Heresies

Necessary Heresies
Challenging the Narratives Distorting
Edited by Justin Bronk and Jack Watling
Andrew Chubb
WHITEHALL PAPER | 99
Whitehall Paper 99
Necessary Heresies
Challenging the Narratives Distorting Contemporary UK Defence
Justin Bronk and Jack Watling
www.rusi.org
Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Necessary Heresies: Challenging the Narratives Distorting Contemporary UK Defence

First published 2021
Whitehall Papers series
Series Editor: Professor Malcolm Chalmers

Editor: Dr Emma De Angelis
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Contents
About the Authors iv
Introduction
Justin Bronk and Jack Watling 1
I. The Slow and Imprecise Art of Cyber Warfare

II. The Grey Zone Is Defined by the Defender

Sidharth Kaushal 24
III. Doing Less with Less in the Land Domain

Nick Reynolds 34
IV. Swarming Munitions, UAVs and the Myth of Cheap Mass

Justin Bronk 49
V. The Lights May Go Out, But the Band Plays On

Peter Roberts 61
VI. In Space, No One Will See You Fight

Alexandra Stickings 76
VII. More Sensors Than Sense

Jack Watling 87
Conclusion
About the Authors
Justin Bronk is the Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the
Military Sciences team at RUSI. He is also Editor of the RUSI Defence Systems
online journal. Justin’s particular areas of expertise include the modern
combat air environment, Russian and Chinese ground-based air defences
and fast jet capabilities, unmanned combat aerial vehicles and novel
weapons technology.
Justin is a part-time doctoral candidate at the Defence Studies
Department of King’s College London. He holds an MSc in the History of
International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA
(Hons) in History from York University. Justin is also a private glider and
light aircraft pilot.
Sidharth Kaushal is the Research Fellow for Sea Power in the Military
Sciences team at RUSI. Sidharth’s research covers the impact of
technology on maritime doctrine in the 21st century and the role of sea
power in a state’s grand strategy. Sidharth holds a doctorate in
International Relations from the London School of Economics, where his
research examined the ways in which strategic culture shapes the
contours of a state’s grand strategy.
Nick Reynolds is the Research Analyst for Land Warfare at RUSI. His
research interests include land power, wargaming and simulation. Prior
to joining RUSI, he worked for Constellis. Nick holds a BA in War Studies
and an MA in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College
London. During his studies, he was Head of Operations of the KCL Crisis
Team, which organises large-scale crisis simulation events.
Peter Roberts was the Director of Military Sciences at RUSI until December
2021, having been the Senior Research Fellow for Sea Power and C4ISR
since 2014. He has researched and published on a range of subjects,
including strategy and philosophy, contemporary war, military doctrine
and thinking, command and control, naval warfare, ISR, professional
military education and disruptive warfare techniques. He lectures, speaks
and writes on these topics as well as regularly providing advice for both
UK and foreign governments.
Previously, Peter was a career Warfare Officer in the Royal Navy,
serving as both a Commanding Officer, National Military Representative
1
About the Authors
and in a variety of roles with all three branches of the British armed forces,
the US Coast Guard, US Navy, US Marine Corps and intelligence services
from a variety of other states. He served as chairman for several NATO
working groups and Five Eyes maritime tactics symposia. His military
career included service in Hong Kong, the Baltics, Kenya, the Former
Republic of Yugoslavia, Iraq, South Africa, Pakistan and Oman,
interspersed with deployments in the GIUK gap and the Persian Gulf.
Peter has a Master’s in Defence Studies and a PhD in Politics and
Modern History. He is a Visiting Professor of Modern War at the French
Military Academy.
Alexandra Stickings is Space Strategy Lead at Frazer-Nash Consultancy,

working as part of the strategic advisory team across the space, defence
and government sectors. Prior to this, she was Research Fellow for Space
Policy and Security in the Military Sciences team at RUSI, where she
remains an Associate Fellow. Alexandra’s expertise covers military space
programmes, space warfare, counterspace capabilities, space situational
awareness, arms control, and the intersection of space and missile
defence. She has written for a range of publications and is a frequent
speaker at international conferences.
Jack Watling is the Research Fellow for Land Warfare. Jack has recently
conducted studies of deterrence against Russia, force modernisation,
partner force capacity building, the future of corps operations, the future
of fires, and Iranian strategic culture. Jack’s PhD examined the evolution
of Britain’s policy responses to civil war in the early 20th century. Prior to
joining RUSI, Jack worked in Iraq, Mali, Rwanda, Brunei and further afield.
2
INTRODUCTION
JUSTIN BRONK AND JACK WATLING
Humans are naturally drawn to stories, since we use narratives to make

sense of a complex world, to order information into chains of causality,
and to communicate and respond to ideas.1 Confronted with novel
technologies or tactics, we are often drawn to narrative vignettes of how
these capabilities could be employed in order to visualise their effects.2
However, narratives are not merely descriptive; they implicitly promote
frameworks that prompt behaviour and judgement. It has long been
recognised in economics that narratives shape expectations, stimulate
imagination and guide investment decisions in ways that empirical
analysis often struggles to match.3 Within Defence, the shaping influence
of uncritically accepted narratives can have problematic consequences.
In many areas of defence policy, such as cyber warfare, space or
novel weapons systems, deep subject matter expertise is required to
understand the potential benefits and limitations. The same is true of
attempts to assess the policies and actions of strategic competitors with
very different cultural and geopolitical viewpoints. Crucial nuances and
practical constraints are almost unavoidably lost in translation as senior
decision-makers shape policy and generalists rewrite doctrine and
strategy documents based on their own understanding of briefings given
by specialist practitioners and subject matter experts. This tendency is
exacerbated by a natural inclination to over-hype the potential for novel
technologies or strategies to provide transformative effects. Incompatible
1
Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
(New York, NY: Harcourt, 2013).
2
A phenomenon that explains the success of books like P W Singer and August
Cole, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next War (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2015).
3
Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk (eds), Uncertain Futures: Imaginaries,
Narratives, and Calculation in the Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2018).
1
political demands for increased financial and manpower efficiency,

equipment modernisation, improved force readiness, resilience and
constant engagement in global competition incentivise defence planners
and policymakers to seek silver bullet solutions. Once policy has been
stated on an issue, further nuances and important caveats are often lost
as the wider policy community try to tailor their own outputs to align
with what they perceive as the new high-level consensus. As such, the
narratives that end up shaping much of the ‘coal face’ work in Defence
are not the (usually) nuanced and well-caveated statements on novel
technologies, domain activities or adversary tactics prepared and
published by specialists. Instead, they are often mantras or collective
‘received wisdom’ that in practice have been oversimplified or distorted
by repeated translation, repetition and transmission.
In the Chief of the Defence Staff’s annual lecture, delivered at RUSI in
December 2020, General Sir Nick Carter asserted that ‘our rivals seek to win
without resorting to war’. He suggested that there is ‘a clear trend towards
military action that uses the cognitive elements of war with arms-length
instruments like drones and mercenaries to provide a plausible degree of
deniability and strategic ambiguity – thus enabling intervention without
the risk of entanglement’. He argued that ‘competition below the
threshold of war is not only necessary to deter war, it is also necessary to
prevent one’s adversaries from achieving their objectives in fait accompli
strategies as we have seen in Crimea, Ukraine, Libya and the South China
Sea’, and posited that ‘the means to control others – principally through
the application of technology - is the crux of the matter’.4
The authors contend that narratives such as these are not only
fundamentally unsound but also produce potentially harmful
distortionary effects throughout Defence. Far from seeking victory
without war, Russia used overt conventional military force against
Georgia and Ukraine to seize territory, as did China in Ladakh,5 and in
the South China Sea to militarily occupy atolls. Russian operations in
Syria,6 Libya7 or the Donbas have not evaded ‘entanglement’.8 The
insinuation that the bombardment at Zelenopillya9 or the vicious battle
4
Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Nick Carter, ‘Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI
Annual Lecture’, 17 December 2020, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/
chief-of-defence-staff-at-rusi-annual-lecture>, accessed 10 July 2021.
5
Shashank Joshi, ‘A Border Dispute Between India and China is Getting More
Serious’, The Economist, 30 May 2020.
6
BBC News, ‘Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane on Syria Border’, 24
November 2015; Thomas Gibbons-Neff, ‘How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian
Mercenaries and U.S. Commandos Unfolded in Syria’, New York Times, 24 May 2018.
7
US Africa Command Public Affairs, ‘Russia and the Wagner Group Continue to Be
Involved in Ground, Air Operations in Libya’, 24 July 2020, <https://www.africom.
2
Introduction
for Donetsk airport10 were part of fait accompli strategies or were actions
which fell short of warfighting is indefensible. While adversary
campaigns have used novel technologies including uncrewed aerial
vehicles and cyber attacks, it was hard power and not ‘the application of
technology’ that provided the means by which they coerced and
controlled their opponents. In order to coerce Kyiv in February 2021,
Moscow applied pressure through the build-up of over 100,000 troops on
the Ukrainian border,11 the tangibility of which contrasted starkly with
Western statements of solidarity and concern.12 Similarly, China is able to
coerce its neighbours with its maritime militia in the South China Sea,13
not because it is carefully avoiding escalation, but because of the size of
the People’s Liberation Army Navy, which makes the Philippines and
Vietnam wary of providing a pretext for Beijing to apply overt military
force.14 Russia and Iran have used undeclared military forces in their
recent campaigns. But this is not new. The use of undeclared forces
featured prominently throughout the Cold War by all sides, from the
Korean War and the Vietnam War15 to the Angolan Civil War16 or the
UK’s campaign in Oman.17
mil/pressrelease/33034/russia-and-the-wagner-group-continue-to-be-in>, accessed
11 July 2021.
8
Andrew Kramer, ‘Fighting Escalates in Eastern Ukraine, Signaling the End to
Another Cease-Fire’, New York Times, last updated 30 April 2021.
9
Bellingcat Investigative Team, ‘Bellingcat Report – Origin of Artillery Attacks on
Ukrainian Military Positions in Eastern Ukraine Between 14 July 2014 and 8
August 2014’, Bellingcat, 17 February 2015.
10
Amos C Fox, ‘“Cyborgs at Little Stalingrad”: A Brief History of the Battles of
Donetsk Airport’, Land Warfare Paper No. 125, Institute of Land Warfare, May 2019.
11
Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold, ‘OFFICIAL Russian Military Build-Up Near
Ukraine Numbers More Than 100,000 Troops, EU Says’, Reuters, 19 April 2021;
Cyrus Newlin et al., ‘Unpacking the Russian Troop Buildup Along Ukraine’s
Border’, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 22 April 2021.
12
Andrew Hilliar, ‘Biden Offers Ukraine “Unwavering Support” Over Russia
Standoff’, France24, 3 April 2021.
13
BBC News, ‘South China Sea Dispute: Huge Chinese “Fishing Fleet” Alarms
Philippines’, 21 March 2021.
14
Sidharth Kaushal and Magdalena Markiewicz, ‘Crossing the River by Feeling the
Stones: The Trajectory of China’s Maritime Transformation’, RUSI Occasional Papers
(October 2019).
15
Francis X Clines, ‘Russians Acknowledge a Combat Role in Vietnam’, New York
Times, 14 April 1989.
16
Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, ‘Intelligence
Memorandum: Soviet and Cuban Intervention in the Angolan Civil War’, March
1977, <https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000518406.pdf>, accessed
11 July 2021.
17
John Akehurst, We Won a War: The Campaign in Oman, 1965–1975 (Salisbury:
Michael Russell, 1982).
3
Through years of repetition, narratives about the rapidly changing

character of warfare and the transformative effects of novel technologies
have become akin to gospel truths, enshrined in policy documents. The
Integrated Operating Concept, published in September 2020, stated that
‘old distinctions between “peace” and “war” … are increasingly out of
date’.18 Just as General Carter argued that technology shall provide the
means of control, so too does the Integrated Operating Concept ‘require
us to embrace combinations of information-centric technologies to
achieve the disruptive effect we need’.19 As General Carter warned, ‘our
rivals … developed long range missile systems; they integrated electronic
warfare, [and] swarms of drones connected digitally to missile systems
and used these to defeat tanks’.20 And so the Integrated Operating
Concept argues that ‘expensive, crewed platforms that we cannot replace
and can ill afford to lose will be increasingly vulnerable to swarms of
self-coordinating smart munitions – perhaps arriving at hypersonic
speeds or ballistically from space – designed to swamp defences already
weakened by pre-emptive cyber attack’.21
The fact that technological change forces militaries to adapt how they
fight is axiomatic. Yet, it is striking how a narrative that places a
disproportionate emphasis on technological transformation betrays a
poor understanding of how these technologies work, and consequently
misrepresents their likely effects. To take the example from the
Integrated Operating Concept above, while swarming munitions, smart
munitions, hypersonic and ballistic missiles, and cyber attacks will feature
on the future battlefield, many of these properties are mutually exclusive.
Self-coordinating smart munitions – let alone hypersonic ones – cannot
be cheap enough for most states to field them in sufficient numbers to
‘swarm’ the battlefield. This is especially true given that, in Defence,
capability ambitions consistently outstrip available funding.22
Nevertheless, such capabilities are regularly combined in a form of word
soup as the basis for transformative narratives in speeches by senior
officials and high-level policy documents.
Although the misconceptions that this Whitehall Paper seeks to
confront have been widely promulgated by senior officials publicly, it is
important to recognise that many of those who propound them take a
18
MoD, ‘Integrated Operating Concept’, August 2021, p. 5.
19
Ibid., p. 16.
20
MoD and Carter, ‘Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI Annual Lecture’.
21
MoD, ‘Integrated Operating Concept’, p. 6.
22
Claire Mills, Louisa Brooke-Holland and Nigel Walker, ‘A Brief Guide to Previous
British Defence Reviews’, Briefing Paper No. 07313, House of Commons Library,
26 February 2020.
4
Introduction
more nuanced view in private. Nevertheless, that nuance is often absent

from policy documents because of biases that perennially afflict
bureaucracies. The result for Defence is that once adopted by decision-
makers, phrases like ‘competition below the threshold of war’ gain a
gravitational power that distorts surrounding debate. It can even lead to
the recycling of outright disinformation – such as the existence of a
Gerasimov Doctrine – which survives in the discourse among non-
specialist officials years after the original error was corrected.23 In
bureaucracies, once ideas are codified into policy documents, those who
challenge the consensus risk being bypassed as obstructionists or side-
lined as heretics. However, it is the contention of the authors that
challenging some of the narratives which form part of the current
consensus view in UK defence discourse is a necessary heresy.
The authors do not dispute that the character of warfare is evolving.
Emerging technologies are already changing how militaries are structured
and how they will fight in the future. However, many of the
interpretations of how emerging technologies and supposedly novel
adversary activities will shape the future defence and security
environment in the current discourse are provably false. This paper is an
attempt to correct some of these misleading narratives before they drive
acquisition decisions that undermine the UK’s conventional forces. The
related arguments it seeks to refute are:
. That new domains of warfare, from space to cyberspace and

‘information’ render traditional land, air and maritime platforms as
‘sunset’ capabilities.
. That adversaries prefer to fight in the ‘grey zone’, rather than being
forced to pursue inefficient strategies because of the effective
application of conventional deterrence.
. That technology will eliminate the relevance of critical combat mass in
future operations.
. That information operations, cyber attacks and precision-strike
capabilities can in themselves decisively cripple a state’s capacity and
will to fight.
Confronting these propositions is made difficult by the fact that they

arise from a constellation of conceptual and technical misconceptions. The
mischaracterisation of the grey zone, for instance, is both a product of
conceptual inaccuracy in how adversaries approach escalation and of an
23
Mark Galeotti, ‘I’m Sorry for Creating the “Gerasimov Doctrine”’, Foreign Policy,
5 March 2018.
5
overestimation of the efficiency and efficacy of grey-zone tools such as

cyber operations. The belief that mass is no longer relevant to operations
arises from inflated expectations as to what can be delivered by
technology at an affordable cost, and a failure to map out the tasks that
fall to militaries that will continue to require people to carry them out.
Furthermore, some underlying errors inform more than one of the
conclusions that this book seeks to refute. For this reason, the chapters
do not directly rebut the conclusions above but are instead aimed at
correcting the underlying technical and conceptual misconceptions.
In Chapter I, ‘The Slow and Imprecise Art of Cyber Warfare’, Justin
Bronk and Jack Watling seek to unpack how cyber attacks work and
what they require to succeed, in order to provide a measured assessment
of what cyber capabilities can actually deliver in a military context. Few
subjects better highlight the gulf separating the technical and policy
communities. The authors contend that, against hardened military
systems, cyber attacks take far longer to prepare than political planning
for conflict usually provides and, once emplaced, enduring capability is
difficult to assure. The result is that while cyber warfare can provide
unexpected opportunities when used in combination with conventional
military capabilities, it is slow, unpredictable and demands exceptionally
long planning cycles to produce results. It is a potentially potent enabler
and will continue to form an important component of the modern
security and defence toolbox, but it is not interchangeable with, nor a
replacement for, kinetic power. Moreover, if defence establishments do
not establish an operational echelon that can link cyber technical experts
into the planning cycles for other domains, then cyber capabilities are
unlikely to be in place when and where they are needed.
The long lead times in emplacing cyber capabilities mean that such
operations must be carried out long before the outbreak of hostilities.
Indeed, a cyber attack is often the main example desired to describe
grey-zone activity, prosecuted with hostile intent but below the threshold
of warfighting. The discourse surrounding the grey zone has become
amorphous but has a tendency to frame certain capabilities as grey-zone
‘tools’ or ‘strategies’. The problem with this framing, as Sidharth Kaushal
explores in Chapter II, ‘The Grey Zone Is Defined by the Defender’, is
that the threshold between warfighting and the grey zone is not fixed. A
cyber attack could, in fact, prompt a conventional military response.
What determines whether an attack is ‘below the threshold’ of armed
conflict is whether the defender is prepared to escalate to violence in
retaliation. States do not pursue ‘grey-zone strategies’ because they are
necessarily preferable, but rather because they have judged that certain
activities are what can be pursued without unacceptable consequences.
To this end, the grey zone can in fact include kinetic fighting if the
6
Introduction
defender is deterred from retaliating with conventional forces. Grey-zone

activities are often an inefficient way of prosecuting a campaign and are
a function of the relative balance of conventional deterrence between
parties. The policy question therefore is not how to deter grey-zone
activity, but which activities will elicit a response, and which will not.
That conventional hard power underpins deterrence and buys the
capacity to constrain the parameters of the grey zone means that the
credibility of the UK’s conventional forces bears examination. There is a
pervasive trend in UK defence discourse to assert that technology can
deliver more capability with fewer personnel. In Chapter III, ‘Doing Less
with Less in the Land Domain’, Nick Reynolds explores the practical
limits to reductions in conventional forces before capability suffers from
exponential decay. While acknowledging that technology can allow
fewer personnel to deliver greater effects on the battlefield, there are
irreducible minimums to be able to project power in the land domain.
From a force generation point of view there is a requirement to train,
project, sustain and deploy a force, which must then have a presence
across the ground. A deployable division is the minimum viable force for
participation in even limited wars. However, if a force lacks further
reserves, its tactical options can be severely constrained because
preserving the force becomes a pre-eminent task. Historical campaigns
are replete with early setbacks, and this is even more likely in the future,
given the lack of data to guide expectations about how technologies will
manifest in combat. In this context, the capacity to reconstitute a first
echelon and being large enough to absorb failures is vital to having
credible military forces and therefore deterring adversaries into using
grey-zone tools.
The scale at which transformative technologies are anticipated to
populate the future battlefield is vastly inflated, overlooking their cost
and complexity. In Chapter IV, ‘Swarming Munitions, UAVs and the Myth
of Cheap Mass’, Justin Bronk examines the promised revolution in terms
of increased combat mass through the use of swarming munitions and
so-called ‘attritable, reusable unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs).24 There
are important grains of truth fuelling the narrative. Prototypes for
attritable, reusable UAVs and swarming munitions are being rapidly
developed by several states and offer novel tactical options and potential
efficiency gains across a range of key mission sets. These weapon classes
will significantly alter the way in which air forces conduct operations at
the tactical and even operational levels. However, despite being
24
For example, RAF Chief of the Air Staff, ACM Mike Wigston quoted in Aaron
Mehta, ‘Britain’s Royal Air Force Chief Talks F-35 Tally and Divesting Equipment’,
Defense News, 10 May 2021.
7
technologically feasible, many of the visions for how such capabilities

might be employed at scale greatly overstate the cost and performance
efficiencies achievable. The result is that while militaries will gain
significant flexibility from these novel weapons systems, they will not be
applicable to all mission sets and are unlikely to be affordable in the
quantities envisaged. Thus, they should not be assumed to offer a large-
scale replacement for traditional combat aircraft, nor do these
technologies represent a silver bullet solution to a persistent lack of
combat air mass. Finally, if states will have limited arsenals of these
capabilities, then they will need to be very discerning as to what targets
they employ them against.
Exaggerated expectations as to the volume and effects deliverable by
novel strike capabilities are arguably leading to dangerous assumptions
about mutual deterrence. The threats posed by long-range precision
strike – combined with cyber attacks against critical national
infrastructure – are often presented as capabilities that could win a war
before it starts by preventing an adversary from being able to deploy.
This is tied to the notion that the infliction of major casualties would
politically cripple an adversary’s will to fight. In Chapter V, ‘The Lights
May Go Out, But the Band Plays On’, Peter Roberts argues that,
throughout history, states have proven highly robust and adapt quickly in
response to shocks. Unless physically occupied, they are usually able to
reconstitute and conduct prolonged operations. Furthermore, casualty
tolerance is not a fixed variable but is highly context dependent. In any
major conflict, casualty tolerance often increases drastically. Even in small
conflicts, states are able to sustain a high level of attrition and maintain
support for operations when the public has confidence in the cause for
which they are fighting. The implications are that, when evaluating the
likely outcome and risk of conflict, policymakers should pay careful
attention to the relative strengths of their second echelons – they should
not just ask who will win the first battle, but extend their analysis to the
second. They should also work hard to ensure that there is public
support for key causes, rather than self-deter their policy by assuming a
blanket intolerance of casualties.
In contrast to the resilience of states, space-based infrastructure is
robust in its component parts but systemically fragile. Although
redundancy in a growing number of constellations is increasing the
challenge of countering specific military space-based capabilities, the risk
of denying access to orbits through the creation of debris creates a form
of mutual deterrence. Dependence on and increasing capabilities in
space are seeing its progressive militarisation and fuelling a misplaced
fear of kinetic anti-satellite capabilities and weaponised vehicles in the
space domain.25 In Chapter VI, ‘In Space, No One Will See You Fight’,
8
Introduction
Alexandra Stickings argues that the fragility of access to the space domain
creates strong disincentives for states to conduct kinetic operations in
orbit. While these may occur on a highly limited basis, most conflict in
space will comprise manoeuvring for advantageous orbits and the
application of non-kinetic effects to enable operations in the other
domains. The process of competition will occur continuously, while
targeting in space will be strongly tied to the imperatives created by
terrestrial operations. Thus, the key question for understanding warfare
in space is less the interaction between orbital systems, but rather the
effects these systems have on the ground. Indeed, the highest-intensity
conflict for access to space may well comprise the targeting and
occupation of the ground-based infrastructure. Therefore, space should
not be a siloed specialism but must be integrated into other warfighting
domains. Most importantly, space may stand as an important example of
how political constraints will remain a feature of military decision-making
even in large-scale warfare, a fact often ignored in military concepts and
wargames.
While the wholesale destruction of space-based infrastructure is
unlikely, denial of access for a limited duration at critical moments from
defined geographic areas pose a serious threat to the assurance of
communications on the battlefield. There is a growing obsession across
militaries with connecting all parts of the force into an ‘any-sensor-to-
any-shooter’ network. While ensuring that systems can talk to one
another when links are available, the implications of this network are
highly uneven across the domains. In Chapter VII, ‘More Sensors Than
Sense’, Jack Watling explores the challenges in sharing data around a
battlefield within a contested electromagnetic spectrum and argues that
the advantages gained from interconnectedness are highly context
dependent. While transformative in the maritime domain, there are
operational limitations on its usefulness to air forces, and massive
technical hurdles to expecting reliable advantage from such systems in
land operations. This is not to say that a networked force will not have
advantages, but that those advantages will be more incremental,
contextually dependent and less assured than is widely supposed. Thus,
the regular use of ‘combat cloud’-enabled concepts in narrative
descriptions of future military operations needs careful scrutiny if
dangerous distortions to force planning are to be avoided.
As the UK military seeks to modernise in accordance with the
Integrated Review, it is vital that this is done with a sound conceptual
25
For example, BBC News, ‘UK and US Say Russia Fired a Satellite Weapon in
Space’, 23 July 2020; Kim Sengupta, ‘UK Seeks to Prevent Space Arms Race After
Russia Launches Anti-Satellite Missiles’, The Independent, 26 August 2020.
9
understanding of both how adversaries are operating and what is

technologically possible. If the UK is to increasingly deploy forces to
deter Russian and other hostile activity and to compete without
escalation into warfighting, it is vital that military planners understand
what the adversary is doing and why. Moreover, while investment in
novel technologies and force modernisation is key, policy must be
tempered by contextual and technical understanding. Policy based on
uncritically repeated and amplified narratives risks overinvestment in
capabilities with insufficient deterrent value in the eyes of adversaries,
and would fail to deliver victory unless fielded in coordination with more
traditional tools of hard power.
10
I. THE SLOW AND IMPRECISE ART OF
CYBER WARFARE
Sally Walker, former Director of Cyber at GCHQ, has stated that cyber
attacks ‘can have impact in the real world and you can do it at scale’.1
Because cyber attacks can target everything from financial systems and
critical national infrastructure to political leaders and legal institutions –
undermining trust and the rule of law – they can have an ‘attritional’
effect on the cohesion of states to which open societies ‘are uniquely
vulnerable’.2 Such warnings over the years, combined with high-profile
incidents like the WannaCry ransomware attack against the NHS, have
meant that military leaders have recognised the importance of the ‘cyber
domain’.3 When new forms of conflict first emerge, however, there is
almost always a period of inflated expectation.4 For the small community
within Defence who have worked in the margins to explore the novel
capability, there is a tendency to hype its effects and downplay its
limitations in order to gain the attention of the wider defence and
security community and secure resources within the bureaucracy. For
that wider community – lacking an understanding of the capability – it is
often much easier to visualise the potential threats posed by novel
weapons than the challenges involved in employing them effectively.
Cyber warfare today is arguably at the peak of this inflated discourse,
1
Sally Walker, ‘Into the Grey Zone Podcast: Episode Five – Cyber Power (Part II)’,
Sky News, 3 June 2021, 06:00, <https://news.sky.com/story/into-the-grey-zone-
podcast-episode-five-cyber-power-part-ii-12212228>, accessed 26 July 2021.
2
Ibid., 10:30.
3
National Audit Office, Investigation: WannaCry Cyber Attack and the NHS, HC
414 (London: National Audit Office, 2018).
4
This is visualised in Gartner, ‘Gartner Hype Cycle’, <https://www.gartner.com/
en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle>, accessed 30 March 2021.
11
where its importance is recognised but its implications remain poorly

understood beyond the limited community of technical specialists.
In briefings, military commanders often characterise cyber
capabilities by the speed, scale and sophistication of the effect. Outlining
the challenge of ‘convergence’ between warfighting domains, Lieutenant
General Eric Wesley described how ‘cyber is moving at milliseconds,
ships are moving at 30 knots, vehicles at 30 km. The ability to
synchronise that might be a bit of a stretch’.5 As well as an expectation of
near-instantaneous effects, there is a persistent fear of the devastation
that could be wrought. General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme
Commander Europe, warned that ‘it’s possible to shut down critical
infrastructure, refineries, businesses, banks, transportation – but most
importantly, the electricity grid. It’s been done by the Russians in the
Ukraine’.6 Finally, there is a great deal of anxiety in militaries about the
sophistication of cyber effects against conventional military systems.
General John Allen, for instance, hypothesised about an incident in
which a US Navy vessel had its defensive systems rendered ineffective by
cyber attack, making it vulnerable to conventional munitions.7
A more thorough examination of the mechanics of cyber warfare
renders much of this military discourse highly hyperbolic. Although data
can travel quickly, cyber attacks are slow to develop and deliver, and
often unpredictable and isolated in their effects. The challenge with
integrating cyber effects into multi-domain operations is the opposite of
the problem suggested by Wesley – that cyber attacks take far too long to
easily synchronise with conventional operations. As Walker noted, ‘it just
doesn’t relate to conventional warfare’.8 A realistic appreciation of the
impact of cyber capabilities on the future of warfare must begin with a
concrete understanding of how cyber attacks work. Appreciating what is
required to attack a digital system reveals its limitations and so allows for
the potential impact of such techniques on warfare to be put into
perspective. This chapter seeks to explain how cyber attacks function
and suggests their likely trajectory on the future battlefield.9
5
US Department of Defense, ‘AUSA Global Force Symposium: Day 3 – Opening
Remarks and Keynote Speaker’, 18 March 2021, 35:00, <https://dod.defense.gov/
News/Special-Reports/Videos/?videoid=668339>, accessed 26 July 2021.
6
Mandi Kogosowski, ‘“We’re on the Brink of an Enormous Cyber Catastrophe”’,
Israel Defense, 4 June 2021, <https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/49194>,
accessed 26 July 2021.
7
John R Allen and Amir Hussain, ‘On Hyperwar’, Proceedings Magazine (Vol. 143,
No. 7, 2017), p. 1373.
8
Walker, ‘Into the Grey Zone Podcast’, 13:49.
9
Cyber practitioners are necessarily very precise in the language they employ. This
chapter is intended to help non-cyber practitioners understand key concepts and
12
The Slow and Imprecise Art of Cyber Warfare
The Anatomy of a Cyber Attack

Cyber activity is primarily concerned with the virtual dimension,10 which is
characterised by its dependence on invented languages.11 Information
encoded in these invented languages comprises data.12 Military cyber
attacks seek to achieve at least one of three things: to access data that an
adversary does not wish to share; to change the data that an adversary
holds; or to destroy an adversary’s data.13 The first requirement for
conducting a cyber attack is to identify that an adversary holds data. For
example, a range table for a munition in a printed handbook exists in the
physical dimension as paper and in the cognitive dimension if it has been
memorised by an operator, but not in the virtual dimension. If, however,
the range table has been translated into data and is stored on a digital
device, it exists in the virtual dimension and can be subjected to cyber
attack. If this data is accessible as part of a fire control system supporting
geographically dispersed artillery pieces, then that data must be remotely
accessible via a network. It can therefore be attacked remotely.
Since the virtual dimension is fabricated, it is usually not immediately
apparent to an external party what systems have been digitised, what they
are connected to, or what languages are used to store the data and manage
the network. Furthermore, programming languages do not simply store
information but also contain grammar for describing commands that the
system can execute. These commands describe how the data is to be
stored, who has permission to access it, and what checks are carried out
to determine who each user is. All of these facets of a network are
invisible to an intruder until they have interacted with part of that
uses analogy and imprecise terms to aid accessibility. The authors apologise to
specialists in the field for the resulting lack of precision.
10
Ministry of Defence, ‘Joint Doctrine Publication 0-30: UK Air and Space Power’,
2nd edition, December 2017, p. 17.
11
David J Peterson, Art of Language Invention, The: From Horse-Lords to Dark
Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building (London: Penguin,
2015), pp. 21–22.
12
The subset of invented languages used in computing comprises markup and
programming languages. Markup languages allow the programming instructions
to not be displayed when displaying data in a non-programming language. See
Thomas Powell, HTML & XHTML: The Complete Reference (New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill, 2003), p. 25. Programming languages use imperative and
declarative syntax to describe and command the execution of specified functions,
see Michael Gordon, Programming Language Theory and Its Implementation
(Hoboken: Prentice Hall, 1988).
13
These offensive aims can be understood as the offensive mirror image of the
CIA’s triad model of cybersecurity principles: confidentiality; integrity; and
availability. See ‘What Is Security Analysis?’, <https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ajs300/
security/CIA.htm>, accessed 21 October 2021.
13
network. Therefore, having determined that a digital target exists, an

attacker must seek to intrude into the network which contains it, and
exfiltrate data to determine how that network is constructed and by what
languages it is governed.
A lack of information about a network makes designing penetrations
that are difficult to detect almost impossible, just as it is very difficult for a
non-native speaker of a language to pass as a native speaker.14 For this
reason, the initial penetration and mapping of networks involves an
extensive reconnaissance effort. Attackers will often conduct a high
volume of unsophisticated attacks on the basis that while only a few will
make any headway into the network, they will generate valuable
information about which nodes in the network hold administrative
privileges and how the protocols that govern the network function.15
Large-scale unsophisticated attacks produce a constant noise so that
adversaries cannot necessarily determine what is being targeted. In many
ways, this is because the purpose is to find what targets might be
available. This is comparable to a reconnaissance by force, or advance to
contact, rather than a deliberate reconnaissance. However, the defenders
will try to identify who is perpetrating this reconnaissance in order to
anticipate what subsequent, more sophisticated attacks might look like.16
Once the shape of a network and the location of data and privileges
are identified, an attacker will begin to craft specialised attacks to gain
access to those points. This will often require detailed information about
the humans who govern these points in the network, and how they
interact with it in the physical dimension, because this can provide
valuable information about how to attack the system.17 These deliberate
attacks against identified nodes must be carried out without being
detected. If an intrusion is detected, the defender can simply sever the
node that has been penetrated or change the permissions to deny it any
useful access to the rest of the network. At that point, the attacker must
14
Simon Müller, ‘Discourse Makers in Native and Non-Native English Discourse’,
PhD submission to Justus Liebig University Giessen, Amsterdam, 2004; Melissa M
Baese-Berk and Tuuli H Morrill, ‘Speaking Rate Consistency in Native and Non-
Native Speakers of English’, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
(Vol. 138, No. 3, 2015), pp. 223–28.
15
H P Sanghvi and M S Dahiya, ‘Cyber Reconnaissance: An Alarm Before Cyber
Attack’, International Journal of Computer Applications (Vol. 63, No. 6, 2013),
pp. 36–38.
16
This is the purpose of cyber threat intelligence. See Henry Dalziel, How to Define
and Build an Effective Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability (Waltham, MA:
Syngress, 2015).
17
Micah Zenko, Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy
(New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015), pp. 171–83.
14
begin from scratch against a defender that has gained information about the
attacker’s techniques and signature.
After a critical node is penetrated, data from it must be exfiltrated and
analysed to allow the attacker to see further into the network and target the
next node up the chain. Ultimately, the aim is for the attacker to gain access
to repositories of data, or to components of a system that can control other
parts of the system. Whereas most parts of a network have the right to read a
limited set of data, some administrative nodes have permission to rewrite
the instructions governing the system. Attackers seek access to
administrators because these accounts can change or destroy the data or
physical infrastructure that constitute the enemy system. For example, an
administrator for a fire control system might substitute an accurate range
table for an inaccurate one, ensuring the artillery system as a whole
misses any target it tries to engage. Alternatively, it could delete the range
table so that the system cannot calculate firing solutions. The
administrator could even delete the instructions for the system to read a
range table, and then destroy the instructions for the system to accept
new instructions so that the defender cannot simply upload a new range
table when the data is found to be missing.
Almost all components of a network will be subject to varying levels
of encryption which must be cracked or bypassed by an attacker at each
stage. This could require the entry of a simple password, or for more
sensitive and better defended systems, a three-part authentication
comprising something known by the individual who owns the node (a
password), something they have (a physical key), and something they
are (biometric data). Passwords to confirm that someone requesting
access to a system is the right individual can be cracked through a brute
force (guessing all possible combinations) or analytical attack. The latter
method can be invalidated by randomly generating passwords. In
practice, any effectively defended system will have millions of possible
solutions to passwords at each level, and incorrect entries will attract the
attention of defenders. For this reason, attackers will endeavour to
bypass passwords through hacking. Hacking involves the interrogation of
the code to find ambiguities through which an attack can convince the
system that a password is not necessary or has been entered when it has
not.18
18
There is an alternative distinction drawn between hacking and cracking that is
framed in ethical terms, with the former being constructive and the latter
destructive. In practice, this ethical distinction – while important in the early days
of the internet – has fragmented. See John P Carlin with Garrett M Graff, Dawn of
the Code War: America’s Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global
Cyber Threat (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2018), chapter 1.
15
To envisage how a hack works, consider the consequences of

someone using poor grammar, as in the sentence: ‘Correct and verified,
the user may decrypt the data’. In conversation, this can be understood
to mean ‘if the user has been correctly identified and verified, then they
may decrypt the data’. However, the sentence could equally be literally
interpreted as saying ‘the user is correct and verified and may decrypt the
data’. A hack would suggest to the system that it should proceed with the
latter interpretation. Because complex code involves thousands of lines
of instruction, often written by multiple people at different times, there
will often be minor contradictions or ambiguities that can be discovered
and then leveraged by an attacker.19
When these ambiguities and contradictions are part of the code in a
system, they are termed ‘zero-days’ because they are vulnerabilities that
were introduced into the system by the way it was designed, and at the
time of discovery represent an open vulnerability that has not been
patched, leaving defenders with zero days to resolve the problem. By
storing zero-day exploits which they discover through reconnaissance
efforts, an attacker can subsequently employ them to bypass a system’s
defences. However, just as the poor grammar cited above can be
clarified, so too can a defender clarify their coding to make a system
more secure. If, therefore, they identify that a zero-day exploit has
enabled penetration of their network, they can often patch the system to
edit out and close the vulnerability, or else closely monitor it to gain
intelligence on potential ongoing or future attacks. Consequently,
attackers must make a trade-off between the value of accessing a system
at any given time and the risk of losing the ability to bypass its
encryption or being rapidly attributed and potentially counter-attacked if
discovered.
Attacking sensitive digital systems is further complicated by the fact
that they are often air-gapped, meaning they are not susceptible to
remote access. This means that, to attack them, an adversary must either
create an artificial connection to the outside world or physically plug into
the air-gapped network without being detected. This may require
multiple physical penetrations since the first intrusion may simply allow
the attacker to collect information about what language the system uses
and how it is structured. They must then physically penetrate the system
a second time to deliver a designed payload to attack it. If they do not
wish to immediately activate the delivered payload, they may need to
19
A common issue is poor hygiene in compound coding for signifier/signified
correlation. See Paolo Rocchi, ‘The Concepts of Signifier/Signified Revisited’, IBM,
<http://mcs.open.ac.uk/dtmd/Presentations/Session%202/Rocchi.pdf>, accessed
30 March 2021.
16
penetrate the system a third time to trigger the attack at the desired point in
time.
A cyber attack may therefore be envisaged as comprising seven
stages:
1. Reconnaissance: to understand the target network.

2. Weaponisation: designing a payload to exploit vulnerabilities.
3. Delivery: insertion of the payload through the system.
4. Exploitation: using new access to identify and target the key node.
5. Installation: installing the payload at the target node of the system.
6. Command and control: having a means of initiating the payload.
7. Action on objectives: having the desired effect on the system.20
Attempting to gain entry to a complex defended system may require

several iterations of this cycle as the attackers fight their way into the
network. Against a complex network with multiple layers, which
ultimately ends in an air-gapped component, working into a network
may take between one and three years.21 While embedding malicious
capabilities into public utilities or other legacy civilian systems may be
more straightforward,22 attacking military systems is complex, sensitive
and has a significant lead time, requiring payloads to be embedded
during peacetime if they are to be available during war.
If a cyber attack is prosecuted in peacetime and the payload initiated
before the outbreak of war, its effects will either be limited or escalatory.
For example, to return to the artillery fire control system, if it were
penetrated and the range tables altered prior to a conflict, this could
mean that the change would be noticed during an exercise, the range
tables corrected and the system security patched prior to a conflict.
Alternatively, it could mean that during the same exercise the artillery
kills friendly forces. This would lead to an investigation and, if the cause
could be attributed to a hostile cyber attack, it would lead to a significant
20
Joseph Raczynski, ‘Kill Chain: The 7 Stages of a Cyberattack’, Thomson Reuters,
12 October 2018.
21
Author interview with a senior CTI director at a major bank, March 2021; author
interview with a senior military cyber warfare officer, February 2021; author
interview with a law enforcement officer specialising in counter-cyber operations,
January 2021.
22
House of Commons, ‘A Major Cyber Attack on the UK is a Matter of “When, Not
If”’, Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, 22 January 2018, <https://
houseofcommons.shorthandstories.com/jcnss-cni-report/index.html>, accessed
30 March 2021.
17
escalation in tensions or could even be interpretated by the victim as a casus

belli.23
Conversely, a cyber payload that sits dormant in a system until
activated during a conflict presents other challenges. It must either be
activated automatically when certain criteria are met or manually. The
latter requires a sustained capacity to connect to the system at short
notice to be maintained by the attacker. For military systems – given the
changes that occur when a state transitions to war – this may be difficult,
requiring the embedding of agents with knowledge of the penetration
inside the enemy force. However, a payload that monitors the system so
that it can activate under certain conditions is an active rather than
passive insertion and is, therefore, more susceptible to detection. It could
also activate under circumstances unforeseen by the attacker.
The final limitation of a military cyber capability is that cyber attacks
function by inserting data into a system so that it is directed to behave in a
specific manner. It is effective not in itself, but because of how the payload
interacts with the rest of the system. Because the system is fabricated,
however, and the language invented, it is subject to being expanded,
divided, updated and changed in fundamental ways. Therefore, a
payload that must remain dormant may be activated only to find that the
surrounding environment has been altered to the extent that its code no
longer makes any sense within the language with which it is supposed to
interact. A well-defended system will be periodically patched so that
changes like this should be routine. The result is that while militaries may
spend years embedding capabilities into a network, they have no
guarantees that when the time comes it will function as anticipated.
Consequently, cyber attacks are unpredictable in their effects and are
difficult to synchronise with established military planning and operations.
This is a significant limitation, as the high lethality, mobility and relatively
low quantities of most modern military capabilities mean that precise
timing and coordination between different joint force elements are even
more essential than they were in previous eras.
The Military Application of Cyber Weapons

There are limited scenarios in which a cyber attack can have a decisive
operational or strategic effect when used in isolation. The most famous
strategic cyber attack is the Stuxnet worm which formed part of a series
of attacks on Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment centrifuges from 2008.24
23
Jens Stoltenberg, ‘NATO Will Defend Itself’, NATO, last updated 29 August 2019,
<https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_168435.htm?selectedLocale=en>,
accessed 30 March 2021.
18
Estimates vary but some suggest that enough disruption was caused to set
back Iranian nuclear enrichment by 18 to 24 months. However, the system
reconnaissance and infiltration process took years, having reportedly
begun in 2005.25 Furthermore, when Stuxnet leaked accidentally beyond
the air-gapped nuclear facility network, its code was subsequently
identified and analysed by states and cyber security firms around the
world. This resulted in public attribution of the Stuxnet attack itself to
intelligence agencies in the US and Israel, as well as the probable
attribution of other cyber weapons which appear to function in a similar
manner.26 It also gave Iran and other national and civilian organisations
the opportunity to examine a strategic cyber payload described by a
senior cyber security professional as ‘by far the most complex piece of
code that we’ve looked at – in a completely different league from
anything we’d ever seen before’.27
The Stuxnet leak, and the US/Israeli cyber operations against Iran’s
uranium enrichment programme as a whole, illustrate some of the key
practical characteristics of cyber warfare as a standalone tool of national
power. Attacks on defended systems require years of preparation to
identify, infiltrate and exploit weak points. Once triggered, even very
sophisticated payloads will be discovered, analysed and ultimately
identified. The effects created can only ever be temporary in isolation, as
states will patch their systems and replace damaged machinery if not
prevented from doing so by other means. When the payloads are
ultimately identified and analysed, peer and near-peer states can use
insights gained to ascribe probable attribution, and also potentially to
develop or enhance their own offensive cyber capabilities.
Less sophisticated cyber payloads than Stuxnet-type cyber weapons
can still be highly effective in causing standalone disruption and potentially
physical damage if conducted against less defended systems such as those
which control civilian infrastructure. Examples include the attack on a
German steel mill in 2014, and the WannaCry ransomware attacks which
caused major disruption to the NHS in 2017.28 States such as Russia and
24
David E Sanger, ‘Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran’,
New York Times, 1 June 2012.
25
Ibid.
26
Josh Fruhlinger, ‘What is Stuxnet, Who Created It and How Does It Work?’, CSO
Online, 22 August 2017, <https://www.csoonline.com/article/3218104/what-is-
stuxnet-who-created-it-and-how-does-it-work.html>, accessed 3 March 2021.
27
Ibid.
28
TrendMicro, ‘German Steel Plant Suffers Significant Damage from Targeted
Attack’, 12 January 2015, <https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/fr/security/news/
cyber-attacks/german-steel-plant-suffers-significant-damage-from-targeted-attack>,
accessed 3 March 2021; Josh Fruhlinger, ‘What Is WannaCry Ransomware, How
19
North Korea regularly use quasi-criminal groups of hackers operating under

loose state direction to demonstrate to expert communities their ability to
disrupt and even directly damage civilian industry and critical national
infrastructure (CNI). This capability is then tacitly leveraged to enhance
deterrence messaging against potential state opponents. Some of these
attacks exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, but most employ simple massed
phishing attacks to infiltrate potential target networks. As such, they are
much more effective against networks which rely on commercial
operating systems which are well understood, do not use three-factor
authentication security procedures and may be slow to implement
security patches. The purpose of most attacks of this nature is also far
less specific than strategic cyber weapons such as Stuxnet; either theft of
information across a broad industrial sector, extortion or simply
disruption for its own sake.
For most Western states, there are significant legal and ethical barriers
to the use of offensive cyber capabilities against civilian targets, at least in
any overt attempt at deterrence messaging. In any case, the ability to
infiltrate civilian infrastructure and cause temporary disruption or even
limited destructive effects is unlikely to deter a state opponent from
conventional military action if it has already committed to such a high-
risk course of action. The recent conflicts in eastern Ukraine and
Nagorno-Karabakh provide compelling evidence that states are prepared
to suffer extensive damage to both civilian and military targets without
backing down from kinetic confrontations where national interests are
clearly defined. As such, the immediate question for those who see the
apocryphal cyber capability to ‘turn out the lights in Moscow’ as a
cheaper replacement for conventional and nuclear deterrence tools is:
what effect would such an attack have on a determined adversary, and
for how long? It is perhaps ironic that hyperbolic narratives, such as that
advanced by Nicole Perlroth,29 use Ukraine as the example of how
devastating cyber attacks can be, while somehow overlooking the extent
to which Ukraine has weathered and recovered from Russia’s cyber
onslaught.
Whilst there are few situations in which cyber weapons can replace
more traditional forms of military capability outright, there are many
potential ways in which offensive cyber tools can be used as part of joint
operations. For example, a previously inserted cyber payload might be
Does it Infect, and Who Was Responsible?’, CSO Online, 30 August 2018, <https://
www.csoonline.com/article/3227906/what-is-wannacry-ransomware-how-does-it-
infect-and-who-was-responsible.html>, accessed 3 March 2021.
29
Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons
Arms Race (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
20
used to disable or disrupt key adversary defence systems at a critical

moment to enable a conventional attacking force to physically bypass or
destroy them. Israel allegedly carried out just such an attack against the
Syrian air defence network in 2007.30 The normally bristling air defence
network was rendered blind to an Israeli Air Force strike package which
entered Syrian airspace, bombed a nuclear facility and withdrew
unchallenged.31 It is still unclear in the public domain whether this was a
case of a cyber payload or advanced electronic warfare techniques
opening the door for the Israeli aircraft. In general terms, whereas cyber
attacks involve the theft, alteration or deletion of data, electronic warfare
involves the detection or disruption of enemy sensors and the
transmission of data using electromagnetic energy. While both rely on an
attacker having knowledge of how a target system operates, electronic
warfare can be applied as an active effect in real time without lengthy
network reconnaissance, infiltration and payload activation. In practice,
the line between the two techniques is increasingly blurring. For
example, information about the exact software and hardware
configurations of a radar, obtained via cyber attacks against the defence
network which it sits within, might be used to tailor sophisticated
electronic warfare attack options using digital emitters such as active
electronically scanned array radar sets. In this context, however, the
cyber attack would have occurred long before the electronic attack, with
the theft of data enabling conventional electronic warfare capabilities.
What is clear, however, is that the Israeli attack in 2007 was successful
because it blended cyber and/or electronic attack with a precisely
choreographed application of traditional firepower. The attack on the
Syrian air defence network itself was not intended to create strategic
effects, but as an enabling capability it greatly reduced the risk profile
and increased the effectiveness of an otherwise conventional strike
operation.
The use of cyber attacks to ‘open the door’ for conventional forces in
this way is dependent on several key factors. First, that the potential target
can be identified well in advance of any requirement to exploit a breach.
This is to allow sufficient time for the required reconnaissance,
penetration and delivery stages of cyber attack preparation to be
conducted. Second, in the case of an attack against a target such as an
integrated air defence system (IADS), this activity will have to be
coordinated with traditional intelligence gathering about the physical
30
Sharon Weinberger, ‘How Israel Spoofed Syria’s Air Defense System’, WIRED, 4
October 2007.
31
BBC News, ‘Israel Admits Striking Suspected Syrian Nuclear Reactor in 2007’, 21
March 2018.
21
locations, individual system capabilities and patterns of movement

exhibited by the radars and missile launchers themselves. This is so that
the required virtual effects can be identified in terms of practical effects
in the physical dimension, and it requires in-depth intelligence which will
need to be gathered in multiple domains. This in turn introduces a third
dependency for using cyber weapons in this way to enable conventional
attacks; permissions and security clearance levels. Continuing with the
IADS example, the required physical and network reconnaissance and
intelligence-gathering activities would likely draw on resources from air
force(s), multiple intelligence agencies and special forces operations.
Many of these assets will require very high-level authorisation for tasking,
and the products generated will be highly classified and not widely
distributed within the military as a whole. As such, the successful use of
cyber attacks as a coordinated enabler for conventional military
operations requires operational planners to be aware of the art of the
possible, in areas where they are unlikely to be in most countries by
default. The final major dependency for this sort of attack is a linked one.
Imagine a case where a cyber capability has been successfully developed
and implanted with a compatible activation mechanism in a specific
adversary defence system, and an operational commander is aware of it.
In order to employ it, that commander must be able to justify its use to
enable their conventional operation, given that once the cyber weapon is
used the adversary will rapidly reset their systems, discover the
vulnerability and patch it. In the case of the 2007 attack by the Israeli Air
Force on a Syrian nuclear reactor, head of state authorisation would
almost certainly have been granted for the operation, and the expending
of a developed cyber capability (if indeed it was one) embedded over
several years in the Syrian IADS deemed worthwhile to enable it.32
However, for more routine or ongoing military operations, cyber
weapons will likely remain a capability held for specific situations rather
than a regular feature. Furthermore, if military operations take place in an
unforeseen context, it is unlikely that sufficient time will be available to
prepare as thoroughly as Israel was able to do against its traditional rival
to the north.
A more ad-hoc use of disruptive cyber operations against CNI and
military enabling capabilities is more likely to characterise the routine use
of cyber capabilities in warfare in the coming decade. If the requirement
is not to create a catastrophic failure in key military systems at a specific
point in time to directly enable conventional operations, then the
32
Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted
Assassinations (New York, NY: Random House, 2018), pp. 590–94.
22
dependencies placed on cyber specialists are less onerous. For example,

Russia has conducted a range of cyber attacks against Ukrainian military
and civilian systems as part of its hybrid war against the country since
2014. These have included attacks on Ukrainian military communications
in coordination with intensive electronic warfare operations, as well as
attacks on the national power grid and banking system. The result was to
impose further disruption and costs on the government in Kyiv in
conjunction with sustained direct and indirect military support to rebel
groups in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. In other words, cyber warfare
offers states another vector through which to pressure opposing states in
conjunction with traditional hard and soft power tools. In a NATO
context, obvious potential targets for Russian cyber attacks in the event
of a major crisis or limited conflict would be the networks which control
the civilian port and rail infrastructure which would be critical for
mobilisation and the deployment of conventional military forces to
eastern Europe. Such attacks could have significant or even decisive
effects on the strategic picture for the Alliance if coupled with sustained
conventional and nuclear force posturing. However, on their own, they
would only delay rather than prevent military capabilities being brought
to bear.
In considering the impact of cyber warfare on future operations,
militaries are clearly correct to be taking the security of their systems
seriously. Offensive cyber operations offer opportunities to gain
contextual tactical advantage by disrupting the functioning of enemy
systems and undermining the adversary’s confidence in their equipment.
They also allow for the shaping of the human terrain around which
fighting takes place when aimed at civilian systems. Nevertheless, cyber
attacks should not be seen as an alternative to hard power. Nor can
cyber attacks function as a standalone solution.
Finally, the opportunities offered by offensive cyber capabilities are
difficult to guarantee at a specified time and place, and so cannot be
relied on as a foundational capability in deterrence terms. Cyber warfare
is real and cannot be ignored. But for now, it remains slow and imprecise
compared to more traditional levers of military power.
23
II. THE GREY ZONE IS DEFINED BY
THE DEFENDER
SIDHARTH KAUSHAL
Over the course of recent years, it has become common to hear the term
‘grey-zone strategy’ invoked to conceptualise the ways in which a range of
state competitors are pursuing revisionist goals. Per this understanding,
Western adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran have become adept at
using a range of tools short of open warfare to challenge the status quo,
leaving Western policymakers scrambling to come up with appropriate
and proportionate responses.1 Similarly, the US and its allies have their
own grey-zone tools, including support for colour revolutions, financial
sanctions and cyber attacks. Thus, for example, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
envision an operating environment defined by sub-threshold activity and
attendant ambiguity.2 Nor is this an exclusively American view: the UK’s
Integrated Operating Concept notes that ‘our adversaries use an array of
capabilities including their militaries below the threshold of war and in
ways that challenge our political and legal norms’.3 Similarly, France’s
2017 national security strategy notes the challenge posed by legally
ambiguous forms of aggression in the information space: ‘Ambiguous
postures and covert aggression are also becoming more common, with
certain states making an increasing use of a wide variety of proxies.’4
1
See, for example, Michael J Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a
Changing Era of Conflict (Carlisle, PA: US Army War Studies Press, 2015).
2
Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘Joint Operating Environment 2035: The Joint Force in a
Contested and Disordered World’, 14 July 2016, <https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/
Documents/Doctrine/concepts/joe_2035_july16.pdf?ver=2017-12-28-162059-917#:
~:text=The%20Joint%20Operating%20Environment%202035,and%20its%20allies%
20in%202035>, accessed 27 October 2021.
3
Ministry of Defence (MoD), ‘Integrated Operating Concept’, August 2021, p. 8.
4
Republic of France, ‘Defence and National Security Strategic Review 2017’, 2017,
p. 47.
24
The Grey Zone Is Defined by the Defender
The use of political subversion, unbadged ‘little green men’, cyber

attacks and the deployment of paramilitary units to prosecute territorial
aims have all been described as instances of a supposedly new model of
grey-zone warfare. Revisionist states have, it is contended, found ways to
circumvent Western conventional strengths by exploiting the cumulative
effects of persistent competition short of open warfare.5 This view was
captured by General Joseph Dunford, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, when he claimed that adversary sub-threshold competition
exploited an American mindset that drew a clear distinction between
peace and war, and which lacked the conceptual architecture to frame
competition.6
This chapter contends that the distinction between sub-threshold
grey-zone tools and the tools used in conventional warfare is analytically
unhelpful and can distort strategic decision-making. First, defining the
concept of the sub-threshold space in negative terms – grouping together
all forms of competition that do not entail high-intensity warfighting –
adds little analytical value. Second, this distinction omits the relationship
between a state’s posture for high-intensity warfighting and its ability to
compete at lower levels of intensity. Finally, defining the competitive
space in terms of instruments used and the implicit assumption that
certain tools are inherently ambiguous obscures the agency that both
competitors have in delineating boundaries and the critical importance of
what Herman Kahn dubs the ‘systems competition’ to define the
thresholds at which competition enters a different phase.7 Ultimately, the
threshold between war and peace is not absolute, and is defined by the
defender.
The Pitfalls of the Grey-Zone Concept

