Cyber attacks, AI and swarms of bees: Telegraph readers reflect on the future of war

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As the nation reflected on the centenary of the end of the First World War, the Telegraph's special correspondent Harry de Quetteville examined what global warfare will look like over the course of the next 100 years. 

In the piece, he outlined the transformative technologies, including artificial intelligence, genomics and cyber warfare, that will impact future global conflicts.

The far-reaching capabilities of these new technologies had our readers taking to the comments section to offer their own predictions and analysis. The implications of fully autonomous weapons on civilian as well as military targets and the threat posed by increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks were among the key concerns of our readers.

Read on to see a selection of the best reader comments on the future of war as well as additional commentary from Harry de Quetteville. 

Increasing global populations

'So we don't need aircraft carriers, we need swarms of bees.'

What a fascinating article.

So we don't need aircraft carriers, we need swarms of bees. That is such an interesting concept.

There are too many people for the planet to sustain. Looks like it could be very easy to solve that problem in the not too distant future?

In response @Harry de Quetteville SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TECHNOLOGY replied

You will have noticed that the global birth rates are in steep decline. And that technology has made mincemeat of Malthus. 

'Wars, unless at sea or in space, are going to have dire consequences for non-combatants' 

Fascinating. One point not mentioned is the sheer number of humans on the planet now. In the past, a large war hardly affected the general population even it changed the government and political direction of a large country.

With China now on the world stage and the massive increase in population wars, unless at sea or in space, are going to have dire consequences for non-combatants.

Massacres are being used to destabilise other non-combatant countries with refugees as well as alter their own ideological makeup.

I can easily see this strategy being used with new automatic weapons in all spheres of war. Machine / AI intelligence will have to be modified in some way to stop it.

'Disrupting supply lines will play havoc with vulnerable international trade'

Disrupting supply lines will play havoc with vulnerable international trade and ever more fragile supply chains - given the planet is grotesquely over-populated, it's hard to see why it wouldn't. 

Biological and chemical warfare

'The future of full-scale war shall likely be biological' 

The future of full-scale war shall likely be biological.

Not necessarily more bloody but more lethal.

A return to first strike doctrine 

'Disruption by cyber attacks will be the most likely means of war'

Very interesting piece. It does seem most likely that disruption by cyber attacks or hacking of all services simultaneously will be the most likely means of war. Nations will wake up to find themselves of banking, of identity, of proof of home ownership, of medical means, of electricity and food, will turn on themselves for survival and so be powerless against a force which had retained these capabilities. The first to strike is the likely winner.

In response @Harry de Quetteville SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TECHNOLOGY replied

You're right that first strike is discussed again in serious terms for non-near peer rivals. If Trump talks about a war on North Korea it's because he seriously believes he can find, target and destroy Kim's limited arsenal. So it's possible that nuclear weapons don't provide dictators with the security they used to. As for cyber attacks, it seems inconceivable today that any war between major powers wouldn't begin without a major assault on systems as you describe. 

Combatants versus non-combatants 

'As weapons get smarter they will get more discriminating and more able to kill only combatants' 

Ask any science fiction writer what the future of war will look like and you'll get some pretty good guesses. 

But recreating the scale of the bloodshed of the past is not in anyone's interest and, as weapons get 'smarter' they may well get more discriminating and more able to kill only combatants.

Non-combatants can always be put to some use when the killing stops and are, therefore, not worth wasting ammunition on.

'Reducing the number of weapons operators does not mean reducing casualties' 

Harry de Quetteville ends by asking....."Ultimately, however, when near-peer rivals which both had the machine gun faced each other across the trenches between 1914-18, the casualties turned Gatling’s dream to a nightmare. Will AI follow the same trajectory?"

I'd say yes. Military technology implementation tends to do more with less: especially causing more casualties. Reducing the numbers of weapons operators does not mean reducing casualties, it will mean increasing them as each operator can cause more damage.

Want to take out a single target in a house? Bomb it with a precision munition directed from your home country. 

And if the opposite of trench warfare occurs, with soldiers near invisible in environments, guerrilla-style, they'll need to be found and weeded out. Casualties would be even worse with hastily trained conscripted troops thrown into the fray.

