中國軍事作戰管理系統:現代作戰指揮控制的核心
現代英語:
Source: China Military Network-People’s Liberation Army Daily Author: Yang Lianzhen Editor-in-charge: Yang Fanfan
2022-04-22 06:42
Combat management is the foundation for winning modern wars and the core of the modern combat system. It is the planning, organization, coordination and control of personnel, equipment, information, resources, time and space and other elements during the combat process.
Combat management system refers to the command information system used to support combat management activities, including intelligence collection, information transmission, target identification, threat assessment, weapon allocation, mission planning, etc. It has gradually developed with the evolution of war and technological progress.
Combat Management System: The Core of Modern Combat System
Schematic diagram of the combat management system
Past and present life
Implementing timely and accurate command and control of combat operations and making timely and decisive combat decisions are the goals and dreams that commanders have always pursued in different war periods. Before the emergence of scientific management, there was no concept of combat management in war, and naturally there was no combat management system. However, simple combat management activities and systems have always been associated with war and developed in an integrated manner.
The core of combat management is to ensure that commanders and troops can exchange information and instructions smoothly. In the ancient combat command system, gongs, drums, and flags were called the “three officials”. “When words cannot be heard, gongs and drums are used; when sight cannot be seen, flags are used.” Sight and hearing are the primitive means of command and control.
After the invention of the telegraph, telephone, and radio, long-distance and rapid transmission of combat orders and combat information became a reality, and the scope of combat management shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. The war decision-making of “planning and winning thousands of miles away” is no longer a myth. Of course, traditional battlefield management methods are not completely ineffective. For example, in the Korean War, due to limited communication conditions, our army still used bugles to transmit combat orders to the company and below, and there were more than 20 types of bugle calls related to combat. “The sound of bugles from all sides rose up,” and the bugles on the Korean battlefield once frightened the US military. Ridgway wrote in his memoirs: “As soon as it sounded, the Chinese Communist Army would rush towards the coalition forces as if it were under a spell. At this time, the coalition forces were always beaten back like a tide.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of scientific management gradually gained popularity, and the military quickly applied it to combat. The term “combat management” first appeared in the US Air Force, where combat managers provided long-range target indication and voice guidance to fighters based on radar detection. The core combat organization is called the BM/C3 system, namely Battle Management and Command, Control, and Communication. In 1946, the first electronic computer “ENIAC” was successfully developed, and the military began to use computers to store and process various data related to combat. In 1958, the US military built the world’s first semi-automated combat management system-the “Seqi” air defense command and control system, which used computers to realize the automation of part of the information collection, processing, transmission and command decision-making process for the first time. In the same year, the Soviet Army built the “Sky No. 1” semi-automated air defense command and control system. Combat management systems began to appear on the war stage, and human-machine collaborative decision-making gradually became the main form of combat decision-making for commanders. During the “Rolling Thunder” campaign of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military commanded more than 5,000 aircraft to dispatch 1.29 million sorties and dropped 7.75 million tons of bombs, which would have been impossible to achieve by manual command alone.
The combat management system has gone through weapon-centered, platform-centered, network-centered, and system-centered construction stages, and has gradually been able to receive and process information from sensors and other sources in multiple domains, perceive and generate combat situation maps in real time, automatically implement command and control of troops and equipment, and intelligently assist commanders in making decisions, involving the army, navy, air force and other military services.
For example, the Israeli Army’s “Ruler” combat management system uses a single-soldier digital device to connect to a channel state information device to provide real-time situational awareness and command and control information for troops performing tactical operations and fire support. The U.S. Navy’s “Aegis” combat system uses a multi-task signal processor to integrate air defense and anti-missile capabilities, and realizes the integration of shipborne phased array radars, command decisions, and weapon control. The NATO Air Force’s ACCSLOC1 system, based on network distributed deployment, integrates 40 types of radars and more than 3,000 physical interfaces, and undertakes air operations such as mission planning, combat command, and combat supervision. From the launch of the first Gulf War to the Libyan War, the time from sensor information acquisition to firing by the U.S. military has been shortened from 24 hours to 2.5 minutes.
