Intellectualization of weapons and weapons against human intelligence.

By now mankind has built up enormous weapons stockpiles that can kill life on Earth many times over. At the same time, under pressure from the international public, measures are being implemented to eliminate the most dangerous types of weapons--weapons of mass destruction, cut the stockpiles of conventional weapons, and reduce the risk of their unbalanced use. Meanwhile, newly developing weapons are being made more humane through an increased selectivity of target engagement and minimization of environment impact. This brought about selective-effect precision guided weapons and non-lethal, including information, weapons.

The history of the creation and evolution of guided weapons is inseparably linked with the evolution of control and guidance technology, which accounts for the term "guided weapons" per se. They constitute the most complex, costly, and "smart" part of the majority of modern conventional guided weapons. Upgrading and modernization of guided weapons has been accompanied by an extensive application of information technology and fierce competition with producers of relatively cheap non-guided weapons. First guided weapon models were very expensive, but combat experience convincingly demonstrated their advantages. Development of information technology and elemental base, including its minituarization, reduced the weight and dimensions of guided weapons while their production costs declined as they went into series production. Introduction of new information technology in weapon systems drastically changed the forms and methods of warfare.

Modern guided weapon control and guidance systems have diverse capabilities. They can automatically select an optimal flight trajectory, guide weapons to a target from the most effective angle, track their maneuvers, and finally, select the necessary target from a multitude of surrounding objects. Yet to select a target, it has to be recognized. To fulfill this challenging task, guidance systems need to be equipped with high-definition sensors and a high-capacity processor--the "brain"--and be able to "teach" it to make independent decisions by comparing, via a special algorithm, preset information about targets with information coming from in-flight sensors.

Sensors are the eyes of the guidance system. The higher their definition, the more reliably the target is identified. There are a great many types of such devices, based on different physical principles. Infrared (IR), radar, laser, and optical sensors are the most common. IR sensors ensure target detection regardless of the time of day, but just like radar sensors, they do not feature high definition. Furthermore, IR sensors react to any heat sources, which sharply reduces their immunity to interference. Optical and laser sensors are heavily dependent on weather conditions and time of day, but on the other hand, ensure a reliable recognition of target and its status. The strong and weak points of all types of sensors are well known. Basically new opportunities are opened by equipment based on hyper-spectral analysis and optical-electronic systems with artificial intelligence. It ensures detection, identification, and accurate guidance on a target using its three-dimensional image, two dimensions corresponding to an object's spatial coordinates and the third, to a specific radiation frequency. Specialized hardware and corresponding software make it possible to abandon the principle of accumulation and move to the system of the direct count of photons with high space/time definition. Hyper-spectral technology not only creates a three-dimensional image of a target but also provides data about its chemical composition, ensuring its observation even behind camouflage nets, foliage, smoke, and fog, during the day time or at night.

The "brain" of the target recognition system is the digital processor that processes incoming sensor data. The higher the required definition, the greater the processor's speed and memory capacity, and the more advanced its software should be. The task of target recognition for precision guided weapons is made more difficult also by the fact that the guidance system functions not in a static but in a strained dynamic mode, under an acute time pressure. The system processes target imagery with constantly changing angles, scales, and backgrounds, amid jamming and interference. Experts believe that to process data coming from just one sensor, a processor has to have capacity to perform 5 billion to 10 billion operations per second. For the guidance system to be able to reliably identify a detected target, it is necessary to process an enormous amount of data from several sensors, comparing them against in-built data stored in computer memory and making the decision. This task is up to artificial intelligence systems that can independently, i.e. without human participation, make decisions in conditions of uncertainty. The use of artificial intelligence systems requires processor speeds three to four times as high.

The high cost of the guidance system with elements of artificial intelligence (especially the automated target recognition system) is a major factor in building the structural scheme of smart precision guided weapons, Today, there are two basic structure models. The first, used mainly for close-range combat precision guided weapons, has the automated target recognition system deployed on the delivery vehicle. The second, wherein the guidance system is located in the warhead, is more suitable for long-range weapons (say, cruise missiles) or for action in an aggressive air-defense area. After launch, such precision guided weapons become completely autonomous. When they approach the target area, they independently search out, detect, recognize, lock on, and destroy the target. Such weapons are expensive, but their use against critical enemy targets is justified, as confirmed by local wars: Despite their high costs, the United States uses more and more cruise missiles in one conflict after another.

Generally speaking, smart weapons ensure: effective engagement of several targets simultaneously; target prioritization in the process of fire delivery; prompt reprogramming of the guidance system for subsequent missions; information exchange and redistribution in the course of attack; and optimization of effective engagement by taking into account the specifics of designated targets and exploiting their vulnerabilities. The fire-and-forget principle underlies the development of all modern precision guided weapons today.

Further development of precision guided weapons is associated with miniaturization of elemental base, integration of different-type sensors, enhanced capacity of onboard processors and their artificial intelligence level (including by using neuro-biological algorithms), and their greater immunity to interference. Selective engagement precision guided weapons are becoming an indispensable combat asset today.

