DISTRIBUTION A:
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Document created: 1 December 05
Air & Space Power Journal - Winter 2005

Since the beginning of World War II, we have seen the introduction of radar, precision-guided weapons, atomic bombs, ballistic missiles, transistors, semiconductors, computers, jet aircraft, stealth technology, satellites, cell phones, lasers, the global positioning system (GPS), and so forth. The list of scientific and technical applications in warfare is staggering. Each of these technologies has had a profound impact on the way we fight and, equally importantly, on the way we keep our war fighters out of harm’s way. Furthermore, the pace of inserting winning technology is increasing. In the millennia since humankind has kept records, estimates indicate that the world has seen a doubling—a 100 percent growth—in knowledge from the dawn of time until the 1950s. That knowledge, which has doubled several times since then, has spilled over to the war fighter. In many cases, it has actually been driven by his or her needs.

Because today’s warrior fights with more technologically sophisticated weapons than in the past, fewer of them have to fight on the battlefield. Moreover, the increased precision of war fighting has ushered in a profound change in the very nature of national conflicts: rulers of nations can no longer wage war with the lives of their people without putting their own personal safety at risk. But technological advances in warfare have become a double-edged sword. That is, although the number density of combatants (the number per square kilometer) may have decreased throughout the years (fig. 1), their firepower has increased, made possible by the introduction of state-of-the-art weapons. One may understand the increase in firepower by considering the way technology has enabled fewer war fighters to levy more damage at a longer distance: the range of a spear was extended by the bow and arrow, whose range was extended by the bullet, whose range was extended by the artillery shell, whose range was extended even farther by missile technology. New technologies such as hypersonic missiles, which can cover hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes, or directed-energy weapons, which can engage the enemy at the speed of light, allow us to extend a weapon’s range beyond national borders or even around the world, reducing manpower density on the battlefield even further.

The Increase in Military 
Effectiveness due to
Science and Technology

In 1945 J. F. C. Fuller enumerated range of action, striking power, accuracy of aim, volume of fire, and portability as qualitative parameters characterizing the power of a weapon, giving range of action the highest priority.¹ Brig Gen Simon P. Worden, USAF, retired, expanded on this concept by deriving military effectiveness as a basic measure of a weapon’s military power.² One may define effectiveness in terms of the brightness (a term frequently used by laser engineers to measure the capability of a laser) per unit time, or the measure of a weapon’s range, accuracy, and power per unit time, all rolled into a single number (table 1).

Note the presentation of military effectiveness in compact form as an exponential number—meaning, of course, that bullets have a military effectiveness of 102 or 100 times greater than arrows (108 divided by 106), and that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) are 108 or 100 million times more effective than artillery in 1900 (1022 divided by 1014). Here, Worden presents lasers as 10 billion times more effective than artillery. Although military tactics and strategy have played a role in increasing the effectiveness of these weapons, advances in military effectiveness stem chiefly from the exploitation of science and technology (S&T) (fig. 2). One sees the dramatic increase in such effectiveness on a logarithmic scale; that is, the vertical axis of the figure shows exponential powers of 10, so the maximum value of 25 is not a simple factor of five greater than 20 but 105—100,000 times greater.

Figure 2. Military effectiveness through the years. (From data in Simon P. Worden, SDI and the Alternatives [Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991].)

When will this increase in military effectiveness stop? At the present rate, it will not cease in the foreseeable future because technology present in the battlefield keeps increasing. For the war fighter, this means that weapons used to win tomorrow’s war will differ as much from today’s weapons as the latter differ from those used in World War II. But this will happen only if we keep investing in S&T because advances in that area have to come from somewhere—remember that today’s weapons are the result of yesterday’s investments. If we don’t invest, we’ll fight tomorrow’s war with today’s technology—but our adversaries may not. Or just as bad, the fact that we invent something doesn’t mean that we will exploit it first. The country that invented the airplane found itself using other nations’ airplanes in World War I. Aviation historian Richard Hallion has pointed out that a decade after the Wright brothers’ first flight, American military aircraft accounted for only 2.5 percent of the world’s total number of military airplanes then in service.³ Without a sustained S&T program, the brilliant ideas of our research scientists and engineers will languish or, worse, perhaps fall into the hands of future adversaries.

