Tech Rules But You Still Need A Man To Fight The Battle

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New Delhi: : Some 500 years before Christ, Babylon near modern-day Baghdad was a bustling centre. It is often referred to as the cradle of human civilisation. King Nebuchadnezzar, after conquering Jerusalem, built a city of unprecedented charm complete with sturdy fortresses, moat, drawbridges, temple of Baal, tower of Babel and of course the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven ancient wonders. It was sheer technology, way ahead of its times, that created these monuments. And ironically, technology is again playing a crucial role in Iraq, this time in its destruction.

War and technology go arm-in-arm. The invention of gunpowder was responsible for the colonial ambitions of Britain. The U2 boats, torpedoes and the flying bombers stoked the Third Reich’s expansionist ambitions. And technology is once more in the limelight with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the satellite-guided Cruise and Tomahawk missiles, the Joint Direct Munitions (JDM)s, and the works.

From the 1991 Gulf War to Gulf War-II, there has been a distinctive shift in the way the wars are waged, a shift in favour of technology. Not only have weapons evolved in terms of destructive power, they are also smart now. For instance, Cruise missiles can hover around the target for an hour or so, waiting for a ’go’ from the command centre. The whole operation is being run from thousand of miles away in Virginia, US and Bahrain.

War is a logistics nightmare and technology comes to its aid. With the help of technology, there is much better co-ordination of the allied force, notwithstanding cases of ‘friendly fire’. It is now possible to manage and employ a variety of means of invasion — B-52 bombers flying down from the UK, Stealth bombers flying in from Diego Garcia, Apache helicopters from Kuwait, and missiles being fired from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. All this is due to the intensive computerisation programme undertaken by the US defence department. There has been a seamless integration of sensors, communication devices and the weaponry systems in a single network. And this is the difference between the Gulf War in 1991 and the current one.

Says Lt General (Retd) Vinay Shankar, “In 1991 Gulf war, the weapons were in an experimental stage. Today, they are refined and calibrated. Take the example of the Patriot missile systems, they weren’t working then, but today they are bringing down the Iraqi missiles with amazing regularity.”