BIRMINGHAM – Back before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, before military thinkers and policymakers became obsessed with counterinsurgency, the idea of the day was the Revolution in Military Affairs, or RMA. RMA, a doctrine that emphasized modern information, technology and communications, was sparked by Soviet analysis of the West’s move towards more reliance on precision targeting and coordination.
The reclusive and enigmatic “Yoda” of the Pentagon, Andrew Marshall, was poring through Russian language journals and presumably secret communiques. He was intrigued by the Soviet identification of a “Military Technical Revolution.” Europe throughout the Cold War occupied the center of the chessboard. On one hand, grand strategy revolved around a massive preemptive blitz of tanks and troops supported by air and even tactical nuclear weapons, emanating from the Soviet bloc, and on the other hand, arms buildup and nuclear deterrence from the West.
When Russian and Chinese thinkers witnessed an actual invasion using massed weapons and troops, supported by air and stand-off cruise missiles, as a U.S.-led coalition easily pushed Iraqi forces from Kuwait, they believed they saw the future of modern warfare. A combination of precision-guided weapons, networked intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and modern command and control would be a force multiplier while eliminating the “fog of war.”
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Richard Stiennon is an IT security industry analyst. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (2010) and writes the Cyber Domain column for Forbes.com This article is based on his Master’s Dissertation in War in the Modern World at King’s College, London, and is the subject of his new book, Surviving Cyberwar, the first history of nation state use of networks to project force.
