From anthropocentrism to network-centricity: Drones as a tool for transforming modern warfare

Larionov Viktor Vladimirovich ORCID: 0000-0002-3082-9763 Postgraduate student; Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities; Vologda State University 162605, Russia, Vologda region, Cherepovets, Pervomaiskaya str., 38A, sq. 16 larsvic79@gmail.com

Introduction

Over the past few years, the word "drone" has begun to be heard in the media and in the colloquial speech of Russians almost daily. Equipping unmanned aerial vehicles with modern navigation, communication, control, radar, optical and electronic reconnaissance systems, as well as automatic weapon control systems made it possible not only to detect and select enemy targets, but also to destroy them ^[1], making the drone a universal and "perfect weapon" in human hands. At the moment, the development of unmanned vehicles is experiencing another internal symbiosis (the term is borrowed from the evolutionary theory of L. Margulis ^[2]), aimed at introducing artificial intelligence as a source of management and decision-making. The tests carried out have shown that completing the task by any means is the primary goal, by fulfilling which, a drone controlled by artificial intelligence is able to eliminate its operator, even if the latter has introduced the cancellation of a previously set task ^[3]. The successful use of drones in the airspace has made it possible to rethink the traditional concept of conducting armed confrontation in favor of remote warfare, launching the process of developing ground, surface and underwater unmanned aerial vehicles, thereby changing not only society's attitude to military technology in general, but also initiating a new stage of machine-human interactions.

As the degree of study of the issues of the use of heavy reconnaissance and attack drones for military purposes with a fixed wing, it is necessary to single out the research of P. U. Singer ^[4] and G. Shamay ^[5]. The military-technical potential of drones was considered by P. Scharre ^[6], the arguments in favor of using drones are presented in a collection edited by B. Strouser ^[7], and the antagonistic opinion is presented by M. Benjamin ^[8]. In Russian literature, philosophical approaches to the use of drones, leading to the transformation of military operations of post-heroic societies, are represented by the works of N. A. Balakleets ^{[9, 10]}. The basics of the design, application and control of unmanned aerial vehicles are considered in the works of P. P. Afanasyev ^[11] and V. I. Litvinenko ^[12]. The concept of an invisible enemy, which defines the realities of a technized war and the identity of its participants, is explicated in the works of V. S. Solovyov ^{[13, pp. 198-423]}, L. P. Karsavin ^{[14, pp. 621-766.]}, E. Junger ^[15], A. F. Stepun ^[16], K. Schmitt ^[17], G. Shamayu ^[5] and other authors. The unprecedented asymmetry of the paradigm of modern warfare, achieved by the combined use of military and civilian drones, is being actively discussed by Russian scientists, journalists and public figures not only in the media, but also in popular messengers, among which are the Telegram channels of A. V. Chadaev (https://chadayev.ru ) and A. Y. Korobov-Latyntsev (https://t.me/s/korobov_latyncev ).

The novelty of the research is to identify and describe the process of transformation of the classical (anthropocentric) concept of war into a network-centric one due to the introduction of remote weapons. The object of the research is the humanitarian consequences of the introduction of modern types of remote weapons. The process of transformation of modern wars due to the transformation of civilian drones into unconventional weapons has been chosen as the subject of research. The practice of using drones has been widely studied within the framework of modern military science, as evidenced by the above list of references, at the same time, the specifics of conducting network-centric warfare using remote weapons are currently not fully understood, which determines the relevance of the research. The concepts of network centrism and the window mechanism of J. P. Morgan can be used as a methodological basis for conducting a systematic study. Overton.

Anthropocentric wars

The doctrine of armed confrontation until the 21st century was limited to the study of fronts, battle formations and direct clashes, the success of which depended on the individual capabilities of combat units. For this reason, the development of weapons was carried out in order to increase its armor protection, mobility, firepower and accuracy of destruction. The possibility of networking was envisaged, but it did not allow achieving the effect that modern information technologies currently provide. In the information and communication space, anthropocentric wars are characterized by a strict hierarchical type of architecture, vulnerable to external influences and the technical incompatibility of data formats received by decision-making centers. The time interval spent collecting data from various sources, correlating them, processing them, and transforming them into information about the target allows, in some cases, the target itself to leave the affected area before making a decision to destroy it.

