Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence: The Technologies That Are Transforming Them
During the cold war, the nuclear arms race made war increasingly unthinkable. Today, in contrast, many argue that arms races in robotics and computer technologies are making war increasingly thinkable. Remotely piloted "hunter-killer" drones, for example, make it far easier to launch an attack without the military or political risks of putting boots on foreign soil. But technology can also make wars less deadly.Low-tech fighting has often turned into blood-bath wars of attrition, as the Napoleonic campaigns, America's civil war and the first world war attest. With modern technology, however, fighting forces can wage "system against system" war. Destroy enough elements of an enemy's system—kit and infrastructure, or specialists needed to operate it—and the force cannot keep fighting. With air power, for example, an attacker can wreck critical equipment behind enemy lines without needing to shoot its way through troops on the ground.What matters, then, is to ensure that military know-how leads not to the nightmare of mass or nuclear destruction, but rather to fewer and less deadly conflicts. This book explores the technological developments that have given rise to what has become one of the biggest challenges of today.The book is organised in five parts, as follows:Land and seaDesigning, and countering, new weaponryUpgrades for combatantsPowering up, differentlyNew materials, new capabilitiesiPod militariesNukesAir and spaceAttacks from aboveThe growing drone dimensionAir ops, for lessAircraft and flight, enhancedMilitarising spaceThe computer factorThe new realm of cyberwarBetter equations, smarter machinesPropaganda ops, onlineIntelligence and spycraftIdentifying, and killing, the quarryFinding what's hiddenGetting to know you betterThe road aheadThe challenge of irregular warfare