Thread by @RUSI_org

We will be live tweeting throughout the day, please follow #RUSILWC to stay up to date with the Land Warfare Conference.

The Welcoming Remarks and Strategic Context is being chaired by @kvonhippel. "@RUSI_org has it's roots in the British armed forces." #RUSILWC

General Mark Carleton-Smith, the new @ArmyCGS is now on the stage. "I'd like to extend a particular welcome to fellow Chiefs of Staff, 43 Nations are represented here, for a unique military gathering" #RUSILWC

“When the definition of common global strategy looks increasingly elusive…It is not just important we are all here today and tomorrow, it is vital to our own nations respective security. It sends a message to our potential adversaries”
@ArmyCGS #RUSILWC

“Manoeuvre has never been limited literally to the physical. To my mind there are some inescapable realities; Cyber is the man-made domain, unconstrained by geography” @ArmyCGS #RUSILWC

“I am interested in how we exploit the emerging opportunities in robotics, connectivity and autonomy.” @ArmyCGS #RUSILWC

“While warfare remains unchanged in it’s nature, it is hard to imagine the application of these technologies isn’t going to profoundly change some of its characteristics. Might technology eventually trump terrain?” @ArmyCGS #RUSILWC

“Its important to acknowledge the progress, health security, prosperity. If you were to chose any time to live in human history it would be now" @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“The end of Cold War, the advent of I.T. and the rise of #China add up to globalisation. It has not brought about the triumph of a single system of government, it has not brought universal liberal democracy.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“In the 90’s a vast misunderstanding arouse between the West and #Russia. Europes westward expansion has been perceived as a threat. The friendship with Russia goes up the hill and rolls back down again, that’s the story.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“The last G7 meeting broke up in the greatest disarray of any meeting in our life time. There has been a major split in strategy between America and it’s European allies.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“Britain’s departure from the EU and the agreement which we obtain could end up with major allies making each others’ security more expensive. These developments are taking place just when alliances need updating.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“Capability and resilience was more important than perfect analysis of what was going to happen next.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“The rise of #China; overall this is massively positive in world affairs. This has opened up many areas of strategic co-operation. But there will be competition.” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

“We can see a coming strategic race in artificial intelligence. Whoever is in the lead in #AI in 2040 will be as important as who was in the lead in 1940 in building the atomic bomb” @WilliamJHague #RUSILWC

We now move in to ‘Session Two: The Evolution of Manoeuvre’ which is chaired by @allan_mallinson. #RUSILWC

“Military History has been colonised by young academics with no experience of soldiering.” @allan_mallinson #RUSILWC

“Parity, Stasis, Momentum and Initiative have all been key to understanding manoeuvre. The Rifles used to pride themselves on the use of every man’s initiative, that is now true for the whole of the @BritishArmy” Dr Rob Johnson #RUSILWC

“If manoeuvre was about finding the right place in the battlefield in the past, today it is about getting the enemy to think what you want them too” Dr Rob Johnson #RUSILWC

“The virtual dimension today offers exciting opportunities, in the digital domain choice words can have a more significant effect. Digital and physical need to work together.” Dr Rob Johnson #RUSILWC

“We’re facing a mix of state and non-state threats, including state threats adopting non-state tactics” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“The introduction of small drones for vertical capabilities at the squad level rivals the importance of the introduction of the light machine gun” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“We are talking about cognitive manoeuvre and the digital space, but we are also talking about kicking the crap out of an enemy with greater efficiency, enabled by that connectivity ” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“Environment is driving the evolution of forces able to demonstrate stealth, dispersion, modularity, precision firepower, cyber resilience and able to manipulate the media and operate within political constraints” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“Close combat is still viable for land forces” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“We are getting close to true battlefield #AI. When we think in manoeuvre, we may be concentrating fires or information in the future, but leaving our forces dispersed. That has some leadership implications that are worth thinking through” Dr David Kilcullen #RUSILWC

“Manoeuvre is the expression of the Art of War.” General Sir Rupert Smith #RUSILWC

“It is firepower that does the business not movement. It is the intensity that kills, that shocks your adversary into defeat. You need command, an appropriate doctrine and sufficient information.” General Sir Rupert Smith #RUSILWC

