by
Austin BayAugust 7, 2024
The think piece has this compelling title: "America Isn't Ready for the Wars of the Future." Foreign Affairs published it on Aug. 5.
The noted authors: former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Give the article this big plus: The messengers' notoriety means major media will notice. Pray the chatter is useful.
The essay addresses what the authors perceive as immediate U.S. defense weaknesses. However, its major theme, that cheap unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and various microchip gadgetry (guidance, sensors, communication and munitions) have changed contemporary warfare, isn't new. The authors focus on wars in the last decade. Yet over two decades ago, the U.S. started using General Atomics' Predator to hunt and then kill terrorists with missiles. Terrorists in the world's hardest corners learned they couldn't hide.
Milley and Schmidt make the case that drones, microchips and advanced software (artificial intelligence software) have produced what I'll call a near-ubiquitous battlefield transparency. In Ukraine, "Russian units find themselves under constant observation, and their communications lines are prone to enemy disruption -- as are Ukraine's. Both states are racing to develop even more advanced technologies ..."
The authors argue AI is a key tool for analyzing an immediate situation and projecting likely enemy reactions -- which tells a drone operator where and when he might find another enemy target to ambush. That's how I interpret this line: "AI systems could, for instance, simulate different tactical and operational approaches thousands of times, drastically shortening the period between preparation and execution." The authors speculate that AI may ultimately control fully autonomous weapons.
To their credit, the authors acknowledge an AI issue that war games have revealed: "AI models tend to suddenly escalate to kinetic war, including nuclear war, compared with games conducted by humans. It doesn't take much imagination to see how matters could go horribly wrong if these AI systems were actually used ..."
Milley and Schmidt also concede the nature of war doesn't change -- they invoke Clausewitz's clash of wills. "The nature of war is, arguably, immutable. In almost any armed conflict, one side seeks to impose its political will on another through organized violence." However, "the character of war -- how armies fight, where and when the fighting occurs, and with what weapons and leadership techniques -- can evolve. It can change in response to politics, demographics, and economics. Yet few forces bring more change than technological development."
Hence this definite warning: "Future wars will no longer be about who can mass the most people or field the best jets, ships, and tanks. Instead, they will be dominated by increasingly autonomous weapons systems and powerful algorithms."
That is a supposition.
Technology -- airframes with advanced guidance and sensors -- that takes money. Ultimately, Milley and Schmidt believe they can answer this problem: How can America best spend its billions of tax dollars to field a war-winning, economically viable and therefore credibly war-deterring 21st-century defense system?
I think the authors will agree that's their goal. It should be. But remember, Schmidt's company is very involved in AI -- expensive AI projects.
System is a critical word. Unfortunately, it's one that gets lost in the techno-discussion of drones and ships and munitions. Defense System means the entire shebang has to work and be synchronized -- strategic combined arms. The tech, the tanks, the jets, the computer chips, the doctrine, the training, the intelligence (spy stuff) gathering and assessment, the AI and the gray ware -- human intelligence and leadership.
And, yes, the leadership. Leadership from the White House commander in chief to the Pentagon four-stars down to the infantry squad leaders. And, per Milley and Schmidt, the private first-class drone operators.
Without leadership in the White House and Pentagon, the savviest PFC drone operator is merely playing a deadly video game, and one that may cost him his life.
Milley and Schmidt focus on the weapons systems, not the entire diplomacy-war prevention-warfighting system.
Yes, drones and relatively inexpensive smart munitions have created vulnerabilities. But counter-drone weapons are appearing, to include microwave emitters. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has the ability to suppress and eliminate enemy air defenses. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy do. New U.S. Army long-range strike missiles are another enemy air defense suppression option.
The biggest vulnerability remains poor leadership. Mark Milley has a number of leadership actions and inactions to explain, beginning with the Biden administration's Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. That was on his watch. If he opposed Biden's decision, he should have resigned. Accountability and character matter in all human endeavors, but especially in the military. There's nothing artificial about it. It's essential to victory.