airland battle

[Simone]

Erano altri tempi, ma i Carabinieri già in passato si sono trovati ad affrontare il "grande banditismo",fra la fine del 1800 e l'inizio del XX secolo, e proprio il loro essere sia una forza di fanteria che una di polizia ha permesso di venire a capo in maniera meno distruttiva che altrove di questo grande problema. Forse l'Afghanistan attuale non è troppo diverso dal Mezzogiorno post unitario,pur con tutte le differenze del caso, sarebbe forse bene prendere spunto da questa esperienza

[vorthex]

infatti, come è noto, la questione meridionale è stata risolta 150anni fa...

[Einherjar]

Erano altri tempi, ma i Carabinieri già in passato si sono trovati ad affrontare il "grande banditismo",fra la fine del 1800 e l'inizio del XX secolo, e proprio il loro essere sia una forza di fanteria che una di polizia ha permesso di venire a capo in maniera meno distruttiva che altrove di questo grande problema. Forse l'Afghanistan attuale non è troppo diverso dal Mezzogiorno post unitario,pur con tutte le differenze del caso, sarebbe forse bene prendere spunto da questa esperienza

 

Meno distruttiva di dove? Hiroshima? Dresda?

 

Il brigantaggio è stato represso nel sangue dalle forze sabaude: esecuzione sommarie, rappresaglie contro la popolazione civile, condanne anche solo per essere sospettati di essere dei collaboratori.....

 

Il brigantaggio gia c'era da prima, passare dai borboni ai savoia è stato saltare dalla padella alla brace. Il discorso sul brigantaggio post'unitario è cosa troppo complessa da discutere in off topic, Per farla breve i briganti erano i "buoni" e se volete contestarmelo aprite pure una discussione.

[Andrea75]

Segnalo un paper ed un articolo di commento sulle operazioni Joint Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020 e DoD releases Concept to build Joint Force 2020

 

Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership identifies ten primary missions through which the Joint Force will protect U.S. national interests:

- Counter terrorism and irregular warfare

- Deter and defeat aggression

- Project power despite anti-access/area denial challenges

- Counter weapons of mass destruction

- Operate effectively in cyberspace and space

- Maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent

- Defend the homeland and provide support to civil authorities

- Provide a stabilizing presence

- Conduct stability and counterinsurgency operations

- Conduct humanitarian, disaster relief, and other operations

...

The Concept: Globally Integrated Operations

There are eight key elements to globally integrated operations:

1. requires a commitment to the use of mission command

2. must provide the ability to seize, retain and exploit the initiative in time and across domains

3. both enable and are premised upon global agility

4. place a premium onpartnering

5. provide for more flexibility in how Joint Forces are established and employed

6. future Joint Forces will leverage better integration to improve cross-domain synergy

7. flexible, low-signature or small-footprint capabilities such as cyberspace, space, special operations, global strike, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) will play more pronounced roles in future joint operations

8. future joint operations will be increasingly discriminate to minimize unintended consequences

...

Adopting this capstone concept carries with it potential risks.

- The communications required by this concept may be unavailable

- Partners may be unable or unwilling to integrate

- The pursuit of advanced technology may prove unaffordable

- An overemphasis on decentralization may lead to lack of coordination and inefficient use of scarce resources

- The armed forces may fail to achieve the required level of global agility

- Standardization may lead to decreased diversity, flexibility, versatility and, ultimately, effectiveness

- Elimination of redundancies may lead to operational brittleness and risk

- The emphasis on organizational flexibility may limit operational effectiveness

[Andrea75]

segnalo questo paper: si tratta di un suggerimento per una nuova strategia A New US Defense Strategy for a New Era: Military Superiority, Agility, and Efficiency

 

Rapid and continuing changes in the international environment, weaknesses in the US economy, the worsening and unsustainable fiscal outlook, and a better understanding of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of US-military capabilities create a need and an opportunity for the United States to rethink its defense planning and budgets.

