War and technolgoy

There was a second NPR discussion today concerning the use of high technolgoy weapons, particularly remote weapons, in the conduct of war.  The basic notion was that it was somehow different than the way war was previously waged and in some way a substantial change in warefare.

This conversation struck me as sophomoric to the point of being silly.  War is a teriable business that involves breaking things and killing people.  It is a profound breakdown of civility and a blight on civilization.  But,  with the possible exception of nuclear war, technology does little to change the nature of warefare at a fundamental level.

Consider the history of war.  At one time war involved hand to hand conflict between individuals and groups.  It might be said to be somehow honorable or brave to personally engage in conflict.  Then someone invented the spear, then the throwing stick, and then the long bow, and cross bow.  Now war could be waged at a distance.  It need no longer involve the personal risk of hand to hand combat.  Still such weapons had limited range and their users were directly exposed to retribution.  But time and technology moved on with the invention of gunpowder, rapid fire weapons, aircraft with bombs, and other increasingly remote weapons whose users were progressively less exposed to combat.  Still later we had cannons and long range missiles whoes users have little if any exposure to the consequence of using their weapons.  In this latter regard the nuclear missle submarine is the current ultimate evolution of killing remotely.

This history raises the obvious question of how, if at all, robotic weapons wether operated by humans remotely or fully autonomous are in any way different.  Common sense suggests that they are just the most recent evolutionary step in a long history of remote distruction.  In short history and common sense teaches that concerns of the sort expressed day are both sophomoric and silly.