Military Embedded Systems

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In my previous seven articles, we explored the worldwide markets for most military platforms. However, there are two platforms left to complete our study – satellites and helicopters. I saved these two segments for last since they share some common characteristics. Satellites expend their limited fuel struggling to stay in orbit (station keeping) while helicopters use their fuel thrashing the air furiously with rotor blades to stay aloft. Both fight a constant battle against gravity so that’s why I put them together for this essay. As they say in the aviation community: airplanes want to fly, but satellites and helicopters don’t.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: So far in this series, we have explored the worldwide markets for military platforms (tanks, ships, submarines, airplanes, and drones). These segments are interesting to the companies that bend metal, but for us, we want to know about the electronic systems inside those platforms. That insatiable yearning is the inspiration for this article. There’s a plethora of these systems, scattered around the services, so we can’t identify all of them here. I'll just mention the major programs and let you discover the rest on your own.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. Previously, we studied the markets for fighter planes and bombers, ground combat vehicles and tanks, warships and submarines, and unmanned naval vessels (surface and underwater). Now, it’s time to explore the market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is rapidly becoming the largest volume segment of the military platforms. First, the UAV designation is actually a misnomer.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In our last escapade, we investigated the worldwide market for warships and submarines. Out of respect for the literary principle of subject matter continuity, we are forced to explore the worldwide market for UNVs (unmanned naval vessels) in this essay, since they are an extension of warships and submarines. UNVs break down into two basic groups: unmanned surface vessels (USV) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV). We will deal with naval unmanned aerial vehicles (NUAV) in another composition.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In previous episodes, we explored the two largest military platform markets: ground combat vehicles and tanks, and fighter planes and bombers. This time, we’ll take a look at the third market for big iron: warships and submarines. I’m going to throw a lot of numbers around in this composition but don’t take them as absolute. Warships sink all the time (Ukraine has sunk or damaged 17 Russian ships in the war so far), and shipyards are launching a new warship now and then. So, look at these numbers as estimates. Let’s start from the top.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. Last time, we looked at the market for ground combat vehicles and tanks. Now, it’s time to look at the second largest volume platform market in the military: fighter planes and bombers. Let’s start at the top. According to Flight Global, there were about 53,250 military aircraft in the world in 2021. The U.S. flies about 25% of that total (13,250), Russia flies 8% (4,170), and China flies 6% (3,280). This includes fighters, bombers, tankers, cargo planes, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) planes, and helicopters. Keep in mind that these numbers move around. Military aircraft crash all the time, and Russia has lost about 175 aircraft in Ukraine in 16 months.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In our last adventure, we explored the worldwide military markets using three recent reports, and integrated those into the TAM-SAM-SOM model (total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, and serviceable obtainable market). That expedition gave us a macro-view of things. Now, it’s time to put on our rubber gloves, get out the sharp knives, and carve the military market into edible segments. The most objective way to dismember this massive creature is to cut it up by platform, so we’ll start with the largest volume segment: ground combat vehicles (GCV) and tanks.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. As previously promised, we are fearlessly embarking upon a challenging project here, to integrate the demand-side and supply-side data about the world military markets. The best method to attack this problem is from the top-down. Going from the bottom-up would create debilitating confusion, misconceptions, and illusions.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. As I was putting together my notes about all the Army’s Project Convergence Exercises, I got a notice that the planned PC-23 exercises had been cancelled and rescheduled for 2024. That’s a great disappointment, so let's drown our sorrows in a vintage bottle of data from the three previous exercises: PC-20, PC-21, and PC-22.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. Let’s take a break from studying the Kill Web and explore something else. Back in the late 1940s, Harvard linguist George Kingsley Zipf picked up a copy of James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” and read it. Although it was acclaimed by the pompous literary pundits in rumpled suits as a masterpiece, Zipf could not believe how incomprehensible and boring it was. In case you were not exposed to it in college, reading “Ulysses" is like being mercilessly waterboarded with the English language by shallow characters, in a dull story with no detectable plot, for an unbearable period of time.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. If you have been a fervent reader of these Kill Web articles, you know that the Army has been connecting their sensors and weapons together into a tactical network under their IBCS initiative (Integrated Battle Command System). The Navy has been secretly connecting their ships and planes together with their CEC program (Cooperative Engagement Capability). The same goes for the Air Force’s planes under their ABMS initiative (Advanced Battle Management System) and the Space Force’s satellites (SF-ABMS).

