Military intellectuals call them "revolutions in military affairs." Every few decades, a new technology or a new "doctrine," to use the military jargon, changes the nature of war. Single technologies, like gunpowder or nuclear weapons, spur some of these revolutions. New doctrines, like Napoleonic staff organization or Nazi blitz tactics, drive others. And some are the result of many simultaneous advances, like the airplanes, chemical weapons, and machine guns of World War I - which achieved new rates of slaughter.
The newest revolution is known to Pentagon planners as "force transformation." The idea is that robotic planes and ground vehicles, empowered by an ever expanding range of sensing, targeting, imaging, and communications capabilities (new technologies), would support teams of networked soldiers (a new doctrine). According to its most expansive definition, force transformation is intended to solve the problem of "asymmetric warfare" in the 21st century, where U.S. forces are not directly confronted by conventional militaries but rather must quell insurgencies, destroy terrorist cells, or mitigate regional instability. Among other things, more nimble, networked forces could employ tactics like "swarming"- precise, coordinated strikes from many directions at once.
Iraq Net articleThe newest revolution is known to Pentagon planners as "force transformation." The idea is that robotic planes and ground vehicles, empowered by an ever expanding range of sensing, targeting, imaging, and communications capabilities (new technologies), would support teams of networked soldiers (a new doctrine). According to its most expansive definition, force transformation is intended to solve the problem of "asymmetric warfare" in the 21st century, where U.S. forces are not directly confronted by conventional militaries but rather must quell insurgencies, destroy terrorist cells, or mitigate regional instability. Among other things, more nimble, networked forces could employ tactics like "swarming"- precise, coordinated strikes from many directions at once.
According to that definition, it seems the Iraqis are way ahead of us.
The technologies driving force transformation are incredibly complicated. It will take at least 31 million lines of computer code to run something called Future Combat Systems, the centerpiece of the Pentagon’s transformation effort.
The technologies driving the Iraqis "force transformation" don't seem to be all that complicated.
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