Emerging Technologies and Military Utility
March 2025
Advances in science and technology improve military power. Industrialization and mass production, followed by new modes of power generation and communications changed warfare in the 19th century. Steam engines powered railroad and ships, revolutionizing transport and logistics. It no longer takes weeks or months to shift forces over enormous distances. The chemical industry developed high-powered explosives that made World War I’s Western Front a lunar landscape and transformed battlefields and tactics. The introduction of internal combustion engines and the radio provided for a dispersed mobility.
Digital technologies expand knowledge and precision and improve communication. Commanders are no longer limited to acting on what they can see on the battlefield. New orders no longer require sending vulnerable couriers or written notes. Precision guided weapons mean that an attack that required 100 aircraft to service a target can now be performed with only a few.
The use of new technology to enhance combatant performance has been accelerating since the start of the industrial age. The technologies for flying, seeing in the dark, using tiny chips to perform complex aiming calculations, or building weapons that rival the sun, would have struck earlier generations as science fiction, if not wizardry. Each wave of technological change alters what is required to field an effective force. The result has been increased firepower, lethality, precision, mobility and informational advantage, but these improvements do not address the most important shortcomings.
But technology is not the only variable or, in most contests, the most important variable, for predicting military success. That remains the ability to create effective strategies. One historical analogy demonstrates this. In 1940, the French Army had more and better tanks than the German Army. It still lost. The explanation for defeat lies with more than the number of tanks, of course. German use of aircraft was novel and aggressive. Innovations in radio communications technology increased the operational flexibility that was the hallmark of a few innovative commanders. A combination of new tactics and technologies led to what the commander of the French Army later described as the first time a country was defeated without its army being defeated first.
We can first consider the effect of technology in armed conflict using a simple attrition model. Over time and multiple engagements, the side with less advanced technology loses more of its forces. Many other variables affect the outcome of wars, but the destruction of an opponent’s forces will lead to their defeat. Maneuver warfare is an alternative to attrition, where the opposing force is outmaneuvered, creating an inability to respond effectively at an operational level and an erosion of morale and confidence at a strategic level. Maneuver warfare relies on creating confusion, shock, and paralysis in an opponent’s military and political leadership. Germany’s quick victory in France in 1940 is an example of maneuver warfare. World War One (in the trenches of France), with large forces grinding away at each other for years, is an example of attrition. A failure to adjust tactics to new weapons and technologies produced stalemate between 1914 and 1917; the German success in 1940 and 1941 reflected the thinking of a few innovative officers who had examined the problems of 1914 and managed to escape an inherent conservativism in military leadership.
The U.S. has relied on qualitative superiority over conventional opponents since at least the 1970s, when it was clear that it would not be able to outproduce the Warsaw Pact. Better technology meant that in each engagement, the Warsaw Pact would lose more than NATO. Since the Cold War, this approach has had mixed results. The highpoint was the swift victory in the first Persian Gulf War. In contrast, during the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, American qualitative superiority produced an apparently quick military victory, followed by stalemate and then defeat. Technology is not a substitute for strategy.
These assumptions create the context for the concern that American technological advantage is eroding as our primary strategic opponent reaches technological parity. But too often the discussion of the military use of emerging technology ignores the fundamental limits of technological superiority, drawing too heavily on the 1990s “Revolution in Military Affairs” or various “offset” strategies. Technological advances require the development of new tactics and doctrine to create military success, but above all it must be used in the service of effective strategy. Technology will not compensate for deficiencies in strategy. Better technology can increase the likelihood of success, but only as one factor in combination with other factors, the most important of which are doctrine, strategy, and leadership.
Assumptions about the advantage conferred by emerging technologies also reflect a fascination with what is new, but this is not always connected to the realities of warfare. In the 1930s, fast bomber aircraft were a relatively new technology and their appearance was accompanied by an assumption that “the bomber will always get through.” This was quickly proved wrong. The bomber did not always get through and even when it did, this was not enough to produce victory against determined opponents.
The market’s fascination with AI (and misconceptions over what it can do) has spilled over into warfare. AI can make weapons more precise and agile and increase their lethality, but it will not improve strategy-making. Emerging technologies like AI can provide powerful tools, but they are not a substitute for strategy nor, in fact, are they capable of generating strategy. This means AI will not correct the most damaging American weakness, the inability to develop effective strategy. Why this is so requires a separate discussion of strategic culture and international relations, topics on which technology has only an indirect effect.
Technological leadership has shaped American strategy since 1990. But after twenty years of combat and despite having better technology, a superb military force, control of the air and sea, and ample funding, the U.S. was unable to achieve its goals in the Middle East. More importantly, it was unable to recognize that its goals were unachievable, despite this being evident to outside, and was unable to act on this realization to cut its losses and withdraw. American opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan were too weak to capitalize on this to do more than frustrate ambitious American goals, but that may not be true for peer opponents in the future.
The Cold War is not a useful precedent. Then, two powerful opponents confronted each other and, while avoiding general conflict, engaged in proxy wars, and tested each other with occasional confrontations. But, prompted by the shock of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this conflict took place in the context of ongoing bilateral negotiations that do not now exist. The Cold War relied on building and refining weapons and expanding armed forces with the intent (or perhaps the hope) to never use them. The accumulation of advanced arms in large quantities had a symbolic and political effect, a kind of shadow boxing. Had one side pulled significantly ahead of the other in this race, it would have affected alliances and political influence (if there is no compensating improvement by the opponent). This was a global conflict, and China’s military aims are now more regionally focused and do not require the same degree of parity in capabilities.
China once depended on western sources for acquisition of technology, but this dependence is shrinking as its tech economy matures and as its government invests billions. Overall, China increasingly has an ability to develop advanced weapons capabilities in key areas. In a few cases (like hypersonic missiles), it is ahead of the U.S. In other cases (like shipbuilding) it simply outbuilds the U.S. These factors means that PLA modernization is outside of U.S. control and technology denial will not by itself ensure superiority. The real contest may be over which side does better at creating new strategy and doctrine. Neither China nor the U.S. has demonstrated advantage in strategy-making, but some analysts believe that unlike the U.S. military, the PLA is less invested in legacy systems and the 20th century mindset that accompanies them.
Two immediate conclusions from this discussion are that technological superiority unaccompanied by changes in doctrine and strategy is of limited value. Innovation in strategy and doctrine is as least as important as innovation in technology. The second is that technological superiority is not the most important variable in the conflict the U.S. has entered. Overestimation of the role of technology absent better strategies can create risk for the U.S.
The most important new weapons will be unmanned vehicles and robotics, hypersonic delivery systems, biotechnology, and the software tools known as artificial intelligence. 20th century weapons, such as carriers and tanks, are increasingly vulnerable to precision munitions, missiles, and drones. Unfortunately, efforts in the U.S. to retain qualitative advantages from emerging technologies are hampered by regulatory and cultural obstacles. Drones are an example. What would take Ukraine days to produce will take months in the U.S.
Current U.S. policy does not do enough to address these problems. Concern over technological parity with China led to a regulatory surge to deny access to technology for it and others, but technology denial is a Cold War approach designed for the bifurcated world of the 1970s. A reliance on technology denial will not only fail to guarantee military success, it will damage America’s ability to maintain technological leadership, which requires both investment (Federal and private sector) and access to the global market. To outpace opponents like China, U.S. policy must focus on building technological advantage, not on trying to deny it to others.