「無人」戰爭會在中國未來戰爭中發揮主導作用嗎？
現代英語：Editor’s Note: In recent years, in local wars such as the Syrian War and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a large number of unmanned weapons and equipment have been deployed on the battlefield, announcing to the world that unmanned warfare “has arrived in the future”. New weapon platforms dominated by unmanned technology, such as drones, robots, and unmanned submarines, are influencing the future direction of combat development, and are likely to shake the status of human beings as the protagonists of wars for thousands of years. Will humans be marginalized in future wars? How to explore the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare? Looking forward to your participation in the discussion.
Square
Unmanned combat is the trend
■ Liang Song
Looking ahead to future wars, unmanned battlefields will inevitably evolve to a higher level, the traditional combat system built with humans as the main body will likely be subverted, and future battlefield confrontations will be dominated by unmanned combat systems.
The evolution of war tools determines
In order to achieve superiority over the enemy on the battlefield and to kill people instead of being killed by people, humans always take the lead in applying emerging technologies to the military field, and spare no effort to promote the upgrading and evolution of various war tools and even subversive changes. At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution has once again triggered changes in war tools. Its outstanding feature is that human intelligence is constantly embedded in weapon systems in the form of programs, algorithms, rules, etc., and the combination of people and weapons has ushered in a historic change. People and weapon platforms are gradually physically separated, and the autonomy of weapons and equipment has been significantly improved. They have begun to have a series of intelligent features such as calculation, analysis, planning, decision-making, command, and control, thus gradually getting rid of their dependence on human control. In 2016, the Russian army used robot troops in an organized manner on the battlefield in Syria, and captured high ground that was difficult for human soldiers to capture in 20 minutes, becoming the world’s first battle example in which robots were put into the battlefield in an organized manner. Driven by the development of science and technology, human work such as thinking, making decisions, and clicking buttons is also being rapidly replaced by intelligent war tools, and unmanned combat is coming to us in big strides.
Global and multi-dimensional battlefield confrontation traction
Based on the constant pursuit of strategic advantages and interests, human beings continue to expand new fields and explore new spaces, from shallow to deep, from tangible to intangible, from macro to micro, polar regions, deep sea, space… all have been set foot by human beings one by one. At the same time, human beings have also rapidly led wars to new spaces, pushing wars from plane to three-dimensional, from reality to virtuality. Modern wars are increasingly showing the distinctive characteristics of full-domain multi-dimensional integrated confrontation. Compared with traditional spaces such as land, sea, and sky, emerging spaces often exceed the range that human beings can bear physiologically and psychologically. Tangible spaces such as space, polar regions, deep sea, high altitude, and ultra-micro are difficult for humans to reach or even if they reach them, they cannot survive for a long time, and it is even more difficult to carry out operations; virtual spaces such as networks, information, and psychology are everywhere but elusive. Faced with the ever-changing information network world, humans are not only unable to control it by their own abilities, but will also be drowned in the ocean of information. The great expansion of battlefield space and the complex confrontation in all domains and dimensions have put forward urgent requirements for the acquisition and processing of massive information, real-time and accurate command and control, unimpeded access to virtual and real space, and accurate and efficient combat release. Modern warfare has to rely heavily on intelligent unmanned combat systems in all aspects such as reconnaissance, control, attack, and evaluation. Driven by battlefield confrontation and technological development, unmanned combat forces have gradually integrated reconnaissance, attack, and defense functions, covering the entire domains of land, sea, air, space, and the Internet. Clustered, intelligent, and autonomous highly mature robot legions will enter the war stage. The original combat system built with humans as the main body will be gradually deconstructed, and unmanned combat systems will become the main confrontation parties on future battlefields.
Intrinsic drive to reduce casualties
No matter how war develops, its violence cannot be changed. As long as humans are involved in war and on the battlefield, they will inevitably be hurt or even lose their precious lives. Faced with the extremely high risk of war, the nature of seeking benefits and avoiding harm drives humans to find their own “substitutes”. From simple stones and sticks to replace hands and feet, to robots to replace human soldiers, this process continues to spiral and will continue until the “beast” of war disappears from human society. In the context of peace and development becoming the theme of the current era, liberating soldiers from dangerous and boring combat tasks and reducing casualties in war has become an issue that powerful countries attach great importance to. At present, the world’s military powers are making every effort to promote the development and use of intelligent unmanned weapon systems. Various types of drones, unmanned vehicles, unmanned boats, etc. are equipped in large numbers in the army, and some have even formed special unmanned combat units. In recent local wars and armed conflicts, unmanned equipment has frequently appeared and shined. Just as a product will become a hot seller once it is recognized by the market, the outstanding performance of unmanned equipment and unmanned combat on the battlefield will also strongly promote their further expansion and iteration. Ultimately, the accumulation of quantity will bring about a qualitative leap, and unmanned combat will be the general trend.
