Title: War and Technology - Foreign Policy Research Institute
Headings: War and Technology
War and Technology
Nuclear Weapons and Their Impact on War
The American Approach to Military Technology
Conclusion

Content: To say so is a form of hubris that is not without importance to the American way of making war in particular. Whereas weapons have always helped determine tactics, tactics in turn helped determine organization, operations, strategy, logistics, and command and control systems. All these were driven by the technology in use and, in turn, drove it along. Thus the relationship between the two–war and technology, doctrine and the hardware required for putting it into effect–is two-sided. For example, did the development of mechanical transport before 1914 permit the huge artillery pieces of World War I, or did the need to break through fortifications lead to the development of those pieces as well as the mechanical transport without which they would have been useless? And yet the quest for technological superiority is eternal. From the first moment that Homo sapiens went to war, attempts were made to obtain victory by designing weapons that would be better than those of the enemy. Flint blades were replaced by copper ones. They in turn were replaced by bronze ones, which were replaced by iron ones, which were replaced by ones that were made of steel. Simple bows were replaced by long and composite ones, until finally firearms took over and did away with the bow altogether.