Top 10 Military Technology Trends to Watch
Author: Abhay Reddy
1.Unmanned aerial vehicles (Drones) are piloted either remotely or autonomously. They are already used in many applications such as military drones, photography, law enforcement, and firefighting. The price point of such drones varies from very cheap ($10-$50) to $100’s of millions depending on their sophistication and intelligence. There are currently significant investments being made in drone taxis and in military applications. Drones have completely upended military conflicts (Nagorno-Karabakh war, Ukraine-Russia war). Just wait for the cheap swarm drones that are getting much more pervasive and could easily overwhelm air defenses.
[source]
2. Advanced robotics: Robotics has been a trend for some time now, but it’s only recently that the number of applications seems to be exploding. New generation of robots seems to be smarter and more autonomous. This has been made possible by trends such as AI/ML, 5G, Big Data, and Intelligent edge. They are becoming more practical than human labor in cases such as manufacturing, military, service jobs, and maintenance. There are many examples of simple armed robots on the fields, but we may not be too far from a terminator-type robot army.
[source]
[Source]
3. Autonomous transport/systems is another field that is completely upending logistics, military, and transportation sectors as we know them. Militaries, Auto, software, logistics, and retail companies are investing heavily to create cars, frameworks, and related hardware/software that are capable of sensing the environment and moving safely with little to no human input.
[source]
[Source]
4. Intelligent Edge and Edge Computing: Intelligent edge refers to aggregation, analysis, and processing of data close to where it was captured in the network (on-premises system). Intelligent edge uses edge computing to reduce response times, bandwidth usage and takes care of security needs. An intelligent system is an advanced computing architecture that can gather, analyze and respond to the data it collects from its surrounding environment. It can also work and communicate with other devices in the network to gather insights and adapt accordingly. Examples are abound in many industries: wearables (smartwatches, glucose monitoring), autonomous cars, aerospace and defense (drones, missiles, warplanes), healthcare (surgery robots), and industrial (connected factories, traffic monitoring).
[Source]
5. AI/ML (Artificial Learning & Machine Learning): The ability of machines to learn and act intelligently making it possible to automate complex tasks that were long thought of as impractical for machines to perform. Many people think of this field as the creation of Skynet, but we are miles away and still trying to automate complex but basic functions. We may get to a Sentient AI soon enough, but I am more interested in the plethora of applications that are still to be automated across industries. Advanced militaries rely heavily on AI to make decisions both at an individual and complex theater command level.
[Source]
6. Hypersonic systems: Hypersonic missiles can travel more than 5 times the speed of sound. These missiles can travel at low altitudes and maneuver, making them nearly impossible to track and destroy. Currently, Russia, China, the US, and India have either fully deployed systems or in advanced stages of development. Russia seems to have used the first hypersonic missile (Kinzhal Kh-477M2) in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
[Source]
7. Directed Energy Weapons use highly focused energy such as lasers, microwaves, particle beams, and sound beams to damage or destroy targets. These directed energy weapons convert electrical or chemical energy into concentrated radiated energy and unlike traditional weapons do not use any projectiles. The US, UK, China, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, India, Israel, and Iran have either deployed or in advanced stages of development. Speed, accuracy, and cost (per use) seem to be the primary benefits while disadvantages include line of sight, weather distortion, and cost of systems. Wait for them to be miniaturized to a DL-44 and used by Han Solo.
[Source]
8. Cyberwarfare and Cybersecurity. Cyberwarfare refers to cyber attacks against groups of individuals, companies, or nations, causing harm that is equivalent to actual conventional warfare. The harm could be propaganda, sabotage, crippling infrastructure, theft of IP, or economic. This is a grey zone type of warfare (in between peace and boots on the ground) given the ambiguity, deniability, and the complexity in tracking. Cybersecurity on the other hand is the protection of computers and networks from unauthorized users or malicious attacks. This is generally a cat-and-mouse game that involves caution and constant technological advancement on both ends.
[Source]
9. Economic and Information warfare: Economic warfare is the strategy of weakening an adversary country’s economy by use of sanctions, blockades, insurgency, and other means. Information warfare is the pursuit of gaining an information advantage over an opponent by gathering, controlling, manipulating, and disseminating information. Some examples include Cyberwarfare, propaganda, hacking critical communication systems, and manipulating public opinions. These tactics have been used since ancient times, but it’s only recently with the advent of social media and smartphones that the effectiveness and impact are much more granular and thorough.
[Source]
10. Rapid Development and Deployment. Development and deployment of military systems can take many years or even decades. Militaries are struggling to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies while employing legacy development practices. Domain expertise engineering workforce is also hard to come by, and training them on legacy software, processes and methodologies is not feasible. DevSecOps is a development approach that adds security to a familiar DevOps practice. It allows organizations to innovate, build and release solutions by shortening the development life cycle and providing continuous delivery with high software quality (DevOps) while integrating security testing and validations into the product lifecycle (vs at the end as an add-on).
[Source]
Refer to https://demandsimplified.marketing/ for more interesting content
Keywords: #trends, #military #technology #drones #AI
