Paradigm Shifts in Interstate Conflict? The Strategic Effects of AI and Space-Based Military Technologies

This paper examines whether recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and space-based military technologies have produced a paradigm shift in interstate conflict or have primarily enhanced the conduct of warfare within an existing strategic framework.Existing research has largely emphasized technological development and operational efficiency, while paying comparatively less attention to whether military innovation fundamentally transforms the strategic logic through which battlefield success is converted into strategic outcomes.To address this gap, the paper develops an analytical framework combining the concepts of paradigm shift, critical juncture, and military innovation.It distinguishes tactical and operational change from strategic transformation and argues that a paradigm shift occurs only when technological innovation becomes sufficiently institutionalized to generate a durable transformation in how wars are fought, won, and terminated.Using a qualitative comparative design, the study contrasts short-term decisive operations with prolonged conflicts and evaluates the effects of AI-enabled and space-based systems across both operational and strategic criteria.The findings show that these technologies substantially enhance surveillance, target identification, precision strike, command coordination, and battlespace awareness when objectives are limited and targets are identifiable in advance.Their strategic effects, however, diminish as conflicts become prolonged, when geography, manpower, industrial capacity, political resilience, and escalation management reassert their importance.It therefore argues that recent military innovation has produced substantial tactical and operational transformation without yet displacing the underlying strategic grammar of warfare.It academically contributes by providing a clearer analytical threshold for distinguishing military innovation from a genuine paradigm shift, while acknowledging that the recent and ongoing nature of the cases and reliance on publicly available qualitative evidence limit definitive conclusions about their longer-term strategic consequences.