解析中國軍隊智戰打贏方式新變化
現代英語：
●From war of attrition to war of dissipation—
An Analysis of the New Changes in the Ways to Win in Intelligent Warfare
■Wang Ronghui
President Xi Jinping pointed out that the core of studying warfare is to understand the characteristics, laws, and winning mechanisms of modern warfare. From the clash of bronze swords to the roar of tank engines and the saturation attacks of unmanned “swarms,” each leap in the form of warfare has profoundly changed the way wars are won. In the long era of cold weapons, firearms, and mechanized warfare, attrition warfare used the offsetting of national wealth and resources to exhaust the opponent’s will to resist. However, the new military revolution, led by the information technology revolution and accelerating towards the intelligent era, is pushing the way wars are won to a completely new dimension—dissipation warfare, which transforms the traditional method of war, which is mainly based on the consumption of materials and energy, into a comprehensive method of war that integrates the offsetting of materials, the offsetting of energy, and the confrontation of information.
The war of attrition is an iron law of traditional warfare.
In the long years before and during the Industrial Age, wars were primarily based on the struggle for material and energy resources, and the balance of power often tipped in favor of the side that could withstand greater material and energy losses.
The war of attrition is a major winning tactic in traditional warfare. In cold weapon warfare, the focus of confrontation lies in the number of soldiers, their physical endurance, and the competition of metal weapons and food reserves. The outcome of the war often depends on the size of the army and the strength of the logistical chain. For example, the siege warfare that was common in ancient times was essentially a war of attrition between the defender’s supplies and the attacker’s manpower and equipment. In firearms warfare, the use of gunpowder did not reduce the attrition of war; on the contrary, it pushed it to a new level. The dense charges of line infantry in the Napoleonic Wars, and the brutal trench warfare of Verdun and the Somme in World War I, all exemplified the nature of attrition warfare—trading space for steel and flesh. Mechanized warfare, with the advent of tanks, airplanes, and aircraft carriers, pushed the scale of material and energy consumption to its peak. In World War II, the Battle of Kursk on the Soviet-German front and the brutal Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific were the ultimate clashes between a nation’s industrial capacity and its military’s ability to withstand casualties.
The war of attrition is essentially a contest of material and energy resources. It’s a contest of size and reserves—static or slowly accumulating factors such as population size, resource reserves, industrial capacity, and troop strength. Its primary objective is to destroy the enemy’s manpower, war materials, and seize their territory and resources; essentially, it’s a contest of material and energy resources between the opposing sides. Klausewitz’s assertion that “war is a violent act that forces the enemy to submit to our will” is fundamentally based on the logic of violent attrition. The winning mechanism of a war of attrition is that victory belongs to the side that can more sustainably convert material resources into battlefield lethality and can withstand greater losses.
The war of attrition has revealed significant historical limitations in practice. From the long-term experience of traditional warfare, the fundamental limitations of the war of attrition manifest in the enormous loss of life and material wealth, the unbearable high costs to society, and the waste of vast amounts of energy and resources on non-critical targets, indiscriminate bombardment, and large-scale but inefficient charges. When both sides are evenly matched in strength and determined, the outcome is difficult to predict, leading to repeated back-and-forth battles and easily resulting in a protracted quagmire of attrition, as seen on the Western Front of World War I. Faced with increasingly networked and information-based modern warfare systems, the attrition model relying on large-scale firepower coverage is insufficient for accurately targeting the opponent’s key nodes and functional connections, resulting in diminishing returns.
The information technology revolution gave rise to the prototype of dissipative warfare
The information technology revolution in the second half of the 20th century injected a disruptive variable into the form of warfare. Information began to surpass matter and energy, becoming the core element of victory, and information warfare took center stage in history.
The focus of information warfare has shifted. The Gulf War is considered a milestone in information warfare, where multinational forces, relying on reconnaissance aircraft, early warning aircraft, electronic warfare systems, precision-guided weapons, and C4ISR systems, achieved overwhelming information superiority, realizing “one-way transparency” on the battlefield. The focus of this war was no longer on the complete annihilation of the opponent’s massive ground forces, but rather on the systematic destruction of its command and control systems, air defense systems, communication hubs, and logistical supply lines, leading to the rapid collapse of the opponent’s overall combat capability and plunging them into a chaotic state of fragmented operations and command failure. This marks a shift in the focus of warfare from “hard destruction” in the physical domain to “system disruption” and functional paralysis in the information domain.
