Futuristic Military - The extended velocity and range of EM rail guns provides several benefits both in offensive and defensive terms, from precision strikes that can counter even the most advanced area defense systems to air defense against incoming targets. Another advantage of this technology is that it eliminates the need to store the hazardous high explosives and flammable materials necessary to launch conventional projectiles.
Despite international pressure against the weaponization of space, major countries continue to explore technologies that would turn the sky above us into the next battleground. The possibilities are as limitless as they are outlandish, from moon-based missile launchers to systems that would capture and redirect asteroids towards a target on the surface of the Earth. Evidently, not all scenarios are technically feasible and will forever remain the stuff of science-fiction novels. But some breakthroughs are within the grasp of current science and would have a deep impact on the nature of warfare as we know it.
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Unlike the theater defense systems currently used for BPI (e.g. Aegis), which must be deployed close to enemy territory, space-based laser platforms can operate at altitudes that, as discussed above, are well beyond the ability of the targeted country to shoot down or deactivate prior to a launch. As more countries and “rogue states” acquire the means to deliver long-range—and possibly nuclear—ballistic missiles, interest in SBL interceptors, and the willingness to fund such costly programs, will likely grow. However, challenges remain in developing chemical megawatt-laser systems for orbiters.
Executive Summary
EM rail gun launchers use a magnetic field rather than chemical propellants (e.g., gunpowder or fuel) to thrust a projectile at long range and at velocities of 4,500 mph to 5,600 mph. Technology under development has demonstrated the ability to propel a projectile at a distance of 100 nautical miles using 32 megajoules.
Over the past 11 years, the NT has hosted annual rotations of the US Marine Rotational Force–Darwin (MRF-D) during the dry season. Last year, 2,200 US personnel also conducted combined training with the Australian Defence Force in the NT, including crisis response exercises and engagement with regional partners.
As discussed further in my concurrent paper “A Retrospective on the So-Called Revolution in Military Affairs, 2000-2020,” I have subsequently concluded that I was right about computers but should have added robotics to the list of technologies likely to experience radical change (my earlier estimate, in 2000, forecast a “high” pace of change for robotics such as unmanned aerial vehicles, rather than radical or revolutionary progress). Notably, there are now some 20,000 unmanned vehicles of various types in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) inventory, and the various new uses to which they have been put during this century, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the broader Middle East and beyond, are remarkable. Enemy forces are increasingly using robotics, too.
Developing this type of thinking requires a focus on the long-term place of our key alliances – such as the new AUKUS partnership with the US and UK - as well as regional partners. But it must also consider the domestic context of our security, such as the role of important regional centres around Australia.
Not to be bested, the U.S. Army has been developing its own version of the EM rail gun. China is also rumored to be working on its own version, with satellite imagery emerging in late 2010 suggesting ongoing tests at an armor and artillery range near Baotou, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The establishment of any new training areas and expansion of existing facilities – combined with an influx of troops, vehicles and equipment – can lead to serious issues like soil erosion, water contamination and habitat loss.
In the earlier book, I also predicted that another seven categories of technology would likely witness high change—chemical sensors, biological sensors, radio communications, laser communications, radio-frequency weapons, nonlethal weapons, and biological weapons. The remaining 19 categories of key military technologies, many of them sensor technologies or major components of weapons platforms like ground combat vehicles, aircraft, ships, and rockets, seemed likely to advance at only modest or moderate rates. In my concurrent paper, I revisit these prognostications one by one. In general, the thrust of my estimates seems to have been mostly correct, though with a number of specific imperfections in which progress that I had forecast to be high or rapid proved to be only moderate, or vice versa. Crucially, however, putting aside robotics, I do not believe that any of the remaining 26 areas of technology did in fact undergo revolutionary change.
Keeping in mind the scenario-contingent nature of warfare, we can nevertheless try to establish a list of weapons systems, most of which are already in the development stage, that will, if only for a brief instant, change the nature of warfare. By trying to strike a balance between conventional warfare and irregular operations, our list is inherently incomplete but shows trends in the forms of warfare that are likely to affect our world for decades to come.
