This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded...

This book explores contemporary military innovation, with a particular focus on the balance between anticipation and adaption. The volume examines contemporary military thought and the doctrine that evolved around the thesis of a transformation in the character of war. Known as the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs (IT-RMA), this innovation served as an intellectual foundation for the US defence transformation from the 1990s onwards. Since the mid-1990s, professional ideas generated within the American defence milieu have been further disseminated to military communities...