In recent days, the entire army and armed police forces have organized officers and soldiers in various forms to seriously study and discuss the important speech delivered by President Xi at the National Conference on Cybersecurity and Informatization. The officers and soldiers firmly expressed that they must earnestly study and implement the spirit of President Xi’s important speech, keenly seize the historical opportunity of informatization development, strengthen military-civilian integration in the field of cybersecurity and informatization, independently innovate and promote the construction of a cyber power, and make new contributions to winning the decisive battle to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, winning the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
From April 20 to 21, the National Cybersecurity and Informatization Work Conference was held in Beijing. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the State, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Director of the Central Cybersecurity and Informatization Commission, attended the meeting and delivered an important speech. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Tao
Seize the historical opportunity to build a strong cyber power
——Officers and soldiers of the entire army and armed police force earnestly studied and implemented President Xi’s important speech at the National Conference on Cybersecurity and Informatization
Beijing, April 23 (People’s Liberation Army Daily) – In recent days, the entire army and armed police forces have organized officers and soldiers in various forms to seriously study and discuss the important speech delivered by President Xi at the National Conference on Cybersecurity and Informatization. The officers and soldiers firmly expressed that they must earnestly study and implement the spirit of President Xi’s important speech, keenly seize the historical opportunity of informatization development, strengthen military-civilian integration in the field of cybersecurity and informatization, independently innovate and promote the construction of a cyber power, and make new contributions to winning the decisive battle to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, winning the great victory of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
“Informatization has brought a golden opportunity to the Chinese nation.” After studying President Xi’s important speech, the cadres of various departments of the CMC and the theater of operations were full of confidence. Many cadres mentioned in the discussion that President Xi’s important speech, starting from the overall situation of the party and the country, systematically explained the rich connotation of the strategic thinking of building a cyber power, scientifically answered a series of directional, overall, fundamental and strategic issues related to the long-term development of the cyber and information industry, pointed out the direction for grasping the historical opportunities of the information revolution, strengthening network security and informatization, and accelerating the construction of a cyber power, and provided a fundamental guideline, which is of great and far-reaching significance.
On December 25, 2015, when President Xi inspected the PLA Daily, he typed on the Weibo and WeChat publishing platforms of the PLA Daily and sent a Weibo to congratulate all officers and soldiers on the New Year; on the eve of the 2017 Spring Festival, when President Xi inspected the “Great Merit Third Company” of a certain army unit, he stopped in front of an electronic screen and listened to the officers and soldiers’ report on their study and education through the “Learning Barracks” mobile phone APP… President Xi’s concern for the military’s cybersecurity work has inspired the officers and soldiers. Everyone said that the Party Central Committee and President Xi attach great importance to the Internet, the development of the Internet, and the governance of the Internet, and have coordinated major issues involving informatization and cybersecurity in the political, economic, cultural, social, and military fields, made a series of major decisions, and put forward a series of major measures to promote the historic achievements of the cybersecurity cause. Officers and soldiers of a certain brigade of the Rocket Force said that the achievements made in the network construction of our country and the army fully demonstrate that the decisions of the Party Central Committee on strengthening the centralized and unified leadership of the Party over cybersecurity work and the series of strategic deployments made for cybersecurity work since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China are completely correct.
In recent years, a certain brigade of the 74th Group Army has closely followed the characteristics of young officers and soldiers and actively explored new models of online political work, which has been welcomed by young officers and soldiers. During the discussion, Luo Yingli, an officer of the Propaganda Section of the brigade, said that we must actively promote innovations in online propaganda concepts, content, forms, methods, and means, grasp the timing and effectiveness, and unite and gather the officers and soldiers with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and work tirelessly to achieve the goal of strengthening the army.
During the study and discussion, Li Kangjun, instructor of the second missile company of the air defense battalion of a brigade of the 75th Group Army, said with deep feeling that the newly revised “Internal Affairs Regulations (Trial)” revised the regulations on the use of mobile phones and the Internet, and added new behavioral norms for military personnel such as online shopping and the use of new media. As soldiers, we must firmly establish a correct view of network security and strictly abide by the relevant regulations of the state and the military. Fan Jianli, political commissar of a brigade of the 80th Group Army, said that we must strengthen the network security protection of information infrastructure, strengthen the construction of network security information coordination mechanisms, means, and platforms, strengthen the construction of emergency command capabilities for network security incidents, and actively develop the network security industry to move the checkpoints forward and prevent problems before they occur.
Whoever masters the Internet will seize the initiative of the times; whoever occupies the commanding heights in informatization will be able to seize the initiative, gain advantages, win security, and win the future. Experts from the Academy of Military Sciences, the National Defense University, and the National University of Defense Technology believe that the integration of military and civilian networks is a key and frontier area of military and civilian integration, and is also the most dynamic and potential area of military and civilian integration. We must seize the historical opportunities of the current information technology revolution and the new military revolution, deeply understand the inherent relationship between productivity and combat effectiveness, the market and the battlefield, grasp the working mechanism and laws of the integration of military and civilian networks, and promote the formation of a pattern of deep integration and development of military and civilian networks with full factors, multiple fields, and high efficiency.
Studying President Xi’s important speech has given leaders at all levels a strong sense of mission and urgency. Leaders of a certain air force brigade of the Eastern Theater Command, a certain armed police unit, and the Shenyang Joint Logistics Support Center said that they should actively adapt to the requirements of informatization, strengthen Internet thinking, and continuously improve their ability to grasp the laws of the Internet, guide online public opinion, control the development of informatization, and ensure network security. The Party Committee of a Red Army Corps of the Xinjiang Military Region has decided to include Internet information work in the Party Committee’s key work plan and important agenda, and use the Internet to solve the problems of “difficult, slow, and complicated work” that officers and soldiers strongly reflect.
Talent is the key to promoting the construction of a cyber power. A scientific and technological personnel of a unit of the Strategic Support Force said that in today’s world, network information technology is developing rapidly and has become a competitive highland for global technological innovation. We must continuously improve our own capabilities and qualities, focus on cutting-edge technologies and key core technologies, and work hard to overcome difficulties. A group of people from the Party Committee of a combat support ship detachment of the South China Sea Fleet said that it is necessary to study and formulate an overall plan for the development of talents in the field of cyber security, promote the reform of the talent development system and mechanism, and let the creative vitality of talents compete and burst out, and their wisdom and talents fully flow.
Informatization brings new opportunities for strengthening the military in the new era. During the study and discussion, the officers and soldiers said that they should firmly establish the idea of information-led and system construction, take positive and proactive actions, unswervingly take informatization as the development direction of the modernization of the military, take the network information system as a starting point, promote the leapfrog development of our military’s informatization construction, and comprehensively improve our military’s system combat capabilities.
(Reporter Zhang Kejin of the PLA Daily, special correspondent Wang Xuechao, correspondents Zheng Guangbin, Li Hengjian, Chen Hongjia, Wan Yongkang, Zhang Qiang, Yu Wenbin, Li Yunfeng, Meng Zhuolin, Li Jiahao, Tan Wenwei, Wang Yuting, Cao Zhiguo, Xu Fengfang, Hou Wei, Chen Zhi, Luo Kunkang, Li Guolin, Ma Yixun, Zhao Lei, Yang Guiliang)
War is a violent confrontation. With the development of science and technology and the evolution of war forms, the violence of war has gradually reached its peak in the “big” aspect. Nuclear weapons have been able to destroy the earth many times, which in turn limits the actual combat application of nuclear weapons. However, the violence of war is accelerating in the “small” aspect. The emergence and use of micro-combat equipment and micro-combat forces have increasingly changed our cognition of future warfare. Perhaps a mosquito may be a precision strike weapon in the future.
Micro-operation is the abbreviation for using miniaturized weapons and equipment to conduct operations. It is a new product based on the rapid development of science and technology and an important manifestation of the scientific and technological development level of a country and its military. With the rapid development of high technologies such as electronic information technology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence technology, more miniaturized, micro-miniaturized, and intelligent weapons and equipment are constantly emerging. The scale of operations has changed from the trend of continuous expansion for thousands of years. Micro-operation has become possible and has become an important development trend of future operations. We must fully recognize the importance of micro-operation, lead the development trend of micro-operation, and seize the initiative in micro-operation.
Micro-operation becomes a new direction of combat development
In the new wave of development of combat methods, micro-combat, with its unique image of being independent and cost-effective, has become a new direction of combat development and has a huge impact on combat development.
The future demand for intelligent warfare will lead to the development of micro-operations. The development of military intelligence has overturned traditional cognition. Its battlefield perception intelligence, autonomous decision-making intelligence, and attack intelligence have undoubtedly become the key to victory. Micro-operations just fit the context of military intelligence development and become a new direction of rapid development driven by the demand for intelligent warfare. Intelligent warfare requires intelligent perception means. The intelligent micro-perception system under micro-operation conditions can provide battlefield intelligence and information that is difficult to obtain with traditional perception equipment. It is reported that the modern new bionic flapping-wing aircraft developed by the University of Toronto in Canada and a company in California, USA, by imitating hummingbirds, has achieved aerial hovering for the first time. In wartime, it can be disguised as a hummingbird and is extremely difficult to be discovered. It has the ability to enter enemy locations and secretly obtain intelligence information. Intelligent warfare is inseparable from intelligent attack methods, and micro-operation provides a wealth of options for this. The “Vector Eagle” multi-mission micro-drone launched by Lockheed Martin of the United States has a total take-off weight of only 1.8 kilograms and a length of about 10 centimeters. It can carry different payloads according to different mission requirements and complete different combat missions such as destruction, interference, and blasting.
