War and Technology
Maciej Szczerba
Executive Search ?? Working across ???????????? Podcast host at "Past, Present & Future"" on YT???Besides:"I'm Winston Wolf , I solve problems"
A year has passed since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. This war has various facets. The predominant face is the unbelievable scale of Russian barbarism towards civilians and the mass destruction of civilian targets. But one face of the war is also the unprecedented use of technology.
Historically, it could be said that the first drone war was the Azerbaijan-Armenia war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. But it was the war in Ukraine that showed how essential the massive use of drones is in the military art. It was probably underwater drones that destroyed the Crimean Bridge.
And it's a war not just of drones. Also satellite communications (StarLink), electronic intelligence and start-ups, often even garage-based ones, that have switched to military support activities.
For example, Ukrainian start-up Spaitech's drones help guide artillery fire and another Ukrainian tech company Roboneers produces unmanned 'buggies' that can serve as medevacs, for example.
According to The Economist, Ukraine is becoming a 'military Silicon Valley'. If this happens, the technology sector will not only help win the war, but will also play a significant role in the country's economic recovery.
But the real breakthrough in the art of war seems to be coming with the application of Artificial Intelligence.The old truth is making itself known once again, whether it is politically correct or not - technology (by no means just IT) is developing, thanks to the demands of armies and militaries.
AI is not just ChatGPT and big language models. AI algorithms are, unfortunately, also cutting-edge weapons and technology that answer the question of how to kill people faster, more efficiently and more precisely. And one more thing - AI in military application causes the machine to kill the human, but at worst the machine dies not the humans. As the legendary US World War II general George Patton said: "The purpose of war is not to die for one's homeland, but to make those motherfuckers over there die for theirs". Worse, if the 'over there' are civilians: including women and children.?And in modern warfare, it is increasingly easy to kill them - as you will read in a moment, thanks very much to AI. In a moment we may be dealing not only with autonomous cars. We will be dealing with autonomous killing robots that will make their own decisions about who to kill and who to spare.
What is the current use of AI in military technologies?
From my research, the leading segments of AI application in the military are :
Target guidance. An algorithm that can control a drone, a tank or even a fighter plane learns to capture specific targets faster.?
Military logistics support. As with civilian logistics, AI helps to significantly streamline and optimise supply routes for food, ammunition, as well as soldiers.
AI helps significantly with weather forecasting. This is of great importance for the global operations of the world's largest navies.
Military intelligence - AI allows for better verification of intelligence. Better mapping of patterns and their learning by algorithms allows better assessment of what is valuable intelligence and what is enemy's provocation.
AI supports medical care on the battlefield. It allows better location of the wounded and faster diagnosis of the quickest method of evacuation and treatment.
Military robots including unmanned vehicles and drones are much faster than their human counterparts.
Autonomous aviation. The US Air Force is running a programme to convert older F-16s, which are being withdrawn from service, into autonomous and unmanned aircraft. So that they can keep up with the much more modern F-35s, which are now becoming the leading standard aircraft. They would be controlled by the squadron commander, as autonomous 'wingmen'.
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Most interesting from a technological point of view - in the recent clash between Israel and Palestine, the Israeli army (IDF) made massive use of artificial intelligence in tracking Hamas's top officers and the location of the tunnels through which Hamas funnels its men from Gaza into Israel.
What does all this mean in practice? We have drones, tanks, planes that we can program to make their own decisions and that have the ability to learn who to kill. They can escape our control and they can also, in theory, wage a much more humane war than before. Given the Russians' deliberate blind firing in Syria and Ukraine and the demolition of civilian targets brick by brick....
It is fair to say that we have two main camps today, representing radically separate positions on the use of AI in the military:
The camp of the great powers, although politically on different sides of the political barricade on a daily basis, which are the US and China, argues that war waged with AI support is more humane. Firstly, we can theoretically program algorithms so that weapons automatically miss civilians, especially children and women. Algorithm-assisted warfare is intended to be more precise and more humane. In an ideal world, robots fight robots and people don't die....
The other camp - the smaller States and NGO activists - point to the gigantic increase in the killing potential and flare effect of AI-assisted weapons, which will not necessarily be used in accordance with UN conventions. After all, we can teach an algorithm controlling a drone to shoot black people, men wearing yarmulkes, or women with their hair covered by a headscarf. There are activists around the world who compare autonomous weapons to the war gases of the WW1, which were eventually banned.
One thing is certain. The modern battlefield is beginning to resemble a super-advanced computer game in which soldiers and machines are connected by super-fast wireless internet. Just as we talk about 'connected health', 'connected cities' and 'connected industries', we can probably already talk about 'connected warfare'.
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