In 1660 and 1670, Newton and Leibniz exposed and confirmed their insights about the way to calculate and compute the curve’s area trapped by tangents. This was a privileged momentum, and extraordinary time to jump into integral and differential calculus. Knowing the gravity’s force in a specific moment let understand why the planet´s orbit was elliptical and not circular as Keppler announced previously. The great jump in mechanical physics had been done. Without going and moving from a desk, it was possible determine exactly the position of planets and satellites in the space, disregarding huge masses, long distances, and gravity forces as well.
Then Newtonian physics became deterministic science, ruling and predicting the motion in everywhere and in every field. However, the publication of Newton’s Principia stated that not everything could be analyzed by the gravity, masses, and the square of velocities. Newton himself avoided resolve the nature of light. When Faraday, Maxwell, and other scientists tried to use Newton’s formula for unfolding the mysteries of light and sound, it was not possible to proceed because electricity, beams, and magnetism, all them move up through the waves and not in a perfect line. Spectra, light, the photoelectric effect, and the nuclear atom, all of them were out from Newton’s law. In short, classical physics did not reach subatomic particles. Since then, quantum physic emerged as a leading theory and practice.
Like the three moments toward quantum physics described above, warfare has comparable ones along historical stages. The first age, army against army went into the battlefield to fight. Sometimes, one huge bloody battle determined the entire campaign. Hundreds if not thousands of warriors were killed, injured, or missed. The concept of mass overwhelms every other conceptual principle. The second stage, the mass concept is present and others as mobility, and surprised are added. The adversaries try to destroy the war effort of their opponents. Cities, factories, highways, bridges, facilities, dames, and symbolic monuments are damages. Huge armies are deployed, and enormous logistic supports them. In a third age, armies concentrate all their energies in a specific place. All efforts and means in military, scientific, cyber, etc., focused in a short period of time. Certainly, a revolution in warfare has happened. However, after victory or defeat the hypothetical beaten adversary keeps up the war effort. Not enemy is visible, strategy and tactics neither, but casualties are increasing in every moment. Moral is affected, economical efforts accompanied to intelligence needs, no targets. Situations request micro tactic designs. Newtonian armies don’t fit into scenarios of the digital age.
The new army will not be Newtonian anymore. New armies will have to adapt the new situation. Strategy will not be restricted by the time’s vector. A long time’s objective will not mean to be strategic necessarily. The deep impact and strategic damage will not be produced by a giant, Newtonian army, but by a quantum army instead. To escape from a Newtonian law, armies must be sub atomic in quantity of soldiers. The last campaigns mobilized up to 4 million of warriors and incredible logistic support. New economical scenarios will continue with the same problem of uncertainty which comes from worldwide crisis, fight between national currencies, neo regionalisms, the climate change, and the steadily gap between rich nations and poor ones. The new campaign could not support Newtonian armies without engaging in huge internal debts.
New technologies and rapid information tools will disrupt the linear command of the Newtonian armies. Quantum armies will do obsolete the usage of enormous large caliber weapons. To be “quantum”, new microscopic forces ought to be autonomous in mobility and logistic aspects. Quantum forces’ vehicles will not roll on the surface, these will mobilize parallel to the surface without friction for being in two or more places almost at the same time. A force with 10 or 15 warriors is a microscopic force in comparison to 4 million. Only tiny 0.0003% of a Newtonian army. All the means, efforts, conditions, power, technology, and leadership, must be used when the quantum army leads operational attack. Commanders of a quantum army will need a new military theory, synthesized for a centralized planning and decentralized execution of tasks.
Sun Tzu said, the elements of the art of war are: the measurement of the war space; the estimation of quantities; the calculations; the comparisons; the chances of triumph. Many such affirmations go onto fuzzy zones due to the quantum theory. However, the pundit Chinese was clear when he stressed “…because the expert wins his victories without error. Without mistake means that every task he does, he ensures the victory…”. Close to the end of the second decade in this millennium, technological, economical, climatic, social, politics, and military issues will shift finally into the quantum thought. It would be a terrible mistake does not prepare the Army in this new chore, and because finally it is the land force which arrives, conquers and keeps the target in a volatile environment.
