Is The War In Libya A Preview Of Future Conflicts?

Nathan Vest and Colin P. Clarke, Defense One: Is the Conflict in Libya a Preview of the Future of Warfare?

Drones. Mercenaries. Disinformation campaigns waged on social media.

The Libyan conflict, now entering its ninth year, could well be a testing ground for how wars will be fought in the future. The conflict itself looks much different today than it did in 2011, when a coalition of NATO countries deposed longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and the country quickly descended into civil war and internecine fighting between tribal militias, Salafi jihadists, and other non-state actors.

On one side of the conflict is the internationally recognized Government of National Accord, or GNA, backed by Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Italy and Qatar. On the other side is the Libyan National Army, or LNA, led by the notorious warlord Khalifa Haftar and backed by a diverse coalition that includes Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt, with varying degrees of support from Saudi Arabia, France, and Greece. The stakes are high; the prizes include access to Libya’s vast energy reserves and contracts to extract, refine, and deliver them.

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WNU Editor: Conflicts have not changed. The tools have.

The U.S. Army Wants Future Robots And Drones To Work Together In Perceiving Battlefield Opportunities And Threats

An automated direct and indirect mortar system is operated from a distance by U.S. Soldiers during a multinational joint equipment training exercise with the U.S. military at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, April 2, 2018, in preparation for a Robotic Complex Breach Concept demonstration - file photo.. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Hubert D. Delany III / 22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

FOX News/Warrior Maven: Army eyes groups of autonomous 'morphing' robots for 2040

What if a small army of forward operating robots were able to detect an upcoming river gap and then ... without requiring human intervention -- autonomously mesh together into a bridge-like structure enabling manned combat units to advance?

What if an aerial swarm of mini-drones was able to autonomously operate in a synchronized fashion to act collectively as a group - perhaps combining otherwise separate small munitions into a larger explosive to attack a large emerging target if directed by human decision-makers?

These types of hypothetical scenarios might be possible in 20 years or so, depending upon the progress of current Army Research Lab work investigating new scientific frontiers in the area of robotics and autonomy.

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WNU Editor: The U.S. Army is giving a 20 year time frame to do this. I would not be surprised if it is done sooner.

Is The War In Yemen The Future Of War?

Saudi Arabia Air Force intercepts Houthi drone. Image Credit: Twitter

Michael Horton, American Conservative: Are Yemen’s Houthis the Future of War?

Taking a page from T.E. Lawrence and excelling at primitive drone technology, these 'ragtag' insurgents are besting major powers in Yemen.

If you want to see the future of war, look closely at the fighting in Yemen.

There, the Houthis, a rebel group based in the country’s northwest, have fought the lavishly funded and equipped militaries of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to a standstill. They have even proven capable of launching attacks deep inside Saudi Arabia. How did this poor, lightly equipped and armed rebel group do it? And what does it mean for the United States, which continues to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in complex, costly, and vulnerable weapons systems?

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WNU Editor: A must read.

The Past Can Help The U.S. Military Modernize

The Pentagon's skunk works is creating technology to build the 'super soldier' of the future. It envisions using augmented reality to help ground troops identify targets, sources of gunfire and help with communication

Lou DiStasi, Defense News: Modernizing the US military by learning from the past

“Innovation” and “force modernization” are the Pentagon buzzwords of the day. Strategies are being developed across the Department of Defense enterprise, with these concepts as the foundational pillars. Is this a flawed idea involving competing philosophies? Can the U.S. be truly innovative if it wants to rapidly modernize its force?

For the first time in decades, the United States military apparatus does not possess a clear advantage on the world stage. The flattening of the technological landscape and emergence of peer adversaries requires that the U.S. innovate to remain dominant. While technological progress remains critical, fielding systems more rapidly is also necessary.

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WNU Editor: It is advancements in technology that is driving the military on how to fight future wars. But the U.S. is not the only player when it comes to technological innovation and military modernization, and it definitely no longer has a monopoly in being the world leader in this field. And while the past can help the U.S. military in knowing how best to innovate, I would also suggest looking at how other countries are modernizing their military, and learn from them.

