Sea Control - Sea Control 211 - Bursting A2/AD Bubbles with Robert Dalsjö and Michael Jonsson

Episode Date: November 15, 2020

1. Bursting the Bubble? Russian A2/AD in the Baltic Sea Region, Robert Dalsjö, Christofer Berglund, Michael Jonsson, FOI, March 2019.2. Beyond Bursting Bubbles: Understanding the Full Spectrum of the Russian A2/AD Threat and Identifying Strategies for Counteraction, Robert Dalsjö, and Michael Jonsson (editors), FOI, June 2020.

Hey folks, Jared here. Thanks for tuning back in to Sea Control. If you haven't heard, we brought in some new hosts, and our first new host, Andrea Howard, dropped her first episode last week, interviewing Dr. Stephen Goff about opportunities for cooperation between the Coast Guard and the Space Force. This week, we've got the team behind the 2019 study, Bursting the Bubble, Russian A2AD in the Baltic, and the 2020 study, Beyond Bursting Bubbles, Robert Dalzio and Michael Janssen. please emotionally prepare yourself to hear me mispronounce michael's name seven different ways i definitely should have taken him up on his offer to just refer to him as michael as a reminder all views expressed are our own and not representative of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated as always we want to advertise and strongly recommend our friends in the simsec podcast network and our second podcast feed the bilge pumps you can find alex drack jamie and a pile of empty iron brew bottles on apple podcast stitcher spotify and wherever

else you download your podcasts. It's a more low-key, slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval history. Check them out wherever you download. This week, they're taking you back to ancient Rome. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, I'm joined by two of the authors of one of my favorite works and its sequel. We'll get into their work in a second here, but first I'd like to welcome Robert Dalzio and Mikael Jonsson to the program. Gentlemen, thanks for agreeing to join me. Before we talk about your work, I'd like to give each of you

the opportunity to introduce yourself to our listeners. So Robert, would you mind starting? Okay, I'm somewhat of a veteran here. I've been doing political military affairs for the British government for 30 years and whatever the topic has been the flavor of the year since crime but we never forget russia so and especially since crimea it's been a lot russia related and i have a background as a reserve officer in the coast artillery which is now sadly different thank you and welcome and michael would you please tell us a little bit about your background yeah sure i've been working at the swedish defense research agency for seven years so i'm not a newcomer anymore maybe but i'm not as seasoned as robert like him i'm a phd in political science from

rapsala former fulbright scholar at georgetown university i've been working well like most of us on on different topics but i've fairly recently come into sort of conventional military studies before that i did a lot of civil wars and terrorist studies and that sort of well thank you both so much. I had mentioned that you'd written one of my favorite works, and it's linked in the show notes. And the work in question was March 2019's paper, Bursting the Bubbles, Russian A2AD in the Baltic Sea region, which the two of you wrote together with Christopher Berglund. You're going to have to tell me if I mispronounce his name, and I'm sorry if he's listening. I'm going to shift into fanboy mode, though, for just a minute, because I've recommended this work at least 50

times. We use it as a text for the class that I taught on operational art in Germany. It's a really good comprehensive work if you want to understand both the capabilities and the limitations of A2AD. So, Robert, I'll start with you. What is Bursting the Bubble about, and why did you decide to write it? Well, it's about a critical examination of the Russian A2AD capability in light of the hype that was heaped on russian a280 people is following the crime now and in a way it started with i did a study on rc battle and chinese a3d so i kind of got got on the subject and then after

