Customer Reviews

The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Future of War" predicts US dominance of warfare throughout the 21st Century, as a result of US advanced technology in general and precision weaponry in particular. Their train of thought has considerable merit, and deserves reading and thoughtful attention. However, the book suffers from the same two major flaws as most books by visionaries without enough practical experience: misunderstanding of specific happenings in the past, and unlikely projections into the far future. Having been involved with US defense for 50 years, as a member of the military, as a designer and developer and advisor on US weaponry, and as an advisor on strategic, operational and tactical issues, I read this book with considerable amusement, although I do take seriously much of what it says. I shall give specifics on two failures to understand the details of the past, and then offer criticism of two of the book's projections, as examples.

Past episode #1: The 1991 precision strikes against Iraq. There is no doubt that our air strikes and land attacks in the 1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait were exceedingly effective, and there is no doubt that this effectiveness was largely due to our precision weaponry. However, to do precision strikes, whether with airborne munitions or ground forces, it's necessary to know what targets to attack, where they are, and what weapons are likely to be effective against a particular target. In the 1991 campaign, this effort was undertaken by the "Jeddi Knights", largely under the guidance of Col. John Warden. The key role of the "Jeddi Knights" was to establish priorities and mission profiles for which targets to strike when with what munitions, and they did this extraordinarily well. What the Friedmans obviously don't know is the amount of detailed information that was available to the "Jeddi Knights", carefully acquired over the 70 years preceding the campaign, first by the British until about 1950, and thereafter by the US military. The armed forces of major powers assume they may have to fight wars on short notice aganst opponents who have been designated shortly before by national authorities, so they invest a great deal in gathering information pertinent to how various campaigns might be conducted. In the case of Iraq, the British did very careful mapping from 1920 until about 1950, producing "ordnance" maps of higher detail and accuracy than exist even for some parts of the United States, and these were invaluable to planners. Then, starting in about 1950, when it began to seem possible that the US might someday have to fight somewhere in the Middle East, the US military carefully gathered information relevant to how a campaign might be fought, and which potential enemy targets should be candidates for destruction. These studies resided in US intelligence and military archives until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and were then used as the basis for planning the campaign.

Two examples of this. First, the destruction of certain bridges was given high priority not to impede vehicular movement, but to sever the communications cables running under the bridges; our planners knew which cables important to Iraqi Command and Control were buried too deeply to destroy easily except where they were routed under bridges, and therefore which bridges to take out to disrupt Iraqi military communications. Second, the swing by US, British and French forces far to the West, the "Hail Mary" gambit, would not have been possible in that harsh terrain unless viable routes for armor and supply vehicles were known, and the Iraqi Army either didn't know of such routes or didn't believe we could know of them. There are exactly two feasible routes, and both were used; they can both be determined in complete detail from careful study of the British Ordnance maps prepared in the 1930s, and (although I wasn't involved in the campaign planning) I had no difficulty in finding and plotting the only two feasible routes before the ground campaign began, from the good maps in my possession. I also understand why it was necessary to bring the two prototype JSTARS systems to the theatre, to detect and allow blocking of any Iraqi strike intended to sever the Tapline Road; this was also evident from the maps.

By contrast, we had no success at all in locating and destroying mobile Scud missile launchers, because they moved around with great frequency. If you don't know where something is, no precision of your weaponry, and no amount of technical sophistication or military skill, will allow you to destroy it.

