Robotics and drones are the new “low tech” answer to the First World’s exquisite military platform that are over priced and have the same provenance of battleships planet-wide in January 1942.
The electronic emissions environment in future conflicts will be a two-way street that will put any active acquisition sensors and attached effectors in the hazards if they emit and remain in one place.
Autonomous targeting will become more and more relevant as the speed of munitions increases and the salvo competition costs are driven down.
Hypervelocity munitions are here to stay.
The life of the light infantryman will change significantly since for the first time in human history, the cost of hunting individual soldiers and small groups of soldiers in an effective fashion has reached a cost in concert with technology [I will treat this with more detail in a future episode on the end of the legacy infantryman].
The Russian Strike Reconnaissance Complex has come of age and the Russians have one of the most effective fires synchronization modalities on Earth. The system is now battle proven in the first near-peer and peer conflict of the 21st century.
Fires synchronization is the effective coordination of sensors and effectors in near-real time or real time in a hostile non-permissive combat environment to bring the metal on target.
“Quantity has a quality all of its own.” – Thomas A. Callaghan Jr.
References:
A Retrospective on RMA, 2000-2020.
The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age
Army Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028
Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare
Lester Grau & Charles K. Bartles The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces
David Glantz Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 (Soviet (Russian) Study of War)
David Glantz Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (Soviet (Russian) Military Theory and Practice)
Georgii Samoilovich Isserson G.S. Isserson and the War of the Future: Key Writings of a Soviet Military Theorist
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.
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