We Are On The Verge Of A Robot Arms Race

Russian President Vladimir Putin, flanked by senior Russian officials, watches the Zapad-2017 war games in the Leningrad region, Russia September 18, 2017. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS

Peter Apps, Reuters: The coming robot arms race

Russia’s latest “Zapad” military exercise is underway on NATO’S eastern border. Tens of thousands of soldiers are taking part in the massive four-yearly war games that are both a drill as well as a show of strength for the West. Next time around, in 2021, those troops might be sharing their battle space with a different type of force: self-driving drones, tanks, ships and submersibles.

Drone warfare is hardly new – the first lethal attack conducted by an American unmanned aerial vehicle took place in Afghanistan in October 2001. What is now changing fast, however, is the ability of such unmanned systems to operate without a guiding human hand.

That’s a truly revolutionary shift – and one every major nation wants to be lead. Critics have long feared countries might be more willing to go to war with unmanned systems. Now, some see a very real risk control might pass beyond human beings altogether.

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WNU Editor: The Russian government has invested enormous resources in developing unmanned and robotic systems for their military. Will this be successful .... I do not know. But the successful use of drones by the U.S. to conduct warfare has made everyone aware on what is the potential of this technology, and this "robot arms race" is probably just starting.

The Pentagon And Its Dependence On Developing New Technologies To Keep Its Dominance On The Battlefield

Alfred W. McCoy, HuffPost: The Pentagon’s New Wonder Weapons For World Dominion.

Or Buck Rogers in the 21st Century.

[This piece has been adapted and expanded from Alfred W. McCoy’s new book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power.]

Not quite a century ago, on January 7, 1929, newspaper readers across America were captivated by a brand-new comic strip, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It offered the country its first images of space-age death rays, atomic explosions, and inter-planetary travel.

“I was twenty years old,” World War I veteran Anthony “Buck” Rogers told readers in the very first strip, “surveying the lower levels of an abandoned mine near Pittsburgh... when suddenly... gas knocked me out. But I didn’t die. The peculiar gas... preserved me in suspended animation. Finally, another shifting of strata admitted fresh air and I revived.”

Staggering out of that mine, he finds himself in the 25th century surrounded by flying warriors shooting ray guns at each other. A Mongol spaceship overhead promptly spots him on its “television view plate” and fires its “disintegrator ray” at him. He’s saved from certain death by a flying woman warrior named Wilma who explains to him how this all came to be.

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WNU Editor: What was science fiction 100 years ago has become reality today.

Urban Warfare Has Not Changed Much Since The Last Century

Bing West: Urban Warfare, Then and Now

From Hue to Mosul, the mechanics of fighting in cities remain much the same.

A few weeks ago, the Atlantic Monthly Press released Mark Bowden’s excellent book, Hue 1968, A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. As he did previously in Black Hawk Down, Bowden brings the reader down the deadly streets of a savage urban battle, meticulously describing the action from the points of view the participants. Currently, the roughly yearlong battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul is drawing to a close. Although a half century separates these two classic battles, the similarities in urban combat far outweigh differences. Why is this so and what does it portend for the future?

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WNU Editor: If this book is written in the same format as Black Hawk Down .... it is going to be a must read. And as for today's urban warfare .... technology has assisted the U.S. in keeping military casualties down .... but for the opposite side and the civilians caught in the crossfire .... as we have seen in Syria and Iraq .... it is still a disaster.

The Furture Of War And Conflict Is Electronic

F35B MCAS Beaufort (Photo: Lockheed Martin)

Rick Stella, Digital Trends: From cyberwarfare to drones, the future of conflict is electronic

Innovation can take many forms: Today’s computers are faster. Space travel is cheaper. Artificial intelligence is smarter than ever before. The military is … well …

While the details on Intel’s latest processors or LG’s new OLED technology remain a simple Google search away, the uniquely secretive processes of the United States military make it tough to know what’s truly cutting edge. Much of the work happens behind closed doors, and even when an innovation is made public, layers of classified details often prevent us from ever knowing the full story. We may learn about battery-powered exoskeletons for soldiers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), or real-life railguns that shoot hunks of metal at blistering speed, but the projects we don’t learn about may be even wilder.

