Radioflash! Episode 16: SMART Kill!

You have heard of hard kill, you have heard of soft kill, but what about SMART Kill? Drawing on his operational experience in the Royal Navy, and time in industry, Alasdair Gilchrist, our guest on episode 16 of Radioflash! says we need to start thinking about how to engage threats without stovepipes. Mr. Gilchrist, who has recently embarked on a new career as a consultant, has developed the SMART (Sensors and Measures Against Realistic Threats) Kill concept of operations. This takes the effects-based approach to prosecuting threats a step forward. He argues that traditional thinking about hard kill and soft kill approaches are becoming obsolete. The plethora of emerging threats militaries are facing, the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) menace being a good example, is forcing this rethink. Within the SMART Kill concept, sensing stresses the importance of threat comprehension. Are we understanding the real, and not the perceived, threat? This is particularly relevant on future battlefields where misinformation and disinformation risks clouding our threat sensing and comprehension. When engaging a threat, are we using our effects judiciously and responsibly? Should we be sending kinetics aloft to counter UAVs, when jamming may kill such threats just as effectively? The danger posed by swarms of UAVs aptly underscores this point. Can the SMART Kill approach allow us to use technologies which may not be exquisite, but which may perform the mission just as well, but at a fraction of the cost?