Past example #2: The SAFEGUARD BMD system. The Friedmans say, on the basis of assertions by people who may or may not be experts, that SAFEGUARD was deactivated because it wouldn't work. In fact the situation was exactly the reverse, but one must know the purpose of SAFEGUARD and its mode of operation to understand what actually happened. The mission of SAFEGUARD was to prevent complete success of a Soviet counterforce first strike against our Minuteman ICBM fields, by opening a "launch window" for a retaliatory strike by the Minuteman missiles in the face of a full-scale Soviet strike. I helped to plan and design that system, and it would have done what it was intended to, although at a horrible increased toll of death and destruction, which I dreaded, but could see no alternative to in the face of rapidly increasing Soviet capability. Far more important than the fact that we knew SAFEGUARD would work was the fact that the Soviets concluded it would work; that realization brought them back to the bargainng table at the Helsinki talks, and led to the SALT I treaty, which I rejoiced about. Provisions of that treaty made SAFEGUARD unnecessary, and that's why the one completed SAFEGUARD site was deactivated and construction on the other sites was stopped.

Also on the subject of balistic missile defense, the Friedmans assert that midcourse discrimination and destruction of incoming warheads is infeasible. This is simply not true, although there is an exceedingly serious problem associated with doing it. I know three quite different ways of doing midcourse discrimintion and destruction of enemy incoming warheads, and, given that I've been out of that business for more than 10 years, I expect that other ways are known by now. The problem is that, at least for the three ways I know, one is politically unacceptable to the US Congress and the US public, one is so expensive that it's unlikely Congress would ever fund it, and the third, if fully developed, would be usable for certain other military purposes that would probably lead to a renewed arms race as our potential major opponents sought to counter it. (I was one of a small group of scientists who successfully recommended to Congress that development of that third approach be stopped, to avoid the resulting foreseeable escalation; scientists and military professionals, despite various comments in the Friedmans' book, work closely together over years and decades, and come to have considerable knowledge of each other's fields.) Whether at some future time it may become desirable to develop and deploy a BMD system that does midcourse discrimination and destruction of warheads is a political and diplomatic question to be decided by the public and its elected leaders, on which I have no insight, but it is technically feasible.

Now, turning to the future, what the Friedmans fail to understand in their glowing vision of US technology dominating future warfare, is that for every technical advance, opponents can devise at least partial countermeasures, and that therefore no amount of technology as such can determine the outcome of a campaign. The Coalition conquest of Iraq in 2003 provides an excellent example. Although large parts of the Iraqi army, and all of its top leadership, was utterly incompetent, other large parts of the Iraqi army were composed of thoroughly trained officers and enlisted men, who fully understood that if they confronted US forces nose to nose, they would be destroyed. Understanding this, very many of the best Iraqi units simply demobilized themsleves and disappeared into the civilian population as Coalition forces approached, in many cases taking their weaponry with them. One entire Iraqi division near the border with Iran totally vanished before we got to its bases; everyone from the division commander to the most junior private. Professional soldiers, even if motivated to fight, have no more desire than anyone else to be killed pointlessly in a situation where they are unable to resist effectively.

A substantial fraction of these well-trained, motivated Iraqi forces subsequently emerged as part of the resistance movement that continues in Iraq. How many of the resistance fighters come from that crowd is obviously impossible to know for sure, but my personal estimate is that about 30,000 of Saddam Hussein's best and most loyal troops and officers became part of the resistance movement. And our overwhelming superiority in all aspects of conventional warfare have been far less effective against current Iraqi resistance methods; the resistance movement seems to be gradually weakening and fragmenting, but it's a long slow process, in which our precision weapons and our advanced communications and intelligence give us far less of an advantage than they do in conventional warfare.

There are various other gaps in the Friedmans' assessment of the future. I'll mention only two of many. First, vircators, often touted as the most effective weapon of the 21st Century, have had only relatively diappointing results so far. Why? Partly because technical improvements to vircators are needed; those will surely come along in due course. Much more serious is the fact that battle damage asssessment after a vircator strike is at present almost impossible to do with any degree of accuracy, so after a target has been attacked with one or more vircators, there is no practical way to know whether the strike was successful or not.
Presumably some day we will overcome this particular problem, but it illustrates that new and potentially formidable technology may find relatively little application because of purely tactical and operational problems that arise in using it.

