Concepts of the visible and invisible enemy as antagonistic components determining the success of military confrontation (using optical devices as an example)

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 Other publications by this author

Introduction

Wars in the history of mankind are continuous, which is confirmed by the research of Odyssey Baro, who, after analyzing the time period from 1496 to 1861, came to the conclusion that for 3,357 years mankind had been at war for 3,130 years and had been at peace for only 227 years ^{[1, p. 20]}. The appearance of remote weapons and the improvement of their tactical and technical characteristics geographically distanced the warring parties from each other, which, according to N. A. Berdyaev, replaced open military confrontation with "murder from around the corner" ^{[2, p. 185]}. The concept of remote warfare can be understood using the visible/invisible enemy and detect/hide dichotomies. The visibility of the enemy makes it vulnerable to enemy weapons, for this reason, the warring parties strive to detect the location of enemy troops as early as possible, while preventing their positions from being exposed.

Two-dimensional wars, in which the confrontation of visible enemies was determined by their location on the spatial surface, turned into three-dimensional wars due to the incorporation of new dimensions into the physical space. Physical invisibility became possible by adding a vertical component to the horizontal dimension of space, which made it possible to introduce additional levels of warfare, determined by measurements of height and depth in air and water, respectively. The capabilities of the human eye in detecting and identifying remote objects are very limited, which has led to the development of a number of optical devices that are actively used in the military field. Countering optical detection systems in order to achieve invisibility is also based on the laws of light refraction, and if the search for objects belongs to the active phase of activity, then masking mostly consists of passive methods.

As the degree of study of the issues that determine the physical (non-) visibility of the enemy on the battlefield and in conditions of remote confrontation, we highlight the following works. The classic dueling nature of an armed confrontation to the point of exhaustion, culminating in a general battle, is considered by K. By Clausewitz ^[3]. War as a political phenomenon characterized by the presence of a predominantly open form of confrontation, excluding the complete destruction of the enemy, if such a confrontation is not absolute, was studied by K. Schmitt ^[4]. Within the framework of ethical reflection, the territorial remoteness between opponents at a distance of a shot was used by V. S. Solovyov ^{[5, p. 355]} as a basis for removing responsibility from soldiers for their murders. The philosophical understanding of the concept of an (invisible) enemy through the prism of the events of the First World War by the participants of the warring parties is represented by the works of E. Junger ^[6] and A. F. Stepun ^[7]. The autochthonous nature of the irregular telluric force, which is the main instrument of the invisible war, is explicated in the work of K. Schmitt ^[8]. The work of G. Shamai ^[9] is devoted to the issues of radical asymmetry of war through the use of drones that ensure full visibility of the enemy, while remaining hidden from the eyes of the enemy. The political and philosophical content of the concept of the invisible enemy in its physical and symbolic meanings was studied by N. A. Balakleets ^[10] in order to analyze wars and political conflicts. The historical scheme of the three orders of simulacra is proposed by J. By Baudrillard ^[11]. The panopticon as a visual model of total control is considered in the works of M. Foucault ^{[12, 13]}.

The concepts of the visible and invisible enemy have been widely studied in the framework of modern technical warfare, as indicated by the list of references. At the same time, the processes of transition from a state of visibility to a state of invisibility and back by direct participants in military operations based on the application of the laws of optics are currently not fully understood, which determines the relevance of the ongoing research. The object of the research is the phenomenon of (non-)visibility of combatants and military equipment during combat operations. The subject of the study is the practice of detecting the enemy and hiding their units by participants in military operations based on the application of the laws of optics. The lack of eye contact between the subject and the target makes defeating the latter impossible for two reasons. Firstly, the exact direction of the target is unknown, and secondly, there is no understanding of the target itself, which determines the choice of weapons for its guaranteed destruction. For this reason, the optical device was chosen as the starting point in the study as a tool for direct interaction between the subject and the search object. As a methodological basis for conducting a systematic study, the following can be used: historical and philosophical reconstruction, the concept of simulacrum. Baudrillard and the panopticism of M. Foucault.

Optical devices that detect enemy visibility

Developing optics as a science, people projected the visual organ into a number of optical devices, expanding the boundaries of exploring the surrounding world and their knowledge, increasing, according to N. N. Moiseev, "the fronts of contact with the still unknown" ^{[14, p. 111]}. The human eye is the main organ that takes a direct part in the process of perception of the surrounding world by the subject, therefore, without detecting and identifying the target in space, the process of its destruction becomes impossible. The first object that marked the beginning of the creation of optical devices is a hollow tube used by ancient man in order to examine objects located at a considerable distance from him. The installation of lenses inside the tube and the resulting positive effect in observing remote objects was regarded by researchers as something that could be very useful in the military field. Thus, in 1267, the Franciscan monk Roger Bacon informed Pope Clement IV that armies of enemies could be viewed in detail from a great distance using "transparent devices" ^{[15, pp. 128, 192]}, and the author of the first telescope, Hans Lippergey, presented the developed device to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Netherlands, Prince Morris of Nassau ^{[15, p. 123]}.

