War Practice and Revolution of Military Thinking
【Lecture Hall】
Just like people's unremitting pursuit of wisdom, people have never given up their exploration and cognition of the laws of war since ancient times. War cognition is a doctrine about the general laws of contradictory movement in the field of war, a world view and methodology about war issues, and the basis of all military theories and strategic planning, and it has a guiding function. In the context of the current accelerated advancement of military reforms, especially at the moment when intelligent warfare is about to enter the war arena, how to innovate thinking and recognize modern warfare has become a major issue of the times before us.
Ask the art of war or science?
Is war art or science?
This question is quite difficult to answer.
Clausewitz believes that war is an "uncertainty field." "All actions in war seem to be carried out in half-bright and half-dark light...it must be guessed or resolved by luck. ".
Indeed, to this day, wars are still regarded by some people as elusive as art, because the occurrence of war is uncertain, like the inspiration of artists; the process of war implementation is complicated, like the process of artistic creation; the result of war It has a certain degree of randomness, like the completion of an artwork.
However, as the tools of war continue to improve, mankind’s ability to withstand war has become increasingly fragile, and there is an urgent need to scientifically understand the laws of war to prevent war from happening.
Therefore, the scientific interpretation of war has become a passion for many military strategists.
Count Raimondo Monteculico, who was born in Italy, was one of the first theorists and practitioners to look at war from a scientific perspective.
He believes that war science, like other sciences, is a study that seeks to make universal rules and basic principles overcome human subjective experience.
Since then, well-known schools of war theory, such as the geometry school and the mathematics school, have tried to use scientific methods to interpret and guide the war in a regular manner. Although each has its own advantages and disadvantages, they all reflect to a certain extent that the war is quantifiable. The scientific attributes of the research object.
In fact, from the perspective of war practice, its scientificity is mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, the preparation of war forces is measurable and very clear.
Before any army enters a war, it must go through processes such as recruiting, military training, weapon production, and material delivery. At present, almost every process has specialized disciplines for systematic research; secondly, the use of war forces is controllable .
Under what circumstances, what kind of force, the number and scope of use, how to use, etc., all have regular conclusions as guidance, and then the commander can make decisions and control; finally, the evaluation of the war effect is reasonable Followable.
For the evaluation of the economic benefits of war, there are theories of war economics as a guide; for the evaluation of the political effects of war, there are theories such as political science and international relations as support; for the evaluation of the social effects of war, there are sociological theories and their investigation methods Available.
Obviously, from the above point of view, war has its scientific side.
When the light of modern science and technology illuminates every corner of the war, the "art" in traditional planning and decision-making begins to move toward "science."
Today, whether it is the thinking method of combat decision-making or the material means of organizational control, driven by science and technology, it has begun to change from simple "management" to "skillful", and more emphasis is placed on the use of mathematical sciences, especially It is a variety of emerging scientific methods and advanced technologies to study and guide warfare.
Clarifying the propositions about whether war is art or science will help us to establish scientific thinking that we should have in the cognition of war.
As the highest form of violence in human society, war has always followed closely with the development of human civilization.
In the military field with war as the main axis, any development is engraved with the "stigma" of the times.
In the process of historical development, human beings always describe the changes of the times in a specific way of thinking, forming a thinking paradigm that is suitable for a certain era.
Fundamentally speaking, the revolution in military thinking is undoubtedly the product of the changes of the times.
Compatible with the social productive forces of the primitive age, it formed a military thinking mode characterized by wood-stone confrontation; adapted to the social productivity mode of the agricultural era, it formed a military thinking mode characterized by foot-riding confrontation and firearm confrontation; Compatible with the social productivity mode of the industrial age, it has formed a military thinking mode with mechanized combat platforms as the main feature; adapted to the social productivity mode of the information age, it has formed a military thinking mode with information confrontation as the main feature; and the intelligent age To adapt to the social productivity mode of the country, it will also form a military thinking mode characterized by intelligent system confrontation.
Combination of war practice and mathematical thinking in the era of mechanized warfare
Engels pointed out: "Humans will fight in what way they produce." The rapid penetration of mechanized industrial production into the military field has subverted the law of the generation and release of combat effectiveness.
Driven by mechanical thinking, platform thinking, and mathematical thinking, mechanized warfare has begun to reshape people's inherent war cognition in an "unexpected" way.
Today, when we talk about mechanical thinking, rigidity, rigidity, and backwardness flash in the minds of many people.
