The history channel, the discovery channel, National Geographic channel, and he is really one of our most popular lecturers. Today we have asked him to speak , on the revolutions in military affairs which will give you a , quick survey of military history from the 13th century up to today. All in one hour, so im sure you will enjoy. Please welcome paul springer. [applause] mr. Springer good morning. I would like to extend a thank you to dale and alan, the New York Historical society and the policy research institute. Both are wonderful organizations i support and love working with. It is a great opportunity to speak to all of you today. I will see if i can keep you terrified for the rest of the weekend with some military robotics information here. But i am an historian, by definition that means i have to back up way to far to tell you the beginning of the story. Before i get rolling, as i work for the air force do not worry , about reading the small disclaimer at the bottom. These are my views, not the views of the air force or the department of defense or the u. S. Government. They are solely mine unless you really like them, in which case, everybody else can take credit too. All right, so this is the only slide i will throw at you with an enormous amount of text. I dont expect you to read it, and im not going to read it to you but my point of this like , your, my fundamental argument, is that the world right now is in the middle of a revolution in military affairs. That means the mode of Human Conflict is fundamentally altering, and that alteration is going to change virtually every aspect of the way the Human Conflicts are propagated. It will change how we decide whether or not we decide to go to war and how we behave when we find ourselves in a war. This is due to technological changes that are really on the verge of upsetting human society. In the end, there will be some countries that adopt these changes, that take the new technology and learn how to it, and there will be some that dont. These will be the haves and havenots of the future in conflict. There is an enormous advantage in being one of the first adopters. If you have a revolutionary change in the way that conflict is occurring it becomes possible , to dominate your rivals in a short period of time. The originator of the term revolutionary Nuclear Affairs argokoff. I it gives me some pain to get ready it credit to a soviet thinker but there are times when , fundamental changes occur and the occur so rapidly that they make everything that has gone before completely obsolete. It is my contention that is occurring right now before our very eyes. Let me give you an example that people are probably more familiar with. If you go back to the middle ages, this is what characterized war. Tassels and boats castles and moats and heavily armored knights. If you wanted to capture something belonging to an opponent, that was an undertaking that was likely to take you months of cs craft, and unless you were lucky enough to find them at the gates open, the walls unmanned, the moat drained, and no preparations at made. Here, we have three successful sieges in the 14th and 15th centuries. As you can see, each one of those was a major undertaking which required all of the resources and all of the time of an entire campaign season. This is what characterized war in that time the thing. Time in that period. However, when gunpowder became the norm in europe, the situation changed. It suddenly became possible to battered down the defenses of a tall highwalled castle from a , safe distance, and the attacker had the advantage because the capital and its defenders could not leave its position while the attacker had certain degree of mobility, could choose when to fight, where to fight. Suddenly, being inside the castle was a disadvantage because you became an obvious target. As a result, here are some and you willeges, notice we are still in the 15th century, but the seed duration is suddenly measured in days rather than being a multimonth undertaking with no guarantee of success. But the situation did not remain stable. Gunpowder has certainly changed the the approach to world but it was warfare, possible to redesign fortifications, to make them less vulnerable to gunfire and thus it became possible to defend a static position. This is what one of those fortifications looked like in the 1600s. As you can see, it is an enormous fortification full of geometric designs. The idea behind this particular forge was that it could not be approached on any side without the attackers coming under heavy fire from multiple angles from the defenders. Were backed up, really long sieges. And these were the sieges that really succeeded. The vast majority of siege attempts in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were doomed to failure. He became once again a major undertaking, and warfare shifted back to a static approach. As you might imagine, those who have not adopted gunpowder, who had not changed to meet the new situation found themselves , quickly overwhelmed. It became impossible for an army that did not use gunpowder to withstand one that wielded firearms. If siege craft came almost entirely impossible, it guaranteed you would have some battles fought away from static positions. Sometimes you could not build the fortification in the place he wanted to defend longterm, and sometimes armies were going to meet in the fields. Now in the 16th century, reloading a firearm could take approximately two minutes. And the effective range of a firearm was only about 50 meters. I am not exactly, should we say, a paragon of physical fitness but even i could cross 50 meters , in two minutes. I could crawl 50 meters in under two minutes. Which means if you are using firearms and you shoot and miss there is a reasonable chance i , am going to run across the field and hit you with something sharp or heavy. As a result, we get mixed formation. His is the spanish tersio. It comprises musketeers on the outside and pikemen in the center. The musketeers open fire. After they shoot, the pikemen come to the outside to protect