War Made New

No technical advance by itself made a revolution; it was how people responded to technology that produced seismic shifts in warfare.

FIVE THEMES As this book explores four military revolutions, five major themes will emerge:

And, fifth, that innovation has been speeding up. It took at least two hundred years for the Gunpowder Revolution to come to fruition (c. 1500–1700); one hundred and fifty years for the First Industrial Revolution (c. 1750–1900); forty years for the Second Industrial Revolution (c. 1900–1940); and just thirty years for the Information Revolution (c

American long-range bombers,

satellite navigation systems, and stealth planes

First, that technology alone rarely confers an insurmountable military edge; tactics, organization, training, leadership, and other products of an effective bureaucracy are necessary to realize the full potential of new inventions. For this reason, ever since the rise of modern nation-states in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shifts in mil

radio, radar, and other inventions of the Second Industrial Age.

precision-guided munitions

The German edge lay in their superior ability to coordinate their forces, and in their high quality of leadership, training, and morale. They figured out how to make the best use of the technology of the day; the Allies did not.