International Defense Security & Technology Your trusted Source for News, Research and Analysis
Related Articles
This century has seen rapid growth in new technologies such as 5G, AI, cloud computing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, smartphones, cryptocurrency, augmented reality, gene editing, social media platforms…and quantum. This is a perfect example of the Law of Accelerating Returns posited by American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. In an essay published in 2001, he argued that the rate of technological change accelerates exponentially. “So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate),” he wrote.
In every other generation, it seems, humans, develop new technologies that alter the nature of warfare. During World War I, advances in chemical processing were utilized to develop poisonous gases for battlefield use, causing massive casualties; World War II witnessed the tragic application of nuclear technology to warfare. Today, a whole new array of technologies—artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, hypersonics, and cybertechnology, among others—is being applied to military use, with potentially far-ranging consequences.
The US, China, and Russia are spending billions of dollars on AI, robotics, and other cutting-edge technologies, to assume leadership in their development and utilize these technologies to secure a future military advantage leading to a vigorous arms race in emerging technologies.
For example, AI, autonomy, and other emerging technologies are being employed to develop unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned surface and subsurface naval vessels, and vehicle swarms. Further, they are being designed to search their targets and even take decisions to strike them on their own. In the cyberspace realm, a variety of offensive and retaliatory cyberweapons are being developed for use against hostile states.
China is becoming world leader in many technologies in areas ranging from wind power to nuclear reactors artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, 5-G broadband technology and the “Internet of Things.” Chinese researchers have made significant breakthroughs in AI applications including natural language processing, real-time translation, imagery analysis, and autonomous driving. It supercomputer Sunway Tianhe-1A has been crowned as world fastest since last two years. China has launched a quantum communications satellite called Micius established a quantum fiber link between Beijing and Shanghai, has invested billions of dollars into research on quantum computing, and even claims to have tested functioning quantum radar that can detect stealth aircraft.
U.S. Critical And Emerging Technology List updated in Feb 2022
U.S. National Science and Technology Council published its set of Critical and Emerging Technologies (CETs) which highlighted the technology areas that are perceived as being key for U.S. national defense. This list serves as guidance for defense research, development, and acquisition efforts and prioritization.
The CET list includes fourteen technical areas from previous lists and five new technical areas. The lists of continuing technologies include advanced computing, advanced engineering materials, advanced gas turbine engine technologies, advanced manufacturing, advanced and networked sensing and signature management, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and robotics, biotechnologies, communication and networking technologies, human-machine interfaces, networked sensors and sensing, quantum information technologies, semiconductors and microelectronics, and space technologies and systems. These technology areas relate to current weapon systems and existing modernization efforts, encompassing a range of capabilities from aircraft to cyber warfare to autonomous systems. Furthermore , many of the research and development efforts from the National Defense Authorization Act aligned with these areas.
The five new technology areas in the CET list are hypersonics, directed energy, renewable energy generation and storage, nuclear energy, and financial technologies. By adding these technology areas to the CET list the Department of Defense is elevating their importance for the development of capabilities requirements in future wars.
Emerging technologies and their military impact
Many emerging technologies exhibit characteristics that could potentially affect the future character of war. For example, developments in technologies such as AI, big data analytics, and lethal autonomous weapons could diminish or remove the need for a human operator. This could, in turn, increase combat efficiency and accelerate the pace of combat—potentially with destabilizing consequences.
Emerging technologies such as low-cost drones could shift the balance between quality—upon which U.S. military forces have traditionally relied—and quantity, as well as between offense and defense. For example, swarms of coordinated, unmanned vehicles could overwhelm defensive systems, providing a greater advantage to the attacker, while directed-energy weapons that provide a low-cost means of neutralizing such attacks, could favor the defender. Thus, emerging technologies could shift the offense-defense balance multiple times over the coming decades.
Interactions among emerging technologies could also improve existing military capabilities or enable new capabilities—with unforeseen consequences for warfighting and strategic stability. For example, an enabling technology like AI could be paired with quantum computing to produce more powerful methods of machine learning, potentially leading to improvements in image recognition and target identification and enabling more sophisticated autonomous weapons.
Similarly, AI could be paired with 5G communications technologies to enable virtual training environments or with biotechnology in a “brain-computer interface” to enhance human cognition or control prosthetics or robotic systems. Such developments could, in turn, require new strategies, tactics, and concepts of operation.
Information and Communication Technology
ICT is a cross-cutting fastest growing technology comprising of software and supporting hardware necessary for sensing, storing, processing, transmitting, receiving and securing digital information. ICT has enabled the military-force transformation to network-centric operations that shall provide seamless communications, collaboration, and situational awareness across all branches of service—securely and reliably. ICT has enabled military strategists to visualize the battlefield scenarios, conduct extensive simulation studies (war gaming), plan line of attack and take crucial decisions based on tools such as expert systems.
ICT has revolutionized military capability by enabling autonomous land, air and sea systems, and smart weapons led systems. Targets can be engaged with extreme precision by Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) from land, air or sea. Combining artificial intelligence with drone technology, has also led to create fully autonomous weapons, which can select and engage targets based on pre-defined criteria without human intervention.
AI and Machine learning
Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers. A computer system able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Machine learning is a subset of AI. That is, all machine learning counts as AI, but not all AI counts as machine learning. For example, symbolic logic – rules engines, expert systems and knowledge graphs – could all be described as AI, and none of them are machine learning.
AI is further divided into two categories: narrow AI and general AI. Narrow AI systems can perform only the specific task that they were trained to perform, while general AI systems would be capable of performing a broad range of tasks, including those for which they were not specifically trained.
Narrow AI is currently being incorporated into a number of military applications by both the United States and its competitors. Such applications include but are not limited to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; logistics; cyber operations; command and control; and semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles. These technologies are intended in part to augment or replace human operators, freeing them to perform more complex and cognitively demanding work.
