Over the last few years, many analysts have discussed what Marine General Charles Krulak called the rise of the “strategic corporal.” This concept meant to describe how technology was putting far more destructive power (and thus influence over strategic outcomes) into the hands of younger, more junior troops. A 20-year-old corporal could now call in air strikes that a 40-year-old colonel used to decide in the past. But with these new technologies, we are also seeing the emergence of its doppelganger, what I call the “tactical general.” While they are becoming more distanced from the battlefield, generals of the 21st century are becoming more and more involved in the real-time fighting of war.

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That incident with the general watching the Predator footage is far from the only one I came across in the course of my research. For instance, one battalion commander in Iraq told of how he had 12 stars worth of generals (a 4-star general, two 3-star lieutenant generals, and a 2-star major general) tell him where to position his units during a battle. Another time, an Army Special Operations Forces captain recounted how on one mission he even had a brigadier general (so, four layers of command up) radio him while his team was in the midst of hunting down an insurgent who had escaped during a raid. The general, watching live Predator drone video back at the command center in Baghdad, called in orders for the captain on where to deploy not merely his unit, but his individual soldiers.

So our new technologies are giving an entirely new, and perhaps even literal, meaning to the idea of “Armchair Generals.” But it also prompts a serious and important question that I had a fun time wrestling with in my book: Is this trend a positive or negative one to the fighting and winning of our wars? Moreover, what can and should be done about it? Leave your comments below.

P.W. Singer is Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He has worked in the Pentagon, as well as consulted for the CIA, Congress, and the State Department. He is the author of two previous books, Corporate Warriors and Children at War, which were groundbreaking works on the issues of private military firms and child soldiers. His new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century will be available from Penguin Books January 26, 2009. For further information, please go to P.W. Singer Books. Read the review on ArmchairGeneral.com.

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