“The conflict you are actually engaged in is understood in the context of the confrontation that contains it. These boundaries are getting smaller. It is hard to find an actual fight that is bigger than one heavily reinforced company.” General Sir Rupert Smith #RUSILWC

“The Russian approach is to create ambiguity, to confuse the opponent and frustrate his ability to decide.” General Sir Rupert Smith #RUSILWC

“You and your opponent share the objective; legitimacy, populations access to basic resources, imposing the rule of law or not. These are competitive relationships, not adversarial. A race, not a boxing match.” General Sir Rupert Smith #RUSILWC

We are now starting 'Session Three: How Land Forces Contribute to Strategic Outcomes' which is being chaired by @MClarkeRUSI. As with all sessions today, RUSI rules apply and the Q&A will not be tweeted.

“The shift in the global centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that shift in the economic centre of gravity will lead to a shift in political centre of gravity too.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“There are many aspects of the global order changing. Here in the UK of course, we focus on the updated Russian threat. At least during the Cold War we all understood the rules.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“Bilateral relationships have been a big part of our strategy post referendum. It means renewing friendships in the Gulf, Sub Saharan Africa and Asia, as well as building new relationships with rising economies. ” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“We need to take the rules based order to cyberspace and we need to do that in the private sector; it is a place where battles will be fought but people also live their lives.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“The UK is the only country in the G20 to spend both 2% of GDP on defence and also 0.7% on overseas aid; both hard and soft power.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“Fusion Doctrine: By blending security, economic and influence capabilities can better protect and promote our national security. ” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“We all know that there are a lot of examples in our history where we have allowed ambitions to run far ahead of resources. Therein lies the route to failure” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“What I’m looking for in land forces is that ability you have always possessed to react quickly and flexibly to many problems as they emerge. Deploying at speed into many different environments.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“We must ensure that we don’t become over reliant on the military tool and end up using it in situations where it is not appropriate or not equipped. This needs a flexible, whole of government approach.” @marksedwill #RUSILWC

“National Security involves everybody, that’s what I want to talk about. The threats to our society are changing and becoming more diverse. Norway’s home guard force enables the military to have trained eyes everywhere” @elisabethbraw #RUSILWC

“Total Defence includes all parts of society, especially alert and trained citizens. Total Defence is about to make a come back, #Sweden is outlining what it’s citizens should do in any crisis situation up to and including military invasion.” @elisabethbraw #RUSILWC

“We shouldn’t become over reliant on the army, the UK might not support having armed military personal on the streets, but I would argue such a system could work in the UK; a resilience force and certified resilience training for teenagers. ” @elisabethbraw #RUSILWC

“Resilience training at a national level is not just beneficial to society but also for the military as it builds vital defence capacity against broad threats” @elisabethbraw #RUSILWC

“Worth remembering that crisis training tends to make citizens less, rather than more scared or worried about such events as they feel prepared and understand what to do. Prepared citizens are a deterrent. ” @elisabethbraw #RUSILWC

“We have had an era of seapower, of land power, of air power, we are now in an era of data power. The amount of processing power available to civilians in their pocket devices exceeds that available to US missile defence planners in the Cuban Missile Crisis.” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“A human would take 63 billion years to process the data that NASA’s new Summit computer can in one second” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“The world I am describing means much faster weapons. That speed raises the question of the speed of our decision making. We have to think differently about our risks when any code can be broken by someone with sufficient processing power” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“The potential power of data today can be expressed as a holographic sphere of data, that allows you see reality more clearly than you can see reality yourself, a crystal ball that can give accurate answers on anything you want - even you.” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“This a world where people are freely giving away insights into who they are. Cambridge Analytica got data on 81 million people just from Facebook likes. Amazon Echo is being subpoenaed as a witness in a murder trial in America. The new oil is data. ” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“China will use data to secure access to resources that are required to keep society stable.” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“The competition for resources is going to be fuelled by the capacity of data to deliver faster and more efficient outcomes.” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“That line between what is defence and what is civilian is eroding. The president of the USA can talk directly to the public, but it also allows leaders to negotiate geopolitics, the North Korean deal did not use the traditional apparatus of government” @DrPippaM #RUSILWC

“The commander of a future multinational Army Corps must be able to understand and integrate the new domains of warfare; terrorists, hybrid and cyber threats - as well as using the traditional enablers such as long range artillery and precision air support” Gen. Farina #RUSILWC

“Alongside the first priority for militaries; territorial defence along the Westphalian borders, the second is crisis management - and those crises may take many forms as part of broad spectrum security threats which Defence must address” General Farina #RUSILWC

We now move into the Q&A which is off the record. Will return with "Session Four: The Capabilities Needed to Out-manoeuvre Future Adversaries" at 1400. You can go to slido.com & enter event name RUSILWC to ask questions.