Central to the concept of the grey zone is the notion of ambiguity. It has
been argued that means that cannot be unambiguously defined as an act
of war can serve as tools by which the status quo can be altered without
recourse to high-intensity warfighting. Following this argument, events
such as the Russian annexation of Crimea, China’s militarisation of the
South China Sea, and Iran’s use of mining in the Strait of Hormuz and
missile strikes against Abqaiq and Khurais all challenge Western concepts
5
Mazarr, Mastering the Gray Zone, pp. 10–20.
6
Colin Clark, ‘CJCS Dunford Calls for Strategic Shifts; “At Peace or at War Is
Insufficient”’, Breaking Defense, 21 September 2016.
7
Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (London: Routledge,
1965), pp. 236–50.
25
Sidharth Kaushal
of deterrence by not presenting a clear casus belli.8 Plausible deniability

supposedly enabled the territorial or political status quo of each
revisionist state’s region to be challenged without an open declaration of
war. Other analysts have also nested political subversion, economic
coercion and cyber attacks within the rubric of grey-zone warfare.9
Three considerations are worth bearing in mind here. First is the risk
of the concept serving as an analytical dustbin – a general purpose concept
that encompasses a range of actions which share little in common other
than the fact that they do not include high-intensity warfighting.10 Kinetic
attacks that constitute acts of limited warfare and activities which are
more consistent with the conduct of peacetime statecraft such as
economic coercion are lumped together under the rubric of grey-zone
warfare.11 Concepts which define the criteria for inclusion in negative
terms as opposed to shared characteristics of their subjects do more to
confound than to clarify. The risk is that dissimilar competitive strategies
are grouped together simply because they fall short of warfare. Consider
two recent examples of actions grouped under the rubric of grey-zone
warfare: China’s probing of Taiwanese defences and Iran’s mining of
tankers in the Persian Gulf. Each state’s competitive strategy follows a
distinct logic. Chinese probing appears to be aimed at the exhaustion of
Taiwan’s material capabilities. The costs of interception – $900 million a
year – have caused the Taiwanese government to desist from sortieing
aircraft to intercept People’s Liberation Army aircraft.12 This contributes
to the incremental assertion of control over a territory’s air and sea space
that China wishes to annex as a stated policy. By contrast, Iran’s
approach had materially limited effects and was geared to exploit the
8
Thomas Trask, Jonathan Ruhe and Ariel Cicurel, ‘Countering Iran’s Gray Zone
Strategy’, RealClearDefense, 18 October 2019, <https://www.realcleardefense.
com/articles/2019/10/18/contesting_irans_gray_zone_strategy_114798.html>,
accessed 1 March 2021; Andrew S Erickson and Ryan D Martinson (eds), China’s
Maritime Gray Zone Operations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019);
David Carment and Dani Belo, ‘Gray-Zone Conflict Management: Theory,
Evidence, and Challenges’, Journal of European, Middle Eastern and African
Affairs (Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 2020), pp. 21–41.
9
Elisabeth Braw, ‘Modern Deterrence: Preparing for the Age of Grey-Zone
Warfare’, RUSI Newsbrief (Vol. 38, No. 10, 5 November 2018).
10
For more on the issue of conceptual clarity and the criteria by which it can be
determined, see John Gerring, Social Science Methodology: A Critical Framework
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 339–50.
11
For example, the study of economic coercion has a long history as a field of
coercion distinct from warfare. See David A Baldwin, Economic Statecraft, 4th
edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).
12
Reuters, ‘Taiwan Says Has Spent Almost $900 Million Scrambling Against Chinese
Jets This Year’, 7 October 2020.
26
psychologically magnifying effects of international market responses to

limited stimuli in order to bring the West back to the negotiating table on
sanctions. The fact that these strategies did not involve major war does
not mean that they share very much in common. The risk of using the
term ‘grey-zone strategy’ is that it overlooks a plethora of strategies that
states may pursue in the competitive space, including the material
erosion of an opponent’s capabilities, costly signalling and territorial
revisionism, among others.
A second concern is the assumption that certain instruments are
inherently ambiguous or fall below a target state’s escalatory thresholds.
There is nothing inherent in a certain tool which makes it intrinsically
non-escalatory. Consider, for example, the way in which Japan’s attack
on Pearl Harbor was prompted by the oil sanctions imposed by the
Roosevelt administration. In other instances, by contrast, kinetic clashes
did not lead to broader escalation, as was the case during the Korean
War when Soviet pilots flew sorties against the US Air Force under North
Korean colours.13 In this case, as with many others, attribution was
accomplished relatively quickly but a mutual desire to avoid broader
escalation led both sides to downplay the fact that they were in combat.
This is not to necessarily deny that some actions are easier to conduct on
a covert basis than others, but rather that the key factor in defining
precisely where the boundaries of the grey zone are is a conscious
choice by the defender. This choice depends on several factors, such as
the ability of the attacker to raise the risks of escalation which might
occur in the event that a state of war is openly acknowledged and the
trajectory of the overarching relationship between the two powers. States
in a restrained competitive relationship comparable to the years of
détente, for example, have incentives to broaden the boundaries of the
grey zone.
A major risk inherent to defining strategies in terms of means used as
opposed to ends sought is a misappreciation of the dynamics of risk and
escalation. These are primarily a function of the significance of the
political concession that one seeks from an opponent. For example,
while many treated Iran’s use of kinetic force in the Gulf in response to
US sanctions as highly escalatory, there is no a priori reason to believe
that recourse to kinetic assets represents a threshold by which escalation
should be identified. The overarching aim of the maximum pressure
strategy – a full-scale reassessment of Iranian foreign policy at a
minimum and possibly even regime change – made escalation a foregone
13
Austin Carson, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).
27
Sidharth Kaushal
conclusion, irrespective of whether economic or military instruments were

used.
In a similar vein, when analysts speculate about whether a
catastrophic cyber attack could be treated as the basis for kinetic action
against a rival, they mistakenly conflate the dynamics of escalation with
instruments used. If an opponent’s strategy involves them seeking the
significant disruption of one’s own society – to a degree comparable to
that which could be achieved by conventional warfighting – then this is
likely to occur in the context of them seeking maximalist political
objectives and would represent an escalation that few states would not
treat as a justification for war, irrespective of the tools used to deliver this
end. The instruments used to deliver a strategic objective are, while not
insignificant in every case, of secondary importance to the nature of the
objective itself.
Moreover, the assumption that certain tools are inherently
ambiguous overlooks the way in which states can use the full spectrum
of tools at their disposal – including warfighting assets – to set the
boundaries of the competitive space in a way that gives them the
advantage. Take, for example, the rationale for the expansion of the
Soviet military, and particularly its navy under Sergei Gorshkov. The
rationale provided by Soviet naval leaders, and accepted by the Kremlin,
was that without a major navy any competition with the US at distance
could escalate into a situation comparable to the Cuban missile crisis,
where the Soviet Union – having engaged in sub-threshold competition
via the emplacement of weapons in Cuba – was faced with either general
warfare or an embarrassing climbdown by virtue of its naval inferiority
and the nuclear balance.14 In effect, if the Soviet Union wanted to
compete in the sub-threshold space, where it believed it had advantages
due to its network of proxies and allies as well as the allure of
Communism in the developing world, it needed to have a credible
conventional deterrent at reach as well as nuclear parity. Without this, the
Soviet Union risked being threatened with escalation to localised conflicts
which it could not win by a US that had an incentive to use its
advantages above the threshold of warfare to limit what could be
considered part of the sub-threshold space. Even if the US likely did not
wish for conflict with the Soviet Union, its conventional and nuclear
superiority meant that the Soviets had more to lose from escalation and
14
David Holloway, ‘Military Power and Political Purpose in Soviet Policy’,
Daedalus (Vol. 109, No. 4, 1980), pp. 13–30; Michael MccGwire, ‘The Evolution
of Soviet Naval Policy: 1960–1974’, in Michael MccGwire, Ken Booth and John
McDonnell (eds), Soviet Naval Policy: Objectives and Constraints (New York, NY:
Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1975), p. 537.
28
greater incentives to take threats to escalate seriously even if they judged

there to be a mutual disincentive to warfare. In other words, however
unlikely a large-scale clash between the two powers, the conventional
and nuclear balance of forces was an ‘elephant in the room‘ which
delineated what each party could risk doing in the competitive space.
Similarly, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and China’s creeping
militarisation of the South China Sea were underpinned by escalation
dominance over the immediate targets of revisionism and conventional
deterrence, if not dominance, against likely external interveners.15
Russian exercises conducted in tandem with the Crimean annexation had
the effect of both fixing Ukrainian forces away from the theatre of action
and raising the spectre of a wider conflict should Ukraine attempt to
retake the peninsula. Similarly, the presence of the People’s Liberation
Army Navy (PLAN) over the horizon limits what local disputants in the
South China Sea can do to constrain Chinese civilian, coastguard and
maritime militia vessels. Moreover, external military intervention to
reverse territorial gains made by each party is unlikely, less because of
the inherent ambiguity of the actions taken than because of the military
and political risks that this would entail.
The discourse surrounding the challenge of supposedly ambiguous
tools ignores the many instances in which the use of supposedly grey-
zone tools have generated either the threat or actual use of large-scale,
conventional retaliation by the target state. For example, states such as
Israel and Turkey have both threatened the use of force and taken action
against opponents that lent support to sub-state proxies within their
borders or housed elements that they deemed subversive.16 Nor did the
use of unbadged forces lead to any ambiguity in, for example, the 1999
Kargil War in which India, the target state, immediately identified these
forces as regulars in plain clothes and treated Pakistani incursions as an
act of war. Similarly, during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, China’s use of
missiles tipped with dummy warheads under the aegis of conducting
routine exercises in the waters near Taiwan produced a direct – if implicit
– threat of a US response in the form of the dispatch of two carrier strike
15
On the basic typology of strategy, see Robert J Art, ‘To What Ends Military
Power?’, International Security (Vol. 4, No. 4, Spring 1980), pp. 3–35.
16
Turkey threatened to invade Syria in 1998 unless the latter expelled Abdullah
Ocalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party leadership. See Nick Danforth, ‘A Short
History of Turkish Threats to Invade Syria’, Foreign Policy, 31 July 2015. On
Israel’s responses to proxy subversion, see Wendy Perlman and Boaz Atzili,
Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors
(New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019).
29
Sidharth Kaushal
groups to the area.17 Ambiguity, then, has rarely stayed the hand of states
that believed they had viable conventional options.
Alternatively, when states have struggled to respond to low-intensity
aggression, such as Ukraine in 2014 or the Philippines during the
Scarborough Shoals crisis, their militaries were deterred from doing so
effectively by the threat of escalation posed by large regular formations
operating in coordination with proxies and paramilitaries.18 In other
words, the conventional balance of power often determines whether
low-intensity aggression meets a large-scale kinetic response. When
actors choose not to treat an act as one of open warfare, it is generally
because they have been conventionally deterred or seek to prosecute a
competition at a limited level of intensity as a policy choice.19
The Relationship Between Low-Intensity Coercion and Warfighting

The tendency, described above, to treat grey-zone activity as a means by
which opponents exploit ambiguity to circumvent the conventional
advantages of (primarily) Western states carries two risks:
1. Misperceiving adversary strategies and the relationships between low-

intensity coercion and high-intensity warfighting.
2. Overlooking the agency that policymakers have in delineating the
boundaries of the sub-threshold space to their own advantage.
To begin with the first risk, reconsider Colonel Harry G Summers Jr’s
analysis of the Vietnam War. The US, Summers presciently noted, had
effectively misconstrued the nature of the war as being a conflict against
proxy subversion by a North Vietnamese government which supported
the Viet Cong. In truth, he noted, proxy subversion was an enabler.
When the North finally absorbed the South in 1975, it was by a
quintessentially conventional offensive. The Viet Cong had created the
preconditions for it by forcing a US withdrawal, and it was this offensive
that decided the political outcome of the war.20 Had the US correctly
17
J Michael Cole, ‘The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Forgotten Showdown
Between China and America’, National Interest, 10 March 2017.
18
For a discussion of Russian actions, see Michael Kofman et al., Lessons from
Russia’s Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (Santa Monica, CA: RAND,
2017). On Chinese activities, see Sidharth Kaushal and Magdalena Markiewicz,
‘Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones: The Trajectory of China’s Maritime
Transformation’, RUSI Occasional Papers (October 2019).
19
Carson, Secret Wars.
20
Harry G Summers Jr, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War
(New York, NY: Random House, 1995).
30
perceived that conventional forces were the North’s centre of gravity, it

might have pursued an approach comparable to that of the Easter
Offensive in which conventional air power was used to support the Army
of the Republic of Vietnam in neutralising North Vietnamese Army main
force units and deter subsequent conventional attacks.21 This would
likely have been consistent with the public’s willingness to bear costs and
would have effectively neutralised the conventional force without which
no amount of proxy subversion could deliver the ultimate aim of
unification. The emphasis on the pacification effort in the South, and the
immense costs it entailed, were the product of treating subversion as a
novel strategy to be countered as opposed to an enabler for an eventual
conventional clash.22
To use a more contemporary example, China’s militarisation of small
islands in the South China Sea has salience in the context of its doctrine of
being able to fight ‘local wars under informatized conditions’.23 The ISR and
sea denial assets on these islands can provide the PLAN with local
overmatch in the South China Sea against most plausible opponents in
circumstances short of protracted warfare. It is in their capacity to
reinforce a strategy based primarily around conventional warfighting –
and the impact that this has on the region’s balance of power – that these
developments have greatest salience. Similarly, in both Crimea and the
Donbas, Russian forces achieved conventional overmatch against their
Ukrainian counterparts – often in very bloody confrontations, as in the
case of the Donbas conflict. Even if conventional forces are not used but
are simply postured to limit an opponent’s options – as was the case in
Crimea – the conventional balance of forces is often central to any
strategy. This approach uses a combination of tools which allows an
actor to determine the rules of competition by creating an asymmetry of
risk should a conflict escalate.24
21
On the Easter Offensive, see Phil Haun and Colin Jackson, ‘Breaker of Armies:
Air Power in the Easter Offensive and the Myth of Linebacker I and II in the
Vietnam War’, International Security (Vol. 40, No. 3, 2016), pp. 139–78.
22
On the historical parallels between the emphasis of the Kennedy and Johnson
eras on new tools of strategy and the current grey-zone discourse, see John Lewis
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National
Security Strategy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
chapters 7 and 8.
23
See for example, M Taylor Fravel, ‘China’s New Military Strategy: “Winning
Informationized Local Wars”’, China Brief (Vol. 15, No. 13, 2 July 2015).
24
For further information, see Sidharth Kaushal and Peter Roberts, ‘Competitive
Advantage and Rules in Persistent Competitions’, RUSI Occasional Papers (April
2020).
31
Sidharth Kaushal
This leads to the second challenge of framing the grey zone in terms
of the inherent ambiguity of the tools used by a competitor – ignoring the
extent to which defining the boundaries of the competitive space is a
conscious policy choice that depends on the outcome of a parallel
competition to set the rules of competition and to define the contours of
precisely where the competitive space transitions to warfighting. Actors
may have incentives to attempt to define the competitive space in narrow
or broad terms, depending on their circumstances. A conventionally
weaker actor has obvious incentives to broaden the scope of the
competitive space and limit the possibility of high-intensity warfighting.
Take, for example, the dynamic between Pakistan and India, where the
two sides are effectively engaged in a competition to define whether
proxy warfare is a sub-threshold activity. Pakistan’s use of battlefield
nuclear weapons is effectively geared to ensuring that this remains the
case, while the Indian Cold Start doctrine entailing limited conventional
offensives is meant to provide India with usable conventional options to
respond to a proxy attack. Similarly, the assassination of Qassem
Soleimani in response to proxy attacks on US personnel in Iraq was
notable in the way it reframed the nature of the competition by
demonstrating that a direct and potentially highly escalatory kinetic
military response against a sponsoring state might occur as a result of
proxy attacks – thus using conventional forces to narrow the boundaries
of the sub-threshold competitive space for Iran. Defining some tools as
inherently belonging to the grey zone leads policymakers to overlook the
degree to which defining the boundaries of the competitive space is a
strategic choice that must itself be based on an assessment of national
strengths and the use of the levers of national power.
Conclusions
The treatment of low-intensity conflict, as well as the use of other tools of
statecraft within a state’s grand strategy, has some pedigree and is a
useful subject of enquiry. That said, the emphasis on ambiguity evinced
by both analysts and policymakers’ discussions of the grey-zone concept
does more to obscure than clarify.
First, the distinction between grey-zone actions short of war and
warfighting is analytically unhelpful and obscures the role of kinetic
action in many of the instances of revisionism grouped under the grey-
zone rubric. While it is useful and necessary to talk about the strategies
that states can pursue in the context of long-term competition, describing
competition in the grey zone as a ‘strategy’ adds little analytical value.
Second, and finally, an overemphasis on ambiguity ignores the
importance of Kahn’s ‘systemic competition’ to define where the
32
boundaries of the competitive space are, as well as the agency that the
target state has in defining the contours of the grey zone. This has the
effect of eliding the role of a state’s conventional force posture and even
its nuclear assets in the sub-threshold space, as it is the posturing of these
assets that often delineates the boundaries.
33
III. DOING LESS WITH LESS IN THE
LAND DOMAIN
NICK REYNOLDS
It is a long-established point of pride for smaller, lighter professional

military forces that they can match larger, heavier forces. The US Marine
Corps (USMC) has often considered itself as ‘doing more with less’1 when
compared to the US Army, equivalent to the UK defence cliché of
‘punching above our weight’.2 Since the end of the Cold War, successive
events have pushed most Western militaries to become smaller. The idea
of a peace dividend was followed by attempts to make defence more
efficient, and despite a brief trend of modest expansion during the War
on Terror, this has been followed by further contraction. The official
rationale usually involves efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Recently, an
additional element of the debate has been brought to the fore: whether
older, heavier platforms are survivable in the face of the increasing range,
precision and lethality of offensive weapons and technology.
The UK’s Integrated Review in 2021 required government policy to
directly address these questions, and the result for the most part favoured
smaller and lighter land forces. It framed the shrinkage of the British
Army as a positive step, stating that ‘the Army of the future will be leaner,
more lethal, nimbler, and more effectively matched to current and future
threats’ while proposing personnel cuts ‘from the current Full Time Trade
Trained strength of 76,000 to 72,500 by 2025’.3 The necessity of rectifying
prior funding discrepancies by difficult prioritisation decisions was
1
Raymond Priest, ‘Doing More with Less’, Marine Corps Gazette (Vol. 74, No. 10,
1990).
2
Thomas Colley, ‘Britain’s Public War Stories: Punching Above Its Weight or
Vanishing Force?’, Defence Strategic Communications (Vol. 2, 2017), pp. 172–73.
3
Ministry of Defence (MoD), Defence in a Competitive Age, CP 411 (London: The
Stationery Office, 2021), p. 53.
34
Doing Less with Less in the Land Domain
certainly a major factor.4 However, Chief of the General Staff General Sir
Mark Carleton-Smith has argued that the Integrated Review left the British
Army ‘right-sized’.5 Meanwhile, the Chief of Defence Staff focused his
own assessment on the UK’s technological capabilities and the benefits of
structural changes geared towards competition over warfighting when
justifying the cuts to the number of main battle tanks (MBTs) to be
modernised and the total loss of the infantry fighting vehicle fleet.6
Recently, the UK Defence Secretary claimed when proposing personnel
cuts that ‘the Army’s increased deployability and technological advantage
will mean that greater effect can be delivered by fewer people’.7 The
restructuring reflects serious thinking about the implications of
technological change and how to maximise the utility of the armed forces.
While the need for modernisation is real, the focus on efficiency gains
justifying cuts to the size of conventional forces risks conflating some quite
different issues. That some tasks can be carried out with fewer personnel
does not mean that all tasks demanded of land forces do not require
mass. Reductions in mass are not equally consequential across the force,
and those below certain levels begin to significantly constrain the ground
a force can contest and the risks available to a commander irrespective of
how lethal or enabled individual force elements are. It is important that
the mantra of doing more with less is challenged, because increased
capabilities enabled by specific technologies risk concealing very real
reductions in the breadth of tasks a force can deliver once it is cut below
certain critical thresholds. A focus on the expense of, and problems with,
unmodernised, unrestructured military forces has proved to be deeply
unhelpful, as has the narrative that new technologies should replace
rather than complement legacy platforms. This chapter seeks to contend
that far from maintaining capability, recent cuts to the British Army have
4
Guy Anderson et al., ‘The UK’s Integrated Review and Defence Command Paper’,
Janes, 23 March 2021; Mark Lyall Grant, ‘The Integrated Review’s Concept of Global
Britain – Is It Realistic?’, King’s College London, 19 July 2021, <https://www.kcl.ac.
uk/the-integrated-reviews-concept-of-global-britain-is-it-realistic>, accessed 8
August 2021.
5
RUSI, ‘Land Warfare 2021: Welcoming Remarks and Opening Keynote’ (14:24),
17 June 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhcGUoNo6Hk>, accessed 6
August 2021.
6
MoD and Nick Carter, ‘Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI Annual Lecture’,
17 December 2020, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-
defence-staff-at-rusi-annual-lecture>, accessed 8 August 2021.
7
MoD and Ben Wallace, ‘Defence Secretary Oral Statement on the Defence
Command Paper’, 22 March 2021, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/
defence-secretary-oral-statement-on-the-defence-command-paper>, accessed 8
August 2021.
35
Nick Reynolds
left it unable to effectively conduct operations that the Integrated Review

suggests are critical to the UK’s foreign policy strategy.
Not All Reductions in Mass Are Equal

Before exploring the problems with force reductions, it is important to
acknowledge legitimate reasons for why militaries are letting go of
some capabilities and fielding smaller formations. In the US, there is an
ongoing public debate regarding the restructuring of the USMC, which
is divesting itself of all its heavy armour and virtually all its tube
artillery, from 21 battalions to five. As it also loses three marine infantry
battalions and two amphibious vehicle companies, as well as two
transport and two attack aviation squadrons and associated ground
support, this constitutes more than a restructuring but a significant
contraction of the force by 7%.8 The future USMC will favour lighter
forces to focus on the littoral environment of the South and East China
Seas,9 representing perhaps the most radical restructuring of any
Western military at present. The planned changes are controversial,
with concerns about this approach focusing on one problem set to the
exclusion of other possibilities.10 However, the proposed force structure
is the result of dedicated analysis to specific operational tasks against
which the force intends to optimise.
8
Andrew Feickert, ‘New U.S. Marine Corps Force Design Initiatives’, Congressional
Research Service, IN11281, updated 2 March 2021, pp. 1–2; Gina Harkins, ‘Marines
to Shut Down All Tank Units, Cut Infantry Battalions in Major Overhaul’,
Military.com, 23 March 2020, <https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/03/23/
marines-shut-down-all-tank-units-cut-infantry-battalions-major-overhaul.html>,
accessed 29 October 2021.
9
Megan Eckstein, ‘New Marine Corps Cuts Will Slash All Tanks, Many Heavy
Weapons As Focus Shifts to Lighter, Littoral Forces’, USNI News, 23 March 2020,
<https://news.usni.org/2020/03/23/new-marine-corps-cuts-will-slash-all-tanks-
many-heavy-weapons-as-focus-shifts-to-lighter-littoral-forces>, accessed 29
October 2021; David B Larter, ‘The US Marine Corps Wants Grunts Packing
Deadly Swarming Drones’, Defense News, 9 December 2020, <https://www.
defensenews.com/naval/2020/12/09/the-us-marine-corps-wants-grunts-packing-
deadly-swarming-drones/>, accessed 29 October 2021; Peter Ong, ‘“The U.S.
Marine Corps Has Divested in Their Tanks” Well, What Does That Mean?’, Naval
News, 25 September 2020, <https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2020/09/
the-u-s-marine-corps-has-divested-in-their-tanks-well-what-does-that-mean/>,
accessed 29 October 2021.
10
Mallory Shelbourne, ‘Panel: New Focus on China Fight Could Rob Marine Corps
of Versatility’, USNI News, 30 July 2020, <https://news.usni.org/2020/07/30/panel-
new-focus-on-china-fight-could-rob-marine-corps-of-versatility>, accessed 29
October 2021; Mark Cancian, ‘Don’t Go Too Crazy, Marine Corps’, War on the
Rocks, 8 January 2020.
36
The French army has long favoured lighter, more mobile forces,
having tailored their force structure to fit within the constraints of their
limited logistics capability, and generally tolerate greater risks.11 As the
general officer commanding its Centre for Doctrine and Command
Teaching, Michel Delion noted, ‘the French army has maybe a less
technophile approach than other armies’.12 However, its current
modernisation trajectory blends technological updates and multi-domain
concepts that are broadly comparable to their US and UK equivalents,
including a vehicle upgrade programme for its heavy forces, with the
divergent commitment to increasing spending by a projected 46%
between 2018 and 202513 and to generating combat mass on land.14 The
Chief of the French Army Thierry Buckhard has notably committed to
regenerating the army’s ability to conduct combined-arms manoeuvres at
division scale.15 Nevertheless, French military concepts do expect smaller
force packages to offer greater combat power through the application of
reconnaissance, precision fires and manoeuvre.16
Aiming to do more with less is an appropriate approach under the
right conditions. Persistent ISTAR and precision fires are an affordable
means of achieving military effect and are playing a critical role in
counterterrorist and counterinsurgency campaigns, and were recently
seen as enabling a decisive military outcome in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Meanwhile, lighter forces are easier to deploy and subsequently use in
places where heavy forces cannot be deployed within a relevant
11
Michael Shurkin, ‘What It Means to Be Expeditionary: A Look at the French Army
in Africa’, Joint Forces Quarterly (Vol. 82, No. 3, 2016), pp. 76–78.
12
Sydney J Freedberg Jr, ‘Budget Up, French Army Preps for Major Wargames With
US’, Breaking Defense, 25 November 2020, <https://breakingdefense.com/2020/11/
budget-up-french-army-preps-for-major-wargames-with-us/>, accessed 29 October
2021.
13
The Economist, ‘The French Armed Forces are Planning for High-Intensity War’,
31 March 2021.
14
Armée de Terre, ‘Strategic Vision of the Chief of the French Army: “2030
Operational Superiority”’, April 2020, pp. 2, 6, <https://franceintheus.org/IMG/
pdf/french_army_strategic_vision_2020.pdf>, accessed 27 October 2021; Ben
McLennan, ‘Confronting a Foreboding Future: The French Army’s Strategic
Vision’, The Strategist, 14 August 2020; Audrey Quintin, ‘Progress on the Scorpion
Program: France’s Plan to Upgrade its Motorised Capacity’, Finabel, 26 February
2020, <https://finabel.org/progress-on-the-scorpion-program-frances-plan-to-
upgrade-its-motorised-capacity/>, accessed 29 October 2021; Army Recognition,
‘French Army Accelerates Modernization of Land Force’, 19 September 2019,
<https://www.armyrecognition.com/september_2019_global_defense_security_
army_news_industry/french_army_accelerates_modernization_of_land_force.
html>, accessed 29 October 2021.
15
Armée de Terre, ‘Strategic Vision of the Chief of the French Army’.
16
Guy Hubin, Perspectives tactiques (Paris: Economica, 2009).
37
Nick Reynolds
timeframe. Moreover, counterarguments are often polemic, with NATO’s

primary adversary Russia, and China, the US’s ‘pacing threat’,17 held to a
double standard. The Russian military’s aim of shrinking from 1.35 to
1 million personnel18 and its increased focus on precision fires, electronic
warfare and drones is generally portrayed as a well-formulated and
threatening restructuring effort while domestic restructuring along similar
lines is disparaged. Restructuring efforts are a necessity, and those
formations tasked with executing the tactical fight – the archetypal
combat arms and manoeuvre elements that form the core of any
professional military – can produce an outsized effect when backed up
by modern enablers.
Much of the appeal of current debates and trends in force
modernisation and restructuring are driven by the efficacy of the
combination of pervasive, persistent ISTAR and long-range precision
fires. Modern ISTAR in the form of drones can cue on precision fires,
destroying even heavily protected targets. This can be done in a way that
is affordable due to the comparatively low cost of drones and munitions,
while still providing the ability to deliver lethal effect in depth and at
scale.19 As long-range precision fires do not need to saturate targets to
destroy them, they do not need to be launched en masse – or at least not
to the degree required in previous conflicts, albeit still requiring to be
sufficiently distributed in order to benefit from dispersion and avoid
being targeted and attrited by counter-battery fire. Furthermore, the
offence–defence paradigm has shifted. Countermeasures have proven
increasingly expensive to develop while still struggling to reliably protect
platforms and formations. Fears about the lethality of future warfare
triggered by the destruction of the Armenian army in Nagorno-Karabakh
are not unfounded. Thus, there is a practical and psychological
disincentive to retaining a large unmodernised force that is vulnerable to
long-range fires; if a force will simply be destroyed while proving unable
to adequately defend itself against a peer adversary, it has little deterrent
value in high-end conflict, its use will be limited and it will not represent
17
Jim Garamone, ‘Milley Makes Case for U.S. Military Keeping Up With Global,
Technology Changes’, US Department of Defense, 2 December 2020, <https://
www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2432855/milley-makes-case-for-
us-military-keeping-up-with-global-technology-changes/>, accessed 29 October
2021.
18
Defence and Military Analysis Team, ‘Russia’s Armed Forces: More Capable by
Far, But For How Long?’, IISS Military Balance Blog, 9 October 2020, <https://
www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2020/10/russia-armed-forces>, accessed 29
October 2021.
19
Liam Collins and Harrison ‘Brandon’ Morgan, ‘Affordable, Abundant, and
Autonomous: The Future of Ground Warfare’, War on the Rocks, 21 April 2020.
38
value for money unless it operates in an alliance context, providing support

or combat mass to a more capable ally.
Regrettably, while policy documents have alluded to these changes
in the character of warfare, cuts to UK land forces have been driven
principally by fiscal calculations. The UK has experienced more extreme
shrinkage than comparable militaries, even before the Integrated Review.
The 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) was replete with
references to efficiency gains, cost-effectiveness and enhanced
capability,20 while the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) 2012 Defence
Equipment Plan laid out similar aspirations of efficiency concurrent with
investment and improved effectiveness.21 Yet, while troop strength was
reduced, no new major systems have entered service. The 2015 SDSR and
2016 Defence Equipment Plan raised awkward questions when it became
apparent that the efficiency savings required to continue the planned
level of investment in the armed forces outstripped the ability of the MoD
and services to deliver them.22 Furthermore, the 2017 National Security
Capability Review shifted its language towards sustainment and resilience
in the face of new threats.23 Here, structural changes and budget cuts are
driven more by financial constraints than any calculations about threats
and capability. Problems have culminated to the point that in January
2021, the National Audit Office declared ‘4 years in a row that we have
reported that the Equipment Plan has been unaffordable’.24
Modernisation is Not Minimisation

