Wars in different eras have different characteristics, and the “fog of war” that accompanies them is constantly changing. Often when people feel that they have basically seen the way to win through multi-faceted exploration, the next war presents new uncertainties. Local wars such as the Syrian War and the India-Azerbaijan conflict have demonstrated the multifaceted and complex nature of modern warfare from different perspectives. It can be seen that although traditional firepower warfare is still on the stage, the characteristics of intelligence have already emerged; although the combat type is still an offensive and defensive struggle, the combat guidance, environmental conditions, and specific methods of play have undergone profound changes. Wars are accelerating their evolution towards intelligence. The battlefield space has expanded from land, sea, air, space, electricity, and the Internet to space, polar regions, deep sea, and cognitive confrontations. The game competition has changed from military confrontation to multi-dimensional competitions such as politics, economy, science and technology, and public opinion. The participating forces have developed from the two warring parties to global attention and multi-dimensional intervention. Information intelligence has moved from auxiliary support to comprehensive dominance, full penetration, and full coverage. The combat unit has evolved from scale optimization to small, micro, and sophisticated, and the form is scattered and capable. Intelligence and hybrid have become basic trends. In the face of evolving wars and new uncertainties, we need to be sensitive to change and respond proactively, accumulate momentum and forge ahead in the midst of change, so as to achieve leadership and surpass others and seize the opportunity to win.
Enhance the hybrid nature of war based on the “pan-variability”. War is the continuation of politics and has never been a simple military confrontation. In the era of intelligence, visible struggles and invisible struggles coexist, battlefields with gunpowder smoke and silent battles coexist, and gray areas, hybrid warfare, and marginal conflicts coexist. In the face of fierce and complex competitive game situations, it is necessary to accelerate the construction of a hybrid warfare system with military as the cornerstone. First, enrich strategic options. Closely follow the characteristics of the times, strengthen the exploration of the characteristics and laws of non-military confrontation and the construction of power means, implement relevant preparations, and form comprehensive advantages. Secondly, enhance invisible strength. Attach importance to geopolitical, cultural, psychological and other aspects of research, and form an effective discourse system through think tank exchanges, academic promotion, cultural integration, legal construction, media propaganda and other means to influence the other party’s cognition in a silent way. Thirdly, unite the forces of peace. Take the construction of a united front in the new era as an important means of hybrid confrontation, unite all forces that can be united, and enhance international influence and appeal.
Enhance the flexibility of tactics based on the “smart change” of the battlefield. Looking at recent local wars and conflicts, due to factors such as the regional dimension and the strength of both sides, the traces of traditional warfare are still relatively obvious, but intelligent and unmanned warfare has irreversibly come to the fore. It can be foreseen that comprehensive intelligent warfare is not far away, the extension range of weapons and equipment will be farther and wider, the combat perspectives of the opposing sides will be larger and wider, and the degree of hinge fusion between the physical domain, network domain, and cognitive domain will be deeper. The battlefield with deep “smart change” calls for concepts and tactics that are adapted to it. We should accelerate the promotion of intelligent thinking, intelligent technology, and intelligent network aggregation and empowerment to form a flexible closed link with fast perception, fast decision-making, fast judgment, fast action, and fast feedback, based on “OODA” and the kill chain to beat the slow with the fast and change with change. Relying on intelligent computing power and intelligent algorithms, we design wars in advance, build various models, and innovate tactics and training methods in peacetime. In wartime, we analyze the battle situation in real time, keenly seize opportunities, and make precise decisions and actions. We use “military + technology”, “theory + experiment”, and “algorithm + tactics” to integrate the art of strategy with intelligent technology to achieve a combination of the strange and the orthodox, take the lead in rapid changes, and win by intelligence.
Enhance the plasticity of forces based on the “micro-change” of units. One of the important characteristics of modern warfare is that large systems support elite combat, and combat units are becoming increasingly miniaturized, integrated, and modular. We must focus on the combat unit, the end of combat effectiveness, and forge a “sharp knife” and “sharp blade” that is small, fine, micro, and strong to adapt to intelligent warfare. On the one hand, strengthen its ability to integrate into the system and connect all parties, rely on ubiquitous access to information networks, and achieve decentralized combat and energy concentration through flexible matching and rapid reorganization; on the other hand, strengthen its independent decision-making and improvisation capabilities, improve robustness and self-recovery, and be able to survive, respond to emergencies, and fight in extreme situations. It is possible to explore the formation of a “micro-unit” concept force, implement a flexible organization, do not fix the number of personnel, and do not restrict the field. Advanced combat theories, new combat formations, and new weapons and equipment can be tested and verified in advance, so as to explore ways to achieve cloud combat, cloud joint, cloud energy gathering, and self-combination at the end of the strike chain.
Enhance strategic bottom line based on deterrence “evolution”. Deterrence has a long history like war. With the in-depth application of intelligent technology and weapons and equipment, the connotation and extension, force means, form and effect of deterrence are changing. Although traditional nuclear deterrence is still the cornerstone of bottom line, new deterrence capabilities have been quietly formed, requiring higher determination, strength, wisdom, and strategy. Focusing on the role of deterrence in blocking the enemy invisibly in peacetime, controlling the situation at the key in times of crisis, and winning the final victory in wartime, we should focus on strengthening the strong and making up for the weak, opening up new areas, and long-term strategy to maximize the strategic value of deterrence. First, we should give equal importance to conventional and unconventional, accelerate the development of new weapons and new forces, and achieve the predetermined deterrence intention through actual combat training and actual combat deployment, supplemented by the expression and transmission of strategic will. Secondly, we should continue to study new combat concepts and new combat theories, and promote the transformation of theories from “soft” to “hard” through academic exchanges, think tank collisions, and multi-track and multi-layer confrontations, and transform them into real deterrence. Thirdly, accelerate the transformation of science and technology into the military field, increase research efforts in cloud computing, blockchain, quantum technology, etc., and strive to form a potential deterrent to opponents.
●The application of artificial intelligence in the military field is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it greatly improves combat effectiveness, but on the other hand, it also requires great attention to the potential weaknesses and loopholes of artificial intelligence.
●The use of intelligent weapons does not mean that the role of humans has declined, but rather that some of the functions of humans have been transferred and materialized into weapons. Weapons extend the human body and brain, and stimulate human creativity and initiative.
Accelerating the development of military intelligence is a strategic task proposed in the report of the 19th CPC National Congress. It is a powerful tool to promote the modernization of national defense and the army and realize the party’s goal of strengthening the army in the new era. It is also a major measure to aim at the future war situation and seize strategic opportunities. When conducting research on intelligent warfare, we should adhere to dialectical thinking, prevent research from “deviating from reality to virtuality”, “generalizing from a single case”, and “focusing on technology rather than theory”. Only by scientifically analyzing the characteristics and laws of intelligent warfare can we truly promote in-depth and practical research.
To prevent “decoupling from reality and turning to virtuality”, we need to use scientific methodology and epistemology to analyze the problem
Intelligent warfare is a highly informationized war conducted in the physical and cognitive domains through the extensive use of intelligent weapons and equipment and the corresponding combat styles and methods. It is essentially not out of the scope of informationized warfare. The trend of unmanned warfare in recent local wars only has some characteristics of intelligent warfare, and is far from being an intelligent war in the true sense. At present, there is a wave of research on artificial intelligence in all walks of life, but to some extent, there is also a phenomenon of exaggeration and exaggeration. Some people also believe that intelligent warfare will give rise to geopolitical changes, and the traditional physical space control will be replaced by “intelligence control” with artificial intelligence as the core. This view inevitably has a tendency to virtualize cognition. To this end, intelligent warfare should be rationally studied and understood using scientific methodology and epistemology.
System theory perspective. Intelligent warfare is an advanced stage of information warfare, and is essentially still a system confrontation based on information systems. Whether it is human-machine collaborative operations, real-time perception of the entire battlefield, or brain-machine integrated decision-making, the characteristics it exhibits are all conscious behaviors of the various elements of the military system with “winning the war” as the ultimate goal. The understanding of military intelligence cannot stop at “technology-only theory” and “weapon-only theory”, but should focus on the mutual connection and action characteristics between the various elements of the military system, and explore its triggering mechanism, internal laws and implementation path.
Global thinking. Qian Xuesen believes that war is an organic whole composed of many parts and cannot be separated. In all human social practices, there is no activity that emphasizes the global concept and the overall concept more than directing war, and emphasizes starting from the overall situation, using all forces rationally, and ultimately achieving the overall final effect. This is true for directing war and studying war. Intelligent warfare not only refers to the intelligence of weapons and equipment, but also includes a series of intelligence such as intelligence analysis, command and control, military training, and logistics support. Only by conducting all-round research and thinking on the relevant elements can we have a global understanding of intelligent warfare. Global thinking also requires us to consider military intelligence in the context of achieving the Party’s goal of strengthening the military in the new era and the overall national strategy, and to grasp the dialectical relationship between short-term and long-term, key and urgent needs, and actual military needs and overall military modernization.
Engineering design. To win future wars, we must have the ability to design future wars. We should use engineering thinking to classify and plan the operational concepts, operational styles, and force use of future intelligent warfare, and put forward practical military needs, phased development goals, and methods based on the current development stage of our army and targeting powerful enemies. We can follow the idea of ”proposing theories – developing concepts – experimental simulations – actual military exercises” to promote innovative breakthroughs in military theories based on intelligent warfare, incorporate them into operational regulations, and integrate them into actual combat training.
Avoid generalizing from a single example, and grasp the opposites of contradictions with the unity of opposites thinking
The ancients said: “The way to win or lose, to be safe or dangerous, is the way.” The “way” here includes not only the fundamental view of war, but also the speculative understanding of the laws of winning war. Intelligent warfare research should go beyond the limitations of one-sided descriptions such as “algorithmic warfare”, “unmanned warfare” and “self-adaptation”, and use dialectical thinking to fully understand and grasp the relationship between the various elements of future wars.
The relationship between people and weapons. With the widespread use of drones, unmanned combat vehicles, unmanned submarines, etc. in the military, “war between people” will be largely replaced by “war between machines”. The realization of combat means such as autonomous coordination and autonomous decision-making has reshaped the combat process, and the combat style with unmanned operations as a prominent feature has rewritten the rules of the battlefield. Despite this, the decisive role of people in war has not changed, but the way they act is significantly different from before. As Engels said, “It is people, not guns, who win the battle… Guns will not move by themselves, and they need a brave heart and a strong hand to use them.” Intelligent weapons undoubtedly play an important role in war, but the subject of war is still people, and people are always the most active factor in war. The use of intelligent weapons does not mean that the role of humans has declined, but rather that some of the functions of humans have been transferred and materialized into weapons. Weapons extend the human body and brain, and stimulate human creativity and initiative. Intelligent weapons cannot replace the important role of fighting spirit. The superposition of indestructible political beliefs, overwhelming heroism, the bloody spirit of daring to fight and win, as well as superb strategies and flexible strategies and tactics, these dynamic factors make it possible to win when the enemy and our strength are equal, and to have the possibility of defeating the strong with the weak when we are at a disadvantage.
The relationship between offense and defense. The application of artificial intelligence in the military field is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it greatly improves combat effectiveness, but on the other hand, it is also necessary to pay great attention to the potential weaknesses and loopholes of artificial intelligence. Intelligent warfare mainly relies on powerful algorithms and interconnected networks. Once they are attacked, fatal errors occur, or they are reversely controlled, the advantage may turn into a disadvantage. The U.S. Department of Defense has now established a special agency to assess the potential risks of military intelligence and countermeasures. While promoting military intelligence, we should pay special attention to strengthening information protection and risk management, and simultaneously develop “anti-artificial intelligence technology” to establish a two-way advantage of both offense and defense.
The relationship between inheritance and innovation. Artificial intelligence has promoted major changes in the war situation, but it has not changed the general sense of the war guidance rules and war winning mechanism. No matter how the future war is fought, we must not abandon or deviate from the precious war experience and theoretical guidance accumulated by our army in long-term practice. We must still adhere to the principle of “you fight yours, I fight mine”, uphold the principle of asymmetric strategic checks and balances, and attach importance to giving full play to people’s subjective initiative. On the other hand, we must follow the general trend of military reform, keep a close eye on the forefront of war development, promote military innovation with a sense of urgency and accelerate the application and transformation of results.
