apas-95:

Also, on the topic of autonomous weapons platforms: you really shouldn’t be fighting them at all, even in an outright conflict.

Unmanned ground vehicles are a part of the current military pivot, away from counter-terrorism and occupation peacekeeping, towards great-power conflict. They shine in the role they’re designed for: high-intensity peer-on-peer conflict, between the armies of two superpowers. Here, they provide extra carrying capacity for more advanced weapons, like loitering munitions, and can even form a base of fire. They can move casualties in areas where airspace is contested, and can provide organic integration of heavy weaponry, like rocket artillery, heavy machine guns, and anti-tank missiles.

While the expectation might be that these somewhat-autonomous weapons might be equally as devastating for anti-insurgency roles, looks can be deceiving. We can imagine a nightmare scenario, of some nigh-bulletproof mini-tank rolling down our street and gunning us down, shrugging off attacks that would kill a squad of infantry - and that could be reality, if we actually tried fighting these things directly. However, that’s not how guerrilla warfare actually works.

A drone is the prototypical autonomous weapon system, and has shown itself to be a devastating tool against insurgencies. Though, it’s arguably harder to make an unmanned aircraft than it is to strap a machine gun to an RC car, so why did the former already take off decades ago? Well, a drone requires precisely one person less than a regular aircraft - the pilot. It’s still flown by a pilot, sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in Montana, but you don’t need them at some dusty FOB hiding from mortar attacks, or on an expensive aircraft carrier. The rest of the crew required on base to keep a drone running are already necessary to keep a regular jet running.

An unmanned ground vehicle, on the other hand - if used to replace infantry, like in our imagined scenario - drastically increases the amount of people required, it just shifts those people away from the very front lines. This means mechanics and engineers on base, more logistical needs, meaning bigger supply lines, and, at the end of the day, someone still at the base, controlling it. In peer conflict, this isn’t an issue: the military’s expecting to be flying C-5 Super Galaxies full of containers to their side of the front; and are even developing concepts for suborbital rocket cargo, shipping plane-loads of containers to their beachheads. However, this extra logistical weight makes them a great weak-point for an insurgency.

The basic maxim of guerrilla warfare is that the guerrilla fighter gets to pick their battles, and they only pick the battles they can win. When the enemy amasses tanks and helicopters, the guerrilla fighter declines to fight. If robots are rolling down city streets, the guerrillas are a hundred kilometers away, sabotaging trucks filled with replacement parts. If the military enforces its rule from the safety of its bunkers, the guerrillas blow up their radio towers. When it’s been months since the last tanker full of diesel managed to make it into the region, the autonomous weapons platforms won’t be leaving base unless they’re being pushed.

A clear view of how guerrilla warfare actually works - rather than the view most people have, influenced by TV shows of plucky rebels outsmarting tanks and crimethinc infographics of kids throwing paint onto cameras - is necessary, to understand these systems, and how they can be effectively opposed.