them while they reload. For aade it impossible cavalry charge to overwhelm a group of musketeers in a second. It was a very wielding move, very slow. It swept everything before it on the battlefield because it was infinitely better than anything else someone else i come up with to that time to use firearms in the field, and it teaches us something. But he does that sometimes it is not the technology that matters. It is being the first one that figures out how to use it effectively. That is what is going on here. The spanish wind up using the tercio to become the dominant land power in europe. But nothing lasts forever. Now this is one of the rare times where you are going to hear a historian talk to about swedish military dominance. [laughter] mr. Springer it is not really what they are particularly known for, but it was the swedes who figured out how to counter the tercio. Was veryized it unwieldy because everyone was getting in everyone elses way, it was hard to move around, you could have thousands of troops in the hearing of one person, screaming to be heard to get around. And maybe, the pikes that protect the musketeers with outstanding amongst the musketeers. The idea was called the brigade. And when the brigade swept onto the battlefield of europe under gustavus adolphus, it drove them tercios from the field. Adolphus entered the 30 year war knowing it was one of enormous carnage but he had this new idea that for a brief time the swedes could turn the tide of a war that had effectively engulf the entire european continent. And this thing was a bloody mess. As much as 25 of the european population died in that war, a much higher percentage than died in world war ii. So this tells us these new forms of weaponry, even though they seem very archaic today, could be extremely effective when used en masse. If we fastforward a few centuries we reach world war i. , once again, gunpowder is the dominant weapon of the era. The difference of course each , individual wielding a machine gun like this can fire 600 rounds per minute, and they can sustain that rate of fire as long as they have bullets and they can fire relatively , accurately for a distance up to two miles. I cannot cross two miles in under two minutes. There is no way im going to be able to do it with a couple thousand bullets flying at me. And this caused warfare to once again become very static, very positionoriented. Two, for all intents and purposes, stagnate. But progress continued. Now world war i at the time was the bloodiest war in history. Millions of people died. And there was a Significant Movement around the world to say, oh, well, we are never going to do that again. At one point, leading nations attempted to ban the practice of warfare which did not last very long. Though technically, the United States has never repealed the Kellogg Briand act, where we swear we would never use warfare against an opponent. There were other attempts to try to mitigate the worst aspects of warfare, a lot of which came out as a result of the gunpowder revolution. You had very prominent thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries that effectively said there are , limits to what you can do in warfare. There are things that are not acceptable behavior. For example, you should not go out and poison your bullet the firing them at someone. Four you should not deliberately kill someone after you have captured them. You should not deliberately spread disease amongst your enemies. Yes, they are your enemies, but when wars end, you have to go back to at least being able to coexist unless your objective is , the complete and utter annihilation of your opponent. Which, these thinkers would also tell you, is flat wrong. You should not do that. Annihilation is bad. So even though we are innovating these new technological ideas, we are building these new concepts, at the same time, we are saying theres something to just do not do. You do not invent weapons that are designed to maim. You accept the enemys surrender if they offer it in good faith. Over time, it becomes the norm in european warfare that there are specific limits. These thinkers also considered, when is it acceptable to go to war . They come to the conclusion there are times when war is an acceptable policy option. Obviously, you have the right to go to war to defend yourself, to defend your citizenry, to defend your territory. But there are other circumstances in which warfare is also in acceptable alternative to these thinkers. As we move forward into the 20th century after world war ii, there was a Significant Movement once again to never allow a conflict like this to happen. And when the United Nations charter was written, a key component of the charter was that Member States of the United Nations shall not make war upon each other. If you violate that norm, the expectation is that all of the other Member States will come to the aid of the victim. As you all know, it has not always worked out that way. But there is an enormous body of International Law governing what you can and cannot do in war. Most is encapsulated in the Geneva Convention. There are four key components that are going to matter a little bit later in the lecture as to what are the ultimate limits of warfare in terms of who can and cannot anticipate. Participate. The Geneva Convention makes this clear. Number one, you must bear arms openly. Youre not allowed to make war by hiding your weaponry, pulling it out, attacking the enemy, hiding it again. Two, you must wear some form of uniform or recognizable device. It may be the uniform of a country with a flag on it. It may be something as simple as the green headscarves common to hamas. But it has to be something recognizable and distinct so i know you are representing yourself as a combatant. And you are expecting me to follow the rules of war. Third, you must be part of an organization of a hierarchical structure where the leadership is responsible for the behavior of subordinates. So there has to be a form of , command and control. Someone that can be ultimately held responsible for the behavior of troops in