Yesterday, Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and prolific writer on the future of robotics and artificial intelligence, posted a fascinating argument on Twitter regarding swarms and mass in future combat.
This is a thread about #swarms 👇 (1/a lot)
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
His thread was in response to an article by Shmuel Shmuel posted on War on the Rocks, which made the case that the same computer processing technology enabling robotic vehicles combined with old fashioned kinetic weapons (i.e. anti-aircraft guns) offered a cost-effective solution to swarms.
Scharre agreed that robotic drones are indeed vulnerable to such countermeasures, but made this point in response:
I think this is 100% correct! The genius of robotic vehicles is that they don't have to be survivable. They can be built cheaply and expendable, overwhelming the adversary with mass. 5/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
He then went to contend that robotic swarms offer the potential to reestablish the role of mass in future combat. Mass, either in terms of numbers of combatants or volume of firepower, has played a decisive role in most wars. As the aphorism goes, usually credited to Josef Stalin, “mass has a quality all of its own.”
Numbers matter. For an adversary willing to treat individual units as expendable, swarming is a very appealing tactic. 9/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
Overwhelming the enemy through sheer mass has been an effective military tactic throughout the ages. In fact, that's precisely how the Allies won World War II, by overwhelming the Axis through an onslaught of iron. 10/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
As Paul Kennedy wrote, "No matter how cleverly the Wehrmacht mounted its tactical counterattacks … it was to be ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Allied firepower." 12/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
Scharre observed that the United States went in a different direction in its post-World War II approach to warfare, adopting instead “offset” strategies that sought to leverage superior technology to balance against the mass militaries of the Communist bloc.
During the Cold War, the United States adopted an "offset strategy" to counter Soviet numerical superiority with qualitatively superior technology — first nuclear weapons then information-age precision-guided weapons. 13/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
While effective during the Cold War, Scharre concurs with the arguments that offset strategies are becoming far too expensive and may ultimately become self-defeating.
The logical conclusion of that strategy is the current death spiral of the U.S. military — rising platform costs and shrinking quantities leading to qualitatively superior weapons but in insufficient quantities to deliver operational results. 14/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
And it's not about the budget. More money won't save the U.S. from this trap. From 2001-2008 the base (non-war) budgets of the Navy and Air Force grew by 22% and 27% respectively in real dollars. # of assets declined by 10% for ships and nearly 20% for aircraft. 16/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
In order to avoid this fate, Scharre contends that
The United States needs to change the way it produces combat power, focusing on the most cost-effective way to accomplish its operational goals rather than building next-gen "X" programs at any price. 17/
— Paul Scharre (@paul_scharre) September 12, 2018
The entire thread is well worth reading.
Trevor Dupuy would have agreed with much of what Scharre’s asserts. He identified the relationship between increasing weapon lethality and battlefield dispersion that goes back to the 17th century. Dupuy believed that the primary factor driving this relationship was the human response to fear in a lethal environment, with soldiers dispersing in depth and frontage on battlefields in order to survive weapons of ever increasing destructiveness.
TDI Friday Read: Lethality, Dispersion, And Mass On Future Battlefields
Robots might very well change that equation. Whether autonomous or “human in the loop,” robotic swarms do not feel fear and are inherently expendable. Cheaply produced robots might very well provide sufficient augmentation to human combat units to restore the primacy of mass in future warfare.
I started to detest this line “quantity has a quality all its own” (which is more political anyway). It is obvious that it will remain a question of quantitative and qualitative factors (or differences) of belligerent A vs belligerent B. Robots will have different combat power, reliability issues, replacement rates etc.
It is frequently quoted and associated with the Soviet army, but one has to understand that Soviet efficiency was higher than that of Syrian or Iraqi forces, comparable to Japan and only lower to German overall efficiency (and if Italy mobilized its forces to the same degree as it did in WW1, the outcome might have been completely different). Their “quantitative” advantage is totally negated if it is compared to the reserves of nations like China or India.
China was too underdeveloped (during the 40s) to expel the Imperial Japanese invaders, which leaves us with force strength and the respective “kill rate” (and both have diminishing returns), since they are tied to development factors and other circumstances.
“No matter how cleverly the Wehrmacht mounted its tactical counterattacks … it was to be ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Allied firepower.”
WW2 was much closer than most people think and with the collapse of the USSR, the Allies would have been unable to launch an invasion anyway. Soviet reserves were also not endless, a numerical advantage did not automatically ensue victory either, not to mention that the USSR did not have a firepower advantage over the Wehrmacht, it was quite the opposite. Whenever the Wehrmacht committed mistakes, it was only able to last longer (or make the enemy pay for every inch), because of the fact that it could impose higher attrition. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that Germany’s early victories were more a result of its economic potential and population size, absorbing and implementing Austria and Czechoslovakia, while wrestling down Poland, Denmark and Norway.
Whether a system can be built “cheaply” and expendable is entirely based on its design and the way it is going to be (mass) produced. I would never rely on sheer numbers, Britain once controlled 2/3 of the entire world.
Countermeasures will evolve around that. Hacking, jamming, electronic warfare enables a significantly more cost effective defense. “Overwhelming the enemy” is also offensive action, which would be problematic for democracies, since it sounds rather volatile. Wars of annihilation were usually waged by dictatorships.
The most interesting question would be: Are robots tied to or constrained by manpower (maintenance)? What is the carrying capacity of a robotic army (or the upkeep)?
Economically more powerful nations (and in possession of substantial resources) would be able to exert unopposed dominance, causing an ever increasing disparity between richer and poorer nations. Dictatorships would seek for a cost effective alternative, invest a lot of money into developing a copy with the goal of mass production.
Robots (so far at least), have a supplementary role, serving alongside humans (such as defusing, recovery), being sent into situations where a human would be endangered (counter terrorism, barricaded hostage situations, mine fields) or may be utilized in the medical field/field hospitals, since we are not talking about a real AI.
I do think however, that the West may increase its warmaking potential relative to asian societies by investing into artificial systems, that is (in a globalized world), only possible by investing into a higher quality machine than relying on waves, in order to retain a tactical advantage. Quantity is not an option for the Western world, taking manufacturing output (aggregated) and population sizes into consideration (and the ever increasing number of territory in control held by non western civilizations, 10% by 2055).