Lessons from Military History

03/18/2024

In what tactical and strategic ways have military drones changed the nature of modern warfare and the relative strengths of the world’s armed forces?
Vote now on the new issue of : https://www.hoover.org/what-tactical-and-strategic-ways-have-military-drones-changed-nature-modern-warfare-and-relative

03/17/2024

The Ukraine and Israel wars have renewed worries over the emergence of advanced military technologies. Ukrainians have used naval drones to inflict staggering losses on Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and aerial drones to destroy armor and personnel with unprecedented precision and speed. In Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces have used drones to kill individual Hamas leaders, and robots to pe*****te Hamas’ dense network of underground tunnels. A network of surveillance robots, space-based communications, and even artificial intelligence analysis helps human decision-makers on tactics and strategy.
The success of high-tech weapons in Ukraine and Israel seems to make manifest the prophecies of a revolution in military affairs. “The future of war will be dictated and waged by drones,” warns Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and a science advisor to the White House and the U.S. military. To some, the rise of warfare by robots, computer networks, and AI spells the end for conventional weapons such as tanks, manned aircraft, and capital ships, and demands the embrace of radical new approaches. To others, these developments demand unprecedented legal and political regulation. UN experts have warned that drone strikes will be abused because “they make it easier to kill without risk to a state’s forces.” If intervention is too easy, these critics argue, states will be tempted to turn too quickly to force as a solution and to wage war too easily upon civilians. They urge us to negotiate new treaties or to extend existing treaties, even though the latter were developed for the technologies and strategic challenges of a half-century ago. Elon Musk has called for a ban on “killer robots” because AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”
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The Ukraine and Israel wars have renewed worries over the emergence of advanced military technologies. Ukrainians have used naval drones to inflict staggering losses on Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and aerial drones to destroy armor and personnel with unprecedented precision and speed.

03/16/2024

The unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, first appeared on the battlefield during World War II, when the Germans used a small number of radio-controlled aircraft as offensive weapons. The United States began employing drones for military surveillance and reconnaissance during the Vietnam War, but not until Operation Desert Storm, with the advent of a new suite of precision weapons, were drones capable of making significant tactical contributions.
Drones acquired strategic significance during the Global War on Terror of the early twenty-first century, as the result of new capabilities and new targets. The equipping of American drones with the Hellfire missile in February 2001 gave the United States an armed platform that could monitor targets in real time and stay on station for hours at a time without the risk of losing a pilot. The migration of al-Qaeda extremists from Afghanistan to Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban produced suitable targets. The Pakistani government refused to allow American military forces to operate on their territory, and after an initial period of cooperation it lost interest in helping the Americans capture al-Qaeda members. Hellfire strikes overcame these obstacles and had the added advantage of secrecy, which was beneficial for both operational and political reasons.
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The unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, first appeared on the battlefield during World War II, when the Germans used a small number of radio-controlled aircraft as offensive weapons.

03/15/2024

The Ukraine War has been dubbed the first drone war—and the first “StarLink War”—considering the publicly apparent role of advanced technologies in the conflict. However, the issue is what the Ukraine War might teach us about the future of military power. More specifically, is the Ukraine War a watershed moment, after which unmanned, distributed technologies will dominate the battlefield? Or is it a remarkably public display of a broader set of evolutions in the character of warfare?
A clear-eyed assessment of the battlefield realities in Ukraine demonstrates that drones are largely in continuity with the development of military capabilities coherently understood since the late 19th century. Their use in Ukraine is notable, simply because they carry to maturation concepts under long-term historical development. By generating a widespread reconnaissance-strike complex, drones in Ukraine allow both Ukraine and Russia to fight in a truly systemic manner, bringing to fruition the logic of the modern battlefield. There is much to learn from the Ukrainian case—and those that learn its lessons are likely to gain military power. But its lessons are primarily intellectual, not technical or material.
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The Ukraine War has been dubbed the first drone war—and the first “StarLink War”—considering the publicly apparent role of advanced technologies in the conflict. However, the issue is what the Ukraine War might teach us about the future of military power.

03/14/2024

Issue No. 91 of Strategika features essays that explore the legal framework surrounding the use of drones as weapons, how drones have changed the battlefield (drawing on experiences from the Russia–Ukraine war), and what the use of drones in armed conflict today means for future defense planning.

In the background essay, Seth Cropsey writes that while the US should acquire more drones to augment its reconnaissance-based fires strategy, the introduction of the drone as a weapon on the battlefield has not actually altered the nature of modern warfare to its core.

Mark Moyar documents the development of drones – from World War II to the Global War on Terror to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He draws similarities between the advent of the machine gun in World War I and the nature of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that both the machine gun and the drone pushed combatants to develop better methods of cover and concealment.

Next, John Yoo pushes back against calls for the military use of drones to be legally regulated, arguing that the precision targeting of these unmanned weapon systems may help reduce indiscriminate harm in war and spare civilian lives. He also explains that previous novel weapons systems, such as nuclear weapons, did not fall under any regulation for a period of up to 30 years after they were first used.
Read now: https://www.hoover.org/publications/strategika/issue-91

02/28/2024

Issue No. 90 of Strategika features three essays stressing that the United States should retaliate more aggressively against Iranian proxy militia groups across the Middle East.

In the background essay, Edward Luttwak writes that the Biden White House could deter Iran by massively raising the stakes both militarily and economically of Iran’s proxy militia activity throughout the Middle East.

