Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

• Helicopters and the kill web

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: Helicopters will have a role in the kill web as they have in the kill chain dating back to their first uses in warfare. Starting with the Korean War, and later in Vietnam, the helicopter became the cavalry. Anyone serving in the Army during the 1960s and 1970s knows about the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Vietnam. You could hear their UH-1 Iroquois helicopters (nickname: Huey) coming from miles away. These aircraft carried troops into battle and provided fire support for ground forces in a fight.

• Ground combat vehicles, tanks, and the kill web

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. When I started researching ground combat vehicles (GCV) and tanks, I suspected it was going to be messy from the start. I was not disappointed. There's a plethora of research reports and articles containing hundreds of pages on this topic.

• Long-range bombers and the kill web

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: In our last article, we examined how U.S. fighter planes fit into the kill web, along with a review of European Union (EU), Russian, and Chinese fighters. And, we looked at some of their flight characteristics and design parameters. Now, it’s time to explore long range heavy bomber aircraft.

• Fighter jets and the kill web

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: In the previous article, we explored the transition from the static kill chain to the dynamic kill web in future warfare scenarios. Now, let’s look at how fighter jets fit into this new model. That requires a review of the fighters being flown by the U.S. and our allies today. We also need to consider what the Russians and the Chinese are doing with their fighter jets.

• Transitioning from the kill chain to the kill web

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: My last post outlined the strategic reviews and national defense priorities that sit on top of the kill chain. Defense planners at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are now looking at transitioning to a concept they've dubbed the kill web.

• Integrating warfare models with the kill chain

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: My previous article covered what sits on top of the kill chain from a strategic perspective. Now, it’s time to integrate the other models: RMAs (revolutions in military affairs), warfare domains (land, sea, air, space, cyberspace, electromagnetic (EM) spectrum), strategic offsets, generations of warfare (1GW through 8GW), and the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act).

• What sits on top of the kill chain?

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: In my previous article, I promised that we would integrate the warfare models (RMAs [Revolution in Military Affairs], warfare domains, strategic offsets, the OODA Loop, and generations of warfare) with the kill chain. That noble goal has been overcome by events. A number of important reports have been released in the past few months, so it’s best that we take a look at those elements first. Otherwise, we risk confusion and lose some critical connections about how the kill chain is evolving.

• Fire and finish: The middle of the kill chain

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: As stated in previous articles, we need to reduce the complete kill chain down to 10 minutes or less, according to General John Jumper. So, all new systems and weapons must fit inside the kill chain somewhere (find, fix, fire, finish, feedback). And, they must speed things up significantly. We also established that the latest radar, sonar, SIGINT, IMINT, and other sensor systems fit in the find and fix phases. Now, it’s time to take a look at some of the latest developments going into the fire and finish phases.

• Artificial intelligence (AI)…and artificial stupidity (AS)

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: Isaac Asimov first published the three laws for super-intelligent robots in 1942, and we are ignoring them. Although Department of Defense (DoD) directive 3000.09, dated November 2012, says that a human must always pull the trigger or press the button on our weapons, we violated that when we created the Phalanx CIWS and the Aegis missile defense system, although those weapons are defensive. Now, everybody with a lot of money, or a lot of education, is claiming that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will take us to a “singularity,” sometime between 2020 and 2040, where machines become exponentially smarter than humans. At that point, the machines and killer robots will eliminate humans and take over the world.

• Find and fix: The front-end of the kill chain

  Ray Alderman, VITA Standards Organization

  WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. I can speak to this topic with some level of experience. My old military intelligence unit, Army Security Agency (ASA) was the military arm of the National Security Agency (NSA). Our primary mission was to find, identify, fix, and track every significant military unit on the planet, including both our enemies and our allies. As Sun Tzu is credited with saying (or maybe it was Machiavelli, or Petrarch, or Michael Corleone): "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4