I don't worry about the U.S. being overtaken in the military technology realm anytime soon. But just in case, here's this at the National Interest, "The Next Revolution In Military Affairs: How America's Military Will Dominate":
The Next Revolution In Military Affairs: How America's Military Will Dominate https://t.co/PC4T8XPKVm— National Interest (@TheNatlInterest) January 2, 2018
A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a theory about the evolution of warfare over time. An RMA is based on the marriage of new technologies with organizational reforms and innovative concepts of operations. The result is often characterized as a new way of warfare. There have been a number of RMAs just in the past century.
An example of an RMA is the mechanization of warfare that began in World War I with the introduction of military airpower, aircraft carriers, submarines and armored fighting vehicles. Out of these advances in technology came independent air forces, strategic bombardment and large-scale amphibious operations. Another occurred with the invention of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles leading to the creation of new organizations such as the now-defunct Strategic Air Command and new concepts such as deterrence. In the 1970s, the advent of information technologies and high-performance computing led to an ongoing RMA based largely on improved intelligence and precision strike weapons. The 1991 Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 are considered to be quintessential examples of this RMA.
According to the theory of dialectics, all revolutions give rise to counter-revolutions. The counter to the precision strike revolution arose in the form of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. These included weapons systems such as sophisticated air defenses, long-range precision fires and unmanned vehicles. But more significantly, the A2/AD counterrevolution seeks to exploit new means of combat -- electronic and cyber warfare, in particular, and operations in domains such as outer space -- to attack the sensors, networks, and command and control systems on which the precision strike revolution was based.
A still new RMA could be imminent. It is a function, first and foremost, of the proliferation of sensors and so-called smart devices, the creation of increasingly large, complex and sophisticated information networks, and growing potential in automated systems and artificial intelligence. The first step in this revolution, now evident in the commercial world and our personal lives, is the rise of the “Internet of Things.” But it is the marriage of ubiquitous information collection, virtually unlimited data storage, advanced computational analytics and global, near-instantaneous communications that will truly revolutionize the world.
This emergent RMA is also driven by the need to address the A2/AD challenge and to more fully exploit the opportunities presented by new technologies and concepts of operations. Electronic and cyber “weapons” can be employed both offensively and defensively. Sensors and weapons in each of the domains of warfare (land, air, sea, outer space and cyberspace) can be employed in all others.
The current overarching concept encompassing the various aspects of the new RMA is Multi-Domain Battle (MDB). Although the MDB approach to future warfare is still evolving, one reasonable definition of it can be found in the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command draft document, Multi-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century, 2025-2040: “a new, holistic approach to align friendly forces’ actions across domains, environments, and functions in time and physical spaces to achieve specific purposes in combat, as well as before and after combat in competition.” The key to the conduct of MDB is something called “convergence.” This is defined in the same document as...
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