Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance by Donald MacKenzie MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, 1990, 464 pages, $29.95.
Inventing Accuracy reads like a doctoral dissertation, but don't let the scholarly approach scare you off. If you have been following the phenomenon referred to as the military technological revolution, then you realize the impact that accuracy of all kinds has had on the development of warfare in the recent past. The point is that, to a large degree, accuracy determines whether national security depends on targeting cities, industrial networks, or specific military targets within the military industrial complex. As MacKenzie tells us, "the more deeply one looks inside the black box, the more one realizes that 'the technical' is no clear-cut and simple world of facts insulated from politics" (page 381).
Indeed, he does a good job of developing the point that politics, technology, and economics sometimes come together, and when they do, they can produce unpredictable results. "Technical people sometimes also seek to shape, as well as to anticipate and to meet, the criteria of those in power" (page 390). He also points out quite eloquently that the decisions, once made, have long-lasting effects that extend well beyond the political lives of those people who made the decisions. The author relates that by the early 1960s, the main features of US strategic nuclear forces--including the triad--were well established. In fact, the organizational roles of the controlling agencies were formalized. Even the dimensions of the missile silos and launch tubes were set. Additionally, the question of whether Strategic Air Command would exist was no more seriously debated than was the need for submarine-launched ballistic missiles for the US Navy. In fact, the debate entailed which aircraft would replace the long-range bomber, how missiles would be hardened, and what specifications would be used for follow-on missiles for submarines.
MacKenzie tracks one line of technology--strategic ballistic missile guidance--through the development of today's weapons systems. He introduces us to the technical problems the scientists faced and explains in layman's terms how they worked to resolve those problems. He also gives us a glimpse into the political process and the political pressures that shaped nuclear deterrence into reality. Surprisingly, the standards to which these scientists were held were sometimes based on the caprice of the nonscientific project managers and at other times based on criteria designed to favor manned bombers over unmanned vehicles:
However it looks in hindsight, a preference for bombers and
skepticism about missiles was thus at the time by no means
irrational. The bomber, too, was organizationally a crucial
technology of the U.S. Air Force. . . . The strategic bombing
role was thus central in the Air Force's rapid rise to become
the dominant U.S. service; by the mid-to-late 1950s the Air
Force's share of the budget was around 47 percent, compared
to 29 percent for the Navy and Marines and 24 percent for the
Army. (Page 101)
The evidence the author presents leads one to believe that service rivalry may have had as much to do with weapons development as the perceived threat from the former Soviet Union.
A career officer interested in this complex process can glean a wealth of useful information from this academically rigorous volume. Understanding the historical roots of nuclear deterrence in this age of complex international relations between nation-states and nongovernmental organizations ultimately leads one to explore the question of accuracy. Specifically, the possibility of a radical state or an outlaw group possessing a nuclear capability inevitably leads to an assessment of that state's or that group's ability to deliver the weapon. Clearly, a major component of the question is an assessment of the particular entity's ability to target the weapon and its capabilities in postlaunch guidance.
My impression from reading this book is that nuclear missile guidance has less to do with technological brilliance than it does with political infighting and service rivalry. That statement is not meant to demean the scientists and engineers who made deterrence a reality, but merely an attempt to focus our attention on what was and still is a political process with a fair degree of doubt and calculated risk. MacKenzie points to testimony from the House Armed Services Committee in 1961:
Who knows whether an intercontinental ballistic missile
with a nuclear warhead will actually work? Each of the
constituent elements has beentested, it is true. Each of
them, however, has not been tested under circumstances
which would be attendant upon the firing of such a missile
in anger. By this the committee means an intercontinental
ballistic missile will carry its warhead to great heights, sub-
jecting it to intense cold. It will then arc down and upon re-
entering the earth's atmosphere subject the nuclear warhead
to intense heat. Who knows what will happen to the many
delicate mechanisms involved in the nuclear warhead as it is
subjected to these two extremes of temperature. (Page 342)
The real connection is illustrated a few pages later as the author points out that this doubt generated by the House Armed Services Committee was used as justification to continue the manned bomber production that the Kennedy administration was trying to shut down. The cost to the taxpayer was $337 million.
I would be remiss not to point out that the author's final point is perhaps the most important in the book. MacKenzie argues that if the civilized world is to return the nuclear genie to the bottle, now is the time to begin. Further, he notes that we collectively need to "uninvent" the accuracy and the nuclear weapons that it made a reality if we are to have a world that is safe to live in. Finally, he observes that we have come to grips with thinking the unthinkable through analysis of a nuclear holocaust--now we need to think the unthinkable through analysis of a world without nuclear weapons.&127;
Lt Col Albert U. Mitchum, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
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