A look at 20th century military technology developments reveals some interesting patterns.
New technology begin immature, expensive, unreliable, bulky, heavy (usually not all at once).
Some of the disadvantages disappear over time, and the technology becomes more widely useful.
A typical pattern is that a new technology is first being used in aircraft (as the air power's importance justifies the costs and the mostly obstacle-free air favours some technologies).
Another typical pattern is that it originates in navy ships (especially if the technology is very bulky or heavy at first).
A typical example is the active phased array and Aegis technology. The antenna technology was first employed in 'strategic' air defence radars (on land, but for air warfare) and on the Ticonderoga class "Aegis" cruisers. The latter also developed the well-known air defence networks one step farther, as it could co-ordinate the anti-air fires of a whole naval task force (carrier battle group).
Active phased array radars are becoming quite standard today, they moved into aircraft applications
(as they became less bulky) and even battlefield surveillance radars. The network approach was a great hype in Western army forces in the past 10-15 years. It's been partially successful in army applications, especially for the tracking of friendly units and artillery coordination.
OK, pattern recognized, what's the use of this? Simple; we can look at what's been introduced into naval and air forces but not yet into the low priority/low cost ground forces and can thereby form our own predictions of future army technology trends. It's a pity that development delays are often long enough to throw such predictions off by decades. Anyway; we can at least guess what technology will eventually be introduced into ground forces.
Some technologies are already transitioning from naval/air applications into ground force applications, just to name a few:
- vertical missile launches (considered for EFOG-M, Netfires)
- dual missile seekers (as in 9M123 Khrizantema)
- close-in weapon systems as the Phalanx gatling system (originally built to intercept missiles, revived to intercept mortar bombs), radar camouflage (first tried on periscopes, latter applied to warship masts to improve the own radar's performance, then applied to 'stealth' bombers)
- fire-and-forget and multiple targeting (especially to be found among most newly introduced direct fire ground missiles/ATGMs)
- electronic defensive jammers (in contrast to general electronic warfare, defensive jammers were introduced in the 90's and are still not used in all possible applications)
- digital radios for datalinks (becoming standard in well-funded ground forces)
New technology begin immature, expensive, unreliable, bulky, heavy (usually not all at once).
Some of the disadvantages disappear over time, and the technology becomes more widely useful.
A typical pattern is that a new technology is first being used in aircraft (as the air power's importance justifies the costs and the mostly obstacle-free air favours some technologies).
Another typical pattern is that it originates in navy ships (especially if the technology is very bulky or heavy at first).
A typical example is the active phased array and Aegis technology. The antenna technology was first employed in 'strategic' air defence radars (on land, but for air warfare) and on the Ticonderoga class "Aegis" cruisers. The latter also developed the well-known air defence networks one step farther, as it could co-ordinate the anti-air fires of a whole naval task force (carrier battle group).
Active phased array radars are becoming quite standard today, they moved into aircraft applications
(as they became less bulky) and even battlefield surveillance radars. The network approach was a great hype in Western army forces in the past 10-15 years. It's been partially successful in army applications, especially for the tracking of friendly units and artillery coordination.
OK, pattern recognized, what's the use of this? Simple; we can look at what's been introduced into naval and air forces but not yet into the low priority/low cost ground forces and can thereby form our own predictions of future army technology trends. It's a pity that development delays are often long enough to throw such predictions off by decades. Anyway; we can at least guess what technology will eventually be introduced into ground forces.
Some technologies are already transitioning from naval/air applications into ground force applications, just to name a few:
- vertical missile launches (considered for EFOG-M, Netfires)
- dual missile seekers (as in 9M123 Khrizantema)
- close-in weapon systems as the Phalanx gatling system (originally built to intercept missiles, revived to intercept mortar bombs), radar camouflage (first tried on periscopes, latter applied to warship masts to improve the own radar's performance, then applied to 'stealth' bombers)
- fire-and-forget and multiple targeting (especially to be found among most newly introduced direct fire ground missiles/ATGMs)
- electronic defensive jammers (in contrast to general electronic warfare, defensive jammers were introduced in the 90's and are still not used in all possible applications)
- digital radios for datalinks (becoming standard in well-funded ground forces)
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