The systematic destruction in the Gulf War of Iraq by high-technology weapons, and Iraq's inability to respond, was a dramatic demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of the military technology of the industrialized powers. The Gulf War demonstrated the operational effectiveness of a range of new technologies.
For convenience, the most important new military technologies can be grouped under four headings:
Advances in real-time and long-range surveillance and target-acquisition technologies, for example, have given the military unprecedented reconnaissance capabilities. It is now possible to identify and track, in real time, enemy forces deep in their own territory.
Sensors on board satellites, manned aircraft and remotely piloted vehicles (pilotless aircraft) give advance warning of mobilization and
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preparations for attack. Rapid advances are being made in a broad range of sensors - photographic and return-beam vidicon television cameras, multi-spectral scanners, visible and infra-red radiometers and microwave synthetic aperture radars, charged couple devices, sensors sensitive to gamma-rays, X-rays and electronic signals, and communications- monitoring devices.
A typical modern surveillance system is the US Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (Jstars), an airborne radar system for target acquisition, tracking and weapons-guidance over relatively long ranges. Flying over friendly territory, at some 50 kilometres from the border, the side-looking radar is able to locate tanks and other moving targets at ranges of 150 kilometres or more.
The real-time data collected by Jstars is passed to a control station for computer analysis. Appropriate weapons, normally missiles, are chosen to attack the targets, The Jstars radar guides the weapons during their flight to deliver them to their targets with great accuracy. Other Jstars sensors are able to detect and locate enemy systems that are emitting electromagnetic radiation (radio waves, radar, etc.).
Long-range reconnaissance equipment will be increasingly carried by remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) rather than by manned aircraft. RPVs are, because of their small size, less vulnerable to air defence systems and, because they are much cheaper than manned aircraft, can be used in relatively large numbers.
Modern weapons can be guided to their targets with great accuracy by real-time mid-course guidance and, more important, by terminal guidance. Accuracy is, or soon will be, virtually independent of range. Terminally guided missiles use radar or a laser system to search the area around the target and compare it with a map pre-programmed into the warhead's computer. The system locks on to some fixed location near the target and guides the warhead precisely on to it.
Terminally guided sub-munitions - various varieties of bomblet and mine - are being developed which can distinguish between different types of moving vehicle and attack them at their weakest point (such as the turret of a tank).
Missiles are not only becoming more accurate; they are becoming autonomous. Once fired, an autonomous missile - also called a 'fire-and-forget' missile - seeks out its target, identifies it and attacks it without any further instructions from the person or platform which fired the missile.
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An example of a new powerful conventional warhead is the fuel - air explosive, used by coalition forces during the 1991 Gulf War. The weapon produces an aerosol cloud of a substance like propylene oxide vapour. When mixed with air, the substance is very explosive; and the aerosol cloud, ignited when at its optimum size, produces a very powerful explosion, between five and ten times as effective, weight for weight, as high explosive.
Several clouds of fuel - air explosive can be formed close together so that when ignited they produce a huge explosion. This can be so large as to be equivalent to that of a low-yield nuclear explosion. People under the exploding cloud die from asphyxiation caused by physical damage to the membranes of their lungs. The fireball produced by the exploding aerosol cloud can kill and injure people on the edge of the explosion.
Cluster bombs and fragmentation munitions are other new conventional weapons. Exploding fragmentation bomblets can scatter small jagged chunks of metal over a large area. The fragments have razor-sharp edges, are very hot, and travel at high speeds. A rocket warhead can carry very large numbers of fragmentation munitions.
Most of the people in the range of the fragments are killed, many of them literally shredded. Those that escape immediate death often have multiple wounds, difficult to treat. Some fragmentation munitions are made of plastic. The fragments in the bodies of survivors do not then show up on X-rays, which greatly complicates medical treatment.
The Vought Multiple-Launch Rocket System (MLRS) fires rockets carrying cluster munitions with anti-personnel bomblets. Each rocket, about 4 metres long and 23 centimetres in diameter, contains 644 bomblets. A salvo of twelve rockets can be fired in about forty-five seconds, and there is a reload time of ten minutes. The range of MLRS is more than 30 kilometres. Each salvo of MLRS rockets, containing nearly 8,000 bomblets, can cover an area of 60 acres or so with antipersonnel fragments, making it as lethal as a low-yield nuclear weapon.
