Military Technology and the Arms Trade: Changes and their Impact

Abstract

Revolutionary changes now taking place in the technology of war may have a significant impact on the character of the international trade in arms. Some analysts argue that a Military Technical Revolution is now under way, as military organizations begin exploiting a wide variety of new technologies through organizational adaptation and doctrinal innovation. The result will be fundamental change in the ways wars are fought, just as the blitzkrieg and the aircraft carrier revolutionized warfare following World War I. Among the significant new technologies often identified are information systems, including advanced sensors, communications, and data processing, long-range precision guided weapons, and advanced simulation techniques. If these views are correct, the international trade in arms will undergo a fundamental transformation. While specialized defense hardware will remain, dual-use equipment will become increasingly central to the performance of advanced military forces. As a result, it will become more difficult to track the implications of trade in defense-related hardware simply by monitoring transfers of major weapons systems.

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References

1. See Patrick Garrity , Why the Gulf War Still Matters: Foreign Perspectives on the War and the Future of International Security, Report no. 16 (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Center for National Security Studies, 1993), for a discussion of the impact of technological changes on the conduct of war. This study, which summarizes a substantial assessment undertaken by the Center for National Security Studies of Gulf war lessons learned, provides a useful survey of the current state of the debate from an international perspective.

Mary C. FitzGerald , “The Impact of the Military-Technical Revolution on Russian Military Affairs,” vol. 1 (Research paper, Hudson Institute, 20 Aug. 1993).

3. These conclusions draw heavily on Hirsh Goodman and W. Seth Carus , The Future Battlefield and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990).

4. The concept of the MTR has been developed in the U.S. defense community by Andrew Marshall, director of net assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The description of the MTR given here is based on discussions with Mr. Marshall, as well as members of his staff, including Dr. Tom Welsh and Dr. Andrew Krepinevich. However, they are in no way to be held responsible for this account, which reflects the author's own interpretations.

5. The history of the panzer forces is too well known to require much elaboration. The panzer forces adopted a new way of fighting by integrating tanks, mobile infantry, and artillery, along with close support aircraft. The system worked because the Germans gave considerable attention to communications, which enable the units to react quickly to battlefield developments.

6. Modern military forces can have so many different sensors collecting data that it becomes impossible to assimilate it all in a timely fashion. Data fusion is the integration of these diverse data streams so as to create a coherent picture.

7. The most commonly employed munitions during the conflict were upgraded versions of weapons first developed during the Vietnam war, including laser-guided bombs and Maverick television-guided missiles. These weapons constituted the bulk of the precision guided munitions used by U.S. forces during the conflict. At present, the United States is in the final stages of developing new generations of fire and forget weapons that can strike targets in all weathers with considerable precision over long ranges. Systems like the Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) and the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) will rely on extremely inexpensive integrated inertial and satellite navigation systems to guide weapons to the target. As a result, they will not have to be actively controlled after release, and they will rely on guidance systems considerably less expensive than those found in the current generation of cruise missiles.

William B. Scott, “DARPA System to Find, Kill Mobile Targets Quickly,” ibid., 22 Feb. 1993, pp. 59-60.

For a discussion of South Africa's so-called Greensat reconnaissance satellite, see Craig Covault, “South African Satellite Carries Earth Imaging System,” ibid., 21 June 1993, p. 24.

10.

“Army Prepared for Non-Lethal Combat,” ibid., p. 62.

11.

For a recent analysis of the history of technology, which puts the process squarely into a social and economic context, see George Basalla , The Evolution of Technology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

12.

12. Martin Van Creveld , The Transformation of War (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 18 ff, provides a discussion of the predominance of low-intensity conflict in modern warfare.