Thoughts on the future from the recent past…
#3 This essay (below) was written for publication and was submitted to the Integrated Review team in August 2020 in order to draw out some of the practical implications of the theorising behind the Integrated Operating Concept, and the Future Operating Concept, in the real World of hard choices. It is notable now because it suggested cancelling some programmes that were judged to be likely to be overtaken by the future. The moneys thereby freed might be used to invest in the future; hence identifying ‘sunset’ and ‘sunrise’ systems.
Some of those programmes have now, in 2026, been cancelled or are on life-support. One, the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail (AWACS), is now no longer a secure programme as an E-3 replacement for the USAF, and for just the reason that many in Congress fear that the future will, indeed, have overtaken it by the time a fleet is in service. NATO has gone for a cheaper solution to replace E-3, of which it can afford more. I am unable to cost how much might have been saved had the advice been followed and these programmes had been cancelled in 2020.
At the time this was published we were just finishing a comprehensive imagining of what a transformed, integrated, five-domain force should look like four years hence - which then would have been 2024. The advice from industry and from the Services, who pored over this comprehensive analysis and description of a future force, was that the vision was achievable. Sadly that document was classified as ‘Official Sensitive’ so cannot yet be published here. Let us just say it used a scenario of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the first tactical vignette explored was the problem of swarms of cheap attack drones… The integrated C2 and targeting system postulated, cloud-hosted and using AI/ML to chew on masses of data, has since been built: by Ukraine. (And Israel.) We await the outcome of the Digital Targeting Web programme to see what the UK solution looks like. Initial reports are encouraging, if sketchy, but it has taken too long when one considers that Ukraine’s ‘Delta’ system was developed and deployed at scale only after the war started in 2022 and has been globally class-leading for the last few years.
Delivering Transformation – Getting from Sunset to Sunrise
Introduction – The case for change
The rise of China and the return of aggressive great power competition is the geostrategic fact of the age. Competitor powers, such as China and Russia, have watched Western dominance in war since Gulf War 1 and spent three decades working out how to neuter it. The socio-economic fact of the age is the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. As with all such industrial revolutions the ways in warfare will follow, and our competitors have identified this as an opportunity not merely to regain military parity but to leapfrog.
Over the last year the MOD has tested and endorsed an Integrated Operating Concept – IOpC25 –that recognises the changing character of warfare and the nature of the competition we are now in. It is an operating blueprint for the funded force of the JF25 programme and beyond. But 2025 does not represent a ‘light-switch’ moment of sudden change, and some of the key tenets of the IOpC – such as moving from Joint to Integrated Action and the Operate/Fight distinction – are already being embodied. The more ambitious thinking of the IOpC is extrapolated further in a Future Operating Concept that assesses the impact of the technological advances that are just around the corner in the next decade.
Combinations of those technologies will change our way in war even more fundamentally. Manned, unmanned and autonomous force elements, integrated by the military cloud and using Artificial Intelligence to crunch shared data at speed, confront foes over previously unimaginable ranges and at hypersonic speeds. The battle of the narratives that is the core of political warfare is driven by digitised media and susceptible to information operations. And so the cyber war of the networks underpins all military capacities. The fight for data allows one to act quicker than the enemy, hiding and finding on a global scale, driving the narrative and being able to engage first. In a connected World where the ‘Internet of Everything’ is becoming a daily reality this defines warfare, just as production capacity defined the Twentieth Century’s wars of the Industrial Age.
But that is not the World that contextualised the decisions of SDSR ’15 and gave rise to the JF25 Programme we are trying to fund today. That is a force characterised by a range of ever more expensive, and so ever fewer, usually manned, hunter-killer platforms that combine their own organic sensors, decision-makers and weapons. In the light of the Future Operating Concept’s analysis these platforms look ever more vulnerable to munitions that are increasingly fast, smart, mutually coordinating and precise. In a world where we cannot quickly replace our expensive platforms as we could in the C20’s wars of industrial production then we may not be able to risk them at all. The Information Age is transforming the economics of warfare significantly and fast.
Transformation is never easy. That the IOpC25 is already being realised in some quarters of Defence gives us confidence in the concept in the round, and some useful pointers to making change substantive across the board. This paper suggests ways in which that broader transformation might happen in practice, and it is focused on the equipment programme that tends in any Defence Review to become the pivotal, polarising feature – as such it provides more detail to support the complementary IOpC25 Primer, which covers the breadth of the IOpC and its rationale in more depth. This paper takes several cases, across all domains, and plots a migration path to the future and a force that embodies the new “theory of winning”.
