Alastair Finlan
This research explores the shape of warfare to come over the next twenty-five years from a Swedish perspective. It is evident that change in the practice of warfare is apparent in international relations today due to the use of innovative new technologies. These developments raise profound practical and conceptual questions for armed forces as to what do these new systems mean for the prosecution of warfare and the intellectual ideas/knowledge base that underpin the contemporary application of force. This research offers a tentative exploration of three aspects (artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms and the future battlefield: the soldier level) framed in the context of the traditional environments of air, land and sea to interrogate their meaning for Sweden and future warfare.
Introduction
The title of this article draws inspiration from the extraordinary book by H.G Wells titled, The Shape of Things to Come published in 1933. Unlike his terrifying vision of the future in which an incurable global pandemic and war halve the world’s population leading to the reconstruction of humanity over a period in excess of 170 years,1 this research has a more modest canvas. It looks ahead just twenty-five years with a focus on the shape of warfare and is a contribution to an emerging discussion in Sweden and in international fora in this area. Whether acknowledged or not, change is evident in the practice of warfare in international relations today due to innovative new technologies that were spectacularly demonstrated in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020. The question for scholars and military officers is whether this new change represents, as Williamson Murray and Allan Millet argued a generation ago, a part of the “cyclical periods of innovation beginning in the early fourteenth century and continuing to the present”2 or the start of something new. Simply put, do these technologies possess, in common parlance, “game-changing” potential?
This research offers a tentative exploration of just three aspects (artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms, and the future battlefield: the soldier level) framed within the context of the traditional fighting environments of air, land and sea, from a Swedish perspective. The choice of these aspects is both deliberate and limited. The future of warfare offers a bountiful cornucopia of diverse topics, from Cyber – to space-warfare to name just two areas that are not covered here, but there is simply not enough space in an article format to cover all of them satisfactorily. Instead, the limited selection reflects an estimate of which new technologies will affect the Swedish Armed Forces and their fighting environments in the most significant way within the timeframe of a generation.
The emphasis in this research is on specific new technological trends that are most likely to materially affect Sweden’s conventional forces in a future combat environment in the short to medium term. Such an exercise in prediction is never easy, but it is necessary in the light of the present-day warfare trajectories that throw up fundamental concerns for the traditional protectors of the state from external threats. A brief glance at the major fighting environments in Europe, Africa and Asia that are witnessing – in some cases – the decisive use of innovative new combat technologies is all that is needed to understand the magnitude of the consternation. This state of affairs raises profound practical and conceptual questions for armed forces as to what do these systems mean for the prosecution of warfare and the intellectual ideas/knowledge base that underpin the contemporary application of force. Is traditionally-conceived warfare using technologies/knowledge that have formed the mainstay of military formations for decades dead, or are nations without the new technologies highly vulnerable? As Monica Duffy Toft and Talbot Imlay argue, “A key question for planners is determining what mix of old and new technologies and force structures will best counter future enemies on the battlefield.”3 This article attempts partly to frame this question for Sweden with an emphasis on measuring the potential influence of these new technologies within the context of the traditional fighting environments.
It is perhaps easy to overlook that the rapid development of the new warfare technologies over the last thirty years has created an unusual situation: practice is moving well ahead of existing knowledge frontiers. In other words, theory and concept development concerning these technologies lag behind their employment in warfare. This is not a unique occurrence in history, but the memory of it is largely long forgotten. The same situation occurred before the Great War of 1914–18 and its perils were identified by the remarkable Jean de Bloch (often known as Jan Bloch) in his peerless “The Future of War in its Technical Economic and Political Relations” produced in 1898.4 Bloch’s book was as much an analysis of the state of military technology and its potential as it was a work on warfare and war with the prescient claim that the pace of technical change had outstripped much of the existing literature on strategy and tactics.5 The extraordinary loss of life in World War I (over nine million combatants6) suggests that this is a worrisome state of affairs. This research is an attempt to close the knowledge gap by looking at specific new technologies used in modern warfare and locate them in the intellectual warp and weft that underpin traditional fighting environments.
“The Future of War” has become a very popular topic in recent years. Notable academic forays to date include, from the discipline of international relations, Christopher Coker’s Future War7 (2015) that draws upon an eclectic fusion of views, from philosophy, social sciences, history, and science fiction to name just a few to interrogate the meaning of various aspects of future war. From a war studies viewpoint, Sir Lawrence Freedman’s The Future of War: A History8 (2017) offers an erudite and wide-ranging historical enquiry rooted in knowledge gleaned from decades of studying and teaching the subject of war. Louis Del Monte’s Genius Weapons: Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Weaponry, and the Future of Warfare9 (2018) stands out as one of the most insightful discussions on the technological significance of the next generation of these weapons from a science perspective. Unsurprisingly, numerous military professionals have shared their thoughts on an area that is generating considerable debate among those who apply force in world affairs. Major General Robert Latiff provides searing insight in Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield10 (2017) into the meaning of these new trends and technologies for both society and the armed forces from a much-needed moral and ethical perspective. Paul Scharre, a combat veteran of the recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Army of None11 (2018) adopts a technological lens to look at robots/autonomous weapons and provides a fascinating glimpse into their potential across a wide range of applications.