the field. You must, fourth, follow the laws of war. If you do not follow the laws of war, you cannot claim their protection in any form of combat. Now why does this matter . , the United States is currently in a fight. We are fighting the Islamic State. We are fighting al qaeda. We are fighting terrorism as a concept. And the organization with which we are in conflict do not bear arms openly. Do not wear a recognizable uniform do not have a command , structure where the leadership is responsible for the behavior of subordinates, and they certainly do not although the follow the laws of war. So they are outside of our traditional understanding of who is an acceptable combatant and who is protected by the laws of war, and if the United States and its allies choose to extend additional privileges such as accepting surrender and restraining ourselves, that is our option. But we really effectively have to follow the rules of war, even though we are facing an enemy that doesnt. And that can be an increbly frustrating situation as this cartoon illustrates. We have to follow the laws of war for one fundamental reason. If we do not follow the laws of war, then the laws of war themselves become largely irrelevant, and the enemy that we are currently facing has its primary goal being the destruction of the existing world order. You can conceive of the Islamic State and al qaeda as a global insurgency. Its goal is not necessarily just to bring down individual governments. Its goal is to destroy the entire international system. It is trying to pull down the system we have with the United Nations where there are nations that are considered haves and nations that are considered havenots. And none of the haves resemble the organizations that are pushing to bring it down. Consider the permanent members of the Un Security Council have the ultimate International Relations tool, a veto over you and use of violence. Un use of violence. In those nations are the United States, britain, france, and china. None of them are in the middle eastern region. So imagine if you will, if we were to redesign the permanent Security Council, if we were to choose new membership, would you put the same five countries in there . But on the basis of economics, you wouldnt. Not on the basis of population size and probably not on the basis of geography. Now, imagine the Islamic State achieved everything and pushing it seems to be pushing for. It creates a caliphate that stretches from north africa all the way to the pacific ocean. Would they have cause to claim membership in this most elite of fraternities . They might, or they might instead choose to simply pull down the system because they believe that chaos and anarchy will more effectively serve their end goal. So that is our starting point here. When it comes to 21st century conflict and military robotics, which is the heart of what i want to discuss today, i need to establish a few definitions the first. Media is a big fan of the term drone. And drone has a specific meaning. A drone is a preprogrammed machine. It does whatever it is told to do. It does not think. It does not react to its environment. It does not choose from a host of different options. It simply does what it is told. You preprogram a route, it flies the route. You tell it to strike a certain point, it strikes a certain point. It is not a thinking machine. And a drone by definition is not being driven by some other intelligence. You fire a Cruise Missile it , flies off. You do not control it on its route. You might have the ability to stop it, to abort its mission, but theres no intelligence guiding its actions. It has already been done. A robotic system a robotic , system incorporates some degree of the ability to sense an environment and make decisions on the basis of it. For example, you are probably familiar with a predator. A predator is being flown by a human operator but it has some functions it performs automatically which makes flying , it a lot easier. It does not choose to kill. A human being chooses to fire a missile from a predator. It does not choose where it will fly. A human being chooses where it will fly. But it does some things on its own. Some of these other devices, here, this is called a pack box. It has become west most wellknown as an explosive ordinance removal disposal robot. It allows you to avoid putting humans in the worst of harms way. It does not disarm bombs on its own. It gets close to the bomb and then does what its operator tells it to do. Incredibly useful to reduce as casualties. Because at the end of the day, dies, cries if a robot does not die. It just gets rendered into small pieces. On the right, more terrifying. This is the larger, uglier cousin. It is called a talent. It weighs about 200 pounds. It is remotely driven. This thing is not driving itself around and shooting off guns and causing chaos everywhere it goes. There is in a operator driving it from a distance using a camera. But as you can see, it can be armed. You can put rocket launchers, you can put grenade launchers, you can put machine guns on it. It does not suffer from a lot of the problems that trigger in accuracy in humans when using weaponry. It does not have a pulse. It does not breathe. It instantly calculates the wind. It has a laser rangefinder. It doesnt care what it is shooting at. It doesnt feel bad if it is shooting at a house of children. A house full of children. It just does what it is told. There is a human operator telling it to do that, but there is a certain divorce there. The human is a little further away from the intimacy of killing. A true robot, as you can see i have used a lot of popculture references here. Roberts robots dont exist yet not in the way the military , means when it uses the term robot. A robot senses it environment and makes decisions of what it will do on the basis of the environment it senses. Right now, there are no weapons that are true robots in the classical sense, wandering around, causing headaches for everyone. They dont exist yet, but they are on the immediate horizon. I am going to show you some examples of how