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That said, we have reached one of those points in military history when the role of technology in fighting wars has taken on an altogether new importance. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a real revolution. The term refers mainly to two developments: the power of instantly available, networked information, and the large-scale use of precision firepower. One of the foremost experts on the strategic implications of RMA, Professor Eliot Cohen, has graphically described its reality:

Satellites beaming fresh pictures of targets to pilots in jet aircraft, tanks communicating their locations to computerized command posts, generals peering remotely over the shoulders of company commanders through the cameras of orbiting unmanned aircraft – these are all phenomena of today, not the military dreams of tomorrow.*

America is and will remain far ahead of any of her rivals in the use of these technologies – as long as she keeps on investing in them.

But RMA is not without its drawbacks. I have already referred to one of these – a feeling that technology can make war casualty-free. A more tangible danger is what (in the jargon) are called ‘asymmetric threats’. By these are meant threats posed by powers which, although generally lagging well behind America militarily, are able to concentrate their resources upon and exploit American vulnerability in one particular aspect of warfare. Thus China has on its own admission been developing plans to use networks and the Internet to cripple America’s banking system and disrupt its military capability.* Information- or Cyber-warfare has leapt from the television screen to the centre of the Pentagon’s preoccupations. That is absolutely right. It is a rule as old as warfare itself that every advance in military technology provokes counter-measures. And history is full of rich and technologically advanced civilisations which fell before a more primitive enemy who had seen and exploited a systemic weakness.

That is why we have to:

 Give top priority to investing in and applying the latest defence technologies

 Be alert to the dangers that America’s technological sophistication could be undermined by asymmetric threats from a determined enemy

 Never believe that technology alone will allow America to prevail as a superpower.