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a very comprehensive GBAD based
around a domestic missile system
similar to the older S-300.
It’s not just GBAD. US power
projection capabilities are based on
its carrier battle groups and China has
developed a series of weapons with no
role other than to kill US carriers.
That’s the DF-21D, a ground-
launched ballistic missile intended
to target a moving aircraft carrier
at a range of more than 1,500km,
penetrating air defences at hypersonic
speed and obliterating the target
with either a conventional or nuclear
warhead.
Beijing was apparently stung to
develop this weapon system following
the 1995 Taiwan crisis, when China
reacted badly to prospects that the
island nation would elect a pro-
independence president.
To defuse the crisis, the US sailed
carrier USS Nimitz and its battlegroup
through the Taiwan Strait in an
effective show of force.
Would DF-21D work as claimed?
We just don’t know. Would
Washington take a gamble and sail
a carrier battlegroup through the
Taiwan Strait or the South China
Sea next time a spot of sabre-rattling
is needed? Again we don’t know.
Whether this works or not, China still
has a very significant anti-ship cruise
missile capability.
It could be that China has mostly
achieved its aim of denying free use of
these seas to the US Navy.
Since we don’t know what we don’t
know, science fiction provides some
thoughts on the disruptive technology
of the future, in particular the novel
Ghost Fleet by Peter Singer and
August Cole.
The premise is a future war
between China and the US, which
opens with a massive cyber attack
which cripples many vital US systems.
The advantage of US submarines is
eliminated as China has developed a
means of detection based on emissions
of Cherenkov radiation from their
reactors.
F-35s are blown out of the sky- compromised microchips start
emitting a radio signal as a homing
beacon for Chinese missiles. Chinese
anti-satellite weapons destroy US
surveillance and GPS capabilities.
The novel also features UAV
swarms and naval railguns. Ultimately
the US wins, sort of. The book comes
highly recommended as a primer on
future war.
The recent Air Power conference
canvassed some other possibilities.
There’s artificial intelligence (AI),
not an easy concept to grasp as the
potential applications aren’t that clear
and this has a long way to go.
Yet everyone is taking this extremely
seriously. Russian President Vladimir
Putin went so far as to say whoever
becomes the leader in this sphere will
become the ruler of the world.
AI, according to the Wikipedia
entry, is the ability of a computer
system to perceive its environment
and then take steps to achieve
nominated goals. That’s pretty much
what humans do all the time but AI
does it faster and on a vastly greater
scale.
This has applications in seemingly
every area of society – health, finance,
transport (autonomous cars and flying
taxis) to nominate a few, and certainly
the military. The Pentagon’s Project
Maven aims to use AI to analyse the
vast and ever growing amount of
intelligence data and imagery from
UAVs, satellites and manned aircraft.
AI will increasingly feature in
unmanned platforms, whether
aircraft, ground or maritime surface or
undersea systems.
There is an energetic debate going
on in the West about deployment of
lethal autonomous systems. So far
the answer is no – a human remains
in the loop. But our future opponents
may not be so constrained and neither
might we.
AI, coupled with quantum
computing, could revolutionise the
battlefield. The decision cycle for an
action – termed the OODA loop for
observe, orient, decide (which mostly
takes the longest) and act – could be
reduced to fractions of a second.
AI could well manage a swarming
drone attack, involving thousands
or tens of thousands of small simple
UAVs, directing to nominated targets,
bypassing resistance and reinforcing
success.
The US has already successfully
trialled an autonomous unmanned
combat aircraft, the Northrop
Grumman X-47B, able to takeoff and
land on an aircraft carrier and conduct
missions without human involvement.General Atomics’ developmental
Predator C Avenger points to
the future of unmanned combat
aircraft.GENERAL ATOMICS‘The novel
also features
UAV swarms
and naval
railguns.’