The Impact of Advanced Technology on the U.S. Military

The Impact of Advanced Technology on the U.S. Military
Author: Naomi Verdugo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 27
Release: 1990
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper focuses on the impact of advanced technology on three areas of the military organization: manpower, training, and human factors. Military technology has undergone rapid changes and the military organization has experienced changes in occupational structure, training technology, and manpower requirements. High technology has generated interest in issues such as the impact of advanced technology on small unit cohesion, de-skilling in the operation or maintenance of high-tech weapon systems, and the development of new training programs for advanced military technology. The changing nature of warfare and how these changes will require a varying range of technological weapons and equipment are also discussed. Additionally, the authors suggest an approach for empirical investigation of the relationship between technology and the military. (rrh).

The Kill Chain

The Kill Chain
Author: Christian Brose
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 031653336X

From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons that it fights with, have been uncontested. That old reality, however, is rapidly deteriorating. America's traditional sources of power are eroding amid the emergence of new technologies and the growing military threat posed by rivals such as China. America is at grave risk of losing a future war. As Christian Brose reveals in this urgent wake-up call, the future will be defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies that are revolutionizing global industries and are now poised to overturn the model of American defense. This fascinating, if disturbing, book confronts the existential risks on the horizon, charting a way for America's military to adapt and succeed with new thinking as well as new technology. America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as "the kill chain." Examining threats from China, Russia, and elsewhere, The Kill Chain offers hope and, ultimately, insights on how America can apply advanced technologies to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace.

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Alex Roland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190605391

The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.

The Culture of Military Innovation

The Culture of Military Innovation
Author: Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2010-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804773807

This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.

Technology and Command

Technology and Command
Author: William B. McClure
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2000
Genre: Command and control systems
ISBN:

"The introduction of advanced technologies into the military, which is known as the "revolution in military affairs," is producing an opportunity for significant changes in the American military's paradigm for command and control. The future battlespace will require commanders to operate more efficiently and at a higher operations tempo, so that commanders will be able to use the advantages of dominant battlespace awareness to enhance what is known as "command-by-intent." But the more likely outcome is a return tocommand-by-direction. A potential consequence of this change is that significant command functions will be made by machines that act, not as an assistant, but as the decision maker and executor -- which is known as the machine commander. However, the current U.S. military doctrine is inconsistent about the admissibility of such an entity, even though technological developments are on the threshold of delivering the components for constructing the first-generation machine commander. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that assists the traditional human commander creates a framework for using a machine commander. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that assists the tradiitional human commander creates a framework for using a machine commander. While resistance to this technology is expected, this is the proper time to examine the implications of a machine commander for military operations in the future."--Abstract

War Made New

War Made New
Author: Max Boot
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2006-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101216832

A monumental, groundbreaking work, now in paperback, that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, War Made New focuses on four "revolutions" in military affairs and describes how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air strikes have remade the field of battle—and shaped the rise and fall of empires. War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare's evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation-state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare and the rise of centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War—arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, "irregular" forces to become an increasingly significant threat.

War Machines

War Machines
Author: Timothy Moy
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781585441044

The American military establishment is intimately tied to its technology, although the nature of those ties has varied enormously from service to service. The air force evokes images of pilots operating hightech weapons systems, striking precisely from out of the blue to lay waste to enemy installations. The fundamental icon for the Marine Corps is a wave of riflemen hitting the beaches from rugged landing craft and slogging their way ashore under enemy fire. How did these very different relationships with technology develop? During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In War Machines, Timothy Moy examines these recreations and explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped these leaders' choices. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the airplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on hightech precision bombing. The Marine Corps focused on amphibious, firstwave assault using sturdy, graceless, and easytoproduce landing craft. Moy's astute analysis makes it clear that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the twentyfirst century.

Force Multiplying Technologies for Logistics Support to Military Operations

Force Multiplying Technologies for Logistics Support to Military Operations
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2014-12-15
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309307368

The mission of the United States Army is to fight and win our nation's wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders. Accomplishing this mission rests on the ability of the Army to equip and move its forces to the battle and sustain them while they are engaged. Logistics provides the backbone for Army combat operations. Without fuel, ammunition, rations, and other supplies, the Army would grind to a halt. The U.S. military must be prepared to fight anywhere on the globe and, in an era of coalition warfare, to logistically support its allies. While aircraft can move large amounts of supplies, the vast majority must be carried on ocean going vessels and unloaded at ports that may be at a great distance from the battlefield. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, the costs of convoying vast quantities of supplies is tallied not only in economic terms but also in terms of lives lost in the movement of the materiel. As the ability of potential enemies to interdict movement to the battlefield and interdict movements in the battlespace increases, the challenge of logistics grows even larger. No matter how the nature of battle develops, logistics will remain a key factor. Force Multiplying Technologies for Logistics Support to Military Operations explores Army logistics in a global, complex environment that includes the increasing use of antiaccess and area-denial tactics and technologies by potential adversaries. This report describes new technologies and systems that would reduce the demand for logistics and meet the demand at the point of need, make maintenance more efficient, improve inter- and intratheater mobility, and improve near-real-time, in-transit visibility. Force Multiplying Technologies also explores options for the Army to operate with the other services and improve its support of Special Operations Forces. This report provides a logistics-centric research and development investment strategy and illustrative examples of how improved logistics could look in the future.

Wired Fast and Thinking Slow: Cyber Technology and the U.S. Army - Increase in Speed and Quantity of Social Transactions, Inadequate Coverage of Imp

Wired Fast and Thinking Slow: Cyber Technology and the U.S. Army - Increase in Speed and Quantity of Social Transactions, Inadequate Coverage of Imp
Author: U. S. Military
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2018-10-05
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781726746953

Understanding the impacts of cyber technologies on war and warfare is increasingly critical for a planner's ability to design and execute operational art. The purpose of this monograph is to examine how the U.S. Army describes cyberspace and the effects that cyber technologies have on military strategy and operational planning writ large. The work specifically examines how cyberspace increases the speed and quantity of social transactions over space with effects on military and social forces. Secondly it addresses how the Army recognizes the impact of cyber technology on identity formation and virtual identity of both friendly and enemy actors. The author concludes that society's and the Army's increasing dependence and activity in cyberspace marks a change in warfare that the Army has been slow to accept. Inadequate coverage of the implications of cyberspace throughout doctrine combined with insufficient emphasis in professional military education and training may limit the Army's potential in all levels of war.Throughout recorded history, individuals and societies have had a fascination and a complex relationship with technology. Carl Sandberg's poem, "Under a Telephone Pole," is one such example from the twentieth century. The work personifies a telephone wire as being aware of its disparate uses