To prevent “focusing on technology and neglecting science”, it is necessary to promote technological and theoretical innovation by integrating science and technology.
An advanced army needs advanced military theory to guide it. The emergence of intelligent warfare is first of all due to the promotion of the new scientific and technological revolution, but it is inseparable from the scientific guidance of advanced military theory, especially Marxist military theory. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to comprehensively promote the modernization of military theory, which is an inevitable requirement for realizing the party’s goal of strengthening the army in the new era, and is also the meaning of intelligent warfare research. To this end, we must conscientiously implement the development idea of integrating theory and technology, and promote the simultaneous innovation of technology and theory in deepening problem research.
Conceptual integration. Modern military theories are increasingly characterized by actual combat-driven, interdisciplinary, and systemic support. To promote the integration of science and technology, we must first break through the barriers of concepts and ideas. We should adhere to the complex research approach of overall planning, system design, and system integration, based on the evolution of war forms and the actual national and military conditions and development stages, and coordinate the promotion of technological breakthroughs, concept development, tactics innovation, combat power generation and other theoretical innovations to provide scientific guidance and theoretical support for winning future wars. We should strengthen research on the winning mechanism, combat guidance, and combat style of intelligent warfare, and conduct in-depth research on the military organization form caused by intelligent warfare, especially the series of changes in organizational system, scale structure, combat organization, tactical principles, combat support, and force application, so as to make ideological and theoretical preparations for a new round of military reforms.
Integration of disciplines. Intelligent warfare research not only involves the application of artificial intelligence in the military field, but also involves multiple fields such as algorithms and materials, and multiple disciplines such as physics, chemistry, electronics, and biology, and involves a wide range of fields such as war ethics and international law. In order to achieve the integration of science and technology, technical workers are required to break away from the shackles of pure engineering thinking, establish strategic thinking and global awareness, master scientific methodology and epistemology, and use dialectical thinking to lead technology research and development. Theoretical researchers should break the boundaries of disciplines, step out of the small circle of pure academic research, actively promote the interaction between scientific research institutions and colleges, troops, and technology research and development departments, strive to achieve original results in the basic field of artificial intelligence, and enrich the theory of intelligent warfare. Make good use of data, focus on actual combat, adhere to the “three aspects”, and effectively play the leading and guiding role of theory on technology.
It is easy to break the “fog” of the battlefield, but it is difficult to break the “obsession” in your heart——
Since ancient times, achieving surprise through combat deception has been an important way to win on the battlefield. Entering the era of intelligence, the in-depth application of artificial intelligence technology has not only clearly dispelled the original war “fog”, but also created a large amount of new war “fog”. If we only rely on improving deception techniques and means, and simply superimposing and strengthening the traditional deception paradigm, it will become increasingly difficult to achieve the deception goal. From “smart deception” to “smart victory”, there is an urgent need for an overall transformation of the objects of deception, means of deception, methods of deception, and focus of deception, so as to form a new deception paradigm that meets the requirements of the intelligent era.
The target of deception has shifted from humans to human-machine hybrid agents
Clausewitz believed that three-quarters of the factors on which war is based are more or less surrounded by the “fog” of uncertainty. Combat deception is essentially the use of uncertainty in war. The more “fog” there is in war, the more room there is for maneuvering. Traditional combat deception is carried out around the opponent’s decision-making level, and people are the only target of deception. However, with the increasingly prominent role of intelligent intelligence analysis and auxiliary decision-making systems in command activities, the use of deception to achieve strategic, campaign, and tactical surprises faces major challenges. How to deceive human-machine hybrid intelligent entities composed of humans and intelligent systems has become an important factor that needs to be considered when planning and implementing deception in the intelligent era. The competition surrounding intelligent deception and anti-deception is becoming increasingly fierce.
There is a world of difference between deceiving people and deceiving intelligent systems. In the past, the “calculations” that deceived people may be exposed when facing the “calculations” of intelligent systems. Intelligent systems can efficiently integrate and process massive amounts of sensor data and Internet open source information, making a qualitative leap in the speed, depth, breadth and accuracy of battlefield situation perception, realizing a profound transformation from “sensing” to “knowing”, from “state” to “momentum”, and playing an important role in dispelling the “fog” of war. For example, on the battlefield, although both sides try to hide the truth and cover up their intentions in various ways, they still cannot escape the “eyes” of the intelligent system: the tracks left by carefully disguised tanks and armored vehicles, after being detected by the opponent’s satellites, drones, etc., will also reveal their specific locations under the analysis of the intelligent system.
On the contrary, it is very easy to deceive intelligent systems with methods that target them, but it may not be able to deceive people. A foreign research team found that by changing a few key pixels in a picture of a cat, the intelligent system can identify the cat as a dog, while the human eye will not make any recognition errors due to this change. Similar incidents are common. Some studies have pointed out that sticking a piece of paper with a special pattern on a person’s forehead can deceive the strongest facial recognition system, and this method is highly portable and can deceive other facial recognition algorithms with a slight change.
It can be seen that deceiving people and deceiving intelligent systems are two different “deception methods”. After the deep application of artificial intelligence in the field of intelligence analysis and auxiliary decision-making, from the formulation of strategic deception plans to the design of battlefield camouflage patterns, how to deceive both the human brain and the computer and keep the human-machine hybrid intelligent body “in the dark” will be an important issue that needs to be focused on and solved in order to win the initiative in war.
The fraudulent methods have shifted from being mainly human-based to a combination of human and machine.
The organization and implementation of traditional combat deception is mainly manual, especially large-scale strategic deception, which requires a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. For example, in World War II, the Allies formulated a series of deception plans to ensure the success of the Normandy landing: setting up a fake radio network and a simulated landing fleet, and imagining that the US 1st Army Group with 50 divisions and 1 million people was actively preparing to cross the channel and land in the direction of Calais; using the air force to bomb Calais and Normandy, but the former was bombed more than 1 times more than the latter, etc. The application of artificial intelligence in deception can fundamentally change this situation. With humans as the main guide and intelligent means as the auxiliary, it can quickly generate massive amounts of false information, confusing the real with the fake, and create a thicker war “fog” for the opponent.
The use of intelligent means can improve the quality of deception. On the one hand, intelligent decision-making aids can be used to formulate deception plans, optimize the design of deception forces, deception deployment, deception processes, etc., to achieve systematic deception with the best overall effect; on the other hand, intelligent intelligence analysis systems can be used to pre-test the deception effect, “using one’s own spear to attack one’s own shield”, find out the loopholes and contradictions in the plan, and then improve the deception plan to make it logically self-consistent and seamless.
The use of intelligent means can expand the scale of deception. The increasingly mature deep fake technology can synthesize realistic fake pictures, handwriting, audio, video, etc. in large quantities, and has broad application prospects in strategic, campaign, and tactical deception. For example, in strategic campaign deception, corresponding technical means can be used to confuse opponents by forging fake radio stations and fake commanders, and even to fake an active command post in a certain battle direction; in tactical deception, battlefield camouflage can be used to attach special patterns to high-value equipment to make the opponent’s intelligent system recognize it incorrectly.
The use of intelligent means can reduce the cost of deception. With the support of technologies such as virtual reality and deep fakes, unexpected deception effects can often be achieved with the help of synthetic optics, acoustics and other means, and they are low-cost and low-investment, which is more cost-effective than traditional strategic deception methods. For example, setting up false targets such as bait unmanned combat platforms, using electronic feints and electronic camouflage to send false signals can effectively restrain the opponent’s power, produce high returns at low cost, and thus gain the upper hand.
The use of intelligent means can optimize the accuracy of deception. Traditional combat deception is usually stereotyped, with prominent characteristics of broadcast, extensive, and generalized. For this reason, in the era of intelligence, we should focus on collecting data on opponent decision makers in peacetime and use big data for precise analysis to “know the enemy” more deeply and specifically. On this basis, deep fake technology can be used in wartime to customize the content of deception, realizing precise deception from targeting groups to targeting individuals.
The method of deception has shifted from mainly deceiving to mainly confusing and seducing.
“Playing cards” and “playing chess” are two game modes with completely different battlefield transparency. In the “playing cards” mode, both sides only know the cards that the opponent has played, but do not know the cards in the opponent’s hand, let alone what cards the opponent will play next; while in the “playing chess” mode, the deployment of both sides’ forces on the chessboard is completely transparent, but the opponent’s intentions and the next move are unknown. It is not difficult to see that from cold weapon wars, hot weapon wars, mechanized wars, informationized wars, and then to intelligent wars, the form of war confrontation is increasingly changing from the “playing cards” mode to the “playing chess” mode.
In a war of “playing cards”, blind deception is very useful. Through strict disguise and strict confidentiality, the opponent’s channels of information can be blocked as much as possible, making it impossible for the opponent to detect one’s own intentions and actions, thereby achieving surprise. In the past, when the means of obtaining information were limited and information on the battlefield situation was scarce, there were many examples of wars that used “hiding the truth” and “showing falsehood” to achieve surprise. However, at present, with the help of advanced reconnaissance technology, full-dimensional and full-spectrum reconnaissance has been realized, and the battlefield is becoming more and more transparent. Complete concealment without any revealing features is difficult to achieve. Once the concealment state is switched to the action state, the probability of being discovered by the opponent will be greatly increased. Blind deception can only become an auxiliary deception method.
In the war of “chess”, the following two deception methods are usually used: one is confusing deception, that is, using intelligent means to send a large amount of true and false mixed and difficult to identify information, increasing the ambiguity of information and the difficulty of analysis, making it difficult for the opponent to judge or misjudge. The second is inducement deception, that is, by sending high-definition misleading information, the opponent is led into a preset trap. The combination of these two methods and the cooperation of blinding deception together constitute a hybrid deception that is difficult for the opponent to guard against.
The focus of deception shifts from human perception to human cognition
As the main subject of war, people are important variables that influence the war situation, which implies uncertainty and uncontrollability. From the perspective of psychology, cognitive neurology and other aspects, the “black box” of the mind still cannot be revealed. Deception by deception targets people’s eyes and ears, taking advantage of human sensory weaknesses, while deception by deception and temptation directly targets people’s minds, taking advantage of human weaknesses.
From past cases, even with the most advanced intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance technology and the most intelligent analysis methods, it is impossible to make up for and overcome human weaknesses. In many cases, it is not that the intelligence department failed to recognize the opponent’s deception, but that the decision-makers are unwilling to believe the facts. On the eve of the Soviet-German War in World War II, although more and more evidence showed that Germany was planning to invade the Soviet Union, the Soviet decision-makers believed that the war would not come for the time being. Therefore, when the war broke out, the Soviet army was not well prepared for the response, and the initial defensive actions were very passive.
War practice shows that in the era of intelligence, even if the opponent has obvious military technology advantages and can achieve one-way transparency on the battlefield through advanced intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance technology, the enemy can still take advantage of the cognitive weaknesses of the opponent’s decision-making layer to implement counter-intuitive deception and cover up the true intentions and actions. This also shows that the focus and center of deception in the era of intelligence should not be entirely on how to deliberately cover up the traces of military actions, but should focus more on targeting the opponent’s decision-making layer and inducing it to make decisions and actions that the enemy wants to see.
Yuan Yi Zhao Di
(Author’s unit: Institute of War Studies, Academy of Military Science)
At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and military revolution is developing rapidly. Disruptive technologies represented by artificial intelligence are accelerating the evolution of war to intelligent warfare. Winning intelligent warfare has gradually become the focus of military competition among powerful countries. As a pre-practice of war, military training should take a new step towards intelligence in a timely manner, realize the transformation to “intelligence”, train soldiers with “intelligence”, continuously improve the scientific and technological level and “intelligence content” of military training, and help accelerate the generation of intelligent combat capabilities.
Keeping up with the changes in the war situation, upgrading the concept of intelligent training
With the acceleration of the intelligent era, high-tech has been widely used in the military field, which is causing major changes in the concept, elements and methods of winning wars. The size of the army and the number of equipment are no longer the key to winning a war. It is imperative to upgrade the war thinking and training concepts. We should follow the development trend of intelligence with a more proactive attitude and a more open vision, and advocate new thinking in intelligent military training.
