{"id":39608,"date":"2018-05-30T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T05:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39608"},"modified":"2018-05-30T14:58:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T04:58:58","slug":"39608-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/39608-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we preparing to fight the wrong war?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? That\u2019s the question being asked increasingly frequently by Australian defence planners, especially in the RAAF.\u00a0What makes some people nervous are a number of emerging disruptive technologies that will have a profound effect on military operations in the very near future.<\/p>\n

These include, but aren\u2019t limited to: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; micro uninhabited aerial systems (UAS); quantum computing; hypersonics; micro \u2018cube\u2019 satellites and matching launch technologies; uninhabited underwater systems; the vastly increasing power of conventional explosives utilising nanotechnology; and information operations and cyber warfare.<\/p>\n

In fact it\u2019s not the maturing of any single one of these technologies that\u2019s causing such concern, but rather that all of them\u2014and more\u2014are being developed in parallel at an extraordinary rate. That gives rise to a myriad of possible combinations that risk turning all of the tens of billions of dollars\u2019 worth of platforms the\u00a0ADF is acquiring into so much obsolete junk.<\/p>\n

The consequences of artificial intelligence\u2014and its even spookier subset of machine learning\u2014will have a profound influence on military operations, but we don\u2019t yet fully understand what they\u2019ll be. In\u00a02015 a computer was able to defeat a professional player of the board game Go\u2014an achievement previously considered by many experts to be impossible because of the inherent complexity of the game with the two opponents having either 180\u00a0or 181\u00a0pieces each.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a chess-playing program called Alpha Zero not only beats all human opponents, but has developed strategies from scratch after just a few hours of learning that are unlike anything seen before because it taught itself to play from first principles. Henry Kissinger, writing in The Atlantic<\/em><\/span><\/a>, concludes that these sorts of developments in AI mark the end of the Age of Enlightenment.<\/p>\n

At the RAAF\u2019s signature air power conference held in Canberra eight weeks ago, a number of alarming scenarios were discussed. One that illustrates the problem facing planners is the use of swarming micro UAS that could see hundreds\u2014or thousands, or even tens of thousands\u2014of these being used in saturation attacks even against the most well-defended targets. They already have the capability to fly autonomously in a GPS-denied environment to find and destroy objects with small explosive payloads. And they can be purchased in massive numbers even with a small budget.<\/p>\n

The development of micro-UAS is surging ahead for recreation, entertainment and parcel delivery services. According to former Marine and now military theorist Dr Thomas X. Hammes,<\/a> the parcel delivery company UPS in the\u00a0US is planning to open a factory producing up to 100,000\u00a0of those devices per day, with each able to carry a five-kilogram payload. That\u2019s not a misprint: there are already a myriad of quadcopter devices around\u2014but those numbers will be absolutely dwarfed in the coming years, and the devices\u2019 range and power will increase.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re in widespread use by the world\u2019s militaries for surveillance tasks, and now they\u2019re being weaponised. Even the remnants of Islamic State in the desolate desert regions of Iraq and Syria have their own tiny air force in the form of remote-controlled quadcopters carrying hand grenades and explosives.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0US has recognised the importance of\u00a0AI and has set up a crash program called Project MAVEN<\/a>, designed to interpret vast amounts of surveillance data that\u2019s already beyond the ability of humans to deal with. The volume of information pouring in from satellites, aircraft and uninhabited systems is growing exponentially. To give the project its full name, the Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team is using software originally developed by Google to boost its global surveillance capabilities massively.<\/p>\n

Another example of an autonomous system that already has the potential to make manned aircraft such as the F\u201135 and Super Hornet obsolete is the X\u201147B, developed by Northrop Grumman. This is a fighter-size platform designed for carrier operations that has already demonstrated the ability to take off, land and perform combat missions without any human intervention whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Experienced fighter pilots say that their worst nightmare would be to come up against an X\u201147B\u2014which can easily outmanoeuvre a conventional aircraft\u2014equipped with internally carried advanced missiles and programmed to destroy anything that came into its \u2018kill box\u2019. According to Dr Hammes, the X\u201147B development has stalled only because the US\u00a0Navy\u2019s \u2018pilots\u2019 union\u2019 doesn\u2019t want it to go ahead.<\/p>\n

Just as the massive investment in battleships around the world was rendered obsolete overnight by the aircraft carrier attack on Pearl Harbor in\u00a01941, some Australian planners can also foresee the possibility that emerging disruptive technologies could leave the ADF extraordinarily vulnerable. There\u2019s no room for complacency. Those who think the next big war will be like the last one are in for a shock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? That\u2019s the question being asked increasingly frequently by Australian defence planners, especially in the RAAF.\u00a0What makes some people nervous are a number of emerging disruptive technologies that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":39609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1291,65],"class_list":["post-39608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-defence-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAre we preparing to fight the wrong war? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/39608-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? 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