At first glance, the war in Ukraine might look like something from the 20th century. You see a sort of trench-like landscape that would be familiar to soldiers from 1915. But it holds many lessons for conflicts to come. While boots on the ground still matter. Russia has moved to tighten its conscription law, pressing more men to fight. New tech is making a huge difference. There's this idea of revolutions in military affairs, and they're typically attributed to technology. And I think that's why we're here to see the future. The world will definitely be very important in any conflict between Taiwan and China. Has the world entered a new era of increased conflicts? What does the future of combat look like? This may be the moment where war really does become something else.
Go back and cut off planes without assist, and turn off weapons. There cannot be a good way to stay out of the war.
回到并割断没有帮助的飞机,并关闭武器。在战争中不可能有什么好的方法保持不参与。
In Ukraine's capital of Kiev, Vatali runs aerologics, a company that makes drones for the Ukrainian military. Today he's testing their flagship product, a reconnaissance drone called the GORE, as well as a smaller loitering munition or kamikaze drone. Over 20 such systems have already been sent to the front line. It's a successful combination of months of research and development. The drones are adapted to be used as weapons or as guides. Both Russia and Ukraine are sending huge numbers onto the battlefield. We're now estimating that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are losing some 10,000 drones a month, so just the extent to which drones are being used is definitely noteworthy. Drones have flown in wars before, but what's different in Ukraine is how they're being used. What I think it's teaching us is that just because drones are being shot down doesn't mean they aren't absolutely indispensable. If the drone is shot down, no problem, it's done its job. These are almost becoming like consumables on the battlefield.
A QB- Hitler thing is really good for the quality and gravity. Search and destroy drone missions are a huge part of the new tech dominating the battlefield. But it's artillery batteries flying drones to show them where to aim their guns that are using them with the most effect. Without expandable drones as their eyes and ears, shooters would be nearly blind. Just how many drones are being used is an invaluable lesson for any future conflict. Quantity can really matter in a war and quantity has a quality of its own. That's something that in the West we may have forgotten to some extent. We have relatively shallow arsenals with regard to ammunition and things like that and now we're realizing that in these kind of rather large conventional wars you also just need a lot of drones and a lot of everything really. Whether they're consumable or large and long range Ukraine has demonstrated drones will be regular players in wars of the future.
But the intelligence drones collect is only useful if there's a means of communicating it to the wider force. And in the battlefield that isn't always easy. Soldiers like Fevorski are at the forefront of that challenge. They risk their lives training soldiers how to use technology that has become a lifeline for Ukraine. Starlink. Away from the battlefield maintaining the equipment is essential.
Starlink is a satellite constellation owned by SpaceX, an American rocket company. It's made up of more than 4,000 low orbit satellites that provide off-grid internet access. A lifeline when heavy artillery is constantly battering your ground base utilities. And crucially it's allowing soldiers on the ground to share images from drone feeds to connect targets with the nearest artillery team. A kind of Uber for howitzers.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. Other countries are taking note. Chinese generals have been watching American wars since 1991 when America's lightning fast victory over Iraq woke them up to the power of American intelligence and digital networks. And from that moment on the People's Liberation Army of China realized not only that they had to be able to wage a similar kind of warfare but that if they were going to be able to defeat America and its allies in Asia they would have to take out not just weapons and soldiers on the ground but you take out the systems that they rely on. Taiwan constantly in China's cross says, knows its undersea internet cables could be cut in the event of an invasion. It too sees the value of a star-link type constellation in a future conflict. Satellite communications in the future are going to be that absolutely critical element that allows sensors to be connected to shooters in a timely fashion in a way that ensures if a soldier sees a tank and sends that information back you can hit it in a time scale that is minute not hours by which the tank may be miles away.
Starlink may help information move quicker and more securely but in wars of the future artificial intelligence will help to make sense of that information.
Hello, I'm Tom Standage Deputy Editor at The Economist. If you're enjoying this film why not take out a subscription to The Economist? You'll receive daily and weekly analysis of global affairs and you can read us online, in the app and listen to our audio edition. For the best offer, click on the link.
Generals in Ukraine are already adapting AI technology to help them plan what to attack, what resources to use and when. A kind of Google Maps for Armies. It's another glimpse of how new tech will be helping tomorrow's soldiers.
You'll use these virtual simulations for various training or experimental purposes. Jennifer McCarle should know she specializes in training soldiers for future wars.
