Another technology that WWI planners didn't initially understand was the machine gun; they kept sending troops at the trenches, in spite of e.g. losing 70,000 troops per month at Verdun. Slow learners. And although aviation did have a small role in WWI, it wasn't really till WWII (with a small side trip to Spain) that forces learned how to wield it. (The Battle of Midway is of course famously the first naval battle in which the ships never saw one another.)
The US prides itself on "the most powerful military in the world" (tho do we really know where China is?). But someone recently noted on a social medium that the US has not definitively won a war since 1945. (Some look like victories — Iraq comes to mind — but did the US really win that one?) I hope this is making folks at the War College think very hard about tactics, weapons, and what it even means to "win" anymore.* Sounds like they're thinking about it, but as you say, the only people currently really testing it all out are the front-line troops in the hottest wars.
* Well, ok, the US hasn't had to worry about losing a war since 1865, since our territorial integrity has not been seriously threatened since then. Ukrainians have a much clearer sense of what constitutes winning (or at least losing, gah).
Too true. About 20 years ago there was an excellent book on modern war fighting, called "The Utility of Force," written by a British head of peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo. I wish it had received more attention. https://www.amazon.com/Utility-Force-Art-Modern-World/dp/0307278115
Another technology that WWI planners didn't initially understand was the machine gun; they kept sending troops at the trenches, in spite of e.g. losing 70,000 troops per month at Verdun. Slow learners. And although aviation did have a small role in WWI, it wasn't really till WWII (with a small side trip to Spain) that forces learned how to wield it. (The Battle of Midway is of course famously the first naval battle in which the ships never saw one another.)
The US prides itself on "the most powerful military in the world" (tho do we really know where China is?). But someone recently noted on a social medium that the US has not definitively won a war since 1945. (Some look like victories — Iraq comes to mind — but did the US really win that one?) I hope this is making folks at the War College think very hard about tactics, weapons, and what it even means to "win" anymore.* Sounds like they're thinking about it, but as you say, the only people currently really testing it all out are the front-line troops in the hottest wars.
* Well, ok, the US hasn't had to worry about losing a war since 1865, since our territorial integrity has not been seriously threatened since then. Ukrainians have a much clearer sense of what constitutes winning (or at least losing, gah).
Too true. About 20 years ago there was an excellent book on modern war fighting, called "The Utility of Force," written by a British head of peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo. I wish it had received more attention. https://www.amazon.com/Utility-Force-Art-Modern-World/dp/0307278115