Drone tanks, laser cannons, and rods-from-God, war will look very different 50 years from today.
There's no greater danger than a nation planning to fight today's wars without an eye to the
future. In the interim period between World War I and II, Brigadier General William L. Mitchell-
father of the US Air Force- advocated fiercely for the greater adoption of the airplane into
the US military. Mitchell correctly foresaw that the airplane would become the most important tool
of future wars, and warned that the United States needed not just a land air component,
but a naval one as well. When US leadership ignored his very adamant pleas and decided
to continue building traditional naval vessels instead, Mitchell accused them of an “ almost
treasonable administration of the national defense.” His comments would see him demoted
all the way back to his old rank of Colonel, with a court martial for insubordination.
But Mitchell was dead right, and would die just a few years before
the Japanese Empire struck a decisive blow against the US Navy via aircraft carriers.
Today the United States works hard to avoid that type of rearview planning, with a healthy
budget for innovation and discovery. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
otherwise known as DARPA, is particularly famous for its out-of-the-box thinking and a hiring
practice that encourages fanciful visionaries over traditional rank-and-file military
personnel. Responsible for some of the greatest technological breakthroughs in human history,
this 220 personnel agency created the internet and the earliest version of Google Street view all the
way back in 1978 with the Aspen Movie Map, which allowed one to virtually tour Aspen, Colorado.
DARPA's mission is simple: keep the United States beyond the cutting edge so that its
military supremacy remains unrivaled anywhere in the world. And some of its past and current
programs give us a sneak peek at how the United States will fight wars half a century from today.
One of the biggest challenges the US faces today is being able to counter
China's increasing anti-access/area-denial capabilities. Knowing that China's navy
can't compete with the US in a stand-up fight, China has been developing a very
dense layer of defenses to keep the US out of the South China Sea. This includes the
largest ballistic missile force in the planet, with the intent of keeping US carriers from
operating anywhere near China- or Taiwan as China attempts reunification by force.
To ensure US forces can operate unimpeded,
future American warships will be armed with a variety of tools to counter China's ballistic
and stand-off attack threat. The first of these tools are ship-mounted laser cannons,
which will be able to fire concentrated laser beams even through inclement weather. Since
lasers shoot at the speed of light, and have an infinite magazine as long as you have power,
they are the perfect tool to intercept an increasingly lethal variety of anti-ship threats.
Hypersonic missiles move at incredible speeds, giving even the vaunted AEGIS defense system
only seconds to respond before impact. However, with a laser point defense system a ship will be
able to incinerate incoming missiles before they can reach their targets, and with greater accuracy
than the current generation of fleet defense missiles. These laser cannons however will also
be important to counter another dire threat to US ships- swarm attacks by small, nimble boats.
In the early 2000s the US held an exercise that simulated a war between itself and a
smaller nation that was a proxy of Iran. Famously, the officer in charge of the
enemy forces managed to overwhelm and sink a US carrier by simply swarming it with a fleet of
small speed boats loaded with explosives. To save face, the US Navy invalidated his
tactics and forced the exercise to restart under favorable conditions for US forces. However,
the point had been driven home- US supercarriers, the most powerful
conventional weapons of war ever created, could be defeated by a swarm of small speed boats.
Laser cannons will allow a ship to defend itself by rapidly engaging these small threats,
and will work just as well against another one of the future's most deadly weapons.
The war in Ukraine has come to be called the 'drone' war, because no other weapon- save
maybe for artillery- is more important in this conflict than the drone. Even small consumer
drones bought off-the-shelf from big box stores are revolutionizing the war by acting as scouts,
fire observers for artillery, and harassing enemy troops from above.
But we are beginning to see the emergence of a very specific way of using drones called
'the swarm'. This involves the use of many drones at the same time so as to
overwhelm enemy air defenses, ensuring that at least some of the drones will
get through and reach their objective. Russia has used swarm tactics- albeit small swarms-
with its Iranian-made drones to punch through traditional air defenses and
strike at civilian targets. In the future, drones will swarm not just in the dozens,
but in the hundreds, presenting an overwhelming challenge to a defender.
A swarm will operate via distributed intelligence, meaning that each drone
will be one part of the overall machine 'brain'. Capable of working independently,
when sharing data together the swarm will become smarter, better able to track targets and respond
to threats. Much like insect swarms today, future swarms will act as one massive organism made out
of many smaller parts, giving them incredible flexibility and lethality. While each drone
may only carry a small explosive charge of just a few pounds of high explosive, their ability
to strike exactly where it would hurt most makes them serious threats to future forces.
This is why even now the US is developing anti-drone weapons,
ranging from land-based CWIS defenses to rifle-like weapons that can jam drones or
disable them completely. But the best weapon for defending against drone swarms will be lasers,
for the same reason they're so good on ships. So future infantry will definitely
be supported by a mobile short-range air defense component bristling with laser defense systems.
