Read more by Robert Fry: A very unChinese standoff in the South China Sea
London is home to one of the richest concentrations of defence and security analysis in the world. From the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in the Temple, via the world leading War Studies department at King’s College on The Strand, to the Royal United Services Institute on Whitehall and beyond to Chatham House in St James’s Square there are four centres, within a mile, whose only global competition lies within the Washington DC beltway. A seminal event in this defence think tank world is the IISS publication of its annual Military Balance, acknowledged as the definitive audit of global military power, and this year’s edition—which was published in February—makes alarming reading for the West in general and America in particular.
The technological superiority that has underpinned US military strategy for the last two decades is slowly being eroded as Asia spends nearly $100bn more on defence than NATO’s European members and Russia accounts for 20 per cent of the global increase in defence spending in the last year. In addition, while US forces after almost 15 years of unbroken operations have never been more effective, their people, equipment and techniques have been subjected to very public scrutiny and their vulnerabilities revealed to an onlooking world. So the challenge now is to invoke the American genius for reinvention and make the next technological leap that will restore US qualitative superiority.
There is, of course, nothing new in America’s dilemma. From the invention of the stirrup (and hence heavy cavalry) to the use of nuclear weapons, history has seen technology confer fleeting military advantage. One of the most instructive examples was the near simultaneous emergence of mass railway transportation, telegraphic communication and rapid-firing field artillery in the mid nineteenth century. At a stroke, the number of men that could be quickly concentrated at a single point was increased exponentially, where they could be commanded for the first time beyond the range of the human voice to contest a much more lethal and therefore less dense battlefield. Never again would a single human brain comprehend the total battle, in the style of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte. The industrialisation of warfare had begun, for which the Prussians and, later, the Germans would show a precocious vocation, as the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attests.
Indeed, the US has faced exactly the same problem before. In the 1950s, Soviet conventional superiority was countered by the development of a US nuclear armoury in what became known in the trade as the "first offset strategy" (1OS). The US changed the terms of the conflict, to its advantage. By the 1970s the Russians had achieved nuclear parity and the US response was to embark on a "second offset strategy" (2OS) comprising a generation of precision guided munitions that restored their conventional edge; an edge they are now in danger of losing.
As it contemplates the third offset strategy (3OS), America faces some novel problems. First, there is none of the simple clarity of the Cold War in the current strategic landscape. A single, definitive enemy has been replaced by a much larger cast in conflicts that might be nuclear, conventional or counter terrorist in nature. Second, professional soldiers are expensive items and pension liabilities typically exceed the cost of major equipment programmes; only the successful marriage of people and technology can increase military productivity. Third, and most important, the military does not hold the technological aces. The leading edge of data processing, autonomy, robotic, cyber and miniaturised technologies lies in Silicon Valley and not in US government research establishments. In turn this has led to a rather curious dialogue between those dressed in uniforms and those more comfortable in T-shirts, for whom a shared world view is not immediately apparent. For the techies, military contracts represent an exquisite dilemma: juicy profits, but at the cost of reputational compromise and, perhaps, intellectual property rights. The dilemma is nicely captured by Google’s acquisition of the niche defence contractor, Boston Dynamics, and its complete inability to subsequently find a way of working with the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the FBI vs Apple tells us everything we need to know about the tensions between private confidentiality and public security that the Faustian pact between state and service provider will continue to test.
So, some tricky issues will have to be negotiated. But what might 3OS look like in practical terms? A few snapshots might help: big data analytics will mean the replacement of secret intelligence by open sources; cyber attack, information operations, artillery fire and air-delivered weapons will be equal means of bombarding an enemy; 3D printing, telemedicine and robot-assisted surgery will transform logistic support to America's armed forces. But perhaps a single image captures it best: a small group of concealed special forces soldiers using flawlessly connected monitors to view an integrated data and optical image of the battlefield before employing remote robotic weapon platforms to engage the enemy more closely. Put another way, a single human mind might once again comprehend the total battle.
