The Lowdown on Hitech Wars

Lieutenant General Ghanshyam Singh Katoch writes:

The photographs above of Major General Chris Donahue and Colonel General Boris Gormov, the last commanders and men to symbolise exit from Afghanistan of the USA and the USSR respectively—33 years apart—are poignant. One meme doing the rounds on social media after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan states, “if you ever feel useless, remember it took 20 years, trillions of dollars and four US Presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban”. In 2021 the question being asked time and again is—how did this happen to technologically the most powerful military and country in the world? Why couldn’t the high Technology (hi-tech) of the US military win the war in Afghanistan?

On reflection, it is obvious that the fact that technology alone cannot ensure victory in war in a repeat lesson (learnt by the USA in Vietnam and in Afghanistan by the Soviets), but which is forgotten with the passage of time.

Hi-tech war has spawned a number of definitions in diverse armies (Transformation, Network Centric War (NCW), Informatization, Cyber War, RMA, 4IR war etc.  Such terminologies create a false perception of strength.  This is an illusion for both the military and society.  For the military, for obvious reasons— for society (especially in the developed world) because it promises prevention of / minimum human casualties. In practise hi-tech war is  divorced from  the ground reality and the nature of war. The belief that technology could solve all the challenges that are posed by the adversary, regardless of their tactics and nature has been proved wrong in war for two prime reasons as under:

• When a developed society with hi-tech weapons but unwilling to accept human casualties fights with a society willing to accept human loss and suffering, the society more accepting of casualties for whatever reason, has an edge in the long run.
• Secondly, high tech war is expensive in economic terms. It is ‘platform-centric’ and if pitted against a ‘people-centric’ low tech enemy the much higher cost of platforms versus people will mean that people are much more easier to replace than platforms.

Therefore, Hi-tech war is not a revolution in military affairs ensuring a military victory, but rather a force multiplier that could enable a military to fight more effectively. This again is only possible if  the doctrine, strategy and organisation of the armed forces are changed in accordance with the new technology.

There are other aspects of hi-tech war which also need to be weighed. In counterinsurgency use of drones give an illusion of being cheaper than manned aircraft. While drones may be theoretically cheaper than conventional aircraft yet still the trade-off between the cost of one Hellfire missile (used for precision drone strikes on people) versus one 7.62mm  bullet ( $150,000 vs $ .20 to $ 1) can in a long counterterrorism war overburden the strongest economy as was evident in Afghanistan.   It must also be kept in mind that hi-tech weapons may not give an edge against an equal enemy. In a protected airspace of a sophisticated hi-tech enemy the current generation of  larger drones are much more vulnerable than the examples from Afghanistan or even Azerbaijan would lead us to believe. In the former because there were no air defences. In the latter, because of the Azerbaijani strategy of taking out the Armenian air defence radars and then using drones. In relative terms this was a short war (44 days long vs 890 days of their previous war).

This third blog article of the series concludes that lesson #3 from Afghanistan is that Hi-Tech will give great dividends in a short war. In long counter-insurgency wars when other factors are present (sanctuaries’, material support and moral capital) hi-Tech will fail. In long conventional wars too, the edge is lost as the other side devises or procures countermeasures after getting over the initial shock effect.

Lieutenant General Ghanshyam Singh Katoch,  PVSM, AVSM, VSM (Retd), is a former Director General Strategic Planning.
Article uploaded on: 05-10-2021
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any organisation that he belongs to or of the USI of India.