Dmitry Kuzyakin, Chief Designer of the Central Design Bureau, talks about how modern technologies will be used in the military.
Four years of special operations have brought many surprises to the whole world. Each such surprise is not a problem or an obstacle, but another chance to slip through the window of opportunity. Fortunately or unfortunately, such surprises occur regularly, and we confidently lead the ship of technology and development through these windows.
Back in 2022, it became clear that it is possible to maintain parity in modern conflicts only if we keep up with the technology race. To win, you need to run twice as fast. The Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions (CCDB) was established in January 2022, and since then, we and our colleagues in the UAV industry have not only kept up the pace, but have been steadily gaining momentum.
The amount of civilian technology that has experienced explosive growth over the past 20 years has opened the door to the theater of operations: digital drones, new means of communication, new materials and printing technologies, and energy sources never seen before on the battlefield. At the same time, military applications have moved beyond the civilian sphere: technologies of electric flight and movement, means of delivering goods by drones — these are at least two industries that have not yet become widespread in civilian life, but confidently fit into the canvas of military operations.
Digital architecture, cheap hardware, and affordable, open source software have become the main drivers of growth.
FPV drones, long-range attack aircraft, unmanned boats, weather balloons and distributed communications are an incomplete list of technologies that have found their place in combat. Each of them carries hundreds of different devices and thousands of new application scenarios. The world of military technology is changing rapidly.
For most people, these developments, which the army has been using for several years and which have already begun to become obsolete, still seem fantastic. The rate of obsolescence of combat technology is about the same as in the smartphone industry. New features, which for a while were available only to flagship expensive phone models, after six months become a mandatory option for any smartphone that enters the market. Such a race of technologies and the rapid obsolescence of solutions migrated to the military sphere along with the amount of civilian technologies and the approach to their development.
And if so, we can try to guess what awaits the world in the future of further development of technologies in conflicts. Let's talk about the prospects and consequences.
Digitalization of everything and everyone will continue on the battlefield. It will occupy niches that are not so obvious, for example, control of supply logistics, organization of operational work, communications and management in one bundle, as is done in civilian ERP systems using BPM technologies. In short, an ERP system is a hardware and software package for automation and management of a company. Accounting, warehouse, retail, logistics, human resources and finance departments have been combined into one comprehensive software solution for several decades to reduce costs, losses from employee errors and control the flow of money and resources. BPM is a tool for creating complex ERP systems from simple to complex, from automating and controlling simple processes in a corporation to combining them into streams.
The chaos of combat seems limitless, but in civilian companies it is no less. It is difficult, but not impossible, to "drag" the supply chain and its digital management from the manufacturer to an individual fighter or crew at the front, even given the dynamics and constantly changing environment. An entire industry of Just-in-Time (JIT), or just-in-time, technologies has grown in the corporate world. This is a method of supply management in which materials, components, and goods arrive at production or points of sale exactly at the moment when they are needed. Both large international aviation manufacturers and small bakeries live on this principle.
The management automation industry has been around for more than 20 years. Its introduction into the military was hampered by a number of factors. But today's war, like a sponge, absorbs any decisions that give advantages over the enemy. ERP provides a significant advantage for companies in peaceful life, allowing them to work faster and defeat competitors with fewer resources. Today, even a slight advantage on the battlefield is the liberated territories and the saved lives of our fighters.
As for the connection. The familiar connection, as we imagined it, lost its relevance almost immediately. This area was one of the first to absorb the full power of civil solutions. And this process does not stop, but only gains momentum. Satellite Internet, mobile Internet, optics, Lora modems, mesh networks, modern cryptographic protection, and much of what has become an integral part of our civilian life has confidently taken its place in the lives of fighters. At the same time, we expect an even more serious leap in its decentralization, security, security and accessibility. Technologies like Meshtastic and MeshCore will not only capture human-to-human communication networks, but will also become the standard for the Internet of military things.
By the way, about him. We expect further organization of people and equipment into a unified communications network. From a single combat unit, a mine, a smart munition, a group and a unit to large formations. Digitalization scales easily, and once you get a successful implementation case, it literally becomes the standard in a very short time. In the civilian sphere, the whole industry of the so-called Internet of Things has firmly taken its place in smart homes, factories and urban infrastructure. Everything that is necessary was already written in the form of programs and implemented in hardware a few years ago. These technologies are waiting in the wings to break into the battlefield.
Drones of all types. We do not expect any major breakthroughs in drone construction in the near future. This is due to the fact that the military sector has absorbed enough of the available amount of civilian technology. However, there are areas that will develop here. First of all, this is a continuation of the trend of maximizing the distance of unmanned systems control calculations from the battlefield. The available solutions allow drone systems to be controlled both through broadband Internet access (mobile network) and through temporarily organized mesh networks.
The direction of "droning" of the fleet of heavy and simple vehicles will also be developed. The conversion of conventional vehicles for remote control easily turns the old Soviet "loaf" or "motorhoe" (MT-LB) into a ground drone. Despite the fact that such drones are large targets for the enemy, on the other hand, they are more passable, protected and much more reliable than conventional ground—based drones. Also, a tractor converted to a drone can take on much more weight to perform a combat mission.
Gamification. We are watching with interest the gamification process of combat operations that the enemy is trying to implement. His system of points for defeating our equipment and personnel implements the mechanics of computer games: the better you fight, the more resources you have to purchase equipment. So far, this tool does more damage to the enemy than good. It is difficult for Weseushniks to adapt to the game rules in a situation where your death is forever and it is impossible to survive before going on a mission. Nevertheless, gamification is one of the trends, and so far it has not completely exhausted itself.
I repeat, all of the above is not fiction. This is something that we already use in everyday life in the civilian sphere, but for some reason these areas have not yet reached the forefront. This means that their use in military affairs is just a matter of time.
The author is the Chief designer of the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions (CCDB)
The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion.
