War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Alex Roland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190605405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book

Book Description
The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Alex Roland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190605405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book

Book Description
The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.

Science and Technology in the Global Cold War

Science and Technology in the Global Cold War PDF Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262526530
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 467

Get Book

Book Description
Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it. The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War. Contributors Elena Aronova, Erik M. Conway, Angela N. H. Creager, David Kaiser, John Krige, Naomi Oreskes, George Reisch, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sonja D. Schmid, Matthew Shindell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Zuoyue Wang, Benjamin Wilson

War Made New

War Made New PDF Author: Max Boot
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101216832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 640

Get Book

Book Description
A monumental, groundbreaking work, now in paperback, that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, War Made New focuses on four "revolutions" in military affairs and describes how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air strikes have remade the field of battle—and shaped the rise and fall of empires. War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare's evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation-state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare and the rise of centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War—arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, "irregular" forces to become an increasingly significant threat.

A Global History of Warfare and Technology

A Global History of Warfare and Technology PDF Author: Kaushik Roy
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811934789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description
This book addresses the global history of technology, warfare and state formation from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Using a combination of top-down and bottom-up methodologies, it examines both interstate and intrastate conflicts with a focus on Eurasian technology and warfare. It shows how human agency and structural factors have intertwined, creating a complex web of technology and warfare. It also explores the interplay between technological and non-technological factors to chart the evolution of warfare from its origins to the present day, arguing that the interactions between civilian and military sectors have shaped the use of technology in warfare. Given its scope and depth, it is a valuable resource for researchers in fields such as world history, history of science and technology, history of warfare and imperialism and international relations.

Science, Technology, and Warfare

Science, Technology, and Warfare PDF Author: Monte D. Wright
Publisher: The Minerva Group, Inc.
ISBN: 0898752116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
This book, originally published in 1969, discusses the development of the complex relationships between science and technology and warfare from the Renaissance to the 1960s. The nature of warfare has always been largely determined by contemporary technology. Instances of technological change undertaken for the sake of military advantage have also been relatively common in history. The relationships between science and warfare however have been much more variable and ambiguous. "Science, Technology, and Warfare" requires a fourth term to be complete "Management " because the primary military innovator never has been the scientist, technologist, or soldier, but rather the administrative "organizer of victory."

The Knowledgeable State

The Knowledgeable State PDF Author: Maurice Pearton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arms race
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book

Book Description
Bog om ændringerne i krigsførelse i de sidste 150 år, specielt om den videnskabsbaserede industri som revolutionerede staternes militære muligheder og ændrede såvel gængse ideer om krigen, dens natur og rolle som krigens forbindelse med diplomati i forfølgelsen af nationale mål.

Competing with the Soviets

Competing with the Soviets PDF Author: Audra J. Wolfe
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421409011
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book

Book Description
A synthetic account of how science became a central weapon in the ideological Cold War. Honorable Mention for the Forum for the History of Science in America Book Prize of the Forum for the History of Science in America For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project. The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics; explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs; and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise. Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, Competing with the Soviets looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists’ choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.

The Kill Chain

The Kill Chain PDF Author: Christian Brose
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 031653336X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
From a former senior advisor to Senator John McCain comes an urgent wake-up call about how new technologies are threatening America's military might. For generations of Americans, our country has been the world's dominant military power. How the US military fights, and the systems and weapons that it fights with, have been uncontested. That old reality, however, is rapidly deteriorating. America's traditional sources of power are eroding amid the emergence of new technologies and the growing military threat posed by rivals such as China. America is at grave risk of losing a future war. As Christian Brose reveals in this urgent wake-up call, the future will be defined by artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and other emerging technologies that are revolutionizing global industries and are now poised to overturn the model of American defense. This fascinating, if disturbing, book confronts the existential risks on the horizon, charting a way for America's military to adapt and succeed with new thinking as well as new technology. America must build a battle network of systems that enables people to rapidly understand threats, make decisions, and take military actions, the process known as "the kill chain." Examining threats from China, Russia, and elsewhere, The Kill Chain offers hope and, ultimately, insights on how America can apply advanced technologies to prevent war, deter aggression, and maintain peace.

Information Technology and Military Power

Information Technology and Military Power PDF Author: Jon R. Lindsay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749579
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.

Engineering Victory

Engineering Victory PDF Author: Thomas F. Army Jr.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421419386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
Superior engineering skills among Union soldiers helped ensure victory in the Civil War. Engineering Victory brings a fresh approach to the question of why the North prevailed in the Civil War. Historian Thomas F. Army, Jr., identifies strength in engineering—not superior military strategy or industrial advantage—as the critical determining factor in the war’s outcome. Army finds that Union soldiers were able to apply scientific ingenuity and innovation to complex problems in a way that Confederate soldiers simply could not match. Skilled Free State engineers who were trained during the antebellum period benefited from basic educational reforms, the spread of informal educational practices, and a culture that encouraged learning and innovation. During the war, their rapid construction and repair of roads, railways, and bridges allowed Northern troops to pass quickly through the forbidding terrain of the South as retreating and maneuvering Confederates struggled to cut supply lines and stop the Yankees from pressing any advantage. By presenting detailed case studies from both theaters of the war, Army clearly demonstrates how the soldiers’ education, training, and talents spelled the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat. He also reveals massive logistical operations as critical in determining the war’s outcome.