ARES&ATHENA25
the military’s new best friend?
MACHINE LEARNING
Maj Gen Dr A R D Sharpe Director, CHACR
If one of the Clauswitzean unchanging factors in the nature of war is that it is, at its core, an intrinsically human activity, this Ares & Athena asks the reader to consider what the evergrowing role of machines in war means for this dynamic. What, for example, do machines do to those apparently timeless sub-components of the moral component of fighting power: like trust, loyalty, affection, pride (both personal and unit), ethos, integrity, or courage, for example; or even the balance of passion over logic which is so important in the fight-or-flight decision making of combatants? If humans struggle, often, to communicate nuance and understanding, how will artificial intelligence and machines affect this vital dynamic? All armies put great emphasis on the importance of teamwork – what does this now mean? And what about ‘leadership’? How do the human and social dynamics of a unit, or headquarters, change if the humans increasingly have less to do with each other and more to do with machines? What happens to the role of human intuition in decision making when artificial intelligence starts to replace human assessors and deciders? How might senior decision makers, and political leaders, change their calculi if their own casualties were increasingly measured in machines lost rather than lives lost? How do people who are inherently comfortable working and interacting with machines, data and programmes work in harmony with humans who would rather work and interact with humans?
So, machines will have a direct effect on future warfare; and, aside from these direct effects on the moral component of fighting power, they will also have an indirect effect in a 21st century army. What about those essential soldierly ingredients of ‘matehood’, ‘comradeship’, ‘kameradschaft’, ‘esprit de corps’, and, put quite simply, the vital importance of ‘being among friends’? Much is made, in the current force development concepts of various nations, of contexts such as ‘the less dense battlefield’, characterised by dispersion, isolation and individual and small-team delegation. And of the ‘transparent battlefield’, where the enemy (and the world) can see everyone’s every move. What might that mean for the lonely, isolated, dispersed, vulnerable combatant’s personal moral component? What does this context mean for unit, sub-unit or formation cohesion? How will such isolation effect the human combatants and decision makers? How will remoteness from (other) combatants affect leadership? And it’s not just in the combat squad: how will universal vulnerability to attack affect the behaviour of those in decision-making headquarters? How will loyalty and trust between coherent groups of people be translated into loyalty and trust between dispersed people and increasing numbers of machines?
This Ares & Athena does not offer the professionally curious or the force developers a list of answers. It does, however, provide such individuals with a deeper layer of thinking, from a variety of angles, on a subject which must sit, surely, at the heart of the future battlefield. Diagrams and order of battle charts, lethality calculations for weapons systems,
enhancement factor calculations for artificial intelligence, and all of such examinations and articulations of logic have their place; but Napoleon will likely remain right, to a greater or lesser degree, and the moral will still ‘be to the physical as three is to one’ (or thereabouts!) when the men and women with their fingers on triggers and buttons, and their hands on bayonets and control sticks, make their fightor-flight decisions. And, ultimately, on a grander scale, what will the rise of machine logic mean in the up-until-now very human decision-making process that philosophers, thinkers, academics and analysts from Clausewitz to Coker, Thucidydes to Howard and Aristotle to Strachan have pondered? Will war be ever less an extension of human-formed policy by other means? Will machine logic disrupt the Clausewitzean trinity’s logic? And will war, therefore, be more, or less, likely? As ever, with Ares & Athena, we seek to provide the practitioners not with answers, but with ‘something to think about’.
Introduction: Machine learning
The human aspects of humanmachine teaming
The impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on combat cohesion
Knowing is half the battle: Organising expertise for all-domain operations
A sociology of post-human war
A view on trust
Conclusion
Published by: Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, Robertson House, Slim Road, Camberley, Surrey GU15 4NP.
Tel: 01276 412708/412660 chacr.org.uk
CHACR business partner: QinetiQ Training & Simulation Ltd (formerly NSC), Cody Technology Park, Old Ively Road, Farnborough, Hants. GU14 0LX Ares & Athena © CHACR 2024
How might senior decision makers, and political leaders, change their calculi if their own casualties were increasingly measured in machines lost rather than lives lost?
Cover picture: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2022
THE NEED TO DESIGN THE HUMAN ASPECTS OF HUMAN-MACHINE TEAMING
Leo Blanken Associate Professor, US Naval Postgraduate School
The future of warfare will assuredly involve the integration of intelligent machines into military organisations. If done successfully, it is hoped that the resulting human-machine teams would allow Western militaries to achieve mass, precision strike and scalable effects within ‘kill-chains’ that include a relatively small number of human operators. Considering recruiting problems and casualty aversion in many Western societies, this option is increasingly attractive. Given the current trajectory of technology, the only question remains – how deeply and how soon will this human-machine teaming occur? Most of the current debate is focused on the technical aspects of this challenge, such as the maturing of technologies and manufacturing of the resulting systems at scale. Much less attention is being placed on the human aspects of the challenge at the individual, organisational and systemic levels. This piece explores the impact of such teaming at these three human levels, arguing that now is the time to conduct thoughtful analysis of how the intentional design of
these socio-technical systems (a) will impact user trust and emotional attachment at the individual level, (b) will construct (and deconstruct) martial identity and military culture at the organisational level, and (c) will drive the shaping of international norms on the use of such teams at the system level. Unravelling these complex topics now is critical, as the pace of technology may soon overtake planning around the human aspects of future battlefields.
Human-Machine Teaming as a socio-technical system
All militaries are currently (and justifiably) fixated on unmanned systems. Though discussion around such systems has been brewing for decades, the war in Ukraine has shown that the successful integration of these technologies is already impacting warfare in significant ways. Given this confirmation of the ready application of unmanned – and increasingly autonomous – systems, the race is on to field them. In the United States, for example, this race for battlefield autonomy has three foci: research and development, acquisition and scaling. Research and development has become an area of real concern for the
Remote and autonomous systems may assist in generating the necessary mass, but beware the siren call of automation... infanteers somewhere will be digging trenches long into the 21st century
United States for most cutting-edge technologies, as the private sector is now driving technological progress and China is superior at leveraging the market through its civil-military fusion of research efforts; this has put the US Department of Defense (DoD) in the uncomfortable position of playing technological ‘catch up.’ Acquisition is a second major area of concern, as the DoD’s bureaucratic process for acquisition is showing itself to be unable to keep pace with these rapidly changing technologies. The conflict in Ukraine, for example, is displaying a dizzying rate of technological change as both sides adapt continuously, with a particular focus on unmanned systems. US observers note that the DoD acquisition process is frankly unable to match this speed of change. The final concern in the US national security community is the capacity of the defence industrial base to produce these systems at the scale necessary for modern warfare. China’s industrial capacity to manufacture high-tech systems, for example, dwarfs that of the United States and there is no easy solution to this problem.
Though these concerns of research and development, acquisition and scaling are all important technical aspects of the problem, none of them address the more human concerns of fielding human-machine teams on the battlefields of tomorrow. As I have argued elsewhere, this emphasis on the physical challenges of new technology “tends to neglect the interaction of a changing material world with
the values, practices and emotional responses of individuals and institutions. These are just as important as technology – arguably more so.”1 Humanity’s journey on this planet has been shaped to no small degree by the things we have constructed. From vehicles to tools, to weapons to toys, the things our societies make, in turn, help to make our societies. Militaries, in particular, have paid close attention to new ‘things’ as relative advantage in the quality and quantity of material often plays a central role in determining outcomes on the battlefield. What is often neglected in stories of technological change, however, is that outcomes are jointly determined by creators and creations; humans and things interact – in what are referred to as socio-technical systems –to cure diseases, land on the moon and win wars. Humans not only build things and determine their usage, but also socially construct the cultural meanings and identities around them and this impending process of social construction around human-machine teaming offers important opportunities for strategic planning.
Given this, I offer some thoughts around the human aspects of such teaming in military organisations. More specifically, I seek to identify recommended areas for further study by structuring the topic along three levels of analysis: the individual, the organisational and the systemic. Thinking in terms of designing may be helpful here, using Herbert Simon’s expansive definition: “[E]veryone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”2 This mode of enquiry entails both objective analysis and the empathetic engagement of human stakeholders in its problem-solving techniques; it is, therefore, well-suited for exploring these topics. Getting ahead of these inevitable social impacts is crucial and savvy military leaders should begin these efforts now.
The individual level
At the individual level, the dyadic interface between human and machine will be critical for effective teaming. The technical considerations around interface will be determined by the required tactics, techniques and procedures given anticipated future operational environments and mission types. This will, in turn, help to determine the range of operations that can be enabled by the human-machine team, as well as the scalability of the team (the ratio of human to machines). Human considerations, however, need to be taken into account as well; these would involve the unconscious, emotional reactions that operators have towards the machine itself as well as its behaviours. The two most relevant human attributes that need to be considered here will be affection and trust, as the design of the machine should strive to elicit the optimal levels of these human responses based on the desired performance of the human-machine team.
Recommended areas for further study at the individual level hinge on the aesthetic design and how the operator interfaces with and experiences the machine. Affection and trust should be carefully considered here as the aesthetic aspects of the machine will drive the nature of the relationship
1Leo Blanken, “The Weird and Eerie Battlefields of Tomorrow,” The Strategy Bridge, 25 August 2020, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/8/25/the-weird-and-eeriebattlefields-of-tomorrow.
2Herbert Simon, “The Science of Design: Creating the Artificial,” Design Issues 4:1/2 (1988): 67-82, 67.
that is developed between the human and the machine. Is the machine a disposable tool? A beloved pet? A valuable platform? Or a trusted teammate? Do machines with four legs appear dog-like (endearing)? Would a machine with six, eight or many legs appear insect-like (repulsive)? How would this appearance impact the potential relationship to the operator or to the civilian population in the human terrain of future conflicts? Should efforts be made to anthropomorphise the voice and features of the machine? Would this approximation of humanity engender empathy or would it, as hypothesised by Masahiro Mori in his seminal 1970 essay on machine aesthetics, create profound revulsion?3 To what degree should human operators trust the information and decision-support analytical products created by their machines and how should this targeted level of trust be engineered? Designing aesthetic aspects of machines to dial in the correct levels of emotional affection and trust, therefore, will be essential for effective teaming.
The organisational level
The
aesthetic aspects of the machine will drive the nature of the relationship that is developed between the human and the machine... do machines with four legs appear doglike (endearing)? Would a machine with six, eight or many legs appear insect-like (repulsive)?