Microsystems, micro-bionics, micro-drones and other technologies support the development of micro-warfare. The development of combat forms cannot be separated from the support of technology, and micro-warfare cannot be separated from the support and promotion of the development of microsystems, micro-bionics, micro-drones and other technologies. Microsystems are devices that integrate sensing, driving, execution and signal processing devices in a heterogeneous and heterogeneous manner based on micro-photonics, micro-mechanics, algorithms and architectures to achieve functions. The US DARPA has set up a microsystem technology office to step up the research and development of electronic components based on microelectronics, optoelectronics, micro-electromechanical and micro-energy technologies, integrated technologies based on optoelectronics and magnetism, algorithms and architecture technologies based on programmable architecture, spectrum utilization algorithms, and electronic warfare, as well as technologies such as heat dissipation, safety, self-decomposition, and self-repair. Military bionic technology is also developing from macro to micro. Through micro-bionics, new materials, new equipment, and new tactics urgently needed for micro-combat can be developed. For example, the photon effect of butterfly wing scale powder can be applied to the stealth of micro-weapons and equipment, and the hydrophobic multi-level micro-nano structure of lotus leaves can be used for the drag reduction and self-cleaning of micro-underwater combat systems. Micro-unmanned technology is a miniaturized unmanned combat technology, representing the crystallization of the development frontier and integration of informatization, intelligence, and miniaturization.
The revolution in military effectiveness has raised new questions for micro-operations. Military effectiveness is the best release of efficiency and effectiveness in the new military reform, and micro-operations are the “catalyst” for releasing energy. On the one hand, the economic added value of micro-operations-related technologies is high and can produce a high cost-effectiveness ratio. Due to the use of micro-nano technology, the size of equipment and parts is greatly reduced, and the cost of equipment and parts can be greatly reduced. For example, the chip-level atomic clock will be 100 times smaller than the traditional atomic clock, and the production cost will be greatly reduced; the missile accelerometer and gyroscope manufactured using micro-nano technology are greatly reduced in size, but the price is only 1/50 of the original. On the other hand, micro-operations can achieve combat effects that traditional operations cannot achieve, presenting unique combat results. For example, the VAPR project carried out by the US DARPA aims to develop a revolutionary advanced transient electronic product. In addition to having the basic functions, reliability and durability of traditional electronic products, it starts and stops working through a trigger program. In order to prevent electronic equipment from being left in the battlefield environment for use by the enemy and to prevent the leakage of key technologies, after completing the military mission, this transient electronic product will partially or completely decompose into the surrounding environment.
Micro-operations will have a profound impact on future operations
In the intelligent era of war, the scale of operations has changed from its inherent trend of continuous expansion. Micro-operations, which are based on the use of micro-nano technology and miniaturized equipment, have had a disruptive impact on traditional warfare.
Subverting combat equipment. Micro-combat equipment is highly integrated and miniaturized, with advanced information technology replacing mechanical technology. It is mainly characterized by extremely small size and weight, extremely low energy consumption, extremely fast attack and defense speed, and extremely high combat performance. The millimeter wave radar scanner developed by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has an effective range of hundreds of meters, and the printed circuit board is tiny. The entire radar is similar in size to a cigarette box. This has revolutionized the appearance of military radar and will subsequently subvert the traditional combat operation mode of millimeter wave radar. MIT recently launched a new computer chip called “Navion” that can be used for micro-drone navigation. The chip is only 20 square millimeters and consumes only 24 milliwatts of power, which is about one thousandth of the energy consumption of a light bulb. It can be integrated into a nano-drone the size of a fingernail to help with navigation, and use a tiny amount of energy to process camera images in real time at a speed of 171 frames per second and perform inertial measurements. Micro-combat equipment developed through miniaturization, weight reduction, and integration is more concealed and more sudden in attack and defense than ever before, which has brought about subversive changes in its use mode and rules.
Subverting the way of fighting. Micro-warfare uses a large number of intelligent, unmanned, and miniaturized combat equipment, and combat personnel are transferred from the front to the rear; some equipment can even achieve fully autonomous intelligent combat, and “people are not in the loop” will become a new way of fighting. Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have designed a micro-robot that is expected to transport cells in the human body. Its diameter is 500 to 700 microns, and it has successfully achieved the purpose of controlling the movement of micro-robots through magnetic fields inside complex organisms. If this robot is used as a weapon to attack the enemy’s living forces, it can attack various organs in the enemy’s body, such as the brain, eyes, etc., and can quickly make the enemy lose its combat ability, and its combat is extremely covert and sudden. In addition, Harvard University in the United States has developed a robot named Kilobot with a diameter of about 2.5 cm. It relies on its own vibration to achieve self-movement and can form a “team” with other robots of the same type to collaborate to complete tasks, providing more options for typical “swarm” operations in micro-operations.
Subvert the organizational form of the army. Micro-operation has changed the relationship between weapons and equipment and soldiers, and thus subverted the organizational form of the army. First, the number of front-line combat personnel has been greatly reduced. Traditional combat is mainly in the form of direct combination of people and weapons and equipment, and killing on the front line. However, due to the extremely small size of weapons and equipment in micro-operation, the combat is relatively concealed. Weapon equipment operators can operate and assist in decision-making far away from the battlefield. This form of warfare makes the army form more loosely developed, and the boundaries between the front and rear will be more blurred. According to traditional standards, it is more difficult to define and distinguish combat personnel and support personnel. Secondly, military personnel are showing a trend of becoming more professional, highly educated, and highly intelligent, and the organizational form of the military needs to be adjusted accordingly. Micro-operations involve many high-tech fields, including materials science, engineering mechanics, chemistry, aerodynamics, electronics, cybersecurity and information technology, optoelectronics, micro-nano, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data, mobile Internet, and quantum, which are all supporting disciplines for micro-operations. The scientific and technological quality requirements for military personnel are not only “broad” but also “deep”. Therefore, the gathering of a large number of high-level talents in the military will become a “new situation”, which will inevitably have a new and significant impact on the organizational form of the military.
Attach great importance to future micro-operations
As the military develops rapidly today, we should fully realize the importance of micro-operations, conduct timely research, drive layout planning with major technological innovation and independent innovation, and take the lead in the field of micro-operations.
Strengthen the basic theoretical tracking of micro-operations and research on applied innovation. Strengthen the basic theoretical research of micro-operations. At present, the micro-operation concepts of developed countries in Europe and the United States are advanced and frequently verified. We should attach importance to the basic theoretical tracking of micro-operations and strive to study and reveal its essence and fill in the gaps. At the same time, we still have a certain emphasis on research and development, but are still insufficient in applied innovative research and transformation of results. We should follow the essential laws of micro-operations, give full play to the role of innovation in driving development, give priority to supporting basic theories, combat experiments, personnel organization, and rear-end support to improve the level of innovation, and use major technological innovations such as artificial intelligence and quantum to consolidate the “foundation” of micro-operations; use independent innovation efforts to narrow the gap in key areas, make up for the “heart, core, and innovation” of micro-operations, and focus on key areas where opponents are holding back and we cannot support them, to ensure leading development.
Vigorously promote the development of micro-operation-related technologies and equipment by taking military-civilian integration as the starting point. Accurately grasp the development direction of micro-operation, take military-civilian integration as the starting point, strengthen the development of related equipment, and form a micro-operation military-civilian integration development organization management system that integrates management, production, learning, and research. Promote the military-civilian sharing of micro-operation technical resources, speed up the formulation of military-civilian compatible micro-operation weapon equipment standards and military-civilian common technical systems, and formulate policies and measures to promote them, so as to reduce the barriers between the military and civilians and ensure the coordinated interaction between military and civilian use. We should speed up the removal of barriers to military-civilian integration in micro-operations-related fields, explore new paths and new models, conduct pilot projects in industries with strong military and civilian versatility and mature technological applications, such as microelectronics and artificial intelligence, and form replicable and popularizable experiences and practices as soon as possible.
Strive to achieve advanced planning and layout of micro-operations. To meet the requirements of future micro-operations, new combat forces can be given micro-operation exercises and experimental tasks, collect relevant data, and provide detailed data to better provide relevant theoretical and practical support for micro-operation planning and layout and pre-practice. Micro-operation-related majors can be created in colleges and universities, and exploration and practice can be strengthened in micro-operation theory research and teaching to provide intellectual support and talent training conditions for micro-operations. We should thoroughly demonstrate the needs of future battlefield construction, continuously improve the construction of battlefield network information system infrastructure, increase mobile communication coverage and bandwidth construction mainly based on satellite communications, and meet the needs of massive information transmission in future micro-operations. We must accelerate the construction of a micro-operation-related standard system and formulate and improve relevant application standards. (Pei Fei, Zhang Dapeng, Li Jinggang)
President Xi Jinping stressed the need to strengthen national defense science and technology innovation, accelerate the construction of a military-civilian integrated innovation system, and vigorously improve the national defense science and technology independent innovation capabilities. This profoundly reveals the objective laws of national defense science and technology development, and points out the direction for comprehensively implementing the strategy of developing the military through science and technology in the new era, creating a new situation for strengthening the military, and promoting the modernization of national defense and the military.
In his important speech at the plenary meeting of the People’s Liberation Army and Armed Police Force delegation at the first session of the 13th National People’s Congress, President Xi Jinping pointed out that we should strengthen national defense science and technology innovation, accelerate the construction of a military-civilian integrated innovation system, and vigorously improve the independent innovation capabilities of national defense science and technology. This important thought profoundly reveals the objective laws of national defense science and technology development, points out the direction for comprehensively implementing the strategy of rejuvenating the military through science and technology in the new era, creating a new situation for strengthening and rejuvenating the military, and promoting the modernization of national defense and the military. It has great historical significance and far-reaching practical significance.
