Perspective on Unmanned Warfare and Anti Unmanned Warfare: A Spiral Game of Spear and Shield
2025-12-10
In the long history of the evolution of human warfare, technological innovation has always been a key driving force for the transformation of combat methods. Currently, with the spiral game between unmanned combat and anti unmanned combat, modern warfare is entering a new era of transformation. This transformation is far from a simple equipment iteration, but rather a systemic military revolution dominated by intelligent autonomous systems that sweeps across multiple fields such as physics and information. The "spear" and "shield" interact, define, surpass each other, and spiral upwards in a dynamic game, not only driving the transformation of new combat styles, but also driving the deep evolution of the way to win wars. The leap of "spear": unmanned combat has achieved a leap from technological empowerment to system reconstruction, changing the explosive development of modern unmanned combat systems. It has surpassed the scope of simple weapons and equipment and become a sharp "spear", driving changes in combat concepts, force composition, and war cognition. The combat subject is evolving from individual intelligence to collective intelligence. Unmanned combat systems are undergoing an evolution from pursuing single platform performance to emphasizing group intelligence collaboration, and the advantages of unmanned combat are increasingly reflected in the emergence effect of group collaboration. The latest local warfare practices have shown that low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles, through advanced algorithms, form intelligent attack networks that demonstrate combat effectiveness far beyond simple stacking of single platforms. This self-organizing and decentralized swarm intelligence combat model is a reshaping of the traditional hierarchical command system. The responsibility of commanders has shifted from issuing specific instructions to setting task boundaries and authorization rules, enabling the most advanced combat units to make autonomous decisions with the assistance of artificial intelligence, promoting the forward and downward movement of decision-making power, and achieving true "distributed warfare". The combat space is expanding from the physical domain to the digital domain. Unmanned combat will extend the field of confrontation from traditional physical spaces such as land, sea, air, and space to new fields such as electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace. New types of equipment such as electronic warfare drones use soft killing methods such as electromagnetic suppression, navigation deception, and communication interference to force the opponent's combat system into a "disabled" state, marking a shift in the focus of combat from pursuing physical destruction in "annihilation warfare" to pursuing cognitive domination in "control warfare". Time has become the key to victory, whoever can complete the OODA cycle faster and more accurately will have the initiative on the battlefield. This transformation makes war more complex and blurs the boundaries between military and non military, wartime and peacetime. The functional positioning has shifted from a single function to a system node. Unmanned systems are transforming from independent combat platforms to "intelligent ecological nodes" deeply integrated into the entire combat system. For example, unmanned underwater vehicles with autonomous perception, long-term stealth, and multi task switching capabilities can flexibly assume different roles according to operational needs. They serve as perception nodes for reconnaissance and surveillance networks in peacetime, but can quickly transform into attack nodes or communication relay support nodes during wartime, achieving a "continuous presence and variable functionality" of combat forces, greatly expanding the temporal and spatial boundaries of combat operations, increasing uncertainty, and achieving functional reconstruction and doubling of combat effectiveness through data links and cloud computing. The Revolution of "Shield": The System Construction of Anti Unmanned Warfare from Passive Response to Active Immunity. Faced with the new challenges brought by unmanned combat, the "shield" of anti unmanned combat system is undergoing a paradigm shift from passive response of simple interception to active immunity, achieving a comprehensive reform of combat concept, system architecture and application mode. The defensive front is pushed from the firepower boundary to the signal boundary. The defense line against unmanned combat has been pushed forward from the traditional firepower interception zone to the electromagnetic spectrum control zone. The new anti unmanned equipment prioritizes the use of various soft killing methods, striving to render unmanned combat platforms ineffective before they pose a substantial threat. The victory of defense is no longer marked by shooting down incoming targets, but may occur before the targets have entered line of