However, if we keep investing and exploiting advances in S&T, tomorrow’s battlefield will consist of global, interconnected networks keeping track of targets using distributed, sophisticated, smart, and reconfigurable sensors; microcombatants; stealthy air/land/sea/space platforms; and long-range, conventional (nonnuclear), high-precision, extremely accurate weapon systems (both manned and unmanned)—all linked with digital computers. History has shown that advances in S&T produce exponential increases in military effectiveness—not just increases of 10 percent or even a doubling of effectiveness but true factors of many thousands of times. So this is the precedent: advances in S&T will make their way to the battlefield and will change the very nature of warfare. For example, military authorities note that in World War II, aircraft had to drop approximately 5,000 bombs to destroy one target.⁴ In Vietnam the addition of laser-guided technology dropped that number to around 500; to about 15 in the Iraq war of 1991, thanks to advances in precision-aiming technology; and to 10 and then to five in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Even more precise weapons came into play during Gulf War II of 2003, with ratios approaching one target killed for every weapon dispensed.

An important human dimension accompanies such advances. Hallion further notes that hitting a 200,000-square-foot German factory in World War II with a 96 percent chance of success required a squadron of 108 B-17 bombers (carrying 1,080 aircrew members and 648 bombs) and approximately 100 single-seat escort fighters, bringing the total force to nearly 1,200 human lives. Typically, 15 of the bombers and their 150 men would not make it back home. Today we could perform the same mission either with a single F-117 stealth fighter dropping two precision-guided bombs or with one cruise missile.⁵ Furthermore, to date only one F-117 has ever been shot down in combat.

In the 45 years between World War II and the first Gulf War, the average miss distance of a bomb decreased from over half a mile to 10 feet.⁶ We’re also quickly approaching the ultimate limit of using one bomb to destroy one target since warriors will be constrained by the number of bombs they can carry. Of course, our intelligence gathering must ensure that the target we hit is the one we really want to destroy. Also, advances in S&T hold out the promise of nonkinetic weapons such as directed energy, whose near-infinite precision may allow warriors to kill many targets with one weapon, resulting in a “deep magazine.” Clearly, we are reaping the benefits of decades of investment in S&T. Weapon systems from the F-22 to the airborne laser owe their existence to years of aggressive, vigorous Air Force support of S&T investments.

The Air Force has a proud tradition of supporting S&T for long-term investments in future war-fighting technology. Originally established as a technology branch of the military, the Army Air Corps offered machines that fly in the air. The nation validated the need for that high-tech legacy by establishing the Air Force as a separate service in 1947. With the invention of the atomic bomb, global aircraft, and jet aircraft, Gen Henry H. Arnold realized the Air Force’s critical dependence on advances in S&T. Consequently, he and Dr. Theodor von Kármán established the Scientific Advisory Group (now the Scientific Advisory Board), giving the nation’s most-renowned scientists a vehicle for advising the service on S&T investments.

Today, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is responsible for the Air Force’s annual $1.2 billion S&T program, including far-term basic research, exploratory development, applied research, and advanced development. The laboratory employs more than 6,300 military and civilian personnel who can proudly claim to have contributed to technological breakthroughs in all of today’s modern aircraft, spacecraft, and weapon systems, as well as significant advancements in modern communications, electronics, manufacturing, and medical research and products. The AFRL also houses the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), which provides funding to over 1,000 researchers at universities, industries, and government agencies throughout the country and around the globe. One can say without exaggeration that the financial and intellectual support of the AFOSR influences the direction of basic research in nearly every technical field with military relevance. The commitment of the thousands of researchers and program managers at the AFRL demonstrates recognition of the importance of basic S&T research to the Air Force mission.

But danger looms: unless we continue to nurture defense S&T, the advantages that the Air Force enjoys in military effectiveness could stagnate—perhaps even grind to a halt. As total funding in Air Force S&T decreases—both in terms of real dollars and constant fiscal-year funding as a percentage of the service’s total obligation authority—so will the direct edge in military capability. S&T funding has to come from somewhere. A significant decrease in the level of industrial research and development and annual decreases in funds available for university research, coupled with the tightening of belts at the defense and national laboratories, will place tomorrow’s advancements in military capability in jeopardy. Our war fighters do not want a fair fight; they want to so completely dominate an opponent that conflicts end quickly with minimal loss—or don’t start at all. If the time comes when we no longer dominate the battle, our warriors will find themselves fighting with the same capability as their foes.