Vigorously improve the independent innovation capabilities of national defense science and technology
Only innovators can win in international military competition. We must place innovation in an important position in the overall development of our military, firmly grasp the strategic basis of independent innovation in national defense science and technology, and significantly improve our independent innovation capabilities in national defense science and technology.
Strengthen basic research and key technology research for national strategic needs. President Xi stressed that real core key technologies cannot be bought with money, relying on imported weapons and equipment is unreliable, and taking the path of importing and imitating will not go far. Only by attaching importance to basic research can we always maintain independent innovation capabilities. We must attach great importance to original professional basic theoretical breakthroughs, strengthen the construction of scientific infrastructure, ensure the continuous advancement of basic, systematic, and cutting-edge technology research and technological development, and strengthen the source supply of independent innovation in national defense science and technology. Attach great importance to the development of strategic cutting-edge technologies, especially disruptive technologies, and strengthen forward-looking, leading, exploratory, and disruptive major technology research and new concept research. We must take the weak links in national defense science and technology and weapons and equipment construction as the main direction for promoting independent innovation, focus on breaking through core key technologies, strive to achieve overtaking on the curve, and realize the transformation from following and running side by side to running side by side and leading, so as to seize the strategic commanding heights of national defense science and technology innovation.
Increase the efforts to transform and apply advanced scientific and technological achievements. Exhaust knowledge to gain knowledge, and introspection to gain practical results. President Xi pointed out that only by combining scientific and technological achievements with national needs, people’s demands, and market needs, and completing the three-step jump from scientific research, experimental development, and promotion and application, can we truly realize the value of innovation and achieve innovation-driven development. The purpose of national defense science and technology innovation is application. It must serve the construction of the troops and military struggle preparations, and we must speed up the transformation and application of innovative and breakthrough achievements. The construction of weapons and equipment must be evaluated based on the contribution rate to the combat system, strengthen the guidance of combat needs, implement combat needs throughout the entire process of weapons and equipment development, ensure the actual combat applicability of weapons and equipment, and achieve an organic unity between development and application. The development of national defense science and technology must insist on focusing on actual combat and serving the troops, so that scientific and technological innovation can be well connected and focused with the development of troop construction, and the results of innovation can be transformed into real combat power, promoting the transformation of our military construction towards quality, efficiency and technology intensiveness.
Accelerate the construction of a national defense science and technology innovation system. The 19th CPC National Congress report clearly proposed to strengthen the construction of the national innovation system and enhance strategic scientific and technological strength. The national defense science and technology innovation system should be incorporated into the construction of the national innovation system to enhance the ability of original innovation, integrated innovation, and introduction, digestion, absorption and re-innovation. Accelerate the construction of innovation infrastructure platforms, promote the military-civilian integration of national defense science and technology and weapons and equipment, and consolidate the basic projects of the national defense science and technology innovation system. Accelerate the training of leading talents in national defense science and technology innovation, build a high-quality new military talent team, focus on training joint combat command talents and new combat force talents, and strengthen the intellectual support of the national defense science and technology innovation system. We will vigorously foster an innovative culture and create an atmosphere of innovation in national defense science and technology that encourages innovation, encourages success, and tolerates failure, so that creativity and innovation will become a trend in the military.
Focus on joint innovation of military and civilian science and technology
The development of military-civilian integration is the only way to achieve the balance between development and security, and the unity of enriching the country and strengthening the military. Vigorously carrying out military-civilian scientific and technological collaborative innovation will help promote the transformation of economic development mode and economic structure adjustment, and will help enhance the country’s war potential and national defense strength.
Do a good job in top-level design and strategic planning. The implementation of any strategy must be planned first and planned ahead. Military-civilian scientific and technological collaborative innovation involves the two major systems of the military and the local government and the interests of multiple parties. It is a major strategic project and a long-term and arduous task. We must firmly grasp the focus of strengthening top-level design and draw up a grand blueprint for the military-civilian scientific and technological collaborative innovation system. On the premise of in-depth understanding and grasp of the military-civilian integration strategy, clarify the development status, target orientation, basic principles, etc. of military-civilian scientific and technological collaborative innovation, adhere to scientific coordination, practical guidance, system argumentation, and strengthen legal protection. Comprehensive layout and strategic planning should be carried out to ensure that major national strategic plans, major policies and regulations fully integrate the needs of national defense and military construction, and that the military construction and development plans are aligned with the overall deployment of economic and social development. We should adhere to forward-looking planning, take major scientific and technological projects as the guide, and take the advantages of basic research and strategic high-tech research as the breakthrough point to seize the scientific and technological commanding heights to promote the generation of combat effectiveness and the transformation of economic development methods.
Promote the integrated demonstration and implementation of major scientific and technological projects. The Party Central Committee has determined my country’s long-term strategy for science and technology towards 2030 and decided to implement a number of major scientific and technological projects and engineering projects, which will not only help my country break the situation of being controlled by others in major key core technologies in strategic areas, but also help open up new industrial development directions and cultivate new economic growth points. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Party emphasized the expansion and implementation of major national scientific and technological projects, highlighting key common technologies, cutting-edge leading technologies, modern engineering technologies, and disruptive technological innovations. National defense science and technology innovation should pay close attention to the development trends of world military science and technology and weapons and equipment, focus on the country’s major strategic needs, adhere to what to do and what not to do, and timely track, adjust and optimize the deployed major scientific and technological projects and engineering projects to form a systematic layout of succession in stages.
Deepen and expand the military-civilian integration in emerging fields such as ocean, space, cyberspace, biology, and new energy. As the boundaries of scientific exploration become farther and farther, emerging fields such as “three depths and one pole” have become new focuses of strategic competition among major powers. Among them, the deep sea has become a new battlefield with potential opportunities for victory, deep space has become a new strategic fulcrum, the deep blue has opened the “Pandora’s box” of the cyberspace battlefield, and the polar regions have become a battleground for strategic games among powerful countries. Emerging fields are a unified whole of cognitive domain, physical domain, information domain, and industrial domain, and have natural military and civilian attributes. In recent years, countries around the world have generally regarded accelerating the development of military-civilian integration in emerging fields as an important measure to seize the commanding heights of international strategic games. The United States has intensively released the “National Innovation Strategy of the United States” and the “Federal Big Data Research and Development Strategic Plan”, and Russia has issued the “Russian Federation Science and Technology Development Plan”, etc., and has established a military-civilian integration development model in emerging fields. It is necessary to accelerate the formation of a multi-dimensional, coordinated and leapfrog development pattern of military-civilian integration in emerging fields through the joint construction of military and civilian facilities, the sharing of military and civilian technology, and the sharing of military and civilian information, deepen and expand military-civilian integration in emerging fields, and work together to build a strong maritime, aerospace, and cyber power.
Optimize the allocation of technological innovation resources
With the continuous development of science and technology, the characteristics of multi-disciplinary professional cross-clustering and multi-field technology integration are becoming increasingly prominent. We must rely on team strength to pool wisdom and tackle key problems, and integrate scientific research forces and innovative resources to maximize the advantages of all aspects and form an overall synergy to promote national defense science and technology innovation.
Strengthen open sharing to break the closed monopoly. We must firmly grasp the “hard bones” of national defense science and technology innovation and overcome difficulties, focus on strengthening the overall coordination of scientific and technological innovation, and strive to overcome the fragmentation of resources such as scattered and closed resources, cross-duplication, etc. in scientific and technological innovation activities in various fields, departments, and aspects, and avoid “islands” in innovation. Remove all kinds of visible and invisible fences, break the closed monopoly, do a good job in demand docking, planning docking, and task docking, and accelerate the establishment and improvement of an open and shared platform for innovative resources that organically interacts with all subjects, aspects, and links, and collaborates and is efficient, so as to maximize the realization of co-construction, sharing, and sharing. We must focus on improving the basic system of scientific and technological innovation, accelerate the establishment and improvement of the national science and technology reporting system, innovation investigation system, and national science and technology management information system, and significantly improve the level of open sharing of scientific and technological resources.
Deepen the reform of the defense science and technology system and mechanism. If scientific and technological innovation is compared to the new engine of my country’s development, then reform is the indispensable ignition system to ignite this new engine. The loose connection between science and technology and the economy has been a major chronic disease in my country’s science and technology development for many years. To solve this problem, we must take the reform of mechanisms and policies and systems as the starting point, resolutely demolish barriers, break the ice, remove thresholds, break down institutional barriers and interest shackles, build a systematic and complete science and technology military-civilian integration policy and system system, and promote the deep integration of science and technology with economic and social development. We must break through the barriers of the defense science and technology system and mechanism that restrict the organic integration of production, learning, research and application, improve the defense science and technology innovation service support system, and strengthen the use and protection of defense intellectual property rights. We should speed up the establishment of a scientific and technological decision-making mechanism in which scientific and technological consultation supports administrative decision-making, reform the scientific and technological evaluation system, and improve the resource allocation method and scientific and technological innovation incentive mechanism that conform to the laws of scientific and technological innovation. Only when the wheels of scientific and technological innovation and the wheels of institutional mechanism innovation turn together can the national defense scientific and technological innovation capability be greatly improved.