In addition, AI-enabled systems could (1) react significantly faster than systems that rely on operator input; (2) cope with an exponential increase in the amount of data available for analysis; and (3) enable new concepts of operations, such as swarming (i.e., cooperative behavior in which unmanned vehicles autonomously coordinate to achieve a task) that could confer a warfighting advantage by overwhelming adversary defensive systems.
AI is enabling many military capabilities and operations such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, identifying targets, speed weapon development and optimization, command and control, logistics and developing war games. Adversaries could use AI to carry out information operations or psychological warfare.
Narrow AI, however, could introduce a number of challenges. For example, such systems may be subject to algorithmic bias as a result of their training data. Researchers have repeatedly discovered instances of racial bias in AI facial recognition programs due to the lack of diversity in the images on which the systems were trained, while some natural language processing programs have developed gender bias. Such biases could hold significant implications for AI applications in a military context. For example, incorporating undetected biases into systems with lethal effects could lead to cases of mistaken identity and the unintended killing of civilians or non-combatants.
Similarly, narrow AI algorithms can produce unpredictable and unconventional results that could lead to unexpected failures if incorporated into military systems. Such vulnerabilities could be exploited intentionally by adversaries to disrupt AI-reliant or -assisted target identification, selection, and engagement. This could, in turn, raise ethical concerns—or, potentially, lead to violations of the law of armed conflict—if it results in the system selecting and engaging a target or class of targets that was not approved by a human operator.
Deepfakes are another threat of AI, as it enables increasingly realistic photo, audio, and video digital forgeries. Adversaries could deploy this AI capability as part of their information operations in a “gray zone” conflict. Deep fake technology could be used to generate false news reports, influence public discourse, erode public trust, and attempt blackmail of government officials.
Electronics and Communications
It is an important part of ICT plays a dominant role in modern battlefield in surveillance and reconnaissance through radars, command, control, and communications, and Electronic Warfare. The Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks which are predicted to be deployed around 2020, promise fast Internet for everyone, smart cities, driverless cars, critical health care, “internet of things” revolution, and reliable and secure communications for critical infrastructures and services. Military communications systems are becoming smaller, lighter, covering more bands and carrying more voice and data. The systems are moving to higher mill metric wave frequencies (60 GHz, 94 GHz) and in future also to terahertz.
Terahertz: Another area that lies between electronics and optics (300 to 3000 gigahertz frequencies), the terahertz frequency range, is emerging as disruptive force in defence and security. Terahertz can also provide revolutionary capabilities in defense, including Secure Terahertz communications, Chemical and Biological Agent detection and anti-stealth THz ultra-wideband radar. THz radar can emit pico-second and nanosecond pulse at GW level that can provide information on the composition of targets and thus target identity, not available in other remote sensing methods. China has claimed to have developed terahertz radar that could unmask stealth fighters like F-35. Being non-ionising as well as non-destructive, THz waves can pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes, paper, wood and brick, making them ideal for applications in areas such as detection of chemicals, drugs and explosives.
The main driver of electronics has been semiconductor industry driven by the Moore’s Law which stated that the number of transistors on a chip will double approximately every two years has been in boosting the computational performance and energy efficiency while reducing cost. Microelectronics and solidstate components have also been the backbone of the military systems and are main contributors in advancement of radar, communication and electronic warfare systems.
Photonics
Another technology that is replacing as well as complementing electronics is photonics. Photonic systems provide many desirable properties such as wide bandwidth, small size, low weight, and EMI immunity. We are currently undergoing photonics revolution which has vision of generating and harnessing photons for real-time, high-resolution, wide area persistent day/night surveillance, missile imaging and tracking, biological and chemical Sensing, optical networks, high-bandwidth free-space communication, and information processing.
For example, Free Space Optical or Laser communications is creating a new communications revolution, that by using visible and infrared light instead of radio waves for data transmission is providing large bandwidth, high data rate, license free spectrum, easy and quick deployability, low mass and less power requirement. So Laser communication systems are being planned from terrestrial short-range systems, to high data rate Aircraft and Satellite communications, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to high altitude platforms (HAPs), near-space communications, relaying high data rates from moon, and deep space communications from mars. Optical communications minimize the probability of interception, jamming, and detection, while dramatically minimizing the power needed.
Thermal Imaging are playing vital role in warfare due to their high resolution and covert passive operation. Infrared imaging enables the spotting of targets, intruders and hidden bombs by detecting their heat signatures thereby protecting troops. The performance of Night vision devices is constantly being improved while driving down the size, weight and power consumption in order to maintain an edge over adversaries. Infrared photodetectors (IRPDs) have become important devices in various applications such as night vision, military missile tracking, medical imaging, industry defect imaging, and environmental sensing. Mature semiconductor technologies such as mercury cadmium telluride and III–V material-based photodetectors have been dominating the industry.
Along with these technologies laser directed energy weapons have also been enabled and which have given rise to new warfare called Optronic Warfare. Nanotechnology is also enhancing Photonics. For instance, Graphene based photodetectors can detect the entire spectrum, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet and in future would lead to ultrasensitive detectors and that too at room temperature. The future infrared sensors shall become small enough to embed in smartphones, rifle sights or eyeglasses and affordable enough to purchase for every soldier.
Photonics has played a key role through the development of small, inexpensive, high data rate transceivers to transport the large data streams in Digital Beam Forming (DBF) architectures for phased array antennas, or “Digital Arrays”. Photonic techniques, given their inherently wide bandwidth are also enabling Next Generation Radars and Electronic warfare receivers with wide frequency coverage and wide instantaneous bandwidths. Enhanced frequency coverage enables multi-frequency radars that are more capable and less detectable.
Another important system has been LIDAR, one of whose application is CBRN detection. The Joint Biological Stand-off Detection System (JBSDS), a light detection and ranging (lidar)-based system is designed to detect aerosol clouds out to 5 kilometers (km) in a 180-degree arc and to discriminate clouds with biological content from clouds without biological material at distances of 1 to 3 km or more. Photonic neural networks have the potential to revolutionize the speed, energy efficiency and throughput of modern computing—and to give Moore’s law–style scaling a new lease on life.