Opposing Side
Unmanned combat still relies on humans
■ Hong Huajie
On future battlefields, although unmanned systems will be ubiquitous, wars originate from people, serve people, and are subordinate to people. People will still be the core of future wars, and unmanned combat will still be dominated by people.
War planning is designed by people
In information-based and intelligent warfare, the role of unmanned weapons and equipment is becoming increasingly prominent, but this does not mean that the role of humans in war is weakening. War is the embodiment of national will and the continuation of politics. No matter how the scale and style change, war is a contest of national will and national spirit dominated by people, and has the essential attributes of serving and being subordinate to politics. The military intelligence of the core key technologies of unmanned combat is essentially intelligence designed by humans. From intelligent environmental perception and target detection represented by deep learning to mission planning, autonomous control and collaborative control, the intelligent system is full of models and algorithms designed by humans. The emergence and development of unmanned weapons and equipment have given weapons the “subjective initiative” given by humans, but this “subjective initiative” can never be compared with human subjective initiative. People are good at thinking, reasoning and other “wisdom” abilities, which play a key role in high-level task planning, complex scenarios and situation analysis. In many cases, people are still irreplaceable, especially as scientific and technological development promotes the expansion of struggle methods to cross-domain and multi-means. Wars need to combine political, economic, diplomatic and other factors to effectively control and adjust the scale, intensity and process of operations. People are needed to carefully grasp the timing of stopping, the scale and intensity of war. With the development of artificial intelligence technology in the future, human intelligence will further extend to intelligent unmanned weapons and equipment, but the situation that weapons and equipment are dependent on and obey people will not change fundamentally.
Battle coordination is led by people
Humans are the initiators of war and the coordinators of the war situation. Unmanned weapons and equipment are essentially “unmanned platforms and manned systems”, with the people on the platform moved to the remote control end. Unmanned weapons and equipment will not set combat objectives and combat methods on their own. They are more like puppets, and humans are behind them controlling the puppets with thin strings. Therefore, unmanned warfare is largely a competition between unmanned weapons and equipment fighting on the front line and command decision-makers relying on intelligent technology to make command decisions at the back end. It is a competition between unmanned equipment systems supported by high technology and a new combat mode. Intelligent systems can make binary judgments on known situations to a certain extent, but the judgment of unknown situations cannot be separated from humans. Although future intelligent weapons can be operated without human on-site control, when intelligent weapons and equipment are put into battle, when to change the direction of attack, how to control the rhythm of war, when to withdraw from the battle, etc., can only be decided by humans in the end. People are always the controllers of equipment and the active factors to give full play to the advantages of equipment. The smarter the weapons and equipment, the more high-level commanders are needed. Therefore, battlefield confrontations can be unmanned, but war control must be human.
War ethics requires people to be the priority
War ethics is the moral cornerstone supporting modern war law. With the large-scale use of unmanned systems in war, human intelligence has begun to be transferred or materialized more to weapons and equipment. The long-range and beyond-visual-range strikes have gradually weakened human resistance to mutual killing. People can carry out combat operations off-site, non-intuitive, and non-contact, which has lowered the threshold for war decision-making and weakened battlefield moral constraints. In 2010, the US military stationed in Afghanistan used drones to track, monitor and analyze a transport convoy for 3 and a half hours, and finally determined that the convoy was providing support to the Taliban and carried out an attack. However, it was later confirmed that the people in the car were not militants, but civilians including women and children. According to estimates by the Brookings Institution in the United States, the ratio of civilian deaths to militants in the US military’s use of drones to combat terrorists in northwestern Pakistan was as high as 10:1. This scenario that may lead to large-scale civilian casualties is something that humans do not want to see. With the continuous advancement of unmanned combat technology, unmanned weapons and equipment need to be constrained by corresponding laws and regulations. The core of the ethical relationship between man and machine in intelligent warfare should be “people-oriented.” Only when humans always truly control the “right to fire” of intelligent weapons and make unmanned weapons and equipment operate according to human ideas can we ensure the correct implementation of human-machine ethical standards.
Reviews
In his book The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly called the changes in the digital field a kinetic energy, which not only emphasized the power of internal evolution, but also indicated the general trend of human social development.
Regarding many issues such as the changes in the war form brought about by military intelligence, especially the intelligent warfare based on unmanned weapons and equipment, it is still difficult to come up with a clear answer based on current combat practices and technical conditions. Facing the rolling wave of intelligence, we do not need to sigh, let alone stand still. Only by focusing on actual combat, letting go of thinking, and gathering wisdom can we strangle the throat of the god of war.
