Strategy and Military Technology

...The crucial point which is well made by Possony-Pournelle is that our national security objectives must be fully integrated with defense strategy and R & D direction if we are to be capable of supporting our foreign policy objectives...

...It was not the technology, for the most part, that was lacking (although in such areas as night-fighting and other aspects of remote sensors, the technology could stand considerable improvement...

...Perhaps this problem shows up most clearly in their discussion of short wars, where, I believe, they overemphasize the importance of technology and underrate the importance of tactics...

...This precipitous decline in United States support for military research and development occurred simultaneously with an extraordinary Soviet effort in the research, development and production aspects of military resources...

...New York: Praeger, 1968) which suggests that very low levels of technological sophistication are necessary...

...Take the situation in World War I. The leading strategists of the day were unable to develop the tactics to overcome the problem of trenches, barbed wire and machine guns...

...The tactical problems are discussed in many studies-perhaps the best source is Frank Armbruster et...

...It is indeed ironic that United States R & D expenditures appear to be inversely correlated with Soviet efforts such that as the relative and absolute levels of the military threat which the Soviet Union poses to the United States is at a historical high, the United States is allocating fewer resources in the constant dollar sense than it did when the Soviet threat was far less serious...

...It is this situation which has undoubtedly led Stefan T. Possony and J. E. Pournelle to assemble the volume, The Strategy of Technology: Winning the Decisive War (New York: Dunellen, 1970...

...In Vietnam, the United States had considerable difficulty in dealing cheaply with a guerrilla force...

...The decades since the end of World War II have seen the institutionalization of the process which develops and exploits technology practical for military purposes...

...The authors have an explicit point of view as to what the appropriate strategy should be, but the usefulness of integrating R & D objectives into strategic considerations is not restricted to the authors' preferred strategy...

...William Schneider, Jr...

...al., Can We Win in Vietnam...

...These strategies could imply somewhat different objectives requiring different technology...

...The technology that became available in the twenties and thirties -- tnechanised warfare-was widely perceived by the German general staff and exploited...

...The system of institutionalized research and development could just as easily produce appropriate weapon systems for the "massive retaliation" doctrine which dominated strategic thought during the frfttes as produce highly surviva We strategic attack systems for the "assured destruction" doctrine which dominated the sixties...

...Perhaps the most useful component of the Possony-Pournelle analysis is its effort to explicate the need for an unambiguous integration of strategy in the direction of research and development...

...a problem which any second lieutanant in World War II was capable of handling almost routinely...

...They employ this information as the basis for discussion of a- new strategy which they describe as "assured survival...

...Ensuring a compatibility of research, development and deployment efforts with a strategic Weltanschauung is essential if the United States is to achieve its foreign policy objectives...

...The nature of the technology available for the military will typically dictate the appropriate tactics...

...There are, of course (and these have been proposed frequently), numerous alternative strategies and the parallel technological requirements to support such strategies...

...New strategies and tactics based on employment of the technologies associated with mechanized warfare were the result which soon rendered World War I strategy obsolescent in World War II...

...Perhaps the most consistent theme of the history of warfare has been the increasing tempo of the alternating dominance of attack and defense technologies...

...The Possony-Pournelle effort is by no means the first work in this field...

...For Peace Strategy and Military Technology By Possony and Pournelle Dunellen Company, |7.95 The history of armed conflict is replete with examples involving the interaction of technology and strategy...

...My major source of disagreement with the Possony-Pournelle treatment is their lack of emphasis upon the importance of tactics...

...For example, research and development expenditures by the Air Force fell more than forty per cent in constant dollars from the amount available during the mid-fifties...

...For example, the apparent dominance of the combination of barbed wire, machine guns and trenches during World War I led to the widespread adoption of tactics which were based on the apparent dominance of such defensive technology...

...Although it is possible to over-emphasize the contribution which technology can make to the fulfillment of a political strategy, the danger of underestimating its importance is far more real in the current socio-political environment...

...The dialectic between weapons of attack and of defense alternates between periods when the technology and tactics of defense dominated warfare and periods when the technology and tactics of defense predominated...

...Similarly, if one envisions warfare in Europe limited to tactical nuclear weapons, it would be inappropriate to develop highly sophisticated helicopters and low performance fixed wing aircraft in an environment that is almost certain to be contested by effective anti-aircraft measures and high performance Soviet aircraft...

...Hopefully other analysts will continue a searching examination of the relationship between strategy and technology...

...The system designed to produce required technologies for military purposes is well-developed, such that appropriate technologies can be procured for virtually any plausible military requirement that is proposed...

...Essentially it involves the employment of developed, near-deyeloped or likely-to-be developed technologies for the heavy deployment of active defenses against the ballistic missile threat posed by the Soviet Union...

...For example, if our strategy includes non-reliance on foreign bases, it is unwise to procure an aircraft such as the ill-fated TFX (F-lll) with its limited range and inability to operate from aircraft carriers...

...The authors provide a very useful discussion of some of the elements of the technology involved in strategic nuclear attack and defense systems...

...Between 1965 and 1970 the funding available, in constant dollars, fell sharply...

...also delved into this topic in a serious and highly technical way...

...Perhaps fifty to one hundred competent police with dogs would have been more appropriate than one hundred technologically sophisticated United States combat maneuver battalions in rooting out the infrastructure and making a guerrilla war impossible for the enemy...

...The essential ingredient required to maintain a high level of scientific and engineering expertise to produce the needed technologies was a broad level of financial support for all major branches of basic and applied research...

...Increased emphasis on technology would not improve the prospects for suppressing insurgencies, but the employment of appropriate tactics would reduce the insurgency problem to trivial proportions...

...The primary problem was a tactical one...

...These requirements in the post-Sputnik scientific binge which was abruptly terminated about 1965 as the requirements for the war in Vietnam began to diminish the level of funding available to the research and development community for military purposes...

...An earlier volume by Thomas Marshak, The Strategy of Research and Development (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corp...