A lot will change on the border of the phase barrier separating different technological structures of human civilization and externally manifested by the global systemic crisis. And it is possible that we will see wars and methods of warfare that no one has ever encountered before. Many processes will develop on different time scales from months and years (for example, at the end of 2013 it was difficult to imagine how the position of our country and the tasks it will solve in just a year and a half will change) to centuries.
On the other hand, the military confrontation between rival entities is developing at different levels. At the technical level, some types of weapons are opposed to others; at the tactical level, these weapons are specifically used in combat conditions with a host of concurrent circumstances, taking into account the measures and countermeasures used by each side to gain the upper hand in this confrontation. At the operational level, the interaction of many units on both sides is considered, and individual tactical successes at this level can be discounted, and, on the contrary, the operational art can help compensate for the actions of tactically weaker units and achieve a decisive victory. At the next, strategic level of the theater of operations, military campaigns, consisting of many battles, are considered, and, for example, issues of logistics, supply of armies can become of decisive importance. (There is a saying of the British military that their army usually loses all battles except the last). However, war turns out to be one more of the tools with the help of which states solve their problems. And at the level of a grand strategy, it should be considered in the context of domestic policy, economic development, and the system of international relations.
Apparently, science will change each of these levels in the not too distant future. But, oddly enough, in the evolution of wars and armaments, as recent decades have shown, key trends were predicted in the "frivolous" essay of the outstanding Polish science fiction and futurist Stanislav Lem "Weapons of the XXI Century".
The forecast presented by him half a century ago then seemed paradoxical. For many military and engineers, he still seems to be so. Consider, for example, the development of aviation. Since the appearance of the first combat aircraft, their speed, carrying capacity, associated with the ability to carry weapons, and, accordingly, size have grown rapidly.
In the end, with the advent of strategic bombers, a significant part of the military power of the superpower was concentrated in several dozen vehicles and cruise missiles that they carry.
The path traveled and the successes of military aviation are fascinating. Currently, one F-117 aircraft, having completed one sortie and dropping one bomb, can complete the mission that B-17 bombers performed in 4,500 sorties during World War II, dropping 9,000 bombs, or bombers in Vietnam, dropping 190 bombs in 95 sorties.
In general, the destructive power of conventional weapons has been increased by five orders of magnitude (100,000 times) since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Moreover, if we look at the weapons programs of a number of developed countries and partly Russia, we again see a desire to move along the same path of increasing quantitative indicators, implementing the same Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" in a completely different area.
However, quantity turns into quality. This is what S. Lem focuses on. This was clearly demonstrated by the evolution of nuclear weapons. The hundred-megaton bomb, tested on Novaya Zemlya in a cut in half, changed the geography of this island. But do we need to change geography in order to achieve our goals in the war? Therefore, the development of nuclear weapons has gone not along the path of creating super-powerful warheads, but along the path of their specialization and increasing the number of nuclear weapons …
During the era of strategic bombers, S. Lem foresaw a decrease in the size of aircraft and the emergence of unmanned systems, practically such as the Pedator strike drones, thanks to which the American army was able to maintain control over the vast expanses of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But then there is a transition to the next level - the use of "silicon insects" in combat: flying micro-robots capable of solving combat missions. These are already in service with the Israeli special forces. They can eavesdrop, take pictures, and, if necessary, kill individuals.
Currently, work is underway to create and control algorithms for swarms and teams of mobile robots. Swarms of such "silicon locusts" of hundreds of thousands or even millions of individuals can turn many previous generation military systems (tanks, aircraft, radars, ships) into a heap of unnecessary metal. Now it would be necessary to negotiate a ban on the creation of such combat systems. Experience shows that it is much easier to negotiate weapons that have not yet been created and deployed than to do so when they are already in service.
Lem's prediction began to be justified in the most paradoxical way. Due to the widespread use of transgenes in the United States in agriculture, for not entirely clear reasons, bee colonies have become extinct in almost 1/3 of the territory of this country. These insects are essential for pollination; and now a project is being developed in the United States aimed at entrusting this work to insect robots.