現代國語：
編者按 近年來，在敘利亞戰爭、納卡衝突等局部戰爭中，大批無人化武器裝備投入戰場，向世人宣告無人戰爭「未來已來」。無人機、機器人、無人潛航器等以無人技術為主導的新型武器平台正影響未來作戰發展方向，大有撼動千百年來人類戰爭主角地位之勢。未來戰爭中，人類是否會被邊緣化？如何探究智慧化戰爭制勝機制？期待您的參與討論。
正方
無人作戰是大勢所趨
■梁 松
展望未來戰爭，戰場無人化必將向更高層次演進，以人類為主體建構的傳統作戰體系將可能被顛覆，未來戰場對決將由無人作戰體系主導。
戰爭工具的演進法則決定
為了追求戰場上高敵一籌、致人而不致於人，人類總是把新興科技率先運用於軍事領域，不遺餘力地推動各類戰爭工具升級演進甚至顛覆性變革。目前，新一輪科技革命再次引發戰爭工具變革，其突出特點就是人類智慧以程序、演算法、規則等形式不斷嵌入武器系統，人與武器的結合方式迎來歷史性變革，人與武器平台逐漸實現物理分離，武器裝備自主性顯著提升，開始具備計算、分析、規劃、計畫、決策、指揮、控制等一系列智慧化特徵，以逐步擺脫對人類操控的依賴。 2016年，俄軍在敘利亞戰場上成建制使用機器人部隊，20分鐘就攻下了人類士兵難以攻下的高地，成為世界上將機器人成建制投入戰場的首次戰例。在科技發展驅動下，動腦、做決策、點按鈕等人類工作也正被智慧化戰爭工具快速取代，無人作戰正向我們大步走來。
全局多維的戰場對抗牽引
基於對戰略優勢和利益的孜孜以求，人類不斷拓展新領域、探索新空間，從淺近到深遠、從有形到無形、從宏觀到微觀，極地、深海、太空……都一一被人類涉足。同時，人類也迅速將戰爭引向新的空間，推動戰爭從平面走向立體、從現實走向虛擬，現代戰爭日益呈現出全局多維一體化對抗的鮮明特徵。相對於陸地、海洋、天空等傳統空間而言，新興空間往往超越了人類生理、心理可承受的範圍。太空、極地、深海、高寒、超微等有形空間人類本身難以到達或即便到達也無法長期生存，更難以實施作戰；網路、資訊、心理等虛擬空間無所不在卻又難以捉摸，人類面對瞬息萬變的資訊網絡世界，不但僅憑自身的能力無法駕馭，而且必將被淹沒在資訊的海洋之中。戰場空間的極大拓展，全域多維的複雜對抗，對海量資訊的獲取處理、即時精準的指揮控制、虛實空間的無礙進入、精確高效的作戰釋能提出了迫切要求，現代戰爭偵、控、打、評等各環節已得大量依賴智慧化無人作戰系統。在戰場對抗牽引和科技發展驅動下，無人作戰力量逐漸集偵察、打擊、防禦等功能於一體，遍布陸、海、空、天、網等全局，集群化、智能化、自主化高度成熟的機器人軍團將登上戰爭舞台，原有的以人類為主體建構的作戰體系將逐步解構，無人作戰體系將成為未來戰場的主要對決方。
減少人員傷亡的內在驅動
戰爭無論如何發展，都無法改變其暴力性。人類只要涉足戰爭、身臨戰場，就難以避免受傷甚至付出寶貴生命。面對戰爭這一極端高危風險，趨利避害的天性驅動著人類想方設法尋找自己的“替身”，從簡單的石頭、棍棒替代手足，到機器人替代人類士兵，這個過程不斷螺旋式上升，將一直持續到戰爭這頭「野獸」從人類社會消失。在和平與發展成為當今時代主題的大背景下，將士兵從危險枯燥的作戰任務中解放出來，減少戰爭中的傷亡已經成為強國高度重視的問題。目前，世界軍事強國都在不遺餘力地推動智慧化無人武器系統的發展與運用，各類無人機、無人車、無人艇等大量列裝部隊，有的還組建了專門的無人作戰部隊。在近幾場局部戰爭和武裝衝突中無人裝備頻頻亮相、大放異彩。正如一件商品被市場認可就會熱銷一樣，無人裝備和無人作戰在戰場上的出色表現，同樣強勢推動其進一步拓展和迭代，最終量的積累帶來質的飛躍，無人作戰將是大勢所趨。
反方
無人作戰仍以人為主
■洪華傑
在未來戰場上，儘管無人系統將無所不在，但戰爭源自於人、服務於人、從屬於人，人仍將是未來戰爭的核心，無人作戰仍以人為主。
戰爭規劃由人設計