It is clear that conflicting imperatives allow rhetoric to be deployed to
support contradictory propositions: that cuts and changes can either
represent adaptation and efficiency, or the irresponsible cutting of core
capability. Untangling debates around which interpretation is more
accurate can be difficult, for there is a significant theory–praxis gap in
modern warfare. Recent small-scale examples such as Nagorno-
20
HM Government, Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic
Defence and Security Review, Cm 7948 (London: The Stationery Office, 2010),
pp. 10, 26, 33, 59, 69.
21
MoD, ‘The Defence Equipment Plan 2012’, p. 4.
22
Commons Defence Select Committee, ‘Gambling on “Efficiency”: Defence
Acquisition and Procurement Contents: 3. The Defence Equipment Plan’, 14
December 2017, <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/
cmdfence/431/43106.htm>, accessed 10 March 2021.
23
HM Government, ‘National Security Capability Review’, March 2018, pp. 2–6,
14–17.
24
National Audit Office, The Equipment Plan 2020 to 2030, HC 1037 (London:
National Audit Office, 2021), p. 4.
39
Nick Reynolds
Karabakh, which involved less-capable belligerents such as Armenia who

lacked a modern IADS, provide very limited evidence sets.25 NATO and
Western-style militaries have not faced a peer adversary in fighting at
scale for many years, and so the system of capabilities that modern
militaries field have not been put to the test in adversarial conditions.
While this lack of fighting is merciful, the result is a greater degree of
uncertainty about how peer adversaries and Western forces will interact
in practice. It is especially difficult for outsiders to determine the exact
impact of structural changes to military forces, and public opinion is a
poor gauge of whether given changes are warranted or sensible. Even
well-intentioned restructuring efforts could prove difficult to rectify or
reverse if core capabilities had been sacrificed for expected
improvements in efficiency and capability which proved illusory. When
misapplied, the rhetoric of change can therefore be disastrous. The idea
of doing more with less, which is politically palatable and financially
attractive in a resource-constrained environment, is dangerous for exactly
this reason unless the government, military hierarchy and general public
have a clear understanding of what they want to get from their
investment in their military, what particular lines of investment buy them
in terms of capability and where the inefficiencies within the military are
to be found. The Russian military’s contraction in terms of personnel
numbers26 occurs in the context of a force that still operates at a superior
scale to its European adversaries and is growing in terms of defence
spending.27 Likewise, the USMC’s shift away from heavy forces is
explicitly designed to prevent duplication of effort with the US Army,
rather than to divest the services as a whole of capability, and the USMC’s
new structure is self-consciously specific to the Pacific theatre.28 Forces
might have scope to become leaner, but still need to be able to operate
at a relevant scale. This requires a degree of combat mass, and traditional
calculi about the number of personnel, formations, combat vehicles and
systems required in the context of a state’s strategic circumstances remain
relevant.
25
Shaan Shaikh and Wes Rumbaugh, ‘The Air and Missile War in Nagorno-
Karabakh: Lessons for the Future of Strike and Defense’, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, 8 December 2020, <https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-
missile-war-nagorno-karabakh-lessons-future-strike-and-defense>, accessed 28
August 2021.
26
Defence and Military Analysis Team, ‘Russia’s Armed Forces’.
27
Andrew Radin et al., The Future of the Russian Military: Russia’s Ground
Combat Capabilities and Implications for U.S.-Russia Competition (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND, 2019), pp. 30–36.
28
Ong, ‘“The U.S. Marine Corps Has Divested in Their Tanks” Well, What Does
That Mean?’.
40
Take, for instance, the recent non-combatant evacuation operation

from Afghanistan as a demonstration of the minimum necessary mass to
achieve politically essential military tasks. The international coalition
needed to secure Kabul airport and use it as a staging area for operations
to recover their nationals and allies. This turned out to require the best
part of an infantry division, including elements from the 82nd Airborne,
US Marine Corps, the UK’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, Turkish, French,
German and smaller elements of other coalition forces.29 Until available
at this strength, the force was insufficient to prevent the runway being
overrun by non-combatants.30 This force was subsequently largely
committed, holding back large crowds, providing medical assistance and
screening evacuees. None of these tasks could be made more efficient by
machines. Yet, this force was only sufficient because the Taliban had
chosen not to attack coalition forces.31 Had they put the runway under
indirect fire, the cordon would have needed to be expanded, significantly
increasing the size of the force necessary. Given that the UK’s highly
deployable force amounts to a single under-strength infantry brigade, the
UK was dependent on the US presence until their withdrawal.32 Had the
UK bent itself out of shape to deploy more infantry and extend the
presence beyond the US, they would have been reliant on the Taliban
not escalating. Otherwise, the operation would suddenly have
overstretched their capacity to maintain the perimeter. The UK’s policy
options were clearly constrained by what the US would enable, and the
Taliban allow. The result was that, in spite of the commendable efforts of
UK troops on the ground, nationals and many Afghans who the UK
intended to evacuate were left in Kabul, under threat from the Taliban.
The UK lacked the mass to secure a single piece of infrastructure abroad,
and no amount of efficiencies within the force would have altered that
calculus.
Regarding the UK’s commitments to NATO, a division is ‘the principal
element of the British contribution to a coalition’.33 Here, the UK’s
Warfighting Division is a useful case study for determining whether the
UK operates at an appropriate scale to fulfil its stated commitments. It is
worth emphasising that commitments to NATO remain at the heart of the
29
Brief to RUSI by 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team on 12 October 2021.
30
Luke Harding and Ben Doherty, ‘Kabul Airport: Footage Appears to Show
Afghans Falling From Plane After Takeoff’, The Guardian, 16 August 2021.
31
Rupan Jaim, ‘Taliban Guards Continue to Provide Security Outside Kabul Airport
Taliban Official’, Reuters, 26 August 2021.
32
Daniel Kramer, ‘Afghanistan: Why Can’t the UK Hold Kabul Airport Without the
US?’, BBC News, 27 August 2021.
33
Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, ‘The Big Picture: The UK
Warfighting Division in Context’, Ares & Athena (No. 6, November 2016), p. 6.
41
Nick Reynolds
Integrated Review. The numbers are troubling. Only 148 of the British
Army’s 227 Challenger 2 MBTs are to be retained and upgraded after the
Integrated Review,34 and 3rd (UK) Division will operate 112 of these in
two regiments.35 Within the division, 1 Armoured Infantry Brigade, 12th
Armoured Infantry Brigade and 20th Armoured Brigade36 form a Deep
Recce Strike Combat Team and two Heavy Brigade Combat Teams
(BCTs). Each Heavy BCT will derive its principal combat power from an
armoured regiment of MBTs, specifically the Type 56 Armoured
Regiment, so-called because it consisted of 56 MBTs split into three 18-
strong squadrons, a model that remains fundamentally unchanged from
when the Army 2020 plan was developed.37 While the UK’s fleet
management dictates that units do not routinely hold a full complement
of MBTs, in the event of conflict around 112 out of 148 MBTs would sit
within the Warfighting Division. By contrast, a standard-configuration
Russian tank regiment, their closest equivalent formation to 3rd (UK)
Division’s Type 56 Armoured Regiment, would derive its principal
combat power from 93 T72B3 MBTs that would be spread across three
battalions of 31 MBTs each, supported by a motor-rifle battalion
equipped with 41 BMPs (Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty, meaning ‘infantry
fighting vehicles’). The two supporting motor-rifle regiments would each
include another tank battalion, bringing the total number of MBTs in a
Russian division to 155.38 Qualitatively, Russian modernisation of their
armoured forces make the workhorse T72B3 MBT a threat to
Challenger.39 UK doctrine dictates that a 3:1 ratio in the close battle
should be sought to achieve decisive advantage, and is a common
planning assumption. The numerical disadvantage between the platforms
delivering combat power that the UK would face in a high-end
warfighting scenario, and the lack of a second echelon to replenish
losses when factoring in the need to retain a training fleet, indicate that
34
MoD, Defence in a Competitive Age, CP 411 (London: The Stationery Office,
2021), p. 54.
35
Ibid., pp. 20, 68.
36
British Army, ‘Continual Operation Readiness: 3rd (United Kingdom) Division’,
<https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brigades/3rd-
united-kingdom-division/>, accessed 24 August 2021.
37
British Army, Transforming the British Army: Modernising to Face an
Unpredictable Future (London: The Stationery Office, 2012), p. 5.
38
Konrad Muzyka, ‘Russian Forces in the Western Military District’, CNA, June
2021, p. 23, <https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/Russian-Forces-in-the-Western-
Military-District.pdf>, accessed 24 August 2021.
39
Will Flannigan, ‘Facts Over Fear; T-14 Armata’, Wavell Room, 19 February 2019,
<https://wavellroom.com/2019/02/19/facts-over-fear-t14-take-the-threat-seriously/>,
accessed 8 August 2021.
42
the UK’s contribution to NATO is verifiably under strength. These

deficiencies are often wished away with the assurance that the enemy
would be attrited by higher-echelon effects before UK units are
committed, but given that equivalent Russian formations also have
significantly more artillery, and that the RAF would be unable to support
ground units while conducting the suppression and destruction of enemy
air defences, these assumptions are ill founded. Arguments that the
character of war has changed and that novel capabilities invalidate these
force ratios, while theoretically defensible, are themselves invalidated by
the fact that no such novel capabilities are held within 3rd (UK) Division,
nor is their acquisition at scale part of the UK’s Equipment Plan. Thus, in
light of the concept of operations of UK forces, the force is insufficient in
scale to deliver against its stated task.
A related issue is the importance of enablement. As noted above,
persistent ISTAR and precision fires are disproportionately influential in
the current discourse, for this means of generating and delivering
firepower is one area in which a smaller force can deliver large
effects. Yet, in the land domain, these functions must support the
ground manoeuvre units and other frontline combat elements. In the
recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the most important result of
effective Azeri drone use was to attrit Armenian reinforcements and
enablers such as artillery, allowing the Azeris to fight under
advantageous conditions at the point of contact. The drones set
decisive conditions but were still a shaping force. Closing with and
destroying the enemy, physically manoeuvring and taking ground all
had to be conducted much as before.
The same logic applies to non-kinetic measures. Much has been
made of influence, cyber and psychological operations. In low-
intensity conflict or other operations below the threshold of
warfighting, these have been suggested as having the capacity to
replicate the effect of kinetic measures without the expense, human
cost or risk. Yet, these non-kinetic measures are most useful when
they either enable ground manoeuvre forces to conduct their mission
or amplify the effects produced by physical activity, an interactionist
model between kinetic and non-kinetic effects that defies the narrative
of replacement.
The Need for Skin in the Game

Interactionist approaches of both types, between both modernised enablers
and traditionally structured and equipped ground combat forces, and
kinetic and non-kinetic effects, are often used in the context of alliances
and partnerships. Pioneered as a core element of campaigning by the US
43
Nick Reynolds
in 2001 in Afghanistan,40 and continuing in comparable forms to this day,

this has involved providing ISTAR and air assets to bolster local partner
forces, with a small number of well-trained personnel providing a liaison
function and working to integrate the disparate elements. Local partners
provide combat mass enabled by modern firepower and targeting, and
non-kinetic influence measures can be provided by whichever party is
able to best tap into and leverage the relevant networks, with local
partners dealing with local social groups and sub-state entities while
patrons might manage influence in cyberspace and diplomatic initiatives
with international stakeholders. While this approach originated for
reasons of political sensitivities around presence and casualties, it is of
use if the military providing high-end assets is too small to deploy at
sufficient scale to achieve their aims, even if the political will to do so
exists. In theory, high-end assets can provide sufficient capability to buy
credibility as a partner or ally, and so partnered operations have been
argued as a replacement for mass.
However, asking other partners and allies to provide the bulk of the
ground forces, who accept the most physical risk and thus the vast majority
of casualties when things go wrong, is problematic. A perceived
unwillingness to commit blood as well as treasure in the eyes of partners and
allies could be damaging to the state in question’s reputation. Since the end
of early, large-scale counterinsurgency deployments during the War on
Terror, Western forces working with less-capable partners – as the US has
done in Iraq and Afghanistan – have often been prevented from
accompanying forces forward by political sensitivities about overinvolvement
and casualties. Advisors have found ways of retaining credibility in the eyes
of their partners under such circumstances, usually through demonstrating
sufficient past combat experience coupled with bringing relevant and useful
skills. Nevertheless, this has represented an ongoing challenge when one
partner in a partnership is taking physical risks that the other is not.41
There is also the issue of the expertise that liaison personnel bring,
for if the plugging in of ISTAR, air assets and other high-end capabilities
includes the provision of the underpinning command-and-control (C2)
structure, then advisors must be sufficiently experienced at working
within a comparable system. Effective C2 partnering may prove difficult if
the provider of C2 structures does not routinely operate at scale and
lacks the relevant expertise.42 Furthermore, as evidenced by the escape
40
Yaniv Barzilai, 102 Days of War: How Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda & the Taliban
Survived 2001 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013), pp. 100–18.
41
Author interview with US officers advising the Afghan National Army, February
2020.
42
Ibid.
44
of Osama bin Laden in 2001,43 the ability of a handful of personnel, even in

a coordinating role, to influence a partner force to fight in a desired manner
towards specific operational objectives can be limited. The force providing
the main ground presence will be able to determine the priorities and
direction of operations at critical points. Relying on partners to do so
inherently surrenders a great deal of strategic decision-making authority
and an acceptance of enabling local partners to achieve their own
objectives first and patron objectives second.
The evidence suggests that Western militaries should seek to retain
their own ground combat mass and be willing to accept the risks
associated with conducting operations in a sovereign manner.
Furthermore, they should keep abreast of current technological trends
and concepts of operation to ensure that they have an integrated range of
capabilities. As survivability cannot be guaranteed at the level of small
unit and individual platform defence due to the sheer lethality of modern
offensive capabilities, this integration is critical. It is only by acting in
concert through integration that different elements of a military force can
remain situationally aware, coordinated, lethal and survivable.
Casualties Are Inevitable, Defeat Is Not

Even if ground manoeuvre forces are maintained in this way, there are
challenges to ensuring that they remain effective at a relevant scale when
faced with attrition. In warfighting against a peer adversary, even a
professional, well-motivated and adaptable force that has been
modernised and integrated along current concepts of best practice will
not be able to avoid material losses and human casualties. In US
doctrine, costs and risks correspond respectively to losses incurred when
operations go to plan and when they do not,44 but in either case are
likely to correspond to different levels of attrition. Furthermore,
successful operations have historically included tactical defeats, and
successful campaigns generally include unsuccessful operations. Even the
most talented and gifted commanders have experienced their share of
failures, or even blunders. Prominent examples are the British campaigns
in North Africa, the Far East and Europe during the Second World War,
where successes at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Kohima-Imphal and
Operation Overlord were preceded by decisive defeats in the Battle of
France in 1940 and the Second Battle of Tobruk and the Battle of
Singapore in 1942. These examples are extreme and characterised by
43
Barzilai, 102 Days of War, pp. 100–18.
44
MoD, ‘Joint Doctrine Note 2/19: Defence Strategic Communication: An
Approach to Formulating and Executing Strategy’, April 2019, p. vi-1.
45
Nick Reynolds
mass mobilisation at a scale and for a type of warfare almost unthinkable in

the post-nuclear era. However, the evidence from routine collective
training is that battlegroups at British Army Training Unit Suffield and US
Army brigades at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin continue to
experience both failure and success as a natural consequence of facing
challenging circumstances, learning from both.45 Meanwhile, current
thinking on high-end warfighting is marked by concerns about an
inability for forces to recover from attrition. Even successful integration of
traditional and new capabilities cannot be guaranteed to prevent attrition
from rendering a force combat ineffective. In the UK, it may be argued
that an obsession with manoeuvre as opposed to attritional and
positional approaches to warfare often masks the fact that attrition is a
constant, with the variable being the rate at which it is experienced.
The US doctrines of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) and Joint All-
Domain Operations (JADO) exemplify the current response to this
conundrum.46 In theory, the winner of the first campaign will be the
overall victor, if it can thereby establish decisive overmatch against any
party to the conflict whose first echelon and bespoke capabilities can be
destroyed. By this logic, any subsequent campaign would be a one-sided
butchery of whichever force had lost its first echelon, and the loser of the
first campaign would therefore have little rational alternative but to
accept an unfavourable negotiated settlement or terms. Sceptics of this
hypothesis have accused MDO and JADO of falling victim to short war
thinking.47 Yet, if MDO and JADO do not fully articulate a solution to
fighting a prospective high-end war, the concepts do succeed in
persuasively highlighting some of its complex challenges. In particular,
the potency of precision fires and other modern weapons systems leaves
little margin for error for all but the largest global economies when high-
end capabilities are few in number, prohibitively expensive and difficult
to generate or regenerate quickly.
The lack of margin for error in such a high-end war incentivises an
exclusive focus on the first echelon. The choice between an
uncompetitive second echelon or no second echelon, when resources
45
Alex Mills, ‘Training and Mission Failure at BATUS’, British Army Review
(Vol. 174, Winter 2019), pp. 91–93.
46
Colin Clark, ‘Gen. Hyten on the New American Way of War: All-Domain
Operations’, Breaking Defense, 18 February 2020, <https://breakingdefense.com/
2020/02/gen-hyten-on-the-new-american-way-of-war-all-domain-operations/>,
47
Christopher Parker, ‘Rushing to Defeat: The Strategic Flaw in Contemporary U.S.
Army Thinking’, Strategy Bridge, 6 July 2020, <https://thestrategybridge.org/the-
bridge/2020/7/6/rushing-to-defeat-the-strategic-flaw-in-contemporary-us-army-
thinking>, accessed 29 October 2021.
46
expended on the former could be used to bolster the first echelon, is an

obvious one – the first echelon should be the priority. However, in a
‘ways, ends, means’ construct where weak links between the three
elements translate into increased risk, and with the theory–praxis gap and
evidenced offence–defence balance having shifted, modern military
forces require a first echelon that can operate and reconstitute itself at
sufficient scale to survive greater-than-expected attrition. This is doable
but requires both additional capacity in the combat arms and a depth of
replacement or recovery, repair and refit enablers for the material
element of the force. Alternatively, militaries may choose to maintain a
second echelon that is capable enough to be competitive against the
predicted adversary, which in practical terms will require a similar level
and type of investment. Either way, the result should be that the military
can fight a second campaign even after an unsuccessful first, in order to
remain credible and not burdened with an unacceptable level of risk in
the event of conflict. This is a high level of investment incompatible with
many recent examples of ‘doing more with less’. However, it may be
necessary for any military wishing to deter or compete with capable
adversaries. Policymakers may be forced to accept that defence after the
Cold War is not destined to remain cheap.
Resilience and absorbing setbacks are not only relevant in the case of
high-end warfighting at scale. A military may also need to respond to crises
or otherwise operate in low-intensity conflicts or stabilisation operations
that are deemed to be in the national interest. Yet, a force without
sufficient mass will find itself losing its deterrent capability if it were
called on to conduct a secondary campaign. Afghanistan and Iraq
provide such examples for the UK, where medium-scale
counterinsurgency deployments contributed to a dire lack of
modernisation as conventional components of the force were neglected.
A force that retains sufficient scale to maintain readiness even while
supporting other commitments most importantly keeps the ability to
impose or enforce thresholds on adversaries. It can also absorb setbacks
in the event of conflict, afford to take more risk and potentially act in a
more unpredictable manner without suboptimal battlefield outcomes
equating to overall strategic defeat. Critically, it should be possible to
compete with adversaries whilst concurrently retaining the necessary
readiness to maintain credible conventional deterrence.
While doing more with less is an attractive proposition, it has too
often been approached with an inadequate understanding of where
efficiencies and force multipliers can be found, and where scale and
depth cannot be replaced. Financial constraints cannot be ignored, but
modern Western militaries need to reassess their discourse surrounding
investment and scale to ensure that their policies match ambition with
47
Nick Reynolds
resource and can credibly achieve their stated aims. Emerging technological
changes for high-end warfighting have tipped the offence–defence balance
in favour of offensive capabilities, incentivising short and fast concepts of
operations to knock out adversaries early. However, lean and efficient
forces will find themselves vulnerable to excessive attrition and being
rendered combat ineffective if they do not operate their first echelon at a
larger scale than they do at present. These must include sufficient
frontline ground combat forces, as platforms, systems and formations
dedicated to delivering long-range kinetic and non-kinetic effects are
ultimately only enablers of more traditional forces which can take, hold
and dominate ground and deliver security in the areas of the battlespace
they control.
48
IV. SWARMING MUNITIONS, UAVs
AND THE MYTH OF CHEAP MASS
JUSTIN BRONK
Swarming munitions and cheap ‘attritable’ UAVs are two of the most
common features of PowerPoint slides and forecasting documents
dealing with the future battlefield.1 Alongside the ubiquitous lightning
bolts representing seamless connectivity, these highly automated assets
are pictured sweeping across future skies in large numbers, rolling back
the fog of war, conducting stand-in jamming and striking key targets with
pinpoint accuracy.2 It is small wonder that this vision is extremely
attractive to many policymakers. In the UK, both the Chief of the Air Staff
and Chief of the Defence Staff recently outlined a vision where such
capabilities might provide up to 80% of the RAF’s combat air mass by the
2030s.3
Swarming munitions are designed to be used in large numbers
simultaneously, and to coordinate their actions as a group to improve
overall efficiency. Attritable, reusable UAVs are an emerging class of UAV
designed for a limited operational lifespan, able to carry modular sensor
1
For example, Ministry of Defence, ‘Joint Concept Note 1/17: Future Force
Concept’, July 2017, p. 43; Frank Fresconi and Scott Schoenfeld, ‘ARL Experts Are
on Target to Find Solutions for the Future Battlespace’, US Army, 9 February
2018, <https://www.army.mil/article/200409/arl_experts_are_on_target_to_find_
solutions_for_the_future_battlespace>, accessed 16 February 2021; Valerie
Insinna, ‘These Are the Five Areas Where the Air Force Wants to See an
Explosion of Technology’, Defense News, 17 April 2019.
2
T X Hammes, ‘Expeditionary Operations in the Fourth Industrial Revolution’,
MCU Journal (Vol. 8, No. 1, July 2017), pp. 82–103.
3
Harry Lye, ‘Future RAF Will Mix Crewed Fighters, UAVs and Swarming Drones:
CDS’, Airforce Technology, last updated 14 April 2021, <https://www.airforce-
technology.com/features/future-raf-will-mix-crewed-fighters-uavs-and-swarming-
drones-cds/>, accessed 9 August 2021.
49
Justin Bronk
and/or weapon payloads, for significantly lower acquisition and operating

costs than traditional combat aircraft.4 They represent a distinct class of
weapon system from swarming munitions. However, both are united by
a common appeal for military planners and policymakers; the promise of
much-needed combat mass being generated cheaply through technology.
In recent years, this has led to a tendency to view traditional platforms
such as fast jets and cruise missiles as ‘sunset capabilities’ in the face of
an imminent era of cheap, attritable multipurpose UAVs and swarming
munitions.5 There are certainly a range of promising trials underway
which support the belief that attritable, reusable UAVs and munitions
with swarming capabilities will be an important part of the future of
aerial warfare. However, there are significant limitations around the
potential capabilities of both classes of weapons system that need to be
understood.
‘Swarming’ as a descriptive term for munitions denotes a specific set
of capabilities which differentiate such weapons from traditional munitions
which can also potentially be used in large numbers. Swarming munitions
must have the datalinks, software and processing power to automatically
coordinate their actions as a group in flight. They must also be equipped
with sensors to build up a useful independent picture of the environment
around them, so that they can coordinate their collective behaviour in
response to contextual prompts. This sort of capability has been
operational in limited forms since the late Cold War, especially in the
realm of anti-ship missiles. The Russian SS-N-19 ‘Shipwreck’ missile
entered service in 1983 and was designed to be launched in salvos of
four to eight missiles which would coordinate their actions in flight; one
missile in the group would climb to higher altitudes to provide real-time
radar data on targets to the others, which remained at a very low level to
avoid interception.6 If the higher-flying missile was destroyed, another
4
Mark Gunzinger and Lukas Autenried, ‘Understanding the Promise of Skyborg
and Low-Cost Attritable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, Mitchell Institute Policy
Paper (Vol. 24, September 2020).
5
Defence Synergia, ‘CDS Speech to IISS 31 March 2021 – Integrated Review’,
6 April 2021, <https://www.defencesynergia.co.uk/cds-speech-to-iiss-31-march-
2021-integrated-review/>, accessed 29 October 2021. See also General Sir Nick
Carter’s discussion of ‘sunset capabilities’ in HM Government and Nick Carter,
‘Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter’s Annual RUSI Speech’,
5 December 2019, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-the-
defence-staff-general-sir-nick-carters-annual-rusi-speech>, accessed 29 October
2021.
6
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, ‘P-700 Granit/SS-N-19 “Shipwreck”’, 28 June
2018, <https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-proliferation/todays-
missile-threat/russia/p-700-granit-ss-n-19-shipwreck/>, accessed 5 March 2021.
50
Swarming Munitions, UAVs and the Myth of Cheap Mass
from the remaining group would climb to take over the guidance and
coordination role. Since the intended target – US Navy carrier
battlegroups – would generally be attacked in open waters and presented
a distinctive radar signature, the limited processing power and sensor
capacity of Soviet missiles at the time was sufficient to enable this
swarming behaviour.
For modern swarming munitions, however, the primary targets are
likely to be hostile radars, missile launchers and armoured vehicles.
These will generally be hidden in complex terrain, mobile, well
camouflaged and often protected by decoys and point defence systems.
This dramatically increases the complexity of the cooperative detection,
classification and prioritisation task which modern swarming munitions
must be able to undertake in flight. Nonetheless, a combination of
compact, high-resolution sensors and increasingly powerful
microprocessors is giving a new generation of weapons the capability to
overcome many of these challenges. The US Air Force is currently testing
a range of adapted cruise missiles and glide bombs to demonstrate
swarming behaviours under the umbrella of its Golden Horde
programme.7 In Europe, MBDA plans to incorporate certain swarming
capabilities into their SPEAR 3/EW family of munitions for the UK
Ministry of Defence (MoD).8 The key target set for both is likely to be
hostile integrated air defence system (IADS) components including
command and control nodes, mobile radars and high-threat surface-to-air
missile (SAM) launchers.
In terms of attritable UAVs, the US Air Force recently launched its
Skyborg autonomous UAV ‘pilot’ development programme, which
commenced flight testing fitted to UAVs manufactured by various
companies in summer 2021.9 The UK’s MoD has funded the development
of its new Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA)
technology demonstrator, with flight testing due to commence in 2023.10
The Royal Australian Air Force also has six Boeing Loyal Wingman
7
Thomas Newdick, ‘Golden Horde Swarming Munitions Program Back On Target
After Second Round of Tests’, The Warzone, 3 March 2021.
8
Author correspondence with MBDA subject matter expert, 8 March 2021.
9
Valerie Insinna, ‘Skyborg Makes its Second Flight, This Time Autonomously
Piloting General Atomics’ Avenger Drone’, Defense News, 30 June 2021. See also
Daryl Mayer, ‘AFLCMC Awards Contract for Skyborg Prototypes’, US Air Force,
10 December 2020, <https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2440755/
aflcmc-awards-contract-for-skyborg-prototypes/>, accessed 18 February 2021.
10
Craig Hoyle, ‘Spirit Team to Fly LANCA Loyal Wingman Demonstrator for UK’,
Flight Global, 26 January 2021, <https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/spirit-
team-to-fly-lanca-loyal-wingman-demonstrator-for-uk/142126.article>, accessed
3 March 2021.
51
Justin Bronk
prototype unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) on order, with the

