Democratization of war is not a new trend. The firearm was itself a democratizing technology, dramatically reducing the skill and physical barriers required to inflict lethal force on an adversary — so was the crossbow before that, and others before that. Those technologies enabled new techniques and expanded existing ones, including forms of irregular warfare that allowed smaller forces to exploit the asymmetry they created. European armies arriving in North America brought a tradition built around disciplined formations and massed firepower, but quickly encountered Indigenous forces that emphasized mobility, concealment, surprise and intimate knowledge of terrain. Colonial forces began adapting to those tactics. Benjamin Church incorporated Native American tactics into his ranger force during King Philip’s War in the 1670s. Nearly a century later, Robert Rogers took those lessons further during the French and Indian War, building Rogers’ Rangers into a force designed to scout, raid and operate deep in terrain where conventional formations struggled.
The technology mattered and so did the underlying lesson: you didn’t have to match a superior adversary soldier for soldier if you could change the conditions of the fight with the technology at your disposal. That lesson carried into the American Revolution, where commanders like Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan employed irregular approaches against the British, using mobility, surprise and targeted attacks to work around traditional advantages in equipment, training and manpower.
Democratization has continued to iterate throughout human history. Today, a $1,000 drone bought online, altered with 3D-printed components and operated with relatively little training can destroy personnel or a weapons system that costs millions of dollars. That changes the economics of warfare. More importantly, it changes who is capable of creating a significant tactical effect on the battlefield.