MLRS rockets can also carry shaped-charge anti-tank bomblets. Other warheads being developed for the rockets include a cluster munition with twenty-eight parachute-retarded anti-tank mines, and a cluster munition with six terminally guided (using active radar) free- fall anti-tank shaped-charge bomblets.
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Put simply, a typical military battle takes place in four distinct phases. In the first phase, the enemy forces are located, identified and tracked. The mission is to find out where enemy forces will attack and with what forces. In the second phase, the threat posed by the enemy forces is assessed and decisions are made about how to neutralize it. In the third phase, appropriate weapons to deal with the threat are chosen and fired at the hostile forces. Finally, the damage done to the enemy forces is assessed by reconnaissance to determine whether or not the threat has been removed. If it has not, the sequence is repeated until it has been removed.
The first and last phases of the battle are carried out by military intelligence; the second and third phases are called command and control: orders are exchanged by commanders by military communications systems. The sequence is called command, control, communications and intelligence or C3I.
Military intelligence uses a vast network of sensors for reconnais-ance. Command and control uses navigational systems of various types to determine precisely the position of friendly forces and the co-ordinates of targets for weapon systems. So much information is collected by today's reconnaissance and target-acquisition systems that it must be analysed by computer to sort out the information which is useful to commanders from the rest. Military command and control centres, therefore, use the most sophisticated computers and processing systems.
Weapon systems based on anti-tank, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles are particularly benefitting from the new technologies. New anti-tank missiles, for example, are rapidly making the main battle tank obsolete, particularly when used on helicopters.
Tanks face a number of threats, including: scatterable anti-tank mines; fixed mines, particularly smart ones; smart sub-munitions; and anti-tank missiles. Perhaps the most effective anti-tank operation is to funnel invading tanks into particular areas by minefields and anti-tank barriers, and then attack them with anti-tank missiles and cannons.
Anti-tank missiles are, therefore, an important (if not crucial) element in the defence against tank attack. Doubts about the future effectiveness of light short-range infantry anti- tank missiles have increased the importance of larger-diameter helicopter-borne anti-tank weapons. These doubts have arisen because of the introduction of explosive armour as extra protection for main battle tanks.
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Explosive armour is undoubtedly a considerable problem for infantry anti-tank missiles, all of which use high-energy anti-tank (HEAT) warheads. HEAT warheads use chemical, rather than kinetic, energy in a shaped charge; a cone-shaped metal liner inside the warhead focuses energy on the target tank. A detonator on the nose of the warhead detonates a chemical high-explosive charge at a predetermined distance from the tank. The explosion produces a concentrated jet of molten metal which travels at some 9,000 metres a second, A metal plug, fired from the warhead, travels with the jet, and both penetrate the armour of the tank. The idea is that a stream of molten metal and hot gases enters the tank through the hole and fills the space inside the tank. This may kill, or disable, the crew directly or explode the ammunition in the tank.
Active explosive armour consists of 'bricks' of explosive, fastened to the tank's armour, sandwiched between two metal plates. If the tank is attacked by a HEAT warhead, the jet of the shaped charge detonates the explosive-armour brick, driving the plates apart. This disturbs the jet, reducing its effectiveness to penetrate the tank's armour.
Reactive explosive armour, a development of active explosive armour, anticipates the arrival of the HEAT warhead and detonates an appropriate 'brick' at a predetermined time before the warhead hits the tank, providing a greater disturbance of the jet of the shaped charge. Reactive explosive armour relies for its effectiveness, therefore, on its ability to detect the in-coming warhead in a timely way.
The advantage of explosive armour is that it is simple and cheap and can be retrofitted rapidly. It should be emphasized that explosive armour is effective only against some HEAT warheads, particularly those on man-portable infantry anti-tank missiles. Larger-diameter helicopter-launched HEAT warheads - such as those carried by Hellfire, HOT 2, Milan 2 and TOW 2 - still have a high (though reduced) kill probability because explosive armour reduces the penetration power of a shaped-charge warhead rather than totally destroying it. Explosive armour does not affect anti-tank warheads and armour-piercing ammunition that rely on kinetic energy.