Technology Can Change
Warfare Overnight

On many occasions, new technology introduced on the battlefield has changed the course of military affairs overnight. The Battle of Crécy in 1346 saw the unveiling of high-powered, highly accurate English longbows in continental Europe, resulting in ruinous defeat of the French and recognition that metal armor would never again offer impenetrable protection. The French, of course, responded, so that within 10 years their armies included highly skilled longbowmen, and military tactics changed forever. Additionally, nineteenth-century naval history shows us examples of military technical revolutions fueled by innovation, creative thinking, and hard work. During the American Civil War, the introduction of ironclad warships altered naval warfare, but another revolution had occurred over half a century earlier. At the end of the eighteenth century, the fledgling American Navy sought a design for a new class of warship. Unfettered by hundreds of years of warship-building legacy, American naval architects led by such out-of-the-box thinkers as Joshua Humphreys of Philadelphia designed sailing frigates that were larger, better armed, better built, and faster than their English counterparts.

These early ships, including the still—commissioned frigate USS Constitution, prevailed in all of their engagements during the early part of the War of 1812. Imagine the shock to the British when their 1,000-ship navy suffered defeat after defeat to a colonial upstart with superior technology. A number of factors proved key to this success: well-trained volunteer crews and newly developed, innovative designs, including hull structures diagonally braced to support heavier cannon; advanced material, including live oak from the Carolina swamps, superior to that of the British; and newly derived designs that allowed higher gun placement above the water and freer movement of ships’ hulls through the water. The moral of this story is that innovation often comes from looking at an old problem from a new perspective—another edge that S&T gives us.

The Best Use Is Not
Always the First Use

Most weapon systems experience the same jaw-dropping, unexpected use made of every new major technological device: once war fighters get their hands on an asset, they almost invariably come up with a new, perhaps even more important, application. History bears this out. For example, no one in his or her right mind wanted a device—such as a GPS receiver—that would indicate one’s location accurate to centimeters, much less time of location accurate to microseconds. For years, people had gotten along fine with maps from the American Automobile Association (AAA), or if they needed more accuracy, standard navigation gear such as compasses.

To determine their location, pilots started using long-range aid to navigation (LORAN), which came in handy when they flew in fog or through clouds or, especially, over water.⁷ Even then, no one really had a need for more accurate navigation tools since pilots could always “eyeball” a landing once they flew in under the cloud layer. Nevertheless, more sophisticated navigational tracking devices appeared, such as star trackers and then the ultimate—the inertial navigation system (INS), based on the accurate reading of differences between gyroscopes. Later, the laser gyroscope further refined the INS. Why in the world would anyone want anything more accurate than that?

This is precisely the criticism that a few far-thinking Air Force scientists encountered when they first proposed the GPS. Undaunted, they argued that precise navigation would do away with the need for the sometimes-inaccurate LORAN (then used for the majority of air navigation) and could set a standard for everything from mapping to geolocation. Many scoffed at the idea: why spend billions on a navigation system instead of a new class of fighters? Luckily, Congress agreed with the visionaries and funded the project. When the GPS finally came online, however, it fizzled. Nobody used it, and at first nobody wanted it. After all, why would someone spend thousands of dollars buying a GPS receiver to find his or her location within a few hundred meters (for security purposes, the Air Force masked the commercial GPS algorithm, making it 10 to 100 times less accurate than the military version)? Even the military couldn’t see why it needed to spend the extra money to obtain a new, uncertain capability; INS worked just fine.

Then came the first Gulf War—the battle to liberate Kuwait. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Airmen discovered that AAA maps didn’t work in the desert. Even worse, the National Imaging and Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) didn’t have accurate maps of Iraq because no recognizable landmarks existed for thousands of square miles. Frustrated soldiers wrote home before the war started, and their moms rushed to sporting-goods stores, buying $1,000 GPS units and shipping them to their sons and daughters so they could find their way in the desert—and it worked. Suddenly, everyone wanted these receivers. The military upgraded the civilian ability to use the GPS, and the number of uses exploded. Now engrained in society, the GPS has become indispensable for navigation in commercial industry.

