5GW

Discussing fifth generation warfare (5GW) makes me think of this quote from the Bible: "I beheld, and lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled."--Jeremiah 4:25. This defines 5GW, non-contact warfare in the present context. Since Sept. 11, 2001 the U.S. has performed more than 500 targeted killings on identified terrorists using armed unmanned aircraft.[Ray Alderman, February 5th 2015.]Blog, .r. Sep 2020.
5GW is a concept ‘#cavetwitter’ has made use of, but it evolved on pre-existing blogs.
When did 5GW actually start? Non-contact warfare suggests that you destroy a specific target without a human directly seeing it. If that is correct, then 5GW techniques started with long-range artillery and naval gunfire using rifled-barrel weapons. Or you could say the Norden bomb site might qualify. Or, you could also say that the German V-1 and V-2 buzz bombs over England started this generation of warfare. In a very broad sense, these are all good candidates.
But let's add one new requirement: precision accuracy. That would narrow it down to laser and GPS-guided weapons. In that case, we would only need to go back to 1968, when the first laser-guided bombs were dropped in Vietnam. Or to the Falkland Island dispute in 1982, when the Argentinians fired three French-made Cruise missiles and hit two British destroyers and another of their ships. But, the best example is the use of drones to deliver Hellfire missiles against specific human targets.
[Ray Alderman, February 5th 2015.]
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War; Warfare; Generation; Generations of war; PsyWar; Xenodirectionalism; Xenowarfare; Xenowar
Mindwar; Cywar
Warfighting; Warmaking;
Destructive forces
Category:War