As new technological achievements such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data continue to be equipped and put into actual combat, weapons with artificial intelligence characteristics will be widely used on the battlefield in the future, promoting the acceleration of air combat confrontation from informatization to intelligence, networking, and transformation from unmanned and digital. The combat effectiveness generation model brought about by the development trend of air combat equipment technology has gradually evolved towards the integration of mechanization, informatization, and intelligence. On the basis of environmental complexity and real-time response, the air battlefield further presents strong game confrontation and information. Features such as incomplete and highly uncertain. In several recent local wars, one or more parties to the conflict have made extensive use of unmanned forces and the disruptive potential of unmanned equipment on the battlefield have accelerated the trend of unmanned air main battle aviation equipment to a certain extent.

Intelligent trend in air combat equipment and air combat styles

With the continuous empowerment of artificial intelligence, deep learning, cloud computing, big data and other technologies, aviation weapons and equipment are showing more and more intelligent characteristics on the basis of mechanization and informatization, and the trend of integrating combat effectiveness generation models is becoming increasingly clear. The world's major aviation powers continue to increase their investment in artificial intelligence technology in the generation of aviation equipment and air combat capabilities. Through intelligent and networked information technology equipment, aviation equipment is empowered to enable it to perform battlefield situation awareness, identification, judgment and tracking, and command There has been a leap in the full-process capabilities of air combat such as control decision-making and autonomous and precise actions. The early warning time of air operations is advanced, the decision-making time is shortened, and the combat operations are precise and fast, which improves the efficiency of OODA's process, making air combat more systematic and faster.

In terms of battlefield situation awareness, information processing technologies such as deep learning algorithms, big data mining, expert systems, and neural network systems for sensing data can change the simple digital mapping model in the mechanization and information era, thereby obtaining more comprehensive and more applicable battlefield situation information.

In terms of identification, judgment and tracking, in view of the abnormal complexity of systematic confrontation and the electromagnetic environment of the air battlefield, artificial intelligence and data mining technology can quickly transform situation information into decision-making and action support, quickly and independently identify high-value and high-threat targets, and Achieve multi-target, anti-interference independent identification, judgment and tracking.

In terms of assisting command and control decision-making, expert systems, genetic algorithms, neural network technology, etc. enable aviation main battle equipment to have certain self-learning, reasoning, and decision-making capabilities. Intelligent assisted decision-making and real-time command and control capabilities can also be improved to a certain extent. Reduce the influence of factors such as people's subjective emotions, combat status, and practical experience.

Improved intelligent decision-making and real-time command and control capabilities

In terms of autonomous coordinated actions, intelligent fire control systems and precision-guided weapon systems make combat platforms more precise in attack and defense, enhance interconnection and interoperability capabilities, and also make formation operations and system confrontation tactics based on intelligent platforms more flexible, and double combat effectiveness. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's artificial intelligence close range air combat project, the Alpha Autonomous Air Combat System, and the U.S. Air Force's Sky Borg project are the main representatives of the trend of air combat intelligence.

Although many progress has been made in research in the field of intelligent air combat, there are still many technical problems that need to be overcome. In the face of a complex air combat environment with high dynamic, strong real-time, uncertainty, and imperfect conditions, traditional rule-based expert systems can no longer meet combat needs. Although emerging machine learning methods have advantages in capabilities emergence, self-evolution, self-learning, etc., in the face of actual engineering implementation, they still need to break through uncertainties, interpretability, security and portability of intelligent air combat. and other bottlenecks. The profound application of artificial intelligence in the air battlefield will subvert the traditional air combat form and change the style of air combat. Air combat will develop from the past information and firepower confrontation to the direction of integration of three modernizations and intelligent confrontation. In the future, air combat will be based on intelligent weapon platforms with autonomous capabilities and relying on intelligent command and control systems, presenting an autonomous and intelligent combat model, which will bring about main battle equipment, battlefield environment, combat styles, winning rules, and combat rules. The profound changes in other aspects will lead to further evolution of the complexity of air combat.

Air combat application and performance of unmanned equipment

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence, information and communication technology, the proportion of the number and scale of unmanned equipment in aviation equipment has increased rapidly. The theory and practical style of combat application of unmanned equipment have become increasingly mature. UAVs have become modern air The important weapon platform of the battlefield is changing from supporting and supporting roles such as reconnaissance and surveillance and network communications to battlefield protagonists such as integration of inspection and combat, precise killing, group intelligence attacks, and asymmetric damage.

During "Operation Enduring Freedom", the US military discovered the Atif convoy, a key member of al-Qaeda, through Predator drones. During the continuous tracking, identification and confirmation process, it guided the F-15 fighter jets to fly to designated positions for standby. Finally, three F-15E fighter jets and two Predator drones launched a total of three GUB-15 laser-guided bombs and two Helfa missiles, achieving precise killing of the Atif convoy and reflecting the effective coordination and complementarity of advantages between humans and humans.

