Abstract
Lake analyzes the organizational culture of the Army and its way of war, emphasizing both its traditional emphasis on the human element and its more recent embrace of technology. This chapter examines how the Army, with its human centric yet still materialist understanding of war, has reacted when confronted by the problems and potentials inherent in rapid technological change. By exploring the Army’s adoption of helicopters, its cancelled RAH-66 Comanche and Future Combat System (FCS) programs, and its nascent interest in unmanned systems, Lake shows how the Army is subject to enthusiasm about technology, and how its preparation for high-intensity conventional war creates the conditions for future overstretch.
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Notes
- 1.
Excluding the Army Air Corps, which became the Air Force in 1947.
- 2.
The Army budget peaked in 2008 at sixfold larger than the 1948 budget in constant terms, due to the costs of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- 3.
See also the discussion of Jomini and American strategic culture in Chap. 3.
- 4.
Note, however, that in comparison to the Native Americans they faced, the Army generally possessed superior technology and superior firepower.
- 5.
While Mahnken interprets this as evidence of the Army substituting technology for manpower, it is more the exception that proves the rule since at the time the Army was not all that concerned with fielding technologically superior equipment, and certainly was not pursuing high technology for its own sake. If anything, the embrace of tactical nuclear weapons was oriented more by the materialistic emphasis on firepower and the bureaucratic need for the Army to prove its relevance in a nuclear era rather than an affection for technology.
- 6.
The number of “critical technologies” fluctuated during this program because the Army sometimes redefined what a “critical technology” was, and because of design changes that incorporated systems from other programs as substitutions for some previously planned to be original to the FCS.
- 7.
The Army concluded that better situational awareness and information was not an adequate substitute for armor given the missions the Army was involved in during 2009 (United States Government Accountability Office 2010a, p. 5).
- 8.
That last requirement is not particularly restrictive, since the C-17 can carry an M-1 tank.
- 9.
Perhaps too open, based on defense industry concerns that they did not know what the Army was looking for or how many vehicles the Army actually intended to buy.
- 10.
The CBO also suggested that simply cancelling the GCV program may be the best bet, since it involves less program risk and the need for an M-2 Bradley replacement is not clear.
- 11.
For the Army’s take on this, see The Army Capstone Concept (United States Army Training and Doctrine Command 2009).
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Lake, D.R. (2019). The Army and Technology. In: The Pursuit of Technological Superiority and the Shrinking American Military. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-78681-7_6
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