US to offer British soldiers ‘combat cloud’ access should war break out in the future with China after dismal war games showing
- The Pentagon wants to finish an overhaul of its warfighting strategy by 2030
- Part of the plan includes sharing information with the UK during conflicts
- The change comes after a recent simulation in which the US lost to China
- During the wargame, the US lost access to its information systems early on
- Other plans to modernize include a hacker-proof ‘combat cloud’
The Pentagon plants to share more information with the UK as part of an overhaul of how it wages war following a crushing loss in a wargame.
The simulation involved a hypothetical battle with China over Taiwan. Early in the game, the US lost access to its information systems.
By 2030, soldiers from allied countries will soon be able to use biometrics, such as fingerprints, to access US information during a conflict.
‘Well, what happens if right from the beginning that information is not available? And that’s the big problem that we faced,’ said Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten about the simulation on Monday.
The US ‘failed miserably’ in a wargame over Taiwan, solidifying the Pentagon’s need to modernize. Above, US soldiers during a military operation
‘Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably.’
‘An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it.’
As a result of the game, which involved hundreds of senior military personnel, the US will fundamentally change its guiding principals, the Telegraph reported.
‘We basically attempted an information-dominance structure, where information was ubiquitous to our forces,’ Hyten said at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute on Monday, according to Defense One.
By 2030, allied soldiers should be able to access US military information during conflicts using biometrics. Above, the Ministry of Defense building in London
‘Just like it was in the first Gulf War, just like it has been for the last 20 years, just like everybody in the world, including China and Russia, have watched us do for the last 30 years.’
But the old tactics weren’t enough.
The Pentagon expects to finish the overhaul, titled Expanded Maneuver, by 2030.
Hyten released four directives to the armed services earlier this month, including plans to use rockets to get cargo in and out of battlefields, use ‘virtual aggregation’ of mass fires in order to operate from multiple different places, and having all information connected in a hacker-proof ‘combat cloud.’
‘We always aggregate to fight, and aggregate to survive. But in today’s world, with hypersonic missiles, with significant long-range fires coming at us from all domains, if you’re aggregated and everybody knows where you are, you’re vulnerable,’ Hyten said.
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