first having made its maiden flight in March 2021.11 The purpose of these
loyal wingman-type programmes is to explore the tactical opportunities
offered by teaming attritable, reusable UCAVs with fast jets, and to guide
the rapid acquisition of UCAV capabilities to augment existing fleets. As
such, the UCAVs will need to be able to carry fuel, sensors and weapons
at speeds and over comparable distances to those jets.
Anything that flies must balance aerodynamic, size and performance
attributes which directly impact cost, capabilities and potential uses. The
range that any munition or aircraft can fly will depend on the fuel
efficiency of its engine, the amount of fuel that can be carried, desired
cruise speed and altitude, and the lift/drag ratio of its aerodynamic
configuration. The larger an airframe is, the more weapons and sensors
can be carried as a given proportion of its usable weight and internal
space. This is why combat aircraft have become progressively larger
since their inception, a trend enabled by more powerful and efficient
engines. A modern fast jet must carry a wide array of multirole weapons,
a heavy and complex radar and other sensors, which all require power,
cooling capacity and computer hardware to control them and process the
information they generate, as well as sufficient fuel to provide the
required performance over extended ranges. Providing suitable range
and performance while accommodating these payload and space
requirements is the primary reason why a modern fighter jet such as the
RAF’s Typhoon FGR4 weighs around 21 tonnes when loaded, despite the
extensive use of composite materials to keep weight to a minimum.12
Only a relatively small proportion of the total aircraft weight and size is
directly attributable to the need to accommodate crew, a cockpit with
instrumentation and life support systems, and ejection seats. ‘Loyal
wingman’ or less explicitly tethered, more autonomous attritable UAVs
can avoid the weight and cost penalties associated with a crew.
However, they will still be bound by the same physics-based trade-offs
that have so far led to consistent weight and size growth in comparable
combat aircraft types with each successive generation.
Put simply, if ‘attritable’ UAVs are to be capable of similar
performance to fast jets and are to carry similar weapons and sensors,
they will either have to be comparable in size and weight, have a much
11
Greg Waldron, ‘Boeing Australia’s “Loyal Wingman” Conducts Maiden Sortie’,
Flight Global, 2 March 2021, <https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/boeing-
australias-loyal-wingman-conducts-maiden-sortie/142685.article>, accessed 3
March 2021.
12
Royal Air Force, ‘About the Typhoon FGR4’, <https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircraft/
typhoon-fgr4/>, accessed 19 September 2021.
52
shorter range, or a much smaller useful payload. The weight of any aircraft
is closely linked with operating costs, since in conjunction with the
aerodynamic configuration the weight dictates the amount of power
needed from the engines in order to produce sufficient lift at various
speeds. Heavier airframes need more powerful engines to fly at any
given speed, which generally consume more fuel. This results in either a
shorter range or the need to carry more fuel, which in turn further
increases the required size and weight of the aircraft. As such, the lighter
a UAV can be made, the more likely it is to be sufficient to allow
affordable operations at significant scale. However, this will prevent it
from carrying large payloads, and also limit either range or performance.
Sacrificing fast jet-class performance in favour of slower cruising
speeds would allow range to be increased relative to airframe size and
weight. The slower something is required to fly, the less aerodynamic
drag it must overcome and so the smaller and more fuel efficient its
engine can be. Thus, if desired cruise speed (and acceleration
characteristics) can be kept low, then range for attritable UAVs can be
significantly extended for a given size and fuel capacity. However, this
would mean that such attritable UAVs would need to operate in loose
coordination with, rather than in mixed formations alongside, fast jets in
‘loyal wingman’-type roles. A similar dynamic is true for swarming
munitions development – for a given size, weight and cost of munition,
speed can be increased at the expense of range or vice versa, but
militaries cannot have both in the same design. If something must travel
fast and over long distances, it will have to carry a lot of fuel to feed a
powerful engine, and thus be larger, heavier and more expensive.
Stealth properties further shift this equation towards high acquisition
and operating costs. The airframe shapes which are compatible with low
observability to radars operating in the X and Ku bands are generally less
aerodynamically efficient than more traditional aircraft shapes. This
means they must be larger to generate the same amount of lift.
Furthermore, aircraft which rely on low observability to survive against
hostile forces must carry all their fuel and weapons internally, since
traditional stores on external pylons greatly increase radar cross section.
Therefore, stealth aircraft must be larger and more complex than
traditional equivalents due to the need to accommodate internal weapons
bays and all the necessary fuel within the airframe itself. The stealth
coatings which typically cover such aircraft are also more difficult and
expensive to manufacture than traditional aircraft skins and must be
maintained to a high level of finish to remain effective, which increases
the costs of maintenance and storage. The widespread adoption of
stealth aircraft also affects the requirements for both swarming and more
traditional munitions. Since munitions delivered by stealth aircraft must
53
Justin Bronk
be carried internally to avoid compromising radar signature, they are

subject to more restrictive size, weight and shape constraints than
munitions which are only intended for external carriage. There is also
pressure to develop smaller, shorter-ranged munitions for stealth aircraft
since the latter can get closer to threats, which reduces the value of
additional weapon standoff range, while being constrained in terms of
weapons carried per aircraft.
In summary, there are a series of relatively inescapable trade-offs
which will dictate how and where attritable, reusable UAVs and
swarming munitions will augment and potentially replace more
traditional aircraft and weapons systems. Cost is arguably the key
element for both, since the concepts of ‘attritable’ UAVs and munitions
designed to be expended in large numbers both rely on such weapons
being bought in sufficient numbers to be expended sustainably in
conflict. Furthermore, the same systems that are attritable and/or fieldable
en masse for the US or China are unlikely to be viewed in the same way
by smaller allies or export customers.
There are three broad mission sets for which ‘attritable’ UAVs are
being developed. The first is the comparatively straightforward ‘loyal
wingman’ role wherein UCAVs with similar performance to piloted fast
jets operate alongside the latter in cooperative tactical units. The second
is more independent UCAV operations with airframes in a similar weight
class as fast jets. These would conduct standalone sorties in support of
piloted assets, especially in the ISTAR and suppression/destruction of
enemy air defences (SEAD/DEAD) roles. The third mission set is for
UAVs in a similar weight class to traditional cruise missiles to conduct
primarily ISTAR and electronic warfare missions. These would be
released and potentially recovered by carrier aircraft or launched by
surface units via booster rockets and recovered by parachute.
For loyal wingman-type UCAVs, the most significant cost and size
drivers are likely to be the requirement for sufficient performance and
range characteristics to maximise tactical interoperability with the piloted
fast jets which they will fly alongside. If intended to operate alongside
stealth aircraft without giving away the latter by their presence, such
loyal wingman UCAVs will also need to carry advanced sensors and
munitions internally within a low-observable airframe. These
performance, range and payload requirements mean that combat-capable
loyal wingman-type UCAVs are likely to end up being at least a similar
size and weight to advanced jet training aircraft such as the BAE Systems
Hawk or Boeing/Saab T-7A.
They will also have to have significant capacity for in-flight
autonomy, including the ability to defend themselves and make tactical
decisions to maintain coordination with potentially unpredictable human
54
formation members under rapidly changing circumstances.13 The loyal

wingman concept allows human fighter pilots to remain ‘on the loop’ in
terms of giving tactical directions to their accompanying UCAVs through
line-of-sight datalinks. However, pilots do not have limitless mental
capacity, and can get task saturated simply managing their own aircraft,
weapons and communications, and trying to maintain situational
awareness in combat.14 As such, a loyal wingman-type UCAV must be
fully combat capable even when only receiving relatively limited real-
time directions and permissions by their human formation mates. Unlike
many current-generation remotely piloted UAVs, loyal wingman-type
UCAVs must also be capable of autonomous launch and recovery
capabilities in any weather conditions that their piloted fighter
stablemates would be expected to operate in, since they will provide a
core part of the ‘system of systems’ which will supposedly enable those
piloted fast jets to remain combat effective against future threats. These
requirements will drive significant software complexity, processing
power and sensor requirements, and imply the need for serious national
debates and governmental policy decisions on whether the required
levels of lethal autonomous capabilities are acceptable.
Projects such as Skyborg, LANCA and Loyal Wingman are producing
advanced prototypes for a whole new class of combat aircraft, but the costs,
airframe weight and complexity levels for these proof-of-concept projects
are significantly lower than those which a full-scale frontline loyal
wingman UCAV procurement will imply. This class of UAVs certainly
offers the potential promise of relatively cheap combat aircraft that will
unlock a slew of potentially very useful tactics for use alongside piloted
fast jets. However, it remains to be seen whether they can be developed
to be genuinely combat-capable and dependable frontline aircraft for
high-intensity conflict scenarios at a cost that allows them to be procured
in sufficient numbers to be seen as ‘attritable’ by most air forces. They are
also unlikely to be particularly attractive to air forces for operations in
permissive airspace, where remotely piloted, long-endurance systems
such as the ubiquitous MQ-9 Reaper series will remain more efficient.
13
There is a similar phenomenon at play with loyal wingman-type UCAV
autonomy requirements, as has been found by developers of driverless cars. Safe
and predictable interactions are easier to programme between multiple
automated vehicles than a mix of automated and human-controlled ones. See, for
example, Rodney Brooks, ‘The Big Problem With Self-Driving Cars Is People’,
IEEE Spectrum, 27 July 2017.
14
Fast Jet Performance, ‘SAM Dodging Over the Nevada Desert – Why Low-Level
Flying Is Still Necessary’, 2015, <https://www.fastjetperformance.com/blog/sam-
dodging-over-the-nevada-desert-why-low-level-flying-is-still-necessary>, accessed
9 March 2021.
55
Justin Bronk
To avoid the programming complexity, datalink reliance and

performance requirements inherent in loyal wingman-type UCAV
development, many countries have developed UCAV demonstrators
which appear optimised for more independent concepts of operations.
This category of UCAVs generally consists of flying wing- or cranked
kite-type airframes with buried turbofan engines optimised for minimal
broadband radar and infrared signature, and subsonic flight.15 This
makes them ideal for efficient long-range penetrating flights into heavily
contested airspace, with obvious potential uses in terms of ISTAR, SEAD/
DEAD and strikes against high-value targets. However, they are less
optimised for close tactical cooperation with piloted fast jets, since they
have lower performance, much more restricted agility and are designed
for survivability through remaining undetected. The X-45 and X-47
programmes in the US, Taranis in the UK, nEUROn in France and GJ-11
in China are all examples of technology demonstrators for this class of
UCAV.16 The software and processing capabilities required for an
operational UCAV of this type in the standalone ISTAR, SEAD/DEAD or
even strike role against pre-planned targets are in many ways less
advanced than those required for loyal wingman operations. This is
because they do not have to optimise their in-flight behaviour for
effective tactical cooperation and safe collision avoidance with a
potentially unpredictable human pilot. Also, many of the key targets that
they might be tasked with finding and attacking in a high-intensity
conflict (such as IADS components) have very distinctive radar and IR
signatures which helps to reduce assurance requirements for rules of
engagement.
The lethal autonomy implications, however, are even starker than in
the case of loyal wingman-type operations since standalone UCAVs offer
the greatest potential advantages in mission sets which involve
penetrating heavily defended airspace without direct support. In such
airspace, long-range datalinks or satellite communications are unlikely to
be reliable or suitable for use for real-time control of weapons release
decisions. This is unlikely to prevent major powers such as the US, China
and Russia from developing penetrating UCAVs, meaning that the
15
See, for example, Northrop Grumman, ‘X-47B UCAS’, <https://www.
northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/x-47b-ucas/>, accessed 9 March 2021;
BAE Systems, ‘Taranis’, <https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/taranis>,
16
For a detailed discussion of each, see Justin Bronk, The Future of NATO
Airpower: How Are Future Capability Plans Within the Alliance Diverging and
How Can Interoperability be Maintained?, Whitehall Paper 94 (London: Taylor
and Francis, 2020).
56
question for medium powers with aspirations for penetrating ISTAR, SEAD/
DEAD and strike capabilities is when rather than if they take the ethical and
political plunge. With the requisite high levels of in-flight autonomy,
standalone UCAVs can be designed with a low airframe fatigue life and
operated sparingly in terms of hours flown to retain combat proficiency
of each squadron compared to piloted aircraft. This means total through-
life costs of such systems are likely to be significantly lower than those of
piloted equivalents. However, the very-low-observable airframe,
autonomy and sensors required to operate in the penetrating role in
defended airspace over comparable ranges to piloted combat aircraft
once again imply an acquisition cost which is lower but still comparable
to those of fast jets. Since they offer clear benefits for high-intensity
mission sets, penetrating low-observable UCAVs are likely to be a major
feature of high-end state air power in the coming decades. However,
although one of their attractive qualities is the lack of risk to human
crew, they are likely to be too expensive to be considered truly attritable
for any but the largest of air forces.
The third important class of attritable UAVs being trialled at the time
of writing are those in or below the size and weight class of cruise missiles.
These UAVs blur the line between autonomous aircraft and advanced,
potentially reusable munitions. The upper end of this category involves
compact, subsonic airframes with a small jet engine, fold-out wings and a
modular sensor and/or electronic warfare payload capacity. They are
designed to be either launched from other aircraft or by using a booster
rocket from the ground or a maritime platform, and then potentially
recovered by parachute or in-flight docking with another aircraft after
they have fulfilled their missions. DARPA’s ‘Gremlins’ programme is
perhaps the best known, but there are likely experiments being
undertaken by many states to develop similar concepts.17 The attraction
of such systems is that they can potentially be reused, adding efficiency
over single-use loitering munitions or stand-in jammer equivalents, while
also having an acquisition cost measured in hundreds of thousands or
low millions of dollars as opposed to tens of millions for loyal wingmen
or standalone UCAVs. The limitations compared to those systems concern
payload, mission flexibility and a likely cost which is still comparable to
high-end cruise missiles, which most medium and small air forces already
struggle to field in sufficient numbers. Ultimately, these UAVs offer
various cost advantages over single-use munitions in certain contexts and
can allow the application of novel swarming tactics to problem sets such
17
Paul J Calhoun, ‘Gremlins’, DARPA, <https://www.darpa.mil/program/
gremlins>, accessed 8 March 2021.
57
Justin Bronk
as SEAD/DEAD or ISTAR within defended airspace to provide eyes forward

for an incoming strike package. However, due to the additional complexity
implied by their reusable nature and modular multipurpose payload
options, they will tend to remain more expensive than single-use
swarming and conventional standoff munitions. Some projects such as
the RAF’s Alvina programme are examining significantly smaller and
cheaper systems, but these will be very limited in range compared to
larger UAVs and piloted combat aircraft, and/or sacrifice responsiveness
by having a slow cruising speed.18 With short-range systems, potentially
vulnerable delivery platforms will have to get dangerously close to
threats whilst carrying a large payload of still relatively expensive
‘attritable’ UAVs.
The trade-offs inherent in survivability, range, payload and cost have
already forced a split in traditional standoff missile development between
high-supersonic/hypersonic missiles or more ambitious stealth features
on subsonic ones. It is almost impossible to have both hypersonic
performance and a low infrared and radar signature due to the
aerodynamic shapes and propulsion technologies required for each being
highly specialised. Both techniques significantly increase the cost per
weapon, which in turn has contributed to a demand from militaries for
smaller, cheaper and ‘smarter’ swarming weapons. The idea is that by
coordinating their actions and providing too many threats for IADS to
intercept simultaneously, swarming weapons can offer the required levels
of lethality against improving defences without the cost associated with
comparable numbers of cruise missiles, decoys and jammers.
The most basic and achievable type of swarming logic requires
munitions to be equipped with datalinks so that each can update the
others about their position, chosen target and status, and then use pre-
programmed algorithms to ensure targets are not duplicated. More
advanced systems such as modern anti-ship missiles will also coordinate
their flight paths and final approaches to target vessels to minimise the
effectiveness of the defences on whatever ships they are attacking. One
way of doing this, for example, is to have missiles make their run-ins to
the target ship from the bow and the stern quarter simultaneously.
Smaller munitions can also target weak or critical areas of hard targets
such as reinforced structures or ships, so that a number of small
warheads can collectively cause disproportionate damage. Moving further
up the scale of autonomous swarm capabilities, weapons like those
18
Craig Hoyle, ‘RAF Chief Reveals Combat Cloud, Swarming Drone Advances’,
Flight Global, 15 July 2021, <https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/raf-chief-
reveals-combat-cloud-swarming-drone-advances/144604.article>, accessed 9
August 2021.
58
being trialled in the Golden Horde initiative search for, classify and
collectively prioritise targets as a group, reacting dynamically to
unexpected threats or changes in the environment.19
The degree of autonomous, cooperative capabilities which munitions
are developed with will depend on the anticipated breadth and complexity
of potential mission sets, and the cost, weight and range requirements to
be met. A small munition such as SPEAR 3 or the GBU-53/B StormBreaker,
for example, cannot carry a sufficiently powerful warhead to breach
deeply buried or heavily fortified targets such as bunkers. Furthermore, if a
weapon is to be capable of multiple mission sets in different weather
conditions, this will increase the requirements for multispectral, high-
resolution sensors such as millimetric radar, infrared imaging or light
detection and ranging (LIDAR). However, multispectral sensors also
significantly increase weapon cost and require additional space, batteries
and coolant. The latter compete with fuel, warhead options and the
propulsion system for space and weight. Once again, the longer-ranged
and more responsive, flexible and precise a swarming weapon is required
to be, the larger and more expensive it becomes.
There is also the issue of launch platform capacity and risk tolerance.
The more survivable a launch platform is, the closer it can get to threat
systems and target areas to deploy swarming munitions. Getting closer
also allows launch platforms more opportunities to use their onboard
sensors to give the munitions the best situational awareness picture
possible at launch. Stealth fighters are an obvious candidate but are
limited in terms of munitions capacity by having to carry them internally
to maintain a low radar signature. More traditional fighters such as the
Typhoon or F-15E can carry more munitions but must stand off further
from hostile threats for a given level of risk. Large bombers or transport
aircraft can potentially carry large numbers of munitions but are easy to
detect and have very limited self-defence capabilities if fired upon.
Therefore, there is an inverse relationship between how close a launch
platform can get to defended targets and the number of munitions each
launch platform can carry. This is further complicated by the fact that
having to launch from longer distances from the target area means that
the munitions must be larger or much slower to achieve the required
range. A munition in the 100-kg class with an efficient mini-turbojet
propulsion system might be able to offer standoff ranges of around
150 km with a medium–high altitude release. However, this is still well
19
Garrett Reim, ‘Golden Horde Collaborative Bombs Hit Four Targets
Simultaneously in Test’, Flight Global, 26 February 2021, <https://www.
flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/golden-horde-collaborative-bombs-hit-four-targets-
simultaneously-in-test/142655.article>, accessed 1 April 2021.
59
Justin Bronk
within threat range for legacy fighters, let alone transport aircraft, against a
modern peer IADS. Therefore, swarming munitions intended to be
launched in numbers beyond those which can be carried by the limited
number of penetrating assets available will need to be larger and heavier,
thus making them more expensive.
The addition of swarming capabilities promises significant new
tactical capabilities to a range of existing large and small munitions
classes. These will increase their ability to overcome point defence
systems and allow the integration of organic stand-in jamming
capabilities to a salvo of kinetic munitions. More sophisticated examples
will also allow cruise missiles and glide bombs to search areas for
suspected but as-yet-undetected threats, where rules of engagement
permit. However, these are capability enhancements which will come
with a high cost per weapon fired, even compared to current-generation
standoff weapons. They will also not break the basic relationship
between desired standoff range, cruise speed and weapon size/cost.
Thus, any assumption that swarming munitions will solve current mass
shortcomings in terms of munitions stocks, and the lack of sufficient
survivable launch platforms to get them within range of defended targets,
is sadly misplaced.
In conclusion, swarming munitions and sophisticated UAVs promise
a range of opportunities to increase the efficiency of projecting power in the
air domain. However, unit costs will remain high, especially if the systems
in question are intended to be sufficiently flexible to replace traditional
alternatives across a range of operational scenarios, rather than provide
incremental efficiency gains through a supplementary approach. Even
following the latter approach, the required attributes for most roles mean
that, for countries other than the US and China, swarming munitions and
UAVs/UCAVs will only be affordable in small quantities.
60
V. THE LIGHTS MAY GO OUT, BUT
THE BAND PLAYS ON
PETER ROBERTS
The likelihood of success in achieving national foreign policy goals against

a competitor may be drawn from a set of characteristics determined by a
view on the threat being posed. In military circles, this has historically
been equated to the idea that a threat is equal to the military capability of
a state plus their intent to carry out activities against you.1 This
methodology was rapidly adopted by business seeking ‘competitive
advantage’ and became lingua franca across the public, private,
commercial and military domains before 2005.2 In military education,
where future senior officers and their civil service counterparts are
groomed for high office, such basic calculations have become key
indicators of military prowess – applied as much as an assessment of
one’s own ability to enact foreign policies as it has to other belligerents.3
In national security terms, and increasingly since 1945, this same
calculation has gradually been refined by various states to one that places
equal emphasis on military capability and will to fight. Indeed, given the
history of Western states, the idea of a will to fight (the intent part of the
calculation) has become fixed – first by the ideological position of the
Soviet Union as a long-term adversary, later by the idea of terrorism as a
singular amorphous entity, and most recently by various insurgent groups
1
J David Singer, ‘Threat-Perception and the Armament-Tension Dilemma’, Journal
of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 2, No. 1, 1958), pp. 90–105.
2
Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad, ‘Strategic Intent’, Harvard Business Review (July–
August 2005).
3
Peter Roberts and Heather Venable, ‘Episode 62: Heather Venable: Gen-Z – The
Best Tacticians in History?’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 2 September 2021,
<https://www.rusi.org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-62-heather-venable-
gen-z-best-tacticians-history>, accessed 28 October 2021.
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Peter Roberts
such as Al-Qa’ida, the Islamic State and the Taliban. In this, political and
military leaders seem to have developed an idea that their state’s will to
fight is a fixed variable that has been in a state of slow decline.4 As such,
the chief variable in determining success on the battlefield has often been
equated to military spending alone and the associated military equipment
that is delivered and in service. This is not only a Western issue – for
example, Russia’s doctrine of a ‘correlation of forces’ considers military
capabilities as lined up against each other in a cold calculation that the
greater capability will win on the battlefield.5 Since the concept of
military ‘mass’ is thought to be unaffordable in contemporary Western
military circles, technology has become the crutch with which military
and (later) political leaders have sought to counterbalance the equation
in their favour.6
However, this chapter will evidence that states have proven highly
resilient and adaptable in response to shocks over time. Unless they are
physically occupied, states are usually able to reconstitute and conduct
prolonged operations. In time, these states have demonstrated an ability
to withstand continuous and considerable pressure from foreign actors.
Furthermore, casualty tolerance is not a fixed variable but is highly
context dependent. In any major conflict, casualty tolerance often
increases drastically but is also variable over time: publics have shown
themselves to be much more tolerant to casualties than their political or
military leaders, depending on the cause. This idea of resetting the
narrative on a national will to fight in political and military circles is vital
in order to embed a sound conceptual understanding of our ability to
wage war in the future.
This chapter aims to refine and redefine this calculation to one that
places a much higher emphasis on the national will to fight. It outlines
the idea that a nation’s military capability multiplied by the national will
to fight must be greater than that of an enemy to prevail in a conflict.
Importantly, the idea of the national will to fight – linked to a political
will, which is itself derived from popular support for an intervention –
has two associated factors. First, that the national will to fight multiplies
military capability and is not a simple addition, and second that the will
4
Michael J McNerney et al., National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting
and Others Don’t (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018).
5
Julien Lider, ‘The Correlation of World Forces: The Soviet Concept’, Journal of
Peace Research (Vol. 17, No. 2, 1980), pp. 151–71.
6
Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Nick Carter, ‘Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI
Annual Lecture’, 17 December 2020, <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/
chief-of-defence-staff-at-rusi-annual-lecture>, accessed 23 August 2021.
62
The Lights May Go Out, But the Band Plays On
to fight a specific campaign is not deterministic but contextual and highly

variable.
The chapter concludes that when evaluating the risks in any potential
conflict, and the likely outcomes, policymakers should pay careful attention
to the relative strengths of their second echelon forces and not simply rely
on those asked to fight the first battle. Campaigns are rarely short, and there
are fewer examples of wars that are determined by the initial engagements.
Instead, political and military leaders might do better to understand their
models for fighting over longer periods of time. This requires a different
engagement with the public in ensuring long-term support for key
causes: the current self-imposed limitations of policymakers assume
public intolerance for casualties that deters the creation of realistic
policies, but are also a dubious set of biases that bears little basis to the
lived experience of war.
In its simplest form, the political will to fight is a reflection of the
attitudes of the general public rather than an informed, nuanced and
long-term view to any conflict, intervention or overseas activity. Such
attitudes change in relation to perceptions of the amount at stake in any
engagement, the benefits that might be derived from a military activity,
and the narrative being used to explain and illustrate the campaign, the
context and the conditions. Yet, in acknowledging the realities of these
attitudes, which will naturally vary over the course of any campaign, the
public and their politicians will be both fickle and aware of the ‘sunk
costs’ of longer military adventures.7
Resilient Societies
Western societies have proven themselves remarkably resilient to systemic
shocks. Indeed, in many cases they have exceeded expectations in terms of
their ability to adapt to disruption. Consider, for example, the case of Britain
over the course of the Napoleonic and world wars. The country’s
dependence on food imports and losses to blockades were at their
greatest during the First and Second World Wars, yet suffering from food
shortages during the Napoleonic era exceeded that of the two later
conflicts. The modern state’s ability to reorganise, stockpile and substitute
lost imports largely mitigated the effects of a strategy of punishment,
7
‘Sunk costs’ refer to the amount of resource that has been already expended and
cannot be recovered. In national security terms, there is an associated feeling of
‘how can we give this up after all we’ve sacrificed?’. See Carl Forsling,
‘Understanding the Sacrifice and Sunk Cost of the War in Afghanistan‘, Task and
Purpose, 11 March 2021, <https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/afghanistan-sunk-
costs-withdrawal/>, accessed 29 October 2021.
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Peter Roberts
even when a critical resource was threatened.8 The Royal Navy and British-
flagged merchant fleets were essential in providing protection to convoys
and transporting supplies during this period. While they sustained heavy
losses, the state itself proved remarkably resilient.
Such examples worked against the logic of military strategists of the
time. For example, before the Second World War, advocates of air power
such as Guilio Douhet made the case that the destruction of the
infrastructure that underpinned an opponent’s civilian economy would
render direct clashes with its forces unnecessary.9 An analogue to this
notion was also voiced by figures such as Basil Liddell Hart and the
Defence Secretary Leslie Hoare Belisha, both advocates of the so-called
‘indirect approach’ through which a combination of blockades and
airpower would allow Britain to avoid a repetition of the bloody
attritional battles of the First World War.10 Their ideas were founded on
an argument that societies were complex and fragile ecosystems in which
the disruption of key subsystems could produce the collapse of the
system as a whole.11
More recently, much has been made of the use of combined powers
of states to undermine their adversaries at a national level. Russian
operations in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) used political, military,
economic and cyber levers to attack sovereign governments and achieve
a degree of success in meeting their desired goals. Yet, in doing so,
Russia also galvanised the attacked societies to solidify as states in
response and harden their own resilience to future attacks. In Georgia,
successive administrations overturned NATO advice and reverted to a
conventional military, moving away from the specialised and technical
one that other Western powers had been advocating. In Ukraine, a
40,000-person, crowd-funded militia demonstrated public support for a
8
Mancur Olson Jr, The Economics of the Wartime Shortage: A History of British
Food Supplies in the Napoleonic War and in World Wars I And II (London:
Literary Licensing, 2012).
9
Robert A Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 60.
10
John J Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1988), p. 103. In fairness to Liddell Hart, he did accept the
importance of attrition on the ground, but felt that this role should be outsourced
to allies.
11
This idea had a particular (though not exclusive) appeal to classical liberals who
feared the impact of large standing armies on the power of the state and looked to
win wars in an economical way. See, for example, Azar Gat, A History of Military
Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), pp. 200–50.
64
grinding attritional campaign that has withstood continual Russian

incursions for another seven years.
China may have been learning from Russia’s more obvious intrusions
that have elicited national-level responses. Consistent with its doctrine of
fighting ‘local wars under informatized conditions’,12 China appears to
view disruptive cyber attacks at the strategic level – which might lead a
target population in the US to be more invested in a conflict due to the
anger they produce – as being counterproductive. Chinese leaders view
the wartime applications of cyber attacks in tactical and operational
terms, targeting military systems and C4ISR nodes in conjunction with
kinetic attacks.13 Espionage against strategic targets has not been
matched by a pattern of behaviour, suggesting that subversion and
destruction will be part of a Chinese local war campaign.
There are, of course, examples of states being less resilient to the
coercive use of force. In the aftermath of the terrorist bombing of trains
in Spain in 2004, the Spanish government lost the election and withdrew
from supporting the war in Iraq. Whilst achieving the initial aims, the
attacks did not drive a wider withdrawal of support from US-led forces in
the Multi-National Forces Iraq. This was a stated aim of the published
memo of the Global Islamic Media, which had labelled Spain as ‘the
domino piece most likely to fall first’.14
It is impossible to categorically state that all attacks against the
infrastructure of states will or will not weaken a will to fight. But neither
is it possible to predict under what circumstances the same actions will or
will not strengthen a state’s will to fight. The broad examination of
historical evidence indicates that states are more resilient than they are
given credit for. There is no useful guide to which coercive tools support
the outcomes an actor might desire, but it seems that there is a good deal
more relevance to be placed on the interaction of actions on the societal
culture that might alter the national will to fight.15
The metrics for measuring the resilience of a society to shocks and
how they change under coercion and war, their ability to react and their
flexibility to rebound, are complex and unwieldy. A clearer measure
might be found in the reaction, tolerance and acceptance of casualties.
12
Edmund J Burke et al., ‘People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts’, RAND
Corporation, 2020.
13
Jon R Lindsay, ‘The Impact of China on Cybersecurity: Fiction and Friction’,
International Security (Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015), pp. 7–47.
14
Soufan Center, ‘IntelBrief: 15 Years After Madrid Tarin Bombings, What Have We
Learned’, 11 March 2019, <https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-the-15th-
anniversary-of-the-madrid-train-bombings/>, accessed 10 October 2021.
15
Theo Farrell, ‘Culture and Military Power’, Review of International Studies
(Vol. 24, No. 3, 1998), pp. 407–16.
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Peter Roberts
It Is Not the Casualties but the Cause