Parallel to the development of guided weapons, the information component of the military sphere has been advancing as well. Starting out as a simple technical support asset (binoculars and fixed-line telephony), it emerged as a highly complex sphere of information combat support on the battlefield. Furthermore, the experience in the Persian Gulf War (1991), led experts to define the integrated use of precision guided weapons and global navigation, intelligence, communication, command and control, and EW systems as theater information weapons. The latter (in combination with precision guided weapons) made a decisive contribution to the victory by the multinational force over Iraq, substantially impacting the forms and methods of warfare. Military specialists started talking about an "information-strike operation" making it possible to attain military objectives in a stand-off mode, without using land forces.

Theater information weapons constitute the information-technical component of modern information weapons where the main targets of attack and defense are information-technical systems (communication, command and control, and telecommunication systems, various EW assets, and so forth). Information-technical warfare is not confined to the battlefield. It can be waged also with software both in wartime and in peacetime, spanning areas that go far beyond theaters of operations. Such weapons target the enemy's information resources and assets (computer networks, information on physical carriers, and so forth).

Just as important is the informational-psychological component of information weapons, aimed to break the enemy's will to resist. The main targets of attack, and protection, here are the morale of troops and non-combatants as well as public opinion and the decision-making system of the opposing sides.

Informational-psychological impacts are effected, in particular by methods and means of special propaganda targeting both friendly and enemy troops and non-combatants. Whereas in the former instance, positive propaganda-psychological impacts are used, enemy troops and non-combatants are subjected to wide-ranging negative (destructive) impacts designed to affect the state of mind, weaken the will to resist, and urge personnel to surrender.

Although there is a vast array of propaganda-psychological impacts, all of them belong to the open (semi-covert) impact category. In this event people are able to critically perceive and assess the information that they receive, check it through other channels, identify (reveal) the ulterior motive (the actual purpose) of a particular message, and make a decision, even if not always the right one, by their own decision. Specialists say that such a decision is made by a person who is "mentally competent" and "of sound mind"--in other words, a person himself chooses a solution from a set of possible options. A disingenuous juggling of facts, replacement of real information with false, "brain washing," and the use of manipulative technology can, however, distort the "fundamental data base," and then a particular decision is imposed on a person. Even then, he is always able to make a choice.

Any, including smart, weapons are operated by humans. Automation of combat systems facilitates and expedites human activity in a complicated combat situation, but at the same time enhances human responsibility for the expedient use of costly weapon systems. The operator's key role in the man-machine system necessitates research and development of such means and methods of targeted information-psychological impact that could enable him to make unconscious decisions, advantageous to the impacting side and ensuring the use of his intellect for its own purposes.

These include covert informational-psychological impacts, designed to directly manipulate human consciousness through a person's, subconscious. A person is secretly (without his knowledge) deprived of the right to independently choose logical solutions, behaviorial and emotional patterns, and even of the ability to control his psychological and bodily functions. This is achieved either by altering a person's state of mind (say, with psychotropic substances or hypnotic impact) or by planting manipulative information amid distracting messages or directly into the subconscious (audio- or video-suggestion), skipping its critical perception by his consciousness. Then a person that has become a target of impact, behaves and makes decisions in correspondence with the program that has been implanted into him. Taken to extreme, this impact turns him into a zombie. New communication technologies greatly increase the effect of covert impacts on large groups of people. The discovery of the 25th frame effect and methods of neuro-linguistic programming demonstrate broad opportunities opened by manipulation of human behavior.

Covert informational-psychological impacts constitute the core of psychological weapons--an aggregate of all possible methods and means of covert forceful impact on the human subconscious with the aim of modifying his consciousness, behavior and physiological condition in the interest of the impacting side. There have been reports in the media that totalitarian sects, organized crime groups, and drug traffickers take a close interest in these weapons. Citizens lured into totalitarian sects are conditioned, through special information-suggestion methodology, to slavishly submit to the will of their leaders and to reject spiritual culture and traditional familial and parental values. At some so-called elite clubs, patrons are impacted through suggestion, loud music, and other methods suppressing their consciousness and causing stress. After such treatment, people lose their ability to think critically, and blindly follow somebody else's will. Such methods are also used by various terrorist organizations, say in training suicide bombers. The use of psycho-physical weapons--weapons directed against human intellect--is in principle not limited either to space or time. Neither is it bound by any legal constraints since it is impersonal and can be practiced without a formal declaration of war. All of this blurs the boundaries of organized violence, greatly increasing the possibility of covert warfare.

So, active dissemination of information technology in the military sphere, intellectualization of precision guided weapons, and the dynamic development of information weapons substantially change the character of warfare, opening a possibility in principle of attaining military-political objectives not only in the course of large-scale combat operations, but also without armed confrontation, by conducting covert informational-psychological operations in circumvention of the rules of international law.

S.P. NEPOBEDIMIY

Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences 

V.F. PROKOFYEV

Doctor of Technical Sciences