The methods of winning in informationized warfare have changed. Informationized warfare alters the way and objectives of material and energy utilization through information superiority. The winning strategy is no longer simply about “consuming” the opponent’s materials and energy, but rather about guiding the flow of materials and energy through efficient information flow, precisely targeting the “key links” of the enemy’s operational system. This aims to achieve maximum chaos, disorder, functional collapse, and overall effectiveness reduction in the enemy system with minimal material and energy input. Therefore, informationized warfare is beginning to pursue “entropy increase,” or increased disorder, in the enemy’s operational system, causing it to move from order to disorder. This indicates that dissipative warfare, reflecting the complex system confrontation of intelligent warfare, is beginning to emerge.
Dissipation warfare is a typical form of intelligent warfare.
With the rapid development of intelligent technology and its widespread application in the military, intelligent warfare is becoming a new form of warfare after information warfare, and dissipation warfare is becoming a typical mode of intelligent warfare.
Dissipation warfare has adapted to the demands of the modern world security landscape. In the era of intelligence, the rapid development and application of intelligent technologies such as broadband networks, big data, cloud computing, brain-computer interfaces, intelligent chips, and deep learning have broadened connections between countries and nations. Non-traditional security threats have emerged and intertwined with traditional security threats, leading to a continuous expansion of the subject and scope of intelligent warfare. The time and space of warfare are constantly extending, and the warfare system is shifting from relatively closed to more open, forming a higher-level and broader-ranging confrontation. Dissipation warfare, as a winning strategy in the intelligent era, is becoming increasingly prominent.
Dissipation warfare reflects the historical development of methods for winning wars. Dissipation warfare has always existed, but before the advent of intelligent warfare, due to technological constraints, it remained in a relatively rudimentary and simple form, where the confrontation could only be manifested as a confrontation between one of the elements of matter, energy, or information. Cold weapon warfare was primarily a confrontation centered on the human body and dominated by material elements; firearms and mechanized warfare was primarily a confrontation centered on platforms and dominated by energy elements; and information warfare is primarily a confrontation centered on network information systems and dominated by information elements. Entering the intelligent era, intelligent technology highly unifies the cognitive, decision-making, and action advantages in the confrontation between enemies and ourselves. In essence, it highly unifies matter, energy, and information. By empowering, gathering, driving, and releasing energy with intelligence, it forms an intelligent warfare form dominated by intelligent elements and centered on intelligent algorithms. Its typical form is dissipation warfare, which reflects the complex system confrontation of intelligent warfare.
Dissipation warfare embodies the resilience of complex warfare systems. From the perspective of the winning mechanism, to gain a competitive advantage, it is necessary to construct a closed loop of dissipation warfare that enables rapid “perception, decision-making, action, and evaluation” based on the fundamental principles of “negative entropy infusion, threshold determination, phase transition triggering, and victory control.” This continuously increases the enemy’s entropy value in a dynamic hybrid game, causing the enemy to lose its overall combat capability. From the perspective of the path to victory, dissipation warfare emphasizes the comprehensive use of material attrition, energy confrontation, and information confrontation. Internally, it “establishes order” to achieve logical concentration, immediate accumulation, complementary advantages, and integrated strengths to form comprehensive combat power. Externally, it “increases entropy” by continuously exerting its effects through military, political, economic, technological, cultural, and diplomatic components until the effectiveness accumulates to a certain level, resulting in “rise and fall” and achieving a sudden change in combat power and the emergence of systemic effectiveness. In terms of its basic characteristics, dissipative warfare is characterized by comprehensive confrontation and competition, multiple subjects across domains, complex and diverse forms, integrated and concentrated forces, and the emergence of accumulated effectiveness. The core of the confrontation has evolved from the destruction of the physical domain and the control of the information domain to a game of disrupting and maintaining the “orderliness” inherent in the complex system of intelligent warfare.
Dissipation warfare encompasses various forms of intelligent warfare. Beyond the traditional attrition warfare across land, sea, air, space, cyberspace, and electronic domains, dissipation warfare also includes various forms of conflict employed by one or more countries against their adversaries in multiple social spheres. These include political isolation and encirclement, economic and financial blockades, disruption of technological supply chains, cultural strategic export, authoritative media campaigns to seize the initiative in discourse, manipulation of public opinion through trending events, AI-assisted social media information warfare, and the use of proxies to establish multilateral battlefields. The diverse forms of dissipation warfare allow it to be conducted in both war and peacetime. Sun Tzu’s Art of War principle, “Victorious armies first secure victory and then seek battle,” takes on new meaning in the context of war preparation in the intelligent age.