››

Internationally, threats to US interests are changing rapidly. The nation’s one peer adversary, the USSR, was long ago replaced by Russia. Though neither friend nor foe, Russia is certainly more limited in capabilities and ambitions than its predecessor. At the same time, a new power is emerging in East Asia. China, a country with claims against many of its neighbors and whose long-term intentions are uncertain, but which also has powerful economic and political interests in maintaining cooperative relations with the US and other advanced nations. After 10 years, the US is ending its involvement in long and bloody wars in the Middle East and South Asia—wars that cost the nation more than 7,000 lives and trillions in treasure. Even so, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia remain unsettled, with one sworn US adversary (Iran), civil conflicts or unstable political situations in many other nations, and the constant specter of terrorist attacks throughout the region. Similarly unsettled situations characterize large swaths of Africa. Yet, after Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clearer today that these instabilities pose only indirect threats to the United States, threats to be managed rather than resolved through protracted military involvement.

››

Fiscally, the struggles of the US and most of its allies include unprecedented requirements for reductions in government spending, including defense spending. These pressures are expressed most clearly in the sequester provision of the Budget Control Act (BCA). If implemented at the start of 2013, the BCA would cut the defense budget by 10 percent overnight. Of more lasting significance, interest on the nation’s projected long-term debt would crowd out investments that not only are needed to sustain the country’s superior military technologies, but, of at least equal importance, are required if the US is to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving knowledge-based and technologically-advanced global economy.

››

The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the several lesser conflicts the United States has fought since the end of the Cold War have clarified the nation’s comparative military strengths and weaknesses. The US has unsurpassed global flexibility, agility, and reach. Its joint and combined forces provide unprecedented intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities (ISR). Its air, naval, and ground forces have the means to reach out promptly anywhere in the world and deliver powerful blows. These same forces can sustain limited air and ground campaigns far from home, just as they can deliver military supplies to embattled allies or humanitarian support to victims of disasters. No other nation will be able to match these capabilities for years to come. But US military power is not unlimited. The Afghan and Iraq wars demonstrated how difficult it is to stabilize distant nations, to provide security to their populations, and to facilitate effective and honest governance. There may be limits, too, in the US’ ability to defend against unconventional weapons—whether lethal biological or chemical agents, cyber-warfare, or efforts to interfere with the use of space for commercial or military purposes—either by governments or in the hands of terrorists.

In view of these rapidly changing circumstances, the Peterson Foundation brought together a group of experienced, former military and civilian defense officials and experts to discuss US defense strategy over the course of a year.1 This Defense Advisory Committee notes and endorses the changes already being taken by the Department of Defense to rebalance US forces toward an incrementally and proportionally greater emphasis on Asia and the Pacific. These include redeployments of naval forces and the greater use of rotational deployments of ground and air forces in East Asia. However, we conclude that more far-ranging changes should be implemented over time in US defense strategy and budgets. Our conclusions are founded on 10 key operating principles.

1. The US owes a huge debt to all those who have served in the nation’s wars, and particularly the men and women who have served repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should ensure that they are provided superior medical care, as well as the educational and vocational support necessary for successful reentry into the civilian economy.

2. The US should implement as a high priority long-standing proposals to utilize manpower more efficiently, to reform personnel compensation systems, and to streamline the system used to acquire equipment, goods, and services.

3. The US should maintain space, air, and naval forces superior to those of any potential adversary.

4. The US should maintain robust and technologically advanced special operations forces to counter terrorists and criminal enterprises, protect US citizens overseas, and for other contingencies.

5. Priority in research and development (R&D) budgets and additional funds should be given to basic research and the pursuit of advanced military capabilities, with a particular emphasis on cyber-warfare, space, defense against biological weapons, and on many of the programs hidden from view in classified portions of the budget.

6. The US should continue to exercise security leadership by working cooperatively with allies and friends to ensure their security, but should strive to ensure that these nations contribute a proportionate share of the cost of these defense preparations.

7. Over time, the US should shift from a mind-set that emphasizes static deployments overseas, and instead rely on frequent rotations of expeditionary forces home-based in the United States to exercise jointly with allies, to familiarize themselves with potential combat theaters, and to demonstrate US resolve and capabilities. Given the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula, however, and the uncertain future of US-China relations, the US should maintain its currently planned ground, naval, and air combat units in Japan and Korea, while it works to develop a more trusting relationship with Chinese military and political leaders. The US also should retain the smaller forces now planned to be based in Europe, until lingering uncertainties about Russia’s intentions are resolved.

