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ABSTRACT
The United States is launching another defence innovation initiative to offset the growing military-technological might of countries such as China, Russia and Iran. However, by utilising emerging technologies from the commercial sector to achieve greater military power the US may further open up the technology gap within NATO. This raises serious questions for NATO’s European allies. This article probes the nature of the US’s latest innovation strategy and sets it within the strategic context facing Europe today. Whether European governments, firms and militaries will join the US in its new defence innovation drive will hinge on politico-military and industrial considerations.
Notes
1 Mark Webber, Ellen Hallams and Martin A. Smith, ‘Repairing NATO’s Motors’, International Affairs 90/4 (2014), 773–93.
2 Luis Simón and Daniel Fiott, ‘Europe after the U.S. Pivot’, Orbis 58/3 (2014), 413–28.
3 Kareem Ayoub and Kenneth Payne, ‘Strategy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence’, Journal of Strategic Studies (2015).
4 Tai Ming Cheung, ‘The Chinese Defense Economy’s Long March from Imitation to Innovation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 34/3 (2011), 325–54.
5 David S. Yost, ‘The NATO Capabilities Gap and the European Union’, Survival 42/4 (2000), 97.
6 James Sperling, ‘Capabilities Traps and Gaps: Symptom or Cause of a Troubled Transatlantic Relationship?’, Comparative Security Policy 25/3 (2004), 452–55.
7 Yost, ‘The NATO Capabilities Gap and the European Union’, 99.
8 David J. Galbreath, ‘Western European Armed Forces and the Modernisation Agenda: Following or Falling Behind?’, Defence Studies 14/4 (2014), 394.
9 Terry Terriff and Frans Osinga, ‘The Diffusion of Military Transformation to European Militaries’, in Terry Terriff, Frans Osinga and Theo Farrell (eds), A Transformation Gap? American Innovations and European Military Change (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press 2010), 188.
10 Ibid., 188–89.
11 Steven J. Coonen, ‘The Widening Military Capabilities Gap between the United States and Europe: Does it Matter?’, Parameters 36/3 (2006), 67.
12 David S. Yost, ‘The U.S.–European Capabilities Gap and the Prospects for ESDP’, in Jolyon Howorth and John T.S. Keeler (eds), Defending Europe: The EU, NATO and the Quest for European Autonomy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), 87.
13 See Alan Tonelson, ‘NATO Burden-Sharing: Promises, Promises’, Journal of Strategic Studies 23/3 (2000), 31–38.
14 Coonen, ‘The Widening Military Capabilities Gap between the US and Europe’, 68.
15 Bastian Giegerich, ‘NATO’s Smart Defence: Who’s Buying?’, Survival 54/3 (2013), 76.
16 Ellen Hallams and Benjamin Schreer, ‘Towards a “Post-American” Alliance? NATO Burden-Sharing after Libya’, International Affairs 88/2 (2012), 313–27.
17 Robert Gates, ‘The Security and Defence Agenda (Future of NATO)’, speech delivered by Secretary of Defense, Brussels, 10 June 2011.
18 Webber et al., ‘Repairing NATO’s Motors’, 781.
19 Don Thieme, ‘NATO Renewed: Building the New Transatlantic Strategic Alliance’, RUSI Journal 159/3 (2014), 42–43.
20 Giegerich, ‘NATO’s Smart Defence’.
21 Ethan B. Kapstein, ‘Allies and Armaments’, Survival 44/2 (2002), 145.
22 Yost, ‘The NATO Capabilities Gap and the European Union’, 107.
23 Sperling, ‘Capabilities Traps and Gaps’, 455.
24 Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr, ‘People, no tech: DepSecDef work on 3rd Offset, JICSPOC’, Breaking Defense, 9 February 2016, <http://breakingdefense.com/2016/02/its-not-about-technology-bob-work-on-the-3rd-offset-strategy/>.
25 Ibid.
26 Aaron Mehta, ‘For NATO, a cloudy future’, DefenceNews, 23 May 2015, <http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/isr/2015/05/23/nato-combat-cloud-future-mercier-shaffer-interoperable-f35-typhoon-rafale-network/70893364/>.
27 Douglas Barrie, ‘Libya’s Lessons: The Air Campaign’, Survival 54/6 (2012), 57–65.
28 Robert Martinage, ‘Toward a New Offset Strategy: Exploiting U.S. Long-Term Advantages to Restore U.S. Global Power Projection Capability’, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2014, 18, 24.
29 Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘China’s Anti-access Strategy in Historical and Theoretical Perspective’, Journal of Strategic Studies 34/3 (2011), 299–323.
30 Robert Work, ‘The Third U.S. Offset Strategy and Its Implications for Partners and Allies’, speech by the Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Willard Hotel, Washington, 28 January 2015.
31 Alexander Kott, David Alberts, Amy Zalman, Paulo Shakarian, Fernando Maymi, Cliff Wang and Gang Qu, ‘Visualizing the Tactical Ground Battlefield in the Year 2050: Workshop Report’, US Army Research Laboratory, June 2015.