Nanotechnology
Moore’s Law is becoming more and more difficult. As dimensions approach nanometer ranges, CMOS transistors are difficult to operate because of rising power dissipation of chips and the fall in power gain of smaller transistors, soaring fabrication plant costs and finally quantum effects in silicon will bring about an end to the ongoing miniaturization of CMOS transistors.
The further miniaturization in electronics now being enabled by Nanotechnology, through its subarea called nanoelectronics. Carbon nanotubes and Semiconductor nanowires are being used for building transistors and integrated circuits. Transistors built in single atom thick graphene film can also enable very high-speed transistors. Another way Nanotechnology is enabling the vision of “More Moore” Technologies is by migrating from charge to non-charge based devices i.e. based on spin, molecular state, photons, phonons, nanostructures, mechanical state, resistance, quantum state (including phase) and magnetic flux. So we now have spintronics, molecular electronics.
We have already entered Nanotechnology era, with thousands of sub 100 nm technologies entering the commercial domain. Nanotechnology is revolutionizing the military capabilities in areas as diverse as Information technology, future soldier systems, semiconductor technology, sensors and actuators, photonics, stealth and camouflage, biomedical science, biotechnology and aerospace systems. Nanotechnology is also culminating in the creation of a new class of weaponry – nano-enhanced weapons.
Novel applications of nanotechnology for military purposes are expected to have a transformative impact on the way in which wars can be fought in the future battlespace, with the potential to drive changes to the law of weaponry. In the past military applications of nanotechnology primarily include defensive gear, countermeasures, armor, medications, new high-yield explosives and enhancements to existing classes of weapons. On defensive applications they enable garments designed to increase soldier survivability and camouflage against thermal detection as well as new weapons and surveillance technologies.
As we saw Nanotechnology is being applied to miniaturize and enhance the performance of basic technologies including sensing, surveillance, detection, communications. Processing, energy storage, rapid computations, and lower power consumption. This is enabling Smart dust is another technology that combines sensing, computing, wireless communication capabilities and autonomous power supply within the volume of only a few millimeters that can detect everything from light to vibrations. It is very hard to detect the presence of the Smart Dust and it is even harder to get rid of them once deployed. Smart Dust is useful in monitoring real world phenomenon without disturbing the original process. The integration of these type of sensors to surveillance and security systems has already been tested and is ideal for high-value target sites, critical infrastructure sites, and industrial sites.
Nano-implants in soldiers, brain-machine interfaces and manipulation of biological processes, for example to reduce fatigue, increase reaction time or alter perceptions, emotions or thoughts. It is also giving rise to new class of weapons – nano‐enhanced weapons which can augment varieties of existing weapons types. Missiles, artillery projectiles or mortar rounds with reduced mass, greater destructive force, increased penetration capability, tailored energy release, smaller size or improved accuracy; Lighter and smaller firearms made of nanofiber composites with low or no metal content, and “self-steering” bullets equipped with optical sensors;
Hyper-reactive explosives due to extremely small particle sizes and unique physicochemical properties. On 13th April 2017, the United States Military dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat, known as the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) on a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces. The MOAB is a precision-guided munition weighing 21,500 pounds and was dropped from a C-130 Hercules aircraft.
Although MOAB carries only about 8 tons of explosives, the explosive mixture delivers a destructive impact equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. According to one analysis it was a nano weapon. Louis Del Monte, an award winning physicist, inventor, futurist, featured speaker, CEO of Del Monte and Associates, Inc the TNT and powdered aluminum account for over half the explosive payload ( H6), by weight. According to him, “It is highly likely that the “powdered aluminum” is nano aluminum, since nano aluminum can enhance the destructive properties of TNT. This argues that H6 is a nano-enhanced explosive, making the MOAB a nano weapon.”
Materials with superior electromagnetic properties that could cause disruption to the electrical grid and communications infrastructure. It has even been argued that nanotechnology could be used to create the next generation of nanotechnology based lasers and nuclear weapons. Combining all these miniaturization technologies shall also enable the development of nanobots, tiny robots built with nanotechnology. New miniaturized platforms with reduced drag and increased payload and range, including UAVs(drones), and nano- and micro combat robots carrying nano-enhanced miniaturized munitions, can create new types of destruction. They may also be operated in swarms.
Many Nanoparticles are themselves toxic. More recently, there has been concern regarding the convergence of nanotechnology with other emerging technologies, such as biotechnology and synthetic biology, to create a new type of biological weapon with potentially self-replicating. Pathogens and chemicals linked to nanomaterials creating new types of hybrid chem-bioweapons. A nanoweapon has the potential to specifically target certain traits (be it genetic, or some other “trigger”) at a global scale. You also have the horrible advantage of setting the destructive force to whatever you desire. You could attack a particular genetic trait only your enemy has. You could program the weapon to seek specific materials (the materials used in modern tank armor, or aviation grade aluminum) to destroy specific equipment. You are talking a weapon you could program to reproduce itself using silica and it would literally destroy the entire planet starting as only one nanomachine. This is a horrifying weapon that hopefully we never develop. In future we may also see self-replicating drones, or more generically self- replicating nanobots enabled by exponential advance in nano electronics and artificial intelligence.
Energy and Power
The goal of Power Electronics involves high power management systems, which has become important with the growth of electric vehicles, directed energy systems, and high energy lasers. The research area includes novel power generation and distribution concepts including biomimetics, distributed generation, and nuclear batteries. It also includes renewable power strategies such as photovoltaics and energy harvesting.
Micro, Soldier, and Portable Power
The vision for this area is long-lasting power for Soldier and autonomous microsystems. The major military organizations in the world are devising various ways for meeting enhanced soldier power requirements due to much equipment he carries, while also while reducing the logistical load thereby enhancing soldier’s agility on the battlefield. Some of the solutions are developing smaller, lighter, cost-effective power sources, switching to renewable energy options, flexible solar panels, wearable energy solutions, nuclear batteries, low power electronics, battery and power management.