8. The US should strongly resist being drawn into protracted land wars, restricting its combat deployments of ground forces to well-defined and limited objectives.

9. The US should reduce the size of its nuclear forces as rapidly as possible, preferably through a new treaty with Russia, and make commensurate reductions in planned nuclear modernization programs.

10. The US should defer additional deployments of Continental US missile defenses until relevant technologies mature and seem assured of providing effective capabilities, but continue to develop and deploy cooperative theater missile defense systems with partners in regions threatened by hostile states with short- and mid-range missiles.

Together, these principles comprise a new defense strategy, which takes advantage of the unmatched flexibility, agility, and reach of US air, naval, and ground forces to promote US and allied interests in a rapidly changing international environment. We call the new strategy “Strategic Agility.” We recommend that over time the US shift to this new strategy, and away from the more static mentality that has characterized the US posture since the early 1950s. By implementing this new strategy, the US can protect its interests and strengthen its global leadership in a wide range of possible budgetary scenarios.

The proposed strategy does not dictate a particular force structure or modernization program. Specific choices will depend on how much money is allocated to the Department of Defense, how much waste is reduced through implementation of the efficiency measures (mentioned in principle #2, above, and described in section V of this paper), and on the politics of defense decision-making within the Pentagon and in the Congress. Obviously, the more that can be spent wisely on forces and modernization, the greater the hedges against an uncertain future and the lower the risks to US interests.

In the penultimate section of the paper, we illustrate a range of possibilities by examining eight, 10-year budget scenarios. These include four aggregate levels of spending: (i) an extrapolation of the budget proposed by President Obama for FY13 and beyond, which complies with the requirements of the BCA (“baseline”); (ii) budgets that increase baseline defense spending by $230 billion over the next 10 years to match inflation; (iii) the 10-year budgets that would result if the sequester provision of the BCA were implemented, but its effects distributed over the 10 years (roughly 10 percent below the baseline); and (iv) a budget envisioning a 15-percent cut from the baseline over the 10 years, which would conform more closely to the size of the cut-backs in US defense spending following the end of the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War. For each aggregate level of spending, we then illustrate possible reductions in forces and modernization programs under two assumptions: (a) if $200 billion of the potential nearly $1 trillion of efficiency savings were implemented, and (b) if $400 billion of the potential were implemented.

The illustrative budgets show that by implementing the new strategy the US can defend and promote its interests with varying, but no more than moderate, risks in all the scenarios. These scenarios also underscore the overriding importance of spending defense dollars more wisely, by implementing long-sought reforms in the ways the Department goes about its business.

 

fatte le dovute proporzioni non siamo distanti da quanto affermato dal Ministro di Paola nella recente audizione in Parlamento

 

... Non essendo percorribile la strada di un incremento del budget per la difesa, che non appare auspicato da nessuna forza politica, la scelta obbligata è quella di riqualificare la spesa per orientarla verso obiettivi di maggiore formazione ed addestramento del personale, di ammodernamento degli equipaggiamenti, di implementazione delle capacità e di interoperabilità dei nostri contingenti. Solo così saranno realmente soddisfatte al massimo livello qualitativo possibile le richieste che rivolgono all’Italia l’Unione europea e la NATO. ...

 

segnalo questo paper: si tratta di un suggerimento per una nuova strategia A New US Defense Strategy for a New Era: Military Superiority, Agility, and Efficiency

 

Rapid and continuing changes in the international environment, weaknesses in the US economy, the worsening and unsustainable fiscal outlook, and a better understanding of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of US-military capabilities create a need and an opportunity for the United States to rethink its defense planning and budgets.

››

Internationally, threats to US interests are changing rapidly. The nation’s one peer adversary, the USSR, was long ago replaced by Russia. Though neither friend nor foe, Russia is certainly more limited in capabilities and ambitions than its predecessor. At the same time, a new power is emerging in East Asia. China, a country with claims against many of its neighbors and whose long-term intentions are uncertain, but which also has powerful economic and political interests in maintaining cooperative relations with the US and other advanced nations. After 10 years, the US is ending its involvement in long and bloody wars in the Middle East and South Asia—wars that cost the nation more than 7,000 lives and trillions in treasure. Even so, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia remain unsettled, with one sworn US adversary (Iran), civil conflicts or unstable political situations in many other nations, and the constant specter of terrorist attacks throughout the region. Similarly unsettled situations characterize large swaths of Africa. Yet, after Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clearer today that these instabilities pose only indirect threats to the United States, threats to be managed rather than resolved through protracted military involvement.

