The Future of War: How Autonomous Systems Are Reshaping Conflict

Hello, and welcome to RUCI in London. I'm Kevin Rowlands, the editor of the RUCI Journal and guest presenter this week of Global Security Briefing, the podcast devoted to providing regular insights from leading international experts to help you make sense of the far-reaching changes affecting international security around the world today. In today's episode, we have a very special guest, General David Petraeus. He's Senior Vice President of RUCI, former Commander of the U.S. Central Command, former Commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq, and a former Director of the CIA. Ukraine has become the clearest evidence that warfare is changing in revolutionary ways. Uncruised systems now account for nearly 90% of Russians killed and wounded on the front line, and Ukraine produces around 8 million drones a year, updating software weekly. And hardware every few weeks. It's a pace that no Western procurement system can match. Traditional armoured manoeuvre has effectively stopped, replaced by a dense zone of surveillance and strike drones along the front. For General Petraeus, this demands a complete institutional overhaul, covering doctrine, force structure, training, procurement, and personnel, on a scale far beyond the changes he oversaw during the Iraq surge. He argues that the UK is unusually well-placed to lead this change, given its visibility into the Ukrainian battlefield, its political continuity across governments, and a parliamentary system that can move fast, although entrenched interests in legacy platforms will resist the change required. General Petraeus came to the UK to deliver a speech to the House of Lords, and in that speech he called for change and transformation. And of course, his trip to the UK wouldn't be complete without a short hop down Whitehall Road. General Petraeus came to the UK to deliver a speech to the House of Lords, and in that speech he called for change and transformation, and of course, his trip to the UK wouldn't be complete without a short hop down Whitehall Road. Here's our conversation in full. General David Petraeus, former commander of ISAF in Afghanistan, former commander of US CENTCOM, former commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, including during the surge, former director of the CIA, but most importantly for us, I think, sir, current senior vice president of RUSI. current senior vice president of RUSI. For over 13 years now, I think. And welcome back to RUSI. Great to be back. You've come to the UK to deliver a speech to the House of Lords, and in that speech you call for institutional change and transformation. I mean, that's a tricky thing to do, given the challenges of our age. Can you expand on that? Sure. It's even more than that. It is urgent, revolutionary institutional military change. And institutional change means that this is much more than just military change. very expensive, exquisite, heavily manned systems. For that, you can buy numerous of the unmanned systems, which again, one attribute is that they are cheap and they're attritable. So in all these different ways, and then frankly, even if you look at your structure, your political structure, your prime minister doesn't have to deal with a house of representatives in a Senate, which may or may not be part of his party. He owns the parliament. That's why he's the prime minister. If he has a sufficient majority, he can get on with this in a way that will be more difficult. The U.S. is pursuing a host of initiatives, and we may spend $65 billion on drones alone, but we have not really yet directed the kind of institutional change that I advocate for at this moment, and which I believe should be truly, again, revolutionary, and it really is very urgent. And I really don't see any of the major countries of Europe undertaking this yet. And keep in mind, there's going to be a lot of obstacles to this. Some of the major defense contractors, some members of parliament, others that have a vested interest in what are called legacy systems, some of your old shipmates that, you know, like to be on the bow of a ship rather than moving a toggle switch or a joystick. Again, there will be resistance. And this does not mean that we're going to have a lot of resistance. We're going to have a lot of resistance. It does not mean complete replacement of all man systems by any means. Many of them are still very, very desirable based on the new concept of war. But if you look at a situation where on the ground, tanks can't survive, now maybe you put high-powered microwave on them in the future, everyone has its own little, maybe you can return maneuver to the battlefield. The Ukrainians are trying to experiment with that by blanketing everything to enable armored forces to move without getting out of the way. And I think that's a very, very important point. And I think that's by putting yourself in there and you're agonized over a decision, the other machine is going to take yours out. So this is ultimately going to be machine speed, a lot of it enabled by, again, these Nobel laureate staff officers who are agentic AI, LLMs, programmed to perform certain tasks. And again, the detail in the algorithm is going to be enormous, and there's going to be a lot of learning and a lot of experimentation. In fact, the Ukrainians just gave the prime minister the data that they have from years that they've been saving and then using to train their machines. And that data is invaluable. That's one of the reasons why the Ukrainians do so well with what it is that they have. And so this is going to be a long process, and it will be incremental, but it's not going to be that slow, I don't think. When you see the pace. I believe we'll see significant numbers of autonomous systems in Ukraine by the end of this year, certainly aerial systems. So this is the future, and this is why I believe it's a revolutionary moment in terms of the concept of war, and we've got to therefore urgently take the changes that respond to the reality of modern warfare. By the way, we see a little bit of it in the Gulf, not much though. The Iranians probably haven't even used a single day's worth of Ukrainian expenditure of drones in the entire campaign against the U.S. And this has been a challenging campaign. They don't have the numbers. Although they're the ones, of course, who gave the models for the Shahed to the Russians, who have made many improvements, and they now have a jet-powered Shahed, loitering munition. That is quite problematic right now, and the Ukrainians are scrambling to produce jet-powered drone interceptors. They're also scrambling. Of course, to react to greater use of missiles by Russia in an era when globally the number of missile interceptors available has dwindled very considerably. General, you've described this change brilliantly, what's happening now, what's happening in Ukraine, what may be happening in the Middle East and what's going to happen in future. Thank you for that. I'd like to bring our chat to a close, but just for those watching and listening, the article that we've been discussing is going to be out in the RUSI journal towards the end of this year, probably the end of November, beginning of December. And it's a really fascinating research. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Always great to be with RUSI. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of today's special episode of Global Security Briefing, a discussion on autonomous warfare, Gentic AI, drone technology and the military transformation driven by Ukraine. Transformation. It will shape future war and the role of future human successors for General Petraeus. I'd like to thank our guest David Petraeus for his time joining us here at RUSI today. Global Security Briefing is available on all major podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. And if you enjoy the podcast and would like to help us reach even more listeners, a great way to do so is by sending this episode to a friend or colleague or by leaving a review wherever you listen to us. Further information about the work of the international security team, please follow us on @ISS_RUSI and on LinkedIn @InternationalSecurityRUSI. You can find out more about the Institute's research as well as the articles we've discussed on our website at RUSI.org. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Kevin Rowlands at RUSI in London.