The American Revolution in Military Affairs
The American Revolution in Military Affairs

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 3

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

We use the term "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) a lot today. It comes up in briefings at the Pentagon. Journalists and academics write about it. We discuss it within the Armed Forces and with military leaders from other nations. That is as it should be, for RMAs can be disturbing. They demand considerable debate and dialogue if we are to master them. So what is the current RMA? Where does it stand today? And where will it go? As the essays in this issue of JFQ suggest, the revolution is alive, healthy, growing, and stirring the debates, insights, and passions which accompany rapid and significant innovation, especially in the United States. Indeed, the world will increasingly refer to the "American" RMA, for while military thought outside this country reflects some aspects of what is underway, it is here that the discussion is deepest and the technologies that drive the revolution are most robust. And it is here that the integration of those technologies with each other and with military organization and doctrine has already begun.

The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050
The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050

Author: MacGregor Knox

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-08-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1107393809

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Dynamics of Military Revolution aims to bridge a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs, suggesting that there have been two very different phenomena at work over the past centuries: 'military revolutions', which are driven by vast social and political changes; and 'revolutions in military affairs', which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. By providing both a conceptual framework and a historical context for thinking about revolutionary changes in military affairs, the work establishes a baseline for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western World since the thirteenth century - beginning with Edward III's revolutionary changes in medieval warfare, through the development of modern Western military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the cataclysmic changes of the First World War and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. This history provides a guide for thinking about military revolutions in the coming century, which are as inevitable as they are difficult to predict.

The Culture of Military Innovation
The Culture of Military Innovation

Author: Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-01-27

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0804773807

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.

War Made New
War Made New

Author: Max Boot

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006-10-19

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 1101216832

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A monumental, groundbreaking work, now in paperback, that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, War Made New focuses on four "revolutions" in military affairs and describes how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air strikes have remade the field of battle—and shaped the rise and fall of empires. War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare's evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation-state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare and the rise of centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War—arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, "irregular" forces to become an increasingly significant threat.