10 ms·

Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies

80 points by howsilly 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago
To me, it's very clear. Drone warfare will be the next big thing after a nuke, and ICBM. Probably it's the only thing which can shift the power poles from the current nuclear states.
- narrator 5y ago
  Drones warfare will really have a big affect on small conflicts, not great power conflicts. Look at the recent Azerbaijan/Armenia war. Drones give the power of having a full fledged air force to small countries.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    The role of drones in a big conflict is a tactical warfare again regaining critical importance. Mid-sized drones are an unkillable airforce, following the front-line, with very small logistic footprint. This way, nuclear countries cannot simply nuke your few airfields, and deprive your force in the field of air cover, and then bomb you with impunity with cheap bombs. It very much means, a big conventional army can now get a decent chance to reach your capital in case of continental conflict even if you nuke all their airfields, and supply caches. In fact, a lighter force can now have much bigger chances to win than a heavier one, burdened by expensive toys, with huge demand on supplies, which will run out of fuel in a day if the supply chain is interrupted. A tank without fuel is just a bunker with 50 cal. on top.
- yellow_postit 5y ago
  satellite sabotage/hijacking/repair is a field I would foresee parallel accelerating development in. The critical path for comms and vision when paired with drones makes leo a likely playground but with the fun dynamics of many amateur astronomers being able to watch what’s going on.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    In some sense, drones can replace the earlier usage of satellites, especially for countries which do not have a surveilalnce satellite fleet - satellites grant visibility of the battlefield without needing air superiority and risking your pilots; drones do the same. An in a major conflict, it's likely that the big players can take out each others' satellites (and those can't be replaced quickly/easily) but drone swarms can still provide battlefield visibility even in that case.
    - nradov 5y ago
      The small drones cheap enough to be used in swarms are very short range. They're useful for tactical intelligence but hardly a replacement for satellites.
enzino 5y ago
One has to wonder how much of military "tech" is simply fake. Until its use is demonstrated in war (which i absolutely do not advocate, and is known to affected by propaganda as well), all the incentives from weapons' manufacturers and buyers are to exaggerate features and effectiveness. The main victim is the gullible public, who funds the military-industrial complex with taxes.
- ArtWomb 5y ago
  Arthur C. Clark's "Superiority" comes to mind ;)
- newaccount2021 5y ago
  Or just catastrophically malfunction. What % of ICBMs launched from silos in the Midwest will fail and land inside the US? What % of those actually trigger?
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Even if 90% of military tech is fake (and I think "fake" more usually means "we think it works, but turns out it doesn't"), the other 10% can completely tip the scales in a war, to disastrous effect (to the loser). History has a lot of examples of technology which seemed preposterous until it completely turned the tides of battles or wars (radar, tanks, mustard gas, atomic bombs...) Drone warfare is pretty clearly in this camp. Not a lot of people followed the Armenia / Azerbaijan war last year, but Armenia was fighting a war from 10 years ago (trench + urban warfare), and they got slaughtered by armed drones. It was a wipeout. Nobody wants to be the Armenians in the next war... and often that means wasting a lot of money figuring out what the next breakthrough is.
  - enzino 5y ago
    your comment shows little knowledge of history. wars, historically, have been won by the parties with the strongest economy. that's even true for pre-historical conquests, as far as we know. ww2 was won by the midwest industrial base, and (mostly), the soviet's. check out the ussr industrial growth in the 30s. (they didn't have the fed wrecking havoc.) today there's no match for china, this is not even controversial. thankfully they're smart enough to understand that war doesn't make sense.
jonmc12 5y ago
The analysis of Cavalry and Iron is fascinating. As is the correlation between MilTech and Phylogeny (cultural similarity between polities). I was most surprised that the authors had no strong theories about the role of "agricultural productivity". In addition to building armies from agricultural surplus, the ability to feed horses, people, elephants, etc was key to large military campaign. A common defensive technique against large army campaigns included burning agriculture.. for instance Hannibal's invasion of Rome. ie, the agriculture supply-chain itself seems to be a necessary pre-requisite to military campaigns with thousands of troops.
- narrator 5y ago
  Speaking of examples of food innovation aiding military campaigns, Napoleon's army was responsible for the development of canned food[1]. [1] https://unrealfacts.com/napoleon-bonaparte-role-canned-food-invented/ https://unrealfacts.com/napoleon-bonaparte-role-canned-food-...
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    James Burke covers this in Connections, season one I believe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documenta...
    - nefitty 5y ago
      Wow, this might be one of the best Wikipedia pages I've ever encountered. Thanks for linking it!
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        You’re welcome! Enjoy the show! You can find it on YouTube. It may also be on Internet Archive and the usual places.
rogereur 5y ago
I think wars in the future will be about who's better at computer science. It will be programmers vs programmers, and computer literacy will become the new military service and a national security interest
- wolverine876 5y ago
  It's just the technology of the day. From an earlier day: "Oscar Wilde issued a memorable prediction of the war of the future: "A chemist on each side will approach the frontier with a bottle." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/22/the-ring-and-the-rings https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/22/the-ring-and-t...
- doomjunky 5y ago
  I was astonished about the rapid expansion of the list of cyber warfare forces in recent years and by the incredible mass of cyber warfare capabilities of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces
- anonporridge 5y ago
  I think it will be more psychological. Memetic warfare. Hell, this kind of war has been raging for decades. Most people just don't know it.
wolverine876 5y ago
> Here we analyze the evolution of key military technologies in a sample of pre-industrial societies world-wide covering almost 10,000 years of history using Seshat: Global History Databank. Does anyone here know about that Seshat Databank? It looks fascinating, and I ran into it someplace else too. What is its scope? Who actually uses it and for what?
- nradov 5y ago
  You can just read their own description. http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    Re: Lazy Saturday Accommodations: About Us Seshat: Global History Databank is a large, international, multidisciplinary team of evolutionary scientists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, economists, and other social scientists. Our team includes scholars from various backgrounds, policy makers, and enthusiastic volunteers. Seshat is governed by an editorial board, who oversee work done by postdoctoral researchers, collaborators and consultants, and research assistants all over the world. We are a nonprofit organization housed by the innovative Think-Tank the Evolution Institute. Our mission is to gather information from historical societies in order to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. The Seshat: Global History Databank is an umbrella organization for numerous research projects that examine different facets or themes of human life. Each project is headed by various members of the Seshat Team along with a group of consultants and contributing experts. Support for our research comes from a variety of private donors, academic, and governmental funding sources. The Seshat (project) Wikipedia page provides some additional information about how the project is organized and funded. We also rely on the efforts of our team of Research Assistants and Volunteers — see how you can get involved in this exciting organization!
arminiusreturns 5y ago
It all cumulates eventually into a race to singularity, which is a zero sum game. Whoever gets there first wins. I promise to make mine mostly benevolent. I think emp warfare (actually already quietly a thing) is going to be the in between for stuff like drones... I hope the new generations of children are being taught old school survival skills, because they are probably going to need them. One of the best books on the post nuclear world that I reference often is The Shield of Achilles, and one of the conclusions that sticks with me is that there will be a rise in corporate power and a fall of nation state power. Fight club was right after all... "planet Starbucks" indeed.
- usui 5y ago
  I don't think a rise in corporate power and a fall of nation state power makes sense. At some point, some group is going to need to have a monopoly on violence. It doesn't matter if two groups of power don't have complete dominance over a geographic region, they are still two groups with power that look after their own kind and perform diplomacy.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

