Air University Review, November-December 1984

On Technological War

A HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO: 25 December 1996, The White House, Washington, D.C., 0205 hours

"Wake up, Mr. President . . . Mr. President, it's the Hotline."

"What? Oh, yes . . on my way!"

"Yes, What is it, Premier Chebrikov? It is two in the morning here, you know."

"Mr. President, we have a rather serious matter to discuss. . . . You undoubtedly know by now that we have successfully demonstrated our operational capability to destroy ballistic missiles in flight with our satellite-based ABM system. You monitored our test, yes?"

"So?"

"Mr. President, by now you realize that your ICBM and SLBM forces are effectively useless. True, you still have cruise missiles and some bombers, but what are these in relation to our forces?"

"Premier Chebrikov, just what is the point of your calling me at this hour?"

"The point is that my tanks will begin rolling into West Germany thirty minutes from now. But what is this to you? The forces you have there will last but a few days. The whole matter will be settled in less than two weeks. All we want is West Germany. We do not wish to bring you into this."

"Do you know what you are risking? You're talking war!"

"I think not, Mr. President. Your conventional forces are inadequate, and your nuclear forces are useless. If you strike, we can destroy your ICBMs and SLBMs. We can handle the rest and deal you a crushing blow that will leave you in ashes. You have no choice but to stay out of this."

TECHNOLOGICAL surprise. It has all the ingredients of a nightmare. Nations have vanished practically overnight because they could not or did not have the will to prevent their enemies from gaining overwhelming technological superiority. And it will happen again, perhaps even to the United States, if we are not vigilant in our efforts to advance the technological sophistication of our weapon systems. We are now engaged in a technological war whose battles will determine whether we survive as a free nation or fall by the wayside.

Technological war is not a phenomenon restricted to the Industrial, Age. It has been a decisive factor in the rise and fall of nations since time began. In the twelfth century B.C., the Mycenaean Greeks were at the height of their civilization, having a well-developed culture and written language. Their armies were equipped with the best bronze weapons available. But when the Dorians invaded Mycenae from the northwest in about 1200 B.C. carrying iron swords, they so completely destroyed the Mycenaeans that even the Mycenaean language arts were lost and the vanquished Greeks remained illiterate for the next 500 years.¹ The Dorians had won the technological war, and battlefield victory followed.

Many centuries later, during the Middle Ages, the combination of knight and armor was a formidable weapon system. But in the Battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years War, French knights were pitted against English archers carrying powerful longbows. The result was 1500 French knights and their attendant infantry dead, with only a few dozen archers lost. The technological superiority of the longbow put an end to the age of knights in armor.²

In much the same way, the musket overwhelmed the bow when it was brought into battle in Europe in the late 1660s. Its main advantage was that the musket could be mastered more easily than the bow, enabling more accurate fire to be directed against the enemy by larger numbers of trained soldiers. The technologically superior weapon made the difference between victory and defeat in many European battles and later in the New World.³

These few examples are enough to show that technology has played a significant role in the defeat of those who have not kept pace in the technological competition. Technological defeat is often followed by actual defeat on the battlefield.

THOSE in the forefront of our technological war with our potential adversaries are the men and women of Air Force Systems Command who daily are engaged in engineering, project management, acquisition support, program control, contracting, and all the other tasks necessary to bring a proposed weapon system to fruition. These are the people to whom Project Warrior should be most meaningful. They do not practice bombing targets or spend their days on the flight line or sit in a launch control center where there are constant reminders of their true mission and its importance. Instead, these Air Force personnel often go about their duties with a businesslike, managerial mind-set, which does not mean they lack professionalism; far from it. But they often lack reminders of the importance of their mission in ensuring that the United States wins the technological war. In this sense, they are on the front lines of a battle whose outcome will determine the future of their country, determining whether the nation will remain strong militarily and free or whether, instead, it will lose the technological war and the subsequent actual war that would inevitably follow.