As my second example, I'll remark on the Friedmans' vision of US infantrymen as being in effect "cocooned" in future to protect them from the enemy's weapons. This vision ignores two serious problems. First, no "cocoon" imaginable can protect an infantryman against certain weapons such as a fuel-air bomb if the enemy knows approximately where the infantryman is. Second, and closely related, anyone with substantial experience in concealing himself in a hostile environment, including me, knows all too well that the more accoutrements one has, the harder it is to hide and not be observed. In light clothing and carrying only light personal weapons, I can disappear into the landscape almost anywhere, and move around unnoticed; burdened with excess equipment and elaborate protective clothing, only certain carefully selected spots can offer concealment. Everyone with experience in this matter knows as much as I do on this subject, so infantrymen whose lives depend on not being observed will move far more cautiously when heavily burdened than when lightly armed and lightly protected. That doesn't mean infantry should be sent into combat inadequately equipped, but it does mean that the increased effectiveness of some given number of trained infantry when provided with extra combat capability and protective equipment is far less than one might otherwise suppose.

I could cite dozens of other matters, past and projected, which the Friedmans book misunderstands or overlook, but this is enough. I'll just say that the book is an excellent source of ideas, but should be viewed with practiced skepticism.

The authors begin by noting that there is "a deep chasm between the advent of technology and its full implementation in doctrine and strategy." In their history of failure they note how conventional wisdom always seems to appreciate the systems that won the past wars, and observes that in the U.S. military there is a long history of transferring power from the political and military leadership to the technical and acquisition managers, all of whom have no real understanding of the current and future needs of the men who will actually fight. They address America's vulnerability in both U.S. based logistics and in overseas transport means-"Destroying even a portion of American supply vessels could so disrupt the tempo of a logistical build-up as to delay offensive operations indefinitely." They have a marvelous section on the weaknesses of U.S. data gathering tools, noting for example that satellites provide only a static picture of one very small portion of the battlefield, rather that the wide-area and dynamic "situational awareness" that everyone agrees is necessary. They go on to gore other sacred oxes, including the Navy's giant ships such as the carrier (and implicitly the new LPH for Marines as well as the ill-conceived arsenal ship) and the largest of the aircraft proposed by the Air Force. They ultimately conclude that the future of war demands manned space stations that are able to integrate total views of the world with control of intercontinental precision systems, combined with a complete restructuring of the ground forces (most of which will be employed at the squad level) and a substantial restructuring of our navel force to provide for many small fast platforms able to swarm into coastal areas.

The Friedmans stir up controversy because they don't adhere to any one standard weltanschauung (not even that of MIT). That's OK. Their primary contribution in this book is framing the issue of maritime security with both focus and relevance. They are 100 percent right: in the next half century it will become much harder to defend ships at sea - merchantmen or warships - because of long-range shoot-and-scoot missiles posing a threat from shore, and because of inescapable surveillance from space. This will profoundly alter international security relationships and world trade patterns. This will in turn affect your life directly.

America is the only great naval power in history who has never really recognized that she is one. The Friedmans pull out some nuggets, even if much of their information is well known to those in the military and the defense industry.

In light the number of stars I have given this book, I feel I should start off be stating that there is tremendous merit in this work. The authors do a superb job of pointing out the root causes of warfare, and why it is naïve to expect that armed conflict has gone by the wayside. They then go on to point out the challenges to American global preeminence, and what needs to be done to assure it.

Specifically they look to precision-guided munitions as the key weapons of future combat, and space as its primary battleground. They make compelling arguments for each, particularly regarding the obsolescence of the primary weapons of today's Pax Americana: the tank, the strategic bomber, and the aircraft carrier. Furthermore, the completely debunk the myth of nuclear supremacy on the modern battlefield.

The problems with this book that I alluded to are twofold. First, the editing is appalling; there are numerous typos and misprints (for example, referring to a torpedo that can travel at 400 knots). While the knowledgeable reader can usually infer what the authors' intent is, editorial errors always make for a frustrating reading experience.

