On 8–11 November 2021, SIPRI hosted the sixth annual Stockholm Security Conference (SSC 21) #SthlmSecCon. The theme of this year's conference was 'Battlefields of the Future: Trends of Conflict and Warfare in the 21st Century.'
We are entering a new era of warfare. This era—with new means, locales and doctrines of warfare—will challenge our concepts of war, peace and security. It will also test what we mean by power in the security context and our legal and ethical concepts around conflict.
Urbanization, new technological advances, a cyber-dependent society and Covid-19 are all part of this changing landscape. Terror weapons become more effective as kinetic warfare increasingly takes place in urban settings. Demands for ever faster action and response follow new and widespread technological advances in weapon systems and military infrastructure. This, in turn, promotes the role of artificial intelligence and is part of what makes cyber capabilities fundamental, both offensively and defensively. The cyber domain opens new battlefields. A cyber-dependent society is also a cyber-vulnerable society and relatively modest capabilities can threaten physical and virtual aspects of critical infrastructure. The rise in space technologies similarly raises concerns for international security and new, and at times less visible, weapons, such as neurological weapons, can enter domains that were previously exclusive. Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic has emphasized the critical importance of biosafety and biosecurity.
Changing drivers of insecurity further complicate the picture. We face not only interstate rivalries and broader competition among domestic elites, but also the pressures of climate change and crises in the biosphere, and their public health consequences. To understand the impact of these drivers of insecurity fully, we need to understand their social settings and the elements of injustice and grievance that impel groups towards conflict. New weapons and battlefields, in a context of increasing distrust among great powers, create an environment of uncertainty and, thus, a risk to stability. These settings and technological advances may also benefit new, non-traditional actors.
This mix of factors needs to be understood to gain an overview of the larger trends influencing the battlefields of the future. Four panellists disentangled these issues while keeping an eye on the big picture, and provided a better understanding of what drives these trends, and where and how they are likely to play out.
Moderator:
Dan Smith, Director, SIPRI
Panellists:
Major General Darrell Amison, Director, United Kingdom Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC)
Dr Cordula Droege, Chief Legal Officer and Head of the Legal Division, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Dr Renata Dwan, Deputy Director and Senior Executive Officer, Chatham House
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