Why change is difficult – The problem
If we started with a clean slate then the problem of delivering a transformed military would be still be challenging. But we don’t; we have a legacy programme as outlined above, much of which is still entering service. That programme represents financial commitments that stretch an already taut budget, and any transformation represents a further cost. A standing criticism of the future concepts is that they do not readily translate into costed options on today’s spreadsheet. In competition with the well-documented options and risks being taken by the current programme – and against current military tasks – the future tends to come off second best.
Put another way, even if we identify those ‘Sunrise’ capabilities that drive tomorrow’s theory of winning, it is hard to shift funding from the ‘Sunset’ capabilities whose time may be near but are still deemed essential today. The key problem this paper addresses, therefore, is how do we move from Sunset to Sunrise within a financial envelope that is largely already spent? Fortunately, those areas where we have already managed to embody IOpC25 indicate a possible path for the rest.
Getting set on the right vector – Delivering IOpC 25 in the shorter term
Two current transformation programmes challenge the pessimistic perspective: DSF’s Special Operations Concept (SpOC) and the Royal Navy’s concept for the Littoral Strike/Future Commando Force (FCF). Both were written in parallel with IOpC25 and reflect its core principles. Both will see forces transformed for the Information Age and permanently deployed ‘up-threat’, continually engaged with allies, seeking advantage in the information environment, and with a mutual dependency on the cyber capacities delivered by the National Cyber Force to allow integrated effect under the concept of Integrated Action (now also enshrined in UK Doctrine). Both were designed from the outset to contribute to our ‘theory of winning’ above and below the threshold of armed conflict.
But it is in the combination of concepts that the real difference is found. We no longer indulge in sterile debates about ‘Joint Theatre Entry’ that argue the need for a specialised amphibious or airborne force to conduct ‘assaults’ against generic foes from a standing start. Instead we have forces configured to confront the threats we actually face, for example in the Baltic, operating with regional allies to seek an advantage in the sub-threshold. We thereby deter our adversaries, who may no longer be quite so assured that, for example, their Information Operations will undermine Alliance resolve, or their A2AD construct will work as advertised. If Theatre Entry is needed then we already have forces in place to set the conditions, backed by an extensive cyber and EW effort that aims to unlevel the playing field to our advantage – the path to Theatre entry has already been laid.
Both the SpOC and FCF are costed options, and being designed to have utility above and below the threshold of conflict, they are designed to operate as well as fight. The SpOC, with its associated integrating plans from all five domains, can be seen as a microcosm of, and proving ground for, Defence transformation as a whole. This subset of the ‘theory of winning’ is achievable now and can be delivered. It provides an example of the JF25 Programme being malleable in the shorter term where we are changing ‘ways’ and ‘ends’ more than substantial ‘means’. C4ISR (Command and Control, Computers, Comms, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), the software, can be changed more rapidly than heavy military plant, the hardware.
That methodology is now being expanded to draw a blueprint for the whole of JF25, one that aims to position JF25 at the best starting point to enable the longer-term transformation inherent in the FOpC. We now need to assess whether the same methodology might effectively be applied for the Equipment Programme’s bigger ticket items in that longer term.
Transformation in the longer term – The big spend and the difficult EP questions
All three Services maintain future equipment programmes that are challenging financially, and challenged operationally by the assessed future operating environment. It would be difficult to give many an unequivocal green light. There is a further complication in that the operating concepts require us to think in domains but we are still constructed essentially as environmental Services. A migration path for every major equipment programme is needed to explain how it maintains relevance and contributes to the ‘theory of winning’ of the Future Operating Concept. If we take one from each Front Line Command (FLC) then we can draw some overall conclusions.
Few programmes have been more scrutinised than Carrier-Strike, and the argument has become polarised between those that promote the broad utility of a large piece of floating sovereign real estate, and those who see a sitting duck for hypersonic, smart munitions. The challenge is to amplify the former and mitigate the latter – as our strategic partner the US is also having to do. Similarly, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), where some see a systems-enabled, modern tool of air dominance, and others a vulnerably slow and unmanoeuvrable manned fighter whose costs are set to rocket as its in-service delivery date slips. And in the land environment a system of systems is sketched for Long Range Deep Fires, but critics point out that the long-range sensors do not exist to match the munitions, and even if they did then there is no way to reliably link the two. The argument over the utility of the Tank, digitised or not, has become highly charged.
At the heart of all these debates is the ever-present argument between self-defined ‘early adopters’ and ‘pragmatic realists’. The necessary risk-balancing calculation between the two positions requires reliable evidence; experimentation and data are needed to replace assertion. And experimentation needs a hypothesis to test – in the cases mentioned above the hypotheses would be the proposed capability migration paths to keep the weapons systems relevant in the future operating environment.