One of the technologies that the military is looking at for soldier power is betavoltaics. Betavoltaic sources generate power from beta particles emitted by radioactive materials. “They can last a long time [and] you can make them very small,” “A betavoltaic incorporated into a flight data locator could signal to search teams for years instead of months.”
High energy and high-power primary and secondary batteries; fuel cell components; logistics fuel reforming for fuel cells; and munitions batteries. Research areas include high energy batteries, fuel cells and fuel processing, power sources for munitions and UGS power/novel power sources. Dependable scaled-down energy harvesting devices that take advantage of advances in MEMS/NEMS technologies and can draw upon a range of ambient energy sources to aid the powering of embedded or retrofitted sensor and actuator systems.
Quantum
Quantum technology (QT) applies quantum mechanical properties such as quantum entanglement, quantum superposition, and No-cloning theorem to quantum systems such as atoms, ions, electrons, photons, or molecules.
Quantum field comprises four domains: Quantum Communication, where individual or entangled photons are used to transmit data in a provably secure way; Quantum Simulation, where well-controlled quantum systems are used to reproduce the behavior of other, less accessible quantum systems; Quantum Computation, which employs quantum effects to dramatically speed up certain calculations, to perform tasks too hard for even the most powerful conventional supercomputer from code-breaking to big data analysis. They could accelerate the discovery of new materials, chemicals and drugs. and Quantum Sensing & Metrology, that can breakthrough standard quantum limits to realize supersensitive measurements.
Quantum Computer
Quantum computers shall bring power of massive parallel processing, equivalent of supercomputer to a single chip. Quantum computing uses quantum bits, or ‘qubits’ instead. These are quantum systems with two states. Qubits have special property termed superposition, which can simultaneously be a 0 and/or a 1. They can store much more information than just 1 or 0, because they can exist in any superposition of these values.
Further it is possible to create nontrivial correlated states of a number of qubits, so-called ‘entangled states’, This enables quantum computers to weed through millions of solutions all at once, while desktop PCs would have to consider them one at a time. Entanglement means that describing a system of several qubits using ordinary classical information, such as bits or numbers, isn’t simply about stringing together the descriptions of the individual qubits. Instead, you need to describe all the correlations between the different qubits. As you increase the number of qubits, the number of those correlations grows exponentially: for n qubits there are 2n correlations. This number quickly explodes: to describe a system of 300 qubits you’d already need more numbers than there are atoms in the visible Universe.
The power of quantum computers depends on the number of qubits and their quality measured by coherence, and gate fidelity. Qubit is very fragile, can be disrupted by things like tiny changes in temperature or very slight vibrations. Coherence measures the time during which quantum information is preserved. The gate fidelity uses distance from ideal gate to decide how noisy a quantum gate is.
There’s a hitch however. While a quantum algorithm can take entangled qubits in superposition as input, the output will also usually be a quantum state — and such a state will generally change as soon as you try to observe it. “Nature pulls a trick here,” says Jozsa. “She updates a quantum state, but then she doesn’t allow you to get all the information.” The art of quantum computing is to find ways of gaining as much information as possible from the unobservable.
There have been two leading approaches for building general purpose Quantum computer. One approach, adopted by Google, IBM, Rigetti and Quantum Circuits involves encoding quantum states as oscillating currents in superconducting loops. The other, pursued by IonQ and several major academic labs, is to encode qubits in single ions held by electric and magnetic fields in vacuum traps.
Some engineers even predict that within the next twenty or so years sufficiently large quantum computers will be built to break essentially all public key schemes currently in use. Experts like Michele Mosca, co-founder of the Institute of Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo (Canada), sees a chance of 50% that by 2031 quantum computers will be able of breaking RSA-2048 encryption—a scheme today regarded as secure. This would seriously compromise the confidentiality of military information too as many of our current cryptography shall be vulnerable to advancements in quantum computers
NSA, whose mission is to protect vital US national security information and systems from theft or damage, is also advising US agencies and businesses to prepare for a time in the not too-distant future when the cryptography protecting virtually all e-mail, medical and financial records, and online transactions is rendered obsolete by quantum computing. Organizations are now working on post-quantum cryptography (also called quantum-resistant cryptography), whose aim is to develop cryptographic systems that are secure against both quantum and classical computers, and can interoperate with existing communications protocols and networks
Google is trying a two-year experiment: It’s switching the TLS web encryption in a test portion of Chrome installations and Google services from elliptic curve cryptography—a common form of encryption that can be practically unbreakable for normal computers—to a protocol that bolsters elliptic curves by adding in a new type of encryption known as Ring Learning With Errors or Ring-LWE. Another technique that is immune from computational or algorithm advance and even quantum computers is Quantum key distribution based secure Military Networks that guarantee security by laws of quantum physics.
Quantum key distribution (QKD)
Quantum key distribution (QKD), establishes highly secure keys between distant parties by using single photons to transmit each bit of the key. Photons are ideal for propagating over long-distances in free-space and are thus best suited for quantum communication experiments between space and ground. The unit of quantum information is the “qubit” (a bit of information “stamped” in a quantum physical property, for instance the polarization of a photon).
Fiber optic based QKD systems are commercially available today, however are point to point links and limited to the order of few hundreds kms because of current optical fiber and photon detector technology. The link can be extended using quantum memories China has recently completed the installation the world’s longest quantum communications network, a 2,000-kilometer line linking Beijing and Shanghai a step towards making their networks unhackable. The network would be used by the central government, military and critical business institutions like banks. Government agencies and banks in cities along the route can use it first.
Another way to overcome this distance limitation is by bringing quantum communication into space. China has launched the world’s first quantum communications satellite officially known as Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, or QUESS, satellite in 2016. “QUESS is designed to establish ‘hack-proof’ quantum communications by transmitting uncrackable keys from space to the ground. These quantum keys can be used to encrypt messages sent between cities thousands of miles apart. In Sept.2017, they held a 75-minute videoconference between researchers in the two cities, also encrypted via quantum key.
A functional satellite-based quantum communication system would give the Chinese military the ability to operate further afield without fear of message interception. By developing satellite based quantum cryptology China shall be able to gain information superiority over other countries as it would be able to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying its adversary’s ability to do the same.