Features
The combat management system is a rapidly developing and constantly improving distributed operating system. It mainly collects and processes sensor data, facilitates the transmission and integration of various types of information, conducts situation identification and prediction, generates combat plans, completes action evaluation and selection, and issues combat orders to weapon platforms and shooters. Its essence is to achieve an efficient combat “observation-judgment-decision-action” cycle (OODA loop).
The combat management system widely uses situation assessment and prediction, combat space-time analysis, online real-time planning, combat resource management and control, and combat management engine technologies, and adopts a “cloud + network + terminal” technical architecture based on information technology.
For example, the U.S. military took the lead in using information technology to build a C4ISR system that integrates command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, laying the foundation for the combat management system. In the Afghanistan War, the C4ISR system achieved near-real-time transmission of combat information to combat platforms for the first time. With the continuous maturity of sensors, networks and artificial intelligence, technologies such as intelligent situation understanding and prediction, intelligent information push, intelligent task planning, intelligent collaborative control, intelligent rapid reconstruction and intelligent parallel command and control are having an increasingly significant impact on combat management systems.
Combat management systems usually support functions such as situational awareness, mission planning, engagement management, communications, modeling, simulation and analysis, and test training. For example, a missile defense combat management system mainly includes command and control, engagement management, and communications. The command and control function enables pre-battle combat planning and battlefield situation awareness; the engagement management function enables auxiliary combat decision-making, allocation of anti-missile weapons, and completion of strike missions; and the communication function enables the transmission and sharing of intelligence and data among the anti-missile units in the system.
The combat management system is an open and complex system. The structure determines the function. Different system structures determine the functional expansion of different systems: the ship’s self-defense combat management system enables the ship to have a strong self-defense capability through automated weapon control regulations, collaborative engagement management systems and tactical data links; the electromagnetic combat management system improves the planning, sharing and mobility of the electromagnetic spectrum by integrating and displaying battlefield electromagnetic spectrum data; the individual combat system enhances the soldier’s mobility, support, lethality and survivability by integrating individual protection, individual combat weapons and individual communication equipment.
Combat management systems generally have the characteristics of integration, automation, optimization, and real-time. The combat mode of modern warfare is complex and the battlefield scale is expanding. The requirements for force control, resource integration, and task scheduling have increased, and system integration must be achieved. The French Army’s “Scorpion” system fully integrates tanks, armored vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, unmanned ground vehicles, drones, and attack helicopters into the same combat group, and links all platforms and combat units in the task group.
With the increase of combat elements in modern warfare and the expansion of battlefield perception space, the command automation system that relies heavily on people can no longer fully adapt, and the system must be automated. All operating functions of Pakistan’s combat management artillery control system are fully automated, “providing an automated solution for preparing, coordinating, transmitting, executing and modifying fire support plans and firing plans.”
The pace of modern warfare is accelerating and battlefield data is massive. It is necessary to quickly grasp the situation and make decisions efficiently, and it is necessary to achieve system optimization decision-making. Military powers are combining artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and big data technologies to facilitate faster decision-making in multi-domain operations.
Future Development
Traditional combat management systems place more emphasis on pre-established engagement sequences and combat rules. However, future wars will emphasize the confrontation between systems, and it is impossible to exhaust all situations in advance. The battlefield information that needs to be mastered is also becoming more complex and massive. For this reason, the armies of various countries have begun to abandon the traditional method of developing combat management systems for each combat domain separately, and are network-centric and supported by artificial intelligence, trying to help commanders make combat decisions more quickly and realize real-time connection between sensors in each combat domain and any shooter.
The combat management system will promote the implementation of combat concepts. The “Advanced Combat Management System” developed by the US Air Force plans to connect all military services and their weapon platforms in real time in a military Internet of Things. Its core is to seamlessly link various intelligence reconnaissance platforms, command and control platforms, strike platforms and combat management platforms with various cross-domain capabilities, convert intelligence and target indication data into timely and usable information, shorten the “discovery-positioning-tracking-targeting-strike-assessment” cycle, and execute combat operations at a speed that opponents cannot keep up. The Russian military proposed the “military unified information space” theory and organized the development of the “automatic control system” for integrated joint operations of land, sea and air networks. By establishing a network-centric command model, it attempts to integrate the command, communication, reconnaissance, firepower, and support of the entire army, realize cross-domain operations in the true sense, and improve battlefield situation awareness and combat command efficiency.