The questions that this research explores are “how will new technologies affect warfare over the next two decades and what does it mean for Sweden?.” The focus of analysis is warfare or the process of applying force as opposed to the broader concept of war that often has a larger remit. Few writers emphasise this distinction and the conflation of them is captured well in a recent study by the RAND Corporation, The Future of Warfare in 203012 (2020) that define warfare from Clausewitz as “an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,”13 which was actually his definition of war. A better interpretation comes a little later in On War in which Clausewitz states, “warfare comprises everything related to the fighting forces – everything to do with their creation, maintenance, and use”14 and this research follows this approach.
Sweden
Sweden is a country rarely associated with warfare. It has enjoyed a remarkable period of peace in Europe for over 200 years and is commonly associated with neutrality, but this long-standing policy does not mean that it has no interest in defending itself. Sweden has a long track record of success in warfare that reached a high point with the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus in the seventeenth century (The Thirty Years War) who has been described as the “father of modern war.”15 Innovation has been a common feature of Sweden’s approach to warfare, from tactics to technologies, based on a powerful science-based approach to solving contemporary military challenges. This science-based drive feeds strongly into its development of technologies and doctrine. During World War II, for example, one of the most popular anti-aircraft guns in the Royal Navy and the US Navy was the legendary Swedish Bofors 40 mm gun. It is not widely known that Bofors devoted approximately “30,000 hours” to developing this robust and reliable weapon on “the drawing board.”16 Remarkably, Britain was still using these old but still deadly air defence weapons during the Falklands Conflict of 1982. During the Cold War, Swedish innovation was on display again with its development of a revolutionary low observable main battle tank, the Stridsvagn 103 or S-Tank as a carefully considered response to the challenges facing armoured forces on the battlefield. In the modern age, Sweden’s innovation trend is testified by its development and production of the Visby-class stealth warship, twenty years before the United States and its new Zumwalt-class ship that became combat active in 2020.
Today, the Swedish Armed Forces are in a period of rapid and unanticipated organisational change and readjustment that presents both opportunities and challenges. The current situation can be traced back to the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union that provoked a remarkable alteration in the world order. It appeared to promise a new age of international relations without the fear of military invasion and a significant economic windfall of not having to spend so much money on defence: the so-called peace dividend. Consequently, successive Swedish governments from 1990, until recently, initiated an extraordinary process of “deep force reductions”17 within the Swedish armed forces including a shift from conscript-based forces to a largely all-volunteer force. This has led to fundamental structural alterations in the size and capability of the armed forces as its focus and doctrine moved rapidly from a total defence of the nation using a powerful blend of regular and reserve forces to a much leaner structure with an emphasis on expeditionary operations in support of international partners.
To illustrate it, the Swedish Army went from a force structure in 1989 of 44,500 with 550,000 reserves18 with a wartime field army of 300,00019 to a present regular force total of just under 7000.20 Today its army remains small, but modern in some respects with “120 MBT [Leopard 2 main battle tanks], 396 IFV [infantry fighting vehicles] and 1083 APC [armoured personnel carriers].”21 Nevertheless, the Swedish Army lacks artillery support with just 23 innovative 155 mm Archer self-propelled guns and is heavily reliant on 282 81 and 120 mm short-range mortars.22 The Swedish Navy and Air Force also endured similar radical changes. The Swedish Navy has 1250 personnel23 and a further 850 dedicated amphibious forces with major combat assets such as 5 non-nuclear submarines (SSK), five highly advanced stealth corvettes, four patrol craft with guided missiles and torpedoes, seven mine warfare ships and 129 fast patrol boats.24
The Swedish Air Force with 2700 personnel has 96 fourth-generation plus JAS 39 Gripen C/D advanced combat aircraft, 8 RQ-7 Shadow UAV, 48 light and medium size helicopters, 8 transport aircraft and a handful of light airborne early warning and electronic warfare aircraft.25 In sum, the Swedish Armed Forces have a mix of modern systems, many of which, were state of the art twenty years ago and still pack a formidable punch, but in the light of twenty-first century developments such as fifth-generation multi-role fighter aircraft and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) appear dated. Nevertheless, in the light of increasing instability in Europe in the twenty-first century; most notably the annexation of Crimea in 2014 by a resurgent Russia, and the emergence of powerful and transnational non-state actors with unprecedented social media influence to transgress traditional security borders and defences, Sweden has taken important political decisions to reinvest in its armed forces and rebuild them.
Three aspects of future warfare
Aspect 1: artificial intelligence (AI)
The label “revolution” carries with it powerful historical meaning and, from the Industrial Revolution to the French Revolution, such a description means systemic and fundamental change at the social level. It is remarkable to think as some suggest if “human history began in 50,000 BC. Or thereabouts”26 that the modern technological age based initially on steam power started just over three hundred years ago with Thomas Savery’s patent for a steam engine in 1698. Far-reaching technological advancements that penetrate all aspects of society can in a relatively short space of time fundamentally alter the human environment. The debate about AI is best captured by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, Stuart Russell, who pithily sums up its challenge, “If all goes well, it would herald a golden age for humanity, but we have to face the fact that we are planning to make entities that are far more powerful than humans. How do we ensure that they never, ever have power over us?”27
AI has far-reaching implications for the future prosecution of warfare28 and it is highly likely that by 2040/50 it will be one of the most significant systems on the battlefield. AI is potentially the revolution in military affairs (RMA) in the twenty-first century that will facilitate the application of autonomous platform warfare free from the shortcomings of people and satellite relays. The likely impact of AI on all aspects of warfare; if current trends continue, will be pronounced. As one scholar warns,
“experts in artificial intelligence (AI) forecast that there is a 50 percent probability that AI will equal human-level intelligence at some point between 2040 and 2050 and greatly exceed the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest as early as 2070”.29The point in time when AI stretches ahead of humans is known as “the singularity”30 and this will be the harbinger of the age of machine intelligence warfare. There is no precedent in humanity’s evolution for the crossing of this technological frontier in the application of violence and its “game-changing” potential at this point is very high.
