It is customary to call the Air Force and the Navy “technological armies”, suggesting that, for the Army, this is not the case. While it is true that just a few decades ago, cutting-edge technologies were most likely to be found in the cockpit of a fighter plane or behind the control panel of a submarine, this situation is rapidly evolving and, soon, the “biffins” will have nothing to envy of the “matafs” and “piafs” when it comes to the technology used.
In the article " the 12 innovations that will define the battlefield of tomorrow », 9 of these innovations concern the equipment that the Army will use (or should use) in the years to come. Today, the DGA gave the start for work on three of these innovations : Artificial Intelligence to analyze the massive data generated by the multitude of sensors and effectors connected on the battlefield, the connection and interaction between the infantryman and the information network, and finally, the increased use of drones and robots in the different missions encountered by the Army.
These 3 technologies will indeed be at the heart of the conduct of operations on the air-land battlefield of tomorrow, which will be characterized by very high mobility and remote engagements, therefore the need to acquire and distribute as quickly and faithfully as possible the positions and information on friendly and enemy units, in order to make the best use of available resources, and to avoid friendly fire, the risk of which increases precisely with the increase in mobility and engagement distance.
Robotics, for its part, responds to a relatively new imperative in the conduct of war: the low number of combatants. It is no longer possible, today, to dedicate a soldier to secondary missions that could be assigned to drones or robots, such as making a man or woman take unnecessary risks when a robot can do so. acquit.
In any case, all of the Army's weapons, from cavalry to engineers, including marine infantry and mountain troops, will have a very important technological dimension.