The future is the shape of things to come


can take you down into a death spiral, trying to make ever more exquisite weapons systems. Former Secretary of Defense Gates called them Baroque systems that were ever more expensive and in fewer numbers, until they became unsustainable and we have reached that point. It is worth pausing and remembering that the allies won world war two by overproducing, US tanks weren’t better than German tanks there were just more of them. That is a viable strategy for military superiority, quantity is not an inferior approach, but somehow in the US defence department it has got a bad reputation.” Part of Mr Scharre’s vision is that


swarm would face swarm, of either robotic ground or air variant and key differentials would come into play. Perhaps coming from the CBRN side of the house, part of which is obscurants, I tend to see things differently. What we need to defeat drones is not precision kinetic weapons, but area denying electrochemical weapons. The potential would be for less than lethal fogs that might have limited effect on human actors, and none at all on protected ones, but dramatic effect on robotics. Churchill and the BBC famously


broadcast false accounts of where German V1 and V2 rockets fell to erode confidence in Nazi targeting techniques. The ability to spoof optical sensors 10m off target would have a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of these devices. Effectively you hide them in plain sight, making them only targetable by the most sophisticated weapons systems, and thereby shifting the fight back to one of economy. Equally, the ability to have systems that can fire paint or dazzling polymers into the direction of the swarm, either to blind the sensor or retard its ability will also have advantage. Mr Scharre admitted that this view


had some value. “One of the most interesting things that you raised in your questions is that I had always thought about robotics in the CBRN environment as projecting power without putting people at risk. You spark interesting ideas about swarms being delivery systems for CBRN agents or obscurants. The question of


obscurants leads to another interesting question, as one of the most significant developments we have seen in warfare is precision guided weapons. Once targets can be attacked with precision, your ability to protect and defend people and vehicles changes, it puts a premium on hiding. It is all the more important to obscure your position whether with obscurants or an electromagnetic signature, or decoys, because the relationship between hiding and finding becomes really critical in an area where if you can find someone you can kill them.” Equally challenging is the concept


of drones as CBR munitions. Cheap drones can be paired with non- conventional payloads that either burst on impact with the ground, or are programmed so that when they rapidly lose altitude a ‘Hozelock’ type disseminator sprays agent everywhere. The benefit of CBR devices is that they don’t actually require precision, and the problems of payload can be dealt with by having multiple cheap UAVs all carrying small amounts. “Yes, I think you are painting a


frightening and plausible picture. We are wrapping up a project on drone proliferation, and one thing we have been tracking is the risk of the proliferation of large numbers of low cost commercial systems. We are already seeing this in attacks in Iraq where ISIS uses small drones; and Houthi rebels in Yemen, and non-state groups have greater capability when they are backed by a state like Iran. Even without state backing they have the option of attacks in the third dimension and can fire from overhead, which is a novel development for ground forces – the IED is coming for you! “Would that change the equation in


terms of chemical weapons - I don’t know. We have seen crude CW attacks from non-state groups in the past, I was hit with a chlorine bomb in Iraq in summer 2007 but it was not particularly effective. The problem is that cheap drones put a precision capability in groups, it is about them operating with precision and that allows them to get around dispersal problems and hit their target, especially in unprotected rear


areas. What is interesting about the effect is that a lot of times these attacks are broadly successful as even if they are tactical failures they create terror and cause disruption and oblige blue force to undertake cumbersome protective postures. If the net effect is that everyone has to walk around in MOPP all the time, that is effective disruptive activity. You look at IED attacks, and how they had a damaging strategic effect.” Returning to positive roles for


robots in CBRN, Mr Scharre sees the future as fairly rosy. “If the chemical soldier is looking forward to a world where a robot can do parts of his job, then that is likely to happen. When I look at how US militaries are incorporating robotic systems, one of the trends is a tendency to use robots for the less glamorous jobs, tanker airplane, defusing bombs, cargo resupply. It is in the cutting edge combat jobs where there seems to be some resistance, at least in pockets of the military, so my guess is that we will still see people in the infantry or operating tanks, even when it seems sensible to use robotic systems in that role. But for a support function, that’s where we will see robotic systems used; so we will see them in roles like decon.” As is always the case with gazing


into the future it is easy to get carried away. For every work of fiction that turns out to be accurate there are a 100 dead ends. The same is true of military prognostications. Earl Haig supported the lance in combat because he viewed future combat as being between ‘gentlemen’ as many previous wars in Europe had been. He only seems ridiculous now because the future didn’t work out that way. It may well be that in 100 years this article will be held up in war colleges (virtually of course, because paper will be too valuable) as a hilarious example of how wrong people got it in the 21st century. Yet, as stated earlier, Mr Scharre’s future seems plausible and real - more next generation than future generation. Personally, I think we will see a future generation of chemical weapons aimed at denying ground to electronic platforms rather than human ones… but that might be a bit too far-fetched.


CBRNe Convergence, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana, USA, 6 - 8 Nov 2017 www.cbrneworld.com/convergence2017 32 CBRNe WORLD June 2017 www.cbrneworld.com


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