Air University Review, November-December 1985
"FEAR God and dread nought" was the motto selected by Sir John Fisher on entering the peerage, a distinction conveyed on the admiral largely for his contributions to the development of the first modern battleship, the HMS Dreadnought. When it was christened, everyone assumed that Fisher's battleship was the unsurpassable weapon, the vessel whose power and strength would secure England's supremacy on the seas. Instead, the Dreadnought sparked a naval arms race among the powers of the day that culminated in such behemoths as the Yamamoto and the USS Missouri.
Decades after the Dreadnought slid down the ways, Billy Mitchell's flimsy wood-and-fabric bombers sank ships that were far more capable. It seemed that another ultimate weapon had arrived. After Mitchell resigned from service, he touted air power as the decisive element of future warfare, able to lay waste to entire cities. Some air power enthusiasts ventured the opinion that wars would become so destructive as to be unthinkable. At the end of the next great war, after thirty or forty million people were killed, including a quarter of a million Americans, the atomic bomb took its place as the ultimate weapon.
One can indeed argue that nuclear weapons have ushered in an "age of peace." While armed to the teeth and implacably opposed in ideologies and foreign policies, the world superpowers have avoided coming to blows for nearly a half century. During this period the American military establishment has prepared itself for the "big war," confident that, if prepared for a major war, the little wars will take care of themselves. Korea and Vietnam seem to have bankrupted that line of reasoning, and, while being "prepared for the big war," almost a hundred thousand Americans have given their lives in "little ones" in Asia, Middle East, and the Caribbean.
One wonders if Cain thought that the rock, club, or ass's jawbone he may have used in slaying Abel represented the technological breakthrough that would end future conflict. Although banished to the Land of Nod, Cain had, after all, laid low his major rival and eliminated a quarter of the world's population in one blow. Alas, as we humans have progressed from that time to the present, we have punctuated our social and political advances with developments in military technology, ensuring that, in the tradition of Cain, we shall continually subtract a portion from our species even as we multiply.
The development and deployment of a Star Wars-type defensive system is, according to the flow of history, inevitable. If the United States does not pursue this course, the Soviets surely will. Weaponry evolving from the Strategic Defense Initiative will be expensive, complex, and controversial. What it will not be is the device that makes nuclear war--or any other kind of war--passe. Centuries ago, when our ancestors pushed back the frontiers of the New World, entrepreneurs, priests, and soldiers sailed with the explorers. I expect that we shall book the same manifest into space.
E. H. T.
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.
Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor