War is fought in front of the screen. Tomorrow’s battlefield. The Gulf conflict was the first step towards the ”information war”

Published 1997-08-21Share

By Ingemar Larsson

The Americans were actually fighting two kinds of wars in the Persian Gulf in January 1991; the traditional war and a high-tech war based on IT. Thirty-year-old B52s rolled out carpet bombs over Iraqis hiding in the sand while stealthy Stealth planes drilled their laser bombs into the air drum of the building in Baghdad that housed the air defense headquarters. Peter Arnett was in Baghdad and was able to report on CNN that a cruise missile was currently passing outside his hotel room window.

Smygplanet F-117

accounted for 2 percent of the weapons effort but accounted for 40 percent of the striking power. To get the same effect as from such a smart weapon, 400 bombs were needed from 176 F-4 planes during the Vietnam War. During World War II, 9,000 bombs would have been needed from 1,500 bombers. The dramatic increase in accuracy is not only due to laser sights. The US had total control with AWACS and similar radar planes together with small unmanned reconnaissance planes that sent photos to computer screen pilots on the ground. The war became a trade show for US military technology and the victory came to change military doctrines worldwide. The Iraqis had excellent Soviet military equipment but it stood out against the technology of the IT age.

That the Gulf War

at the same time, abhorrent mass slaughter using traditional warfare was quickly forgotten in the face of the fascination with the information war of the new era – or rather the first stumbling steps to tomorrow’s i-war.

Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in August 1990 because he could not repay the huge loans taken out for the Iran war and then preferred to destroy his benefactor. The West, which feared that Saudi Arabia’s oil taps would also be choked, began to prepare for a counterattack. Swedish small boat owners suddenly discovered that their satellite tracker showed an accuracy of a few meters when the US removed the jamming function that would prevent enemies from practicing sniper shooting with cannons. The reason was that the military bought up lots of civilian GPS trackers in preparation for the upcoming desert war and in the same way the store shelves had to give up network servers and a large amount of other computer equipment.

Shipping over half a million soldiers requires advanced logistics and everything worked down to the smallest screwdriver, it is said. In a few months, they built up complex computer networks that linked the forces together, and analysts believe that this electronic nervous system was crucial to the outcome of the war.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book ”War and Antiwar” has had a major impact because it put into words the concerns of the military and many others. Toffler’s thesis is that the way we wage war is a result of how wealth is created.

In the first wave of wars, the struggle was for arable land and trade routes that could be taxed. In the second wave, industrial society demanded access to raw materials, Gulf oil being the latest example. In the third wave, domination is about knowledge.

It is the “smart” states that can quickly mobilize their civilian expertise that will win the game. In the past, peasant armies went out with axes and hay rakes. In the Gulf War and in all future wars, hay rakes have been replaced by computers and the knowledge of how to operate them.

The mastermind behind the air war in the Persian Gulf was Colonel John Warden III, and he has contributed greatly to military innovation. He believes that fighting on a front is an expensive and inefficient way to wage war. Instead, one should fight in depth, which requires air superiority and information superiority.

First, the Allies used superior air power to disrupt communications, so that Iraqi troops lost contact with their top leadership. Without orders and without a functioning supply system, they were then able to quickly weaken Saddam’s forces so that they surrendered.

Colonel Warden has left the Air Force to instead sell his strategic model to the business community and to speak at seminars, such as at the Military Academy conference last year.

– Society functions as a circle with the military defense at the far end – with a front as a shield and sword – and the leadership at the far end. In between there are circles with a number of strategic power centers, such as electricity, telecommunications, communications and factories. It is these centers that should be attacked and, most preferably, the leadership, Warden believes. Meeting at a front has been the classic way of waging war, but the way of destroying each other has lost its importance.

With the new approach, the aim is to disable the enemy’s key functions, not necessarily to destroy them. The will of the leadership must be worn down with as little loss of life as possible, both for the enemy and especially for one’s own troops. Opinion in the US will not allow a large loss of life, believes Warden.orgondagen’s battlefield

becomes empty of people and the front dissolves if it is no longer needed for a showdown.

