Weapons and equipment have accelerated the evolution of warfare

The historic achievements in the development of weapons and equipment by leaps and bounds have provided solid material and technical support for enhancing the country's strategic capabilities, especially its military strength. In the face of changes in science and technology, in war, and in the face of changes in the opponents, science and technology, and weaponry play a more decisive role in the balance of victory in war, and are an important weight for winning the future.

Weaponry is an important weight in the international strategic game

Weaponry is an important symbol of military modernization, an important foundation for preparations for military struggle, an important support for national security and national rejuvenation, and an important weight in the international strategic game. At present, there is a clear trend of long-range precision, intelligence, stealth, and unmanned weaponry, the battlefield is constantly expanding from traditional space to new fields, and some advanced weaponry has broken through the boundaries of time and space in terms of technology, and once deployed in actual combat, it will fundamentally change the traditional pattern of offensive and defensive warfare.

The development of military science and technology and its materialization into military equipment have provided a material basis for mankind to engage in warfare, and have also determined the general way in which people conduct warfare in a certain historical period. Focusing on winning high-end wars, forward-looking layout and active deployment in terms of war design and counterbalance means, and constantly consolidating theoretical, scientific and technological, and talent reserves is a key to the world's efforts to seize the new heights of strategic checks and balances, and it is also an important driving force for many emerging countries to chase after the strong and "overtake in corners". We must continue to strengthen the important weight of weaponry and strive to win the strategic initiative.

The development of weapons and equipment is facing new situations and challenges

"The high ground of life and death, the new way of survival" is the core of the military revolution and the foundation for the growth of combat effectiveness. In particular, under the traction of new technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, the degree of military intelligence is gradually deepening, and the characteristics of intelligent combat on the battlefield are becoming more and more apparent, further forming a hot spot of competition for asymmetric advantages.

Scientific and technological innovation is advancing rapidly, and it is on the eve of the leap of the times. The competition of high-end warfare is the competition of military technology, and its core is technological superiority, and the scientific and technological innovation thinking of certain military powers in the preparation for high-end warfare is also their habitual thinking of "winning the opponent." At present, the era of production and life shaped by scientific and technological innovation is characterized by a high degree of informatization, ubiquitous networking, and gradual intelligence, and the next military era will also be characterized by this and enter a new era. The current Ukraine crisis is the "first full-scale drone war" and "the first large-scale use of artificial intelligence", presenting a targeted and gradual change, innovative application of emerging concepts and organizational methods, giving birth to subversive new logic and new theories of warfare, and initially revealing the outline of the future form of warfare. The relationship between quantity and quality on the battlefield is changing subtly. Lower-cost precision strike capabilities are rapidly proliferating, and new advantages in scale may emerge in disproportionately low-cost and unforeseen ways.

The progress of weaponry and technology has accelerated the evolution of the form of warfare. First, unmanned combat has profoundly changed the face of warfare. Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the rapid development of unmanned system technology and the substantial improvement of computer processing capabilities, the reliability, maintainability, automation degree and operation interface of unmanned systems have been continuously improved. The massive use of unmanned and robotic systems to replace manned platforms has become an important feature of the new type of warfare. Second, the battlefield space has shifted to a multi-dimensional and all-domain domain. With the development of the times, the environment faced by human military practice has become increasingly complex, expanding from physical dimensions such as land, sea, and air and space to virtual and high-dimensional spaces such as information, electromagnetism, and cognition, and from a single contest to a hybrid contest, such as "the weaponization of high-dimensional attack methods such as hackers, viruses, and electromagnetic pollution, and the evolution of a high-dimensional offensive style that connects the economies and societies of various countries through networks and satellites." At the same time, warfare in the traditional sense has a clear area of engagement, a definite time limit, and a definite opponent, but high technology has changed the battlefield and broadened the "spectrum" of war operations.

Vigorously promote the innovative development of weapons and equipment

Weaponry is the materialized form of military science and technology, and is the material basis for the evolution of the form of warfare and the transformation of the mode of warfare; to promote the next military revolution, we must take the innovation and development of weaponry as the basic starting point, take a forward-looking view, design the system, and actively explore and pre-study the means of warfare for "tomorrow" or even "the day after tomorrow."

Adhere to the thinking of innovation-driven development. Innovation is the soul of a country's development and progress, and it is also the soul of an army's development and progress. Scientific and creative thinking can gain the initiative in the development of weapons and equipment for backward and passive countries, and achieve twice the result with half the effort. Innovation, especially independent innovation, is not only the key to promoting the development of national defense science and technology and the construction of weapons and equipment, but also an important foundation for getting rid of the constraints of others in the development of weapons and equipment. It is necessary to put the enhancement of independent innovation and original innovation in a prominent position and step up the advancement, strengthen research in basic science and cutting-edge technology, intensify exploratory research on new concepts in weapons and equipment, strive to put forward new ideas, new concepts, and new ways for the development of weapons and equipment, master core technologies and independent intellectual property rights in key fields and at the forefront of scientific and technological development, and get rid of the situation of being controlled by others. Promote a virtuous circle of sustainable development with the innovative concept of "exploration generation", breakthrough technology with "pre-research generation", physical and chemical equipment with "development generation", and ability formation with "production generation".

Focus on the forward-looking exploration of combat and equipment concepts. Conceptual exploration is a leading link in transforming advanced science and technology and operational concepts into advanced weaponry and actual combat effectiveness. The conceptual exploration of weaponry is to explore a new concept of weaponry on the basis of scientifically predicting and accurately grasping the development trend of the world's high-tech military science and technology, and in accordance with the requirements of building a weaponry system and winning an information-based war with intelligent characteristics. Future warfare is, in essence, to seek leadership in tactics through conceptual innovation and to take advantage of the technological generation gap to form dimensionality reduction strikes. It is necessary to establish the concepts that "designing weapons and equipment means designing future wars" and "developing weapons and equipment for future wars" and strengthen the exploration and study of concepts.

Grasp the weakness and create "asymmetric" checks and balances. In some regional conflicts, the warring parties have not only invested in multiple types of advanced weapon systems in the traditional sense, but also extensively acquired "handy" weapon systems through non-traditional methods such as "small increment" development and the introduction of off-the-shelf commercial technology. Both sides attach importance to seizing local advantages with asymmetric thinking, and pursue highly targeted, replicable and promotable, and rapid iterative upgrading by integrating active-duty equipment into the battlefield network of military, civilian and commercial complexes, and introducing a large number of commercial products and technologies. In light of the development trend of the future combat system and the development and application of its operational concepts, we should proceed from the technical principles and winning mechanisms to find out its weak links, adhere to the principle of "you fight yours, I will fight mine," and speed up the formation of asymmetric capabilities if we can attack what we cannot.

Give full play to the deep driving force of excellent culture. The history of human warfare shows that military confrontation is also a collision between cultures. The evolution of the form of war depends on the cultural development of society as a whole, and at the same time, the tools of war are also the touchstone for judging the power of culture. In future wars, the status and role of culture will become increasingly prominent, and the dazzling laurels of war will often belong to the side with a higher degree of civilization. Excellent culture is not only the deep-seated driving force for the growth and expansion of an army, but also the deep-seated driving force for military technological progress and innovation. The victory of advanced weapons over backward weapons means that advanced productive forces are victorious over backward productive forces. The excellent culture we have formed in the field of military technology is our unique political advantage, and it is also the key internal factor and inexhaustible driving force for military technological innovation.

(Author's Affiliation: Institute of Military Political Work, Academy of Military Sciences)