Technological Optimism and the Imagined Future: Implications for Warfare

“I will ignore all ideas for new works and engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for improvement I see no future hope.”
—Sextus Julius Frontinus (Engineer, General, and Statesman, circa 40 - 103 AD)

The conventional wisdom of technological optimism presumes that the new technology is categorically different, delivers a devastating effect, and will be decisive in warfare, especially if its introduction on the battlefield is a surprise. This vision of the future is not surprising. As  the 3rd of Clarke’s Three Laws—or, more accurately, guidelines—postulates, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”[4]

In a quest to achieve this imagined future, the pursuit of innovation and technological transformation is driving military research, development, and acquisition programs around the globe, not least among the United States, its allies and regional partners, and its peer competitors. How much of a real as opposed to illusory opportunity, however, does pursuing these twin goals represent for creating and deploying a new game-changing technology whose military application changes fundamentally what has been by creating a new what is? In other words, leveraging technology and achieving long-term strategic transformation by opening up new national security options or closing off existing ones possibly changes the domains or character of warfare as opposed to temporary disruption of the status quo at the operational or tactical levels.

Air Combat - Western Front World War I, Air Service, United States Army (Wikimedia)

Because the ways in which new technologies get introduced frame expectations and interpretations, examining the historical record since World War I offers an empirical test for whether truly transformative technologies or temporarily disruptive technologies tend to predominate. This is a logical starting point, since the period from 1914 to 1918 represents a fundamental revolution in warfare, ushering in the modern three-dimensional style of war and thereby making almost all pre-1914 military doctrine about the conduct of large-scale ground and naval operations obsolete.[5] Principles of mass, maneuver, and surprise were changed by the introduction of rudimentary forms of combat aircraft, the tank, motorized transport, target acquisition and fire-control technologies, communications technologies for command and control, and submarines by 1918.[6] Taken as a whole, the application of these technologies was genuinely transformative, yet few World War I commanders grasped they had the potential to go beyond being merely disruptions or novelties.[7] Reflecting on that war, Basil H. Liddell Hart observed “two thousand years of experience... tell us that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old idea out.”[8] This underscores the fact that actually understanding or failing to comprehend what the technology does and how it works frames the way that it is developed, adopted, and employed.

World War II similarly represented a second wave of technological innovation with a mix of disruptive and transformative technologies being deployed for military applications. [9] Most of the innovations—with the notable exceptions of radar, nuclear weapons, cruise and ballistic missiles, and rudimentary computers—were technological improvements or extensions of existing conventional weapons to a geographically expanded three-dimensional battlespace.[10] As a result, the basic elements of battlefield operations from 1939 through 1945 traced their origins to and mirrored those in 1918.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers in the aftermath of World War II and engaged in intense competition globally throughout the Cold War era lasting from 1947 to 1991. The threat of mutual assured destruction from a nuclear exchange led both countries to devote substantial financial and scientific resources to their defense industrial bases and the development of strategic military technologies, especially nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Technological advances in offensive and defensive conventional weapon systems for ground, air, and naval forces also occurred at an unparalleled pace as the two peer competitors simultaneously sought to increase their own lethality and disrupt the adversary’s capabilities. Some cases, such as the problems with the Sparrow missile and air crews employing them effectively during Vietnam, underscore the reality that expectations of technological superiority can go unmet in combat.[11] Examples of new American and Russian technologies that delivered a devastating effect through tactical application but not necessarily victory include the development of the first generation of precision munitions and their introduction in the Vietnam War’s Operation Linebacker II and advanced anti-tank weapons in the Yom Kippur War or October 1973 Arab-Israeli War.[12] After an arms race lasting almost 55 years ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. emerged from the Cold War as the only global superpower.

F-14A in flight over burning Kuwaiti oil wells during Operation Desert Storm, 1 Feb 1991 (Wikimedia)

Combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first Gulf War in 1991—often referred to as Operation Desert Storm—signaled the potential for the United States military to exert its unrivaled technological preeminence in conventional warfare vis a vis its international rivals.[13] In parallel, Russian military power declined precipitously. For example, as evidenced by its performance in the 1994 battle for Grozny in Chechnya, Russian conventional capabilities were in a precarious state. The destruction of the 131st Maikop Brigade, for example,  came as a shock to the Russian military and government as well as western intelligence services, all of whom had anticipated a quick victory. The Chechen campaign followed more than a decade later by the 2008 war with Georgia clearly demonstrated Russia’s diminished conventional capabilities. Although Russia’s strategic systems were better insulated from the relatively low levels of investment that degraded its conventional forces until after Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, these events profoundly impacted perceptions about the Russian military’s capabilities and competence within and beyond Russia.[14] Putin subsequently moved aggressively to fund and implement a doctrine first articulated in 1996 by then Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov that Russia would position itself globally as an alternative center of power to the U.S. and its allies.[15] In parallel, the People’s Republic of China observed in real time the stark disparities between the American military approach and capabilities relative to the Chinese military’s ability to wage modern conventional warfare successfully.[16]

