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31 July 2024

Something WICKED This Way Comes: The Future Singularity of Asymmetric Warfare Innovations

Robert J. Bunker

The modern world and dominance of conventional (symmetric) warfighting systems operated by human combatants—main battle tanks, capital warships, fighters and strategic bombers—is rapidly approaching its twilight. This ‘gold standard’ of military innovation and technology is completing its functional weapons systems life cycle as it transitions from institutionalized to ritualized usage on the more advanced mid-21st century battlefield. This battlefield has disparate elements now readily recognizable and the mosaic forming portends a form of conflict inherently alien to our modern comprehension of state-on-state warfighting.

Asymmetric Warfare Innovations

While asymmetric warfare is typically viewed as unorthodox and even insurgent in approach—leveraging weakness against a superior force using innovative applications of technology and tactics—it also possesses an advanced warfighting component. This is the circumstance behind the contemporary suite of asymmetric warfare innovations, derived from a synthesis of technology and CONOPS (concepts of operations), now forming. However, the disruptive innovation taking place is a level of magnitude above that of 1920s-1930s revolution in military affairs (RMA) perceptions. That level of operational change, resulting in blitzkrieg tactics, carrier operations, et al., existed within the modern paradigm of warfare. The level of disruptive change we are now witnessing is out-of-paradigm change equivalent to the shift from the Classical to Medieval or Medieval to Modern epochs of Western civilization. These shifts have been characterized respectively as ‘The Dark Ages’ and ‘The Renaissance’ in their societal, state institutional, and military impacts. We are within a post-Modern shift that will witness modern (legacy) nation-state mass industrial force structures becoming ineffective on the battlefield as asymmetric warfare innovations mature and are increasingly fielded by states and non-state entities.

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