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Via the Tactical Leader

Though most tactical leaders intuitively understand that their reconnaissance and security formations can conduct either stealthy or aggressive reconnaissance depending on the situation, we are currently out-of-balance. Many formations remain overly-reliant on echelons above brigade (EAB and organic unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to collect the information needed to inform the Commander’s decision-making. The results are underwhelming. The ‘see first, decide first, act first, finish decisively’ paradigm is one that has proven ineffective against an intelligent enemy well-trained in the use of camouflage, concealment, and dispersion techniques to defeat these platforms. Stealthy reconnaissance by ground forces holds more promise in overcoming these passive counter-reconnaissance techniques. Stealthy reconnaissance by ground forces are well-suited to identify the flanks and rear of enemy formations, allowing follow-on maneuver forces to achieve shock and surprise and exploit both physical and psychological positions of relative advantage. And yet, preparing and training formations almost exclusively in the conduct of passive, stealthy reconnaissance leaves the formation out-of-balance in respect to its capabilities. The ability to conduct aggressive reconnaissance is an essential proficiency in large-scale combat operations. Formations must train both. This post seeks to highlights considerations in favor of conducting aggressive reconnaissance that a tactical leader should use to inform their model of reconnaissance.

As a line grunt at the platoon level, I was usually more involved in the counter-reconnaissance fight, rather than the reconnaissance effort.

Fighting the CR fight allowed me to infer a few things.

Having to devote resources, and time, to denying the enemy reconnaissance effort meant our unit had fewer resources and less time to devote to the main effort- usually the defense, but often enough preparations for the attack. As much as a third of the task force would be devoted to the CR effort.

For relatively modest forces fighting the recon battle, the OpFor could tie up our task force with minimal risk. As soon as his reconnaissance forces made contact, they would almost immediately break contact, reposition, and advance once again in another sector.

Eventually, after multiple contacts, the enemy reconnaissance effort would be able to fairly accurately map our CR effort. And by  painting a picture of how we were attempting to deny  him reconnaissance, a savvy enemy  commander would be able to infer where our actual defense was. Given that our order of battle was known, and that the OpFor was intimately familiar with the terrain, and our doctrine, guessing the design of our defense was no great mental stretch.

If, however, we were able to destroy early on the enemy reconnaissance effort, before they could map the entirety of the CR effort, the enemy ability to infer  our defense was greatly compromised.

A woman once told me, after her life had taken an unexpected turn, that if you live long enough, pretty much anything can happen. That thought was in the back of my mind on a cool morning last November as I sat in the covered bleachers overlooking the wide expanses of Hilton Field parade grounds at Fort Jackson, in Columbia, South Carolina. Across the field, about a thousand camo-clad soldiers marched in formation out of a pine forest, emerging from the green and white fog of detonated smoke grenades. They came toward us across the dead winter grass, in five companies, Alpha through Echo, to the wild whoops and cheers of the crowd and the strains of “Soldiers,” a rousing modern rock song with lyrics like “This is a perfect day to die” and “With our final breath, we will fight to the death—we are soldiers, we are soldiers.”

I was there not as a reporter but as a dad. Alongside me were my ex-wife, Jacqueline Wallace, and our twelve-year-old daughter, Harriet, all of us with tears in our eyes and our skin tingling, proud to bursting of our son and brother: Private John Henry Lomax, who would be formally graduating from Army boot camp the next day.

Military service is a tradition in many families, but not in mine, nor Jacqueline’s. No Lomax or Wallace had served in the armed forces since World War II. The general idea in our family was that the military was for other people, not for our son. I’m not proud of that, but it is the truth. I grew up on war movies, played guns incessantly as a kid, and later, when at loose ends as a young adult, toyed with the idea of joining the Navy or even the French Foreign Legion, but I never followed through on those schemes. I was isolated from the military world: even in my thirties, I could count on one hand the number of my friends, acquaintances, and extended family members who had served.

via www.texasmonthly.com

A great article in Texas Monthly, as a father reflects on his son's decision to join the Army.

In the early days of World War II, the US Navy had a problem in the campaign against German U-boats. It was fairly common for a patrol plane to spot a surfaced U-boat from a considerable distance. But very often, the U-boat would spot the patrol plane, and crash dive to safety before the patrol  plane could attack.

The Navy wanted to reduce the visual detection range of its aircraft. Looking at previous Canadian research into the issue, it soon became clear that the visual detection range of aircraft from ships was due primarily to the aircraft appearing darker than the sky background. Even if an aircraft was painted white,  it still appeared darker then the ambient light.

And so, the crazy way to make an airplane invisible during the day was to use bright lights.  Shining bright lights on the airplane would make it blend with the ambient light, and thus reduce the contrast that made spotting it easy.

Unfortunately, shining a bright light all over an airplane wasn’t exactly practical.

But the Navy did a little more experimentation, and figured out that bright lights on the nose and the leading edge of the wing, pointing forward, would essentially make a plane invisible as long as it was pointed directly at the target, and would require far less electrical power.

In 1943, a TBM Avenger was outfitted with such an array, under Project Yehudi. The average visual detection range in tests on Chesapeake Bay dropped from 12 miles, to as little as a mile and a half.

