CHAPTER 9

TECHNOLOGY AND WARFARE

 Military Technology and National style

• Technological innovation
• The ‘magic’ of new technology
• Demand pull or technology led?
• The continuing importance of the soldier
• National style is determined by numerous factors, including
political assumptions, trade-offs, processes of interaction,
invisible technologies, systems technology, and seeking
technological edge
 Military Technology and National style
• Political assumptions: When procuring equipment, leaders must
make assumptions about what kinds of conflicts they are likely
to fight in the future, who their enemies will be, etc.
• Trade-offs: Engineers must decide among desired features, and
emphasizing one means paying a penalty in other respects
• Processes of Interaction – interaction create evolutionary
process by which a weapon system settles into its ecological
niche
• Invisible technology: Parts of weapons system that may not be
of obvious importance nonetheless can be critical
• Systems integration: Putting technologies together; many
technologies interact on a platform such as a ship or aircraft
 MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES

Intelligence and counter- State border protection

Enemy detection systems
intelligence security methods systems

Psychotropic weapons Anti-missile shield Non-lethal weapons

Firearms Soldier equipage Space weaponry technologies

Electromagnetic pulse Mines and demining

Amours and their technologies
weapons technologies

Tectonic weapon Laser weapons Plasma weapons

Cybernetic technologies in an Communications and infor-

Military medicine
army mation encryption in warfare

Anti radar materials Future weapons Energy sources in an army

Military positioning and Military positioning and

Military electronics
navigation systems navigation systems

Weapon manufacturing
Reactive materials in warfare Military training facilities
technologies
 Changing Military Technology

Understanding role of military technologies:

constant process of changes that takes
place

One difficult issue is relationship between Quantity

and Quality Changes
Yet another is some technology is slow to take effect
while others is immediate and radical
 Quantity Changes
• Question: witnessing - Quantity vs. Quality
• Quantitative – changes that brought little radical
changes in warfare
– Marginal increases are quantitative
 Quality Changes
• Qualitative – improvement that brings a
marked change in how war is fought
• Quality resides in the combine of manpower
and technology
• Tremendous upheaval in the conduct of war
• Fluidity between command and control
Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMAs)

• RMAs have occurred repeatedly throughout

history
• Three main features of the new era in warfare:
quality over quantity, speciation of military
hardware, and an increased role for commercial
technologies
 Quality over Quantity
• The end of the age of the mass army
– Old metrics for calculating military power no longer
applicable
• Quality requires the combination of technology
and personnel
 Speciation of Military Hardware
• Formation of new and distinct species in the
course of evolution
• 3 parts:
– Evolution of actual implements
– Emergence of platform
– Creation of larger system of military technologies
• Major powers no longer all field similar weapons
systems
• Diversification of weapons system
• Development meta system of extraordinary
complexity – system integration
Increasing role of commercial technology

• After World War II, it was common for

technologies developed for military purposes then
to be applied to civilian use
– Increasingly, however, technology is “travelling” from
civilian to military use, as civilian technology “leads”
military applications
 Asymmetric Warfare
• Asymmetric responses can counteract superior
conventional technology
– Irregular warfare and weapons of mass destruction
(WMD)
– US and Iraq, Israel and Hezbollah
• Willingness of the stronger opponent to persist is a
key variable
• Technology remains critical even in low-intensity
conflict
Asymmetric warfare
 Challenges of the New Technology
• Vibrant Civilian economy and military recruiting
and retention
• Information technology and centralization of
military control
• Media coverage: challenges for political and
military leaders
• The best way to predict the future is to invent it