››

Fiscally, the struggles of the US and most of its allies include unprecedented requirements for reductions in government spending, including defense spending. These pressures are expressed most clearly in the sequester provision of the Budget Control Act (BCA). If implemented at the start of 2013, the BCA would cut the defense budget by 10 percent overnight. Of more lasting significance, interest on the nation’s projected long-term debt would crowd out investments that not only are needed to sustain the country’s superior military technologies, but, of at least equal importance, are required if the US is to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving knowledge-based and technologically-advanced global economy.

››

The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the several lesser conflicts the United States has fought since the end of the Cold War have clarified the nation’s comparative military strengths and weaknesses. The US has unsurpassed global flexibility, agility, and reach. Its joint and combined forces provide unprecedented intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities (ISR). Its air, naval, and ground forces have the means to reach out promptly anywhere in the world and deliver powerful blows. These same forces can sustain limited air and ground campaigns far from home, just as they can deliver military supplies to embattled allies or humanitarian support to victims of disasters. No other nation will be able to match these capabilities for years to come. But US military power is not unlimited. The Afghan and Iraq wars demonstrated how difficult it is to stabilize distant nations, to provide security to their populations, and to facilitate effective and honest governance. There may be limits, too, in the US’ ability to defend against unconventional weapons—whether lethal biological or chemical agents, cyber-warfare, or efforts to interfere with the use of space for commercial or military purposes—either by governments or in the hands of terrorists.

In view of these rapidly changing circumstances, the Peterson Foundation brought together a group of experienced, former military and civilian defense officials and experts to discuss US defense strategy over the course of a year.1 This Defense Advisory Committee notes and endorses the changes already being taken by the Department of Defense to rebalance US forces toward an incrementally and proportionally greater emphasis on Asia and the Pacific. These include redeployments of naval forces and the greater use of rotational deployments of ground and air forces in East Asia. However, we conclude that more far-ranging changes should be implemented over time in US defense strategy and budgets. Our conclusions are founded on 10 key operating principles.

1. The US owes a huge debt to all those who have served in the nation’s wars, and particularly the men and women who have served repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should ensure that they are provided superior medical care, as well as the educational and vocational support necessary for successful reentry into the civilian economy.

2. The US should implement as a high priority long-standing proposals to utilize manpower more efficiently, to reform personnel compensation systems, and to streamline the system used to acquire equipment, goods, and services.

3. The US should maintain space, air, and naval forces superior to those of any potential adversary.

4. The US should maintain robust and technologically advanced special operations forces to counter terrorists and criminal enterprises, protect US citizens overseas, and for other contingencies.

5. Priority in research and development (R&D) budgets and additional funds should be given to basic research and the pursuit of advanced military capabilities, with a particular emphasis on cyber-warfare, space, defense against biological weapons, and on many of the programs hidden from view in classified portions of the budget.

6. The US should continue to exercise security leadership by working cooperatively with allies and friends to ensure their security, but should strive to ensure that these nations contribute a proportionate share of the cost of these defense preparations.

7. Over time, the US should shift from a mind-set that emphasizes static deployments overseas, and instead rely on frequent rotations of expeditionary forces home-based in the United States to exercise jointly with allies, to familiarize themselves with potential combat theaters, and to demonstrate US resolve and capabilities. Given the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula, however, and the uncertain future of US-China relations, the US should maintain its currently planned ground, naval, and air combat units in Japan and Korea, while it works to develop a more trusting relationship with Chinese military and political leaders. The US also should retain the smaller forces now planned to be based in Europe, until lingering uncertainties about Russia’s intentions are resolved.

8. The US should strongly resist being drawn into protracted land wars, restricting its combat deployments of ground forces to well-defined and limited objectives.

