The better planning is assisted by new AI-assisted tools
13 October 2022 – Ukraine’s swift counter-offensive owes much to U.S. weapons, planning, and intelligence help. But the U.S. Army is benefitting as well: by learning how to move intelligence much faster from satellites to ground units. Part of the answer is planning: making sure satellites are available to gather data when and where commanders need it. That means trying to locate where the targets are now in the targeting board, making sure that the effect that the commander wants on the battlefield is there and it’s right there in the stack.
At a press briefing yesterday, Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, the commanding general of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said plans must include getting permission to access those satellites:
“We could sit there and we can have a plan out there. But sometimes you have to get authorities at the right level. And if you’re waiting for authorities to come down, because you haven’t put them into the plan initially, then that flashbang…it’s going to be much longer”.
Part of the answer is new software tools. For example, U.S. defense contractor Palantir has developed MetaConstellation, which allows a user to specify a time and ground location. So let’s say you recently launched a HIMARS strike against a Russian tank company. You get an AI-assisted search of all the relevant data gathered by passing satellites, whether radio signals, thermal imagery, or aerial photos. This allows a ground commander to do the kind of search that used to be possible only at higher headquarters level, and so the results appear far faster than the days it might otherwise.
NOTE TO READERS: I’ll have more on the super-tech being used in this war in an upcoming post, but in brief … Himars (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) is a missile launcher mounted on a five-ton truck which can fire six guided missiles in quick succession. The missiles supplied to Ukraine have a range of up to 50 miles (80 km), which is over twice the range of the howitzer guns which the US has previously given to Ukraine.
They are changing the war. While the 50-mile range is roughly similar to that of Russian Smerch missiles, Himars fire GPS-guided missiles which can be more accurately targeted. They were first deployed against fixed targets and command centres, but now are being used against Russian forces on the move. By the end of September, Ukraine’s forces had destroyed more than 150 high-value Russian targets with Himars, according to the US army, and an estimated 300 Russian troops on the move.
So all of this high-level AI intel has further enabled the sort of highly mobile, highly maneuvering combat that Ukraine is using to push back Russian forces. This war is being fought really by like a bunch of small units. They’re going out and they’re running their mission in a certain, defined area. How do you empower that unit to work off of imagery from today for their targets and understand the success or failures of other units’ strikes or impact on those targets without the need to check back with their HQ?
There is also something called Skykit, which is basically software in a Pelican case with a Starlink (satellite internet connection) attached to it. The thinking was: how do you give them a laptop, a Starlink and a rugged case so that any unit in their truck can go back and do all this work in a fully offline disconnected fashion? These little autonomous units, how do we empower them?
This all began to ramp up In April, when the U.S. Army launched a program to help Ukrainians much more quickly spot and respond to Russian drones. Back then, I attended a press briefing and the point was anything that provides early warning on adversarial drone reconnaissance allows you to make sure you maintain survivability and move before you know you’re being shot at. The U.S. Army was just trying to help the Ukrainians as they iterate through this in this moving battlefield right now.
But the United States military doesn’t have forces operating in Ukraine (the CIA and NSA are another story) and is focused on not becoming a direct party to the conflict. So how do you provide intelligence support, down to individual, fast-moving units, without people onhand? The Army is realizing that to make that transfer better they need to establish a new working partnership between special operations, space, and cyber assets. And that is working.
In addition to the work that the Army is doing with Ukraine, they are also experimenting with new special operations, space, and cyber partnerships. Some of that experimentation will play a part in the Army’s big “Project Convergence” experiment taking place next week. “Project Convergence” is the Army’s annual large-scale effort to try out new tech.