Incidentally, it should be noted that if infantrymen could be trained to attack the weak points of a tank, i.e., not to concentrate only on the frontal are, their anti-tank missiles would be effective even if the tank is equipped with explosive armour. One counter-measure to explosive armour would, therefore, be to retrain infantrymen in antitank techniques. But this is much easier said than done. It takes a brave infantryman to let enemy tanks pass him by so that he can attack them from the side or the rear!
Modern main battle tanks - such as the British Challenger, the German Leopard 2 and the American M1A1 Abrams - do not use
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explosive armour but rely on modern laminated and spaced armour, such as Chobham armour, to protect the tank against frontal attack. The thickness (and slope) of the armour protects against kinetic energy attack, and the laminations and air gaps of Chobham armour disturb the molten jet of shaped-charge warheads. Another new armour, for the M1A1 Abrams, uses depleted uranium (one of the densest materials available) encased in steel.
Measures to improve the effectiveness of anti-tank missiles include the use of 'tandem' warheads. In one version, used on TOW 2A, a small shaped charge is used in a probe to detonate an explosive-armour brick at the optimum distance. The main warhead can then penetrate the tank's armour. Similar systems are used on HOT 2 and Milan 2. Typically, such warheads are larger, with weights increased from about 3 kilograms to about 6 kilograms.
Missiles under development (like the TOW 2B) will be provided with two 'proper' warheads, one clearing the way for the other. The obvious Russian counter-measure to tandem warheads is to use two thicknesses of explosive armour by overlapping or superimposing bricks; this is already being done.
Tandem warheads are, in any case, not the answer for infantry antitank missiles because they increase the weight and size of the missile beyond those acceptable in man-portable weapons. It is, in fact, difficult to see how these weapons can be made effective for the frontal attack of tanks protected with explosive armour.
A much more promising approach is to attack the turret of the tank, known as top attack. Because the turret has to rotate relatively rapidly, there is a limit to its weight and, therefore, to the thickness of the armour that can be used on it. Even though explosive armour can be used on the turret, the relative thinness of the underlying armour still makes it a weak spot. Also, in a top attack, the jet from the shaped charge strikes the armour perpendicularly, which reduces the effectiveness of explosive armour.
A tandem-warhead approach is proposed for the French-German - British TRIGAT missile programme and the American Anti-Armor Weapon System - Medium (AAWS -M). The USA is investigating three different technologies for an advanced, light, multi-purpose anti-tank missile (to replace Dragon). One uses a laser-beam-riding guidance system. The top-attack tandem warheads are fused to detonate at the optimum time to do maximum damage to the tank. The second approach uses fibre-optics guidance and an infra-red imager to acquire
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the target. (Incidentally, fibre-optics guidance is a powerful technique, potentially useful for very long range - tens of kilometres - missiles.)
The third approach is the most complex and expensive but potentially the most effective. It is based on a fire-and-forget missile which is locked on to the target before launch. A focal-plane infra-red seeker acquires the target. Once the seeker is locked on and the missile launched, it guides itself automatically to the target so that the operator can engage another target.
The TRIGAT (third generation anti-tank missile) programme includes a medium-range (up to 2 kilometres) infantry-portable missile (weighing 16 kilograms) to replace Milan and a long-range (up to 5 kilometres) helicopter- or ground-launched missile to replace HOT, Swingfire and TOW. The medium-range system is likely to use technologies very similar to those planned for the first American approach, based on laser beam riding and a tandem forward-facing warhead detonated at the optimum stand-off distance by a laser proximity fuse. The long-range system will probably be similar to the third American approach using an infra-red homing seeker and automatic target-tracking (i.e., it is a fire-and-forget system) so that an operator can engage several (probably four) targets simultaneously. The warhead will also be of the forward-facing tandem design.
The world's most sophisticated attack helicopter is the American Apache AH-64, armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. The Apache costs about $10 million; a laser Hellfire anti-tank missile costs about $45,000; and a typical main battle tank costs about $2.5 million. Operational research shows that one helicopter should, in battle, be able to destroy seventeen times its value in tanks before being shot down, and this excludes the cost of supporting and maintaining the tanks. For tanks in an anti-tank role, the ratio is considerably less than the 1:17 ratio for helicopters.
