A-Infos (en) virtual global war:space platforms to electronic warfare

[MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>]

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http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/md/en/1998/02/14weapons.html

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LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - February 1998

>From space platforms to electronic warfare

Arms and munitions are now no more than part of a larger complex whose
elements are continually interlinked, programmed to communicate
automatically. The aim, according to Admiral William Owen, is to transform
the American armed forces into a "system of systems". Each combatant, each
weapon system, each information system will be connected to a kind of
gigantic Intranet (1) which will make processes available in real time
(multimedia messaging, automatic warning systems, aids to the user, for
analysis and for decision-making).

These developments are the fruit of the tremendous progress already made
and foreseeable in the technologies of information, materials and
structures, energy and propulsion, and life itself (2). To take just one
example, by the 2020s the leap forward in microelectronics is expected to
allow number-crunching power to be increased 100,000 fold and digital
information storage capacity by 1,000 to 10,000 fold.

Global battlefield surveillance

Global surveillance of the battlefield is a decisive strategic
prerequisite for using the information obtained in several dimensions to
simulate, prepare for and engage in combat. The increasingly accurate
digitisation of world topography, and of the battlefield in particular
(what the Americans call the digital battlefield) has become a priority.
Advances in microtechnology will enable swarms of eavesdropping and
observational micro-satellites to be deployed, as well as large numbers of
ground systems (it will be possible to activate thousands of mini-sensors
and self-powered detectors - acoustic, magnetometric, infrared, thermal -
from specially programmed satellites passing overhead).

Remote-controlled devices capable of performing the same kinds of tasks
are on the drawing board, but piloted spy planes of the J-Stars type are
still extremely effective. They are capable of monitoring movements over
an area of nearly 250,000 sq. km. They sometimes make use of drones
(small, remote-controlled aircraft, used in Bosnia, for example). France
is close behind the United States in this essential field: the futuristic
drone Mars HAGV resembles a cruise missile designed to discover the full
extent of the enemy's capabilities; flying at three times the speed of
sound. It will be launched from a Rafale type fighter and will navigate
using an inertial unit; it will carry radar systems and/or signals
intelligence (Sigint) payloads and will be capable of operating day or
night regardless of the weather, to supplement other systems: spy planes,
satellites, etc.

Three hours to respond

It is the American strategists' ambition to make the first strike anywhere
in the world under all circumstances (and therefore to know before the
enemy). They dream of doing so at any point on the globe from their own
territory within a maximum of three hours. To achieve this, they will use
hypersonic carriers to convey missiles and offensive drones, piloted
parachute craft, and energy beam (laser, electromagnetic, etc.) weapons of
neutralisation and destruction.

Combat drones

Defence chiefs hope that by the year 2020 remote-controlled carrier drones
will allow strikes to be organised with even greater accuracy, delivering
guided munitions.

Some ten years before that, the American air force will have developed a
new type of combat drone capable of engaging in manoeuvres beyond what the
human body can withstand. More stealthy (no cockpit) and
"hypermanoeuvrable", an Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle (UNCAV) will be
able to escape from missiles launched in its pursuit.

In the longer term, the US space agency (NASA) in September 1994 launched
a programme (Erast) with the purpose of designing a drone capable of
remaining airborne for several days at an altitude of 30 kilometres.

Space

This is the fourth dimension of warfare, and its strategic and tactical
roles are becoming increasingly important. Thanks to satellites, it is
already possible to "communicate, see and listen" and soon will be to
defend oneself and attack.

The Air Force 2025 Program's designers say that by the year 2025 the air
force's missions will include a space dimension with the establishment of
a multi-purpose space platform (the S3) comprising a drone for launching
weapons systems, a piloted hypersonic attack aircraft, a set of hypersonic
cruise missiles and trans-atmospheric vehicles for launching and repairing
orbiting satellites and for attacking enemy bases in space.

The "micro-revolution"

For the strategic year of 2025, the Pentagon envisages a world where war
is waged by means of "exterminator" "ants" and "wasps", ultra-miniature
nanorobots, tiny sensors (some of them mobile and driven by micromotors)
capable of entering or overflying (like microdrones) any building, command
post, data communications node, etc. in order to paralyse or jam them.

Self-guided munitions

In order to increase the accuracy and effectiveness of "strikes", American
laboratories are working on a generation of piloted munitions. By
combining digital maps, positioning of the Global Positioning System (GPS)
type, and the deployment of hidden ground beacons along the path of the
final stage of the multi-sensor fusion devices on board, it will, by the
year 2020, be possible to deliver military payloads with an accuracy of
effect 10 to 100 times better than today.

Micro-machining technologies will also soon make it possible to produce
low-cost miniature electronic components for direct incorporation into
systems. The combination of sensors and actuators (to gather information,
survey the environment, warn and act directly) and new forms of energy
suggest it will ultimately be possible to manufacture guided bullets.