Tap into the potential for innovation in national defense science and technology. In today’s world of globalization, informatization, and networking, innovation factors are more open and mobile, and scientific and technological innovation is endless. We must improve the national defense science and technology innovation governance system, fully mobilize the initiative of innovation subjects, unleash the vitality of various innovation factors, make good use of all high-quality resources and advanced achievements in society, tap into all potential for scientific and technological innovation, and organically integrate national defense and military construction into the economic and social development system. Against the backdrop of economic and technological globalization, innovative resources are flowing rapidly around the world, and the links between countries are becoming increasingly close. No country can solve all innovation problems in isolation and on its own. We must adhere to open and inclusive independent innovation, and actively absorb innovative resources and achievements that can improve the efficiency of military construction and enhance the combat effectiveness of the military. Deepen international exchanges and cooperation, make full use of global innovation resources, and promote independent innovation in national defense science and technology from a higher starting point.
(Author’s unit: College of Arts and Sciences, National Defense University of Science and Technology)
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.
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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.
“Military academies are born for war and built for war.” At the opening ceremony of the 2019 military academy presidents’ training, President Xi Jinping proposed the military education policy for the new era, which pointed out the direction for the training of high-quality and professional new military talents in military academies. At present, the war situation is accelerating towards informatization and intelligence. What kind of soldiers are needed to win the future intelligent war and how military higher education can cultivate talents adapted to intelligent warfare are major issues facing us.
Warfare is accelerating towards intelligence
The war form is a stage-by-stage manifestation and state of war history, marked by the technical attributes of the main combat weapons. So far, after experiencing cold weapon war, hot weapon war, and mechanized war, the war form is accelerating towards information-based and intelligent warfare. The increasingly widespread application of advanced technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and brain science in the military field is becoming an important driving force for the new military revolution, giving rise to new unmanned, autonomous, and intelligent war forms, and changing the traditional war winning mechanism. In 2014, a foreign military think tank released a research report titled “20YY: War in the Age of Robots”, which believes that a storm of military reform marked by intelligent armies, autonomous equipment and unmanned warfare is coming. It will develop intelligent combat platforms, information systems and decision support systems, as well as new weapons such as directed energy, hypersonic, bionics, genetics, and nanotechnology. By 2035, an intelligent combat system will be initially established, and by 2050 it will develop to an advanced stage, fully realizing the intelligence and even unmanned nature of combat platforms, information systems, and command and control, and new weapons such as bionics, genetics, and nanotechnology will enter the battlefield, and the combat space will be further expanded to biological space, nano space, and intelligent space.
In recent years, with the continuous deepening of research on the human brain, brain-computer interface technology is becoming more mature. In the future, information exchange between humans and the outside world will no longer be limited to the senses. Chips can also be used to achieve direct information exchange between the brain and the outside world. People and things are fully interconnected. Humans may surpass the Internet and the Internet of Things and enter the intelligent era supported by brain networking. In the era of brain networking, the brain of soldiers is directly connected to combat platforms, information systems, and decision support systems. With the assistance of technologies such as quantum computing and cloud platforms, decisions are made. The targets of attack will be expanded to human thoughts and actions, and matter, energy, information and mind will be integrated. Some domestic experts believe that with the help of artificial intelligence technology, the winning mechanism of future wars will change from “information-led, system confrontation, precise strikes, and joint victory” in information warfare to “intelligence-led, autonomous confrontation, traceability strikes, and cloud brain victory” in intelligent warfare. After matter, energy, and information, cloud intelligence that integrates man and machine will become the key to determining the outcome of wars. This transformation of the form of intelligent warfare is accelerating, and any hesitation may bring unimaginable consequences.
However, it should be noted that no matter how the war develops, people are always the most fundamental factor. The intelligent warfare will change the functions and roles of soldiers, and will place higher demands on the ability and quality of soldiers. Cognitive ability may surpass knowledge and skills to become the core ability of soldiers.
Intelligent warfare requires the comprehensive quality of soldiers to be upgraded and restructured
According to the talent growth cycle, the military personnel currently receiving higher education will become the main force of combat training in more than 10 years, and will also become the first batch of main forces to meet the challenges of intelligent warfare. At present, there are still some deficiencies in the design of talent training goals in our military higher education, and insufficient attention is paid to the ability to adapt to the changing intelligent battlefield in the future. There is still a certain gap between the talent training goals and the needs of intelligent warfare. On July 23, 2020, when President Xi visited the Air Force Aviation University, he emphasized the need to persist in cultivating people with morality and educating people for war, strengthen military soul education, strengthen fighting spirit, and comprehensively lay a solid foundation for the ideological and political, military professional, scientific and cultural, physical and psychological qualities of pilot trainees. In order to implement President Xi’s important instructions and meet the needs of future intelligent warfare, it is urgent to build a higher-level military talent training goal with thinking ability as the core and accelerate the upgrading and reconstruction of the comprehensive quality of the military.
Intelligent warfare is a complex system that integrates multiple fields. Its intelligence-based characteristics and iterative and changing development trend are changing the role of soldiers in war. Soldiers may gradually move from the front stage of war to the backstage, from direct face-to-face combat to human-machine collaborative combat, and from charging and trapping on the front line to planning and designing wars at the back end. To be competent in human-machine collaboration, war planning and design, and other functional roles, in addition to ideological and political and physical and psychological requirements, in terms of military professionalism and scientific culture, soldiers should focus on improving the following five aspects of knowledge and ability: First, a multidisciplinary knowledge structure, mastering the core principles of multiple intelligent warfare-related disciplines such as nature, military, cognitive psychology, and network intelligence, and being able to integrate knowledge across disciplines to guide military practice; second, strong cognitive ability, with logical thinking, critical thinking, and systematic thinking capabilities, and the ability to use scientific methods to analyze, infer, and solve operational problems; third, human-machine collaboration capabilities , deeply grasp the characteristics and laws of intelligent warfare, skillfully use combat platforms, command and control systems, and decision support systems, be able to control a variety of intelligent weapons and equipment, and realize efficient human-machine collaboration; fourth, innovation ability, with keen scientific and technological perception and strong creativity, be able to grasp the forefront of science and technology, innovate combat methods, and master the laws of war development; fifth, self-growth ability, be able to accurately recognize oneself, rationally plan military careers, freely use information means to acquire new knowledge, new technologies, and new methods, constantly improve knowledge structure, enhance cognitive ability, and better adapt to the complex and changeable development of the military revolution.
Finding the Focus of Military Higher Education Reform
At present, the overlapping advancement of informatization and intelligence has brought greater complexity to the talent training work of military academies. It is necessary to meet the actual needs of informationized warfare and lay the foundation for adapting to intelligent warfare. The following tasks should be focused on.
Reconstruct the curriculum system. The curriculum system supports the formation of the knowledge structure of talents. In order to cultivate military talents that meet the needs of intelligent warfare and achieve the training goals of military expertise and scientific culture, we should break the practice of designing a curriculum system based on a single major and establish a “general knowledge + direction” curriculum system. General knowledge courses are based on existing natural science and public courses, and add courses such as mathematical logic, mathematical modeling, critical thinking, network foundations, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, and system engineering to establish a cross-domain and cross-disciplinary horizontal curriculum system, expand the knowledge of students, build a knowledge structure urgently needed for intelligent warfare, and lay a broad knowledge foundation for their lifelong growth. Direction courses are to establish a discipline and professional direction, set up a vertical course system of mathematics and science, professional foundation, and professional positions, build a solid professional background, and cultivate students’ ability to use professional theories to solve complex combat training problems. The “general knowledge + direction” course system helps to build a “T”-shaped knowledge structure and meet the needs of military talents to adapt to the diverse and changing intelligent warfare.
Deepen classroom reform. Educational neuroscience believes that education is the reshaping of students’ brains, and the classroom is the main battlefield for reshaping students’ neural networks. It plays an irreplaceable role in the formation of high-level cognitive abilities required for intelligent warfare. Continuously deepening classroom reform is the current key task of military higher education. It should be noted that a classroom with only knowledge understanding is far from being a good classroom. All human behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are controlled by the brain. Every piece of knowledge, thinking, and emotion corresponds to a specific neural network of the brain. Therefore, classroom reform should focus on students’ learning, follow the cognitive laws of the human brain, start with attracting and maintaining attention, establish a scientific thinking framework, and mobilize students to think actively. Generally, the teaching methods that aim at high-level abilities have a common model – problem-driven heuristic teaching. Commonly used problem-based teaching methods, project-based teaching methods, and inquiry-based teaching methods all belong to this model. Therefore, the main path to promote classroom reform is to develop unknown, novel, and interesting questions and stories for students, design a thinking framework that aims at logical reasoning, critical thinking, reflective ability, creative ability, and learning ability, inspire students to think actively under the guidance of the framework, and then supplement it with the output process of speaking and writing, and finally achieve the goal of internalizing knowledge understanding and forming high-level abilities.
Promote all-round education. Modern educational theory not only regards the classroom as an important battlefield for education, but also regards all time and space outside the classroom as important resources for cultivating students. These time and space outside the classroom not only support classroom teaching and promote the formation of knowledge and ability, but are also important places for cultivating non-intellectual abilities. Colleges and universities should make full use of these time and space, clarify specific training goals, focus on going deep into the troops, getting close to actual combat, and highlighting practicality and creativity, and scientifically design education and training plans. Focus on giving full play to the management and education advantages of military academies, explore and establish a student management model, and promote the cultivation of students’ leadership and management capabilities; continuously enrich the second classroom, build an innovation platform, create more opportunities for independent practice, and enhance students’ innovation capabilities; make full use of various large-scale activities to cultivate students’ competitive awareness and teamwork capabilities; strengthen the construction of management cadres, improve scientific management capabilities, and be able to effectively guide students to carry out time management, goal management, emotional management, psychological adjustment, habit formation, etc., to help students improve their self-management and independent learning capabilities.
