American battlefield command posts haven't done enough to erase their status as "missile magnets" on a conventional battlefield.
Russia demonstrated the problem:
In the brief but devastating Battle of Zelenopillya in July 2014, Russian forces targeted several Ukrainian battalions with rocket artillery, conducting one of the largest artillery barrages on the European continent since World War II. The US Army took note of Russian sensor-to-shooter capabilities and recognized that conditions of the modern battlefield would require its brigade combat teams (BCTs) to find ways to mitigate this type of threat through improvements in mobility and survivability as well as a reduction in the signatures of BCT command posts and tactical assembly areas. If not, Army units risked the same consequences suffered by Ukrainian units at Zelenopillya: in minutes, their vehicles were almost all destroyed, thirty soldiers were killed, and hundred more wounded.
I've admitted that the Russian capability scares the Hell out of me.
Not enough, according to that first author, has been done to fix the problem:
The recommendations made in this piece—reducing footprints, rethinking bandwidth needs and interoperability, and enabling tailored acquisitions—do not represent a significant departure from the original mandate to improve Army headquarters’ mobility and survivability in the transition from counterinsurgency to large-scale combat operations. However, the inability to solve the structural problems arising from the retrofit and replacement of legacy systems is a risk to both the mission and the force. Pairing on-the-move mission command with at-the-halt capabilities hampers commanders’ ability to maintain tempo. Mobility enhancement and dispersion enable commanders to reduce the threat to command posts and keep vulnerable elements out of the range rings of the enemy. ...
The Army doesn’t get to choose its next conflict or adversary, but it can prepare for the fight through investments in command nodes, communications, and trust in commanders’ equipment requests. A blind brigade will never be able to mass and synchronize effects. On the other hand, a brigade enabled by highly mobile and redundant mission command, bound together by flexibility in tactics and communication, will stand ready to meet and defeat adversaries on a future battlefield.
Roger that.
UPDATED: In a related matter, just what is artillery fire supposed to achieve to win the battle?