Warfare has progressively become more inhuman. WWI had at least the human element between England and Germany which the new film "They Shall Not Grow Old" shows. 

'The civilian population and civilian infrastructure becomes the target' 

If all armies operate technological and robotic warfare engaged and controlled remotely, where is the enemy? Who is the target? Answer - the civilian population and civilian infrastructure becomes the target - it has to be the target because there is nothing else to hit. 

The RAF's new drone - 'Protector'

Aircraft carrier vulnerability 

'There is a substantive case for aircraft carriers' 

Much has been said about the vulnerability of the new aircraft carriers. But to attack such a ship, first you have to find it; the oceans are vast, far larger than most people envisage (70% of the world's surface).

Even during the Cold War, the US could successfully 'hide' its supercarriers from Soviet reconnaissance submarines, aircraft and (radar, ELINT and photo reconnaissance) satellites by using a variety of deception techniques as well as the weather. 

A large carrier at sea can be more difficult to locate than a grain of sand in a swimming pool. Bear in mind that from any given point, a carrier force can move over 700 miles in 24 hours, and in any direction not constrained by land; so it could be anywhere within 1.5 million square miles.

And when you've found the carrier, you then have to deploy your anti-ship weapons against layered, defence in depth. No ship is invulnerable; but compared to carriers, the precise location of every military airfield in the world is known down to the last metre.

This, then, is the substantive case for aircraft carriers. However, their utility extends far beyond warfare; they have the organic resources to provide a very wide range of humanitarian aid, e.g. fresh water, food, emergency shelter, sophisticated medical aid and, vitally, lift (helicopters) to provide such aid ashore when port facilities are non-existent or have been destroyed.

The single unit that provided all of this and much more to northern Indonesia after the Asian tsunami was an aircraft carrier - the USS Abraham Lincoln. I trust this will inform further debate.

In response @Harry de Quetteville SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TECHNOLOGY replied

No doubt carriers have provided the 20th century's greatest strategic platforms for projection of power. And continue to do so today. How long that will last is a big question. Interestingly finding things - whether carriers or second strike subs - is something that machine learning is uncommonly good at. Hiding is going to get a whole lot harder. That will change the game significantly. 

'This raises questions about the value of building aircraft carriers for partisan reasons, not for defence requirements' 

@Tom France

This raises questions about the value of Gordon Brown ordering two aircraft carriers to be built in Scotland, of course for partisan reasons, not for defence requirements.

Was he advised about their vulnerability to drone swarm attacks or was this technology not yet invented?

In response @Harry de Quetteville SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT TECHNOLOGY replied

Military procurement is hard, so long are the development cycles which often stretch to decades. Which is why harnessing civilian tech is so important as it works so much faster. The most important point - as you point out - is bias in procurement for political not strategic aims. If AI takes a greater role in procurement that really might make a difference to what our Armed Forces look like - because it will not be bound by tradition 

Boots on the ground

'It is infrastructure, not low-value foot-soldiers that will be targeted' 

@Simon Coulter

It is infrastructure, command and control, not legions of - in military terms - low-value foot-soldiers that will be targeted. Some of that can happen completely remotely through cyber-warfare.

We will not see battlefield bloodshed of the kind we had in WWI again in a war involving modern military powers. Their big-ticket kit like capital ships may prove vulnerable to missiles and drones.

Looking at the horrible life-changing injuries we have become aware of in recent conflicts where our troops have served it has been age-old, even improvised, methods which have led to all those amputations. Putting men in on the ground was not the answer.

'We haven't seen the end of the soldier in the mud with a rifle and wet feet just yet'

@Philip Griffin

Really good article and very interesting but forgot something important. Looking at peer to peer war game scenarios a lot of the fancy stuff is lost very early on. I read one war game scenario with Russia where we lose all out F-35's within three weeks at the most.

Technology is expensive and complicated to make which makes it hard to stockpile and slow to manufacture. A short war will see lots of fancy tech but a long war, lasting years, will see young men storming trenches with fixed bayonets thinking themselves lucky if they're wearing a scrap of Kevlar.

And then there's always electromagnetic pulse (EMP) tech that'll render all electronics useless. Oh no, we haven't seen the end of the solider in the mud with a rifle and wet feet just yet.