The future of…

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The future of warfare

Jan 1999

I spent four years in the defence industry before joining BT, and it always seemed strange to me that there is no attack industry. We wage war with weapons that have been developed under the motive of defence, and many of the most advanced technologies are reserved for the use of armed forces. What is equally strange is that the most advanced technologies in the world still use some of the most primitive of basic means to accomplish their task. Some of the most advanced missiles do little more than hit an aircraft effectively with a high speed stone. A soldier shooting smart bullets from a laser assisted rifle can still be killed by a spear. The technology doesn't confer invulnerability, it just improves the odds.

However, with information technology, warfare will change dramatically as we try to improved the odds of our survival further still by not even being there. We will send machines or wage electronic warfare on the networks. With these new forms of warfare, far fewer people will be needed unless a final land assault is required to finish the job man to man. For most of the war, not only can many jobs can be delegated to machines but many jobs can be done better by machines

Fortunately for soldiers, many future weapons may be more oriented to destroying machines than people, e.g. by EM pulse. The purpose of war is not to destroy the enemy but to get them to do what you want. Deactivating a soldier by making his tools unusable can be just as effective as killing him.

When we do need human soldiers, some will look like the Borg, or Universal soldier. Their CamNet headsets will give HQ real time video of the action from the soldier's viewpoint, while presenting the soldier with instructions straight from HQ, perhaps thousands of miles away. Even the soldier's weapons may be remotely armed, disarmed, or fired. Of course, the soldiers will have computers to provide battlefield information, recognise and enhance images and provide instructions in front of the soldier's eyes via an eyepiece. With video cameras in smart weapons relaying images to the eyepiece, the soldier can watch what is going on, aim and fire the weapon with greatly reduced personal exposure. Of course, this will use the latest night vision technology and be sensitive to a much greater range of the spectrum than the Mk1 human eyeball. Eventually active contact lenses will give soldiers 3d overlays of information on the real world, enhancing their effective vision and highlighting targets or threats. Every scene will be enhanced by the computer.

Soldiers will wear sophisticated new clothing. It may change colour dynamically to match the surroundings, providing superb camouflage. It may alter its thermal characteristics to keep soldiers comfortable. If a soldier is shot, antiseptics and other medicines and pain killers in the fabric could accompany the bullet into the wound, while sensors would detect the position and extent of the wound and then inform the field medical staff of the problem and the casualty's location. They would then be able to prioritise casualties for treatment. Meanwhile, other sensors could monitor his pulse, blood pressure and so on.

With massive machine intelligence and good communications with individual soldiers, defence computers will be able to organise soldiers in a highly distributed attack, providing no main front to defend against. Commanders may still provide the inspiration and overall strategy, leaving the computers to take care of detail.

A wide variety of smart munitions will seek out enemy machines, identify and destroy them. There is already a high degree of intelligence in today's weapons. There are already cheap mines that recognise the acoustic signature of approaching vehicles. The more sophisticated guidance systems in cruise missiles are still expensive but this technology should become much cheaper over time. Where dolphins were once trained to identify and destroy ships, smart missiles and torpedoes will eventually have similar levels of intelligence, able to find, recognise and destroy their specific targets. This may make many tanks, ships and other such 20^th century tools obsolete. Only developing countries will still use them for local conflicts. Alternatively, a new range of ships with sophisticated electronic warfare and defence systems may be even more central to defence abroad, floating electronic fortresses. Such leapfrogging is a general characteristic of defence technology.

We may see the use of many insect-like robots being used for a variety of military tasks, gathering intelligence of all kinds, acting as remote eyes and attacking the enemy in various ways. Such miniature robots could slip into enemy territory undetected, or in such large numbers that some would be certain to get through. They could send back pictures, intercept transmissions, or transmit propaganda, subtly modifying enemy broadcasts. As these robots become smaller still, their scope of operation increases. They could crawl into computers and modify or destroy data or communications. They could physically damage circuits or other components and generally wreak havoc. Ultimately, nanotechnology may bring about nightmare weapons that are able to manipulate matter at the atomic scale, changing enemies into sickly goo.

Telepresence and computer game-like interfaces will bring about the extensive use of planes that are remotely piloted rather than carrying real pilots, as well as remote control of these cyber-insects. Without the constraints imposed by human G-force tolerance and the pilots desire to live, their performance could be greatly enhanced. They will have a high degree of autonomy; the computer would do most of the flying, target identification, and weapon management. Only the decision to fire will be human-based. Small remote controlled planes have been used for some time for reconnaissance, most notably in the Gulf War. Soon we will see the use of remotely piloted fighters and bombers.

Of course, biological and chemical warfare is an ever present threat, and could also make use of some of these advanced delivery systems, even to the extent of attacking people with particular physical characteristics, either by using smart microbots or at the biological level, using gene-dependent agents. Hopefully, new technologies such as gene chips and micro-electromechanical machines will enable such threats to be detected early on, and rapidly identify chemicals or viruses so that appropriate treatments or antidotes can be rapidly administered.

But most warfare will be non-physical, based in cyberspace. Networks can be knocked out by viruses, logic bombs, information waves, information bombs, false information, overloads etc., bringing communications of all kinds to a standstill. Economic and industrial information and systems can be tampered with, hacking computers, changing bank balances or making subtle modifications to systems that aren't noticed until the damage is done. Electronic warfare disables the enemy by capitalising on the total dependence on electronic systems.

However, it is not all bad news. Although ever more sophisticated technology will be used to kill people, in fact, soft warfare may become the norm. Soft warfare relies on changing a country’s inhabitants’ attitudes by information, entertainment, aid or outright propaganda much more effectively than was possible in the past. Invasions are then unnecessary. If the point is to get people to do what you want, then gradual persuasion until they come round to your way of thinking may be more time consuming than killing some of your enemies, but it is much less expensive and in the long term probably much more successful. Australians have changed British attitudes in their favour much more by selling us Neighbours than any amount of hard warfare would have achieved.