The avoidance of unnecessary casualties is a desirable military tenet,
usually framed as economy of force in the Western principles of war,16
that overlaps all methodologies of warfare at the operational level. The
desire, in these terms and at this level, is to preserve resource better than
an adversary in a contest of wills that will, necessarily, be attritional to
some degree. More recently, as militaries have been professionalised and
become smaller, the reduction in casualties has been increasingly
important to preserve scarce resource and prolong output from
expensive capabilities that take considerable time to generate.17
There is another part of the discussion over casualties in conflict that
has become an axiom: that society (and thus politicians) have no stomach
for military casualties in warfare.18 There is an argument made on this
basis that militaries have less utility in ‘challenging’ circumstances
where the risk of loss of personnel cannot be mitigated, and that in
attempting to adapt to this new policy of casualty aversion, militaries
have had to rely increasingly on physical barriers, technology and
different ways of engaging to reduce risk. The argument that these are
less effective in allowing human-to-human contact requires a balance to
be struck, but one in which politics and societal risk aversion plays a
crucial role.19
The third element of casualty aversion is associated with civilian
casualties during military action. As military forces have adapted ways of
fighting that minimise their own casualties (notably in the use of drones
and standoff munitions to kill targets), the result has been a direct
correlation to the public perceptions of increased civilian casualties. Until
recently, there was little useful research into this part of understanding
public support for military action. Nonetheless, recent studies have
produced some useful data and polling – albeit nulling some variables
16
Jan Angstrom and J J Wigen, Contemporary Military Theory: The Dynamics of
War (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), pp. 78–79.
17
Peter Roberts and Tony King, ‘Episode 30: Is the Era of Manoeuvre Warfare
Dead?’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 10 December 2020, <https://rusi.org/
podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-30-era-manoeuvre-warfare-dead>,
accessed 29 October 2021; Peter Roberts and Mungo Melvin, ‘Episode 23: Utility vs
Utilisation’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 5 November 2020, <https://rusi.org/
podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-23-utility-vs-utilisation>, accessed 29
October 2021.
18
Niklas Schörnig and Alexander C Lembcke, ‘The Vision of War Without
Casualties: On the Use of Casualty Aversion in Armament Advertisements’,
Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2006), pp. 204–27.
19
Thomas R Mockaitis, Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace Operations: The Case
of Kosovo (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2004).
66
that could have significant implications for their findings.20 These three
factors have resulted in a political casualty intolerance that has been a
focus of military planning in the UK at least since 1996 and, according to
some, has shaped the country’s government policy about interventions,
engagements and national security since 2003.21
The fixation on military casualty rates is a relatively recent
phenomenon, linked particularly to post-Cold War military engagements,
and has been variable throughout campaigns. A direct link between the
nature of public outcry and interest in military interventions is seemingly
linked to perceptions of the campaign itself. For example, deaths during
the 2003 invasion of Iraq received much less attention than the
subsequent deaths of service personnel during the long
counterinsurgency/state-building campaign that followed. Similar
experiences can be found during the campaign in Afghanistan: casualties
in Operation Jacana in 2002 were expected, but during the subsequent
state-building campaign (2004–17), personnel losses were met with more
questions and resistance.
The same is true for US experiences, as well as other allies who
engaged in these campaigns. One might draw the conclusion that the
public expects the military to make sacrifices in wars they believe are
worthwhile but will be less tolerant when the benefits are unclear. They
also change over the course of these campaigns. This has significant
implications for the military, military operations, and political decision-
making in questions of defence and security.
Arguably, Western governments have always had a requirement to
justify their use of military forces to the electorate. As an intrinsic part of
the democratic process, how governments explained why they were
waging war also involved a narrative of how they were fighting it; an
explanation for the costs in ‘blood and treasure’ to the state and society
at large.22 The number, scale and severity of casualties (dead and
injured) during conflict started to become a more prominent question in
proxy conflicts during the final stages of the Cold War.23 Indeed, it has
been argued that the Vietnam War was a turning point in the US – taking
20
Robert Johns and Graeme A M Davies, ‘Civilian Casualties and Public Support for
Military Action: Experimental Evidence’, Journal for Conflict Resolution (Vol. 63,
No. 1, 2019), pp. 251–81.
21
Paul Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality: US and UK Approaches to Casualty Aversion
and Force Protection’, Defence Studies (Vol. 3, No. 2, 2003), pp. 121–28.
22
John E Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York, NY: John Wiley
and Sons, 1973), pp. 60–69.
23
Victor Mahieu, ‘Casualty Aversion in Western Countries’, Finabel, 15 May 2019,
<https://finabel.org/casualty-aversion-in-western-countries/>, accessed 12
February 2021.
67
Peter Roberts
time to move across the Atlantic to other Western allies – and produced new
attitudes towards military casualties in the Western world, stimulating the
term ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ to indicate the ‘American public’s unwillingness
to continue to support US foreign military efforts, particularly as
casualties rise’.24 Elsewhere in the West, timelines might have been
different but thinking was shifting in the same direction: casualties in the
Falklands War (1982), and how the dead were commemorated,25
alongside the long-running counterinsurgency operations in Northern
Ireland did not shape policy decisions in the UK at the time, yet casualty
aversion did become a significant factor in the 1990s. Subsequently, it has
taken up permanent residence in national security decision-making.26
It was only really after the end of the Cold War that the political and
military concern over casualties as such became an issue across all Western
states. The images of dead and injured service personnel in Somalia (1993)
or in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia (1995) brought home the cost of
conflict in a world lauded as largely devoid of enemies.27 For some allies,
it has been claimed that such has been the lack of risk appetite for
casualties that it has become the single factor in determining whether
interventions will take place or not.28 Others claim that the casualty
averse nature of political decision-making since the 1990s has forced
militaries to embrace an entirely new Western military concept of war,
one in which rapid, bloodless victories are possible when technology
and overwhelming superiority can be assured.29 Notably, this research
took place before the global War on Terror following terrorist attacks in
2001. Yet, the rhetoric of risk aversion has again made its way into the
public discourse by senior military leaders.30
Under the broad category of casualties (including those projected in
‘collateral damage’ estimates), one might consider classifying causes for
casualty aversion under four headings: national interest; strategic
24
Richard A Lacquement Jr, ‘The Casualty-Aversion Myth’, Naval War College
Review (2004), p. 41.
25
Helen Parr, Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (London: Allen Lane, 2018).
26
Christopher Coker, ‘Post-Modern War’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 143, No. 3, 1998),
pp. 7–14.
27
Charles A Stevenson, ‘The Evolving Clinton Doctrine on the Use of Force’,
Armed Forces & Society (Vol. 22, No. 4, 1996), pp. 511–35; Jan van der Meulen
and Marijke de Konink, ‘Risky Missions: Dutch Public Opinion on Peacekeeping
in the Balkans’, in Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia (eds), Public Opinion and
the International Use of Force (New York, NY and Abingdon: Routledge, 2001).
28
T S Milburn, ‘Casualties – The Crucial Factor in Modern Conflicts’, British Army
Review (Vol. 113, August 1996), pp. 78–84.
29
Andrew P N Erdmann, ‘The U.S. Presumption of Quick, Costless Wars’, Orbis
(Vol. 43, No. 3, Summer 1999), pp. 378–80.
30
MoD and Carter, Chief of Defence Staff Speech RUSI Annual Lecture’.
68
calculus; internal politics; and long-term social change.31 In doing so, one
must also acknowledge the military drive for reduced casualties that has
endured for millennia in both the East and the West, whether in full-
spectrum, high-intensity conflict or in more coercive and less kinetic
campaigns. Both Sun Tzu (‘Supreme excellence consists of breaking the
enemy’s resistance without fighting’) and Machiavelli (‘Never attempt to
win by force what can be won by deception’) advocated for approaches
that maximised gains and minimised casualties.32 Warfare can never be
regarded as an efficient use of national resource, and the loss and/or
waste of fighting power through avoidable casualties is not a
characteristic normally demonstrated by successful militaries. On the
other hand, it seems impossible that a state could win a war with a
serious opponent unless prepared to accept the risks involved. Yet,
perversely per Clausewitz, inflicting casualties on the adversary is the
very foundation to the nature of warfare,33 driving the adversary to a
position where capitulation is more attractive than the continued loss of
resource. This represents victory in both the political and military space:
casualties rather than financial headlines have become the public
manifestation of resource invested in military operations. Death,
destruction and injury are a core part of warfare and appear likely to
remain so.
Despite this, a notable nobility has developed in political and military
narratives regarding casualty aversion beyond the wasted resource and
costs associated with repatriation and/or long-term treatment. Yet, it is
also clear that a state displaying a high casualty-averse policy or position
can undermine its own strategic posturing: if casualties matter more than
the campaign, and the adversary understands this and messages
accordingly, a state can be forced from the conflict without the
requirement for a decisive military engagement (Spain in Iraq in 2003–04
is a fitting example).34 Such manifestations of policy undermine any
31
Hugh Smith, ‘What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories
of Casualty Aversion’, Armed Forces and Society (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005), pp. 487–512.
32
See, for example, fs, ‘Attrition Warfare: When Even Winners Lose’, 2017,
<https://fs.blog/2017/07/attrition-warfare/>, accessed 31 March 2021; Karl
Walling, ‘Thucydides on Policy, Strategy, and War Termination’, Naval War
College Review (Vol. 66, No. 4, 2013), p. 24.
33
See Beatrice Heuser, ‘Introduction’, in Carl von Clausewitz, On War, translated
by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
p. xxviii.
34
‘The rich man’s option is to sanitise war; the poor man’s is to make it even more
horrendous than it is’. See Christopher Coker, Humane Warfare (London:
Routledge, 2001), p. 65.
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Peter Roberts
illusions of a credible deterrence policy, whether with irregular armed

groups or nuclear armed challengers.35
Such noble considerations by political and military leaders can have
significant consequences not only for committing to an intervention, but
also in the decision-making around how campaigns are waged. The
critique applied to US forces in Bosnia was an inability to interact with
the population, remaining inside their well-protected superbases and
patrolling in armed convoys. This also became the UK’s experience in
Iraq (hunkered down in Basra airport and deserting the people of
Basra).36 However, the US model for force employment changed
markedly after 2001, when the willingness to accept mission risk and cost
in blood and treasure were reversed. These examples point to the nub of
the issue: that the public – and thus political – will to fight is fickle. The
merits of the campaign in public eyes determine an attitude to casualties
that is not fixed, but highly dynamic.
These are worthy considerations. Yet, part of the existing literature
and research around Western casualty aversion makes a case that it is not
about political repercussions or decisions, but rather about changing
public attitudes to the use of force and the perpetration of violence by
societies at large. Eyal Ben-Ari’s study in 2005 noted evidence of an
increasing trend of casualty aversion across Western democracies.37
Given such findings, others have posed the most pertinent question: can
democracies any longer tolerate casualties?38 For militaries, evolving to
political demands is a natural evolution in campaign planning, but the
shifting attitudes to casualty-averse policies has accompanying
operational implications.
Since 1998, the UK Defence Planning Assumptions have codified part
of the risk calculus for operations as an expectation of numbers of dead and
injured that will be acceptable to the government.39 As a driving planning
and force design factor, the amount of risk for an operation became
expressed as the number of deaths, casualties and losses expected in set
scenarios. The MoD’s planning assumptions represented the department’s
35
Justin Bronk, ‘The Weakness of “People” in Deterrence’, RUSI Commentary,
18 December 2019.
36
Ben Barry, Blood, Metal and Dust: How Victory Turned Into Defeat in
Afghanistan and Iraq (London: Osprey, 2021).
37
Eyal Ben-Ari, ‘Epilogue: A “Good” Military Death’, Armed Forces & Society
(Vol. 31, No. 4, 2005), p. 662.
38
Smith, ‘What Costs Will Democracies Bear?’.
39
Peter Roberts and Ben Barry, ‘Episode 44: Evolving the Western Way of War Into
(and Out of) COIN’, RUSI Western Way of War podcast, 15 April 2021, <https://rusi.
org/podcasts/western-way-of-war/episode-44-evolving-western-way-war-and-out-
coin>, accessed 20 October 2021.
70
own book of scenarios for using operational analysis to test force structures
and equipment, in which UK military casualties were deemed to be an
important element of the calculus that would determine success.
Different levels of fatalities and casualties were assigned for different
types of mission and differing scales of effort. Whilst there appeared to
be little detailed analysis behind them, the figures were representative of
the Falklands conflict in 1982, Northern Ireland during The Troubles and
UK Balkan experiences in the 1990s. The belief has been that casualty
risk aversion is a critical determinant in political decisions to undertake
any specific campaign, and that the military might be expected to
guarantee a risk level to deployed forces that bounded missions and the
part that UK forces could play in a wider campaign.40
There is some evidence to underwrite such claims, and an
accompanying set of expectations in infrastructure planning for medical
and psychological casualties that saw the UK remarkably unprepared for
the losses in Afghanistan and Iraq. Part of the problem with managing
fatalities, the wounded and their families from Iraq and Afghanistan was
the apparent lack of preparedness of both Selly Oak and the
rehabilitation and service welfare organisations to manage the
consequences. They gave the impression that they had never envisaged
the high level of steady casualties or were unprepared to quickly ramp
up, or both.41
Considerable efforts have been made to reduce the risk to personnel
deployed in war zones, specifically those from the armed forces. In order to
minimise casualties, there has been an increasing appetite to employ
contractors instead of government employees: an approach as clear in
Russia as it is across Western governments.42 Yet, those measures have
not been sufficient in interventions when the deployment of sovereign
troops has been required. In such circumstances, and against such
perceptions of casualty intolerance, the implications on decision-making,
planning and military activities have been significant. Now underpinning
the entire approach to the UK’s campaign planning, response options,
and assumptions of endurance, risk and appetite, this idea of a political
and societal obsession with casualties has become inculcated in military
life. The result has been a desire that any military operation needs to be
not only high reward, but low risk: a dynamic that is almost impossible
40
Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality’.
41
Richard Dannatt, Leading from the Front (London: Corgi, 2011), pp. 342–57.
42
R Kim Cragin and Lachlan MacKenzie, ‘Russia’s Escalating Use of Private Military
Companies in Africa’, Institute for National Strategic Studies, 24 November 2020,
<https://inss.ndu.edu/Media/News/Article/2425797/russias-escalating-use-of-
private-military-companies-in-africa/>, accessed 1 March 2021.
71
Peter Roberts
to achieve. In reality, this approach to casualties has put UK military

campaign plans into a state that can only deliver low rewards from low
risks. It also places the UK, like other Western militaries, in a position
where a reliance on technology is required to match the risk of
deploying – let alone seek any type of competitive edge or deliver
success. This is a conundrum that the UK MoD and successive
governments have developed for themselves; it is hard to find examples
of successful military operations on the basis of such planning
assumptions in the real world.
The narrative and considerable literature about casualty-averse
policies in Western democracies feeds a self-fulfilling prophecy about
deployments and military interventions, as well as the conduct of military
operations. Yet, it is valuable to review the claims made above against
the types of interventions in which they have been made. There is a case
that in being selective about which conflicts and wars have been
examined for evidence to support such presumptions, incorrect
deductions have been made about the nature of risk held by political
leaders. This is not new. In the US in 2004, Richard A Lacquement Jr
wrote a compelling article in which he addressed the question: ‘How
does casualty sensitivity affect the pursuit of American national security
objectives?’43 He was reflecting on evidence given by Senator John Glenn
in 1997 – a different set of military conditions for US deployments, and
now cognisant of not just the lessons of Somalia and Haiti, but also of the
9/11 attacks and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also
evidence of considerable differentiation in views between military
personnel, civilian leaders and the general public. The results of casualty
appetite from the public might shock but are worthy of note.44 The idea
that the public is more willing to accept greater casualties than either
military commanders or the political ‘elite’ (as defined by the polling) is
not just reflective of a US audience; UK evidence is remarkably similar.45
In a 1999 poll, the differences between opinions were stark and revealed
that the public understood a difference between national security
imperatives and casualties. Asked about acceptable casualties in
preventing Iraq from obtaining WMDs, the military considered 6,016 as
43
Lacquement Jr, ‘The Casualty-Aversion Myth’.
44
See Triangle Institute for Security Studies, ‘Project on the Gap Between the
Military and Civilian Society: Digest of Findings and Studies’, Conference on the
Military and Civilian Society, Cantigny Conference Center, 1st Division Museum,
28–29 October 1999.
45
Johns and Davies, ‘Civilian Casualties and Public Support for Military Action’.
72
realistic, whilst the civilian leadership strata opted for a figure of 19,045. The
mass public considered 29,853 military casualties acceptable.46
Despite the evidence, arguments continue to be made that UK views
and opinions differ considerably from those in the US. Much of this might
be attributed to the UK’s obsession over deciphering wars of ‘choice’
versus ‘necessity’. There is also an idea that UK society is a fast adaptor,
especially in the case of necessity.47 The public may indeed be able to
make nuanced judgements and engage in a discussion about national
security, resourcing of defence and the acceptance of casualties provided
they are able to view the need as having legitimacy. There is therefore a
wider implication that the government, rather than running away from
public scrutiny, should be more prepared to make the case for the use of
force.48
The latter becomes important given the British experience of
casualties in combat when contrasting the entire Afghanistan campaign
(454 soldiers) and the First World War.
A senior British military colleague argued that the public would
never again tolerate a war with significant military casualties. He
made the point that the 454 soldiers killed in Afghanistan
represented ‘a quiet day on the Western Front’ during the First
World War. Some basic maths suggests that Britain lost an average
of 341 men each day on the Western Front between August 1914
and November 1918.49
Given the rhetoric about China and Russia in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s
speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2021,50 the near- to
mid-term defence and security challenges for the UK may require greater
sacrifice than has been experienced for two generations. Research does
not just indicate that the casualty-averse nature of society and its
politicians may have changed, but that this would revert to a norm of
behaviours and attitudes rather than the aberration that has been the
46
Triangle Institute for Security Studies, ‘Project on the Gap Between the Military
and Civilian Society’.
47
Cornish, ‘Myth and Reality’.
48
Hew Strachan and Ruth Harris, The Utility of Military Force and Public
Understanding in Today’s Britain (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020).
49
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, ‘Does the Pandemic Tell Us Anything About War
Casualties?’, RUSI Commentary, 12 January 2021.
50
HM Government, ‘Prime Minister’s Speech at the Munich Security Conference:
19 February 2021’, 19 February 2021, <https://www.gov.uk/government/
speeches/prime-ministers-speech-at-the-munich-security-conference-19-february-
2021>, accessed 20 October 2021.
73
Peter Roberts
Western outlook since the 1990s.51 Whilst such a shift would not be
immediately evident to military planners or personnel, the implications
would be significant.
Conclusion
The proposition of this chapter is that the will to fight multiplies the effect
that a state can exert through the use of force. If the sacrifice is considered
worthy, it seems that society both accepts the requirement for casualties
and a willingness to make sacrifices, but that they also have greater
resilience than they are given credit for. Instead of the deeply fragile
ecosystems that they are made out to be, many Western states have been
tested by systemic and long-term shocks and have proved robust.
It also appears clear that the will to fight in Western states depends
greatly on the context, the adversary and the gains that might be made.
Society is unlikely to accept the same sacrifices for a humanitarian
mission in Mali as it would to defeat a Russian attack on a major city. The
other highly dynamic variable appears to be the state of the narrative of
such campaigns: an extremely well-articulated and compelling narrative
seems to increase a state’s will to fight more than an ill-considered and
reactive set of lines-to-take.
In understanding these factors, it also needs to be acknowledged that
neither is fixed but instead is underpinned by another set of variables,
including the national infrastructure, system of alliances, ability to pay for
support and resources, changing demographics, and national strategic
culture. None of these are immutable, and each relies on variables and
dynamic factors.52 The key is that the state has agency in shaping its
populations’ will to fight. But if governments lack sufficient confidence in
their causes to justify them publicly, it should be questioned whether the
cause is indeed worthwhile. The idea that a figure could be placed on
casualties in any campaign is foolhardy and undermines the realities of
public concern and political national security calculations.
The implications for the military – in terms of undertaking operations,
offering options to political leaders, and the expected risk appetite in their
missions and tasks that pose a threat to life – are significant. Two key facets
of a new dynamic are most important.
51
Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion, pp. 60–69; Steven Kullclay
Ramsay, ‘The Myth of the Reactive Public: American Public Attitudes on Military
Fatalities in the Post-Cold War Period’, in Everts and Isernia (eds), Public Opinion
and the International Use of Force, p. 205.
52
Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War (New York, NY: Free Press,
1991).
74
First, the philosophy of higher-risk, high-reward missions (which the

UK military have a solid history of delivering) once again becomes possible
– in the right campaign. Not only is this more likely to deliver campaign
success than an approach determined by the currently employed low-
risk, low-gain models, but it would also free the UK from the shackles of
technological reliance in order to mitigate risk. Alongside this new
appetite for higher-risk missions would be the attractiveness that the UK
forces would have to its allies, and the niche this would give the UK in
any coalition force design. With such a niche, and for those willing to
take such risks, comes influence and bragging rights with pre-eminent
allies such as the US.
Second, one of the key vulnerabilities of Western societies to
coercion by competitors and adversaries disappears. If casualty aversion
and societal resilience are no longer dominant factors in determining
response options, those actions designed by belligerents to unhinge an
opponent’s forces and their will to succeed will not be a factor in
deciding the campaign outcome. The result is a more resilient force
design model, able to weather well-prepared tests against a ‘Western way
of war’ and less susceptible to leverage from external actors.
It would be sensible to assume that adversaries will seek to increase
the imposition of casualties on Western states on the understanding that this
will be the critical vulnerability that forces capitulation in any engagement
the West undertakes. Similarly, the evidence seems to point in the direction
of exploiting the multiplier effect of a positive will to fight, and engaging in
a longer, more complex relationship with the public on the topic of national
security. Simply putting a number on society’s willingness to fight and
refusing to engage with the dynamics of the variables is unconscionable.
75
VI. IN SPACE, NO ONE WILL SEE YOU
FIGHT
ALEXANDRA STICKINGS
In 2019, the establishment of the US Space Force as an independent military

service reignited various long-running debates on the nature of future
conflict in space.1 While specialists in military space policy understood
the formation of Space Force as a reorganisation of existing capabilities
and missions, other narratives soon emerged in the broader security and
defence sphere. Most centred on fears of direct kinetic conflict and
increasing weaponisation of assets in orbit; high-powered space lasers
which could target enemy satellites, military bases on the Moon, and the
spectre of ‘space marines’ in the shape of armed service personnel
routinely being deployed in orbit.2 Beyond providing a target for political
commentators and late-night comedy show hosts, these narratives distract
attention from the real and important issues raised by likely confrontation
in the space domain during future conflicts. Specifically, it is necessary to
counter the idea that kinetic warfare in space will be a central and early
feature of future state-on-state wars.
The idea of kinetic conflict in space is not new. It became apparent
during the late 1950s that satellites could provide enabling capabilities for
terrestrial military operations. Consequently, both the US and the Soviet
1
John J Klein, ‘The Creation of a U.S. Space Force: It’s Only the End of the
Beginning’, War on the Rocks, 2 January 2020.
2
See, for example, Nathan Strout, ‘The Space Force Wants to Use Directed-Energy
Systems for Space Superiority’, C4ISRNet, 16 June 2021, <https://www.c4isrnet.
com/battlefield-tech/space/2021/06/16/the-space-force-wants-to-use-directed-
energy-weapons-for-space-superiority/>, accessed 2 August 2021; Ramin Skibba,
‘How Trump’s “Space Force” Could Set Off a Dangerous Arms Race’, Politico
Magazine, 22 June 2018; Rachel S Cohen, ‘Space Force Will Eventually Put
Troops in Orbit, Ops Boss Says’, Air Force Magazine, 29 September 2020.
76
In Space, No One Will See You Fight
Union researched, and in some cases deployed, capabilities that could

either destroy the other’s satellites or deny access to them. During the
second half of the Cold War, the use of orbital assets for missile defence
was also explored, with the US proposing the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI), commonly referred to as ‘Star Wars’.3 This original
‘space race’ took place within the specific context of the Cold War and
as such the focus of both major players was on nuclear capabilities. The
1967 Outer Space Treaty banned the placement of WMDs in orbit, and
despite the conventional terrestrial standoff and various proxy conflicts,
kinetic confrontation did not extend to or break out in orbit.
The US gained the freedom to largely act unchallenged in orbit
following the fall of the Soviet Union, and the resulting loss of inertia
within the Russian space programme. Over decades, this US supremacy
in orbit nurtured notions in the West that space was a ‘sanctuary’ free
from conflict. However, a range of new challengers and rapidly
proliferating capabilities means that space can no longer be kept apart
from terrestrial discussions on competition and conflict. It is only the
character of this conflict, and the ways that it will be realised in space,
that remains a question. Understanding the character of different
potential forms of conflict in space, as well as the implications of each,
can provide some guidance here.
Kinetic Space War and the Question of Sustainability

Anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles are the most obvious example of the
militarisation of the space domain, due in part to the ease of classifying
them as ‘weapons’.4 ASAT missiles are typically ground-launched, direct-
ascent vehicles which physically collide with a satellite in order to
destroy it. At present, capabilities in this area are limited to low Earth
orbit (LEO), although there is evidence that some states are pursuing the
capability to intercept satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and
geostationary orbit (GEO).5
3
Atomic Heritage Foundation, ‘Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)’, 18 July 2018,
<https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/strategic-defense-initiative-sdi>,
accessed 5 November 2021.
4
There is no international agreement on what constitutes a weapon in space. It is
now commonplace to use the term ‘counterspace capability’, which covers all
threats to space systems, including ground stations and receivers.
5
Brian Weeden and Victoria Samson (eds), ‘Global Counterspace Capabilities: An
Open Source Assessment’, Secure World Foundation, April 2020, <https://swfound.
org/media/206970/swf_counterspace2020_electronic_final.pdf>, accessed 8 March
2021.
77
Alexandra Stickings
Kinetic ASATs were one of the earliest counterpace capabilities to be

developed, not least because of the technical crossovers with existing
ballistic missile programmes. As with other early space capabilities, the
first programmes to examine their utility were run by the US and the
Soviet Union, although neither achieved full proficiency in this area. The
US successfully tested the first ASAT in the shape of the air-launched ASM-
135 in September 1985, but the programme was cancelled the following
year.6 At present, the US does not have a confirmed ASAT programme, but
has demonstrated the capability to repurpose SM-3 ballistic missile defence
interceptors for this purpose.7 More recently, China and India have
successfully tested this capability, each destroying one of its own satellites
in the process.8 In November 2021, Russia conducted an ASAT test which
destroyed one of its satellites in low-earth orbit and caused the crew of the
International Space Station to repeatedly take emergency measures when
passing through the resulting orbital debris.9
Despite these tests, and the evidence that additional states are likely
to pursue ASAT capabilities, questions remain as to the likelihood of such
an asset being deployed in practice. The nature of the space environment
and the ways in which states monitor and regulate their space assets
impose limitations on the practical effectiveness of kinetic ASATs. The
first of these is the overtly aggressive and escalatory nature of ASAT use.
Physically destroying the satellite of an adversary in this way generates a
distinctive signature that will ensure near-instantaneous detection and
attribution. Such a blatant attack on strategic infrastructure would
certainly elicit a response. However, without historical precedent or
recognised international conventions to draw on, the nature of that
response, and the domain in which it might take place, would be hard to
predict. This uncertainty is likely to cause hesitancy in those states that
possess kinetic ASAT technology to use it in practice. Any potential
kinetic ASAT use must also be considered within the context of a broader
conflict or crisis. Such a directly escalatory act would not only be a leap
into the unknown but also contradict the likely desire of both belligerents
6
Paul Glenshaw, ‘The First Space Ace’, Air and Space, April 2018.
7
George Galdorisi, ‘U.S. Navy Missile Defense: Operation Burnt Frost’, Defense
Media Network, 18 May 2013, <https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/
u-s-navy-missile-defense-operation-burnt-frost/>, accessed 1 April 2021.
8
Shirley Kan, ‘China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Test’, CRS Report for Congress,
23 April 2007, <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS22652.pdf>, accessed 7 March 2021;
Ashley J Tellis, ‘India’s ASAT Test: An Incomplete Success’, Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 15 April 2019, <https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/
15/india-s-asat-test-incomplete-success-pub-78884>, accessed 8 March 2021.
9
BBC News, ‘Russian Anti-satellite Missile Test Draws Condemnation’,
15 November 2021.
78
to limit the geographical and temporal boundaries of any future state-on-

