Russia must eliminate the backlog in a number of areas
The conduct of a special military operation has given a powerful accelerating impetus to the reformatting of the world order and the entire system of international relations. A total hybrid war has been declared against us, covering all spheres of the country's life. The bitterness of our enemies and their determination to erase Russia from the political map of the world has exceeded all limits.
The scale of the proxy war in Ukraine is expanding. Hotbeds of proxy wars are being prepared in Transnistria (with the participation of Moldova and Romania), in Belarus (with the participation of Poland and the Baltic states), provocations are being prepared against the Kaliningrad region. Large-scale NATO military exercises are being held in Europe.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND THE STATUS OF A GREAT POWER
Along with the importance of the metered use of military force, ITS demonstrated the increasing role of other factors: economic, scientific, technical and informational. The priority of the scientific and technical sphere in ensuring national and international security is also emphasized by the next, fifth technological order experienced by the world (1985-2035), based on breakthrough information technologies, artificial intelligence, network structures, genetic engineering, biotechnologies, new types of energy and materials. It is important for Russia to maintain and strengthen its positions in all areas of the transformation of the world order.
In general, the world order represents the norms of the international legal system aimed at regulating international public relations, the result of creation, not natural evolution in the world.
Today, the transformation of the world order is accompanied by the emergence of new challenges and threats, the response to which leads to powerful geopolitical shifts. New development centers are being formed in the regions, more and more actively defending national interests, protecting their sovereignty, the right to their own path of development. Such processes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America create objective conditions for purposeful activity to form a new world order as a more flexible and stable system of security and cooperation, adequate to current challenges, based on international law and respect for each other's interests. The formation of a new world order entails the transformation of the categories of geopolitics, gives powerful impulses to the development of the technosphere and accelerates the change of technological patterns.
For the United States and NATO, it has become obvious that there is a need to change the strategies of conducting primarily counter-terrorism wars against an enemy with a low level of development of the military technosphere and readiness for high-tech and high-intensity conflicts with an equal rival. In the new format of military operations, intensive exchanges of strikes with precision weapons with qualitatively new requirements for exploration, recovery and replenishment of resources are likely to take place.
In the context of a global hybrid war, confrontation in the information sphere will become a key element of the strategies of Russia, China and the United States. Success will also depend on the ability of each of the States and coalitions to adjust the traditional arms race with the help of advanced military technologies.
UNITED STATES
The United States proceeds from the fact that leadership in military technologies should play a decisive role in the confrontation, on the rational choice of which the success of the war on the high-tech battlefield will depend. The American Center for Strategic International Studies CSIS in a new report has identified seven technologies that can play a decisive role in the fight against an almost equal opponent (Seven Critical Technologies for Winning the Next War, April 2023).
Three of them are "sprint" technologies in which the United States should aggressively move forward: quantum sensing and computing, biotechnology and secure duplicated communication networks. The other four are "follow-up" technologies: high-performance batteries, artificial intelligence, machine learning, space sensors and robotics.
CSIS analysts claim that the rejection of any of these technologies can be a decisive factor in victory or defeat. The "Joint Concept of Competition" developed by the Pentagon in February provides for focusing efforts on such areas as intelligence, hybrid wars, conflict competition, which will allow preparing for the realities of high-tech confrontation and potential conflicts in the future.
For a future war, the Americans are considering two possible strategies: the strategy of a "slow-smoldering conflict" and the strategy of a "hot explosion". An example of a slowly smoldering conflict is the situation around Taiwan, where China is not yet betting on the forceful seizure of the island, but resorting to a hybrid strategy of slow coercion. Beijing seeks to put pressure on Taiwan's power institutions, to support local politicians who advocate reunification with China. The tactics of "driving a wedge" between Taiwan and the United States may also be effective. If successful, Beijing will have the opportunity to promise Taiwan economic stability in exchange for reunification within the framework of the "two systems – one China" concept.
The "hot blast" strategy is based on the desire for complete victory on the battlefield, and as quickly as possible – before the United States can intervene in the situation. This form of war includes the overwhelming ability to accurately defeat, the seizure of communications, the application of decapitating strikes along with disguised preparations for combat.
As part of the global hybrid war, Washington continues to supply arms to Taiwan. At the same time, the administration of Joseph Biden does not seem to realize that by acting in this way in Ukraine and Taiwan, the United States is intensifying the confrontation with the two great powers, and only naive optimists believe that the United States can win.
Each of the possible strategies will require the United States to develop a military technosphere. In the high-tech arms race, the Pentagon has already put into effect the "Third Offset Strategy" and the "Defense Innovation Initiative". Their goal is stated to preserve America's military-technical superiority over China and Russia in the XXI century. The United States intends to achieve this by making extensive use of the latest technologies and intelligent solutions, as well as improving the concepts of the use of forces and means at all levels and strengthening military-technical ties with NATO and Japan. Back in 2003, the US Congress appealed to military-industrial corporations with a demand to urgently begin the development of unmanned technologies. This allowed the Americans to get ahead in equipping their armed forces and the civilian sector with air and sea drones.
