A cloud of 3D-printed drones big enough to bring down the latest U. S. stealth fighter, the F35, was just one of the combat scenarios evoked in a discussion of the future of warfare at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
Much of the discussion focused on the changes computers are bringing to the battlefield, including artificial intelligence and autonomous systems\u2014but also the way the battlefield is coming to computing, with cyberwar, and social media psyops an ever more real prospect.
Former U. S. Navy fighter pilot Mary Cummings, now director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University, delivered the first strike.
\u201cThe barrier to entry to drone technology is so low that everyone can have one, and if the Chinese go out and print a million copies of a drone, a very small drone, and put those up against an F35 and they go into the engine, you basically obviate what is a very expensive platform,\u201d she said.
Drones could not only defeat the F35, on which the U. S. is spending what Cummins called \u201ca ridiculous amount of money,\u201d but also replace them, she said.
\u201cISIS can go out now and print drones with a 3D printer, can print thousands of drones with a 3D printer at very low cost, and arm them with conventional weapons or biological weapons for example, and basically result in much more devastation than an F35 in a surgical strike could cause,\u201d she said.
That gave Dutch Minister of Defense Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert pause for thought. \u201cAs I placed an order for I don\u2019t know how many F35s, I just wonder if you could advise me whether I should continue or not?\u201d she asked Cummings.
If the perceived value of an F35 is falling, though, so too is its cost. \u201cThe price is dropping, as I understood last week from Lockheed Martin,\u201dHennis-Plasschaert said.
In the Netherlands, there is a hot debate on the use of autonomous weapons, according to Hennis-Plasschaert. \u201cIt\u2019s important that the deployment of such weapons must always involve meaningful human control,\u201d she said. On the flip side, future enemies may not feel the same way: \u201cWe may face self-learning systems that are able to modify their own rules of conduct, and so there\u2019s this ethical question.\u201d
That\u2019s not the only ethical question governments will need to answer, though.
With war no longer just about territorial control, \u201cwe run the risk of cyberspace being the battle space in the future,\u201d Hennis-Plasschaert said.
Agreeing on limits to such conflicts will be difficult, as there is insufficient cooperation between governments at the moment.
The Law of the Sea treaty is a nice example, she said, \u201cbut to copy this for cyberspace is not easy.\u201d
There are other boundaries to set when it comes to drone warfare, too.
\u201cWe have fully autonomous defensive weapons today,\u201d Cummings said. She wondered why they are OK, while fully autonomous offensive weapons are not.
She raised the question of future autonomous missile technology that might be able to target a person not by their GPS coordinates, as today, but by their photograph. \u201cThat missile could do a better job of targeting a bad person than a human could,\u201d she said. That scenario would make her reluctant to put a blanket ban on autonomous offensive weapons, she said.
Targeting a specific person through their photo \u201creally is an illustration of the blurring of the line between war and peace,\u201d said Jean-Marie Gu\u00e9henno
president and CEO of International Crisis Group and a former UN peacekeeper. The traditional way of dealing with that would be through a court or military tribunal, he said.
Airborne drones aren\u2019t the only autonomous vehicles that might cause concern, Cummings said.
\u201cWhen we go to an internet of things for vehicles, we will have a potential worldwide connectivity of terrorism, where terrorists can get into the network and start hacking driverless cars.\u201d
Worse still, she said, they could hack a truck. They don\u2019t even have to have explosives on board to cause trouble she said: Hacking half a dozen trucks in the Washington, D. C., area and stopping them in the right places could bring traffic to a halt and open the way for all sorts of mischief.
But what of social media? \u201cDoes the power of social media mean traditional military might is less important?\u201d asked Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Social media plays a role, said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King\u2019s College London. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think we should consider that new,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we look back at the strategists of the past, what they called the psychological element was always there, was always important.\u201d
So there you have it: In the future, war may not be declared by drones dropping destruction on our heads, but by a spate of unexplained illegal parking downtown.<\/p>\n