Technology and War Quotes

“Under the direction of General Westmoreland, significantly himself a graduate of the Harvard Business School in which McNamara had at one time taught, the computers zestfully went to work. Fed on forms that had to be filled in by the troops, they digested data on everything from the amount of rice brought to local markets to the number of incidents that had taken place in a given region in a given period of time. They then spewed forth a mighty stream of tables and graphs which purported to measure “progress” week by week and day by day. So long as the tables looked neat, few people bothered to question the accuracy, let alone the relevance, of the data on which they were based. So long as they looked neat, too, the illusion of having a grip on the war helped prevent people from attempting to gain a real understanding of its nature.
This is not to say that the Vietnam War was lost simply because the American defense establishment’s management of the conflict depended heavily on computers. Rather, it proves that there is, in war and presumably in peace as well, no field so esoteric or so intangible as to be completely beyond the reach of technology. The technology in use helps condition tactics, strategy, organization, logistics, intelligence, command, control, and communication. Now, however, we are faced with an additional reality. Not only the conduct of war, but the very framework our brains employ in order to think about it, are partly conditioned by the technical instruments at our disposal.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“War previously had been a question of units and men being assigned objectives and seeking to achieve them by one method or another. Following the new emphasis on what technology can do, it more and more became a matter of capabilities which a word of command might actualize into missions. These two approaches represent two entirely different frameworks of thought, even two irreconcilable mindsets. The first framework makes the mind think in terms of what it wants to achieve, the second, in terms of what it already has. The first seeks to shape the present in accordance with the demands of the future, the second to base the future on what is available at present. For better or worse, the transition from the one to the other is a result, and not the least important result, of the technological revolution that has taken place.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“Though the manner in which technological progress takes place was transformed during the nineteenth century, the nature of invention as a mental act remained the same. In the absence of detailed knowledge, one can only assume that men’s creative mental processes were the same before the Industrial Revolution as they are today. No invention is entirely new, and each one is necessarily made up of a combination of existing elements. As the full-rigged sailing ship demonstrates so well, the essence of invention consists of an act, which might almost be described as an act of violence, by which these elements are wrenched out of their accepted frameworks and put together in new combinations. Doing this requires a certain flexibility, not merely in the mind of the inventor, but also in the structure of the organization or social milieu to which he belongs. However, such flexibility merely constitutes a necessary condition for invention, never a sufficient one.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“The accelerated pace of technological innovation in modern times, however, was by no means the sole result of the new awareness of invention. At least as important was the fact that, at some point during the Industrial Revolution, progress became sustained. A transition took place from a situation in which inventions were for the most part not only exceptional but accidental and unexpected, to one in which technological change—and the anticipation of technological change—became the normal state of affairs. Applied to the military sphere, this meant that war itself became an exercise in managing the future, and the most successful commanders were not those most experienced in the ways of the past but, on the contrary, those who realized that the past would not be repeated.
In addition to becoming sustained, technological progress also became deliberate and therefore, up to a point, predictable. No longer regarding new devices as the gift of the gods or, increasingly, even as the near-miraculous brain-child of individual inventors, society began developing technology in directions which for one reason or another appealed to it. Often vast human and economic resources were expended to obtain some desired result, and the time was to come when it seemed that a goal only had to be formulated in order to be achieved.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“Type for type, ships in general, and warships in particular, have always been bigger than their land-bound equivalents, often representing by far the largest and most complicated movable machines produced by, and at the disposal of, a given society at a given time and place. This was true in regard to the junks of pre-modern China, the galleys and sailing ships of the ancient Mediterranean, and the cogs of medieval Europe. As even a casual glance at a nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier of 90,000 tons burden will confirm, that still remains true today.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“Obviously no army, except a one-man army, can either exist or operate without communications of some sort.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present

“Seeking truth, we must always begin by trying to recognize the limitations of our labor, or else serious misunderstandings will certainly result and thought itself may become impossible.”
― Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present