**4. What is fundamentally changing**

This chapter addresses the change in the art of decision-making for a military officer, implied by the use of some technologies that will gradually invade the battlefield.

Indeed, some technologies will allow the leader to be better informed, but also to be more reactive in order to keep the initiative. Their management requires a mastery of new data management processes resulting from the digitisation of the battlefield, in particular the possible influx of operational data from the field and their synthesis for the military leader.

#### **4.1 A more accurate and faster remote information acquisition**

The one who sees further and before the others is the one who dominates the military manoeuvre. This is what enables him to gain a tactical advantage because the one who acts first with determination is most often the one who wins. Moreover, the ability to see further and more accurately thanks to remote sensors or cameras brings an undeniable advantage to the military leader, enabling him to react faster than his enemy.

Today, spaces are getting tighter, and information can be transmitted in a few milliseconds to any point on the planet, provided that the sensor capturing the information is available. This is done through cyberspace which must be secured for military forces so that they can be sure of the veracity of the data they use. This immediacy of information is a new parameter in the art of command. It forces the leader to make a quick analysis and to be reactive in his response.

It also raises the question of his capacity to process the information, if there is too much data to process. In this case, it will be necessary to process automatically the data as soon as it is received by the systems, to extract only the relevant

<sup>1</sup> "en conduite" is a French expression literally translated by " while driving " which means to decide while the military action is taking place.

#### *Advances in Decision Making*

information. And if these systems are unable to do this, the leader will have to be assisted in the analysis and decision-making by a third party, which may also be a machine. This raises the question of the control of these decision aids provided and which he must rely on.

### **4.2 Act remotely to remove the danger and increase the area of action**

One of the major military revolutions that began at the start of the 21st century in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is the robotisation of the battlefield. It is unavoidable and will gradually be introduced into the battlefield because the use of unmanned robots (UAV, USV, UUS and UGV) offers many advantages to the armies that will use them on the ground.

Firstly, it avoids exposing our own combatants, which is all the more important in our modern armies where the latter are a scarce and expensive resources to train.

Secondly, it extends the area of perception and action of a military unit. In a sense, they are the "5 deported senses" of the fighter, i.e. his eyes (camera), his ears (reception), his mouth (transmission), his touch (actuator arm) and even his sense of smell and taste (detection of CBRN products).

As tools placed at the disposal of the combatant, robots will allow him to control the battlefield by deporting effectors or sensors allowing a control of the various dimensions and spaces of the battlefield, on land, in the air, at sea and even electromagnetically. These will thus progressively move the combatant behind the contact zone, in order to move him away from the dangerous area and reduce the risks, or allow him to dive in with the maximum of means at his disposal, thus significantly reducing the vulnerability of the combatants [3].

Finally, the ability to act remotely while preserving the lives of his men will allow the leader to act even the enemy can even deploy his forces for his manoeuvre.

Robotic systems will thus become new tactical pawns that the military leader will now use to prepare his action, to facilitate his progress, allowing him new effects on the enemy, the terrain, the occupation of space and on the rhythm of the action. Especially since these machines will eventually be more efficient, more precise and faster for specific tasks than a human being can be. This is currently evident in industrial manufacturing and assembly plants.

#### **4.3 The disruption of autonomy**

This military revolution of deporting action with robotic systems is accompanied by another, no less disruptive, that of the autonomy of these systems. Autonomy will allow for omnipresence of action in the area, 24 hours a day, subject to energy sufficiency. It will allow the machines to adapt to the terrain and its unforeseen events in order to carry on the mission entrusted to them by the military leaders. Autonomous systems will allow them to react to complex situations by adapting their positioning strategy, and even adapting the effects it produces on the battlefield. For example, it may be an automatic reorganisation of the swarm formation adopted by a group of robots to follow an advancing enemy, followed by the decision to block an axis of progression with smoke or obstacles to hinder enemy progression.

However, autonomy is not fundamentally new for a leader. A section or a platoon leader has combat groups under his command, whose group leader who receives a mission has full autonomy to carry it out. The new fact is that if robots are tactical pawns at the disposal of the combatant, and if they can have a certain form of

autonomy in the execution of their action, they do not have and will never have the awareness of their action and the capacity of discernment which are characteristics of the human being. This opens up a number of ethical questions regarding the opening of fire that will not be addressed in this chapter (See [3]).
