The Future of War Technology

https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/the-future-of-war-technology-whispers-to-us-from-the-past-and-we-must-listen-better/

by chat • 7 years ago

55 48 7 years ago

arethuza• 7 years ago

An an aside - about the main picture. Is that an artillery piece being used for direct fire - looks to be rather short range?

anvandare• 7 years ago

Practice firing, hence direct fire. But unless I'm mistaken, it's an M777 UFH - conventional range 15 miles, rocket assisted projectile range 18.6 miles. More than capable of lobbing stuff a few horizons ahead.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

And also for the "O bugger the enemy have broken through" moments

nostrademons• 7 years ago

This study cites expert predictions from the 1990s and then polls another set of experts today about whether the predictions came true. I'd argue that that's a uniquely bogus experimental design, because: a.) you've cherrypicked a 25-year period of peace b.) with relatively minor geopolitical changes c.) where military technology is driven by a set of oligopolistic contractors who basically deliver what they want to deliver d.) which is whatever the long-term technology plans said they would deliver.

I'd argue that if you look at history, his argument decisively does not hold, which you can see from the rushed construction of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia in 1862, all the battleships canceled after Pearl Harbor in 1942, the rapid development of the atomic bomb only 7 years after nuclear fission was discovered, or the cancellation of SDI and ABM defense when the Cold War ended. Basically, everything goes according to plan until war happens, at which point all plans are useless.

I'd further argue that the exponential curve he shows cherrypicks examples. The kinetic energy of a subsonic bullet fired from a silencer is orders of magnitude lower than that of an ICBM, yet the former is significantly more useful in today's conflicts.

TMWNN• 7 years ago

c.) where military technology is driven by a set of oligopolistic contractors who basically deliver what they want to deliver

Is the Digital Century Series an attempt to change this?

marvin2• 7 years ago

Are subsonic, silenced weapons significantly used in wars today? Out of curiosity.

pheme1• 7 years ago

Probably what he means are weapons used in black ops and special ops. For example the assault on the Osama hideout in 2011. But I think the more significant version are subsonic weapon fueling for proxy wars in Middle East.

jandrewrogers2• 7 years ago

No, they are only used in very specialized cases. They have many durability and practicality issues for general military usage.

flohofwoe• 7 years ago

you've cherrypicked a 25-year period of peace

As far as I remember, there hasn't been a single year without a significant war going on since the Cold War ended? (not saying that it's worse then during the Cold War, but it also didn't get any better, depending in which part of the world you're living of course). Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine... and I probably forgot quite a few.

No atom-bomb-raining World Wars of course, but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war.

marvin2• 7 years ago

but then I think what we're currently seeing is the future of war

We can only hope. AFAIK, none of the wars since WWII were total wars between powers with strong industrial/technological capability.

If that should happen, heaven forbid, it will be mayhem with crazy weaponized computer security exploits and rushed autonomous weapon platforms deployed within weeks or months. I think that's what GP is alluding to. We have seen plenty of conflict, but not the kind that drives the most significant innovation in weapons technology.

Here's to hoping that things stay on this level, and the superpowers continue to realize that trade is more profitable than war. (And that disagreements are settled, at the most, with economic warfare rather than shooting wars).

SiempreViernes9• 7 years ago

Uh, I'd like to hear your reasoning for counting an ICBM as a direct fire weapon.

Further, are you so familiar with the authors work that you feel it can be dismissed with little more than a wave of the hand? A wave that by the way states that the period of time containing both all the geopolitical effects of the end of the cold war (those certainly appeared after 1990) and the two longest running wars in US history is "peaceful" with only "minor geopolitical changes".

I at least feel the author deserves more credit for actually trying to do some quantitative work, instead of just making a snarky comment of little substance.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

Well the mini nuke fired from a recoilless rifle on a jeep (Davy Crocket) is sort of direct fire

jvanderbot2• 7 years ago

kinetic energy per unit time per unit mass, was the plotted relationship. Your counter example is not fully counter without those divisors.

Further, warheads were not factored. e.g. the nuke part.

jvanderbot2• 7 years ago

ICBMs are hardly more useful in modern conflicts, given they are never deployed. A 9mm is quite often deployed, but lets get quantitative over coffee.