The shift in winning strategies from war of attrition to war of dissipation
Dissipative warfare manifests itself in the comprehensive confrontation across multiple domains, including the physical and information domains, in the intelligent era. It embodies a high degree of unity among political contests, economic competition, military offense and defense, cultural conflicts, and diplomatic checks and balances, reflecting the openness, complexity, and emergence of intelligent warfare systems.
The evolution from a war of attrition to a war of dissipation represents a comprehensive and profound transformation. The basis for victory has shifted from relying on the stock of resources such as population, mineral deposits, and industrial base to relying on information superiority, intelligent algorithm superiority, network structure superiority, and the ability to dynamically control the flow of energy and information. The target of action has shifted from focusing on destroying physical entities such as soldiers, tanks, and factories to focusing on dismantling the “function” and “order” of the war system. The pursuit of effectiveness has shifted from the absolute destruction and annihilation of manpower to the pursuit of highly efficient “asymmetric paralysis,” that is, inducing the greatest chaos and incompetence of the enemy’s combat system at the lowest cost on one’s own side, pursuing “paralysis” rather than “destruction.” The focus of war has shifted from confrontation mainly in the physical domains such as land, sea, and air to a comprehensive game in multiple domains such as the physical domain and the information domain. While the physical domain still exists, it is often determined by the advantages of higher-dimensional domains.
The evolution from war of attrition to war of dissipation reflects a change in the decisive advantage. In the era of intelligent warfare, victory will no longer simply belong to the side with the largest steel torrent, but will inevitably belong to the side that can more efficiently “establish order” and “induce entropy”—that is, the side that can maintain a highly ordered and efficient operation of its own war system, while precisely and intelligently dismantling the order of the enemy’s system, forcing it into irreversible “entropy increase” and chaos. To gain a decisive advantage in war, we must adapt to the openness, complexity, and emergence of intelligent warfare systems, shifting from the extensive consumption and utilization of single materials, energy, and information to a war system where intelligent advantages dominate dissipation, and striving to gain the initiative and advantage in comprehensive multi-domain games.
The evolution from war of attrition to war of dissipation is an inevitable trend driven by the tide of technological revolution. Technology is the core combat capability and the most active and revolutionary factor in military development. Currently, intelligent technology is developing rapidly. Only by proactively embracing the wave of intelligence and firmly grasping the key to victory in the accurate understanding, intelligent control, and efficient dissipation of the complex system of warfare can we remain invincible in the ever-changing landscape of future global competition and the profound transformation of warfare.
現代國語：
●從消耗戰到耗散戰——
試析智能化戰爭制勝方式新變革
■王榮輝
閱讀提示
習主席指出，研究作戰問題，核心是要把現代戰爭的特點規律和制勝機理搞清楚。從青銅劍的碰撞到坦克發動機的轟鳴再到無人“蜂群”的飽和攻擊，戰爭形態的每一次躍遷都深刻改變著戰爭制勝方式。在漫長的冷兵器、熱兵器和機械化戰爭時代，消耗戰以國家財富資源的對沖抵消來耗盡對手的抵抗意志。然而，以信息技術革命為先導，並加速向智能化時代邁進的新軍事革命，正將戰爭制勝方式推向全新的維度——耗散戰，即將傳統的以物質、能量消耗為主，轉變為集物質對耗、能量對沖和信息對抗綜合一體的戰爭方式。
消耗戰是傳統戰爭形態的鐵律
在工業時代及其之前的漫長歲月裡，戰爭主要是基於物質與能量要素的對抗，勝負的天平往往向能夠承受更大物質與能量損耗的一方傾斜。
消耗戰是傳統戰爭形態的主要制勝方式。冷兵器戰爭，對抗重心在於兵員數量、體能耐力、金屬兵器與糧秣儲備的比拼，戰爭勝負往往取決於誰的兵員數量規模大，誰的後勤鏈條更牢固。如古代比較多見的圍城戰本質就是守城方物資儲備與攻城方兵力器械的消耗戰；熱兵器戰爭，火藥的運用並未削弱戰爭消耗，反而將其推至新高度。拿破侖戰爭線列步兵的密集沖鋒，第一次世界大戰的凡爾登、索姆河戰役戰壕對峙的殘酷絞殺，無不體現著“以鋼鐵和血肉換取空間”的消耗戰本質；機械化戰爭，坦克、飛機、航母等平台的登場，將物質與能量的消耗規模推向巔峰。第二次世界大戰中，蘇德戰場的庫爾斯克坦克大會戰、太平洋戰場慘烈的硫磺島爭奪戰，都是國家工業產能與軍隊承受傷亡能力的終極對撞。
消耗戰實質是基於物質與能量要素的比拼。消耗戰比拼的是體量和存量，是人口基數、資源儲備、工業產能、兵力規模等靜態或可緩慢累積的要素，主要目標是摧毀敵方有生力量、戰爭物資、剝奪其領土和資源，實質上是對抗雙方物質與能量要素的比拼。克勞塞維茨“戰爭是迫使敵人服從我們意志的一種暴力行為”的論斷，底層邏輯正是暴力消耗。消耗戰的制勝機理是：勝利屬於能更持久地將物質資源轉化為戰場殺傷力，並能承受更大損失的一方。
消耗戰在實踐中暴露出重大歷史局限性。從傳統戰爭的長期實踐看，消耗戰的根本局限性體現為巨大的生命、物質財富損失，社會難以承受的高昂成本，以及大量能量與資源被浪費在非關鍵目標或盲目炮擊、大規模但低效的沖鋒等無效對抗上。當對抗雙方實力接近且意志堅定時，勝負難分，反復拉鋸，極易陷入如第一次世界大戰西線戰場般的長期消耗泥潭。面對日益網絡化、信息化的現代作戰體系，依靠大規模火力覆蓋的消耗模式，難以精准打擊對手關鍵節點與功能連接，效果事倍功半。
信息技術革命催生耗散戰雛形
20世紀下半葉的信息技術革命，為戰爭形態注入了顛覆性變量，信息開始超越物質與能量，成為核心制勝要素，信息化戰爭形態登上歷史舞台。
