Future conflict: Star wars, or just more mud?

By James Hider

PARIS (AFP): Wars fought in space, with robots, insects or spray guns that fire a thick toffee-like substance to immobilize opponents without killing them -- just a few of the ideas military planners are toying with as they contemplate the landscape of the battlefield in the 21st century.

But the chances are that most wars will resemble the low-level regional conflicts of the second half of the last century.

While U.S. strategists dream of wars in which lasers shoot missiles out of space, the prospect for the rest of the world is of gritty battles fought in deserts over increasingly scarce water supplies.

These wars, fought among poorer regional powers, will probably be little different from those we already know, military specialists say.

Kalashnikovs, heavy artillery and easily available low-tech hardware look set to be the staple of such conflicts.

But in the United States, the army brass is already looking higher, developing a strategic defensive initiative that will allow Washington to shoot down incoming missiles.

While there have been teething problems, the system if it works would in theory allow the United States to opt out of the nuclear threat scenario.

But the 20th-century notion that wars are essentially the business of the major powers may be out of date.

Military planners are increasingly concerned about the threat of medium powers, "rogue" states or even large non-state groups such as drugs cartels who might seek to tangle with states or defense alliances such as NATO.

Varieties of "limited war," fought covertly through the media, the Internet and economic institutions, could become as important as armed conflict as a means of toppling local governments or reducing their power.

Advanced media manipulation could be used, along the lines demonstrated in the movie Wag the Dog, to convince reluctant populations of the need to intervene in a country or demoralize an opponent's people that their leader is actually bargaining with the enemy.

The Internet, mobile phones and fax machines all provide extra access points for disseminating future propaganda. Radio Baghdad suddenly playing The Star Spangled Banner could deal a real blow to Iraqi troops in any future conflict with the United States.

With the rise of electronic warfare, where vast and highly complex systems of communications are deployed to guide troops and weapons, hacking and computer sabotage will play a greater role in any country's arsenal.

Scrambling signals between satellites and the missiles they are guiding could have disastrous results, as could cutting pilots out of an electronic loop in a systems-dominated conflict.

One of the key fears for the future will be the small size of weapons, such as biological arms, which can be smuggled across borders.

Rogue states or armed dissident groups such as religious sects, anti-state militia or fundamentalists pose a threat in that they are difficult to pin down and control and can be manipulated by rival states.

Some strategic experts have even conjured images of Chinese- sponsored crack gangs in Los Angeles, turning inner cities in the United States into centers of localized Lebanon-style conflict, while all around the war zone life goes on relatively normally.

But what military experts have always loved most is to conjure up new technologies.

Retired U.S. army col. John Alexander, in his book Future War, lists equipment ranging from acoustic blasters firing low- intensity pulses to disorient enemy troops to spraying an area with pheromones -- sexual hormones -- to drive local bugs crazy.

"Imagine trying to sleep or work in an area that is attracting every ant, cockroach, or spider from miles around," he writes.

Another favorite is the foam-gun which envelopes trouble- makers in a substance resembling insulating foam and renders them immobile, particularly useful in peace-making operations.

Since the end of the nuclear stand-off with the Soviet Union the search has been on for ways of waging war that would avoid upsetting television viewers with pictures of "our boys" in body- bags or massacres committed by democratic states.

Wars are fought as much by political will as military strategy: would the United States, with all its new technology but hobbled by a public that wants death-free war, be able to fight a conflict the way Moscow is waging war in Chechnya, with heavy losses on both sides?

Some analysts have compared the situation to that of the rich Italian city states in the 16th century, whose merchant citizens tired of fighting -- and dying -- for their ideals and instead invested in vast mercenary armies to do their dying for them. Those armies eventually ran amok across the countryside, and the once-powerful Italian states waned as a result.

Analysts have however stressed the pitfalls of predicting future wars. In 1900, most people thought future wars would resemble the 1870 Franco-Prussian war -- neat, decisive, and won by the best-equipped force.

In fact the wars of the 20th century more resembled the lumbering, imprecise and bloody battles of the largely overlooked Civil War in the United States.