Nuclear Technology Developments and Its Impact on Warfare

Introduction

In recent years, a wide array of new technologies have entered the modern battlefield, giving rise to new means and methods of warfare, such as cyber-attacks, armed drones, and robots, including autonomous weapons. While there can be no doubt that international humanitarian law (IHL) applies to them, applying pre-existing legal rules to new technologies may raise the question of whether the rules are sufficiently clear in light of the new technologies' specific characteristics and foreseeable humanitarian impact.

Modern military technology is not different in kind, but in degree. World War II was the first war in history in which the weapons in use at the end of the war differed significantly from those employed at the outset. The atomic bomb is the most obvious example, but the list of military technologies introduced between 1939 and 1945 includes as well jet aircraft, guided missiles, microwave radar, and the proximity fuse, to name just a few. Some military leaders concluded from this experience that industrial production had won the world wars but military innovation would win the next war.

The Atomic Bomb: A Game Changer

In the summer of 1945, an American B-29 heavy bomber dropped the world's first atomic bomb. Its target was the city of Hiroshima, Japan. In a single moment warfare changed forever. With the explosion of the bomb, code-named ''Little Boy'', entire cities, even regions, were destroyed in an instant. Aside from shooting down the plane before it could release its bomb, there was virtually no defense against America's new weapon of mass destruction.

The atomic bomb was a major game-changer. After a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, Japan surrendered to the U.S., effectively ending World War II. Japan's army was no match for this new weapon. After its implementation, other countries like the Soviet Union, Israel, and China sought to develop the technology to construct their own atomic weapons. This led to an arms race that characterized the Cold War Era. The atomic bomb account is an excellent example of how technology impacts warfare. Let’s dig deeper and learn more about the relationship between the two.

Technology Development Impact on war

Artillery Large guns, called artillery, were improved during World War I including anti-aircraft guns to shoot down enemy planes. The majority of the casualties in the war were inflicted using artillery. Some large artillery guns could launch shells nearly 80 miles. For a discussion of modern military technology, see the small arms, artillery, rocket and missile system, nuclear weapon, chemical warfare, biological warfare, fortification, tank, naval ship, submarines, military aircraft, warning systems, and military communication. Over the past several decades, advances in technology have transformed communications and the ability to acquire, spread, and utilize information in a range of environments. Modern societies and their respective militaries have taken advantage of a robust information space through network-centric systems. Because military and commercial operations have increasingly converged, communication and information infrastructures are now high-priority military objectives in times of war. The theoretical underpinning of current cyber warfare researches some of the emerging themes to be considered; it also postulates the development of a cyber warfare doctrine.

Key Developments in Military Technology

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. While technology often improves the quality or efficiency of life, when used for military purposes, its results are deadly. In ancient times, horse-driven chariots were a powerful application of technology. Teams of chariots could quickly out-maneuver standing armies. Of course, today this technology has been rendered obsolete. Today a modern aircraft can pin-point a tank on the ground and destroy it with a small missile or a precision bomb. As technology continues to progress, past technologies are rendered ineffective. Canons and guns, which became popular in the middle Ages, were game-changers in their own right. Canons replaced catapults and were often used to lay siege to fortresses and eat away at stone defenses. In time, canons could be mounted on ships. This provided vessels with a deadly combination of maneuverability, speed, and now firepower. Firearms too changed the face of warfare. Becoming popular in the late Middle Ages, guns replaced bows and arrows and ultimately proved far more deadly.

A major technological breakthrough took place in shipbuilding during the late 19th century. Iron ships replaced wooden warships, ultimately giving rise to massive naval fleets consisting of destroyers and battleships. This led to a greater recognition among military strategists that sea power was essential.

The Great War: Industrialized Killing

World War I (1914-1918), also known as the Great War, is considered by most historians to be the first modern, industrialized war. The technology that emerged during the Industrial Revolution was put to use for the purpose of killing. During the Great War, many new weapon systems emerged. It was a war of ''firsts''. It was the first war in which:

• Aircraft and poison gas saw widespread use.
• The modern machine gun was used.
• Modern submarines played a significant role.

Finally, the tank was invented during WWI (in 1917) by the British. This armored vehicle profoundly changed the face of 20th-century warfare.

Conclusion

The presence of atomic weapons stores made aggregate or present-day war out of date. Inside this key setting, another type of war developed. Post-present day war did not require the state to assemble its whole populace and economy to battle a crucial battle against different states, generally in light of the fact that its chief spotlight was on concocting approaches to utilize military capacity to discourage war or conceiving new intends to assault the foe's good as opposed to its physical power. Accordingly, the rationale of war rose above basic ideas of fight and triumph. The war between the Great Powers and their partners would in general be restricted to the hazy area between harmony and open brutality. Nonetheless, the drive for mechanical advancement, brought about by the quirks of the Cold War, guaranteed that war and the state remained emphatically associated, as just the state had the ability to animate innovative work on the scale required to guarantee the adequacy of key discouragement.

References

1. D. L. I. Kirkpatrick, ‘The rising unit cost of defence equipment: the reasons and the results’, Defence and Peace Economics 6: 4, 1995, pp. 263–88.
2. Martin Shaw, The new western way of war (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 29–41.
3. Bobbie, The shield of Achilles, pp. 301–303.
4. Paul Rogers, Irregular warfare: ISIS and the new threat from the margins (London: Tauris,
5. See Grégoire Chamayou, Drone theory (London: Penguin, 2015).
6. See Robert Kaplan, The revenge of geography: what the map tells us about coming conflicts (New York: Random House, 2012).
7. Lawrence Freedman, The future of war: a history (London: Allen Lane, 2017), p. xviii; Damien van Puyvelde, Stephen Coulthardt and M. Shahmir Hossain, ‘Beyond the buzzword: big data and national security decision-making’, International Affairs 93: 6, Nov. 2017, pp. 1397–416.