Implications of PLA's "Soldier as a Sensor" Initiative
How the US Can Defeat the PLA and CCP
BLUF
PLA has implemented small arms-hosted sensor platforms to better gather and manage battlefield data.
PLA has made a doctrinal pivot to defeating the US on its own (perceived) strengths of sensor and platform dominance.
US now has new opportunities to leverage PLA’s doctrinal weaknesses and reliance on technology for command/control to disrupt and defeat PLA in a conflict.
PRIMER
Yesterday, New Kite Data Labs published an excellent paper called “Operational Monitoring and Control of Small Arms Weapons Within the People’s Liberation Army” outlining efforts by the People’s Liberation Army of the Communist Party of China (PLA) to employ weapons-hosted sensors at the individual soldier level.
Similar technology has been in development for more than a decade inside the United States military, with the most well-known being the Intelligent Rail (also called I-Rail) system manufactured by Tworx. Widespread deployment of systems like I-Rail at the tactical unit level has been a longtime goal of DoD procurement and service leadership alike. Until recent times, Internet of Things-like (IoT) sensors have been limited by the weight and capacity constraints associated with current-generation batteries - the modern soldier is already overloaded with gear, with batteries alone accounting for nearly 20 pounds of that weight.
However, DoD strategists and leaders have continued pursuing the program for two key reasons:
Battery (and inter-sensor communication) technology has continued to advanced at a rapid pace, scaling down the soldier’s notional burden with lighter weight, higher-performing materials.
A “soldier as a sensor platform” dramatically enhances situational awareness up, down and across the chain of command. This speeds up the decision-making cycle at both the tactical and strategic levels, ideally providing accurate, timely, and dynamic optionality to troops in harm’s way under extremely fluid/uncertain conditions. Critically, dispersed troops-as-nodes more effectively leverages the joint capabilities of larger combined arms forces, enabling soldiers, armor, artillery, planes, helicopters, ships, drones, satellites, and numerous other platforms/systems to detect and destroy the adversary.
Moreover, the vast amount of data available for consumption in an individual’s immediate operational environment is exploitable for building larger and more accurate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models that can bolster the decision making of humans and power development of sophisticated AI that can operate fully autonomous platforms that might otherwise be limited by the presence of a human operator.
DIGGING DEEPER
Though New Kite’s paper does not share the raw data as acquired, we can make several strong inferences based on the information presented.
PLA is following a different approach to enhancing soldier lethality and survivability than the US.
PLA is betting the farm on technology and sheer scale being their competitive advantages in a near-future conflict with US armed forces.
PLA is capable of iterating and deploying technology at a far more rapid pace than the US.
The US will not win by playing to its historical strengths in technology, materiel, naval and air/space superiority, and precision strikes at overwhelming scale.
Different Approach
PLA has clearly adopted a mindset shared by US military leaders - “big data will win wars”. For the reasons listed above, it is quite true that more data executed upon faster than the enemy is a significant advantage. Having stolen, copied, or otherwise iterated US defense technology for a generation or more, the PLA has closed the gap rapidly in terms of individual system performance and interoperability under a joint forces order of battle. Further, China has long been the manufacturing hub of the world, and holds significant advantages in control and refining of the critical and strategic materials necessary to building cutting-edge weapons, sensors, communications systems, and logistics platforms - which it wields as an economic weapon routinely. Given that a theoretical war with the US would likely occur close to its shores - especially considering China’s shorter, cheaper, and more robust supply chain capabilities being combined with a pivot to a wartime economy and labor force - the PLA cannot be blamed for making a doctrinal pivot to defeating the US on its own (perceived) turf of sensor and platform dominance.
