Reducing carnage to a hi-power videogame

Exciting jargon at Aero India 2005 that concluded on Sunday, included UAVs, UCAVs, URAVs, anti-ballistic missiles, AWACS, AEW&C, Command and Control, secure data links, air superiority and finally, 'Network Centric Warfare' (American).

That last one is more than the sum of its parts and Network Enabled Warfare (British) was the future of combat, experts agreed at the biennial defence aeronautics show.

So will India start off with a modest network of its own? "We are keenly aware of what is happening in other parts of the world, but I won't comment on our strategic plans," one senior defence scientist, said.

He too agreed, however, that the role of unmanned things "" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) and reconnaissance aerial vehicles (URAVs) among others "" will increase.

Such intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance "" and in the future, combat "" vehicles will take their place alongside airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) or airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) "" as India's Defence Research and Development Organisation calls it "" to make battlefields more accessible to those who must deal with them.

The generals will know of enemy movements almost even as they happen, while the soldier may get "real time updates" on what her situation is and what she needs to do next.

What experts don't agree on yet is, how "unmanned" should unmanned combat be allowed to become. Officers from the United States Air Force, who had set up a stall of their own at the air show, told this correspondent, "the decision to make unmanned combat vehicles more sophisticated (read independent) will be a political one, rather than one based on technology. Economic costs will be another factor, but many of the technologies needed, including artificial intelligence, already exist."

With its economic might, the US is considered to be way ahead of other nations in building and testing unmanned combat aircraft.

Three of the biggest defence contractors in the US, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, all have their own unmanned combat aircraft programmes. "So far, we are only conducting some tests," the USAF officers said.

John Day, a senior advisor to BAE Systems, a European defence conglomerate whose Hawk jet trainer the Indian Air Force is buying, says there will be obstacles.

Chief among them will be the difference between peace time tests and simulations and actual battlefield scenarios.

For instance, while a UCAV may be able to withstand 9Gs (nine times the earth's gravity) that may be difficult for human pilots, the UCAV will only work as well as the software programme that runs it.

Desperately required "spontaneous" change of tactics that movies like Top Gun made look so easy, may not be possible, artificial intelligence notwithstanding. Day advises manual overrides.

There are also "complications of training and peacetime safety: convincing political masters that a UCAV loaded with deadly missiles won't go haywire and obliterate a village close to where the air exercises are happening, will take some work.

Proponents will have to learn serious diplomacy, quite apart from trusting untested technology, while opponents will only have to wait and watch.

Yet, every nation that can, is planning, running small pilots and even implementing modest programmes whose scope will be slowly expanded to truly become networks that integrates the fighting ability of all the armed services.

The US, which again is at the forefront, is also working on the wider implications of preparing its forces for such "global information grid" based warfare.

For instance, under a programme called Future Total Force, the USAF is working on better combining people in active duty and those in reserve.

"This could involve altering our organisation, training and other processes. There will be more learning of technology than ever before," the officers said. Using fewer people to achieve the same target or more seems to be the order of the day.

Elsewhere too enthusiasm is high: A sales guy from a small Israeli firm that makes UAVs gushed, "you know, after its latest fifth generation aircraft, the joint strike fighter (F-22), the US will not make anymore manned fighters... and Frost and Sullivan, a UK-based consultancy, is trying to estimate the market for UAVs in Asia."

In the past, he said, UAVs were made for specific tasks, such as surveillance or reconnaissance. Modern unmanned combat aircraft will be built and repeatedly refined to handle fluid battlefield scenarios.

So when the time comes for this cold blooded idea, future warfare may be reduced to a high power videogame. The destruction and death will be real of course.