How Modern Military Technology Has Transformed Warfare?

We have once again arrived at a time when the military, military readiness, and weapons are discussed every day. The uncertain era has led to the reintroduction of mandatory military service in Croatia to prepare the youth and teach them the basics of handling rifles and pistols. However, do infantry and human soldiers on the ground have any meaning today?

In an era where algorithms determine what we read, watch, and buy, it is no surprise that warfare is increasingly becoming a job for machines and less for humans. Modern defense technology no longer includes just rifles, tanks, and aircraft – it encompasses large data sets, artificial intelligence, orbit, genetics, and invisible networks that monitor and connect everything. In this transformation of warfare, classic battlefields are disappearing, and instead of in trenches, battles are now fought in data clouds and with invisible frequencies. While the public discusses tanks in Ukraine or Israeli missile strikes in Gaza, another military race is taking place behind the scenes, rarely mentioned, if at all, but whose consequences could be global. In this whole story, it is the unfortunate souls whose fate has placed them in a trench when explosive-laden drones fly towards them that suffer the most.

Foggy Secrets

Armies around the world are making extraordinary efforts to keep secrets about their latest innovations, and for good reason. However, this secrecy often fuels curiosity and speculation in the public. Occasionally, military secrets do come to light – if not immediately, then decades after their first application. One such case is a material called fogbank, which was used in the production of nuclear warheads. The process of its production was so strictly confidential that the data about it has since been – lost. When it became necessary in the early 2000s to produce a new quantity of this material to refurbish existing warheads, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration had to invest enormous effort, time, and money to rediscover the lost production process. Although the existence of fogbank is now publicly known, its exact structure remains a secret.

Weapon experts believe it is a type of aerogel – a material that should transform into superheated plasma upon the detonation of the fission phase of nuclear weapons, which then triggers the final fusion explosion of the warhead. Fogbank was produced in the state of Tennessee from 1975 to 1989. After the production of that series of warheads ended, the production facility was shut down. Twenty years later, when the U.S. decided to extend the lifespan of existing warheads, engineers and scientists who worked on the project realized that documentation on the production of fogbank was almost nonexistent.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that many experts who worked on its original production had since retired or left the agency. After a painstaking process of reverse engineering, the material was successfully produced again in 2008. Today, it is unknown whether fogbank is still used in new generations of American nuclear weapons. This is just one example of secret military technologies that seem to surround us, but about which little is known or not known at all.

Algorithmic War

If we jump from the Cold War to the present, we enter the era of autonomous drones that decide on targets themselves, which was reserved for science fiction movies just a decade ago. However, as we witness events on the ‘eastern front’ daily, such aircraft or drones have become commonplace. In the Ukrainian war, drones equipped with computer vision autonomously identify tanks and attack them, with significant contributions from the American company Palantir Technologies, which developed the MetaConstellation system that connects satellite data and drones on the ground in real-time, enabling analysis and decision-making in seconds. In this process, key responsibility no longer lies in the hands of commanders but rather in the hands of engineers and programmers who train machine learning systems. This is a radical shift because war is no longer a matter of generals’ strategy but of quality code. Macho men in green uniforms are being replaced by nerds with ‘ashtrays’.

Behind all this are powerful private companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and China’s CETC, which, often shrouded in secrecy, develop the weapons of the future. Collaboration between the public and private sectors has become crucial as armies no longer develop technology but become clients in the global security industry, making it sometimes very difficult to draw a line and clearly see where the invisible line lies between national defense and corporate interests.

Between Reality and Myth

In the spirit of the Cold War, many military forces are developing weapons that do not formally exist, but everyone knows they do. Myth and reality have become inseparable, and transparency has become a luxury that states can no longer (or do not want to) afford. One of the most interesting among them is PHASR (personnel halting and stimulation response), which represents one of the most unusual and futuristic non-lethal weapons developed in the U.S. military. It is an experimental laser system designed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, whose main purpose is to temporarily incapacitate an opponent using intense light. PHASR uses laser beams of two different wavelengths to disorient and temporarily blind a person, reportedly without causing permanent eye damage.

International conventions, such as Protocol IV of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, prohibit the use of weapons that can cause permanent blindness to people, and the U.S. military claims that PHASR does not violate these rules as it is not designed to cause permanent blindness. Instead, its purpose is to detain and neutralize threats at shorter distances, in crowd control missions, protection of military facilities, and in counter-terrorism situations, where lethal force is not a desirable option. With a visual appearance reminiscent of a gun from science fiction movies, PHASR has gained almost cult status in discussions about the weapons of the future. However, its application remains limited, and widespread operational use has not yet been confirmed. In theory, PHASR is a ‘non-lethal weapon’, and we could also call it a ‘silent repressive weapon’.