The interaction of the subject with the search object is mediated by the optical properties of the device used. At a small distance from the object of visual perception, the eyepiece of an optical device is not able to convey to the observer the fullness of the observed picture, due to the existing limitations in viewing angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. By enhancing vision and helping to overcome distances, optics shackles the visual organ, depriving it of mobility: "what can you see when the gaze, enslaved by this sighting device, is reduced to an almost insurmountable structural immobility? Only momentary fragments are now visible, picked out by the cyclopean eye of the lens, and as a result, the gaze, losing its substantiality, becomes accidental, accidental" ^{[16, p. 30]}. The projection of the gaze through an optical device onto the observed object has the shape of a cone, and the farther away from the object, the larger the surveyed area. A subject placed relative to the studied object in a separate spatial topos of a vertical plane (a central tower or mountain peak) perceives the observed picture as a dynamic fragment of a two-dimensional map. For this reason, optics in the military sphere was given the role of a tool that allowed not only to develop cartography, but also ultimately to modernize the classical model of Jeremy Bentham's ponopticon, transforming ordinary observation into total surveillance.

Physical visibility does not guarantee the destruction of a target only due to the experience of aiming shooters and gunners. To increase the effectiveness of shooting, you need to know the distance to the target. Knowledge of geometry allowed Aristarchus of Samos and Hipparchus of Nicaea in the III and II centuries BC to calculate the distance from the Earth to the Moon, without resorting to the use of high-precision measuring instruments, which in the field of military technology could find its practical application only at the end of the XIX century. The appearance of the world's first optical device for accurately determining the distance to a target, called the coastal artillery rangefinder and successfully tested at the batteries in Kronstadt in 1868, is associated with the Russian officer, military engineer V. F. Petrushevsky ^{[17, pp. 32-47]}. The principle of operation of the rangefinder was to determine the height of a parallactic triangle, which was based not on two observers geographically located at different points on the ground, but on two lens lenses spaced apart, which allowed one person to make all the necessary calculations. The introduction of V. F. Petrushevsky's invention into military affairs created a complex sociotechnical system based on the initial principle of network centrism, combining coastal artillery guns into a single network, which was controlled by the battery commander, rather than the gunner of each gun individually.

Until the middle of the 19th century, targeted shooting in battle tactics did not play a special role due to the fact that firearms were used collectively and exclusively to create a "wall of flying metal" ^{[18, p. 46]} in order to inflict maximum damage to enemy manpower before a bayonet attack. To increase the effectiveness of shooting at remote targets, the technical solution was to combine the telescope and the gun into a single mechanism. The result of the constructive combination of two artifacts made it possible to accurately and selectively destroy the combatants, which at that time was considered "a manifestation of treachery, one of the horrors of war" ^{[19, p. 9]}. Therefore, optical sights were widely used exclusively on hunting weapons before the outbreak of the First World War, but, due to the advent of new combat tactics, by 1914 they had become an integral attribute of bombing systems, artillery gunners and specially trained shooters (snipers). The visibility of an object implies the assertion of differences. Combatants stand out among the civilian population by their uniform, and among themselves by a system of insignia that serve as markers of a strict military hierarchy, which in anthropocentric wars made command staff and signallers (signallers) priority targets for snipers, the timely destruction of which deprived military formations of the ability to self-organize and reorganize while participating in battles and demoralized personnel.

