Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

Third Wave, economies likely, at least for a time, to occupy the top of the global powerpyramid. In this new global structure, war, too, is trisected 89 .The transition to the Information age implied and was manifested in the awareness thatinformation was becoming the driving factor in warfare 90 . Information and communicationtechnology improved the quality of sensor systems, it increased transparency of thebattlefield, it enhanced precision of weapons systems and, finally, it speed of command anshortened the “sensor-to-shooter time”. In short, as many noted, information agetechnologies improved the capabilities for observation, orientation and decision, it allowedfor compressing the time to complete an OODA cycle.A revolution in postmodern military affairsThese features where the very subject of the discourse on the Revolution in Military Affairs,a revolution people became aware of after the Gulf War 91 . Debating the postmodernmilitary, three authors note that ‘although not quite congruent with our concept of thePostmodern military, the RMA vision does point to qualitative break with the patterns ofwarfare characteristic of the Modern Era’ 92 . Latham, Gray, McInnes and other too see theRMA as part of the wider societal trends concerning war and warfare. The RMA is made upof the same elements of Gray’s expression of postmodern war. The RMA is a postmoderndevelopment also in the sense that it holds a number of potential benefits to the West,particularly in reducing the exposure of troops to danger, in minimizing the risks of warmore generally, and in reducing collateral damage. It fits the pattern of war the West wouldhope to fight 93 . The RMA also contains arguments for various doctrinal and organizationalwhich are fully in line with Boyd’s work. It includes the idea of decision superiority and theimportance of superior situational awareness, the importance of time and high reactioncapability and the decentralized network form of organization.First noted by the Russian analysts during the eighties when they noted that thesynthesis of technological changes in western militaries constituted something of a militarytechnical revolution, the RMA debate took of in the West to describe and explain themomentous changes taking place 94 . One of the influential definitions of this discourse 95 wasoffered by Andrew Marshall from the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessments:89 Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War, Survival at the Dawn of the 21 st Century (New York, 1993),p.81.90 Zalmay M. Khalizad and John P. White (eds), Strategic Appraisal: The Changing Role of Information inWarfare (RAND, Santa Monica, 1999).91 This section is derived from Frans Osinga and Rob de Wijk, ‘The Emergence of the Post-ModernWarform: Assessing a Decade of Changes in Military Affairs’, in Alfred van Stadne, Jan Rood andHans Labohm, Cannon and Canons, Clingendael Views of Global and Regional Politics (Royal van Gorcum,Assen, 2003); and from a series of articles on Network Centric Warfare, see Frans Osinga:‘Netwerkend de oorlog in? Network Centric Warfare en de Europese militaire transformatie’, Deel I,Militaire Spectator, JRG 172, 7/8-2003; and Frans Osinga, ‘Netwerkend de oorlog in? NCW als productvan de revolutie’, Deel II, Militaire Spectator, JRG 172, 9-2003.92 Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams, David R. Segal (eds), The Postmodern Military, Armed Forcesafter the Cold War (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000), p.5.93 McInnes (2002), p.139.94 See for the Russian view for instance General Makhmut Gareev, (edited by Jacob W. Kipp) If WarComes Tomorrow, The Contours of Future Armed Conflic, (Frank Cass, London, 1998).95 This is not the place to discuss the merits of the RMA thesis. Several critical studies have beenpublished that argue that there either is no RMA, it is irrelevant because it is only due to technical303