The second concern cuts to the heart of the book. While the authors do a superb job of defining the future battlefield, they offer very little in terms of how we get there from where we currently stand. The weapons systems they describe will almost certainly come to pass, but they neither make suggestions as to the allocation of R&D dollars, nor offer any sense of what research should receive priority. In the absence of such commentary, their bold assertions frequently seem more like dogma than scholarship. Moreover, they ignore potential doctrinal changes that might extend the service life of current weapons systems while increasing their effectiveness.

At its best, `The Future of War' is a visionary look into the future of armed conflict. The authors correctly grasp the dawning senility of the weapons currently deployed, and paint a bold picture of what the future battlefield will look like. Unfortunately, while brilliantly describing the future, they completely ignore the near to middle term. As a result, `The Future of War' while well worth reading, can only be treated as half of an equation. One must read the works of authors like Leonhard and MacGregor to truly appreciate the shape of the modern battlefield.

This book is more than the grocery store's blase` litany of new gizmos that has Tom Clancy's name slapped on it. So if you are intersted in a book that natters about specific weapons systems ad nauseum, you are better off shopping there or else watching the Discovery Channel. The Friedmans' book is useful because it sees technology as more than a collection of shiny and expensive toys that make loud noises; although utterly essential and often defining our ability to achieve our ends, technology is always a pillar within a grander scheme.

The value in this book is its capability to trace a concept historically, and provide us with a valuable and critical perspective of our strategic strength. Consequently we are able to analyze something transcending the, "Our ship is better than their ship," manner of thought.

So a framework of strategic thought, within which technological capability relative to others is essential for analysis, gives us insight into future needs. Whether their conclusions are valid are certainly open to debate; the approach, however, is certainly valuable.

Like, 'The Coming War With Japan,' this book is able to use multiple levels of understanding to present their arguments.......... the importance of the Friedmans' work is growing everyday. Worth the read.

This book directs one's attention to the discussion the way we have thought about war will no longer be as relevant in the future. The notion of "weapons reaching and obsolete status" points to a central thesis in the book--that America will remain the preponderant military and technical power of the 21st century. This of course may be a comforting piece of information for policy shapers and makers, and business peoples. But is it really ? Such dominance by one nation is bound to lead to the shifting of the balance of power among nations unless the movement toward internationalization proves to be successful. However, aspiring powers and emerging nations that wish to be freed from this American dominance may -- and there seems to be information to support this -- seek weapons of mass destruction to counter US global hegemony.

This book made a clearly argued case for American Dominance, but it does not help us to see the political/moral future. But within its parameters, its an "eye-opener."

Friedman has done a wonderful job of laying a broad overview of US techno-politico power and policy plans for the new millenium. He has not however fully discussed the appalling breach of security that our own US based companies are guilty of committing. China has now armed themselves with advanced missile technologies that representatives and technicians of many US firms have given away. This is not only an insane and profoundly stupid act of retardation but an act of treason. Every one of these people that devulged these secrets, however casually, should be publically executed as an example.

Because of these breaches, the US is now in the midst of radically and most wisely changing its war policies. What we read about is of course the things that are known and what the government wants us to either know or feels is not a threat in having it known. My only hope in the development of conventional weaponry, we are not merely drawing plans but have the capacity to make a new George Lucas film look like a cheap gimic trick and can take out our enemeies whole sale if need be.

Kruschev and Mao Tse-Tung reportedly boasted that the West would sell them the rope that they would then use to hang the West. Like fools, we've sold them yards of rope. Hopefully we've invented something quite clever to make this proverbial rope obsolete and useless.

The current poltiically correct culture would have us idiotically believe the vacuous notion that our enemies share our same value system and that there is no need to prepare for war and so doing is provocative. But freedom has never been free--ever. Our enemeies spit on our values and would indeed hang us with the rope we've provided because of that foolish liberal sentiment that everyone is fundamentally good with that world-can-be-as-one Coca-Cola-motto philosophy.

