The rocket belt has been experimental and largely unsuccessful for many years. With improved liquid or solid propellants, lighter materials and control by mini-computers, it may become a workable replacement for the parachute. Not only the individual soldier but any vehicle or weapon that is air-transportable may become air-droppable as well, ready to go into action the moment it lands.
The powered exoskeleton has appeared a number of times in science fiction as “powered armor” for the infantry. This ultimate development of the concept is probably more than twenty years away and may never be really practical or effective. Against the weapons of the future, a powered suit may simply increase the infantryman’s value as a target without decreasing his vulnerability or increasing his fighting power. Less sophisticated exoskeletons undoubtedly will be developed and used for all sorts of engineering, construction and housekeeping jobs.
Conclusion: The New Range of Choices
The decision-makers in future wars will face a whole new range of choices in deciding how to accomplish any given objective.
1. Level of Violence: As weapons improve along the lines we’ve just examined, any military unit will be able to function at many different levels, high and low.
With only its regular weapons and ammunition, an infantry brigade will be able to suppress a riot in one neighborhood of a city or raze the city to the ground. A patrol boat will be able to stop a yacht smuggling marijuana or sink a super-tanker two hundred times her tonnage at a range of thirty miles. With the level of violence no longer tied particularly closely to the nature and size of the armed forces on the spot, the already complex job of the decision-makers in choosing which level to use will become still worse.
2. High-performance Platforms vs. High-performance Weapons:
The high-performance platform such as the F-15, or super-carrier, has attracted most of the attention and distorted our perception of the range of possibilities. We can now build high-performance vehicles, sophisticated, specialized and extremely expensive. We can also build vehicles with a lower performance, carrying extremely powerful weapons. The missile-armed patrol boat, the subsonic attack aircraft with smart bombs, the jeep carrying a tank-killing missile are all existing examples of performance built into the weapons rather than into the weapons platform.
Now the United States is putting into service the Harpoon missile, designed to be fired from submerged submarines, surface ships of any reasonable size, aircraft and land vehicles. There is talk of using converted airliners or merchant ships to launch the cruise missile, a major strategic weapons system. Before long we may see jeeps able to carry anything from four MPs with pistols to missiles with kiloton fusion warheads, converted airliners mounting anti-missile lasers or long-range anti-aircraft missiles, merchant ships defending themselves with packaged missiles, guns, radar sets and even helicopters or VTOL aircraft.
The high-performance weapon isn’t always the optimum solution but it is likely to be the preferable one in an increasing number of cases for economic reasons. It already costs more to build performance into the platform than into the weapon, and the gap is likely to increase. Also, any countermeasures effective against the weapon are likely to be even more effective against the weapons platform. Even if the enemy forces you to expend eight missiles instead of two, it’s still cheaper than losing two planes and three crewmen.
3. The Mass Army vs. the Elite Force: Much conventional thought about war implies a dichotomy between large masses of moderately trained men with simple weapons and handfuls of super-troopers with immense firepower. This dichotomy began to erode with the development of automatic weapons and has been shrinking ever since. A World War I infantry company outgunned one of Napoleon’s battalions; a modern platoon could beat either one; and a modern missile frigate could sink any of the battleships that fought at Jutland without getting her paint scratched.
Until recently the process has been slowed by the limitations of explosives and materials, as well as poor design. Increased firepower has tended to require more skill, training and education on the part of the soldiers. Now we are moving into an era of durable materials, hyper-explosives and solid-state electronics. All sorts of prepackaged, maintenance-free and nearly foolproof weapons become possible, putting great power into the hands of only marginally trained and educated soldiers.
As long as there are few restrictions on the spread of such weapons and the technology to manufacture them, the gap between the educated and the uneducated fighting man will continue to narrow. In a world where most of the educated soldiers come from rich countries and most of the uneducated ones come from poor countries, this narrowing gap could be more dangerous than the atomic bomb or nerve gas.