80 points by howsilly 5y ago

To me, it's very clear. Drone warfare will be the next big thing after a nuke, and ICBM. Probably it's the only thing which can shift the power poles from the current nuclear states.

narrator 5y ago
Drones warfare will really have a big affect on small conflicts, not great power conflicts. Look at the recent Azerbaijan/Armenia war. Drones give the power of having a full fledged air force to small countries.
- baybal2 5y ago
  The role of drones in a big conflict is a tactical warfare again regaining critical importance. Mid-sized drones are an unkillable airforce, following the front-line, with very small logistic footprint. This way, nuclear countries cannot simply nuke your few airfields, and deprive your force in the field of air cover, and then bomb you with impunity with cheap bombs. It very much means, a big conventional army can now get a decent chance to reach your capital in case of continental conflict even if you nuke all their airfields, and supply caches. In fact, a lighter force can now have much bigger chances to win than a heavier one, burdened by expensive toys, with huge demand on supplies, which will run out of fuel in a day if the supply chain is interrupted. A tank without fuel is just a bunker with 50 cal. on top.
yellow_postit 5y ago
satellite sabotage/hijacking/repair is a field I would foresee parallel accelerating development in. The critical path for comms and vision when paired with drones makes leo a likely playground but with the fun dynamics of many amateur astronomers being able to watch what’s going on.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  In some sense, drones can replace the earlier usage of satellites, especially for countries which do not have a surveilalnce satellite fleet - satellites grant visibility of the battlefield without needing air superiority and risking your pilots; drones do the same. An in a major conflict, it's likely that the big players can take out each others' satellites (and those can't be replaced quickly/easily) but drone swarms can still provide battlefield visibility even in that case.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The small drones cheap enough to be used in swarms are very short range. They're useful for tactical intelligence but hardly a replacement for satellites.

enzino 5y ago

One has to wonder how much of military "tech" is simply fake. Until its use is demonstrated in war (which i absolutely do not advocate, and is known to affected by propaganda as well), all the incentives from weapons' manufacturers and buyers are to exaggerate features and effectiveness. The main victim is the gullible public, who funds the military-industrial complex with taxes.

