Document created: 14 October 2003
Air University Review,
November-December 1973
The first issue of a new quarterly publication from the United States Strategic Institute was distributed to selected addressees in July 1973.* In an opening message, the directors of the Institute observe that “Armed Forces seniors, active and retired” have written little “on national strategic doctrine and the essential elements of a sound national security.” Indeed, most of such writing “has been contributed by academicians without military education, training or experience with conflict. . . . this can be a hazard to sound national defense . . . .” The Institute, therefore, will “encourage military professionals and others skilled in the military art to express their views . . . .” The USSI takes “no position other than to make available the pages of Strategic Review” for such papers.
*Strategic Review, a quarterly publication of United States Strategic Institute, Suite 1204, 1612 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 (tel. 202-393-1776); Vol. I, No. 1, Spring 1973.
To lead the way, five of the seven retired military directors of the Institute have articles in this issue. These include General Bruce K. Holloway’s advocacy of the urgent need to restore U.S. strategic superiority; an interview with Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., on the subject of our Pacific interests; and an extolment of our SLBM force by Vice Admiral Ruthven E. Libby.
To represent the active duty contributions that Strategic Review will seek, there is an article by General George S. Brown, outlining some of the realities of R&D lead times and contrasting our dwindling research effort with the burgeoning one of the U.S.S.R. The reader may sense that he has been here before as he encounters some of General Brown’s evidence for the contrast, which cites increases in Soviet technological work force and education that are entirely disproportionate to our own concentration on social “sciences.” Statistics comparing the numbers of engineering, mathematics, and physical sciences graduates being produced in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were a commonplace of our post-Sputnik state of national alarm. The comparison has lost public interest in the glow of our successful space effort since then, in the state of national unconcern which accepts (and probably, in sum, approves of) the cancellation of the supersonic transport (SST) while the Tu-144 goes into production, and in the downward trend of our military R&D while the Soviets are profligate with new and experimental projects.
A look at the early post-Sputnik days is instructive. General Brown notes only a 50 percent gain in advanced physical science and engineering degrees in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970. By 1965, however, the effects of the post-Sputnik emphasis already had been observable. Between 1960 and 1970, advanced degrees in a group of “hard core” scientific disciplines1 increased from 19,200 to 47,100—a 146 percent gain. Doctorates in engineering went from 786 to 3681; in mathematics, from 303 to 1236.2
Government encouragement of scientific-technical studies, a policy adopted as a result of our critical self-examination after October 1957, was a factor in these increases. More important than such directed measures, perhaps, in our free labor market, was the evidence to secondary and college students that scientific and technical careers were “where the action is” and would provide rewards commensurate with the effort they required.
Those who thought this way from the mid-60s on are emerging with their Ph.D. certificates to find NASA phasing down, military R&D in trouble with Congress, and experienced scientific-technical people from Seattle to Boston drawing unemployment payments. They are victims of the 6- to 10-year lead time between a career decision and a contributing role in R&D. The lesson will be noted by the more astute young people now entering college.
General Brown expresses concern over the momentum and concentration of the Russian R&D effort, which is fast eroding the technological superiority we have previously enjoyed. If our own military and space R&D continue in a downturn, the result could eventually be a cause for alarmed examination more traumatic than Sputnik.
Dr. Francis X. Kane, who has contributed several articles to the Air University Review dating from his active duty assignments with Air Force Systems Command, is represented in Strategic Review by a brief and trenchant piece, “Arms Control and Defense Spending.” Kane argues that increased military spending will—or at least ought to—accompany the reaching of arms control agreements that attack the technological aspects of military competition in the absence of political reconciliation. We have, he observes,
. . . inverted the process. Instead of the logical flow from national interest to political commitments to military forces to technology programs, we now deny that improved weapons are required by political differences and national interest. . . . If we restrain nuclear weapons in numbers are we more secure? The answer is no, unless we take proper safeguards against Soviet abrogation of the treaty or against their achieving technological surprise. . . . we need R&D to provide a base from which to produce new weapons in the event the treaties are abrogated; to learn where technology will drive security measures; to investigate how Soviet scientists might make breakthroughs; to explore where we will find new weapons to replace those eliminated or constrained by the arms control measures.