These are the tools of the next generation’s warfare. What remains are the two old questions:
How fast will the decision-makers learn to use these tools?
Who will pay for their education?
Editor's Introduction to:
ACT OF MERCY
by D.C. Poyer
Legio, patre nostra
—Flag of La Legion Étrangère
The mystique of the French Foreign Legion has fascinated many writers. Though called “French,” there has seldom been a French majority among the Legionnaires. Germans, Belgians, Danes, Swedes, Britons—the list is endless. With every European war, the ranks of the Legion were filled as the defeated soldiers sought the only trade they knew.
This poses a formidable problem. Why would men of all nationalities—a veritable legion of strangers—fight so fiercely and so well? For fight they have. Few dared face them, for even in their defeats they sold their lives dearly.
Stationed for decades at Sidi Bel Abbes, the Legion was withdrawn to Corsica when the French left North Africa. There was then, and is now, considerable question as to what should happen to La Legion Étrangere.
Otto von Habsburg, whom some consider the legitimate sovereign of Europe, has thought long and hard on the future of the Legion. In 1975 he wrote:
“Since its background is European, should not the Foreign Legion come to Europe? Instead of being ‘foreign,’ could it not offically become that which in fact it is, in other words, European? Could it not find its niche in a new community defense organization, the European equivalent of what the Marine Corps is for the United States of America?”
The thought is intriguing; indeed, I had some such idea in mind when I wrote of the worlds of the CoDominium, whose Marines incorporated the Legion. Men who regard the Legion as their Fatherland should have little trouble giving allegiance to Europe, or to a larger entity.
Such a truly multi-national force could be useful in other ways. The accomplishments of the Legion go beyond battle. To this day, in Morocco the inscription on the famous Foum el Zabel tunnel reads:
The mountain stood in our way.
We were ordered to proceed nevertheless.
The Legion carried out the order.
The Legion carries battle banners from Lebanon and Syria, Madagascar, France and Spain, the Crimea, Hanoi and Hue and Saigon; from the glory of Camerone in Mexico to Kolwezi in Katanga. However, when one thinks of the Legion, what usually comes to mind is the desert, when Franks and Iberians and Saxons returned to North Africa in repayment for the time when only the strong sinews of Charles the Hammer halted the blood tide of Islaam and for half a millennium Arabs held Spain.
D. C. Poyer writes of the time when the Legion held the desert and feared only two things: capture by the Arabs, and le cafard.
ACT OF MERCY
by D.C. Poyer
It is cold in the Sahara at night, cold enough to freeze the water in a sleeping man’s canteen. Cold enough, if a Legionnaire is unprepared, to kill him.
And tonight feels like the coldest night of the year: bundled up as I am for guard duty, I’m shivering as if with malaria. My rifle is cramping my right arm, so I shift it to my left. For the thousandth time tonight I sigh and wish for a cigar, for one of the long black ones they sell back home in Franc
e.
I console myself with the thought that my watch will be over in a few more minutes, and turn and look over the wall at the Sahara. The moon is full, and its light glistens on the dunes, making them hills of silver dust. It is a beautiful night.
Me, Jean-Paul Bergaine, I am not much of a soldier. As the girls say of me in the brothels of Mers-el-Kebir, I am a lover, not a fighter. So why did I join the Legion Étrangère? Ah, now, there’s a question I ask myself a hundred times a day. Why did I lose myself in this empty place, this place that is not my own, this hell that perhaps can belong to no one but the desert Arabs? A hundred times a day I ask myself this. I spit over the wall and am in the middle of a vast yawn when the alarm bugle sounds behind me.
I spin, stuffing cartridges up the magazine of the Lebel, and at first I see nothing, because my eyes are sweeping the ramparts for Arabs. But then I realize that, in the flickering blue-white light, I can see the walls clearly and even the mountains far beyond them, and I look up at the ball of flame overhead.