32 Paul Szoldra, ‘What the world will be like in 30 years, according to the US government’s top scientists’, Tech Insider, 10 December 2015, <http://www.techinsider.io/darpa-world-predictions-2015-12>.
33 Work, ‘The Third U.S. Offset Strategy and Its Implications for Partners and Allies’.
34 Jeffrey Krolik, ‘Upward Falling Payloads (UFP)’, DARPA, 17 December 2015.
35 Luis Simón, ‘Assessing NATO’s Eastern European “Flank”’, Parameters 44/3 (2014), 67–79.
36 Congressional Budget Office, ‘Growth in DoD’s Budget from 2000 to 2014‘, 2014, 1.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 2.
39 Paul Scharre, Robotics on the Battlefield Part II: The Coming Swarm (Washington: Center for a New American Security 2014), 5.
40 Ibid., 13.
41 Robert Work, ‘The Third Offset Strategy and America’s Allies and Partners’, speech by the Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Royal United Services Institute, London, 10 September 2015.
42 Peter J. Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz, Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry (New York: Columbia University Press 2006), 30.
43 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, ‘The National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015‘, 2015.
44 Judith Reppy, ‘Dual-Use Technology: Back to the Future?’, in Ann R. Markusen and Sean S. Costigan (eds), Arming the Future: A Defence Industry for the 21st Century (New York: Council on Foreign Relations 1999), 269.
45 US Government Accountability Office, ‘Key Factors Drive Transition of Technologies, but Better Training and Data Dissemination Can Increase Success’, Report GAO-16-5, 2015.
46 Ibid., 27.
47 See for example Nina Kollars, ‘Military Innovation’s Dialectic: Gun Trucks and Rapid Acquistion’, Security Studies 23/4 (2014), 787–813; Adam M. Jungdahl and Julia M. Macdonald, ‘Innovation Inhibitors in War: Overcoming Obstacles in the Pursuit of Military Effectiveness’, Journal of Strategic Studies 38/4 (2015), 467–99.
48 Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (New York: Cornell University Press 1984), 178.
49 Sperling, ‘Capabilities Traps and Gaps’, 452–55.
50 See for example Keith L. Shimko, The Iraq Wars and America’s Military Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press 2010).
51 Anthony King, The Transformation of Europe’s Armed Forces: From the Rhine to Afghanistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011), 103; see also Jon R. Lindsay, ‘Reinventing the Revolution: Technological Visions, Counterinsurgent Criticism, and the Rise of Special Operations’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36/3 (2013), 422–53.
52 Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), 47.
53 Olof Kronvall, ‘Transformation: The Key to Victory?’, in Karl Erik Haug and Ole Jørgen Maaø (eds), Conceptualising Modern War (London: Hurst 2011), 261.
54 Strachan, The Direction of War, 47–50.
55 Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass 2002), 1.
56 Gordon Adams and Guy Ben-Ari, Transforming European Militaries: Coalition Operations and the Technology Gap (Abingdon: Routledge 2006), 4.
57 Ibid., 6.
58 Elinor C. Sloan, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Implications for Canada and NATO (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press 2002), 78.
59 David C. Gompert, Richard L. Kugler and Martin C. Libicki, Mind the Gap: Promoting a Transatlantic Revolution in Military Affairs (Washington: National Defense University Press 1999), 8.
60 Theo Farrell and Sten Rynning, ‘NATO’s Transformation Gaps: Transatlantic Differences and the War in Afghanistan’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/5 (2010), 680.
61 Alexander Mattelaer, ‘How Afghanistan Has Strengthened NATO’, Survival 53/6 (2012), 134, 136.
62 Farrell and Rynning, ‘Transatlantic Differences and the War in Afghanistan’, 696.
63 Ibid., 685.
64 R.D. Williams, ‘Is the West’s Reliance on Technology the Panacea for Future Conflict or Its Achilles’ Heel?’, Defence Studies 1/2 (2001), 51; see also Stephen J. Cimbala, Clausewitz and Chaos: Friction in War and Military Policy (Westport CT: Praeger 2001); Azar Gat, ‘Ideology, National Policy, Technology and Strategic Doctrine between the World Wars’, Journal of Strategic Studies 24/3 (2001), 1–18.
65 Ron Smith, Military Economics: The Interaction of Power and Money (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2009), 132.
66 Robert J. Art, ‘To What Ends Military Power?’, International Security 4/4 (1980), 4.
67 Strachan, The Direction of War, 191.
68 Work, ‘The Third U.S. Offset Strategy and Its Implications for Partners and Allies’.
69 F.G. Hoffman, ‘“Hybrid Threats”; Neither Omnipotent nor Unbeatable’, Orbis 54/3 (2010), 441–55; Rod Thornton, ‘The Changing Nature of Modern Warfare’, RUSI Journal 160/4 (2015), 40–48.
70 Simón, ‘Assessing NATO’s Eastern European “Flank”’.
71 The Guardian, ‘Fighter jet flies with 3D printed parts’, 6 January 2014, <http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/06/fighter-jet-flies-with-3d-printed-parts>.
72 Saab Group, ‘Innovation in Every Fibre’, 6 August 2015.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daniel Fiott
Daniel Fiott is a researcher at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a doctoral fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).