The point is that no one knew exactly what benefits would arise from investing in the GPS, and we’re only now realizing the potential of this critical investment. People initially skeptical of new technology can’t get enough of it later. This mind-set is not unique. In 1921, when told of Billy Mitchell’s claim that airplanes could sink battleships, Secretary of War Newton Baker growled, “That idea is so damned nonsensical and impossible that I’m willing to stand on the bridge of a battleship while that nitwit tries to hit it from the air.” Similarly, in 1938 Maj Gen John K. Herr remarked, “We must not be misled to our own detriment to assume that the untried machine can displace the tried and proven horse.” And in 1939, Rear Adm Clark Woodward sniffed, “As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, it just can’t be done.”⁸

More recently, some individuals even scoffed at precision-guided weapons: “Who would need to be so precise when a grease pencil mark on the cockpit window has worked for years?” Others decried the Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft for controlling the air battlefield: “The Soviets did this and lost!” In the same way, many think the airborne laser will show the same resilience as these other new national systems and provide the United States with a capability that we can’t even begin to imagine. After all, putting a highly capable national asset in the hands of a war fighter and placing him or her in a new, life-threatening situation will not cause that warrior to freeze up and not function. We teach our war fighters to think innovatively, on their feet. The products of new S&T will give us the edge that allows us to win.

Invention to Innovation

The time it takes for a weapon to be invented until someone finds a “killer application,” a use that no one can live without, is known as the period from invention to innovation. For example, precision weapons introduced in the 1960s (laser designators in the Vietnam War) were not widely embraced until later, when the news media televised scenes of incredibly accurate air-to-ground missiles shooting through windows in the first Gulf War. There, the time from invention to innovation was roughly 30 years. Every discovery has this period—sometimes referred to as the S curve of technology development (fig. 3). This is especially true of advances in the basic sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and applied mathematics. Rarely does a discovery reveal what it will ultimately affect. In fact, today some critics still wail at all the worthlessness generated by researchers.

Consider our recent history with the basic sciences.⁹ Within a few years of 1875, discoveries made since the 1600s—an incubation process lasting nearly 270 years—started to feed into the West’s industrial-technology base.¹⁰ Would anyone today have the patience to wait for the innovative use of something invented 270 years ago? Over that period, the basic sciences laid the groundwork for explaining the basis of the natural sciences, chemistry, and physics. These developments culminated in the foundation of rigorous engineering procedures responsible for the rapid evolution of technology. For example, the hundreds of significant breakthroughs in the basic sciences in the midnineteenth century include Rudolf Clausius’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, Georg Friedrich Riemann’s non-Euclidian geometry, and James Clerk Maxwell’s Kinetic Theory of Gases in the 1850s; Dmitry Mendeleyev’s periodic table of the elements, Gustav Kirchoff’s black-body radiation, and Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations in the 1860s; and Louis Pasteur’s work in food spoilage, Johannes Diderick van der Waals’s gas laws, and J. W. Gibbs’s chemical thermodynamics in the 1870s.¹¹

The innovative application of these discoveries was not immediately apparent; however, from Maxwell’s equations sprang the basis for radio, television, electronics, and computers; Mendeleyev’s work on the periodic table established the basis of modern chemistry; and Pasteur’s efforts in food spoilage resulted in the science of bacteriology and modern biology.

On the surface, a direct connection seems to exist between discovery and application. That is, by looking into the past, one can easily show a simple path from creative spark to world-changing technology. But the path from these scientific discoveries to the technology used by the war fighter is never direct but long and circuitous, rarely linear, and never straightforward. One discovery begets another; a new application yields a wellspring of others. Rarely does the ultimate application leap directly from the mind of the inventor; instead, it waits to be revealed by the user like an onion’s inner core—peeled away, layer by layer.

The labors of research do not quickly bear fruit. Typically, the applications of basic research are measured in decades, not days. For example, the time between invention and innovation for the fluorescent lamp was 79 years; gyrocompass 56 years; cotton picker 53 years; zipper 27 years (!); jet engine 14 years; radar 13 years; safety razor nine years; and wireless telephone eight years.¹² Although this extensive timescale is a drawback of long-range research, its applications have proven that they can change the direction of society.

