In the face of combat, an impasse is encountered, one presented all too often throughout history: to have the mental strength to overcome fear and to kill. The development of warfare has made this common problem less obvious over time. The nature of killing in hand-to-hand combat, whether it be with swords, spears, or bayonets, has become increasingly elusive as the distance between the soldier and his enemy increases. Projectile weaponry has made the act of taking a life a matter of accuracy and precision on the part of the soldier, more so than the strength and skill required of close combat. This dilemma, the most human element of warfare, was previously unsolved by advances in technology. Even the disconnection of artillery and aerial bombing failed to eliminate the need for infantry on the ground, and for these soldiers to bear witness to the act of killing. Up to now, man adapted to warfare. The aspects of war, be it the constant threat to life, the physical demands of combat, and the mental strife of witnessing death, were once held inviolable. Military innovations have reversed these facts of war; remote weapons systems have adapted warfare to man. We are witnessing the advent of a new era of warfare, where the cold knowledge of killing is learned from computer screens and monitors.
Remote weapon systems, or unmanned weapons and weaponized vehicles that are remotely controlled, represent a fundamental change in the nature of the battlefield. Indeed, hereto all military operations carried risk assessments in terms of potential casualties; the likelihood of an operation occurring traditionally decreases as potential losses increase in estimation. Warfare is strongly influenced not only by a desire to maximize the enemy’s losses, but a need to limit your own. Remote weapon systems eliminate the latter concern. Technological materiel, while valuable in its own right, is not as valuable as human life, in every operational scenario. To remove this element, then, is a major shift in how military operations are planned and considered. The ability to operate without concern for the lives of your own soldiers lessens logistical and maximizes operational priorities. In warfare without concern for personnel losses, significant pragmatic and moral barriers to total unimpeded conflict are removed.
Up to now, man adapted to warfare. The aspects of war, be it the constant threat to life, the physical demands of combat, and the mental strife of witnessing death, were once held inviolable. Military innovations have reversed these facts of war; remote weapons systems have adapted warfare to man.
This technology has already been put into practice in the U.S. Army, with dramatic effects. Remote weapon systems like Predator drones have broadened the scope of what was previously believed possible without combat troops on the ground. From within a trailer at an Air Force Base in Nevada, a pilot can take out a group of insurgents 8,000 miles away with the push of a button on a joystick. A remotely operated turret on an armored vehicle allows an operator to deliver effective and devastating fire without ever removing himself from the relative safety of his personnel carrier. The most crucial fighting vehicles in our Armed Forces’ inventory, including helicopters and submarines, are undergoing development to produce unmanned variants. The soldier using a remote weapons system operates with impunity; he is the unseen, unassailable combatant, omnipresent and untouchable to the enemy.
The moral implications of this technological development are immense. Military operations planning has traditionally been restrained by concern for losses and casualties among one’s own soldiers and civilians. Remote weapons systems breaks down this ethical barrier. The practical concern, eliminating the enemy, remains the same, yet the means by which one does so is significantly streamlined. The drone pilot does not concern himself with the possibility of dying in combat; the unmanned armored fighting vehicle operator neglects the possibility of personal physical harm. The trauma of war becomes one-sided as the pain and misery of death afflicts only those on the battlefield itself, and as remote weapons systems slowly take the place of entire armies in the field, the word “deploy” comes to take on a significantly different meaning. There remains death and destruction, but such tragedies become unique to whatever party is without this technological development. The most human elements of warfare become absent for those utilizing remote weapons systems. The moral dilemma of killing becomes distinctly diminished as human lives become blinking dots on a screen, extinguished forever by the touch of a button.
The quest to distance oneself further and further from the most basic act of war, killing, is nearing its apex. The notion of hand-to-hand combat, ancient yet incredibly relevant, warped as swords and spears grew longer, bows and guns shot faster, and artillery and bombers shelled further. To remove oneself entirely from the battlefield, however, represents a shift of monumental significance, one that all those who practice the art of war must note. If battles are to be decided by soldiers operating a continent or ocean away from the killing zone, we must come to redefine what constitutes soldiery and warfare. We are witnessing warfare change in ways that our tactics, operations, and strategy have not yet come to comprehend. As we continue to use and develop remote weapons systems, the nature of our battlefield will bear witness to a new kind of warfare.
