War
The Ukraine War Has Already Influenced Chinese Military Thinking
AI-enabled assassination drones are just the start
A recent report has suggested that Chinese military thinking is already being influenced by the war in Ukraine. However, it’s a safe bet that it’s not only Chinese who are at it.
Military analysts around the world are digesting the news from Ukraine and developing new strategies and tactics based on the multiple news feeds, videos and other data that’s available — much of it through open source intelligence.
“This conflict will definitely set off a chain reaction in the military and technological sector,” — Meng Fansong, associate professor with the college of information and communication at the National University of Defence Technology in Wuhan in a paper published in the domestic peer-reviewed journal Command Control and Simulation on 1 June (as reported in the South China Morning Post). The research was seemingly done under the auspices of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
In particular there are two aspects of note in the story about the Chinese analysis:
- the use of AI-enabled drones as personnel hunter-killers
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink network as a communications network
Let’s look at these aspects in more detail.
Drone Hunter Killers
It’s no secret that Ukraine has been targeting high ranking Russian commanders using special forces snipers, US-supplied Switchblade kamikaze drones and artillery. But the targeting was base on intel and some smart thinking based on detailed knowledge about how the Russian military works. After all, Ukraine was part of the Soviet setup until 1991, but since then they have restructured their forces to be more flexible in the Western model.Some reports estimate that up to 12 Russian generals have been killed as well as many more lower rank commanders.
Part of the problem has been the structural issues of the Russian Armed Forces which lack a strong professional NCO corps. Because of this, senior commanders have had to be active at the front line in order to make things happen.
Planners now face the near prospect of dealing with threats from drones which have embedded AI/facial recognition systems hunting for specific commanders and other significant personnel. It seems that the Chinese are already developing such systems.
The drones will have databases of facial images culled from social media and press photographs. There are plenty available online, worldwide, although every country almost every country will already have a database of senior forces personnel in other countries.
Here’s one of Russian Major General Roman Kutuzov, reportedly killed recently in eastern Ukraine.
And other there’s other drone tasking too:
“In the early days of the conflict, when the warships from the two sides faced off, [in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov] the third-party country dispatched manned reconnaissance aircraft, such as E-3A and E-8C, together with strategic drones, including RQ-4 Global Hawk and MQ-9A Reaper, to patrol over the sky in the war zone, providing target guidance for the asymmetric side’s fleet,” the researchers said.
Note: The report does not mention any country by name. Russia is referred to a ‘military power’, the Ukraine is the ‘asymmetric side’ and the US as a ‘third party power’.
Ukraine appears to have been highly successful in its deployment of the Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 drone for target spotting and laser designation and it would seem that Russia has been behind the game in this aspect of the war.
Drone Counter Measures
The Chinese analysis as reported in the South China Morning Post includes the assertion that ‘the US was likely to have hacked into the Russian control system with quiet electronic warfare that caused several Russian suicide drones to veer off course’ without giving the source of their information.
And there’s more:
“In this conflict, the military of the third party country has fed all battlefield intelligence and strikes targets into the algorithm. The artificial intelligence system determined the strike targets and prioritised them according to the degree of threat,” Meng said.
“Relying on the AI system and intelligence support of the third country, the military of the supported country could calculate and predict in advance the departure time, location, destination and escort forces of the opponent’s logistics convey, and then send the TB-2 drone to carry out precise strikes,” he added.
There’s no doubt that the worldwide military focus on drones is huge. Recently Iran released a video taken at one of its underground drone bases located ‘somewhere in the Zagros Mountains’, showing off a hundred plus drones with a variety of configurations.
SpaceX and its Starlink satellite constellation
There have been plenty of stories about Elon Musk supplying Starlink satellite internet comms ground terminals to Ukraine. These are being used to maintain internal government communications within the country as Russia attacks Ukraine’s comms infrastructure, as well as public communications: the online social media and information battle has largely been won so far by Ukraine.
But apparently the Starlink satellite constellation has had other uses in Ukraine. The Chinese researchers have taken note of this.
“The asymmetric side has used Starlink to direct drones for reconnaissance and deadly strikes against the armoured forces of the military power,” Meng’s team said.
“The space internet has become a reality and changed the form of war. It is necessary to implement some strategic pre-emptive measures.” he added.
That pre-emptive action would sound like taking out satellites, one way or another, wouldn’t it?
Conclusions
There surely is a lot more that we are not hearing about from the Chinese analysis. I’m wondering why they said anything at all.
Apparently the researchers denied any suggestion that the situation they had analysed bore any resemblance to that of China/Taiwan, because Taiwan is already a part of China…they said.
Sources:
This story was based on a story at: South China Morning Post
I was unable to find a link to the source paper at the journal Command Control and Simulation or to the journal itself.
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…Chinese global ambitions
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Also, the space internet has changed the face of war
What are other countries thinking?
There will be many lessons learned from this conflict and I have an upcoming story on this aspect, so if you’re interested make sure you are following me.