Lin Dong, Associate Professor of National Defense University： Re-examining the new military revolution in the world
For readers who are slightly familiar with the military, "new military revolution" is a familiar phrase, and new military revolution is in full swing in many countries. It has been almost 20 years since the concept of "new military revolution" was put forward and put into practice. What is its effect? What is the future development prospect? China Youth Daily reporter interviewed Lin Dong, an associate professor of National Defense University.
Reporter: When and who initiated the new military revolution, and in what context did it begin?
Lin Dong: The 20th century is a century in which military revolution continues to take place. Today, the global new military revolution we are carrying out is relative to the military engineering revolution characterized by mechanization basically completed during the Second World War, and it is marked by informationization.
This change was first initiated by the US military, which originated from the contest with the China army and rose from the confrontation with the Soviet army. The early motivation was the Korean War, and then the Vietnam War. The US military deeply reflected on these two unsuccessful wars. Finally, tactically, it concluded that the US mechanized troops were strong in firepower, assault and maneuver, but weak in "melee", "night fighting" and sudden attacks during the March, and it was also unsuccessful to engage in "logistics strangulation war".
Reporter: the us military began to change for this?
Lin Dong: Yes, the US military began to implement the military sensing revolution in the 1950s, and later it developed into satellite reconnaissance and high-altitude UAV reconnaissance. Until the drastic changes in Eastern Europe occurred in the late 1980s, the US military quickly turned to general local conventional warfare, and prepared to turn the three major achievements in dealing with the Soviet nuclear war into the application of conventional warfare. First, the GPS system used to correct the time difference for intercontinental nuclear missiles flying across time zones was turned to provide navigation and positioning for various conventional mobile weapons and equipment; Second, the internet, a computer communication network established to resist the nuclear destruction of the Soviet Union, has been transferred to joint operations, which has become the basis of digital troops and network-centric warfare; Third, the Star Wars plan, which was prepared to break through with the Soviet Union, laid the foundation for the construction of the missile defense system.
It was also during this period that Marshall, director of the Net Assessment Office of the US Department of Defense, put forward the concept of "new military revolution".
Reporter: That is to say, the US military has explored the new military revolution before, and then it has an official name?
Lin Dong: It’s like this. In 1994, the then Secretary of Defense of the United States, Perry, formally put forward a comprehensive view of military reform based on the achievements of the military technology revolution, and named it the military affairs revolution. By the end of 1990s, after the Bush administration came to power, Rumsfeld, in combination with the needs of the "9.11" anti-terrorism war, re-positioned military reform as military transformation, trying to fully meet the needs of information development in the military establishment system, operational system and operational methods, and surpassing information in the development of weapons and technology, and opening up a broader world of military reform.
Reporter: Has the concept of new military revolution been recognized by other countries as soon as it was put forward?
Lin Dong: No, this concept was accepted late by other countries. Since 1980s, when people talk about the new military revolution, they mostly use the word high-tech war. It was not until the Gulf War in 1991 that the US military defeated hundreds of thousands of mechanized troops in Iraq with hundreds of casualties. Everyone was shocked and realized that a revolutionary military revolution had arrived.
Reporter: What was the goal of the early new military revolution?
Lin Dong: In the early days, the US military did not expect a historic leap forward, so the initial goal was not high. First, it was to save money. It was required that the new military revolution would enable the US military to rely on high technology to have a superior combat capability with about 300,000 troops. Second, fewer people are killed. Another important indicator of the new military reform proposed by the US military is that it can make the US military lose less than 10,000 people in conventional wars.
Although these two goals were achieved in the Gulf War, the US military at that time did not dare to take them lightly. However, the subsequent wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, without exception, the battlefield situation was one-sided with the US military. The number of combat troops sent by the US military has been reduced to tens of thousands, and even there has been a record of zero casualties in a war, and the US military has become ambitious.
Reporter: So far, has the new military revolution of the US military gone smoothly? Have all the goals been achieved?
Lin Dong: After Rumsfeld took charge of the US military command, he made every effort to promote military transformation, so in the middle of the new military transformation, he launched a brand-new strategic goal: First, to achieve a global strike, and the US military can strike any corner of the earth with one hour of emergency preparation; The second is to realize the integration of the army, integrated operations and integrated formation.
As a result, the integration construction encountered setbacks. First of all, Rumsfeld’s conflict with various services broke out. Rumsfeld made great efforts to promote joint operations and drastically weakened the position of the service headquarters. As a result, Rumsfeld was boycotted. However, Rumsfeld had no intention of quitting, and several generals of the army and navy were dismissed. As a result, he ended up being cornered by various services.
