Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking

Abstract

To date, most warfare has taken place within what Robert J. Bunker terms " human space, " meaning the traditional four-dimensional battlespace that is discernible to the human senses. 1 In essence, war has always consisted of human beings running, dodging, and hurling things at each other, lately with the help of machinery. Even such revolutionary developments as gunpowder only enhanced our ability to throw things at enemies we could see and hear. The first crude examples of autonomous weapons were probably the early experiments by the US Navy and Sperry Gyroscope Company on unpi-loted aircraft during the last years of the First World War. Then came the advent of electronics, especially radar, and warfare began to leave the realm of human senses. Ships and planes could fire on enemies that were no more than ghostly green images on a cathode ray tube. Later came military robots such as cruise missiles that were able to autonomously execute missions formerly requiring manned systems. Advanced radar engagement systems enabled pilots to locate, identify, and destroy enemy aircraft without ever seeing them. Some robotic systems became even more independent, such as the Navy's Phalanx close-in air defense weapon, which is " capable of autonomously performing its own search, detect, evaluation, track, engage, and kill assessment functions. " 2 Thanks to advanced sensors and information processing, target recognition and identifica-tion methods are being developed to permit truly autonomous guided munitions. This includes munitions capable of autonomously engaging fixed and mobile ground targets, as well as targets in air and space. 3 Warfare has begun to leave " human space. " Dr. Thomas K. Adams is a political military strategist with more than 30 years of expe-rience in all forms of operations other than war, including counterguerrilla operations in Vietnam, humanitarian assistance in Haiti, counterdrug missions in South America, and peace operations in Bosnia. His recent publications include Special Operations and the Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (Cass, 1998) and " The Real Military Revolution, " Parameters (Autumn 2000). His last operational military assignment was with the NATO stability force in Bosnia. A retired US Army lieutenant colonel, Adams holds a Ph.D. in political science from Syracuse University, an M.A. in international relations, an M.S.Sc. in social psychology, and a B.A. in liberal arts.