Applications of AI in warfare environments today
For Sweden and other nations, the question is how can AI in view of its limited state of development today be integrated with their existing military power. The area that the current state of AI can greatly help all military organisations is in the realm of information management. This is the basis for situational awareness in warfare. Information has always been at the heart of the successful prosecution of warfare. This has never been an easy aspect of warfare to master because information management demands the ability to gather and process large quantities of data in a timely and accurate way. In more modern times, the exponential increase in the volume of information to commanders has become a major problem area. To take an example of less connected times, during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the British commander of the naval taskforce in the region was dealing with “800 signals”31 every day before the actual fighting started. The key to timely information exchange between military units and their commanders in the modern age is available bandwidth and its marked increase in modern warfare indicates how vital it is. For example, Operation Desert Storm in 1991 had only a tenth of the bandwidth required for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.32
In view of the proliferation and power of modern military communications devices, the volume of information going back to commanders is cognitively saturating. This is an area where AI can have a critical influence because machine learning offers the ability to handle vast amounts of information and through advanced algorisms facilitate predictive analysis. James Johnson argues that “AI-enabled command and control systems will likely be able to avoid many shortcomings inherent to human strategic decision-making during the ‘fog of war’.”33 For nations with smaller military forces such as Sweden, AI-supported information management in theory would act as a “force multiplier”34 and permit commanders to manage information flows and co-ordinate military units more quickly to concentrate their firepower in the most optimal places.
In the same way that AWAC (Airborne Warning and Control) aircraft and E-8 JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System) aircraft quietly, yet profoundly, contributed the effectiveness of air power in the Gulf War of 1991,35 AI-supported forces may benefit in the same way: better management of information and units within a battlespace. The impact of AI initially would be quite modest and certainly not changing the parameters of warfare, but within 10–20 years, it would perhaps be an indispensable tool as AWACs are today. It would also help mitigate information swamping both by their own military forces, but also through malign enemy efforts to overload their C4ISTAR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting Acquisition and Reconnaissance) systems that are vital in managing modern warfare. For future commanders of the next decade, planning and conducting warfare without AI support will probably be inconceivable given the inexorable increase in data volumes.
Aspect 2: autonomous platforms
The debate about autonomous platforms/weapons swirls around different, often overlapping, technologies, but all with potential to take the next evolutionary step towards independent operations in a battlespace with no direct command tethers to satellite relays or people. In essence, machine-based entities that can take decisions to apply lethal force against designated targets, including people. According to Ash Rossiter, “Simply put, autonomy is the ability of a machine to perform a task without human input.”36 Drones today do represent a “game-changing” trend in warfare and their effect is enhanced with each new generation. Nevertheless, there is nothing hugely new about unmanned aerial vehicles and their origins can be traced back to just before World War II.37 The advancement that occurred in the twenty-first century was the ability to fly a sophisticated aircraft carrying weapons with enhanced reconnaissance capability, providing a real-time intelligence picture, with a 24-hour endurance over distances measured in thousands of miles.
Most critically, these aircraft had the ability, from 2001 onwards,38 to attack independently the target without having to call in other military assets. The systems integration of long-range unmanned aerial vehicles with anti-tank weapons and satellite relays is without question one of the most significant technological leaps forward in the history of air warfare. It is the foundation of future applications that will see drones in all their forms being a permanent feature of the battlefield for those nations that can afford this technology or realise its significance. As a non-traditional unmanned means of exploiting the air dimension of war, cultural resistance within air forces to keep pilots at the forefront39 may retard its development in some countries, but without it, a nation state will be severely disadvantaged in a war against a sophisticated enemy.
To illustrate its application today, a drone pilot in Nevada, USA can now engage the enemy with lethal force or support US soldiers in theatre from thousands of miles away in Afghanistan or Pakistan without any potential physical risk to the drone operator. It is important to note that the ability to conduct long-range conventional warfare is a trend that has been steadily improving since the Cold War through the use of versatile cruise missiles as typified by the latest generation of Russian Kalibr weapons that can be fired from multiple platforms.40 The recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020 showed the devastating effect of Turkish-manufactured armed drones (TB2 Bayraktar) on traditional technologies such as main battle tanks and mobile air defence units. It also demonstrated the perils of fossilised thinking, combined with traditional military technologies, when not prepared to face the threat posed by unmanned combat aerial vehicles. This is the military reality of the early twenty-first century. The Achilles’s heel of the system at the moment are the satellite relays. They represent the vital control coupling between pilot and drone that can interrupted or lost through jamming or destruction of the satellite.
