The Black Hornet, a decimeter scaled spy helicopter, is actively used by military across the globe. As robots get more miniature, in a short while we might expect to see centimeter scaled military robots. Flying and crawling, recharging from the sun and waiting in ambush, capable of carrying sensors, transmitors, tiny explosives, poison, acid – they are the perfect tools for sabbotage, espionage and (possibly non fatal) neutralization. They go to ears and eyes but also to the gun barrels and the wheels, sensors and ammunition – they make the modern warfare as we know it utterly impossible.
The implications are hard to overestimate, but flrst it is constructive to try and protect the troops against the new threat. First we can try mosquito nets, rubber clothes, hermetic cases – partial measures that slow down and expose the units. Then signal jamming and electromagnetic pulses with similar disadvantages. Finally, an army of bugs predators can be employed, which effectively turns the war to a robot war anyway. However, not all troops bear the same sensitivity to the new threats – e.g. tanks and boats are relatively easy to defend with some electric mosquito net and windshields and airplanes and missiles are insensetive to the bugs at all.
Therefore, first and most important implication of the war bugs is diminished use of infantry. It is possible to shield a human hermeticaly with an exoskeleton but it will cost more than a shielded vehicle. No more amateurs with machine guns – only professional machine operators on the battlefield.
An immediate consequence, military ability will depend more on the equipment quality than on shear numbers. Small hi tech armies will defeat much larger enemies. Logistics and economics will determine wars, not the ability to recruit large numbers of citizens.
This, in turn, for the first time since the introduction of guns, or, more accurately, crossbows, will make nation states obsolete. It may sound a bit of a logical jump, but the very reason behind nurturing a national identity is the ability to draw large armies. The empires of the past did just fine with taxation of cities to sponsor professional armies, without recruiting civilians.
The empires of the past were limited by communication and transportation times, largely irrelevant now. We might end up in a world loosely controlled by just a few empires. Though they might be dictatorial, experience suggests they will be rather pluralistic – above certain size, intervening with local affairs becomes counter productive. One may also hope that a handful of leaders will face global challenges more productively.
What should we do now? I feel sitting on a boat approaching watefalls. We will pass them one way or another. I do not think there is a chance of banning such anti infantry weapons, like it happened to chemical and biological. Selectivity and controlled impact of war bugs makes them one of the more humane weapons. Pushing them to become more humane will be the role of the civil sosclety.
Another challenge is the inevitable stage of warlords, probably growing from private military companies. Minimizing it length and damage is the role of future diplomacy. The new Cortes might make his or her name starting as a soldier of fortune in Ethiopia, negotiating himself a port city and an aircraft carrier and ending as the emperor of Africa, ruling the whole continent with a force of a few thousand men. These new warlords, however, will be extremely susceptible to financial sanctions and embargoes, hopefully allowing a more civilized redistribution of power.
Yet another concern is the atomic weapons and their redistribution. The balance of power here is more subtle. Tactic weapons, up to and including Hiroshima sized are not very different from other artillery capabilities. The bigger ones, i.e. strategic hydrogen bombs on submarines and ballistic missiles are left trully only as a mutual assured destruction measure, effectively non implementable. There is a very nieche scenario of electromagnetic pulse atomic bombs used to disarm the war bugs, followed by massive infantry attack through the radioactive void – I hope we never get there.
In general in the new wars there is no meaning in wasting ammunition on civillians in their cities, unlike the ancient times, there is no gold or slaves to take from a city. The warlords do need to get their money from private citizens and companies, but they will not achieve much by terrorizing a city — in a global economy it will lead to a decrease in business. Economically strong cities will be able to bargain good taxes like the free cities of the Holy Roman Empire, and coalitions of such cities will own their own military companies, like the Hansiatic league. Overall, from a conservation of energy perspective, a world that is less busy in maintaining the national narrative is a happier world with less conflicts and borders.
P.S.
Maybe the most immediate innovation will be a small road-drone, a monocycle size of a bicycle wheel to make use of the existent roads infrastructure. It can go fast and far behind the enemy lines and be used for espionage and sabotage, carrying tiny explosives to puncture trucks and buses tires for example, or correcting artillery fire. Sabotaging the logistics is like adding friction to the war machine, draining the system before flesh and blood soldiers make it to the front line