Crimea, we talked our paymasters into commissioning a study of the A280. And by that time, I had a feeling in my knees that there was something wrong with the reporting about Russian capabilities in both of the serious mainstream media in the West and in the professional media. So we wanted to go after that story. Thanks. Michael, before I come to you, Michael, it sounds like Robert sort of started with this project, but how did you become involved with Bursting the Bubble? Sure. Well, first of all, the study started as a

primer for non-specialists trying to explain, intended to be four pages long, trying to explain the technical reasons why you shouldn't take Russian claims of the 880 capabilities is face value but the more we dug into it and the more you went you go contrary received wisdom the more you feel a need to sort of justify and explain and verify your claims so it grew grew in size quite quite substantially so towards the second half of the writing i came into into the project and second i'd just like to add there's three orders but at least five or it's a teamwork beyond that as well we rely a lot on our technical colleagues and a lot of

russia team as well and without that breadth of expertise available to us i don't think we would have been able to to put together such a comprehensive report thank you robert let me come back to you is did you begin the research with any assumptions yes i did that this is a serious matter that needs serious attention and another assumption was the earth is round while radar beams traveling the straight line. Thank you. Michael, how about you? Well, not to start off, but the more you dig into the empirics of it, the more obvious it was that there was

quite a big need to revise the received wisdom on Russian capabilities. But it really wasn't a thesis to begin with. We didn't have a point that we wanted to make. It was more that we did the analysis And once we're done, we realized, okay, we probably need to put this up front and to make it clarify what the main takeaway is. But it wasn't the starting assumption. It was the conclusion of the analysis. Thank you. Robert, I'm going to ask you.

You both mentioned sort of Russian hype around A2AD. Do you believe that that's a Western phenomenon or just Westerners sort of accepting Russian propaganda? Anders? Probably it's a combination, that the Russians had reasons to hide their own capabilities, both political reasons, that it's scaring Russia, we are mean and bad and strong. And on the Western side, you might say that the pendulum of assessment of Russia swung. Before Crimea, they were generally seen as a basket case. And then after Crimea, they were 10 feet tall. So there were some people in the West who had an interest in driving this story, you might say. Thank you. So what did you learn about your assumptions as you started to do

the research? And were there any real revelations for you? And Robert, we'll start with you and then come to you mckay well one thing a revelation was it's more complicated as you go below the circle uh there are some aspects to it that were really complicated and then another thing i realized after a while or mike and i and christopher realized was that in order to explain this to the intelligent layperson we cannot just zero in missiles and radars and stuff we have to explain the problem of hitting a moving object at a long distance so in a way that's why it kind of turned out like a primer and and that annex on on hitting a moving target at long distance because there were some things i remember from my midshipman years which um

You couldn't expect the common man or woman in the street to grasp. I was actually going to ask a follow-up to that. Just how did your background with the coastal artillery help the development of this project? Well, it gave me a little bit sense of a warning signal. When those maps with 400-kilometer range of the S-400 from Kaliningrad started popping up, I remembered the old teaching about the radar horizon. Hello, there's something hidden here. This can't be right. So it's helped me, and it's helped us that this old background of mine about the in and out of hitting a moving target.

And, of course, in the coast of Hillary, hitting something at 20 kilometers with a cannon wasn't trivial. And then, of course, hitting something at 10 times the distance is also a non-trivial problem. Mikhail, how about for you then? Any real revelations as you went about the research? Was this the first time that you worked on a project specifically focused on this area? uh in the in terms of our near abroad and conventional military no on russian air defense yes i would say so uh the revelations were there was a multitude one was as soon as you start scratching the surface as robert said the 400 kilometer rings not even the proponents of sort of maximalist threats not even they believe in the 400 kilometer rings because it's assumed that It's a maximal range of the missile, and it would assume that the target would be moving in a straight line and very predictable. Second was when we started looking at possible countermeasures and drawing from previous conflicts, and you tend to look only at your own vulnerabilities.

But if you turn around and look at Kaliningrad from a Russian perspective, it's quite vulnerable. So that was maybe not a revelation, but a shift in perspective was quite helpful. Yes, and I'd like to add that here having real Russian specialists and real rocket scientists and radar boffins, you would say in British English, in-house was a great boon because we could go with them and talk about ideas and get feedback. So it helped make the product better. Well, this goes directly to my next question, and Mikhail, I'll start with you. How did you go about having some of these discussions about capabilities where you're able to pare back the range rings to something that looks more manageable for a military planner? Well, I have a habit which is sometimes irritating for my colleagues. When I get an idea, I go and bother them and talk to them about it.

