Transition From Sensor To Shooter Chain To Kill Web

Western military powers rely on advanced and precise weaponry to deter and defeat asymmetric and near-peer adversaries. For better effectiveness, these weapons should match accurate information about the targets, such as location and status.

For time-sensitive targets, this information needs to be provided quickly, or the target may change. The process defined as the “Sensor to Shooter” (STS) cycle represents the process of executing an attack, involving intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and target acquisition (ISTAR) equipment, information processing, decision-making, and related weapon systems. The ability to quickly advance through each stage of this process is crucial for modern militaries, from the tactical to the strategic level.

From Kill Chain To Kill Web

The STS cycle has many synonyms, the most common being “kill chain,” which defines the process from target emergence, planning, and authorization to engagement with the target. Traditionally, the kill chain reflects a set of linear procedures associated with various elements in this process. However, maintaining discrete kill chains for each target is not always suitable for urgent requests or exploiting fleeting opportunities. Modern militaries attempt to accelerate this process by simplifying data sharing, speeding up data links, automating processing, and parallel tasking, thus forming a “kill web,” whose ultimate goal is to achieve strikes within seconds, rather than minutes or hours.

In a military that relies on the effects of precision strikes, sensors and effectors are equally important. Typically, improving sensors contributes more to enhancing strike effectiveness than upgrading weapons, as improved sensors and information processing provide more engagement opportunities and increase the probability of successful engagements. This improvement may include increasing the number or types of sensors providing information for the “sensor to shooter” system, as well as expanding bandwidth to increase the speed and depth of information transmission and the quality of the information conveyed. Building a “sensor network” composed of various sensors can achieve the fusion of multiple information streams, improving the probability of detecting concealed targets and providing shooters with more accurate information.

Sensors are usually co-located with weapons, forming a closely integrated sensor to shooter system, but in other cases, sensors, command and control (C2), and shooters are distributed. When sensor data is transmitted via wireless networks, bandwidth limitations, electronic attacks, and interference can cause congestion and delay the information flow and processing. Satellite links are particularly susceptible to these interferences. Modern mesh networks have inherent resilience to such challenges and are commonly used in contemporary sensor networks. In situations where weapon systems are relatively close to each other, such networks can provide a “tactical cloud” that allows communication even in the face of interference.

Drone manufacturer AeroVironment has launched a tightly integrated STS system, which includes a surveillance drone—PUMA 3 AE and the Switchblade loitering munition. Operators can monitor both systems on the same display using the Switchblade STS kit, allowing them to see the PUMA 3 AE’s sensor views before and after the attack, as well as the footage from the loitering munition’s camera as it approaches the target. The sensors and data links of these two systems are designed to synchronize with the map view displayed on the same control unit. This process simplifies and accelerates the response to opportunity targets encountered in surveillance missions. Both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war have adopted this cross-drone collaborative hunting combination.

Simplifying Processes

Simplifying processes across formations, services, and allied partners is relatively complex. A typical example is the artillery counterfire mission seen in Ukraine. Before firing the first round, artillery fire follows a structured, detailed planning and fire control process. However, the time to execute counterfire against enemy artillery targets must be shortened, as these targets are often “time-sensitive,” especially when it involves mobile rocket launchers and self-propelled howitzers. Such missions rely on various sensors, such as acoustic sensors and radar, to detect enemy fire and use computers to calculate the trajectory of enemy fire, deducing the enemy’s fire position. Therefore, this process needs to be executed quickly before the enemy vacates the firing position. In the counterfire STS cycle, both sensors and shooters are operated by artillery, typically at the division or regiment level. They share networks, programs, and information formats to quickly process information and execute counterfire missions.

Countering enemy long-range fire requires more sensors to provide sufficient coverage. For example, to counter ballistic missiles with ranges of hundreds of kilometers, target information based on higher-level sensors and intelligence sources is needed, which the shooters may not have access to. The U.S. Army plans to deploy new communication satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), known as the Tactical Space Layer (TSL), along with Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Nodes (TITAN ground stations) to support shortening the cycle requirements from long-range sensors to shooters.

Another consideration is the connectivity issue between sensors and information systems, which can be lengthy and complex. When operating at the tactical level, sharing a communication layer between sensors and shooters can simplify connectivity, and automation can reduce the cognitive burden on operators.

Although accelerating the STS cycle requires improvements in many elements, it typically includes flattening hierarchies and clearing obstacles in existing processes. Another way to accelerate this process is through machine-to-machine connections, which are easiest to implement at lower levels. However, implementing this solution at higher levels is more challenging, especially in joint and multinational coalition operations, where connections between different information systems and data-sharing standards will be necessary. Sometimes, gathering two officials in one room may resolve long-standing delays better than automation. Other solutions, including introducing information converters, aim to simplify connections between different computing systems. Once information systems can communicate with each other, additional enhanced functionalities may emerge, such as using machine learning and artificial intelligence to process large volumes of data.