In the military sphere, obtaining intelligence data about the enemy necessary for preemptive strikes against its "centers of gravity", which are understood as the most vulnerable objects ^{[20, p. 119]}, is preceded by a process of continuous monitoring through external and internal sources of information collection, thereby identifying the "functional of the eye... the functionality of weapons" ^{[9, p. 129]}. The appearance of photography in the 1830s and 1840s became a new form of presenting objective scientific results ^{[21, p. 15]}. The photographic image did not distort reality and at the same time was both a tool for demonstrating the fact and a special tool for its cognition. In the concept of J. Baudrillard's photography belongs to the second order of simulacra and is considered by him as an industrial (serial) copy ^{[11, p. 113; 122]}. The installation of cameras on reconnaissance aircraft led to a significant expansion of the area of visibility of enemy territory, the photographs of which were regularly updated, which ultimately required the development of practices for their timely and detailed analysis. The development of complex photoanalysis algorithms made it possible to penetrate inside photographs in search of the necessary information, which was organized by photoanalysts into patterns that serve as the basis for subsequent conclusions and extrapolation. Several images of the same area taken from a reconnaissance aircraft and spaced apart in time for an ordinary person may not differ from each other, but an experienced photo analyst can see that an additional power line has been added between the objects of observation, or determine the fact of movement of weapons and military equipment by the presence of a track on the ground. Visually detected unmasking signs determine not only the very fact of the enemy's presence, but are also used as a basis for solving the epistemological problem of recreating images of objects hidden by him. The human eye is the main organ that takes a direct part in the process of perception of the surrounding world by the subject. He is able to see "even missing details if they fit the overall picture in meaning, and if any details do not make sense, he does not see them" ^{[22, p. 201]}. The launch of reconnaissance satellites shifted the tracking process from a local scale to a global scale, which made it possible to monitor a potential enemy without crossing its state borders or violating its airspace, while avoiding the risk of losing photographic reconnaissance aircraft and their piloting crew.

In a metaphorical sense, the concept of "invisible enemy" is often used to refer to objects of a non-anthropogenic nature, which include pathogenic bacteria, viral infections, and poisons. The first optical artifact for visualizing invisible elements of a non-anthropogenic nature was a composite microscope, which already in 1664 allowed Robert Hooke in his work "Micrography" to introduce the term cell for the structures he discovered in the cork bark ^[23]. Further study of the organic type of material systems allowed us to identify several levels of their organization, and their synthesis led to the creation of biological, chemical and bacteriological weapons by humans. Even if we negate the claim about the anthropogenic nature of COVID-19, a number of researchers have compared the consequences of the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection in their destructive effect on humanity with the damage caused by large-scale military operations ^{[24, 25]}.

Gaining invisibility

The human eye, being a passive organ, is responsible for reflecting light scattered from objects coming from different angles from the light-tight vascular "wall" of the retina in the direction of its photosensitive analyzers, followed by translation into the brain. Therefore, the secret to gaining invisibility lies in deceiving analyzing devices, which can act as a human brain or any other complex technical device. To do this, instead of a hidden object, it will be necessary to present some imaginary image, having discovered which, the subject's brain or the analyzing device conducting the search will not be able to localize and identify it as the object of the search. An imaginary image can be presented intentionally in the form of fakes or simulacra of the first category ^{[11, p. 113]}, aimed at creating an illusion, well explained by F. Nietzsche's metaphor "shadow of God" ^{[26, p. 427]}, according to which the enemy must believe in the physical presence of his enemy or, conversely, in his absence. Mock-ups of weapons and military equipment located on the ground are often used as fakes, as well as mechanisms for translating reality into another semantic field are actively practiced. Instead of military uniforms, combatants often use clothing typical of civilians in the attacked region, carry out covert transfer of weapons and personnel through civilian vehicles, postulating the main principle of successful armed confrontation.: "It is necessary to see not what is shown, but what is really there."

The art of disguising and concealing military units and objects, up to complete invisibility, has become an integral part of the military art practiced by military leaders for thousands of years. Thus, back in the 5th century BC, the military theorist Sun Tzu noted that war is nothing more than a "path of deception" ^[27]. Masking is achieved by placing the hidden object in certain conditions that are temporary, situational, and spatially determined. The movement of troops on the ground is characterized by full visibility to the enemy due to the use of unpaved and equipped roads suitable for this purpose by the moving units. Defenders at this time, using the terrain features and specially created engineering structures, may remain inaccessible to the enemy's visual perception until a decision is made on a surprise attack. For this reason, the attacker's priority task before launching any ground operation was to establish dominance in the airspace of the attacked State. The mechanism of traditional ground-centered warfare has been revised in favor of aerocentric warfare. G. Shamayu in his book quotes the words of a resident of an Afghan village, which became a reaction to American strikes carried out by aircraft-type drones: "We pray to Allah to face American soldiers who can be killed. We cannot fight against bombs falling from the sky" ^{[9, p. 76]}.

