Introduction

ABSTRACT

This special collection of essays explores how militaries are integrating, adapting and leveraging 4^th Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies and examines the varying strategic and operational implications. Its core themes reflect on the position of the 4IR in the context of previous Revolutions in Military Affairs; a comparison between how large resource-rich states and small resource-limited states are adopting and integrating 4IR technologies; the difference between various 4IR innovation and adaptation models; and the operational implications of such technologies in terms of manpower, operational domains force structure and the application of force.

Technology is widely regarded to be a crucial element of military effectiveness and advantage. As Keith Krause once put it, ‘the possession of modern weapons is a key element in determining the international hierarchy of power.’¹ In theory (and often in practice), the possession of cutting-edge military-relevant technologies equals more effective weapons systems, which shapes military power that in turn translates into greater geopolitical power. Simultaneously, the transnational diffusion of military-related technologies is an essential factor affecting the distribution of power in international politics. Consequently, the global dissemination of advanced, militarily relevant technologies should be as great a security concern as the spread of weapons systems themselves.

Moreover, we live in a time when ‘militarily relevant technologies’ are becoming harder and harder to identify and classify. Advanced technologies – many of which are embedded in commercial rather than military-industrial sectors – offer new and potentially significant opportunities for defence applications and, in turn, for increasing one’s military edge over potential rivals. Unlike during the Cold War, spending on military R&D in the West is now dwarfed by its commercial equivalent. Technological advances, especially in the area of military systems, are a continuous, dynamic process; breakthroughs are constantly occurring, and their impact on military effectiveness and comparative advantage could be both significant and hard to predict at their nascent stages. Consequently, the military is no longer the primary driver of technological innovation. Instead, militaries are looking to turn technologies primarily developed in the commercial sector, although with dual-use potential, such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, and advanced supercomputing into the next generation of combat systems.

However, such technologies and resulting capabilities rarely spread themselves evenly across geopolitical lines. The diffusion of new and potentially powerful militarily relevant technologies – as well as the ability of militaries to exploit their potential – varies widely across the globe. This unequal distribution in turn, will naturally affect how these technologies and capabilities impact regional security and stability. Therefore, it is critical to assess the relative abilities of militaries to access and leverage new and emerging critical technologies, their likely progress in doing so, and the impediments they may face, ultimately with an eye toward how it will affect relative gains and losses in regional military capabilities.

How these new technologies will integrate with current operational constructs and force structures is a matter of much debate in militaries across the world. The level of human involvement in the future of warfare, the need to alter doctrines, force structures and recruitment patterns are all matters that are being challenged by new technologies.

Further, on a strategic level, new technologies will continue to create new dynamics. Alliances are becoming more closely interconnected, strategic concepts such as deterrence and strategic stability are being tested. New technologies are both challenging and empowering large and small states alike and may encourage new phases of arms competitions across the world.

In short, the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) promises to create a new set of challenges when it comes to identifying new and significant military technologies and understanding how these capabilities will create military advantage and, therefore, political leverage in the decades to come. In particular, the 4IR is creating a new set of conditions for the development and application of new military technologies. These conditions will have profound implications for a) how militaries adopt new technologies; b) how on an operational level, militaries adapt to and apply new technologies and c) our understandings of both the operational and strategic battlespace and d) strategic stability and instability.

This special issue uses a thematic and case study-based approach. In the opening paper, Michael Raska directly links the 4IR with the next wave in the modern Revolution in Military Affairs debate. In contrast to previous IT-RMA waves, which have failed to achieve their intended strategic outcomes, the emerging AI-RMA wave differs: it is global, embedded in a contest for military-technological superiority between major powers; diffused by a convergence of civil-military sources of innovation; and the resulting shift toward autonomous and AI-enabled weapons systems in warfare.

Next, Zoe Stanley-Lockman and Elsa Kania in two essays examine how the US and China respectively are adapting to the 4IR. The contrasts are striking. The US uses a diverse number of innovation models to leverage the 4IR. This diversity can be seen in the different approaches the service branches are taking, which Stanley-Lockman argues is resulting in varying levels of success across the US military. China, on the other hand, is using a top-down strategy of military-civil fusion, which aims to create and leverage synergies between defence-commercial developments and supply chains.

Katarzyna Zysk examines Russia’s approach to the 4IR. She reveals that despite grand ambitions and a number of new initiatives, Russia struggles and will continue to struggle to leverage the 4IR. It is constrained by a range of structural and circumstantial problems and lacks the resources and capabilities of its near-peer competitors, the US and China. Nevertheless, Russia has also shown the ability to experiment with and exploit 4IR technologies to amplify traditional symmetric responses and enable asymmetric capabilities, including hypersonic weapons and the application of AI in grey zone operations.