Lasers

This is the only really new technology on the battlefield. On the ground,
the so-called "cat's eye" effect allows electro-optical systems that have
not hitherto shown up on radar to be detected by lasers sweeping the
terrain. Snipers can thus no longer watch and fire without being seen.
Some guns are already fitted with lasers connected to a computer that
calculates the trajectory the bullet must take to hit a hidden marksman,
even behind a window.

The famous "death rays" are no longer science fiction. They will
increasingly be used against men (to "blind" them, even though blinding
weapons are banned by the Geneva Convention, or "dazzle" them) and
especially against enemy materials and weapons systems. The United States
are currently developing a laser mounted on a 747 to shoot down Scud
missiles. And Miracle, the satellite-killing laser, has just been
spectacularly tested, giving the United States mastery of space. In the
longer term, American aviation researchers expect to see the development
of high energy laser systems (HEL), a constellation of chemical lasers
based in space and capable of being used as offensive or defensive weapons
against targets on the earth, in the air or in space. At lower power, they
will have a surveillance function: twenty would be enough to cover the
entire planet.

Stealth

To counter the considerable growth in effectiveness of detection systems
(radar, sonar), new ways will be found to attenuate refraction waves:
machine architecture (long-range missiles, aircraft, ships, tanks),
greater discretion (less noise, less heat) and new materials that absorb
radar waves.

New combat devices

The Pentagon's medium and long-term programmes - futuristic is what the
French call them - include the development of combat devices capable of
moving in three dimensions, protected electronically and fitted with beam
weapons and a variety of sensors.

Electronic warfare

In peace time or in war, computer warfare allows the computerised systems
of strategic infrastructures (civilian and military) to be sabotaged and
espionage (for military and economic purposes) to be conducted by
intrusion into those systems.

Its main weapons are viruses (small programs that contaminate the
operation of networks), worms (viruses that reproduce and circulate in the
network, gradually contaminating other computers and programs until they
completely fill the memory and paralyse it), trap doors (systems installed
secretly by the designer, allowing him to bypass all protections and
enter), Trojan horses (programs hidden in another program and capable of
destroying the content of a computer), logic bombs (programs that inject
viruses and worms into a system and that are remotely activated or else
are triggered by certain programs or commands acting as detonators),
hyperfrequency guns (radio pulses that upset electronic components),
electromagnetic waves - "microwave" guns installed on a device (or, in the
near future, carried on the battlefield by a foot soldier) that generate a
very short, but extremely powerful pulse capable of paralysing all or part
of an electronic system, be it the controls of an aircraft, tank or ship,
or the firing devices of missiles or other weapon systems.

Psychological warfare

The information revolution is also greatly transforming the weapons of
"psychological warfare". When preparing for their intervention in Haiti in
1994, the Special Forces made an audio tape designed to get those who
believed in voodoo on their side: they used digitised recordings of the
voice of Papa Doc to construct a speech by the late dictator from the
"other side", asking his subjects to welcome the American troops as
benefactors. Again in Haiti, several GI units were equipped with digital
mini-cameras on their helmets to film their surroundings direct, the
pictures being transmitted to headquarters in Washington. On the basis of
this experiment, the Pentagon is trying to form the basis of an "image
tap" to rival CNN and, of course, much easier to control.

The American armed forces' laboratories are also working on the use of
holographic images to play on the fears and superstitions of certain
peoples. Similarly, they have tested the possibility, using a process
derived from morphing (the fusing of two images), of breaking into an
enemy's television networks in real time, adding pictures, inventing
situations, changing faces, etc.

According to a Pentagon study, the Internet could be an excellent
"counter-information" and disinformation weapon.

Geometric progression

During the American civil war (1865), the telegram was capable of sending
30 words a minute and 38,830 soldiers were needed to cover a 10 sq. km.
battlefield. In 1915, during the first world war, the telegraph was still
transmitting at 30 words a minute, but only 4,040 soldiers were needed to
hold 10 sq. km. of ground. During the second world war, teletype managed
to transmit 66 words a minute and 360 soldiers were needed to occupy the
same 10 sq. km. In 1991, during the Gulf war, the computer transmitted
192,000 words a minute and 23.4 soldiers were enough to hold a "front" of
10 sq. km. In 2010, the "pipes" of electronic data systems and networks
will transmit 1.5 trillion words a minute and a division will be divided
into small groups covering at least 10,000 sq. km.

Maurice Najman

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(1) Internal communications network belonging to a company or group of
companies. 

(2) For an overall picture of this technological revolution, see Henry
Martre and Nicolas Chamussy, "Technologies et armes futures", Les Cahiers
de la Fondation pour les etudes de defense, Paris, special issue No. 1,
December 1997.

Translated by Malcolm Greenwood

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