Similarly, revolutions in modern warfare such as stealth technology did not happen overnight. Stealth began with an investment in basic research in the 1950s, led in large part by fundamental efforts supported by the AFOSR and fueled by an American appreciation for some basic theories developed by the Russian physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev, the application of whose work was largely ignored in his own country. As another example, future hypersonic missiles will build on almost five decades of basic and applied research in high-speed flight. The engine that will most likely power a high-speed cruise missile—the supersonic combustion ramjet or “scramjet”—first underwent rigorous analysis by two engineers, Richard Weber and John McKay, working at the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, precursor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in 1958. Forty-six years later, the flight of the X-43a experimental airplane validated Weber and McKay’s concept by flying at seven times the speed of sound on 27 March 2004 and 10 times the speed of sound on 16 November 2004. These flights, with a combined total of 20 seconds of engine data, represent the culmination of literally hundreds of hours of wind-tunnel tests and thousands of hours of computer simulations—just the beginning of a long series of experiments to make high-speed missile engines practical.

The same holds true of the application of lasers and high-power microwaves as directed-energy weapons. Their world-changing applications will dwarf any initial expectations of what these technologies could eventually accomplish. Thus, although a specific purpose may drive the initial use of an invention, the real, innovative result of investments in S&T always awaits discovery. War fighters will do just that.

The Way Ahead

Current advances in S&T will find their way into the war fighter’s arsenal on an ever—decreasing timescale. The scientific breakthrough of today will serve as the foundation for the weapons of tomorrow. In other words, the warrior’s equivalent of industry’s “time to market”—beating the competition by fielding a new, better product—means deploying new war-fighting capabilities before the enemy can respond. This ensures that the United States will avoid technological surprise as well as keep an overwhelming, asymmetric advantage over its adversaries. It is impossible to list all the breakthroughs and myriad ways the military is trying to exploit them; the AFOSR or the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering provides a broad window for individuals interested in examining our current, future investments.¹³ However, some exciting possibilities made possible by recent scientific breakthroughs bear mentioning.

With his colleagues B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, Albert Einstein published a paper in 1935 now known as the EPR paradox, named after its authors.¹⁴ In an effort to refute quantum mechanics, Einstein attempted to prove the incompleteness of this new theory: the EPR paradox seemed to show that information could travel faster than the speed of light. Instead, Einstein’s paper led to a new branch of physics, currently used in passing secret codes, which has spawned a growing field known as quantum cryptography.¹⁵ Using quantum mechanics, scientists have demonstrated the possibility of creating a code with only two unique, uninterceptable keys. This breakthrough means that someday the military (or whoever else uses this technique, such as banks—or even terrorists) might generate an unbreakable code.¹⁶

Millimeter waves centered at 95 gigahertz (GHz) produce the active-denial effect. Funded by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, the Air Force’s Active Denial Program, recently declassified, causes temporary, intense pain to individuals at distances greater than those characteristic of small-arms fire.17 The millimeter waves are nonionizing and thus noncarcinogenic, producing no long-term harmful effects. The waves quickly produce what researchers call the flee effect, giving warriors a nonlethal option other than shouting at or shooting someone. In a sense, this creates a “force field.”

Quickly absorbed by the atmosphere, terahertz waves (one terahertz = 1,000 GHz) do not propagate more than a few kilometers. We can use this drawback to our advantage by providing short-range, secure communication between nodes in a dynamic network of computers or even foot soldiers when we want to prevent the interception of radio “leakage” over long distances.18 Among other applications, this stops adversaries from detecting command-and-control centers.

Nanotechnology involves machines 1,000 times smaller than a micron—a billionth of a meter in length. In 1993 nanotech research was funded at levels over $3 billion a year, and by the end of this decade, that investment will approach $1 trillion a year.19 Recent advances in nanotechnology suggest the possibility of coating projectiles with a layer one molecule thick, making them superslick and able to penetrate far deeper than today’s typical bunker-buster bombs. Advances in the future may also someday allow Airmen to carry nanotech “medics” in their bloodstream that repair damage to internal organs in wartime. Today these advances remain in the realm of science fiction. We must remember, however, that a decade ago, scientists never dreamed of today’s accomplishments in nanotechnology.