Fighting environment 1: air
Air warfare in its modern sense is barely over 100 years old and its defining characteristics until the twenty-first century were people and impermanence. Manned aircraft could influence a specific airspace above ground or sea only for a limited period of time due to fuel/weapon constraints. The air power environment in the twenty-first century is, however, significantly different to the last century as the impermanence barrier has been broken. With sufficient unmanned drones, an air force can maintain a permanent presence over a specific air space for weeks at a time, possibly longer. This has profound implications for warfare in the air, at sea and on land that has never been seen before in human history. Air power prophets, from Douhet41 to Deptula,42 have always promised more than the technology could deliver, but perhaps that is not the case today with the new age of air power that will leap forward yet again with machine intelligence. Traditionally, air warfare, from World War I to modern times, has encompassed four main areas related to combat broadly described as air defence, strategic bombing, air support and reconnaissance and all of them have been affected to varying degrees by unmanned combat aerial vehicles.
The pilot is moving to the back seat
Air defence has primarily been the protection of the nation state and vital strategic targets located in the homeland against enemy air threats. Unmanned combat air vehicles add more complexity to this form of warfare. In late 2017, the United States demonstrated that a UCAV can shoot down an aerial target using an air-to-air missile.43 This simple demonstration indicates a potentially worrisome development for air forces that have invested in traditional means of conducting air defence. A typical fourth or fifth-generation standard multirole fighter aircraft (not the more expensive vertical take-off versions) cost around 80 million dollars per unit.44 In contrast, a UCAV of the Predator/Reaper-type costs 15 million dollars per unit.45 For the investment of one advanced jet in the skies, a nation state could instead field at least five UCAV with advanced air-to-air missiles. A five to one ratio in warfare offers strong differential advantage in combat in view that success in a modern dogfight increasingly depends more on the weapon and less on the platform.46 Moreover, it potentially leads to the problematic scenario of aerial overmatch whereby a large number of UCAVs will simply overwhelm traditionally structured manned air defences and render the costly investment in pilots, manned aircraft, and their supporting infrastructure null and void. It can be interpreted as an updated technological reincarnation of Douhet’s original air power thesis47 that a nation state can be knocked out from the air with the refinement that its air defences can be stripped away very quickly creating extreme vulnerability.
Strategic bombing traditionally has sought to target critical infrastructure within a nation state to coerce it into surrender or a negotiated settlement. It is a difficult and unwieldy method. Strategic bombing campaigns throughout history have always carried exorbitant cost in risk, blood, and treasure. The British strategic air campaign in WWII alone cost almost 50,000 lives of highly expensive skilled air crews and their sophisticated platforms.48 A small force of 200 armed drones without ethical constraints over an undefended metropolis could conduct a long-term terror campaign through attacking the conveniences of modern life: petrol stations, fuel dumps, power/distribution hubs and even bus terminals to generate mass social insecurity. The social and political pressure on a government, especially within a democratic state, would be intense to parley or negotiate with the enemy to find a quick way out of the horrifying situation, if domestic military means proved ineffective.
The possibility of such a scenario depends on the location of the beholder. From a US perspective nestled in the relative comfort zone between the vast Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, such a military scenario from an external actor is unlikely. In Europe, however, and the Middle East and Asia, this scenario is a very real possibility due to the shorter distances between potential hostile state-based actors. In the 1930s, it was the refrain, “the bomber will always get through,”49 but, in the 2030s it could be, “the drone will always get through.” By 2040, even more sophisticated drones will be available with stealth qualities to make incursions into enemy territory very hard to detect and to counter with much larger payloads and damage potential with no risk to the state employing them.
Deadly concentrations: drone swarms
Concentration of force at the right time and at the decisive point has often been the key factor in success or failure on the battlefield for thousands of years. Its importance is reflected in the fact that in some successful armies it has been elevated to the status of a principle of war.50 Drone swarms have the ability to apply superior numbers against conventional targets with increasingly intelligent applications and can transform traditional ideas about air support. For automated defences, the swarm method could well cause systems to fail because software cannot cope with fast moving and constantly moving multiple targets using complex algorithms to change flight patterns. During the Falklands Conflict of 1982, for example, low flying and weaving Argentine aircraft often confused British missile software on air defence ships that in some cases led to the software refusing to engage the targets with catastrophic effect for the defending vessels.51
Counter drone swarm capability is perhaps one technology avenue along with enhanced electronic warfare capability, possibly based on conventional electromagnetic pulse technology (EMP)52 to provide some form of protection against saturation attacks on vital military and strategic assets. Another technological avenue is improved ground-based anti-air defences such as the Oerlikon Revolver MK3 gun with the Rheinmetall AHEAD technology ammunition (using 152 tungsten projectiles per round electronically programmed to burst in front of the target)53 that offers a powerful anti-drone swarm capability.
Keeping the pilot in the loop: drone teams
Drone co-operation with conventional platforms in the air is now beginning to show maturation and these dedicated technologies are starting to emerge. 2019 witnessed the first flight of the American XQ-58 Valkyrie that is designed to be a fast and seemingly stealth-like drone to accompany traditional aircraft on missions. The potential synergy between combat drones such as Boeing’s “Loyal Wingman” concept54 and advanced combat aircraft (mother ships) promises radically to alter the parameters of the possible in air power. A single aircraft, such as a highly capable F-15 Strike Eagle teamed with three stealth drones equipped with munitions, offers an exponential increase in combat power, whilst at the same time reducing the risk for the manned aircraft. A combat aircraft with a drone team can now use the drones for the riskier parts of the mission such as reconnaissance in hostile environments, attacks on ground targets, and air-to-air combat, while the manned aircraft remains at a safe distance. By 2040, these drones could be fully autonomous requiring minimal control by the manned aircraft. and by this time the physical difference between drone and aircraft may not be noticeable.
