Citadels and Marching Forts: How Non-Technological Drivers are Pointing Future Warfare Towards Techniques from the Past

Future warfare is frequently imagined through the prism of technological change. Because our era is dominated by information technology it follows that future warfare will be also. This article argues differently, that the key drivers of conflict nowadays are actually non-technological, or at best secondarily technological in origin. The practice of warfare now is in fact highly static, positional, exceedingly cautious and characterised on the ground above all by new forms of traditional military technology—fortifications. If we understand present trends correctly and they continue then the future of warfare looks less like the manoeuvrist visions of extant doctrine and more like the patterns of warfare of centuries past.