However, two centuries ago, it was a very "innovative" word.
In the 17th century, scientists represented by Newton generally believed that there was a certain isomorphism between nature and clocks.
The world is like a "clock", and the military system is more like a "clock". It is simple and straightforward, with clear cause and effect.
Major General Henry Lloyd, a British military historian and military theorist in the 18th century, pointed out sharply: “The army, like all machines, is composed of various components. The way these components are assembled...Only in this way can the whole machine be perfect." The greater influence of mechanical thinking is to guide war behavior as a criterion.
It regards war as a lifeless machine, uses the "determinism" and "causality" in mechanical thinking to subdivide the war into several phases and small areas, and completes the superposition of combat tasks through subsystems. Achieve the expected combat objectives.
It can be said that in the era of mechanized warfare, the process of war is largely dominated by mechanical thinking.
However, with the leap of human cognition, people have discovered that the world itself has huge uncertainties. Therefore, in the information age, its limitations have become more obvious.
The evolutionary path of human warfare is also, to a certain extent, a leap forward to the modernization of combat platforms. In the era of cold weapons, the scale of war was limited, and the combat platform was relatively simple, with flags, drums, and gongs to retreat; in the era of mechanized warfare, the fusion of gunpowder lethality and mechanical power created a mechanized combat platform, and then emerged New combat power. The rise of mechanization on the battlefield at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century gave birth to platform thinking. With the emergence of high-speed maneuverability aircraft, tanks, warships and other equipment on the battlefield, the elements of combat effectiveness have merged with each other, and the connection mode of "human-mechanized combat platform-voice communication system" has begun to appear. From the perspective of the materialization of science and technology into weapons and equipment, this is a process from "single piece" to "platform." In response to this, military thinking has also undergone a shift from "single linear thinking" to "platform thinking." Platform thinking must organically coordinate the various elements of combat effectiveness to adapt to future combat needs. In the era of mechanized warfare, since the various elements of combat effectiveness have not yet formed a true organic system, the efficiency of cross-platform coordinated operations is relatively backward, and cross-service coordinated operations are even more difficult. With the gradual emergence of platform advantages, people began to think about how to organically connect individual weapons and combat platforms, which greatly promoted the innovation of military thinking.
Marx once said: "A subject can only be truly perfected if it successfully uses mathematics." However, mathematical thinking, as a way of thinking, has not attracted enough attention for a long time, especially This is even more true in the military field.
With the advent of the era of mechanized warfare, it is no longer possible to carry out calculations and deductions for a series of complex command activities such as troop formation, equipment allocation, and combat decision-making with pure thinking activities.
In World War II, the US warships were repeatedly attacked by Japanese aircraft in the early days of the Pacific War, and the loss rate was as high as 62%. During the high-altitude dive bombing, the loss rate of the U.S. ship adopting rapid swing evasion tactics was 20%, and the loss rate of adopting slow swing was 100%. Second, when Japanese aircraft used low-altitude dive bombing, the U.S. ships adopted rapid swing and slow swing. The loss rate is 57%. The U.S. military immediately found the best method based on the principle of maximization and minimization in the game theory in operations research: when the enemy plane strikes, it adopts rapid swing evasion tactics. According to estimates, this decision at least makes the ship The ship loss rate dropped from 62% to 27%.
In short, after the advent of the era of mechanized warfare, military practice and mathematical thinking have been closely integrated: aircraft take-off, ship sailing, missile launching, and artillery shooting all do not require precise calculations; strategic decision-making, campaign planning, combat command, force use, and combat Support and equipment development are all closely related to quantity and quantity.
At the same time, with the increase of uncertainties in war, war operations have become more and more complex, calculation results and quantitative analysis have more and more profound reflections of the inherent laws of actual problems, and the application of mathematical tools and mathematical thinking to quantify military issues Analysis has gradually become an important method of winning wars.
The future intelligent warfare military thinking changes toward the "networking" direction
Nowadays, artificial intelligence is increasingly on the battlefield, promoting the accelerated evolution of warfare from information warfare to intelligent warfare.
Intelligent warfare is an advanced stage in the development of information warfare, and victory with intelligence is its core.
The form of war shows new features such as man-machine coordination, intelligent leadership, cloud-brain combat, and global confrontation.
Looking forward to future intelligent warfare, we must use networked thinking, data thinking, and complexity thinking to analyze the winning mechanism.
With the development of information technology and the emergence of networked warfare, networked thinking has gradually become familiar to people.
