From the synchronised camera/machine-guns on the biplanes of World War One to the laser satellites of Star Wars, the technologies of cinema and warfare have developed a fatal interdependence. Hiroshima marked one conclusion of this process in the nuclear 'flash' which penetrated the city's darkest recesses, etching the images of its victims on the walls. Since the disappearance of direct vision in battle and the replacement of one-to-one combat by the remote and murderous son et lumiere of trench warfare, military strategy has been dominated by the struggle between visibility and invisibility, surveillance and camouflage. Perception and destruction have now become coterminous. Paul Virilio, one of the most radical French critics of contemporary culture, explores these conjunctions from a range of perspectives. He gives a detailed technical history of weaponry, photography and cinematography, illuminating it with accounts of films and military campaigns. He examines in parallel the idea