9. The US should reduce the size of its nuclear forces as rapidly as possible, preferably through a new treaty with Russia, and make commensurate reductions in planned nuclear modernization programs.

10. The US should defer additional deployments of Continental US missile defenses until relevant technologies mature and seem assured of providing effective capabilities, but continue to develop and deploy cooperative theater missile defense systems with partners in regions threatened by hostile states with short- and mid-range missiles.

Together, these principles comprise a new defense strategy, which takes advantage of the unmatched flexibility, agility, and reach of US air, naval, and ground forces to promote US and allied interests in a rapidly changing international environment. We call the new strategy “Strategic Agility.” We recommend that over time the US shift to this new strategy, and away from the more static mentality that has characterized the US posture since the early 1950s. By implementing this new strategy, the US can protect its interests and strengthen its global leadership in a wide range of possible budgetary scenarios.

The proposed strategy does not dictate a particular force structure or modernization program. Specific choices will depend on how much money is allocated to the Department of Defense, how much waste is reduced through implementation of the efficiency measures (mentioned in principle #2, above, and described in section V of this paper), and on the politics of defense decision-making within the Pentagon and in the Congress. Obviously, the more that can be spent wisely on forces and modernization, the greater the hedges against an uncertain future and the lower the risks to US interests.

In the penultimate section of the paper, we illustrate a range of possibilities by examining eight, 10-year budget scenarios. These include four aggregate levels of spending: (i) an extrapolation of the budget proposed by President Obama for FY13 and beyond, which complies with the requirements of the BCA (“baseline”); (ii) budgets that increase baseline defense spending by $230 billion over the next 10 years to match inflation; (iii) the 10-year budgets that would result if the sequester provision of the BCA were implemented, but its effects distributed over the 10 years (roughly 10 percent below the baseline); and (iv) a budget envisioning a 15-percent cut from the baseline over the 10 years, which would conform more closely to the size of the cut-backs in US defense spending following the end of the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War. For each aggregate level of spending, we then illustrate possible reductions in forces and modernization programs under two assumptions: (a) if $200 billion of the potential nearly $1 trillion of efficiency savings were implemented, and (b) if $400 billion of the potential were implemented.

The illustrative budgets show that by implementing the new strategy the US can defend and promote its interests with varying, but no more than moderate, risks in all the scenarios. These scenarios also underscore the overriding importance of spending defense dollars more wisely, by implementing long-sought reforms in the ways the Department goes about its business.

 

fatte le dovute proporzioni non siamo distanti da quanto affermato dal Ministro di Paola nella recente audizione in Parlamento

 

... Non essendo percorribile la strada di un incremento del budget per la difesa, che non appare auspicato da nessuna forza politica, la scelta obbligata è quella di riqualificare la spesa per orientarla verso obiettivi di maggiore formazione ed addestramento del personale, di ammodernamento degli equipaggiamenti, di implementazione delle capacità e di interoperabilità dei nostri contingenti. Solo così saranno realmente soddisfatte al massimo livello qualitativo possibile le richieste che rivolgono all’Italia l’Unione europea e la NATO. ...

[Andrea75]

Hypersonic Weapons May Be A Key Part Of The Answer To Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges

 

The conventional challenge of the Cold War was massive Soviet land armies that threatened to sweep across Eurasia. In the first two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union the challenge has been terrorists, insurgents and hybrid opponents. As the withdrawal from Afghanistan proceeds the U.S. military is beginning to look towards a future in which it is likely to face more capable adversaries.

The challenge of the next several decades looks to be anti-access/area denial capabilities (A2/AD), most specifically a combination of conventional and ballistic and cruise missiles and integrated air defense systems (IADS). An opponent employing A2/AD capabilities and concepts will employ missiles to attack U.S. forward bases and naval expeditionary forces moving into theater and then rely on its IADS to defeat any residual U.S. air strikes. The A2/AD challenge is particularly worrisome in the Western Pacific where China not only has deployed many hundreds of ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. bases in the region and even targeting large warships and is rapidly building a powerful IADS based on a combination of a large fleet of fighters and double and triple digit surface-to-air missiles. But countries such as Iran and Syria are deploying long-range ballistic missiles and building IADS, often with technology from Russia and even China.

