Compensating for Smaller Forces

Strategy and Technology in the New Era

by James Blackwell

There is no question that technology will continue to be a major component of U.S. global security strategy for the future. The important questions are how great a role technology should play, how much the nation can afford to invest in technology, and how to organize the application of technology to protecting national interests. The basic requirements of efficiency, superiority and flexibility still apply, but as the defense drawdown continues into the 1990s it will become increasingly difficult to optimize the balance of investments to achieve these goals.

The United States must begin to explore new approaches to strategic technologies. Finding new ways to evaluate both the risks and opportunities presented by foreign dependencies and foreign investments will be an increasingly important dimension of this policy area. At the same time, there will remain requirements for defense-specific investments in critical military technologies that will not be supported by commercial market forces.

It may also prove to be more cost-effective to abandon the cold war approach of pursuing the most advanced technologies in all areas of military significance in favor of a more selective approach. In some cases it may be cheaper to pursue quantity over quality in military technologies where strategic assessment would prove the approach to be prudent. In such cases, maintaining production capacity may be more important than pushing forward the envelope of technology. And in some cases our technological lead may be so far ahead of potential adversaries that we can afford to maintain large existing inventories, already paid for during the cold war, while pursuing only a modest level of investment in the pursuit of new technologies. And where we do choose to invest we would be wise to exploit our opportunities to have access to foreign developments rather than maintaining high walls of protection around our own laboratories and factories.

ENDNOTES

[1] The following discussion is taken from the framework developed in: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Deterrence in Decay: The Future of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, The Final Report of the CSIS Defense Industrial Base Project, Washington, DC: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 1989.
[2] See, A Quest for Excellence: Final Report of the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, David Packard, Chairman, June 1986; Center for Strategic and International Studies, U.S. Defense Acquisition: A Process in Trouble, Washington, DC: CSIS, 1987.
[3] Norman R. Augustine, Augustine's Laws, New York: Viking, 1986.
[4] Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society, 1939-1945, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977, p. 169. Data from secondary source, see fn 1.
[5] See especially The Center for Strategic and International Studies Integrating Technology for National Security, Washington, DC: CSIS, May 1991.
[6] The discussion of machine- tool industries in the World War II period is taken from Milward, pp. 181-185.
[7] CSIS, Deterrence in Decay, p. 11. For a more detailed historical summary of industrial mobilization in the United States, see Roderick L. Vawter, Industrial Mobilization: The Relevant History, An Industrial College of the Armed Forces Study in Mobilization and Defense Management, revised edition, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1983.
[8] Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, U.S. Army, Ret., The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980, p. 299.
[9] The most credible of the "lessons learned" studies and after action reports make this point. See, Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf Conflict: An Interim Report to the Congress, Washington, DC:, U.S. Department of Defnese, June 1991, pp. 7-1 - 7-7; Center for Strategic and International Studies, Military Lessons Learned from the Persian Gulf War, May 1991, p. 37; and James Blackwell, Thunder in the Desert: The Strategy and Tactics of the Persian Gulf War, New York: Bantam Books, 1991, pp. 213-230.
[10] F.M. Scherer, Innovation and Growth: Schumpeterian Perspectives, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984, p. 3.
[11] Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, New York: Harper, 1942, p. 106.
[12] Scherer, p. 6.
[13] Eric von Hippel, The Sources of Innovation, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 3.
[14] Ibid., p. 5.
[15] The data following are taken from CSIS, Deterrence in Decay, pp. 33-44.
[16] Department of Defense Critical Technologies Report, 1990.
[17] On the notion of an explicit strategy of conventional deterrence based on technological superiority see Theodore S. Gold and Richard L. Wagner, Jr., "Long Shadows and Virtual Swords: Managing Defense Resources in the Changing Security Environment," unpublished paper provided to Unfersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, DoD February 1, 1990.
[18] For an early discussion of the relationship between technology and conventional deterrence, see chapters by Michael Gordon and Michael Brown in James R. Golden, Asa A. Clark and Bruce E. Arlinghaus, eds., Conventional Deterrence: Alternatives for European Defense, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1984.
[19] See especially, DOD Critical Technologies Report; OTA report ITA-ISC-449, Arming Our Allies: Cooperation and Competition in Defense Technology, May, 1990; OTA report OTA-ISC-374, The Defense Technology Base.- Introduction and Overview, March 1988; OTA report OTA-ISC-460, Global Arms Trade, June 1991; US GAO report NSIAD 91- 93, "Industrial Base Significance of DOD's Foreign Dependence," 1991; OTA report, Holding the Edge: Maintaining the Defense Technology Base, 1990; OTA report, Adjusting to a New Security Environment: The Defense Technology and Industrial Base Challenge, February 1991; OTA report, Redesigning Defense: Planning the Transition to the Future U.S. Defense Industrial Base, July 1991; and The Defense Science Board, The Defense Industrial and Technology Base, October 1988.
[20] See various reports identifying this deficiency, especially, CSIS, Deterrence in Decay, pp. 53-54; and the GAO 1991 report.
[21] A noteworthy example is the Joint Logistics Commanders 1987 Precision Guided Munitions Study.
[22] Martin Libicki, Jack Nunn, and Bill Taylor, U.S. Industrial Base Dependence/Vulnerability. Phase II Analysis, Washington DC, November 1987.
[23] The notion that Canada is not a foreign country when it comes to consideration of defense technology base analysis is in fact embodied in law and is supposed to be governed by a joint U.S.-Canadian watchdog agency called the North American Defense Industrial Base Organization (NADIBO).
[24] Blackwell, Thunder in the Desert, p. 9.
[25] See the November 1991 Defense Department Report, The Defense Industrial Base.
[26] Theodore H. Moran, "The Globalization of America's Defense Industries: Managing the Threat of Foreign Dependence," International Security, Summer 1990, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 57-99.
[27] Basic text is FM Scherer, Industrial Market Structure and Economic Performance, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980.
[28] Benjamin Zycher, Kenneth A. Solomon, and Loren Yager, An "Adequate Insurance" Approach to Critical Dependencies of the Department of Defense, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation National Defense Research Institute, 1991.

More Prospects and Risks of Technological Dependence

Back to Table of Contents Prospects and Risks of Technology Dependence
Back to SSI List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2001 by US Army War College.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com