Option 1:

- ICBM: 3e2 kg warhead [1] to 1.1e6m at cost of 3.3e4 kg launch vehicle mass [2]

- KE > 3e2 * 1.1e6 * g

- T ~ 1800 s per shot

- R1 > (3e2 * 1.1e6 * g) / (3.3e4 * 1800 )

- R1 > 5.556 g ~ 54.48

Option 2:

- 9mm: 300 J, ~1kg launch vehicle mass [3]

- KE = 300J

- T ~ .5s per shot

- R2 ~ (300) / (.5 * 1 )

- R2 ~ 600

Comparing, the 9mm outperforms the ICBM by this measure according to my under-caffeinated math and googling (please check). But they are suprisingly close. ICBMs are optimized for the longest tail of reach, rather than a nice tradeoff of fire rate, carry weight, throw weight, etc, so this roughly makes sense. Also we should consider the roughly 40 years difference in design and deployment of the two systems, which may remove the order of magnitude advantage of the 9mm. Not also, we've ignored the lateral velocity of the ICBM.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-25C_Titan_II

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum

EDIT formatting.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

If you ever see a non-training photograph of someone firing that size artillery piece at that kind of angle you can be assured that they are having a very interesting day.

mothsonasloth2• 7 years ago

Can these pieces not be used for direct fire in anti tank situations?

pjc502• 7 years ago

Yes, but if that's happening you're losing. Or at least you've lost air superiority and your own armoured advance hs stalled or been destroyed somewhere up ahead.

C1sc0cat3• 7 years ago

A Significant Emotional Event as they say

mothsonasloth2• 7 years ago

I think lasers are going to be the biggest flop. There was big talk about them from the 90s till now. However they only seem to be able to be used for disruption or counter measures. Not in an offensive capability. Unless you mount it on a battleship.

Railguns and new kinetic energy weapons seem to the natural trend following on the graph (in the article)

Rifle --> Railgun --> Energy Weapons?

3pt14159• 7 years ago

Got to store that energy somewhere, right? At a certain point your just re-inventing X-ray lasers via nuclear explosion.

I think the hard part about modern war technology is making sure you quickly neutralize adversaries whilst minimizing collateral damage. That's why drones are exciting. In theory, anyway.

Also defence against cyberattack is hard. So far it's only nationstates that seem to be able to hit infrastructure and autonomous systems, but I worry about proliferation to terrorist groups.

jjoonathan• 7 years ago

IMO the most useful thing about lasers is that they disrupt the idea that "humans can't be jammed." Humans are visual, and even if you put people behind tinted glass or cameras, lasers jam visual systems. I don't think the consequences of readily available good visual jamming have fully sunk in to the tactical playbook yet.

pjc502• 7 years ago

"maximum kinetic energy that the system can potentially direct at the target in unit time and per unit mass of the overall system" is a great example of a metric that's simple to understand, relatively straightforward to calculate, and misleading enough to result in optimising for the wrong things.

I would argue that the peak of destructive technology was the ICBM. We're now at the point where we have "enough" destructive capability. At the height of the cold war the plan was to wipe out half the Russian population in an hour.

The problem of today's low-tech widespread conflicts is how to bring them to a peaceful resolution that stays resolved, so that the refugees can go home. Something like three million Syrians are refugees in Europe including Turkey, and this is destabilising local politics. Refugees from Guatemala and Honduras are causing a similar problem to the United States. The war started on 9/11; people born after then are now old enough to fight in it.

The guy with the chart of destructive energy has no solutions to that. Well, one solution, but you're not going to like it.

dandare• 7 years ago

My favorite way of low tech conflict resolution is prevention. For instance, don't draw arbitrary borders through multietnic nations when colonizing them, don't arm random militants to fight your proxy wars or don't topple democratic regimes just because they want to get rid of your crony "capitalists".

SiempreViernes9• 7 years ago

That's no way to fight Communism! Also, this runs the risk of not having any active conflict to motivate military spending with.

More seriously, prevention is a strategy that is complicated to apply to existing conflicts, and those are the ones we have a most pressing need to resolve. I do agree that "bomb more" doesn't work very well.

lowdose• 7 years ago

My favorite way of low tech warfare was the illegals program. The USA for decennia fascinated by high-tech solutions while just installing some people can deliver results as easily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegals_Program

SiempreViernes9• 7 years ago

Total kinetic energy delivered is a sensible metric for a direct fire weapon, your choice to compare a tactical weapon like a gun with a strategic one is not very helpful.

It leads to a whole family of fairly useless remarks, such as pointing out that neither magazine size nor calibre, commonly held to be important numbers for guns, are not very useful measures when applied to ICBMs.

arminiusreturns• 7 years ago

Just as the industrial age brought on a deceptive transition from hard power to soft power mechanisms, I think the automation age will bring on a transition from soft power and the hard power residuals to psychological warfare first and foremost. Of course it's already implemented, but it is likely to get much worse as the supranational oligarchy begins to corrupt the internet, driving free-thinkers into enclaves that are censored and targeted, while the increase of monopolistic entertainment and mainstream media sources created through mergers and aquisitions backed by banks will become defacto government mouthpieces.

They want a brave new world, where they entertain and distract you and manipulate your information bubbles primarily, secondarily, if you fight, is when the 1984 tactics will be used.

Through these mechanisms other future strategic pushes are enabled, such as for example, the increasing use of manipulated and inorganic color revolution movements to weaken or overthrow governments. Those participating in the revolutions may not even know or understand the shady forces that started said revolution.

The Future of War Technology

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