On the Digital Brink
Chris Lynch and Oliver Lewis
March 11, 2021
This article, the first in a series on digital defense, will look at how the United States should bring tech experts and the innovative ideas they develop into the Department of Defense at an accelerated rate, and why those innovations should be shared with allies. It will be followed by stories on how safety science can inform the use of artificial intelligence in the military, and on how the Army’s 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers can be a model for virtual training of the armed forces today to face future conflicts, not past wars.
The world stands on the brink of a new way of war, as digital technology takes over the military just like it has taken over entire industries in the civilian sector — the retail business, financial services, and the media. Companies that have not embraced software are being leapfrogged and left behind. In the military this can be a matter of life or death. Both of the writers of this story have seen in our careers the consequences of relying on antiquated systems from past wars: soldiers reduced to using paper maps in combat in Afghanistan because they had no functioning digital mapping, servicemembers in Afghanistan blown up in vehicles lacking state-of-the-art protection, soldiers badly injured in Iraq by Islamic State drones dropping grenades on them because they lacked simple electronic jamming devices to stop them. It is not that the technologies to deal with these problems did not exist — all were available in the private sector. They simply didn’t exist in the military when and where they were needed. Nor is it just a question of updating technology. To be able to fight the wars of the future, the military should come to see itself as a software-enabled enterprise.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/03/on-the-digital-brink/
