Technological warfare

Technological warfare

Ninety-four years ago today, Austria declared war on Serbia and thus began the “War to end all wars.” World War 1 lasted more than 4 years and resulted in the loss of more than 9.2 million lives, with more than half of those from just Germany, Russia, and France alone. WW1 resulted in the development of a number of very brutal military technological advances including submarine warfare, aerial combat, armored vehicles (tanks), and chemical warfare. Few of these “advances” would find use in the consumer or industrial marketplace following the war.

The U.S. Dept. of Defense currently spends about $60 billion a year on research—more than almost every other country combined—some items of which make it into the commercial marketplace, like electronics, autonomous vehicles, imaging systems, communications satellites and networks, and computer-based modeling and simulations systems. Today’s weapons technologies include smart weapons so that only those specifically targeted are the likely fatalities—there’s relatively little collateral “damage” compared to those targeted in WW1. The Military-Industrial complex, first named by Eisenhower in the late-1950s, has done well in establishing itself and the self-sustaining output of new and improved weapons systems each year.

The problem with the smart weapons and their commercial counterparts is that we’ve become numb to the literal facts of war—that large numbers of people die and are injured, that large portions of the social infrastructure of an area are completely destroyed, that large percentages of a region’s populace are displaced, and that the livelihood of that populace can be disrupted or destroyed.

Even the Viet Nam War, with its daily TV updates, gave us some sense of the brutality and hideousness of war. Today’s wars are sanitized, and it’s hard to know what’s going on and what gains or losses are being made. We’re rarely aware of the war in the trenches (so popularly termed in WW1).

It’s hard to imagine a world without war in the future. There will always be religious fanatics, territorial disputes, terrorism, and political upheavals. The technologies employed by the major powers will also continue to be developed and implemented. Other than a potential nuclear incident, though, the actual fatalities and combatants will likely decline, as new technologies replace the manual and the hazardous aspects of warfare.

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