state conflict – at least in its early stages.
The second limitation concerns changes in the ways in which space
assets are developed and deployed. Kinetic ASATs can only be used against
a single satellite. If that satellite alone is providing a capability to the user,
destroying it could provide a significant advantage. However, the
architecture of space systems is changing. There has been a continued
move towards diversified and disaggregated space systems, where
constellations of multiple satellites, at times covering different orbits, are
used to provide a specific capability.10 Therefore, the loss of one satellite
does not necessarily mean the loss of the capability, and so the user of
the kinetic ASAT must make a cost/benefit analysis to determine the
impact that could be made. Of course, destroying a satellite, regardless of
what impact it has on the provided capability, has symbolic and potential
political utility, but this would also be subject to the first limitation
mentioned, that of response and escalation.
The final limitation is that of space debris. Kinetically destroying a
satellite causes it to break up into thousands of parts. It is impossible to
know how many pieces will be created in such an event, nor their size
and the direction in which they are sent. This, coupled with the realities
of orbital mechanics, means that there is no way of determining the true
extent of collateral damage that might be done to other space assets,
including those of the perpetrator.
The creation of orbital debris fuels perhaps the greatest concern
surrounding a kinetic conflict in space; the potential triggering of a debris-
collision cascade in the form of the Kessler Effect. Such an event would
render the specific orbit unusable for many years, and limit or perhaps
even prevent actors from reaching other, higher orbits. The 2007 Chinese
test, which was carried out at an altitude of 863 km, produced more than
3,000 pieces of observable debris. Many of these are expected to remain in
orbit for decades and pose a long-term collision risk to other spacecraft,
which could potentially lead to additional debris.11 In contrast, the Indian
test in 2019 was undertaken at a deliberately low altitude of 280 km, which
meant that the resulting debris will not last as long.12 This has led some to
10
Todd Harrison, ‘The Future of MILSATCOM’, Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, 24 July 2013, <https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/the-
future-of-milsatcom/publication/1>, accessed 1 September 2021.
11
Brian Weeden, ‘2007 Chinese Anti-Satellite Test Fact Sheet’, Secure World
Foundation, updated 23 November 2010, <https://swfound.org/media/9550/
chinese_asat_fact_sheet_updated_2012.pdf>, accessed 7 March 2021.
12
Brian Weeden and Victoria Samson, ‘India’s ASAT Test Is a Wake-Up Call for
Norms of Behavior in Space’, SpaceNews, 8 April 2019, <https://spacenews.com/
79
Alexandra Stickings
label the Indian test as more ‘responsible’ and perhaps the way in which any
future tests should be carried out. It certainly did not elicit the same
international condemnation as the Chinese test.13 However, any ASAT use
against an adversary satellite for military purposes in a future conflict
would not be able to take this sort of debris-limitation measure since the
altitude of the interception would be dictated by the target’s altitude. As
such, the unintended consequences of ASAT use could also lead to
unpredictable further escalation and the broadening of terrestrial hostilities.
This is likely to constrain their utility as a practical tool in future conflicts.
In terms of kinetic space conflict, it is also necessary to examine the
narrative that armed service personnel will be in orbit; the ubiquitous ‘space
marines’. It is true that a high percentage of astronauts, from all states, have
been either serving or retired military officers. The early US astronauts were
drawn from the test pilot cadre, and Russia selected its first cadre of
cosmonauts from Soviet air force pilots.14 However, the missions which
they conducted were generally about science and exploration. Today,
NASA astronauts who are serving military officers are seconded to the
Agency, and as such are not considered to be representing the military
during their time in orbit.
Nevertheless, there was some concern recently when NASA
astronaut Mike Hopkins, a US Air Force officer, was sworn into the new
Space Force whilst on the International Space Station.15 This blurring of
the line between military and civilian activities highlights what many are
worried about: that military activities may increasingly be carried out
under the pretence of civilian exploration and experimentation. There is
a fear that crewed military missions being carried out routinely by
competing powers might lead to direct conflict in orbit. However,
beyond the damage that such a confrontation could do to the orbital
environment and the prospects for long-term sustainability, there are
other challenges that suggest caution is required in assessing such
narratives.
First, crewed space platform capabilities are still fairly limited.
Despite a constant human presence in orbit aboard the International
op-ed-indias-asat-test-is-wake-up-call-for-norms-of-behavior-in-space/>, accessed
5 March 2021.
13
Hindustan Times, ‘No Global Heat on India’s ASAT Missile Test’, 29 March 2019.
14
NASA, ‘60 Years Ago: Soviets Select Their First Cosmonauts’, 25 February 2020,
<https://www.nasa.gov/feature/60-years-ago-soviets-select-their-first-
cosmonauts>, accessed 6 March 2021.
15
NASA, ‘NASA Astronaut Mike Hopkins Transfers to US Space Force While
Aboard International Space Station’, 18 December 2020, <https://www.nasa.gov/
feature/nasa-astronaut-mike-hopkins-transfers-to-us-space-force-while-aboard-
international-space/>, accessed 6 March 2021.
80
Space Station (ISS) since 2000, human activity is limited to work onboard
the station or space walks in its near vicinity.16 While the ISS does
possess some manoeuvring capabilities to avoid debris in its path, there
are no propulsion systems that could enable spacecraft to ‘fly’ around in
orbit in the manner which mainstream science fiction has normalised in
the minds of many. Manoeuvring and human activities remain at the
mercy of orbital mechanics. How, for example, might weapons be
developed that do not have recoil and could therefore avoid altering the
velocity and movement of a platform or astronaut after firing? While
specific technologies that might solve some of the impediments to a
‘shooting war’ in orbit could potentially be developed, they would have
to successfully compete for limited resources with other capabilities that
are of more immediate practical use.
Crewed military missions would also likely be seen as crossing a line
in terms of ‘militarising’ or ‘weaponising’ space. Although there is general
acceptance that space is a military domain, the vast majority of activities
undertaken are those that support terrestrial operations and are not
overtly aggressive towards others. It is this that keeps the balance in
space between the major state actors. Introducing a new parameter such
as orbiting service personnel could upset this balance, without offering
immediately obvious benefits to offset the potential negative repercussions.
It is evident, therefore, that kinetic conflict in space is neither
inevitable nor of great military use, and that despite the rhetoric of some
of the bigger military space powers, there are strong incentives for most
states to avoid it if possible.
Non-Kinetic Capabilities and Sub-Threshold Activity

The many capabilities offered by orbital assets, and the role that space plays
in supporting military and national security activity, has led to a reliance on
space that is only growing. A kinetic conflict that could lead to the worst-
case scenario of a Kessler Effect, affecting satellites covering the whole
range of not just military but also commercial and civil activity, would
have severe repercussions for all states, affecting everything from Earth
observation satellites in LEO to the ability to reach MEO and GEO and
replace the navigation and communication satellites that are found in
these orbits.
16
Derek Richardson, ‘The ISS Marks Two Decades of Continuous Human
Presence’, Spaceflight Insider, 2 November 2020, <https://www.spaceflightinsider.
com/missions/iss/iss-2-decades-of-continuous-human-presence/#:~:text=The%
20International%20Space%20Station%20has,two%20days%20later%20on%20Nov.>,
81
Alexandra Stickings
However, the ever-increasing dependence on space also presents an

obvious set of vulnerabilities which states could leverage to gain
advantages over an adversary in a military context. Put simply, states
have much to gain from disrupting or denying their adversaries’ access to
space. Interrupting secure communications, ‘blinding’ satellites to limit
ISR capabilities or preventing access to position, and navigation and
timing signals could all provide significant advantages. As such, many
states have been developing capabilities that can do this without the
destruction or overt aggression associated with kinetic ASATs. Effects can
be realised without long-term damage to the environment, and in a way
that makes attribution difficult.
Laser weapons play a part in this, but in a very different way than that
suggested by the more sensational public narratives surrounding ‘space
lasers’.17 Ground-based lasers can be used to ‘dazzle’ the optical sensors
of Earth observation satellites, an effect that is temporary and reversible.
It is used to deny ISR capability, and the potential use of this technique
by the Chinese military is of particular concern to the US.18 Other
capabilities include the potential use of high-powered microwave
emissions to interfere with internal components of satellites, as well as
the jamming and spoofing of GPS signals and cyber attacks.19 GPS
jamming is already commonplace, particularly by Russia, and there have
also been a number of incidents of cyber attacks against space systems.20
Another technique which spans both non-kinetic and potentially
kinetic activity is close approach and rendezvous, which involves
satellites with manoeuvring capabilities that can approach, and in some
instances make contact with, other spacecraft. Unlike the other
capabilities discussed, this is a technology that is being pursued by the
private sector for legitimate commercial activities such as debris removal
and on-orbit servicing. Although these are being developed by the
commercial sector for non-military purposes, there are good reasons for
concern that such rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) could also
have military applications. Early Russian anti-satellite weapons research
17
Andrew Liptak, ‘France Wants to Arm Satellites With Guns and Lasers by 2030’,
The Verge, 28 July 2019.
18
Brian G Chow and Henry Sokolski, ‘U.S. Satellites Increasingly Vulnerable to
China’s Ground-Based Lasers’, SpaceNews, 10 July 2020, <https://spacenews.com/
op-ed-u-s-satellites-increasingly-vulnerable-to-chinas-ground-based-lasers/>,
19
For a full account of the various counterspace capabilities possessed by all
actors, see Weeden and Samson (eds), Global Counterspace Capabilities.
20
Alexandra Coultrup, ‘GPS Jamming in the Arctic Circle’, CSIS Aerospace Security
Project, 31 March 2020, <https://aerospace.csis.org/data/gps-jamming-in-the-arctic-
circle/> accessed 2 August 2021.
82
focused on RPO-type vehicle tests,21 and both Russia and China are thought
to have restarted development of this class of vehicle in recent years.
The dual-use nature of RPO capabilities is illustrative of the
difficulties in regulating the development of many space technologies
with potential military capabilities. It is also another reason why states
are likely to pursue them, not necessarily at the expense of kinetic
effects, but as more practically usable tools. They provide opportunities
to disrupt or deny an adversary’s access to space, preventing them from
using the data and other benefits provided, while being potentially
difficult to attribute and having minimal impact on other spacecraft and
the orbital environment.
Increasing Commercial Sector Dominance in Space

Private enterprises will soon not only operate the most satellites, but will
also be able to field capabilities which exceed those of many national
military satellites across a range of areas including imagery and
bandwidth. SpaceX is a clear example of this trend. The company’s
Starlink mega-constellation, which is intended to provide high-strength
internet from orbit, already consists of 1,200 satellites and the intention is
to launch tens of thousands more.22 Similarly, the now well-known
ability of SpaceX to land and reuse its first-stage Falcon 9 rocket boosters
is well ahead of the capabilities of other launch providers and has
dramatically increased launch cadence while also decreasing cost per
kilogram of launch.
While SpaceX may at present be leading the pack, others are looking
to join in. Amazon Web Services and OneWeb are just two examples of
commercial enterprises looking to enter the mega-constellation club.23
Similarly, numerous private launch providers, including Blue Origin, not
only regularly launch both commercial and national security payloads but
are also looking to move into the reusable launch market, as well as
continually developing new launch capabilities.24 Large financial
resources and the nature of their corporate governance structures allow
such companies to take risks that are unavailable to national
programmes. One example is the contrast between the many failures
21
Glenshaw, ‘The First Space Ace’.
22
Jeff Foust, ‘SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites and Expands International
Service’, SpaceNews, 11 March 2021, <https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-
starlink-satellites-and-expands-international-service/>, accessed 12 March 2021.
23
Amazon Web Services, ‘AWS for Aerospace and Satellite’, <https://aws.amazon.
com/government-education/aerospace-and-satellite/>, accessed 28 October 2021;
OneWeb, ‘Connected as One’, <https://oneweb.net/>, accessed 28 October 2021.
24
See Blue Origin, <https://www.blueorigin.com/>, accessed 28 October 2021.
83
Alexandra Stickings
leading up to SpaceX’s first successful landing, and its Starship vehicle,

versus the budgetary and time overruns of NASA’s Space Launch
System.25 Private companies can develop new capabilities much faster
than the public sector. As a result, militaries and governments are likely
to become increasingly reliant on the commercial sector to provide
certain capabilities, which will give the latter increased leverage over
time. This is, of course, the way these developments are playing out for
the US and its Western allies. It is to be expected that China and Russia
will pursue mega-constellations and reusable launch systems, but in
these cases the dividing line between military and civilian capabilities is
not likely to be as clear. Nevertheless, the trend is still part of a broader
disruption to the traditional field of space exploration and exploitation
that will affect how militaries and governments are able to act in the future.
The potential for commercial resource extraction on both the Moon
and asteroids is judged by some analysts to be sufficiently valuable to
produce the world’s first trillionaire in the coming decades.26 Harvesting
resources from asteroids and bringing them back to Earth, perhaps even
for on-orbit manufacturing, could drastically alter the economics of space
activity. It would also potentially change the balance of power between
both states and state and commercial entities. Militaries will need to
operate in an environment where their priorities are only a subset of a
myriad of competing interests, and legal regimes are still in development,
with the possibility of non-state actor involvement. Due to the factors
already discussed, the negative implications of kinetic military activity in
orbit in such a scenario could have even more detrimental effects on
terrestrial systems and economies than at present. This is also a reason
for caution when discussing possible military installations on celestial
bodies such as the Moon. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits any state
from placing a claim on an extra-terrestrial body.27 However,
governments are also likely to face major corporate pressure to refrain
from military activities which could impact the ability of private industry
to access the resources found on such bodies.
25
Ryan Whitwam, ‘Former NASA Head Predicts Commercial Rockets Will Beat
SLS’, Extreme Tech, 11 September 2020, <https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/
314905-former-nasa-head-predicts-commercial-rockets-will-beat-sls>, accessed
11 March 2021.
26
Mike Wehner, ‘Asteroid Mining Will Produce the World’s First Trillionaire,
According to Goldman Sachs’, BGR, 23 April 2018, <https://bgr.com/2018/04/23/
asteroid-mining-trillionaire-goldman-sachs-report/>, accessed 11 March 2021.
27
UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, ‘Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other
Celestial Bodies, Article II’.
84
As commercial space activity continues to gather pace alongside the

continued advance of military counterspace capabilities, states must also
consider how the rules and regulations concerning space activity will
change and the effect this may have on orbital military activity. Most
discussions have been taking place through multilateral forums at the
UN, such as the Conference on Disarmament and the Disarmament
Commission. The Preventing an Arms Race in Outer Space negotiations,
and the associated Prevention on the Placement of Weapons in Orbit
Treaty,28 both sponsored by Russia and China, have until recently
appeared to be the best hope of this community to reach agreements on
limiting certain counterspace capabilities. However, the stalling of the
talks and opposition from the US have supported a widespread
perception that major progress and agreements are impossible, at least
within the current international climate. This has fed a narrative that
without agreements in place, states that possess the more destructive
capabilities will have free rein to wreak havoc in orbit.
One of the difficulties associated with treaties such as this is the
definition of what constitutes a ‘weapon’ in the context of space. This is
particularly relevant when considering the numerous non-kinetic
capabilities discussed above, which are often functionally
indistinguishable from civilian or commercial capabilities. Members of the
disarmament and arms control communities, therefore, have been
looking at ways in which to create some international agreement that will
at least limit the more dangerous activities. This has led to a focus on
behaviours rather than capabilities, and most recently has seen some
success through the UK-led initiative through the UN First Committee.29
While such initiatives are voluntary, and full international uptake is
perhaps wishful thinking, it does point to what may be the way forward,
and what therefore may provide some limitation to the more concerning
potential future activities. First, such voluntary agreements are only a first
step. They can help to build trust and confidence, creating a better forum
for dialogue, and it is hoped they will be able to lead to more concrete
agreements on the uses of certain capabilities. Second, not engaging with
or abiding by these agreements could lead to states being perceived as
28
Louis de Gouyon Matignon, ‘Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of
Weapons in Outer Space’, Space Legal Issues, 8 May 2019, <https://www.
spacelegalissues.com/treaty-on-the-prevention-of-the-placement-of-weapons-in-
outer-space-the-threat-or-use-of-force-against-outer-space-objects/>, accessed
11 March 2021.
29
Aidan Liddle, ‘Disarmament Blog: Space Resolution Adopted’, Foreign,
Commonwealth and Development Office, 10 December 2020, <https://blogs.fcdo.
gov.uk/aidanliddle/2020/12/10/disarmament-blog-space-resolution-adopted/>,
85
Alexandra Stickings
pariahs. As more states come to be actively involved in space activities, and

their infrastructures become ever-more reliant on space, the need to work
collaboratively to ensure safety, security and sustainability in orbit will
become more apparent. Not abiding by agreements, while not illegal,
could have significant geopolitical repercussions for those states,
especially in the context of a tense terrestrial standoff or flashpoint crisis.
Conclusion
Despite the narratives around the inevitability of kinetic conflict spreading
to the space domain in the early stages of any future state-on-state conflict,
the reality is likely to be more nuanced. Although there is often a danger in
approaching space as separate and unlike other domains, there are ways in
which its differences must be recognised. Due to the core physics involved,
even limited levels of kinetic conflict in space risk greater repercussions on
the environment than similar conflict in other domains. The debris fallout
that would result from kinetic ASAT or on-orbit weapons use would
potentially affect every spacecraft in that and surrounding orbits,
regardless of ownership. Difficulties in attribution and proving intent,
stemming from technical limitations in tracking space objects and
visualising incidents, add a layer of complexity and uncertainty in the
case of less overtly kinetic means, including laser, electromagnetic, cyber
and RPO-type attacks. However, the uncertainties over retaliatory
dynamics and the unavoidably escalatory nature of attacks on core
national capabilities outside the geographical constraints of any particular
conflict zone mean that most offensive capabilities are likely to have
more value as deterrence tools rather than practical ones.
This is not to say that conflict in space will not occur. Indeed, it is
already happening. However, most activity will likely continue to
comprise manoeuvring for advantage and temporary interference through
jamming, or cyber attacks and other non-kinetic effects. States will
continue to find ways that limit the ability of their adversaries to access
space and to assure their own access, but in ways that do not threaten
the long-term sustainability of orbit or risk uncontrolled escalation. As in
many other aspects of future state-on-state conflicts, the mutual interests
of all parties to avoid unrestricted warfare is likely to mean that tight
political constraints remain on kinetic actions in space, at least during the
crucial early stages. As such, orbital conflict should not be seen merely as
the effects of ASAT missiles or satellites against other space systems.
Instead, it should be examined in terms of the effects which more likely
non-kinetic competitive behaviours will have on the ability of these
systems to enable operations on the ground. Fighting will happen in
space, just not in a way we can easily see.
86
VII. MORE SENSORS THAN SENSE
JACK WATLING
The US Air Force likes to describe the future of command and control in
warfare as analogous to Uber.1 Such a system promises a drastic
improvement in efficiency and cooperation across the force. Suppose, for
example, that an infantry platoon needed assistance in engaging enemy
armour advancing on their position. They could make the request by
reporting the target’s position, and this could be made available to all
potential shooters in the area. These might comprise an artillery battery,
an aircraft en route to a target and an aircraft returning from a strike. One
could envisage the artillery battery declining the request because they
were tasked with counterbattery duties and did not want to unmask their
guns. The first aircraft might also decline because they were already
tasked with an important strike mission and needed their munitions for
that. The returning aircraft, finding that it had munitions left over from
the strike, might accept, and the request would no longer be pushed to
other units. Alternatively, if the second aircraft is removed from the
equation, a higher commander might be envisaged, with access to the
options, determining the trade-off between unmasking the guns, or
abandoning the strike mission, based on their broader intent.2 Without
such a system, the infantry platoon would have to call for artillery and air
support on separate systems. Since the artillery and aircraft would not
coordinate with each other, the infantry may receive no support, or
support from both.
1
Rachel S Cohen, ‘Want to Understand MDC2? Think About Uber, USAF Official
Says’, Air Force Magazine, 23 September 2019.
2
Congressional Research Service, ‘Joint All-Domain Command and Control
(JADC2)’, 1 July 2021, <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF11493.pdf>, accessed
26 February 2021.
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Jack Watling
This ‘any-sensor-to-any-shooter’ system is premised on the seamless

transfer of data between units.3 It comprises the backbone of a capability
supposed to deliver command posts with real-time situational awareness
from all available sources, removing the fog of war, and centralising data
to allow AI to rapidly generate optimised courses of action.4 The promise
is of a military that operates at higher tempo, with greater efficiency,
effectiveness and assurance. In the UK military, this attempt for a
defence-wide digital backbone is at the core of future visions of how the
force will fight. The aspiration is for multi-domain integration.5
There are some contexts within which this vision is partially realised
and could be extended. The coordination of air and missile defence around
a US Navy task group, for example, sees the network of ships identify
incoming threats, assure the status of defensive systems and then
prioritise defensive systems across the task group to engage separate
targets.6 This prevents each ship independently selecting the same target,
or missing threats aimed at other ships.7 It is important to appreciate,
however, the challenges in creating a type of military Uber, and how the
trade-offs necessary to make such a system work lead to quite a different
capability to the one often envisaged in depictions of future war. Uber
functions because the world is now densely dotted with 3G, 4G and 5G
masts, while the overhead constellation of GPS satellites ensures that
every device can be constantly tracked.8 In the context of the naval task
group, similar conditions can be met. Its cooperative engagement
capability is possible because there is a relatively small number of points
in the network, which mainly operate within line of sight of one another.
Each ship has a large communications array, and a significant source of
power, enabling reliable and rapid transmission of large volumes of data.
If the electromagnetic spectrum is contested, high-bandwidth
transmission within line of sight can be achieved through free-space
3
Caitlin O’Neill, ‘Delivering an On-Demand Sensor to Shooter Warfighting
Capability’, US Army, 29 April 2020, <https://www.army.mil/article/235067/
delivering_an_on_demand_sensor_to_shooter_warfighting_capability>, accessed
3 March 2021.
4
Ministry of Defence (MoD), ‘Digital Strategy for Defence: Delivering the Digital
Backbone and Unleashing the Power of Defence’s Data’, April 2021, pp. 14–15.
5
MoD, ‘Joint Concept Note 1/20: Multi-Domain Integration’, November 2020.
6
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, ‘The Cooperative Engagement
Capability’, Technical Digest (Vol. 16, No. 4, 1995), pp. 377–96.
7
For example, as led to the loss of the SS Atlantic Conveyor during the Falklands
conflict. See Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (London:
Pan Macmillan, 2012), p. 286.
8
Open Cellid, ‘The World’s Largest Open Database of Cell Towers’, Unwired Labs,
<https://www.opencellid.org/#zoom=6&lat=29.59&lon=-76.03>, accessed 3 March
2021.
88
More Sensors Than Sense
optical communication.9 Consequently, there is a limited ability to disrupt

or jam the system. However, those conditions are not universal across
domains.
This chapter seeks to outline the different frictions by domain and
explain the limits on exploiting an interconnected, all-domain, digital
command-and-control (C2) system. While useful, the gains are in many
contexts iterative rather than transformative, while dependence on such a
system across domains will risk creating numerous single points of failure
that can be targeted by adversaries, increasing the vulnerability of the
joint force.
Large-scale land operations do not offer conducive conditions to
maintaining a robust any-sensor-to-any-shooter network. The land
equivalent of a naval task group would be a division. A division
comprises several thousand vehicles.10 These vehicles do not have a
large source of power, and most will not be within line of sight of one
another. This means that their transmissions will often need to be routed
through intermediaries, so that moving data from vehicle A to E will
potentially also require vehicles B, C and D to receive and transmit the
data. Alternatively, masts, larger antenna and dedicated communications
systems can be mounted to transmit beyond line of sight. However, all of
these will be susceptible to interference. Interference may arise from
terrain, but in the land environment, the closeness of engagements also
makes units vulnerable to deployable artillery or standoff jammers,11
which – unlike shipboard communications – can overpower the receivers
on many communications systems. Furthermore, electronic warfare
allows transmissions to be detected, but large robust transmission points
often need to be set up and cannot be used on the move. Therefore,
large-bandwidth data transmission will only be intermittently available as
the vehicles with this capability set up, transmit and then manoeuvre
again to avoid being destroyed.
Beyond these structural difficulties is one of bandwidth. Modern
sensors are generating much higher-fidelity pictures of the operating
environment than previous generations. Whereas an artillery spotter
would previously have called for fire with a scripted set of sentences of
voice transmission, including the target’s grid reference, today’s recce
9
QinetiQ, ‘Free Space Optical Communications’, <https://www.qinetiq.com/en/
what-we-do/services-and-products/free-space-optical-communications>, accessed
27 July 2021.
10
‘BAOR Order of Battle: July 1989’, <https://www.orbat85.nl/documents/BAOR-
July-1989.pdf>, accessed 31 March 2021.
11
RUSI, ‘RUSI LWC 2017 – Session 7’, 19 July 2017, 21:54–48:00, <https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=_EcrrD1dBhg>, accessed 8 April 2020.
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Jack Watling
platforms gather thermal imaging, radar data, acoustic signatures and more.
This information must be fused to ensure confirmation of targets at
significant range. The volume of data that must be transmitted for a
targeting solution has therefore increased dramatically. These sensors are
also concentrated on reconnaissance vehicles, which are the most
geographically dispersed element of the force. The exact size of data files
and bandwidth capacity within military networks is sensitive.
Nevertheless, it is evident that the volume of data to be transmitted is
accelerating faster than the bandwidth to support its transmission. Within
the land domain, therefore, while a commander is increasingly able to
interrogate portions of the battlefield in ever-greater detail, accumulating
a consistent picture of the operating environment is becoming harder.
Without an as-yet-unforeseeable technological breakthrough, the
disparity between data volume and available bandwidth in the land
environment is likely to become worse. This is partly because air and
naval assets, lacking many of the constraints of land forces, will seek to
exploit volumes of data that are not supportable on land platforms. As a
result, militaries have experimented with two methods for reducing the
volume that must be transmitted. The first is to employ edge processing
to sort important from unimportant sensor data at source and to only
transmit that which is determined to require the attention of higher
echelons.12 The catch with this system is that the decision as to what is
important is made separately by the crews and their supporting software.
The data that reaches the centre will therefore be incomplete and,
perhaps more importantly, inconsistent. As different parts of the recce
screen come to contextually derived independent conclusions as to what
is important, the information at the centre will not give consistent
information. This will mean that the centre will have a list of targets but
will lack much of the vital information that could enable them to
prioritise the allocation of shooters, since there will be insufficient
information to assess the relative priority of support and advantage. That
is not an issue if the force has enough munitions to cover all targets, but
will create serious problems in a warfighting context where prioritisation
is critical.
The alternative method is for the centre to request discrete returns
from the sensor screen. In this system, the centre might, for example,
request all information regarding enemy main battle tanks identified by
its network of sensors. This system also relies on edge processing. The
sensors must interrogate the data they have collected, isolate that which
12
David S Alberts and Richard E Hayes, Power to the Edge: Command and Control
in the Information Age (Washington, DC: Command and Control Research Program,
2003).
90
is relevant to the request and transmit only the relevant data. In practice, the
centre would request a range of information; not just returns on a single
type of vehicle. Nevertheless, the problem with such a system is that it
will only provide the centre with what it expects or thinks it needs to
know. It will not flag the unexpected, provide indicators of the
unforeseen or highlight absences. This exposes higher echelons to the
risk of being surprised, which may be exacerbated by the illusion of
situational awareness created by the feeds of data returning from the
sensor screen.13
Historically, brigades have fought battles, divisions have worried
about the next battle, and corps the battle after.14 The different lead times
at these echelons has provided time for higher commands to receive and
ingest reports from subordinate formations, written by their officers, to
give a commander a combination of baseline statistics and the human
comments that contextualise them. Each commander has therefore had
the ability to have a feel for the battle two echelons below, to balance
knowns and unknowns, and use this information to prioritise resources
for the battle ahead.
On the modern battlefield, the range of systems and the low force
densities anticipated means that all echelons are likely engaged
simultaneously.15 The any-sensor-to-any-shooter concept is an attempt to
ensure competitiveness in this context by accelerating the accumulation
and interrogation of data. But to accumulate a complete dataset will
overload the bearer network. Furthermore, accumulating trend data will
leave a command vulnerable to surprise and letting the edge report
outliers to the centre will not provide the latter with a consistent dataset
to form a basis for analysis. The most realistic workaround is for the
system to accumulate trend data based on a high-priority list generated at
echelon, and for outliers to be reported via standard reporting methods.
This, however, raises two further challenges. First, the trend data will
accumulate at a tempo that is out of sync with the reporting of outliers.
Higher echelons will therefore either make decisions too quickly to take
outliers into account or will have the whole process slowed to the
existing operating speed.16 Second, the usual answer for how the volume
13
It also accentuates vulnerability to systematic deception. See US Army, ‘FM 3-
13.4: Army Support to Military Deception’, February 2019, <https://fas.org/irp/
doddir/army/fm3-13-4.pdf>, accessed 30 March 2021.
14
Jack Watling and Sean MacFarland, ‘The Future of the NATO Corps’, RUSI
Occasional Papers (April 2021), p. 20.
15
Watling and MacFarland, ‘The Future of the NATO Corps’.
16
Nick Reynolds, ‘Performing Information Manoeuvre Through Persistent
Engagement’, RUSI Occasional Papers (April 2021), pp. 37–43.
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Jack Watling
of data is to be interrogated at a competitive speed in command posts is

through the application of AI.17 If the system relies on data transfer and
human reporting, however, then either the human reporting will need to
be translated into a language ingestible by the AI system – which will
take time and require supervision – or the AI will produce solutions
based on an incomplete dataset.18 This may produce solutions that are
not just incomplete, but – because AI systems pursue optimal solutions,
and therefore often make aggressive trade-off decisions – may in fact be
wholly inaccurate in its assessment of the balance in the absence of
additional information.19 Imagine, for instance, an Uber app that had no
information about road closures or traffic jams. It may assign tasks to
drivers that could not reach the customer within a practical timeframe.
None of this invalidates the usefulness of being able to transfer data
between domains and systems. Nor does it mean that AI will not be highly
valuable in accelerating the planning of logistical resupply or of
coordinating batteries from a fire control headquarters. However, in the
land domain, the ability to move data from any sensor to any shooter will
in practice function as the transfer of data from some sensors to some
shooters, some of the time. The concept will improve the efficiency of
C2, but the gains are iterative and not transformative. Furthermore, as the
differences between the maritime and ground contexts demonstrates, the
utility and constraints on this system will change how it is employed in
each domain. While the aspiration to enable maritime, ground and air
assets for information sharing is sensible and will provide incidental
opportunities to secure advantage, it will be subordinated to how each
service intends to fight. The frictions of how systems will be shaped by
the approach to fighting in each domain are best outlined by reference to
an as-yet-unconsidered domain: the air.
Air power fits curiously into the discussion, as air–land and air–sea
integration are the most routine examples of multi-domain engagements.
The capacity to draw target data from, or push it to, aircraft is the most
immediately comprehensible example of joint activity. Yet, this
discussion has arguably been shaped by the relationship between air and
17
Congressional Research Service, ‘Artificial Intelligence and National Security’,
updated 10 November 2020, <https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R45178.pdf>,
18
A problem already facing cyber threat intelligence needing to ingest non-digital
feeds. See Sean Barnum, ‘Standardizing Cyber Threat Intelligence Information with
the Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX™)’, MITRE, 20 February 2014,
<http://www.standardscoordination.org/sites/default/files/docs/STIX_
Whitepaper_v1.1.pdf>, accessed 30 March 2021.
19
RUSI, ‘Session Twelve: Innovation and Adaptability’, 19 June 2019, <https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzJIcS36Ls>, accessed 3 March 2021.
92
land forces that has characterised the post-Cold War period of