Conclusion

Advances in S&T are crucially important to giving the Air Force the winning edge. Today, we reap the benefits of decades of investment in S&T. History shows that such investments always pay benefits, but current pressure to solve our problems (such as paying fuel bills and war costs, and even increasing the quality of life) can threaten to give S&T short shrift.20 After all, trying to solve today’s important, nagging problems makes it easy to put off the future.

We must also be mindful that with advanced technology and capabilities come increased vulnerabilities. For example, a military dependent upon the GPS for precision guidance is also particularly susceptible to an opponent who threatens that system. Consequently, once we have invested in technology, we must continue investing to stay ahead of those who would seek to use those leads against us.

It is also true that military technology, like all technology, undergoes revolutionizing changes that can be fleeting. Someday our opponents’ technical advances may negate the advantages stealth technology offers the Air Force. But if that day comes, we can be prepared with new technologies such as hypersonic flight—so fast that detection becomes irrelevant—and directed-energy weapons that strike almost instantaneously with near-infinite precision. To ensure our winning edge, the Air Force must continue to support S&T by aggressively investing in its programs and its talent, both military and civilian.

*Portions of this article come from Dr. Beason’s book DOD Science and Technology: Strategy for the Post–Cold War Era (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997).

[ Feedback? Email the Editor ]

 Notes

1. J. F. C. Fuller, Armament and History: A Study of the Influence of Armament on History from the Dawn of Classical Warfare to the Second World War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 7.

2. Simon P. Worden, SDI and the Alternatives (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1991), 13–15.

3. Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 288.

4. Actual accuracy numbers come from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report (Pacific War), 1 July 1946 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946). The Strategic Bombing Survey gives gross numbers that range from 10 percent of bombs hitting the target area (250 to 1,000 feet from target) to 50 percent for low-altitude, carrier-based planes.

5. Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 293–94.

6. Ibid., 282–83.

7. According to the US Coast Guard, LORAN was developed to provide radio navigation in US coastal waters and was later expanded to include complete coverage of the United States, including most of Alaska. Users can return to previously determined positions with an accuracy of 50 meters or better using Loran-C in the time-difference repeatable mode—still not accurate enough to allow a plane to land itself.

8. Kenneth L. Adelman and Norman R. Augustine, The Defense Revolution: Intelligent Downsizing of America’s Military (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1992), 66.

9. Part of the following discussion comes from Col Douglas Beason’s The E-Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2005).

10. Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell Jr., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York: Basic Books/Harper Collins, 1986), 243.

11. Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Chronology of Science and Discovery (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 338–71.

12. Donald L. Losman and Shu-Jan Liang, The Promise of American Industry: An Alternative Assessment of Problems and Prospects (New York: Quorum Books, 1990), 104.

13. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, http://www.afosr.af.mil; and Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, http://www.dod.mil/ddre/mainpage.htm.

14. A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” Physical Review 41, 777 (15 May 1935): 777–80.

15. C. H. Bennett, G. Brassard, and A. K. Ekert, “Quantum Cryptography,” Scientific American, October 1992, 50–57.

16. “Quantum Cryptography Tutorial,” http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~jford/crypto.html.

17. “Active Denial Technology: Directed Energy Non-Lethal Demonstration,” Air Force Research Laboratory fact sheet, Office of Public Affairs, Kirtland AFB, NM, March 2001.

18. SiGe/Si Terahertz Lasers and Detectors for Space-Based Communications and Sensing, AFRL/SN-99-08 (Hanscom AFB, MA: AFRL Sensors Directorate, Electromagnetics Technology Division, Sensor Integration Technology Branch, 1999).

19. National Science and Technology Council, Nano-scale Science, Engineering and Technology Subcommittee, National Science Foundation, “Government Nanotechnology Funding: An International Outlook,” 30 June 2003, http://www.nano.gov/html/res/IntlFundingRoco.htm.

20. The standard measure of merit used by NASA is that for every dollar invested in space S&T, NASA expects a sevenfold return.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

[ Back Issues | Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor ]