futurewar: Highlights from RAeS

[madd0c0t0r2]

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/highli ... es-summit/

It's doing the rounds as the source for the gaurdian article about the drone simulation that learned killing its commander was the best way to ensure an uninterrupted mission.
BUT there is a lot of interesting stuff in that blog post.

1) the theme of concentration vs dispersal in airfields, tactics, logistics ect - all the way out to rapid civilian readoption methods

1b) the recognition that a lot of the distributed assets (like anonymous cyber-warfaring Russia) are not obedient to the state. It's getting towards a scifi story where the guns refuse to shoot if they think its unjustified, or troops vote on if they want to stay on the same side. There's still a quiet sense of unease within the UK military over Iraq. At least one vet I know has said he'd like to see Tony Blair trialled for war crimes. He believed that at the time, but still went when ordered.

2) the idea that in a lot of elements, civilian tech and open source tech has fast outstripped the military. I'm not sure if that's a reflection of misplaced research funding, typical outside of a cold war funding situation, or something new related to how tech has shifted away from cold war ICBM mega projects.

3) Hypersonics seem to be the focus of research in China, and China is discussed much more as a peer threat then Russia. The Ukraine war is seen a test bed for operations and logistics. There is zero threat felt from Russia over it.