A grand strategic vision for Australia’s security will naturally focus on the place of the US alliance and the role of China in shaping our regional order. But a compelling and practical narrative for Australia’s future must incorporate key regional centres such as the NT. And, importantly, this narrative must speak to them, not just about them.
But it does not take a formal document like this for Australia to further invest in the kind of grand strategic thinking demanded by contemporary challenges. Grand strategy can capture, as the UK scholars Andrew Ehrhardt and Maeve Ryan argue,
Predicting which five weapons will have the greatest impact on the future of combat is a problematic endeavor, as the nature of warfare itself is fluid and constantly changing. A system that could be a game-changer in a major confrontation between two conventional forces—say, China and the United States—could be of little utility in an asymmetrical scenario pitting forces in an urban theater (e.g., Israeli forces confronting Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza or Lebanese Hezbollah in the suburbs of Beirut).
The desire to be able to strike anywhere, and to do so quickly, has led to the creation of a program known as “prompt global strike,” which the U.S. military initiated in 2001. Efforts have centered on the X-51A hypersonic cruise vehicle (HCV) under a consortium involving the U.S. Air Force, Boeing, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, and the USAF Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate. Russia, China and India have made strides in developing the technology to achieve similar feats using conventional warheads, leading some defense analysts to warn of a looming global strike arms race.
The US and Australian governments have committed to sharing more than US$1.52 billion (A$2 billion) in infrastructure investments and upgrading military assets across the Top End, including the construction of 11 giant jet fuel storage tanks in Darwin.
Other US aircraft, such as the B-52, B-1 and B-2 bombers, already visit northern Australia. But the RAAF’s ability to host the aircraft and train alongside them will mark an important milestone toward the integration of the two air forces.
Second, to the extent that there were flaws in my approach and my analysis, it is important to understand their origins, and attempt to take remedial action in any future prognostication. Most importantly, it was difficult to predict how military organizations would avail themselves of new technological opportunities—or, alternatively, to allow themselves to remain or become vulnerable in the face of new capabilities possessed by possible adversaries. In other words, the challenge was largely in predicting how entrepreneurial military organizations might, or might not, respond to transformational opportunities for better or worse.
A naval EM rail gun system has been in development since 2005 by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. The current phase of the project, initiated in 2012, seeks to demonstrate sustained fire, or “rep-rate” capability.
One possibility is the arming of space orbiters with nuclear or non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. By detonating a satellite-launched EMP weapon at a high altitude, a belligerent could initiate a decapitation attack against an enemy’s electrical grids, satellites, as well as the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture that are necessary to conduct military operations. Depending on the size of the EMP weapon utilized, the attack could blanket an entire country, or be more surgical, targeting an area of operations. An “assassin’s mace” weapon of this type could theoretically end war before a single shot is fired—at least against a heavily information-reliant adversary such as the U.S. (much less so against, say, the Taliban or Hamas).
In regard to computers, however, modern militaries generally have not succeeded. Indeed, they carelessly allowed themselves to build Achilles’ heels into their own systems, as well as their supporting national civilian infrastructure that is often essential to the operations of modern military forces. Thus, they have potentially made the performance of future weapons less dependable than past ones had been. In other words, they may even have set themselves back, though it is impossible to know for sure at this point, since we have not seen the kind of interstate warfare among near-peer competitors that would probably be needed to assess the hypothesis accurately.
Two lessons emerge from this previous analysis. One, the approach I developed in the 2000 book appears useful. Assessing future trends in military technology by examining a number of fairly broad, yet also fairly specific and discrete areas of defense-related technology, and then integrating these individual findings into a broader framework for predicting future war, is valuable. This methodology discourages hyperbole based on cherry-picking areas of technology that may be most (or least) promising. It also helps to identify those specific technological enablers that are most likely to cause any radical change in broader military capabilities—to figure out what might drive a revolution in military affairs, should there be such a thing anytime soon.
Another challenging aspect is choosing how we define revolution in the context of weapons development. Do we quantify impact using the yardstick of destructiveness and casualty rates alone? Or conversely, by a weapon’s ability to achieve a belligerent’s objectives while minimizing the cost in human lives? What of a “weapon” that obviates kinetic warfare altogether, perhaps by preemptively disabling an opponent’s ability to conduct military operations?