Drones will also accompany infantry on the ground though, with each platoon having a
dedicated drone squad responsible for their operation. However, future drones will do a
lot of their thinking without needing a human in the loop, freeing up operators to handle
more pressing battlefield needs. Already the US has been experimenting with drones
that can directly assist troops on the ground such as the Big Dog quadruped military robot.
These robots will help relieve some of the burden of modern combat troops,
and that's a serious concern for the US Army. As the equipment each individual soldier carries
gets more and more expensive and high tech, this comes with added weight- the average infantryman
can carry as much as 15 pounds of batteries alone for all his gear. All that modern gear
US soldiers carry into battle makes them far more effective than their opponents, but it also makes
them slow and prone to injury. During the war in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters called US soldiers
'tortoises' for the huge amount of equipment they carried and how it slowed them down.
Automated drones won't just be carrying equipment though, they'll be adding firepower
to the fight and moving casualties out of combat to the safety of a field aid station.
Automated defenses against threats a human can't respond to quickly enough, such as drone swarms,
will necessitate future drones to have a high degree of autonomy, including when and how to
use lethal force. It's a scary proposition to some, but an inevitable necessity if a
future fighting force is going to survive and increasingly lethal, and automated, battlefield.
Drones and pilots will also work closely together to achieve air dominance in the skies.
Already the United States is well on its way to fielding a 6th generation air dominance fighter,
with a prototype already having been flown. But it won't just be improved stealth and sensors that
will make this air dominance fighter better, but also the direct assistance of two wingman drones.
The US Air Force outlined interoperability with drone wingmen as a top priority for its
next generation air dominance program. As the threat to US aircraft gets more and more lethal,
drone wingmen will be integral to the survival of future air forces. These drones will work as
an extension of the mothership itself, either by baiting enemy air defenses or undertaking strikes
in air space too risky for the mothership to enter. With even stealthier characteristics
than their manned counterparts, the drones will be able to operate closer to enemy air defenses
and even guide in missiles fired from outside the reach of said defenses to their targets. And if it
comes down to it, the drones could sacrifice themselves to save the manned mothership.
With a cost the fraction of the manned fighter, these drones could be fielded in very large
numbers and their losses quickly replaced, putting serious pressure on any adversary.
In 50 years war will come to space. Current outer space treaties forbid the stationing of weapons in
orbit, and with very good reason. A satellite loaded with nukes could rain destruction down
at a moments notice anywhere it happens to be orbiting over, and both the US and the Soviet
Union saw the danger in that and wisely decided that neither would pursue this capability. But
the US military doesn't want to put weapons in space, it wants to put troops in orbit.
With bases nearly everywhere in the world, US service members are used to deploying to some
very remote places. But nowhere will be as remote as a deployment into orbit. American troops won't
be in space to wage war with aliens however, they'll be there to stop wars here on earth.
In the early 2000s a defense study proposed that the immediate presence of heavily armed US troops
could stop most wars before they even started. If the US could place three battalions- or about
3,000 personnel- at a conflict site within 24 hours, backed up by US air power,
all but the largest of wars could be stopped in their tracks. But how in the world do you
move that many soldiers and all their equipment across the globe so quickly?
You simply drop them from orbit.
A military space station could hold a considerable fighting force for long stretches of time,
especially with artificial gravity generated via spin. From this ultimate of high grounds,
US forces could be anywhere in the world within hours, landing on nearby airfields
via gliders dropping to earth from orbit. The idea seems far fetched, and there's a lot of
technical challenges, but even if the US can only manage to station a single company in orbit,
it could have heavily armed troops essentially available on demand for any contingency anywhere
in the world. When you consider that these troops will be backed up by both light and heavy combat
drones, a single company could bring as much firepower to the table as a modern battalion.
Keeping troops in orbit over the long term will be both expensive and challenging,
so instead the US may opt to simply station equipment in orbit. America's modern rapid
reaction forces can be anywhere in the world within days, but their heavy equipment will
take longer to get there. This means that America's hardest hitting weapons such
as tanks and rocket artillery can take up to weeks to get to a conflict zone in significant
numbers- and by then it might be too late in the increasingly fast nature of modern combat.
Instead, American troops may be delivered to the front the old fashioned way,
but once there may simply call up to orbiting equipment caches to literally
rain tanks down from the sky for them. It's not just heavy vehicles that are
important to move quickly though, but other more mundane supplies such as ammunition,
food, and water- all of which could be dispatched via drop pods directly to the front from above.
The US Air Force will make full use of space as well with aircraft capable of
transmedium propulsion- or the ability to fly both in atmosphere and the vacuum of
space. While American bombers and fighters won't be flying to the moon anytime soon,
the ability to escape the atmosphere will allow US aircraft to quickly make
the trip to anywhere in the world within hours. This will allow US forces to enjoy
air support quickly and reliably even thousands of miles from the nearest friendly air field.
Now go check out US World War III Plan, or click this other video instead!