Revolution in military affairs

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Revolution in military affairs" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A revolution in military affairs (RMA) is a

Broadly stated, RMA claims that in certain periods of the history of humankind, there were new military doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies which led to an irrecoverable change in the conduct of warfare. Furthermore, those changes compel an accelerated adaptation of novel doctrines and strategies.

In the

Nikolai Ogarkov called the early idea of RMA the Military Technological Revolution (MTR). Pentagon officials in the United States changed the name of his original idea, which is how it became known as RMA.^[3] Orgarkov's belief that the potential and possibility for new weapons was increasing rapidly led to the development of his initial idea.

At the time of the initial development of MTR, the Soviets anticipated that certain technologies, including energy weapons and robots, would be in use by 2015 at the latest.^[3] They believed that the use of large ground forces would be minimized. In place of some ground forces, these new technologies would be implemented in order to establish dominance on the battlefield. Russians also believed that control of space would become essential for maintaining dominance in future conflicts. Soviets believed that it would be essential to control the satellite space around earth, in order to more effectively relay information. They also anticipated the ability to use space as a medium in which they could deploy weapons.^[3]

Renewed interest

The United States' victory in the 1991 Gulf War renewed interest in RMA theory. In the view of RMA proponents, American dominance through superior technology emphasized how the United States' technological advances reduced the relative power of the Iraqi military, by no means a lightweight rival, to insignificance. According to Stephen Biddle, part of the growth in popularity of the RMA theory after the Gulf War was that virtually all American military experts drastically over-estimated the coalition casualty count. This led many experts to assume that their models of war were wrong—that a revolution of sorts had occurred.^[4]

After the

In 1997, the U.S. Army mounted an exercise codenamed "Force 21", to test the application of digital technologies in warfare in order to improve communications and logistics by applying private-sector technologies adapted for military use. Specifically, it sought to increase awareness of one's position on the battlefield as well as that of the enemy, in order to achieve increased lethality, greater control of the tempo of warfare, and fewer instances of friendly fire via improved identification friend or foe.^[5]

In 2002, Chris Bray described RMA as new ideas about "the use of information and automation on the battlefield" to make forces "more lethal" and "more agile."^[6]

Areas of focus

One of the central problems in understanding the current debate over RMA arises from many theorists' use of the term to refer to the

When reviewing the gamut of theories, three fundamental versions of RMA come to the forefront. The first perspective focuses primarily upon changes in the

Authors such as the

Finally, the third concept is that a "true" revolution in military affairs has not yet occurred or is unlikely to. Authors such as Michael E. O'Hanlon and Frederick Kagan, point to the fact much of the technology and weapons systems ascribed to the contemporary RMA were in development long before 1991 and the Internet and information technology boom.

Several critics point out that a "revolution" within the military ranks might carry detrimental consequences, produce severe economic strain, and ultimately prove counterproductive. Such authors tend to profess a much more gradual "evolution" in military affairs, as opposed to a rapid revolution. In 2021 the

By 2021 the concept and capability for Long range precision fires had developed sufficiently to be able to schedule their initial fielding by 2023, in its various materiel forms, as well as to be able to communicate the necessary doctrine for their application by the United States.^[10] In brief, no headquarters, no command center, no air defense, no missile battery, nor any logistics center of an adversary is safe in the event of war.^[11] Moreover, the strikes will be precise enough to paralyze the adversary's massed military capability.^[11] See: Artillery § Precision-guidance

In considering the implications of precision attack, it is clear that precision weapons, when coupled to recent developments in aerospace, have transformed warfare, and as a result, the question is not that "Does an RMA exist?" rather, "When did it begin, and what are its implications?" Tied to this are surprisingly persistent questions about the use and value of air power, now more accurately seen as aerospace power. If nothing else, given the record of precision air power application, aerospace power advocates should not still have to spend as much time as they do arguing the merits of three-dimensional war and precision attack's value to it. Modern joint service aerospace forces offer the most responsive, flexible, lethal, and devastating form of power projection across the spectrum of conflict, employing a range of aerospace weaponry such as maritime patrol aircraft, attack and troop-lift helicopters, land-based long-range aircraft, and battlefield rocket artillery systems. Service-specific aerospace power can often be formidable and, as such, has transformed conflict from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, and has changed the critical focus of conflict from that of seizing and holding to one of halting and controlling.

In reviewing a few points from the military history of the 20th century, within roughly a decade of the

Given its historical underpinnings, we should not be surprised that the revolution in warfare that has been brought about both by the confluence of the aerospace and the electronic revolutions, and by the offshoot of both—the precision guided munition—is one that has been a long time coming, back to the Second World War, back, even, to the experimenters of the First World War who attempted, however crudely, to develop "smart" weapons to launch from airships and other craft. Used almost experimentally until the latter stages of the Vietnam War, the precision weapon since that time has increasingly come to first influence, then dominate, and now perhaps to render superfluous, the traditional notion of a linear battlefield. A cease-fire in the

By 2021 long range precision fires (LRPF) at ranges well over 1725 miles^[17] were developed and well on the way toward initial fielding in 2023.^[20][11][21] The Space Development Agency's National defense space architecture is an essential part of this plan.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27]}

Criticism

The revolution of military affairs is the inclusion and expansion of new technology—e.g.,

Stephen Biddle's 2004 book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern War, discounts the idea of RMA. He argues that military doctrine and tactics are far more important to battle outcomes in modern warfare than is technological progress, and that basic doctrine has changed little since the second half of World War I.^[29][4]

See also

• Networked swarming warfare
• Effects-based operations
• Full spectrum dominance
• Military intelligence (MI)
• C4ISTAR
• Information warfare
• Electronic warfare
• Airborne Early Warning and Control
• Communications satellite
• Spy satellite
• Precision-guided munition
• Rapid dominance

US military-specific:

• Transformation of the United States Army, the future-concept of the US Army's modernization plan
• Battle Command Knowledge System
• Future Combat Systems
• Information Awareness Office (IAO), was established by DARPA
• DoDAF
• Global Information Grid
• ARPANET
• E-8 Joint STARS
• Joint Tactical Information Distribution System
• Tactical Data Link
• Rumsfeld Doctrine
• AirSea Battle

References