On 5 July 2007, the United Press International (UPI) carried a commentary titled "The Death of Revolution in Military Affairs" by William S Lind that has become the subject of a hot debate among the world strategic community. One of the main reasons for this is that Lind, was one of the early proponents of RMA in the late 1980s, and is still considered to be one of the leading authorities on the Fourth Generation War.

In his latest commentary, Lind admits that the transformation of war in recent times took a turn, which he and his colleagues had never anticipated. He analyzed the current turn of events based on findings from three wars - the ongoing messy conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the unexpected outcome of the Second Lebanon War launched by Israel in July 2006. In its April 2007 report, the Justice Winograd Commission, which enquired into the causes for the failure of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the Lebanon war squarely blamed both the political and military leadership of Israel.

According to the Commission one of the main causes for the failure of IDF was the error of judgment on the part of the Israeli General Staff in assessing the efficacy of RMA. "The first lesson of the second Lebanon War is …..that wishful thinking concerning the capabilities of precision weapon systems overpowered the general Staff's analytical abilities ….. Faith in advanced air and artillery systems as magical "game changing" systems absolved the General Staff from the need to consider what capabilities (such as distributed and hardened facilities) the enemy possessed, and led the IDF into a strategic trap it had recognized in advance."

The experiences of the US war machine in Afghanistan and Iraq also shattered the hubris built around "standoffish" weapons and their ability to kill only enemy combatants. Despite the best efforts of scores of embedded journalists, the civilian casualties among Iraqis stand at above eighty thousand on a conservative count.

According to Lind, the original advocates of the RMA had visualized the game changing capability of precision weapon systems and other modern gadgets. However, what Lind and others did not foresee was the ability of the Pentagon and other military industry "fat cats" to change the "budget game." For Pentagon it became a "game" of big money, and against this aspect Lind has launched a scathing attack. According to him, "the fact is, Pentagon policy has nothing to do with war," rather its policy is more to do with the procurement of big budget weapons and equipment, which in reality has a great deal to do with why America is losing two wars. Further he asserts that, "the Pentagon is the last Soviet Industry. It is not about producing a product, least of all a product that works. It is solely, entirely, about acquiring and justifying resources." Lind says that according to this justification - "the RMA does supremely well."

There is an urgent need in India to understand these developments and to understand how to adopt RMA in India's circumstances and within the given military budgets. If one takes a look at the Chinese military, the PLA carried out a detailed study about the various aspects of RMA in its early stages and formulated a system of RMA with Chinese characteristics.

In order to have a better understanding about this phenomenon one need to look at the massive volumes of work the strategic community in China has done on RMA and asymmetric warfare. They understood the problem of budget constrains quite early and decided to use the available resources judicially in areas where China had absolute advantages. Another important aspect Chinese thinkers have paid attention to, is the development of first rate human resources to fight future wars. At the conclusion of a discourse on RMA, General Xiong Guangkai, one of the foremost military thinkers of China today, concluded that, "in the final analysis, it is 'people' that the humanities are about. Everything on earth is about or for the people. In the military field too, everything will eventually depend on people. In short, the human factor is decisive."

For the foreseeable future, the Indian military will have to continue to survive on limited budgets. Therefore, it is crucial to have a healthy and detailed debate on how we can maximize our advantages and reduce failures. How far can India depend on imported hi-tech weapons and equipment? What changes are necessary in our man management systems? No future war can be fought with a backward looking human resources development system within the armed forces. The recent assertion by Lind can be taken as a starting point for discussing the urgently required changes in the larger policy framework of the Indian military.