sight. The implementation of this' beyond line of sight defense 'relies on comprehensive control and precise utilization of the electromagnetic spectrum. The outcome of this competition in intangible space directly determines the initiative in physical domain confrontation. The defense mode has shifted from fixed-point protection to mobile hunting. With the development of drone swarm technology, traditional fixed-point air defense systems are facing unprecedented challenges. Fixed deployment air defense systems, no matter how powerful their firepower, often appear inadequate for low-cost, large-scale saturation attacks against drone swarms. The anti unmanned combat mode is evolving towards mobile hunting. Simply integrating laser weapons or intercepting drones on a highly mobile platform can form a flexible and agile countermeasure hunting unit, enabling it to have fast mobility and precise strike capabilities. At the same time, by combining artificial intelligence technology to predict the attack path of the drone swarm, automatically scheduling the optimal interception resources for layered interception, and constructing a dynamic defense network system similar to an "active immune system" that patrols the entire domain and eliminates threats, the defense mode has undergone a qualitative change. The key to defense has shifted from feature recognition to intent prediction. Traditional defense methods based on feature recognition have significantly lagged behind in dealing with highly autonomous intelligent unmanned systems. Modern anti unmanned defense is moving towards a new stage of predictive defense, with the key being the integration of multi-source intelligence data, the use of artificial intelligence and big data analysis, to predict in advance the combat patterns, behavior patterns, and even attack intentions of the opponent's unmanned system. This ability of "foresight" enables the defense team to shift from passive response to active layout, making targeted preparations before the opponent's attack, thereby firmly controlling the defense initiative. Spiral development: dynamic game between unmanned combat and anti unmanned combat. The confrontation between unmanned combat and anti unmanned combat is not a simple "cat and mouse game". Its essence is that "spear" and "shield" mutually stimulate and surpass each other in dynamic game, spiral development in fierce confrontation, and promote the evolution of war forms, tactics, and strategic thinking to higher and more complex dimensions. The combat system is upgraded from platform center to system entropy reduction. The essence of modern warfare confrontation is the competition of the overall effectiveness of the combat systems of both sides. The combat system extracts orderly winning factors from the chaos and disorder of the battlefield through deep integration of information and intelligence. One is the evolution of command and control structures towards neural networks. The game of "spear" and "shield" between unmanned and anti unmanned combat has led to the phenomenon of "entropy increase" in human-machine command and control, giving rise to the construction of a "decentralized" command and control structure similar to biological neural networks to shorten decision-making cycles and enhance system resilience. The second is the shift from resource allocation to real-time scheduling. The characteristics of unmanned and anti unmanned combat are beyond limits, ultra sensitive, and ultra controllable, which enable both to have precise, flexible, and sustainable combat capabilities. However, it also requires the combat system to dynamically schedule and allocate resources based on real-time threats, achieving real-time optimization and reorganization of the kill chain. The third is the evolution from functional collaboration to intelligent symbiosis. An adaptive collaborative relationship of "intelligent symbiosis" is gradually forming between humans and unmanned, unmanned and unmanned equipment, building a "human-machine symbiosis" intelligent combat ecosystem with strong anti-interference and optimization capabilities. Technical and tactical upgrades from rigid destruction to multi-dimensional game theory. The focus of the confrontation between unmanned and anti unmanned combat is shifting from physical firepower destruction to multi-dimensional games such as algorithm decision-making and cost-effectiveness, and the confrontation focus is shifting from "fighting power" to "fighting intelligence". One is to counter the algorithm decision of center of gravity shift. The intelligent autonomy of unmanned and anti unmanned combat has shifted the focus of attack and defense from destroying platforms to paralyzing decision-making. Through "calculation based calculation", it realizes the prediction and countermeasures of opponent's actions, forming an intelligent heterogeneous fusion of "intelligent calculation fast attack", "defense before attack", and "attack defense integration". Secondly, the asymmetric paradox of cost-effectiveness is highlighted. Unmanned