In short, education is a systematic project. The above are only three aspects to break through the shortcomings of talent training in the intelligent era. To truly solve the problem, military academies need to carry out systematic reforms to effectively support the achievement of talent training goals in strategic planning, quality management, personnel quality, teaching conditions and other aspects. This requires us to continue to explore and innovate, continuously improve the level of school management and education, and strive to open up a new situation in the construction and development of military academies.
In the picture of human history, war and military development are particularly eye-catching. When we cast our eyes on the long river of history of war, it is not difficult to find that in the magnificent world changes, the strength of the army has always been accompanied by the prosperity of the country, and every era has ushered in a first-class army. Exploring and studying the era trajectory of the construction and development of these armies and finding things with regularity will undoubtedly provide us with important inspiration and reference for achieving the goal of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the army as scheduled and accelerating the construction of the people’s army into a world-class army.
Driven by military needs, strengthening capabilities is a top priority
Military capability has always been the most critical part of the national security system. From the development of the military construction in major countries in the world, it can be found that military construction has always taken strengthening military capability as an urgent task. Military capability has been generally regarded as the ultimate standard for measuring military strength and the primary task of war preparation. In recent years, some military powers have continuously issued forward-looking military capability assessment and forecast reports, emphasizing the vigorous development of military deterrence and combat capabilities. It can be said that strengthening military capability is at a critical period of competition, which is a rare opportunity for latecomer countries. History and practice tell us that the construction of first-class military capability needs to seize the window period of transformation from quantitative accumulation to qualitative leap, take the historical mission of the army as the starting point, and take deterring and winning the war as the standard. At present, major military powers have focused on the needs of strategic application, continuously expanded into space, far sea, deep earth, network, electromagnetic and other spaces, planned ahead of time, stepped up efforts to fill the “gap” of new combat forces, and developed new domains and new qualities with decisive influence on military technology and equipment means, aiming to seize the “new commanding heights” of future military competition and build a lasting military advantage, which also reflects that the military capability structure will undergo a fundamental mutation and leap. For example, the US military has accelerated the development of military capabilities in the direction of “integration, both offensive and defensive, doubling advantages, rapid and precise”, attempting to achieve the deep integration of information, firepower, defense, guarantee and control, and form a system combat capability of one-time combat, multi-domain joint and rapid support.
Taking military training as the starting point and military training as the central task
Only when a soldier is familiar with the skills can he be good at fighting; being prepared for the unexpected is the way to keep the country safe. Training and preparation for war are the central tasks and normal manifestations of a first-class army. Only by real training and real preparation in peacetime can we be deployed, deployed and win in wartime. If a country does not make great efforts to improve the army’s ability to win and be ready to deal with possible military conflicts and potential war threats at any time, it will fall into a passive situation of being beaten once a war breaks out, and its national security and development interests will be greatly damaged. The practice of military construction in some countries in the world today has proved that first-class training and preparation for war must always be based on missions and tasks, insist on using the leading role of military struggle to control combat preparation and continuously exert efforts to actual training and preparation, use the integration of training and combat to control actual combat training to leap forward to high intensity, normalization and systematization, and use the ability to win battles to control the combat effectiveness standards to advance to high, deep and practical levels, so as to truly focus on preparing for war and invest various resources in preparing for war. In recent years, the development of the Russian army has benefited greatly from the consistent adherence to training to shape momentum, strengthen preparations, and promote combat, especially the high attention paid to carrying out a series of targeted pre-war training to enhance the cluster deterrence capabilities in various strategic directions, thus changing the army’s earlier image. It is worth noting that major military powers are taking the promotion of military intelligent means as an important part of training and preparation for war, focusing on liberating and developing combat effectiveness, integrating key technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies of unmanned combat systems into preparation for war, guiding the implementation of the modernization tasks of combat theory, military personnel, and weapons and equipment, so as to accelerate the formation of a new pattern of modernization of the system of combat readiness and combat capability, and presenting distinctive contemporary characteristics of training and preparation for war.
Focus on integration and energy gathering, and make system deployment the key point
The joint operations of land, sea, air, space and power grids and the multi-domain integrated system operations characterized by cross-domain interaction urgently need to plan and construct an integrated combat system layout with deep integration of “detection, attack, control, defense and protection” from the “long term” to form a system victory. This has become the focus of major military powers in promoting the construction of first-class armies. In recent years, the concepts of “air-sea integrated warfare”, “joint all-domain operations” and “multi-domain operations” proposed by the US military are actually the systematization products of organically combining sea, air and space-based forces, land-based strike forces and network and power forces, which means that the US military is fully committed to optimizing the global layout of military forces through cutting-edge technological advantages in order to welcome the arrival of a new form of war. Today, the era of winning by relying solely on the advantages of combat units has ended. Instead, a combat force system that combines long, medium and short distances and integrates soft and hard forces has been built to ensure that key areas are controlled by the offensive and defensive advantages of the system. Therefore, the key to the systematic layout of joint operations is to gather the combat energy advantages of different domains and quickly integrate each combat module into the system operations to achieve a composite offensive and defensive situation layout with system efficiency increase, overall linkage, precise energy release and mutual coordination. In recent local wars and armed conflicts, the role of information networks as “hinge” and “enabling” in system layout has been revealed, enabling multiple combat forces to be autonomous, adaptive, interactive, and intelligently make decisions and control. In future operations, we should strengthen the intelligent advantage layout of “cloud” and “network” aggregation, skillfully combine tangible forces with intangible “cloud” and “network” deployment, and accelerate the formation of a combat layout that combines virtual and real forces and disperses form and gathers force, which will become a new model and trend of system deployment, integration and aggregation.
The main purpose is to gain an advantage, and to prioritize joint control.
Modern warfare begins with and is highly dependent on the comprehensive seizure and maintenance of battlefield control, which reflects the special significance of the struggle for control over the battlefield to the dominance of war. Planning key joint operations for control over the battlefield plays a crucial and decisive role in the struggle for control over key domains. Among them, gaining information advantage is the key to joint control over the battlefield. Military powers such as the United States and Russia generally believe that various combat forces in the era of informatization and intelligence must take the control advantage of multi-domain space as the basis for carrying out multiple tasks. The Russian military emphasizes improving the timeliness and anti-interference of joint combat force projection, and defeating opponents through cross-domain coordination and concentration. This shows that when fighting for control over the battlefield, we must first maintain the initiative strategically, that is, strategically establish the direction, goals and paths for obtaining joint control over the battlefield, stipulate the means and methods for creating and using overall advantages, and form an advantageous position in intelligent technology and weapon systems, information acquisition and utilization, and control capabilities. At present, some military powers use “big data intelligent technology and super network technology” as the “key catalyst” for seizing control over the battlefield, intending to form a decisive military advantage. This is a major strategic shift for military powers since the informatization of military affairs. In the future struggle for power, only by building intelligent efficiency chains and control relationships with parallel flow of material information and high aggregation can we promote the emergence of joint power-control efficiency through the linkage and energy-gathering effect.
Focusing on battlefield confrontation, improving efficiency is the key factor
Military activities and combat forces are inseparable from the physical and virtual battlefields of multi-dimensional space confrontation, and the rapid integration of multiple domains to form an integrated battlefield system makes the pursuit of maximizing the effectiveness of confrontation the key to battlefield confrontation and a topic that needs to be highly valued in building a first-class army. In recent years, major military powers have accelerated the construction of comprehensive information systems covering the full-dimensional space of the battlefield to pursue the overall benefits of battlefield confrontation. At present, the US military already has nearly 10,000 intelligent unmanned information network systems in the air and on the ground, and they are still being upgraded. With a view to solving bottlenecks such as the difficulty of responding to command and control in the informationized battlefield and the easy paralysis of the combat system, the future focus of battlefield system construction will be to rely on intelligent systems with rapid and autonomous decision-making, efficient information processing, precise coordinated operations and automatic control of weapons and equipment, establish a more complete and flexible control system and operation mechanism, and focus on doubling the effectiveness of battlefield cognition, command and control, precision strikes and information attack and defense confrontation. In addition, around the control of battlefield space, future battlefield confrontations will present a “flash” in terms of power, highlighting the joint deterrence of multiple forces, quickly accumulating power, and suddenly exerting force to form a soft and hard containment trend; “fast integration” in terms of means, effectively integrating and using multiple means, gathering combat energy in different domains, and forming a multi-dimensional linkage and precision attack to assist defense; “fast attack” in terms of action, real-time scenarios, efficient decision-making, seizing favorable opportunities, and forming a local battlefield advantage of rapid and high-intensity suppression in the entire domain. This is the focus of the current major military powers in studying and applying battlefield confrontation, and it will also become a new scenario and new content of combat that both sides of the confrontation will pay attention to.