At the organisational level, the integration of machines into the social dynamics of groups will also be important for effective teaming. One comparative advantage that military organisations enjoy over most other groups is the strength of their organisational culture. Group identity, tradition and shared values are necessary to bind personnel together through the rigours and terrors of war. These organisational cultures are jealously guarded and carefully reproduced through symbols, language and institutionalised rituals. One of the most enduring and important aspects of military organisational culture, unit cohesion, may be impacted by embedding increasingly autonomous machines into combat teams. This topic, therefore, will require significant thought.
Recommended areas for further study at the organisational level should focus on the careful manipulation of culture and ideal-types. This would include both the challenge of integrating machine teaming into an existing culture, as well as the much more neglected challenge of offloading elements of the existing culture that may clash with this new addition. Consider the transition from the culture of elegant sailing vessels to smoke-belching steamships in 19th century navies. This change in technology significantly disrupted sailors’ culture, traditions and social hierarchies as much as it disrupted naval warfare. Organisational culture can, however, be amenable to manipulation. Consider the iconic scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now, in which the helicopters of the First Air Cavalry Division are taking off as a bugler plays the call for ‘charge’ while wearing the gear of a 19th century Western frontier cavalryman. In this case, the battlefield mobility afforded by a new technology (helicopters) was wedded to a romantic aspect of the American military tradition (Westward expansion). This offers glimmers into how a military organisation might strategically shape organisational culture to adopt new technology effectively.
3Masahiro Mori, “The Uncanny Valley: The Original Essay by Masahiro Mori,” IEEE Spectrum, 12 June 2012, https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-uncanny-valley.
Warrior ideal-types such as ‘the ace’ or ‘the door kicker’ may need to be replaced by idealtypes that are centred on the indirect efforts of enabling machines to create the desired effects, perhaps in the vein of a ‘gamer’ or an ‘orchestra conductor’ ideal-type.
The systemic level
At the systemic level, norms around humanmachine teaming will shape their employment on the battlefield. Though much ink has been spilled on the question of the ethics or morality around autonomous systems, attention should shift to the question of shared norms instead. Ethics and morals are features of an individual actor, whereas norms are a feature of a system of actors. International norms are regularised forms of accepted (and expected) behaviour among system members and may be held in place due to internalisation over time or enforced through punishments for transgression. Attention to norms is a duty that normally spans several areas of foreign policy expertise (military, law, diplomacy) but ultimately resides with the state’s leadership, so cross-agency engagement and coordination would be necessary to shape this challenge of human-machine teaming.
Recommended areas for further study of system-level norms shaping should seek to arrive at a balance within the nexus of desirability, advantage and sustainability. Regarding desirability, this may be where the ethics and morals of a society and its leadership would come into play. This would, most likely, be an attempt to reconcile the international norms of acceptable employment of machines for war in a manner that is consistent with domestic laws and standards. Regarding advantage, this would be the military calculation of employing human-machine teams for optimal effect on the battlefield. Regarding sustainability, this refers to the likelihood of identifying, achieving and maintaining the desired norms –not only among allies but, critically, among adversaries. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Military history is replete with examples of forms of wartime behaviour that have been effectively constrained by norms, such as the use of poison gas and the treatment of prisoners. Further, game theoretic modelling provides the concepts and language to build viable strategies towards the shaping of norms. More specifically, Nash equilibria within non-cooperative games are outcomes from which no reasonable player has an incentive to defect. Such outcomes, then, provide natural locations upon which to build norms that are endogenously binding. Strategies around norms formation, then, should identify the appropriate balance of desirability (least repugnant) and advantage (most enabling of relative combat power) before being mapped to projected equilibrium outcomes (sustainability).
Conclusions
Getting the future of human-machine teaming right is not simply a technical challenge; the human elements of the story at the individual level, organisational level and systemic level must not be neglected. Priming military and political leadership to begin conceiving of autonomous machines as part of a socio-technical system as soon as possible is
necessary to achieving the best path forward. Thinking in terms of trade-offs will be key for these discussions.
One trade-off will certainly be in terms of the societal implications of human-machine teaming in the military. This refers to how the military’s usage of machines will stress domestic standards around the treatment of these technologies. This may show up in clashes with domestic laws and ethical principles, as well as in the flow of veterans who will bring their experiences with machines back into civilian life. Balancing the narratives and practices of human-machine teaming between the external security sphere and the domestic societal sphere, therefore, will be of high importance.
A second trade-off will hinge on the puzzle of competitive lethality. The use of strategic nuclear weapons has been kept in check since 1945 because brilliant strategists were able to articulate profound value in the non-use of these weapons within the construct of Mutual Assured Destruction. If war is determined to a large degree by the comparative speeds of adversaries’ OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loops, and if “[f]uture enemies employ AI and autonomous systems
4US Army, Army Futures Command Concept for Command and Control 2028: Pursuing Decision Dominance (AFC Pamphlet 71-20-9), 13.
to expedite targeting unconstrained by ethical norms”, then machine-speed kill-chains will rapidly defeat ones that are interrupted by human interference.4 Though many experts advocate for a ‘trust but verify’ approach to machines, and to keep humans in the loop, the speed of future conflict will most likely stress or break these injunctions. Just as strategic nuclear weapons became ‘too big’ to be useful, machine-speed killchains may become ‘too fast’ to be useful. As human-machine teams become more effective on the battlefield, it will be in the interest of each state to make their systems more effective on the one hand, while simultaneously looking for ways to limit their destructive impact on the other. If this is to be achieved, it will most likely be done through the strategic shaping of international norms or some clever tweak of deterrence theory.
In sum, exploring and debating these topics and trade-offs needs to be done before the pace of technological change overtakes the pace of thoughtful consideration. Framing the endeavour as the design of a complex socio-technical system provides an appropriate toolkit for both knitting together technical and human dimensions, as well as synchronising efforts at the individual, organisational, and systemic levels. The time to begin these efforts is now.
THE IMPACT OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ON COMBAT COHESION
Warren Chin Program Chair Defense and Security, Rabdan Academy at Zayed Military University
“The art of war is subjected to numerous modifications to accord with scientific and industrial and other progress. But one thing does not change: the heart of man. In the final analysis, combat is a moral affair; in all the improvements concerning an army, its organization, its discipline, and its tactics, all must concede that the human heart in the supreme moment of battle is always the essential question.” – (Ardant Du Picq, Battle Studies,1880)1
The unleashing of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is likely to be something of a Pandora’s box. As a feat of technological innovation, it promises to revolutionise every aspect of human existence, including the conduct of war. Evidence of its importance in the military realm can be seen by how it drives the latest arms race between the United States and China. In this competition for superiority, technological innovation, rather than weapons, has become the metric of victory – reflect on Putin’s observation that the state which wins the race in artificial intelligence (AI) will control the world. The speed and breadth of change induced by this revolution in the military realm are causing militaries to ask existential questions about how these technologies will change the conduct and character of war. Much of this debate has been pitched at the strategic and operational
level of war, but it is important to remember that tactics profoundly impact both.
Consequently, a theory of military operations that neglects tactics will likely encounter a rude awakening as thinking based in the ethereal domains of strategy and operations is challenged by the grim reality of battle. In the case of future battlefields, the combination of AI and its integration with the vast array of sensors and smart munitions is creating a tactical kill zone that is predicted to be 100 miles deep. The emergence of this integrated AI reconnaissance strike complex poses a profound challenge to the received wisdom on conducting offensive operations. Basic pre-requirements for success, such as deception and surprise to bring about the dislocation of the enemy, will become increasingly difficult. Similarly, the concentration of mass to break in and break out of a modern defensive system will simply present a massive target for the defender to strike.2 These issues challenge our existing assumptions about war in the land domain. Most importantly, the anticipated lethality of this vision of future war poses a colossal test of humanity’s continued presence in this space. The big question then focuses on how future soldiers will cope and operate on an increasingly violent automated high-speed battlefield.
Before we despair about the plight of humanity on the future battlefield, it is important to remember we have confronted this kind of challenge before. Moreover, the response
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Evidence of [technology’s] importance in the military realm can be seen by how it drives the latest arms race between the United States and China. In this competition for superiority, technological innovation, rather than weapons, has become the metric of victory.
1Ardant Du Picq, Battle Studies translated and edited Roger Spiller, (Lawrence, KA: Kansas University Press, 2017).
2Jack Watling, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2024).
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The big question focuses on how future soldiers will cope and operate on an increasingly violent automated high-speed battlefield
crafted to address it provides if not a solution, then, a more constructive and methodical way of comprehending the problem and how we might address the impact of technology on the future battlefield. Of relevance here are the writings of Colonel Ardant du Picq (1821-1870). Although his thoughts date back to the 1860s, his ideas provide an appropriate starting point in an investigation of the connection between war, technology and humanity because he addressed a similar challenge to that facing soldiers today – the impact of the industrialised battlefield on the morale of the army. A long service soldier in the French military, du Picq witnessed firsthand how the fruits of the first industrial revolution changed the character of battle. His observations collected in his tome, Battle Studies, were inspired by the challenges contemporary European armies faced during the firepower revolution unfolding in the second half of the 19th century. He witnessed the effects of rifled muskets and the Minie ball during the Crimean War and observed how Union and Confederate armies struggled to deal with both rifled muskets and breechloading rifled artillery.
An interesting addition to this mix was his experience of fighting in Syria against Druze tribal militias, which opened his eyes to the human equation in war. The fundamental question that emerged from his reflections was how to ensure soldiers continued to advance and close with the enemy on a battlefield that created an unprecedented sense of fear. At the heart of his analysis was the recognition of what today is called the ‘flight-fight response’. This is an instinctive reaction to a direct threat to life and causes the person to either flee or attack the cause of the danger. Two questions arose in his study. First, why did soldiers ignore the instinct to run, and second, how could their fears be contained on the battlefield of his time? He observed that on the industrialised battlefield, the level of violence was such that each soldier reached a point where the urge to run became too powerful to resist. Within this setting, traditional forms of control, such as coercion and discipline, no longer held those fears in check. The fragility of French soldiers on the battlefield was compounded in du Picq’s view by the pernicious effects of broader societal change within France, which he believed was killing the martial spirit of its people. This decline in
virtue was attributed to the pernicious effects of what he called democracy, but this might be seen as the symptom of a deeper cause of cultural change triggered by modernity, i.e. industrialisation and urbanisation.3 Du Picq’s observation highlights the wider effects technology can exert beyond the battlefield; a development we are all too familiar with today as we debate how smartphones and social media are changing the values and norms of contemporary society, specifically its supposed lack of martial virtues.
