That's the change in the modern military. Having the communication system fail is the equivalent of having the main gun fail: you are no longer an effective fighter. The communication system should protected, hardened, and as reliable in combat as a soldier's rifle.
Air forces are at the front of this. There are countless mission-critical information systems for which there is no 'analogue' option. If the bomber doesn't have a data link with the spotter on the ground, the bombs are not dropped. If the IFF system on the helicopter isn't working, there is no takeoff. Technology is no longer a "nice to have" but an essential part of warfighting.
Fighting certainly doesn't stop because you can't get comms with the bird. You just lose that as on option to deploy.
I think what gets abstracted away when people think about military operations is that it's not a chess board back at the Pentagon. They only are accomplished by physical deployment of force. You always plan for the back up contingencies because the mission still needs to get done if all the systems aren't online.
Long hard experience has taught us the way you make operations resilient is always know how to fall back on a physical signal like popping a smoke or sending up a flare.
--Perhaps that take is a bit too simplistic, so take it with a grain of salt from a ground combat element guy. I get it that there a large portions of the military who don't show up to play when their widgets stop working.
Ya. Air Force and Navy are defined by their widgets. If the aircraft cannot fly, the air force cannot air force. If the ships don't float, the navy doesn't navy. That's the cultural difference. The army has trouble dealing with 100% reliance on anything. For pilots and sailors such reliance comes natually.
But if the radio doesn’t work the Navy even today can fall back to light signals or even semaphore or flag codes. That’s the point, there isn’t just reliability, there is also redundancy.
If the tanks cannot tank, the army can’t army against a near-peer enemy either...
And how are you going to archieve this?
So if ive got a buddy who needs wiring for the antenna array on the back of an HMMV or if im short on power cables for something, the first thing im going to do is find a few legs who hate their vests. those little connectors with the boots on them look real sturdy too, and im sure those cables wont be missed by guys who havent had the ammunition or the battery packs to fire those space age senator kickbacks for months.
Start improving the army at the parts of it that arent sexy. Supply chain, and the VA system.
They now have a skill gap of mid-seniority navigators who have no astro-nav experience and will struggle under GPS denial.
Easy. The same number that know how to use a GPS. Your one guy may be the first casualty.
We've got plenty of ways to defeat jamming, the newest block of GPS satellites have ways to increase signal power in certain areas and anti-radiation missiles can blow up a jammer.
What do you do when your enemy dumps a load of sand in orbit?
That's about 4 or 5 people on a typical warship, and then you can add to that pool the number of people who did hold a job that required the skill but have since been promoted.
There were recent exercises in the Baltics where US forces were exposed to learnings from the Ukraine conflict. Very different than fighting ISIS.
Turns out GPS jammers, proper drones, etc. can wreak havoc. The IDF got smoked in Lebanon for the same reason, the game has changed. Well prepared state-level adversaries are not the same as militias in pickup trucks and SVBIEDs.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/02/army-study-173rd-a...
"The common thread running through the paper is the challenge posed by Russia’s jammers and other electronic warfare tools.
An enemy equipped with these “could effectively neutralize a GPS system from 50 miles away using one-fifth the power of a tactical radio,” the report estimates, so “we should assume that GPS will be either unavailable or unreliable for the duration of the conflict if the [brigade] faces a near-peer threat or sophisticated non-state actors.” "
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/03/06/...
I only have anecdata, but the last several times I've been on remote camping trips, I've taught folks the basics myself. And a relative's son, a Boy Scout, was told by his troop leader that the Orienteering merit badge was obsolete, don't worry about it.
Then make them not fail. If it's as important as a rifle, you make sure the failure rate is as low as possible/acceptable, right?