Drones make Army high-tech machine
Small NZ has ‘no money, so we’ve got to think’ — document
Spy drones will be as common as machineguns and engineers may fight alongside killer robots, according to an Army paper which explores how Kiwi soldiers will operate in future wars. The remarkable document outlines how the Army’s land and special forces must evolve over the next 18 years. New Zealand has to incorporate drones, satellites, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data into its arsenal, while keeping its ability to win close combat battles against ever-evolving foes.
Its paper says the Army must excel as a light fighting force, with no budget for powerful armour or heavy fire-power, and be known for its highly trained and motivated soldiers who are “ethical, physically tough and well-equipped”, while keeping close ties to Five Eyes intelligence allies.
The 94-page Future Land Operating Concept 2035: Integrated Land Missions (FLOC 35) has been the talk of the Army since it was released last year.
Penned by Army general staff, the “aspirational document” quotes Napoleon, Erwin Rommel, James Joyce, Thucydides and Ernest Rutherford while citing Trotsky battles, Ukrainian rebel tactics and military successes in Mali, Afghanistan and Timor Leste.
It predicts that New Zealand’s greatest risks will continue to be border control and illegal resource exploitation, including unlawful fishing, along with natural and human disasters.
Terrorism in the Australia and South Pacific region will continue to be a “highly localised, small-scale but high-profile threat”.
By 2030 there will be 41 mega cities, with populations over 10 million, and many in the Indian and Pacific regions, while social media and “fake news” will help create adversaries, with algorithms increasingly dictating what information individuals consume, which creates “echo chambers” that can “harden people’s ideas and promote populist politics and intolerance”, the paper states.
New Zealand’s military needs to adapt to modern conflict where “adversaries have adopted hybrid warfare” and blend conventional and irregular methods with information and cyber tactics.
“To do so, they form coalitions of convenience between states, extremists and criminals, create proxies, or employ their own special forces to work in the ‘grey zone’ just below the escalation threshold.”
More lethal and autonomous future weapons will not be limited to traditional militaries, it warns, with “nonstate actors becoming increasingly technologically enabled as well”.
New Zealand is a small nation with a comparatively tiny military budget. In the great tradition of its “Number 8 Wire” mentality, the document even quotes Kiwi physicist Ernest Rutherford’s line of, “We’ve got no money, so we’ve got to think”, while also hinting at the Spartan virtue that “austerity drives innovation, resilience and resource maximisation”.
The paper says: “Given resource constraints, the NZ Army is a light fighting force, therefore, it must be agile: able to do more than one task and transition between tasks quickly. It must also be precise, so that its limited combat power can be employed to greatest effect.”
But a light fighting force is also vulnerable so designers will need to “make trade-off decisions”.
With high-end firepower too costly for New Zealand, investment should focus on cutting-edge tools that enable Kiwi troops to “sense, act and react faster and with better precision than likely adversaries”.
It will also see increased use of autonomous systems and robotics.
By 2035, drones will be “as ubiquitous as section machineguns” for armies, civilians and irregular forces.
“Large quantities or ‘ swarms’ of small and disposable remote or autonomous air systems, for example, may be used to harass and attack friendly forces, even if the enemy does not possess a conventional air force and has not gained control of the air in the traditional sense,” it says.
The Army’s chief, Major-General Peter Kelly, says the document gives a clear direction for land and special operations forces to remain “ready and relevant into the future”.