Marginalium

On the future of battlefields. Gen. Guy Hubin describes the ‘homothetic’ impulse of modern armies: the fact that it’s the same structure from the smallest unit to the biggest, but for a matter of size, that focuses in on a central command structure. For Hubin, the future looks more like air control: a manoeuvre element that is linked to a portion of terrain, and not the command structure. Such a re-construction would better utilise the technology that is developing:

“One must break the existing relationship,” he writes, “between the importance of the level of responsibility and the volume of the subordinates.” Hubin argues that such a radical transformation is necessary to derive from the new technologies their full benefit.