The Schliffen Plan of 1905 (photo: historylearning.com)
In 1992, the Office of Net Assessment in cooperation with the Office of the US Secretary of Defense published a report on the future military technical revolution (the Revolution in Military Affairs, abbreviation ‘RMA’). Already in the 1970s, Soviet military theoreticians were heralding the arrival of a third, as they then described it, wave of the military-technical revolution of the 20th century. The first concerned war-motorization, the use of aviation and chemical weapons in World War I. In its mature form during World War II, it incorporated the German concept of Blitzkrieg (i.e. armoured-warfare operations with an air tactical support component), the Anglo-American concept of strategic bombing, and the concept of replacing battleships with onboard aircraft taking off from aircraft carriers, as envisaged by both Japan and the United States.
The second wave of this technical revolution came with the development of ballistic missiles and atomic weapons and saw its mature form in the 1970s with the achievement of nuclear balance between the US and the USSR. The third wave of the technical revolution was to combine precision ammunition, sensors and long-range radars, a computerized communication system and situational control, i.e. reconnaissance and long-range impact, into one coherent and comprehensive reconnaissance-strike system.
In 1997, Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessment, stated that the Soviets were indeed right that the new possibilities would revolutionise the way the war was waged. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the asymmetrical wars with weak states or rebels in which the Americans took part in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century allowed them to forget about RMA. Meanwhile, Marshall in his office worked and publicly compared US operations in the first Iraq war in the field of RMA to the British first tank introduction at Cambrais in November 1917. He claimed then that a new technology had appeared combined with a new mode of action, but it was still in the infancy phase. He stated, among other things, that the US Armed Forces in 1993 were at just a starting point as they had been in 1922, when it came to their ability to use and conceptualize new military capabilities, thus discussing the concept of RMA in relation to the innovations and the opportunities that had arisen during the period during and immediately after World War I. In March 2008, however, Marshall stated that the U.S. armed forces were still very immature when it came to using a coherent reconnaissance-strike system as envisaged by the RMA, and – again invoking a comparison with the conceptualisation of the capabilities of the first revolution in military affairs (tanks and planes) – that they were respectively at pre-1930 levels.
He pointed out, for example, that the Americans had been using a new way of waging war against the Taliban, or against a demoralised Iraqi army, against terrorists and insurgents and jihadists, and not against a symmetrical peer opponents with their own extensive, durable and resilient reconnaissance-strike complex.
Andrew Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessments (photo: Wikipedia)
Andrew Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessments (photo: Wikipedia)
Meanwhile, potential opponents such as China were working on their own, more mature reconnaissance-strike complex, and therefore on their own capabilities provided in the RMA, while the Americans did not yet have their own complex that would be mature and that would provide a significant advantage over other peer or near peer opponents.
Seminars exploring the development of the American RMA run yet before 2015 have shown that American reliance solely on space for observation and communication is a serious weakness. There are no more safe sanctuaries for the US armed forces – surface ships can be destroyed from ever greater distances, even while in motion, and aircraft carriers will have less and less chance of survival on the modern battlefield. Manned aircraft, including stealth ones, will lose their operational advantages along with the development of sensors and radars and the development of integrated modern anti-aircraft defence. Bases in Eurasia and its littorals will be subject to the intense fire action of the enemy from long distances, using their own reconnaissance-strike complexes over long distances. American traditional strength projection may therefore be ineffective, and too expensive to continue practising in the same way. The seminars also showed that the way of conducting warfare may change much more between 2015 and 2050 than it has, for example, between 1990 and 2015.
In the RMA combat system, the most important thing will be the ability to maintain your own reconnaissance-strike system, i.e. the ability to conduct and win a modern scouting battle (mentioned several times), manifesting itself in the ability to “roll” or “turn off” the enemy’s situational awareness system and to effectively and permanently protect your own.
Some compare the situation of the US armed forces to the status of nimbus invincibility of the German army from 1870–1914. The German modern railway system, enabling large-scale transport, a dense telegram network allowing them to centralise war management, modern weapon systems as well as conceptual and operational productivity of the German general staff enabled the relatively easy defeat of opponents such as Austria and France, who could not yet lead modern industrial wars. In the period 1870–1914 the alleged superiority of the German army throughout Europe was considered to be an indisputable dogma. A test of new times appeared in 1914, when the German offensive was halted at the gate to Paris. Symmetrical armed forces emerged who learned to wage a modern industrial war, depriving Germany of its earlier advantage.
We will see how the situation unfolds in the 21st century for the US armed forces in the face of the powers of China and Russia openly pushing out the free power projection of US forces in Eurasia using modern A2AD anti-access systems. Poland, the Baltic States, maybe Ukraine, Romania, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, East China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and Korea will be the training grounds for system competition under the Revolution in Military Affairs. The big game begins. Poland and the entire Baltic-Black Sea bridge will have to take part in it.
Autor
Jacek Bartosiak
CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.
Strategy&Future
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