Grasp the internal mechanism of intelligent victory. The winning mechanism is the manifestation of the internal laws of war. Driven by the intelligent revolution, driven by strategic competition, and guided by war practice, the advantages of information-generated intelligence and intelligence-enabled capabilities are becoming increasingly apparent, reflected in actuarial science, jointness, systems, and other aspects. To a certain extent, it can be said that the higher the “intelligence”, the higher the quality level of combat and training can be. Therefore, an army whose training thinking remains at the mechanized level will never be able to keep up with the pace of intelligent warfare no matter how it is trained. We should have a “brain storm” with the courage of self-revolution, upgrade the concept of intelligent warfare, strengthen the theoretical research of intelligent training, deal with the problems of mechanized, informationized, and intelligent warfare with the thinking of training troops with “intelligence”, organically connect training and fighting, design wars with advanced technology, and rehearse wars with intelligent means, so as to clear up the fog of intelligent warfare.
Establish the goal of “strengthening the strong”. At present, the military of developed countries is implementing a training transformation with an emphasis on intelligence, trying to further widen the gap in combat power with the military of other countries. Once the military gap is widened, it will be difficult to make up. If you can’t keep up, you may be completely controlled by others. Only by keeping a close eye on the opponent can you surpass the opponent. We must highlight the goal of “strengthening the strong” in military training, and improve the level of military intelligence and asymmetric combat capabilities in training.
Strengthen the goal positioning of science and technology empowerment. Science and technology are the core combat power. Driven by science and technology, the combat power form has leaped from mechanical energy type and information energy type to intelligent type. Traditional siege-style large-scale troop operations are gradually withdrawing from the historical stage, and cutting-edge competition in high-tech and emerging fields is becoming increasingly fierce. If military training does not improve its scientific and technological content, it will only be able to linger at a low level and it will be difficult to open the door to intelligent warfare. To this end, we should firmly establish the concept of winning through science and technology, firmly grasp scientific and technological innovation, the “life gate” and “key point” to winning future wars, greatly improve the scientific and technological content of military training, and increase the practical application of new technologies and new means such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data, so as to unveil the mystery of intelligent warfare and control the initiative in future wars.
Keep up with the changes in technological development and strengthen intelligent training conditions
Intelligent training conditions are the basic support for organizing and implementing intelligent military training, and are directly related to the quality and effectiveness of intelligent training. To build an intelligent training environment, we need to keep a close eye on the development of intelligent concepts, intelligent technology, and intelligent warfare, and continue to work hard in building a training environment, innovating training methods, and cultivating new talents.
Construct a realistic battlefield environment. Intelligent warfare has a wider space, a wider range of fields, and more diverse methods. The battlefield environment construction under the conditions of simple mechanization and informatization can no longer support the needs of intelligent training. We should highlight the elite confrontation, rapid confrontation, and joint confrontation under the support of intelligent conditions, fully tap the potential of existing training methods and training venues, strengthen the application of technologies such as big data analysis, smart wearable devices, and machine “deep learning”, and effectively integrate various fields such as land, sea, air, space, electricity, and the Internet. For example, use digital maps, virtual reality and other technologies to simulate and display intuitive three-dimensional terrain, weather and complex combat situations, and construct vivid and realistic intelligent actual combat scenes.
Develop advanced training methods. Advanced training methods are helpful to improve training effectiveness. Intelligent military training should grasp the key factor of intelligent “data-centricity” and transform the latest scientific and technological achievements into training conditions. We should focus on strengthening data linkage and integration, creating a “data pool” covering strategy, campaign, and tactics, and connecting command organizations to end-users; developing data intelligent analysis tools, integrating and mining combat data with the help of advanced technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence; developing intelligent training systems, increasing the construction of simulation training methods such as simulation, war game confrontation, network confrontation, and intelligent decision-making, and overall promoting the transformation and upgrading of military training methods to “technology +” and “intelligence +”.
Cultivate new military talents. No matter how the war situation evolves, people are always the real controllers and final decision-makers of war. The quality of military personnel’s intelligence level determines the quality and effect of intelligent training to a certain extent. To win the information-based local war with intelligent characteristics, we should accurately match future military needs, strengthen the intelligent training of traditional combat force talents, make good use of “technology +”, “maker +”, “think tank +” power resources, promote the integrated development of “commanders”, “combatants” and “scientists” and “technicians”, and forge a new type of professional and intelligent military talent group to achieve intelligent interaction between people and equipment, deep integration between people and systems, and extensive adaptation between people and the environment.
Strengthen support for intelligent equipment. At present, the world’s major military powers attach great importance to the development of intelligent equipment. New equipment such as unmanned “swarms” and unmanned submarines are emerging in an endless stream, supporting intelligent military training while constantly testing and improving them in training practice. To this end, we should make full use of the overall coordination mechanism of war construction, vigorously promote the “+ intelligence” of existing equipment and the “intelligent +” construction of a new generation of equipment, insist on researching, building, using and improving, and improve the intelligence level of weapons and equipment through breakthroughs in training practice. We should work on both ends to achieve a multiplier effect, shorten the timeline of weapons and equipment from “weak intelligence” to “strong intelligence” and then to “super intelligence”, and better support intelligent military training.
Keeping up with the changes in war practices, innovating intelligent training models
The combat style determines the training mode. After years of development, military intelligence has moved from theoretical exploration to battlefield practice. In recent local wars, intelligent warfare has begun to show its edge and has shown the potential to change the “rules of the game” of war. As the combat style changes, the training mode must also change and change proactively. We must keep a close eye on the characteristics of intelligent warfare, innovate intelligent military training models, and fully rehearse the next war in military training.
Highlight high-end warfare research and training. We should focus on cracking the essence of high-end warfare by strengthening the enemy, continue to deepen research on strengthening the enemy, and use the development of new combat concepts and training theories as a starting point to understand the development laws and winning mechanisms of high-end warfare. We should predict future wars and design combat styles from a high-end perspective, and pool wisdom and innovation to research unique, clever, and high-level strategies to defeat the enemy. We must emphasize key actions such as joint missile defense, target strategic campaign and tactical training to force strong organizations to defeat the strong with the weak, target practical training for asymmetric checks and balances to win decisive battles in high-end organizations, target extended training in new domains such as the far sea and far domain for all-domain confrontation organizations, seize high positions in future wars through innovative training, and develop combat capabilities that are “one step ahead in intelligence” and “one step ahead in skills” against powerful enemies.
Emphasize the training of new-type forces. The transformation of war from winning by force and equipment to winning by wisdom has made new-type combat forces a new growth pole of combat power. According to information, the US military plans to achieve intelligentization of 60% of ground combat platforms by 2030, and the Russian military expects that the proportion of intelligent weapons and equipment will exceed 30% by 2025. As the army has more and more new equipment with intelligent attributes, it should move away from the actual combat training path with new-type combat forces as the dominant element, highlight the formation and combat use of new-type combat forces, carry out training methods and tactics that are compatible with the new domain combat concept and winning mechanism, increase new types of training such as unmanned combat, promote the integration of new-type forces into the combat system, and make new-type combat power resources move and come alive.
Emphasize intelligent command training. No matter how the war situation evolves, command capability is always the key to winning the war. As the intelligence level of war continues to increase, planning and command based solely on experience and personal wisdom can no longer adapt to the ever-changing battlefield situation. Artificial intelligence decision-making training has become an inevitable trend to improve the efficiency of combat mission planning, combat planning, and command and control. We should focus on commanders and command organizations, which are the key to the system’s operations, seek breakthroughs in the scientific nature, accuracy, and timeliness of command planning, and rely on new technologies such as “big data” and “AI algorithms” and new methods such as “engineering” and “one network” to promote the upgrading of command planning from “human intelligence” training to “human intelligence + intelligence” training. We should judge the enemy’s situation, formulate plans, and determine actions through actuarial and detailed calculations, so as to achieve the goal of defeating the slow with the fast and getting the upper hand over the enemy.
Source: Liberation Army News Author: Yuan Yi, Xu Jinhua, Li Zhifei Editor-in-charge: Wang Feng 2020-12-01 10:xx:xx
introduction
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, while emphasizing the need to accelerate the modernization of national defense and the armed forces and achieve the unity of enriching the country and strengthening the military, pointed out the need to accelerate the integrated development of mechanization, informationization, and intelligence (hereinafter referred to as the “three modernizations”), thereby raising the requirements for the integrated development of the “three modernizations” to a strategic level. We must conscientiously implement the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, carry out scientific strategic positioning, strategic planning, and strategic deployment for the integrated development of the “three modernizations”, and vigorously promote the integrated development of the “three modernizations” to expand in depth and breadth. We must accurately grasp the essential connotation of the integrated development of the “three modernizations”.
The era background of the integrated development of the “three transformations”
The parallel advancement, mutual promotion and integrated development of the “three transformations” have profound historical inevitability and are the only way for our military to modernize national defense and the armed forces in the future.
The integrated development of the “three transformations” is in line with the concept of mechanization and informatization. Since the late 1990s, our army has promptly proposed to promote the integrated development of mechanization and informatization. At that time, the war situation was changing from mechanization to informatization. National defense and military construction must take the path of leapfrog development. There is no need to wait until the entire process of mechanization construction of the military of developed countries is completed before engaging in informatization. We should strive to promote the integrated development of mechanization and informatization. We must strive to leapfrog certain stages of mechanization development, and at the same time learn from the mistakes and lessons of mechanization and informatization construction of the military of developed countries, and take as few detours as possible. The experience and lessons learned from the integrated development of national defense and military mechanization and informatization provide valuable experience for how to coordinate the integrated development of the “three transformations” at this stage.
The integrated development of the “three transformations” reflects the reality of the current “multiple forms of warfare”. In today’s world, a new wave of military revolution characterized by military intelligence is sweeping across the world, and the armies of major countries in the world are striding towards the threshold of intelligence. However, due to the imbalance in the development of scientific and technological levels and military strength among countries in the world, several local wars and armed conflicts in the world have shown the characteristics of “multiple forms of warfare” of mechanization, informationization, and intelligence. In the Syrian War, low-end, cheap civilian pickup trucks danced with high-end, expensive stealth aircraft, crudely made homemade rockets and high-precision cruise missiles flew together, and the highly informationized and intelligent U.S. and Russian armies, the highly mechanized Syrian and Turkish armies, and the opposition with a very low mechanization level, jointly performed an alternative “hybrid war” on the Syrian battlefield, in which mechanized warfare, informationized warfare, and elementary intelligent warfare overlapped with each other.
The integrated development of the “three modernizations” is in line with the stage characteristics of the current national social and economic development. my country’s path to modernization is very different from that of Western developed countries. Western developed countries have a “serial” development process, with industrialization, urbanization, agricultural modernization, and informatization developing in sequence, and it took more than 200 years to develop to the current level. my country’s development must be a “parallel” process, with industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization developing in an overlapping manner. The national social and economic foundation is the basic support for national defense and military construction. It is precisely the “parallel” development characteristics of my country’s current social economy that determine that national defense and military construction must adopt the “three modernizations” integrated development mode.
The integrated development of the “three transformations” is adapted to the current level of development of mechanization, informatization and intelligence in the military. After long-term efforts, our military has basically achieved mechanization, and has made significant progress in informatization construction, but is also facing opportunities and challenges of intelligence. The special national and military conditions make it impossible and impossible for our military to copy the development path of the Western developed countries represented by the US military. “Step-by-step” development may lead to the loss of the historical opportunity of promoting intelligence to accelerate the completion of mechanization and informatization, and leading and promoting the development of mechanization and informatization to a higher stage.