The combat management system will rely on artificial intelligence technology. The application of artificial intelligence will not only multiply the capabilities of weapon systems, but will also fundamentally change the implementation of the OODA loop. In future combat management systems, artificial intelligence technology will become the core support and driving engine, and the key factor is the quality of the algorithm. The system will have built-in upgradeable artificial intelligence, and people will be in a supervisory or collaborative state to minimize manual input, spontaneously identify and classify threat targets in the combat environment, autonomously evaluate and weigh, and automatically allocate weapons, thereby providing adaptive combat advantages and decision-making options.
For example, the “Intelligent Autonomous Systems Strategy” released by the US Navy in July 2021 aims to accelerate the development and deployment of intelligent platforms through a highly distributed command and control architecture, integrate unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and autonomous driving technologies, and realize future combat decisions facilitated by intelligent autonomous systems. The Russian military has more than 150 artificial intelligence projects under development, one of the focuses of which is to introduce artificial intelligence into command and control systems, adapt intelligent software to different weapon platforms, achieve the unification of physical and cognitive domains, and double combat effectiveness through intelligent empowerment.
The combat management system will achieve a breakthrough in cross-domain capabilities. The military’s combat management capabilities are shifting towards full-domain coordination, including land, sea, air, space, electricity, network, cognitive domain, and social domain. To adapt to the full-domain environment, the combat management system needs to have the following functions: a resilient and redundant communication system, flexible and secure data operation; artificial intelligence and machine learning directly extract and process data from sensors, and conduct decentralized integration and sharing; segmented access based on confidentiality levels to meet perception, understanding, and action needs. On this basis, it is also necessary to provide troops with reconnaissance and surveillance, tactical communications, data processing, network command and control, and other capabilities.
