The Hand Behind Unmanned: Origins of the US Autonomous Military Arsenal

The Hand Behind Unmanned tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, and beliefs that led to the contemporary American unmanned arsenal. It takes an expansive look at automated and autonomous technologies, from mines and torpedoes, to guided bombs and missiles, satellites, and ultimately drones. Instead of asking the question: "why unmanned rather than manned," the book explains why certain types of unmanned systems became popular while others languished in research or in small pockets of the American military.

In order to answer this question, Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald use interviews of senior decisionmakers, military doctrine and writings, and historical sources to detail the proliferation of over a hundred years of unmanned weapons in the US arsenal, from mines and balloons to Reapers and Global Hawks. Their exploration reveals how multiple factors–key policy entrepreneurs, like Andy Marshall in the Office of Net Assessment; critical junctures like the fall of the USSR or the 9/11 attacks; beliefs that emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War; and US military service culture–all interacted in complex ways to form today's unmanned arsenal.

The Hand Behind Unmanned uses theories of organizational innovation and process tracing of historical cases to explain recent developments, including US precision munition shortfalls and the rise of unmanned aerial platforms. It also foreshadows where the US unmanned arsenal may be headed in the future. Ultimately, the book uses a remarkable case study to illustrate how ideas diffuse across people and organizations to build the weapons of modern warfare.