UAVs have the advantages of low economic consumption, low casualties, and low detectability, which makes drones have huge potential in intelligent attacks and asymmetric damage.

UAVs have the advantages of low economic consumption, low casualties, and low detectability, making UAVs have great potential in swarm intelligence attacks, asymmetric damage, etc. According to media reports, the U.S. Navy once used a swarm of eight small drones to conduct simulated cluster attacks and saturation penetration of the Aegis system at sea. The results showed that at least one aircraft would successfully penetrate. If 10 aircraft were used, at least 3 aircraft would successfully penetrate. Honeybee swarm intelligence attack tactics can greatly improve penetration effectiveness. In addition, during the verification process of the loyal wing aircraft project, the US military achieved 0 points in coordination with the manned aircraft guided by the AWACS.:Air combat loss ratio of 8. In 2019, the Houthi armed forces used more than a dozen low-cost drones to successfully penetrate Saudi Arabia's high-density air defense system composed of the American Patriot, the THAAD system and the German Skyguard system, and attacked Saudi Aramco's refineries and oil fields, resulting in a reduction in Saudi oil production by nearly half and achieving a high asymmetric combat strike effect.

The large-scale and large-scale use of unmanned combat aircraft and weapons is also the result of the continuous application of informatization and intelligent technology. Combat concepts and combat concepts such as unmanned autonomous air combat, stealth unmanned penetration, unmanned cluster penetration, manned and unmanned coordinated operations are proposed and battlefield practice, the superposition of informatization and intelligent technologies to empower the OODA process and the reshaping of the air combat system, further exacerbating the complexity of future air combat in terms of strong confrontation, uncertainty, and system heterogeneity.

The complexity of air combat under the development trend of equipment technology

The development of artificial intelligence technology has brought a high degree of uncertainty in air combat. From a historical development perspective, artificial intelligence has been continuously applied to air main battle platforms and command and control fields and has achieved rapid development, leading to the inevitable evolution of air combat towards intelligent air combat and unmanned air combat. But at the same time, we must also note that artificial intelligence technology still has technical problems in terms of interpretability, security, and portability in the implementation of actual projects, especially with the continuous enhancement of big data and deep learning technology capabilities, the "black box" characteristics of intermediate feature combinations and thrust rules may lead to uncontrollable, unreliable or even catastrophic output results in the decision results and action controls. The optimal solution output based on its own learning results may not be the correct solution, which in turn brings subversive ethical and moral issues. This is also an important issue that artificial intelligence technology must face when applied in the military field.

The information brought by the trend of integrating the three aspects of combat effectiveness generation models is incomplete. Future air combat is supported by a combat system composed of huge mechanized and information-based equipment. Since deep learning is in a weak intelligence state and is restricted by data, experience, rules, and knowledge, air combat countermeasures under the trend of intelligence and unmanned technology involve many elements and coverage. Wide and fast response, in actual training, it is difficult to truly restore all battlefield scene data and combat elements to the computer. When conducting air combat training, computers cannot obtain complete training information and are always in an incomplete battlefield environment. In addition, the complexity of the battlefield brings complexity to decision-making. When an autonomous platform for intelligent air combat makes self-decisions, whether its decisions can effectively process and analyze sensor data and output more reasonable and accurate, do not violate combat rules, science and art. Unified, interpretable, and replicable decision-making instructions also need to be further resolved.

The game brought about by the era of intelligent hybrid warfare is all-round and strong confrontation. In intelligent hybrid warfare, operational boundaries tend to be blurred, covering the entire scope of military and social space, and the impact is more far-reaching. At the same time, the battlefield and front lines have become more blurred, and the seizure of cognitive space by both sides of the war has become more intense. Air combat in the traditional sense is that aviation forces use aviation weapons to conduct air confrontation. In the era of intelligent warfare, air combat mainly uses intelligent and unmanned platforms with independent decision-making capabilities to conduct air confrontation. Once this platform with independent decision-making capabilities breaks through technical bottlenecks, through continuous strengthening of learning, it will far exceed the existing human cognition and become an invincible and uncertain agent in air combat, which in turn brings air combat rules and combat goals. Complexity in terms of victory rules, system construction, etc.

Conclusion

Under a century of changes, intelligent hybrid warfare has emerged. It is necessary to keenly observe the combat effectiveness generation model of the integration of the three modernizations and the development trend and complexity of air combat brought about by the new military science and technology revolution. Concepts should be changed in a timely manner with the development of the times and technological progress, theoretical innovation should be used to drive the construction and development of equipment, technological breakthroughs and implementation should be used to promote combat concept design and tactical warfare innovation, and through the mutual driving of theory and practice, we should grasp the complexity trend of air combat, follow the trend, adapt to the situation, gain more advantages in the air battlefield, and seize the initiative in the air battlefield.

版权声明：本文刊于2024年 1 期《军事文摘》杂志，作者：李飞、Li Qiankun等， If you need to reprint it, please be sure to indicate "Transferred from Military Digest".

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