Connecting All Sensors And Shooters

In a modern kill web, sensors can upload their feedback to a tactical cloud, forming a network shared by many sensors and users, rather than connecting a specific sensor with a specific user. To minimize the upload bandwidth demand, artificial intelligence and machine learning can preprocess the feedback for automatic target recognition (ATR) and data mining. Time-sensitive data events should be prioritized for upload, along with other feedback that may be meaningful to certain users. Further processing can be done in the cloud, including measurements, situational assessments, and additional information needed for decision-making processes associated with correlating with other sensors.

The Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) promoted by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) embodies the kill web concept, aiming to enhance interoperability and decision-making speed. Although such networks hold theoretical promise, their implementation is complex, particularly in land domains, and there is no guarantee of their sustained operation in contested environments. Therefore, users should maintain the capability to handle situations where parts of the JADC2 processing are denied or degraded, and forces need to operate independently.

The U.S. Army has been testing aspects of JADC2 in recent multi-domain “fusion plan” (PC) exercises involving systems and capabilities from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force. Last year’s exercise (PC21) integrated multiple intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and weapon platforms into the Army’s kill web to generate a detailed real-time common operational picture (COP). This outcome relied on 110 new technologies and concepts. In the PC21 exercise, the U.S. Army adopted planned combat cloud servers for the first time within the multi-domain task force (MDTF) operational framework. Each combat cloud server is capable of processing a complete sensor to shooter system via satellite links, with plans to equip each of the Army’s five MDTFs with one server. Each MDTF will be stationed in the continental U.S., Europe, the Pacific, and the Arctic, while the fifth MDTF will be designated as global in nature, serving as an airborne maneuver force capable of deploying the kill web to any location in the world within 24 hours. Each MDTF cloud server operates four artificial intelligence programs, namely RAINMAKER, PROMETHEUS, FIRESTORM, and SHOT, to automate the kill web.

The Four “Killer Apps” Of The Kill Web

In the PC21 exercise, RAINMAKER connected 15 sensors and 19 weapon systems to the combat cloud via satellite links. RAINMAKER converts data from different sources, each with its own “language.” During the PC21 exercise, RAINMAKER also faced simulated challenges of electronic interference and enemy forces deceiving position, navigation, and timing (PNT) data. To overcome these challenges, RAINMAKER implemented new anti-jamming waveforms on the radio frequency (RF) link and sought open communication channels to reconfigure the network to maintain access to sensor information.

PROMETHEUS’s mission is to search for threats and targets within the sensor data provided by the ISR platform via RAINMAKER. Once a target is identified, it is handed over to the “Firepower Synchronization to Optimize Response in Multi-Domain Operations (FIRESTORM)” program, which matches the best “shooter” with the most appropriate target based on the location and status of each shooter connected to the system. For each target, FIRESTORM presents dozens of ‘sensor-target-weapon’ firing solutions to the battlefield commander. Once a choice is made, it is sent to the high-speed operational target synchronization (SHOT) program for execution. As the selected weapon receives the fire or launch command within seconds, all other shooters associated with that task are released to execute different tasks. At this point, the PROMETHEUS program will conduct damage assessment work. The entire process involving these four complex programs only takes a few seconds.

The first MDTF unit of the U.S. Army was established in 2017 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, and the second unit was established in September 2021 at Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden, Germany. The U.S. Army plans to establish its third MDTF unit at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii in 2023.

New Operational Capabilities of STS

Another sensor-to-shooter concept being developed by Israel, known as “Storm Cloud,” involves the integration of new systems as part of new unit and capability building. The 144th Squadron, launched on August 3, 2022, at Hatzor Air Force Base, is part of this concept. This new unit will operate Aeronautics’ ORBITER 4 drone to provide aerial ISR capabilities for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “Storm Cloud” program. This massive system is part of a comprehensive, automated wide-area surveillance, target acquisition, and automated intelligence processing system designed to enhance the operational capabilities of small independent units.

The networking of sensors, operational management systems, weapons, and data processing systems makes them part of a distributed “sensor to shooter” system. Rafael’s FIRE WEAVER is a sensor-to-shooter system designed for battalion-level tactical formations. Rafael recently launched a sensor-to-shooter system for SPIKE NLOS, called the SPIKE NLOS Mission Task Group (SPIKE NMT). This system integrates the camera sensors on the ORBITER-4 drone with Rafael’s BNET software-defined radio and the FIRE WEAVER system. The system uses the SPIKE NLOS sixth-generation missile, which can be mounted on land platforms with a range of 32 kilometers or mounted on helicopters with a range of 50 kilometers.

Sensor-to-shooter systems provide a promising means for militaries to keep pace with increasingly complex battlefields. However, as many startups’ experiences suggest, the key to successfully implementing and gaining user trust is to take small, simple steps. For machines, manipulating vast and highly complex systems may be straightforward, but on the battlefield, human operators must come first.

This article is sourced from: The Spear of Electromagnetic Waves