The British Tempest sixth-generation future multirole fighter aircraft is a good example because it will have the ability to be manned or unmanned. The difference, however, is that drones such as the XQ-58 Valkyrie are designed from the outset to be low-cost and relatively expendable whereas the future Tempest55 will be a high cost investment from the outset with two billion pounds56 already allocated to its development. Sweden has expressed an interest in Tempest, but it is just at the preliminary stage at the moment. The absence of a medium altitude, long-endurance (MALE) combat aerial drone is without question a significant shortcoming in Sweden. It is involved in the nEUROn combat drone demonstrator development programme with Dassault,57 but this is clearly not as mature as American, or Turkish systems.
What the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh shows is that this gap in capability can filled quickly or literally bought off the shelf. Azerbaijan bought the Turkish drone system in June 2020 and had it involved in major combat operations in just three months.58 It is highly likely that air warfare in the future will be enormously influenced by unmanned combat aerial vehicles. For the Swedish armed forces, the absence of medium range and long endurance drone capability is a notable shortfall in its military power because these relatively cheap technologies afford potent joint warfare benefits in terms of reconnaissance and interdiction capability across Sweden’s vast landscape and area of interest in the Baltic Sea region.
Fighting environment 2: sea
The very old human activity of fighting at sea is characterised by platform/team-based warfare representing a blended fusion of technologies comprised of habitat and combat vessel equipped with skilled personnel working together to master an often-mercurial environment. From wood and sail to steel and steam, sea warfare has undergone long periods of technological stability that has only really altered dramatically in the last two centuries, marked by an increasing pace of change since the end of the Second World War. In the twenty-first century, this trend has greatly accelerated across a range of different platforms, from the incorporation of stealth technologies in ships and aircraft through to the development of powerful 150 kilowatt solid state lasers to shoot down drones.59
Speed is the hallmark of naval warfare today and the last twenty years have witnessed a remarkable transition from the supersonic to the new age of hypersonic warfare at sea. Hypervelocity weapons greatly complicate war at sea. They extend combat ranges with traditional technologies, or dramatically reduce reaction times with the new generation of anti-ship missiles. The US Navy has stimulated research in this area as part of its development programme concerning electromagnetic rail guns,60 which overcome the traditional limitations of chemical-propelled munitions in terms of range, with spin-off applications regarding munitions for use in conventional guns. BAE’s Hypervelocity Projectile (HVP), for example, can be fired from a variety of existing naval and land-based artillery systems with combat ranges between 74 and 93 km depending on the gun system.61 This has extraordinary potential in terms of engaging long-range targets with existing weapons at a much cheaper cost in relation to missile technologies. It brings back the relevance of the large calibre gun in naval warfare and in terms of coastal defence.
The most worrying development of hypersonic technologies is best captured by the Russian Zircon anti-ship missile that was successfully tested again in October 2020. According to Russian sources, it propelled a hypersonic projective to a speed in excess of “Mach 8 or 6138 mph”62 when fired from the frigate, Admiral Gorshkov, and hit a target “298 miles”63 from the ship in just “4.5”64 minutes. To put this achievement in context, the deadly French Exocet missiles of the Falklands Conflict are subsonic weapons and fly at speeds of typical contemporary anti-ship missiles around Mach 0.965 or approximately 700 mph. The sheer speed of hypersonic missiles places enormous pressure and time constraints on naval commanders and their team-based systems within surface vessels to react quickly in an effective way. A co-ordinated and successful strike of hypersonic missiles on a carrier battlegroup could change the balance of naval forces in a theatre in a matter of seconds. This is the reality of warfare at sea in the hypersonic missile age.
Russia also appears to be experimenting with radioisotope-powered engines that was revealed in an accident in August 2019 in Northern Russia that set off radiation warnings systems in the vicinity and killed several scientists.66 This nuclear technology was explored by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War as it has many advantages over chemical-fuelled rockets, particularly for space exploration,67 but they potentially emit hazardous and radioactive material. If the latest generation of Russian hypersonic missiles are radioisotope-powered then it blurs the boundaries between conventional and nuclear weapon technologies with toxic consequences for the environment and their targets against which they are employed.
The US Navy, the most powerful navy in the world, has been steadily developing not only aerial drone technology to support its aircraft carriers, but also an ocean-going vessel called Sea Hunter that has recently demonstrated the ability to sail from San Diego to Hawaii using AI. It is planned that these vessels will have a range of 10,000 miles, a top speed of 27 knots and the ability to deploy for 90 days at sea and future applications include anti-submarine warfare and resupply at sea.68 Sea Hunter is only a prototype but by 2045, it would not be inconceivable to see a proliferation of these vessels in naval warfare engaged in risky forward missions such as outer protection of a carrier battle group, protection of coastal waters, permanent anti-submarine presence in specific areas and resupplying forces at sea or on land. Ships also provide excellent platforms for the launch and recovery of drone swarms in every sphere of naval surface warfare.
The Swedish Navy has traditionally maintained a defensive posture in the Baltic Sea, a narrow stretch of water that is just 120 miles wide and 1000 miles long using a combination of powerful, yet small missile boats, submarines, mines, strong coastal defences, and amphibious forces. The challenge for the Swedish Navy today is whether its traditional defensive posture and force structure to defend Sweden is still optimal in the age of hypervelocity weapons and unmanned drones in the air and at sea. Coastal defences can be greatly strengthened by investment in mobile artillery platforms using hypervelocity projectiles and long-endurance UCAVs armed with anti-ship and anti-air missiles, but as yet these are technologies that have not been acquired.