ArtWomb 5y ago
Arthur C. Clark's "Superiority" comes to mind ;)
newaccount2021 5y ago
Or just catastrophically malfunction. What % of ICBMs launched from silos in the Midwest will fail and land inside the US? What % of those actually trigger?
bpodgursky 5y ago
Even if 90% of military tech is fake (and I think "fake" more usually means "we think it works, but turns out it doesn't"), the other 10% can completely tip the scales in a war, to disastrous effect (to the loser). History has a lot of examples of technology which seemed preposterous until it completely turned the tides of battles or wars (radar, tanks, mustard gas, atomic bombs...) Drone warfare is pretty clearly in this camp. Not a lot of people followed the Armenia / Azerbaijan war last year, but Armenia was fighting a war from 10 years ago (trench + urban warfare), and they got slaughtered by armed drones. It was a wipeout. Nobody wants to be the Armenians in the next war... and often that means wasting a lot of money figuring out what the next breakthrough is.
- enzino 5y ago
  your comment shows little knowledge of history. wars, historically, have been won by the parties with the strongest economy. that's even true for pre-historical conquests, as far as we know. ww2 was won by the midwest industrial base, and (mostly), the soviet's. check out the ussr industrial growth in the 30s. (they didn't have the fed wrecking havoc.) today there's no match for china, this is not even controversial. thankfully they're smart enough to understand that war doesn't make sense.

jonmc12 5y ago

The analysis of Cavalry and Iron is fascinating. As is the correlation between MilTech and Phylogeny (cultural similarity between polities). I was most surprised that the authors had no strong theories about the role of "agricultural productivity". In addition to building armies from agricultural surplus, the ability to feed horses, people, elephants, etc was key to large military campaign. A common defensive technique against large army campaigns included burning agriculture.. for instance Hannibal's invasion of Rome. ie, the agriculture supply-chain itself seems to be a necessary pre-requisite to military campaigns with thousands of troops.

narrator 5y ago
Speaking of examples of food innovation aiding military campaigns, Napoleon's army was responsible for the development of canned food[1]. [1] https://unrealfacts.com/napoleon-bonaparte-role-canned-food-invented/ https://unrealfacts.com/napoleon-bonaparte-role-canned-food-...
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  James Burke covers this in Connections, season one I believe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documentary) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_documenta...
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Wow, this might be one of the best Wikipedia pages I've ever encountered. Thanks for linking it!
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      You’re welcome! Enjoy the show! You can find it on YouTube. It may also be on Internet Archive and the usual places.

rogereur 5y ago

I think wars in the future will be about who's better at computer science. It will be programmers vs programmers, and computer literacy will become the new military service and a national security interest

wolverine876 5y ago
It's just the technology of the day. From an earlier day: "Oscar Wilde issued a memorable prediction of the war of the future: "A chemist on each side will approach the frontier with a bottle." https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/22/the-ring-and-the-rings https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/22/the-ring-and-t...
doomjunky 5y ago
I was astonished about the rapid expansion of the list of cyber warfare forces in recent years and by the incredible mass of cyber warfare capabilities of the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyber_warfare_forces
anonporridge 5y ago
I think it will be more psychological. Memetic warfare. Hell, this kind of war has been raging for decades. Most people just don't know it.

wolverine876 5y ago

> Here we analyze the evolution of key military technologies in a sample of pre-industrial societies world-wide covering almost 10,000 years of history using Seshat: Global History Databank. Does anyone here know about that Seshat Databank? It looks fascinating, and I ran into it someplace else too. What is its scope? Who actually uses it and for what?

nradov 5y ago
You can just read their own description. http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  Re: Lazy Saturday Accommodations: About Us Seshat: Global History Databank is a large, international, multidisciplinary team of evolutionary scientists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, economists, and other social scientists. Our team includes scholars from various backgrounds, policy makers, and enthusiastic volunteers. Seshat is governed by an editorial board, who oversee work done by postdoctoral researchers, collaborators and consultants, and research assistants all over the world. We are a nonprofit organization housed by the innovative Think-Tank the Evolution Institute. Our mission is to gather information from historical societies in order to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. The Seshat: Global History Databank is an umbrella organization for numerous research projects that examine different facets or themes of human life. Each project is headed by various members of the Seshat Team along with a group of consultants and contributing experts. Support for our research comes from a variety of private donors, academic, and governmental funding sources. The Seshat (project) Wikipedia page provides some additional information about how the project is organized and funded. We also rely on the efforts of our team of Research Assistants and Volunteers — see how you can get involved in this exciting organization!

arminiusreturns 5y ago

It all cumulates eventually into a race to singularity, which is a zero sum game. Whoever gets there first wins. I promise to make mine mostly benevolent. I think emp warfare (actually already quietly a thing) is going to be the in between for stuff like drones... I hope the new generations of children are being taught old school survival skills, because they are probably going to need them. One of the best books on the post nuclear world that I reference often is The Shield of Achilles, and one of the conclusions that sticks with me is that there will be a rise in corporate power and a fall of nation state power. Fight club was right after all... "planet Starbucks" indeed.

usui 5y ago
I don't think a rise in corporate power and a fall of nation state power makes sense. At some point, some group is going to need to have a monopoly on violence. It doesn't matter if two groups of power don't have complete dominance over a geographic region, they are still two groups with power that look after their own kind and perform diplomacy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]