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WNU Editor: The focus is to now develop sophisticated AI platforms .... US Military Works On Developing AI Weapons (iTech Post), but it is also a "war" that the U.S. now believes it is losing .... US military worries it will lose the AI war (Endgadget)

We Are Entering The Age of High Speed Warfare

Malcolm Davis, The Strategist: To Mach 5 and Beyond

The Age of High Speed Warfare

Of all the potentially transformational military technologies that will appear over the next 10 years, hypersonic strike weapons, and ultimately, hypersonic platforms, could radically transform future military operations as well as open up the prospect of cheaper and more responsive access to space. The United States, Russia (here and here), China (its programmes discussed below) and India (and here) as well as Australia (here and here) all have R&D projects aimed at developing hypersonic propulsion or understanding the science of hypersonics.

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WNU Editor: If they solve the bugs, this will be the next big thing for the military.

The Pentagon Is Looking For New Ideas On How To Wage Future Wars

Washington Post: As it combats the Islamic State, Pentagon looks to assemble the force of the future

As it wrestles with how best to attack yet another unconventional enemy—one that is without a recognized state, driven by extreme ideology and willing to kill innocents on civilian territory—the Pentagon has largely stuck to a conventional strategy: bombs away.

The U.S.’s war against the Islamic State has largely been fought from the air, with old reliables of the U.S. arsenal, such as the B-1 bomber and the Tomahawk cruise missile.

But while the force the Pentagon has deployed may be similar to the force that opened the Iraq War’s “shock and awe” campaign more than a dozen years ago, military leaders are at the same time scrambling to assemble a new force, equipped with the most advanced technology for the wars of the future.

WNU Editor: What does the future hold? I would say robots, drones, automated defence systems, and weapons that can pin point targets from great distances and be able to take them out on a moment's notice.

11 General Trends Shaping Future Conflict

An MV-22B Osprey taxis to the runway on Morón Air Base, Spain, as it deploys to West Africa in support of Operation United Assistance Oct. 8 2014. The aircraft is assigned to Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Africa. U.S. Marine Corps photo by 1st Lt. Gerard R. Farao

The Great Revamp: 11 Trends Shaping Future Conflict -- Frank Hoffman and Pat Garrett, War On The Rocks

Our thinking about future wars is often held hostage by the tension between continuity and change. We tend to embrace the known past and continuity with it, sometimes too tightly. But thinking about future wars and preparing the Joint Force for success beyond today’s battles has to be based on more than extrapolating from history or clinging to the immutable realities of war. This is not a task for the faint of heart, as Colin Gray notes, “the further away from today one peers and tries to predict, the foggier the course of future events becomes.” Certainly we can benefit from deep immersion in history and its lessons, but we also must peek around the bend into the future. Since warfare often presents changes that are more than cosmetic, per Clausewitz, Joint Force developers must continuously balance their search for relevant lessons from the past while scanning for indicators of trends that will yield change in the future.

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My Comment: These are general trends .... but still a good summary.

‘Call Of Duty’ Creator To Advise The Pentagon?

Screenshot from "Call of Duty"

Pentagon Think Tank Hires ‘Call of Duty’ Creator To Advise On Future Threats To US -- RT

You would think war-themed video games copy real life, and not the other way around. Not this time. A Washington think tank has hired the maker of the acclaimed “Call of Duty” game to envision the kind of future wars the US could be fighting.

The key reason for this, according to the Atlantic Council think tank, is that, with all its money and capabilities, America really isn’t thinking creatively about the various threats it could face in the 21st century.

Dave Anthony, the creator of the billion-dollar Call of Duty franchise, will be joining other authors, screenwriters and entertainment figures in an initiative called 'The Art of Future War Project,' set to launch next week, according to AFP.

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My Comment: Science fiction books/movies and Hollywood have usually been prophetic in their predictions on what future warfare may entail. The Terminator movies are an example of this .... who would have thought robotic drones (as depicted in the first Terminator movie) would be considered normal and indispensable today.

How China Is Revolutionizing Warfare

Beijing's 'Bitskrieg' -- John Arquilla, National Security/Foreign Policy

How China is revolutionizing warfare.

As the Pentagon's annual report to Congress, released last week, makes abundantly clear, China is on something of a long march in cyberspace. While most attention is being drawn to the report's assertions about Chinese snooping into sensitive classified areas and theft of intellectual property from leading American firms -- and others around the world -- there is some intriguing analysis of Beijing's broader aims as well. Indeed, the Pentagon sees a clear progression in Chinese strategic thought that, viewed as a whole, begins to elaborate what might be seen as an emerging military doctrine enabled by advanced information technologies. Just as the radio made skillful coordination of tanks and planes possible, introducing World War II-era blitzkrieg, so today the computer may be opening new vistas for cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, and other smart weapons.

