Strategy&Future

Autonomous systems are a dangerous element of future warfare. Especially taking into account the prospect of so-called Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs), controlled by machine learning and AI. And as Michael Horowitz writes, it would be a mistake to focus solely on the drone strike trees and miss the vast military robotics forest.[1] He raises quite an important question for understanding the upcoming military future. [1] Michael C. Horowitz, “The Ethics & Morality of Robotic Warfare: Assessing the Debate over Autonomous Weapons”, Daedalus 2016; 145 (4) // https://www.amacad.org/publication/ethics-morality-robotic-warfare-assessing-debate-over-autonomous-weapons

In the 1990s, when Ukraine was forced to give up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, John Mearsheimer published a text that is forgotten today, arguing that Ukraine should remain a nuclear state against the will of the United States. This would, according to Mearsheimer, ensure a lasting peace in Europe, depriving Russia of a chance to rebuild its empire and, subsequently, break the European order and peace.

What’s brewing in the United States is not exclusively only one concept of future warfare based around JADC2, but something more sophisticated and sometimes even more controversial for traditional politicians and militaries that are used to seeing war as something specifically human. This supplementary concept to JADC2 is called Mosaic Warfare, and it is the offspring of DARPA. Accurately speaking, Mosaic Warfare is a branch of JADC2 because within DoD are following programs that are linked to JADC2:

Jacek Bartosiak talks to Elbridge Colby on realistic military strategy, limited war, burden of escalation, and your enemy’s best strategy.

On 5th December 1994, the three depository states of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that entered into force on 5th March 1970 – Russia, UK, and the US – pledged to provide security assurances to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine for their accession to the NPT and to respect their independence and sovereignty within their existing borders. Already from the very document, it is possible to draw three main components.

“It may take longer than the visionaries think, but the pilot in the cockpit is already an endangered species.” The Economist, 2011[1] [1] Unmanned Aerial Drones: Flight of the Drones: Why the Future of Air Power Belongs to Unmanned Systems,// Economist, Oct. 8, 2011, available at http://www.economist.com/ node/21531433.

Since the publication of my guide calculating how many battalion tactical groups (BTGs) the Russian Armed Forces could generate against Poland, a couple critiques have been levelled at whether this is the best way to understand how Russia would fight Poland and/or NATO at large. My guide was intended only to demonstrate how many of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s declared 168 BTGs [1] were available to mass on the Polish border and has been taken somewhat out of context. Nevertheless, some of the critiques raise important points worth addressing.

“I asked my opponents the question, ‘Who are our weapons aimed at?’ If we are to retarget our missiles, we must choose a target to aim the missiles at. Let’s suppose that we choose a target. What will the reaction be in a situation where no one aims their missiles at us while we choose an ‘enemy’ to target our missiles? What will be the international reaction and attitude toward Ukraine?” Leonid Kravchuk, 1993 TV-statement

The Russian Armed Forces implemented many reforms after the 2008 Georgian War, consolidating military districts, streamlining command-and-control structure, and switching from a division- to a brigade-centric order of battle. Overall, these reforms acknowledged the futility of retaining a theoretically mass mobilization-capable force in a time when the political conditions for using it are almost impossible to fathom. Instead, the reforms aimed for a military capable of rapidly generating force of flexible size in any of the multitudinous peripheries of the Russian sphere of influence.

We repeat: the key factor is the level of autonomy, i.e. that (and whether) we build these systems ourselves, put them into orbits, then maintain and supplement them, command and repair them, also controlling the data transfer, collecting and analysing the data. We have to think this over carefully, bearing in mind the always more or less limited financial and organisational possibilities.

For the Russians, a military tragedy, a catastrophe; for the Poles, a strategic victory; for the Ukrainians, a human and civil tragedy

It is very puzzling, the calmness with which public opinion received the statements of the most important politician in the country on the real possibility of a war with Russia (and Belarus) and the need to start major preparations for it.