China is also first country to release a detailed schedule to put this technology to large-scale use. Communications satellite would be a first step toward building a quantum communications network in the sky. China hopes to complete a Asia-Europe intercontinental quantum key distribution in 2020 and build a global quantum communication network by 2030.
Quantum Sensors
Quantum sensing has become a distinct and rapidly growing branch of research within the area of quantum science and technology. Quantum sensors are measuring device that takes advantage of quantum correlations, such as states in a quantum superposition or entanglement, for better sensitivity and resolution than can be obtained by classical systems.
When measurements are based on quantum phenomena, such as the energy difference between two well-defined quantum states, sensors have the ability to reach unprecedented precision and accuracy that doesn’t drift over time. High sensitivity and stability in combination with a small form factor provide transformational capabilities with applications spanning from GPS-free global navigation and cryogen-free high-precision magnetometry to sensing within mesoscale structure and measurements of individual nuclear or electron spins.
Quantum sensors also useful in many military applications such as through wall imaging, detecting deeply buried structures and stealth airplanes. In particular quantum radar can be used to detect targets that cannot be discerned through conventional radar, and quantum navigation similarly leverages quantum properties to create a precise form of positioning system that may eventually replace GPS.
In September 2016, there were claims from China that they had developed quantum radar.. In the target detection experiment, conducted in a real atmospheric environment, the detection ability of the system was proven to be over 100 kilometers (62 miles). If the claims are true then China can detect stealth planes at a range of 62 miles with accuracy sufficient for missile targeting. They would be able to create a detection network with quantum scanners spaced about 100 miles apart.
There are many ways of implementing Quantum radar. In one of systems demonstrated by MIT, two beams of light are entangled, and one of them is stored locally—racing through an optical fiber—while the other is projected into the environment. When light from the projected beam—the “probe”—is reflected, it carries information about the objects it has encountered. But this light is also corrupted by the environmental influences that engineers call “noise.” Recombining it with the locally stored beam helps suppress the noise, recovering the information.
On 21 June, the Chinese Academy of Sciences hailed a breakthrough – a major upgrade to a kind of quantum device that measures magnetic fields. Magnetometers have been used to detect submarines since the second world war. They are able to do this because they can measure an anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field – like one caused by a massive hunk of metal.But today’s devices can only detect a submarine at fairly short range, so tend to be used to home in on the location once the sub has already been spotted on sonar. You could widen their range if you had a magnetometer based on a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID.
Superconducting magnetometers are exquisitely sensitive, but their promise has been limited to the lab. Out in the real world, they are quickly overwhelmed by background noise as minuscule as changes in Earth’s magnetic field caused by distant solar storms.
The new magnetometer, built by Xiaoming Xie and colleagues at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, uses not one SQUID but an array of them. The idea is that by comparing their readings, researchers can cancel out some of the extra artefacts generated by motion. This “would be relevant to an anti-submarine warfare device”, says David Caplin at Imperial College London, who works on magnetic sensors. esearchers estimate that a SQUID magnetometer of this type could detect a sub from 6 kilometres away, and Caplin says that with better noise suppression the range could be much greater
Biosensing
Sensing, for example, has been achieved with a wide range of different biological components, including enzymes, antibodies, receptor proteins, and nucleic acids. For example, certain biological systems can naturally or synthetically detect electromagnetic waves, light and ionizing radiation. These organisms can produce physical or chemical signals, which scientists can harvest to create living sensors and detect changes in an environment.
Because of their small size, high sensitivity, ability for self-replication, multiple stimulus sensing ability and the difficulty of distinguishing synthetic vs. organic organisms in the environment, synthetic organisms can become very accurate and discrete sensors for military applications. Potential applications include: distributed tag, track and trace systems and persistent clandestine sensors.
Brain-computer interface (BCI)
Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are bidirectional devices that allow communication between the brain and external systems, such as computers. Every action our body performs begins with a thought, and with every thought comes an electrical signal. The electrical signals can be received by the brain-computer interface, consisting of an electroencephalograph (EEG) or an implanted electrode, which can then be translated, and then sent to the performing hardware to produce the desired action.
There are various techniques for picking up signals from the brain. This can be done, for example, on the outside of the brain with sensors. Commercial manufacturers such as NextMind or Emotiv offer headbands for playing computer games or controlling the lighting in a house. In contrast, with the semi-invasive method, the sensors are located under the skull and on top of the brain. Even beyond that, in the full-invasive method, the sensors are located inside the brain. A well-known example is Deep Brain Stimulation, a medical application used by some patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Brain-computer interfaces are being applied in neuroprosthetics, through which paralyzed persons are able to control robotic arms, neurogaming where one can control a keyboard, mouse, etc using their thoughts and play games, neuro analysis (psychology), and in defense to control robotic soldiers or fly planes with thoughts. These devices are employed for controlling exoskeletons, aiming to restore lost motor functionality or even improve natural human strength.
Biocomputing
Electronic computers are extremely powerful at performing a high number of operations sequentially at very high speeds. However, they struggle with combinatorial tasks that can be solved faster if many operations are performed in parallel for example in cryptography and mathematical optimisation, which require the computer to test a large number of different solutions. There have been significant efforts in conceiving parallel-computation approaches in the past, for example: Quantum computation and microfluidics-based computation. However, these approaches have not proven, so far, to be scalable and practical from a fabrication and operational perspective.
Recently biocomputers are becoming feasible due to advancements in nanobiotechnology. Biocomputers use systems of biologically derived molecules—such as DNA and proteins—to perform computational calculations. Compared to conventional computers, DNA used as a computing medium may prove to be a billion times more energy-efficient and to have a trillion times more data-storage capacity. (DNA stores information at a density of about 1 bit/ nm3, about a trillion times as efficient as videotape.)
