The Future of War: Organizations As Weapons (Issues in 21st Century Warfare)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Many analysts have heralded the U.S. military's Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), a qualitative improvement in operational concepts and weapons that transforms the nature and character of warfare. Focusing on military technology, most argue that the new sensor, surveillance, communications, and computational technologies will usher in a period in which U.S. military capabilities will far exceed those of potential competitors. Developments in such fields as nanotechnology, robotics, and genetic engineering will greatly influence new weapons designs of the twenty-first century.
These discussions about military revolutions, however, too often ignore or only pay lip service to the role of military organization in improving combat capability. They downplay the relationship between organizational structure and outcomes, the difficulties of coordinating large organizations composed of many people and offices having specialized roles, and the challenges of calculation, attention, and memory that face individuals making decisions with inadequate or ambiguous information under short deadlines or stressful situations.
Mark D. Mandeles argues that the key to future combat effectiveness is not in acquiring new technologies but rather in the Defense Department's institutional and organizational structure and its effect upon incentives to invent, to innovate, and to conduct operations effectively. Doing so requires the military establishment to resist incentives to substitute short-term technological gains for long-term operational advantages and to maintain incentives for effective long-term innovation.
From the Publisher
Explains the radical changes in military technology that have reshaped the U.S. military and argues for significant restructuring of the defense bureaucracies to take full advantage of this revolution.
The Future of War: Organizations As Weapons (Issues in 21st Century Warfare)
The Future of War: Organizations As Weapons (Issues in 21st Century Warfare),Mark D. Mandeles,Potomac Books,1574886304,History,Military,Military - United States,Military Science,Military art and science,Organizational behavior,Political Freedom & Security - General,Political Freedom & Security - International Secur,Politics / Current Events,Technological innovations,Technology & Industrial Arts
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