The anthropocentric nature of the use of military equipment considered the equipment and weapons themselves as an extension of the human body, projecting and enhancing its physical capabilities externally. No matter how secure a tank or an accurate artillery piece is, they are controlled by a person who determines the effectiveness of the weapon used with his professional qualifications. So, in the case of a low level of training, physical fatigue, concussion or injury to the shooter, the accuracy of the shooting decreases, and the loss of consciousness of the latter makes the weapon useless. The radical expansion of the technical sphere in the field of weapons ended the era of anthropomorphic machines and mechanisms, defining the network-centric nature of modern weapons.

The network centrism of modern wars

The network centrism of modern wars includes not only the deployment of digital communication networks to ensure the horizontal integration of participants in the operation, responsible for the interaction between units of their level, but also vertical integration, which determines the transfer of information between intelligence facilities, aerial platforms and operational centers. The organization of cognitive interaction between management bodies and armed formations involves an adaptive change in the tactics of units with dispersed combat formations, optimization of reconnaissance, as well as simplification of coordination and fire destruction mechanisms. The formation of a unified information and communication space with a distributed network architecture is less susceptible to intentional interference and allows achieving high combat capabilities from networked means of warfare that significantly exceed the effectiveness of using the same means separately, which was not available in the era of anthropocentric wars.

An assessment of the degree of influence of network centrism on the effectiveness of the use of armed formations, which include mining, information management and executive elements, can be made using the theory of decomposition of strategic goals by J. Varden ^[18] and the theory of management cycles by J. Boyd OODA (Observe – observe, Orient – orient, Decide – decide, Act – act) ^{[19, pp. 124-137; 20]}. One of the ways to increase the effectiveness of strikes, according to J. Boyd's theory, is to achieve a shorter time interval required to complete a full OODA cycle than the enemy, which can be achieved by minimizing the execution time of each of its subcycles individually. The technical evolution of drones, which began with the optimization of the "observe" subcycle, eventually made it possible to implement the entire OODA cycle on one platform, combining the mining, information management and executive elements of network-centric warfare.

Drones as a tool for the transition from anthropocentric to network-centric wars

The history of drones originates from radio-controlled aircraft models, which at the beginning of World War II were used as targets for training cadets of American artillery schools in aiming and destroying flying objects ^{[5, p. 33]}, which was facilitated by the active use of aviation by the parties to the conflict. The tele-archic mechanism, once in a hostile environment, is aggressively influenced by its factors. In the case of radio-controlled aircraft models, such a factor was the aimed fire produced from various types of small arms. The issues of saving the lives of pilots and the creation of remote weapons became widespread in scientific circles at the beginning of the twentieth century. So, in 1934, V. Zvorykin, proposing to connect a radio-controlled torpedo with an electric eye, laid down the basic principle of building modern smart bombs and combat drones ^{[5, p. 99]}, and B. Hershey became the author of the idea of equipping robot aircraft with television cameras for reconnaissance of enemy positions in 1944 ^{[21, p. 15-16]}. These proposals did not receive practical implementation in the historical period under consideration, since technological development has its own driving force and is not always able to meet human needs.

The increased role of strike aircraft required engineers to find solutions to protect the airspace. The development of automated military technologies in the field of air defense did not exclude the possibility of an air strike, but the losses for the attacking side in this case would be great and unjustified. The basis of the next symbiosis of drones was the need to open the locations of enemy air defense systems in order to destroy them before delivering the main strike. The function of tracking surface-to-air missiles ^{[22, p. 14]} using Ryan's Lightning Bugs unmanned aerial vehicles was implemented during the Vietnam War. The use of drones as false targets in 1973 against Egypt and as surveillance devices in 1982 against Syria allowed Israel to uncover the location of anti-aircraft batteries and gain air supremacy.

