Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming warfare, but whether it is changing it for the better remains unsettled. AI-enabled systems can improve surveillance, targeting, defensive response, and force protection. Yet technological improvement alone does not constitute a revolution. The more critical issue is whether AI-enabled robotics, which include semi-autonomous and fully autonomous machines, will change what Carl Von Clausewitz called the “grammar of war,” which includes the practical methods through which political violence is organized, controlled, and conducted. 

The conflict with Iran, known as Operation EPIC FURY, has made a broader view of war more compelling. The operation is characterized by drones, missiles, long-range strikes, electronic warfare, persistent surveillance, and layered air defenses, like the war in Ukraine. The absence of a significant ground campaign does not mean U.S. troops are out of harm’s way. These courageous service members reassure allies, support operations, deter escalation, and influence an adversary’s decisions. Even if they are not directly fighting on the ground, these brave men and women remain targets. 

This operation highlights the lack of distinction between combat troops involved in direct operations and support troops, which may signify the future of warfare. The U.S. has pivoted toward multi-domain operations with a focus on geopolitical actors and challenges, at times marginalizing insurgency and criminality as a secondary issue. In this new (or perhaps revamped) dynamic, a service member does not have to be maneuvering against an enemy force to be a target. Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones can hit well beyond a conventional front line. The front line has not disappeared. Instead, it has expanded across the theater. 

Robotics may further alter this situation, but only if our military leaders and planners look beyond supplanting troops with machines. Unmanned aircraft, robotic logistics platforms, automated ships, underwater systems, and loitering munitions could reduce the number of personnel exposed to kinetic attacks. But these systems would still need operators, maintainers, analysts, communications specialists, and logisticians. If those people remain concentrated on vulnerable bases, robotics may simply shift risk rather than eliminate it. 

A genuine technical revolution would therefore require robotics to transform both offensive and defensive capabilities. Robotic systems would need to fill roles in the most dangerous missions in place of humans while also protecting the human force that remains as a shaping element in the region. The first recorded rescue operation involving downed pilots involved an unmanned surface vessel (USV) during Operation EPIC FURY. This rescue proved that robotics or drones could reduce the potential for loss of life. 

Advanced AI plays a role in the revolution especially in counter-missile and anti-drone capabilities. A prime example of AI successfully countering unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and missile attacks is Israel’s use of its Iron Dome. With future advancements, those networks could fuse multiple sensor feeds, distinguish real threats from decoys, predict trajectories, and deploy the most cost-effective defense. This is important because current attacks are meant to swamp defenders with volume, speed, and complexity. 

Clausewitz explains what can change the nature of conflict. War has its logic in political aims, the why, and its own grammar, the how. Geopolitical entities will engage in combat operations, but the question is, with what tools? The debate regarding active conflict will not dissipate, even if humans are not involved in the more active parts of combat. Emerging technologies can rewrite this framework to a degree but only if they compel militaries to completely overhaul established doctrine, logistics, and command structures to accommodate novel paradigms. 

Historical precedent cautions against calling a revolution at the first use of every new weapon system. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, numerous analysts cited precision munitions and satellites as definitive evidence that combat had undergone a permanent transformation. The less glamorous realities of the Gulf War are very telling as well and commonly forgotten. These include strong supply chains, highly specific political boundaries, ineffectiveness and ineptitude of the opposing force, and overwhelming air superiority, which are frequently disregarded by that narrative. Hardware offers promise; institutional competence is still the filter through which that promise is translated into actual combat effectiveness.  

The same will be true of robotics. Militaries will not achieve a revolution merely by purchasing or producing thousands of drones or unmanned vehicles in place of humans. Those systems must be integrated in a coherent way of fighting through doctrinal and organizational changes. They must share information, divide tasks, adapt to losses, function in disrupted communications environments, and operate under clear rules of authority and accountability. 

