Defence Innovation and the 4th Industrial Revolution

Security Challenges, Emerging Technologies, and Military Implications

Michael Raska, Katarzyna Zysk, Ian Bowers, Michael Raska, Katarzyna Zysk, Ian Bowers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000563795
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book examines the implications of disruptive technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on military innovation and the use of force. It provides an in-depth understanding of how both large and small militaries are seeking to leverage 4IR emerging technologies and the effects such technologies may have on future conflicts.

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), the confluence of disruptive changes brought by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnologies, and autonomous systems, has a profound impact on the direction and character of military innovation and use of force. The core themes in this edited volume reflect on the position of emerging technologies in the context of previous Revolutions in Military Affairs; compare how large resource-rich states (US, China, Russia) and small resource-limited states (Israel, Sweden, Norway) are adopting and integrating novel technologies and explore the difference between various innovation and adaptation models. The book also examines the operational implications of emerging technologies in potential flashpoints such as the South China Sea and the Baltic Sea.

Written by a group of international scholars, this book uncovers the varying 4IR defence innovation trajectories, enablers, and constraints in pursuing military-technological advantages that will shape the character of future conflicts.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

The sixth RMA wave: Disruption in Military Affairs?

Michael Raska

ABSTRACT

The Revolution in Military Affairs, its concepts, processes, and debates, have evolved in five ‘IT-RMA waves’ since the 1980s. None of them, however, have fully achieved their intended outcomes as their ambitious premises have exceeded available technologies, budgetary resources, and operational capabilities of a given era. This paper argues that a new ‘artificial intelligence-driven RMA’ wave differs in the political, strategic, technological, and operational diffusion paths and patterns. While the AI-RMA may affect select countries and regions disproportionately, its technological advances coupled with an ongoing strategic competition is sufficiently broad to stipulate significant military changes across geopolitical lines.

Introduction

After nearly three decades of debating the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), security studies is once again reflecting narratives of a ‘disruptive’ or significant military change brought by the convergence of emerging ‘next-frontier’ technologies, novel operational concepts and organisational force structures.¹ In particular, the application of advanced machine-learning algorithms in select areas of warfare promises to enable unprecedented capabilities concerning the speed of information and data processing, automation for weapons platforms and surveillance systems, and ultimately, decision-making.² For example, advanced sensor technologies such as hyperspectral imagery, computational photography, and compact sensor design, promise to significantly improve target detection, recognition, and tracking capabilities and overcome traditional line-of-sight interference.³ State-of-the-art materials, including composites, ceramics, and nanomaterials with adaptive properties, promise to make military equipment lighter but more resistant to the environment.⁴ Emerging photonics technologies, including high-power lasers and optoelectronic devices, may provide new levels of secure communications based on quantum computing and quantum cryptography.⁵ Moreover, the convergence of these technologies with artificial intelligence (AI) systems, robotics, additive manufacturing (or 3D printing), quantum computing, directed energy, unmanned systems and other ‘disruptive’ technologies of the 4^th Industrial Revolution (4IR), are increasingly synonymous with sources of strategic and operational advantages in future warfare.⁶

While the strategic context differs, the diffusion of these technologies has prompted theoretical and policy-prescriptive questions similar to those posed in security studies since the early 1990s: Does the diffusion of emerging technologies signify a ‘disruptive’ shift in warfare or is it a mere evolutionary change? If emerging technologies stipulate a disruptive shift in warfare, what are defence resource allocation imperatives, including force structure and weapons procurement requirements? How can military organisations exploit emerging technologies to their advantage? Furthermore, how effective are emerging technologies to counter security threats and challenges of the 21^st century, characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity?

In this context, this paper positions its argument along two main lines: First, RMA conceptions and debates on the impending major change in warfare have progressively evolved over the past three decades. In 2006, Colin Gray briefly mentioned five stages or ‘RMA waves’ that have guided both theoretical and policy-oriented debates in strategic studies: (1) the intellectual discovery in the Soviet strategic thought in the 1980s, (2) the conceptual adoption and adaptation in the United States military in the early 1990s, (3) the culminating point of the RMA debate in mid-to-late 1990s, (4) the shift toward ‘defence transformation’ in the early 2000s, and (5) critical reversal questioning the RMA thesis from 2005 onwards.⁷ This paper argues that since the mid-2010s, with the accelerating research and development of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, a new AI-driven RMA wave has already emerged (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. Overview of the six RMA waves Source: Author; Adapted from Raska (2016).

Second, notwithstanding significant advances in military technologies and the use of force in the initial five RMA waves, these trends have not been fully implemented relative to their envisioned conceptions. Their varying and often ambitious premises have generally exceeded available technological capabilities, financial resources, and operational requirements of a given era. Moreover, Gray’s ‘Five RMA’ waves have actually been subsets of one comprehensive ‘information technologies RMA,’ or IT-RMA, which focused on integrating digital technologies into existing conventional weapons platforms and systems. The new AI-enabled RMA wave, however, differs from the past IT-RMA waves in several ways. Firstly, for the first time in decades, the US faces a strategic peer-competitor, China, capable of pursuing and implementing its own AI-RMA that can potentially negate strategic and operational advantages of the US military across geopolitical lines, particularly in East Asia. Secondly, advanced military-industrial sectors are no longer the primary drivers of technological innovation; instead, advanced technologies with a dual-use potential are being developed in the commercial sectors, including those of small states and middle powers, and then being ‘spun on’ to military applications. Finally, the diffusion of autonomous and AI-enabled weapons systems, coupled with novel operational constructs and force structures, challenge the direction and character of human involvement in future warfare.

Accordingly, the main question is not whether the AI-RMA wave is ‘the one’ that will bring about a fundamental discontinuity in warfare, and if so, how and why? Instead, it is whether the US AI-RMA can be nullified – or at least weakened – by a corresponding Chinese AI-RMA? Consequently, how will the global diffusion of emerging technologies affect strategic stability, alliance relationships, arms control, ethics and governance, and nearly all aspects of international security? These questions will arguably shape the next decade of debates in security studies with diverse theoretical and policy-oriented viewpoints, interpretations, and arguments. To advance these debates, however, it is essential to reflect on the intellectual history of the five IT-RMA waves, critically pointing out their failures to fully achieve their intended conceptual visions, while highlighting the differences in the strategic contours of the AI-RMA wave. As this paper shows, the IT-RMA waves trace their conceptual roots to Russian strategic thought, followed by varying experimentation and implementation paths in the US military, while the AI-RMA wave is a global phenomenon. It is embedded in the growing US-China systemic rivalry and their varying ‘techno-nationalist’ visions and approaches to dominate in areas of disruptive technologies of the 4IR.⁸ At the same time, its diffusion paths and patterns are shaped by defence innovation trajectories of select advanced small states and middle powers such as Australia, France, Israel, Singapore, South Korea, United Kingdom, and others. These states seek to leverage advanced technologies such as AI systems not only to alleviate their traditional defence constraints but also to advance their power and influence in the international arena.⁹

First RMA wave: Electronic warfare & military-technical revolution (MTR)

In the early 1980s, Soviet strategic forecasters debated the first-generation of RMA theories under the conceptual umbrella of the Military-Technical Revolution (MTR).¹⁰ As Dima Adamsky noted, the Soviet MTR debate focused on two aspects: (1) the implications of scientific progress on the direction and character of future military operations; and (2) responding to Western doctrinal and technological innovations, notably the 1982 US AirLand Batt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 The sixth RMA wave: Disruption in Military Affairs?
• 2 From closed to open systems: How the US military services pursue innovation
• 3 Artificial intelligence in China’s revolution in military affairs
• 4 Defence innovation and the 4th industrial revolution in Russia
• 5 4IR technologies in the Israel Defence Forces: blurring traditional boundaries
• 6 Small states and autonomous systems: the Scandinavian case
• 7 Not so disruptive after all: The 4IR, navies and the search for sea control
• Index