The battle will be fought with surgical precision weapons, something the US military, excited after the Gulf War, wants to call brain surgery. That war will be fought largely on computer screens, if possible with checkmate after the first move.

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IT replaces uniforms. Information warfare. The armed conflicts of the future are developing into close interaction between military and civilian activities

Published 1997-08-21 By Ingemar Larsson

The US and Britain had professional soldiers in the Persian Gulf. The French did not do so well and are abandoning conscription. It did not help that Iraq’s conscripted soldiers were trained in eight years of war with Iran. Thus, the idea of ​​conscription with a tough old man in every bush should be settled for Sweden and many have called for a professional army. The liposuction in the Swedish defense is not only due to shrunken defense appropriations, it is a matter of getting money for new material. Advanced technology stifles long training, which speaks in favor of professional soldiers in slim units. If all wars looked like in Kuwait, this fact should mean the death blow for Swedish conscription, but it is not that simple.

It has been shown in Bosnia that the Swedish units function exceptionally well despite the short basic training. They bring with them civilian professional skills – electricians, computer operators, etc. – and that versatility is a strength. The idea of ​​conscription is perhaps not as dead as many people think.

In the Defense Decision

The new framework was drawn up last year. It expands the role of the defence force, making international peacekeeping operations important, as well as being able to intervene in domestic crises and disasters.

The problem with conflicts is that they have different characters, with chaos and uncertain developments. Major wars are unlikely, but small wars are all the more numerous. In the post-war period, 160 wars have killed almost as many soldiers as in the First World War.

The well-armed troops of the United States and the Soviet Union had to face guerrillas in Vietnam and Afghanistan who suddenly changed into uniforms and shot from ambushes with homemade weapons. If a UN soldier in Bosnia can teach a farmer how to repair a Ferguson tractor, it may be more valuable than being able to maneuver a missile. Today, advanced training is required in the military, but what should it look like to be able to handle tasks that are not similar to conventional war?

President Clinton has issued an order called “Critical Infrastructure Protection” because national security can be threatened by terrorists and the mafia. An “Information war defense policy” has been announced by the president and a “cyberwar defense plan” aimed at hackers went into effect in July.

One might suspect that similar considerations lie behind the Swedish defense decision, and then it is a completely different competence that will enter the Swedish defense.

Last in the armies of old on the march came the trouser and last of all the market women and whores. Of the 500,000 soldiers that the US sent to the Gulf War, only a small number were in combat. A quarter of a million, largely civilians, stayed at home in the US and handled logistics and software support for the combat weapons platforms. Some were programmers who worked from home on their personal computers.

The war was decided

in the initial stages of only 2,000 soldiers in battle according to Alvin Toffler. “The tail has grown to immense proportions,” it says in the book War and antiwars.

We can see how the war of the future will develop into a close interaction between military and civilian activities. It will become the invisible tail that controls, and then perhaps Charles XI’s division work will become a role model.

The division office, which was replaced by general conscription in 1901 when the war required a lot of cannon fodder, involved a military/civilian split where officers and soldiers made their living from farming.

What can the new

the ”division work” of time means

will it be a half-baked job where the info soldiers sit at their regular jobs and are never seen in uniform?

If there is a crisis, they turn on their computers in the office and allow themselves to be mobilized in a military activity at lightning speed. There is no need for barracks and instead of exercising on the heath, they receive specialist training at paramilitary faculties at Technical or Commercial.

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Hackers are the future of hard-core military leaders. The US Air Force establishes an information warfare squadron

Published 1997-08-21

By Ingemar Larsson

Some time ago, a paper clip that fell between the keys of a personal computer caused trains to stop for an hour in southern Finland. It could just as easily have been a virus from a foreign power that filled the hard drive of the traffic control system. Why invest in expensive cruise missiles when the same effect can be achieved by a hacker?

The US Military Academy has trained 16 information officers and the US Air Force is establishing a squadron for information warfare this year. And perhaps we will get a new branch of arms for such warfare. We will now have separate branches of arms for land, air and water as the tasks increasingly merge; Admiral Owens, who has been a close associate of President Clinton, does not seem entirely convinced.

