With self-detonating grenades, thinking bullets and robot warriors, humans on the front line could soon be a thing of the past.
When armies clash in the not-too-distant future, remotely-operated robotic weapons will fight the enemy on land, in the air and at sea, without a human soldier anywhere on the battlefield.
The first robotic systems are already being used by the Israel Defense Forces and other armies across the world, and only budgetary constraints seem to be keeping science fiction from becoming reality.
In places where there is no choice but to send in troops, constantly improving broadband technologies, developed from the civilian communications industry, will serve as an essential part of the infrastructure for all modern military forces.
A helicopter that spots suspicious movement on the ground will, for instance, is able to relay a command to a drone aircraft to photograph the site and transmit the picture in real time to troops on the ground and to the command posts in the rear.
Soldiers will be able to mark their target by its coordinates and with lasers, allowing missiles launched from dozens of kilometers away to be guided by global positioning systems, ensuring accuracy and destruction of the target.
The systems will be coded to prevent enemy interception of the operation. Spy satellites that today weigh several tons will be shrunk down to anything between one and 100 kilograms or less, with engines the size of postage stamps. Infantry rifles will be computerized and fire "smart" rounds telling them when and where to explode. New rockets will also be able to think for themselves to enhance their accuracy.
Israel's military industries, already world leaders in arms technology, are hard at work developing weaponry for the 2020s. Development of new weapons for the IDF is generally carried out with assistance and in coordination with the Defense Ministry's research and development arm.
"The Protector, which we are already marketing, is a vessel that sails all over in all kinds of places without a living soul on board," says Roni Postman, vice president for R&D at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. "It can get close up to a terrorists' boat, address it through a loudspeaker, and open fire at it. In the past, a thing like this required a boat with seven or eight crewmen who were in constant danger. This type of remote control is one of the clearest characteristics of the future battlefield. It will be a battlefield devoid of troops, with vehicles doing what soldiers have done until now."
Unmanned boats, land vehicles and aircraft will be either controlled remotely or will function autonomously, pre-programmed to carry out a mission from start to finish, such as reaching an enemy bunker, transmitting a photograph back to a command post, launching a projectile at it, and returning, or blowing itself up to destroy the target and the people inside it.
Forces will be equipped with what they need to deal with certain objectives and not simply with "the lowest common denominator," says Postman.
Israel Aerospace Industries, for example, has developed the Mosquito, a UAV with a 40-centimeter wingspan and a silent engine, that can be launched from the shoulder of a single soldier. Even this device may be shrunken down, if the military so requires.
Micro-satellites and nanotechnology
Israel is one of seven members of the club of countries that have proved their independent ability to put satellites into orbit, alongside the United States, Russia, India, China, Japan and Western Europe - which has a unified space program based on French capabilities.
Israel's satellites are all manufactured by IAI, and include optical observation and radar platforms as well as communications satellites. IAI engineers are working on technologies for future satellites, ranging from construction materials to advanced designs that will enable, for example, the deployment of antennae with a radius of dozens of meters in space.
The next generation of satellites, now being developed, will weigh ten kilograms (micro-satellites) or one kilogram (nano-satellites) and some speak of even lighter ones. They will orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers above the surface of the earth. Ben-Israel says one way of sending up a 100-kilogram orbiter without losing any of its operational capability is to break it into 10 units each weighing 10 kilograms.
But technology must be developed that will be enable each part to migrate to the correct place after launch, after which they will continue to orbit together as a cluster.
"That's the direction being taken," says Ben-Israel. "That way, each part can be shot from a plane separately and even at different times, and in this manner build the satellite in space over a week."
Rafael's Postman believes that a satellite weighing less than 100 kilograms will cost eight to 10 times less than a large orbiter. "Because it will cost less, it will be possible to put a formation of 10 satellites into space, and to time their orbits in such a way that it will be possible to maintain an unbroken 24-hour watch over the enemy," he says.
Even without any miniaturization, Israel possesses unique technologies that can upgrade future satellites. Elbit Systems is working on an advanced optical system that will be able to transmit multicolored pictures and that will be able to function at night. In addition, IAI radar will improve the resolution of the pictures. Today, satellite pictures can be found on the open market with a resolution of 70 centimeters.
Israel already has technologies for satellite photography at higher resolutions, and they are expected to yet improve. The achievements of Israeli space technologies are reflected in both the MSAR (mini-synthetic aperture radar) project of the U.S. space agency NASA and the French Venus project.
"MSAR is a mission undertaken by NASA in order to map the surface of the planet Venus, to see if it will be possible to land there in the future," explains Ben-Israel.
Venus is surrounded by clouds of toxic gases and the project requires synthetic aperture radar which can take photographs through fog, dust and darkness. There are seven countries capable of developing synthetic aperture radar systems and one of them is Israel, through ELTA, a subsidiary of IAI. Israel's miniaturization capabilities were also helpful in this project.
American satellite radar weighs four tons, and the Venus satellite has to be relatively light, so NASA put out a tender for bids that was won by IAI over aeronautical giants like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman."
The future battlefield will also include outer space. GPS-based technology fed by satellites are already becoming a fundamental element in future military systems. Moreover, the ability to equip satellites with IAI-produced radar that sees through clouds will enable every field commander to obtain, in daylight and at night and in bad weather conditions, a picture of his target.