Bashing the Laser Range Finder with a Rock

In Chechnya, we did not have a war which had been expected, for which the troops and staffs were preparing, which had been studied in academies and planned accordingly and which would have complied with regulations and field manuals.1 Colonel General Anatoli Afanasyevich Shkirko EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES play a dominant role when trying to forecast future war. Military planners must consider geostrategic realities, national interests, developing alliances, existing armed forces and the future's uncertainties. Because technological advances have had a major impact on past warfighting, leaders must plan to incorporate or nullify new technologies before and as they appear. Future technologies have the biggest effects in a conventional, maneuver war against a modernized, but less-technologically advanced, armed force. As authors Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft suggest, "To envision and describe accurately the features and dimensions of the landscape of future battle is a nearly impossible task. The record of Americans' ability to predict the nature of the next war (not to mention its causes, location, time, adversary or adversaries and allies) has been uniformly dismal. But the myopia of the past in no way lessens the need to prepare. Quite the contrary. Preparations of the most certain sort possible are required for a most uncertain future. "2 Future War's Face It is also prudent to plan to apply force across the entire spectrum of conflict, whether or not new technologies will have much effect. Military planners and forecasters are constantly accused of planning for the "last war. " What future warfare will look like depends, to a great extent, on where, under what circumstances and for what purposes a country will commit armed forces. The Russian General Staff's vision of future theater war anticipates dynamic, high-tempo, high-intensity land-air operations encompassing vast areas and extending into outer space. Precision-guided munitions (PGMs), which approach the effectiveness of tactical nuclear weapons but avoid most collateral damage, would be employed from war's outset in an attempt to destroy enemy PGMs, command and control (C2), air defense and operational formations. Tactical warfare would become increasingly lethal and nonlinear. Front lines would disappear, communications would be sporadic and control, difficult. Winning the information battle would be paramount. This includes mastering the processing, sorting and analyzing of intelligence products from high-tech collection systems and managing CZ information to provide some order to battle's chaos. This future war view puts a premium on maneuver's technical aspects, strong-point defense, technological integration, professionalism and effective training. It also puts a premium on maintaining large stocks of expensive, constantly upgraded PGMs. The Russian vision may be partially accurate, but as Operation Desert Storm demonstrated, only the United States and a few European nations can conduct this type of war on a theater level.4 To a certain extent, the United States shares this view of future war. This view, the latest revolution in military affairs (RMA) and budget cuts have led the US armed forces to focus on replacing expensive manpower with emerging technologies. If the popular press forecast of long-range, high-tech, computer-heavy future warfare is correct, this concentration is wholly justified.5 One of Desert Storm's enduring lessons is that a nation does not want to stand up against US PGMs and cruise missiles unless it has its own large PGM and cruise missile supply or, at the very least, an effective air defense or a limited target set of marginal value. The few countries that now have a large supply of hightech weaponry are unlikely to go to war with the United States in the near future. This does not mean the United States has entered a period of guaranteed peace or that nations or groups without a large supply of high-tech weapons will avoid conflict with us. …