In a military confrontation, the detection of a target with subsequent identification, as well as its concealment, play a key role, which is primarily due to the selective nature of fire damage. In other words, the cost of the ammunition used must be less than or, in extreme cases, equal to the cost of the target being destroyed, otherwise such a confrontation becomes economically unprofitable. To date, there are three known scientific methods that can remove an object from the observer's field of view. The essence of the first method is that light must bend around objects without colliding with them. In the optical range, despite the ongoing research, there are no practical implementations of this method, but for the centimeter range of radiation waves based on the metamaterial, an annular structure with a negative refractive index was developed, passing through which electromagnetic waves encircled an object mounted in its center. The second method assumes that light must pass through objects without being distorted, for which special non-reflective coatings and complex systems of lenses and mirrors are widely used, which, on the contrary, redirect the luminous flux not back to the source, but away from it. The third method is to select materials for making the objects themselves that will absorb light completely without reflecting anything. Thus, O. Gadomsky proposed applying an ultrathin layer of microscopic colloidal gold particles to objects as a non-reflective material for converting optical radiation.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the American artist E. Thayer outlined the theory of countershading ^[28] and identified the difference between two ways to achieve the effect of invisibility, one of which he attributed to the possibility of an object or a living organism to merge with the surrounding background, and the other, on the contrary, to dazzle the observer. Nature has endowed animals with the ability to both take on the background of their surrounding vegetation and confuse predators with their bright coloring in the form of stripes, spots and other garish details that completely mask the outlines of their bodies, making it difficult to detect and pursue. Both of these methods allow you to disappear from the enemy's field of view and are actively used in the armed forces. The process of merging with the environment is realized by coloring military uniforms and military equipment in protective colors with various patterns characteristic of the decadent visual avant-garde movements of Cubism, futurism and Vorticism, which significantly distorts the shape of the hidden object. The literature ^{[15, p. 205]} describes a case when P. Picasso, seeing military equipment covered with camouflage zigzags on one of the boulevards of Paris, exclaimed: "This is us, we invented it!". Short-term blinding of the analyzing devices is achieved through the use of lasers, smoke and light grenades, which not only indicates the territorial proximity of the enemy, but can also inform about the transition of his units into the active phase of military confrontation.

The myth of the invisible hat, which dates back to the time of Ancient Greece, is currently gaining practical realization. R. Alden's method of three-dimensional masking is based on the emission towards the observer by light-emitting devices of rays identical in their parameters (wavelength, direction, intensity) to the rays incident on the illumination sensors of the hidden object located behind it. A modification of this technical solution was a device called the "retroreflectum", created on the basis of small reflective beads capable of displaying a video projection of what is actually behind the object ^{[15, p. 207]}. There is one serious drawback in both of these methods of disguise, due to the fact that the hidden object is clearly visible to an observer, who may be from behind or from the side. The introduction of improved retroreflectum technologies in the field of operational camouflage will make it possible to conceal equipment and personnel that are both stationary and in motion from enemy optical surveillance equipment. The concept of the "kill box" ^{[9, pp. 67-69]} drones will be contrasted with the realistic and illusory concept of the "safe box" retro-reflex, which forms projections of the surrounding landscape, making hidden objects spatially homogeneous in all planes.

Conclusion

War, as a complex political, socio-cultural, technical and humanitarian phenomenon, is based on a number of concepts, the study of which requires the use of philosophical methods and approaches. One of the most significant concepts is the concept of a visible and invisible enemy, as antagonistic components that determine the success of military confrontation. This concept can be considered based on the rich philosophical tradition of analyzing optical metaphor and contrasting the visible and the invisible, dating back to Plato. Visible here means accessible, knowable, clear, but at the same time vulnerable. The invisible appears as something hidden, elusive, ineffable, secret, inaccessible. Panopticism, like the complete visibility of objects, creates a situation of insecurity, and the complete indistinguishability of the target makes it impossible to defeat it. Invisibility of the enemy deprives the fighter of the one he is fighting, while full visibility is guaranteed to involve attempts at his complete destruction. The border of (non-)visibility is not stable, its deviant nature determines both the level of development of military art and weapons, as well as the natural and geographical features of the theater of military operations. For this reason, the success of armed confrontation is actively shifting towards outstripping the enemy in the implementation of practices for converting his invisible objects into visible, open and calculable ones. Optical devices have certainly enhanced human vision, allowing within certain limits to destroy the boundaries of the perceptual inaccessibility of the enemy, but at the same time, knowledge of the laws of light propagation and refraction can significantly complicate the spatial identification of search objects, shifting the process of their further detection from the optical domain to the field of application of other forms of technical perception of the surrounding reality. The success achieved in the field of analytical methods of pattern recognition has shifted the traditional battle of weapons to the background. If earlier in the wars of visible armies the recognition process consisted in separating real targets from false ones, then modern wars require a more detailed analysis of the observation results to find visual inconsistencies between both the material objects in the frame and between objects and the environment. The surveillance process in modern warfare has become not only continuous and comprehensive, but has also transformed into a decentered, dynamic and panoptic surveillance aimed at timely detection of threats and their preventive elimination.