The "smart dust" project, the result of the nanotechnological scientific revolution, continues to be discussed (and, apparently, developed). It is a system of collectively acting and invisible to the naked eye transmitters and other electronic components capable of monitoring, reconnaissance or interfering with critical enemy systems.
Lem goes even further. Imagine bacteria and viruses wreaking havoc on the opposing population. And this grim prospect, too, should be taken seriously. Indeed, people of different races, nationalities, ethnic groups, obviously, differ not only in appearance, but also genetically. Therefore, it can be assumed that pathogens of infectious diseases can be created that selectively affect them. And here a new bifurcation arises.
The classic of military strategy B. Kh. Liddell Hart wrote: "For over a hundred years, the basic canon of military doctrine has been that" the destruction of the main enemy forces on the battlefield "is the only true goal of war."
But is this so in the current or, even more so, in the future realities? The eminent Chinese strategist Sunzi wrote that the highest level of military art is to win without entering the battlefield, depriving the enemy of his allies and destroying his plans.
And this format of war also turns out to be possible, S. Lem also wrote about this. Wars are usually associated with rapid, large-scale, obvious action. But if one country is technologically superior to the enemy and may not rush to solve its strategic tasks, then the prospect of "slow wars" or "crypto wars" opens up. During such hostilities, the enemy may not realize for a long time that he is being destroyed.
Often the new turns out to be well forgotten by the old. Recall how the colonists of North America evicted the Indians from the territories they occupied. On the one hand, the Indians were much more vulnerable to alcohol than the whites, so the colonists regularly supplied the natives with "fire water". On the other hand, the local population did not have immunity to many diseases, to which Europeans, after numerous epidemics, gained resistance, and also developed medicine focused on the treatment of these ailments. The Indians did not have all this, and quite soon after the arrival of the whites, they began to die out for reasons unclear to them, freeing up the territory for a new civilization.
Technology is today, education is tomorrow, science is the day after tomorrow. And if one civilization opposes another at characteristic times in several generations, then it is precisely on the education and science of competitors that the main blow should be struck. We will dwell on this in more detail below.
History shows that in the course of the development of technology, over time, new environments are mastered, which immediately begin to be used as spaces for military operations. In ancient times it was land, a little later the sea was added to it, at the beginning of the twentieth century, man began to use the depths of the seas and oceans, a big role in the First World War and a huge role in the Second was played by the opposition in the air. For the last half century, space has become the new space used for military purposes. Ballistic missiles, spy satellites, communications systems using the space segment have already radically changed the way war is waged.
American futurist and analyst E. Toffler in his book "War and Antiwar" put forward a very important thesis: "The way of waging wars reflects the way of creating wealth, and the way of fighting war should reflect the way of waging war."
Indeed, let us turn to the industrial phase of development. She created a society characterized by mass production, mass culture, mass education, mass consumption, mass media. Much of the wealth was created in huge factories, and most of the entire population was involved in production. Mass armies and weapons of mass destruction have become a military reflection of these socio-economic realities.
The figures confirming this thesis of E. Toffler are amazing. For example, during the Second World War, 15 million people were drafted into the US Army, more than 300 thousand aircraft, 100 thousand tanks and armored vehicles, 71 thousand naval vessels and 41 billion pieces of ammunition were manufactured.
How to foresee new areas of military confrontation and new formats of wars? A good guideline here is the theory of large waves of technological development, put forward by the outstanding economist N. D. Kondratyev, as well as its generalization associated with the concept of technological structures and locomotive sectors of the economy.
The period of the First and Second World Wars was determined by the III and IV technological order. The industry of that time was characterized by mass production, the active development of heavy industry, metallurgy, large chemistry, as well as the automotive industry, aircraft construction, and tank construction. I. V. Stalin called World War II a war of engines, and he was right. It was the quantity and quality of engines that to a great extent determined the combat power and capabilities of the fighting armies. The scientific basis of these structures was the achievements of electrodynamics (the age of electricity and electric motors came) and chemistry (embodied in the metallurgical and oil refining industries).