Secondly, there are serious differences of opinion among the services on the development direction of the new military revolution, and the Air Force put forward the idea of denying joint operations. The US Air Force believes that the assault stage of modern warfare is mainly air strikes, and the air combat forces of the navy and the army should all be under the command of the air force, and the implementation of coordinated assault with the air force as the main content of winning the war. The navy should become the transportation captain, and the army and the marine corps mainly occupy the city after the completion of the main air assault, and then go into the city to catch prisoners, and then fight terrorism and maintain stability.
This argument caused a great division and controversy among the US military services, which is still going on today. At present, the US military’s huge information system, national and theater missile defense systems are all disturbed by differences among various services, and their goals are vague and hesitant.
Reporter: Mr. Lin, the world’s new military revolution has been going on for nearly 20 years. Some people think that it is the sprint stage of the new military revolution, but in your new book "Beyond the military service era-systematic scientific thinking about the new military revolution", you suggest that the new military revolution is undergoing a spiral development process. What does this mean?
Lin Dong: At present, some people think that the new military revolution has formed a framework and entered a substantial leap stage. However, this is not the case. For example, the US military, as the leader of the new military revolution in the world, has carried out several core projects with budgets of trillions of dollars, such as GIG system of global information grid, NMD system of national missile defense, TMD system of theater missile defense, etc., thinking that they can win the all-round victory of the new military revolution with one effort, but all of them are frustrated and faced with huge strategic risks. At the same time, Rumsfeld, the leader of the new military revolution in the United States and former defense secretary, also resigned because of the quagmire of the Iraq war, and his radical military transformation policy was boycotted by all services of the US military.
The great exposure of the new military revolution in the west, led by the US military, shows a huge deviation in the theoretical guidance of military revolution, which comes from people’s stagnation in mechanized thinking to solve the information problem. Therefore, I think that the new military revolution in the west led by the United States is entering an adjustment period, and everyone’s understanding of the new military revolution in the world is also entering a gray area, which requires a breakthrough in thought and theory.
Reporter: In your book, you propose to "transcend the military service era". Does it mean that the future army will no longer be divided into land, sea and air forces, so how to organize the future army?
Lin Dong: The establishment system of the army is determined by the way of fighting.
In the mechanized era, the army fights according to the division of natural geographical space, so it is necessary to divide the army, navy and air force. The army controls the land, the navy controls the sea and the air force controls the air, each of which has its own symmetrical combat targets and fights independently of each other.
However, since the late World War II, there has been a phenomenon of cross-growth of services, and the cross-development of services has moved towards a super-service structure, and each service has tried to develop into a big army that includes the forces of other services.
Up to now, all services have broken the boundaries of services and extended to other battlefields. The air force can fight naval battles and land battles, the army has planes and surface ships, and the navy is decathlon, thus breaking the pattern of monopolizing land battles, naval battles and air battles respectively, and also bringing about the problems of repeated development of service combat capabilities and serious waste of military resources.
In order to solve the problem of the expansion of various services, the military all over the world invariably put forward the strategic problems of developing joint operations, sharing operational resources and dividing the military organizational system for the second time.
At present, there are two opinions on reforming the military service system. One is that the German army proposed to abolish the organizational system of the three armed forces and set up three major services, namely, the long-range strike force, the stable operation force and the information support force. Another view is to keep the current service establishment, but make the service units modular and can be reorganized with other service units, and at the same time add a horizontal organization to form three networks of reconnaissance, strike and maneuver, and all service units participate in the actions of these three networks.
Now it seems that the US military was adapted according to the second plan.
Reporter: When do you think the U.S. military will realize informationization, and where is the direction of change after informationization?
Lin Dong: According to the three indicators of global strike, global arrival and global surveillance proposed by the US military, its information transformation will be basically completed around 2025.
At that time, the focus of the US military’s reform will also shift. At present, these shifting directions have been used as new concept weapons in experimental research. First, the material revolution, mainly relying on nanotechnology to build micro-weapons. The second is the power revolution to solve the problem of high energy consumption. The third is the firepower revolution. Nowadays, the US military is designing a network fire system, a 64-tube vertical firing artillery array, which does not need a steel shell, and the ammunition fired in one minute can catch up with half of the current battalion. Fourth, laser weapons enter the battlefield and use high-energy lasers to destroy incoming enemy missiles, thus fundamentally solving the missile defense problem. The fifth is the flexible technology revolution, which has created humanoid flying robots that can fly and walk. With the help of intelligent technology, soldiers can fly spaceships that can reach the moon and catch turtles in the sea, spraying inexhaustible lasers and galloping between heaven and earth. (China Youth Daily Xuehong Li)
Editor: Cao Jin