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Information technology will radically change modern warfare just as
gunpowder revolutionised military strategy during the Middle Ages, according
to a new US Army manual.

The manual lays out an up-to-date set of military principles to underlie the
strategy and tactics used in battles. ‘Microprocessing, miniaturisation,
communications and space technologies have combined to permit almost
real-time intelligence and information sharing, distributed decision making,
and rapid execution of orders,’ it says.

The document favours electronic warfare, in which the army detects
electronic emissions from enemy forces and intercepts or disrupts enemy
communications. Commanders can ‘use the effects of these systems to slow,
misdirect or confound enemy operations,’ the manual advises.

General Gordon Sullivan, the US Army’s chief of staff, cites the
hypothetical example of a commander of a battalion of tanks: ‘He is coming
across the desert floor at, say, 15 or 20 kilometres an hour. He knows where
all of his tanks are . . . so he doesn’t have to go out there and
determine, is this friend or foe?’

At times, the document becomes positively futuristic. On the subject of
training orbiting weapons on military targets on Earth it states: ‘With its
potential global positioning, space-based firepower can suppress, neutralise
or destroy enemy offensive and defensive capabilities.’

Not everyone is so excited by the high-technology revolution. John Pike of
the Federation of American Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs says such weapons are generally
useless against technically unsophisticated enemies such as those in Somalia
and Bosnia. ‘Most of these weapons are not terribly useful against rifles
and mortars,’ he says.

Meanwhile, officials in the defence department are looking for more mundane
payoffs from high-technology weaponry: They hope the weapons will allow the
Clinton administration to trim the size of the armed forces.

After the end of the Cold War, the Bush administration wanted the Pentagon
to be large enough to fight two regional wars simultaneously. But Clinton’s
military staff are considering further cuts, after which the US would be
able to fight only one regional war while keeping a second enemy at bay
until the first war was over.

Defence secretary Les Aspin said last week: ‘We must be able to detect the
main concentrations of the enemy force, process and analyse the information,
and then pass it to the shooters before it becomes obsolete. We have much to
learn about orchestrating the operation of hundreds of sophisticated systems
into one coherent operation.’

One advance, he said, would be the development of new types of smart
munitions that could easily destroy large numbers of invading tanks.
‘Weapons that seek their own targets can be dispensed by aircraft in large
numbers, engaging armour concentrations rather than individual armoured
vehicles,’ he said. ‘Wide-area smart mines can be dispensed by air and other
means to delay the aggressor and drive his forces into narrower paths
creating even more lucrative targets.