Perspective on the phased characteristics of the evolution of intelligent warfare
2024-08-21
The innovation of military technology and the development of materialized weapons and equipment are the intrinsic driving forces and determining factors of the evolution of war forms. Revolutionary military technology usually follows the logical chain of "military technology weapon equipment combat mode organizational form war form", driving the transformation of war form from quantity to quality. Currently, technology self drive, combat traction, and strategic investment respectively form an iterative and mutually reinforcing cycle with intelligent technology innovation. The combination of these three cycles creates a sustained acceleration effect, accelerating the advancement of military technology innovation and the evolution of warfare forms. The rapid development and application of intelligent technology are driving the evolution of intelligent warfare into three stages. Close up stage: The third wave of artificial intelligence is approaching its peak, with shallow empowered unmanned platforms being widely used as weapons. The primary intelligent warfare led by humans is gradually maturing and accelerating the peak of the third wave. A new round of artificial intelligence technology, represented by deep learning and intelligent big models, is rapidly iterating and developing, continuously empowering unmanned platforms. It has been preliminarily and widely applied in military fields such as target recognition, situational analysis, information processing, and auxiliary decision-making, forming an intelligent technology innovation cycle based on combat applications, namely "unmanned platform application military intelligence demand intelligent technology innovation unmanned intelligence application". Thanks to the acceleration of this innovation cycle, but also constrained by the interpretability of statistical learning, the unreliability of emergent generation, and the high energy consumption of required resources, the third wave of artificial intelligence is expected to reach its peak within ten years, taking into account the development history and rise and fall cycles of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence empowers unmanned platforms at a shallow level. Machines process massive amounts of data, automatically recognize and analyze multimodal information such as text, speech, and images. Single agent intelligence is gradually maturing, and breakthroughs have been made in expert style intelligence for specific fields, mainly applied in weapon equipment and tactical operations. The "OODA" loop is mainly based on the "human in the loop, led by someone" mode, while artificial intelligence mainly participates in a certain implementation stage or specific action of combat tasks such as reconnaissance and surveillance, situational awareness, information processing, auxiliary decision-making, and killing and striking in a single element form. The focus is on embedding and upgrading unmanned intelligent technology to enhance the combat capabilities of existing weapons and equipment, as well as using intelligent technology for combat mission planning to improve the quality and efficiency of command and decision-making. The rapid development of intelligent warfare in the primary stage. As an important tool with human power, unmanned platforms play a role in expanding human capabilities in combat applications. Its extensive application at the tactical level has formed a certain scale, and its proportion is gradually increasing, leading to the emergence of human-machine hybrid combat grouping mode. However, the intelligent warfare at this stage is a mechanized and information-based warfare with intelligent components, and the intelligence content is relatively low. It is basically a summary and extension of past war experience, and still mainly uses command based combat as the main mode of command and control. It belongs to unmanned enhanced manned combat, which can achieve remote control, stealth penetration reconnaissance and surveillance, close range remote control combat with no one in front and no one behind, system support, remote control of air ground precision strikes and other combat styles. Mid scenario stage: Qualitative artificial intelligence emerges and iterates rapidly, deeply empowered unmanned platforms play a leading role in the war, and the intelligent led "three modernizations" fusion war accelerates the evolution of great power games and the arrival of strong artificial intelligence. Human understanding of the world mainly relies on logical reasoning and intuition. The advantage of artificial intelligence lies in logical reasoning, but to generate reliable intuition, at least 1 to 2 rounds of disruptive breakthroughs are needed. Possible technological routes include constructing electronic neural systems that are close to biological neural networks, such as brain like computing, and quantum computing that breaks through the limitations of classical computers, all of which are gradually moving from theoretical research to practical applications. This stage is a quantitative accumulation period for artificial intelligence to move from specialized to universal. Unmanned intelligence has become a key variable in the game between major powers. Strengthening strategic investment in various countries will quickly promote innovation in unmanned intelligence technology and transmit it to combat applications. The significantly improved combat effectiveness will stimulate further strategic investment, forming an intelligent technology innovation cycle based on strategic investment, namely "strategic investment technology innovation combat application strategic investment". This cycle is bound to accelerate the arrival of strong artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence deeply empowers the combat system. The main indicators are platform autonomy, battlefield unmanned, force integration, and human-machine collaboration, achieving highly self-organizing collaborative operations between multiple unmanned platforms (systems), as well as efficient collaborative operations between manned and unmanned systems. The "OODA" ring is mainly based on the "human on the ring, human-machine collaboration" mode, and the artificial intelligence technology group is embedded in a certain combat process as an independent small-scale grouping, or directly responsible for the specific tasks of a certain combat module. Artificial intelligence has begun to fully integrate into all aspects of the combat system, accelerating the evolution of warfare towards intelligence. The autonomy of the platform has been greatly enhanced, with