With the advent of unmanned aerial vehicle technology, the model of traditional ground-centered warfare has been revised in favor of aerocentric warfare due to its archaism. Performing combat missions for covert surveillance, detecting concentrations of personnel and fire weapons on enemy territory is an integral part of a partisan raid ^{[23, p. 274]}, which undoubtedly gives the drone the status of a "partisan". At the same time, due to the lack of the possibility of destroying the detected objects, the guerrilla drone turns out to be somewhat incomplete. The transformation of a remotely controlled passive mechanism for reconnaissance, surveillance and identification into a real predator capable of destroying detected military facilities and "live targets" occurred as a result of an internal symbiosis that combined unmanned aerial vehicles and fire weapons into a single whole, the successful testing of which was carried out by the US Army in late 2001 in Afghanistan ^{[24, p. 85]}.

The high cost of military strike and reconnaissance drones, the possibility of their detection and destruction by air defense systems and interceptor fighters, as well as the risk of gaining access to unmanned aerial vehicle production technologies by the enemy as a result of studying captured samples, significantly limit the use of fixed-wing drones without first achieving dominance in the airspace of the attacked state. What could be sacrificed in large numbers without fear of losing production technology was implanted into the battlefield from the civilian sector. The high quality of manufacturing of modern vertical take-off and landing drones, combined with large volumes of their production, made it possible to realize the previously put forward idea of V. Zvorykin, but in the opposite order. It was not necessary to equip a radio-controlled torpedo with a video transmission device, but rather a radio-controlled video transmission device with various types of ammunition.

The air defense systems in service proved ineffective in destroying vertical takeoff and landing drones, which determined the phenomenon of their mass use on the line of direct combat contact. A wide range of models, low cost, availability of high-quality optics and navigation systems, the possibility of retrofitting hand grenade or grenade launcher discharge mechanisms, ease of use, maintenance and routine repairs made it possible to solve a whole range of tasks in real time. Civilian drones are used to conduct reconnaissance, relay radio signals, adjust the fire of artillery systems and destroy detected targets, and carry out remote mining. The use of kamikaze drones in swarm mode is capable not only of completely overloading air defense systems, but also of destroying them without using anti-radar missile delivery systems.

Unmanned aerial vehicles used in agriculture to cultivate crops in order to protect them from pests can be converted to spray chemical warfare agents. Such a turn from using unmanned aerial vehicles for peaceful purposes towards conducting military confrontation turns them into a real unconventional weapon, retrofitting and rapid repair of which can be quickly carried out directly in the areas of deployment of military units through 3D printing technologies. A peaceful drone, even from the category of toy radio-controlled models of airplanes, helicopters, cars and boats, equipped with ammunition, can easily reach public places with large crowds of people, becoming an affordable remote weapon for the "poor". Given the possibility of artisanal manufacturing of drones from commercially available components and mechanisms, attacks on the infrastructure and critical facilities of the enemy can be carried out from the territory directly controlled by him, both by forces of sabotage and reconnaissance groups and by forces of proxy detachments.

The subject's interaction with the drone is mediated by available means of visual display of information. The operator focuses not so much on his visual impression of what is happening as on the display screen (monitor, smartphone, virtual reality glasses, etc.), which displays stationary and moving objects broadcast in real time via video cameras of unmanned aerial vehicles. The transmission of vertical and horizontal projections from a drone is perceived by the subject on the display device as the graphic content of modern computer games. Vertical projection is more comparable to games with strategy elements, in which, based on visual images and the data obtained, it is necessary to calculate the possible moves of the enemy, exploit his weaknesses and quickly manage his units. The horizontal projection, widely used in first-person action games, is provided by the use of drones at low altitudes in urban areas while overcoming obstacles. The targeting of artillery systems, the decision to use force, and objective control are conducted by the operator solely on the basis of visual contact with the display device, rather than on actual observation, and this distinction is often not in the conscious focus of the subject. Virtualization of what is happening depersonalizes the perception of the enemy, transferring him to the category of computer game characters, the destruction of which is often accompanied by aggression and excessive brutality, causing a wide public outcry in the field of humane conduct of armed confrontation.

