worth noting that although American and American-led forces were militarily victorious
in each of the four campaigns just cited, having won the battles the United States
discovered that warfare and criminal violence continued, albeit in different forms. Peace
worthy of the name, which is to say political peace, did not break out in any of the four
cases.
A large body of defence theorists argue that the master strategic narrative of the
post-Cold War period, to the present day and well beyond, is a process of transition from
Industrial Age warfare to a new chapter of warfare shaped and driven by the technologies
of the Information Age (Benbow, 2004; Gray, 2006c; Hammes, 2004; Keaney and Cohen,
1995; Owens, 2000). For the better part of the 1990s, American analysts were debating
the proposition that an RMA was under way. Although early evidence of its coming had
been visible late in Vietnam with the introduction of laser- and radar-guided bombs,
unmistakable signals of major change were provided by the air campaign (17 January–
24 February) that preceded the 100-hour ground war against Iraq in 1991. Coalition
‘briefers’, led theatrically by the Allied Commander, the charismatic General Norman
Schwarzkopf, made effective propaganda use of video footage of the discrete destruction
wrought by smart precision-guided munitions (PGMs). It so happens that only 10 per
cent of the aerial munitions employed in 1991 were precision guided, but the general
impression given was that something momentous had changed in the conduct of warfare.
In 2003, by contrast, precision guidance assisted as much as 70 per cent of the aerial
firepower directed against Iraqi forces and other targets. There is no doubt that a military-
technical revolution (MTR), at least, was well in train, if not necessarily a process worthy
of being called an RMA.
Since the early 1990s the US armed forces in particular have been able to exploit the
tools granted them by the Information Age to change the way that they fight. The great
enabler of this MTR/RMA has been the computer, of course. The United States set its
planning sights on three necessary achievements: information dominance, or dominant
battle-space knowledge; the internetting of forces so as to exploit that information
dominance; and precision strike. To date, the US armed forces would appear to have
succeeded impressively in making major progress towards their tactical goals, but, to
repeat the vital caveat, they have yet to fight a sophisticated regular enemy. As a result,
one cannot be sure that America’s information-led forces do not suffer from some
fatal weaknesses. One of the lessons of strategic history is that RMAs are eventually
always emulated, offset or effectively evaded. There is no final move. In the current case
of America’s exploitation of advanced electronics, the Russian military professes a
contingent intention to achieve its neutralization by the delivery of low-yield nuclear
weapons. The electromagnetic pulse (emp) generated by a nuclear explosion is deadly to
unshielded electronic equipment. This would be a brute force approach, crude and
dangerous, but probably highly effective.
Arguably, over the past fifteen years the United States has effected an RMA with
reference to the waging of regular warfare. The US superiority in C^4 ISTAR (Command,
Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting And
Reconnaissance) is so marked, at least at present, that no enemy could engage America
in regular warfare with any prospect of success. The United States is unquestionably king
of the regular battle space in most geographical environments. Through precision
firepower delivered from altitude by aircraft, cruise missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles
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