Crosshairs - Military Matters in Review

In the early 19th century, military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz wrote that it takes "genius" in war to translate classroom teachings into success in battle. Now, in the 21st century, technology is producing robots whose only genius lies in electronic circuitry. Consider what P. W. Singer of the Brookings Institution says in his book, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

He writes of tiny, deadly robot aircraft swarming over the battlespace by the dozens, or maybe hundreds, or even thousands. Each one flies randomly so that the swarm covers the objective area. Quicker than a reconnaissance aircraft or an overflying satellite, one of them senses a preprogrammed target. It might be a buried site for weapons of mass destruction, or a key communications grid, or even a flight of enemy aircraft or a merchant ship carrying hidden enemy aerial robots. The entire swarm attacks like bees overpowering a bear that's stealing their honey, inflicting tiny stings until the bear is reduced to a quivering piece of flesh.   

Swarming is not new. In ancient times, for example, Mongol horsemen would spread far and wide over the steppes until they located the enemy. They would encircle them and launch deadly arrows until they defeated them. And the Mongols weren't the only warriors that swarmed. Singer cites a RAND study that concluded that in the time of Alexander the Great, swarm tactics won 61 percent of the battles.

Moving to the 20th century, in World War II, German U-boats scoured the North Atlantic until one of them located a convoy. The other subs converged until more and more were firing torpedoes from all sides of the convoy, and even surfacing to finish off crippled merchant ships with their deck guns. They were called "wolf packs," because wolves and other animals that swarm are nature's most efficient predators. Think of sharks gathering around hapless mariners in the sea for a frenzy of killing.
It's little different with humans, when small bands of guerrillas keep dispersed until a group spots an enemy force of the right size. They converge for the kill, then quickly fade away. Remember Somalia ("Black Hawk Down") in 1993, Grozny, Chechnya, in 1994 and 1996, and Baghdad and Fallujah in today's war in Iraq.

The U.S. Air Force's defense budget allows for buying 271 unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons platforms by fiscal year 2013. This represents 36 percent of the total aircraft procurement budget. So in broad numbers about three of every 10 new Air Force planes in the sky will be piloted from the ground. But the new numbers become insignificant when considering that at the first of the year, 5,331 aerial vehicles -- ranging from 3-foot-7-inch long Ravens that can look behind the next building, to high-flying Global Hawk reconnaissance birds and lethal Predators carrying Hellfire missiles -- were already in use.  

But now we're talking about swarms of tiny aircraft that operate like wide-ranging swarms of bees. Just energize them, turn them loose, and let them win battles. They could conduct warfare with no friendly human casualties -- unless the other side has the same technology or a way to counter ours. And that's the rub. I don't think we have reached the point where we can toss out Clausewitz. It's still going to take men and women who use "genius" to determine the outlook of battles, and war. A retired Air Force general officer who was a fighter pilot put it this way: "Robots are not new. We've had them for a long time. We call them 'autopilots.' But they don't replace pilots. It takes a human being to override them at precisely the right time. Don't expect fighter pilots to become obsolete soon."

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