In another essay, Bing West argues that the US should respond with strikes against Houthi missile sites and command centers in western Yemen, with an aim to completely remove the group’s offensive capabilities against shipping in the Red Sea. He also suggests Biden authorize tough enforcement action against Iran’s so-called “ghost fleet” of 300+ tankers used to evade oil sanctions.

Next, Jerry Hendrix argues the Biden White House needs to jettison its position that Iran will re-commit to de-escalation and de-nuclearization at the negotiating table. He calls for Biden to order direct strikes against Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) assets, including military targets within Iran.
Read now: https://www.hoover.org/publications/strategika/issue-90

02/07/2024

As the United States and its allies strive yet again to keep the Red Sea and adjacent waters safe for commerce while struggling to contain an epidemic of Iran-backed violence elsewhere in the Middle East as well, the two greatest obstacles to our success are the Euro-American fantasy that all problems must have a solution, if only we can uncover it, and our whimsical, fickle morality.
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As the United States and its allies strive yet again to keep the Red Sea and adjacent waters safe for commerce while struggling to contain an epidemic of Iran-backed violence elsewhere in the Middle East as well, the two greatest obstacles to our success are the Euro-American fantasy that all proble...

09/28/2023

The Russian-Orthodox jihad in Ukraine adheres uncannily to the patterns of campaigning and giving battle that have defined the Russian way of war since Peter the Great fielded his empire’s first modernized army and defeated the Swedish warrior-state of Charles XII at Poltava in 1709. Today’s pretender to the throne of the czars, Vladimir Putin, has introduced a few new tools (such as drones) but no new behaviors. The list below of tactical and operational characteristics is as reliable as the Russian taste for vodka. Our misunderstanding of Moscow’s latest aggression is not about hypersonic missiles or the massive deployment of land mines, but about a pre-modern state that can reach into space, a slumbering cult ever awaiting a prophet’s call, and a friendless frontier land with a sense of divine purpose so enduring it shapes the worldview of atheists.
The date that continues to deform the Russkaya dusha’ or Russian soul isn’t 1917, or 1941, or 1991, but 1453, when Byzantium, the “Second Rome,” weakened by the assaults of other Christians, fell to the Muslim Turks, inspiring a struggling duchy far to the north to assume the title of the “Third Rome” and the duty to recover all that had been lost over centuries.
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The Russian-Orthodox jihad in Ukraine adheres uncannily to the patterns of campaigning and giving battle that have defined the Russian way of war since Peter the Great fielded his empire’s first modernized army and defeated the Swedish warrior-state of Charles XII at Poltava in 1709.

09/27/2023

One of the most climactic moments of the Second World War was the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and elements of the French and Belgian armies from Dunkirk, on France’s north-west coast, in late May and early June 1940. What has been descried as “the Miracle of Dunkirk” saw 338,000 men plucked from almost certain capture by an extraordinary naval operation carried out by more than eight hundred vessels of every conceivable size, of which two hundred forty were lost and a further forty-five damaged.
Now a new Franco-British venture—pioneered by Drassm, the French Department of Underwater Archaeological Research, and the British organization Historic England—will attempt to map all the shipwrecks, with divers being sent down to make a comprehensive geophysical survey.
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One of the most climactic moments of the Second World War was the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and elements of the French and Belgian armies from Dunkirk, on France’s north-west coast, in late May and early June 1940.

09/26/2023

A new issue of is now available online. Strategika is an online journal that analyzes ongoing issues of national security in light of conflicts of the past—the efforts of the Military History Working Group. Read Issue 87:

Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nation’s preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance.

09/23/2023

An exciting discovery has been made in the Judean Desert in Israel, casting light on the Bar Kokhba Revolt of A.D. 132–135, in which the Jews of Judea conducted a brave but doomed rebellion against Emperor Hadrian’s Roman Empire. Four Roman swords (gladius/gladii) and a shafted spearhead (pilum) have been found in a crevice in one of the eight hundred caves in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority believe the weapons were captured from the Roman army and hidden by the rebels.

The classic two-foot-long Roman spatha swords are in a remarkably fine state of preservation. The near two thousand years since they were hidden in the cave have had astonishingly little effect on them, primarily because of the exceedingly dry climate but also because they were still in their wooden and leather scabbards.
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An exciting discovery has been made in the Judean Desert in Israel, casting light on the Bar Kokhba Revolt of A.D. 132–135, in which the Jews of Judea conducted a brave but doomed rebellion against Emperor Hadrian’s Roman Empire.

09/22/2023

Many military historians estimate that without the vital breakthroughs in cracking N**i Germany’s Ultra code, as encrypted by its military units’ Enigma machines, the Second World War might have lasted as much as a year longer than it did. That is partly why everything connected with the heroic codebreakers of Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire in England still makes news today.

In particular, Professor Alan Turing (1912–54), the English mathematician and computer scientist, who led Hut 8 at Bletchley which broke the German naval codes, has been greatly honored, indeed today his face adorns the £50 British banknote. The present debate surrounding the uses and potential shortcomings of Artificial Intelligence have further burnished the reputation of the man widely considered as one of the fathers of modern computing. “The Turing Test,” for example, establishes if a human can distinguish whether the replies to a question come from a computer or from another human. If a computer’s response is indistinguishable from a human’s, it has passed the Test.
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Many military historians estimate that without the vital breakthroughs in cracking N**i Germany’s Ultra code, as encrypted by its military units’ Enigma machines, the Second World War might have lasted as much as a year longer than it did.