For du Picq the answer to the question posed by the dramatic increase in firepower and how soldiers could cope with this challenge was via improved morale. He failed to provide a pithy definition of this concept, but this was largely because, for him, morale was an amalgamation of many different actions and processes, which made it impossible to define. He groups these disparate elements into four broad categories: command, discipline, comradeship and organisation. The amalgamation of these factors generates more than mere courage. As he observed: “Four brave men who do not know each other would not dare attack a lion. Four less brave men, but who know each other well, with solidarity and mutual support, resolutely attack. There is all the science of the organization in brief.”4
Organisation was the vital force multiplier in du Picq’s view ensuring the less courageous army was victorious in battle. So, for example, when exploring the behaviour of soldiers in warrior armies he observed the more courageous warriors were typically defeated by their less courageous French opponents. He hypothesised the answer to this puzzle lay in the deficient organisation of the warrior army.5 The French Army took his theory of morale to heart and it became the foundation of their ‘offensive a outrance’ (offensive to the utmost) doctrine in the lead up to the First World War. This doctrine is mired in controversy and is seen to have played an instrumental role
3Du Picq, Loc 560.
4Du Picq, Loc 1877.
5DuPicq, Loc 2027.
in France’s disastrous battles in the first month of the war. It was believed that reliance on morale demonstrated a profound naivety because it assumed willpower could overcome the challenge of firepower and this thinking stymied much needed change in the tactical organisation of the army.6 Given du Picq’s culpability in the catastrophic performance of the French military it is fair to question his utility in the 21st century. I offer two responses to this question. First, there is a view that the French army literally weaponised du Picq in their efforts to ensure the preservation of a certain kind of army based on an aristocratic officer corps and long service professional soldiers.7 Second, and connected to the first point, its focus on elan led it to ignore the most significant part of du Picq’s analysis, which was the importance of organisation in the generation of morale. This is the part of his theory of war which I believe can be applied most usefully to our study of the changing character of war on the battlefield today. Two questions arise here. First, to what extent is the organisation of the British Army challenged by anticipated developments on the future battlefield? Second, can we conceive of changes that might increase its resilience and hence effectiveness in a future battle?
In answering the first question we need to look at how technological change has impacted on the variables of command, discipline, comradeship and organisation. The last of these, organisation, I view as a facilitator of the first three variables and so it is the vital node in allowing the others to work. A review of recent history reveals how armies have both consciously and unconsciously crafted various responses to the challenges posed on the modern battlefields of their time. In exploring this issue, the process of innovation and organisational adaptation during the First World War offers an important insight into how subsequent organisational change was introduced to generate and sustain combat effectiveness and morale. So, for example, Stephen Biddle has argued that the modern military that we see today in wars like Ukraine first emerged as a response to the impact of firepower during the First World War. This new system moved away from linear to non-linear tactics and focused on dispersion, cover, concealment and combined arms between artillery, infantry and, in the case of the Allies, tanks.8 Within this operating context, Anthony King identified a supremely important organisational change, one which has lasted to the present day in the form of the platoon. The platoon existed as an administrative unit for more than 200 years prior to the First World War, but became a combat formation within modern armies in the second half of this conflict. This change addressed the need for dispersal to dissipate the effects of enemy firepower. In addition, it allowed for the creation of specialist sub units trained and equipped with the means to fight their way through a modern defence. For King, the significance of the platoon stems from three sources. First, it is “the tactical unit on which all infantry
6See Robert Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Military Doctrine 1919-39. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1985).
7See Douglas Porch, The March to the Marne: The French Army 1871-1914. (Cambridge: CUP, 1981).
8Stephen Biddle, Military Power Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. (Princeton, PUP, 2004).
9Anthony King, The Combat Soldier (Cambridge, CUP, 2015), 17-18.
10See SLA Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command. (Norman, Ok. OUP, 1947).
tactics are built”. Second, it has the task of engaging in extreme violence at close range. Finally, the platoon is the prime location for cohesion in an army. King acknowledges that higher level formations might claim cohesion resides within their command, but the important distinction for him is that all members of a platoon know each other, something which is not possible in higher formations. Instead, he believes these other formations display ‘esprit de corps’ – a sense of organisational unity.9
The debate over combat cohesion persisted in the Second World War as soldiers struggled to deal with the challenge of battles, which increased in intensity, scale and duration. Interestingly, these studies continued to emphasise the key connection between morale and small unit organisation. The exception to this was S.L.A. Marshal’s analysis of the combat performance of American infantry. He claimed that 85 per cent of soldiers in small units were seized by fear and failed to use individual weapons when in battle.10 However, this observation did not result in a radical restructuring of army organisation, but new training methods to instil greater fighting spirit. Interestingly, the challenge posed by irregular wars during the Cold War produced different psychological and physical challenges and also failed to produce dramatic change in the organisational structure of Western militaries. Instead, the British Army somehow muddled through from Malaya to Afghanistan.
Cohesion and organisation on the future battlefield
The Fourth Industrial Revolution poses a profoundly different challenge to the experience of recent irregular wars. As has been said, the speed and ferocity of the future battlefield is expected to see an exponential leap in lethality. Even the current war in Ukraine, which is being waged by two Soviet style armies with bolt on technologies, reveals the lethality of current weaponry; in the first year of the war the combined material losses on both sides equated to more than 11,000 major weapons platforms destroyed. Before becoming complacent and judging the belligerents as ‘mere armed mobs’ we should note that in a wargaming and simulation exercise conducted by NATO, brigades achieved their objectives but suffered 80 per cent casualties. This, as Watling points out, is a staggering rate of attrition and no state possesses the resources to replace these losses.11
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In the first year of the [Russo-Ukrainian]
war the combined material losses on both sides equated to more than 11,000 major weapons platforms destroyed
The function of infantry is also going to have to change if soldiers are to survive facing an AI-driven reconnaissance strike complex. Advance to contact and fighting at close quarters will be the exception rather than the rule... future soldiers will function as battlefield sensors in the forward edge of the battlespace.
How then can organisational change improve the resilience and survivability of the soldier on the battlefield? Viewed from the perspective of the human spear of battle, ‘the poor bloody infantry’, the answer appears to be even greater dispersal of soldiers on the battlefield. This challenges the parameters of cohesion because it deprives the soldier of the basic physical and emotional pillars of support deemed vital in preserving fighting spirit, which was precisely the problem du Picq faced. The function of infantry is also going to have to change if soldiers are to survive facing an AI-driven reconnaissance strike complex. Advance to contact and fighting at close quarters will be the exception rather than the rule. According to Robert Scales, future soldiers will function as battlefield sensors in the forward edge of the battlespace. Here, their primary role will be to use surveillance technologies to feed information to the operational commander deployed outside the range of the enemy’s weaponry. This vision of future battle implies that such units will be largely isolated and, if attacked, physical reinforcement or extraction will likely be a hazardous exercise, which means they are on their own – even resupply will be a challenge. However, each of these units will be able to draw on the firepower of higher-level formations which also lie outside the range of the enemy’s weaponry to defend them if attacked.12 This network of human sensors will be deployed across the entire battlefront and the information they gather will be used to break the enemy’s reconnaissance strike complex and so enable offensive manoeuvre by friendly forces deployed further back. In sum, operational fires, directed from the forward edge battle will be employed to bring about the tactical disintegration of the enemy.
Scales argues that the level of dispersion required by infantry on this battlefield and their new mission cannot be adequately addressed within the existing organisational framework of armies. If survival and functionality are to be achieved, a new type of formation which lies somewhere between the platoon and the section needs to be created. Although not prescriptive, Scales argues that a group of perhaps 13 soldiers should be sufficient in this new formation. The size of this grouping will be determined solely by the functions the unit is designed to serve on the future battlefield. The creation of this unit should ensure the sustainment of cohesion, but it will still face significant challenges. The most important of these will be
the sense of isolation experienced by these units, hidden and dispersed as they must be. Equally important, I presume that physical movement within such a formation will have to be kept to the minimum to avoid detection from enemy optical acoustic or vibration sensors. As a result, the high levels of adrenaline pumped into the body as the fight-flight response kicks in will add to the soldier’s stress because adrenaline is typically reduced through physical activity.13 A direct challenge to the cohesion of the unit lies in its composition in terms of personnel. Given the diverse range of expertise required to ensure it can fulfil its principal role, getting such a heterogeneous group to bond together will require some thought. Command will surely play an important role in the generation of higher morale within this unit. Scales asserts the unit commander will be acting three levels above their normal rank. This is necessary because of the range of tasks assigned to this unit and the level of firepower it will draw on to attack the enemy. However, the demands of this post will impose a severe strain on the person in charge.
The creation of this tactical organisation is driven largely by the need to survive and carry out its mission. As such, the cohesion that stems from this ‘super squad’ is an unintended but beneficial consequence, but will it be enough? Perhaps it will, but an important variable here focuses on wider social change that is being induced by technology and its impact on the future soldier. This possibly challenges our existing conceptions of cohesion and how best to sustain this bond in battle. Is it possible that du Picq’s concept of the human heart captured in this article’s opening lines is changing? As humanity becomes increasingly sucked into the ‘metaverse’ through ever-improved forms of virtual and augmented reality, we need to adjust our understanding of time, space and physical reality to reflect how technology might change consciousness and forms of social interaction. Could this mean the future soldier is more comfortable operating in a space described by one soldier as the loneliest place in the world, i.e. the battlefield?
11Watling, 12.
12Robert Scales, ‘Tactical Art in Future Wars’, War on the Rocks (2019), warontherocks. com/2019/03/tactical-art-in-future-wars
13Other countermeasures are available to limit the impact of this kind of stress.
KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE: ORGANISING EXPERTISE FOR ALL-DOMAIN OPERATIONS
J.P. Clark Associate Professor, U.S. Army War College
Artificial intelligence to make sense of vast amounts of data and develop solutions beyond the ability of the human mind, unmanned systems in the air and on the ground that can both seek and kill, attack and defence in cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum: there is debate about whether these new capabilities will lead to an entirely new ‘character’ of warfare or simply modify that which currently exists.
Such academic questions are good fodder for debate until hindsight reveals the course of events, but in the meantime the unforgiving timelines of personnel management require armies to make practical choices now. The Chief of the General Staff of 2050, after all, is likely already commissioned. What will he or she need to know to be a competent senior leader? How should the army assess and manage a cadre of artificial intelligence experts, and what should these experts know about the larger military profession? Conversely, what must the infanteer or tanker know about artificial intelligence?