The Pentagon assumes that new conflicts will require highly mobile expeditionary forces and a stable communication system using space, ground and underwater means to create a mesh network of communications. Alternatives to GPS systems are also needed for targeting long–range strike weapons - in case GPS fails. At the same time, the communication should ensure the safe exchange of data between special forces scattered over a vast geographical space.
In the Battle of the Pacific, autonomous air and sea–based means may be required to provide supplies - from underwater resupply systems to marine drones and UAVs as barrage ammunition.
Stealth technologies that allow long-range strikes are likely to become another element of the military technosphere. Submarines, long-range bombers and hypersonic vehicles should provide a decisive advantage in high-level conflicts. At the same time, the importance of stable communication will increase, since the parties to the conflict will seek to disrupt communication in the cyber and electromagnetic sphere. Underwater pipelines, cables and space objects will be under threat.
China
Beijing is striving to gain global innovation leadership, surpassing the United States and Europe in the field of high-tech products, including in the field of artificial intelligence, hypersonic systems, powerful batteries.
The leading state in the "battery war" will not only control the electric vehicle market, but also create thousands of jobs, manage the future of mobility and determine the country's ability to switch to more environmentally friendly forms of energy. Since 2015, China has started work on batteries in order to take a dominant place in the market as part of a key national research and development program for new energy vehicles. A clear goal has been set: to monopolize the market of key materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel; to invest in their extraction; to build factories for the production of batteries.
Cyberspace is becoming a new theater of military operations for the PLA in accordance with the concept of multi-sphere operations with the active use of cyber weapons, robotic and autonomous systems. Combat operations in this scenario unfold in all environments, and with high intensity, which implies processing large amounts of information in the shortest possible time for making adequate management decisions.
Due to the increasing role of digital technologies in the PLA, a new type of Strategic Support Force has been formed. Their main task is to ensure total control over the information space. Beijing is implementing the cyber initiative "Plan for the Development of a new Generation of Artificial Intelligence," where AI is seen as a key transformative technology of economic and military dominance in the future.
USA AND INDIA
In February 2023, Washington and Delhi launched a joint "Critical and Emerging Technologies Initiative" (iCET). It provides for the expansion of cooperation in the field of critical technologies – biotechnologies, advanced materials, processing of rare earth elements, etc. At the same time, Washington expects to gradually reduce the level of India's cooperation with Russia, China, the DPRK, and Iran.
American-Indian cooperation is planned in the following areas:
– development of a roadmap for accelerating technological cooperation between the two countries, in particular for the joint development of jet engines (the US government has already received an application from General Electric for joint production of engines with India that can be installed on aircraft) and the production of ammunition;
– strengthening long-term cooperation in the field of operational use of security systems and intelligence surveillance at sea;
– launch of an "innovation bridge" that will connect American and Indian defense startups aimed at finding new business models in the civil and military sectors.
Taking into account the situation around Taiwan as a leading semiconductor manufacturer, the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) have announced plans to form a task force in the private sector that will strengthen cooperation between countries in the global semiconductor ecosystem.
Such cooperation may become an important factor aimed at reducing India's interest in Russian weapons systems, which have been in demand in New Delhi for decades. At the same time, India has previously tried to close the defense sector to the domestic market and encourage domestic manufacturers to create their own models of weapons.
CONCLUSIONS FOR RUSSIA
The recently adopted large-scale decisions on the development of the Armed Forces of Russia as the sole guarantor of our country's independence are based on the understanding of the impossibility of transforming the system of global politics only based on a system of economic incentives and "soft power".
Scientific-technical and military-power tools are relatively quickly legalized in the historical perspective as instruments of interstate (and in the future – and intersystem, interblock) geo-economic confrontation. When implementing plans of vital, existential importance for Russia, the main emphasis should be given to the personnel problem. The decision to include "Hybrid Warfare" courses in the training programs of the military, politicians, and diplomats is very timely.
Against the background of our leadership in hypersonic, marine autonomous strategic systems and some other technologies, decisions have recently been announced on the accelerated development and production of unmanned aerial vehicles in Russia, on the creation of a line of modern aircraft engines for UAVs and small aircraft, on reaching the forefront of domestic navigation and reconnaissance aerospace complexes, engines and weapons of aircraft and electronic warfare systems. In this context, the decision to relocate the world-famous Air Force Academy to the capital may be logical. Zhukovsky as a forge of engineering and technical personnel for domestic aviation.
Such reforms give impetus to overcoming the lag in technological development in a number of areas. We need to compensate for the lost time, otherwise we will be crushed and pulled apart. The leaders of the USSR and Russia warned about such a prospect at different times.
Joseph Stalin declared on February 4, 1931: "We are 50-100 years behind the advanced countries. We have to run this distance in 10 years. Either we do it, or we will be crushed." And Vladimir Putin said about the threat of "pulling Russia apart" using the Ukrainian crisis by our geopolitical opponents in an interview on December 25, 2022.
For Russia, technological development has taken on a truly existential significance. Taking into account the material connectedness of the modern world, an important factor is the preservation of Russia within the framework of globalization processes by restoring ties with Europe, developing relations with the SCO and BRICS states, friendly states of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America.
Alexander Bartosh
Alexander Alexandrovich Bartosh – corresponding member of the Academy of Military Sciences, expert of the League of Military Diplomats; Anatoly Grigoryevich Letyago – Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences.