In 1995, the Pentagon noted that the defense computer network was subjected to 250,000 hacker attacks – and 160,000 managed to get in! Having been such a hacker may be a merit in the mustering. Because in the new warfare, it is important, for example, to introduce viruses into the enemy’s telecommunications network or to cause banking systems to crash. Such Trojan program modules can very well be planted before the enemy has become an enemy.

Tomorrow’s military

strategists face many ethical problems. Because what is more immoral, to neutralize an enemy economically – or to shoot him dead?

No front and no declaration of war; the showdown of the new era will be fought in a diffuse no-man’s land.

Military innovators often quote the book “The Art of War,” written 2,500 years ago by the Chinese general Sun-tzu. He was not familiar with the new technology but was familiar with how individuals work. Don’t fight wars if you can avoid them, was his message, because the enemy can be useful as a servant. Instead, spy, mislead, and exploit human weaknesses to your advantage.

Avoid battle as much as possible and do not let the enemy discover you until it is too late, wrote Sun-tzu. Is this how tomorrow’s war will look: no front, no clear boundary between war and peace, perhaps not even a visible enemy?

Conventional war is an extraordinarily disgusting craft. But is a bloodless war that sneaks through fiber optic cables an alternative?

– War always starts with peace. It is important to nurture this peace by understanding the dynamics of the conflict so that it can be diverted as early as possible. The words have been spoken by Israel’s Air Force Chief Avihu Ben Num and that task may ultimately be the most important for the military.

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Games pave the way for the military. The cyber soldier can act as a one-man division

Published 1997-08-21

By Ingemar Larsson

Once it was tin soldiers, today it’s video games. Swedish youth have developed their fine motor skills to the point that the Swedish Air Force has had to change its tests to be able to narrow down its intake.

The video game market is bigger than the computer industry and is pushing towards superfast home computers. Hollywood is jumping on the bandwagon with computerized virtual worlds, with Jurassic Park being a modest start.

“The chips that are in the giant lizards are sensitive to physical changes and should work excellently in our military sensors,” says Admiral William A Owens. In practice, the military has already adapted to the civilian tools and it is only certain technologies, such as radar, that are not available on a civilian mass market.

The entertainment industry’s cyberworlds can be converted into 3D maps in the computer that each soldier will carry. GPS satellites (unless they are turned off by the US in the event of war) always provide the correct position. Together with incoming data on troop movements, this creates a virtual landscape on the screen – and the cyber soldier can in some cases act as a one-man division, much like in video games. The sight of a cranky little Olle feeding his laptop with his teddy bear out in the bush does not have to be far off. Perhaps he or she will bring his mobile phone and computer from work with him when he enlists.

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Head mouse controls robot. Helmet-mounted sights the last cry in combat aviation

Published 1997-08-21

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By Ingemar Larsson

The JAS 39 Gripen is a good example of an IT-intensive platform: a bunch of computers where the sheet metal shells have been replaced by a winged package. When the pilot leaves the plane, he joins the programmers to teach the plane new tricks.

As in Windows 95, there were bugs in the beginning and the plane went downhill as the pilot and the computer fought for dominance. The Gripen is constantly being developed, the plane in turn is part of a larger system that also swallows up lots of people to tinker with the technology. This is also the case for other military platforms, which is the military’s term for hard weapons combined with software.

The latest in combat aviation is helmet-mounted sights that cause a steerable robot to move in the direction the pilot is looking.

The accuracy tends to be so high that both planes are shot down if they have these weapons and aerial duels become practically pointless.

In the future, enemy territory could be flooded with thousands of tiny sensors that act as eyes and ears to make the battlefield transparent. MIT in Boston is experimenting with a flying vehicle, the size of a cigarette pack, that takes pictures. Other such electronic sparrows could sniff out enemies and then attack, disorienting soldiers.

Other aircraft can spray glue on enemy runways so that planes cannot take off.

For example, military research is investing enormous sums in non-lethal weapons, such as electromagnetic pulses that cause opponents to temporarily behave like mindless zombies.

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