These are fundamentally questions about expertise, which the army has well established methods for organising. Cap badges reflect one of those ways; the army bins expertise into a hierarchy of trades, specialties, roles and corps. Although these divisions of expertise are so ingrained and enduring as to rarely attract much reflection, they reflect deep set assumptions about boundaries of knowledge and competence. Mechanised and light role infantry are similar enough to fall under the same category, but armour is not. A unit’s table of organisation is another tool for managing expertise. Obviously, these tables dictate the number and types of experts that should be in any given unit. But they also implicitly suggest
that the commander, with the help of the staff, has the requisite expertise to intelligently train and fight all of that unit’s capabilities.
The challenge of organising expertise for the all-domain battlefield can be explored in three parts. The first examines how individuals with new forms of expertise might be managed. Where in the army do they fit? The second provides a framework of differing levels of expertise to help parse both what knowledge only a few experts must possess and what is essential for everyone to know. Finally, these insights are built upon in light of recent battlefield trends with suggestions offered for how expertise might come together in the form of fielded units.
Organising individual expertise: Hobby, knowledge, specialty, corps or service?
It is obvious that the army will increasingly require experts in fields like artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial system operations and cyberspace operations. Yet the precise administrative mechanisms to incorporate this new expertise are far less apparent. To the extent the problem is thought about, most people seem to take the airplane and tank as the archetypes for the incorporation of new technology; specifically, that the answer is to create some new independent corps, service or command. At least, that is the apparent assumption underlying much of the conversation around space and cyberspace. In the United States, this has led first to the creation of Space Command, and then later the Space Force. Although such solutions might be entirely appropriate in some cases, the fact that the U.S. Army still has to retain a space operations career field for officers and several spacerelated enlisted specialities demonstrates that incorporating any significant technology requires more than a single organisational solution.
The unforgiving timelines of personnel management require armies to make practical choices now. How should the army assess and manage a cadre of artificial intelligence experts, and what should these experts know about the larger military profession? “”
Artificial intelligence, information science, cyberspace operations, unmanned systems and the exploitation of proliferated sensors through open-source intelligence... will produce some combination of new units, new trades and new knowledge for generalists
To gain a more nuanced perspective into how expertise in rapidly developing technologies can evolve over time, it is useful to look back to the early 20th century when the army faced similar challenges with the incorporation of aviation, the internal combustion engine and electricity for battlefield use.
The Royal Air Force is one model for the creation of a separate organisation to foster new expertise. It has the honour of becoming the first independent air force in the world, less than 15 years from the Wright brothers’ first flight and just six years after the conversion of the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers to the Royal Flying Corps. That is an exceptionally quick development. Yet unless we anticipate an equivalent to the massive expansion of the military during the First World War, even a technology so revolutionary and distinct as to merit the creation of a new service – and the majority do not fit that category – will require a far more evolutionary organisational development. The case of the U.S. Air Force is more likely to be the norm. Although Congress considered establishing an independent air force as early as 1914, it did not actually do so until 1947; significantly, this was after another enormous wartime expansion had already created the full apparatus of aviation-facing administrative, personnel, supply and acquisition organisations necessary to support an independent service. Prior to that, aviation had progressed through several stages of growth within the Signal Corps before becoming an air corps equivalent to other branches like the artillery, and then later on to an army air force equivalent to all of the ground forces combined. Although airmen chafed under these arrangements, this gradual organisational process was a practical necessity. It is impossible to birth a complete service (or corps or even trade) from scratch.
Rather than wish for a fantastic leap forward, it is better to ask how might we determine which ‘cradle’ is best to nurture a developing field of expertise that has not yet reached organisational maturity? Historian David Johnson has brilliantly shown that interwar developments in American aviation and armour were conceptually anchored in the parent organisations from which they developed.1 There is nothing inevitable about these choices. The British Army
initially chose to place aviation within the Royal Engineers; the U.S. Army chose the Signal Corps. There are choices to be made, and we should be deliberate in thinking through possible paths of organisational development for today’s nascent technologies.
Moreover, even in unusual cases like aviation, where a new technology does lead to an entirely separate service, even that extreme solution is not comprehensive. There are many aviation-related specialities outside of the Royal Air Force. Aside from the obvious examples of airborne infantry, air defence and helicopters, there are significant elements of fires, intelligence and logistics that are intimately intertwined with aircraft.
Most new areas of expertise, however, are more likely to follow patterns of adoption similar to those of the internal combustion engine and electricity. Those cases suggest that any significant new technology will require multiple kinds of adaptation. They did lead to the creation of new organisations such as the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Tank Regiment and Royal Corps of Signals. But other changes took place at a lower level. For instance, within enduring functions like logistics, farriers and veterinarians gave way to turret mechanics and petroleum specialists. Finally, even for positions that seemingly remained unchanged, the knowledge required to perform the same function has been transformed. Whereas a 19th century commander of a recce unit had to understand the care, limitations and capabilities of horses, today an understanding of vehicle maintenance and logistics and the characteristics of the electromagnetic spectrum are requirements.
We should expect artificial intelligence, information science, cyberspace operations, unmanned systems (air, ground, and subsurface) and the exploitation of proliferated sensors through open-source intelligence to have similar effects. They, too, will produce some combination of new units, new trades and new knowledge for generalists. For instance, there will still be division intelligence officers, but in addition to what they
1David E. Johnson, Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 19171945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
currently know will be added a working knowledge of the mechanics of artificial intelligence, data science, unmanned systems and open-source intelligence. Within the division intelligence cell there will be new positions dedicated to those functions, and new units – such as an unmanned aerial system unit – to gather the information.
Organising levels of expertise:
Executor, planner, and commander
It is well understood that everyone in the army, regardless of rank, requires some combination of specialist trade and generalist professional expertise. The practical constraints of time available in any individual’s career make the balance between the two a zero-sum game. To help manage the necessary trade-offs between specialist and general expertise, this paper offers a framework of three levels of expertise differentiated by the depth and breadth of required knowledge: executor, planner and commander.
n Executors. Executors possess the detailed knowledge necessary for the employment of a specific function or system. This includes some working knowledge of other intersecting functions and systems as well. For instance, a tank commander must have some knowledge of how mechanised infantry are employed. Due to the exacting requirements of transforming a new recruit into a competent soldier in a short period of time, the army has well-honed systems for classifying executor knowledge at the most junior ranks into defined trades (for example, radio operator, machine gunner) and imparting the necessary expertise. For officers, corps organised around a technical function also tend to have explicit qualifications for expertise. Pilots and doctors are examples of this. Some might dismiss these as outliers due to the obvious life-threatening consequences of incompetence in those fields, but the same is true for most trades or specialties in the army; in combat, someone’s life might depend on expertise. Air forces, then, might have something to teach in regard to disciplined thinking about quantifying the expertise to operate at progressive levels. The navy is less precise in this regard, but its traditional emphasis on time at sea over virtually all else reflects the same imperative to amass executor expertise.
The naval example is a good one to illustrate the manner in which executor expertise is not confined to the more junior ranks. The captain of a frigate, for instance, ideally possesses deep expertise in all aspects of the functioning of the ship. Within the army, comparable senior executors are commanders of artillery or aviation regiments. It is unthinkable to put someone who is not a gunner or pilot, no matter how capable a leader they are, into one of those positions.
n Planners. Planner expertise is the ability to integrate multiple functions. Typically, planners are several years into their career, and so have executor expertise in their own specialty but have acquired some detailed working knowledge of fields as well. In contrast to executors, planners
2“505th Command and Control Wing graduates fire-eve class of multi-domain warfare officers”, Air Force News, 18 October 2019, https://www.505ccw.acc.af.mil/News/ Article-Display/Article/1992177/505th-command-and-control-wing-graduates-first-everclass-of-multi-domain-warfa/
3J. P. Clark, Joe Broome, Derrick Franck, Jr., and Michael Loftus, Command in Joint AllDomain Operations: Some Considerations, U.S. Army War College, 2020.
Fire support officers do not have to be able to fly an Apache, but they do need to know many of the factors that govern its employment “”
are characterised by the breadth of their knowledge. The year-long curriculum of theory, history, simulations and staff rides at the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies to train planners for work at division and corps is indicative of the expertise required by higher echelon planners. At lower echelons, an example of planner expertise is the fire support officer able to integrate whatever mixture of mortars, howitzers, rockets and missiles, attack helicopters, and ground-attack aircraft, and increasingly unmanned aerial systems, are available in a way that makes best use of their different characteristics. Fire support officers do not have to be able to fly an Apache, but they do need to know many of the factors that govern its employment.
In practice, planners operate as teams within a staff, so this experience is always applied in a collective manner. Thus, there is no need to have a single planner who has mastery of the details of every capability within the division to the level of detail required for true integration. This is fortunate because it would be impossible for a mid-career officer to amass such expertise. Nonetheless, there is a requirement for a cadre of individuals distinguished by their ability to see the bigger picture and how the various functions all come together. A recent initiative within the U.S. Air Force underscores the value of such planners, as well as the limits of what might be expected of them. Recent operations in the Middle East had demonstrated that simply bringing together air, space and cyberspace executors was not producing sufficiently integrated operations, so the U.S. Air Force created a multi-domain warfare specialty – 13O within the service’s personnel nomenclature – for mid-career officers. Selected individuals attend a school to prepare them before spending the remainder of their careers as experts in the integration of air, space and cyberspace capabilities.2 Shortly after the creation of the new specialty, a U.S. Army War College study team examining the larger issue of joint all-domain command and control for the joint staff spoke with some of those responsible for this new initiative. The big question was whether it was possible to go from multi-domain planners (air, space and cyberspace) to all-domain planners (ground and maritime, in addition)? The overwhelming consensus from the trainers was that was asking too much; they thought that what was then being attempted was already straining the limits of individual expertise.3
n Commanders. Commanders must possess the expertise necessary to give general direction, provide intelligent oversight, and, most of all, make hard operational decisions
grounded in a fundamental understanding of all the functions inherent within the organisation, as well as those that are likely to be provided by higher headquarters. Put simply, commanders must have enough knowledge of all of the capabilities they employ to be able to apply a senior leader’s basic skill: judgment.
One of the general officers involved in the development of the U.S. Army’s multi-domain operations concept neatly summarised the challenge of commander expertise now and into the future. He observed that a division commander who might have commissioned as an armour officer, for instance, would still have no difficulty in closely questioning and issuing firm guidance to a senior artilleryman or aviator. But, he noted, “when the ‘weirdos’ from the [special technical operations] vault come out with some piece of paper, my peers don’t know what to ask, hastily sign the paper, and hope the weirdos go back to the vault as soon as possible”.4 Though perhaps overdrawn, the vignette nicely illustrates the fundamental challenge of adding new domains. At whatever level a capability is integrated into a larger combined arms team, commanders must have the basic expertise (and be supported by staffs with the appropriate planners) to competently orchestrate their employment. Examining the various trade-offs at what echelon that integration occurs is the subject of the next section.