Two new submarines, the Blekinge class (A26), have been ordered but they will not be available until the mid-2020s.69 The Baltic Sea is an ideal ambush environment for non-nuclear submarines using air-independent Stirling engines that have an advantage over less quiet nuclear-powered submarines in such a setting. The acquisition of the latest generation of Saab RBS15 anti-ship missile will also provide a capability to hit targets beyond 200 km.70 The problem for Sweden is that relatively cheap UCAVs in large numbers operating in the Baltic Sea region potentially degrade the advantages of the stealthy and highly expensive investment in the Visby class corvettes, the most powerful combat units of the Swedish Navy. Hypervelocity weapons and drones clearly have game-changing potential in the maritime environment today that greatly augments the challenges for navies trying to readjust to these new realities in the twenty-first century.
Fighting environment 3: land
Fighting on land is the oldest form of warfare. It has traditionally revolved around the warrior/soldier applying physical violence and will to overcome their opposition. Land warfare encompasses infantry, armoured forces, and artillery with battlefield helicopters for attack roles and for supporting the infantry. Today, drones are affecting all these dimensions with profound consequences for the shape and character of the battlefield in 2045. At the soldier level, in the United States and Australia, combat formations are already being equipped with hand-held reconnaissance drones. The Black Hornet Nano drone, for example, has a flight time of 25 min and can cover 2 kilometres.71 It means less risk for soldiers as they move towards contact with the enemy and much better battlefield situational awareness. The logical development of these micro-drones will be kill capabilities through the inclusion of a few grams of high explosive within the drone architecture sufficient to neutralise, or seriously injure targets of opportunity within a battlefield.
The use of larger reconnaissance drones has been a noticeable feature of the recent fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq with the RQ-11 Raven drone with a 10-km range and a 60–90-minute flight time being a popular example.72 Alongside of it, US forces have used another drone called the Switchblade that is designed specifically to attack targets. The US Army also has a Predator-type drone called Gray Eagle that can loiter over a tactical battlespace for up to 25 h and interdict targets with Hellfire missiles.73 It is likely by 2045 that all modern armed forces will have organic drone-based assets (reconnaissance and kill capabilities) operating from the soldier level to the brigade and division levels.
In Russia, the development of drone technology encompasses also large fighting vehicles to bring more firepower into the tactical equation. The Uran-9 unmanned combat vehicle is one such early development with a 30 mm cannon, four anti-tank missiles and a 7.62 mm machine gun.74 Early trials in combat in Syria (what has been described a “battle laboratory”75) have revealed problems,76 but this can be seen as valuable empirical data on which to base technological fixes for the future. Unmanned combat ground vehicles may well prove to be the future for armoured forces and tanks such as the T-14 Armata are well suited for full automation. Combined with AI, these technologies overcome manpower deficiencies that affect the most developed armies in the West and in theory offer by 2045 a credible means to provide a significant component of a land campaign without risk of human casualties.
For the Swedish Army as it rebuilds its fighting brigades, the question remains as to how much can it integrate these new technologies with the traditional combat arms of armour, mobile infantry, with limited artillery support. Battlefield MALE drones such as Gray Eagle and TB2 Bayraktar would considerably reduce its dependence on the Swedish Air Force and free up the latter for other pressing tasks while profoundly enhancing the long-range firepower of the land forces and its reconnaissance capabilities. For a much smaller military force, MALE drones do appear today to offer measurable game-changing potential to punch well above their weight and enable well-equipped, but size-constrained brigades, to engage with more powerful opponents with better odds for successful outcomes than without these technologies. For Sweden, the rapid purchase of MALE drones could quickly solve the artillery gap in its force structure and provide time for this crucial element in warfare to be reconstituted.
Aspect 3: the future battlefield: the soldier level
Swedish military thinking has once again returned back to the idea of defending its territory in the face of an attack by a hostile external state actor and it has been expressed in recent doctrine publications such as Militärstrategisk Doktrin (MSD16) and Doktrin för Gemensamma Operationer (DGO 20).77 Geography is a critical aspect in this thinking as Sweden can be accessed by land from several compass points from the north, east and west with a bridge to Denmark in the south. The point of contact with any future enemy is likely to have a major land combat dimension. As such, it is helpful when thinking of the future battlefield for Sweden to focus analysis on its fundamental dynamics and the two variables that permanently affect it: offence and defence. In times gone by, writers on military affairs, unlike today, were not coy about expressing which one was superior in the light of the technology of the time. Clausewitz argued that “defense is a stronger form of fighting than attack,”78 and so too did Bloch that new technologies at the end of the nineteenth century “have all tended to the advantage of the defensive.”79 It is useful to take the same perspective today and include the experience gleaned from recent combat to examine the interplay between offence/defence and new technology at the tactical level through the conditions of undermatch, equilibrium and overmatch.
