1914-2014: Weapons of the Next Great War

By Tom Risen

Aug. 1, 2014

From dynamite to drones, the way wars are fought has changed dramatically in the last century. 

World War I – the first industrial conflict on a global scale – began a century ago, using the rapidly advancing science to devise new weapons like poison gas, industrial shelling, aerial bombing, fighter planes and tanks. The Great War wound up taking the lives of more than 37 million people. Wars might not have changed much since 1914, but weapons are more advanced and subtle as technology is changing faster than perhaps any time since the start of the 20th century.

Decades before World War I, scientist Alfred Nobel created dynamite but later became horrified at the carnage caused by his invention and donated his fortune to create a peace prize in his name.

“The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops,” Nobel said.

Those are very prescient words considering Nobel died in 1896, decades before the threat of nuclear weapons. Look at some of the ways World War III might be fought and remember how Nobel feared misusing science for destruction.

The ability to covertly infiltrate infrastructure through hacking – without putting boots on the ground – poses a game changer for how wars are fought. 

Attacks on computer systems will be a major part of warfare, but there is much hype surrounding the concept - including the word “cyberwar.” “Cyberwar is a term that is widely misused to describe things that are not war, including annoyance attacks,” says Peter Singer, author of several books, including “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” Groups that hijack Twitter accounts like the Syrian Electronic Army are a good example of annoyance attackers.

The most often cited example of military hacking is the reported use of the Stuxnet virus by the U.S. and Israel to damage Iranian facilities that could have been used to create nuclear material - and possibly an atomic weapon. World War I placed civilians at greater risk during war with the first use of long-distance and aerial bombardment. Hackers pose a similar game-changing danger. Attacks against critical infrastructure including hacking electrical grids could be a prelude to invasion, but the hype about gifted teenagers being able to shut down networks is a myth used to boost the sale of cybersecurity services, Singer says.

“The massive level of intellectual property theft is a bigger threat,” Singer says. “Part of U.S. military strength is being a generation ahead of defense technology.”

State-linked hackers based in China and Russia are perhaps the most active attempting to stealAmerican military technology. Nations spy on each other, but members of the Obama administration have said targeting civilian companies to benefit their own economy is crossing the line. There is an emerging discussion to set ethics for “cyberwar,” including ideas that civilian facilities like hospitals should be off-limits from hackers.

The Final Frontier

An influx in interstellar satellites and space stations could expand conflict into the final frontier. 

Similar to the Internet, space will redefine the notion of the homefront as battlefields expand to new venues. The high seas are international territory, so Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare during World War I that led to the deaths of American citizens with the sinking of the Lusitania was the last straw that pressured the U.S. to join the conflict in 1917. Nations will face a similar question about the limits of war in space, Singer says.

“A huge and overwhelming amount of military and communications control go over satellite networks in space,” says Singer, a strategist at the New America Foundation think tank. “Either the parties agree to leave them alone – or more likely they are going to find a way to go after it by blocking or destroying the communications nodes. The U.S. has enjoyed unfettered use of space against a real state level adversary. That is not going to continue.”

Opposing nations could target space satellites or bases that communicate with them to neutralize GPS signals, crippling the effectiveness of missiles, drones and transportation that rely on space-based navigation.

Using drone strikes eliminates the need for search and rescue missions.

The 2014 version of the film “RoboCop” depicts the U.S.conquering Iran with an army of robots, but replacing soldiers with drones any time in the foreseeable future “seems far-fetched,” says Sam Brannen, aformer Defense Department policy analyst.

Planes were used during World War I but their use became more deadly when coordinated with soldiers and tanks during the German blitzkrieg of World War II. As drone technology becomes less expensive, nations may design unmanned naval ships, underwater vessels and ground vehicles,Brannen predicts .

“You are seeing them in the air domain first since it is technologically easier,” says Brannen, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Advantages of drones include a remote control first strike without endangering a human pilot, thus eliminating a search and rescue if the craft is shot down. That also makes drone attacks politically less complicated than human ones, as seen by the Obama administration’s expansion of unmanned attacks, Brannen says.

“We as a society may decide we are not comfortable with lethal autonomy,” he says. “Other countries may not. Israel and China have shown a lot of experimentation with it.”

Before World War II some military leaders in nations such as the U.K. were reluctant to replace their cavalry with newly designed tanks. Some in the U.S. military are also reluctant to expand drone warfare, Brannen says.

“We need to create in [the Defense Department] an unmanned systems office that looks at the possibilities of the technology in a realistic way,” he says. "We also need to expand the promotion opportunities beyond colonel for unmanned systems officers.”

Drugs

A record number of military personnel were prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac during tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Soldiers of the future may literally fight wars on drugs. Some U.S. soldiers already have. Veterans from many generations order antidepressants using their federal health benefits to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw a record number of active duty personnel taking pills too. Military doctors in combat theaters prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, anti-anxiety pills including Clonazepam or sleeping pills like Ambien to battle-weary soldiers – some of whom served numerous tours of duty as U.S. forces became stretched thin during two simultaneous decade-long wars.

