by T. Scott Randolph

Created on: August 16, 2010

The future of the military may not be clear. The days of mass armies facing each other across a battle field seem to be a thing of the past. The wars that are being fought today are centered on small units that employ units that are no bigger than a company. There doesn't seem to be any indication that this will change in the near future. Because of this, the technology that the military uses will more than likely be centered on this style of warfare.

If we step back a little in history we can see the evolution of this concept. During WWI the trench warfare made it so that you may have to engage an enemy that was a 1000 yards away. You needed a rifle that was capable of this range and accuracy. During the next war, WWII we found ourselves fighting in the jungles of the South Pacific. All of the sudden the enemy may be a 100 yards away if you were lucky. There was no need for the long range rifle. Enter the Thompson sub machine gun.

Several decades later an assault rifle was designed that seemed to meet all the needs of the military. The M-16. It took a few years to work out the bugs but eventually it was modified to the M-16A2. This weapon is still used by the military yet it does have one flaw in today's combat environment. It is still rather long. Once again, the state of war has given us another version of the assault rifle. It is the same basic rifle but in a smaller package, the M-4. Being shorter in length, it is easier to handle in a vehicle and during house to house fighting.

This is just one example of the military changing with the times and updated its technology. Another example is in communications. Even in the short time since my tours with war, communications have made leaps and bounds. In the 1990s you would have maybe two radios for an entire platoon. You had to rely mainly on hand signals in the fog of war.

Today, almost every soldier wears a headset that keeps them in constant communication with both their fellow soldier as well as higher command.

GPS location is another advancement. It use to be a large clunky device that took forever to lock onto satellites. It was easier to guess at a location using grid coordinates on a map. Now you instantly know both your own location (as well as other friendlies) and the placement of hostile forces. You can call in an unmanned air strike without having to put you or your soldiers in harms way.

While the ability to kill more efficiently has made leaps and bounds, so has the type of body armor that a soldier wears. When the flak jacket first came into use during the Korean War, it was not very effective. Not much changed until after the year 2000. Before that soldiers could wear steel plates in their armor but the weight caused most soldiers to for go the protection. Kevlar, and its later upgrades helped to alleviate this problem. Today soldiers have Kevlar and ceramic based armor that is capable of sustaining a direct hit from an assault rifle or RPG without causing injury (if you doubt this,you can find countless videos on You-Tube that show soldiers being shot and getting up to return fire).

Today's soldier (or land warrior as the television shows refer to them) are becoming more and more like video games. It begs the question is the technology interchangable? Are video games training youth to be soldiers? Even if this is the case, it has given us the best trained, equipted and ready to accopmplish whatever mission comes down the pipe on a moments notice.

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