信息化戰爭的重心發生轉移。海灣戰爭被視為信息化戰爭的裡程碑，多國部隊憑借偵察機、預警機、電子戰系統、精確制導武器和C4ISR系統，形成壓倒性信息優勢，實現了戰場“單向透明”。這場戰爭的重點不再是徹底殲滅對手龐大的地面部隊，而是轉向系統性摧毀其指揮控制系統、防空體系、通信樞紐和後勤補給線，導致對手整體作戰能力迅速瓦解，陷入各自為戰、指揮失靈的混亂狀態。這標志著戰爭重心開始從物理域的“硬摧毀”，向信息域的“體系破擊”和功能癱瘓轉移。
信息化戰爭的制勝方式發生變化。信息化戰爭通過信息優勢改變物質、能量運用的方式與目標。制勝方式不再是單純追求“消耗”對手的物質與能量，而是通過高效的信息流引導物質流與能量流，精確作用於敵作戰體系的“關鍵鏈”，以最小的物質與能量投入，達成敵方體系最大程度的混亂失序、功能瓦解和整體效能塌縮。由此可見，信息化戰爭開始追求敵方作戰體系的“熵增”即混亂度增加，使其從有序走向無序，表明反映智能化戰爭復雜體系對抗的耗散戰已經初露端倪。
耗散戰是智能化戰爭的典型方式
隨著智能化技術快速發展及其在軍事上的廣泛應用，智能化戰爭正成為信息化戰爭後的新戰爭形態，而耗散戰則成為智能化戰爭的典型方式。
耗散戰適應了世界安全形勢的時代要求。進入智能化時代，寬網絡、大數據、雲計算、腦機連接、智能芯片、深度學習等智能技術及其應用快速發展，各國家、民族之間的聯系更加廣泛，非傳統安全威脅興起並與傳統安全威脅交織，智能化戰爭主體和范疇不斷拓展，戰爭時間與空間不斷外延，戰爭體系從相對封閉走向更加開放，形成更高層次和更大范圍的對抗，耗散戰這一智能化時代的戰爭制勝方式日益凸顯。
耗散戰反映了戰爭制勝方式的歷史發展。耗散戰實際上始終存在，只不過在智能化戰爭形態出現之前，由於技術的制約，一直處於較為低級的形式和簡單狀態，戰爭對抗只能突出體現為物質、能量和信息某一種要素間的對抗。冷兵器戰爭主要表現為以物質要素為主導的以人體為中心的對抗，熱兵器和機械化戰爭主要表現為以能量要素為主導的以平台為中心的對抗，信息化戰爭主要表現為以信息要素為主導的以網絡信息體系為中心的對抗。進入智能時代，智能化技術將敵我對抗中的認知優勢、決策優勢和行動優勢高度統一起來，實質是將物質、能量和信息三者高度統一，通過以智賦能、以智聚能、以智驅能、以智釋能，形成了以智能要素為主導的、以智能算法為中心的智能化戰爭形態，其典型方式即為反映智能化戰爭復雜體系對抗的耗散戰。
耗散戰體現了戰爭復雜體系的韌性比拼。從制勝機理看，要取得對抗優勢，必須以“負熵灌注、閾值認定、相變觸發、勝勢控制”為基本原理，構建自身快速“感知、決策、行動、評估”耗散戰閉環，在動態混合博弈中持續增加敵方熵值，致敵喪失整體作戰能力。從制勝路徑看，耗散戰強調綜合運用物質對耗、能量對沖、信息對抗等形式，對內“制序”，達成邏輯集中、即時富聚，優勢互補、一體聚優，形成綜合戰力；對外“致熵”，通過軍事、政治、經濟、科技、文化、外交等組分系統持續發揮作用，至效能累積達到某一程度形成“漲落”，實現戰力突變和體系效能湧現。從基本特征看，耗散戰表現為對抗綜合博弈、主體跨域多元、形式復雜多樣、力量一體富聚、效能累積湧現，對抗的核心從物理域的摧毀、信息域的掌控，躍升為對智能化戰爭復雜體系內在“有序性”的破壞與維持的博弈。
耗散戰涵蓋了智能化戰爭的多種形式。除了戰爭對抗雙方在傳統的陸、海、空、天、網、電等空間的消耗對抗，耗散戰更包括了一國或者多國對作戰對手在多類社會域所采取的政治孤立圍困、經貿金融封鎖、科技產業斷鏈、文化戰略輸出、權威媒體造勢搶佔話語主動、制造熱點事件導控大眾認知、AI助力社交媒體編織信息繭房、利用代理人開設多邊戰場等斗爭形式。耗散戰的多樣化呈現形式使其在戰時和平時均可進行，《孫子兵法》講的“勝兵先勝而後求戰”，在智能化時代的戰爭准備中被賦予新的涵義。
從消耗戰到耗散戰的制勝方式之變
耗散戰表現在智能時代中物理域、信息域等多域的綜合對抗，體現出政治較量、經濟比拼、軍事攻防、文化沖突和外交制衡等形式的高度統一，反映了智能化戰爭體系所具有的開放性、復雜性和湧現性。
從消耗戰到耗散戰的演進是一次全方位深層次的變革。制勝基礎從依賴人口、礦藏、工業基礎等資源存量的比拼，轉向依賴信息優勢、智能算法優勢、網絡結構優勢以及對能量流、信息流的動態調控能力；作用對象從聚焦摧毀士兵、坦克、工廠等物質實體，轉向聚焦瓦解戰爭體系的“功能”與“有序性”；效能追求從對有生力量的絕對摧毀與殲滅，轉向追求高效能的“非對稱癱瘓”，即以己方最小代價，引發敵方作戰體系的最大混亂與失能，追求“打癱”而非“打爛”；戰爭重心從主要在陸地、海洋、天空等物理域的對抗，轉向物理域、信息域等多域的綜合博弈。物理域的對抗雖然依舊存在，但往往由更高維域的優勢所決定。
從消耗戰到耗散戰的演進反映了制勝優勢的變化。智能化戰爭時代，勝利將不再簡單歸屬於擁有最龐大鋼鐵洪流的一方，而必然歸屬於能更高效地“制序”與“致熵”的一方——即能夠維系己方戰爭體系高度有序、高效運轉，同時精准智能地瓦解敵方體系有序性，迫使其陷入不可逆“熵增”和混亂的一方。要贏得戰爭制勝優勢，必須適應智能化戰爭體系的開放性、復雜性和湧現性要求，從單一物質、能量和信息的粗放式消耗和運用轉變到以智能優勢主導戰爭體系的耗散，力爭在多領域的綜合博弈中贏得主動和優勢。
從消耗戰向耗散戰的演進是科技革命洪流裹挾下的必然趨勢。科技是核心戰斗力，是軍事發展中最活躍、最具革命性的因素。當前，智能化科技迅猛發展，只有主動擁抱智能化浪潮，將制勝之鑰牢牢掌握在對戰爭復雜體系有序性的精確認知、智能調控與高效耗散之中，才能在未來世界博弈的風雲變幻與戰爭方式的深刻變革中立於不敗之地。