2019 has come to its end.
We wish all the viewers, a very happy upcoming New year 2020.
In this year, we have published 242 videos and tried to provide as much information and
analysis we could.
Rest assured we will continue to do the same going forward.
We have got a lot of support from you and very thankful for this.
This is the last video of this year and hence it is apt that we focus on things that could
be important in the coming days.
In this video Defense Updates lists 5 weapons technology that will shape the future of warfare
from 2020 onwards.
Let’s get started
This video is sponsored by the free-to-play military vehicle combat game War Thunder.
We talk a lot about military vehicles on this channel, but what about trying them out for
yourself?
In War Thunder, you can chose from more than 1200 playable vehicles from the 1930s to the
1990s and go to battle on more than 80 theaters of war.
You can fly aircraft, helicopters, drive tanks and command ships of all types and sizes,
which have all been carefully recreated from their real-world counterparts.
It's available as a free download on PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox One with cross-platform support,
so grab your friends and give it a try!
All viewers of Defense Updates that register using the link in the description below will
also get a free premium tank or aircraft or ship and three days of premium account time
as a bonus.
Space is a new domain and there are many possibilities including having weapons that can hit earth
from space.
But in the immediate future, Space warfare is most likely to revolve around satellites.
Satellites are one of the most important assets for a nation.
They play a vital role in civilian and military communications.
Military satellites are used for gathering intelligence as well as they can monitor and
provide early-warning against missile launches by a rival nation.
Military satellites also provide guidance to missiles, aircraft, warship to name a few.
So, if an adversary can somehow knock off the satellites then it can handicap the military.
At present, the main Space warfare capability is the ability to disable or destroy an adversary’s
satellites from the ground using ASAT or Anti-satellite weapons
The US carried out its first ASAT test in 1959.
The anti-satellite weapon had a range of 1100 mi or 1770 km.
A mock test was carried out in which a dummy attack on the Explorer 6 which was at an altitude
of 156 mi or 251 km was successfully executed.
The Soviet Union after conducting a series of 7 tests from 1963-1971 declared its system
operational in 1973.
In January 2007, China successfully destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite.
On 27 March 2019, India’s successfully knocked out a satellite.
So, as of now, this kind of tech is available to these 4 countries.
Another aspect of space warfare is using a satellite to destroy another satellite but
this kind of capability is still immature.
It is interesting to note that the U.S Space Force was signed into law Dec. 20, 2019 as
part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
Modern militaries around the world depend on computers and networks.
Cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and
attempt to damage another nation's computers or information networks.
This could be done in multiple ways like injecting computer viruses or triggering DDoS or distributed
denial-of-service attacks.
Cyberwarfare at least in limited form is already in use now.
In August of 2012, the Saudi Arabian firm Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest
oil producers, was hit with a piece of malware known as Shamoon that deleted data from 35,000
of the company’s computers.
This attack allegedly triggered by Iran paralyzed the operation of the company.
Iranian hackers even hit almost all major US banks, making their websites unresponsive
with sustained DDoS attacks.
In 2015, Russian hackers carried out an unprecedented act of sabotage which gives us an idea of
what can Cyberwarfare so.
They attacked three Ukrainian regional energy utilities and this resulted in a loss of electricity
for about 225,000 civilians.
In the future, it will be one of the most important domains of the military as this
bring in asymmetric capabilities.
For example, suppose a military base is near a dam and the dam’s computers are taken
over the water is released to flood the base.
The technology of swarming is in which drones are deployed in squadrons, able to think independently
and operate as a pack using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
This kind of capability will be disruptive as it will be hard to defend against.
For example, even the most potent air defense will hard to track a single drone from a huge
number of potential targets and it will also run out of ammunition.
This technology is in its infancy, but militaries around the world are putting in a lot of resources
on this.
A relatively simpler form of this has already been used.
In January 2018 Russian forces faced a drone swarm launched against Khmeimim Air Base,
in Syria.
The Russian were able to neutralize most of these.
Though the attack was not able to inflict major damage, it indicated that the threat
of the drone swarm has arrived.
A recent example is the attack on Saudi Arabia.
On September 14, facilities of Saudi Arabia's oil company Aramco located in the east of
the country came under attack.
As per reports, 18 drones and 7 missiles were used for the coordinated attack.
The damage was significant & this caused a spike in global oil prices.
Lasers are concentrated beams of light that transmit large amounts of electromagnetic
radiation against their targets.
The power of a laser is generally stated in kilowatts.
The general idea of laser-beam weaponry is to hit a target with a train of brief pulses
of light.
The rapid evaporation and expansion of the surface cause shockwaves that damage the target.
When a laser beam strikes a target, it can cause the external surface to heat up rapidly.
This can cause a drone to burst in the sky as its battery pack or fuel tank to ignite.
Even if this doesn’t happen, the laser could fry the electric sensors & communication modules
of the drones which will make them lose contact with its operate and deplete its ability to
navigate, ultimately disabling them.
Lasers have some very important advantages.
The speed of light enables them to hit their targets almost instantaneously.
Laser weapons also don’t need to carry ammunition like traditional systems and hence they will
be able to take out a much larger number of threats constrained only by the power supply
limit of the platform.
They are also so much cheaper and could cost as less as $1 per shot.
This is much more cost-effective than deploying traditional weapons.
The U.S is in the lead and is deploying several lasers of different types.
An object is said to be hypersonic once they exceed speeds of Mach 5 that is 5 times the
speed of sound.
This is about 1,715 m/sec or 3,836 mph or 6,174 km/h.
There are currently 3 methods being applied to make hypersonic weapons.
The first is using Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV).
In this method, the system is launched to extremely high altitudes using Ballistic Missile
or an aircraft where it skips across the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The vehicle then separates from the carrier and glides back to the earth towards its intended
target attaining hypersonic speed.
The second is using a Scramjet engine.
The scramjet is an innovation on the Ramjet.
Ramjet engine can power flight to supersonic speeds but scramjet can enable the missiles
to reach hypersonic speeds.
These engines have no moving parts, like the compressors and turbines used in the turbofan
engines found on conventional jet planes.
They rely on the huge pressures created by fast airflow into the engine to ignite the
fuel and generate thrust.
In this method, a rocket booster is used to accelerate the missile to hypersonic speed,
then the scramjet engine kicks in and enables the missile to fly at sustained hypersonic
speed.
The third is through the use of Air-Launched Ballistic missile (ALBM).
As the name suggests, this kind of missile is ballistic in nature but is launched from
air, unlike traditional ballistic missiles which are launched from land or sea-based
platforms.
It must be noted that traditional ballistic missile like American Minuteman III, Russian
Satan or Indian Agni ballistic missile all travel at hypersonic speeds, but they follow
a predictable ballistic trajectory and can’t maneuver mid-course.
Current air defense will fail to intercept these weapons because of their capability
maneuver at such high speeds.
Russia is at the forefront of hypersonic technology and has reportedly deployed this Avangard
which is an HGV and Kinzhal which is an ALBM.