I have not had much schooling, but I know what it is, the ball of white fire and red sparks that moves so slowly in the sky. It is a bolide, a meteor. But how slowly it moves! It must be very high. Every man in the post is awake now, craning his neck upward, but we hear nothing. The bluish light is harsh on the upturned faces, and shadows are sharp on the dark sand.
The bolide takes many minutes to disappear. It seems to be traveling south, into the desert. A good place for it, too; only the desert Arabs go far into the South Sahara. It will hurt no one. But it has put on quite a show for us; unless we should have women or a skirmish, it will furnish us conversation for days to come. My relief arrives, and I go back into the barracks. Spinelli and Petit and I speak wonderingly of it for a few minutes before we pull the blankets over our heads again.
The mud-walled office of the post commandant was very sparsely furnished; a battered wooden table, carried to the post over two hundred kilometers of camel-trail, and two rickety cane chairs were the sum of its appointments. The two men in tropical uniform rose politely as a short, perspiring man in a dirty white suit brushed aside the curtain at the door and entered the room.
“Ah, M. Paul-Boncour! It is indeed an honor to be able to assist the National Observatory!” said the older officer, ushering his junior forward with a gesture. “This is my assistant, Lieutenant de Dissonville. If you approve, I should like to send him with you on your expedition. Lieutenant, would you step outside and ask the orderly to bring in some wine? Thank you. Professor, a seat?”
“Thank you.” Paul-Boncour sat down heavily. “I am happy to see that you appreciate the importance of my mission; I’ve been riding that damned camel for four days to get here. According to the calculations of the flight of the bolide I made at Koufra, it should have landed in the desert about fifty kilometers southeast of here. By the way, did you happen to time the passage of the object across the heavens?”
“Ah…no; we were, to be frank, startled by the apparition, and had no idea such a procedure was called for…but, monsieur, you say that you expect to find the bolide southeast of here?”
“Yes. Estimates made by myself, and also by Rawlings of the Royal Observatory, who happened to be vacationing in Koufra, agree that the low speed and southeasterly heading of the object would bring it down in an area just beyond your post. But—why do you look at me so strangely?”
The Army officer shifted his eyes to the scarred tabletop for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration, before he answered. “A bolide is a ballistic object, is it not? Falling through the air much like an artillery shell?”
“In general, yes. It falls in a straight line across the earth’s face, and downward in a parabolic arc.”
“But this bolide, Professor…when it passed over us, it was going due south, Monsieur! How could that be?”
The fat, sweating civilian and the officer in his wilted khakis regarded each other over the rickety table.
“Impossible,” said the professor flatly.
It is a blazing hot day today, much hotter than yesterday. After five years in Africa, I am an old hand, a seasoned, sun-blackened vieillar, but the days like today are too hot for any European. The Arabs can stand the heat, though. When the column has fallen out for five minutes’ rest, and the men cannot regain their feet for the fatigue and thirst, we see them sitting far off on the horizon, watching our agony from atop their camels. And enjoying it. They are not like us, the desert Arabs. They are bred to the savagery of the desert, and sometimes I wonder if we French will ever succeed in wresting it from them. But that is a silly thought; we are a cultured race, while they are uncivilized savages who enjoy nothing more than torturing a stranger to death. I have seen some of my comrades’ bodies after the Arabs were done with them, and I would die before falling into their hands. Only our modern rifles keep them at a respectful distance from us as we march.
We started this morning from the post and marched south all morning. The fat civilian, who is riding a mule at the head of the column, has a compass, and we must go in a straight line. Diable! A mule– just so he can rest his fat ass! Even the lieutenant, that spoiled Parisian mama’s boy, is marching. Mule or not, a fat man like that won’t last the day out. When he faints, he’ll fall off, and we can stop for a rest and perhaps a drink of water then. Vive le soleil!
