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Roles, Missions, and Equipment: Military Lessons from Experience in this Decade
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 2008-07-09
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=243785