The future combat management system will focus on security processing, connectivity, data management, application, sensor integration and effect integration, optimize data sharing, collaborative operations and command and control in the entire combat domain, and support decision-making advantages from the tactical level to the strategic level. Its purpose is only one: to give commanders the ability to surpass their opponents.
(The author is the deputy director and professor of the Training Management Department of the Armed Police Command Academy)
現代國語:
作戰管理,是打贏現代化戰爭的基礎,是現代化作戰體系的核心,也是作戰過程中對人員、裝備、資訊、資源和時空等要素進行的規劃、組織、協調與控制活動。
作戰管理系統,指用來支撐作戰管理活動的指揮資訊系統,包括情報採集、資訊傳輸、目標識別、威脅判斷、分配武器、任務規劃等。其隨戰爭演化、技術進步而逐步發展。
作戰管理系統:現代化作戰體系核心
■楊蓮珍
作戰管理系統示意圖
前世今生
對作戰行動實施適時精確的指揮控制和作出及時果斷的作戰決策,是不同戰爭時期指揮員始終追求的目標與夢想。在科學管理產生前,戰爭中並無作戰管理這一概念,自然談不上作戰管理系統。但樸素的作戰管理活動和系統一直與戰爭相伴、融合發展。
作戰管理的核心是保證指揮員與部隊能順暢地交換資訊和指示。在古代作戰指揮號令系統中,金、鼓、旗號稱為“三官”,“言不相聞,故為之金鼓;視不相見,故為之旌旗”,目視耳聽是原始的指揮控製手段。
電報、電話、無線電發明後,作戰命令和戰鬥訊息的遠距離快速傳輸成為現實,作戰管理範圍由平面走向立體,「運籌帷幄、決勝千裡」的戰爭決策不再是神話。當然,傳統的戰場管理手段並非完全失去作用,例如在抗美援朝戰場上,我軍因通信條件受限,連以下分隊仍在通過軍號傳遞作戰命令,與作戰相關的號聲就有20餘種。 “四面邊聲連角起”,朝鮮戰場上的軍號曾讓美軍聞風喪膽。李奇微在回憶錄裡寫道:“只要它一響,中共軍隊就如著了魔法一般,全部不要命地撲向聯軍。這時,聯軍總被打得如潮水般潰退。”
20世紀初,科學管理的概念逐漸升溫,軍隊迅速將其應用於作戰。 「作戰管理」一詞,最早出現在美國空軍,其編成內的作戰管理員,基於雷達探測情況向戰機進行遠程目標指示和話音引導。作戰核心組織則稱為BM/C3系統,即作戰管理(Battle Management)和指揮、控制、通訊(Command,Control,Communication)。 1946年,第一台電子計算機「埃尼阿克」研製成功,軍隊開始使用計算機存儲和處理有關作戰的各種數據。 1958年,美軍建成世界上第一個半自動化作戰管理系統-「賽其」防空指揮控制系統,使用電腦首次實現了資訊擷取、處理、傳輸和指揮決策過程部分作業的自動化。同年,蘇軍建成「天空1號」半自動化防空指揮控制系統。作戰管理系統開始登上戰爭舞台,人機協作決策逐漸成為指揮主要的作戰決策形式。越戰中的「滾雷」戰役,美軍指揮5,000多架飛機出動129萬架次,投彈775萬噸,如果單靠人工指揮是不可能實現的。
作戰管理系統經歷了以武器為中心、以平台為中心、以網絡為中心和以體係為中心的建設階段,逐步能夠接收、處理來自多域的傳感器和其他來源信息,實時感知並生成作戰態勢圖,自動對兵力及裝備實施指揮控制,智能輔助指揮員決策,涉及陸、海、空等軍兵種。
如以色列陸軍的「統治者」作戰管理系統,單兵數字化裝置連接通道狀態資訊設備,用於為執行戰術作戰、火力支援等部隊提供即時態勢感知和指揮控制資訊。美國海軍的「宙斯盾」作戰系統,採用多任務訊號處理器整合防空與反導能力,實現艦載相控陣雷達、指揮決策、武器控制等一體化整合。北約空軍的ACCSLOC1系統,基於網路分散部署,整合40種型號的雷達和3000多個物理接口,承擔任務規劃、作戰指揮和戰鬥監督等空中行動。從發動第一次海灣戰爭到利比亞戰爭,美軍從傳感器獲取資訊到開火,時間由24小時縮短至2.5分鐘。
