Are U.S. military leaders preparing to fight the last war, or a modern one with drones, deception and surprise attacks?
If nothing else, Ukraine’s effective attack on Russia last weekend has shown a flashlight on how the world is changing. Wars of the future could come down to which nation has the sneakiest, smallest and most AI-ready lethal drones.
Kateryna Bondar, a fellow with the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former advisor to Ukraine, wrote recently that Ukraine’s “objective is to remove warfighters from direct combat and replace them with autonomous unmanned systems.”
If nothing else, Ukraine’s effective attack on Russia last weekend has shown a flashlight on how the world is changing. Wars of the future could come down to which nation has the sneakiest, smallest and most AI-ready lethal drones.
Kateryna Bondar, a fellow with the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former advisor to Ukraine, wrote recently that Ukraine’s “objective is to remove warfighters from direct combat and replace them with autonomous unmanned systems.”
It’s AI in the sky, and autonomous drones are much harder to track and destroy than ones operated remotely.
Ukraine’s “Operation Spider’s Web” reportedly took 18 months of planning and preparation. It involved smuggling a multitude of small drones into storage compartments on freight trucks that delivered them to spots near air bases all over Russia.
When launched, these apparently were able to destroy many of Russia’s long-range bombers at close range.
That kind of unconventional attack is asymmetrical, as the Washington Post noted on Wednesday. It quoted Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, telling Congress in April: The “character of warfare is changing at a ratio faster than we’ve ever seen. Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles. That cost-benefit curve is upside down.”
The audacity of this mission was reminiscent of Israel’s complicated scheme to put explosive pagers and walkie-talkies into the hands of top Hezbollah leaders.
But then, as a colleague reminded me, these were not much different than the 9/11 attacks against the U.S., which required years of infiltration and training, including learning how to fly commercial jets.
Nor were they much different from the time, millennia ago, when the Greeks hid soldiers inside a wooden horse they gave to the city of Troy, allowing a deadly attack from within.
Innovation, creativity and the element of surprise have long been essential to warfare.
The difference now is in lethality and the use of artificial intelligence. News reports say Ukraine claims its drones were operating in autonomous mode.
Author Robert Greene discusses “fighting the last war” as the tendency to repeat the tactics, strategies and assumptions that were valid during the previous war, not realizing that the world has changed.
The Post quotes Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, as saying the war between Russia and Ukraine has shown how wrong the U.S. is in its planning.
“This conflict has already fundamentally changed the nature of warfare,” the Post quotes Crow saying, adding that the U.S. spends “exorbitant amounts of money” on things “that would be relevant decades ago.”
In the United States, the conflict seems worlds away. Europe, however, is much more concerned.
Sweden, for example, is renovating and modernizing its approximately 64,000 civil defense bunkers, spread all over the country. Britain’s Daily Mail said these, which are capable of sheltering about 7 million people (in a nation of 10.5 million), are being upgraded to protect against nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout and biological and chemical weapons.
Neighboring Finland, which has the world’s largest border with Russia, has joined Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in withdrawing from a treaty that prohibited the use of landmines, just in case it may need to repel an invasion.
The Mail also said Germany is considering conscripting people into the armed services, saying it needs an additional 100,000 soldiers to defend against a Russian attack on NATO, which its chief of defense believes could come within four years.
Writing this week for Bloomberg, Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Jake Rudnitsky and Olesia Safronova said drones are threatening to flip the script in Ukraine and elsewhere.
“Taiwan is investing in mass-produced drones in anticipation of a possible conflict with China. Israel has recalibrated the Iron Dome air defense system in the war in Gaza to account for maneuverable drones — one of its biggest blind spots. European governments embarking on their largest rearmament since the Cold War have identified drones and counter-drone systems as an investment priority.”
Even the United States is looking for cheaper drones, rather than the expensive, over-engineered ones it helped pioneer.
The Atlantic Council recently surveyed more than 350 experts and found 40% of them expecting a global war within the next decade.
An optimist would note that experts seldom are right about much of anything.
But a realist would say it’s good to be prepared, in any event, and especially for the type of war the future may bring.
Ukraine’s “Operation Spider’s Web” reportedly took 18 months of planning and preparation. It involved smuggling a multitude of small drones into storage compartments on freight trucks that delivered them to spots near air bases all over Russia.
When launched, these apparently were able to destroy many of Russia’s long-range bombers at close range.
That kind of unconventional attack is asymmetrical, as the Washington Post noted on Wednesday. It quoted Army Gen. Bryan Fenton, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, telling Congress in April: The “character of warfare is changing at a ratio faster than we’ve ever seen. Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles. That cost-benefit curve is upside down.”
The audacity of this mission was reminiscent of Israel’s complicated scheme to put explosive pagers and walkie-talkies into the hands of top Hezbollah leaders.
But then, as a colleague reminded me, these were not much different than the 9/11 attacks against the U.S., which required years of infiltration and training, including learning how to fly commercial jets.
Nor were they much different from the time, millennia ago, when the Greeks hid soldiers inside a wooden horse they gave to the city of Troy, allowing a deadly attack from within.
Innovation, creativity and the element of surprise have long been essential to warfare.
The difference now is in lethality and the use of artificial intelligence. News reports say Ukraine claims its drones were operating in autonomous mode.
Author Robert Greene discusses “fighting the last war” as the tendency to repeat the tactics, strategies and assumptions that were valid during the previous war, not realizing that the world has changed.
The Post quotes Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colorado, a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, as saying the war between Russia and Ukraine has shown how wrong the U.S. is in its planning.
“This conflict has already fundamentally changed the nature of warfare,” the Post quotes Crow saying, adding that the U.S. spends “exorbitant amounts of money” on things “that would be relevant decades ago.”
In the United States, the conflict seems worlds away. Europe, however, is much more concerned.
Sweden, for example, is renovating and modernizing its approximately 64,000 civil defense bunkers, spread all over the country. Britain’s Daily Mail said these, which are capable of sheltering about 7 million people (in a nation of 10.5 million), are being upgraded to protect against nuclear weapons, radioactive fallout and biological and chemical weapons.
Neighboring Finland, which has the world’s largest border with Russia, has joined Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in withdrawing from a treaty that prohibited the use of landmines, just in case it may need to repel an invasion.
The Mail also said Germany is considering conscripting people into the armed services, saying it needs an additional 100,000 soldiers to defend against a Russian attack on NATO, which its chief of defense believes could come within four years.
Writing this week for Bloomberg, Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Jake Rudnitsky and Olesia Safronova said drones are threatening to flip the script in Ukraine and elsewhere.
“Taiwan is investing in mass-produced drones in anticipation of a possible conflict with China. Israel has recalibrated the Iron Dome air defense system in the war in Gaza to account for maneuverable drones — one of its biggest blind spots. European governments embarking on their largest rearmament since the Cold War have identified drones and counter-drone systems as an investment priority.”
Even the United States is looking for cheaper drones, rather than the expensive, over-engineered ones it helped pioneer.
The Atlantic Council recently surveyed more than 350 experts and found 40% of them expecting a global war within the next decade.
An optimist would note that experts seldom are right about much of anything.
But a realist would say it’s good to be prepared, in any event, and especially for the type of war the future may bring.
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