In the case of Carrier-Strike, that migration path would see it move from a floating airfield for F35 manned fighter aircraft – and so forced to operate at ranges suitable for a manned fighter – to a multi-domain servicing platform carrying a range of manned, unmanned and autonomous weapon systems. These would be able to hold a range of adversary systems and vital assets at risk over strategically significant ranges.
That significant range would also confer much greater survivability on the carrier platform, which would further protect itself by being integrated into the multi-domain net of sensors and shooters that would give significant warning of emerging threats. These would be engaged early and at range, not defended against once inbound and already ‘on the goal-line’. Combining greater lethality at range with survivability, the transformed carrier-strike capacity would force adversaries to recalculate their options.
FCAS ought to be tested primarily against its own declared operating concept of being a system of systems, not a modernised replacement for the Typhoon. Therefore, the network that links the core air vehicles with the ‘additive’ subsystems of autonomous loyal wingmen, smart weapons and active decoys, becomes the vital system element to be proven. For reasons of cost, performance and utility the core vehicle should be unmanned. The overall weapons system needing to be integrated, as with the carrier, to the multi-domain net that conveys further lethality and survivability through being aware of threats earlier, and then able to have them engaged or otherwise neutered in a variety of ways across all domains.
This approach would unambiguously shift the emphasis of the current programme that can be decried as another manned fighter fated to demonstrate Augustine’s Law. To secure funding the programme needs to prove in any case the viability and resilience of the linking architecture of data nets. Approval for any manned version should be conditional on this and proof that the TRLs for unmanned systems are demonstrably immature in the timescales required. The programme of smart additives could be de-risked by testing elements of it within the current Typhoon programme, thereby making the migration path both more gradual and substantive. It would also be axiomatic that FCAS, an Air system, is symbiotically linked to Land’s Ground-based Air Defence system as both share a fundamental purpose – control of the air – and so both must be developed accordingly. At present they are not though both declare adherence to a ‘system of systems’ approach.
In the Land environment there are a range of programmes that can be seen as transitional and possibly revolutionary. The digital turret on the legacy Challenger 2 chassis will help calibrate for the digital era the age-old battlefield trade-off of speed and lethality v armour. (Can you use speed, agility and reach to avoid being targeted, or should you accept you cannot and so accept the burden of carrying heavy armour as physical protection?) The Deep Fires programmes will allow army formations to engage at what were previously considered strategic ranges – The US Army has a requirement for rocket artillery with a reach in the 1000km range - with concomitant implications for manoeuvre at strategic ranges too.
All these programmes, however, have a vital dependency on shared situational awareness and deep targeting that requires complicated data fusion from all domains – previously hard to conduct on a dynamic battlefield. So the hypothesis to be tested is the resilience and sustainability of the digitised battlefield. This will then illuminate the range and nature of Land platforms required on the battlefield of the future – a subject of follow-on experimentation and war-gaming. Elements of the Deep Fires and FCAS programmes could well find their way onto Carrier-Strike if we coordinate our force development across previously siloed enterprises.
Strategic Command has proposed a range of systems that in broad terms provide the linking glue – the network connectivity that is also referred to as the “digital backbone” – that emerges as the key dependency of the modernisation plans of the three Services. Some of that is in train: we are, for example, generating an offensive National Cyber Force to complement the extant enterprise that manages our networks and their cyber defences. That combination will require an overall cyber operating concept. Cloud provision is identified as a game changer and is being scoped as a key part of the digital backbone. But is still in its infancy in the military sphere and currently more associated with fixed infrastructure – the provision of a secure ‘battlespace cloud’ must be explored with urgency . There is work underway too to produce a space operating concept. And if the Electro-Magnetic Spectrum is the medium in which all these capacities are exercised, then our ability to contest ownership of the Spectrum through Electronic Warfare is equally vital and provides another testable hypothesis.
Across all domains the field of ISR is open to a revolution, and one that could recoup great savings. The hypothesis is that the internet of everything, allied to its military equivalent, is making data all pervasive. Previously such a quantity of data would have swamped human analysts, hence military reconnaissance was precisely ‘Directed’. But AI and Machine Learning (ML) inverts that equation – it works better when there is a mass of data. Patterns can be detected where previously there was only noise. Such an effort is the bedrock of understanding that underpins Integrated Action and its requirement to target a range of audiences. If we could generate situational awareness from myriad cheap and cheerful sensors - from submarine to satellite and open source - then we might be able to dispense with expensive surveillance and reconnaissance platforms that can only be in one place at a time and appear increasingly vulnerable. Thus, the requirements for E7, CROWSNEST and WATCHKEEPER, amongst others, are called into question if the hypothesis is correct.
