The war in Ukraine has undoubtedly imposed a reflection on the evolution of armaments and tactics used in battle, with technology accompanying the traditional methods of conducting war, in a sort of fulfillment of ideas on From the War of the Future (the war of the future) by German general Friedrich von Bernhardi. The vast use of technological discoveries on the field has, in fact, not accelerated but slowed down the war, with the rigid calculation of the waste of resources, in terms of men and munitions, determining its conduct, in this responding to what von Bernhardi had called Spirit of modern deeds, that is, the “spirit of modern combat”.
In the field of the use of artificial intelligence and systems unmanned, however, those coming from the Ukrainian fronts are just some of the lessons to be learned. The main tactical innovations of AI are, in fact, coming from the Middle East, specifically from the Libyan and Gaza conflicts. If in March 2021 a drone Kargu-2 Turkish-made engaged vehicles and troops from a Libyan militia "without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the ammunition effect", therefore without - at least apparently - human intervention (a case that had pushed the International Committee of the Red Cross to publish a specific report), today at Gaza The Israelis have demonstrated their willingness to overcome the traditional pitfalls of urban combat for a regular army through the massive use of data management and command and control systems equipped with artificial intelligence.
Combat in urban environments - including underground - by its very nature limits the advantages provided by factors such as firepower, mobility and mass, which are specific to regular armies. In such a situation, as many of the urban clashes of recent years, from Mogadishu to Fallujah, have shown, the function of command & control of both field commanders and senior officers degrades considerably. The current generation of AI solutions, especially due to the presence of visual, acoustic and thermal "clutter", is not, at the moment, the optimal solution to eliminate the disadvantages of urban warfare, but this is precisely what is being worked on, as the IDF "experiments" in Gaza have shown.
As Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Bonney wrote on "War on the Rocks", among AI technologies "More relevant to urban warfare are battle management systems, which can help commanders at all levels gain a clearer picture of a dynamic urban landscape. At the tactical level, small drones and autonomous robots equipped with sensors or munitions can move over piles of rubble."as well as the "algorithmic pattern recognition tools".
These are applications that respond to the needs of troops that have to fight not a conventional war but a "small war", but that can also be applied to uses for conflicts between peers. The war in Ukraine has highlighted, in fact, how the compartmentalized areas spread over large surfaces - such as industrial plants or subway tunnels - represent a plausible battleground, which determines an operational environment very similar to that of "guerrilla warfare" and "urban warfare".