Since the 1970s, the development of the economy was determined by the V technological order, and computers, telecommunications, the Internet, low-tonnage chemistry, and new methods of working with mass consciousness came to the fore. They were based on the results of physics of the early twentieth century - quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity and, in part, psychology and sociology.
If until that time the industry sought to identify consumer needs and the best way to satisfy them, then at a new level of development a different way of action became possible. Thanks to effective, diverse advertising, it was possible to "sharpen" a mass of buyers on the capabilities of manufacturers and the product they throw on the market, create artificial needs, and cultivate irrational behavior.
The flip side of this has been the transformation of the mass consciousness sphere into a battlefield. The results of this are now in sight. During the post-Soviet period, the Russian Federation in various forms provided economic assistance to Ukraine in the amount of more than $ 200 billion, while the United States invested $ 5 billion. But these funds were invested in the sphere of mass consciousness. Ukrainian colleagues say that school textbooks with an emphasis on the revival of "Ukrainians", printed in the United States, were delivered to the country at the end of 1991. The stake on the transformation of the mass consciousness of the inhabitants of Ukraine made it possible to reorient the elites, carry out a coup d'état, unleash a civil war and inflict huge, varied damage on Russia, change its place in the world geopolitical and geo-economic space.
Since the 1970s, virtual space, cyberspace, has become another space in which conflicts are already taking place and preparations for much larger wars are underway.
The large-scale sabotage in the Iranian nuclear complex has become a clear example of the military use of virtual space. One of the most closely guarded sites in the country is the isotope separation plant in the city of Natanz. However, a computer virus specially created for this purpose put the centrifuges in an unacceptable mode of operation, this led to their failure and threw Iran's nuclear program several years ago.
Note that it is rather difficult to defend oneself in this area. Studies have shown that it is not possible to create computer programs in which there is less than one error per 1000 code instructions, even for highly protected dangerous objects. Therefore, the popular Windows operating system from Microsoft contains more than 50 thousand vulnerabilities. Peacetime intelligence uses 1, 5-2 thousand of them. However, in the regime of cyberwar, for which the computer troops created in many leading countries of the world are preparing, the results of the disorganization of computer systems and the interception of control of a number of objects can many times exceed today's expectations.
This was clearly demonstrated by the Gulf War (1991). About five hundred thousand soldiers of the countries of the anti-Iraqi coalition were deployed to the territory of Iraq, another 300 thousand were in reserve. However, to a large extent, the victory was won thanks to the activities of 2,000 employees who did not leave the United States and sat at the terminals. It was they who destroyed control systems, guided aircraft to targets, intercepted secret messages, blocked the bank accounts of Iraqi officers and their relatives.
Since the formation of the V technological order and the widespread distribution of computers, projects of so-called network-centric wars have appeared and are partly being implemented. This method of conducting combat operations implies that a soldier on the battlefield in a form convenient for him is provided with data from space and aviation reconnaissance, about the presence of his partners and opponents on the terrain in which he is currently operating, commands and priorities of combat missions that he must decide.
Of course, action creates opposition. Electronic, computerized reconnaissance, communications and target designation are opposed by electronic warfare (EW), which allow blocking enemy information flows and "close" their targets from observation.
However, the widespread penetration of virtual reality into modern society is changing the way war is waged, not only at the technical, tactical level, but also at the level of grand strategy. The opportunity arises to create a world "transparent" for the military and special services. E. Snowden only confirmed what was already obvious to specialists. The US intelligence services keep more than 1 billion people "under the hood" in more than 50 countries of the world. They have access to e-mail, SMS messages, calls, purchases made with a bank card, account, movement. Moreover, this information is recorded, stored, and computer systems can find answers in this ocean of data, analyze a person's views, his psychotype, identify organized groups in order to deliver accurate disarming strikes if necessary.