The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that “we should accelerate the development of intelligent military and improve the joint combat capability and all-domain combat capability based on the network information system”, “basically realize mechanization by 2020, make significant progress in informatization construction, and greatly enhance strategic capabilities”, and “strive to basically realize the modernization of national defense and the army by 2035, and build the people’s army into a world-class army in an all-round way by the middle of this century.” On the eve of the August 1st Army Day this year, President Xi Jinping proposed the strategic idea of ”accelerating the integrated development of mechanization, informatization and intelligence” when presiding over the 22nd collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on strengthening national defense and military modernization. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee further emphasized and deployed this, and incorporated it into the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 2035 Vision Goals for implementation, marking that the requirements for the integrated development of the “three transformations” have been elevated to a strategic level and have become an important guiding ideology for leading national defense and military construction.
The essential connotation of the integrated development of the “three transformations”
The “integration” in the “three transformations” does not mean mixing, combining or compounding. The word “integration” in the physical sense means melting or melting into one; in the psychological sense, it means that after a certain collision or contact, different individuals or groups tend to merge into one in terms of cognition, emotion or attitude. The integrated development of the “three transformations” in national defense and military construction refers to the coordinated mutual tolerance, mutual penetration and mutual promotion of mechanization, informationization and intelligence, from “you are you and I am me” to “you have me and I have you”, and then to “you are me and I am you”, reaching the level of perfect integration and unity, and thus producing a superposition effect, aggregation effect and multiplication effect, and realizing a leap in the overall combat capability.
The basic laws and main characteristics of the integrated development of the “three transformations”. The main ones are: First, the “three transformations” are progressive and orderly dependent. From a chronological perspective, the “three transformations” did not originate at the same time. Without the previous “transformation” as a premise, foundation and input, there would be no occurrence and development of the latter “transformation”. The previous “transformation” provides an important material basis for the latter “transformation”. Second, the “three transformations” overlap and penetrate each other. Informatization is not the end of mechanization. There is still a certain degree of mechanization in the process of informatization. Intelligence is not the end of mechanization and informatization. There is still a certain degree of informatization and mechanization in the process of intelligence. Third, intelligence and informatization can enhance the efficiency of mechanization through virtual control. The “real” here mainly refers to the hardware represented by physical entities such as combat platforms and ammunition, and the “virtual” mainly refers to software with combat data, algorithms, etc. as the core. Mechanization is mainly based on hardware construction, while informatization and intelligence are mainly based on software construction. “Software defines everything”, and hardware is optimized, upgraded, empowered and made more efficient through software. With the in-depth development of the integration of the “three transformations”, the construction priority will be that load will surpass platform, software will surpass load, and algorithm will surpass software.
The internal mechanism and driving mechanism of the integrated development of the “three transformations”. The main ones are: First, the superposition of advantages. Practice has proved that no matter whether it is mechanization, informatization or intelligence, the supporting technology group of each “transformation” will give birth to new weapons and equipment, generate new combat forces, and ultimately form new combat capabilities with different combat mechanisms. These new combat capabilities and the original combat capabilities are combined with advantages to produce a system outflow effect and greatly enhance the overall combat capability of the army.
The second is upgrading and expansion. Informatization aggregates and upgrades mechanized combat systems into informationized combat systems through digital transformation and networking of various mechanized combat platforms, making a qualitative leap in combat effectiveness. Intelligence can also be integrated with mechanization and informatization through upgrading and expansion. On the one hand, intelligent technology is used to upgrade the “brain” of the combat platform – the control system, and promote the control mode of unmanned combat platforms such as drones, unmanned boats, and unmanned ground vehicles, in accordance with the human direct operation mode, human assistance mode, human authorization mode, fully autonomous mode, and machine adaptive mode. After some old combat platforms are upgraded through informatization and intelligent transformation, they can also realize remote control operation and cooperate with manned platforms. On the other hand, the use of intelligent technology to optimize and upgrade the informationized combat system has greatly enhanced its capabilities in information acquisition, transmission, processing, sharing, security and other aspects, and the system’s combat capability has been comprehensively improved again.
The third is to make up for shortcomings and replace them. From the history of military construction, in the process of deepening development of a certain “ization”, bottleneck problems that are difficult to solve by relying solely on its own technical system often appear, and other “ization” technical means and development ideas are urgently needed to find a new way to solve them. At present, machinery is becoming more and more sophisticated and complex, and the difficulty of design and control is increasing; informatization leads to “information explosion”, massive data is generated, rapidly diffused, true and false are mixed, and it is increasingly difficult to quickly transform into useful information. These problems are difficult to be effectively solved within the technical system of mechanization and informatization itself. To break through the bottleneck of mechanical control capabilities and information processing capabilities, the use of intelligent technical means is an important option. Conversely, the technological breakthroughs and applications produced by the previous “ization” may also offset the shortcomings of the latter “ization”. For example, the speed of hypersonic missiles can exceed the reaction capability of the informationized defense combat system and achieve rapid penetration; high-energy microwave weapons can directly destroy networks and electronic equipment, etc., which to a certain extent offset the opponent’s information advantage.
A strong military culture is the inner guarantee for the people’s army to be invincible, invincible, and continuously develop and grow. It is a fertile spiritual ground for nourishing officers and soldiers, and an important factor in improving the combat effectiveness of the army. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the need to “prosper and develop a strong military culture and strengthen the cultivation of fighting spirit.” In-depth study and implementation of Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts, for the people’s army, is to prosper and develop a strong military culture. Through the education and influence of culture, we can cultivate the fighting spirit and brave and tenacious fighting style of the officers and soldiers who dare to fight and win, and use advanced culture to sharpen the spirit of defeating the enemy, providing spiritual motivation for being able to fight and win wars, and truly make the culture of a strong army point to winning and winning. Win with service and win with support.
one
To comprehensively strengthen military training and preparations and improve the People’s Army’s ability to win, we must attach great importance to the valuable function of a strong military culture in educating people for war and assisting a strong military. Prosperity and development support the culture of a strong military that wins and wins. It is not only a historical inheritance, a need of the times, but also the call of the cause of strong military.
The basic direction of continuing our military’s cultural tradition. Culture is the root of a nation’s prosperity and an important support for a strong military. More than 80 years ago, Comrade Mao Zedong said at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art: “If we want to defeat the enemy, we must first rely on the army with guns in hand. But it is not enough to have this kind of army. We also need an army with culture. This is An army that is indispensable for uniting ourselves and defeating the enemy. “In the long-term practice of revolution, construction and reform, our army has used its blood and lives to forge the “cultural gene” of victory and the “cultural bloodline” of heroes, nourishing generations after generations. A generation of officers and soldiers. All the winning culture for victory contains a strong bloody gene and shows a clear direction of winning. In the new era and new journey, the key to extracting the essence and absorbing energy from our military’s cultural traditions is to polish the sharp knives and swords of the officers and soldiers’ fighting spirit, continue to enhance the officers and soldiers’ awareness of war, and constantly strengthen the joy of hearing war, bravery and tenacity, and The martial spirit of winning if you dare to fight.
An inevitable choice to adapt to the evolution of war patterns. The world’s new military revolution is accelerating the evolution of war toward information-based warfare with intelligent characteristics, showing characteristics such as informatization of technology, systematization of organization, and digitization of weapons and equipment. The evolution of war patterns will inevitably lead to the reshaping of military cultural patterns. From mechanized warfare to informatized and intelligent warfare, from “large corps” operations and “large depth” assaults, to “asymmetric operations”, “non-line operations”, “integrated joint operations”, and then to “multi-domain precision warfare” “Cognitive domain warfare” and the evolution of the mechanism for winning wars have promoted corresponding changes in the form of military culture. On the new journey, our military promotes the integrated development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligence. It must not only accelerate the iterative update of weapons and equipment, but also actively promote the transformation and development of military culture, shape and reflect the characteristics of the times in terms of military theory, strategy, tactics, and fighting spirit. Create a strong military culture in the new era that is compatible with the development of the times and in line with technological progress to support victory.
The essential requirement of prospering and developing a strong military culture. The fundamental function of a strong military culture is to serve as a military force for war, which determines that the fundamental purpose of building a strong military culture is to provide spiritual motivation for being able to fight and win wars. The culture of a strong military is extremely permeable and durable. The loyalty, quality and will to fight it contains forge the spirit of the people’s army and cultivate the invincible combat effectiveness of the people’s army. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Army has been reborn, transformed and reshaped. The entire military has taken the ability to fight and win wars as its fundamental focus, and has taken the prosperity and development of a strong military culture as a powerful measure to generate combat effectiveness. It is closely integrated with the generation of combat effectiveness. At the same time, it is closely integrated with the main responsibilities and main business of the army, constantly improving the contribution rate of a strong military culture to combat effectiveness, and fully demonstrating the combat function of a strong military culture in troop training and preparation.
two
To prosper and develop a strong military culture that supports victory, we must be guided by Xi Jinping’s Thought on Strengthening the Army, grasp the main thread, highlight the key points, and strive to cultivate a strong military cultural system with combat culture, joint culture, and military characteristic culture as the main content. .
Cultivate a fighting culture that can win battles. Combat culture reflects the inherent essence of a strong military culture and determines the value positioning and value orientation of a strong military culture. Combat culture is a bloody culture that has been tempered, washed, and accumulated through the practice of military struggle. It has profound cultural heritage, strong combat characteristics, and distinctive characteristics of the times. Its value functions are mainly manifested in strengthening war awareness, improving combat skills, and sharpening combat skills. Spirit is an important component of combat effectiveness, the main body of the cultural system of a strong military, and an important magic weapon for the people’s army to win. To cultivate a combat culture, efforts must be made to strengthen the responsibility of officers and soldiers to serve as soldiers in war, lead troops to fight, and train troops to fight. The fighting spirit of “one is not afraid of hardship, and the other is not afraid of death” and the fighting qualities of bravery, tenacity, and determination to win if they dare to fight, and effectively set the standard of combat effectiveness. As the basic focus and foothold for the prosperity and development of a strong military culture, it serves as the fundamental criterion for testing the quality and effectiveness of the construction of a strong military culture.
Cultivate a joint culture that unites to win. Modern warfare cannot be fought without alliances and cannot be won without alliances. The basic combat style is integrated joint operations. Joint culture is based on the sum of joint knowledge systems, values, ways of thinking and behavioral norms that are required to win modern wars. It widely penetrates into the joint combat system, force structure, behavioral norms and models. It is like an invisible hand, effectively promoting the joint combat system from “physical connection” to “spiritual connection”, from “heart to heart” to “heart to heart.” To cultivate a joint culture, we must rely on task traction and joint exercises and training to solidify the political soul of officers and soldiers to obey the party’s command, cultivate the operational concept of joint victory, improve the knowledge system of joint operations, temper the way of thinking of integrated linkage, and cultivate common emotions and values, strengthen and stabilize the collective psychological identity, and condense the unbreakable will to win.
Cultivate a rich and colorful military culture. One flower blooming alone is not spring, but a hundred flowers blooming together fills the garden. In military practice, our army has formed its own distinctive service and service cultures, including the Army’s “Armored Iron Style” culture, “Artillery God of War” culture, and “Army Aviation War Eagle” culture, the Navy’s “Deep Blue Culture”, and the Air Force’s “Sky” culture. The culture of “Eagle”, “Ladder to Heaven” and “Arrow of Heaven”, the Rocket Army’s “Sword Sharpening Culture” and “Lang Ying Culture”, etc. The magnificent flowers of military service culture not only constitute a unique spiritual symbol, but also become a “multiplier” to improve the combat effectiveness of the troops. Creating a service culture with distinctive characteristics and profound heritage is not inconsistent with cultivating a joint culture. The culture of the services and arms supports the joint culture, and the joint culture realizes the organic integration of the cultures of the services and arms. The deeper the roots of the distinctive cultures of the services and arms are, the stronger the combat nature and combat effectiveness of the joint culture will be. At the same time, it is necessary to vigorously carry out colorful military camp cultural activities, use characteristic culture to build the soul of the army, gather soldiers’ hearts, and improve morale, and strive to create a lively situation where everyone has a stage, and more effectively use culture to educate people, Use educated people and literary talents to fight for their role.
three
To prosper and develop a strong military culture in the new era, we must adhere to serving to win as the fundamental orientation, strengthen historical confidence, and continue to win the gene; persist in fighting for war and strengthen combat attributes; take multiple measures, integrate innovation, and create a military-minded and capable military culture. Create a strong atmosphere and effectively use a strong military culture to generate combat effectiveness.
