mined when one of the contestants decides to yield to the wishes of his adversary. Thus the true object of warfare is not to destroy the materiel and to occupy the territory of the enemy but to influence the enemy government and population to adopt the pattern of action desired.

The most obvious form of war, of course, is direct military action, corresponding roughly to the adolescent forms of competition in the individual. Just as the individual discovers upon reaching maturity that there are more subtle ways of achieving his objective than fighting with his fists, so a maturing civilization discovers far more subtle ways of influencing its fellow members in international society, although unquestionably the threat of destruction remains the most impressive form of influence and no nation dares present a weakened military posture to the outside world.

Second only to the threat of physical destruction is the threat of economic destruction. Economic warfare has been an important alternative to military action since early history and has been raised to a high pitch of industrial competition by the great nations of the world. The third method of influence popular in warfare is direct applied psychology, perhaps the most fundamental of all. In pure psychological warfare the objective is to influence directly enemy populations and governments without the deployment of either military or economic force.

Technological warfare to some extent represents a combination of all three types of influence. For example, development of the atomic bomb and the long-range bomber provided a direct military threat to potential enemies. The demonstration of a continued high level of 'technical achievement, particularly if this level is higher than the enemy's, provides a direct psychological influence against his seriously considering an attack upon you. Perhaps the most important threat of technological warfare is the economic one. It is here that tactics and strategy may be stated most explicitly and that maximum results are achieved in times of military peace.

In other words, the object of technological warfare should be not only to exceed the enemy technically but also to influence or coerce him economically in the process. Thus technological warfare may be defined as the strategic and tactical employment of scientific and engineering discovery to influence adversely the enemy's economic, political, and military posture.

The environs of warfare since the middle of the twentieth century have moved spectacularly toward the realms of science and space. In this aspect of national power, laboratories are advance bases, blueprints are battlefields, scientists and engineers are troops, and victories are measured in the orbits of satellites and the trajectories of missiles. This is technological war. Its outcome is dependent upon technological progress and new space-age concepts. Its tactics and strategy—not to mention political impact—are imperfectly understood and will not be advantageously pursued by the United States until we substitute positive direcreliance on chance. Col. William O. Davis, AFRes, scores failure to ac'\nological warfare the necessary emphasis and calls for reorganization er management of resources to meet this challenge to national survival.

How did we get involved?

As the beginning of the current technological conflict took this nation largely by surprise, it is worthwhile to consider how it was possible for the Soviet Union to have gained so much headway. For the most part the best technical minds in the United States failed to foresee the rapid development of the field of space technology. This is not surprising. Of even the most imaginative science-fiction writers it can generally be said that they have predicted events too far in the future. Jules Verne, writing in 1890, forecast television, 600-mile-per-hour passenger travel, the atomic bomb, and many other modern discoveries, but in general he forecast such discoveries for nearly one thousand years in the future. Looking at forecast after forecast, one is forced to the conclusion that new scientific discoveries usually occur much sooner than anyone has expected.

This factor is of obvious importance in the waging of technological war. A knowledge of the true rate of progress in a given field of technology would constitute a potent offensive or defensive weapon. The characteristics of a weapon determine the strategy and tactics of its application. Let us, then, consider those characteristics of technical progress which dictate the strategy and tactics of technological warfare and proceed to a discussion of the factors affecting doctrine in this area.

The accompanying figure is a plot of speed records for various modes of transportation over approximately the last hundred years. This curve has been included because it graphically presents the principles to be discussed; curves for number of other parameters of progress have presented those same characteristics. On a rectangular plot a straight line represents a situ ation in which the same amount of progress occurs each year. On a semilogarithmic plot a straight line indicates that the percentage rate of progress -unlike the amount of progress on the rectangular plot-is constant each year. Thus since this is a semilogarithmic plot, the speed capability of a given type vehicle tends to increase by a constant per cent each year during the period of active development. This represents a dramatic growth pattern in the case of the more modern modes of transportation, such as the airplane. (The figure is unclassified; if classified data were presented, the trend would probably be somewhat nearer to a straight line.)

Even more remarkable than the trends of individual modes of transportation is the over-all trend of speed. Speed, in common with many other parameters of progress, is actually increasing at an exponential rate on this semilogarithmic plot. In other words the percentage rate of progress is not only high but increasing every year. This observation has most serious consequences in the conduct of technological war.

Another very important observation from these trend curves is that there appears to be very little correlation between technical progress and economic cycles. So the rate of technical progress appears to be independent of the amount of financial support provided or even the amount of effort. If greater effort is applied, the most important result is a shortening of the interval between discovery and production rather than a hastening of discovery. Thus

one might conclude that, regardless of the level of effort, an attempt to increase the rate of technical progress within a given concept of a vehicle will normally be fruitless. The continued development of an airplane per se can only bring an increase in speed along the straight line of the airplane

speed curve. To increase the percentage rate of progress, it is necessary to develop new vehicle concepts. The same general type of conclusion can be drawn from most of the other relevant trend curves, such as altitude, horsepower per pound of vehicle, etc.

