Bharat Rakshak

The defence industry is amongst the most technologically intensive of all industries. It has quickly adopted technological and scientific advances from the civilian sectors . What was fiction in the past is reality today . Reality has often been even beyond imagination. For instance many of today's technological marvels are even more sophisticated than those that occurred in the 1968 science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey . It would be fascinating to imagine what armed forced in 2040 could be like. Countless essay's , editorials and stories can be found on the subject throughout the internet blogs and print media often with clichéd concepts like "robot wars" ,"artificial intelligence" ,"space warfare" , "cyber warfare" etc . Many of these literatures albeit fascinating are more speculative than backed by thorough science . (Disclaimer- I am not against free flowing imagination) .

Lot of exchanges of ideas have taken place between civilian and defence industry . For instance radars were invented for the armed forces . But microwaves ovens were derived directly from them . The ubiquitous ultrasound machines that form an important part of medical imaging were derived from SONARS .


What I intend this thread to be is a place for intelligent , imaginative and scientific discussions about the future of the industry that fascinates us all . We could discuss about the technological advances in the civilian industry that could have direct military implications . (For instance robotic exoskeleton). Technology that has been developed keeping the military in mind but not yet found large scale induction could also be discussed. (for instance directed energy weapons )

Basic or theoretical research with defence applications that could be a potential topic of discussion .Many adopts technology ever faster than before. It took 50000 years for man to adopt fire as a weapon from its discovery by men.
Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1890s .And within half a century we had the nuclear weapons . A lot of theoretical work went into the A- Bombs. In fact most of physics research between 1890s and 1930s was directly or indirectly applied in the A- bomb [ Radioactivity ( 1890) , theory of relativity (early 1900s) ,Atomic structure models by various people beginning with the simplistic Bohr's model , to the discovery of neutron by Chadwick , to eventually the complex quantum mechanical models , Schroedinger equations , particle physics (1930 onwards) are the concepts that led to the A-Bomb ] . None of these were intended or imagined to have a destructive purpose. Yet they led to the A bomb which shaped the history post world war 2 . Perhaps we have some theoretical developments taking place today could shape this century . And as I mentioned we are getting quicker and quicker in adopting new Science.

And lastly we could also discuss civilian applications of present day military tech.

The Starship Troopers' Mobile Infantry concept is widely believed to have inspired the US Future Soldier Program, which in turn drives similar infantry modernization programs world (including FINSAS).

I know for a fact that The Starship Troopers is one of the most popular science fiction novels with US military officer and NCO corps (and also very controversial for its philosophy, which many/most of them disagree with).

The Mobile Infantry concept has powerful cultural resonation with the West, as it seems to be a future version of the Heavy Infantry -- a continuation of the Greek Hoplite, Roman Legionnaire, Medieval Knight, Modern Mechanized/Air-Assault Infantry, if you will.

It makes me wonder, if an Indian wrote Sci-Fi that could really resonate with Indian military forces, whether it would be the Archer and the Charioteer Pair who would probably dominate the theme?

as countries grow richer the society develops a disaste for heavy casualties.

I am thinking the Clone army seen in star wars is a direction people will take. first create a artitificial human-machine hybrid having all desirable traits and then clone in the lakhs....no family, no ties to society, born for war, "expendable", no medical issues, no food except electricty and organic resins.

the arms race will shift to who can produce more clones , and who can produce the bigger badder hybrids - sher khan will likely design a 10foot tall "creature" as seen in robocop, armed to the teeth and equipped with a jetpack for heavy infantry and a lighter "master chief"(halo) type creature for light infantry. and they will go to battle accompanied by drones and unmanned combat vehicles.

in India the debate on "we the people" will be that drdo used a hindu man and jewish woman for its clone templates and whether the clone offends minority religious sentiments and is secular enough.

china will produce 1000000000 clones , all of which will die within one hour of entering the war due to inferior batteries cloned from OEM german kit.

pakis will take the chinese model, spray on some green paint, add a 2 feet long orange beard and proclaim the worlds first shariah complaint halo soldier.

I think there's already a thread on future mil-tech, please browse through the mil forum to find it and post this there.
in case I am wrong kindly notify in forum feedback thread and I will unlock this thread.

-- unlocked --

Singha: I agree with the notion that societies will become casualty-averse as they grow richer, and it will have important implications on future military technology and training.

Even countries like China and Russia, which used to be very casualty-tolerant, are shifting their design and training doctrine away from it. In China the one-child policy makes losing the sole son in the inverse-pyramid socially and politically unacceptable; in Russia the falling birth-rates among the Rus (and corresponding boom among their restive minority populace) is also making old doctrines unacceptable.

Will this trend lead to clone armies? I dunno, its too far into the future (OT, the Chinese already have a disposable and easily reproducable army -- its called Pakistani Army). But in the immediate future, we will see those armies also emphasizing greater protection/survivability in their weapons designs. It will also lead to much more aggressive tactics and operations, as the users will be more confident of their survival (noticed in American armor operations in Iraq, which turned out to be even more fast-paced and successful than they had planned; it usually works the other way).

The future wars would be fought on the basis of who has the best intelligence on targets, on human targets.

This involves on the one side observation (SIGINT), and on the other side elicitation of information (HUMINT). Observation would be done by nanobots which can fly, penetrate spaces semi-autonomously and can observe those spaces, can record speech, can read, can download data from other data stores, etc. and can relay all that elsewhere for data crunching by artificial intelligence servers which can correlate information, filter the relevant information and present it to human analysts.

Just consider, someone sitting in Delhi Intelligence Central would know everything that is being planned, discussed in all of Pakistan, who is saying what, who he is, where he is.

If needed, he could finish off anybody he pleases by pressing a single button, upon which another nanobot could inject him with some poison and make his death look completely natural. If he wishes he can kill off 300 million Pakis with a single button. That is the power of nanotech. But the idea is to be able to target others far more precisely and at a time of one's choosing. With the technology one can shut off a Qaddafi or a Saddam Hussein any minute.

The other part of technology would involve something like Fringe Shapeshifters who can be made to look like and to act like anybody one wants.

We could exchange Kiyani with our own shapeshifter and Mrs. Kiyani would not know about it.

Thank you for unlocking the thread adminullahs .While science fiction can be a possible content of this thread it should not be the only one . Military applications of present day research can also be discussed. For instance there might be a brfite who is a material scientist working in a company developing new polymer , that could have a desirable property for military purpose which is not found in the existing materials . Or a computer science guy working on AI algorithms that could have a potential military applications . The possibilities are endless.

@ ParGha - American sci-fi has had a tremendous impact on the world. Sci-fi can have a psy-ops value. The star wars program never materialised. But arguably had a role in collapse of USSR. I don't remember reading quality Indian science fiction. Not that Indian writers don't have the potential . But it seems that the publishing industry only supports left winged , India bashing psuedo-moralists
May be BRFites can collaborate to write quality Indian sci-fi . We surely have great potential .

I remember reading, 20-25 years ago, about scientists studying insects, reptiles etc to mimic and create robots and instruments. In this line is the "nano drones" that America has admitted it has now.
US Military Admits To Having Spy Drones As Small As Bugs
Example:


NYtimes article on this
Hummingbird drone, LA Times article

Rahul, could you please change the thread title so it is not SCREAMING.

Thanks.