Origins of the U.S. Autonomous Military Arsenal
Oxford University Press, 2025, ISBN 97801900643892025, 280 pp (hardcover)
Authors: Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald
Reviewed by: Carl Rhodes
Conflicts over the past decade have underscored the importance of unmanned systems on the modern battlefield.[1] While much attention has focused on the technological advances that enable modern autonomous systems, it is equally important to understand why certain technologies received investment and were ultimately adopted by military forces. In the United States, securing funding for any military system requires more than achieving a given technology readiness level or passing test and evaluation hurdles. To attract funding, an autonomous system must align with military doctrine, find champions when budgets tighten, and sometimes even have history on its side.
The Hand Behind the Unmanned offers a rigorous examination of the people, processes, and institutional cultures within the US military that shaped investment decisions (or the absence of them) in autonomous systems over the past century. The authors effectively demonstrate that autonomous weapons have a much longer history than the era of Predator unmanned aircraft. They trace this lineage through systems including land mines, booby traps, balloons, and naval torpedoes stretching back centuries. The authors astutely note that naval mines (an early unmanned system) were once proposed as a means of avoiding the need for a larger US Navy at the start of the nineteenth century. The book traces the history of US autonomous systems from World War I to the present, spanning all domains and incorporating often-overlooked systems such as satellites and smart munitions. This is a useful reminder that the drone warfare seen on twenty-first-century battlefields in Europe and the Middle East is as much evolutionary as it is revolutionary.
The book then turns to its core arguments on how the US autonomous arsenal evolved into its current form. Is an unmanned military inevitable once technology makes it feasible, or are other forces at work? The authors argue that investment in autonomous systems is shaped by multiple interacting factors, most notably their acceptance within ethical frameworks of warfare, the emergence of champions for specific technologies, and windows of opportunity created by budgetary or historical circumstances.
Two key beliefs that have driven the adoption of unmanned technology are examined in detail across two chapters. The first is the conviction that a revolution in military affairs, coupled with the imperative to integrate advancing technology into military operations, would fundamentally reshape warfare. The authors provide a detailed account of the role played by Andrew Marshall during his long tenure at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) in promoting the view that new technologies (including autonomy) were essential to improving long-range sensing and precision strike capabilities. This effort accelerated in the 1980s when ONA translated Soviet research on automation, helping frame what became understood as a ‘military-technology revolution.’ The book shows that Marshall was not only an intellectual force within defence strategy circles, but also a master of quiet influence, cultivating junior officers and civilians who would later rise to senior leadership positions in the US Department of Defense. The depth of the research is especially evident in this chapter, examining the influence of Marshall on various individuals who would later shape key decisions concerning unmanned technologies.
The book next examines a second belief shaping the adoption of unmanned systems—the idea that these technologies will help reduce casualties. Up until the Vietnam War, much of the US military and its political leadership believed that warfare was fundamentally a contest of attrition. However, an ever-increasing number of troop losses combined with televised images of body bags helped erode public support for the conflict. This led many, especially within the uniformed military, to believe in the need for improved unmanned systems to reduce US losses in conflict while sustaining greater public support. Unmanned systems were also seen as a means of improving strike precision and reducing collateral damage.
The book finally examines the role of service identity in shaping the incorporation of autonomous technology across domains. The cultures of the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines are each examined, along with the role their respective beliefs and inter-service rivalries play in the incorporation of unmanned systems.[2] For the US military, these institutional identities are especially important given the primary role the services play in making budget decisions. Carl Builder’s 1989 book, The Masks of War, which connects service identity to technology investments, plays a central role in this chapter. Ultimately, the authors show that service culture posed a greater barrier to incorporating unmanned systems than capability-based arguments alone. Culture often limited the impact of policy advocates for unmanned innovation.
One area that could have been explored in greater depth is the operational demand for the unique capabilities unmanned systems provide. The Predator, acquired in large numbers to support the US War on Terror, was not the most technologically advanced system. It did, however, provide long-endurance airborne surveillance with sortie lengths that were not sustainable using manned aircraft over long periods. More recently, Ukrainian drone strikes have often been carried out using commercial systems, or systems closely derived from them. At times, military innovation lies less in developing new technology than in adapting existing technology to new operational purposes. Such wartime adaptation is often more decisive in conflict than in peacetime, when institutional culture and procurement processes exert greater influence over technological adoption.
One of the book’s major strengths is its deep research into the many relationships and internal machinations of the Pentagon surrounding unmanned technology from the post-Vietnam era to the present day. The authors have examined a wealth of documents and conducted interviews with the key players involved in many of these decisions, including Bill Perry, Bob Work, Frank Kendell and others. As an airpower researcher, I would be remiss if I did not highlight a minor error. The authors refer twice to the shootdown of Scott O’Grady, stating that he piloted an F-117 when it was actually an F-16C over Bosnia. An F-117 was lost a few years later over Serbia, during Operation Allied Force, but it was piloted by Lt. Col. Dale Zelko.
Overall, the book provides an excellent account of the many reasons why various kinds of unmanned technology have, and have not, been incorporated by the US military. It is clearly not a simple story of a single ‘hand behind unmanned’ that incorporated autonomous technology, nor is it a story driven purely by technological development. The successful incorporation of unmanned systems required entrepreneurial advocates, harnessing trends in public support for military operations and overcoming service cultures often resistant to removing the human operator. This book makes a substantial contribution to the academic literature and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in military innovation or in understanding how new technologies gain traction within military institutions.
About the Reviewer
Dr Carl Rhodes is founder of Robust Policy and a senior fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. He hosts the Deterrence Down Under podcast and previously spent 25 years with RAND Corporation.
Endnotes
[1] The reviewer prefers the term uncrewed to unmanned, reflecting the fact that personnel of all genders have operated these systems. In this review, however, the term unmanned is used to be consistent with the book’s title and terminology.
[2] While the Space Force is now an independent service branch in the U.S., they aren’t included for consideration in the book due to their relatively short history.
