Defense

Are We Preparing to Fight the Wrong War?

Are we preparing to fight the wrong war? That’s the question being asked increasingly frequently by Australian defence planners, especially in the RAAF. What makes some people nervous are a number of emerging disruptive technologies that will have a profound effect on military operations in the very near future.

These include, but aren’t limited to: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; micro uninhabited aerial systems (UAS); quantum computing; hypersonics; micro ‘cube’ satellites and matching launch technologies; uninhabited underwater systems; the vastly increasing power of conventional explosives utilising nanotechnology; and information operations and cyber warfare.

In fact it’s not the maturing of any single one of these technologies that’s causing such concern, but rather that all of them—and more—are being developed in parallel at an extraordinary rate. That gives rise to a myriad of possible combinations that risk turning all of the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of platforms the ADF is acquiring into so much obsolete junk.