The Economist: Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence

The Panzerfaust-3, a German shoulder-fired heat-seeking antitank missile, can punch through a metre of solid steel-far more than any armoured vehicle could carry. The MPR-500, an Israeli precision bomb, can hammer through several storeys of a building and explode on a chosen floor. Russia's Sizzler, an exported antiship missile, can fly 300 kilometres and sprint at three times the speed of sound. America, China and Russia have destroyed orbiting satellites in tests. The Stuxnet worm, a cyber weapon, has infected computers in Iran's nuclear program.

These and myriad other military and intelligences technologies are changing the world. This Economist book describes these emerging technologies and places them in the larger context of today's politics, diplomacy, business and social issues. It shows how efforts to win wars or keep the peace are driving enormous and multifold technological advances. Technological one-upmanship is invigorating arms races. Military R&D is benefiting civilian technologies (augmented-reality contact lenses are in development, for example).
Intelligence technologies such as data-mining software raise important questions about privacy. And balances of power are shifting as new defence technologies emerge.

Much has been made of the limits of Western technology against today's low-tech insurgencies. This book shows, however, that, broadly speaking, defence technologies will continue to provide enormous advantages to advanced, Western armed forces.

The book is organised into five parts: land and sea, air and space, the computer factor, intelligence and spycraft, and the road ahead, which examines the coming challenges for western armies, such as new wars against insurgents operating out of civilian areas.

Comprising a selection of the best writing on the subject from The Economist, each part has an introduction linking the technological developments to political, diplomatic, business and other civilian matters.

For anyone who wants to know just how smart the global war, defence and intelligence machine is, this will be revealing and fascinating reading.