The initial phase of the Iraq War—sometimes called the second Gulf War or Operation Iraqi Freedom—lasted just three weeks, ended with Saddam Hussein's overthrow, and reinforced how to fight and not fight future conventional wars.[17] The extensive use of precision-guided munitions by American forces leveraging networked operations and near-instantaneous global communications and intelligence provided confirmation that the revolution in military affairs had profoundly changed the way in which the U.S. waged conventional warfare.[18] At least for the Chinese and Russians—as well as other potential peer or near-peer U.S. and NATO adversaries—it also underscored the imperative to modernize military technology and doctrine as well as to identify new domains for warfare in information operations, cyberspace, and space.[19] And, at least with respect to Russian doctrine, the concept of nuclear escalation to de-escalate, which significantly lowers the threshold under which the use of nuclear weapons is permitted, added a potential consideration for the U.S. and its Western allies to factor into their decision calculus.[20] As a result, unlike the immediate post-Cold War era of the 1990s through roughly the first decade of the 21st century, the United States no longer can assume either unrivaled technological preeminence in conventional warfare or that the battlespace will be restricted to the conventional warfare domain.[21]

This article closes by returning to the questions posed in the introduction: Is technological optimism justified? And, if so, are disruptive or transformational technologies more likely? The weight-of-evidence over the past 100 years demonstrates that accurate interpretation of the impact of technologies is critical. Despite the proclivity to assume technological optimism, examination of the actual historical experience indicates the introduction of a new technology or innovative application of existing technology tends to be disruptive rather than genuinely transformative. This may stem from several key factors. First, militaries have a capital stock of equipment and doctrine as well as training tied inextricably to that capital stock. Second, each military organization has a complex web of norms and expectations about how it should and does function that conditions and constrains how forces are used in combat. Ethical, legal, and moral values also shape decisions about developing and using or not using a particular technology.[22]

Consequently, as demonstrated by the World War I experience, new technologies may have a lag time between initial tactical introduction and commanders’ ability to employ them effectively. Similarly, the World War II experience indicates that disruptive technologies can deliver devastating effects operationally or tactically—Operation Barbarossa comes readily to mind—but fail to achieve long-term strategic success.[23] The disconnect may come from a tendency to underestimate resiliency, or the ability to recover if given sufficient time. This underscores why transformative technologies may by their very nature be decisive, as the use of nuclear weapons demonstrated.[24]

Despite the seductive appeal of technological optimism, truly game-changing technologies that radically alter the status quo and simultaneously create a new present and possible future are rare. This is not surprising, because transformational technologies are contingent on the ability to translate fundamental paradigm changes and breakthroughs in scientific knowledge into practice as progress in physics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and neuroscience is leveraged.[25] Transformational technologies, by definition, significantly alter military capabilities and generate new threats to national security spanning the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. In essence, they exert truly revolutionary effects to alter radically the balance of mass, maneuver, and surprise between adversaries. This follows because the adoption and application of new technologies can impact both the adversary and the operators. For example, the development and deployment of strategic bombers and submarines in World War II impacted the battlespace. Strategic bombing campaigns in Europe resulted in some of the highest casualty rates for Allied units due to air crew losses. Similarly, due to submarine warfare in the Atlantic, the loss rates for U-boat crews were among the highest if not the highest for German units on a per capita basis.

As a result, history suggests on balance that game-changing technologies are more likely to be disruptive militarily to the operational or tactical status quo rather than transformational unless they radically change an existing domain or create a new domain of warfare. This stems from several factors. First, by its very nature, truly revolutionary change that raises to the strategic level is extremely rare. Second, despite expectations or predictions to the contrary, the arc of history is malleable rather than unidirectional. This is illustrated by a clear link between the development of weapons in World War I and their adaptation and ongoing development in World War II. For example, Liddell Hart in 1925 correctly identified the importance of aircraft, tanks, and submarines—including Britain’s vulnerability to blockade.[26] However, he fortunately erred in over-estimating the impact of poison gas on warfare. There is not necessarily a linear relationship between technological development of weapons and their application in warfare, nor do they automatically involve improvements mirroring previous conflicts. The imagined future of war’s domains or character, therefore, is a necessary precondition for military innovation and technological development but does not pre-ordain automatically what tomorrow’s warfare becomes.

James L. Regens is Regents Professor and Director of the Center for Intelligence and National Security—an Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence—at the University of Oklahoma.

Matthew R.H. Uttley holds the Chair of Defence Studies and is Professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London.

Charles B. Vandepeer is a Senior Lecturer in intelligence and national security at Charles Sturt University and a Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

This research was supported by U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency, Grant # HHM402-19-1-0005 (PI: Regens).

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[2] John Keegan, A History of Warfare London: Hutchinson, 1993; John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture New York: Basic Books, 2004; and Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013.

[3] Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War London: Simon and Schuster, 1991; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Geoffrey Parker, ed., The Cambridge History of Warfare Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World London: Allen Lane, 2005; Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today Los Angeles: Gotham Press, 2006; and Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

[4] Arthur C. Clark, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, revised edition New York: Harper & Row, 1973; first appeared in a January 19, 1968 published letter as "Clarke's Third Law on UFO's,” Science 159, 3812 (1968): 255.

[5] Major General Jonathan B.A. Bailey, The First World War and the birth of the modern style of warfare Camberley, UK: Army Staff College, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996; and Major General Jonathan B.A. Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.

[6] Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller, Tanks in the Great War London: J. Murray, 1920; James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992; Major General Jonathan B.A. Bailey, The First World War and the birth of the modern style of warfare Camberley, UK: Army Staff College, Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996; General Gulio Dohuet, The Command of the Air (1921) reprint, Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998; and David T. Zabecki, The German 1918 offensives: A case study in the operational level of war London: 2006: Routledge.

[7] Basil H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War London: Faber & Faber, 1944, page 115.

[8] Allan Mallinson, Too Important For the Generals: How Britain Nearly Lost the First World War London: Bantam Press, 2016.

[9] Paul Kennedy, Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World War New York: Random House, 2013.

[10] Norman Longmate, Hitler’s Rockets London: Hutchinson, 1985; Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1989; and Norman Davies, Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory London: Macmillan, 2006.

[11] Naval Air Systems Command, Report of the Air-to-Air Missile System Capability Review, July - November 1968 Washington: Department of the Navy, Naval Air Systems Command, 1969 (a.k.a. The Ault Report); Marshall L. Michel, Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965–1972 Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997; and Commander David Baranek, “TOPGUN: The Navy’s First Center of Excellence,” Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute September 2019 Vol. 145/9/1,399.

[12] Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Audra Wolfe, Competing with the Soviets Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013; David Wallsh, “Timeless Lessons from the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War” Modern War Institute at West Point October 4, 2017 West Point, NY: United States Military Academy https://mwi.usma.edu/timeless-lessons-october-1973-arab-israeli-war/; and Kyle Mizokami, “The Cold War Led To Amazing Military Innovations, But These Five Are The Best” The National Interest November 4, 2019 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/cold-war-led-amazing-military-innovations-these-five-are-best-92856.

[13] Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, The First Gulf War https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/firstgulf; and Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, The Collapse of the Soviet Union https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/collapse-soviet-union.

[14] Andrew Radin, Lynn E. Davis, Edward Geist, Eugeniu Han, Dara Massicot, Matthew Povlock, Clint Reach, Scott Boston, Samuel Charap, William Mackenzie, Katya Migacheva, Trevor Johnston, and Austin Long The Future of the Russian Military: Russia’s Ground Combat Capabilities and Implications for U.S.-Russia Competition Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019.

[15] Julia Gurganus and Eugene Rumer, “Russia’s Global Ambitions in Perspective” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 20, 2019 https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/02/20/russia-s-global-ambitions-in-perspective-pub-78067.

[16] Robert Farley, “What Scares China’s Military: The 1991 Gulf War,” The National Interest https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-scares-chinas-military-the-1991-gulf-war-11724.

[17] COL Joel D. Rayburn, COL Frank K. Sobchak  LTC Jeanne F. Godfroy, COL Matthew D. Morton, COL James S. Powell, LTC Matthew M. Zais The U.S. Army in the Iraq War – Volume 1: Invasion – Insurgency – Civil War, 2003-2006 Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College Press, 2019; and COL Joel D. Rayburn, COL Frank K. Sobchak  LTC Jeanne F. Godfroy, COL Matthew D. Morton, COL James S. Powell, LTC Matthew M. Zais The U.S. Army in the Iraq War Volume 2: Surge and Withdrawal 2007 – 2011 Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College Press, 2019.

[18] Keith L. Shimko, The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010; Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 3-09 Joint Fire Support Washington: U.S. Department of Defense, 2010. Department of the Army, FM 3-09 Field Artillery Operations and Fire Support Washington: U.S. Army, 2014.

[19] William J. Lynn III, “Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy,” Foreign Affairs September/October 2010 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2010-09-01/defending-new-domain.

[20] Joshua Stowell, “Escalate to De-Escalate: Russia’s Nuclear Deterrence Strategy,” Global Security Review August 20, 2018 https://globalsecurityreview.com/nuclear-de-escalation-russias-deterrence-strategy/.

[21] Mark Urban, The Edge: Is the Military Dominance of the West Coming to an End? London: Little, Brown, 2015; and U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge Washington: U.S. Department of Defense, 2018.

[22] Noëmi Manders-Huits, “What Values in Design? The Challenge of Incorporating Moral Values into Design,” Science and Engineering Ethics 17, 2 (2011): 271–287; and Martin Peterson, The Ethics of Technology: A Geometric Analysis of Five Moral Principles Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017.

[23] David Stahel, Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1911; and David M Glantz, Operation Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion Of Russia 1941 Cheltenham, UK: The History Press, 2011.

[24] Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966; and J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

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[26] Basil H. Liddell Hart, Paris, Or the Future of War London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Tubner, 1925.