As DNA molecules are very small a desktop computer could potentially utilize more processors than all the electronic computers in the world combined – and therefore outperform the world’s current fastest supercomputer, while consuming a tiny fraction of its energy. Using DNA to archive data is an attractive possibility because it is extremely dense (up to about 1 exabyte per cubic millimeter) and durable (half-life of over 500 years). This DNA molecule could then be replicated many times over. This characteristic of biological molecules could make their production highly efficient and relatively inexpensive.
DNA computing is also massively parallel. Researchers are currently trying to exploit these properties for several purposes,
Specialty Materials
Some biological systems are able to naturally produce materials that are difficult, expensive, or impossible to produce by traditional means. Potential defense applications include: sensor active materials, high strength polymers for armor, stealth materials, corrosion resistant coatings, biological computing; data storage and cryptographic materials.
Arti Prabhakar said that she expects synthetic biology to produce materials “better” by borrowing tricks from nature. Spider silk, for example, is stronger than steel, and abalone shells are tougher than glass and more flexible than plastic. More powerful fuels might also come from genetically engineered microbes, she said.
Smart, Multifunctional and Programmable materials
Smart materials or Active materials or Functional materials are designed materials that have diverse, dynamic features that enable them to adapt to the environment. They have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, the stimulus and response may be mechanical, electrical, magnetic, optical, thermal, or chemical.
Smart materials are used to construct smart structures. A smart structure (a.k.a. intelligent structure, adaptive structure, and functional structure) is defined as a structure that is able to sense external stimuli such as pressure, velocity, density, or temperature change. It can process the information and respond in a controlled manner in real time. A smart structure is a system containing multifunctional parts that can perform sensing, control, and actuation; it is a primitive analogue of a biological body.
Programmable materials offer many possibilities in defense. These materials could change their strength, size, impact properties, or overall shape in response to changing operational requirements. There include morphing wings in UAVs or hypersonic vehicles which change their shape to change their aerodynamic profile according to the mission. Another example is Antenna that uses metamaterials or engineered materials to modify its radiation pattern, change the band/frequencies in which it transmits, or direct the beam at a specific target.
Synthetic Biology
Synthetic biology is the application of science, technology and engineering envisions the redesign of natural biological systems for greater efficiency, as well as create new organisms as well as molecules with desired bio-attributes. Synthetic biology, a set of technologies related to the design and fabrication of biological systems, poses an emerging hazard but also provides the tools to mitigate that hazard It may enable potential adversaries to develop chemical and biological threat agents with new characteristics. However, it is critically important to the development of medical countermeasures (MCMs), detection technologies, materials for protective equipment, and other technologies with applicability to CBR [chemical / biological / radiological] defense,” the report said.
DNA is the molecule that is the hereditary material in all living cells. Genes are made of DNA, and so is the genome itself. A gene consists of enough DNA to code for one protein, and a genome is simply the sum total of an organism’s DNA. DNA is a very large molecule, made up of smaller units called nucleotides that are strung together in a row, making a DNA molecule thousands of times longer than it is wide.
Each nucleotide has three parts: a sugar molecule, a phosphate molecule, and a structure called a nitrogenous base. The nitrogenous base is the part of the nucleotide that carries genetic information, so the words “nucleotide” and “base” are often used interchangeably. The bases found in DNA come in four varieties: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—often abbreviated as A, C, G, and T, the letters of the genetic alphabet.
A DNA molecule is a double helix, a structure that looks much like a ladder twisted into a spiral. The sides of the ladder are made of alternating sugar and phosphate molecules, the sugar of one nucleotide linked to the phosphate of the next. DNA is often said to have a sugar and phosphate “backbone.” New techniques to edit and modify the genome may allow scientists to harness organisms or biological systems as weapons or to perform engineering tasks typically impractical with conventional methods.
CRISPR is a new technology that facilitates making specific changes in the DNA of humans, other animals, and plants. It allows removing a single (defective) gene from a genome and replacing it with another one, to prevent genetic diseases. US and China are leaders in applications of CRISPER technology.
DARPA wants to utilize the potential of Synthetic biology, to provide on-demand bio-production of novel drugs, new materials, food, fuels, sensors and coatings whatever suits the military’s needs. Future advances might include the construction of new biological parts and brain-computer interfaces.
Pentagon scientists are researching gene manipulation to build the soldiers of tomorrow that will be able to run at Olympic speed, and won’t need food or sleep. It will also be possible to trigger the cells of injured soldiers’ bodies to rebuild lost limbs. China has already genetically engineering hyper-muscular SUPER-DOGS. The dogs, which are test tube bred in a lab, have twice the muscle mass of their natural counterparts and are considerably stronger and faster.
Yet without careful precautions, a gene drive released into the wild could spread or change in unexpected ways. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a combined $65 million over four years to seven research teams toward projects designed to improve the safety and accuracy of gene editing.
CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat. This name refers to the unique organization of short, partially palindromic repeated DNA sequences found in the genomes of bacteria and other microorganisms. If a viral infection threatens a bacterial cell, the CRISPR immune system can thwart the attack by destroying the genome of the invading virus. The genome of the virus includes genetic material that is necessary for the virus to continue replicating. Thus, by destroying the viral genome, the CRISPR immune system protects bacteria from ongoing viral infection.
CRISPR RNA sequences are copied from the viral DNA sequences which then guide bacterial molecular machinery to destroy the viral material. Because CRISPR RNA sequences are copied from the viral DNA sequences acquired during adaptation, they are exact matches to the viral genome and thus serve as excellent guides.
Creating Synthetic Life
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in California in Jan 2017 announced the development of the “first” stable semisynthetic organism, an advancement that may have major implications for medicine and even pave the way for the creation of new life forms. Romesberg and colleagues expanded life’s genetic code from four letters to six by adding two synthetic bases called X and Y to the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria. All natural organisms store genetic information in a four-letter, two-base-pair genetic alphabet, the four natural bases, called A, T, C and G, but in 2014
Natural and synthetic biological systems can already sense a wide variety of phenomena of interest, from specific chemicals to light and ionizing radiation. Microbes are found in nearly every realm on earth, ranging from thermal vents to Antarctic ice. DARPA under their BioDesign program wants to create living organisms, that can be programmed to live indefinitely, that shall be tamper proof through genetic locks, can be traced using DNA manipulation and could be killed as last-resort through genetically coded kill switch. Alicia Jackson, the deputy director for DARPA’s biological program, said biology can do things “that no other technology can come close to doing.”