These are most dangerous times indeed and our enemies still see power coming from the capacity to do violence.

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
-Mao Tse-Tung

Friedman is to be commended for his visionary description of tomorrow's possible military technologies. He makes a few blunders, but his main points are basically sound.

I think the greatest of these is his emphasis on the importance of space in future military affairs. Not just the development of today's space technologies -- communications, command and control, surveillance, and navigation (particularly of guided weapons), but the actual employment of weapons in space. The main point is that if you can strike at the enemy -- and not necessarily decisively -- and the enemy cannot strike back at you, then you have an invaluable advantage. If you can strike decisively and your enemy cannot answer back in like manner, then you will necessarily emerge the victor. Throughout history he who commands the high ground has always emerged the victor, whether the high ground is the tallest hill on the battlefield, the airspace above the battlefield, or an orbital station overwatching the battlefield.

Friedman gives a serviceable account of the "terrain" features of near-Earth space, and a brief introduction to the rudiments of orbital mechanics, which circumscribe what it is possible for a spacecraft to do and how it can maneuver. His account is by no means complete nor authoritative; however, as an introductory text for the newcomer it is serviceable.

Friedman sees the most powerful future weapon as the hypersonic cruise missile with intercontinental range, guided to its far-off target(s) by satellite surveillance and communication. He also claims that it will be cheap, but I greatly doubt that. I read this part with skepticism; however, now that I have learned of the successful test flights of the scramjet research aircraft X-43A (Mach 9.8 for 12 seconds) and the X-51 (Mach 6 for 200 seconds, scramjet burn for 140 seconds), I no longer doubt Friedman's claim concerning the idea's feasibility. I have also learned about the Navajo Mach 3 cruise missile program from the 1940s - 50s. This vehicle could transport a thermonuclear warhead (weighing in those days more than a ton) over intercontinental distances. So I believe the technology is feasible, but much more research will be required to maintain a vehicle at Mach 9+, or even Mach 5, for the better part of an hour, with the required reliability.

One massive advantage such a craft would have would be its relative invulnerability to interception. This was the reason that the Navajo project was dropped. At Mach 3, the missile is always going to go in a straight line. I recall the SR-71 Blackbird described as having a turn radius the size of Kansas at Mach 3. And a Mach 3 cruise missile will be hotter than hell, so it will show up like a sore thumb on any thermal imager. And it's not known how well radar-absorbent material performs with that much skin friction. So the Navajo would have been not too difficult to shoot down.

Things become rather different around Machs 5 or 6. A tail chase by an interceptor seems unlikely; a shot from port or starboard would have a horribly large amount of lead angle necessary. At that speed, proportional navigation as the method of leading the target seems unlikely. The only possible shot would be from the nose, and you only get one shot and then the cruise missile is gone. Then there is the fusing problem -- the sensor that triggers the interceptor's warhead would have to act very speedily after detecting proximity of the cruise missile. Of course, one could always resort to a dumb hit-to-kill mechanism, which can use the cruise missile's own speed against it. Like a direct-ascent ASAT, the interceptor need only position itself in the path of the cruise missile and spread out a mesh net as did some of the early Army ASAT proposals. But if the cruise missile had an ability to detect this, a small hypersonic jink could produce a trajectory displacement large enough to evade. Much more research needs to be done in this area.

Needless to say, the best answer of all to the hypersonic cruise weapon would be a laser or particle beam. But then, it would be the best answer to any aerial foe. The only question would be how much more difficult for the dollar would a hypersonic target make -- stealth or ECM at conventional speeds might be more cost-effective in the air-breathing realm. Then there is always the Russian/Chinese solution -- simply overwhelm your enemies with numbers (so long as the technology lag isn't too great). As always in military affairs, the most important battles will be the battles of the budgets.

