Notes To Chapter 4
1. Delay in decision making can
cost more than a wrong decision. While
the so-called experts are deciding which system to build,
the technical talent that can build them must be paid to
idle, or allowed to disperse. If they disperse, the
cost of reassembling them is high.
Note that salaries of technical
personnel are by far the largest single cost of any technological
system. As this is written (1970), many key technologists
and engineers are unemployed.
2. After unification of the
services, the war plans function largely
vanished, even in the military sphere. It has since been
recaptured by the JCS.
3. Or is seeking to test a new concept of
warfare, as in the case of the Communists in
Vietnam. This does not contradict the above
statement, although the Communists now believe they
have found a manner of warfare in which
they hold decisive advantages. Yet small
wars cannot produce irreversible results
in the Technological War. (See Chapter 8.)
4. For a more detailed description of the
system and the logic that generates it, see Chapter
6, Assured Survival.
5. At least three different approaches to
the construction of the hydrogen bomb are now known; all
would have resulted in a useful weapon, and
at least two have led to important -- and
different -- advances in nuclear technology.
6 Most strategic decisions on technology
are today made on the basis of briefings which are
usually conducted with charts. As Amrom Katz
has pointed out, the trouble with charts is that
one can only present data on them,
usually in the form of numbers, and
this leads to the collection of data on the basis of its availability
rather than its relevance. Military officers now
generally employ civilian scientists to prepare their charts
and present their data, in the hope that these men will be
able to communicate with the decision makers.
There is usually no attempt to present a
technological question in strategic terms because
there is zero expectation that the decision maker will
know what is being said.
7. Parallel approaches will often be
undertaken when the system requirement is
high, as in the case of the hydrogen
weapon. This is not only insurance for reaching the performance
but may be wise in terms of
the general advancement of technology.
8. There is a concept of systems analysis
that appears to be identical to what we have
called strategic analysis. Many major aerospace
firms employ systems analysis departments to make strategic analyses,
and strategists will be found in systems
analysis sections at lower levels of various military development
commands. Examination of what systems analysts now do in
most places, and particularly in McNamara's office of
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems
Analysis, revealed that the more narrow concept we
employed in the First Edition was proper. The military
phase of McNamara's systems analysis seemed to consist of a
standard memo to the services ordering them to "Prove
that you need it."
9. One major objection to
systems analysis as performed by McNamara's office
was that it appeared to be eternal. By the time the
analysis is performed, the system and its requirements may
be obsolete -- or the war lost.
10. And some of which do not even make
sense. The authors have been required to
perform detailed mathematical analyses of strategic weapons
proposals sent down from the Pentagon which
described weapons so absurd as to cause us to ask if the request
was serious. Unfortunately for the reader, but quite
fortunately for the civilian scientists who proposed them, the
more silly the proposal, the higher the classification, so
examples cannot be given.
11. Real uncertainties, as
opposed to statistical uncertainties, can
never be quantified. For example, we have
some estimate of the ratio of black and white balls in an urn if
they have been randomly-selected; but how
will we assess a probability mixture
if an intelligent man has deliberately made up the mix and
hopes to deceive us? We may have an estimate, but it cannot
be based on probabilities. Unfortunately
for scientific analysis, real uncertainties are more
common in the military world than statistical
uncertainties.
12. Colonel Lawrence A. Skantze,
U.S.A.F., "The Art of the Program Manager,"
Air Force-Space Digest, LII, 11 (November
1969), p. 78.
13. In recent years, the Soviet Union has
employed Stalinist dictatorship, collective leadership,
the Khruschev cult of personality, Brezhnev's
stagnation, [Andropov's reforms, Gorbachev's glasnost and
perestroika. The basic decision structure of the USSR
has been changed radically at least eight times since 1917. [And
continues to do so; Gorbachev's survival is by no means assured.]
14. For example, see Harold Lasswell,
Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How (New York:
Meridian, 1958).
15. The examples are endless: Pearl
Harbor, the predicted Soviet detonation of the
atomic and hydrogen bombs, Sputnik I, the Cuban
missile emplacements, and escalation in Vietnam are
well known. It is unfair to blame the surprises that
resulted on the intelligence community, since the
political leaders were in each case unwilling to take the
warnings seriously.
16. A high-ranking officer of the
Imperial German General Staff once remarked
to a subordinate, "His Majesty employs but one
strategist, and neither you nor I is that man."
17. One of the truly vital mistakes this
country tends to make is to assume that
because a man has been successful as an industrial
manager, oilman, or stock manipulator, he will be a
competent manager of the armed services. This in
itself is not the vital mistake, but the error
flows from the industrialist's belief in the
myth and his concept of himself as a competent
strategist.
18. We can almost guarantee
that any highly-competent military commander
will hate nine out of ten scientists he meets -- he won't
like the strategists he has to work with, either.
19.*@* The first edition of this book
proposed a number of changes in decision structure. Some
of those were made in the 1980's.
20.**@@** This process has in part been
implemented since the first edition of this book. The
result is known as competitive strategies.
21.***@*** Times change, of course; what
was 'far out' in 1969 became vital in 1980. IN the chapter
"Assured Survival" this book in 1969 advocated strongly
focused efforts into 'beam technologies'. That research
paid off handsomely after 1983; but note that beam technology is
only one of the means for constructing viable missile defense
systems.
22.**** This situation is essentially
unchanged in 1989; the USSR expects glasnost and perestroika to
produce internal changes, but also to induce the West to loosen
up restrictions on both strategic goods and credit. While
it is important to "give Gorbachev a chance" it is also
vital that we don't preserve and increase Soviet military power.
In the 1990's Trade policy has become the key front for the
Protracted Conflict. [1987]
The decisive moment was when Reagan refused to abandon SDI at
Gorbachev’s request. This threatened to make obsolete the
extremely expensive missile establishment of the USSR; the cost
of refurbishing that system to make it viable in an era of
strategic defense was unthinkably high for USSR planners. The
alternative of using it before it became obsolete was no more
attractive due to NATO readiness (although there certainly were
advocates of a ‘take Europe now’ policy within the
PolitBuro.)
23.***** The era of computational plenty
has had many beneficial effects, but it has one major drawback:
if not careful, one can easily exaggerate the accuracy of
computer predictions. The output of a computer analysis is
really no better than the understanding of the programmer who
built the analytical model; and since even today's computers
can't understand history and economics and leadership
personalities, they output of a computer simulation isn't likely
to be an accurate prediction of world events. As an
example, a popular computer game called "Balance of
Power" is often used in university classes on foreign
relations, and has been used in the Foreign Service schools. This
game ignores economics and trade, and is largely "won"
if the U.S. player pursues a policy of appeasement vis-à-vis the
'implacable' Soviet Union. Nothing the U.S. player can do
will make fundamental changes within the structure of the Soviet
player's empire. Balance of Power is an amusing game, but
it is a pernicious instructor in real-politik. [1989]
We note that had the US followed the precepts of that
game—which was based on the principles then taught by the
Department of State—the Seventy Years War or Cold War would
still continue. [1997]