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| Roles, Missions, and Equipment: Military Lessons from Experience in this Decade |
| 2008-07-09 |
| The pendulum has swung too far in denigrating the value of technology in war. Anything that smacks of high-tech warfighting is ridiculed as “legacy” or “Cold War” thinking. Today, however, we are at risk of over-correcting and dangerously undervaluing high-technology. Historians Ronald Haycock and Keith Neilson make an important point: “Technology has permitted the division of mankind into ruler and ruled.”[18] Technology is part of our culture; it is, in fact, our asymmetric advantage. Recently, strategic theorist Colin Gray noted: “[H]igh technology is the American way in warfare. It has to be. A high technology society cannot possibly prepare for, or attempt to fight, its wars in any other than a technology-led manner.”[19] Some underrate technology because they are drawing the wrong lessons from history. For example, in writing the new counterinsurgency manual the drafters relied heavily upon lessons learned from insurgencies of the 1950s-70s. These were eras when, significantly, high-technology in general, and airpower in specific, had little to offer. Hence, it is no surprise that the discussion of airpower in the 2006 counterinsurgency manual is limited to a five-page annex, and that short discussion is leery of airpower out of fear of collateral damage. Ironically, today’s precision air weaponry, especially the new Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, have produced what retired Army General Barry McCaffrey insists is a “a 100-year war-fighting leap-ahead” that has “fundamentally changed the nature of warfare.”[20] The result? Human Rights Watch activist Marc Garlasoc recently conceded that he thinks “airstrikes probably are the most discriminating weapon that exists.”[21] Equally important, today’s insurgent is not low-tech. In a recent article, retired Army officer John Sutherland invented the word “iGuerrilla” for what he describes as the “the New Model Techno-Insurgent” who exploits technology in a wide variety of ways.[22] Sutherland argues that the iGuerrilla “cannot be swayed by logic or argument” and insists this kind of insurgent is markedly different from those of the twentieth century who, he contends, are relegated to the “dustbin of history.” Yet much of our doctrine today is premised on twentieth-century insurgents. To me, this risks missing the opportunity to exploit technological opportunities. We may be reaching the tipping point where the research and development capabilities of the nation-state can significantly exceed the abilities of an adversary dependant upon improvising from off-the-shelf technologies. |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #5 "Reaching the Tipping Point...off-the-shelf technologies" > methinks DESERT STORM better marked that Point. You can go back even earlier to Osama's war agz the Soviets + Putin in Afghanistan where ELDERLY REDEYE MISSLES STILL MANAGED TO SHOOT DOWN A LARGE NUMBER OF NEWER SOVIET = SOVIET EQUIPPED ARMED HELOS, or the early '80's ISRAELI AIR VICTORIES over Lebanon. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-07-09 19:36 |
| #4 We have made huge advances but we don't have the ability to take advantage of them in many cases. Many of our weapons are expensive to build and take a long lead time to produce. We can knock out a tank with a single missile but a country could produce more cheap tanks than we have missiles. The way to defeat the US would be in quantity of targets. Our ammunition is so scarce and expensive that if you present more targets than we have high-tech missiles to hit them with, you win. The worst scenario would be a mix of fully capable tanks along with others that are basically just a shell and a motor. Indistinguishable visually from the fully capable target, we would waste a lot of ammunition on targets of little military value. The answer to that threat is the enhanced radiation warhead that simply kills all the tank crews but it would be hard politically to use such a weapon against a mosquito like Iran, for example. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-07-09 19:29 |
| #3 We do not have the human assets, read fodder, for attacks, unlike the Chicoms, or the Jihadis. One of the lessons learned by the Chinese in Korea is that they don't have enough fodder either. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-09 17:37 |
| #2 We Americans must use technology in warfare as a lever. We do not have the human assets, read fodder, for attacks, unlike the Chicoms, or the Jihadis. Even they will eventually feel the effects of attrition. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2008-07-09 15:03 |
| #1 "cannot be swayed by logic or argument" Tell the Japanese. After the failure at Guadalcanal, their gains contracted. After the naval battles of the Philippines, their naval defense were decimated. When Okinawa as taken, their inner defense lines were breached. Their cities were literally burning to the ground around them. The Imperial Japanese Staff continued to follow an irrational path which included plans using human waves of civilians to try to delay the inevitable. It took two wake up calls to bring logic back to the process. Even then, desperate elements within the military attempted a coup to prevent a rational conclusion to the conflict. Dealing with the irrational is not new. It is only 'will' or lack there of that by application in a manner they understand will rational return to the equation. We spend a lot of time and effort to avoid applying will. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-09 14:36 |