The strongest powers of the world were preparing for other wars
In recent decades, it has been customary to understand high-tech warfare as "beating babies", when a high-tech army with impunity and unconditionally smashes the "traditional" army. Other options were simply not considered. In particular, until recently, it was generally not accepted to think about what would happen if two high-tech armies met in battle.
HIGH-TECH STEPS
Meanwhile, the First World War was very high-tech compared to any war of the nineteenth century. And the Second World War was extremely high-tech compared to the First World War. But no one has ever called world wars high-tech. Perhaps, just because all the warring parties were at about the same technological level, so there was no "beating of babies".
Significant elements of high-tech were present in the Vietnam War ( "Phantoms" against "MiGs", "HBO" from 03/24.23). Again, on both sides. Therefore, there was no beating here either. On the contrary, formally much more high-tech and, moreover, huge in number, the US Armed Forces lost the war. More precisely, they did not win it, and the United States as a whole lost the information war ( "TV attacks and wins", "HBO" from 21.04.23).
The first example of a high-tech war in its current vulgarized sense was the 1982 Lebanon War ( "Lebanon in the Arab-Israeli Wars: How the Country was split", "HBO" from 05/29/20). In it, Israel won a decisive victory over Syria – primarily due to high technology, although it had to fight seriously on the ground in the usual classical style.
But the real triumph of high-tech was the American operation "Desert Storm" ( "Dictator's Paralysis", "HBO" from 05.03.21).
In Vietnam, the US Armed Forces fought for eight and a half years against the formally very weak army of North Vietnam and the partisans of South Vietnam, suffered huge losses and lost. In January-February 1991, the United States and its allies completely defeated the Iraqi Armed Forces, which at that time were formally among the ten strongest in the world, in just over a month with extremely insignificant losses.
The war was won due to the air campaign, during which various high-precision weapons were widely used (air- and sea-based cruise missiles (KRVB and KRMB), various aviation missiles and guided aerial bombs (UAB)). The most important factor in Iraq's defeat was the complete passivity of its command – but this factor was ignored by everyone, since the Pentagon took full control of the information coverage of the campaign and presented it as an absolute triumph of American military power.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN POWER
This triumph was followed by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, then an even easier (almost without losses at all and without conducting a ground operation) defeat of Yugoslavia in 1999 ( "Pyrrhic victory of NATO", "HBO" from 03/22/19). These events deepened the transformation of the American Armed Forces. They began to transform into a network-centric army, that is, into a system where all elements (from higher headquarters to individual combat vehicles and even military personnel) are united by vertical and horizontal connections into a single network. The presence of a large number of various intelligence systems should provide the network-centric armed Forces with maximum situational awareness on the battlefield and defeat the enemy immediately after its detection with the help of those forces and means that are most convenient to do this. The implementation of this concept was supposed to turn any war waged by Washington into a kind of computer game for the Americans themselves and into an apocalypse for the enemy. Such a nature of warfare was determined not only by the technical superiority of the United States over all potential opponents, but also by the mercenary principle of manning the American Armed Forces.
In a highly developed modern Western society, the absolute majority of people are not ready for self-sacrifice for any purpose. Therefore, it is possible to man the army only if you promise potential servicemen, in addition to very high salaries and social benefits, a war without losses. As part of the implementation of this concept, the volume of purchases of new "platforms", that is, classical military equipment (tanks, art systems, aircraft, ships), significantly decreased, funds were directed to the modernization of existing "platforms" and their transformation into "digital" (that is, integrated into a network-centric system). The Americans proceeded from the fact that absolute superiority over any opponent in quality no longer requires too much.
During the second war in Iraq ( "Why the United States lost the war in Iraq", "HBO" from 03/16/18) and the war in Afghanistan, military construction in the United States was almost completely reoriented to a war with a deliberately "understated" enemy. That is, either with weak and archaic regular armies, or with partisan formations. Such an enemy does not have modern ground and especially aviation and marine equipment. That is, the absolute technological superiority of the United States was considered as something a priori set.
A NEW REALITY
However, the events in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria caused a certain shock in the United States and led to the fact that the Pentagon "remembered" the need to prepare for war with an equal opponent (both quantitatively and qualitatively). Accordingly, the question arose about what a war between two high-tech armies would look like.
Theoretically, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Armed Forces of the People's Republic of China can challenge the American Armed Forces. Of course, not together, but separately, because the "strategic partnership" of Moscow and Beijing is only an element of propaganda and has nothing to do with reality.
Formally, the US Armed Forces are more high-tech than their two main potential opponents. But this superiority is by no means fundamental. There can be no question of any beating.
