Steel to silicon: A digital way to make combat forces more lethal, accurate

Sophisticated militaries the world over are moving to digitally networked weapons systems to turn their combat forces more lethal and accurate

The First Gulf War of 1991 — the official name for the four-day decimation of Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait the previous year — mesmerised television audiences everywhere. It was the world’s first televised war, where CNN showed bridges and tanks exploding in puffs of flame, their fates sealed by the placement of a cross hair from a fighter pilot’s cockpit. Cruise missiles sailed almost leisurely through the streets of Baghdad before flying into buildings through open doors and windows.

But while the television viewer took vicarious pleasure in that sanitised dance of death, the armed forces of other