However, this technology (like everyone else) has its own Achilles heel. It was clearly shown by Julian Assange and his Wikileaks portal. In the presence of a huge array of distributed information and developed computer networks, one cannot be sure that the secret will not be revealed quite quickly. What happened is global in nature - the published confidential information is not secret - it shows the deceit and cynicism of the American establishment.
However, with this state of affairs, there is every reason to fear for the security of classified information much more than before. In the event of an aggravation of the situation, this factor can play a very important role.
Nevertheless, at present, the countries leading in technological development are undergoing a transition to the VI technological order. Right now the retaking of History is taking place and it is becoming clear which industries will become leading and which ones will be led; which countries will become sellers, which buyers; which will take off on the wave of the new technological order, and which will disappear from history forever.
The locomotive industries of the VI structure are often called those that rely on biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, new environmental management, full-scale virtual reality technologies, high humanitarian technologies, new medicine, and cognitive technologies. The choice of the main direction of development for the next 40-50 years is being made at the present time.
SocioCognitoBioInfoNano (SCBIN) converged technologies are named as the technological basis for this new stage of technological development. The term itself emphasizes that a combination of several types of technologies from this five can give new qualities. What will become the scientific basis of this order? This issue is now being actively discussed in the scientific community.
We will venture to express our opinion on this matter. Probably, the scientific basis for the next breakthrough will be the achievements of molecular biology, artificial intelligence and interdisciplinary approaches (in particular, the theory of self-organization or synergetics). The results of these disciplines are likely to determine the format of the wars of the future.
Indeed, one of the outstanding discoveries of the twentieth century was the discovery of the genetic code - a universal way for all living things to record genetic information. The creation of efficient genome sequencing technologies has become a huge achievement in applied biotechnology. The Human Genome Program has become one of the most successful economically (over a number of years in the United States, more than $ 3 billion has been invested in this program). According to Barack Obama, every dollar invested in this program has already generated $ 140 in profit. These scientific results have already largely transformed medicine, pharmaceuticals, law enforcement, agriculture, and have become the basis of a number of defense programs.
Considering the proximity of the phase barrier and the need to reorient the world economy towards renewable resources, it can be assumed that the share of the "green economy" will grow rapidly. An increasing part of the world's wealth will be created in it, and in the event of a military confrontation, a blow will be dealt to it. Let's pay attention to just one possibility. Bacteriological weapons did not become widespread during the Second World War and in the Cold War, largely due to the lack of a concept of combat use (the attacking side is more likely to be exposed to the same infections) and due to the impossibility of a secret attack.
However, the situation has changed. In 2012, Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize for the technology of transforming ordinary body cells into stem cells, from which tissues of any organ can potentially be grown.
We can say that for individual cells the miracle described in the fairy tale "The Little Humpbacked Horse" was embodied, associated with rejuvenation as a result of bathing in a cauldron of boiling water. The role of this cauldron is played by the pluripotency factor (it is he who transforms ordinary cells of the body into stem cells), which can transform the world of transplantation. Instead of transplanting foreign organs and the associated suppression of the immune system, you can transplant "your" organ grown from your own stem cells.
However, studies have shown that if the pluripotency factor is sprayed over a metropolis (which can be done covertly), it will increase the incidence of cancer by 5%. There are many other windows of vulnerability in biological space.
One of the most important and closed American defense programs now is the program to protect the biological space of the country. This work is expected to be completed by 2022.
Historians point out that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Polish banker I. Blioch published a multivolume work that revealed the nature, features of technology and the course of the upcoming world war. This work was strikingly different from the forecasts of the General Staffs and, as it turned out, was very accurate and important. If it were taken seriously, much in the history of Russia could have turned out differently. It is very likely that similar works have already been written, in which both the main features and features of the wars of the 21st century are presented in detail.
Hopefully, this lesson will be useful, and we will have the courage to look into the future without comforting ourselves with the past.
