FUTURE OF WAR, WARS OF THE FUTURE

Predicting the future of war is a very challenging and fascinating task. The pop culture we are now
submerged in has familiarised us with a nuttygritty mix of weapons, robots, hi-tech knights in a sort
of a mega computer game. Shall the war of tomorrow be a purely technological competition of
advanced weaponry? My belief is that such a colourful image is only a part of the answer.
Two approaches of the subject are possible. A more conservative approach, employed commonly by
futurists, identifies the evolutionary trends and builds on this ground future scenarios. Its main
drawback lay in the difficulty to identify these real trends and to take in account the disruptive
evolutions. Some of these drawbacks may be fixed with a creative or prophetical approach, being
used mostly by sci-fi writers, and based on intuition and imagination. Therefore a mixture of futurism
with some doses of imagination might shape a more real image1 of the coming type of war.
To foresee the future war as in a crystal ball we shall question the past. In the history of mankind
the wars were competition for resources, wealth, prestige and domination between societies. The
winners took it all and their way of doing war became the model, the key to success for other
societies.
Some important patterns, issues, trends of past wars are visible. The history shows the importance of
geographical (or geopolitical) factors in war outcome.
But equally important were the brainpower, the creativity and the inventiveness of leading groups or
whole societies at strategic, tactic or technological level. Take for example just the Greco-Persian
wars, where a league of citystates with divergent interests but common values fought and defeated
the biggest empire of the time. Some of the reasons are still to be find but for sure, the Greeks were
valuing the openspirit, the technology and the art of war (strategy and tactics are Ancient Greek
concepts). War has become from now a confrontation between the intelligence of different cultures
(in the pathway of Sung Tzus Art of war).
Certain case studies may give a hint of this social intelligence (or social creativity) with military
implications. For example if we compare Germany and Britain in the Second World War we can
identify a better British strategic creativity (espionage superiority-Enigma code breaking, propaganda
superiority, soft power superiority) while Germany had, at lest for a while, a superior tactical
creativity (the invention of blitzkrieg by learning and extrapolating lessons of the First WW). The
technological creativity was apparently equal between the two states.
1

A sort of Ockams razor can be use to cut of some scenarios by a thorough understanding of causes that provoked the
success or failure of past predictions.

Although we can identify another important factor: the creative management (for example for naval
convoy organization in the Battle of Atlantic as a result of operational research) which was superior
in England2. The same type of case study applied to USA versus Germany in the Second World War
will identify the superior creative management of USA.
USA had also a superior technological creativity (the atomic bomb and the computers are real
breakthroughs more than marvel weapons of Hitler). At a strategic level USA were likewise
superior to Germany (soft power, strategic bombardments, etc).
In order to foresee the future of war it is crucial to understand the character of upcoming society.
The social paradigm is already shifting from matter and energy to information. The production of
goods and energy will always play a role, but the main asset will be information, its retrieval,
processing and, most of all, creation. I strongly believe (as many other people) that we are in a middle
of a rapid expansion that will soon (by 2015) establish a first knowledge (or creative) society.
Future applications (based on semantic web, data mining, grid and cloud computing, virtualisation,
simulations, social network and so on) will act as creative accelerators tools with direct impact on
military factors identified in the case studies above.
As a result, several scenarios of future wars seem plausible.
In a first scenario the social (enhanced) creativity will change the war technological environment.
Some classical weaponry will apparently survive by becoming smarter and by communicating
between them and with military personnel. The real time interconnectivity will allow optimisation by
reducing the casualties and destructions. Equally important will be the development of new artefacts:
the war robots. They will assist and enhance the abilities of human warriors 3. Well adapted for
asymmetric wars (against pre industrial or industrial societies) they will pursue the same trend of
warfare optimisation.
A more revolutionary scenario is related to the emergence of ICT weapons, controlling the
information flow or the information systems of the enemy (industrial or post-industrial societies). The
Israeli attack on some (assumed) nuclear Syrian facilities in operation Orchard seem to be a step in

So we can distinguish four closely interconnected aspect of social creativity with direct impact on war: the strategic
creativity (real understanding of own strengths, strong soft power, clever policy decision making, profiling and
understanding of the enemy, etc), the creative management (efficient, flexible and creative organizations and logistics),
the tactical creativity (intelligent development of tactics) and technological creativity (invention of new weapons). To
assure the victory all of the factors (or at least most of them) had to be stronger than those of the enemys. And these
factors will play a role in shaping the future war.
3
For some years now (20 years) it will be impossible to build up an android robot. If we compare the whole Internet
network with the human brain (and the brain seems to be more complex) we understand the difficulties of building a robot
that can act, even at an elementary psychological level, like a man. And as a matter of fact such an android would be
useless.

this direction4. Apparently the Israelis may have used a technology similar to Americas Suter
airborne network attack system to allow their planes to pass undetected by Syrians radars. Such a
system is able to identify what the enemys radars see, process in real time the radars signals and
feed (using high energy antennas) it back with the desired signals (in this case erasing any signature
of an upcoming air attack). Behind the scene a huge real time processing power and microwave
special antennas neutralised without destruction an essential piece of an enemy arsenal 5. We can see
here the model of a future confrontation between a knowledge (network oriented) society and an
industrial one.
This kind of ICT armament might be the final precision weapon. By using it there will be almost no
casualties; no need to dismantle the cities, they will be only shut down; no necessity for enemys
armies to be taken out, they will be only neutralized - in each case not for very long. Without
causalities and destructions there is no need for post war reconstruction or nation (re)building. The
war, as we now it, dematerialize.
A last scenario, related however to the former one, concerns mostly the future conflicts between
equally developed knowledge societies6. The mains asset is here the emergence of tools
permitting to guess and eventually to control enemys thinking.
In the Second WW (by 1943) the US political leaders asked prominent psychologists from Harvard
University to realise the profilingof Hitler. They concluded that he will fight to the very end and
will finally commit suicide. When dealing with a dictatorship the profiling of the leader may give an
insight, a sort of profiling of a whole society. For a democratic country, as a knowledge society
should be, the situation might be very different. Still, the information revolution might provide the
answer.
Google (an entirely different entity, not just another ICT company) can profile all of us as users and
aggregate our behaviours at social level. Some time ago, for example, Google announced, based on
statistical analysis of particular researching words, a flu epidemic some days before the American
health administration. In the future these kinds of instruments will be applied in a military context.
The knowledge societies will become transparent to themselves and to eventual enemies. No
surprises, no hidden attacks will be possible, the new technologies allowing the profiling of an army
staffs or a whole society. Therefore, each one will compute its chances with a deterrent effect for the

Israeli realised the air strike on a target at the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria in 6th of September 2007.
In fact it is a high-tech deception of state-of-the art Russian air defence system: two radars reckoned to be Tor-M1
launchers that carry a payload of eight missiles, as well as two Pachora-2A systems.
The same model might be applied in the future against strategic command infrastructures of an enemy.
6
Maybe the future relationships between USA and China will approach such a situation?
5

two enemies7. In this situation the future warfare will be at most a mega high tech covered operation
matching today espionage or propaganda operations.
Lets hope that future war will change its present nature to render obsolete the suffering, the death
and the immense destructions that we experienced from the beginning of the History.

Like the satellite surveillance of theCold war era.