How Covid proves the future of warfare will be small-scale and robotic

Modern warfare is dehumanizing and it’s about to become small and dehumanized. In fact, Covid has accelerated the trend toward miniaturization, and cheaper, more distributed ways to kill. 2020 also shows us that Covid and its cousins will also continue to play and important role in the conflicts that follow. War will never be the same again.

Picture this. You’re a time travelling tourist and you’ve got a ‘thing’ for naval battles. So you take a trip to May 1916. You stand on the shores of the north western tip of Denmark, gazing at the battle playing out at sea. It’s called ‘The Battle of Jutland’, where a total of 251 German and British combat vessels pound away at each other in the hopes of owning the sea lanes.  This industrial age punching match doesn’t look too much different to what you observed in last year’s trip to 1805, where you observed the Battle of Trafalgar when Horatio Nelson’s fleet squared off against France and Spain. Big ships firing big guns and little else but sea birds a safe distance away.

But something changes as you take a charter to 1942. You stand on the deck of the USS Enterprise, traversing the Pacific Ocean. You approach a tiny atoll called Midway and observe something very different than what you saw in your past travels. Airplanes. Hundreds of them. Like angry hornets, they leap off the deck and swarm the Japanese. And the aircraft are effective, in fact, they account for almost all of the ships sunk – five fleet carriers, a destroyer and heavy cruiser.

The loss of life is immense and horrible but does little to impede either side’s ability to continue the war. On each of the combatant’s shores, men are training to replace them, reserves can be called up, however, the large ships that sank beneath the waves cannot be replaced so quickly. These vessals take many months to build, and, are extremely expensive. And that is why the aircraft are so significant. They are comparatively cheap to build and operate, and their small size makes challenging targets for the sea faring ship’s guns to hit. And the planes require just a small crew of one or two to operate once they are in flight, so any one plane that is destroyed will have little impact to the bigger picture.

So. What does any of this have to Covid and with the future of warfare? Everything. Covid has made the large naval vessel is practically obsolete.

The report in the New England Journal of Medicine reports:

An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) occurred on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a crew of 4779 personnel. On identification of the outbreak, the ship was diverted to U.S. Naval Base Guam.

Source : An Outbreak of Covid-19 on an Aircraft Carrier, NEJM, Dec 17, 2020.

The aircraft carrier has been the consummate means to project power across the globe over the last one-hundred years. But it’s days are over if it can be saddled by something as stealthy and pervasive as a virus. The USS Gerald Ford, the latest generation of carriers, will cost over 12B dollars to make. A hefty price to pay if it is incapacitated and made to sit out in harbor when the going gets tough.

The USS San Diego also had its service interrupted by COVID outbreak. It’s crewed by almost 700 and it’s cost of about $1.6B is nothing to sneeze at (pun intended).

Source : Covid hits U.S. Navy warship in Mideast; possible cases on 2nd ship, NBC News, Feb 28, 2021

Warfare will continue, as humanity, firmly rooted in its biology, can’t escape it, and is doomed to repeat it’s dark past. Humanity will improve the deadly art of killing too, and the artists of war will craft smaller, cheaper means to project power, which will usher in the rise of the drone. Machines do not get sick and if you have enough of them, any one is not significant if it’s destroyed. But it will be the result of other tiny weapons that will be unleashed upon the combatants. Viruses. The cheapest, most distributed, most undetectable way to keep humans off the battlefield.

The battlefield will be occupied by robotic troops who need not a half-pence a day, have no use for petty distinction, nor possess a soul to electrify. For they will cost a half-pence to build, be individually insignificant and be electrified to do one thing – kill.  And this future will be here much faster than ever, all thanks to Covid.

Cheers!

BG

Image Source; GCN.com