武装无人机与战争变迁:以社会-技术系统为视角

Armed UAVs and Warfare Changes: A Study from the Perspective of Socio-technological System

进入21世纪以来,武装无人机成为新军事技术的象征,理解其军事和战略影响成为重要的课题。在既有的讨论中,支持者沿着功能本位论证无人机让战争变成了精确的外科手术,质疑者从价值本位批评它将战争变成了暗杀。两派在争论中各执一端,但都共享了将无人机器物化和静止化的预设。这些技术预设限制了我们对无人机变革与战争关系的思考,为此,引入技术社会学的"社会-技术系统"的概念。该概念认为技术不是静止的,一直处在变革中,技术变革不是器物的变革,是与器物相关的系统变革,是技术与社会的共同演化。以此观之,无人机不是单独的器物,而是一个与社会无缝连接的系统,其演化的动力是技术利基、客观环境和社会制度三者相互作用,它经历了诞生、发展和制度化三个阶段。当前,无人机系统正处在制度化阶段,它与既有制度在资源分配、独立建制和价值观念上存在冲突和融合。如果没有技术突破和战略环境的剧变,这种冲突和融合将会长时间存在,这决定了当前无人机战争的含混性和复杂性。社会-技术系统的视角有利于思考技术变革和战争变迁的复杂性,并为应对未来的无人机战争提供新的思路和研究方向。

With armed UAVs becoming a symbol of new military technology since the beginning of the 21 st century, a better understanding of their military and strategic impact has turned to be a key topic. In the current discussions, the proponents who stick to functionalism claim that armed UAVs have turned wars into precise surgery whereas the skeptics who view armed UAVs from the value-oriented perspective claim that armed UAVs have turned wars into assassinations. For all their divided opinions, they share the view about the presupposition that unmanned machines can be made materialized and static. However, technical presuppositions have set limits on people's thinking about the relationship between UAV innovation and wars. Therefore, the concept of "socio-technological system"(STS) in the field of technical sociology has been introduced. The STS concept holds that technology is not static and is subject to constant changes. Likewise, technological changes are not about changes of objects but about system changes related to objects as well as the joint evolution of technology and society. From this perspective, the UAV is not a separate object but a system featuring the seamless connection with society. The driving force of its evolution is the interaction between technological niche, objective environment and social system. It has gone through three stages in the process of evolution: birth, development and institutionalization. At present, the UAV system is at the stage of institutionalization and undergoing both conflicts and integration with existing systems in terms of resource allocation, independent institutional construction and values. Without technological breakthroughs and drastic changes in the strategic environment, such conflict and integration will persist for a long time, which determines the ambiguity and complexity of current UAV warfare. The STS perspective can set people contemplating the complexity of technological innovation and warfare changes and thus provide a new way of thinking and research direction for coping with future UAV warfare.