It is vitally important that the U.S. military develop the capabilities to deter and, if necessary, defeat A2/AD threats. While the United States and China are unlikely to come to blows, Beijing could be emboldened if it were able to deploy a full-blown A2/AD capability that the United States could not counter.

The Pentagon has been struggling to find ways to counter the A2/AD challenge. The Joint Operational Access Concept envisions employing deep strikes against an opponent’s homeland directed in particular at taking down the C4ISR networks, on which the A2/AD system relies. But in order to go deep, the current set of U.S. forces will have to operate forward, not only risking attack by the adversary’s air, sea and missile forces but fly into the teeth of the IADS. Stealthy systems such as the B-2, F-22, F-35 and, in the not-to-distant future, a long-range strike system are part of the answer. So too will be advanced standoff jammers, UCLASS and long-range cruise missiles. But these are only part of the answer.

Enter hypersonic weapons. According to recent press reports, what was for a long time nothing more than a series of science experiments has now organized into a coherent program that could produce a new generation of long-range, extremely high speed weapons capable of negating hostile IADS and holding at risk a range of targets including ballistic missile launch sites.(*) The Air Force has a plan in place to develop a hypersonic strike weapon by 2020 and a hypersonic aircraft to perform ISR in an A2/AD environment by 2030. Hypersonic weapons combined with stealthy platforms and advanced electronic warfare and cyber capabilities would be used to defeat hostile IADS, “kicking in the door” for slower and less stealthy systems to conduct follow-on attacks.

 

 

Wide Area Persistent Surveillance Revolutionizes Tactical ISR

 

When it comes to combat, context is everything. Is the individual observed a lone gunman or the advance scout for a large army? Is there a weak spot in the adversary’s position that friendly forces can exploit? Was the IED blast the act of a single homicide bomber or part of a coordinated attack? Is a mass demonstration actually a cover for an organized, planned assault on an American consulate or military facility?

In the world of tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) context is provided by wide area persistent surveillance (WAPS). Traditional ISR systems either looked at a large area without the ability to provide detailed resolution of a particular object or provided high resolution views of specific targets, the so-called “soda straw’ perspective. Traditional systems could not provide both wide area and narrow focus ISR. WAPS is the capability both to continuously monitor a relatively large area and simultaneously focus in on multiple specific locations or targets. With WAPS, context is maintained even as particular subjects of interest (individuals, vehicles, buildings, etc.) are examined in detail and over time. Because height is important for both area coverage and tracking multiple targets, WAPS systems typically are designed to be deployed on aerial platforms (tethered balloons, aerostats, unmanned aerial systems or manned aircraft).

WAPS has proven particularly valuable in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where the adversary seeks to blend into the civilian population. The ISR challenge has been to pick up specific nuggets of information from activities taking place across a large area that are indicators of hostile action. In addition, by stringing together a number of specific data points it is possible to develop a more comprehensive picture of an adversary’s forces, command and control system and networks. This allows intelligence analysts to identify the network that provided the homicide bomber with his orders, funding, training and device.

The demand for WAPS to support counterinsurgency and counter terrorism operations was immediate and intense. The Pentagon struggled to develop and integrate ISR sensors that provided a combination of wide area coverage and narrow view, high fidelity observation. The challenges included integrating the right combination of wide area and narrow field of view sensors in a single platform, achieving a day/night capability, creating appropriate algorithms moving information rapidly to the tactical user on the ground and developing a data storage and retrieval system that allowed the information to be rewound in order to reconstruct events and backtrack targets.

Over time and with enormous assistance from national laboratories and private industry a revolution in tactical ISR took place. The Argus-IS system using four sensors to provide an 8-by-8-kilometer broad field of view and at the same time the ability to select multiple independent high resolution tracks with 20-centimeter resolution. The even more impressive Constant Hawk not only provided improved resolution and a higher refresh rate but shrank this capability down to a 54 pound integrated turret that can be employed on an Army Shadow UAS.

The gold standard for WAPS is the Gorgon Stare system which is deployed aboard the Reaper UAS. The current version of Gorgon Stare uses five electro-optical and four infrared cameras to generate imagery from 12 different angles. Gorgon Stare can provide a continuous city-sized overall picture, multiple sub-views of the overall field and what are high resolution “chipouts” of individual views, each of which can be streamed in real time to multiple viewers. A single Gorgon Stare pod can generate two terabytes of data a day.

