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Revolutions in Military Affairs: Fact or Fiction?

Every several decades, or years now it seems, someone comes up with something that is claimed to revolutionize warfare. However, wireless communications, microchips, drones – all heavily hyped – have failed to change the core endeavor.  Wars are fought by finding the enemy and killing them.  War, at its core, is a human endeavor, and until something other than human minds fight a war, the game will remain static.  What I propose is that war will always be war, but there are specific dimensions that are malleable through technology or technique: speed and lethality.

As humanity develops new technology, the tools of human endeavor change, but the end results do not.  Genocide is hardly a new concept, some argue that our species genocided the Cro-Magnon’s before us.  In Rwanda, genocide was effectively implemented with farming implements.   In Germany, genocide was attempted with machine like precision using industrial techniques.  Different tools, achieving the same fundamental goals.  Something like genocide seems like madness to us, yet so many cultures have partaken in it. It is strangely human.  Warfare is similar – the enemy is doing something we don’t want them to do, and won’t stop short of force.   So we use so much force that they comply or are removed from the mutually shared environment.

The goals of warfare remain the same – make the enemy do what you want.  The tools evolve, and the time lines change with the tools.  The German Blitzkrieg shocked the world with its speed and utilization of mechanized forces.   Desert Storm I & II shocked the world with how fast American forces could take down an adversarial military.  If WMD are ever fully brought into play, the world will be terrified with how fast a nation can cease to exist.   The common denominator is the fundamental goal of making the other guy say “Enough, I yield” – but the rapidity of employment has increased dramatically.

In our networked world, imagine a day when suddenly every bank, the power grid, the water grid, and the air transportation system are held hostage electronically by a foreign power, with the ultimatum of “Do this or lose all your banking records, power grid, water supply, and air transportation system”.   It represents a significant level of force that be can applied nearly instantly.  It won’t be lethal, but how much leverage could a country exert if it controlled our banks, power, water, and air transportation?  Enough to, say, annex Taiwan?  Demand trade concessions?  Or prevent our intervention when they invade Europe?

Human infighting shows the juxtaposition of new technology/techniques and old objectives and thought patterns.  The basic strategies don’t change: envelopment, the hammer and anvil, Blitzkrieg, clear and hold, and shadow government insurgencies.  The use of cell phones, tanks, airpower, IEDs are new, but the core is remarkably old hat.  IEDs are designed to wage the old style war of attrition and waiting.  The goal is to create an advantageous mismatch between a cheap weapon and very expensive targets.  The same effect has been created throughout history by sabotaging railroad tracks or raiding supply convoys.  They are nothing more than a new tool executing an old idea.

So if all this is old hat, why develop new tools?  Speed and lethality are the major incentives.   If the rest of the world could be convinced not to develop new tools for warfare, and an effective method emplaced to verify it along with real punishments developed to enforce it, then the arms race could end.  As this is seemingly impossible, there will always be an arms race to develop the best tools.  As long as there is human progress, countries will find ways to adapt technology into new weapons, networks, and techniques to wage war.  War will have the capacity to happen faster, and it will have the capacity to be more lethal (or less lethal with increased impact).   Defenses will have to be developed to mitigate the new tools of war, and if they do not keep pace, history has shown that an “all offense, no defense strategy” will only lead to failure.

Warfare is one of those horribly human things that is thankfully limited by human minds.  It is waged when humans decide that other humans must not be allowed to continue on their current path.  The tools change how rapidly we can kill each other, but the fundamental strategies and goals stay the same.  Revolutions in Military Affairs aren’t truly revolutions, they are simply evolutions of technology and technique.

Editor’s Note: For a baseline background of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), click here.

The Realist is an Air Force Academy graduate, holding a master’s degree in Unconventional Warfare from the American Military University, and a co-founder of The PULSE Review.