Network-centric wars and modern concepts of humanism

Humanism in a broad sense is defined as a historically changing system of beliefs that recognizes the value of a person as a person ^{[25, p. 130]}, which allows us to interpret military humanism as an activity aimed at observing the principles and norms of international humanitarian law, prohibiting the use of certain types of weapons and reducing the brutality of armed conflict. The basis for criticism of modern humanism is the current principle of the inviolability of combatants, rather than the civilian population, characteristic of the armed conflicts of recent decades. The control of territories in an aerocentric war is based on the "kill-box" concept ^{[5, p. 67]}, which defines the boundaries of the zone of total extermination on the geographical map of the area. The work of aircraft pilots within the boundaries of the "kill-box" at an altitude inaccessible to enemy air defense equipment minimizes the losses of the air force, but significantly reduces the accuracy of strikes, the error of which is expressed in civilian casualties and in the destruction of non-military infrastructure. Modern drones have a higher accuracy of striking, and the video stream they broadcast performs not only objective control of the target's detection, attack, and firing results, but also acts as an evidence base for the murder. The distribution of such video content in the media and on the GIS Internet is carried out by state law enforcement agencies as a report on measures taken to counter threats to national security, and by insurgents or terrorist organizations in order to intimidate their opponents and the civilian population. Both of these examples are more reminiscent of public executions, which are not only reviewed and evaluated, but also actively discussed in society regarding the effectiveness of the methods of murder used and the victim's death agony.

The paradigm of chivalrous humanism of the era of the Western European Middle Ages, which aroused respect, worship and imitation in society ^{[26, p. 83]}, lost its moral relevance as remote weapons were created and modified. Increasing the range of fire and the penetrating power of weapons geographically removed the opposing armies from each other, and an enemy who becomes invisible to his opponent cannot become a source of moral feeling. The common thing that can unite the actions of an ensign gunner of the First World War and an airplane pilot involved in the bombing of Kosovo in 1999 is the complete lack of eye contact with the enemy. But if for F. A. Stepun , "the Austrians are in the trenches ... not people... but a certain faceless "he". We don't see them, so we don't know them; if we don't know them, we don't love them. And when we see and know (the wounded, the prisoners), we love them" ^{[16, p. 59]}, the local population of Yugoslavia was not included in the concept of "new humanism" and was destroyed for the benefit of peace and the protection of their own values and interests of NATO countries ^[27]. Operators of military drones also do not have a direct "coupling" with the target, which in actor-network theory is called entanglement ^[28], therefore they are inaccessible to enemy weapons. For example, "sitting at a safe distance in Nevada... The same pilot can blow up a car in Afghanistan in the morning, shoot a group of suspicious guerrillas in Iraq in the afternoon, and return to his family in Reno in the evening" ^{[29, p. 3]}. Taking other people's lives, the operator himself does not die, but returns the drone for new ammunition to go hunting again and, having found the target get the right to move from the role of the beholder to the role of judge and executioner.

To achieve victory, it is enough to deprive the opponent of the ability to resist and not necessarily resort to sophisticated methods of violence. Supporters of the "new humanism" ignore this fundamental principle, so the coat of arms of the MQ9 Reaper drone consists of an image of Death with a bloody scythe and the motto "Let others die" ^{[5, p. 109]}, and on T-shirts issued in support of the Predator drone, the inscription "You can run, you'll just die out of breath" was applied ^{[5, p. 105]}. Proponents of the use of drones, following the principle "No one but the enemy will die", agree that such weapons are not only acceptable, but also "morally necessary", distinguishing them into a special class of sophisticated, reliable and "humane weapons" ^{[8, p. 146]}. The new humanism leaves no chance for the enemies to live. Modern drones have transformed combat into higher-level violence. For these reasons, mass cases of deliberate and deliberate killing of unarmed and wounded servicemen have become a source of moral concern in society regarding the use of vertical takeoff and landing drones. Under rocket or artillery fire, a soldier is completely deprived of the opportunity to surrender, while the drone operator is able to visually capture the intentions of the enemy, who has laid down his weapons or is signaling the need for medical attention.

