People’s Daily published an article asserting that a new form of warfare is emerging in the modern era, calling for China to become familiar with the new modes of battle. “There are new rules on battlefield, rules of information and intelligence. Those who can lead in this new setting will seize victory. … There are some who claim to fight against us in a high-level war. That ‘high-level war’ refers to a new form of warfare, with new rules and new styles. It no longer relies on our traditional advantages, but rather on technological warfare, informational warfare, and hybrid warfare.”
The article went on to analyze recent military trends: “Recent regional wars have demonstrated new developments in hybrid warfare and proxy warfare. Various forms of combat, such as unmanned warfare, cognitive offense and defense, intelligence gathering, and force deployment, are emerging as crucial variables influencing the course of conflict. Especially in modern warfare, combat formations are shifting from being ‘people-based’ to being ‘machine-based,’ and the mode of engagement is transitioning from ‘human-in-the-loop’ to ‘human-out-of-the-loop.'” (Editor’s note: the term “human-out-of-the-loop” may refer to increased use of unmanned vehicles/drones in combat, or perhaps to the rise of automated systems that can engage targets without input from a human pilot.)
“In the intelligence era, future battlefields will expand from traditional domains such as land, sea, air, space, and electronics to new realms including information, algorithms, cognition, and more. This change will manifest in characteristics such as spatial expansion [of war], the intertwining of multiple domains, and multi-dimensional interaction, making for an extremely complex battlefield environment. All of this is inseparable from scientific and technological development. Those who possess a scientific and technological advantage will have the upper hand on the battlefield.”
Source: People’s Daily, January 8, 2024
http://military.people.com.cn/n1/2024/0108/c1011-40154565.html