功能特徵
作戰管理系統是一個迅速發展並不斷完善的分散式操作系統,主要通過收集、處理傳感器數據,暢通各類信息傳輸和融合,進行態勢識別和預測,生成作戰方案,完成行動評估與選擇,下發作戰指令給武器平台和射手。其本質是實現高效率的作戰「觀察-判斷-決策-行動」循環(OODA環)。
作戰管理系統廣泛使用態勢評估與預測、作戰時空分析、線上即時規劃、作戰資源管控和作戰管理引擎技術等,採用基於資訊技術的「雲+網+端」的技術架構。
如美軍率先運用資訊技術,建構了集指揮、控制、計算機、通訊、情報、監視和偵察於一體的C4ISR系統,為作戰管理系統打下了基礎。阿富汗戰爭中,C4ISR系統首次實現作戰資訊近實時傳輸到作戰平台。隨著傳感器、網絡和人工智慧的不斷成熟,智能態勢理解和預測、智慧資訊推送、智慧任務規劃、智慧協同控制、智慧快速重構和智慧平行指控等技術,正在對作戰管理系統產生越來越重大的影響。
作戰管理系統通常支援態勢感知、任務規劃、交戰管理、通訊、建模及模擬與分析、試驗訓練等功能。如導彈防禦作戰管理系統,主要包括指揮控制、交戰管理及通訊等功能構成。指揮控制功能,實現對戰前的作戰規劃及對戰場態勢的感知;交戰管理功能,實現輔助作戰決策和分配反導武器並完成打擊任務;通信功能,實現系統各反導單元情報、數據的傳輸和共享。
作戰管理系統是一個開放的複雜系統。結構決定功能,不同的系統結構,決定不同系統的功能拓展:艦艇自防禦作戰管理系統通過自動化武器控制條令、協同交戰管理系統和戰術數據鍊等,使艦艇具備了強大的自防禦能力;電磁作戰管理系統通過融合並顯示戰場電磁頻譜數據,提高電磁戰兵器規劃能力、共享電磁力和單兵作戰力量;
作戰管理系統普遍具有一體化、自動化、最優化、即時化等特徵。現代戰爭作戰模式複雜、戰場規模擴大,對力量管控、資源整合和任務調度要求的提高,必須實現系統一體化整合。法國陸軍的「蝎子」系統,就將坦克、裝甲車、步兵戰車、無人地面車輛、無人機與攻擊直升機完整整合到同一個作戰群,並連結任務群中的所有平台和作戰單元。
現代戰爭作戰要素增加、戰場感知空間擴大,對人依賴較高的指揮自動化系統已無法完全適應,必須實現系統自動化運作。巴基斯坦作戰管理火砲控制系統所有操作功能全部自動化,「為準備、協調、傳遞、執行和修改火力支援計畫與射擊方案提供了自動化解決方案」。
現代戰爭作戰節奏加快、戰場數據海量,需要快速掌握狀況、有效率定下決心,必須實現系統最優化決策。各軍事強國正將人工智慧、雲端運算、物聯網與大數據技術結合起來,以利在多域作戰中更快決策。
未來發展
傳統作戰管理系統,更強調基於事先制定的交戰序列、作戰規則。但未來戰爭更突出體係與體系之間的對抗,不可能預先窮盡各種情況,需要掌握的戰場資訊也更趨複雜、海量。為此,各國軍隊開始摒棄傳統上為各作戰域單獨開發作戰管理系統的方法,以網絡為中心、以人工智能為支撐,力圖幫助指揮員更迅速作出作戰決策,實現各作戰域的傳感器與任意射手的實時連接。
作戰管理系統將推動作戰概念落地。美國空軍開發的“先進作戰管理系統”,規劃將各軍種及其武器平台實時連接在一個軍事物聯網中,其核心是將各類情報偵察平台、指揮控制平台、打擊平台和作戰管理平台與各種跨域能力無縫鏈接,把情報和目標指示數據轉化為及時、可用的信息,縮短“發現-定位-跟踪-瞄準-打擊-評估”速度,以執行對手的速度執行。俄羅斯軍隊提出“軍隊統一資訊空間”理論,組織開發陸海空網絡一體化聯合作戰“自動控制系統”,通過建立網絡中心指揮模式,試圖將全軍指揮、通信、偵察、火力、保障等進行融合,實現真正意義上的跨域作戰,提升戰場態勢感知能力與作戰指揮效率。
作戰管理系統將依賴人工智慧技術。人工智慧的應用不僅引起武器系統能力的倍增,也將從根本上改變OODA環的實現。未來的作戰管理系統,人工智慧技術將成為核心支撐和驅動引擎,關鍵因素是演算法的品質。系統將內置可升級的人工智慧,人們將處於監督或協同狀態的位置,最大限度地減少人工輸入,對作戰環境中的威脅目標進行自發識別分類、自主評估權衡和自動分配武器,從而提供自適應的作戰優勢和決策可選性。
如2021年7月美海軍發布的“智能自主系統戰略”,旨在通過高度分佈式的指揮和控制架構,加速智能平台的開發和部署,綜合無人系統、人工智能和自動駕駛等技術,實現由智能自主系統促成的未來作戰決策。俄軍在研的人工智慧項目超過150個,其重點之一是將人工智慧引入指揮控制系統,為不同武器平台適配智慧軟件,實現物理域與認知域的統一,以智慧賦能的方式實現戰鬥力倍增。
作戰管理系統將實現跨域能力突破。軍隊作戰管理能力正向陸、海、空、天、電、網和認知域、社會域等全域協同轉變。適應全局環境,作戰管理系統需要具備以下功能:有彈性和冗餘的通信系統,靈活安全的數據運行;人工智能和機器學習直接從傳感器中提取、處理數據,並進行去中心化集成、共享;根據保密級別分段訪問,滿足感知、理解和行動需要。在此基礎上,還需具備向部隊提供偵察監視、戰術通訊、數據處理、網路指控等能力。
未來的作戰管理系統,將聚焦安全處理、連通性、數據管理、應用、傳感器整合和效果整合等能力,優化全作戰域的數據共享、協同作戰和指揮控制,支援從戰術級到戰略級的決策優勢。其目的只有一個:賦予指揮員超越對手的能力。
(作者係武警指揮學院訓練管理系副主任、教授)