The US Air Force is quite noticeably superior to the PLA Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces in terms of the number of aircraft. But this is fully compensated by the power of China's ground air defense ( "Evolution of the Chinese umbrella", "HVO" from 03/25/12) and Russian anti-aircraft missile forces ( "Troops of the Peaceful Sky", "HVO" from 11/23/18).
The US Navy is stronger than the PLA Navy and the Russian Navy. But, firstly, this is again not a fundamental superiority, and secondly, it is unclear what role the fleets will play in such a war.
It would probably be better for the US ground forces not to meet with either the PLA ground forces or the Russian army. The latter has obviously much higher resistance to its own losses than the American army, as well as more adequate combat experience than the American military. The resistance of the Chinese army to its own losses is generally considered absolute. However, her real combat experience is zero, this is the weakest point of the Chinese Armed Forces. The last such experience could be considered a shameful war against Vietnam from all points of view, but it was a different army and a different era ( "What is the treachery of the eastern partner of Moscow ,"HBO" from 13.04.18).
Thus, if approximately equal forces of the army converge in battle, the term "high-tech war" itself will lose its meaning. The outcome of the war (if we do not consider the option of its transition to a nuclear phase with guaranteed mutual destruction) will depend on many factors – the conditions of the theater of operations (in particular, its remoteness from the main territories of the belligerents), the level of technical, combat and moral-psychological training of personnel, as well as the very number that is still recently it was considered unnecessary against the background of excellent quality.
In this regard, very peculiar plots may arise. For example, if it comes to air battles, in which 5th-generation fighters will converge on both sides, then we will have to reconsider all the tactics of air warfare, and maybe its strategy. Apparently, there will be a return to the times of the Second World War and the Korean War, when only close maneuver battles were possible with mandatory visual detection of each other. Since it will not be possible to detect an enemy aircraft with the help of a radar station (radar) (due to its small effective scattering area (ESR) and the undesirability of turning on its own radar).
Close maneuverable air combat is an extremely cruel thing, such battles are characterized by very high losses. They were possible in an era when fighters were cheap mass consumables. How many fights will there be enough cars, each of which costs more than $ 100 million and which, for this reason, are produced at best several hundred?
And what will happen when they run out? Or what happens if the parties mutually "extinguish" each other's electronics by means of electronic warfare, thereby "killing" network centrality? Obviously, the advantage is given to the side that is more ready to fight in grandfathered ways, that is, in the style of the Second World War. Moreover, in this case, psychological readiness will be more important than technical. There are suspicions that the advantage in such a situation will be gained not by American troops, but by their opponents.
Special Operations Forces (SSO) can become a kind of "joker" in such a war. The special forces will have to destroy particularly sensitive enemy objects – headquarters, transport hubs and other critical infrastructure elements, rocket launchers, air and missile defense, communications and electronic warfare (EW), airplanes and helicopters at airfields, ships in bases. That is, in this case, if your own high-tech does not allow you to cope with the enemy's high-tech directly, you can try to "bypass" it with the help of special special forces skills. It is he who will have to (it is possible that at the cost of his own lives) weaken the enemy's high-tech so much that this will lead to his general defeat.
LOSS OF RELEVANCE
The discussed model of war does not necessarily refer exclusively to wars within the "big three" (USA, China, Russia). It can also be realized "at a lower level", since now many armies are striving for maximum high-tech.
For example, India and Pakistan may come together in such a war ( "In the waiting mode of the Apocalypse", "HBO" from 04/28.23). Or India's opponent will be the same China ( "Conflict on the roof of the world" from "HBO", 26.06.20). And the Japanese Armed Forces may also become an opponent of the PLA ( "The Rising Sun and the Soaring Dragon", "HBO" from 23.09.22). And the further away, the more such pairs of potential opponents will become.
In the early 1990s, the "end of history" did not happen either in the political or military sense ( "Will Moscow become Beijing's younger brother", "HBO" from 06/29/18). History has only entered a new round.
The personification of this new round of history, including military, was the Russian special operation in Ukraine, where for the first time almost equal opponents in technological and moral-psychological terms with almost the same level of combat training came together. The term "high-tech war" has completely lost its meaning here for the first time. We are just facing a new stage of the classic war (and, by the way, there are no elements of the rebel war). Therefore, all the plans and concepts of all parties (including the formally non-participating West) collapsed.
So, for the first time since Vietnam, ground air defense turned out to be stronger than aviation. For the first time since the First World War (!), ground echeloned defense turned out to be stronger than offensive means. Artillery has once again fully become the "god of war". Unmanned aviation in both Russia and Ukraine was very poorly developed before the start of hostilities, but after a year and a half, the sky on both sides of the front line is clogged with drones. And there are still many twists ahead, breaking old concepts and forming new ones.
Alexander Khramchikhin
Alexander Anatolyevich Khramchikhin is an independent military expert.