And then it's really good to be able to have rocket scientists and Russian specialists next door. So it was really very informal that I or Michael went over to their office and asked them or sent an email. And it was very much like a chat. Michael, anything to add on that question? no yes it the comparative strength of working in a place like the swedish defense research agency is having access to these kinds of experts it is not necessarily asking them to do something new we're just drawing on the expertise that they already had and it's kind of an iterative process even after the study was done and after we did the follow-up conference report and we had some

some diverging views from some of the authors we could still go back to them and say what do you think about this and is this plausible and so forth and just adding 400 kilometers how should i put it it's not that we have an alternative number it's much more complex it's the range is shorter but we don't have a definite answer and it depends on a lot of circumstances so i don't want to give the impression that one number that gets thrown around is we say against low flying targets effective range is 20 to 35 kilometers sure there's a there's backup up and they're sourcing for that claim but it's not like it's that small either we don't want to underestimate the the capabilities either well let me ask you obviously i'm a fan of this and

i sort of live in a online bubble where these things get talked about but what has been the response to this sure uh it's very very encouraging uh both the informal and the formal responses we it was the single most downloaded and read reports we followed what happened to it was like translated. The news about it was translated to 15 languages within a couple of days. We received an invitation to DSEI, the air power section, lots of encouraging emails. Of course, if you say something partly new and partly controversial, not everyone is persuaded 100% straight away, but it's been very, very encouraging. We realized over time that we might have helped change the the debate on russian a280 capabilities towards something more constructive and more narrowing in

on on the unknowns and moving from the sort of exaggerated view and hopefully avoiding being too dismissive so but overall it's been a very positive experience i also think that the follow-up report that we did shows this that people talk about this and think about the problem from a different, more constructive angle now than they did just a couple of years ago. And we're not the only reason why, but hopefully we sort of contributed to this shift. Yes, and just one follow-up question. What is DSCI that you referenced? It's the main arms, the military conference in London.

But, Robert, help me out here. It's defense, security, something. Defense, systems, technology. It's a huge expo that's in the end of August, early September, every year. So it's a huge expo filled with all kinds of military gear. People come from all over the world to feel and touch. And then there are seminars. So when we were invited to speak at that, my boss goes,

Oh, that conference, oh, it's really high class. Thank you. Robert, how has the response been from your perspective? Absolutely overwhelming. In 30 years at FOI, I have never helped produce a report that has gotten this response. And we've been invited, as we said, to London, also to Shevenham. and a U.S. think tank paid for me to fly over to the U.S. and presented to people from the Pentagon.

And I must say, I feel a little bit like the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's story about the emperor's new clothes, because I've been telling them that the earth is round. And it has been known for 500 years, but still, I think our report helped break the spell. So, yeah, I had a follow-up directly to that. It's about NATO behavior, but I guess I should change the language a little bit because you're from Sweden. Finland is another non-aligned country who would have, I think, intense interest in the subject.

Have you noticed any changes in NATO behavior as a result of this or within Sweden or Finland? And, Robert, I'll ask you to start. Not really. But on the other hand, we don't we don't want personally don't watch NATO behavior or Swedish naval behavior that closely. But what I have seen is that a lot of people in the Swedish Navy and within NATO have been relieved that we have removed this feeling that, oh, it's so terrible, Russia commands almost the whole of the Baltic because of its missiles. So, there's been a sense of relief on the part of admirals and commodores I've talked to. Mikael, generally agree with that assessment or have you seen anything different? No, I agree fully with that assessment. We don't follow that closely.