We are now starting "Session Four: The Capabilities Needed to Out-manoeuvre Future Adversaries" chaired by Lt Gen (Retd) Professor Sir Paul Newton.

“The Land Warfare Conference is part of the @BritishArmy 's campaign to get the future right enough. Not right, because you’ll never get that… but right enough” Lt Gen (Retd) Professor Sir Paul Newton #RUSILWC

“The @BritishArmy needs to stick with simple, easy to understand stories without jargon that the average man or woman can understand - something that it currently finds very hard to do” Lt Gen (Retd) Professor Sir Paul Newton #RUSILWC

“Fallujah, Mosul and Raqqa are not just strategic outliers, they are representative of our direction of travel in future conflicts because future foes will conceal themselves in the urban to frustrate us” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“As the physical environment becomes more deadly, robotics will become ever more important. Both to reduce the risk of casualties but also to allow you to take greater risks in order to manoeuvre effectively” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“Who in your HQ is monitoring the enemies Facebook, their Twitter? Because those are both now part of the battle space and they are monitoring yours.” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“The last time that US and British forces operated in a contested airspace environment was 1942 in North Africa. The German General Staff in WW2 concluded that without control of the air, manoeuvre is impossible.” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“Lines of communications and logistics chains are now vulnerable. Vulnerable to irregular forces, vulnerable to long range precision munitions. Land forces must reduce their dependence on logistics” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“Deception operations will likely be waged on the internet in the future, and the bad news is #Russia is ahead of the West. Someone on social media can use their tools to influence events and attain mission success on the battlefield” Professor Peter Mansoor #RUSILWC

“The foundations of C2 and software systems we rely on in Defence have to be re-evaluated if we are to keep up with the pace of change and the rate of technological advance in the modern world” Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte #RUSILWC

“We need to come to grips with the fact that more automation, more AI means fewer platforms and fewer people to achieve the same effect.” Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte #RUSILWC

“Autonomous Systems in the military are behind where they are in the private sector, which has opened itself to open source software and this is something the military will have to think about if it wants to catch up” Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte #RUSILWC

“There is a huge role for human augmentation, in the context of an army with less people. We think we know what technologies will revolutionise defence but we don’t know how we’re going to implement them.” Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte #RUSILWC

“We hear AI and we immediately think about robots. Nobody really believes this is the main way we will achieve effects, but there should be a focus on autonomy, which is useful in so far as it helps humans apply force better.” Major Kitty McKendrick #RUSILWC

“The main priority is to use AI to make sense of the vast amount of data available to us in the modern world. The harness the incredible potential of that data for precise effects. No one has cracked it yet.” Major Kitty McKendrick #RUSILWC

“Simulation can help us make data more easily adjustable and exploitable so we can base our plans on it. It wont be perfect in the first instance, they need to be built to learn and adapt.” Major Kitty McKendrick #RUSILWC

“There are a lot of start ups who have fallen at the hurdle of good simulation; it's worth it because good simulation will make the difference between meaningless data and data that can be interrogated by various different levels of command” Major Kitty McKendrick #RUSILWC

“We can see why soldiers use Strava who care about their health, but to do it you have to accept someone else terms and conditions. It would be wise to invest more in these platforms. Large scale on secure hardware.” Major Kitty McKendrick #RUSILWC

“The threat we face and the current rate of technological change demand a new approach to the delivery of capability, we must change at a greater pace. We must extend, evolve or revolutionise capabilities.” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“#Russia is the pacing threat in #Europe. The breaking of international order norms concerns us all. Thus, Russia’s capabilities are the ones against which we judge our own modernisation plans” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“Russia is a tricky opponent but not insurmountable with our key strategic allies.” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“Machine learning algorithms will allow us to do more with our older systems than we ever thought possible, it is most akin to the internal combustion engine in the change it will bring.” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“We will upgrade our main battle tanks, our armoured vehicles and our attack helicopters. We will also explore capabilities within directed energy weapons, and technologies to put substance into ‘information manoeuvre’” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“We will leverage autonomy so that unmanned systems can open the fight to enable soldiers to finish it” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

“The first Army to use EMP on the battlefield will change the way counter-mobility is achieved. I am enthused to see this capability on the cusp of entry into service.” Major General Christopher Tickell #RUSILWC

"Session Five: How Allies will Manoeuvre Beyond 2025" Is now in progress.