In the meantime, Kane notes, the concentration of arms control efforts on nuclear forces poses for us the problem of coping with the tremendous conventional forces of the Soviets—a staggering task at the prices that men and machines command today. (Consider our evident inability to produce a main battle tank at less than $1 million per copy, drive away price!)
Only a vastly comprehensive limitation and reduction agreement covering all
approaches to firepower could restrain each side from pursuing qualitative
improvements or making use of existing, nonproscribed forces to seize
advantages. Does the atmosphere created by the “Spirit of Helsinki/Vienna”
promise to lead to such an agreement, or to the mutual abnegation of
capabilities which has been a hope of arms control advocates since the early
sixties? Dr. Kane believes that it does not, although the pressures for the
United States to forego qualitative improvements allowed under the agreement
began with its announcement and continue unabated among critics of defense
spending.3
The major part of Strategic Review, a special supplement comprising 142 of its 182 pages, is not encouraging to those who hope that the Soviets would reciprocate unilateral gestures. It is an updated reprinting of John Erickson’s “Soviet Military Power,” originally published in 1971 by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, London.
Republication and widened distribution of the Erickson work are signal services, because there does not exist in the public print anything close to its fact-filled, informed, perceptive, balanced coverage of the subject.
One thing that emerges from Professor Erickson’s pages is the clear picture of Soviet leadership moving determinedly, after Khrushchev, in the whole spectrum of military capabilities, to erase areas of inferiority to the United States and to assure a margin at least of “sufficiency.” The Soviet doctrine of “sufficiency,” Erickson notes,
. . . involves having forces ‘sufficient’ (both offensive and defensive) to ensure an outcome favourable to the Soviet Union should war come—that is, if deterrence collapses—and maintaining sufficient strength in peacetime to have measurable edges of superiority measured in numerical terms. (p. xii)
Erickson finds the Soviet acceptance of the SALT-1 agreements consonant with this doctrine, noting continued and growing Soviet attention to conventional armaments and qualitative improvements in offensive and defensive systems not barred by the SALT-1 treaty and agreement. There is no evidence that scientists or engineers are being disemployed from military pursuits.
In sum, the pages of this first Strategic Review bear the common thread of alert to the need for adequate U.S. military strength in a perilous world. In the U.S. Strategic Institute’s statement of purpose and in its first editorial, there is promise that future issues will enlarge this scope and serve as a forum for diverse viewpoints on foreign policy and national defense. Surely there is a place for an independent journal that will afford the responsible military commentator an outlet for expression, as a plethora of publications serve antimilitary critics. The expressed intent of the Institute to “take no position” is of course doomed to failure by the necessity to select manuscripts. Those “military professionals and others skilled in the military art” who wish to test the breadth of the Review’s interest have the invitation of the Institute to contribute.
The USSI is a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution. Initial financing has come from Mr. Arthur G. B. Metcalf, who is Chairman of the Institute and also Strategic Studies Editor.
The Institute invites inquiries regarding membership. (No “subscription price” for Strategic Review is announced.)
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
Notes
1. Biological science, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences. A “soft core” group (English, journalism, arts, philosophy, psychology, religion, social sciences) went from 83,426 to 239,259 advanced degrees between 1960 and 1970—a gain of 187 percent.
2. Data from Digest of Educational Statistics, Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, O.E. Bulletin 10024, Government Printing Office, 1962; and from Statistical Abstract of the United States, Department of Commerce, Government Printing Office, 1972.
3. See J. I. Coffey, “The Savor of SALT,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1973, pp. 9-15.
Colonel Harley E. Barnhart (M.A., Stanford University) is Assistant Editor, Air University Review. He was a fighter pilot in World War II, an Air Training Command instructor, and a B-52 commander. His staff assignments include duty with Deputy Directorate of Plans, Hq USAF; with J-5 and Military Assistance directorates of Hq USSOUTHCOM; and as DCS/Plans, Hq Seventh Air Force, Vietnam. He has been faculty adviser and Vice Commandant of Air Command and Staff College and is a 1964 graduate of Air War College.
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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