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The Role of Technology in Warfare Essay

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“History does not teach that better technology necessarily leads to victory. Rather victory goes to the commander who uses technology better, or who can deny the enemy his technology.” –Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (qtd. in Schwartau 540) As the future of warfare becomes more sophisticated, what will be the military technology of tomorrow? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, believes that there are three possible answers to that question: nuclear warfare, biological/chemical warfare, or cyber warfare. While nuclear and biological warfare is conducted on a battlefield, cyber warfare operates via the Internet and computers. All of these weapons have the same destructive potential, but the circumstances surrounding …show more content…

This developed into a race to see which nation could build the first nuclear weapon. The weapon that the United States manufactured was first used on the Japanese at Hiroshima, and then two days later at Nagasaki. The potential of this weapon was frightening. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, the Atomic bomb was banned from use by all countries except the United States, Russia, China, France, and United Kingdom because of the global aftereffects of this terrifying weapon. Nuclear warfare produced the most heinous aftereffects of any previous type of warfare (Walker). The blast of a nuclear weapon is powerful. It may cause third degree thermal burns, produces enough pressure to bend heavy steel girders to a 90-degree angle, and turns the entire blast radius into a firestorm. The people who have survived the blast will still experience a lifetime of side effects. Some of these might be genetically linked to future generations. The intensity and brightness of the blast may cause symptoms like keloid formation and retinal blastoma in humans. The sediment, or fallout, from the mushroom-like cloud,produced by the explosion, will be highly radioactive. The nuclear blast and its consequential fallout will affect the whole world. Heat produced from the explosion will increase the Greenhouse effect on the earth’s atmosphere. Theexplosion will also disrupt global weather patterns. Fallout from the explosion and ashes from the burning cities will be deposited in

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