In a narrow sense, networked thinking refers to a way of thinking that uses a computer-based information network to support the combination of man and machine; in a broad sense, networked thinking embodies a state and way of thinking.
Specifically, it compares the breadth and depth of thinking space to a structure and spatial distribution of the network, and its thinking characteristics often reflect the characteristics of the network, which is the concrete presentation of system thinking in the information age.
Network thinking emphasizes that the focus of war is on the network, and war decisions rely on the network.
In the future, intelligent warfare is still based on joint operations based on the network information system. Therefore, network thinking is not outdated. It means that people begin to think about using a large number of networks to organically connect individual weapons and combat platforms to obtain new combat capabilities. growth point.
"The effectiveness of the network is equal to the square of the number of network nodes" has become an important multiplier of combat effectiveness, which has greatly promoted the transformation of military thinking towards "networking".
Big data is not only a resource and a method, but also a technology and a tool.
Of course, the application of this kind of technology and tools is also inseparable from a change in the way of thinking.
From the perspective of the understanding of the relationship between things, human thinking can be divided into two categories: scientific thinking and data thinking.
Scientific thinking focuses on the causal relationship between things, and data thinking focuses on the correlation between things.
These two ways of thinking have been accompanied by human life and production. They are everywhere and indispensable.
Data thinking was formed earlier than scientific thinking, and it has always been an important way of thinking for humans.
Many researchers further subdivide data thinking into statistical thinking, decision thinking, uncertain thinking, full sample thinking, and so on.
Modern warfare is a contest between information and data. Whoever can take the lead in mastering intelligent algorithms will be able to take the lead and win the war.
On the one hand, in order to win the "algorithm war", warfighters need to have excellent data analysis and computing capabilities.
Manpower giving way to intelligence is an inevitable trend in the development of combat systems. Cultivating excellent "algorithmists" and forming intelligent and efficient combat teams are essential for enhancing combat effectiveness.
On the other hand, the research and development of new algorithms also requires the integration of multiple disciplines to achieve efficient docking between military and technology. For new algorithms to truly become "war algorithms", they must closely integrate tactics and mathematical models, and combine computer technology with Human decision-making coordination and integration.
To achieve this kind of war vision, military personnel are not competent without data thinking.
Qian Xuesen once pointed out: “Any problems that cannot be handled by reductionist methods, or that should not be handled by reductionist methods, but should be handled with or appropriate to new scientific methods, are complex problems.” Since the 1980s, On the basis of general system theory, cybernetics and other disciplines, a batch of new disciplines such as dissipative structure theory, synergetics, catastrophe theory, chaos and fractal theory have been created and developed. They are interdisciplinary and reveal from different perspectives. The regularity of complex phenomena has been created, which has led to the emergence of complexity science.
Complexity science breaks the mindset of traditional scientific methodology, has methodological implications, and can be used as a tool for research in other disciplines.
The war system is a typical complex giant system.
To study the war system, we must first realize the complexity of the war system, and we must adopt research methods and methods suitable for the characteristics of the war complex giant system.
Complexity science is the latest achievement in the development of contemporary scientific theory. It has received wide attention from scholars all over the world and has been widely used in many fields such as natural sciences, social sciences, and philosophy.
In view of the limitations of traditional combat command theories, the use of complexity science in combat command research, the implementation of the methodology of complexity science, and the reflection and transcendence of the principles of division, reduction, and simplification have shown great potential.
It provides theories and methods for the innovative development of combat command theories in the military field, as well as the guidance of world outlook and methodology.
The first-class army foresees war.
Du Hei, the father of "air supremacy," once said: "Victory only smiles at those who can foresee changes in the characteristics of war, not at those who wait for changes to happen before adapting." Military thinking is the foresight of war.
The key to foreseeing war is scientific cognition of war. To this end, we should “remove the rough and extract the essence, remove the falsehood and save the truth, then follow the other, from the outside to the inside” processing and transformation of a large number of perceptual materials, and reveal the military reform practice and military thinking reform as a whole. The relationship between military reforms has been continuously deepened, tested, revised, and developed in the practice of military reforms, so that military thinking reforms truly become the forerunner and guide of military reforms.
(Author: Jia Zhenzhen, lecturer at the College of Arts and Sciences, National University of Defense Technology; Lin Han, associate researcher at the Academy of Military Political Work, Academy of Military Sciences; Shi Haiming, associate professor at the School of Military Management, National University of Defense Technology)