No more enemies?

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THE BERLIN WALL COMES DOWN	November, 1989: Young Germans pull down the Berlin Wall. For more than a generation it had been a symbol of division, of the Cold War. Now, suddenly, it was gone. For those who had lived beneath its shadow, the end of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism seemed to offer, not just the end of threat but perhaps, just possibly, an end to war itself.
THEY WAVE THE FLAGS FROM ATOP THE WALL	Yet, if those who waved the flags for peace could have peered into the future, they would have seen wars aplenty.
MONTAGE: TIMOR, GEORGIA, SIERRA, LEONE, RWANDA, KOSOVO	Wars that stretched unbroken into the next century.
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WWI: OVER THE TOP	Gone were the wars of superpower national survival, of massed armies and the trench-fodder, slaughtered dead you could count in hundreds of thousands; of great nations battering one another to death. In their place, wars of choice: of moral issue, of conscience.
HI-TECH	Wars whose outcome would be determined, not just by strength or courage, or numbers of men, but by the microchip, the laser, the cellphone, the fibre-optic cable. And by weapons that could almost think for themselves.
BOOM! MISSILE HITS TANK
GULF WAR 1991	The first war of this new age began in 1991 for a reason as old as war itself: to regain ground seized by an aggressor. Iraq's Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. In a theatre of war that was to span a million square kilometres, three-quarters of a million coalition troops squared up for battle with half a million Iraqi soldiers. For perhaps the last time in history, both sides of a conflict in-waiting contemplated massive loss of life in pursuit of their war aims. Yet this one, this war, would be different.
TOMAHAWK SHIP-LAUNCHED MISSILES	Cruise missiles launched from coalition warships far out to sea could target not just areas or streets but bunkers, buildings, even individual windows.
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	Suddenly, to a world glued to TV screens offering war-as-it-happened actuality, it looked as though war could be fought with the precision of laser surgery. Pinpoint accuracy had become the new hallmark of international violence.
B-52 BOMBERS, LASER WEAPONRY, STEALTH BOMBERS	Death did not just come from missiles like this, fired from the sea. These American B-52 strategic bombers launched precision-guided cruise missiles to pulverise bunkers and Iraqi troop concentrations 14 kilometres below. Flying non-stop to the Gulf, aircraft like these took part in the longest strike mission in the history of aerial warfare, touching down at base back in America after 35 hours aloft.
B-2 STEALTH BOMBERS	A few years later, planes like this – the American B-2, at £30 billion the world's most expensive aircraft – would be able to penetrate hostile airspace undetected, thanks to something called stealth, an invention that soaks up enemy electronic pulses and makes the planes invisible to radar. Now, as never before, wars would be won by the nation with the best, the most expensive technology. And, with the Cold War over, with the Soviet economy in ruins, it was America that found she had the deepest pockets of all.
US HIGH TECHNOLOGY	America had become the world's unchallenged superpower. For the first time in history, a nation had no rival. America was now the strongest nation in the history of mankind.
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KOSOVO	By the late 1990s, the conscience of the world found itself supporting armed intervention in Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia. This war of choice was waged with popular consent by the world's democracies on one condition: intervention must be without cost. Soldiers and airmen – our soldiers and airmen – must not be killed. For the first time in the history of warfare, generals were able to imagine defeating an enemy land army by the use of aircraft alone. In theory at least, it was now possible to contemplate war if not without risk, then at least without loss. It was a possibility undreamed of just ten, fifteen years earlier.
MICROCHIP	This, then, was the brand new world of RMA – of something the military call the Revolution in Military Affairs – a revolution in battlefield thinking based upon the microchip's unprecedented power to collect, transmit, analyse and display information. Watched by the world on television each night, it was a war controlled and fought by video conferencing, by e-mails… And by tiny video cameras mounted on the noses of the weapons themselves as they flew down onto their targets in swift, silent self-destruction.
B/W VIDEO OF KOSOVO TARGET SPLASH 5/
	It looked like an arcade game. For grown-ups. But down there were real bridges. And real people.
ANOTHER TARGET IS SPLASHED
	PAUSE But the hand that released the laser weapon was still only human. And humans make mistakes.
TRACTOR WRECKAGE/BRIDGE WITH TRAIN WHICH SUDDENLY APPEARS	For laser weapons, once released onto their target, cannot tell if the rail bridge down below is deserted – or about to be filled with a train packed with frightened civilians. And guided missiles cannot be recalled. Or programmed to say sorry. For all the technology, Kosovo showed that wars could still kill the wrong people. And could be won or lost on the swing of public opinion shaped, in turn, by images on television.
CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBED, MAY 7	One bomb in the wrong place – like here, when NATO rockets destroyed part of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade – could have catastrophic implications in full view of the world's media. It was, claimed the Americans, a tragic mistake: an intelligence error.
6/ GRAPHICS/ANIMATED MAP SHOWING INTERCONTINENTAL HOOK-UPS AND LIAISON BEFORE MISSION SANCTION
	Under the eyes of world media, targets now had to be double-verified to make sure the right targets were attacked. Pictures, information and decisions were bounced around Europe in the blink of an eye.
DRONES/UNMANNED RECON VEHICLES	First spotted and photographed by unmanned aircraft, targets were then identified by the Joint Analysis Centre in Molesworth, England.
MAP/GRAPHICS	NATO weapons experts in Vicenza, Italy, would then decide on the type of bomb to be used while officers watching computer screens in Belgium argued over the exact point of impact. Then military lawyers in Germany, a computer bounce away, would check to make sure hitting the target wouldn't contravene the laws of war. Only then would the target be attacked. Never in the field of human conflict was so much information shared by so many with such ease. The battlefield, in truth, belonged not to the warrior, but to the nerd. Software engineers had become the new foot soldiers.