We wouldn't be privy. But we noticed from the way people talk about this and the way from the open publications and so forth that there's been a shift in approach to the problem. Yeah, so that's been my biggest takeaway is just the way that people discuss it before and after. I don't want to overstate it, but it is a pretty dramatic shift. And people were almost afraid to discuss operations in the Baltic beforehand. And now it's accepted that there will be some cost to operating there, but it can be done. And it's just a question of what kind of units and how you would do it. Robert, I'm going to ask, was there any negative feedback?

And then how did you deal with that? A little bit. There was some murmuring that we devalued the threat. And there were also a couple of voices who had been of the maximalist persuasion that were not too happy with our study and tried to piece together a Russian capability to hit targets very far away nonetheless. But they have really been marginal. Can I ask what you mean by maximalist? That's just the first time I've encountered that description. I think it's Michael's term, but those that interpret Russian capabilities as being everything the Russians say and then some. Yeah, I can add to that.

It's just assuming everything works as advertised, the 400-kilometer range, everything is deployed, any sensor, any shooter kind of network, and also perfect jointness between different parts of the Navy and so forth, the Navy and the Army and so forth. So it's just assuming everything works perfectly, as we know full well it never does in our own sort of armed forces. So that's the maximalist version of it. No, thank you. That's a great explanation. Michael, I'm going to come back to you. When did you start planning the sequel to this? well actually we we had a sense that this might be a big thing so first uh we published this and then just five days later we published a op-ed in foreign policy and then we had sort of a list of presentations of the study for you know for the defense department and the armed forces

headquarters and so forth and then as soon as that was done after a couple of weeks we applied for a grant to have the conference so within a few weeks and this stems from the sense that it's such a complex and broad subject, it involves all three domains and arguably should involve additional such as cyber and so forth

and even non-military and then it moves from the very technical to the very sort of security politics so we had a sense that we did it was an accomplishment to to sort of cover all of that ground we didn't feel that we went had enough granularity in certain

areas so that's why we wanted to dig deeper and hear what the best people in in the respective fields had to say and then michael i'll come back to you for the next question you assemble have a what we would call in english a murderer's row of talent just a very accomplished group of people to write beyond the bubbles from all over northern europe and you snuck in a few americans as well did you pick topics and then look for authors or did you choose authors and then allow them to seek out a topic they enjoyed sure a bit of both so we looked at sort of five or six areas that we wouldn't wanted to cover in greater detail and we managed to cover all of them expect except for the lessons learned from the israeli and air campaign in syria that turned out to be

too sensitive but beyond that we picked the topics and then we picked and contacted the top people that we knew of but within each topic such as you know naval operations or air operations or non-military they were had very free reign to sort of formulate their own questions and their own topics within that broader framework so it was a balance between the two of them Thanks. And the next question, Robert, I'll ask you, is your credit as editors for Beyond the Bubbles, and it's a little bit more of an anthology series for those who haven't read it. That'll be linked in the show notes as well. But what were you trying to achieve with Beyond the Bubbles? We've sort of already talked about the goal for the first article. well first of all i think it's a sound military principle reinforce success and secondly we were trying to get an outside view on our analysis where did we go wrong

what did we miss thirdly we wanted to have a wider perspective and also to try to pinpoint to areas where there was still uncertainty that needed further work. Did you think any of the authors identified a place where you quote-unquote went wrong? Oh, good one. I think that... Let me jump in and caveat here is like we're not trying to critique any of the authors. I'm just... No, no, no. I think we may

in the original study, as we had to keep the volume down, it was originally a four-page primer and it became a 120-page report, we had to focus on a few systems, S-400, the bastion system etc uh this gander and didn't take in the full breadth of all the other systems that they have in a similar category nor did we discuss in depth the potential for connecting shooter and and sensor above service line but we did that then in the second report and then robert let me ask you and then i'll go back to mikhail but were there any of the pieces that surprised you elements in the pieces yes but none of the pieces as such except pleasant surprises of course

