Redefining Stand-off Warfare: Modern Efforts and Implications

Abstract

Stand-off warfare — or fighting with extended-range weapons — has long been an essential component of armed conflict. Over the ages catapults, slings, arrows, javelins, firearms, artillery, rockets and other ‘distance’ weapons have been used to inflict as much physical or psychological harm on an opponent as possible before the ‘close fight’. If the damage was sufficient, the enemy might break before close combat had to occur; but, at the very least it was desirable to diminish the foe’s material strength and morale before the decisive clash. Over the course of the twentieth century, three major technological innovations redefined stand-off warfare. These changes came, first, in the early part of the century with the development of aircraft and long-range bombing capabilities, then with the addition of precision-guided munitions in the last third of the century, and finally with the introduction of drones, robotics and other means of remote engagement in recent decades. To be sure, each innovation led to intense debates. over whether ‘air’ or ‘surface’ capabilities were sufficient, or even necessary, to defeat an armed foe, and what defeat in fact meant. Yet, none of these technological changes has fundamentally altered the concept of stand-off warfare; instead, they have merely refined it in terms of destructive power, distance and precision.