Organising collective expertise: Echelons on the all-domain battlefield
Once the British Army generates the units and individuals proficient in employing new technologies as described in the first section, the next question is where to place them within tables of unit organisation. This largely comes down to the practical question of to what level of all-domain integration should we aspire to for the battlegroup, brigade and division? The executor/planner/commander framework suggests that the more complex the unit – measured by how many different functions it contains – the larger the staff and the more broadly experienced the commander must be to operate
Arguably the most sobering trend in modern warfare is the extent to which tactical success, indeed mere survival, requires the competent integration of all battlefield functions into cohesive teams. Even in the simple ‘old days’, this was hard. Decades of after action reports from the U.S. Army’s combat training centres testify to the difficulty of integrating the familiar functions of manoeuvre, fires, mobility/countermobility and logistics. Successful units have well-developed standard operating procedures refined and practiced through multiple iterations of rigorous training.5 But the task has become even harder because there are now the additional requirements of both using and guarding against the enemy in the electromagnetic spectrum and the air littoral. A weakness in any one of these areas can be exploited by a competent adversary. As analyst Stephen Biddle notes, the trend of failed offensives in Ukraine somewhat obscures the larger lesson that the offensive is still possible, but requires an even greater degree of all-domain proficiency than before.6 All of this leads to the conclusion that the various functions must be integrated at the lowest echelon possible through, at the very least, routine task organisation, if not permanent assignment, as was done with the American brigade combat team organisation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That is the time-tested method of producing competent, cohesive units.
Unfortunately, there are several countervailing trends pulling in the opposite direction toward integration at higher echelons. As already alluded to, one potential constraint is whether there is sufficient time in the career of the average lieutenant colonel (or brigadier) to gain sufficient experience with many disparate capabilities to effectively command a complex, all-domain unit. Moreover, the lethality of the modern ‘reconnaissance-strike complex’ will punish command posts that are immobile or have conspicuous physical or virtual signatures. That trend limits the size of
4Conversation with the author in late 2017.
5These lessons run throughout the excellent podcast series produced by the Joint Readiness Training Centre, ‘The Crucible—The JRTC Experience’, available at https://www. youtube.com/@TheCrucible-TheJRTCExperience or on most podcast catchers. See particularly Series 2, ‘If I Would Have Only Known’.
6Stephen Biddle, ‘Back in the Trenches’, Foreign Affairs (September/October 2023), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/back-trenches-technology-warfare
The task [of integrating all battlefield functions into cohesive teams] has become even harder because there are now the additional
requirements of
both
using
and guarding against the enemy in the electromagnetic spectrum and the air littoral “”
As a thought experiment we might wonder for those officers and soldiers entering into service this year, what will their trade or corps affiliation be at the end of a full career? How many of these will be new affiliations that are not even currently resident within the personnel system?
staffs, particularly at the battlegroup and brigade. Artificial intelligence will likely become a valuable aide to planners, effectively increasing the productivity and expertise of individuals. Yet as Jack Watling of RUSI notes in his observations of ‘unmanned’ systems in Ukraine, there are irreducible minimums of staffing that are impossible to escape. Extended around-the-clock operations, casualties and requirements for occasional rotation off the line mean that any critical position will have to be several individuals deep, even if the task could notionally be done by a single person augmented by artificial intelligence.7 Finally, while the U.S. Army’s brigade combat team organisation did increase the cohesion of fielded units, it also led to a decline in the technical competence of functional units, primarily the artillery and sappers, due to the lack of a colonel-level executor to oversee their training.
In weighing these conflicting demands, the limiting factor seems to be commander expertise at the lower echelons. Artificial intelligence in the form of decision-support tools is likely to mitigate rather than eliminate this constraint; a commander must have a broad ‘feel’ for all of the components of an organisation deeper than simply figuring what is the most efficient or effective way to employ that capability in a given situation (which falls within the realm of planners). The first two decades or so of a career are likely to be largely consumed in acquiring deep executor, and perhaps some planner, expertise.
Delaying the time when commanders will be required to integrate the full swathe of all-domain functions, however, only moves the cliff of expertise that must be scaled further down the road. We must think deliberately about how to impart all-domain expertise to more senior tactical commanders. There are some who question whether even they will be able to achieve the required mastery. In his study of division command, Anthony King has suggested that the scope of expertise exceeds what one individual can competently manage, and so therefore some system of communal command might be necessary.8
At the same time, it will be necessary to develop changes to training, doctrine and staff procedures so that lower echelon
units that do not contain the full suite of all-domain capabilities assigned or attached, nonetheless can function as cohesive teams under the most difficult circumstances.
Conclusion
After this review of how significant technologies have influenced military organisation over the last century, it should be clear that there will be no simple solutions to new technologies. We can also be certain that today’s system of trades, specialties and corps will not be fit for purpose in the future. As a thought experiment we might wonder for those officers and soldiers entering into service this year, what will their trade or corps affiliation be at the end of a full career? How many of these will be new affiliations that are not even currently resident within the personnel system? Rather than futilely attempting to guess what the final endpoint for any given field of new expertise will be, instead it is more productive now to think through organisational principles for successfully growing new trades, specialities and corps through various stages of organisational development: nascent group of likely heterogenous pioneers; developing community with evolving institutional forms; and mature community with full institutional apparatus of schools, norms and career pathways. Anticipating both challenges and solutions to issues such as to what degree civilian expertise (if applicable) should be called upon, how to create organisational environments conducive to innovation, what constitutes a viable career path, how to ensure senior oversight of a new field, and what elements of being a soldier are essential for every member of the British Army, regardless of their specialist expertise, are just some of the issues to be grappled with. This will be hard, fascinating, and important work.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defence, or the U.S. Government.
7Jack Watling, ‘Automation Does Not Lead to Leaner Land Forces’, War on the Rocks, 7 February 2024, https://warontherocks.com/2024/02/automation-does-not-lead-toleaner-land-forces/
8Anthony King, Command: The Twenty-First-Century General (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
A SOCIOLOGY OF POST-HUMAN WAR
Thomas Crosbie Associate Professor, Royal Danish Defence College
War, as the late British political philosopher Christopher Coker argued, is “the human thing”.1 Coker took that formulation from Thucydides (who needs no introduction in these pages), but what Coker, Thucydides and generations of like-minded philosophers of war have in mind is perhaps best laid at the feet of Aristotle. Aristotle thought of species as defined in fundamental ways by their most characteristic behaviour. From Aristotle’s perspective, war is not our telos (our destiny), but merely our entelechy (the purest expression of our sociality). War is then the most characteristically human thing, although this cuts in two directions. On one hand, we find humans engaging in war, warlike behaviour or attempts to prevent or mitigate war across time and space. On the other hand, war (as we currently understand it) is shaped by our humanness. War is our thing, bearing the traces of our way of being. Just as two rams will inevitably butt heads, any two groups of people are, in this way of thinking, bound to relate to one another through war – if not through the violence of war, then through the pains taken to avoid, mitigate or resolve such violence.
Coker was not simply reheating a classic debate, but rather inquiring as to whether war was still just ours. Have we already lost our monopoly over the direction of human violence and violence derived from human means? War, born of humanity, might be leaving humanity behind, a baton passed to the lifeless hands of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and other forms of automation. The “human thing” no longer, war enters its post-human era.
1Christopher Coker, “Still ‘the Human Thing’? Technology, Human Agency and the Future of War,” International Relations 32, no. 1 (March 2018): 24, https://doi. org/10.1177/0047117818754640.
An idle thought, perhaps, but there is a disconcerting degree of truth in it. ‘Post-human war’ is the very thing of science fiction, yet there is good reason to dwell on the potential for something like it to emerge (if it hasn’t already). Indeed, eight years after Coker wrote his article, many of his concerns have already drifted from the realm of speculation into mundane reality. “China’s military shows off rifle-toting robot dogs”, reads one bizarre headline on CNN.2 Yet the future jostles uncomfortably with the past. The battlefields of Ukraine boast hypersonic missiles alongside that once-defunct technology, the trench.3 Slowly, however, exotic technologies filter to the forefront. Autonomous unmanned vehicles, nanotechnology, directed energy weapons, upward falling payloads, a weaponised space domain: once hallmarks of science fiction, now the arsenals of great powers.4
NATO’s key concept development communities have begun to speak of the need for information to move at “the speed of
2Brad Lendon Gan Nectar, “China’s Military Shows off Rifle-Toting Robot Dogs,” CNN, 28 May 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/china/china-military-rifle-totingrobot-dogs-intl-hnk-ml/index.html.
3Cedric Pietralunga, “Trench Warfare Makes a Comeback in Ukraine’s Fight against Russia,” Le Monde.Fr, 30 September 2023, https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/ article/2023/09/30/trench-warfare-makes-a-comeback-in-ukraine-s-fight-againstrussia_6142009_4.html; Lyle Goldstein and Nathan Waechter, “China Evaluates Russia’s Use of Hypersonic ‘Daggers’ in the Ukraine War”, January 12, 2024, https://www.rand. org/pubs/commentary/2024/01/china-evaluates-russias-use-of-hypersonic-daggers-in. html.
4U. S. Government Accountability Office, “Science & Tech Spotlight: Directed Energy Weapons | U.S. GAO,” accessed June 28, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/ gao-23-106717; Joe Saballa, “China Developing Biological, Cyber Weapons for Covert Warfare: Study”, The Defense Post, August 28, 2023, https://www.thedefensepost. com/2023/08/28/china-biological-cyber-weapons/; ESD Editorial Team, “The State of Autonomy, AI & Robotics for Russia’s Ground Vehicles,” June 26, 2023, https://euro-sd. com/2023/06/articles/31798/the-state-of-autonomy-ai-robotics-for-russias-groundvehicles/; Betty Wehtje, “Increased Militarisation of Space - A New Realm of Security | Beyond the Horizon ISSG,” June 6, 2023, https://behorizon.org/increased-militarisationof-space-a-new-realm-of-security/; “Upward Falling Payloads”, https://www.darpa.mil/ program/upward-falling-payloads.
Autonomous unmanned vehicles, nanotechnology, directed energy weapons, upward falling payloads, a weaponised space domain: once hallmarks of science fiction, now the arsenals of great powers
relevance”.5 Humans, unfortunately, can only think and act so fast: often (it is presumed) slower than the speed of relevance. And so, while the exotic technologies just listed free us from certain long-standing spatio-temporal limitations, in doing so they may well shackle us to new ones. At any rate, they herald a striking change: one fundamentally human feature of war, namely human decision-making, is muted, if not entirely silenced when decision-points become unobservable (whether due to speed, location or virtuality).
