What is a military innovation and why it matters

ABSTRACT

The study of military innovation is one of the most important topics in the strategic studies arena, but when it comes to defining the term ‘military innovation,’ there is a remarkable lack of consensus. Lack of agreement on a definition makes it harder to advance knowledge beyond specific cases and for ongoing research to have policy relevance. Currently, what one might consider an innovation another might call an adaptation of an existing technology or tactic, or neither. To move forward, we survey dozens of existing studies and review articles for proposed definitions and examples of military innovation. We locate common and differentiating themes across a wide range of definitions and (at times) conflicting conceptual terminology. We then propose a new framework for thinking about military innovation that builds on existing research and suggests a path forward for future research. Finally, in an online appendix, we demonstrate the plausibility of the framework applied to prominent cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Military innovation
• military adaptation
• organizational change

Acknowledgements

We thank Tom Mahnken, Theo Farrell, Jon Lindsay, Alexander Kirss, the anonymous referee, and the editors. Excellent research assistance was provided by Julia Ciocca, Alexander Rabin, and Camila Celi. All errors are the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Notes

¹ Michael C. Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 11

² For example, see Adam Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 5 (2006)

³ Stuart Griffin, ‘Military innovation studies: Multidisciplinary or lacking discipline?,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 1–2 (2017), 217–218

⁴ Griffin, ‘Military innovation studies’, 199–200

⁵ We cross referenced literature cited in Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, and Griffin, ‘Military innovation studies’. A full list of the texts is in the Appendix.

⁶ Each definition was entered into a corresponding spreadsheet (direct quote with page number). For edited volumes, assistants were instructed to see if the editors consolidated and/or drew from the authors in volume to provide their own definition (usually in the introductory chapter).

⁷ Some examples of notable scholarship on military innovation that were omitted from our sample due to the selection criteria include Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Rebecca Slayton, Arguments That Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949–2012. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013); Matthew Ford Weapon of Choice: Small Arms and the Culture of Military Innovation. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017); Andrea, Gilli, and Mauro Gilli. ‘Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage’, International security. 43, no. 3 (February 2019): 141–189; Peter J. Dombrowski, and Eugene Gholz. Buying Military Transformation: Technological Innovation and the Defense Industry. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Julia Macdonald and Jacquelyn Schneider. ‘Battlefield Responses to New Technologies: Views from the Ground on Unmanned Aircraft’, Security Studies 28, no. 2 (2019), 216–249.

⁸ Harvey Sapolsky, Benjamin Friedman, and Brendan Green, US military innovation since the cold war: Creation without destruction (New York: Routledge, 2009), 6

⁹ Martin Van Creveld, Technology and war: from 2000 BC to the present (New York: The Free Press, 1989), 219

¹⁰ For example, Mahnken describes innovation as ‘three distinct but often overlapping phases … speculation, experimentation, and implementation’. Thomas G Mahnken, ‘China’s anti-access strategy in historical and theoretical perspective’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 34, no. 3 (2011), 303.

¹¹ Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the enemy: organization theory and Soviet military innovation, 1955–1991 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 907

¹² Table 1 in the appendix further illustrates this distribution.

¹³ See Chad C Serena, A revolution in military adaptation: the US Army in the Iraq War (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 9; David Harrison McIntyre, ‘Taming the electric chameleon: War, offense-defense theory, and the revolution in military affairs’ (Ph.D., University of Maryland College Park, 1999), 7

¹⁴ Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the arms race: how the United States and the Soviet Union develop new military technologies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 12; Itai Brun and Carmit Valensi, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs of the “Other Side”,’ in Contemporary Military Innovation: Between Anticipation and Adaption, ed. Dima Adamsky and Kjell Inge Bjerga (New York: Routledge, 2012), 107; Zisk, Engaging the Enemy.

¹⁵ Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘New ways of war: understanding military innovation’, International Security 13, no. 1 (1988), 134

¹⁶ Owen R. Cote, ‘The politics of innovative military doctrine: The US Navy and fleet ballistic missiles’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD 1996, 8–9.

¹⁷ Murray’s use of the term ‘revolutionary innovation’ falls under this framework. Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 309.

¹⁸ McIntyre, ‘Taming the electric chameleon’, 42; Toffler, War and Anti-War; Andrew F. Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions’, The National Interest 37 (1994); Murray ‘Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs’, Joint Forces Quarterly, 16 (Summer 1997), 70

¹⁹ Van Creveld, Technology and war: from 2000 BC to the present, 83

²⁰ Tai Ming Cheung, ‘The Chinese defense economy’s long march from imitation to innovation,’ The Journal of Strategic Studies 34, No. 3 (2011), 326

²¹ Richard Lock-Pullan, US intervention Policy and Army Innovation: From Vietnam to Iraq (New York: Routledge, 2005), 6

²² Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, Making Sense of Global Security (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 6

²³ Griffin, ‘Military innovation studies’, 203; Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, 6

²⁴ Farrell and Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change, 5; Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, 2.

²⁵ Ibid, 5–6

²⁶ Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984)

²⁷ Rosen, Winning the next war, 20

²⁸ Jon F. Giese, ‘Military Innovation: Sources of Change for United States Special Operations Forces’, Naval Postgraduate School, MA Thesis 1999, v

²⁹ Lock-Pullan US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation, 6

³⁰ Farrell and Terriff point out that 1) not all militaries have doctrinal traditions, 2) doctrine has different meaning, weights, and salience in different contexts, and 3) as Rosen argues, doctrinal change minimally impacts militaries and how they fight. Farrell and Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change, 4–5.

³¹ Thomas McNaugher, The M16 Controversies: Military Organizations and Weapons Acquisition (New York: Praeger 1984), 182)

³² Farrell defines military innovation as ‘a major change that is institutionalized in new doctrine, a new organizational structure and/or a new technology’. Farre,ll ‘Improving in War’, 569. Rosen distinguishes between technological and doctrinal innovations. Winning the Next War, 7–8.

³³ McIntyre, ‘Taming the electric chameleon’, 6–7

³⁴ Gregory A. Engel, ‘Cruise Missiles and the Tomahawk’, in The Politics of Naval Innovation, ed. B. Hayes and D. Smith (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1994), 41

³⁵ Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, ‘Introduction: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Innovation and Diffusion’, in The diffusion of military technology and ideas, ed. Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 7–8

³⁶ Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, 5

³⁷ Stephen D. Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)

³⁸ Dima Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 1

³⁹ McIntyre, ‘Taming the electric chameleon’, 367

⁴⁰ Giese, ‘Military Innovation’ v

⁴¹ Eliot A. Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare’, Foreign Affairs 75, no. 2 (1996), 16

⁴² Serena, A Revolution in Military Adaptation, 93. Also see Williamson Murray and Allan Reed Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 406

⁴³ Brian R. Sullivan, ‘What Distinguishes a Revolution in Military Affairs from a Military Technical Revolution?’, (1998), 92; These characterizations of military innovation tend to highlight civil-military tensions. For example, Serena describes how the Clinton Doctrine’s elevation of ‘military operations other than war’ (MOOTW) was impeded by the US Army’s focus on traditional combat operations and AirLand Battle doctrine. Ibid, 32.

⁴⁴ Edmund Beard, Developing the ICBM: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976)

⁴⁵ Michael H. Armacost, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 5

⁴⁶ Farrell and Terriff, eds., The Sources of Military Change, 6

⁴⁷ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 923

⁴⁸ Nina Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 4 (2015), 792

⁴⁹ Robert T. Foley, ‘A Case Study in Horizontal Military Innovation: The German Army, 1916–1918’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 35, no. 6 (2012), 803

⁵⁰ Dima Adamsky and Kjell Inge Bjerga, Contemporary Military Innovation: Between Anticipation and Adaption (New York: Routledge, 2012), 188. Also see Marc Milner, ‘Convoy Escorts: Tactics, Technology, and Innovation in the Royal Canadian Navy, 1939–1943,’ Military Affairs 48, no. 1 (1984)

⁵¹ Adamsky and Bjerga, Contemporary Military Innovation, 188

⁵² Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon’, 804 and 811

⁵³ Murray, Military Adaptation in War

⁵⁴ Theo Farrell, ‘Improving in War: Military Adaptation and the British in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2006–09,’ The Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 4 (2010), 569. Also see Farrell and Terriff, eds., The sources of military change, 6; Sergio Catignani, ‘Getting COIN at the Tactical Level in Afghanistan: Reassessing Counter-Insurgency Adaptation in the British Army,’ The Journal of Strategic Studies 35, no. 4 (2012).

⁵⁵ Theo Farrell, ‘Introduction: Military Adaptation in War’, in Theo Farrell, Frans Osinga and James Russell, editors, Military Adaptation in the Afghanistan War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 6–7.

⁵⁶ Farrell, ‘Introduction’, 7

⁵⁷ Farrell and Terriff, eds., The sources of military change, 6

⁵⁸ Farrell, ‘Introduction’, 7

⁵⁹ As we discuss below, this challenge is further illustrated by the distinction (or lack thereof) between military innovations and RMAs.