The use of fire-and-forget, top-attack, precision-guided missiles will allow the helicopter to attack from much larger ranges and considerably reduce its vulnerability. And so will improved avionics, allowing helicopters to operate at night and in bad weather.
New technologies will eventually revolutionize helicopters themselves. With today's design, the top speed of helicopters is limited to 400 kilometres per hour or so. Using technologies such as the Advancing Blade Concept (with two contra-rotating stiff rotors), Tilt Rotor (in which the rotors tilt through a right angle to provide lift or thrust or a combination of both) and the X wing, very much higher top speeds, even supersonic speeds, will become possible. Helicopters will then acquire new battlefield roles.
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In the face of developments in anti-tank warfare, main battle tanks are no longer cost-effective weapon systems. Anti-aircraft systems (such as the Patriot missile system) and anti-ship missiles are making long-range combat aircraft and large warships even more vulnerable than heavy tanks. The new military technologies are, therefore, making defence increasingly cost-effective in that it is cheaper to destroy long-range weapon systems like main battle tanks, long-range combat aircraft and large warships (seen to be the main weapons of invasion and occupation) than to deploy them. Put simply, today's most cost-effective weapons are short-range missiles designed to attack tanks, aircraft and warships. These missiles are cost-effective mainly because the cost of a missile is roughly proportional to the square of its range. For this reason, interest in military policies which emphasize defensive systems - called non-offensive or non-provocative defence - is increasing.
Non-offensive defence is, or very soon will be, the most cost-effective military posture. Non-offensive defence relies on the principle that the size, structure, weapons, logistics, training, manoeuvres, war games, military academy text-books, and all the other activities of the military forces can be so designed as to demonstrate in their totality that they provide an effective conventional defence but have virtually no offensive capability. The military forces could, on request, be opened for inspection by neighbouring or other countries to assure them of the non-aggressive, non-threatening nature of the forces.
Schemes for non-offensive defence vary in their details but have in common reliance on new cost-effective short-range missiles against attack by main battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships, and in-depth defence using a network of protected positions, decentralized and hence less vulnerable to attack and destruction. They also usually emphasize the need for well-fortified borders, using a variety of modern tank-barriers, the deployment of rapid earth-moving equipment, the use of anti-tank minefields with intelligence mines, and so on.
Critics often claim that conventional defensive deterrence uses only complex and highly centralized technologies. This is not so. Weapons and technologies would be chosen for specific tasks and operated well within their design characteristics. Emphasis would be given to simply operated and expendable missiles, cheap to produce in large quantities. But there would be a judicious mix of anti-tank missiles, anti-tank mines and anti-tank cannon; anti-aircraft missiles and light anti-aircraft guns; and direct and indirect fire.
The defence - including command, control and communications
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centres - could be decentralized and would, therefore, not provide obvious targets for enemy bombardment, This is particularly true for a defensive system based on comparatively small, independent units armed with short-range weapons. With a larger number of cheap systems, there would be more redundancy and less scope for error.
Short-range systems also have the advantage of choice of weapons. Short-range missiles can be guided by laser, active or passive radar, infra-red, millimetre waves, fibre optics, etc. Mines can be fitted with various sensors - seismic, magnetic, acoustic, infra-red and so on. Choice increases the scope for surprise and further increases the effectiveness of the defence.
The advocates of conventional defensive deterrence have yet to convince military and defence establishments that the concept offers the most cost-effective defence. The lag between military technological advances and military tactics and bureaucratic inertia is a barrier to the adoption of a security policy based on a non-offensive defence, which is seen by many as a radical change. Traditionalists still cling to the outdated belief that 'offence is the best defence'.
The criteria by which the effectiveness of a change of defence policy should be judged can be summarized as follows:
Judged by these criteria, a new European security system should be based on a defensive military posture. In particular, the democratization process in eastern European countries and the former Soviet republics would be greatly assisted if the military postures of western European countries were demonstrably defensive. Moves to a non-offensive defence would, therefore, complement and enhance the foreign policy of western European countries.
Political leaders in both eastern and western Europe and the former Soviet republics, spurred on by the need for a new defence policy appropriate to a new European security system and by economic con-
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straints, may well be anxious to negotiate mutual non-provocative defence strategies, with adequate verification, as part of the European disarmament process. If so, they will be in tune with military technological realities.
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