and anti unmanned combat platforms, due to their scale, low cost, and consumable advantages, can improve the cost-effectiveness ratio of operations, leading to the development of low-cost means or the use of intelligent algorithms to optimize resource allocation, achieving "dimensionality reduction, energy consumption, and annihilation" and achieving unequal energy consumption of "small gains, big gains". The third is the synergistic evolution of soft and hard killing methods. Unmanned and anti unmanned combat have been deeply integrated into modern battlefields, with applications ranging from hard killing methods such as firepower assault and interception, to soft killing methods such as electronic interference and information deception. Faced with the threats of unmanned and anti unmanned combat, the approach of "using no to counter no" is also moving towards a multi-level, cross domain comprehensive development that integrates software and hardware, reflecting the dialectical "cross domain balance" of attack and defense. From tactical confrontation to strategic deterrence at the strategic level. The game between unmanned combat and anti unmanned combat is profoundly driving the structural adjustment of military strategy. One is to challenge the threshold of traditional warfare. The rapid spread of unmanned and anti unmanned technologies has resulted in low-cost and "zero casualties" in combat, greatly reducing the threshold for the use of force, weakening traditional military advantages, and leading to more ambiguous and generalized forms of conflict. The second is the paradigm shift of strategic deterrence. Visible and reliable unmanned and anti unmanned combat capabilities can effectively deter strategic risks of opponents, achieve the deterrent effect of "subduing the enemy without fighting", and achieve a "low-cost upgrade" of deterrent power. The third is facing the reshaping of rules and ethics. The "responsibility black hole" brought about by unmanned combat and the easy alienation of the global monitoring capability of anti unmanned combat into social control tools are serious challenges to international humanitarian law and social ethics. Military theory and legal system must innovate and develop synchronously. The way to victory: The outcome depends on the ability to control the rules and the competition between unmanned and anti unmanned combat. On the surface, it may seem like a technical battle, but at its core, it is a battle of thinking concepts, organizational forms, and combat systems. The key to victory no longer depends on the short-term advantage of a single technology or equipment, but on the ability to deeply understand, grasp, and apply its inherent laws. One is to grasp the rhythm of attack and protection transformation. Every sharpening of the spear inevitably leads to the corresponding hardening of the shield. Victory does not belong to the party that first possesses advanced technology, but to the party that can achieve a faster and more effective "technical tactical" capability transformation loop, and continuously optimize and complete the OODA cycle in actual combat. The second is to balance actuarial costs and efficiency. Organically integrate various weapon platforms and cyber attack methods to form high, medium, and low tier configurations, and build a cost-effective and sustainable flexible combat system. By raising the opponent's combat costs to a level they cannot afford, their strategic intentions cannot be realized. The third is to grasp the dialectical unity of concentration and dispersion. In response to the low-cost, distributed, and saturated offensive and defensive combat forms, relying on the advantages of intelligent network information system to aggregate electromagnetic, network, firepower, etc. in real time, we implement a "point and hole" attack on the combat system, accurately striking system nodes, command and control links, and key hubs, etc., to break through the "distributed saturation" with "instant aggregation" and achieve the goal of discrete and paralyzed combat system. The fourth is to control the collaborative boundary between humans and machines. Accurately grasp the balance point between the final control of the commander and the high-speed response of the machine algorithm, dynamically adjust the depth of the "human in the loop" according to the task hierarchy, confrontation intensity, and information environment, and construct the optimal mode of human-machine collaborative command and control, realizing the advantages of intelligent algorithm speed and accuracy while retaining the final decision-making power and ethical control of the commander. (New Society)
Edit:QuanYi Responsible editor:Wang Xiaoxiao
Source:www.81cn
Special statement: if the pictures and texts reproduced or quoted on this site infringe your legitimate rights and interests, please contact this site, and this site will correct and delete them in time. For copyright issues and website cooperation, please contact through outlook new era email:lwxsd@liaowanghn.com