What is victory in technological warfare?

In summary, we find that the evolutionary development of existing concepts in general follows the line of constant percentage improvement, whereas the introduction of new concepts may lead to a revolutionary increase in capability. The fact that we cannot increase the evolutionary rate of progress merely by increasing the effort in the field leads to one important conclusion with regard to the strategy of technological warfare. The prediction of a discovery does not imply that the scientists of any particular nation will make it. Once a nation has gained the advantage-is ahead on the trend curve -it is very difficult for an adversary to catch up. To do so, the adversary must

make a discovery still further in advance and therefore less probable. He can never retrieve his position by merely attempting to duplicate the achievement of another nation after the fact. Increasing the national effort may expedite the more rapid production of new weapons, but it will not usually bring about new discoveries any sooner. Thus when a nation has fallen behind in technological warfare, it must seek new concepts if it is to retrieve its position.

In the past, before we were really aware that we were fighting a technological war, we had usually followed two methods of planning and developing military weapon systems. To the end of World War II and perhaps for some years after, we were primarily concerned with purchasing military weapons in quantity for the use of our operating commands. We did not generally attempt to program the development of a given weapon system but rather bought off-the-shelf items which had been previously developed by the manufacturer. When we did plan for the development of a new weapon, in most cases it was done on the basis of a frozen state of the art. It was assumed that no new technological changes would be added to the weapon system during its development. This procedure inevitably resulted in a weapon system obsolescent the day it became operational. As a matter of fact, in the case of the B-52 as much progress in speed was made during the development time of the airplane as during the entire previous history of aviation.

The second method of planning was the programing of developments based more or less on the assumption of a constant percentage increase in the state of the art. This method presumes that progress will have been made by the end of each year but only that evolutionary progress predicted in advance will be included in the new weapon. Although perhaps realistic in terms of a given weapon concept, this method of development programing leads to almost constant reprograming during the fiscal year as a result of the constantly changing prediction. It has been estimated that approximately 85 per cent of all resources of Air Research and Development Command have been reprogramed during some years.

The ideal situation from a technological warfare point of view would, of course, be one in which all efforts were concentrated on the discovery of new concepts. Unfortunately this approach would not lead to a proper preparation of the nation for armed conflict. In practice, even today we must use all three approaches. A portion of our resources must go into the attempt to discover new concepts so as to score a victory in the technological war over the enemy, a portion must go to the rapid evolution of existing concepts so that a continuing supply of new weapons is becoming available to the armed forces, and finally at some point that state of the art must be frozen so that actual hardware may be produced. It is with the proper distribution of resources into these three areas of interest and with the proper strategic and tactical application of new discoveries and weapons that the management of a technological war must concern itself.

Let us first consider the problem of division of resources. Several years ago, while a student at the Air War College, Colonel Oliver G. Haywood, Jr., made an analysis of a simple tactical problem by the von Neumann

theory of games. He considered the case of a commander who, having limited resources, had to choose between estimating the enemy's capabilities and estimating his intent. If he chose the estimate of the capabilities and attempted to deploy a portion of his force to counter each possible capability, he could not apply sufficient resources to any capability to ensure victory. On the other hand, if he attempted to estimate the intent of the enemy and guessed wrong, he ran a risk of total defeat. In analyzing this problem Colonel Haywood came to the conclusion that approximately one third of the commander's resources should be applied in accordance with his estimate of the enemy's intent and two thirds according to his estimate of the enemy's capability. This distribution optimized his chances for victory while minimizing his possibilities of total defeat.

Something of the sort could well be applied in the present struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. I would hesitate to suggest that one third of the nation's defense resources should be committed to the development of new concepts in technological warfare, but certainly something like one third of the effort and interest, if not dollars, should be applied in this direction. The remaining two thirds of effort and interest and a larger proportion of dollars should, of course, go to the continuous development of new weapon systems and their production for possible military warfare.

A general in charge of fighting a technological war would be concerned not only with the development of new concepts but also very strongly with the problem of communicating the new concepts to system engineers and ultimately to production engineers, so that the products are of concrete military value in the event of armed conflict as well as of psychological and economic value in the technological war. In other words, his primary function would be that of communication and translation between people who think in different ways.

I believe that one of the greatest reasons for our failure to anticipate the success of the first Soviet satellite lay in the fact that for the most part the advocates of space activities were zealots rather than practical politicians. In times past the responsibility for new concepts has generally been assigned to small organizations and has been in the hands of younger men. Although such preparation for the age of space as had been achieved was largely due to their efforts, had there existed a manager or general officer concerned primarily with establishing communications between those having new ideas and those who produce them, I believe we would be in a very much better position today. In the struggle for funds and resources in the American democracy, this general's maturity of approach and practical knowledge of how to influence people and sell programs are at least as essential as his technical knowledge.

If he could solve the communications problem, the next major duty of our general in charge of technological warfare would be mapping tactics and strategy. When the British were faced with the problem of defeating Napoleon at the time when he had the greatest land force in the world and also benefited from internal lines of communication, they resorted to the