Undermatch
Undermatch is a condition in which weaker military forces face a more powerful opponent with better technology. The latter uses its military advantages to ensure tactical success. This state of being has been the hallmark of the insurgency phase of the warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the surface level, undermatch appears to favour the offence, but conversely in modern insurgency warfare, it actually provides sufficient space for the weaker forces to shift the balance of advantage to the defence, if allowed. The enemies of the United States and its coalition and alliance partners in Afghanistan and Iraq were without question militarily inferior to the advanced twenty-first century combat forces arrayed against them. As such, the Taliban and various insurgent forces, were in a condition of undermatch. Relatively small numbers of coalition soldiers could quickly draw upon much more powerful assets such as anti-tank missiles and battlefield helicopters/attack aircraft in an uncontested airspace literally to overwhelm the enemy with firepower. Nevertheless, tactical solutions of this nature did not remedy the absence of a coherent strategy to decisively defeat these forces.
For Sweden, there is much to be learned from undermatch – a condition that it faces – while it rebuilds its forces. What the experience in Afghanistan and Iraq shows is that even the most sophisticated platforms, such as main battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers, are very vulnerable to cheap, locally-produced improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In another theatre of conflict, Lebanon in 2006, a non-state actor, Hezbollah, fought the state of the art Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) asymmetrically80 by nullifying its military advantages (air power and tanks) through an innovative use of prepared defences, unguided rockets, and state of the art anti-tank and anti-ship missiles. What these cases demonstrate, which is of value to Sweden today as it rebuilds its armed forces, is that superior military power and the condition of undermatch do not necessarily lead to defeat of the weaker forces.
Equilibrium
Future peer competitor warfare will be dominated at the tactical level by the challenge of equilibrium and the strengthening of defence. This was witnessed in World War I and it is likely to generate significant deceleration effects on the battlefield. Rapid tactical progress will be in all likelihood difficult. The heavily armoured soldier has once more returned to the battlefield in the twenty-first century, but with little broad recognition. Modern technologies such as advanced body armour developed in the twenty-first century have greatly affected the offense/defence balance at the tactical level. In the course of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the British (and other nations) greatly improved soldier survivability or force protection through the introduction of the Osprey body armour system that can stop powerful bullets such as the 7.62 mm fired from an AK47 assault rifle.81 All modern armies have very capable body armour systems that will improve survivability and resilience on the battlefield. It will complicate the ability to rapidly defeat well-motivated units because they will be harder to kill or wound. The improved defensive qualities of the individual soldier have further been enhanced by the decreasing effectiveness of the standard NATO bullet, the 5.56 × 45 mm, which is over 60 years old.
The 5.56 mm was introduced with the legendary M16 assault rifle in the 1960s during the Vietnam War and it was, despite teething problems, ideal for jungle warfare. The rifle and ammunition were light (the weapon was over 2lbs lighter than the M1482 it replaced) and soldiers could carry more 5.56 mm bullets in the later 30-round magazines that offered a ten-bullet advantage over the 20-round M14 7.62 mm magazines. In jungle warfare in which firefights usually occurred at short ranges often less than 100 yards, the weaker 5.56 mm bullet proved effective against North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas that had no body armour. The critical differences between the 5.56 mm (62 grain weight) and the 7.62 mm (150 grain weight)83 are “effective”84 range and stopping power. The “truly lethal maximum effective range”85 of a 5.56 mm is between “200–250 meters.”86 In contrast, a 7.62 mm will kill someone at around 900 metres distance, which is why they are often used as the preferred calibre for modern sniper rifles. Notwithstanding various improvements to the 5.56 mm to increase its range over the years, the recognised shortcomings of the 5.56 mm are all too apparent: it is becoming ineffective beyond 250 metres and lacks hitting power. Contemporary 5.56 mm assault rifles also consume these bullets at proliferate rates.
Distance matters
The problem for Swedish military planners is that the condition of equilibrium inevitably favours military forces with more mass to overcome the superiority of defence at the tactical level. One potential solution is to exploit the advantage of distance to increase combat ranges and improve the defence advantage. This, however, throws up an expensive and far-reaching technological dilemma: either seek to develop a new calibre bullet with all the associated costs of purchasing a new rifle for the armed forces; or do they go back to the future, revert to the 7.62 mm, and also buy another new service rifle. Both options are expensive pathways, but they offer a means to overcome the shortcomings of the 5.56 mm.
The US Army is now looking for an alternative in the form of the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) that is focused around the new 6.8 mm bullet that offers considerably more capability than the 5.56 mm. It will increase the combat effective range of US soldiers with better stopping power to overcome the problems with improved body armour. The US Army is currently evaluating three prototypes (each offering a standard rifle and light machine gun variant) by Sig Sauer, General Dynamics and Textron Systems. The latter rifle uses an innovative polymer Cased Telescoped (CT) bullet that provides a 35% reduction in weight from a traditional brass bullet87 and much higher velocity.88 In contrast, India has opted to buy the Sig Sauer 716 Second Generation 7.62 mm rifle.89 It will enable the Indian Army to have an advantage over potential enemies with a significant range superiority. The other benefit is that the 7.62 mm remains widely manufactured around the world meaning that access to ammunition poses no problem.
Overmatch
The balance of defensive and offensive modern technologies equipping the soldier of 2021 suggests that undermatch and equilibrium with a particular strengthening of the defence over the offence is likely to characterise the near future battlefield between peer competitor nation states. Armies that seek to create conditions of overmatch will greatly affect the defence/offence balance in their favour, but in order to do so they must rethink equipping force packages that rely as much on tradition as technology. The next generation of squad weapons in 6.8 mm calibres and cased telescoped ammunition technologies offer armies an opportunity to equip soldiers with more powerful and flexible firepower that provides important tactical and potentially game-changing advantages in the short to medium term. Soldiers with next generation weapons and calibres facing a peer competitor enemy equipped with the older 5.56 and 5.45 mm (Russian) technologies would have a significant tactical edge in terms of range and hitting power. Combined with innovative thinking that exploits the potentiality of the new wave of weapon technology, a re-imagination of the standard platoon would be enormously beneficial.
