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For a decade, commentators, analysts and military observers have been talking about a new defence 'paradigm' and the 'revolution in military affairs', but only then, when airliners were used as weapons of mass destruction, did the revolution and the paradigm take flight and a new 'warform' mobilise.

Wow. For a second there, I thought we were going to be treated to an intelligent analysis of the revolutionary implications of suicidists as human delivery sytems for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But the article just turned out to be the same old same old. Oh, well, you know what they say about generals always preparing to fight the last battle. Now we know why.

For the longest time the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) was described in terms of a better and flashier Desert Storm hatching at the Command and General Staff College. Crusader, Objective Individual Combat Weapon, etc. were going to be "it". As it turned out, was the real RMA inaugurated by a bunch of young Islamics using off-the-shelf technology and a new doctrinal paradigm?

This question has to be asked seriously. Many observers were frankly so impressed by the Al-Qaeda's "thinking-out-of-the-box" that they believed the war on terrorism to be unwinnable. The US was helpless, its high-tech weaponry useless in a war against the shadows.

This observation turned out to be partly true and partly false. None of the September 11 methods used by Al-Qaeda were actually new. Airplane attacks had been tried at various scales, in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia before. A dirty bomb had been attempted in Russia. Attacks on skyscrapers had been tried before -- on the World Trade Center. And American military methods were not exactly useless. From the depths of Afghanistan to the neighborhoods of Karachi, to the jungles of Basilan the US military has become a killing machine, perhaps too deadly for comfort.

Technology advanced both the attack and the defense; both America and America's enemies. The second greatest conceit of the 1990 RMA theorists was to think that America alone benefited from technology.

We shall know what the RMA really means for mankind in the next few months. The threat of biological warfare hangs over the entire War on Terror, and in particular the Iraq campaign, like the perfume of death. The greatest conceit of RMA theorists is to think that the surprises are already over.