mikhail how about you yeah i'm thinking about i think it's a hard question to answer because we read each chapter probably 10 times by now so by now it feels very familiar but of course they added elements of knowledge and expertise that we didn't have but and like robert said it was more of broadening the scope and being sort of giving full um well representing the the complexity of the issues at hand um and but of course we learned tons and some people had divergent views and and Some were more optimistic than we are, and some were more pessimistic. But the greatest takeaway from me was that reasonable people, even of slightly different persuasion, see eye to eye on a number of things concerning Russian A280 capabilities, which is narrowing the scope to the few genuine areas of uncertainty. So I think that was very helpful.

Mikael did you have a I definitely am not going to ask you to pick a least favorite but did you have a favorite contribution from the chapters that you received there were several Kirgyles I think was excellent in the sense that it took a totally non-military

perspective from a Swedish perspective I thought Robin Heggblom his take on air defense different solutions for the Russian long range precision strike regime was very helpful but I could probably list all of them i think they were really good but in in various in various ways and robert how about you did you have a particular uh contribution that you enjoyed more than the others

no really it was like a smorgasbord or or uh one of those chinese dinners where you have a little bit of each pieces no i can't say i had a one favorite but i have several favorite pieces in different articles so then Robert let me come back to you and ask do you have anything else planned for this series oh

yes and no we plan well I know we have an article planned but Michael can talk about that and we will probably look at some scenarios for the Swedish government but that will probably

not be published Michael, you can talk about the article. Yes. The one bullet point in our communications list we still haven't checked off is writing a sort of policy-oriented article based on the summarizing what we learned so far. So we're working on that. Beyond that, I think it will be a little bit of event-driven. Depending on what happens in our near abroad, we might pick up the thread again. But we're not planning another conference in the near future, at least.

Not for now. But I think there are two issue areas which stand out as being in need of work. One is a much more fine-grained look at the Russian IADS system. Now, some writers tend to assume that Russia has a single IADS. We have come to the conclusion that they probably have three. One for the Air Force, one for the Army, one for the Navy. But as to how interconnected they are, I think we can do some work there. And the second issue area, which I think merits a closer look, is the things we've seen come out of the Middle East.

because the spectacular failure of Russian-made equipment in Syria and Libya, Israeli but also against Turkish opponents, begs a further look. We know that Russian air defense systems work and can shut down airliners, but how much of a threat are they to military aircraft? Well, let me ask you, have you given any thought to picking up this question and transporting it to another area geographically. You mentioned that this sort of stemmed from a lot of the conversation that started happening after Crimea. Has there been any thought given to taking this to the Black Sea,

or is the fact that you happen to work for a Swedish institution kind of limit this to the scope of the geographic area where you're going to look at this problem? well we'll see what kind of invitations come to us after uh beyond bursting bubble has so to say settled because the the speaking invitations we got from the first report they often they arrived uh three months or six months after the report had come out so i'll never i I won't say never, ever, but, of course, our paymasters want us to focus our attention on areas closer to home. What happens in the Black Sea is, of course, also an interest to Sweden. Well, thank you very much.

Unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Robert Dalzio, Mikael Jansson. Robert, where can we find you online, and what are you working on next? I'm on Twitter. And then almost all our published reports are at SOI's homepage, that's soi.se. And right now, we're working like beavers on a major report due out around New Year's on Western military capability. Thank you. And Michael, how about you?

Where can we find you online? and what are you working on? I'm working on the same major report on Western military capabilities. And so Robert is working on convincing me to join Twitter. I think I will eventually. Sorry, I'm really slow at this. No, you're okay.

I highly recommend Twitter. You just have to curate your list very carefully to avoid the garbage fires. But thank you again to both my guests and thanks to the listeners for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Sea Control is edited and produced by Keegan Ingersoll, Ed Salo, and William McQuiston. © transcript Emily Beynon