For centuries now, most soldiers have been equipped with gun-based technologies that have morphed into the ubiquitous standard 30-round magazine-fed assault rifle. The bulk of firepower in the modern age at the platoon level has been rifle-based and that pattern conforms to historical patterns. Shifting the balance towards more parity with modern belt-fed machine guns would also greatly enhance firepower. The next generation of belt-fed machine gun is much lighter and more flexible (they can fire single shots) than older models and can carry all the usual optics and vision aids. Belt-fed machine guns are also more capable weapons against flying targets such as drones. If just half a typical platoon (32 soldiers) had Sig Sauer NGSW machine guns with 100-round box magazines, the volume of fire in a first contact scenario essentially doubles.90
Sweden has a choice to invest in traditional technologies such as the 5.56 mm AK 5 (modified FN FNC) and Kulspruta 90 (FN Minimi belt-fed 5.56 mm), which are its standard infantry weapons, reinvest in 7.62 mm which equip its Home Guard units using an updated AK 4C (G3 rifle)91 or embrace the benefits of the new small arms technologies that are available. In view of the vast Swedish landscape and the relatively small size of the Swedish Army currently, rethinking the balance of weapons and upscaling to a more powerful bullet at the platoon level could be an innovative means to offset the lack of mass in the short term. One of the key lessons of the fighting in Ukraine was that a shortage of mass in the Ukrainian armed forces severely hindered the state’s ability to defend its territory.92 Here more advanced technology and flexible thinking could greatly enhance the unit power of Swedish battalions when facing a potential enemy with more mass, but less capable weapons.
Conclusion
The Swedish armed forces find themselves at an unexpected junction. This is as much a testing time as it is a moment of opportunity: to re-evaluate and rethink in the context of the modern warfare landscape whether to return to old ways, embrace the new or find middle ground. Warfare today will not be entirely the warfare of 2045, but a sense of the shape of things to come is quite apparent in the light of developing and emerging technologies. To a large extent, the Swedish armed forces has an advantage over other nations because reduced numbers of legacy systems weigh less heavily on force structures so there is more scope for adjustment of ideas and adoption of new technologies. The intellectual debate on the future of the Swedish armed forces is very much at an early stage and this research is a contribution to a wider discussion that encompasses doctrine, ideas, and technologies about the way ahead. It is clear that the employment of new military technologies today and the pace of their development has game-changing potential to varying degrees in the short, medium and long term. The challenge for all armed forces around the world is to accrue sufficient intellectual and conceptual foundations to understand, adapt, adopt, and exploit their possibilities in the next generation of peer competitor warfare.
A number of trends can be identified from the character of warfare today that have great utility for Sweden as it rebuilds its armed forces. First, the integration of new technologies with existing conventional forces is the key to future warfare. From the 1980s to the present day, “joint” warfare has been the mantra of military forces in the West. This approach has generally worked for the last forty years or so, but the new warfare technologies of the present/future do not respect the boundaries of service-specific warfare. This is the nub of the problem. Increasingly, attention in military circles is beginning to shift to a new idea of multi-domain battle93/operations that perhaps is a recognition of the limits of old thinking.
One way to exploit the new warfare landscape would be to develop more integrated forces in the future that adopt AI and autonomous vehicles/weapons to fight holistically with a common situational awareness and purpose. Through this lens of future integrated warfare, all military assets could contribute to the same campaign simultaneously, rather than sequentially or in discrete phases that has characterised warfare in the past. An integrated perspective develops military technologies and forces with multiple applications and purposes in different environments. This has great benefit for nations with limited or small numbers of military forces to generate more combat power and punch in the aggregate.
The increasing application of AI in future warfare will enhance battlefield situation awareness and transform the utility of autonomous platforms. A nation that does not exploit the potential of AI will be at a severe disadvantage when fighting AI-supported armed forces. For Sweden, AI offers significant benefits for the management of its forces and for generating better situational awareness. The development of medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) autonomous combat platforms is a research area that Sweden is collaborating with other countries, but has not yet developed its own capabilities. It is a shortfall in capability that could greatly strengthen the air, maritime, and land dimensions of its armed forces, but it is also a gap that can be filled quickly if necessary.
Distance will be an important quality to acquire in the future battlefield at the soldier level from a Swedish perspective. Through the conditions of undermatch and equilibrium, defence may well be a stronger form of warfare. Overmatch, perhaps, offers Sweden the best pathway in the absence of mass, but it requires innovative thinking and risk to embrace the new technologies being developed today. The battlefield of 2045 may see a very different type of combat specialist than in 2020 who perceives the battlespace not through narrow lens of land, sea, air, and space, but as an integrated space in which AI, autonomous platforms and conventional forces operate seamlessly. The way ahead is challenging, but a cursory glance at Sweden’s military history, from the Vikings to the present day, shows that the hallmark of this peaceful, high technology and advanced nation located between the great powers of East and West has been adaptability and innovation. It bodes well for its armed forces in the second, third and fourth decades of the twenty-first century.
No comments:
Post a Comment