The Trajectory of War in 2024 and Beyond

A recap of the important themes in modern warfare that have become more apparent in the past few years, and a look forward at 2025.

Source: mil.in.ua

Back in February 2022 (that seems like a long time ago now), I published a book called War Transformed: The Future of 21st Century Great Power Competition and Conflict (USNI Books) It covered the key trends which were shaping contemporary strategic competition and conflict. The book also offered several hypotheses about key initiatives that might permit contemporary military institutions to better understand the challenges they faced, remain abreast of best practice and to undertake the organisational, conceptual and personnel adaptations required to do so.

Two great disruptors - new, confident and wealthy authoritarian regimes; and, advanced technologies like AI and robotics - are changing the shape and trajectory of war in the 21st century. This is hardly the first era of massive disruption of societies, and thereafter, military institutions. The end of the 19th century was also a period of significant technological and societal change which resulted in major changes in the character of war.

The Second Industrial Revolution, which straddled the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, resulted in widespread changes to how societies lived, communicated, and interacted. It also provided different means for waging war, with the birth of wireless communications, electricity, aircraft, the internal combustion engine and new materials and chemical sciences (including the development of dynamite).

This period also saw new production techniques being applied to military hardware which changed the increased the scale and lengthened sustainability of military operations. That the era has also been described as The Vertigo Years by author Philip Blom is an indication of the rapid pace of technological and strategic change.

In the late 19^th Century, several influential writers sought to identify the technological means to successfully conduct future operations. One interesting contributor to thinking about future in the late 19^th century was a Polish banker, Jan Gotlib Bloch. His 1899 book, The Future of War in its Technical, Economic and Politician Relations, is a detailed exploration of contemporary warfare, the need to adapt military institutions because of new technology, and the national cost of war. He proposed potential disruptions in human conflict, many of which would appear in the later world wars. His discussions on distributed command and control (now known as mission command) predates the German explorations in the later stages of the First World War and the inter-war year.

Visions of future war from Stockton, Bernhardi and Robida in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The late 1800s saw s multitude of fictional stories that explored how evolving technologies might impact military endeavours. The first entry in the literature was The Battle of Dorking (1871), written by British Army officer George Chesney. This was joined by publications in France, Germany and the United States, and several hundred books were published in the lead up to the First World War. Important contributions in this literature include La Guerre Infernale (The Infernal War) a series of illustrated stories published by Albert Robina in 1908, The Great War in England in 1897 (1895) by William Le Queuex, The Great War Syndicate (1889) by Frank Stockton, and Germany and the Next War (1911) by Friedrich von Bernhardi.

The examination of future war, through the lens of advanced new technologies, is hardly a new undertaking. And, many of the predictions explored in these books failed to materialise. But, as I examined in War Transformed, we should be able to learn from those who have studied future war in the past, to improve our capacity to do so in the future.

The Changing Character of War

The character of war, or the means with which humans fight wars, has continuously evolved throughout history. This evolution continues into the contemporary era. The ageless competition to develop and use the best weapons, achieve dominance over adversaries, and hone the best tactics and strategies for war has engaged the greatest - and sometimes the worst - minds over the past three thousand years at least.

Throughout the year I have sought to better understand, and write about, how the character of war is evolving before our very eyes. Back in February, I reviewed the strategic lessons from the war in Ukraine and how these had applicability in different environments and geostrategic contexts. You can read that article here.

But in reviewing the changing character of war, I have also been examining drivers for new approaches to war, and hunting for evidence of new concepts for war in Ukraine and beyond. In April, I published a piece that explored Ukraine’s evolved ways of war and in June I asked the question “are we seeing a revolution in military affairs?” in Ukraine. Also in June, the need for a new offensive doctrine was the subject of another article. In July, I examined influences on the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, and you can read that piece here.

Finally, just this month, I published a report with Clint Hinote in which we examined the character of war, how it has evolved since the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, what the key trends might be in the security environment out to 2030. You can read it here.

Besides this broader issue of the changing character of war, there have been a variety of themes I have examined in my articles this year. Each of these are worthy of deep study in their own right. However, most of the themes explored below also interact with each other in some way. This interaction adds to the complexity of understanding the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, and war in general. We should expect that this interaction will continue, and intensify, in the years ahead.

Below, I re-examine seven key themes in the trajectory of war that I explored during 2024, and provide links back to the articles related to these themes. The seven themes are:

1. Leadership.

2. Autonomous systems.

3. Victory.

4. Adaptation.

5. Failure.

6. Surprise.

7. Mobilisation.