Taking foresight and prediction as the first step and taking scientific and technological innovation as the strategic support
With the rapid development of a new round of scientific and technological revolution, industrial revolution and military revolution, the leading role of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technical fields has become prominent. Major military powers pay more attention to placing continuous promotion of innovation in an important position, and advance systematic planning and construction in terms of innovation concepts, models, standards, systems and applications, providing important strategic support for building a first-class army. After World War II, some countries became military powers. One of the most important fulcrums was the extensive use of the latest science and technology, which produced new domains and new qualities of combat forces and promoted the leapfrog development of military combat effectiveness. At present, major military powers insist on using cutting-edge technologies to make innovative breakthroughs, step up the research and development of faster, more intelligent information and more destructive combat platforms, in an attempt to maintain an absolute leading position. It should be noted that the world’s century-old changes are accelerating, and the new military revolution is in the ascendant. This makes it more important to judge the direction of scientific and technological innovation. The role of scientific and technological innovation as an accelerator for promoting the construction and development of a first-class army is more obvious, especially scientific and technological innovation is shifting to key areas and key means, implementing key breakthroughs, promoting a leap in the combat capability of the multi-dimensional attack and defense system, and accelerating the overall transformation of the military field. This requires accurately predicting the new forms and characteristics of future wars, continuously applying advanced technological achievements, and striving to promote a fundamental change in the combat power generation model, accelerating the formation of a strong asymmetric victory and strategic balance of power. This is the first move and strong support for the construction of a first-class military. (Xu Jun)
Recently, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the establishment of the “Era Military Innovation Technology Park”, which focuses on scientific research, testing and simulation of advanced weapons, military and special equipment. Coincidentally, the US military is also stepping up the development of the “Soldiers Build Intelligence System Military Training Support” project, hoping to better assist officers and soldiers in conducting military intelligence training by providing equipment, simulators and simulation modeling services. The frequently mentioned military simulation technology has attracted attention from all parties. With the rapid development of cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, military simulation technology has made significant progress in equipment construction, military exercises, combat training and logistics support. At present, major military powers have recognized the huge application prospects of simulation technology in the military field and regard it as an “advanced intelligence contest” in modern warfare.
The “virtual battlefield” can also deploy troops
Once upon a time, we all “learned about war from war”. The emergence of military simulation technology has allowed us to learn about future wars from the “virtual battlefield”.
Simulation technology mainly relies on computer and other equipment platforms, and uses mathematical models to conduct scientific research, analysis, evaluation and decision-making on issues that need to be studied. Military simulation systems are simulation systems built specifically for military applications. They can conduct quantitative analysis of combat elements such as land, sea, air, space, electricity, and the Internet, the performance of weapons and equipment, and combat operations, and then accurately simulate the battlefield environment, present relevant battlefield situations, and achieve effectiveness evaluation of the combat system and command decision-making assistance.
At present, military simulation systems have become an effective means of studying future wars, designing weapons and equipment, and supporting the evaluation of tactics, and they run through the entire process of weapons and equipment development and testing. In recent years, military simulation technology has been increasingly regarded as a multiplier for improving combat effectiveness and one of the key technologies for national defense security and troop construction and development.
The United States has always listed modeling and simulation as an important key defense technology. As early as 1992, the United States announced the “Defense Modeling and Simulation Initiative” and established a special Defense Modeling and Simulation Office. The United States also specifically listed the “integrated simulation environment” as one of the seven driving technologies to maintain the US military advantage. At the same time, European countries attach great importance to the development of military simulation technology, and strive to continuously improve simulation methods in the process of developing a new generation of weapon systems, thereby improving the comprehensive effectiveness of weapon equipment construction and development.
In fact, military simulation technology has allowed people to fully learn about future wars in experiments. Before the outbreak of the Gulf War, the US Department of Defense used military simulation technology to analyze and determine the direct consequences of Iraq igniting all oil wells in Kuwait, which had a profound impact on the US military’s formulation of the Gulf War combat plan. In the integrated ballistic missile defense system project carried out by the US military, modeling and simulation methods are specifically used to conduct a preliminary assessment of the ballistic missile defense system. At the end of 2017, the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency invested 12.8 million US dollars specifically for the construction of virtual simulation space battlefields. The US Army also spent 57 million US dollars to develop the Army Infantry Training System – this immersive military virtual simulation training system can provide soldiers with a more realistic battlefield combat simulation environment.
A brainstorming session to plan operations
From artillery simulation, aircraft simulation, missile simulation to today’s various types of weapon system equipment simulation and combat simulation, while simulation technology continues to meet the needs of military applications, it is also rapidly developing in the direction of virtualization, networking, intelligence, collaboration and universalization. In order to continuously improve military simulation calculation methods and improve simulation technology, people are constantly launching a “brainstorming” to plan operations.
Mathematical modeling algorithm. Mathematical model is the basis of simulation. To carry out simulation, we must first build a mathematical model of the object to be simulated. At the same time, the correctness and accuracy of the mathematical model directly affect the credibility of the simulation calculation results. In recent years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has provided new ideas for mathematical modeling. Introducing artificial intelligence to build mathematical models can not only effectively improve the realism, reliability and accuracy of simulation models, but also further improve the efficiency of modeling and simulation.
Virtual reality technology. With virtual reality technology, people can interact with objects in a virtual simulation environment through related equipment, thereby creating an effect of “immersion” in the real environment. The augmented reality technology that has emerged in recent years has further increased the user’s perception of the virtual simulation system, and can superimpose virtual objects, scenes, and information generated by the military simulation system onto the real scene. The U.S. Army is currently relying on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies to develop the future overall training environment to achieve seamless, mixed immersive combat training.
Network grid technology. The realization of military simulation is inseparable from the strong support of computers, local area networks, software engineering and other technologies. The distributed interactive simulation that integrates simulation equipment or systems of different types in different locations into a whole provides a more realistic application environment for military simulation. In recent years, grid technology that can realize the rapid transmission of various types of information and resource sharing has become a research hotspot for military simulation. The US Department of Defense has begun to use the “Global Information Grid” plan to establish a military grid that communicates various information elements on the battlefield and realizes the dynamic sharing and collaborative application of various military network resources.
Winning the war before it starts
The future information warfare is an integrated war that is carried out simultaneously in multiple dimensions such as land, sea, air, space, electricity, and the Internet. Not only is the battle structure complex and the weapons and equipment diverse, but it also places higher demands on the combatants and the use of tactics. Only by building a “virtual battlefield” for future wars with the help of military simulation technology and realizing the scientific coordination of factors such as the scale of war, the course of war, war investment, the number of combatants and weapons and equipment, the targets of attack and the intensity of attack, can we be sure of victory before the war begins.
In the field of combat experiments, the U.S. military has fully reduced the losses caused by improper combat plans and action plans through a large number of computer simulation evaluations and iterative optimizations. The Russian military’s combat regulations and tactics are also “optimal battlefield solutions” obtained through scientific deduction and simulation calculation using mathematical models. Through military simulation analysis and evaluation, battlefield commanders and fighters can quickly understand the trend of war simulations and carry out effective responses according to various changes in the “virtual battlefield”, thereby effectively improving the effectiveness of combat experiments.
In the field of military training, individual soldier training can be carried out through an immersive virtual simulation training environment, which can be as close to the battlefield environment as possible and effectively improve the training effect. In recent years, the US Army has specially opened a “simulated immersion” training course in the “Advanced Course for Officers”. Through the implementation of virtual simulation military training, the organization and implementation of training are not restricted by time and weather conditions. The distributed training simulation system can even enable trainees in different locations to participate in the training together. By modeling and simulating the specific battlefield environment, tactical background and enemy forces, the military training system can also provide trainees with a more realistic battlefield perception.
In the field of equipment demonstration, the technical support of simulation systems is required throughout the life cycle of weapons and equipment development. At present, the United States has extensively adopted simulation technology in new weapon system development projects to fully support the development and testing, live-fire evaluation and combat testing of weapons and equipment. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has further explored effective measures to deal with incoming missile threats through missile threat target modeling and simulation. The U.S. Navy simulates the operation of ship systems and crew members through mission analysis simulation software, and obtains simulation results for determining and optimizing the number of crew members. In the future, military simulation technology may become a new technological highland for the world’s major military powers to compete.
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)
Modern warfare has undergone profound changes. The most fundamental thing is that the winning mechanism has changed. If you want to win the war, you must understand the winning mechanism of modern war. At present, the form of war is accelerating its evolution to information-based warfare, and intelligent warfare is beginning to take shape. What is the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare? What are the new changes and what are the new characteristics? In order to answer these questions clearly, this journal launches a series of articles “Focusing on the Winning Mechanism of Intelligent War”. Readers are welcome to contribute ideas and actively debate, so as to jointly promote the in-depth research on the winning mechanism of intelligent war.
At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation led by artificial intelligence is in the ascendant. “Artificial intelligence is like previous missiles and satellites. Whether you are prepared or not, it will enter the historical stage of human war.” Intelligent warfare has already Coming in stride. To win the intelligent wars that may occur in the future, the core is to clarify the winning mechanism of intelligent wars.
Clarify the unique connotation of the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare
To clarify the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare, we must first define the connotation of the word “mechanism” accurately. The author believes that “ji” can be understood as mystery and doorway, and “reason” can be interpreted as principle and reason. The so-called winning mechanism of intelligent war refers to the methods (paths) and principles for winning intelligent war. In order to further clarify this connotation, it is necessary to accurately grasp the differences and connections between the three pairs of concepts.
Grasp the unique connotation from the relationship between mechanism and laws. Laws are the inevitable connections between the inherent nature of things, and the laws for winning a war are the essential connections and inevitable trends of development of various factors related to winning a war. War is a complex giant system, and winning is also complicated. Many winning laws often work on the battlefield at the same time. If you conduct a detailed analysis of specific battle cases, you will find that in every battle of victory and defeat, there must be a certain law that plays a decisive role, and other laws play an auxiliary but indispensable role. The winning mechanism of war is the link and reason why the winning factors of war trigger the winning rules and play a winning role under certain conditions. The winning mechanism depends on the winning law and reflects the way and basis for the winning law to work. However, the winning law alone cannot become a winning mechanism. To summarize in relatively simple words, the winning law is the basis of the winning mechanism, and the winning mechanism is the application of the winning law.
