When Jenny Shaw at Brasseys asked whether I would consider updating my book The Technology Trap, my first action was to re-read that slim volume that I had started writing in the early 1980s. Then I had been concerned, as a military man, that we seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of seeking expensive technological solutions to our security concerns. The rising costs of these specialist defence technologies were depleting our capability for fighting in the near term, and it was by no means certain that they would even deliver what they promised in the longer term. To rectify these shortcomings we would spend yet more of our declining budget looking for new panacea weapons.
The book was written in a security context of the Cold War. The idiocy of the technology enthusiasts had reached a peak with the ill-fated Strategic Defence Initiative, which had been set in train by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. It was evident to many of us that the development of a nuclear defence umbrella was flawed technically, economically and strategically. Yet billions of defence dollars flowed down the industrial and research plug hole to remarkably little effect. The hope of public and politicians that some magic invulnerability could be provided by the defence scientist is perhaps to be forgiven; the over-optimistic predictions of soldier, researcher and the defence industry is a little less endearing.
My aim in The Technology Trap was to examine where science had been able to make a key contribution in the past. The book then examined eight key research disciplines, which looked at that time to have potential military application. By isolating the most important potential advances, and also looking at civil applications, I was able to identify where it seemed most profitable to invest limited defence resources.
What has changed since I wrote the analysis? First, the security context is now quite different. The threat of total war at very short notice has ceased to be a preoccupation for the NATO nations. Military operations are numerous, but forces are significantly smaller, and defence budgets have declined dramatically. Secondly, science has not stood still. I was pleased that the areas which I had identified seven years ago as interesting had progressed, and in many cases exceeded my expectations, in the general directions that I had forecast. New ideas have emerged in many of these disciplines, and for the main part I have kept to the same subdivisions that I used before. Only in two areas do I feel the need to introduce separate chapters in this edition: mathematics and nanotechnology.
As last time, the book concludes by looking at how the new technologies could be used in military operations in the future. The analysis is entirely new, as the operations now required of the military are new, the alliances are different and the resources available are likely to be less than any of us imagined in the days of the Cold War.
My aim remains as before: to educate the decision-makers in the realities of what technology can offer. Whatever the level of defence spending, those inside the planning, budgetary and procurement process must make judgements to produce the most effective armed forces. It was not an easy process even when the threat appeared to be readily definable. The various vested interests of each Service, of the politicians, of the research scientists and of industry all serve to distort the logic of the process. The time scales for weapon system procurement remain measured in decades, while some technologies offer double the capability every two years.
I am more experienced in the limitations of the planning process than perhaps I was when I wrote the first edition. I spent some time involved in planning the future UK Defence Programme. Despite my own inclination to avoid high cost, high risk projects, I was rarely successful in stopping even the most obvious money wasters once they were in progress. Defence departments as institutions have the mentality of the roulette player who believes he can win by doubling-up. Nevertheless, as each new generation of decision-makers arrives, they need to remember that their new pet project may be 15 years from delivery, will almost certainly do much less than they expect, and will cost much more. That is the nature of the technology trap.