在資訊化、智慧化戰爭中，無人化武器裝備的作用日益凸顯，但不代表戰爭中人的角色在弱化。戰爭是國家意志的體現，是政治的延續。無論規模和樣式如何變化，戰爭均是由人主導的國家意志和國民精神的較量，具有服務於政治、從屬於政治的本質屬性。無人作戰核心關鍵技術的軍事智能，本質上是由人設計的智能，從以深度學習為代表的智能環境感知與目標檢測，到任務規劃、自主控制與協同控制，智能係統的背後充斥著大量人類設計的模型與演算法。無人化武器裝備的出現和發展，使得武器具備了人賦予的“主觀能動性”，然而這種“主觀能動性”永遠也不能夠與人的主觀能動性相提並論。人本身較為擅長思辨、推理等「智慧」層面的能力，這些能力在高層次任務規劃、複雜場景和態勢分析中具有關鍵作用， 在許多情況下，人仍然是不可替代的，特別是科技發展推動鬥爭方式向跨領域、多手段拓展，戰爭需要結合政治、經濟、外交等因素，對作戰規模、強度、進程等進行有效掌握、調節，更是需要人來精心掌握打停時機、戰爭規模和強度。隨著未來人工智慧技術的發展，人的智慧會進一步朝向智慧化無人武器裝備延伸，但武器裝備依附於人、聽命於人的狀況不會根本改變。
戰局協調由人主導
人是戰爭的發起者，同時也是戰局的協調者。無人化武器裝備在本質上是“平台無人，系統有人”，將平台上的人後移到遠端控制端。無人化武器裝備不會自行訂定作戰目標和作戰方式，他們更像是玩偶，而背後用細線操控玩偶的是人類。所以無人化戰爭很大程度上是無人化武器裝備在前線作戰、指揮決策人員在後端依靠智慧技術進行指揮決策的比拼，是高科技支撐下無人裝備體系的較量，是一種新的作戰模式。智慧系統可以在一定程度上對已知情況進行二分式判斷，但是對未知情況的研判離不開人類。雖然未來的智慧化武器可以沒有人類現場操控，但智慧化武器裝備何時投入戰鬥、何時轉換進攻方向、如何把控戰爭節奏、何時撤出戰鬥等等，最終只能由人來決定，人始終是裝備的控制者，是發揮裝備優勢的主動因素，武器裝備越智能，越需要高水準的指揮人員。因此戰場交鋒可以無人，但是戰爭控制必須有人。
戰爭倫理要求以人為主
戰爭倫理，是支撐現代戰爭法的道德基石。隨著戰爭中無人系統的大量投入使用，人的智慧開始更多地轉移或物化到武器裝備上，打擊的遠程化、超視距，使人類對相互殺戮的抵觸排斥逐漸變弱，人可以非現場、非直覺、非接觸地實施作戰行動，帶來戰爭決策門檻降低、戰場道德約束弱化。 2010年，駐阿美軍利用無人機對一運輸車隊進行長達3個半小時的追蹤監測與分析後，最終判定車隊是向塔利班提供支援，並實施了攻擊，但事後證實車內並非武裝分子，而是包括婦女和兒童在內的平民。根據美國布魯金斯學會估算，美軍使用無人機在巴基斯坦西北部地區打擊恐怖分子的行動中，死亡的平民與武裝份子的比例高達10∶1。這種可能導致大規模平民傷亡的場景是人類不願意看到的，隨著無人作戰技術的不斷深入，無人化武器裝備需要相應的法規準則來約束。智能化戰爭中的人機倫理關係的核心應為「以人為主」。只有人始終真正控制智慧武器的“開火權”，使無人化武器裝備依據人類設想作戰，才能確保人機倫理準則正確執行。
點 評
凱文·凱利在其著作《必然》裡把數位領域中的變革稱為一種動能，既強調了一種內在演變的力量，更昭示出人類社會發展的大勢。
圍繞著軍事智慧化帶來的戰爭形態改變等諸多問題，尤其是基於無人化武器裝備的智慧化作戰，人在其中的角色和定位究竟怎樣，就當下的作戰實踐和技術條件而言，還很難得出一個明確的答案。面對滾滾而來的智能化浪潮，我們無須慨嘆，更不能固步自封，立足實戰、放飛思維、凝聚智慧，才能扼住戰神的咽喉。
中國原創軍事資源：https://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2021-03/30/content_286005888.htm