During my time in the U.S. Army, I learned several valuable lessons from a combat-seasoned noncommissioned officer that ring as true today as the day I first heard them.
He told me, “If you can be seen, you will be targeted, and if targeted, you will die.”
Those words came from a past era, the Cold War, when all combat operations were large-scale.
The same NCO also taught me, “Big objects draw attention. Attention draws interest. Interest ends with targeting, and you know how targeting ends. Small things are not interesting, and mobility — rapid emplacement and displacement, makes you hard to target.”
Thankfully, for our deployed troops and U.S. citizens, today’s Army leadership seems focused on the points above. As our Army undergoes a transformation to prepare itself for modern warfare, it is critical to understand the operating environment and for an air defender, that environment is dynamic and exceedingly challenging.
The operational lessons from U.S. Central Command and the Russia-Ukraine war should make us stop and think, “Is it time to go back to the future as we transform?”
The aerial threat of 2025 is more dynamic and diverse than ever before. Armed unmanned aerial systems have proliferated at a massive rate, and cruise missiles have validated their stealth and lethality, while ballistic missiles have transformed from pop-up flies into maneuvering snitches. Synchronized, complex, 360-degree attacks are now the norm, and direct attacks on air defense systems are now part of the enemy’s calculus.
The shoot-move-communicate Cold War mantra has become shoot, move to survive and rapidly reintegrate into the fight.
Operations in Ukraine highlight the importance of survivability moves. For example, a Patriot battery that remains static after executing numerous successful engagements can become the targeted victim of a complex attack.
April 2024’s highly successful air defense operations in Israel demonstrate the complexity and challenges of today’s environment. U.S. and Israeli aircraft and air defense systems soundly defeated the complex aerial assault, but not in a truly integrated fashion. At best, it was a coordinated defense, which applied innovative tactics, techniques and procedures with existing command-and-control systems to defeat a challenging threat set. The defense succeeded, but at a great cost to U.S. defense assets.
As with the defense of Al Udeid Air Base in June or Al-Dhafra Air Base in 2022, the number of exquisite, limited production and expensive interceptors expended was significant, if not astounding. The dollar cost of those interceptors is irrelevant to an operator. An operator’s concern is the duration of operations: “How long can I stay in the fight with the number of interceptors I have?”
An integrated defense, supported by an integrated fire control system, extends the duration of operations as it selectively pairs shooters to targets and directs “who is taking the shot.”
The Army’s Integrated Battle Command System is the linchpin to solving these air defense operational challenges. After nearly three dozen successful flight tests, it is now being fielded. IBCS provides air defenders with a single integrated air picture and a fire control network that integrates disparate sensors and diverse shooters. “Any sensor, best shooter” isn’t just a bumper sticker — it is backed up by 41 successful intercepts of 41 threat targets.
IBCS is the backbone for the Guam missile defense system and should play a predominant role in the Golden Dome system’s architecture. But as it is currently configured, it does not contribute to enhancing a unit’s survivability — the other challenge facing air defenders.
For an inexplicable reason, the Army has moved away from mounted and mobile command systems, which served us well in Operation Iraqi Freedom’s race to Baghdad. Today’s air defense tactical operational centers are extremely large, high-profile, windowless tents, which violates that sage NCO’s second rule about big objects drawing attention, interest, and, eventually, targeting.
The Army must leverage the technological and tactical success of IBCS by transforming it into a more agile, mobile command-and-control system to meet today’s survivability challenges as it decisively and effectively defeats the threat. The Army should harness its integrated air and missile defense investment to evolve the system and grow its capabilities.
Battlefield success and survivability demand increased speed of service, reliability and resilience, mobility and configuration and employment options. Today’s emplaced operations must become “at the halt” and then “on the move” operations.
The Army’s recently released Air and Missile Defense Operations manual recognizes the new operating environment and speaks to air defense artillery task forces — a variety of air defense systems, organized for combat operations under a single headquarters, to execute an integrated defense. Task forces, employing a tiered, scalable and integrated command-and-control system, will replace the single, siloed weapon system defense.
Today’s operating environment demands agile, mobile, resilient, small-footprint and integrated battle command-and-control systems. The Army must reconfigure IBCS’ leap-ahead capabilities to meet the changing operating environment. But the question of what is far easier than the how.
The Army must fully leverage its existing contracts and challenge its current industry partners to develop, procure and deploy an upgraded IBCS as quickly as possible. Let’s parlay what’s working to innovate this much-needed adaptive capability by the swiftest means necessary.
Francis Mahon is a retired Army major general. He previously served as director for test at the Missile Defense Agency, commander of an Army Air and Missile Defense Command and director of materiel on the Army Staff.
Read the full article here