⁶⁰ This continues to be the case in more recent scholarship. Lindsay argues that ‘user innovations’ in Information Technology (IT) are not top-down, but rather processes of bottom-up adaptations as deployed personnel encounter friction and formulate responses. Jon R. Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020), 14–15, 17, 36–37

⁶¹ See Beard, Developing the ICBM, 13; Robert G. Angevine, ‘Innovation and Experimentation in the US Navy: The UPTIDE Antisubmarine Warfare Experiments, 1969–1972,’ The Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 1 (2005; Frederic Bergerson, The Army Gets an Air Force (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 79; Engel references a process and shows technology plays a minimal role. Engel ‘Cruise Missiles and the Tomahawk,’ 41; For a definition emphasizing the diffusion stage of the innovation process, see Goldman and Eliason, ‘Introduction,’ 7–8

⁶² Armacost, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter Controversy, 5

⁶³ Mahnken, ‘China’s anti-access strategy in historical and theoretical perspective’, 5 and 303

⁶⁴ Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation, 20.

⁶⁵ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 920

⁶⁶ Ibid, 921–922

⁶⁷ Tai Ming Cheung, Thomas G. Mahnken, and Andrew L. Ross, ‘Frameworks for Analyzing Chinese Defense and Military Innovation,’ in Tai Ming Cheung, ed. Forging China’s military might: A new framework for assessing innovation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 27.

⁶⁸ Ibid, 26

⁶⁹ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 907

⁷⁰ Posen, The sources of military doctrine, 29

⁷¹ Adam M Jungdahl and Julia M Macdonald, ‘Innovation inhibitors in war: Overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of military effectiveness,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 4 (2015), 469

⁷² Ibid, 469.

⁷³ For more on the misspecification of RMAs and battlefield performance, see Stephen Biddle, ‘The Past as Prologue: Assessing Theories of Future Warfare.’ Security Studies 8, no. 1 (1998), 1–74.

⁷⁴ Both Talmadge and Biddle’s discussions of battlefield effectiveness rest on the demonstration of skill: military innovation requires a military force with the skillset necessary to implement it. Biddle, Military Power; Caitlin Talmadge, The Dictator’s Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 25.

⁷⁵ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 907

⁷⁶ Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer’

⁷⁷ Jack L Snyder, The ideology of the offensive: Military decision making and the disasters of 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 160

⁷⁸ Krepinevich, ‘Cavalry to Computer’, 32.

⁷⁹ By ‘first moving state,’ we mean the state where the military innovation was first invented, incubated, and implemented. More than one state can be a first mover – i.e., introduce innovations at the same time. Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, 24.

⁸⁰ Vincent Davis, The Politics of Innovation: Patterns in Navy Cases (Denver, CO: University of Denver Press, 1967), 3.

⁸¹ Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, 67–68, 73.

⁸² Barry R. Posen, ‘Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,’ International Security 18, no. 2 (1993)

⁸³ Van Creveld, Technology and war, 83

⁸⁴ Cheung, ‘The Chinese defense economy’s long march from imitation to innovation’

⁸⁵ Grissom, ‘The future of military innovation studies’, 907

⁸⁶ Griffin, ‘Military innovation studies’, 210

⁸⁷ Ibid, 211

⁸⁸ Goldman and Eliason, Introduction, 24

⁸⁹ Lindsay argues that this is the case for the Information Technology Revolution in Military Affairs (IT-RMA), which is comprised, not of sizeable, top-down innovative changes, but rather smaller bottom-up adaptations. Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power. The sheer range of cases further suggests, as we discuss above, the issues with existing definitions of innovation and RMAs.

⁹⁰ Ibid; Van Creveld, Technology and war; James Lebovic, Foregone Conclusions: US Weapons Acquisition in the Post-Cold War Transition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996)

⁹¹ Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011)

⁹² Murray, Military Adaptation in War

⁹³ Adamsky, The Culture of Military Innovation

⁹⁴ Suzanne Christine Nielsen, ‘Preparing for war: The dynamics of peacetime military reform’ (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2003).

⁹⁵ Clark G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air navy (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1978), 72

⁹⁶ Geoffrey Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy, 1914–1945: a Historical Survey (London [etc.]: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1979); Geoffrey Till, ‘Adopting the aircraft carrier: The British, American, and Japanese case studies,’ in Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, ed. Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

⁹⁷ Kollars, ‘War’s Horizon: Soldier-Led Adaptation in Iraq and Vietnam’, 792

⁹⁸ H. R. McMaster, ‘Continuity and Change: The Army Operating Concept and Clear Thinking about Future War’, Military Review vol. 95 no. 2 (2015), 12–13.

Additional information

Funding

This article was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Minerva Research Initiative under grant #FA9550-18-1-01

Notes on contributors

Michael C. Horowitz

Michael C. Horowitz is Richard Perry Professor, Political Science Professor, and Director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Senior Fellow in Defense Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Shira Pindyck

Shira Pindyck is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.