Air University Review, July-August 1977
Dr. Thomas H. Etzold
A COMMON theme pervades these two books by Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet and Paul Dickson: In the twentieth century, electronics has altered not only technical aspects of warfare but its nature. Sir Arthur believes that electromagnetics, the airplane, and the submarine have been the most significant developments in naval warfare in recent times.* In an even more striking assertion, Paul Dickson proposes that electronics, especially in sensor applications, has brought about a revolution in warfare as profound and consequential as that occasioned by atomic weapons.**
*Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet, Electronics and Sea Power (New York: Stein and Day, 1976, $15.00), 318 pages.
**Paul Dickson, The Electronic Battlefield (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976, $10.00), 244 pages.
In Electronics and Sea Power, which surveys uses of electromagnetics in naval warfare from early in the nineteenth century to late in the twentieth, Sir Arthur discusses three broad categories of application. The first, important by mid-nineteenth century, was communication, originally by cable and then, near the end of the century, by radio.
The second category was detection, with beginnings in the battery-powered searchlights of the Royal Navy about 1875, a time when sonar, radar, and over-the-horizon detection would have seemed too incredible even to be good science fiction. The third category was control of missiles, which Sir Arthur nominates as the most revolutionary development of the years following World War II, for it has led to the virtual replacement of naval guns by missiles.
Together with the pace of improvement, these three applications today mean, in Sir Arthur's opinion, that "nothing but the best will be any good in the future." Low-mix ships will be vulnerable, impotent, and obsolescent almost by definition. This is an interesting argument--an important concern each year as budgeteers, project officers, and admirals argue over force structure, weapon development, and procurement. It is unfortunate that, in developing this viewpoint, Sir Arthur did not adhere more closely to another of his avowed goals, namely, to "make the text intelligible to the general reader without removing much that is of real interest to the naval officer or the expert in electrics or electronics. "
The book is laden with abbreviations, designations, and a garble of British and American terms for various devices. In places, whole series of paragraphs consist of nothing more than consecutive one-sentence descriptions of various weapons and systems, descriptions useless to amateur and expert alike. Here, for instance, is Sir Arthur's entire mention of one weapon: "In the United States they also produce a smaller anti-shipping missile called 'Harpoon' with radar terminal homing." It would do little good to catalog here the errors or imprecisions in the text. Suffice to say that the conclusion is interesting, but the volume is unfocused, tiresome, and often trivial without being particularly informative. Perhaps the best chapters are the first ones dealing with the Royal Navy up to the First World War, years before the Navy--and the book--became hardware-intensive.
What Sir Arthur praises, Paul Dickson would like to bury, for he believes that electronics--especially sensor technology--has altered warfare for the worse and far beyond the ability of people to manage. In The Electronics Battlefield he asserts that for centuries success at war has meant "inflicting the greatest damage from the furthest [sic] distance." In terms of this definition, sensor technology now verges on "doing for conventional warfare what the atomic missile revolution did for total war: that is, to bring it to its logical end point--in this case not only distance from the enemy but destructive precision." Three developments of the Vietnam years underlie the emergence of sensor technology and an imminent revolution in the nature of conventional warfare: first, the integration and miniaturization of complex electronic circuits; second, the appearance and refinement of remotely manned systems; third, the creation of a science of "bionics"--not superstrong secret agents but the study of living systems to "provide the keys to new invention." For example, low-light television image intensification was improved partly through study of the eyes of horseshoe crabs.
The foregoing developments in electronics, remote systems, and bionics have made possible the electronic battlefield, or perhaps one should say battlefields:, because Dickson discusses two meanings of this signal phrase. The first meaning, EB I for short, refers to the development, improvement, and use of unattended ground sensors, and is, perhaps, not so worrisome, although it is not nice. The second meaning, EB II as the concept is tagged in Dickson's book, refers to automated war, such as the electromechanical battle zones suggested in a widely reported and quoted speech by General William C. Westmoreland on 14 October 1969. The great difference between EB I on the one hand, and EB II-Blipkrieg, the author calls it--on the other, is that in the latter version sensors are linked directly to weapons so that humans do not necessarily factor into the detection-response sequence. The sensor beeps; the gun, bomb, mine, or missile booms.
Dickson objects to this line of technological evolution and military revolution for several reasons. First, he believes that EB technology is making conventional warfare more lethal, which offends his humanistic values. Second, he resents that EB technology has been funded in bits and pieces, rather than as a line item or project in the defense budget, for that has made it possible to keep the public from questioning EB's ultimate effects on warfare, or even finding out much about it--all of which violates his democratic and journalistic ethics. Finally, Dickson expresses his outrage at the idea that the final lesson of Vietnam for American military men may be that it was inefficient and that military professionals may turn to the technology of the electronic battlefield for redress.
Many people who should read this book probably will not, and that is too bad. Dickson's veneer of reason does not entirely hide his emotional and negative reaction to trends in military technology. That will, to some readers, seem justification enough for discarding the book or ignoring the concerns of the author. For the author is a journalist not a scientist, a civilian and not an insider with clearances, information, and experience concerning many of the topics on which he touches. That may seem another good reason not to read the book or take it seriously.
But Dickson raises questions that deserve at least to be discussed and, if possible, answered: some about fallibility of systems, some about ethical responsibility in this "new" warfare, and some about its legality. "Will the electronic battlefield work well enough to insure that there will be no accidental, automated attacks on Americans or allied troops, no electronic My Lais?" he asks. Who is responsible when things go wrong or right as the case may be--in remote warfare conducted by machines? What is the legality of deploying sensor--weapon systems that cannot discriminate reliably between combatants and noncombatants?
Fallibility, responsibility, legality--these are reasonable questions concerning the effects of the electronic battlefield on conventional warfare. Dickson deserves credit for raising them even in the present form of investigative journalism.
FINALLY and together, these books pose a single point to consider, one raised most eloquently in recent years by Elting Morison in Men, Machines, and Modem Times. The point: how men do affects what they do. Thus, it is essential to employ technology with all deliberation. It is easy to forfeit or to avoid deliberate evaluation and decision on questions such as those Dickson asks. It is difficult to live with the unintended consequences, the unexpected results of failure to manage machines.
Naval War College
Dr. Thomas H. Etzold (Ph.D., Yale University) is professor of strategy at the United States Naval War College. Previously, he taught in the history department of Miami University (Ohio). He is editor with F. Gilbert Chan of China in the 1920s: Nationalism and Revolution, author of The Conduct of American Foreign Relations: The Other Side of Diplomacy, and he has written many articles for professional historical and military periodicals.
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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