Understandably, debates over the future of war generally focus on sophisticated new technologies, quickly demanding a degree of technical understanding that few actually possess. This short article takes the opposite approach, shunning the technologies of the future in order to look back at the persisting social dynamics of the post. To that end, it explores war’s enduring nature and changing character, a concept we inherit from Carl von Clausewitz.6 If war is a human thing, then post-human war is war of a different nature, surely, bearing a meaningfully different character. Therefore, the article looks backward to sketch five fundamentally human features of war that are implied in Clausewitz’s definition. Having established these five features, the article briefly looks with post-human eyes at how these features might transform or disappear in a future conflict arena where humans are no longer the primary actors.
The nature of human war
Clausewitz’s understanding of war is a useful starting point in thinking through the humanness of war. For Clausewitz, as is widely known among military practitioners, war’s nature is enduring, while its character is ever changing. Its nature is, in a sense, an inconvenience. War occurs (in this understanding) when a group of people uses force or the threat of force to advance their interests (that’s the politics part), but in doing so they inevitably discover that reason (including, critically, expert military advice) is joined by emotion and chance, and actions are modulated by friction and fog.
Defining war in this way allows Clausewitz to separate it from other forms of contest or struggle. War and wrestling, for example, are similar in some respects, but by no means all respects. Indeed, war is a unique form of conflict, distinguished by the fact that in its very nature it reflects the messiness of human relations and the limitations of human
5Ann Marie Dailey, “NATO Needs a Plan for Military and Nonmilitary Instruments of Power to Work Together,” Atlantic Council (blog), 2 November 2023, https://www. atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/nato-needs-a-plan-for-military-and-nonmilitaryinstruments-of-power-to-work-together/.
6Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
7“Instruments of national power”, “domains” and “operating environments” are all, of course, anachronisms, but the terms are introduced here to draw the reader’s attention to how Clausewitz’s understanding fits well within the current NATO understanding
8Those struggling with the nature-character debate are directed to Bollman and Sjøgren’s recent analysis of this long-standing debate. See Anders Theis Bollman and Søren Sjøgren, “Rethinking Clausewitz’s Chameleon: Is It Time for Western Militaries to Abandon the Idea of War’s Immutable Nature?”,” in Military Politics: New Perspectives Ed. Thomas Crosbie (New York: Berghahn Books, 2023), 48–69.
9E.g. Gerhard Wheeler, “Ukraine’s Fascinating Trinity - CHACR,” CHACR (blog), 6 June 2023, https://chacr.org.uk/2023/06/06/ukraines-fascinating-trinity/, https:// chacr.org.uk/2023/06/06/ukraines-fascinating-trinity/; Brian Cole, “Clausewitz’s Wondrous Yet Paradoxical Trinity: The Nature of War as a Complex Adaptive System,” Joint Force Quarterly 96, no. 1 (2020): 42–49.
senses. There is no form of war (which is to say, human war) that escapes politics, emotion, chance, friction and fog. War’s character is a different matter. For Clausewitz, “the character of war” refers to the specific ways instruments of national power are wielded across domains and operating environments in the attempt to use force or the threat of force to achieve political interests.7 Countering insurgencies or conducting large-scale conventional operations are very different things, and those tasked with doing so will fight very different types of wars, but in either case they are indeed waging war.8
We take from Clausewitz five features of war, derived directly from his definition, but reflecting the collective wisdom of those generations of soldiers and scholars who found in this definition something powerfully true about the world.9 These human features of war are, simply enough: its political character; the role of emotion in shaping behaviour; the role of chance in shaping outcomes; the role of friction in modulating actions; and the presence of ‘fog’ in limiting comprehension and understanding.
Post-human war: what would be different?
Wars of the future will remain recognisably ‘our thing’ so long as they are defined by those qualities that have always defined the human way of war. They will become something new and different if they cease to be so defined. Let us then briefly consider each of our features in turn, to see how AI-dominated decision-making processes may depart from human approaches. The features of both human and posthuman war are tabulated in Table 1 (above right).
n Will post-human war be politics by other means?
The greatest danger posed by off-loading decision-making lies in freeing the logics of violence from the yoke of political interest. Sociologist Lewis A. Coser describes conflict scenarios lacking a defined goal as “non-realist conflicts”.10 Wars with poorly-defined or rapidly-changing goals are often accompanied by an increasing cycle of violence. These dangers are self-evident, and would likely only arise if humans were well and truly ‘off the loop’ of decision-making entirely.
There is a danger that too much information becomes overwhelming to human analysts. In a post-human war, the same problems would likely arise through a different set of means: spoofing signals, feeding misinformation into adversary algorithms, and similar attempts to degrade the quality of information in order to mislead sensors and AI systems
n Will post-human war be shaped by emotion?
A more likely area where post-human war dynamics emerge is in the role of emotion shaping behaviour in war, but perhaps not in the direction we tend to think. For Clausewitz (writing before the rise of the modern press, let alone social media), emotions affected political decision-making, which interacted with military leadership decisions. Today, our posttruth democracies are shaped more by the flow of emotion than ever before.11 AI systems may lack innate emotion, but attempts to shape populations’ emotions are essential to modern warfighting, whether viewed from the perspective of NATO’s Comprehensive Approach, Russia’s Reflexive Control, and any other leading theory of war. War dominated by algorithmic decision-making will likely focus on human factors to an even greater degree than is currently the case.
n Will post-human war be shaped by chance?
Our understanding of chance has changed dramatically in our post-quantum era.12 Indeed, quantum computing begins by replacing classical, deterministic probability with probability amplitudes set in non-causal models of reality. In other words, managing ‘chance’ (probability) would be at the very centre of AI-driven forms of war, although in a completely different way than it has been in the long history of human war.
n Will post-human war be limited by friction?
Friction in the Clausewitzian sense refers to the inevitability that doing things on the battlefield will be more difficult than expected, a notion that serves as a sort of ‘reality tax’ on military planning. While this concept may seem anecdotal, it has surprising predictive power and reflects the enormous complexity inherent in war.13 Historian Nikolas Gardner argues that while AI systems may “reduce friction resulting from human limitations, they will likely increase informational uncertainty, and unintended escalation”.14
n Will post-human war be limited by fog?
For Clausewitz, the ‘fog’ of war is closely linked to the friction of war, but refers particularly to matters of perception and understanding. The proliferation of sensors, standardisation of operating systems, use of resilient and back-up systems,
FEATURE POST-HUMAN WAR
1. Aims
HUMAN WAR
Defined by political interest. Defined by human political interest, “on” or “in” the loop.
2. Emotion Mediated perceptions of emotion shape political interest. Emotions are targeted as primary influence node.
3. Chance Linear decision-making models aim to minimize role of chance while allowing for inevitable margin of error.
Serves as a holistic “reality tax”.
5. Fog
Quantum estimates aim to model stochastic systems to achieve precision despite uncertainty.
4. Friction Human-created friction is minimised, but information overload causes new forms. Fog is created by spoofing, misinformation, and information degradation. Created by few sensors, limited or vulnerable communications networks, interoperability problems, and unwillingness to share information.
Table 1: Features of human and post-human war
and so on are all designed to help modern militaries overcome the fog of war. In doing so, there is a danger that too much information becomes overwhelming to human analysts. In a post-human war, the same problems would likely arise through a different set of means: spoofing signals, feeding misinformation into adversary algorithms, and similar attempts to degrade the quality of information in order to mislead sensors and AI systems.
Concluding thoughts
War as a social act likely precedes our origin as a species, and a deeper look into the origins of conflict, drawing from primatology, etiology, anthropology and related disciplines could refine our features of war further. Indeed, warring has been observed in virtually all human social groups, sharing distinctive traits that differ from the organised violent conflict of other primates.15 For over a hundred years, social theorists have tried to define common features of war as a human social act.16 Increasingly, however, truly unprecedented changes in the human-technology interface of military organisation seem to herald an era of warring which is no longer simply human. In considering how predicted changes in military organisation align with and sometimes depart from what has made war a typical human act, the post-human era of war does not look so very different than the human era. Politics, emotion, chance, friction and fog all still play their part, although in very different roles than we have come to expect. Whilst it may have a very different character, it seems unlikely to be that different a beast.
10Lewis A. Coser, Functions of Social Conflict (Simon and Schuster, 1964).
11Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018).
12Luigi Accardi, “Quantum Probability: New Perspectives for the Laws of Chance”, Milan Journal of Mathematics 78, no. 2 (December 2010): 481–502, https://doi. org/10.1007/s00032-010-0134-3.
13Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War (Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, 2004).
14Nikolas Gardner, “Clausewitzian Friction and Autonomous Weapon Systems,” Comparative Strategy 40, no. 1 (2 January 2021): 86–98, https://doi.org/10.1080/01 495933.2021.1853442.
15Richard W. Wrangham, “Two Types of Aggression in Human Evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 2 (January 9, 2018): 245–53, https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.1713611115.
16George Simmel, Conflict And The Web Of Group Affiliations (Simon and Schuster, 2010); Coser, Functions of Social Conflict.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE… ASSUMPTION: A VIEW ON TRUST
Jonny Lewis Consultant, Fellow of Edinburgh University
Trust (uncountable noun): ‘your trust in someone is your belief that they are honest and sincere and will not deliberately do anything to harm you’ – Collins Dictionary1
Do the human fundamentals of military organisational design still hold true for the modern battlefield? I would argue they are becoming ever more so, as modern warfare becomes more complex and dependent on technology. And why is this the case? While human beings are still pulling the triggers and pressing the buttons, how human beings connect with each other will remain at the centre of successful operations. Behaviours have driven and will most likely continue to drive the outcomes of military operations and organisations, for good or bad, whatever their size – from the section, platoon and company to the brigade, division and corps. Behaviours affect decision making, at every level, in every organisation –
and, at the heart of every conversation we have, there is the deeply human and emotional response of ‘trust’. Do you trust me? Can I trust you? Do you have my back?
This question does not just affect soldiers’ decisions to stand and fight – it also affects their decisions in planning and command. Why is it that we can have all the ‘facts’, and yet our gut response, our instinct and human experience tell us something different? How are we going to create, build and retain trust at every level when more and more tech and artificial intelligence are being integrated into every organisational structure? What happens when the dilemma is: “do I trust my gut instinct, or do I trust what the machine is telling me?” And if trust breaks down at any point in the chain, it doesn’t matter how good the equipment or tech is. At its heart, therefore, this is about relationships and communication – the connections between human beings and other human beings; and, human beings with machines, tech and artificial intelligence.