A similar situation exists with the sound or acoustic cannon known by the acronym LRAD (long-range acoustic device), which was recently used against students in Serbia. Or was it? Or was it not? Who can know after the state officials in that country have changed their stance several times on whether they have it or not in their equipment. Although it is not lethal, LRAD causes nausea, disorientation, and pain, some of which we could also see that day in Serbia. With such a weapon, the euphemism ‘crowd control’ takes on a sinister connotation, and democracies around the world must raise the question of its use in civilian spaces instead of covering up its use, which we have also witnessed.

Electromagnetic Pulse and the Stone Age

In the sea of modern military technology, EMP or electromagnetic pulse stands out. It is a weapon that does not destroy buildings but systems and, as they say, can destroy the foundations of civilization as we know it in an extremely short time. EMP is a short but powerful electromagnetic wave that occurs as a result of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, and it can also be caused by other sources such as solar storms or specific technologies designed to create EMPs (known as nuclear EMP or non-nuclear EMP devices). EMP is essentially a strong pulse of electromagnetic radiation that causes instantaneous disruption or permanent destruction of electronic devices and systems, such as computer networks, energy infrastructure, communication networks, cars, and aircraft, without physically destroying objects. Its use can be truly catastrophic. Imagine a world where all communication systems are destroyed in one blow, there is no internet, banks no longer operate, air traffic is interrupted, and the largest cities remain in darkness. Such a scenario could result in economic collapse, panic, and a large number of casualties due to a lack of food, water, and medical assistance.

Moreover, the necessity to restore all systems could take months or even years. That is EMP for you. One of the most famous tests of EMP weapons was conducted as part of the U.S. test program ‘Starfish Prime’ 1962 when a nuclear bomb was detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers in the Pacific region. The explosion caused an EMP wave that primarily destroyed communication systems in Hawaii, which were nearly 1400 kilometers away from the explosion site. This was a clear indication that EMP can have a global reach, meaning that a nuclear attack in the atmosphere can have serious international consequences. In addition to nuclear sources, specific non-nuclear EMP devices have also been developed, which can cause similar effects but without a nuclear explosion. Such devices use the power of conventional explosives, but their range is more limited, although they can cause significant disruptions in the targeted area.

The last major test occurred in September 2022 at a U.S. military testing ground when a simulation of an EMP attack on the power grid was conducted. The result? Within ten seconds, hospitals, airports, traffic systems, and banks ceased to operate. Although without any casualties, the attack would have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths due to chaos and lack of basic services. EMP weapons do not destroy buildings but systems, and they do so in silence.

Rods from Space

Theoretically, if the U.S. were to place a system called Rods from God in orbit, tungsten rods that would fall on targets from space at speeds multiple times greater than sound, there would no longer be a safe place on the planet. This project, often referred to as ‘Project Thor’, is a concept for a kinetic bombardment system that originated as an idea rather than a fully realized project. It was originally conceived by Jerry Pournelle while working in operational research at Boeing before he became a science fiction writer. The concept involves launching large tungsten rods – approximately six meters long and thirty centimeters in diameter – from orbit to strike targets on Earth, relying solely on kinetic energy.

Historically, the U.S. Air Force has explored this concept, as evidenced by a 2003 report titled Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, which described a system of satellite-controlled tungsten rods capable of global strike. However, there is no evidence that ‘Project Thor’ has ever been developed into an operational military system. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in space, does not explicitly prohibit kinetic weapons like this, leaving a potential legal loophole. Nevertheless, practical challenges, such as the enormous costs of launching heavy tungsten rods into orbit, currently keep this project in the realm of theory… presumably.

Invisible Attack

And while all past wars were defined by explosions and gunfire, modern warfare carries a completely new dimension. One in which the attacked does not see that they are being attacked but knows that something is wrong. Unlike in the past, when war was physically present, today war is invisible. Algorithms, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weapons not only identify targets, they destroy them, weaken society and its structures, and destabilize nations. The wars of the future will not be experienced on battlefields but in the realms of digital networks, economic destabilization, and social divisions. Perhaps this ‘wars of the future’ should be corrected to ‘wars of the present’.