“Biology can replicate itself, it can adapt, it can evolve,” she said. “It can scale from one to millions, to billions, effortlessly in a day, and it’s programmable through its genetic code.” Jackson also suggested that genetically engineered microbes might someday transform Mars and other planets into livable habitats.
Soldier: Medical and Human Performance Modification
One of the defence applications is maintaining a soldier’s fighting ability at peak levels by creating medical advances like vaccines before an outbreak, healing soldiers who have severely damaged their bodies, and ensuring the mental health of soldiers is sound.
It involves everything from better field cares to improved prosthetics, prophylactic application of bacteria on the skin to prevent infection and to help heal wounds and probiotics that decrease the effects of stress and enhance mental performance. It also involves basic research in molecular genetics and genomics that will enable optimization of soldier cognitive and physical performance.
3D Printing
3D printing or additive manufacturing is ongoing revolution in manufacturing with its potential to fabricate any complex object and is being utilized from aerospace components to human organs, textiles, metals, buildings and even food. Additive manufacturing, is defined by ASTM International as the process of joining materials together, layer by layer, based on three-dimensional model data. 3D printing is revolutionizing defence by printing small components to full drones on naval vessels, replacement parts for fighter aircrafts to printing ammunition. Chinese Xian Y-20 is the first ever cargo plane, which is being made with 3D printing technology. Sri Lanka plans to purchase this aircraft and will be used for the both transport and military purposes. The Pentagon has deployed additive manufacturing technology to build weapons, like the RAMBO grenade launcher. The US Army has tested 40mm grenade launchers and ammunition.
In aviation 3D printed parts save weight thereby enhance performance of the aircraft. The number of parts is also reduced significantly saving on production time, storage, risk and upfront investment. Since you are adding material rather than removing material, this process also drastically reduces waste during manufacturing. You can iterate faster, improve faster and costs will be lower.
In the future, a plane shall be able to print another plane inside itself and then launching it from its undercarriage. The Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) conducted an experiment under which micro-drones, created with 3D printing technology, could be launched from the flare dispensers of various US fighter jets. They are parachuted down in small-sized canisters, where the micro-drone wings then catch the wind with their one-inch propellers.
Orbital ATK has successfully tested a 3D printed hypersonic engine combustor at Nasa Langley Research Centre in Virginia. The breakthrough could lead to planes that can travel 3,425mph (5,500km/h) – 4.5 times the speed of sound. 3D printers are fabricating 3D objects from metals, ceramics, plastics, and even multi-material capabilities. Another trend is BAAM (Big Area Additive Manufacturing) is an industrial sized, additive machine. BAAM was designed to allow 3-D printing to be used for production manufacturing. The size and speed allow large parts to be made quickly. Researchers are addressing some of the challenges like the lack of standardized production processes, quality assurance methods, significant material variability and reduced material performance. There is the need to develop consistent, quality materials for additive manufacturing.
Military IOT
By 2025, it is predicted that there can be as many as 100 billion devices shall be connected to IoT through network of everyday objects through sensors that will be infused with intelligence and computing capability. These devices shall comprise of personal devices such as smart watches, digital glasses and fitness monitoring products, food items, home appliances, plant control systems, equipment monitoring and maintenance sensors and industrial robots.
MIoT offers high potential for the military to achieve significant efficiencies, improve safety and delivery of services, and produce major cost savings. It can also improve military effectiveness. Commanders can make better decisions based on real-time analysis generated by integrating data supplied by sensors and cameras mounted on the ground, and manned or unmanned vehicles or soldiers.
In fire-control systems, end-to-end deployment of sensor networks and digital analytics enable fully automated responses to real-time threats, and deliver firepower with pinpoint precision. Munitions can also be networked, allowing smart weapons to track mobile targets or be redirected in flight.
However Rapid growth in IOT devices, are offering new opportunities for hacking, identity theft, disruption, and other malicious activities affecting the people, infrastructures and economy. Some incidents have already happened, an internet-connected fridge was used as a botnet to send spam to tens of thousands of Internet users. Jeep Cherokee was sensationally remote-controlled by hackers in 2015. FDA issued an alert about a connected hospital medicine pump that could be compromised and have its dosage changed.
Military IoT networks will also need to deal with multiple threats from adversaries, including physical attacks on infrastructure, direct energy attacks, jamming of radiofrequency channels, attacks on power sources for IoT devices, electronic eavesdropping and malware. So we have to start simultaneously work on IoT security. This requires “lightweight” cryptography to secure devices that don’t have the processing capability of traditional devices. That could entail creating cryptographic tools and protocols that require less energy or less software code to execute.
Unmanned Systems
Therefore, military is experiencing major technological revolution as it entering the Robotic Age, in which warfare is conducted by unmanned and increasingly autonomous weapon systems, operating across all domains (air, sea, undersea, land, space, and cyber), and across the full spectrum of military operations. Currently ICT is enabling the next revolution in military what Chinese define as a shift from today’s “informatized warfare” to “intelligentized warfare,” Chinese national strategy is to dominate intelligentized warfare by dominating key commercial industries in AI, quantum technology, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and robotics.
Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS)
AI enhances of autonomy of unmanned Air, Ground and Underwater vehicles. It is enabling concepts like vehicle swarms in which multiple unmanned vehicles autonomously collaborate to achieve a task. For example drone swarms could overwhelm or saturate adversary air defensive systems.
LAWS as a class of weapon systems capable of both independently identifying a target and employing an onboard weapon to engage and destroy the target without manual human control. This concept of autonomy is also known as “human out of the loop” or “full autonomy.” The directive contrasts LAWS with human supervised, or “human on the loop,” autonomous weapon systems, in which operators have the ability to monitor and halt a weapon’s target engagement.
