【Walking the Great Wall】
The so-called "dimensionality reduction strike" comes from the classic work "Three Body" by Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin. It refers to a three-body star using "two-way foil" to reduce the solar system from three-dimensional space to two-dimensional space. In science fiction, this type of attack is refreshing and impressive, but if you think about it carefully, it seems that there have always been various "dimensionality reduction attacks" in the military field.
In the cold weapon era, a single soldier can only attack an enemy in one direction at a time, which can be regarded as a "one-dimensional attack"; after the battle, multiple soldiers form a "one army", holding different weapons respectively, which can be used for close attack and It can be attacked from a distance, and it can also deal with attacks in multiple directions at the same time. At this time, the soldiers who cooperate with each other often have a very significant advantage over the soldiers fighting alone. For example, in the Ming Dynasty anti-Japanese warrior Qi Jiguang invented the "Mandarin Duck Array", eleven people as a team, respectively holding long shields, rattan cards, wolf masculine, javelin, waist knife, palladium boring and other weapons, both long and short, both offensive and defensive, through the soldiers The mutual cooperation between the two has greatly broken the Japanese pirates for decades, and repeated battles and successes have successfully quelled the Japanese pirates along the coast. For Japanese martial arts fighters, ordinary soldiers are not opponents alone, but the "Mandarin Duck Formation" composed of ordinary soldiers, through the optimized combination of soldiers and weapons, has achieved an overall "uplift" in combat capability. Facing the same opponent, this is a kind of "dimensionality reduction strike".
In the era of hot weapons, the emergence of firearms enabled the strength of individual soldiers to "enhance the dimension." Relying on the power of gunpowder, the single soldier's attack distance is greatly expanded, and a soldier with a gun can easily shoot an enemy stronger than himself. Soldiers with guns are also a kind of "dimensionality reduction strike" in front of bare-handed soldiers and even cavalry. As a result, the "scatter line" tactics based on rifle gun technology were all the rage. When firearms became the standard configuration for soldiers, humans quickly discovered that no matter how far the firearms were fired, only one enemy could be shot at a time, and one shell of the artillery could kill many or even dozens of enemies at the same time. Thus, the coordinated tactics of infantry and artillery began to dominate. At this time, the "infantry coordination" tactic represented by surface fire damage is also a "dimensionality reduction strike" for the "scatter line" tactics characterized by point-shaped target killing.
During the two world wars, the emergence of tanks and aircraft represented two new "dimension enhancements." The tank is equivalent to the "artillery" equipped with protective armor and tracked engines. It not only has violent firepower, but also has strong protective power and mechanical power. Compared with artillery that can only be fired at a standstill, tanks can fire projectiles during maneuvering. This is a "dimension improvement" that combines maneuverability and strike capability. Therefore, the attack of the tank-based impact armor cluster on the traditional rifle coordinated forces has become a destructive "dimensionality reduction strike". This huge drop in the strength of the battlefield indirectly gave birth to the German "Glittering" tactics. The aircraft's participation in war directly expanded the form of war from two-dimensional ground to three-dimensional space. At this time, the attack on the enemy's ground forces by the aircraft owner becomes a typical "dimensionality reduction strike." When the aircraft and tank were combined, the "combat dimension" was raised again. The Soviet Union's Tukhachevsky created a dazzling "large depth" tactical ideology characterized by "air-ground coordination", which is of great significance and influence. It is far-reaching and even continues to this day.
With the continuous development of science and technology, precision-guided weapons finally entered the stage of war. If airplanes, tanks, and artillery are masterpieces of the use of force and firepower, then missiles are the perfect combination of speed and precision. Speed can be seen as an improvement in the "time dimension", that is, the advantage of high-speed penetration in the "time dimension"; accuracy is an improvement in the "space dimension", that is, through satellite navigation and inertial guidance and other technologies, will attack the target The precision is controlled at one part per million. For example, in December 1979, the US Navy launched a "Trident-I" missile, successfully hitting a target 7400 kilometers away, its circular probability error (launching multiple missiles of the same type at the target, requiring half of the missiles to land on In a circle centered on the target, the radius of the circle (the circle probability error) is less than 90 meters, which is equivalent to the size of a football field. This is a milestone improvement in military technology in human history. The emergence of missiles means that the war may be over from the beginning, and once again subverts the traditional concept of war.
Today, the emergence of new technologies such as unmanned systems, intelligent robots, big data, and cloud computing will once again trigger a huge change in the form of war. The world is on the eve of the "unmanned" war. Human beings, as the most important and fragile link in war, can realize the optimized combination of "human-machine", innovative tactics and tactics, and exert powerful combat effectiveness through the intelligent attributes of human beings; it may also be due to the fragile physical attributes of human beings. After suffering sudden fire damage, the war machine was instantly paralyzed. For example, anti-tank missiles are not attacking tanks, but internal operators; it is not the fortification bunkers but the soldiers inside that the cloud bombs and thermobaric bombs eliminate. "Unmanned" wars, through the upgrade of the "man" to "no man" dimensions, have filled this deadly shortcoming. In December 2015, the Syrian government forces, with the strong support of the Russian combat robots, successfully captured the 754.5 highlands of Latakia controlled by the "Islamic State" militants. During the battle, under the unified command of the accusation system, the Russian military drones, combat robots, and self-propelled artillery groups achieved "front-end reconnaissance, deep strike, air-ground integration, and autonomous coordination", and the armed elements were unable to fight back. In the end, 77 militants were killed, and only four of the Syrian government troops who participated in the war were slightly injured. This fact shows that the future "unmanned" combat system will inevitably be a new round of "dimensionality reduction strikes" for the "manned" combat system.
Numerous war practices tell us that there may be many ways to defeat opponents, but the one with the highest cost-effectiveness is always the “dimensionality reduction strike”. Because being in the same dimension as the opponent means that both parties must follow the same set of rules of war, then they can only win by virtue of their overall strength. This kind of victory may "kill 10,000 enemies and damage 8,000"; while enhancing their own "combat "Dimension" means creating a new set of rules of warfare, so as to attack opponents at a higher level. This type of strike, or the use of new weapons and equipment, or the creation of new tactics and tactics, or both, can often break through the opponent's conventional defense system, thereby achieving unexpected and shocking combat effects.
(Author: Mao Wei Hao, Department of the Army Command College lecturer)