Evolutionary Revolutions

The Battle of Cambrai took place in 1917. Trench warfare, where victory was measured in thousands of lives and inches of mud, had gone on for three years. It was a world war of attrition, and it was all the world knew. Defenses were too good; there was no way to break through until the British envisioned a breakthrough using a relatively new technology called the tank.  376 Mark IV tanks assaulted German lines, crushed lanes through the wire, and protected the infantry advance. All of this was done with complete surprise. The Germans were astonished. By nightfall of the first day, the British had pushed three miles into German lines. However, they could not press their advantage. Over the next nine days, the Germans regained every inch. The tank was as much of a failure as everything else in that “Great” war, and the Great Powers went back to their trenches for another year and a half before it ended.[1] The technology was not ready. Or was it?

There have been frequent disruptions in military history where the contemporary concept of warfare has been destroyed by technology. The typical, slow, steady evolution of military technology, strategy, doctrine, and tactics suddenly give way to cataclysmic changes in the basic nature of warfighting. The United States machine of warfare is bound to technology, more so than any other nation. Even since the introduction of the airplane, there have been technological changes that have produced dramatic shifts in the USAF’s way of doing business, including nuclear weapons, space flight, turbojet propulsion, supersonic flight, aerial refueling, precision weapons, fly-by-wire, cruise missiles, composite materials, and stealth. Each of these changed the USAF in some way. Many of these advances have been described in official histories as revolutionary. The ‘turbojet revolution’ of the 1950s is often cited, as is the ‘stealth revolution’ of the 1990s.[2] Hallion’s seminal work on hypersonics makes reference to a ‘hypersonic revolution,’ but that revolution has yet to be realized.[3] To describe any of these technologies as revolutionary could be misleading. The science behind the technology was revolutionary, as were the techniques in obtaining the science. But the application of that technology in a military context, is that revolutionary? Were these technologies revolutionary or merely evolutions of previous ideas?

Evolutionary change is when progress is made by improving something, a new generation of a tool, a process, a thought. Even when that progress is dramatic and impressive, there is still some continuity with the previous generation. A revolutionary technology is one that produces a sudden drastic change in a situation or discipline. There is almost no continuity between what is and what was. This something is entirely new.[4]

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn conceptualized the paradigm shift. The best example of a paradigm shift in science was the writings of Nicolaus Copernicus. At the time, the Ptolemaic view of astronomy was a shared belief. Everything orbited the Earth. Copernicus did not make any new discoveries; he simply interpreted the given data a different way. He made a new model, a new paradigm of the solar system, one which orbited the Sun.[5] On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was revolutionary. He was not the only one to see this. Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and others shared his new belief and challenged the status quo. The bureaucracy of science had to be destroyed and rebuilt. It took many years before it became accepted scientific fact, Copernicus never lived to see it, but the paradigm shift had occurred.

Paradigms are common sets of fundamental truths. The military is full of these. Doctrine, strategy, tactics and the very weapon systems that are used to fight are products of the military community’s set of fundamental truths. On December 6, 1941, the military establishment held firm in its belief that the battleship was the centerpiece of the fleet, and therefore, all naval power. The next day the paradigm shifted. Paradigms hold incredible power in the military establishment. Because they express the organization’s concept of fundamental truth, they set the foundation for everything. Doctrine, strategy, and tactics all seek to exploit the set of truths. Weapons are developed, and forces positioned to execute strategies and tactics. Entire industries and political constituencies grow around military forces and weapons. The advancement and promotion of officers are a function of how well those officers master doctrine, strategy, and tactics. Everything is within the context of something held as a fundamental truth.[6] What is invested in the ‘truth’ is the very existence of the bureaucracy. A revolution challenges this. When the fundamental truth is redefined, the entire system is at risk.

The military applications of the airplane were revolutionary. In fact, the airplane itself highlights a simple fact: a revolution does not always happen immediately. It took 40 years and two world wars for the airplane to reach its full potential. In that time the bureaucracy had to be challenged, destroyed and rebuilt. The bureaucracy resisted the change at every step.

Revolutions in military technology have historically been characterized by events where a force that did not recognize the significance of the change was defeated by one that did.

Despite the failure of the tank at Cambrai, the French and British saw the potential, but they treated it as an evolution of infantry. This was demonstrated in the way the British used the tank at Cambrai, to support infantry. In the interwar years French and British armies tied the tank to the infantry, and it was used to support infantry. It was mass-produced and distributed as such. There were no changes in doctrine or organization. This belief that the technology was the evolution of ground combat led to the Maginot Line. When the tank is viewed in the context of an evolutionary technology, the Maginot Line is genius. It would have stopped any infantry advance and given France the time it needed to mobilize. This line of fortifications was impervious to attack. The Maginot Line was in every way state-of-the-art and hailed as a work of military genius. On the other hand, it was a complete failure. But why?

