'Prior to the war in Ukraine, defence professionals delighted in trading claims about the revolution in conflict and how it was changing the character and perhaps even the nature of warfare irrevocably. Those who demurred were written-off as cold war warriors incapable of keeping up with the effects of modern technology. This outstanding book decisively debunks such thinking. It explains that mass as well as technology must continue to determine the shape, size and training of our armed forces. Not to mention the need for raw human courage and resilience. The authors rightly conclude that 'the conduct of war has changed very little regardless of ones's timeline'.
I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Read it and re-learn some very old lessons!'
General The Lord Richards of Herstmonceux GCB CBE DSO DL
Formerly Chief of the UK Defence Staff
 
''Context is everything' - the last words of this excellent book - capture how our ministers, officials and generals are a danger to us all if they stick with the certainties about war espoused so stridently over the last 30 years. This primer illuminates the path to surviving and winning in the wars of the hardest century Homo Sapiens has ever faced.'
General Sir Richard Lawson Barrons, KCB, CBE
Formerly Commander, Joint Forces Command, 2013-2017
 
‘A refreshingly honest, brave, and insightful book drawing from thinkers at the top of their game. Challenging and prescient, War’s Changed Landscape demands to be read – and discussed.’ Professor Lloyd Clark, Director, Centre for Army Leadership, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
 
‘A clear-eyed unsentimental analysis that challenges many comfortable western assumptions about modern warfare. This book should be on the reading-list for every military planner and defence analyst.’  
Rt Hon Sir David Lidington KCB 
Formerly Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office
Chairman, Royal United Services Institute
 
'What are the enduring, the changing, and the novel features of warfare? This thoughtful study has as its forte its understanding of the impact of new technologies and resulting operational dimensions, war in its most concrete forms, a compass to war’s changed landscape for the practitioner.'
Professor Beatrice Heuser
Chair, International Relations, University of Glasgow
 
'In this timely primer, Walker and Roberts present a fascinating vision of changes in the relationship between international conflict practices, emerging military technologies, and the norms of war.'
Christian Enemark, Professor of International Relations, University of Southampton
 
In late 2021, the new means of warfare were confidently being described by political and military leaders alike using phrases such as ‘grey zone’, ‘sub liminal’ and ‘below the threshold of outright conflict’, a mix of hybrid strategies that would no longer involve the messy, noisy use of sticks and stones and bombs and gore. Future warfare was to be political warfare. Cyber and influence tools were the future and many academics agreed. In difficult retrospect, this was actually a narrative based on hubris and a simple extension of commentators’ own experiences over what had been twenty years of failed interventions.
 
But by February 2022, everyone had changed their tune. War was suddenly 20th Century redux, a tapestry of trenches, bayonets and massed artillery that would have been quite familiar to participants of that centuries’ two World Wars. The picture, of course, is more complicated and nuanced. Technology is disrupting practices and doing so right across battlespace. But hybrid warfare has very much not disappeared and political warfare in its many forms remains the overt strategy of several States notwithstanding unprecedented expansion in the means available to parties to undertake meddling and conflict.
 
It is quickly evident, moreover, that contemporary war is actually less defined by technical innovation than armchair experts would have you to believe. And disruptions today are too often tomorrow’s old news. Empirically, war’s norms and behaviours are quite slow to change with each shiny new driver for that change often giving rise to compelling versos and points of friction that combine to dull material transformation. This book unpicks the arguments made pre and post 2022 and, based on interviews with experts from around the world, seeks to dissect battlecraft’s enduring themes and how these may affect conflicts’ current norms.
 
c.200 pages I Size: 234 x 156mm
Publication date: c. October 2023