Grasp the unique connotation from the relationship between mechanism and mechanism. Mechanism is the internal structure, function and interrelationship of things. The combat winning mechanism is the internal mechanism through which the various elements of the combat system interact to form a joint force and achieve victory. For example, gathering effectiveness and parallel linkage are all mechanisms. They are the application methods of relevant winning mechanisms. and implementation methods, and these methods and methods embody certain rules and have certain institutional characteristics. In information warfare, the comprehensive integration of combat elements such as intelligence reconnaissance, command and control, fire strikes and comprehensive support, and the optimization and reorganization of land, sea, air and other combat units will form a variety of winning mechanisms. Most of these winning mechanisms include information winning links that convert events into information, information into situation, situation into cognition, cognition into decision-making, decision-making into action, etc. It can be seen that the winning mechanism is the inner “Tao”, which is more abstract, while the winning mechanism is the “skill” of using Tao, which is more concrete.
Grasp the unique connotation from the relationship between mechanism and theory. Understanding, grasping and flexibly applying the laws and mechanisms of winning war requires correct guidance from the theoretical and strategic perspectives. Wise military theorists always make theoretical processing and creation after discovering new winning laws and mechanisms, thus forming new military guidance theories. It can be seen that the core of military theoretical innovation lies in revealing and clarifying new laws and mechanisms for winning wars, and then summarizing new war guidance. In the history of world military affairs, Mahan’s “sea power” theory, Douhet’s “air superiority” theory, Fuller’s “mechanized warfare” theory, Tukhachevsky’s “large depth operations” theory, Graham’s “high altitude” theory, etc. “Borderland” theory, etc., have revealed the corresponding laws and mechanisms for winning wars, led the military trend, and changed the face of war. It can be said that the mechanism of winning war is the basis and source of innovation in military theory, and military guidance theory is the smart application and theoretical sublimation of the mechanism of winning war.
Dialectically grasp the multiple implications of the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare
The winning mechanism of intelligent warfare includes the general mechanism of winning war, and at the same time embodies the distinctive characteristics of algorithmic games; there are corresponding winning mechanisms at the strategic, operational, tactical and other levels, and they are also closely related to algorithmic games. Due to various factors, the specific winning mechanism of each war may be different. Here, only a few types of winning mechanisms with certain universality are listed.
The “outwit” mechanism of using “strong” to defeat “weak”. “The strong wins and the weak loses” is a certain universal law for winning wars. Even in those battles in which the weak defeat the strong, it is often necessary to form a strength advantage over the enemy locally and at a specific period of time in order to truly win. According to the law of “the strong defeats the weak”, using the strong to defeat the weak has become a universal mechanism for winning wars. The “strong” here refers to the overall combat effectiveness. In the era of mechanized warfare, the strength of the overall combat effectiveness is mainly reflected in the superiority of troops and firepower. In the era of information warfare, the military’s ability to win wars depends on its information superiority. In the era of intelligent warfare, the contribution rate of intellectual superiority to combat effectiveness is much higher than other factors. In intelligent war confrontations, human intelligence has widely penetrated into the combat field and been transplanted into weapon systems. The side with higher and stronger intelligence can better develop and use the “outwit” mechanism of using the strong to defeat the weak, and even according to the This design war, dominates the development of the battle situation, and achieves final victory.
The “outwit” mechanism of using “high” to defeat “low”. The “high” and “low” here mainly refer to the “generation difference” and “dimensional difference”. Usually, the side that uses more advanced war forms and combat styles can defeat the side that is still using lower dimensional war forms and combat styles. For example, troops who generally use muskets can almost always outperform troops who use swords and spears. If “high” wins and “low” loses is the law of victory, then the methods and reasons for using “high” to defeat “low” become the winning mechanism. In the process of intelligent warfare, attacking the weaknesses of the opponent’s combat system to reduce or invalidate its “intelligence” and implementing “dimensionality reduction strikes” is the specific application of the “high” to defeat the “low” and “outwit” mechanisms. . It should also be noted that in the era of intelligent warfare, there are likely to be multiple stages of development from low to high. Try to keep yourself in an advanced stage and attack the opponent to a low-dimensional stage. This is also to use “high” to attack “low” The application of the “outwit” mechanism.
The “outwit” mechanism of using “fast” to defeat “slow”. With the strong promotion of science and technology, the connotation of “fast” in war is constantly being refreshed. During World War I, tanks could only maneuver at 4 to 8 miles per hour. By World War II, armored groups were able to conduct blitzes. In recent years, we have thought that supercomputers are already very fast, but quantum computers can process “Gaussian Bose sampling” one hundred trillion times faster than the fastest supercomputers. Quantum algorithms have achieved exponential acceleration compared to classical algorithms. Artificial Intelligence will achieve a qualitative leap. In future intelligent warfare, with the support of algorithms, early warning time will be advanced, decision-making time will be shortened, combat operations will be extended forward, the “observation-judgment-decision-action” cycle will be greatly compressed, and “instantaneous destruction” will be upgraded to “instantaneous destruction”, truly entering the future. The era of “instant kill” when discovered and destroyed.
The “outsmarting” mechanism of defeating “clumsy” with “skill”. In some classic battle cases, we can often see commanders using flexible strategies and tactics, turning passivity into initiative, and turning disadvantages into advantages, which embodies the law of victory that “skillful” can defeat “clumsy” and “skillful” can defeat “clumsy”. “Clumsy” winning mechanism. The “cleverness” in intelligent warfare, relying on the advantages of algorithms, began to come out of the commander’s brain and was endowed with “intelligent” weapon systems. When intelligent warfare develops to a certain stage, all-domain, multi-dimensional and various types of intelligent combat platforms can quickly couple combat forces, build a combat system based on mission requirements, independently implement collaborative operations, and quickly return to the state of readiness for war after the mission is over, showing a trend of intelligent autonomy. . In the future, intelligent warfare will expand to the polar regions, deep sea, space and other fields. The mechanism of “outsmarting” by using “skill” to defeat “clumsy” will also expand accordingly, and more and newer “outsmart” paths will be developed.
Prospectively explore and develop the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare
In today’s world, the scientific and technological revolution and the military revolution influence each other, the form of war is accelerating the evolution, and the mechanism for winning war is constantly updated. In the context of the slowly opening of intelligent warfare, we must pay close attention to the development trend of the winning mechanism of intelligent war, change from passive to proactive, change from follow-up to leading, proactively explore and develop the winning mechanism of intelligent war, and firmly control the winning mechanism of intelligent war. Take the initiative to win intelligent wars.
Develop new winning mechanisms. History and reality show that once advanced science and technology are applied to the military, it will profoundly change the mechanism for winning wars, thus causing changes in existing combat guidance, doctrines, regulations, and troop formations. Today, with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, the development of military intelligence is limitless, and the specific winning mechanism of future intelligent warfare will inevitably exceed current expectations. We should actively explore the potential of existing advanced technologies in intelligent warfare and explore their possible winning mechanisms. Comprehensively analyze the weak points of the opponent’s unmanned combat system and our advantages, work backwards from the target points to determine the winning mechanism, propose military innovation needs, accurately develop strategic, cutting-edge, and disruptive technologies, and promote the “rules of the game” of war. A change of direction in my favor.
Validate new winning mechanisms. Whether the research results on the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare are effective or not needs to be tested in practice. In times of relative peace, we should strengthen the testing of actual combat training and targeted combat experiments, discover problems during testing, revise understandings, and make the new winning mechanism as scientific and thorough as possible. When the time and conditions are ripe, promote the new intelligent war winning mechanism to become the basis for the all-round reform and overall improvement of military training. We must persist in leading training with war and promoting war with training, so as to train according to the actual requirements of intelligent war and achieve Integration of operations and training. We must put ourselves first, learn from foreign militaries appropriately, break the limitations of more qualitative analysis and less quantitative analysis, vigorously build and improve intelligent warfare laboratories, open up innovative links from winning mechanisms to operational concepts to experimental platforms, and promote the elimination of the dross and the essence. Eliminate the false and preserve the true, and improve the scientificity and authoritativeness of the research results on the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare.
Sublimate new winning mechanisms. The new mechanism for winning wars is the deep basis for promoting innovation in military theory. When we discover new specific “outsmarting” mechanisms such as using “strong” to defeat “weak”, using “high” to defeat “low”, using “fast” to defeat “slow”, and using “skillful” to defeat “clumsy”. , in line with this mechanism, core combat concepts, combat principles, and war guidance can be put forward, and a new military theory on intelligent warfare can be formed through systematic processing. Some people say, “Rich imagination and deep insight are far more important than 100% accuracy.” It is necessary to moderately encourage “whimsical ideas” in war design, and guide creative researchers to propose new “war ideas” based on a deep understanding of military intelligence “technical creativity” and the winning mechanisms derived from it. Based on the research on the winning mechanism of intelligent warfare, we must deepen military theoretical innovation and accelerate the formation of a contemporary, leading and unique military theoretical system.
(Author’s affiliation: National Security College, National Defense University)
An analysis of the use of strategies in intelligent warfare
■Chen Dongheng, Zhong Ya
Reading Tips: “Warfare is the art of deception”. War is a competition of comprehensive strength. Ancient Chinese military strategists have always attached great importance to “strategizing in the tent and winning thousands of miles away”, and all of them regard strategy as the way to victory. War practice shows that as long as war is a confrontation between humans, smart strategies will not withdraw from the battlefield. Today’s battlefield competition is about intelligent skills, and what is fought is smart strategies.