In an interview with Air Force Magazine, General Robert T. Marsh, USAF, recently retired Commander of Air Force Systems Command, outlined his thoughts on the need to emphasize technological superiority. General Marsh declared:

There's been a disturbing trend downward in exploratory and basic research funding over a number of years. That must be reversed. We're on the verge of losing our technological leadership in the world, and the Air Force must play its part in this role and reinforce its commitment to basic and exploratory research and advanced development. We must keep the technology moving forward so we have the options available to continue to build superior new Air Force systems. You can neglect that area only so long, and then you will have cast the die permanently in terms of technological superiority.⁴

General Marsh and other high-ranking military officers have emphasized the necessity of keeping pace technologically with our potential adversaries. But other voices in recent years have been clamoring for a switch to a "quantity, not quality" approach to weapon systems acquisition. They would have us sacrifice technological progress in order to field large quantities of technologically inferior weapon systems. Regarding this quantity-versus-quality debate, General Marsh has said:

I feel, as most of the leadership in the Air Force does today, that the very first and fundamental prerequisite is that everything has to focus on superiority. If you can't win, if you can't defeat the enemy with a given system, no matter how simple it is or how easy it is to operate or maintain, it's not worth building.⁵

General Robert C. Mathis, USAF (Ret), former Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, has also addressed the quantity-quality question. He echoed General Marsh's sentiments when he wrote that some "equate technology with complexity and high cost and draw the erroneous conclusion that we would be better off by returning to the combat-proven weapons of the past. . . . This thesis is simply fallacious."⁶ General Mathis further pointed out that the aircraft we are fielding today represent the most significant increase in operational capability since the jet airplane was first introduced. They are not only more effective but also more maintainable, reliable, and easier to operate and employ than the aircraft we were using in Vietnam. This fact was recently confirmed during the Israeli-Syrian air battles in which the kill ratio was heavily one-sided in favor of the U.S.- made F-15s and F-16s.⁷

Keith Jackson, writing on quantity versus quality, pointed out that at the bombing of the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt, Germany, during World War II, the Eighth Air Force used 291 B-17s plus fighter escort. Of these, 228 B-17s made it to the target area; and of all the bombs dropped during the raid, only 13 percent fell within the target area, due to the smoke and haze that clouded the sky. In order to get that number of bombs on target, 3000 people took part in the raid and more than 600 of them lost their lives. In comparison, this same amount of damage could be accomplished today by eight F-16s and eight people.⁸

Those who would have us neglect technological advance and instead acquire large quantities of inferior weapons would cause us to lose the technological war, with all its attendant consequences.

ONE of the Soviet Union's most effective means of achieving gains in the technological war during the past twenty years has been the theft of technology, both by espionage and by illegal purchases through exporters who violate U.S. laws. A 1982 government report outlines the effectiveness of the Soviet attempts to gain technological advance by theft and mirroring, a practice that involves copying components for use exactly as made in the United States. The report shows that the Soviets are concentrating on the industrial aspect of the military acquisition process--probably the most vulnerable segment of the acquisition cycle to Soviet efforts to acquire technology by theft.⁹

Reportedly, the Soviet Union has a special coordinated directorate with a staff of about 20,000 tasked to acquire Western technology through espionage, theft, and direct or indirect purchasing. These sources say that at least 150 Soviet weapon systems depend on Western technology. U.S. experts have found components in captured Soviet weapons and equipment that are direct copies of Western parts, many of which were produced on Western machines obtained by the Soviets.¹⁰

While the espionage cases get most of the publicity, it is the piecemeal technology transfer through illegal sales which gives the Soviets the bulk of the high technology that they obtain from the United States. They obtain some chips here, an automated test set there, precision equipment from somewhere else, and soon they have the keys to advancing their technology without the high cost and long lead time of an R&D effort. This flow of technology to the Soviets is an ongoing battle in the technological war in which the West has already suffered significant tactical losses.

The Soviets realize the importance of winning the technological war in order that they might exert their influence around the world. For the past twenty years, they have been engaged in an unrelenting effort to surpass the United States in every area of military capability. Until the 1970s, the Soviets could boast a numerical superiority in many areas of conventional weaponry; but their technology was seriously lacking when compared with that of the United States. During the past decade, however, the Soviets have closed the technological gap rapidly and have threatened to surpass the technology of the United States in some very important areas. In 1979, then-Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Dr. William J. Perry testified before Congress that "the Soviet Union is investing twice as much as we are in its military technology base program, leading to a real risk of technological surprise."¹¹ Dr. Perry stated that the Soviets are concentrating on several unconventional technologies, such as "high-energy lasers, charged-particle beams, and surface effects vehicles. . . . In the high-energy laser field, they may be beginning the development of specific weapon systems."¹²