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My Comment: For those who are interested in knowing how future cyber warfare will be conducted .... this is my must read post for today.

Robo-Weapons Are Changing The Rules Of War -- A Commentary

Photo: Danger Room/USAF

Dazzling New Weapons Require New Rules For War -- David Ignatius, Washington Post

A new arsenal of drones and satellite-guided weapons is changing the nature of warfare. America and its NATO allies possess these high-tech weapons, but smaller countries want them, too. Here's an inside glimpse of how the process of technology transfer works:

A year ago, Saudi Arabia was fighting a nasty border war against the Houthi rebels across its frontier with Yemen. The Saudis began bombing Houthi targets inside Yemen on Nov. 5, 2009, but the airstrikes were inaccurate, and there were reports of civilian casualties.

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My Comment: There are still limits in using these weapons .... I know because they have been used in the hunt for Osama bin laden and they have not been successful.

Still .... on the battlefield these weapon platforms have proven to be incredibly effective, as the French-Saudi Arabia military alliance has shown on the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border. And while the U.S. may argue for some controls on these technologies, Pandora's Box is now open and countries with military technologies that are equal to the U.S. are more than eager to either sell them to third parties and/or to use them themselves.

An End To Armor Divisions?

M1 Abrams: Let’s Roll
Photo from Defense Industry Daily

COIN And Hybrid War: The Demise Of Armor? -- Judah Grunstein, World Politics Review

A couple of inter-related items on the ongoing shifts in military doctrine and theories of war managed to jolt me out of a self-imposed blogging hiatus (needed to catch up on organizing upcoming feature issues).

The first thing that caught my eye was this post over at Information Dissemination on the U.S. Marine Corps' experiment in company-size autonomous units. I'd noticed this back in December and wondered whether it might not prove an even more lasting impact of our current wars on the U.S. military than the COIN doctrine being applied to fight them. The network of autonomous small units suggested by the Marine experiment follows logically from the emphasis that COIN places on low-intensity combat after the initial battle. But the Marine Corps experiment is being applied to "over the horizon" landing teams, which shows how the concept is not necessarily tethered to the conditions that gave rise to it. As some of the comments to the ID post make clear, the shift is far from universally acclaimed.

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The Winds of War, The Sands of Time, v2.0 -- A Commentary

Transportation coordination of Soldiers is a significant task of the Army logistician. The Army’s new approach to enterprise logistics is one that will make our forces more effective in the present wars and also ready them for future conflicts. Here, Soldiers from the Army’s 1st Brigade 10th Mountain Div, board a C-17 Globemaster III at Kirkuk Regional Air Base, Iraq, Nov. 4, 2008. (Photo by U.S. Air Force SrA Randi Flaugh, 506th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs.)

From the Futurist:

This is a version 2.0 of a legendary article written here back on March 19, 2006, noticed and linked by Hugh Hewitt, which led to The Futurist getting on the blogosphere map for the first time. Less than four years have elapsed since the original publication, but the landscape of global warfare has changed substantially over this time, warranting an update to the article.

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My Comment: One man's opinion on what future wars and conflicts may look like.

Military Robots And The Laws of War

Soldiers with the Army Evaluation Task Force give a demonstration of the small unmanned ground vehicle combat application to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) and fellow committee member Syvestre Reyes (D-TX) at Ft Bliss, TX, on July 12, 2008. The Congressmen were briefed on the Army's plans to accelerate Future Combat Systems technologies to Soldiers in combat. (Army photo by D. Myles Cullen)

From The New Atlantis:

More than just conventional wisdom, it has become almost a cliché to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved “how technology doesn’t have a big place in any doctrine of future war,” as one security analyst told me in 2007. The American military efforts in those countries (or so the thinking goes) have dispelled the understanding of technology-dominated warfare that was prevalent just a few years ago—the notion that modern armed conflict would be fundamentally changed in the age of computers and networks.

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My Comment: This article from The New Atlantis summarizes my own personal position on what the future of warfare will be .... this is a must read.