In addition to painkillers, the U.S. doctors sometimes prescribed amphetamines to soldiers during combat in Vietnam when they reported stress problems, says Paul Keckley, managing director of the Navigant Center for Healthcare Research and Policy Analysis. The Nazis prescribed the even more volatile compound of methamphetamines to soldiers during World War II to boost alertness during offensives, and the postwar army of West Germany did not ban its combat doctors from supplying it until the 1970s.

Supplying drugs in Iraq and Afghanistan was more convenient for troops than waiting for a short supply of available counselors, and medicating as a default solution is also a problem in civilian life, especially because a certain dose may not be right for everyone, Keckley says. “We have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to prescription,” he says. ”Some dosing is not going to hurt, but consulting is much more important than drugs.”

Even more sinister is the use of heavy narcotics by forces in nations like Liberia in the 1990s, when dictator Charles Taylor kept his child soldiers amped for battle with cocaine, which also forced their loyalty through addiction. Gene Roddenberry, creator of the "Star Trek" universe - which predicted things like tablets and cell phones - also portended a World War III featuring soldiers controlled by drugs.

Expanding pharmaceutical industries could design many more sedatives, stimulants and performance enhancers for armies - but the U.S. at least will likely be cautious about this. After meeting with the surgeons general of the different U.S. military branches in recent years, Keckley says commanders are wary of going too far with drug testing or prescriptions for soldiers that could lead to lawsuits or congressional backlash.

"I think they will stay on the edge of what the FDA has approved," he says, referring to the Food and Drug Administration. "They are very cautious."

Medical devices including implants that read vital signs, however, will likely become more advanced for veterans and combat soldiers as mobile technology booms, Keckley predicts.

Patrick Tucker, author of “The Naked Future,” and a former spokesman for the World Future Society, agrees the U.S. will likely avoid experimenting with human potential.

“Before we are able to achieve cybernetics or super soldiers through pharmacology, we are going to see huge breakthroughs in treating people who served in combat.” Tucker says, noting that U.S. fatalities in recent wars plunged compared with Vietnam or World War I because of advanced battlefield medicine.

Wearable tech such as Google Glass could provide soldiers on the ground with an expanded field of view.

Many digital-age conveniences could be made into weapons during wartime. Rudimentary mobile phones were first used by the military, and Silicon Valley is developing a host of wearable gadgets to measure people’s surroundings that could be very useful if adapted for soldiers. Google Glass-type visors could connect a soldier with a remote camera drone, but the challenge in a war zone is having enough of a wireless signal to keep that link, Tucker says.

"The challenge is getting first world communications to a battlefield," he says. "Forward operating bases in [Afghanistan] can’t have Wi-Fi without exposing themselves to vulnerability."

Tracking developments on Twitter has been a huge intelligence gathering tool for the government to monitor conflict zones like Ukraine, Tucker says, so monitoring communications will likely continue as a military strategy. Google has been forced to cooperate with National Security Agency surveillance, but the compromised ethical demands of a world war would truly test its motto “don’t be evil.”

Along with the development of mobile devices Silicon Valley companies are investing in ideas that could be the next big thing. Alternative energy technology could be very useful to the U.S. military, which is the largest consumer globally of the world's finite petroleum resources, Tucker says. Silicon Valley companies including Google and Apple are also expanding investments in robots.

With the right defense contracts Silicon Valley could be turned into an arsenal – unless engineers oppose war the way German native Albert Einstein did. After World War II Einstein opposed nuclear weapons that his physics research made possible, fearing even greater destruction during future wars.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,” Einstein said. 

The Long War Against Hamas

Author: Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies

The Gaza war of 2014 will end in a cease-fire, just as the previous rounds between Israel and Hamas and the 2006 battle with Hezbollah ended. But the war will be won or lost less in the streets and tunnels of Gaza this summer than when the fighting is over. Israel must not only damage Hamas on those battlegrounds, but seal its own gains in the terms of the cease-fire, and ensure that the aftermath of the war weakens Hamas's hold on Gaza and its role in Palestinian politics. 

This summer, Israel had no choice but to attack Hamas once the terrorist group decided to unleash rocket and missile fire at Israel's cities, a point that not only the United States but even our fickle European allies understood. The discovery—new to us in the West even if partially understood by Israeli intelligence agencies—of a vast attack tunnel system designed to enable Hamas to kidnap Israelis and to wreak havoc in Israeli communities near the Gaza border also justified the Israeli assault and meant that a ground attack was necessary. 

When the combat ends, it will not immediately be clear who gained what. In 2006 most Israelis saw the Lebanon war as a failure. Hezbollah lost men and assets but remained (and remains now) in charge in much of Lebanon and possessing both a powerful terrorist force and serious conventional capabilities. But now, after eight years of calm along that border and after Hezbollah's Sheikh Nasrallah admitted that he would never have started the 2006 war had he known how fierce would be the Israeli response, what Israel achieved seems more like a victory. 

One reason Israelis did not feel that they had won a victory in 2006 was the announcement of excessive war aims by Israel's then prime minister, Ehud Olmert.