A Traveling Shot over Eighty Years

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Paul Virilio

Published:

2023

Publisher:

Routledge

From the commanding heights of the earliest natural fortifications, through the architectonic innovation of the watch-tower, and the development of anchored observation balloons, or the aerial reconnaissance of World War I and its ‘photographic reconstruction’ of the battlefield, right up to President Reagan's latest early warning satellites, there has been no end to the enlargement of the military field of perception. The idea of war as fundamentally a game of hide-and-seek with enemy was proved to the point of absurdity in those First World War earthworks where millions of men were entrenched and interred for four long years. In the wars of old, strategy mainly consisted in choosing and marking out a theatre of operations, a battlefield, with the best visual conditions and the greatest scope for movement. By 1942 ground-based electronic devices were able to direct Flying Fortress squadrons over a very long distance, helping them to drop their bomb-loads by day or night and under any weather conditions.

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