The Army needs to move away from an overfocus on technology to effectively predict the character of war and use it to deter and defeat adversaries, according to a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army.

“Today, many writers are making recommendations about how the U.S. Army should fight based on observations of the Ukrainian War. ... These commentators often focus on the technology employed in Ukraine,” Maj. Robert Rose writes. “As the Army prepares to fight a potential future conflict, it should not just analyze contemporary conflicts, but it should also remember its past to understand how the characters of its wars have influenced the strategies it has pursued.”

In “A Problem of Character: How the Army’s Myopic Focus on Technology has Clouded its Thinking,” Rose argues that writers’ claims that technology itself is changing the character of war are “problematic” and “ignore context.”

“There is not a single character of war across the world,” he writes. “Ukraine does provide an additional data point to forecasting the future character of potential wars, but we should not make sweeping generalizations about the changing character of war based on narrow observations of technological change.”

Rose commands A Troop, 3rd Squadron, 4th Security Force Assistance Brigade, and is a fellow with the LTG (Ret.) James M. Dubik Writing Fellows Program. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and has graduate degrees from Harvard University and Cambridge University.

The paper is part of AUSA’s new Harding Papers series, which was launched in conjunction with the Army’s Harding Project, which aims to revitalize scholarship and writing across the force. The Harding Papers exclusively highlight the work and scholarship of Dubik Writing Fellows.

Just as the U.S. was unable to defeat the Viet Cong or the Taliban despite “an overwhelming technological edge,” technology will not be a silver bullet over current adversaries, Rose writes.

“We cannot assume that any technology will provide a decisive edge over Russia or China,” he writes. “Today, new technologies rapidly diffuse, and Russia and China have the scientific and industrial capabilities to quickly replicate or adapt to breakthroughs.”

Moving forward, the Army will need “to make calculated bets on the character of” future “conflicts,” Rose writes.

“Before an over-emphasis on technology began to cloud our thinking in the mid-20th century, the Army had produced leaders like Grant and Scott who clearly perceived the character of the wars they fought, developed an effective strategy for those wars’ dynamics, and adapted the Army to win,” he writes. “With the right lens to examine each war’s chameleon—like character, we could return that perception.”

Read the paper here.