We slog on through the heat of the day, and that night make camp on a small plain of gravel surrounded by sand drifts. We are slowly moving into the sandy part of the South Sahara, away from all the settled portions of the country. There are not even Legion posts ahead of us. After the sentries are posted we sit in small groups and shoot the bull for a while. Spinelli tells an old story about lost treasures in the South Sahara; Palewski laughs, telling him that there the only gold is on the buttons of dead Legionnaires. They are good comrades. We eat our hard bread and blood-sausages cold, and turn in.
The nineteen men marched onward the next day, and the next, through a lifeless, hostile and monotonous terrain of gravel and drifted sand.
In the lead walked the young lieutenant, pushing himself mercilessly to stay ahead of the common soldiers. His short hair was soaking wet under the neck-cloth of the cap, and the stinging sweat trickled into his eyes. Near mid-afternoon he began to feel nauseated, feeling the onset of heat exhaustion, but he kept his flushed face set forward, toward the emptiness ahead, and walked on.
Behind him, trailing him by ten or twelve paces, rode the savant. He slumped in a torpor on his mule, which plodded slowly along, lolling its tongue and panting loudly. From time to time the professor roused himself for a moment, glanced at a compass, and stared slowly around at the horizon before relapsing into semiconsciousness. A filthy red bandanna peeped from the neck of his shirt.
The sergeant, Kruger, marched at the right of his column, gliding across the sand with a snakelike, fluid step, wasting not a millimeter of motion. In the breathless silence that surrounded them, his occasional low commands rang out like the crack of a revolver.
The men marched in silence, their heads low like a herd of animals, their tumed-up collars, caps and packs concealing their faces from the sun. They, too, glided across the sand, moving as if on parade in a compact body that moved among the low dunes like a many-legged blue caterpillar.
At eight in the evening the lieutenant held his arm above his head to halt the column, and heard behind him Kruger’s soft voice commanding, “Legionnaires…arretez-vous.” He turned to the scientist, who was slumped like a lump of melting lard on his saddle, eyes closed.
“With your permission, M. le Professeur, we will make camp here for the night,” he said.
The mule had stopped when the lieutenant had halted, and stood with its knees locked and eyes closed. It looked as if it had died upright.
“Monsieur,” said de Dissonville again.
They pulled the scientist from his perch, rubbed his face with a handful of water, and made camp.
They marched south for five days.
“The men can eat it, anyway,” said de Dissonville. “It will be a change from marching rations.”
The professor gave the carcass of the dead mule a final kick and turned away. “It was healthy enough yesterday,” he growled. He looked different; his face was becoming browned, and he had lost much of his corpulence. The wrinkles around his face made him look a great deal older. The lieutenant, too, had lost some of his awkward youthfulness and was beginning to walk with the fluid, swaying motion that made marching in the desert bearable.
“I can’t understand it,” he said. “Professor, you were sure that the thing could not have landed more than seventy kilometers from the fort. We have gone three times that, perhaps more. Perhaps we’ve already passed it; it could have been on the other side of a dune. With all respect, M. le Professeur, I think we should turn back toward the post. We have enough water and food left, with the mule dead, to get back without trouble.”
Paul-Boncour pondered, then shook his head. “You don’t understand at all. My computations indicate a very large body. A mass like that striking the earth would cause an explosion many times more powerful than that of a powder magazine. It would leave an immense crater.”
“Like that of an explosive shell?”
“Yes, but perhaps a kilometer across. Doubtless you conceived of the meteor quietly resting on the sand where it landed. But I suppose they don’t teach you much science at Saint-Cyr, do they?”
De Dissonville began to reply, but Kruger signaled suddenly for silence. Over the baked sand stretching for miles ahead of them they heard two more pops of musketry, and then a rattle of fire all at once. Then silence again, covering the small group of men like a blanket.
“Allans! Allans! Sergeant Kruger, get these men in column!” shouted the lieutenant. “Quickly! Check your rifles as we march. Let’s go!”
There Will Be War Volume III Page 15