LAWS would require computer algorithms and sensor suites to classify an object as hostile, make an engagement decision, and guide a weapon to the target. This capability would enable the system to operate in communications-degraded or -denied environments where traditional systems may not be able to operate. Some analysts have noted that LAWS could additionally “allow weapons to strike military objectives more accurately and with less risk of collateral damage” or civilian casualties.
Ultimately, AI is emerging as the biggest multiplier in Military and being embedded in every military platform, weapon, Network and system, from Soldiers to the entire Military enterprise and making them smart and Intelligent. For example, AI integrated with 5G and internet of things (IoT) are enabling smart military bases, soldier healthcare, and battlefield awareness.
Looking into the future, AI is enabling the next revolution in the military to “intelligentized warfare” in which there will be AI Versus AI, we will have to attack adversary AI systems and protect our own systems.
Hypersonic Weapons
A number of countries, including the United States, Russia, and China, are developing hypersonic weapons—those that fly at speeds of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. There are two categories of hypersonic weapons: Hypersonic glide vehicles are launched from a rocket before gliding to a target. Hypersonic cruise missiles are powered by high-speed engines throughout the duration of their flight.
In contrast to ballistic missiles, which also travel at hypersonic speeds, hypersonic weapons do not follow a parabolic ballistic trajectory and can maneuver en route to their destination, making defense against them difficult. Analysts disagree about the strategic implications of hypersonic weapons. Some have identified two factors that could hold significant implications for strategic stability: (1) the weapon’s short time-of-flight, which, in turn, compresses the timeline for response, and (2) its unpredictable flight path, which could generate uncertainty about the weapon’s intended target and therefore heighten the risk of miscalculation or unintended escalation in the event of a conflict.
Directed-Energy (DE) Weapons
DOD defines directed-energy (DE) weapons as those using concentrated electromagnetic energy, rather than kinetic energy, to “incapacitate, damage, disable, or destroy enemy equipment, facilities, and/or personnel.” DE weapons could be used by ground forces in short-range air
defense (SHORAD), counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS), or counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) missions. DE weapons could offer low costs per shot and—assuming access to a sufficient power supply—nearly limitless magazines that, in contrast to existing conventional systems, could enable an efficient and effective means of defending against missile salvos or swarms of unmanned systems.
Theoretically, DE weapons could also provide options for boost-phase missile intercept, given their speed-of-light travel time; however, as in the case of hypersonic missile defense, experts disagree on the affordability, technological feasibility, and utility of this application. High-powered microwave weapons, a subset of DE weapons, could be used as a nonkinetic means of disabling electronics, communications systems, and improvised explosive devices, or as a nonlethal “heat ray” system for crowd control.
Neurocognitive warfare
Future warfare will also use more and more neuro-cognitive warfare by developing defensive and offensive capabilities to indirectly or virtually control or manipulate the minds of soldiers and commanders. These include the use of various drugs and forms of neurotechnologies such as neurofeedback, transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulation, and perhaps even implantable devices for training and performance optimization of intelligence and combat personnel. Its small size and localized effects will make it ideal for employment in urban areas.
Recent advances in neuroscience are enabling development of “neuro-cognitive weapons” such as electromagnetic, infrasonic, and light technologies to target human neural and physiological systems. Most of these findings stem from two basic forms of brain stimulation. The first, called transcranial magnetic stimulation (or TMS), uses the physics of electromagnetism to activate brain cells. How this activity influences behaviour depends on what the brain cells are important for in the first place. So, if TMS is applied to a particular part of your motor cortex then it would make your finger twitch, but if it stimulated Broca’s area then it would disrupt your ability to speak.
The second major approach, called transcranial direct current stimulation (or TDCS), works quite differently. TDCS is generally too weak to make brain cells fire – instead it alters the sensitivity of the cells, making them more or less active in response to something that stimulates them later. Both TMS and TDCS can have aftereffects lasting from minutes to hours, sometimes even days, causing changes in neurophysiology and neurochemistry. One exciting new technique, called transcranial pulsed ultrasound, theoretically allows precise stimulation of any neural region.
Brain-computer interfaces are being used to control aircraft, boats or unmanned vehicles by mind
Drugs: There are particular drugs that act upon the central and/or peripheral nervous system that can be used to 1) alter concentration and vigilance (to increase or decrease combat warfighters’ performance on various tasks), 2) alter sensation, perception and emotion (to induce feelings of fear, confusion or even amiability), and of course 3) incur profound debilitation — and death.
Bugs: There are a number of microbiological agents (“bugs”) — viruses and bacteria — that can induce a host of neurological diseases (such as encephalitis, meningitis), and effects (such as cognitive and motor manifestations).
Toxins: A variety of organic neurotoxins that are derived from cone snails, octopus, shellfish and venomous snakes (for example cobras, mambas, etc) that can be used at very low doses to disrupt neurological function to induce paralysis, illness, and even death, which make very effective “in-close” weapons against important and high profile individual targets.
These advancements could be used to create “super soldiers,” more alert, faster to react, faster to learn, less likely to binge-drink off duty, and more compliant with authority. With increased cognitive, emotional and/or behavioral capacities they might be able to more easily and capably detect threats, function under arduous conditions with less stress, and have increased sensitivity to socio-cultural and physical cues and nuances in foreign environments. They could be more effective in reducing the risk of violence.
Weaponized capabilities at the tactical level will be focused on degrading the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral characteristics of Soldiers. Military may also use drugs, microbes, toxins — and “devices as weapons,” also called neuroweapons, to affect the nervous system and modify opponents’ thoughts, feelings, senses, actions, health or — in some cases — to incur lethal consequences
Such technology could be employed through online immersive environments such as 2d Life or other electronic mediums to surreptitiously impact behavior without the knowledge of the target.
These may include PSYOPS operations through the narratives and discourses that can be rendered in traditional and various social media to affect neuro-cognitive processes of thought, emotion, decision-making and action. A neurologically-based form of propaganda and psychological operations. AI-powered propaganda machines using neuro-linguistic programming via social media to alter views and even the will to fight itself.
References and Resources also include:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R46458.pdf