1Definition: www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/trust
At the heart of every conversation we have, there is the deeply human and emotional response of ‘trust’. Do you trust me? Can I trust you? Do you have my back?
US Navy Commander Christopher E. Hicks in his fascinating 2008 strategy research project cites a number of key factors as creating the necessary ‘agility’ and ‘on the edge’ decisionmaking for operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.2 These are:
n Robustness – to maintain effectiveness over a range of tasks;
n Resilience – to recover from and adjust;
n Responsiveness – the speed of reaction to change;
n Flexibility – employing multiple ways at once;
n Innovation – doing new things and old things in new ways;
n Adaptation – to change. And to pre-empt change wherever possible.
These are all behaviours. But what drives successful behaviours? I suggest that success comes not just from cold facts, but, importantly, from being clear with the emotional intent behind our communication. In intense situations, we need to understand what we want people to feel, not just think or do. For example, ‘to inspire’; ‘to reassure’; ‘to challenge’. Not just ‘to inform’; ‘to update’; or ‘to educate’. “Words are just words until we give them feeling, not just meaning.”
When we consider some of the more emotional words around human (and military) interaction, what part do machines play? For example:
Relationships. Successful relationships, adult to adult and boundaried by mutual respect, revolve around listening to understand, not just listening to solve. What might ‘mutual respect’ mean to a machine?
Hierarchies. Militaries use human hierarches to achieve a range of effects. Flattening hierarchies and leadership structures, and inserting machines into them, change those effects. “The person [or machine] who thinks they already have the right answer stops asking the right questions.”
Cohesion. Unit and team cohesion is a military asset. And ‘telling the story’ is an important part of building this. The right stories – to explain values and connecting with vision, told in the right way, matter. Defending core values (as opposed to cold conquest) matters. Being clear about presenting the ‘why’ of any task matters. And, in many outcomes, understanding what is in it for the other person – win/ win outcomes – matters.
Responsibility. Militaries depend upon the practised execution of individual responsibility. This entails giving space for
people to do their jobs, not micromanaging with detailed instruction. And not getting blamed when things go wrong. And encouraging creativity and improvisation. And this also entails learning from mistakes, not avoiding or burying them: ‘failing quicker and cheaper’ as in the corporate world. Seeing ‘change’ as a mindset and a journey, not the destination.
In a scenario where inter-human relationships matter, the list of emotional (rather than just factual) words is long: prioritising morale; empathy; setting achievable goals; self-discipline; fairness; emotional consistency; affirmation; humility; humour; flexibility; courage – these all play a part.
And frustratingly, the elements of ‘luck’, ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ – the irrational, illogical elements play their part in warfare too. As Napoleon said: “I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones.” How do we advocate for that? Well, we can’t. Or as Donald Rumsfeld famously said in 2002: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know... it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”
“Being curious to understand better.” Everything is an assumption until we dare to ask the question. So, to return to our start point, what gets in the way of ‘trust’? We find an answer in two key emotional responses: ‘fear’ (they can’t or won’t do what I need them to do); and ‘misunderstanding’ (deliberate [lying] or random and unplanned).
. When situations are dangerous, fear comes in many layers: fear of getting things wrong; fear of leaders; of each other; of consequences; of others’ reliability. Fear of not being good enough or brave enough. Fear of different communication styles. Fear of misunderstanding – which leads to a rigidity of thinking (‘don’t get it wrong!’) and a rigidity of being.
(And humans communicate fear and exacerbate the fear of others: inflexible body language, lack of empathetic eye contact and vocal tone, very little diaphragmatic breathing, etc). We are often fearful of fear, yet as Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1933:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Despite all of this, at the same time, we humans are capable of incredible acts of bravery that defy the odds, logic, reason... and I’m not sure whether machines will ever be able reliably to work out the odds or probability of these events: fear and bravery often generate random acts that make no sense.
Misunderstanding. We often misunderstand each other’s communication style and then project negatives on to those behaviours – particularly when the communication style is very different to ours (‘big picture’ v ‘an eye for
ares&athena / organisational design / 21
Picture: Soldier Magazine © Crown copyright
Tech ‘experts’ embedded in [Ukrainian] frontline units haven’t been able to call out or articulate their purpose. Or explain how they add ‘value’ – using their tech to increase effects or save lives.
detail’; ‘team player’ v ‘lone wolf’); we often hurt or wound each other emotionally, mostly without meaning to: the odd remark; a flippant comment; a joke at our expense. Feeling embarrassed, hurt, humiliated. Let down. And we then learn to put on our metaphorical flak jackets, so that we don’t allow ourselves to be hurt the next time. We start to mask our feelings, but we still ‘leak’ what is really going on inside emotionally. I’m often asking leaders to become aware of their listening face – to listen with affirmation. Otherwise, what may well be perceived from the other person is what I call the “resting bitch face!” – what we think is a look of engaged concentration on our own face may appear to others as a look of confusion, or scepticism, or impatience, or condemnation.
The ‘Analysts’ and the ‘Rest’ So, self-awareness of our preferred communication style – its assets and its challenges and limitations – is, therefore, vital. And it will continue to be so as machines take over more and more tasks, especially the tasks that require analytical and informational expertise. As the operation of ever more sophisticated and complex systems requires ever more technical expertise, I want to focus on the communication style of humans, and specifically on those humans that can be categorised as the ‘Analytic’ or the ‘Expert’.
The ‘Analytic’ favours task-orientated communication over people-focused communication. If it is ‘Experts’ who are more likely to be operating the machines and the tech, and if it is ‘non-experts’ who are leading teams, then it’s important
to understand how they build and communicate ‘trust’. And what is missing for the other communication styles in that dynamic. Because it is only with self-awareness and practice that we build the necessary ‘flex’ to persuade others.
The ‘Analytic’ typically gets confidence from ‘knowing stuff’. They like, or are good at: structure; order; numbers; detail; plans; thoroughness; logic; routine; complexity; systems and being systematic; obeying the hierarchy; being prudent (risk averse); being punctual. They are perfectionists. They make great researchers. They like to explore options and alternatives. They want things to be right and accurate. “Let’s do it right the first time, so we don’t have to re-do it again.”
“So let’s not do it until we’re ready to do it.” They are careful – setting very high standards. They prepare thoroughly. They don’t like to ‘wing it’. They like to be seen as an ‘Expert.’
The things that challenge ‘Analytics’ include:
n Flexibility: they don’t like to change the plan without having ALL the facts or evidence.
n They find it hard to come to a decision, especially when they perceive the stakes to be high.
n They don’t like to narrow down the options.
n They are often very hard on themselves.
n They have a very critical inner voice.
n They bear grudges and have long memories.
n They often miss deadlines, as they can get lost in the weeds and go down rabbit holes with the minutiae.
n They (unfairly) can sometimes be seen by others as aloof. Unapproachable.
n They are uncomfortable in informal situations.
n They don’t like to be put on the spot or asked: “How do you feel about that?”
n They prefer working alone but are fiercely loyal when the going gets tough.
n They prefer written communication to in-person or the phone.
n They send long e-mails; with lots of attachments: over explaining, too much data.
n They don’t make great eye contact, often looking away or at the floor.
n Vocally they tend to be quieter. They pepper their spoken words with ‘umms’ and ‘errs’.
n They are thinkers and reflectors. Their energy tends to go inwards.
n Importantly, they are not great at coming forward. They wait to be asked.
Under pressure or stress they start to avoid both people and tasks. They are also not good at explaining how they feel and thus avoid participation and emotional involvement, becoming detached and isolated. This leads to acquiescence and giving in when pushed or challenged and they do not like or deal well with conflict. And, as a result, Analytics’ strengths under pressure can become weaknesses: being prudent can turn to indecision; being painstaking becomes nit-picky; their task orientation is seen by others as impersonal; their thorough and systematic approach is seen as just bureaucratic. All of these ‘leakages’ undermine the ‘expert’ coming across as the ‘expert’.
explain succinctly the ‘why’ is vital. Analytical over-think can get in the way. Process can get in the way. Hierarchy and the right way of doing things can get in the way. But finding the empathetic human balance so that the other character types seek, value and use the ‘expertise’ of the analytical types is a force-multiplier. (And this balance is hard enough to achieve between humans – how might it work if the Analytics are increasingly replaced by analytical machines?)
Tomorrow’s soldiers
Self-esteem has been shattered with young people...this is compounded and reinforced by technology, social media and smartphones... there is trauma in being ‘unfriended’. “”
Importantly, however, the ability and willingness as an ‘expert’ to call out a bad decision or offer up alternative solutions is a really important component of successful teams. This has been played out on the Ukrainian battlefields where tech ‘experts’ embedded in frontline units haven’t been able to call out or articulate their purpose. Or explain how they add ‘value’ – using their tech to increase effects or save lives. Under pressure their voices have been lost. Typically, they’ve waited to be asked. The ‘Techies’, often seen as a hinderance or an obstacle, haven’t spoken up. It has taken the extremes of need for their voices to be heard – and sought. So being able to
This problem is for today’s soldiers to ponder – but it will be for tomorrow’s soldiers to solve. This means that the ‘Millennials question’ will also play a significant role, as the ‘human fundamentals’ are changing. Brains are wired differently now with Millennials (born 1981 – 1996), Gen Z (born 1997 – 2012) and Gen Alpha (born 2010 – 2024). And these are going to be the operators and leaders of our military in the next 20 years. But, right now, they confound our current leaders. They come across as: ‘entitled’; ‘selfinterested’; ‘unfocused’. But what has happened to create this? Self-esteem has been shattered with these young people. Parents have told their kids they are special and can have anything they want. And they have gone out into the real world and discovered that that isn’t the case. There is very little toughness.
This is compounded and reinforced by technology, social media and smartphones, where dopamine is released in the brain with every ‘like’. There is trauma in being ‘unfriended’! Dopamine is the same high we get from alcohol, drugs and gambling. It’s highly addictive. And yet we put no age restriction on this tech.