While the system worked, the increasing use of radar in the Battle of the Atlantic meant that U-boats would increasingly stay submerged during daylight hours, thus negating the need for Yehudi lights, and so the project was essentially abandoned and forgotten.

Similarly, a squadron of B-24 bombers tested a Yehudi array to help defeat visually aimed flack. The increasing use of radar directed anti-aircraft artillery meant the tradeoff of installing the array wasn’t worth it.

A quarter century later, the concept would make a brief reappearance. The Ault Report on the Navy’s air to air performance in Vietnam noted that the F-4 Phantom was much easier to detect visually than the nimble MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters it faced over North Vietnam. Again, a series of tests looked at using a Yehudi approach to minimizing the visual signature of  Navy aircraft.  While Yehudi lights were again not adopted for the fleet, the Compass Ghost paint scheme devised in concert with this project was, and is essentially the basis for all  US tactical aircraft camouflage schemes.

Here’s a brief video showing how to hide an armored vehicle with the counterillumination concept.

When an armored unit is in the defense, digging two tier fighting positions is a major priority.  A well dug two tier position offers very good protection from direct fire, while simultaneously providing excellent fields of fire to engage the enemy.

A tank that is in such a position can conduct what are known in the trade as “berm drills.” While on the lower section of the position, the tank commander can scan for and designate targets. Once the gunner has acquired the target, simply driving the tank forward a few feet brings the tank onto the step, and allows the crew to engage. And just as quickly,  as soon as the shot is fired, the tank rolls back into protection.

Esli very kindly shared with us his tank practicing berm drills during an exercise.

For the first 6 months of the  Pacific War, the Kido Butai, the Japanese Mobile Force carrier fleet, ran wild across a third of the globe, sinking Allied ships, downing Allied aircraft, striking Allied bases, and not losing a single ship.

After the tactical draw at Coral Sea, the Japanese Imperial Fleet planned a decisive battle, with the assault and occupation of Midway to be the catalyst. The Japanese planned to crush the remnants of the US Pacific Fleet, and essentially deny the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii to the Allies.

Thanks largely to the efforts of Fleet Radio Unit Pacific’s cryptology, the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, ADM Nimitz, had a fairly clear picture of the Japanese intentions and order of battle. He even had a very good idea of when the battle was to take place.

Nimitz faced an enormous fleet. Behind the Kido Butai was a huge fleet of battleships, and a large invasion force.

Nimitz scraped together virtually every ship in the fleet to face this onslaught.

Enterprise and Hornet were ready. USS Yorktown, badly damaged in the Battle of Coral Sea one month before had only just limped into Pearl Harbor. At a minimum, it would take three months to repair her.

Instead, a near superhuman effort patched her up sufficiently in three days to allow her to sortie with the fleet. That amazing story can be read here.

Just knowing the Japanese plan was necessary, but not sufficient to achieve success. The US had to detect and localize their fleet, parry the thrust at Midway Island, and then counterstroke against a numerically superior fleet with arguably better materiel.

Entire books have been written about the battle itself, so we shall not attempt to do so here.

Suffice to say that a combination of solid intelligence, sound operational and tactical thinking, astonishing personal courage, and no small amount of blind luck led to the smashing of the Kido Butai, with four of the finest carriers of the Japanese fleet sliding smoking beneath the waves. Equally important, their aircrews were dead, either shot down, killed aboard their ships, or left to drown in the  Pacific vastness. They were an irreplaceable asset, and the quality of Japanese naval air crews would decline through the rest of the war, whereas US aircrews would improve in quality, training, and numbers.

While the Imperial Japanese Navy would never recover from the disastrous defeat at Midway, it was still a formidable force, and the US Navy would have to fight bloody battles against it for three more years.

But without the stunning victory of the US Navy over the Kido Butai seventy five years ago, that long road to victory would surely have been longer, and far bloodier.

FORT SILL, Okla. — A military spouse stationed in Oklahoma has risen to fame after she began designing and selling this fall’s hottest dependent fashion trend — military rank accessories.

“I was always told by my second husband that spouses shouldn’t wear their husband’s ranks,” said Gina Caslen, spouse of Lt. Col. Johnny Caslen. “But I needed a way to let the other members of the Spouse Club know that I am better than they are, so I bought these silver oak leafs at the clothing sales store and they matched my necklace perfectly while not too heavy on my ears.”

via www.duffelblog.com

COLUMBIA — For researchers, documentarians, military veterans — or just about anyone who wants to get an up-close, real-life glimpse at what the major wars of the United States looked like on a day-to-day basis — the United States Marine Corps film repository in the University of South Carolina’s Moving Image Research Collection could be the next best thing to being there, and it will soon be as close as your computer.

On May 25, the university officially cut the ribbon on the collection's Lt. Col. James H. Davis Film Vault and the John S. Davis Scanning Center, which together will allow USC to both store and digitize 18,000 films, totaling some 1,800 hours, documenting Marine Corps operations from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, as well as peacetime training and public relations activities. Over the next two years, this archive will gradually become permanently available on the internet.

via www.postandcourier.com

Excellent news.

A very nice come from behind win.
Sorry I didn’t have time to narrate this one. I’ll just say, I would have switched to AP sooner.  On the other hand, I haven’t earned a Kraken lately, so take that for what it’s worth.