations on sensors/subsystems and Persistent 360 ISR

– Stripping threat anonymity through comprehensive Identity

Operations, facial recognition, micro-expression analysis (A

“Manning Moment”)

– Reconnaissance

Remaining undetected

Canalization of movement

Interior reconnaissance

Small observation areas/short lines of sight/dead space

Signals communications and data transmission

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Fires

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The Key Question –

“How do we deliver rapid, precision

fires that maximize their utility to the

user and prevent the enemy from

operating within our kill chain?”

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Fires

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Georeferenced

images are used

by aerial sensors

to determine

target location...

BUT

...the use of those

images by a

ground-based

observer is very

difficult

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Fires

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In order to

properly depict

the ground-

observer’s

perspective 3D

modeled terrain is

necessary...

SO

...everyone can

identify the target

using the

observer’s

perspective.

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Fires

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This requires fire

support from the

same map...

BACKED UP BY

...fire support

agencies slaved

to the fire support

coordination

process

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Fires

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• Scalablility allows a single

munition to produce different

effects by modifying

detonation intensity, angles of

attack and heights of burst

• Trajectory independent of

delivery method

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Fires

● Fires Challenges– Masking and dead space

– Static survivability and positioning

– Collateral damage limitations (expectations of precision and

restraint)

– Acquisition and arming ranges

– Type and number of indirect fire systems

– Positioning

– Mix of munitions

– Shortening the kill chain

– Understanding the observer’s perspective

– Achievable target location accuracies

– Scalable munitions

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Fires

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Our current approach to IO is incorrect and

will be exploited in the urban environment

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Fires

● IO Challenges– Intense, rapid, real-time IO that is NOT restricted to propaganda

– Lack of authorities, capabilities, and capacities for Cyber, EW and

deception at the lowest tactical levels

– Media and other observers have no interest in “good news stories”

– The threat will both operate to message and seek to induce mistakes

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Fires

● Cyber Challenges– Authorities – Title 10 vs Title 50

– DCO and OCO

– Tactical access to cyber effects

– Temporal and spatial effects; e.g., neutralizing social

media in a given area for a given period to reduce

crowd-sourced threat reporting of friendly PLI and

operations

– Cyber support to lethal fires, and vice versa 2013 Metcalf Substation complex attack

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Maneuver

● Small and Dispersed

– Requires increases in

lethality, mobility, and

sustainability

● Lethality and Mobility

● Gaining and Maintaining

Access

– Edgeless cities and urban

infill

● Isolating the Battlespace

not the Terrain

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Maneuver

Troop-to-space issues - Seeking to solve traditional tactical

problems with less

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The indirect method

utilizes strikes and

raids to degrade and

disrupt enemy forces

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Maneuver

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The nodal or site-

specific method

requires some

physical occupation

and control of LOCs


problems with less

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Maneuver


problems with less

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The sector or zone

method allows small

numbers of forces to

mass their effects on

one area at a time

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Maneuver


problems with less

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The siege method

utilizes alternative

means and methods

to invest and isolate a

city and conduct

actions in it

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Maneuver

● Maneuver Challenges– Solving traditional and new tactical problems with less Marines and

equipment

– Gaining access

– Dispersing and massing

– Relative tactical mobility

– Physical fitness challenge for infantry and assigned enablers

– The need to operate across the entire range of operations and conflict

continuum

– Understanding the nature of the target, the area around it, and how to

generate effects (population, building composition, etc.)

– Adequate urban training

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Logistics

The Single Biggest Challenge

At Sea, Ashore, or Both?

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Logistics

● Challenges

– Avoiding the “Iron Mountain” target

– Mitigating enemy threats to LOCs; surface, aerial, or ground

– Supporting greater dispersion in the battlespace

– MEDEVAC versus CASEVAC

– Unmanned systems and urban navigability/vulnerability

– Organic ability of the receiving unit to do more than distribute

– Accommodate increased consumption rates

– “Maneuver to sustain”

– Mobile and renewable power generation

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Logistics

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What Can We Do

From the

Seabase?

- Sortie rates for

both air and

surface

connectors

- Units of issue

- Receiving unit

capabilities

- Evacuation of

equipment and

personnel

- Security of the

seabase

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Logistics

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What Can We Do

Ashore?

- Greater

capacity and

availability

- More services

- Vulnerability of

the “Iron

Mountain”

- Dispersing,

camouflaging,

and moving

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What is to Be Done?

Experiment

Acquire

Innovate

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• Pre-Conflict Sensing

• Dynamic Urban Mapping

• City Data System

Exploitation/Manipulation

• Counter-Unmanned Vehicle Tactics and

Technology

• Unmanned/Autonomous Systems

• Non-Lethal and Variable Lethality Systems

• Mobile Renewable Power Generation

• Medical Evacuation and Stasis

• Radio Relay and Non-Grid

Communications

• Urban Training

• A Soldier’s Load

• Flattened Kill Chain

• Tactical Access to IO and Cyber Effects

Questions?

Documents

Military Ops in the Urban Littorals PME (160413)