Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 20

1991.27 In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis suffered heavy losses to surprisingly effective Egyptian
air defenses until Israeli ground units were able to
close with and destroy those air defenses.28
The U.S. Army was exploring just such a round
in the XM1111 Mid-Range Munition, in association
with the FCS program, awarding a development
contract in 2008. With a planned maximum range
of at least 12 km, the fire-and-forget XM1111 would
have allowed an M1 to engage targets over an area almost six times larger than possible with today’s 5-km
engagement range. However, the Army terminated
the XM1111 program in May 2009 as part of the
dismantling of the larger FCS program.29
Any similar future munition would entail various
logistics, training, and intelligence challenges. The
round would need to fit in the M1’s existing internal
ammunition racks, and the crew training and workload ramifications would require study. A tank crew
targeting, firing, and tracking an NLOS round likely
would be distracted from the direct-fire fight, so the
tactical tradeoffs should be investigated. With such a
guided precision-engagement capability, the Abrams
would have a greater need for acquiring and processing precision targeting data, which in turn might
require a change in sensor capabilities in the armored
brigade combat team (currently equipped with four
Shadow drones).30

Role for Modeling, Simulation, and
Experimentation
The synergy and relative value of these different
enhancements should be explored initially with war
gaming, modeling and simulation, and at some later
stage, field experiments. Thorough exploration of the
many varying conditions, threats, and combinations
of enhancements will require a virtual environment
capable of a rapid cycle time with modest hardware
and personnel requirements. The involvement of
experienced operators as human player-participants
will be essential to exploring the potential of the new
capabilities.
A pre-scripted set of enhancements should be
part of the process; but as the participants become
better acquainted with the models used and the
simulated new capabilities, participants should be
turned loose to explore the solution space. Ideally,
participants would be presented with a budget they
could use to select from a menu of enhancements
(i.e., greater range or NLOS engagement capability). Those enhancements would be priced to reflect
initial estimates of what it would cost to field those
enhancements.
Over time, participants would become well
acquainted with the capabilities and scenarios and
would develop opinions on the relative value and
utility of the capabilities; giving them a capabilities

Soldiers from 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Squadron, perform maintenance on an M1A1
Abrams tank at the unit maintenance collection point in central Iraq, 28 March 2003.
(Photo by Sgt. Igor Paustovski, Joint Combat Camera Center)

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November-December 2014  MILITARY REVIEW