The Next 100 Years

t h e a m e r i c a n ag e : p re c i s i o n a n d
t h e e n d o f total wa r
The ability to see the target created the need for more accurate weapons. 
Precision- guided munitions (PGMs), which could be guided to their target 
after they were fired, were first deployed in the late 1960s and 1970s. This 
might appear to be a minor innovation, but its impact was huge. It trans­
formed war. In the twentieth century, thousands of bombers and millions of 
rifles were needed to fight wars. In the twenty- first century, the numbers 
will be slashed to a small fraction—signaling an end to total war. 
This change in scale will be of tremendous advantage to the United States, 
which has always been at a demographic disadvantage in fighting wars. The 
primary battlefields in the twentieth century were Europe and Asia. These 
were heavily populated areas. The United States was thousands of miles 
away. Its smaller population was needed not only to fight but to build sup­

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plies and transport them great distances, siphoning off manpower and lim­
iting the size of the force available for direct combat. 
The American way of war has thus always focused on multiplying the ef­
fectiveness of each soldier on the battlefield. Historically it did this by using 
both technology and masses of weapons. After World War II, however, the 
emphasis was increasingly on technological multipliers rather than mass. 
The United States had no choice in the matter. If it was going to be a global 
power, it would need to maximize the effectiveness of each soldier by wed­
ding him to advanced weaponry. It has created a culture of war in which 
smaller forces can defeat larger ones. As the use of technology increases, the 
size of the force needed decreases until ultimately what is required is a re­
markably small number of extremely well- trained and sophisticated war­
riors. It is important to see how the weapons culture created by the United 
States parallels its demographic shift. With an aging and contracting popu­
lation, the maintenance of mass forces becomes difficult, if not impossible. 
The key to warfare in the twenty- first century, then, will be precision. 
The more precise weapons are, the fewer have to be fired. That means fewer 
soldiers and fewer defense workers—but more scientists and technicians. 
What will be needed in the coming decades is a weapon that can be based in 
the United States, reach the other side of the world in under an hour, ma­
neuver with incredible agility to avoid surface-to-air missiles, strike with 
absolute precision, and return to carry out another mission almost immedi­
ately. If the United States had such a system, it would never again need to 
deliver a tank eight thousand miles away. 
Such a weapon is called an unmanned hypersonic aircraft. The United 
States is currently engaged in the development of hypersonic systems capa­
ble of traveling well in excess of five times the speed of sound. Powered by 
what are called scramjet engines, the craft have air- breathing, not rocket, 
engines. Their range currently is limited. But as scramjets develop during 
the twenty- first century—along with new materials that can withstand ex­
tremely high temperatures caused by friction with the air—both their range 
and speed will increase. 
Imagine: Traveling at eight thousand miles per hour, or Mach 10, a mis­
sile fired from the east coast of the United States could hit a target in Europe 
in under half an hour. Increase this to Mach 20, and a strike could be com­

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pleted in less than fifteen minutes. The American geopolitical need to inter­
vene rapidly, with sufficient strength to destroy enemy forces, would be met in 
time to make a difference. Building enough hypersonic missiles to devastate 
a potential enemy would be extremely expensive. But considering the sav­
ings on the current force structure, it would be manageable. I would also 
note that this system would reduce the need for huge stockpiles of petro­
leum to fuel tanks, planes, and ships at a time when the hydrocarbon energy 
system will be in decline. 
The result of deploying hypersonic systems will be to reverse the trend in 
warfare that has been under way since before Napoleon. The armies of the 
twenty- first century will be much smaller and more professional than previ­
ous forces, and highly technological. Precision will also allow the reintro­
duction of a separation between soldier and civilian: It will not be necessary 
to devastate entire cities to destroy one building. Soldiers will increasingly 
resemble highly trained medieval knights, rather than the GIs of World War 
II. Courage will still be necessary, but it will be the ability to manage ex­
tremely complex weapons systems that will matter the most. 
Speed, range, and accuracy—and a lot of unmanned aircraft—will sub­
stitute for the massed forces that were required to deliver explosives to the 
battlefield in the twentieth century. Yet these talents will not solve a core 
problem of warfare, occupying hostile territory. Armies are designed to de­
stroy armies, and precision weapons will do that more effectively than ever 
before. But the occupation of territory will remain a labor- intensive activity. 
It is, in many ways, more akin to police work than to soldiering. A soldier’s 
job is to kill an enemy, whereas a policeman’s job is to identify a lawbreaker 
and arrest him. The first requires courage, training, and weapons. The latter 
requires all of these plus an understanding of a culture that allows you to 
distinguish enemies from law- abiding civilians. That task will never become 
easier and will always be the Achilles’ heel of any great power. Just as the Ro­
mans and British struggled with their occupation of Palestine, even as they 
easily defeated enemy armies, so too the Americans will win wars and then 
suffer through the aftermath. 

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