Tech Juice 2511 Part IV: The Technophile's View On The Impact of Disruptive Technologies on Armed Forces.

Introduction

1.  In Tech Juice Part III of this series, I discussed the impact of disruptive technologies on equipment profiles of the armed forces from a conventionalist's point of view.  In this article, I will cover the view of the Technophile and in the next, that of the Shadow Warrior.

2.  The technophile, wants to change the armed forces in line with Industry Revolution 4.0 technologies. They bat for robotised tanks, unmanned combat systems which are underwater, on surface, in the air/space, AI enabled cyber protection, network management, war gaming, quantum keys, space networks for C4ISR (Communications, Computers, Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), swarm drone soldiers etc. The lists and possibilities are endless. 

3.  For the technophile, everything is robotised. Modern war is a war with robots and computers. According to the technophile, the unmanned combat air vehicle replaces the manned fighter, robotic tanks, submarines and even aircraft carriers project force where needed without putting anyone in harm's way. Communication is largely space-based. Anti-satellite and space-based directed energy weapons are staples. 

UCAVs in the Modern Battlespace

4.  Combat Capability.  Let me illustrate this technological advantage from the impact on air arms.   The UCAV (Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle) will be the most disruptive technology to enter the equipment mix, if the technophile is correct.  The UCAV, essentially an AI-enabled fighter without a human on board, will be a serious addition.  Being unconstrained by human limitations, these fighter aircraft can be designed with airframes that can manoeuvre with forces 20-30 times the gravitational force (G) while an 'Inhabited' fighter will be restricted to 9G.  This will turn air combat on its head. 

5.  Combat Clouds.  The UCAV will also not need any human support systems (Air conditioning, ejection seats, cockpits, dual safeties etc.) on board.  This major saving in weight will result in greater endurance and payload carrying capacities.    Swarm technologies (combat clouds) would enable operations as teams either autonomously defending a region of the sky or in team with the airborne force commander on an 'Inhabited fighter aircraft'.   We have seen how robots can collaborate to make a bespoke car from just the design and engineering instructions.  Similarly, UCAV swarms could operate in teams to achieve an objective for extended periods based on operational instructions (Smart Contracts?). Acquisition of this technology by an adversary can have a domino effect across each border as this is extremely disruptive and renders the combat skies impossible for a now “lumbering’ manned fighter with a 9G limitation to survive in combat.  For the air arms technophile, everything is UAVs, whether it is reconnaissance, ground attack, SEAD, supplies or stealth.

6.   Robots that Kill?  Looks very plausible indeed?  Handing over the kill decision to an AI-enabled robot is a major step that will need standards and various ethical issues to be resolved.  These can be challenging, although not insurmountable, if we are serious about it.  This is a major part of the design discussions of the European Future Combat Air System (FCAS).  I will cover this in a tech juice article later.

7.  Robotic Commanders?  We discussed the applications of unsupervised learning in a previous Tech Juice Article. It is possible to autonomously war game inventories, capabilities using computer programs that are not different from the autonomous chess training programs. The technophile feels that the insights that these computer programs can develop in weeks will result in ideas ahead of the most mature 3-4-star human commanders. These will not be decision support systems but systems which will give us directions in which combat can take and potential technology adaptations that will be required. 

8.  Digital Hardening. The Digital battlefield will be the foundation for all this tech to deliver its punch.  Hardening a digital stream will always be a challenging task. Secure network architectures are built around cryptography that ensures protection from snooping, spoofing, phishing and all the cyber threats that we have all become accustomed to. We all have IT departments telling us to have complex passwords, which need a greater level of resources to crack. But the basic fact is that every password is crackable and every security architecture is breakable. 

9.  I am sure everyone here knows something about “Pegasus” software, which makes any mobile phone vulnerable, even with Apple-like security features. The fates of many an activist or an opposition leader in an autocratic country or a business man with unsavoury practices were predicated to access to their phones. 

10.  Protecting one's own networks and denying the ability of an adversary to attack in cyberspace is critical to any modern battlefield. Today, we have the hardware tree of every aircraft on our ERP systems. Any tampering of certificates of components can deeply impact flight safety as there would be life expired components that will end up flying and jeopardising safety. Shopping lists can be tampered with by inimical elements to reduce effectiveness of our spare prediction and accuracy of our inventory holding. Software that monitors all such critical digital infrastructure for cyber attacks will need to be embedded as part of our architecture. Machine learning to detect, investigate and report new digital patterns and neutralise a cyber attack are now becoming mandatory for any military IT system. AI BOTS are already playing and important role in both inventing as well as neutralising cyber attacks. 

Conclusion

10.  The technophile's vision of the battlefield is not constrained by the availability of technology, but by ethical-moral questions that need to be addressed before providing the kill ability to a robotic system.  I will cover these considerations in a later Tech Juice article.  We will, in the following article, discuss the worldview of the shadow warrior.  The Shadow warrior believes that conventional war is outdated.  Watch this space.