Land operations
dispersed units able to exploit tactical advantages and avoid counter attacks through continual movement. The question isn’t just where you park, but whether you do so at all. And with air superiority no longer a given, every unit needs to be able to protect itself from the full range of enemy threats.
In that sense, M-SHORAD systems are a crucial enabling technology. “I’m so happy that the army has moved forward with this – a capability that protects formations, convoys and facilities,” says Hodges. “M-SHORAD is a component of integrated air and missile defence, whether you’re talking about a formation that’s on the move, or if you’re trying to protect a Patriot battery that’s set up to protect an airfield, where the enemy is going to use drones to come in and try and take out sensors and radar before they launch a big bullet.”
The US Army’s M-SHORAD Strykers are purpose-built for its new multi-domain battle doctrine.
and Israeli drones into its strategy, using them to discover, isolate and destroy enemy positions, clearing the way both for larger missiles and ground forces.
As a result of the Azerbaijani victory, by the time the first M-SHORAD Strykers reached battalions in Germany, some commentators were openly suggesting that drones were doing for tanks what the machine gun did to cavalry. “Particularly in the UK, you started hearing people saying things like, ‘Well, that’s the end of tanks’,” Hodges sighs. He’s an infantry man, rather than a tank commander, but finds this response troubling – not to mention “naive and uninformed” – all the same. In the UK at least, thinking about Nagorno-Karabakh was coloured by the ongoing Integrated Review into defence spending, which was expected to call for a reduction in tank numbers. “That’s exactly what’s come to pass,” explains Hodges, whose opinion on Armenian capabilities diverges from Gressel’s in a couple of key areas. “But my point is, we all wish that we could fight an enemy like Armenia that was totally unprepared, untrained, undisciplined and sitting out in the wide open. Of course they got crushed. The Azeris were better prepared: they had a concept, and they had integrated this technology from Turkey. I would not take from that that nobody wants to be anywhere close to a tank anymore. It’s not true. There will always be a need for protected mobile firepower. Maybe it’ll be unmanned so that you don’t need all the steel of the turret to protect humans; or you’ll have to protect its signature – you get smarter about not parking it behind a little berm in the middle of a giant field.”
Unlike Armenia’s tanks, the US Army’s M-SHORAD Strykers are purpose-built for its new multi-domain battle doctrine, which calls for widely
10 No guarantees
Even so, Hodges stresses that technologies don’t win conflicts. “There’s no silver bullet, no one system by itself,” he says. “Even the invention of the aeroplane, or the rocket engine, or the rifle or machine gun by themselves did not change warfare. It was the side that was quickest in integrating them effectively that was able to get an advantage.” Drones are a significant step forward in what Hodges calls “potential capability”, and M-SHORAD systems are a valuable way to counter them, but neither is foolproof. Tellingly, the US has even considered mothballing its RQ-40 Global Hawk RPAs in favour of more traditional manned spy aircraft. On the other side, reports suggest that dozens of Russian Pantsir vehicles, which, like the M-SHORAD Strykers, combine multiple ground to air weapons with armour, radar and manoeuvrability, have been destroyed by Turkish-made drones across the Middle East. A number of these vehicles seem to have positioned themselves as lone missile defence batteries, but they’re far from alone in misunderstanding how to deal with UAV threats. In the immediate aftermath of Nagorno-Karabakh, Gressel warned that European militaries were no better prepared for anti-drone warfare than Armenia’s.
The first M-SHORAD Strykers were sent to Germany to help change that, and others equipped with directed laser weapons, which have long fascinated the Pentagon, are expected to deploy from 2022. It’s not enough. “You’ll never have enough air defence of any type to protect against all the different threats out there,” notes Hodges. “Commanders will always have to go through an analysis of what’s the highest priority for protection, what’s the most likely to be hit, and what are the passive measures you can take.” With drone swarms massing over the horizon, it’s new thinking as much as new technology that will keep ground forces safe. ●
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
Cpt. Jordan Allen / US Army
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