“The best military is to attack the enemy’s strategy, the next best is to attack the enemy’s alliance, the next best is to attack the enemy’s soldiers, and the worst is to attack the city.” Strategy, as a component of combat power and a weapon to win the war, runs through ancient and modern times and transcends national boundaries, and has an important function of influencing and determining the outcome of the war. Although the role of science and technology is more prominent in intelligent warfare, it does not exclude the use of strategy. With the support and guidance of strategy, the combat system is more efficient. In-depth research and mastery of the use of strategy in intelligent warfare will be more conducive to winning the initiative in intelligent warfare.
The status and role of the use of strategy in intelligent warfare
The essence of strategy lies in the intelligent release of power. Scientific strategy application can often defeat the majority with the minority, the big with the small, and the strong with the weak. The battlefield of intelligent warfare presents more transparency, more extended combat space, more diverse means of confrontation, and more complex winning mechanism. This provides a solid material foundation and technical support for the implementation of strategy, and the status and role of strategy are becoming more and more important.
The internal driving force of the army construction and development planning. Demand is the order of the army, and use is the commander of the weapon. How science and technology are innovated, how weapons and equipment are developed, and how the national defense forces are built are often driven by demand and forward-looking planning. For example, in order to make up for the gap between Russia and the United States in terms of overall air defense and anti-missile strength, Russia used “asymmetric” strategies to focus on penetration technology and developed the “Zircon” and “Dagger” hypersonic missiles before the United States. Facts show that the application of strategies mainly focuses on “Tao” and “Fa”. The more reasonable the design and the more scientific the application, the more it can stimulate the motivation, vitality and potential of innovation and creation, and trigger a revolution in science and technology, weapons and equipment, and military construction and combat methods. Only when intelligent warfare, scientific and technological innovation and weapons and equipment development are closely connected with the needs of scientific war strategies can they adhere to the correct direction and be better transformed into actual combat power.
A multiplier of the actual combat effectiveness of the combat system. In the combat power spectrum, strategy, as an important soft power, has the value and significance of providing scientific methodological guidance, appropriate time and opportunity selection and correct path support for the use of military hard power. For example, Iran once used the “dislocation” tactics to launch a large-scale retaliatory air strike against Israel, first using hundreds of cheap drones to attract the consumption of Israel’s expensive air defense system, and then using more advanced high-value ballistic missiles to penetrate, which improved the hit rate to a certain extent. Facts show that when facing an opponent with superior hard power, if the strategy is used properly, it can also achieve miraculous results; and the same hard power may have very different combat effectiveness when using different strategies and tactics. In intelligent warfare, although the “blade” of military hard power is faster, in order to make it more effective, it still needs to rely on more sophisticated strategic “sword skills”.
Dependent variables of hybrid warfare operations. Strategy can not only empower military hard power, but also has a strong direct combat function, and can even defeat the enemy without fighting by “soft killing”. For example, the United States once spent a lot of money to capture the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, but he seemed to have disappeared from the world, and technical means could not determine his exact hiding place. He was finally tracked down by targeting his messenger through strategic use. The United States’ “live broadcast” “Spear of Poseidon” operation attempted to show the strength of the US military by killing Bin Laden to shock the international community. Intelligent warfare is a hybrid warfare, which has entered a new era of global live broadcast, universal participation, and full coverage. More and more countries are adopting strategic methods to enhance their own confidence and strike the opponent’s will to resist, and the strategic “soft kill” combat function is becoming more and more apparent.
Basic mechanism of intelligent warfare strategy application
Intelligent warfare, high-level development of artificial intelligence, rapid iteration, full spectrum penetration, and high-efficiency release, make the application of strategy have more dimensional support and stronger drive, showing a unique operation mechanism.
Cluster operation of strategy application. The application of strategy is based on the underlying logic of war operation and follows the law of evolution of the subject from individual to team and then to system. From a historical perspective, the application of strategy warfare in the cold weapon era relied more on the wisdom and experience accumulation of generals. Natural factors such as geography and weather are the main grasps of strategy operation. The burning of Red Cliff and borrowing arrows from straw boats are vivid footnotes. In the mechanized era, in order to adapt to the increasingly complex composition of military branches and the needs of fast-paced operations, the “General Staff” of senior military institutions dedicated to war planning services came into being. The “General Staff” in the two world wars is a typical representative. In the information age, the use of war strategies mainly relies on the control of information, and information power has become the main support behind strategic planning. In intelligent warfare, the comprehensiveness of technology application, the systematic nature of force planning, and the platform characteristics of game confrontation are more prominent, and the internal requirements are that the subject of strategy implementation should shift to a more powerful systematic platform.
Algorithm-driven strategy application. Strategy is based on strategy. The essence of planning is calculation, calculation of the world situation, calculation of military situation, calculation of development trend, calculation of strength and weakness, calculation of winning advantage… Whether it is calculation by human brain or machine, calculation by generals or calculation by teams, calculation is always the most critical supporting factor. Generally speaking, whoever has stronger computing power, more precise algorithms, and faster calculations can grab the “calculation” machine and win the victory. In the era of intelligent calculation, artificial intelligence participates in strategic decision-making with human-machine hybrid algorithms or machine algorithms, which greatly enhances the efficiency of calculation. It is based on this that major countries have focused on breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to win the future competition. These artificial intelligences, characterized by strong computing power, have great application potential in simulating battlefield situations, simulating war processes, and assisting decision-making and command. Only by guarding against the opponent’s technical aggression, vigorously improving our computing power, and adding the wings of algorithms to traditional strategies can we be invincible in the strategic game confrontation.
Intelligent support for the use of strategies. In intelligent warfare, strategies are based on the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its extensive military applications. It is a two-way “rush” of human strategic wisdom and “technical” wisdom. Now, the generals’ ingenuity and traditional staff work have become increasingly difficult to adapt to the needs of intelligent warfare. Comprehensive intelligent command and decision-making platforms have become an important support for the implementation of strategies. The command and decision-making system of the US military has developed into a large platform that integrates four-layer structural functions, including “intelligence support, information fusion, mission coordination, autonomous decision-making, action deployment, force allocation, situation adjustment, and real-time tracking”, and has become the brain of its “decision-making center warfare”. The Russian Federation Armed Forces Combat Command Center can dispatch and monitor the training and exercises of the entire army in real time, and undertake combat command tasks in low-intensity small-scale conflicts. It can be seen that intelligent support for strategic planning and strategy implementation has gradually taken shape. Intelligent strategic confrontation has put forward higher requirements for the professional integration of strategic subjects, and promoted the deep integration of human biological intelligence and artificial intelligence, which is “human-like intelligence”.
Main ways to use strategies in intelligent warfare
In intelligent warfare, the era background, supporting conditions, and action mechanisms of strategy application have undergone profound changes. The way of implementing strategies must keep pace with the times, strive to combine traditional strategic advantages with new technologies and new forms of warfare, innovate and expand scientific paths to effectively release strategic energy, and strive to plan quickly, plan carefully, and integrate strategy and attack.
Intelligent technology integration releases energy. That is, make full use of intelligent technology to empower and release energy for strategies. Generally speaking, the effective implementation of strategies is inseparable from accurate information perception, rapid personnel mobilization, and efficient force strikes. The innovative application of artificial intelligence enables people to see farther, hear more closely, know more, and calculate faster, making the army gather and disperse more quickly, move more covertly, and release power more rapidly, which is more conducive to the generation of strategies and the achievement of effectiveness. On the one hand, with the help of the rapidity and autonomy of artificial intelligence, the enemy situation can be quickly grasped through intelligent reconnaissance, the decision-making time can be greatly shortened by using machine algorithms, and the optimal strategy can be selected with the help of simulation deduction; on the other hand, relying on artificial intelligence to release and enhance the efficiency of strategies, modern brain control technology, deep fake technology, information confusion technology, public opinion guidance technology, etc., have greatly expanded the space and means of implementing strategies.
Human-machine complementation releases energy. That is, the strengths and weaknesses of human intelligence and machine intelligence complement each other and enhance efficiency and release energy. The biggest advantage of machine intelligence over human intelligence is that it can fight continuously without being affected by biological factors such as will, emotion, psychology, and physical strength. However, the “meta-intelligence” of human intelligence and its ability to adapt to changes are not possessed by machine intelligence. The two intelligence advantages complement each other and aggregate to form a powerful hybrid intelligence, which strongly supports the use of strategies in war. On the one hand, the “machine brain” safely and efficiently makes up for the shortcomings of the human brain; on the other hand, the human brain responds to special situations on the spot. Facts show that the biggest advantage of human intelligence over machine intelligence is that it can make decisions and deal with different situations on the spot, which just makes up for the shortcomings of machine intelligence. Only by combining the two can we form the optimal solution for intelligent calculation and gather the strongest strategic application.
The platform releases energy as a whole. It is to create a modular intelligent system, an integrated intelligent decision-making command action platform that integrates strategy generation and release. Intelligent warfare, every second counts, improves the time sensitivity of target strikes. The intelligent platform comprehensively uses intelligent computing and command automation technology to efficiently process massive data and complex battlefield situations, creating a “super brain” for commanders. It has significant advantages of good functional connection, high stability, fast operation speed, and high combat efficiency. It is a new quality combat force for strategic planning. Relying on the intelligent command and control system, it can make real-time decisions, form a list of time-sensitive targets, and independently solve the combat units and strike platforms that can be summoned and struck the fastest and best. The hardware and software can accurately strike the targets, and accurate strikes on time-sensitive targets can be achieved in real-time decisions, providing more options for assisting war decision-making and command.
