Northeastern Ukraine is littered with the iron bones of Cold War planning. The vehicles of Russian invasion and Ukrainian counter-offensive — derived from shared arsenals once built in conjunction for an anticipated push west — now lie as wrecks and ruins, the result of weeks of warfare. To the extent that technology has captured attention in this war, it is the drones and missiles of modern origin, applied against older targets, that shape perception.

Is this innovation? Or is it merely the fact that a good drone scout produces useful, shareable combat footage?

In “What is a military innovation and why it matters,” published March 22 in the Journal of Strategic Studies, authors Michael C. Horowitz and Shira Pindyck tackle the concept of change in fighting wars, both as a way to understand how these shifts happen and how people think about these shifts.

The authors settle on the definition, “changes in the conduct of warfare designed to increase the ability of a military community to generate power,” which is better explained through an example. The British Navy invented aircraft carriers with the HMS Furious in 1917, but figuring out how to apply “planes launched from a ship” for maximum effect was the product of interwar planning and thinking. In the US, a combination of experiments in the field, war game exercises, and urging by Navy aviators all led to the useful innovation: “the carrier was envisioned as a mobile airfield, rather than a spotter for the battleship.”

Interwar carrier theorizing would matter a great deal for how World War II was fought, though it was not clear until the war was underway how much the range increase from ship-launched planes mattered over the big guns of battleships. The US and Japan both reached similar conclusions about carriers, building from initial British experience, and employed the ships to much greater effect.

Carriers are a high-end example. Capital ships are, after all, capital-intensive. The construction, operation, and employment of a ship crewed by the population of a small town is a massive undertaking. New ideas and tools for warfare have to be within reach of the military undertaking it, and will reflect the means of destruction that a society can muster.

Another innovation considered by Horowitz and Pindyck is the levee en masse, or the conscription that defined first Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France, enhancing through social institution and connection the scale at which labor for war could be brought into use. Conscription also spread the harm from war, ensuring deaths in combat hit families beyond those of a professional soldiering class.

How militaries adapt to new fights, whether with new machines, new social structures, or a combination of new tech and new behaviors, changes the specific realities of war, if not its overall nature. It’s a kind of perspective worth bearing in mind for policymakers who may, in the next few years, have to decide what kinds of battlefield AI or autonomous targeting systems are pursued, drawing on observations from the Ukraine war and theoretical models.

Incidentally, just over two weeks after the paper was published, Horowitz tweeted he had accepted a position as Director of the Pentagon's new Office of Emerging Capabilities Policy, “shaping defense policy on emerging tech adoption/use.”

Sahar Fetrat mourned the hollowness of international commitment to provide for the people of Afghanistan. Citing both Taliban abuses and the refusal of the Biden White House to release sovereign Afghan funds to the people, Fetrat called out the present status quo for delivering harm to women and girls while conferring legitimacy to the Taliban leadership. “Afghanistan was invaded in the name of saving Afghan women and eradicating terrorism,” wrote Fetrat. “Twenty-one years later, it seems like the international community and the Taliban have both held Afghan women and citizens hostage. A struggle for power between the two has only resulted in hunger, death, and further deprivation.”

Michael Fox lamented the coming demise of Mexico’s last glacier. Jamapa glacier, the last of 14 that once graced the peak of Citlaltépetl, may be gone within the decade. Its death is anthropogenic in two ways: First from climate change, which warms the world, and secondarily from deforestation on the mountain, which removed the cooling and protective properties of trees. An effort to refortest part of the peak was successful, until funding ran out. It’s a loss, and one that will increase water scarcity for people nearby who once depended on the snowpack for their regular water supply.

Carolyn Beeler reported that Germans are willing, by a slim majority, to shoulder the burdens of doing with less electricity and heat if it means cutting a reliance on Russian-supplied fuels. Individual families are adopting resourcing-saving measures, like cold showers, though the change is acknowledged as more symbolic than practical. “The German people, I think, have a different attitude toward this whole boycott, cutting down imports, than most of the politicians have,” high school English teacher Oliver Grosscurth told Beeler. That suggests there’s political room to reduce dependency on Russian fuel, and in turn transition faster to a green economy.

We’re all lucky McKinsey wasn’t around to make it the Emancipation Consultation.

It’s okay if it’s Michael Mannsplaining.

Radioactive McFaulout.

Time to steppe up the cancellations.

Liquid bread and circuses.

Blogs for the blog god, skulls for the skull throne.

Pour one out for the boys of Sumer.