The Future of War, Part 1.

The Economist’s excellent recent “special report” on the future of war brings to mind an old debate prominent among naval warfare theorists of the past between the so-called “materialist school” and the “historical” school. The materialists, often associated with the Jeune Ecole, favored the view that new technologies fundamentally changed the nature of warfare and thus the strategy commanders and decision-makers needed to craft. The historical school believed, on the contrary, that certain fundamentals of war remained unchanging; technology affected tactics above all, but war remained what it always has been.

French torpedo boat, fruit of the Jeune Ecole, which argued that new technology such as torpedoes changed forever naval warfare and made large battleships obsolete. The basic idea was for large numbers of torpedo boats to swarm larger vessels.

The historical school won out. This is not surprising given that the heavyweights of 19^th and 20^th-century naval thinking—Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett, and Raoul Castex—backed it. More recently (and turning to land warfare), an effort by the French Army to reconsider whether new technologies required scraping Ferdinand Foch’s venerable 1903 Principles of War which has remained the cornerstone of French military thinking ever since, concluded that the answer was no. In effect, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Foch himself, writing a new preface in 1918 to his seminal work, argued that “the fundamental truths that govern this art [of war] remain unchanging, just as the principles of mechanics still govern architecture…”

Foch

Nonetheless, the materialist school returned to favor in the late 20^th century with the promise of the Revolution in Military Affairs, which imagined new digital technologies and precision weapons completely and fundamentally overturning warfare. The great example was the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, in which commentators saw proof of high-tech’s battlefield virtues notwithstanding the fact that the U.S.-led coalition’s victory over Iraq stands as perhaps the most-overdetermined military victory in history. Today, as The Economist notes, the use in Ukraine of drones, precision weapons, and satellite links encourages the view that technology has changed everything. And yet…

…as The Economist rightly points out, some old truths remain the same. Mass counts—which is a huge problem for Western militaries with the arguable exception of the United States, for they long ago gave up mass—as do robust logistics. Concentration of effort remains critical for successful operations, with the major caveat that concentration must take place within the context of a high degree of dispersion made necessary by the range and effectiveness of enemy fires. One also sees a growing need for decentralization and increased autonomy on the part of subordinate units, that will need to disperse and concentrate rapidly.

So far, what has emerged is less ‘warfare is different’ than ‘holy crap, Western militaries need to (re)invest in certain capabilities,’ like electronic warfare, and, as much as they can afford, mass. The mass part is where tech probably will play the most important role: Artificial intelligence enables robotization, which frankly is the only way Western militaries will be able to acquire mass given the political and fiscal impossibility of returning to conscription armies. Basically, flocks of robotic systems on the ground, in the air, and on/under the seas, will soon become major features on the battlefield. The cheaper and more numerous, the better.

But here’s an inconvenient truth about autonomous systems: Thus far, Western militaries insist on retaining a “man-in” or “man-on-the loop,” rather than fully automating lethal actions, even though technically speaking all or most modern weapons systems can or could easily be modified to go “full auto.” This makes all the sense in the world. Morally and legally, it’s the right thing to do. Besides, automated systems can be gamed by clever adversaries who might trick weapons into firing at the wrong targets. At best, expensive ammunition is wasted. At worse, the result is friendly fire or high civilian casualties. One could trick automated systems into hitting hospitals, for example. The problem is that 1) our adversaries do not necessarily subscribe to the same norms, and 2), Western policy can give a distinct advantage to any adversary that decides to switch their weapons to fully automatic. Fully automated systems decide faster and act faster. They can also provide a measure of resilience in a context of degraded communications networks. What if a person can no longer communicate with a loitering munition and therefore cannot give it a green light to hit a target? One of these days, someone will choose to flip that switch. What then?