Two things up front, one war perpetuates itself until ground is held. Two, unless you are willing to win the peace, the war will never really end. Convincing yourself that a “zero footprint” or only Special Forces, bombs and drones can win wars is naive at best and tragic at worst. And in any scenario you must include this fact: Unless political and military goals are the same, we will fail no matter the technology or lack thereof. Lesson Learned in OIF: As soon as you disable the technological advantages of the enemy, they go back to basics, which require blood, sweat and tears on the battlefield, face-to-face, to be effective. May God bless you, and may God bless America. Hooah!
A thoughtful article. All asymmetries are temporary, though. In this case, an enemy can either attack the means that make remote warfare possible, or expand their own battlespace to match ours. So instead of attacking the man in the gun turret, attack the whole vehicle. If an aircraft is piloted from 10,000 miles away, carry the war to that location.
Consider, too, the effects of “invulnerability” — or even just less vulnerability. Far from indiscriminately engaging “dots on a screen”, attacks are now conducted after weeks of observation and exhaustive review. Even a man in a remote turret may well hesitate if his life isn’t in immediate peril.
Warfare, and within that, combat, remains a human activity — remove humans from the equation, and the formula will change until they’re back in.
This fits in with a lot of the common narrative about RPAs and robotics being part of a new RMA that requires us to fundamentally change how we view the nature of conflict. I remain a skeptic.
1. Although I generally accept the premise of an RMA as changing the ‘character’ of warfare, I have yet to see one which changes its fundamental nature (aside possibly from the nuclear revolution, but that I would argue was more a revolution in the statecraft of war than the operational conduct of war). The same arguments being made today about RPAs and robotics were made about virtually all previous RMAs, notably the longbow, the machine gun, the manned bomber aircraft, cruise missiles, etc. (the original airpower theorists like Trenchard, Mitchell, and Douhet argued that the manned aircraft itself already placed the deep nation state at risk from the onset of conflict and thus raised every challenge claimed here to be new to RPAs; critics of Napoleon’s tactics from Levee en Masse to how his armies moved through foreign territories argued much the same). The goal of military innovation is to expose your adversary to greater risk while reducing the threat to your own forces to maximize the power differential. Just because we have made a major leap in extending combat radius does not mean we have permanently eliminated or even reduced risk, we have just temporarily reshuffled the deck to our advantage until the next counter-innovation emerges.
The second problem is conflating the ‘warrior ethos’ with the true nature of combat. The warrior ethos is built at its core around notions such as bravery and selflessness owing to the inherent risk of the combat environment. The innovator and the strategist seeks to alter that dynamic to their own advantage, which readily runs into conflict with the warrior ethos as exhibiting some form of either cowardice or flaw in changing fundamental ethics by changing what the warrior sees as the rules of the game. While the warrior ethos plays a vital role in building a particular form of combat force, it becomes self limiting because it requires practitioners of war to see war as changing based on artificial constructs absent broader understanding of warfare at the strategic level. A better focus on the basic underlying nature of war, violent struggle between states and trans-national entities to coerce political will on another, must be the starting point rather than the operational art of maneuver warfare which is generally a means to an end.
In a famous Star Trek episode, two planets that have been at war for centuries rely on linked computers to fight their battles, after which, once the fights have been adjudicated, each planet selects and kills its own computed casualties – no muss, no fuss. The Enterprise ends that comfortable practice – and the war – by destroying the computers, confronting the belligerents with the prospect of war’s true horror. This piece reminded me of that fantasy – distant war taken to its logical extreme, with peace as the result. If only it were so easy…
I like to point to the classic episode of MASH – ‘Dear Sigmund’ (season 6). The sub-plot is a downed pilot, ignorant of the horrors of the Korean War, is forced by Hawkeye to confront the victims of bombings while he saw the war casually from a point of comfort – the irony here is that just a generation ago, pilots were on the outside of the warrior tradition, now they are accepted as noble combatants while pointing their fingers at RPA drivers. Such is the nature of innovation in war, an old story really.
What about identifying aggressors? Soon, it will become impossible to know who launched that smart bomb. What then? Who to attack? Need to simulate this situation to see whether these decisions can even be made in a conflict situation