Historically, advances in military conflict have, to a large degree, been about the creation of new weapons and this is unlikely to change. Moreover, with the cost of killing rising and the willingness of people to die arguably falling in some regions, the emphasis is shifting more to the use of technology to replace all human contact with the enemy.
Wars used to be about lines and columns of armed men. Then it was about machine guns and artillery and after that tanks and aircraft. But in the future there will be networks of technicians controlling remote devices, some of which will be semiautonomous. In other words, we are partially moving away from a world of large-scale military hardware and large physical targets to one where stealth attacks and cyberwarfare will be used to destroy specific individuals and elements of urban infrastructure. The aim of such attacks will not be wholesale physical destruction, but short-term disruption and paralysis that will eat away at the hearts and minds of politicians and the public. One of the new vulnerabilities of our digital age is our reliance on technology in general and networks in particular.
Future war We will hear more about cyberwarfare, in particular, because everything from aircraft control systems to power grids, financial markets, telecommunications infrastructure, water pipes and government computer networks are now generally run by computers and are therefore vulnerable to attack. As a survivor of World War Two remarked: “You don’t need a nuclear bomb to get a country to surrender nowadays; you just need to cut the power off for a week.”
Tactics such as these suit informal terrorist groups and are an example of what’s known as asymmetric warfare, where the formal power on one side differs significantly from that of the other. Cyberwar, a form of asymmetric war in many cases, is not limited to the military either. As the cost of winning and losing in business escalates, so too does the temptation to use cyberspace to steal commercial secrets and intellectual property. Moreover, with everyday life moving toward “the cloud,” whereby information is stored remotely and accessed on an on-demand basis, the implications of digital disruption and electronic insecurity (whether government-sponsored or inflicted by politicized geeks, information vigilantes or “hacktivists”) are enormous. Remember too that China has more Internet users than the USA and therefore has a larger hacker population. This means lots of potential cybercrime and tightly coordinated electronic spying, some of which is undoubtedly directed at US military installations and defense engineering.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
Battlefield robots are another example of semiautonomous warfare, and more than 50 governments across the globe are actively seeking to develop robotic killing machines. This is partly because the “value” of human life is increasing due to public opinion, legal redress and the need to win elections, which means that governments will be less willing to risk individual injury and death. Opponents argue that automation will reduce the cost and the emotional investment of warfare, with the result that wars will become more frequent. There is also the issue of mistaken identity—teaching machines to distinguish between military and civilian targets, especially when final decisions about whether to open fire become automated, is especially difficult. On the opposing side, proponents of robotic weapons argue that intelligent fighting machines will pay more attention to battlefield rules and are less likely to engage in acts of anger or malice. They don’t panic either.
It all sounds like science fiction, but in fact the development of robotic fighting machines has hardly begun. One machine already created by the US army is a wandering veggie-eating robot. The robot—known as EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot)—is able to collect raw biomass such as leaves, wood and grass and convert these into fuel for its steam-powered engine. The robot uses smart software to tell what’s edible and what’s not and uses a laser-guided robotic arm to grab the biomass and put it in a hopper that connects with an internal combustion engine, which in turn powers an onboard battery. Why do this? The answer is partly that wars depend on energy (soldiers increasingly rely on battery-powered devices) and partly that wars are often fought in remote regions where supply chains can be easily disrupted.
“Either war is obsolete or men are.”
Buckminster Fuller, author, inventor and futurist
Friend or foe? When it comes to drones, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), these are principally surveillance tools not weapons at present. Payloads are generally small and they’re vulnerable to ground defense because of their slow speed. But give it a few decades and things will change. For example, how about networked drones small enough and responsive enough to enter a house through an open window and transmit information as they travel from room to room? Or perhaps they could be used to monitor traffic, observe forest fires, count livestock, chase criminals and so on. Perhaps we’ll see robotic insects with a 3cm (1in) wingspan that could collect information more effectively than a satellite and deliver a tiny biological or chemical payload?
But what happens when the USA loses its lead in drone technology and nations start attacking each other preemptively or when terrorist groups use them against civilian targets? Indeed, how about mixing everything up to create a future military, which includes the use of screen-based weapons, remote-controlled aerial drones and joystick-controlled robots? Put another way, what happens when Walt Disney and Hollywood team up to fight the Taliban using 3D glasses, haptic gloves that simulate the sensation of touch and “scent collars” that create microbursts of cordite?
Will this really happen? Quite possibly. And the reason is a mixture of cost savings and the desire to preserve human life. However, it’s not difficult to imagine that the unintended consequences of such developments include a disconnection from reality, real-life risks and understanding, not only on the part of soldiers, but politicians too.
the condensed idea
War is automated and moves online
| timeline | |
|---|---|
| 1400–1600 | Development of handheld weapons including longbows |
| 1884 | First fully automatic submachine gun |
| 1914 | Deployment of the first tank |
| 1945 | Use of the first atomic bomb |
| 2011 | US drone kills Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen |
| 2020 | A third of all US military vehicles are unmanned |
| 2021 | A quarter of US army made up of robots |
| 2023 | Manned fighter aircraft decommissioned |
| 2025 | SWAT teams use insect-like UAVs in civil airspace |