Yoram Evron and Magnus Petersson look at smaller states. Evron’s paper explores Israel’s highly successful approach to the 4IR. He argues that Israel is uniquely placed to take advantage of the 4IR given its historical emphasis on technology to offset its geostrategic limitations and the close relationship between the Israeli private technology sector and the Israeli military. In contrast, Petersson in examining the case of three Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Denmark and Norway – demonstrates that these states are investing significant sums in the military applications of the 4IR. Yet, there is little public doctrinal or strategic thinking about their utility. Instead, the discourse focuses more on the legal and ethical implications of such technologies than their near-term integration in Scandinavian armed forces.

Finally, Ian Bowers and Sarah Kirchberger place 4IR in an operational context. In examining the disruptive power of the 4IR on the application of seapower, they find that such technologies may change the inputs of seapower, particularly in the use of networked warfighting capabilities. However, using two case studies, the South China Sea and the Baltic Sea, they find that in the key operational output of attaining sea control, these technologies will not disrupt naval warfare. They argue that the 4IR will intensify the competition between the operational attributes of detection, stealth, range and lethality, but will ultimately sustain existing understandings of seapower and its strategic effects.

Taken together, these essays may only scratch the surface of the 4IR debate: what the 4IR entails, how it impacts military effectiveness and advantage, and what are the wider, long-term implications of such military developments. However, by shedding more light on the likely effect of the fourth industrial revolution when it comes to defence innovation, we hope to advance what is bound to be a broad, long-term dialogue.

Acknowledgements

This special issue has evolved from international research collaboration and subsequent workshop (2019) co-organised by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and the Institute of Security and Defence Policy at Kiel University. The editorial team would like to express a sincere gratitude to all participants who helped in the project, anonymous reviewers, and editors of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Raska

Michael Raska is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His research interests focus on the evolution of military technologies and defence innovation, wars and conflicts in East Asia, and cyber warfare. He is the author of Military Innovation and Small States: Creating Reverse Asymmetry (Routledge, 2016) and co-editor of Security, Strategy, and Military Change in the 21st Century: Cross-regional Perspectives (Routledge, 2015). His publications include articles in journals such as the Strategic Studies Quarterly, PRISM - Journal of Complex Operations, Journal of Indo–Pacific Affairs, and Sirius - Journal of Strategic Analysis.  His academic contributions include chapters in edited volumes in collaboration with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, European Union Institute for Security Studies, Center for New American Security, University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and Swedish Defence University.

Katarzyna Zysk

Katarzyna Zysk is a Professor of International Relations and Contemporary History at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS), which is part of the Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) in Oslo. At the IFS, she has served as Deputy Director Head of Security Policy Centre, and Director of Research (2017–20). She was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation(CISAC), Stanford University and at the Changing Character of War Centre, University of Oxford (2016–17). She is a member of the Hoover Institution’s Arctic Security Initiative and was a Research Fellow at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies (Strategic Research Department) at the US Naval War College, where she also cooperated closely with the War Gaming Department. In 2016, she was Acting Dean of the NDUC, where she teaches regularly. Her research has focused on security, defence and strategic studies, in particular Russia’s military strategy, warfare, the Russian Navy, maritime security and geopolitics in the Arctic, military change and defence innovation. Her published research has appeared in SAIS Review of International Affairs, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Asia Policy, RUSI Journal, Politique Etrangère, International Relations, Jane’s Navy International, and other journal and books.

Ian Bowers

Ian Bowers is associate professor at the Centre for Joint Operations, Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen. His research focuses on seapower, the future operating environment, Asian security and deterrence. His research has been published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Naval War College Review and the Korean Journal of Defence Analysis. His latest volume is Grey and White Hulls: An International Analysis of the Navy-Coastguard Nexus, co-edited with Collin Koh.

Richard A. Bitzinger

Richard A. Bitzinger is a Senior Visiting Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, where his work focuses on security and defence issues relating to the Asia-Pacific region, including military modernisation and force transformation, regional defence industries and local armaments production, and weapons proliferation. He previously served as the Coordinator of the RSIS Military Transformations Programme. Formerly with the RAND Corp. and the Defence Budget Project, he has been writing on Asian aerospace and defence issues for more than 20 years. His articles have appeared in such journals as International Security, Orbis, China Quarterly, and Survival. He is the author of Arming Asia: Technonationalism and Its Impact on Local Defence Industries (Routledge, 2017), and Towards a Brave New Arms Industry? (Oxford University Press, 2003).

Notes

¹ Keith Krause, Arms and the state: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 19.