Ukraine has been a great example of how the ubiquity and proliferation of sensors has allowed them to more effectively close kill chains. Shortening a kill chain means speeding up the time between finding a target and destroying it.
It's a maritime control aircraft. Can you show me their position? Satellite, radar and drones provide an overwhelming amount of data from the battlefield. And sorting through it is hugely time intensive. If you're able to use AI to go through that information and to be able to present information that matters for a decision maker, you have speed. You can work through that decision-making cycle much more quickly than you can right now.
And AI isn't just helping to make decisions. It's also guiding the machines. Shield AI is a military tech company working to build an AI pilot. It's an intelligent software that can fly unmanned craft during combat. The future of warfare is going to be characterized by thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles. And what is going to be the differentiating factor among all these vehicles is the level of intelligence, the level of autonomy integrated into each one of those vehicles. You'll see unmanned systems outnumber the number of warfighters on the front lines of these conflicts. They will play a key role in any battle of the future.
Business is booming for military startups. Since 2021, the American Defense Department spending on AI allocated by financial year has more than doubled. NATO is also heavily investing. There has been a wave of venture capital that has gone to defense technology companies. I think it's because you see an industry that is fundamentally transforming the products and capabilities that are going to matter in the next conflict are going to be derived from software capabilities from AI.
But there are concerns about leaving the decision to kill to an algorithm. There's this worry, I think, in popular culture that AI is going to spawn these terminators. And while I think there is reason to be cautious, I do think it's important we don't engage in hyperbole. In the US and in a lot of Western countries, we have made the deliberate decision that when it comes to decisions around lethality, a human will always be in or on that decision-making loop. And where this, I think, does become a little bit worrisome is that other countries haven't made that same normative decision. Over a hundred countries have military systems with some degree of autonomy.
It's easy to see how a weapon that thinks for itself could be an advantage. If you are a commander and you launch the weapon, let's say an aircraft and its communications are jammed, if it spots a target on the ground, are you going to wait for your communication link to be restored by which time a target may have gone away? Or are you going to give the weapon the authority to take the shot itself? From a purely military perspective, that independence is hugely valuable under those kinds of comms-denied environment. But for now, humans largely maintain lethal control.
I'm skeptical that AI on its own can turn the tide of war. I think we have to be very cognizant of the fact. AI remains incredibly brittle. It struggles to adapt to unexpected situations and scenarios. And warfare is just full of the unexpected. It's replete with fog and friction.
And in wars of the future, like now, not all fighting will be done with bullets and missiles. Over 8,000 km from Ukraine in the South China Sea, there may be fewer trenches, but a few risks struggle is still underway. China has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan, a democratic self-governing island that it sees as a breakaway province. But geography is on Taiwan's side. For China to launch a straightforward invasion of Taiwan, there are many difficulties, including launching the largest ever amphibious operations since Normandy. This will be extremely difficult for China. The landing itself is also extremely difficult because China hasn't actually conducted any kinetic military operations since 1979. So this is a big gamble.
In the face of such challenges, China may try a different tack if it invades Taiwan. The post-loburial army believes in the three warfare doctrine, which requires communication with your potential audience in order to achieve a psychological effect. Cyber provides a very powerful means for them to extend their concept such as propaganda, such as united fund operations. If they could do that, and this is relatively cheap, you could conduct an entire year's worth of operations and the cost would not nearly be as much as one bull's sickness out.
And cyber warfare isn't just a psychological weapon. They could cut off power supplies, critical military infrastructure such as surveillance radar stations, and keep Taiwan blind, deaf to facilitate further kinetic operations. It may sound like a cleaner version of future war, but when it comes to conflict, there's no escape from attrition.
In Kyiv, Favoski and his partner are preparing for him to return to the front. It's very easy to get caught up in the heart of the world. It's very easy to get caught up in the hardware of this conflict, the drone, the tanks, the satellites. But it is very important to understand, ultimately, this is still people. Mostly men, often very young men, holding guns, firing at the enemy and suffering trauma, life-changing injuries and death. Even in a war with high levels of technological sophistication, in the end, we still need to be prepared for the 18-year-old dying somewhere in the mud. The fundamental nature of war as a human conflict with humans killing each other, I don't think that that is going to go away.
War is still ultimately irreducibly about that clash of arms, waged often at close quarters in which bodies pile up, the societies are ravaged and each country's youth, the most talented of their young generation, are lost in huge numbers.