WAPS has tremendous applications to a wide range of national challenges. The capabilities provided by Gorgon Stare could be employed to support surveillance of drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, assist first responders in natural disasters, provide information to firefighters, conduct urban reconnaissance for law enforcement and even help in traffic management for large urban areas such as Los Angeles. Even corporate security could find uses for the kind of information provided by a Gorgon Stare-like capability.

[Andrea75]

... è stato pubblicato il nuovo numero di Air Land Sea Bulletin http://www.alsa.mil/library/alsb/ALSB%202013-1.pdf

 

alcuni estratti

 

JOINT DOCTRINE FOR UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE (UW)

... “UW is not fully discussed in joint doctrine. When referenced, it is only in the context of a capability for SOF [special operations forces]. This lack of sufficient joint doctrine limits understanding of UW, inhibits operational design for planning, and limits integration of other SOF elements in the conduct and support of UW. It also limits the ability of the services to man, train, and equip the GPF [conventional force] to support SOF conducting UW operations. Joint doctrine would establish authoritative guidance for operational behavior of the
entire joint force in executing and supporting UW, and, when operationally feasible, would facilitate the ability of joint force commanders to incorporate UW in their operations planning.”...

 

ARTICULATING THE JOINT, INTERAGENCY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL, AND MULTINATIONAL BIOMETRICS OPERATING MODEL IN THE UNITED STATES (US) AFRICA COMMAND AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY

Biometric capabilities and its integration into various activities including border security, LE and military operations have become extremely useful over the last decade in preventing illegal entry, capturing criminals, protecting American troops, and supporting national security. Biometric data is collected across several modalities (identifiers) because there is no single biometric modality that is best for all implementations, or a single device that collects all modalities. The primary biometric modalities collected include: face, fingerprint, iris, DNA, and palm print.....

 

INTEGRATING CONVENTIONAL AVIATION WITH SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES (SOF) IS LIKE RUNNING A MARATHON AT A SPRINT PACE

When 1st Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment (attack helicopter battalion) received an order in January 2010 to deploy to Afghanistan in support of special operations forces (SOF), few, if any of the members of the battalion had SOF experience. Seven months later,
the unit began a year of combat operations, primarily in a direct support (DS) role of SOF. This fact alone does not make the unit unique in any way. The battalion did, however, learn some valuable lessons worth sharing with other units embarking on a similar mission.
In Afghanistan today, a significant percentage of rotary-wing sorties support SOF in some way. These include rotary wing fires (either close combat attack or close air support (CAS)); air assault or air movement of SOF elements; nontraditional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and combat service support through aerial resupply and passenger movements.
All conventional aviation formations can benefit from the best practices learned as a result of 1st Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiments Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF) 10-11 deployment....

 

INTEGRATING VILLAGE STABILITY OPERATIONS INTO A CONVENTIONAL FORCE BATTLESPACE

We received word special operations forces (SOF) would be executing a “new” program, village stability operations (VSO) into a problematic village adjacent to our main effort in Sangin, Afghanistan during Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Though not in our regimental battlespace, the village would certainly be within small arms range.
We, Regimental Combat Team-Two, welcomed friendly support on our unguarded flank, but recognized we needed to coordinate with our new neighbors. With ten month’s experience running Northern Helmand, we had developed a solid working relationship with SOF units working in and adjacent to our battlespace. We routinely coordinated fires and medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) support with independent teams executing civil affair operations along the southwestern badlands. Our relationship with direct action SOF units evolved from not only clearing the battlespace to coordinating and designing our conventional missions to “smoke out” priority SOF targets with clean battle handover procedures. In the former case, we were separated by space; in the latter, the short duration required relatively little “close” coordination. In neither case did we have to “live” with SOF right next to us.
But VSO were different. They were built on the concept of inserting a small reinforced team sized element “at the village level which allows the locals to defend themselves and re-establish traditional forms of government and provide the backstop that tribal leaders
need to push back against the Taliban. VSO is an effort to establish governance and rule of law at the local level and then link it back up to Kabul.”