| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 國際事務與戰略研究所 === 88 === The emerging Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) based on technological evolution, but not only depend on technologies. RMA contains three major parts: new technologies, concepts of operation which suitable to maximize the potentials of technology, and finally, organizational change. In history, RMAs often occurred within one country defeated or suffered from failures in last war. Revolutionary phenomena is only the outcome of long-time evolution, and the effectiveness of RMAs not only defined by the completion of three-step procedures-technologies, concepts of operation, organizational change-but also the contributions on specified military goals or strategies. And a more simplified definition of RMA is provided: to obsolete one or some core competencies of a dominant player, or to create one or some core competencies in some new dimensions of military operation, or both (i.e.: competitors-oriented).
The consequence of RMA is basic change of the nature of military conflicts and the way to conduct them. The change can be explained as a kind of paradigm shift: a term borrowed from social science. Conventional military operations are always constrained by natural environment, but air and sea battlefield / battlespace are more suitable for modern high-tech weapons. Such kind of RMA, which emphasizes superiority of technology called Military-Technological Revolution (MTR), it is a ramification of RMA. But , it''s not to say all the technological-oriented RMA would be successful: the U.S. operated in Vietnam and the "People''s War" theory of Mao Tse-Tong are two contrary examples. To identifying and understanding the superiority and disadvantage of specific military / civil technologies contributing to RMA is very important for forecasting right trends of one nation''s military potential.
The coming of Information Age provide a new infrastructure of society, and the same for military operations. (1) Future conflicts may occurred in information-rich environment, such as Global Information Infrastructure (GII). Information is a old factor of war, but today its owned ''ubiquitous'' character-- provided by modern electronic and communication technology. This is a new dimension of war, and battlefield is expended: technology shapes new battlespace-especially space and electromagnetic spectrum. (2) Information technology is also important to conventional operations, for example, without information dominant, precision guided weapons can''t hit targets. Physical firepower and electromagnetic firepower, such like electronic magnetic pulse (EMP), computer virus, their potential effectiveness are as important --- or more than-gunpowder today. But, these ''virtual'' firepower isn''t mature enough, so they cannot dominate physical battlefield alone. (3)The more analyzing the military doctrine of enemy more systematically, the more accuracy on finding enemy''s operation ''center of gravity'' would be successful. Finally, five historical cases, from 1969 till 1999, were chosen to interpret the relation between technologies and concepts of operation.
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