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Revolution in War 31 January 2008 #128
Revolution in War
By Dr Dave McIntyre, Director, Integrative Center for Homeland Security, 31 January 2008
History does not follow a straight line. Sometimes revolutionary events change the rules and the game. We may be in just such a moment of historic change right now. I will tell you more, if you give me Just a Minute for Homeland Security.
I’m Dave McIntyre, Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M.
On the 3d of July 1863, troops from the Army of Northern Virginia emerged from a Pennsylvania wood line, straightened their lines, and set our across a mile of open ground to attack the Union lines at Gettysburg. It was exactly the type of maneuver that had won Napoleon mastery of Europe in places like Austerlitz, Friedland, and Jena. But times had changed. New technology that produced long range rife and cannon fire destroyed Pickett’s charge before it got close enough to wage a traditional fight.
European military professionals ignored the lessons of the American Civil war, and were again surprised by the revolution in technology when they tried similar tactics at the opening of World War I. They expected a short war of maneuver. They got a 4 year slugfest in the trenches, as new technology and tactics made the old expertise obsolete.
Twenty years later, the “lessons learned” from the First World War were overthrown as Germans coordinated tanks, radios and aircraft to create the blitzkrieg. Once again the innovative application of tactics and technology surprised a world that thought it saw traditional tools war, and could only imagine a traditional use and traditional result.
The Soviets expanded on the German blitzkrieg, pointing their massed tank armies toward Europe for decades. In the 1980’s the Americans married the emerging technologies of computers, sensors, and precision guidance to render the Soviet military advantage moot – perhaps easing the way for revolutionary political and economic change.
In each case, experts and average citizens alike were surprised when tools they thought they recognized and understood evolved to provide a revolutionary effect. History was changed. And so it is, perhaps, with the car bomb and the suicide attack – the famous IEDs now changing history around the world.
We think we have been seeing terrorist bombings for years- but the size and sophistication of bombs is changing as more powerful explosives become available. More important is the rise of the suicide bomber – a guidance system which is precise, adaptive, and resolute. And finally, the targets are changing, as terrorists seek civilian casualties, or accept them as a means to an end. Timothy McVeigh ignored the child care center in Oklahoma City. The first attack on Benazir Bhutto was reportedly made with a bomb attached to a child. [1]
The result is a revolution in the way terrorists apply force. The results may well change history as well.
[1] Betsy Pisik, “Bhutto: Fatal bomb was rigged to baby,” Washington Times, Dec 14, 2007, http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071214/FOREIGN/112140060/1001