Foster the winning genes of revolutionary soldiers in the new era. Culture is essentially a spiritual carrier. Over the course of more than 90 years of struggle, our army has forged a combat culture that dares to fight and must win, and has created unique advantages for defeating the enemy and winning the future. On the new journey, we must vigorously carry forward the glorious tradition of the People’s Army, publicize the typical deeds of advanced heroes and combat heroes, guide officers and soldiers to draw nourishment from the revolutionary spirit, draw fighting spirit from the glorious war history, and draw strength from combat honors, so that the people’s army can The winning gene is passed down from generation to generation. At present, the world’s major changes are accelerating. Changes in the world, the times, and history are unfolding in an unprecedented way. It is necessary to educate and guide the officers and soldiers not to be afraid of powerful enemies, to understand clearly that adhering to the party’s absolute leadership over the military is the fundamental guarantee for our army to win the war, to understand clearly that the overall power of the people’s war is the magic weapon for our army to defeat the enemy, and to combine the fighting spirit with the scientific spirit , continue the fine traditions of our army, and firmly establish the confidence and determination to win based on existing equipment.
Improve the combat index of building a strong military culture. President Xi pointed out: “We must combine the traditions and mission characteristics of each army, strengthen the construction of military culture, create a strong military culture, and cultivate the fearless heroism and brave and tenacious fighting style of the troops.” The fundamental direction of military cultural work must be reformed to support capabilities. To fight and win the battle. Deeply explore the revolutionary historical themes, highlight the creation of realistic military themes, and always shape people with a noble spirit and inspire people with excellent works. Regular arrangements are made for the literary and artistic light cavalry, field propaganda teams, and field photography teams to go to cold areas, go to the Gobi, go to plateaus, go to coastal defenses, go to border crossings, and join squads to prepare for military training and war, warm the hearts of soldiers, boost morale, and inspire fighting spirit. . We must insist on seeking combat effectiveness from culture, and promote the construction of a strong military culture to extend from the camp to the battlefield, and from peacetime to wartime. Organize wartime cultural work drills, explore the content, timing, methods and means of wartime cultural work, and provide important support for improving the combat effectiveness of the troops.
Enhance the military atmosphere and military atmosphere of the military camp. To build a strong military culture, an important task is to create an environment with a strong sense of war, so that officers and soldiers can be constantly influenced and subtly cultivate their will to fight and sharpen their fighting character. To create a strong atmosphere for military training and war, raise battle flags, shout battle slogans, and sing battle songs to strengthen the army, set up cultural light boxes, battle slogans, sculptures of heroes and models, etc., build cultural venues that reflect the military’s war history, battle examples, and revolutionary spirit, and continuously strengthen the officers and soldiers War awareness, combat readiness concepts, and fighting spirit. We should pay close attention to mass cultural activities, hold lectures on the culture of a strong army, organize forums on the culture of a strong army, organize officers and soldiers to tell battle stories and read books on combat culture, and carry out extensive assassination combat training and martial arts competitions to inspire officers and soldiers to dare to fight and fight well. . Innovate methods and methods, combine the elements of the times, science and technology with culture and art, and use technological means such as VR, AR, and MR to create battlefield cultural simulation rooms, etc., so that officers and soldiers can “immerse themselves” in the battlefield atmosphere and hone their winning capabilities.
(Author’s unit: Army Party Innovation Theory Research Center)
Digitalization, networking, and intelligence are the prominent features of the new round of scientific and technological revolution, and are also the core of the new generation of information technology. Digitalization lays the foundation for social informatization, and its development trend is the comprehensive dataization of society. Dataization emphasizes the collection, aggregation, analysis and application of data. Networking provides a physical carrier for information dissemination, and its development trend is the widespread adoption of information-physical systems (CPS). Information-physical systems will not only give birth to new industries, but will even reshape the existing industrial layout. Intelligence reflects the level and level of information application, and its development trend is the new generation of artificial intelligence. At present, the upsurge of the new generation of artificial intelligence has arrived.
In his important speech at the 2018 General Assembly of Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out: “The world is entering a period of economic development dominated by the information industry. We must seize the opportunity of the integrated development of digitalization, networking, and intelligence, and use informatization and intelligence as leverage to cultivate new momentum.” This important statement is an accurate grasp of the dominant role and development trend of information technology in today’s world, and an important deployment for using information technology to promote national innovation and development.
Human society, the physical world, and information space constitute the three elements of today’s world. The connection and interaction between these three worlds determine the characteristics and degree of social informatization. The basic way to perceive human society and the physical world is digitization, the basic way to connect human society and the physical world (through information space) is networking, and the way information space acts on the physical world and human society is intelligence. Digitalization, networking, and intelligence are the prominent features of the new round of scientific and technological revolution, and are also the focus of the new generation of information technology. Digitalization lays the foundation for social informatization, and its development trend is the comprehensive dataization of society; networking provides a physical carrier for information dissemination, and its development trend is the widespread adoption of information-physical systems (CPS); intelligence reflects the level and level of information application, and its development trend is the new generation of artificial intelligence.
Digitalization: From computerization to dataization
Digitalization refers to the technical approach of storing, transmitting, processing, handling and applying information carriers (text, pictures, images, signals, etc.) in digital coding form (usually binary). Digitalization itself refers to the way of representing and processing information, but in essence it emphasizes the computerization and automation of information application. In addition to digitalization, dataization (data is an information carrier in coded form, and all data is digital) emphasizes the collection, aggregation, analysis and application of data, and strengthens the production factors and productivity functions of data. Digitalization is developing from computerization to dataization, which is one of the most important trends in the current social informatization.
The core connotation of dataization is the deep understanding and deep use of big data generated by the integration of information technology revolution and economic and social activities. Big data is a fragmentary record of social economy, real world, management decision-making, etc., containing fragmented information. With the breakthrough of analytical technology and computing technology, it is possible to interpret this fragmented information, which makes big data a new high-tech, a new scientific research paradigm, and a new way of decision-making. Big data has profoundly changed the way people think and live and work, bringing unprecedented opportunities to management innovation, industrial development, scientific discovery and other fields.
The value generation of big data has its inherent laws (obeying the big data principle). Only by deeply understanding and mastering these laws can we improve the awareness and ability to consciously and scientifically use big data (big data thinking). The value of big data is mainly realized through big data technology. Big data technology is an extension and development of statistical methods, computer technology, and artificial intelligence technology. It is a developing technology. The current hot directions include: blockchain technology, interoperability technology, storage and management technology of integrated storage and computing, big data operating system, big data programming language and execution environment, big data foundation and core algorithm, big data machine learning technology, big data intelligent technology, visualization and human-computer interaction analysis technology, authenticity judgment and security technology, etc. The development of big data technology depends on the solution of some major basic problems, including: the statistical basis and computational theoretical basis of big data, the hardware and software basis and computational methods of big data computing, and the authenticity judgment of big data inference.
Implementing the national big data strategy is an important way to promote the digital revolution. Since my country proposed the implementation of the national big data strategy in 2015, the pattern of rapid development of big data in my country has been initially formed, but there are also some problems that need to be solved: data openness and sharing are lagging, and the dividends of data resources have not been fully released; the profit model of enterprises is unstable, and the integrity of the industrial chain is insufficient; core technologies have not yet made major breakthroughs, and the technical level of related applications is not high; there are still loopholes in security management and privacy protection, and the construction of relevant systems is still not perfect; etc. At present, effective measures should be taken to solve the bottleneck problems that restrict the development of big data in my country.
Networking: From the Internet to Cyber-Physical Systems
As an information-based public infrastructure, the Internet has become the main way for people to obtain, exchange and consume information. However, the Internet only focuses on the interconnection between people and the resulting interconnection between services.
The Internet of Things is a natural extension and expansion of the Internet. It connects various objects to the Internet through information technology, helping people obtain relevant information about the objects they need. The Internet of Things uses information collection equipment such as radio frequency identification, sensors, infrared sensors, video surveillance, global positioning systems, laser scanners, etc., and connects objects to the Internet through wireless sensor networks and wireless communication networks, so as to achieve real-time information exchange and communication between objects and between people and objects, so as to achieve the purpose of intelligent identification, positioning, tracking, monitoring and management. The Internet realizes the interconnection between people and services, while the Internet of Things realizes the cross-connection between people, objects and services. The core technologies of the Internet of Things include: sensor technology, wireless transmission technology, massive data analysis and processing technology, upper-level business solutions, security technology, etc. The development of the Internet of Things will go through a relatively long period, but it may take the lead in achieving breakthroughs in applications in specific fields. Internet of Vehicles, Industrial Internet, unmanned systems, smart homes, etc. are all areas where the Internet of Things is currently showing its prowess.
The Internet of Things mainly solves the problem of people’s perception of the physical world, while to solve the problem of manipulating physical objects, it is necessary to further develop the cyber-physical system (CPS). The cyber-physical system is a multi-dimensional complex system that integrates computing, networking and physical environment. It realizes real-time perception, dynamic control and information services of large engineering systems through the organic integration and deep collaboration of 3C (Computer, Communication, Control) technologies. Through the human-computer interaction interface, the cyber-physical system realizes the interaction between the computing process and the physical process, and uses the networked space to control a physical entity in a remote, reliable, real-time, secure and collaborative manner. In essence, the cyber-physical system is a network with control attributes.
Unlike public infrastructure that provides information interaction and application, the focus of the development of cyber-physical systems is on the research and development of networked physical equipment systems that deeply integrate perception, computing, communication and control capabilities. From an industrial perspective, cyber-physical systems cover a range of applications from smart home networks to industrial control systems and even intelligent transportation systems, which are national and even world-class applications. More importantly, this coverage is not just about simply connecting existing devices together, but will give rise to a large number of devices with computing, communication, control, collaboration and autonomous capabilities. The next generation of industry will be built on cyber-physical systems. With the development and popularization of cyber-physical system technology, physical devices that use computers and networks to achieve functional expansion will be ubiquitous, and will promote the upgrading of industrial products and technologies, greatly improving the competitiveness of major industrial fields such as automobiles, aerospace, national defense, industrial automation, health and medical equipment, and major infrastructure. Cyber-physical systems will not only give birth to new industries, but will even reshape the existing industrial layout.
Intelligence: From Expert Systems to Meta-Learning
Intelligence reflects the quality attributes of information products. When we say that an information product is intelligent, we usually mean that the product can accomplish things that only intelligent people can accomplish, or has reached a level that only humans can achieve. Intelligence generally includes perception, memory and thinking, learning and adaptive, behavioral decision-making, etc. Therefore, intelligence can also be generally defined as: enabling an object to have sensitive and accurate perception functions, correct thinking and judgment functions, adaptive learning functions, and effective execution functions.
Intelligence is the eternal pursuit of the development of information technology, and the main way to achieve this pursuit is to develop artificial intelligence technology. In the more than 60 years since the birth of artificial intelligence technology, although it has experienced three ups and two downs, it has still made great achievements. From 1959 to 1976, it was a stage based on artificial representation of knowledge and symbol processing, which produced expert systems with important application value in some fields; from 1976 to 2007, it was a stage based on statistical learning and knowledge self-representation, which produced various neural network systems; in recent years, research based on environmental adaptation, self-game, self-evolution, and self-learning is forming a new stage of artificial intelligence development – meta-learning or methodological learning stage, which constitutes a new generation of artificial intelligence. The new generation of artificial intelligence mainly includes big data intelligence, group intelligence, cross-media intelligence, human-machine hybrid enhanced intelligence, and brain-like intelligence.
Deep learning is an outstanding representative of the new generation of artificial intelligence technology. Due to its performance that surpasses that of humans in many fields such as face recognition, machine translation, and chess competitions, deep learning has almost become synonymous with artificial intelligence today. However, deep learning has major challenges in terms of topological design, effect prediction, and mechanism explanation. There is no solid mathematical theory to support the solution of these three major problems. Solving these problems is the main focus of future research on deep learning. In addition, deep learning is a typical big data intelligence, and its applicability is based on the existence of a large number of training samples. Small sample learning will be the development trend of deep learning.
