Since the industrialization of Europe in the mid-19^th century, most commentators have shaped their visions of future war through the prism of technological innovation. At first, this trend was modified by strategic thinkers who, while accepting that the development of new weapons and their mass production with precision tools were changing tactics, argued for an underlying continuity in the principles of war and the strategies which shaped it. Before the First World War, Ferdinand Foch cited Napoleon when he taught at the École de guerre and Julian Corbett’s ideas on maritime strategy, propounded at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, drew their evidence from the age of sail.

The world wars of the first half of the 20^th century gave the materialists the edge. New technologies –the airplane and the submarine– took war into new dimensions, in the sky and under the sea, and the internal combustion edge promised revolutionary change on land. Within a decade after 1945, the dropping of the two atomic bombs had convinced most Americans that not even strategy could be exempt from the impact of scientific innovation. For Carl von Clausewitz, writing between 1815 and 1830, the principal precipitants of change in warfare had been social and political; for his post-1945 successors, they were physical and massively destructive.

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of today’s debates about future warfare is the almost complete absence of nuclear weapons and their effects. The focus is less on weapons and more on their enablers: drones, cyber and electronic warfare, and artificial intelligence (AI). They will deliver real-time intelligence, persistent surveillance, precision targeting, near-instantaneous reaction times, and enhanced lethality. The recurrent principles of “conventional war” (to use the vocabulary of the Cold War) seem about to be upended. Surprise will be impossible; the concentration of force will invite obliteration; the focus on the offensive, taking the initiative and mobility may all be called into question. Land warfare –as in Ukraine’s defense of its territory against Russia’s invasion– looks likely to be protracted and indecisive, with defense enjoying an advantage that will favor positional warfare. Airpower, the instrument for unlocking maneuver in the Second World War and thereafter, looks set to consolidate these trends rather than surmount them. Indeed, in Ukraine, a mix of manned aircraft, unmanned systems and precision-guided ballistic missiles has become the dominant factor leading to stalemate. [...]

Article Outline

• Nuclear Weapons
• Integrated Warfare
• Artificial Intelligence
• Organizational Effects for Armed Forces
• Command and Control
• Increased Lethality
• Attrition
• War at Sea
• The Laws of War

Hew Strachan is a military historian. He was a professor at the universities of Oxford and St Andrews.