In these examples, the basic idea of humanism takes on a completely opposite orientation, justifying both the act of murder itself and its perpetrators, arguing that its reversal has less collateral damage compared to the results of using other types of weapons to solve similar problems. The term "collateral damage" was introduced to determine the scale of the consequences of armed impact, which include "civilian casualties (children, women and the elderly) and the destruction of transport systems or urban buildings that are not military targets" ^{[30, p. 21]}. In March 2011, as a result of an American drone strike, 38 civilians were killed in the Shiga region (Pakistan), solely on the grounds that "their behavior resembled the modus operandi of the rebels associated with Al-Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation)" ^{[31, p. 34]}. The tragedy that occurred indicates the lack of an algorithm that allows the drone operator to reliably separate combatants from noncombatants. Attempts to introduce selectivity of targets in terms of clothing, weapons, and behavioral patterns failed to produce the expected result. Not all rebels are in a hurry to change into military uniforms, everyone is allowed to have weapons in a number of countries, and the peculiarities of human behavior are perceived correctly only after a sufficiently long time of communication with them, which the drone operator is definitely completely deprived of. Such methods of selecting targets are more like a shadow war, with access to which it is impossible to determine exactly what kind of object it ultimately reflects. The manifestation of such humanism is aimed not so much at resolving the conflict as at its further escalation by militarizing the society of the "liberated" countries against the liberators themselves. One of the leaders of the radical Taliban movement (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) in Pakistan recalled that during three months of work he was able to recruit only ten to fifteen people, and after the American airstrike their number increased to one hundred and fifty volunteers ^{[5, pp. 83-84]}.

Skilful manipulation of public opinion regarding the surgical precision of strikes that exclude accidental deaths among civilians has led to a change in the understanding of humanism, assigning drones the role of "morally acceptable" weapons that save the lives of those who use them, and all selected targets are considered military targets a priori until proven otherwise. The change of the poles of humanism regarding the moral permissibility of the use of drones did not happen by chance. J. Overton's windows ^[32] have become a tool of persuasion and step-by-step influence on human perception to introduce the concept of remote destruction. The algorithm of windows operation consists in their step-by-step movement both in one direction from the stage of the unthinkable, through intermediate levels of radical, acceptable, reasonable, popular to the stage of the state norm, and in the opposite direction. Japan's decision to use kamikazes in the Pacific War became absolutely unacceptable to a civilized society, but it marked the beginning of an active discussion and what previously seemed anti-human was given radical status in Islam. The ability to conduct reconnaissance without a crew on board, while remaining invisible and inaccessible, made it possible to bring the situation to an acceptable stage. Equipping drones with high-precision weapons and performing combat missions without risk to their operators has made it possible to prepare society for the transition to the reasonable stage. The reduction of collateral damage and the destruction of exclusively enemies initiated the level of popularity. At the final stage, the use of drones as weapons was consolidated at the legislative level, thereby defining a new concept of conducting a humane confrontation, or, in other words, launching an extermination campaign.

Conclusion

Over the past few years, the war has ceased to be understood as a direct and open confrontation. Large-scale wars of attrition were replaced by armed conflicts in which time, measured not in days and hours, but in minutes and seconds, became the determining factor of struggle. The basis for the success of military operations began to determine the availability of a high-speed adaptive information and communication network for the management of units and weapons. Anyone who follows the anthropocentric paradigm today, or uses time to assess the situation and make decisions, is not rationally doomed to inevitable defeat. Direct invasion began to be replaced by pinpoint strikes aimed not at retaliatory actions, but at the early elimination of potential threat carriers capable of organizing and conducting these actions.

Combining mining, information control and executive elements on the platform of unmanned aerial vehicles has made drones a universal striking tool capable of not only replacing the main types of traditional remote weapons, which include cannon artillery, guided missiles and their means of delivery, but also turning any unguided projectile into a precision weapon in the process of firing. Reducing the losses of military personnel by replacing them with unmanned vehicles violates the axis of symmetry of the armed conflict against the enemy, who cannot make a similar replacement, and the lack of an accurate algorithm for remotely visual separation of combatants from noncombatants leads to numerous civilian casualties. Fully realizing the classic Foucault panopticism ^[33], drones complemented it by exerting a strong psychological impact on the enemy and were able to transform the way of life of the civilian population by their intervention, isolating it socially, generating total hostility and even more violence. The asymmetry of modern wars makes "victory" and "humanitarian catastrophe," "humanism" and "murder" synonymous, and the genesis of drone technology has contrasted firearms, nuclear and precision weapons with conventional radio-controlled devices, which have become especially popular among the military and representatives of modern humanism.