As the wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas have shown us, it is increasingly difficult to survive in conflict zones against technologically advanced foes without hiding deep underground.
But simultaneously, practical tactics and advancing technology can strip away the effectiveness of underground fortifications.
These changes raise the question of how much longer most humans can survive on the battlefield… and eventually, how long even machines will be able to endure human warfare.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been marked by the degree to which her commanding officers, supply lines, ammunition depots and tanks, troops and ships have been destroyed by precision weapons, mainly provided by the West.
Ukraine has not suffered a similar degree of military losses, in part due to Russia’s lack of precision munitions, much less effective ones.
But another telling factor has been that every sizable city heavily assaulted by Russia has vast underground refuges. Kyiv and Kharkiv have extensive subways systems and Kyiv has underground facilities for the government dating back to Soviet times. Mariupol had immense underground bunkers for a nuclear attack under the Azovstal plant. Odesa has her catacombs.
In the modern age, faced with satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and drones - not to mention supercomputers and even AI to weave it all together - it becomes almost impossible for your activities to remain hidden from your adversary, much less safe from their assault.
With so much of the war landing on the doorsteps of those first three cities, Ukraine could simultaneously protect their leadership and communications - not to mention their civilians in Kyiv and Kharkiv - while concealing their equipment, supplies and troop movements.
All of which was devastating for their attackers.
Israel also faces a grim challenge given the many miles of tunnels prepared by Hamas under the Gaza Strip. Looking for hostages, or even terrorist leaders, seems intractable enough given ordinary urban warfare.
The IDF may well flood each tunnel section without hostages with seawater where its encroachment has already destroyed the aquifer, and with freshwater everywhere else, giving civilians time to flee while destroying these bunkers and transportation corridors, not to mention weapons and equipment.
But tunnels, despite their ability to block radio signals, are far from secure from drones.
First, AI drones don’t really need the communications at all, if they’re advanced enough to operate on their own, if only for limited missions. Given the US already has AI which can fly F-16s and outfly human pilots, we can assume such drones will be available soon, if they don’t already exist.
Second, even if you’re restricted to “conventional” drones without AI, nanodrones like Black Hornets could form a communications relay or mesh network not only to scout forward - with each drone communicating with the others in front of and behind themselves - but to enable remote pilots to also fly armed drones.
Where hostages and innocent civilians may be present, drones can be armed with a multitude of non-lethal weapons - smoke, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, entangling rounds, gel rounds, rubber bullets, flares, sonic weapons causing extreme nausea, EMPs, jamming, electronic warfare. And so on.
So it’s quite possibly that fleeing gunmen will be attacked by this technology.
Finally, a humanoid robot like an Atlas or Petman - anything capable of keeping and recovering its balance, traversing rough terrain and carrying heavy weights - could be covered in heavy body armor and go tramping down unflooded corridors with a belt-fed machine gun or automatic grenade launcher.
Probably following the scouting and armed drones providing the network.
Why? Because once balance, walking, climbing and carrying have been solved, as they have been for years, someone can guide its movement and firing remotely… and fearlessly.
Would it be invincible? No.
But it would be expendable.
If all of this, once again, seems terrifying… Yes. Yes, it is.
But this technology has been coming for some time, and both Russia and China have made it clear they want to dominate AI, to the extent Chinese forces have been actively working to integrate artificial intelligence into everything they do. And none of this requires AI. Only the off-the-shelf technology already at hand.
So if something can be done with existing technology, it probably will be.
Which gives us all the more reason to avoid unnecessary wars, and to do what we can to defuse or deter them.
As I’ve noted before, an armed, survivable drone with a decent range for $500 means a million cost $500 million and a billion cost $500 billion.
We can solve the simpler problem of conflict or the much more “exciting” one of millions or billions of drones clashing on the battlefield - when that arena of conflict could be your city. Not to mention more insidious threats such as biowarfare.
If the battlefield becomes unsurvivable, and the battlefield is everywhere, then eventually this eternal escalation will mean our end.
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