Then, we might consider the possibility of lifting the arena completely out of the aerial realm. But Friedman discounts the possibility of ballistic missiles with maneuvering reentry vehicles that can target mobile vehicles. On this I think he is wrong; it is known that the Chinese are interested in this sort of thing for use against our CVNs, and I have seen articles proposing conventional warheads with terminal guidance for the Minuteman and Trident ICBMs. In fact, in the old Pershing 2 IRBM we deployed a maneuvering warhead, though it could not take aim at moving targets. There is also the possibility of the Sanger trajectory in which a projectile launched on a sub-orbital trajectory can "bounce" and "skip" off the atmosphere one or more times, both to increase its range, and to bleed off speed to reduce the thermal load on its nose, perhaps allowing the installation of a seeker package. And there's always GPS update to an improved inertial autopilot, or even some advanced form of command guidance using laser or microwave beam.

It seems that it would be more straightforward to work on a terminal guidance and maneuver package for ballistic missiles rather than work on hypersonic cruise weapons. The technologies are more mature, it can land a warhead anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes, practically impossible to intercept or spoof, and the cruise weapon has most all of the same guidance problems due to the extreme skin friction. Its only possible advantage might be maneuverability, but at hypersonic speed this seems somewhat restricted, maybe even more so than the Sanger projectile.

This book came out a bit before much was publicly known of supercavitating underwater vehicles, that can travel hundreds of knots. His statement that 100-knot torpedos date from WWII is blatantly wrong, but in the future such weapons seem possible. Not much is publicly available on their states of development. The only problem I have seen described with them is the one of being able to maneuver or steer the vehicle. There are difficulties with projecting a set of rudders through the bubble of high pressure gas that sheaths the vehicle in the water, but they will probably be able to work out some method of gimballing the rocket nozzle. Of course, there's the obvious problem of how to guide to its target a 200 or 300 knot torpedo, since it will be deaf from its self-noise. Trailing a guidance wire seems unlikely -- perhaps some blue-green laser from an aircraft overhead. The most workable solution will probably turn out to be a multi-mode attack profile similar to the way current free-running torpedos operate: they proceed to the target area at high speed using an autopilot loaded with target position and speed data by its launch platform (with data perhaps provided by some other vehicle), and once in the last known area of the target, slow down so that their onboard seekers can function, or perhaps receive target data updates. This scheme seems very easy to work out, and I wonder if these sorts of supercavitating weapons have already been secretly deployed.

Friedman's other main theme is that weapon systems undergo their own life cycles. They are created, they mature, and then they decline in effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. New weapon systems come along that threaten their viability, and they are required to employ more and more purely defensive measures to maintain their offensive purpose on the battlefield. This cycle continues until the weapon system becomes so overburdened with defensive gear that it is supplanted with more modern systems that can inherently survive without sacraficing their offensive purpose. Friedman delineates this process with the histories of the armored fighting vehicle (the tank) and the naval aviation vessel (aircraft carrier). In light of the technologies described in earlier paragraphs, it seems particularly unlikely that the CVN will much longer be able to do more than simply ward off all its attackers.

A stimulating read if a little spotty in places.

This book presents a very clear model of how military capability evolves, when it succeeeds and when it fails. The examples such as Gulf 1 and Vietnam present examples of each from a US perspective. I was a bit concerned when I bought it that the developments and wars in the 15 years since it was written (Gulf 2 and Afghanistan) would have made it obsolete but they only confirm its basic precepts. Classic George Friedman - enlightning and entertaining in its merciless objectivity and very dry wit.

Now, I read this book for fun - and fun it was. A lot of interesting ideas related to warfare from both past and future are there. Some things seem to be a bit credibility bending (again, to an amateur) but it is the book you'd try to read in one sitting since it is so well-written.

Also, keep in mind that it reads like a book written in 2010, while it harks from late 90s.