Now read: Putin's Syria success puts western military strategy to shame
London is home to one of the richest concentrations of defence and security analysis in the world. From the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in the Temple, via the world leading War Studies department at King’s College on The Strand, to the Royal United Services Institute on Whitehall and beyond to Chatham House in St James’s Square there are four centres, within a mile, whose only global competition lies within the Washington DC beltway. A seminal event in this defence think tank world is the IISS publication of its annual Military Balance, acknowledged as the definitive audit of global military power, and this year’s edition—which was published in February—makes alarming reading for the West in general and America in particular.
The technological superiority that has underpinned US military strategy for the last two decades is slowly being eroded as Asia spends nearly $100bn more on defence than NATO’s European members and Russia accounts for 20 per cent of the global increase in defence spending in the last year. In addition, while US forces after almost 15 years of unbroken operations have never been more effective, their people, equipment and techniques have been subjected to very public scrutiny and their vulnerabilities revealed to an onlooking world. So the challenge now is to invoke the American genius for reinvention and make the next technological leap that will restore US qualitative superiority.
There is, of course, nothing new in America’s dilemma. From the invention of the stirrup (and hence heavy cavalry) to the use of nuclear weapons, history has seen technology confer fleeting military advantage. One of the most instructive examples was the near simultaneous emergence of mass railway transportation, telegraphic communication and rapid-firing field artillery in the mid nineteenth century. At a stroke, the number of men that could be quickly concentrated at a single point was increased exponentially, where they could be commanded for the first time beyond the range of the human voice to contest a much more lethal and therefore less dense battlefield. Never again would a single human brain comprehend the total battle, in the style of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte. The industrialisation of warfare had begun, for which the Prussians and, later, the Germans would show a precocious vocation, as the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attests.
Indeed, the US has faced exactly the same problem before. In the 1950s, Soviet conventional superiority was countered by the development of a US nuclear armoury in what became known in the trade as the "first offset strategy" (1OS). The US changed the terms of the conflict, to its advantage. By the 1970s the Russians had achieved nuclear parity and the US response was to embark on a "second offset strategy" (2OS) comprising a generation of precision guided munitions that restored their conventional edge; an edge they are now in danger of losing.
As it contemplates the third offset strategy (3OS), America faces some novel problems. First, there is none of the simple clarity of the Cold War in the current strategic landscape. A single, definitive enemy has been replaced by a much larger cast in conflicts that might be nuclear, conventional or counter terrorist in nature. Second, professional soldiers are expensive items and pension liabilities typically exceed the cost of major equipment programmes; only the successful marriage of people and technology can increase military productivity. Third, and most important, the military does not hold the technological aces. The leading edge of data processing, autonomy, robotic, cyber and miniaturised technologies lies in Silicon Valley and not in US government research establishments. In turn this has led to a rather curious dialogue between those dressed in uniforms and those more comfortable in T-shirts, for whom a shared world view is not immediately apparent. For the techies, military contracts represent an exquisite dilemma: juicy profits, but at the cost of reputational compromise and, perhaps, intellectual property rights. The dilemma is nicely captured by Google’s acquisition of the niche defence contractor, Boston Dynamics, and its complete inability to subsequently find a way of working with the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the FBI vs Apple tells us everything we need to know about the tensions between private confidentiality and public security that the Faustian pact between state and service provider will continue to test.
So, some tricky issues will have to be negotiated. But what might 3OS look like in practical terms? A few snapshots might help: big data analytics will mean the replacement of secret intelligence by open sources; cyber attack, information operations, artillery fire and air-delivered weapons will be equal means of bombarding an enemy; 3D printing, telemedicine and robot-assisted surgery will transform logistic support to America's armed forces. But perhaps a single image captures it best: a small group of concealed special forces soldiers using flawlessly connected monitors to view an integrated data and optical image of the battlefield before employing remote robotic weapon platforms to engage the enemy more closely. Put another way, a single human mind might once again comprehend the total battle.
Now read: Putin's Syria success puts western military strategy to shame