counterinsurgency in which air forces have been under minimal threat
and have therefore been subordinated to the support of ground forces.
The cooperative engagement frameworks for ground–air integration are
geared towards high-intensity peer-on-peer warfighting. But that context
fundamentally changes the priorities for air assets.20
In a warfighting context, the threat to air assets will be severe until an
effective suppression/destruction of enemy air defences campaign has
been completed.21 The challenge is exacerbated by the shrinking size of
air forces, meaning that there is a need for a very low rate of attrition.22
As it cannot be assumed that adversary ground forces will wait for the air
battle to be completed before acting, armies must prepare to fight
without available close air support. Even assuming that air assets are
increasingly available, however, it must be understood that air power is
not likely to prioritise tactical targets. In an environment where air forces
bear comparable risk to ground forces, the latter will not be able to
dictate the priority of targets. Within air power theory, targets may be
divided into the tactical and the strategic.23 Tactical targets correspond to
those in the close and deep battle areas within the land domain because
the threat level and impact are comparable from an air force perspective.
Strategic targets – such as critical infrastructure, strategic air defence
networks, industrial and higher-level C2 facilities – are likely beyond the
depth that tactical echelons in ground forces can either detect or strike.
This means that while ground forces can expose their positions to send
target data to aircraft in a high-intensity warfighting context, it is unlikely
that the air force will want to divert assets from sorties against strategic
targets to deliver tactical effects.
The sophisticated sensor suites on modern military aircraft are likely
to capture a panoply of data that could be highly beneficial to ground forces
20
Justin Bronk, ‘Approaching a Fork in the Sky’, in Jack Watling (ed.), Decision
Points: Rationalising the Armed Forces of European Medium Powers, Whitehall
Paper 96 (London: Taylor and Francis, 2020), pp. 52–62.
21
Justin Bronk, ‘Modern Russian and Chinese Integrated Air Defence Systems: The
Nature of the Threat, Growth Trajectory and Western Options’, RUSI Occasional
Papers (April 2021).
22
Justin Bronk, The Future of NATO Airpower: How Are Future Capability Plans
Within the Alliance Diverging and How Can Interoperability be Maintained?,
Whitehall Paper 94 (London: Taylor and Francis, 2020).
23
For example, see Peter R Faber, ‘Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps
Tactical School: Incubators of American Airpower’, in Phillip S Meilinger (ed.),
The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower Theory (New Delhi: Lancer
Publications, 2000), p. 215.
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Jack Watling
as the aircraft penetrate and exfiltrate enemy airspace.24 However, it must

be acknowledged that in data transfer it is the party sending information,
not the one receiving it, that bears the risk. While stealth aircraft
penetrating enemy airspace will likely detect a range of interesting data
points about enemy positions, the period when they are traversing the
overlayed threat rings from short-, medium- and strategic-range SAM
systems is not the time when they will want to give the enemy an
indication of their position. Aircraft such as the F35 can transmit on
specialised datalinks without losing their stealth characteristics, but the
receiver terminals for the Multifunction Advanced Data Link are highly
sensitive and cannot risk being captured through integration into
frontline units.25 These aircraft can therefore pass the relevant data back
to the Combined Air Operations Centre, or potentially to an E3 Sentry or
E7 Wedgetail. There, the data would need to be translated into a system
that could be sent to a receiving ground unit such as the fire-control
headquarters at the corps echelon. Alternatively, it could be transferred to
an aviation asset such as Wildcat if it were equipped with Link-16.26
Here, crew could determine what was relevant and pass key points of
interest to tactical units on the ground via Bowman,27 or through
Morpheus when it comes into service.28 Any of these options require two
or three translations of the data, as well as it passing through at least four
echelons. While this may provide incidentally useful information, it does
not constitute the basis for collaborative engagement between air and
ground units, since the translation of the data must impose a time lag
from capture to delivery.
The situation is made even more problematic if the anticipated
trajectory of air operations in great power conflict is considered. The
increased range of munitions is steadily pushing large C2 and enabling
aircraft orbits further from the battlespace. Even if they are able to stand
24
Douglas Barrie, ‘F-35 Situational Awareness: Sensing Isn’t Enough’, IISS Military
Balance Blog, 19 March 2019, <https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2019/
03/f-35-situational-awareness>, accessed 3 March 2021.
25
Brian W Everstine, ‘The F-22 and the F-35 Are Struggling to Talk to Each Other
… And to the Rest of USAF’, Air Force Magazine, 29 January 2018.
26
Myron Hura et al., Interoperability: A Continuing Challenge in Coalition Air
Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), pp. 107–21.
27
British Army, ‘Bowman Radio Update | Director of Information | British Army’,
13 May 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYr4Hix-AL0>, accessed
3 March 2021.
28
MoD, ‘Morpheus Programme: Next Generation Tactical Communication
Information Systems For Defence’, last updated 18 April 2018, <https://www.gov.
uk/guidance/morpheus-project-next-generation-tactical-communication-
information-systems-for-defence>, accessed 3 March 2021.
94
in, such aircraft are easily detectable, and susceptible to electronic attack
from ground assets within line of sight that may inhibit their ability to
receive data from penetrating ISTAR platforms. As a result of the threat to
enabling aircraft, the US in particular is aiming to reduce its dependence
on these kinds of platforms. However, this will eliminate a key
communications node that at present enables integration with higher-
echelon ground formations. If, by contrast, coordination of air assets is
pushed back to the Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) or Joint
Forces Command, this will impose more echelons between the air
component and ground units, expanding the lag between detection and
receipt of the relevant data.
The situation is markedly different in a maritime context. It should be
noted that while much ink has been spilt lamenting the death of aircraft
carriers,29 all navies seeking to project power are currently investing in
modernising their carrier capability.30 Carrier operations will therefore
remain at the heart of naval operations for some time. The maritime
domain is consequently intrinsically linked to the air domain. This
chapter began by considering the cooperative engagement capability
within the context of point defence of a naval task group. A carrier strike
group would hope to identify threats long before it had to engage in
point defence, and to be sensing and striking first.31 If a nominal combat
29
John Patch, ‘Fortress at Sea? The Carrier Invulnerability Myth’, US Naval Institute
Proceedings (January 2010).
30
See MoD, ‘Joint Statement on Carrier Strike Group 2021 Joint Declaration
Signing’, 19 January 2021, <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-
statement-on-carrier-strike-group-2021-joint-declaration-signing–2>, accessed 3
March 2021. On France, see Elysee, ‘Notre avenir énergétique et écologique passe
par le nucléaire. Déplacement du Président Emmanuel Macron sur le site
industriel de Framatome’, 8 December 2020, <https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-
macron/2020/12/08/deplacement-du-president-emmanuel-macron-sur-le-site-
industriel-de-framatome>, accessed 3 March 2021. On the US, see Congressional
Research Service, ‘Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program:
Background and Issues for Congress’, 29 September 2021, <https://fas.org/sgp/
crs/weapons/RS20643.pdf>, accessed 3 March 2021. On China, Japan and South
Korea, see Felix K Chang, ‘Taking Flight: China, Japan and South Korea Get
Aircraft Carriers’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 14 January 2021, <https://
www.fpri.org/article/2021/01/taking-flight-china-japan-and-south-korea-get-
aircraft-carriers/>, accessed 3 March 2021. Russia continues to try, see Paul Goble,
‘Moscow’s Plans for New Kind of Aircraft Carrier Unlikely to Be Realized’, The
Jamestown Foundation, 11 March 2021, <https://jamestown.org/program/
moscows-plans-for-new-kind-of-aircraft-carrier-unlikely-to-be-realized/> accessed
5 November 2021.
31
This is the objective of the US Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control – Counter Air
(NIFC-CA) system. See John Andrew Hamilton, ‘Navy Conducts First Live Fire NIFC-
CA Test with F-35 at White Sands Missile Range’, US Army, 29 September 2016,
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Jack Watling
radius of 400 nautical miles (nm) is assumed for the carrier air wing,
alongside a sensor radius from their cruising altitude of a comparable
distance, carrier operations sensing targets and potentially engaging them
out to 500 nm or further can be envisaged. That range may be extended
through aerial refuelling, either using carrier-launched refuelling aircraft32
or by linking up with air force aerial refuelling aircraft. The former must
severely reduce the size of strike packages that can be projected.
The distances and ingrained interdependence of the forces involved
have significant implications for the utility of cooperative engagement
beyond the defence of the task group. First, the increase in range
between different cooperating assets increases the potential lag between
action and effect. Aircraft operating at a significant distance from the task
group are likely to detect and encounter incoming threats before the
surface vessels, and consequently any engagement will have progressed
significantly by the time munitions or other capabilities from the task
group can engage the target. The coordination of effects over such
distances requires careful sequencing, even for missiles such as the SM-3
series which offer hypersonic performance. If it has not been planned to
have assets in place to cooperatively engage a target, they may be too far
away to do so opportunistically in many circumstances. Munitions are
increasingly able to interact cooperatively,33 as are aircraft in the same
strike package, but this technology represents an opportunity for iterative
improvements over existing tactics rather than a revolutionary solution to
the tyranny of distance in the maritime domain.
The limitations of enablement also reduce the significance of
cooperative engagement between the services. For air forces operating
over a large maritime area, strike aircraft must either have multiple
refuelling points or the strikes must be carried out by long-range
bombers. If the former approach is taken, the tankers must be protected,
so that to deliver a large strike package against a target requires tiers of
enablement at intervals behind. Those tiers of enablers must also remain
in place to facilitate the return journey, and so must themselves be
escorted. The level of planning, interdependence and precise windows
for intersection between aircraft means that these operations are unlikely
<https://www.army.mil/article/175940/navy_conducts_first_live_fire_nifc_ca_test_
wtih_f_35_at_white_sands_missile_range>, accessed 3 March 2021.
32
Boeing, ‘MQ-25’, <https://www.boeing.com/defense/mq25/>, accessed
3 March 2021.
33
As demonstrated by the US Air Force’s Golden Horde programme. See Garrett
Reim, ‘Golden Horde Collaborative Bombs Hit Four Targets Simultaneously in
Test’, Flight Global, 26 February 2021, <https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/
golden-horde-collaborative-bombs-hit-four-targets-simultaneously-in-test/142655.
article>, accessed 3 March 2021.
96
to be diverted once in progress. They are not going to plan on the basis of
potentially diverting assets from their mission to take advantage of
opportunities detected by maritime assets. They will pursue their mission,
and the data from maritime assets in the operating environment will be
used where available to evade or engage pop-up threats on the pre-
planned route and for planning subsequent operations. Conversely, data
gathered by the strike aircraft may well be passed to maritime forces, but
those maritime units will plan operations based on their own
requirements rather than changing missions in progress to account for
opportunities.
Bombers face a different challenge. Seeking to minimise their
signature, they will employ flightpaths carefully designed to penetrate
hostile air space and will be avoiding datalink transmissions. Again, they
are not likely to divert or cooperatively adjust their missions on the basis
of opportunistic information delivered through joint C2 networks.
Instead, interservice cooperation in the maritime environment is likely to
depend on detailed planning cycles within the air force and navy CAOCs.
Constraints are largely imposed by engagement distances and the time
required to put enablement in place, and will exceed the length of
planning cycles so that accumulating data faster will not necessarily lead
to an increased tempo of sorties and strikes.
The limitations to future C2 do not change the fact that being able to
transfer data between units from different services is valuable and will
improve the effectiveness of the joint force. That units have the ability to
share data – even if they do not always choose to – opens up many small
but important efficiencies and, by increasing the number of routes by
which information can be moved around the battlefield, reduces the
vulnerability of communications systems to attacks on critical nodes.34
The any-sensor-to-any-shooter concept is worth pursuing.
However, the fact that the integration of communications across
domains is advantageous does not mean that it will be decisive. As this
chapter has sought to explain, the reason why communications
architectures for each domain have evolved differently reflects the
distinct challenges that forces face and the way in which they fight.
These differences in approaches will continue to shape decision-making
and ensure that commanders will still need to penetrate the fog of war,
especially in the land domain. That any vehicle can theoretically pass
information back means that the commander, in determining what
information they wish to prioritise on the network, can likely find an
34
Bryan Clark and Timothy A Walton, ‘Taking Back the Seas: Transforming the U.S.
Surface Fleet for Decision-Centric Warfare’, Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, 31 December 2019.
97
Jack Watling
answer to any question about the battlefield that they choose to ask. But
being able to pierce the fog of war is different from it being lifted
entirely, and as long as bandwidth is limited, there will only be so many
questions that commanders can ask.
The problem with the any-sensor-to-any-shooter narrative is that it
suggests to commanders that they will soon have a complete picture of
the battlefield and be able to access a full set of real-time and assured
information. In practice, while it will be increasingly possible to link any
sensor to any shooter, this does not mean all sensors to all shooters, but
rather some sensors to some shooters, some of the time. The risk, in
short, is that this narrative prevents commanders from accepting the
trade-offs intrinsic in what information they prioritise. Unless militaries
determine what information is vital, accepting that an incomplete picture
will have drawbacks, they risk aspiring to a vision that is unachievable
and in doing so miss the genuine advantages that advances in
communications technology offer.
98
CONCLUSION
In March 2021, the UK published its most far-reaching reassessment of its

foreign and defence policy since 1997. The Integrated Review articulated
a vision of the UK as an independent global player, using widespread
access to develop economic and political influence, embedded in a
strong Western alliance, and at the leading edge of emerging
technologies.1 It stated that Russia was a threat that must be deterred,
and that China was a strategic competitor. Whether one agrees or
disagrees with its prognosis, the Integrated Review provides a clear
articulation of what UK foreign policy aspires to achieve.
The subsequent Defence Command Paper (DCP) was supposed to
set out how the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would structure the armed
forces to meet the policy demands in the Integrated Review.2 It failed to
do so coherently. This was partly because the forces which can be
fielded within the budget available fall far short of what would be
required to meet the policy ambition described.3 However, beyond a lack
of fiscal realism, the DCP also demonstrated various conceptual failures
which are likely to hamper the ability of Defence to deliver relevant
policy options.
One example from the DCP which illustrates some of the real-world
consequences of the distortionary narratives highlighted in this Whitehall
Paper is the establishment of the British Army’s new Ranger Regiment.
1
HM Goverment, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of
Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, CP 403 (London: The
Stationery Office, 2021).
2
Ministry of Defence, Defence in a Competitive Age, CP 411 (London: The
Stationery Office, 2021).
3
For more on this trend, see Justin Bronk, ‘The Problem at the Heart of UK
Defense’, Breaking Defense, 13 September 2021, <https://breakingdefense.com/
2021/09/the-problem-at-the-heart-of-uk-defense/>, accessed 22 October 2021.
99
The Ranger Regiment was set up as a specialist infantry unit to accompany

partners and generate credibility for overseas capacity building, working
upstream of conflict to enable local forces to tackle threats at source.
There is nothing wrong with this proposition in and of itself. However,
the DCP failed to show any self-awareness as to the fact that this strategy
had been pursued in many countries throughout the previous two
decades of the War on Terror and has failed dismally. The surprise
among senior MoD officials when the Afghan military collapsed in weeks
during August 2021 underscored the extent of the institutional blindness
to the outcomes of this policy. Similarly, extensive training to Yemeni
and Saudi forces has failed to produce units that can defeat Houthi
insurgents. Training provided to the Malian army has seen the insurgency
in Northern Mali expand, and a second insurgency erupt as a partial
consequence of Malian military activity, before spreading throughout the
tri-border area. There have only been a few isolated successes to offset
this widespread failure. The Counterterrorism Service (CTS) in Iraq is a
standout example. Afghan Commando units also performed well, though
they were unable to compensate for the weakness of the Afghan National
Army at higher echelons.
When the principal determinants of success and failure between
these various missions are considered, two things stand out. First, the
comradeship and shared purpose achieved through accompanying units
in combat is vital to success in partner force capacity building, but this is
dependent on high-level permissions and risk tolerance. The MoD could
have accompanied much more widely across its training missions with or
without a Ranger Regiment if it were to accept a higher level of risk to
personnel. Conversely, the creation of a Ranger Regiment does nothing
to address the cultural risk aversion that has undermined such efforts in
the past. If anything, the desire to grant these permissions to a special
unit, aligned with Special Operations Forces, can be seen as a way to
reduce or even eliminate public discussion of the mission. In this light,
the Ranger Regiment appears to be a means of evading the need to
proactively shape public perception to support missions and thereby
build a national will to fight that would allow for greater risk to be taken.
The narrative which holds sway in Defence that the public will not
accept casualties leads to military training being hamstrung by
inadequate permissions and risk tolerance. These issues are entirely
within the gift of the MoD to solve and have nothing to do with budgets.
However, any hint of a more mature approach to assessing risk and
potential gains is absent from the DCP.
A second failing of training and advisory efforts throughout the War
on Terror has been to ignore the principle of concentration of effort. In most
training contexts, short-term training teams of around six people were
100
Conclusion
deployed for weeks to deliver courses to large, partnered units. The lessons
they delivered rarely stuck. Elsewhere, as with the Afghan National Army,
the scale of personnel mobilised dwarfed the number of trainers
dedicated to support the institution. In short, however knowledgeable
the trainers, what was missing was persistence and mass. By contrast, in
Iraq, a critical mass of trainers was achieved for the CTS. The Ranger
Regiment offers the potential concentration of specialists to enable the
British Army to have more people spending longer with trainees.
However, the Integrated Review does little to articulate a hierarchy of
priorities. Instead, the DCP exhorts the Army to be more deployed, more
of the time, but does not suggest where Defence should place its bets
given limited units of action.
The result of these factors is that the success or failure of the DCP
as regards its forward presence strategy has much less to do with the
name of the unit assigned with the task, or the equipment they carry,
than with whether the MoD remains ensnared by its conceptual
shortcomings. Success will first and foremost be determined by whether
the MoD recognises that there is a critical mass at which partnered
operations will succeed and below which they will achieve little or
even prove counterproductive. The UK has tried doing ‘more with less’
in partnered operations, and the results speak for themselves. Second,
will the MoD pick a manageable number of operations and justify them
publicly in order to develop sufficient public and political will to take
the risks that are necessary to ensure the force’s credibility? As long as
casualty tolerance is assumed to be inherently low, trainers will not be
given sufficient boundaries to achieve success on the ground. The
Ranger Regiment is an example of why the challenges to distortionary
narratives articulated in this paper are necessary; conceptual failings
undermine the ability of the new formation to deliver policy-relevant
results.
The UK’s approach to hostile state actors and strategic competition is
similarly weakened by conceptually flawed narratives within Defence. If
the UK is to expand its international presence and try to compete with
Russia and China for influence or deter Iran from destabilising partners,
then it is axiomatic that its military presence abroad will be in tension
with the foreign policy interests of these states. If the pursuit of
competition short of combat operations comes at the expense of being
able to generate credible combat capabilities, however, then there is very
little reason for such adversaries to accept a competition space framed to
suit UK capabilities. This can already be seen in the extensive use of
coercion by Iran against the UK, with tanker seizures, strikes on UK
shipping and the sponsoring of harassing fire on bases where its forces
are present. Both UK civilians and military personnel have been killed by
101
Iranian actions.4 The consequence of this behaviour has been to massively

increase force protection requirements, and to fix scarce naval assets to
protecting shipping. Similar actions by an increased number of
competitors would quickly outstrip the UK’s capacity to protect its
dispersed forces. In other words, without challenging the narratives on
the acceptability of casualties and risk, adversary states could rapidly
price the UK out of competing, since without enough assets to provide
protection, permissions would rapidly constrain operations.
Distortionary narratives have also fuelled false assumptions within
UK Defence that specific actions are escalatory and others are not; some
actions are perceived as sub-threshold by nature, while others are
axiomatically above the threshold. This misses the fact that the UK has a
great deal of agency in dictating where the threshold lies between what it
will and will not tolerate. However, the ability to shape the thresholds for
various adversary behaviours is in no small part a function of the capacity
to escalate with conventional hard power. Limited non-kinetic
punishment to impose costs on adversary states can send a clear message
as to where the UK believes the threshold should be, but only if backed
up by a credible threat of imposing unacceptable costs if the adversary
continues to push the threshold. Notably, this still holds even if the cost
of escalation is mutually unacceptable. If military actions above a given
threshold may be deemed unacceptable to both parties, competition may
be conducted sustainably below the threshold. But if one party can be
conventionally deterred from responding when an adversary uses force,
they will be unable to compete.
At the same time, the false dichotomy between competition and
conflict has a tendency in the MoD to relegate warfighting to a space that
is apolitical. Because the MoD does not control the political levers of
power and struggles to simulate them, warfighting is often discussed as a
pure military sphere in which the policy and political constraints that
make operating in competition so difficult suddenly dematerialise. This,
too, is misleading. It is in no country’s interests to deliberately start a
third world war. Even immediately before the Second World War, Adolf
Hitler had envisaged his campaigns as limited conflicts. He had not
expected wide declarations of war over Poland.5 This is important to
4
Dan Sabbagh, ‘UK Servicewoman Killed in Missile Attack on Iraqi Base Is Named’,
The Guardian, 12 March 2020; BBC News, ‘Man Killed in Tanker Attack Named as
Adrian Underwood’, 4 August 2021.
5
Antony Beevor makes a strong case for understanding the Second World War as a
series of local and limited conflicts that converged over time, gaining coherence
retrospectively. See Antony Beevor, The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 2012), pp. 1–11.
102
Conclusion
appreciate because the risk of nuclear escalation and thereby total and
mutual defeat ensures that there are very strong incentives for states to
politically and geographically limit conflicts that may occur. This means
that high-intensity warfighting may well occur in the future without a
total war, as in Korea between 1950 and 1953.6 Such a scenario would
entail significant political limitations on what actions can be undertaken
even in a state-on-state conflict. US Multi-Domain Operations, for
example – envisaging the penetration and disintegration of enemy anti-
access and area-denial systems in their own territory – may not be viable
under a range of conflict scenarios due to the likely escalation
implications. Because of the wider consequences, there are also likely to
be severe limitations to what states are prepared to do to one another’s
space-based infrastructure in the event of war. The potential for high-
intensity conflict to occur under geographically and politically limited
conditions means that conventional forces able to credibly conduct high-
intensity limited conflicts have continued policy relevance even in a
world where unrestricted state-on-state warfare remains highly unlikely.
Appreciating that competition and conflict overlap is also important
in assessing the potential utility of cyber capabilities. One of the authors
has observed instances of military officers assuming that because a cyber
capability has been proven against a type of system, it can be called for
and delivered as an effect against any system of that type. In reality,
cyber capabilities can only function against the specific system in which
they have been emplaced. However, this presents a serious challenge to
the idea that cyber attacks are ‘sub-threshold’ capabilities. If they must be
embedded in the specific target system to be militarily effective, and the
process of embedding the capability has a lead time far longer than the
political crisis preceding war, then cyber operations must constitute
preparatory activities for war conducted against a state in peacetime. Any
cyber capability that would be materially significant to a conflict straddles
thresholds between competition and conflict.
Poor understanding of how emerging technologies work,
exaggerated expectations of their effects, and – perhaps most importantly
– a theory–praxis gap between concepts and what is practically available
all present dangers to Defence successfully meeting the requirements in
the Integrated Review. It may be argued that the DCP under-resourced
current capabilities because the government is betting on future systems.
There is undoubtedly a step change in capability on the horizon in many
areas of military technology that will reshape the balance of arms across
6
Donald Stoker, Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the
Korean War to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019),
pp. 44–80.
103
the domains, and in this regard the bet may prove sensible. But it must also
be noted that, in wargames for the future force, communications systems
tend to work perfectly. Data is always available. Bandwidth management
and interference challenges are acknowledged but rarely tested.
Meanwhile, units conducting live exercises cannot test capabilities they
do not possess. To assume that the resultant systems will work in the
field as they have on a map board is dangerous and ignores the huge
investment by competing states in systems and operational concepts
specifically designed to deny connectivity.
Similarly, the RAF, Royal Navy and Royal Artillery may develop a
wide range of complex weapons, and each may be highly effective
because of multispectral sensors and swarming capabilities. However,
expensive munitions make for smaller affordable stockpiles. In Exercise
Warfighter in 2021, the British Army fired a simulated 14,000 GMLRS
rounds and 45,000 155-mm shells over eight days.7 This is consistent with
historical consumption rates. If ground and maritime forces lack mass
and become more dependent on fires, then Defence must have a
sufficient volume of them. Thus, at some point, the UK will need to
select which high-end capabilities it wishes to prioritise and ensure it has
enough launchers and stocks of those capabilities to make a difference.
Similarly, a force design premised on seamless coordination under all
conditions will have far less combat power in practice (once the
adversary and general battlefield chaos cast their votes) than appeared to
be available on paper. Without an appreciation of friction in the
employment of novel technologies, the force will be overly brittle.
Discussion of defence in the UK has gazed wistfully into the sunlit
uplands of future capability for some years now, even as the gap
between its ageing and declining fleets of fielded platforms and its
aspirations has widened over time. The absence of detail in the
description of how future capabilities are to actually work has been
consciously and unconsciously exploited to allow hard decisions to be
avoided. The UK now faces a critical period where its choices will
determine the country’s capabilities for the next generation. It is
important that those decisions are made with a realistic understanding of
the options. Aside from resource constraints, no amount of capability is
of any value if it is not properly employed. The authors hope that the
conceptual challenges set out in this Whitehall Paper will help ensure
that the hard choices confronting UK Defence are approached with clear
eyes.
7
Charlie Hewitt, speaking at RUSI’s Precision Strike in 21st Century Multi-Domain
Operations Conference, 13 May 2021.
104
PRC OVERSEAS
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Royal United Services Ins tute

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Necessary Heresies

Challenging the Narratives Distorting

Edited by Justin Bronk and Jack Watling

Justin Bronk and Jack Watling

Necessary Heresies: Challenging the Narratives Distorting Contemporary UK Defence

Whitehall Papers series

Series Editor: Professor Malcolm Chalmers

RUSI is a Registered Charity (No. 210639)

Image courtesy of Kenjo/Adobe Stock

I. The Slow and Imprecise Art of Cyber Warfare

II. The Grey Zone Is Deﬁned by the Defender

III. Doing Less with Less in the Land Domain

IV. Swarming Munitions, UAVs and the Myth of Cheap Mass

V. The Lights May Go Out, But the Band Plays On

VI. In Space, No One Will See You Fight

VII. More Sensors Than Sense

Alexandra Stickings is Space Strategy Lead at Frazer-Nash Consultancy,

JUSTIN BRONK AND JACK WATLING

Humans are naturally drawn to stories, since we use narratives to make

political demands for increased ﬁnancial and manpower efﬁciency,

Through years of repetition, narratives about the rapidly changing

more nuanced view in private. Nevertheless, that nuance is often absent

. That new domains of warfare, from space to cyberspace and

Confronting these propositions is made difﬁcult by the fact that they

overestimation of the efﬁciency and efﬁcacy of grey-zone tools such as

defender is deterred from retaliating with conventional forces. Grey-zone

technologically feasible, many of the visions for how such capabilities

understanding of both how adversaries are operating and what is

JUSTIN BRONK AND JACK WATLING

where its importance is recognised but its implications remain poorly

The Anatomy of a Cyber Attack

network. Therefore, having determined that a digital target exists, an

To envisage how a hack works, consider the consequences of

1. Reconnaissance: to understand the target network.

Attempting to gain entry to a complex defended system may require

escalation in tensions or could even be interpretated by the victim as a casus

The Military Application of Cyber Weapons

North Korea regularly use quasi-criminal groups of hackers operating under

used to disable or disrupt key adversary defence systems at a critical

locations, individual system capabilities and patterns of movement

dependencies placed on cyber specialists are less onerous. For example,

The use of political subversion, unbadged ‘little green men’, cyber

The Pitfalls of the Grey-Zone Concept

of deterrence by not presenting a clear casus belli.8 Plausible deniability

psychologically magnifying effects of international market responses to

conclusion, irrespective of whether economic or military instruments were

greater incentives to take threats to escalate seriously even if they judged

The Relationship Between Low-Intensity Coercion and Warﬁghting

1. Misperceiving adversary strategies and the relationships between low-

perceived that conventional forces were the North’s centre of gravity, it

It is a long-established point of pride for smaller, lighter professional

left it unable to effectively conduct operations that the Integrated Review

Not All Reductions in Mass Are Equal

timeframe. Moreover, counterarguments are often polemic, with NATO’s

value for money unless it operates in an alliance context, providing support

Modernisation is Not Minimisation

Karabakh, which involved less-capable belligerents such as Armenia who

Take, for instance, the recent non-combatant evacuation operation

the UK’s contribution to NATO is veriﬁably under strength. These