Meta-learning is expected to become the next breakthrough in the development of artificial intelligence. Recently developed meta-learning methods such as learning to learn, learning to teach, learning to optimize, learning to search, and learning to reason, as well as the outstanding performance of “AlphaGo Zero” in Go, have demonstrated the attractive prospects of such new technologies. However, meta-learning research is only just beginning, and its development still faces a series of challenges.
The new generation of artificial intelligence is already here, and the foreseeable development trend is based on big data, centered on model and algorithm innovation, and supported by powerful computing power. The breakthrough of the new generation of artificial intelligence technology depends on the comprehensive development of other types of information technology, as well as the substantial progress and development of brain science and cognitive science. (Xu Zongben, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Xi’an Jiaotong University)
Intelligent victory is a distinct feature of the times in the “quality” of new quality combat power. With the development of science and technology and the evolution of war forms, intelligent joint operations based on “energy mobility and information interconnection”, supported by “network communication and distributed cloud”, with “data computing and model algorithms” as the core, and “cross-domain command and multi-domain operations” as the path, gradually outline a vivid scene of the application of new quality combat power. The intelligent trend of new quality combat power will trigger a chain breakthrough in the military field and become a key variable in changing the rules of war. To enhance new quality combat power and win future wars, we should “knock on the door” of intelligent operations and explore methods and paths to iteratively generate new quality combat power of intelligent joint operations.
Analyzing the characteristics of new quality combat power based on intelligent winning mechanism
Throughout human history, the mechanisms for winning wars have all left clear marks of the era of technological development. To understand and grasp the new quality of combat power of intelligent joint combat, we should keep up with the development of war forms and analyze its key characteristics.
The battlefield environment is distributed in multiple domains. The battlefield environment is the space for the use of new-quality combat power and the space-time framework for understanding the new-quality combat power of intelligent joint operations. Since the emergence of war, the space-time of war has undergone multiple leaps, including plane, three-dimensional, and invisible space. At present, combat confrontation is unfolding in a fusion space with dimensions including physical domain, information domain, and even biological domain and social domain. In intelligent joint operations, the status of virtual space rises and gradually integrates deeply with physical space. Invisible confrontations such as network, intelligence, and psychology constitute a new space. Establishing a virtual battlefield, realizing virtual-real interaction, and achieving virtual-real control have become new driving forces for joint operations.
Multiple integration of constituent elements. Constituent elements are the inherent characteristics of new-quality combat power and the basic elements of new-quality combat power of intelligent joint operations. Mechanized joint operations are platform-centric operations, with firepower and mobility as the dominant forces. The combination of people, mechanized equipment, and tactics is more of a superposition and accumulation, with the goal of carrying energy with objects and releasing energy with objects. Informatized joint operations are network-centric operations, with information power as the dominant force. The combination of network information, people, informationized equipment, and tactics is more of a linkage and interconnection, with the goal of gathering energy with the network and releasing energy with the network. The dominant force of intelligent joint operations is intelligence. The combat elements of cloud, network, people, equipment, and tactics are integrated through models, algorithms, and data to form a complex system with agile reorganization and autonomous adaptation, realizing the control of energy with intelligence and the control of energy with intelligence.
The mode of action is multi-functional and parallel. The mode of action is the energy release path of the new quality combat power and the key to analyzing the new quality combat power of intelligent joint operations. The use of system architecture and distributed coordination in joint operations has made distributed parallelism emerge in war. In joint operations, the speed of information sharing, mobile response, firepower strikes, and command and control decision-making has been greatly accelerated, and the effectiveness of different combat units can act in parallel. In recent local conflicts and military operations, the granularity of command and operations has become smaller and smaller, but the control range, combat effectiveness, and confrontation intensity have increased exponentially, which is the best example of multi-functional parallelism.
Evaluation and feedback from multiple perspectives. Evaluation and feedback is the iterative starting point for the evolution and improvement of new-quality combat power, the dynamic basis for promoting the development of new-quality combat power in intelligent joint combat, and an easily overlooked link in the generation of new-quality combat power. The high-precision and fast-paced characteristics of intelligent joint combat make multi-perspective evaluation and feedback a rigid need. Among them, the cloud-network-group-end link perspective can review the operating status of cloud platforms, networks, “swarms”, terminals, etc.; the manned and unmanned interaction perspective can judge the technical mechanisms of different interaction stages; the multi-domain aggregated space-time perspective is conducive to comprehensive evaluation and understanding of battlefield situations.
Reconstructing the new quality combat power generation model with system concept
At present, technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing are constantly driving the transformation of the basic elements of joint operations. There is a new trend of development from separation to integration, from single equipment to clusters, and from physical to virtual-real interaction between functional modules such as intelligence, command and control, firepower, and network and electronics. The traditional combat capability generation model is no longer able to adapt to the development, and a new quality combat capability generation model should be reconstructed with new thinking.
Create an intelligent warfare system. Outdated military needs will not produce the best system for future warfare. Concept scenarios should be derived from intelligent technology, linking interactive intelligent components with existing personnel, equipment, tactics, etc. to form an intelligent combat system that includes perception, decision-making, offense and defense, support, and virtual-real interaction. An unchanging combat system will also be difficult to adapt to the rapid evolution of the war situation. An innovation chain of rapid iteration and leapfrogging should be formed to run through the entire process of generating new quality combat power and promote the evolution of the combat system from low-level to high-level.
Build agile combat units. The combat system is a high-intensity confrontation system. The faster the iteration speed in peacetime and the more advanced the construction level, the stronger the survivability in wartime. To build an intelligent joint combat system, we should start with cultivating the initiative and creativity of all individuals to form an agile team that can respond quickly and actively deal with battlefield uncertainties. Military training should fully absorb the lessons learned from recent local wars, change the traditional mode of large-scale linear deployment and group operations, highlight the distributed combat exercises of “breaking the whole into parts”, enhance the system’s anti-destruction ability, and improve stability.
Promote disruptive technological transformation. One of the secrets to the success of military revolution is the “surging” transformation of science and technology to the military. We should focus on advancing the basis of combat readiness with scientific and technological progress, transfer and transform the latest scientific achievements such as game theory, complex system science, and software definition, upgrade and transform the basic platforms of combat software and hardware, and explore the mechanism of system victory with innovative thinking, paradigms, and tools. At the same time, we should accelerate the extension of mature technologies such as mobile Internet and cloud computing to the combat system, accelerate the application of new materials, new energy, and advanced manufacturing to combat platforms, and improve the level of unmanned, bionic, and clustered intelligent combat.
Seek asymmetric checks and balances. Since the 20th century, “selective disclosure” and “cost imposition” have led opponents in the wrong direction and disrupted the rhythm, becoming common means in major countries’ military competition. Simply “fighting hard” according to the discourse system and method system dominated by others is often difficult to play one’s own advantages, and may even fall into the trap set by opponents. We should focus on leveraging our strengths and avoiding our weaknesses, scientifically choose our own combat effectiveness development path, and achieve misaligned competition. We should jump out of the leader’s preset, dynamically benchmark, and iteratively develop. Strengthen criticism and falsification to prevent being confused and misled by opponents.
Promoting the iterative development of new quality combat capabilities through continuous evolution
Whoever can take the lead in building new quality combat capability will gain the upper hand. The intelligent joint combat system is a complex and huge system that is constantly evolving. Its elements are constantly expanding and its environment spans multiple domains. It should follow the mechanism of continuous evolution and improvement, and within the scope of strategic management, take demand as the goal, efficiency as the key, and precision as the guide to promote the iterative development of new quality combat capability.
The generation link is included in strategic management. Intelligent joint operations are the new frontier for advancing war preparations and should be promoted in a coordinated manner according to the strategic management link. In the demand link, we should fully consider the gap between capabilities and needs, and scientifically justify the direction and amount of investment in construction resources; in the planning and budgeting link, we should follow the principle of matching goals and tasks with actual resources, focus on efficiency and implement budget control; in the execution and evaluation link, we should not only promote the top-level institutions to relay and coordinate operations vertically, but also regulate, supervise, and correct each field according to their responsibilities one by one.
The generation process establishes a positive cycle. Intelligent joint operations are in an era of change in which science and technology are developing from information networks to artificial intelligence, combat styles are changing from network-centric warfare to cross-domain autonomous parallel operations, and political, economic, diplomatic and military means are integrated and used. The generation process of new quality combat power should establish a positive cycle of iterative development and continuous evolution. It is necessary to pay attention to the balanced development of the capabilities of each system, as well as to clarify the levels and weights, and gradually achieve the best system and the strongest capabilities through hierarchical modeling and positive cycles.
The output of the generation is closely focused on the game confrontation. Only by keeping a close eye on the military game process can the construction of new quality combat power be targeted and in the right direction. We should focus on system competition, form a system of troops, seek system advantages, produce system results, and strengthen system capabilities in combat theory, equipment development, military training, etc., and avoid shortcomings. We should seek asymmetric checks and balances, neither closed and rigid, nor copy and paste, follow the trend, lead opponents in the key areas of building new quality combat power of intelligent joint operations, and create new advantages to check and balance powerful enemies in the process of actively responding to changes and seeking changes.
The generation efficiency is embedded in the inspection and evaluation. The generation efficiency of the new quality combat capability of intelligent joint operations should be included in the inspection and evaluation system. By analyzing strategic tasks to set operational requirements and new quality combat capability indicators, simulating and deducing the effectiveness of the use of new quality combat capability scenarios through major exercise activities, and testing and measuring new quality combat capability indicators through the design of evaluation model algorithms, evaluation and feedback can be used to support the construction of new quality combat capability of intelligent joint operations.
(Author’s unit: Strategic Assessment and Consulting Center, Academy of Military Science)
At the beginning of 2017, Master, known as the evolved version of “AlphaGo”, swept Ke Jie, Park Tinghuan, Iyama Yuta and other top Go players on the Go online platform, winning 60 consecutive games, setting off a “Master storm” and causing many people to worry. What humans are worried about is not that Go, known as the “last bastion of human wisdom”, will be conquered by artificial intelligence, but that artificial intelligence has subverted Go today, what will it subvert tomorrow? This is the concern that hangs in people’s minds.
Master’s consecutive victories over human masters are similar to the nature of computers proving the four-color theorem. They are all victories of computing power and algorithms. There is no need to worry too much that they will dominate and enslave humans. However, artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, and it is generally believed that strong artificial intelligence will come sooner or later. Nowadays, artificial intelligence has penetrated into every corner of life. It is not uncommon to use artificial intelligence in war. Since the arrival of the artificial intelligence era is inevitable, how we use it in future wars will become the key to victory. Whether artificial intelligence brings threats or development to mankind depends on how to use it. “The fake horse is not good at running, but it can reach a thousand miles; the fake boat is not good at sailing, but it can cross the river.” The integration of war technology and artificial intelligence may be the way of the future.
Development History of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence Opens the Door to Intelligent Warfare
Master’s 60-game winning streak makes us think about how artificial intelligence will change our lives. Perhaps the following life scenarios will gradually become a reality:
When driving, you tell the location and the autopilot system takes you to your destination;
In hospitals, you see tug-trailer robots from the United States transporting medical equipment and “Big White” robots caring for patients;
After get off work, you press the “Go Home Mode” on your phone, and when you open the door, you find that the curtains are closed, the temperature is right, the lights are soft, the water is hot, and there is a cute home robot greeting you.
In fact, you can also use an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry a diamond ring and propose to your beloved…
We have been looking forward to this day for a long time.
The era of great development of artificial intelligence is here!
As early as shortly after the first computer came out, scientists predicted that the era of artificial intelligence would come. In 1997, when Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, this beautiful scene seemed just around the corner. However, in the second half of the 20th century, artificial intelligence research fell into a cold winter due to the failure of several attempts at technological innovation. The most recent cold winter, from the end of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century, was caused by the bottleneck encountered in the research of neural networks.