Why is this important? When we are very young, the only approval we need is the approval of our parents. As we go through adolescence, we make the transition where we need the approval of our peers. It’s a very frustrating time for parents, but it’s very important for these adolescents. It allows them to ‘culturate’ outside of their immediate families into the broader tribe, and to learn to rely on friends. Some people discover alcohol and the numbing effects of dopamine to cope with anxiety, stress and fear, that becomes hard-wired in to
Add into the mix impatience and instant gratification. This is a generation that orders online, and things come at once – food from Deliveroo, objects from Amazon. Streaming films, binging box sets (no need to wait for next week’s episode).
their brains, and they learn to turn to the bottle when they suffer any negative feelings or stress associated with social, financial or career issues. Most find other outlets. Because we are allowing unfettered access to these dopamine creating devices and the social media, we are seeing the same thing with whole generations of human beings. And as they grow older, they don’t know how to form deep, meaningful personto-person relationships. They don’t know how to articulate their feelings. They no longer have an extensive vocabulary to explain those feelings. How are they going to grow and nurture teams?
At the same time, they no longer learn the coping mechanism to deal with stress. How will they pass basic military training – or how will training adapt to pass them? What if they have learned, when significant stress shows up in their lives, not to turn to people or friends to help them, but to turn to technology and a device? The science is clear: increasingly people have learned to give up and move on, not to stick at things. Levels of depression are higher amongst young people using TikTok and Instagram than young people who do not. Of course, it is all about balance. Too much and it becomes an addiction. And that is a problem, as the addiction is affecting so many of our young people: of our future soldiers and our future leaders.
Add into the mix impatience and instant gratification. This is a generation that orders online, and things come at once –food from Deliveroo, objects from Amazon. Streaming films, binging box sets (no need to wait for next week’s episode). There isn’t a history of waiting for something, of having to be patient, of having to work through something. This is the ‘swipe right’ generation. It means young people don’t and won’t want to stick at things like jobs or projects, tasks or careers, if they don’t feel they are making an impact or having
purpose. Their ability to stick at difficult tasks is starting to go down dramatically. Attention spans are falling to seconds, not even minutes. We no longer have to learn or practice the social skills of rejection. Language is becoming increasingly functional and losing nuance. (Punctuation, that vital tool for clarity in communication, is now seen by the young, in text and WhatsApp messages, as unnecessarily aggressive and confrontational!) As we mature, we need to learn patience; and that some things that really matter take time. The journey is arduous and long, and stressful and difficult. And people tend to thrive when they understand that they need to be comfortable to ask other people for help. To trust.
Conclusions
When one overlays the ‘Analytical’ communication style onto the communication habits that Millennials and Gen Zs are developing, there are enormous areas of concern, especially for military force developers. I was running a communication skills workshop for software engineers at the Google offices in Dublin some years ago, and as the 12 or so delegates (all in their 20s) arrived, they slumped in their seats and opened their laptops. There was no conversation in the room, just silence and the tapping on keyboards. As we were about to start, I asked them all to put away their laptops which they very reluctantly did. I then discovered that they had all being saying hello to each other via their computers. They were all in the room together but saying hello to each other with their keyboards! It was extraordinary to me that physically saying hello was not instinctive – not something any of them felt comfortable doing.
In reality, it is always challenging in directive, hierarchical, command and control environments, that are inevitably task-orientated and outcome-focused, to appreciate the importance of self-awareness. It is about the plan and getting
the job done, and, rightly, training and rehearsing for various pressurised and high-stakes scenarios. And learning to expect the unexpected. And we are told that AI and machines will increasingly deliver our decision-makers with superior ‘decision support’.
Those who rise to be the commanders and decision makers are often not those with (or even having an understanding of or empathy with) the character traits of the Analysts and ‘experts’. But as the tech age of warfare gathers pace, how we create and maintain trust between character types as we operate these complex machines will be vital. It will depend on how we train our leaders to accommodate the Analysts and experts; and it will depend upon how we train our experts to be more adaptable, to be story tellers, framing the ‘logical need’ as ‘narrative and story’. We will need the Analysts to come forward without prompting, without waiting to be asked – letting go of worrying about getting it wrong, flexing the energy outwards, communicating with others. The Analytical mindset often waits until it has all the information before it feels comfortable making the decision. That could be too late. And we will need the others, the decision-makers, to listen to them – patiently.
For success in the future battlespace, the same close small team trust that must exist at close quarters will need to be replicated in the headquarters of the decision makers – at every level. So, there is a need to prioritise empowering the ‘uncomfortable’ mindset, and to train everyone (of all character types) to flex their communication style to deliver what others need from them, not what they need from others. While humans still design and control these structures then notions of trust will be pivotal for the success of any outcome, whatever the future nature of the military organisation.
“The horizon is tilted and is tilting more and more by the day”.
FURTHER WATCHING
n “Humans aren’t quick enough to defeat machines. We need machines to defeat machines.” – Former Royal Artillery officer Christopher LincolnJones on the evolution of drone technologies and the risk and rewards of the military’s embrace of automation. Scan the QR code below left to watch.
n “The idea of an elaborate, Star Trek-esque hologram form of training is pretty pie in the sky. Do I buy into the romantic vision of what that could be? Yes – it’s a cool idea but we don’t know what the metaverse is and we certainly don’t know what the military metaverse is going to look like. It’s a long way away.” – Sam Vine, Professor of Psychology at the University of Exeter and Chief Scientific Officer at Cineon, talks about the performance powerup technology can afford those in the Armed Forces, ‘marginal losses’ and the economics of Extended Reality. Scan the QR code above right to watch.
CONCLUSION
Professor Andrew Stewart Head of Conflict Research, CHACR
In September 2023 the then Director of Army Futures introduced the Land Operating Concept. Acknowledging that land forces are “a cog within a multi-domain and coalition machine”, this Concept identified four areas of significant challenge under the headings of ‘exposed, autonomous, fragile, observed’, and highlighted the impact of new and repackaged technology as the unifying theme. Informed by the war in Ukraine, shortly after publication the renewed conflict in Gaza provided further opportunity to witness the devastating human costs of warfare. It also further re-energised familiar debates, such as how the necessarily iterative process of militaries seeking to maintain an advantage over foes, real or anticipated, responds to and incorporates technological drivers. In particular, there does appear a clear distinction with previous periods, and what a member of the Reagan Administration and previous US Marine combat veteran has described as the “commoditization of digital technologies” which has “enabled unmanned systems to wreak destruction at a fraction of the previous costs”.1
Commoditization of digital technologies [has] enabled unmanned systems to wreak destruction at a fraction of the previous costs
With the British Army already well advanced in evolving its structural design to respond to this much changed strategic environment, this issue of Ares & Athena has looked at some of the consequences for the soldiers who must always remain key to how the organisation moves forward. Leo Blanken (pages 4-7) provides critical tone and direction in discussing a fait accompli, an environment in which “increasingly attractive” human-machine teaming is already well established, but now demands more thought about what this all means in terms of the evolved human aspects of warfare.
Warren Chin (pages 8-11) expands upon this with his discussion of “an increasingly violent automated high-speed battlefield”, and draws on the often overlooked writing of the 19th century French military thinker Colonel Ardent du Picq.
J.P. Clark (pages 12-16), with the dual perspectives gained from a long and distinguished career in the US Army and great experience of teaching the next generation of soldiery, reflects on whether the character of war is changing or evolving, and upon how the all-domain battlefield is precipitating organisational change, returning to a golden thread and focusing again on war as the most characteristically human activity.
1‘Bing’ West, ‘Remember the Wampanoag’, Strategika (Hoover Institute), Issue 92 (The Future of U.S. Weapons Production), July 1, 2024, hoover.org/research/rememberwampanoag
Tom Crosbie (pages 17-19) asks a series of vitally important questions about what might be different as we move potentially to ‘post-human war’. This, in turn, provides a clear segue to
some concluding thoughts from Jonny Lewis (pages 20-25) who asserts that humans and human interaction will remain central to the future business of war as behaviours and emotions will likely continue to drive both organisations and outcomes.
Reading through these, it seems difficult to disagree with the argument that, while technology can influence significant changes in warfare, it is the manner in which it is used that proves to be key. At the dawn of the 21st century, in contemplating how new weapons might impact on warmaking, it was argued that the emergence of new technologies would “slim down” armed forces “flattening the military pyramid”, leading, potentially, to a blurring of the traditional military services.2 There has been a fusion of sorts, as jointery has further evolved around the US-led drive to adopt integrated multi-domain structures in which specialists have prominent roles, but alongside, as opposed to replacing, the historically familiar massed forces. The war in Ukraine has done little to suggest that, even on the ‘transparent battlefield’, armies (and, importantly, armies with lots of people in them) are irrelevant, rather the opposite, leading current thinking on a trend towards a need for a halting of reductions and an increasing of lethality.
When looking to the future battlespace, there can be a danger of too much fixating on the technology and speculative predictions about the future. In the enduring discussion about how war might change, the role played by machinery has long been a key theme. Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s 1993 study War and Anti-War dedicated an entire chapter to military robotics and autonomous weapon systems.3 It is vitally important for an update in a ‘pre-war’ period and a potentially widening contest in which there is no second place. The consequences of defeat are too terrible to imagine. In an early example of operational
research, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences calculated that between 650BC and 1960 there had been 1,656 arms races only 16 of which had not ended in war. Even in those which failed to turn hot, all of them led to one or other of the protagonists experiencing economic collapse.4 More than 60 years on from this study, the stakes appear to remain the same.
In a broad survey of land warfare, it seems reasonable to agree with the argument that, at the tactical level, it has been “a simple matter of finding the best and fastest way to direct the greatest possible weight of firepower on the enemy”.5 Nothing has changed in that regard but behind it all lies the human aspect. Humans constitute the organisation which is tasked with making best use of the resources it holds: the platforms and systems which exist to successfully and decisively prosecute military activity. Humans continue to need to direct and decide, and humans continue to need to inspire and empathise. The core of this Ares & Athena has not been a discussion about ‘one or the other’, but about ‘one with the other’.
‘Innovation’ and ‘transformation’ might become increasingly less heard, replaced instead by ‘integration’ and ‘augmentation’ as watchwords. Human and machine. Unlock the puzzle and win the next war.
2Nigel Vinson (RUSI), cited in Alexander Nicoll, ‘Moving targets of warfare’, Financial Times, 4 January 2000.
3Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century (Warner Books, 1993), 139-152.
4‘The Art of War’, An Cosantoir: The Irish Defence Journal (Vol.XX, No.7; July 1960)
5Paul Lockhart, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare (New York; Basic Books, 2021), 560.
The core of this Ares & Athena has not been a discussion about ‘one or
CHACR MISSION STATEMENT
To conduct and sponsor research and analysis into the enduring nature and changing character of conflict on land and to be an active hub for scholarship and debate within the Army in order to support the development and sustainment of the Army’s conceptual component of fighting power.