The imbalance in research and development has led some experts, including retired Major General George J. Keegan, former head of U.S. Air Force intelligence activities, to warn of a possibly imminent breakthrough by the Soviets on new technology weapons, such as charged-particle-beam weapons capable of destroying missiles and satellites.¹³ A Library of Congress report observed of the current Soviet efforts that "for a system that flaunts its atheism, there is a certain element of secular religion in the official attitude that Soviet man through his mastery of science and technology can control his destiny for the good of his system of society and government . . . and the investment in support of these ends is substantial, and probably in real terms is in excess of the U.S. program at its previous peak.¹⁴

The Soviets are also expanding their technology base much faster than the United States. According to the pamphlet Soviet Military Power, published by the Department of Defense, the Soviet arms industry is proceeding with an accelerated expansion program to broaden the base of their technology. The basis of this expansion is an increased emphasis on scientifically and technically trained manpower. Intelligence sources have put the total number of scientists and engineers working in Soviet research and development at 900,000--the world's largest technical manpower pool. Comparatively, the United States has about 600,000 technically trained people working in research and development. As the DOD publication indicates, the expansion of the Soviet technology base has paid great dividends. For example, "in the latter half of this decade, it is possible that the Soviets could demonstrate laser weapons in a wide variety of ground, ship, and aerospace applications," and the Soviet directed-energy weapons program is proceeding at "three to five times the U.S. level of effort."¹⁵ The authors of the publication concluded that the results of the Soviet R&D efforts are sobering. "During the 1970s the Soviets have dramatically reduced the U.S. lead in virtually every basic technology. The United States is losing its lead in key technologies, including electrooptical sensors, guidance and navigation, hydroacoustics, optics, and propulsion."¹⁶

If the Soviet technological threat is indeed credible, as reliable sources have pointed out, a technological surprise could lead to other--more menacing--surprises. Such a consequence may seem unimaginable, but it is no longer impossible.

THE United States no longer can afford the luxury of waiting for Sputnik-type events for motivation to begin new programs. Technological advances come much too rapidly today, and it takes an average of fifteen years from the conceptual phase to production of a new weapon system, such as the B-1 or MX. Technological surprise is an ominous possibility, and it is technological surprise which defines when a nation has lost the technological war.

The technological war in which we are now engaged is a struggle for our survival. We cannot afford for our technological warriors to fall into a business-managerial mind-set: the consequence is unthinkable, although definitely not impossible. As Air Marshal Giulio Douhet stated more than forty years ago, "Victory smiles on those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur."¹⁷ In technological war, winning is everything.

Notes

1. Joseph Alsop, From the Silent Earth: A Report of the Greek Bronze Age (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), pp. 132-39.

2. Major General J. F. C. Fuller, The Age of Valor (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1945), pp. 25-30.

3. Eugene Fubini, "Down-to-Earth Research," Ordnance, March-April 1964, vol. 48, pp. 522-28.

4. General Robert T. Marsh, "Developing the Future," Air Force Magazine, January 1982, p. 94.

5. Ibid., p. 88.

6. General Robert C. Mathis, USAF (Ret), "Defense Myths--And Facts," Air Force Magazine, June 1982, p. 16.

7. Ibid.

8. Keith Jackson, "Quality-Quantity and Technology--A Perspective on Fighter Development," SAE Technical Paper Series, Aerospace Congress and Exposition, Anaheim, California, 5-8 October 1981.

9. CIA Report, "Soviet Acquisition of Military Technology," pp. 1-35.

10. "U.S., Allies Seek to Halt Technology Leaks," Los Angeles Times, 6 October 1982, Part I, p. 14.

11. Edgar Ulsamer, "Defense Technology: Moving into Space," Air Force Magazine, June 1979, p. 46.

12. Ibid.

13. Clarence Robinson, "Soviets Push for Beam Weapons," Aviation Week and Space Technology, 2 May 1977.

14. Edgar Ulsamer, "Will the Soviets Wage War in Space?" Air Force Magazine, December 1976, p. 35.

15. Soviet Military Power (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), p. 76.

16. Ibid., p. 71.

17. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air (New York: Coward-McCann, 1942), p. 175.

Captain Neal I. Fox (B.A., Grove City College; M.B.A., University of Wyoming) is Chief, Ground-Launcher Cruise Missile Power Systems, Joint Cruise Missiles Project Office, Washington, D.C. He has served as a Minuteman III launch control officer and instructor at F. E. Warren AFB, Wyoming, and as System Safety Program Manager for the Peacekeeper missile system, Norton AFB, California. Captain Fox is a graduate of Squadron Officer School. His article in this issue was the winner in the first annual Air Force Systems Command Project Warrior Distinguished Paper Program.

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.

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