Employment of 3D-Printed Guns in the 5D Battlespace

摘要

The emergence of 3D-printed guns over 2013-15 is part of a more fundamental shift in the dynamics of war caused by two different forms of convergence. One is technology convergence, and the second is the bundling-up of various tactical and operational concepts, developed over the last two decades. These have converged into a broad-based concept called five-dimensional operations or battlespace. The impact of this convergence has led to a reconfiguring of the logistics base for military capacity, as well as civil policing and security. This has also had an impact on logistics support for extremism and terrorism. The emergence of 3D-printed guns also involves an element of information deception and new tactics. The production-replication of a 3D-printed gun represents one extreme in the spectrum of terrorist 'tactics, techniques, and procedures'. At one end, there is the ongoing simplification of weapons and attacks to the extent that these are identical to daily common assaults and criminal raids, which can be random and uncoordinated. At the other end, there is the complexity of producing a non-traditional gun, the employment of which represents a highly focused use of offensive power.