“Quantity Has A Quality All Its Own”
This quote, famously misattributed to Stalin, is nonetheless a tenet of original Marxist theory. And while PRC is not a purely communist regime, it does adhere to the Marxist mindset that people and technology are both expendable cogs in the machine of power. Thus, leveraging technology to more effectively dictate the operations of masses of humans at scale has become a key methodology of social control for PRC. We may also assume that PLA’s impementation of on-soldier sensors suggests an order of battle that requires overwhelming quantities of things and people moving in precisely-defined, interlocking patterns of movement to achieve specific tactical and strategic outcomes. Contrast this with the US’ order of battle:
Technology as individual-unit force multiplier
Kinetic Effects to shape operational environment
Movement of units as an organic, adaptive methodology
Information to drive a common operating picture to inform decisions at all levels of activity
In other words:
PLA emphasizes tight control of overwhelming numbers of distributed interchangeable assets to achieve a focused strategic outcome.
US emphasizes combined supporting systems and platforms to shape the operational environment while relying on unit-level initiative and decision-making to win many individual fights within the larger scope of conflict.
Why This Matters
The sheer scope of PLA’s rapid advances in modern combat technology is startling. Contrasting this with the US’ disordered, Byzantine DoD procurement cycle, it would appear that PLA has taken the high ground of gathering, processing, and deploying data-as-a-weapon. However, it also opens up new opportunities for the US and allied forces to get inside PLA’s OODA Loop.
Emergent Vulnerabilities
Simply put, anything that emits energy (or frequencies) becomes more identifiable, quantifiable, and targetable. Thus, increasing emissions and complexity at the individual unit level makes them more vulnerable to detection and disruption. Further, as New Kite demonstrates by summarizing internal records of the PLA, a preoccupation with control of data means that the data must be stored, catalogued, and interlocking at some level in order for decision makers to leverage it - which makes the data itself a potential weapon if it can be collected by the enemy.
Tactical Implications
A weapons-integrated sensor system feed likely has a companion sensor system on-body of the individual user, with the two keyed to one another.
This would create a "soldier as a sensor platform", incorporating data from the weapon sensors, biometrics (heart rate, blood pressure, etc), JTAC equipment (laser designators, etc), comms, SIGINT collection tech, micro- or team-level UAS', and other data in the soldier's immediate operational environment.
Such a holistic platform provides PLA unit and theater commanders with a granular, integrated approach for micromanaging the operational environment down to the meter, with AI/ML models providing robust and high-speed computational models for scenario planning, agile force movements, and mission/task order management. This has the perceived advantage of turning the soldier into a de facto robot/"unit of force" within the larger order of battle.
Whatever the advantages PLA seeks to gain from this effort, we also must apply a realistic lens to our understanding of the benefits and weaknesses.
Battle is dynamic, here ground truth exceeds the pace even of high-speed communications and computational modeling. This gives an institutional advantage to the US' style of combat, which emphasizes mission command** and small teams making tactical decisions of their own initiative.
Sensor platforms emit a variety of detectable signatures, particularly in the UHF (WiFi, mesh radio, GPS, 4G) and SHF (satcom, some WiFi) bands. SIGINT collection and exploitation is a US strength at the theater and tactical levels. Identifying unique/unusual RF signals in the operational environment and then overlaying them would provide a precise geofence/triangulation of activity and likely the type of units themselves that are emitting.
RF sources can be disrupted or exploited in a variety of fashions, including hijacking of the equipment itself.
Disruption of the sensor platforms and systems will degrade operational control at the tactical level, opening up opportunities for unexpected responses by US forces to get inside PLA unit (and commander) OODA Loops.
[** Buy and study this book. It provides an extremely thorough and crossfunctional understanding of how Mission Command methodology builds and reinforces victory in all domains of warfighting. My own contribution in Chapter 13 does not focus on warfighting proper, but does illuminate how Mission Command is a truly extensible and powerful approach to achieving victory at any level.]
Conclusion
DoD has an opportunity to gain valuable insights into how PLA and CCP are likely to operate in a near-future conflict with the US. By harnessing these insights and leaning into our strengths - small team, asymmetric warfare across all domains - the US can effectively “rope a dope” the PLA war machine with minimized loss of American and allied lives and destroy CCP credibility in the process.
Dum spiro spero,
RK