Integrating robotic systems into combat operations and the operational environment may fundamentally alter the domestic politics surrounding armed conflict. While sparing troops is an undeniable humanitarian gain, removing the visceral human cost could significantly lower the political barrier for states to initiate or drag out military campaigns. The political price of fighting, therefore, does not vanish but merely takes a new form. Public debate and legislative scrutiny will most likely shift from the casualty metrics to severe hardware attrition, market dynamics, and debt or deficit levels. Domestic debates will center around the depletion of advanced interceptors, sudden semiconductor supply chain crises, and the hard reality that a nation’s industrial base may not even be able to produce replacements at the rate that the conflict justifies. 

Soon to be joined by economic and cost-exchange paradigms, traditional measures of success, such as casualty-exchange ratios, will come to prominence. While tactical victories may be achieved in isolated engagements, a nation could suffer broader strategic failure if it continuously depletes multi-million-dollar defense infrastructure to counter cheap, mass-produced weapons. Future military power will be measured not only by troop numbers, but also by computing capacity, energy reserves, software agility, and manufacturing speed. 

Experiences from recent conflicts suggest that contemporary conflict is nearing this technological threshold but has not yet reached it. Advanced AI-enabled combat systems have transformed the battlefield, yet human vulnerability remains. Specifically, support personnel behind or beyond the front lines are now high-value targets because of how their operational and logistical footprint can shape the course of the conflict. 

The decisive test of a robotic revolution will not be whether autonomous machines can reach the enemy. Missiles and drones already do this. The test will be whether integrated networks of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous systems, supported by advanced AI, can prevent the enemy’s machines from reaching friendly safe havens. If robotics can simultaneously generate combat power, protect deployed forces, and reorganize how militaries distribute risk, then it may profoundly change the grammar of war. 

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew J. Fecteau is an information operations officer working with artificial intelligence, and a PhD researcher at King’s College London. The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of War, or the US Government. 

Beyond the Body Count: Will Robotics Change the Grammar of War? was originally published on Global Security Review.

North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal is changing more than just the amount of destruction Pyongyang could inflict. This may be altering the North Korean leadership’s way of calculating how it could use nuclear weapons in a limited conflict while not necessarily triggering regime change. North Korea is developing a larger and more diversified nuclear inventory, tactical nuclear warheads, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV), cruise missiles, and hypersonic weapons systems. Moreover, North Korea’s September 2022 nuclear law established the conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used preemptively. 

These developments would become particularly perilous when paired with uncertainty regarding how the United States would respond to North Korea’s limited use of nuclear weapons and a simultaneous dual contingency involving China and North Korea. Consequently, the central challenge facing South Korea extends beyond deterring an all-out nuclear attack. It must also ensure Pyongyang does not conclude that limited nuclear use is controllable, survivable, or politically successful. 

A larger nuclear inventory affords greater operational flexibility to North Korea. While a small nuclear stockpile would have to be preserved for regime survival and strategic retaliation, a much larger arsenal would enable Pyongyang to allocate a subset of warheads to American targets, others to Japan, and still others to South Korean military targets. North Korea could reach the tipping point when Kim Jong-un believes he possesses sufficient nuclear capacity to use them for tactical purposes while preserving a survivable nuclear reserve to deter further escalation. 

To achieve doctrinal legitimacy for early use of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s 2022 nuclear doctrine authorizes the use of nuclear weapons not only in response to a nuclear attack but also when the leadership, nuclear command structure, or valuable strategic targets are threatened. Pyongyang could argue that a South Korean attack against its missile bases, command centers, and underground facilities is an attempt to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear deterrent. In that case, a tactical nuclear strike could be portrayed as a defensive measure to halt allied operations and terminate Western aggression. 

This creates a dangerous interaction with South Korea’s Three-Axis System. The Kill Chain is intended to destroy North Korean launchers and command facilities before missiles are fired. Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) is intended to intercept the remaining missiles, and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) is intended to pose a threat to the North Korean leadership. From Pyongyang’s perspective, these strikes may be interpreted as an integrated operation aimed at destroying North Korea’s nuclear forces and decapitating its leadership. Ironically, increased South Korean preemptive-strike capability may result in  greater North Korea’s incentive to disperse authority, shorten decision times, and launch its forces before they could be destroyed. 

