Dominant Battlespace Knowledge

Abstract

DBK alone is meaningless. Military relevance comes from the ability to hit what you can see. To do this it is necessary to analyze the synergy of DBK and a new class of autonomous weapons in a canonical scenario -- what might have occurred if Saddam Hussein's lunge in October 1994 had not stopped short of the Kuwait border. Although DBK can deter, the assumption in this case is that it did not; the issue is whether DBK mated to autonomous weapons can let the United States win in a timely manner, without major deployment or without having to buy new platforms. Autonomous weapons -- sensor-fuzed weapons (SFW), brilliant anti-tank submunition (BAT) and wide-area munitions (WAM) -- are those needing far less human guidance than earlier weapons and promising a high Pk if placed within range.