The US military-technological revolution and the ‘Europeanization’ of the French defence industrial sector during the 1990s
RUSI JOURNAL FEBRUARY 2004 This article suggests a possible correlation between the United Statesled military-technological revolution and the cab for 'Europeanization' of the French defence industry during the 1990s. It presents French views with regard to the US-promoted 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA) and points to elements that fostered an intensified European orientation of the French defence industry during the 1990s. I
Explaining European Defence Cooperation
As the previous chapter has highlighted, the legal bases of European defence cooperation raise serious questions about the utility of existing theoretical approaches in understanding the scope of European defence cooperation. This chapter finds that the patterns of progress and stasis in European defence cooperation which are identified in Chapters 1–3 can be explained by a focus on the contradictory imperatives of neorealist thought. The ‘push and shove’ effects of the ‘balance of threat’ are creating strong centripetal forces driving European states towards convergence in the overall strategic direction of their defence and security policies. The chapter argues that this convergence has taken the form of a process of ‘reformed bandwagoning’ on US power, characterised, as demonstrated by Chapters 1–3, by cooperation that is intergovernmental and more densely institutionalised only in areas which do not have highly significant ramifications for a European states’ relative power.
The Long Search for a Surgical Strike: Precision Munitions and the Revolution in Military Affairs
Abstract : This research paper explores the relationship between the advancement in conventional weapons guidance technology and the "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) said to be afoot. It also explores whether the improvement in conventional air weapons accuracy since World War II is the foundation, the main pillar, one of the principal supports, or is irrelevant to the RMA. Clearly, the air theorists of the 1920s were fully persuaded that indeed a revolution was afoot. Equally clear, the visions of Guilio Douhet, William "Billy" Mitchell, and the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) were no more than partially fulfilled in World War II. This research paper explores the degree to which the shortcomings of aerial weapons were responsible for the denial of their visions and the degree to which those inadequacies were overcome in the conflicts that followed. It closes with an estimate as to whether those dreams of a revolution are about to be fulfilled. Bernard Brodie concluded that World War II had been as complete a test of the theories as Douhet could have desired. Yet, the argument goes on as to the effectiveness of the bombing campaigns of that conflict. Consequently, none of the subsequent air wars has approached the completeness of the tests over Japan and Germany in the 1940s. Therefore, the concluding estimate cannot be much more than a guess.