January 20, 2023
The Siren Song: Technology, JADC2, and the Future of War
The United States military keeps worshiping at the altar of high technology when addressing rising Chinese military threats. Unfortunately, the United States will not be able to brute force its way to superiority through technology. The Pentagon needs to acknowledge this reality and start making real changes, where they can matter.
This love of technology should not be surprising to long-time observers of the U.S. military. We are a nation of engineers with a boundless optimism in our scientific capabilities to overcome any obstacle, and perhaps nowhere is that more ingrained than the defense sector. We believe, in our bones, that superior technology will deliver us to victory.
Winning future wars will not be about maintaining information advantage but rather prevailing when neither side has the advantage. And that is not a war that can be won by new technologies alone
Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is the most recent example of this tech-first trend in American military developments aiming to “sense, make sense, and act at all levels and phases of war, across all domains, and with partners, to deliver information advantage with the speed of relevance.” Moving faster and increasing the speed of decisions is laudable in a vacuum. But technology is not applied in a vacuum: Adversaries get a vote, and China has spent the past 20-plus years looking at the U.S. military with a microscope. The fundamental concept at the core of PRC warfighting doctrine, systems destruction warfare, is aimed at the very heart of U.S. dominance, network-enabled precision targeting. Vast reams of translated open-source materials point to this reality.
Read the full article from Breaking Defense.
More from CNAS
-
How Trump Will Change the World
Commentary
Trump has won the chance to determine U.S. national security policy and will wield the impressive power embodied in the men and women now waiting to work for him....
By Peter Feaver
-
More than the Sum of its Parts: Developing a Coordinated U.S.-Australian Response to Potential Chinese Aggression
Commentary
If China engaged in a war of aggression, the United States, Australia, and other nations would not have much time to develop a coordinated response....
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
To Focus on China, U.S. Needs to Wean off Europe and Middle East Missions
Commentary
If the United States cannot rebalance its military focus toward the Indo-Pacific it risks expediting Chinese aggression in the region and furthering the decline of the US-led ...
By Carlton Haelig
-
The Evolution of Drones with Stacie Pettyjohn, Center for a New American Security
Podcast
Stacie Pettyjohn, Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, joins Squaring the Circle to discuss the evolution of drones. ...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