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. So far, we have covered the Army (IBCS), the Navy (CEC), and the Space Force (SF-ABMS) programs. So now it’s time to explore what the Air Force is doing to join the Kill Web. Their primary effort is called ABMS (Advanced Battle Management System), that seeks to connect all their aircraft, weapons, and sensors together into a tactical mesh network where they can talk to each other in real time. Maybe the best way to present this information is by comparison to what the other services have been doing. That might be more informative.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. So far, we have studied how the U.S. Army (IBCS) and Navy (CEC) programs have been conducting experiments, to integrate their weapons and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems into the Kill Web mesh network. Now, let’s take a look at what the Space Force is doing. The Space Force was formed as the fourth armed service in 2019 and operates under the Air Force.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. Last time, we looked at the Army’s IBCS (Integrated Battle Command System) program and Project Convergence exercises, through the eyes of their advanced AI (artificial intelligence) Kill Web algorithms (Rainmaker, Prometheus, FIRESTORM, and SHOT). Unfortunately, the Navy doesn’t talk much about AI algorithms, so that forces us to reluctantly abandon the trusted engineering principle of consistent analytical continuity and view their progress through what they do talk about: their platforms.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In our previous adventure, I introduced the pyramid model to identify each service’s Kill Web program and their experimental activities. Sitting at the peak is the Pentagon’s JADC2 program (Joint All Domain Command and Control) and the GIDE-XX exercises. On one side is the Army's IBCS program (Integrated Battle Management System) and Project Convergence exercises. On the next side is the Navy’s CEC program (Cooperative Engagement Capability) and their highly classified Project Overmatch exercises. On the next side is the Air Force's ABMS program (Advanced Battle Management System) and Onramp exercises. Since the Space Force stills falls under the Air Force, we’ll call their program SF-ABMS. They  make up the final side of the pyramid. Space Force has been conducting a number of experiments under different names so we’ll decode those in the future.

WARFARE EVOLUTTION BLOG. There’s been a lot of activity going on in the past few months, testing different technologies and operational concepts. We need a model to organize those events to avoid confusion and reduce complexity. So, we’ll use the basic structure of the Kill Web to make sense of it all. The JADC2 (Joint All-Domain Command and Control) program sits at the top. That’s the Pentagon’s vision of how all ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems, weapons systems, satellites, logistics, and operations from all the different services are connected together and share data in realtime. Off to the side is the JAIC (Joint Artificial Intelligence Center), that develops and feeds different artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms into JADC2 and the different services’ activities.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. On 25 June 2021, the Director of National Intelligence (DDNI) released the much-anticipated UFO report. It’s only NINE pages long, and includes the status of 144 UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the new and improved name for UFOs) collected by the AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) from 2004 through the first half of 2021. One of those UAPs was identified as a deflating weather balloon, and the remainder were designated as unknown. There is also a classified version of this report (17 pages long) submitted to congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. I suspect those additional eight pages just contain secret sources and collection methods rather than additional facts. You can read the unclassified report on the web.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: There’s been a number of advancements in technology going into the Kill Web lately but none of them, individually, would warrant a focused article unless I overhyped their potential, wildly speculated about their capabilities, or just made-up some stuff. That approach could seriously jeopardize my standing as an amateur blogger and irritate my publisher. So, let’s avoid that possibility and briefly cover a few of the developments here.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. In my previous articles, I may have left the impression that with the technology we have today, hooking all ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and weapons systems together into a seamless, multi-service, multi-domain battle network should be straightforward. Technologically, it is achievable. But operationally, there are serious complex trade-offs that make the decisions difficult. Let’s look at a few of them here, so you have a better idea why building the Kill Web will take some time, lots of testing, and continuous updates to make it function properly.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. During the night of 7 October 2001, [Central Intelligence Agency] CIA-controlled Predator drone 3034 was flying over a mud-walled compound in Afghanistan, the suspected hideout of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The infrared (IR) sensors picked-up heat signatures from three vehicles and a motorcycle leaving and heading toward Kandahar. The drone pilot, and the weapons officer controlling the two on-board Hellfire missiles, were sitting in a trailer on the grounds of CIA-headquarters (HQ) in Langley, Virginia. The video images from the Predator were being streamed, via satellite links, to the big flat-screen TVs at Langley, to the offices of military brass at the Pentagon, General Franks' office at central command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida, to the offices of General Deptula in Qatar (who was controlling Air Force fighter planes and bombers over Afghanistan), and the office of General Jumper, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Ordinary soldiers call this video network "Kill TV," for reasons that will become obvious.