The term is coined by the US military. Information warfare is the use of information and communication technology to gain advantages in warfare.
Information Warfare
• Military Robots • Cyber warfare • Psychological warfare • Space warfare
Forms of Information Warfare
• Unmanned War Vehicle – Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or Drone – Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) – Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) – Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV): not very operational, having too much signal problems • Rugged Terrain Robots • Unmanned Turrets
Military Robots
Purposes of military unmanned vehicles 1. Target and decoy: as practice targets 2. Reconnaissance: for intelligence 3. Combat 4. Logistics 5. Research and Development Unmanned War Vehicle
Drones
• US’s Wars in – Pakistan (on Taliban) – Somalia – Yemen – Iraq and Syria (on ISIS)
Drone Wars
“Before this we were all very happy, we lived in a very good life. But after these drones attacks a lot of people are victims and have lost members of their family. A lot of them, they have mental illnesses.” (Ismail Hussain from Pakistan)
Secondary strikes have discouraged average civilians from coming to one another’s rescue, and even inhibited the provision of emergency medical assistance from humanitarian workers. (Anonymous Witnesses)
Words from War
“Interviewees described emotional breakdowns, running indoors or hiding when drones appear above, fainting, nightmares and other intrusive thoughts, hyper startled reactions to loud noises, outbursts of anger or irritability, and loss of appetite and other physical symptoms. Interviewees also reported suffering from insomnia and other sleep disturbances, which medical health professionals in Pakistan stated were prevalent.” (Anonymous Psychiatrist in Pakistan) Words from War
"People think we're sitting here with joysticks playing a video game, but that's simply not true, these are real situations and real-life weapons systems. Once you launch a weapon, you can't hit a replay button to bring people back to life.“ (Slim former Drone Pilot, 2013)
Words from War
• There are some 26 countries that possess combat drones. They are mainly countries in the Middle East, Western Europe and South Asia, the US, Russia and China. • Thailand only possesses non-combat drones.
Countries possessing combat drones
Rugged Terrain Robots
Unmanned Turrets
South Korea has deployed autonomous turrets along its border with North Korea.
Cyber warfare is the warfare in the cyber space. As of today, all the cyber warfare activities are cyber terrorism attacks. Methods of Attack: 1. Espionage and national security breaches: mainly by using hackers 2. Sabotage: DoS attack on servers, electrical power grid disruption
Cyber Warfare
• July 2009: DoS attacks on government websites of South Korea and the US. • September 2010: Iran was attacked by the Stuxnet worm. The target was its Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. • In November and December 2010, the governments of Pakistan and India were under hacking attacks.
Some Major Incidents
“Corporations around the world face millions of cyberattacks a day. Most of these attacks don’t gain any media attention or lead to strong political statements by victims.“ (McAfee's George Kurtz)
Cyber Attacks in Private Sector
Psychological warfare is greatly enhanced by ICT. Techniques 1. Jamming and hijacking TV and radio transmissions 2. Propagandizing 3. Disabling enemy communication networks
Psychological Warfare
• Propagandas can drain the public opinion of an opposing regime by stripping away its power on public opinion. • Various news channels are free because of such. • Many countries such as China and Iran block foreign media to prevent this. Propaganda
• First developed from 1970s as a result of the arm race between the USA and the USSR. • Satellites are used in surveillance, positioning and communication. • Kinetic bombardment: directing objects to fall from the outer space on enemies • Anti-satellite weapons • Anti-ballistic missile defense system Space Warfare
Difficulties in launching terrestrial-type weapons in space: 1. As the space has no gravity, it is very expensive to shoot something from the space. 2. Satellites are prone to attacks. 3. It is expensive to replenish satellites with munitions.
Terrestrial-type weapons in space
A satellite system that provides reliable location and time information on or near the Earth.
Global USA: GPS – operational worldwide since 1993 EU: Galileo - expected completion in 2019 China: Beidou - expected completion in 2020 Regional – Russia’s GLONAS. .