EMP weapons fired from lower-altitude platforms or via land-based missile systems (e.g., ICBMs) are vulnerable to intercepts or preemptive strikes. Satellite-mounted EMP weapons, on the other hand, would be beyond the reach of most countries, except those with ground- or air-to-space-based antisatellite capability or space-based weaponized orbiters. Furthermore, the reaction time to a space-based blackout attack would be much shorter, which diminishes the ability of a targeted country to intercept the EMP weapon.
In terms of robotics, U.S. military organizations responded with innovative and entrepreneurial acumen, creating new tactical methods to handle the challenges of complex counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. Other military organizations around the world have also made significant progress in this arena.
The military implications of such developments are self-evident, as “invisibility cloaks” would make it possible for fighters—from ordinary soldiers to special forces—to operate in enemy territory undetected, or at least buy them enough time to take the initiative. Such capabilities would reduce the risk of casualties during military operations while increasing the ability to launch surgical and surprise attacks against an opponent, or conduct sabotage and assassination.
In this context, the nine-month-old Albanese government is soon to release a defence strategic review. It is unclear if this review will be followed by a more holistic examination of Australia’s national security interests, such as the integrated review conducted in the United Kingdom two years ago, or the regular national security strategy in the US.
Technology has changed the way we fight wars. Future conflicts may be resolved with completely different types of weapons than the ones we use today. What can we expect to see in the years to come?
One U.S. Army leader says robots could account for a significant portion of American fighting forces in the next 20 years or so. Find out how machines are waging war now and how they may change the face of battle in the decades to come.
Using naturally occurring metamaterials, scientists have been designing lightwave-bending materials that can greatly reduce the thermal and visible signatures of a target. The science behind it is relatively straightforward, though skeptics remain unconvinced and say they will believe it when they don’t see it: The “adaptive camouflage” renders what lies behind the object wearing the material by bending the light around it.
Had hypersonic cruise missiles existed in the mid-1990s, the U.S. might have rid itself of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden much earlier than it did, and would have accomplished the feat in Afghanistan rather than in Pakistan.
My working hypothesis is that 20 years is long enough to represent a true extrapolation into the future. Yet it is also short enough that existing trends in laboratory research can help us understand the future without indulging in rampant speculation. Since many defense systems take a couple of decades to develop, it should not be an overly daunting task to gauge how the world might look, in terms of deployable military technology, 20 years from now. This approach is not foolproof, as discussed in my forthcoming book, but if undertaken with the proper degree of acknowledged uncertainty, can still be quite useful.
The U.S. Navy hopes to eventually extend the range of EM rail guns to 200 nautical miles using 64 mega-joules, but as a single shot would require a stunning 6 million amps (bigger than the currents that cause the auroras), it’ll be years before scientists find a way to develop capacitors that can generate such energy, or gun materials that will not be shredded to pieces at every shot.
With their ability to accurately deliver warheads over long distances, cruise missiles have had an extraordinary impact on modern warfare. But in an age where minutes can make a difference between defeat and victory, they tend to be too slow. It took eighty minutes for land-attack cruise missiles (LACM) launched from U.S. ships in the Arabian Sea to reach Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 following the terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Using hypersonic missiles cruising at speeds of Mach 5+, the same targets would have been reached within as little as 12 minutes, short enough to act on intelligence which had placed the terrorist mastermind at the location.
Those operating in the classified world may have a greater sense than I of the vulnerabilities and opportunities that the United States now faces due to cyber technology. But even they cannot be sure because cyber vulnerabilities are not static. They are always evolving in a game of measures and countermeasures, even faster than in other areas of military operations characterized by these kinds of dynamics, such as electronic warfare. In addition, the ripple effects of any cyberattack often cannot be easily foreseen even when specific vulnerabilities are understood. There may also be important path dependencies about how different types of failures might collectively affect a larger system. It is difficult to evaluate these possibilities by examining individual vulnerabilities alone.
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