In recent years, everyone can clearly feel that the theoretical research and perceptible products of artificial intelligence seem to have suddenly “exploded” in a blowout manner: wearable devices have appeared in large numbers, intelligent robots have appeared frequently, the accuracy of machine face recognition exceeds that of the naked eye, companies such as Apple and BMW have worked together to develop driverless cars, and the United States and Europe have successively established projects to tackle the human brain…
The explosion of artificial intelligence projects is not a coincidence, but a leap forward after more than 10 years of silence. Ray Kurzweil, an American scientist who successfully predicted that robots will defeat human chess players, has predicted that the wonderful intersection point when artificial intelligence surpasses the sum of human wisdom will be in 2045.
So, how big an impact will this wave of artificial intelligence explosion have, how long will the impact last, and to what extent will it change human life?
From weak artificial intelligence to strong artificial intelligence. After Deep Blue dominated the chess field in 1997, artificial intelligence did not change the world as expected, and Deep Blue disappeared after more than 10 years of silence. Artificial intelligence has also remained at the stage of weak artificial intelligence and has not made any breakthroughs. This period of nearly 20 years has become the longest artificial intelligence winter to date. Some people joked that the greatest achievement in the field of artificial intelligence in the past 20 years is that Spielberg made the science fiction movie “Artificial Intelligence” that has captivated the world. Spielberg put all the rich fantasies of human beings about the future world into the movie world he created. Subsequently, a series of movies about artificial intelligence such as “Robot Butler”, “Super Hacker” and “Ex Machina” came into being. Artificial intelligence has begun to enter all aspects of human life. The use of artificial intelligence in industries such as medicine, education, services, manufacturing, and even in the military field has become common, which makes many military enthusiasts think about what artificial intelligence means to the military field and where it will go in the future?
“AlphaGo” only represents the latest achievements of artificial intelligence in the fields of deep learning of machines based on neural networks, high-performance computing and big data technology, and is a weak artificial intelligence. However, some military experts predict that the application of strong artificial intelligence in the future will bring about huge changes, just like the entry of big data five years ago. In the military field where competition and game are more intense, artificial intelligence has been increasingly moving towards the battlefield since the emergence of computers in the last century, promoting the advent of the era of intelligent warfare.
Artificial intelligence is taking big steps onto the battlefield
Artificial intelligence is an important branch of modern information technology. The world’s first programmable “Giant” computer was born in Britain during World War II. Its purpose was to help the British army decipher German codes. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been increasingly used on the battlefield, profoundly changing the face of war. In summary, the application of artificial intelligence in the military field is mainly reflected in the following five aspects:
Intelligent perception and information processing. The rapid development of micro-electromechanical systems, wireless sensor network technology, and cloud computing technology has further developed battlefield perception methods in the direction of intelligent perception and information fusion processing. The U.S. military, Russian military, French military, German military, etc. are all equipped with digital soldier systems with intelligent information perception and processing capabilities, such as the U.S. military’s “Night Warrior” and the Russian military’s “Warrior”. In fiscal year 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency added research and development projects such as the “cerebral cortex processor”. This processor simulates the structure of the human cerebral cortex to solve problems such as real-time control of high-speed moving objects. In the future, its application will greatly improve the autonomous action capabilities of robots and drones.
Intelligent command and control assists decision-making. The military of various countries develops various military information systems in order to build a powerful grid network information system and improve intelligent evaluation and decision-making assistance capabilities. The command and control automation systems of major military powers are constantly developing, pursuing stronger information and decision-making advantages than their opponents. In recent years, the US military has established a cyber command to vigorously strengthen its network attack and defense capabilities, focusing on the development of intelligent diagnostic information systems for network intrusions based on cloud computing, big data analysis and other technologies, which can automatically diagnose the source of network intrusions, the degree of damage to one’s own network and data recovery capabilities.
Unmanned military platforms. Western countries began to attach importance to the research and development and application of small drones, remote-controlled unmanned vehicles and unmanned boats during World War I. At present, the armies of more than 70 countries in the world are developing unmanned system platforms. The US military has equipped more than 7,000 drones, and more than 12,000 ground wheeled (or tracked) robots have been put into use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the near future, the US military will achieve that ground robots account for one-third of its ground forces, and the carrier-based X-47B drone will account for one-third of the total number of carrier-based aircraft, further promoting the coordinated training and exercise between manned and unmanned platforms.
Bionic robots. Since the 21st century, robot technology has developed rapidly. Various bionic robots such as humanoid robots, robot fish, and robot insects have been continuously introduced and have been increasingly used in the military field. For example, the US military once tested a “big dog” robot on the battlefield in Afghanistan to help soldiers with accompanying support. The US Department of Defense upgraded it in 2013, increasing its load capacity to 200 kilograms, running speed to 12 kilometers per hour, bulletproof and silent. The Russian army recently plans to step up the development of humanoid robots that can drive vehicles and form a robot unit that can fight side by side with human soldiers.
Expanding people’s physical skills and intelligence. The cross-integration of information technology, new material technology and biotechnology will further expand people’s physical strength, skills and intelligence. For example, foreign militaries are developing mechanical exoskeletons to create “mech warriors” with doubled physical strength; and by implanting bioinformatics chips to improve people’s memory and reaction ability, so that human soldiers can better adapt to the highly informationized combat environment in the future.
Artificial intelligence will drive a new round of military reforms
When new military technologies, operational concepts, and organizational structures interact to significantly enhance military combat capabilities, it will trigger new military changes. The increasingly widespread application of artificial intelligence in the military field is becoming an important driver of military change, giving rise to new war styles and changing the internal mechanism of winning wars.
It brings a new impact on the concept of war. The history of human warfare has gone through the era of cold weapons, the era of hot weapons, the era of mechanization, and the era of informatization. The development of artificial intelligence has accelerated the arrival of the intelligent era. Can intelligence be divided into high-level intelligence and low-level intelligence? Do armies with high-level intelligence have an overwhelming advantage over low-level intelligence armies? If the “mechanization” of people and the “humanization” of machines are two inevitable development trends, does it go against the traditional ethics of war for robots that can think to fight instead of humans? Artificial intelligence has unprecedentedly improved battlefield perception and information processing capabilities. Does the “fog” of war still exist on the high-tech battlefield? To understand these issues, the military field must have a brainstorming session.
It brings new inspiration to theoretical innovation. The material and technological basis of war is constantly updated, opening up new space for innovation in strategic theories and operational concepts, and constantly giving birth to new disruptive technologies in the field of artificial intelligence; the combined application of precision strike ammunition, unmanned equipment and network information systems has given birth to new intelligent combat theories such as “distributed lethality”, “mothership theory”, “combat cloud” and “swarm tactics”; relying on one’s own information advantage and decision-making advantage, how to cut off and delay the opponent’s information and decision-making loop in a decentralized battlefield network has become a core issue that must be solved to win in intelligent warfare.
Future Trends in Military Applications of Artificial Intelligence
With the development and application of strategic frontier technology fields such as information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, new materials technology, and new energy technology, artificial intelligence-related technologies will continue to mature and play an increasingly important role in the military field.
Artificial intelligence technology and equipment continue to make breakthroughs. Major countries have elevated artificial intelligence to the level of national strategy. The Office of the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force has issued the “Unmanned Systems Horizon” technology assessment and forecast report for 2035, which believes that the automation, autonomy and remote control performance of various unmanned systems and combat platforms in the future will continue to make breakthroughs with the advancement of technology. In particular, with the advancement of technologies such as super-large-scale computing, quantum computing, cloud computing, big data, and brain-like chips, artificial intelligence information processing and control technology will be greatly developed, profoundly changing the proportion of artificial intelligence technology in modern warfare.
Artificial intelligence has given rise to the vigorous development of new combat forces. The widespread application of artificial intelligence systems and combat platforms will make artificial intelligence, as an important combat element, permeate the entire process of war and combat preparation, and further enrich the connotation of new combat forces. With the application of drone formations, unmanned submarine formations, battlefield robot soldier formations, and coordinated formations of unmanned and manned combat units on the battlefield, various types of “mixed” new combat forces will continue to emerge. With the construction and application of military Internet of Things, military big data, and cloud computing technology in the military field, artificial intelligence combat forces such as “cloud brain”, “digital staff”, and “virtual warehousing” for information support, command and control, effect evaluation, and logistics support will play an increasingly important role in future wars.
Artificial intelligence is constantly evolving and upgrading through actual combat applications. Artificial intelligence systems and combat platforms, which are supported by information technology, are different from the research and development model of traditional mechanized weapons and equipment. Mechanized weapons and equipment are generally put into use after the technology matures until they are scrapped and eliminated, and have a certain service life; artificial intelligence systems are developed in the mode of system prototype-practical training-evolutionary upgrade. Artificial intelligence systems often use continuous evolution to improve their intelligence level according to different versions. The evolution direction of artificial intelligence is always towards high-level intelligence. This law of development of artificial intelligence systems and combat platforms has revolutionary significance for military training and combat capability improvement. In recent years, the United States and its allies have continued to organize activities such as the “Schriever” space (network) exercise and the “Lockton” cybersecurity exercise, which are repeated tests and upgrades of their artificial intelligence information systems. In the future, upgrading training of artificial intelligence systems and various unmanned combat platforms through continuous confrontation exercises will be an important way to improve combat effectiveness.
Artificial Intelligence Helps Build Smart National Defense
Data is called a strategic resource in the information age. The emergence of artificial intelligence provides methods and means for humans to deeply mine the wisdom resources of data information, and is leading and reshaping the development trend of the world’s new military transformation. Facing the booming wave of artificial intelligence, how to meet challenges, seize opportunities, accelerate the construction of military informatization, and enhance the core military capabilities to win modern wars are the contemporary issues that our army must answer to achieve the goal of strengthening the army. On the one hand, our army must keep a clear mind and make prudent judgments. We must not be frightened by the seemingly powerful and mysterious appearance of artificial intelligence, nor blindly applaud it, nor be indifferent and lose the opportunity for development, and be attacked by opponents due to lack of technical cognition. Breakthroughs in individual technical fields of artificial intelligence are nothing more than an extension of human intelligence, but they cannot replace the dominant position of human intelligence. People are still the core element of all elements of combat effectiveness, and people’s subjective initiative is still the key to determining the outcome of intelligent warfare. On the other hand, our army should implement the military-civilian integration development strategy and the innovation-driven development strategy, grasp the trend of the times, highlight the characteristics of our army, keep a close eye on the opponent’s layout, boldly absorb and apply the relevant technological achievements of artificial intelligence to promote the information construction of the army, and try to apply artificial intelligence technology to achieve transformation and upgrading in platform construction, logistics support, military training, national defense mobilization and other fields. Actively develop countermeasures against the opponent’s military application of artificial intelligence, and explore the winning mechanism of the game with strong enemies in the field of artificial intelligence in practice.
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The military application of artificial intelligence in the United States, Russia and other countries
United States: In July 2016, the U.S. Marine Corps tested the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS), which uses sensors and cameras to control gun-wielding robots based on artificial intelligence. The “Army Global Military Command and Control System” developed by the U.S. Army has been equipped with Army Aviation Force transport helicopters, allowing helicopter pilots to maintain contact with frontline soldiers and command ground forces.
Russia: The “Wolf-2” mobile robot system being developed by the Russian Strategic Missile Forces uses a tracked chassis and can be controlled via radio channels within a range of 5 kilometers. The shooting accuracy is guaranteed by a thermal imager, ballistic computer, laser rangefinder and gyro stabilizer, and it can hit the target at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour.
Israel: The robot “Dogo” developed by the company is an automatically armed tactical combat robot, which comes with a standard Glock 26 9mm caliber pistol. It can be said to be a little devil.
The arrival of the “Master” makes the combat style develop towards unmanned
The Go account Master has challenged the world’s top players on two major Go platforms, Yicheng Go and Tencent Go, and won 60 consecutive games, which has attracted great attention from the world on artificial intelligence. Few people thought that in the field of Go, machines did not experience a period of “stalemate” with humans, but directly left in the dust.