“Robotics is not only technology it is necessary. We have to be adaptive and use the power of society and industry to help. New ideas have to help us over come the limits of declining populations. ”Lieutenant General Leo Beulen #RUSILWC

“The dominance of information warfare, law-fare, small scale fighting; this is not what US Army Europe is preparing for. This is optional warfare where survival is not at stake. We need to prep for continental scale warfare.” Lieutenant Gen.Christopher Cavoli #RUSILWC

“Large scale war requires firepower. Technology has rendered manoeuvre less useful than firepower. It is so easy to see and shoot without mass and with precision. Manoeuvre struggles to overcome firepower.” Lieutenant Gen. Christopher Cavoli #RUSILWC

“There is a fine balance between speed and cost and they start to intersect when a conflict begins. Countries in peace and war need to be able to arrive at a decision quickly. It is difficult to train for that.” Lieutenant Gen. Christopher Cavoli #RUSILWC

“Logistics: In Norway we have renewed the cold war concept of Total Defence. Society has changed since the 1980's and so has the concept. We cannot afford to afford to stockpile at a strategic level any more.”Major General Odin Johannessen #RUSILWC

“There are unforgiving surroundings in Norway for full spectrum operations. We have to utilise modern technology, concepts and people.”Major General Odin Johannessen #RUSILWC

“#NATO is the cornerstone of Norwegian defence policy. We need to replace capabilities; is it right to buy new tanks, or will something new replace the old warhorse? Our solution is to purchase ‘good enough’ off the shelf.”Major General Odin Johannessen #RUSILWC

“We still have conscription and we have expanded and developed it. It is universal, both men and women, and it lets us choose the best qualified for the job. Combined with enlisted soldiers-it keeps us effective. We value military service” Major Gen. Odin Johannessen #RUSILWC

“The only way to get more energy out of a system is to open it up, not just in thermodynamics, but in military systems too. Your mind is like a parachute, if it is not open it does not work” Major Gen. Odin Johannessen #RUSILWC

“We are still able to choose whether to go to war or not, our new opponents will put war back into the realm of an existential struggle. Smaller numbers were fine when we had technological supremacy. That time is over.” Major General Vincent Guionie #RUSILWC

“The challenge of information inflation and enemy capacity makes it essential to understand more quickly and more in depth. Winning the battle will mean a competition of narratives.” Major General Vincent Guionie #RUSILWC

“We wish Artificial Intelligence to be the central part of our fifth generation of military equipment which will help us dominate future threats.” Major General Vincent Guionie #RUSILWC

“When I talk about manoeuvre I mean physical not cognitive. Physical destruction, we think, is the ultimate thing we do. I do not believe there will be a net once the shooting starts. ” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

“A high quality force will be limited in numbers, but that means if you suffer losses that costs more, it carries more weight. The battlefield may be becoming more transparent but it is also becoming more complex.” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

“Manoeuvering with fires; it’s possible but only if you have perfect information about the targets in real time.” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

“Data exchange needs to be prioritised over voice exchange. It will enable us to move from assumption based exchange to a certain and deterministic exchange.” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

“Soldiers are not only shooters but sensors and we will put a lot of power to them. We will become platform agnostic. This is not a new type of a tank or piece of equipment. This is a system, with manned-unmanned elements. ” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

“The speed of change is not just due to the acceleration of technology innovation in hardware terms - 99% of the scientists who have ever lived live now. ” Lt Gen Frank Leidenberger #RUSILWC

Now the session move in to Q&A and is off the record. Thank you for following the live tweeting of #RUSILWC. Tomorrow we will be back with three more sessions. See you tomorrow!