The Germans recognized the power of the tank as well, but they saw it as a way to revolutionize their style of warfare. To Germany, the tank was an independent method of maneuver warfare on a much faster scale. The French had more tanks than the Germans, and more embarrassingly, the French tanks were better than the German tanks. But in the end, it did not matter. Revolutions in military technology have historically been characterized by events where a force that did not recognize the significance of the change was defeated by one that did. But it is never just the technology. The Germans challenged their bureaucracy and changed it to maximize the new technology. They changed doctrine, strategy, and organization to support new ideas.[7] Would the tank have been as effective without the associated doctrinal, strategic and organizational changes? Blitzkrieg was not a technological paradigm shift; it was an application of maneuver warfare paradigm shift that would not have been possible without the associated technology.[8] Similarly, would stealth technology have made such a change on the USAF without Warden’s Five Rings model that allowed the technology to be used to a fuller potential?

Ensuring realization of the full potential of a weapon system has become increasingly difficult over the years. Weapon systems tend to be more expensive than their predecessors. Therefore, decisions to acquire a technology have more impact on the defense policies of a nation.[9] Cruise missiles were developed over decades without any defined concept of why we needed them.[10] The usefulness was realized after they had been deployed. This illustrates how research and development sometimes operate independently of policy. The military, political, and diplomatic consequences of technology are seldom understood until long after the technology is in widespread use.

A revolutionary technology can reach its full military potential only if applied as such. Think of nuclear weapons. If the nuclear weapon had remained simply a weapon of war, it would have been the evolution of attrition strategy and strategic bombing. We would have seen nuclear use a hundred times over since 1945, and thought nothing of it. However, when nuclear weapons were seen and applied as revolutionary in the fundamental policy aspect of warfare, they changed everything.[11] Today, there is no aspect of our national policy that has not been touched in some way over the years by nuclear policy. However, it is important to note that even if applied as revolutionary, new technology is never a guarantee of victory. Sure, German use of the tank made short work of France, but the same tanks did not produce victory in Russia. The environment and application get a vote in the true potential of a revolutionary system.

Today, disruptive technologies and potentially revolutionary technologies are being researched at a feverish pace. Hypersonics, directed energy, artificial intelligence, machine autonomy, and quantum computing are only a few areas that have the capacity and capability to revolutionize how wars are conducted. But that does not mean that they have to. When posing the hypothetical question: “Are Hypersonics revolutionary or evolutionary?” it is important to note that there is no right answer. One nation or organization may view them as revolutionary in a certain context, and another may view them as evolutionary. Neither is absolutely correct, and neither is flat out wrong. In a hypothetical scenario, the USAF may view hypersonic cruise missiles as an evolution of current Global Strike doctrines but may simultaneously view hypersonic-enabled, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) as a way to revolutionize operationally responsive space warfare. The important part to note is organizations not willing to challenge their own status quo and redefine their doctrines, strategies, and organizational makeup will never be able to realize revolutionary technological advancement fully.

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ALONE AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE OFFICIAL VIEWS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, OR UNITED STATES AIR FORCE.

NOTES:

[1] Jacob Neufeld, George M. Watson and David Chenoweth, eds., Technology and the Air Force: A Retrospective Assessment (Washington DC: United States Air Force History Office, (1997), 134. http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100929-066.pdf

[2] Jacob Neufeld, George M. Watson and David Chenoweth, eds., Technology and the Air Force, iii.

[3] Dr. Richard P. Hallion, ed., The Hypersonic Revolution, (Washington DC: United States Air Force History Office, 1998).  http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100927-033.pdf

[4] Richard J. Dunn III, From Gettysburg to the Gulf and Beyond: Coping with Revolutionary Technological Change in Land Warfare (National Defense University: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1992), 3.

[5] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 10.

[6] Dunn, From Gettysburg to the Gulf and Beyond, 5.

[7] Neufeld, Technology and the Air Force, 134.

[8] Dunn, From Gettysburg to the Gulf and Beyond, 7.

[9] Richard K. Betts, ed., Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy and Politics (Washington DC: The Brookings Institute, 1981), 30.

[10] Betts, Cruise Missiles, 1.

[11] Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).