Engels once said that the application of cutting-edge technology began in the military field. Military struggle is a comprehensive contest covering multiple dimensions, multiple fields, full time domain and high intensity, and the addition of artificial intelligence will accelerate the pace of military reform in various countries like a catalyst. Looking at the entire process of the two industrial revolutions and the two world wars, we will find that there is an inevitable connection between “technology” and “war”. Technology will trigger war, and war in turn will promote the development of technology. At this stage, all countries have made great progress in the development of information and intelligent weapons and equipment, and various precise positioning, precise strike, and precise evaluation weapon systems have emerged in an endless stream. However, humans have not yet been separated from the weapon system, and a large part of the operations still need to be completed manually. The combination of artificial intelligence and weapons and equipment means that in the future, from searching and discovering targets, to threat assessment, to locking and destroying, and then to effect evaluation, this series of processes does not require human participation at all. Machines can help us make decisions and achieve unmanned development of combat styles.
Master quietly disappeared after winning 60 games in a row, but discussions about the future of artificial intelligence are still endless: Will it take away human jobs, or will it be an extension of human functions? Will it eventually surpass human intelligence, or will it merge with humans? The answers to these questions are not as simple as either one or the other. Solving them will accompany the future development of artificial intelligence. In 1997, “Deep Blue” defeated Kasparov, making more use of computer computing expertise such as hardware acceleration and brute force computing. AlphaGo uses new artificial intelligence technologies such as neural networks, deep learning, and Monte Carlo tree search, and its strength has already made a substantial leap. These new technologies make artificial intelligence more competent for tasks such as voice and image recognition and evaluation and analysis, and are therefore an important development direction.
Although the dust has settled on this round of the Go “man-machine battle”, the thoughts it has triggered in various fields are very worthy of study. Among them, “‘man-machine battle’ is the best pre-practice of war” is particularly worthy of serious study in the military field. Whether in the era of cold weapons or the mechanized era, fighting on the front line relies on “human wave tactics”, and solving problems requires “concentrating superior forces”. Informatized warfare no longer uses “human wave tactics”, and the scene of large-scale fighting is difficult to reproduce, but as far as the entire war is concerned, the use of troops is not necessarily less, on the contrary, it may be more, but the number of troops used at the forefront has been greatly reduced, and the position of the troops has undergone a major shift. In the unmanned, networked and non-contact combat mode of future wars, there will be more participants, and sometimes you cannot know who the opponent is or where he is hiding.
Although the competition field and the battlefield have different operating rules, many of the winning mechanisms are the same. In the past, we could only learn about war in war, but now we can learn about war in a computer-simulated, near-actual combat environment, and deduce the offensive and defensive modes and development trends of future wars. “AlphaGo” can easily collect the chess games of many Go masters, but in the military field, it is extremely difficult to obtain relevant data on your opponent’s training, exercises, and even combat! Future wars are carried out with the support of information systems. Only by solving the core problem of human-machine integration can we take the initiative on the battlefield and win the final victory in modern warfare. (Zhu Qichao, Wang Jingling, Li Daguang)
With the rise of the global Internet and the development of emerging media, the world’s major military powers are now paying great attention to the strategic issue of cognitive space security. The recently published monograph “Brain Control: The Laws of War and National Security Strategy in the Global Media Age” focuses on the future development trend of war and the issue of national cognitive space security in the global media era. It puts forward the concept of “brain control” in cognitive space, which has attracted the attention of the military academic community. On this topic, the reporter interviewed the main author of the book, Professor Zeng Huafeng, Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National University of Defense Technology.
“Subjugating the enemy without fighting” is the highest realm of information warfare
Reporter: The concept of brain control is inseparable from the understanding of cognitive space. What is cognitive space and what is brain control?
Zeng Huafeng: Information warfare is the unity of material and spirit, concept and reality. It is not only the manifestation of the development of material form, but also the inevitable result of the action of spiritual factors. Information warfare has enabled human warfare to truly have three combat spaces for the first time: one is the natural space composed of land, sea, air, and space; the second is the network electromagnetic space based on physical principles, which is essentially a technical space; the third is the cognitive space composed of human spiritual and psychological activities. To win the future information warfare, we must grasp the initiative of the war, obtain the control of the war domain, and dominate the discourse of the war. Seizing the control of the brain in the cognitive space and “defeating the enemy without fighting” is the highest realm of information warfare.
Cognitive space refers to the scope and field of human cognitive activities. It is an invisible space that reflects people’s emotions, will, beliefs and values, and exists in the minds of participants in the struggle. The national cognitive space exists in the subjective world of each individual, and is composed of the superposition of the cognitive spaces of countless individuals in the whole society. National interests exist not only in physical form in natural space and technological space, but also invisibly in cognitive space. “Brain control” is to use the spiritual information carried by propaganda media, national languages, cultural products, etc. as weapons, to infiltrate, influence and even dominate the cognition, emotions and consciousness of the general public and national elites, and ultimately manipulate a country’s values, national spirit, ideology, cultural traditions, historical beliefs, etc., to prompt it to abandon its own theoretical understanding, social system and development path, and achieve the strategic goal of winning without fighting.
Reporter: At present, with the advent of the global media age, especially the development of emerging social media, the political game between major powers continues to intensify, and “cognitive domain symptoms” such as human psychological confusion, moral crisis, and loss of faith continue to emerge. What do you think are the characteristics of cognitive space confrontation?
Zeng Huafeng: I think there are three main characteristics: First, the security boundary of the national cognitive space is ambiguous. The national cognitive space is a boundless, invisible, shadowless, but not negligible space of interests and confrontation. Social public opinion and ideology are the main areas of competition in the cognitive space, and spiritual information is the main weapon. Wherever spiritual information can be spread, it can become a battlefield for cognitive space competition. Second, the information attack and defense of the national cognitive space is manipulable. The reception, processing and feedback of spiritual information are not only closely related to the function of the human brain, but also have distinct national and ethnic characteristics. At the same time, spiritual information is prone to distortion in the process of dissemination and diffusion. In the era of global media, individuals are both recipients and publishers of information. Theoretically, any individual or group can instantly spread the specific information they process and produce in the world and have an impact on specific target objects. Third, the strategic confrontation in the national cognitive space is persistent. The role of spiritual information needs to be carried out step by step, and we cannot expect to produce immediate results. For example, during the Cold War, Western countries led by the United States gradually infiltrated Western values into socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through cultural exchanges and other activities, achieving the goal of peaceful evolution. Today, Western hostile forces seek to instill and infiltrate Western “democratic” and “free” ideas and values through various academic exchanges in politics, economy, science, culture, etc., in normal information interaction activities.
The main way the West seizes national cognitive space and competes for “brain control”
Reporter: What are the main ways the West seizes national cognitive space and competes for “brain control”?
Zeng Huafeng: I think there are four main ways. The first is perception manipulation. Perception manipulation is also called consciousness manipulation. It aims to manipulate the behavior of others by influencing their psychology and spirit. It can be directed at individuals, groups, a country, or even the whole world. In his book “War and Anti-War”, Toffler summarized the tools of perception manipulation into six aspects: one is “accusation of atrocities”, including condemnation of real and false atrocities; the second is “exaggerating the interests of a battle or a war”; the third is “demonizing or dehumanizing the enemy”; the fourth is “polarization”, that is, if you don’t support us, you are against us; the fifth is “claiming to obey God’s will”, which has a strong religious color; the sixth is “super propaganda-propaganda that is enough to discredit the propaganda of the other party.”
The second is to cut off historical memory. Human thought and social ideology are always closely linked to historical memory. Whether it is the spiritual world of an individual or the cultural traditions of a country or nation, figuratively speaking, they are all concentrated pasts and treasures worth cherishing. Once the historical memory of an individual or group is cleverly cut off through some means, making them lose their spiritual home, the obstacles to the infiltration of their values and ideologies are removed, opening the door for the invasion of various erroneous and chaotic ideas.
The third is to change the thinking paradigm. A country and a nation have their own specific thinking paradigm, which is the premise for people to understand the world. Especially for the social elite, their thinking paradigm and ideological cognition play a leading role in the thoughts, values and ideological identity of the whole society. However, people’s rational thinking has weaknesses. Through manipulation, “virus programs” can be instilled into it, prompting people to deviate from obvious facts and accept fallacies and sometimes even absurd conclusions. Once this set of practices seizes the social elite group, most people will lose their ability to resist manipulation. At the end of the Cold War, the Western ideological attack on the Soviet Union was to influence the rational thinking of some Soviet economists, let them make a series of public speeches in the Soviet Union that catered to Western intentions, and covertly “persuaded” the Soviet people to abandon their own country’s social system and national culture, and to welcome the so-called “new era” of Western civilization with a “thorough”, “unconditional” and “bold” attitude.
Fourth, deconstruct symbols. Symbols are born in the historical evolution of national culture. Different nations have formed their own specific symbols in the course of their respective cultural development, such as clothing, anniversaries, monuments, rituals, and characters. With the help of empathy, a nation has some great symbols, which gives it an emotional bond that unites the society. It can arouse people’s sense of belonging, so that people can unite for a common dream and create and continue a new civilization. If someone deliberately repaints and attacks the symbols in the history of a country and nation, by reversing right and wrong, publicly mocking and making fun of the glorious achievements, great figures and noble culture in history, the consequences will be very serious, and it will lead to people gradually losing their sense of identity with the country, nation and self.
Providing strong support for maintaining national cognitive space security
Reporter: Faced with fierce competition in the field of national cognitive space security, how should we maintain national cognitive space security?
Zeng Huafeng: We must fully understand and grasp the characteristics and laws of national cognitive space security, firmly occupy the ideological position, and take the initiative in the field of public opinion and ideology.
First, we must strengthen our ideals and beliefs and build a strong spiritual pillar. History and reality have repeatedly proved that the collapse of a regime often begins in the ideological field. Once the ideological defense line is breached, it will be difficult to defend other defense lines. Whether we can hold on to the ideological position and do a good job in ideological work is related to national cohesion and centripetal force. In this regard, we must always hold high the banner of ideals and beliefs and unswervingly adhere to and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Second, we must be vigilant against the emergence of historical nihilism. Historical nihilism originated with the denial of the “Cultural Revolution” and reform and opening up, and then gradually moved towards the denial of the historical view of historical materialism and the denial of the cultural traditions of the Chinese nation. We must be highly vigilant against its harm, and clearly oppose historical nihilism, oppose all pseudo-historical narratives that glorify aggression and oppression and vilify revolution and resistance, face history sincerely, cherish the subjectivity established by the Chinese nation in the long course of the Chinese revolution, and enhance the self-esteem and self-confidence of the Chinese nation, so as to lay a solid cultural foundation for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Third, we should seek national cultural identity in the collision between Chinese and Western cultures. While promoting military and economic hegemony, the United States actively promotes cultural hegemony. Under the banner of “economic integration”, it strongly impacts the heterogeneous cultures of various countries and tries to influence other countries’ cultures with American culture. In this context, in the process of cultural exchanges with other countries and nations in the world, we should not only continue to absorb and integrate the essence of the cultures of all nations in the world, but also enhance our national cultural consciousness and confidence, and improve the creativity and vitality of national culture in the process of continuous inheritance.
Fourth, we should actively participate in the global governance of cyberspace security. In the Internet era, the United States, with its high-tech monopoly advantage, not only controls the management of the cyber world, but is also the first country in the world to propose the concept of cyber warfare and apply it in actual combat. From the current perspective, the United States’ control over the Internet will not change in the short term. We should pay close attention to cyberspace security, actively participate in the global governance of cyberspace security, and build a cybersecurity system that conforms to the trend of globalization and meets the requirements of my country’s informatization, so as to provide strong support for maintaining the security of the national cognitive space.
We must promote the information construction of our army with a broader vision. Indulging in reflection on the characteristics, patterns and experiences of the last war is a chronic disease and common disease in human military history. From the time when information warfare was proposed to the present, people have been conducting research on its characteristics, laws and tactics, but have overlooked a problem: that is, with the development of modern science and technology, is the so-called information warfare what people are talking about today? In fact, we should have a broader vision for understanding information warfare, and include physical information, biological information and spiritual information into the framework of information warfare. From the aspects of basic research, applied research, combat theory, technology development, equipment development and organizational leadership, we should build a system of cognitive space attack and defense confrontation. Innovate the ways, methods and means of ideological and political work in the global media era. Cultivate and create a team of high-quality talents who can grasp the frontiers of cognitive science, psychology and military needs, and seize the “brain control” of future information warfare. (