North Korea’s lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian war could make this posture even more dangerous. Russia has repeatedly combined or integrated drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles with other measures. North Korea could apply similar methods on the Korean Peninsula. Beginning with cyberattacks and GPS jamming, followed by reconnaissance drones toward missile-defense batteries, airfields, ports, and command centers. An additional wave could include decoys, one-way attack drones, low-altitude cruise missiles, ballistic missiles including KN-23 and KN-24, and hypersonic systems. 

Nuclear-tipped missiles could be mixed with conventionally armed weapons to generate attack uncertainty like a “haystack attack.” South Korean operators might not be able to discern which incoming objects are decoys, which carry conventional warheads, and which are armed with nuclear warheads. As a result, Seoul would be compelled to consume their stock of interceptors against numerous targets. North Korea does not need hundreds of drones to neutralize the KAMD. It would instead need drones that could damage radar, communications vehicles, generators, reloading systems, or command hubs long enough for ballistic missiles to penetrate successfully. 

The Atlantic Council’s Guardian Tiger tabletop exercises explicitly revealed this problem. In one scenario, North Korea employed a low-yield nuclear weapon against ROK Navy facilities. In response, the United States chose to conduct strong conventional strike operations instead of opting for nuclear retaliation, partially because of concerns about escalation with China. 

These risks could be amplified during a Taiwan conflict with American military assets heavily deployed in the Taiwan Strait. Under such circumstances, North Korea could use mobilization, missile attacks, or tactical nuclear blackmail either to coerce the United States into dispersing its assets or to restrict Seoul’s support for Taiwan operations. Meanwhile, China might disapprove of North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons but still intervene to forestall regime collapse.  

South Korea should respond by denying North Korea confidence in such a strategy. In that regard, the following six recommendations are worth pursuing, either individually or collectively. 

First, the Three-Axis System should be operated as a continuously functioning, integrated architecture instead of three mutually separated stages. Intelligence, cyber operations, electronic warfare, missile defense, long-range strikes, civil defense, continuity of government functions, and nuclear consultation with the United States should be aligned through prearranged response options. 

Second, every base that hosts a major missile-defense system should be equipped with its own independent, low-cost counter-drone defense layer. This should include passive sensors, short-range radars, jammers, programmable airburst guns, low-cost missiles, decoys, protected power generation, and rapid recovery teams. 

Third, South Korea should also increase the depth of its interceptor magazine. Reload vehicles, storage and production facilities, and communications networks should be dispersed and protected. 

Fourth, the Kill Chain should concentrate less on searching for every mobile launcher and focus more on destroying the broader launch ecosystem, including tunnel entrances, command nodes, reloading points, transportation support, communications relays, and choke points. 

Fifth, Washington and Seoul also need a classified bilateral plan concerning North Korea’s limited nuclear use. This should regulate viable responses to a demonstrative nuclear explosion, an attack on military bases, and the use of nuclear weapons during a Taiwan contingency. 

Finally, South Korea should also prove that a single nuclear strike cannot paralyze the country. Thus, dispersed aircraft, alternative ports, hardened command posts, emergency runway repair, redundant communications hubs, and diverse measures for the continuity of government functions are at the core of a deterrence through resilience strategy. 

In all, North Korea’s nuclear threshold will rise only when Kim Jong-un concludes that limited nuclear options are not viable on the Korean Peninsula. Seoul should convince Pyongyang that a single nuclear attack would not fragment alliances, secure China’s protection, or end the war on North Korea’s terms, but would instead expose the North Korean regime to uncontrollable escalation and destruction. 

Dr. Ju Hyung Kim is President of the Security Management Institute, a defense think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly. He researches East Asian security, military strategy, and alliance management and has published widely in international defense and foreign-policy outlets. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

North Korea’s Emerging Limited Nuclear-Use Strategy was originally published on Global Security Review.