autonomous perception, judgment, decision-making, adjustment, and action. Group intelligence collaboration is gradually maturing, and frontline autonomous collaboration has become the norm. The application scope has been expanded to include firepower strikes, logistics support, combat planning, and combat management, playing an important role in campaign command. The integration of "three modernizations" is moving towards intelligent dominance in the war. From the emergence of iconic innovative technologies to the formation of new forms of warfare, it requires a transmission cycle, including technology transformation, equipment allocation, force building, organizational structure, and research on tactics. The primary intelligent warfare of the integration of "three modernizations" will continue for a historical stage, and its gradual development is manifested in the increasing scale of unmanned platform application, deeper empowerment of artificial intelligence, and tighter collaboration between humans and humans. The level of intelligence continues to increase, and intelligent unmanned equipment has begun to dominate. Human unmanned collaboration has become the basic way of generating combat power, and intelligent empowerment is gradually deepening from shallow levels. Unmanned intelligence plays a leading role in the main battle and has become the "center" of a war. A large number of specialized unmanned intelligent units have emerged. In this stage of intelligent warfare, intelligent unmanned platforms surpass manned platforms at the campaign level and occupy a dominant position, with the human-machine collaborative combat grouping mode becoming the main body. Possible typical combat styles: One is the first assault, where unmanned intelligent systems that integrate reconnaissance, jamming, deception, and strike are widely used in the first assault, replacing the current style of long-range precision strike weapons mainly used in the first assault. The second is concealed deployment, which involves the deployment of a large number of unmanned intelligent devices in peacetime, triggering wake-up and one strike to defeat the enemy during wartime, replacing the current style of using mobile forces to quickly enter the combat area. The third is unmanned cluster combat, which replaces planned coordination with autonomous collaboration, and implements cluster based breakthrough combat through "swarm" saturation attacks at low cost and high value consumption. The fourth is real-time human-machine collaborative combat, where manned and unmanned mixed forces achieve multi domain and collaborative combat in complex battlefield environments. Vision stage: The "Intelligent Explosion Singularity" will give birth to super artificial intelligence, and super powered unmanned platforms will replace human beings in the entire field. The ultimate arrival of super intelligent unmanned warfare will be driven by technology to accelerate the iteration of strong artificial intelligence. The theory of "technological singularity" holds that whenever humans invent a technology, they will invent new technologies based on that technology. The higher the current level of technology, the faster the next generation of new technologies will come. The overall trend is to first go through a period of slow growth, then achieve exponential progress, and finally enter a period of plateau under objective resource constraints, brewing the next epoch-making technology. For intelligent technology, the development from strong artificial intelligence to super artificial intelligence is at a high level of exponential growth. Supported by a technology driven innovation cycle of intelligent technology, once strong artificial intelligence is achieved, the "intelligence explosion singularity" will soon come, with the emergence of super artificial intelligence that surpasses human intelligence, ushering in a true intelligent unmanned war for humanity. The stylistic features of super intelligent unmanned warfare. At this stage, super artificial intelligence and unmanned platforms are fully integrated, and the embodied intelligence with it as the brain is highly developed, making super powered unmanned platforms the absolute mainstay of the battlefield. In the stage of super intelligent unmanned warfare, the main combat equipment, combat organization, and combat space will undergo disruptive changes, characterized by unmanned platforms being super capable, almost completely unmanned, and engaging in all domain space combat. An unmanned platform with super intelligence, super mobility, and super firepower performance, capable of autonomously carrying out combat tasks under human authorization, simulating human thinking and implementing actions. Fast, compact, and dense intelligent weapons will autonomously construct a giant, complex, and adaptive combat system, creating extremely complex battlefield environments. The main space for combat has expanded from traditional land, sea, and air battlefields to areas such as deep sea, space, and cyberspace, with the latter becoming the main battlefield that determines the outcome of the war. Intelligent "bee colonies", "wolf packs", "shark groups" and other technologies completely replace human unmanned collaboration, achieving true "human outside the environment" autonomous decision-making. In summary, corresponding to the peak of the third wave, the implementation of strong artificial intelligence and super artificial intelligence, the evolution of intelligent warfare can be divided into three stages: close range, mid range, and far range. In response to the trend requirements of the three stages of intelligent warfare evolution, the close range stage focuses on addressing the urgent need for combat power generation. It should be based on the bottom-up concept, using existing and recently feasible unmanned intelligent equipment to fight what battles, integrating them into the joint combat system, and maximizing their effectiveness gains; The top priority lies in the mid scenario stage, which requires close tracking and sharp insight into the development trend of intelligent technology. It is necessary to design unmanned intelligent warfare from top to bottom, develop equipment according to the concept of what kind of war to fight, and deeply study and coordinate with the unmanned construction in the near scenario stage; The long-term stage requires sufficient patience and strategic determination to embrace the arrival of the "intelligent explosion singularity" through solid accumulation and unremitting exploration. (New Society)
Edit：Xiong Dafei Responsible editor：Li Xiang
Source：PRC newspaper
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