The Hyperkinetic War
Computer technology is rapidly taking over the battlefield, speeding up the pace of war. War has become wider in scope, more precise, faster, and more lethal. The enormous killing ability of today's automated weapons---and their fearlessness, self-sacrifice, and absolute lack of compassion---is, literally, inhuman. The ferocity and speed of contemporary war involving advanced nations isn't usually seen by Western television crews only because they aren't on its receiving end. The next major war will fix that.When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the East-West arms race went with it. As military budgets are slashed, more of the newer weapons will come to depend on civilian advances in computer technology, which will make advanced weapons cheaper, smaller, and more common. Because of cutbacks in military research, western forces will upgrade their weapons with the same civilian technologies the rest of the world uses; so when the next major war comes, they will face enemies armed with similar weapons. That will put a new face on modern war---and it's coming soon to a television set near you.
In the 1990s, the ratio of robots to people on the battlefield is still very low. But it's early days yet. It was only about a decade ago, for example, that the first modern cruise missiles were deployed, and they've already been through three generations---each one better than the last. Walking and crawling robots may not be common yet, but the proportion of automated systems on the battlefield is already high and getting higher every year. Guns must now be self-aiming; bombs, self-flying; and missiles, self-guiding.
The overall direction is clear: To have a chance, troops must be armed with smart sensors and weapons. They must also specialize more and be far better trained. Today's complex weapons, compared to the primitive weapons of the Second World War, are more heavily electronic and far more expensive. They take much more skill and training to maintain in the field. Further, making them in the first place requires a first-class economy. At four to six million dollars each, an advanced tank, for example, is now more expensive than some aircraft. Running a real one---like flying a real plane---can cost a lot in fuel, maintenance, and spare parts. Yet soldiers need to practice, particularly since war has become so technical. Electronics helps them do that.
Training troops using electronic simulators is invaluable to those nations rich enough to have them. They help militaries do something they previously could do only in an actual war: separate competent from incompetent officers. Many peacetime forces the world over are ill-prepared for war; their officer classes are largely made of bureaucrats and technocrats with no combat experience. In peacetime, most officers need bureaucratic ability and political astuteness. During wartime, combat officers need the ability to lead in high stress situations and a very special do-or-die mentality not encouraged in peacetime.
Further, as weapons get smarter, they're also getting more integrated and more automated. Radars in forward positions or in reconnaisance planes now relay enemy positions directly to computers in guns and rocket launchers, which automatically target them. All nations have no choice but to move to more and yet more dependence on smarter and faster weapons, smarter and faster defenses, and advanced computation and communication systems.
The common thread through all of this change is the relentless escalation of computer competence. To shoot down bothersome aircraft, one side develops antiaircraft missiles. To destroy those missiles, the other side develops antimissile missiles. To confuse the antimissiles, the first side develops jammers, scramblers, and decoys. To cut through that interference, the other side develops smarter missiles. To reduce the human cost of aircraft losses, the first side develops robot planes. And so it goes, on and on, in a never-ending upward spiral.
Evolution's Heavy Hand