KOSOVO WAR	The war in Kosovo lasted 78 days, yet Yugoslav air defences were never defeated. For all their accuracy, 34 thousand NATO air sorties failed to destroy Yugoslav ground forces. In the end, it was diplomacy not weapons that brought the fighting to a halt. And, when it was over not a single NATO soldier or airman had been killed in combat.
7/	Is that, perhaps, the way of the future, to the war of the future?
BOEING X-45 ROLL-OUT	This is the world's first unmanned strike aircraft – the Boeing X-45 UCAV Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle. And it could just be the shape of things to come.
AIRCREW ON COMBAT MISSION	Pilots have to train, endlessly. They get tired, frightened, push physical limits as they fight gravity turns. They have to be fed, paid, looked after. Rescued when they're shot down, buried when they crash.
PREDATOR/UCAVs	But not these. They do not know pain, or tiredness, or conscience. Better yet, with no pilot inside they offer no hostage to fortune when they are shot down, no tears when they fail to return to base.
TV NEWS FOOTAGE	Downed Tornado pilots in the Gulf War dented British morale.
CNN MOGADISHU	TV shots of dead US helicopter crewmen being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu two years later ended America's humanitarian mission to Somalia. But no one weeps when UCAVs get shot down. They may hold the key to the future. For, as they grow up, they'll scale down.
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	They'll become smaller, neater, cheaper. Soon they will be able to look, loiter, listen, sense, detect, assassinate, shoot down in-coming missiles. Swarms of UCAVs, each no bigger than hummingbirds, will be able to dominate tomorrow's battlefield. Perhaps. For now, people stay in the loop and pilots stay in their cockpits, ensuring that aircraft remain people-shaped. But already, in that cockpit, the pilot is no longer alone.
HUD DISPLAY AND AUTOMATED AUDIO COCKPIT WARNING	Obstruction…Obstruction…Pull up…Pull up…
ADRIAN MEARS, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY, DERA	If the shape and tasks of the pilot are evolving, he is not alone. So, too, are those of the soldier. The man on the ground.
US LAND WARRIOR: TACTICAL MOVE DEMO	US soldiers with new weaponry.
ADRIAN MEARS, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY, DERA:	The battlefield abilities of the new and future soldier.
9/	In woods and in an increasingly urban, built-up battlefield, soldiers are now able to look round corners, whisper to one another across many kilometres, video the ground up front and play back the electronic dangers ahead. The technical investment in the humble soldier now makes him, for the first time in history, the battlefield's most valuable commodity. The role of the foot soldier, passed from generation to generation down the bloody highway of history, has remained essentially unchanged, and it is this: to close with the enemy. And destroy him.
WW1 303 LEE ENFIELD RIFLE, US GREASE GUN, GERMAN SCHMEISSER MACHINE PISTOL
	The soldier's weapons may have changed but that role has not. Until now.
BRITISH SOLDIER UNLOADS RELIEF AID FROM AIRCRAFT
	Today, wars of choice and the peacekeeping conscience of the world offer other options.
HUMANITARIAN AID	Around the globe, humanitarian aid requires not just the strength, but the face of the soldier too; the human touch, even when it comes to unloading food aid.
10/	Yet all soldiers are still trained to kill, to use their weapons. Sometimes, against civilians.
ISRAELI SNIPERS/PALESTINIAN STONE-THROWERS; ITN FOOTAGE – THE DEATH OF MOHAMMED AL–DURREH	Israel, October 2000: In a conflict that has seen huge loss of life on both sides over many decades, Israeli snipers used silenced weapons to kill and maim unarmed Palestinian civilians. Boys like Mohammed Al-Durreh. Scenes like these and the use of lethal force put Israel on the losing side of world opinion. If there IS a better way, then the US military think they've found it.
NON-LETHAL WEAPONS DEMONSTRATION BY USMC/US ARMY	American troops, training in Missouri. Here they are developing weapons of non-lethal force.
GUNNERY SGT STEWART + USMC CAPT. WARREN	What we're doing and why; where we're heading.
11/	Bean bags, rubber shot, pepper sprays, weapons designed to injure, not to kill – all these lie at the far end of an American weapons' spectrum dominated by something called NMD – National Missile Defence, a multi-billion dollar electronic umbrella designed to shield America from in-coming missile attack. Yet there is an irony. For it is the very sophistication of America and her western allies that leaves them – and us – most vulnerable to the enemies of the future. It's David, taking on Goliath. On his own terms. And it’s called… asymmetric warfare.
PROF DAVID KIRKPATRICK, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE,LONDON	asymmetric warfare is…
SARIN GAS ATTACK, TOKYO	When anarchists sprayed sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo underground, Japanese society went into shock. An aerosol the size of a soft drinks can could bring London or New York, Paris or Milan, to its knees. And the enemy? It could be a nation state – or just another lone madman. Something else beckons too, just over the horizon – the use of knowledge itself to destroy your enemy's ability to make sound judgements: Information Warfare.
12/	To subdue the enemy without fighting, wrote Sun Tsu almost two-and-a-half thousand years ago, that is the supreme excellence.
PROF DAVID KIRKPATRICK, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON	The options facing 'David'. The future possibility of I-War…
OUR ON-SCREEN IMAGE DEGRADES AS VIRUS DESTROYS WHAT WE SEE CUT TO – END CREDIT MONTAGE
	ENDS
	Tom Keene, Longbow Productions