Priorities for Experimentation
It is clear that certain capacities are core to all proposals and these become the priority hypotheses to test. We need to experiment with the military internet of everything, including the ‘battlefield cloud’, and the associated operating concept to dominate the electro-magnetic spectrum. If that is resolved then we can investigate how we generate understanding from the mass of data that our nodes on the net generate (every person, platform, sensor and smart warhead), and how we might cloak our own digital signature from those who are trying to use similar techniques against us. Integrated data and shared understanding across domains immediately throws up questions of Integrated C2; these need resolution through wargaming and experimentation. In short: C4ISR transformation is the golden-thread of military transformation, the platforms will follow.
Possible Experimentation Group Priorities:
A cyber Operating Concept that combines the defensive and offensive arms of the domain with the routine network ‘patrolling’ operations that are the bedrock of both.
An Electronic Warfare Operating Concept and posture to guarantee access to the medium that supports our networks and data flows.
Use of Open Source data to complement gathered intelligence within an AI and ML enabled exploitation and dissemination system.
Multi-domain C2 to support Integrated Operations at all levels of war.
Deployed ‘Battlespace Cloud’ provision.
Artificial Intelligence in the kill chain – the implications and mitigations.
Digital Deception – camouflage for the digital age of pervasive sensors and big data.
The possibilities of autonomous systems in all domains.
Hypersonic vehicles/Directed Energy weapons.
Space Resilience.
Integrated Action – Targeting for cognitive effect.
There are many associated complexities that will also need to be considered: the legal aspects of introducing AI and autonomy into the control of lethal force; the relationship between national and military cyber capacities given the indivisibility of the internet and the vulnerabilities in our commercial supply chains; the commercial practices necessary to procure and maintain fast evolving software-driven capabilities. There is much to coordinate, but under Levene’s disaggregated model for Defence Capability Management our experimentation and exploitation plans are too fragmented.
Integrated Warrior and its Defence Experimentation Working Group is an attempt to regain some coordinating authority over work carried out under the auspices of the four TLBs, DE&S, S&T and DSTL. And also, where possible, to integrate industry’s R&D, but it has no budgetary or commercial authority to do so directly.
We might do better with a more formally established Defence Experimentation Group to achieve the necessary prioritisation and coordination from the Centre, and the clout and credibility to allow industry to shape its R&D spend with confidence. This would act as a foil to the ‘programme of record’ being managed by FMC: it would support FMC’s capability management decisions through provision of data and evidence, but would also challenge the established paradigm when the evidence pointed that way. Such creative tension is required to break the group-think that tends to accrete around long cherished programmes, and also meets post-Chilcot requirements for constructive challenge.
Perhaps the other essential coordination is international, as any integrated net will, by definition, need to be integrated across a coalition. We have worked assiduously with allies to socialise our concept development to date, and it is being mirrored individually and collectively by the US, the Five-Eyes and NATO, primarily in NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept and concept for Deterrence and Defence of the Atlantic Area, and the Pentagon’s Joint Warfighting Concept. And we bring the nine-nation Joint Expeditionary Force with us too.
There a range of UK/US war games scheduled over the next year that start to explore the hypotheses outlined above and can be shaped to support the analysis of this paper. And there is an emerging consensus over the need to engage internationally to answer these questions, even in the parts of the Pentagon that routinely default to NOFORN. Given clear political direction to do so, we could make better use of a burden-shared international experimentation effort. Otherwise, we will expend resource we can ill afford repeating each other’s experiments and then comparing notes.
Summary
We are on the cusp of a transformation in military affairs as the World transitions from the Industrial to the Information Age just as great power competition returns. The military will become dependent on data networks, and on the cyber and EW operating concepts necessary to prevail on them. Our adversaries are openly racing us to seek an advantage in this new military order. Such transformations are never easy, with the legacy and the future requiring funding simultaneously. Nor can we do away with the sunk costs of Defence overnight, or rebuild from scratch an entirely new equipment programme. We need a plan for the transformation process.
We have completed the first part of the transformation in defining a testable overall hypothesis for the future way in war of the Information Age - we have sketched out a ‘theory of winning’. What is now needed is a sharply prioritised and tightly controlled experimentation plan to confirm which Genesis options are required to deliver the new way in war, which parts of the current capability programme can be repurposed, and which systems will become redundant. That is, define which are necessary Sunrise capabilities and which are Sunset systems. Risk can then be taken against Sunset programmes to fund the new dawn.
Draft by DG JFD, AM E J Stringer
20 Aug 2020