If there is one word which describes the state of mind of the average citizen as he reflects on the uncertainties of a troubled world, it is the word “confusion.” Will our enemies attack us? With what weapons? When and how? Are we being outstripped in military progress? Are our defense forces alert and well-balanced? Is defense money well spent?
One sees the effects of such confusion in the deliberations of Congress, where dedicated and able men have the difficult task of finding the answers to such questions, a task complicated by a necessity to react to the fears and doubts of their constituents. One sees it in the arguing of scientific groups, economists, and foreign policy experts. These effects pervaded the 1960 national election, insofar as citizens tried to determine who could lead the nation most wisely and resolutely.
There are no human beings with wisdom adequate to meet this situation. As a chess game rapidly becomes so complex that human minds must depend on intuitions and probabilities, so with the chess game of national survival. But the stakes are different here. Instead of pawns and rooks, we deal with lives and human aspirations and the values of civilization itself.
Refuge must be taken in the efforts of men with different backgrounds and abilities to hammer out group judgments. These, too, may be frail and require constant re-examination, but their worth will depend on the approaches such men make, the clarity of their objectives, their freedom from bias, and their diligence in assembling the often insufficient facts.
There has been a good deal of suspicion in the public mind that the military often go their own way, that they are not altogether objective in the national sense. That this has been partly due to penurious treatment of the military in peacetime, and partly due to the anxiety of the military to have excess capabilities to cover the unexpected trends of conflicts, does not change the popular view. That military life has in the past tended toward parochial points of view is accepted as true.
Yet there has been a revolution in military thinking. The extent to which our military organizations use civilian guidance through advisory panels, university and industrial research projects, non-profit study organizations, operations research groups, and scientists and engineers in high government posts would have been unthinkable in 1940.
This is not to say that perfect answers are thus obtained. Neither is it to say that those who scorn “committees” have right on their side. The processes of democracy are clumsy but have great strength. Clumsiness and strength are also characteristics of today’s military debates.
One of the most searching and self-critical studies of U. S. Navy problems ever carried out was made possible by the aid of a civilian group called Project Poseidon. The members of this group can recall no circumstances in which a military service has set forth more fully its problems, doubts, and uncertainties— and has received so well the resulting candid and hard-hitting criticism.
As a consequence of this study—this union of civilian and military thinking—many things are clearer than they were a few months ago. Among them are these:
*The oceans will grow more important in warfare during the next decade. The oceans are becoming vast launching areas, millions of square miles in extent. The watery nature of these areas gives them unique advantages.
*The concept of oceans as launching areas makes the generally accepted missions and roles of navies partly archaic. Though our Navy must continue to protect the sea lanes for commercial and military movements over the water, its central mission becomes that of giving full play to its ability to project power over land areas.
*The more probable a nuclear stalemate continues to be, the more heavily we must rely on the Navy to defend the free world in limited war and cold war. The nearness of most of the free world to the oceans makes this practical and necessary.
*Technological changes will cause impacts on the future evolution of the Navy that may not be recognized at the time they occur. This is not meant to assert the commonplace of rapid technological change. The increasing complexity and cost of weapons, and the increasing rapidity with which they suffer obsolescence, mean that in the future “more money” will not be a sufficient answer. Political leaders may indeed decide that more money should be spent for defense, but we have many domestic needs, and, barring a much more tense world situation, increases in defense budgets will no doubt be moderate. Even if the Navy had a bottomless treasury, however, it could not absorb all the possibilities of technical change. Increasingly, good defense will be determined by how wisely money is spent as well as by how much is spent.
*Because of these developments, the Navy needs a new organization to aid it in using the “systems concept” for carrying out projects and programs. Explained in more detail below, the systems concept is one which views the totality of needs required by a purpose, as opposed to a collection of more heterogeneous developments. It involves defining missions and goals with clarity; establishing requirements to meet them; guiding research, design, and construction in an integrated manner toward these goals; keeping an eye on both prospective, present, and future total costs and on time schedules consistent with military needs. The resulting difference is something like that between a factory, all of whose equipment is directed toward a specific purpose, and a hardware store, which contains useful but unrelated items.
As to how Project Poseidon came about, a single sentence will indicate the point of view of today’s top Navy leadership. Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, last year publicly stated: “When the security of our nation is at stake, no military planner can afford, or dare, to be autocratic or secretive, or too proud to ask the counsel of the people.”
Mulling over the Navy’s global responsibilities, and troubled by organizational, financial, and technological complexities, Admiral Burke turned for help to the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s foremost scientific body. In December 1959, he asked Dr. Detlev W. Bronk, the Academy’s president, to assemble an expert group to study broadly the Navy’s problems. Particular emphasis would be on missions, ships and weapons, technical developments, and programs for construction and maintenance, with the carte blanche, “Other items considered appropriate for review by the Study Group. ...”
Project Poseidon (named after the Greek god of the sea) had a committee of 14, including engineering school presidents and deans, researchers from industry, retired naval officers experienced in ship design and marine engineering, and experts in economics and finance.
Preparatory work began in January 1960, and a secret, 10-day briefing and discussion session got underway on 18 March at the Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida. The report of the Poseidon Group was sent to Admiral Burke in May.
In the 24 briefings at Poseidon, the Navy covered a wide range of subjects, devised to meet preliminary questions raised by the study group. Then the Deputy Chiefs of Naval Operations, the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Chiefs of the Bureau of Ships and the Bureau of Naval Weapons participated in an earnest, 2-day question-and-answer session. The Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ships for Nuclear Propulsion joined the group for a discussion of nuclear power plants. The aim—and the result—was a no-holds-barred soul-searching, perhaps unique in the Navy’s history.
A keynote of the sessions is to be found in some of Admiral Burke’s remarks at Jacksonville. “The decisions on which we are asking your help will have a grave impact on the nation’s future naval capabilities,” he said. “The situation demands every resource of wisdom.”
For security reasons, much of the content of the Navy’s briefings may not be disclosed. The context of the discussions of its military problems can be described, however.
Specific questions stemmed from general considerations such as these:
*What presumptions are in order in view of the vast land mass of Russia and her satellites? With the exception of Albania, no ocean or non-Communist country separates the principal countries of the Communist bloc. This problem is further intensified by the widely- scattered position of our own allies, but it is alleviated by the fact that almost all of the free world is readily accessible from the oceans.
*Is there time for more careful comparisons of current new weapons in the presence of a dedicated and active opponent committed to world domination?
*What should be the capabilities for limited and general war, and for cold war contingencies? How may the Navy best exercise its ability to keep military action from occurring?
The Navy made two basic assumptions in determining requirements for the next five years. First, the strategies of the Communist bloc and the United States will not change drastically in that period and, second, the changing nature and timing of crises induced by the Communist bloc will force the United States to be prepared to face decisions leading to unilateral operations. . . . “This [latter] likelihood has a strong bearing on our requirements.”
Apart from Russia’s increasing interest in naval power, the Navy’s needs are directly influenced by a political situation which identifies the Far East, the Middle East, and other regions as areas of great unrest, reflected in mounting nationalist feelings spurred by Communist machinations. Unstable governments, immature nationalism, under-developed economies, feudal social systems, and negligible organic military strength in the modern sense have proved to be fertile ground for busy Communists and their agents.
The Navy’s leaders agree that by 1965 and increasingly thereafter we can expect the Soviets to have substantial numbers of nuclear missiles which are not only concealed but mobile. Some of these may be mobile ICBM’s on land, but others probably will be at sea on nuclear-powered submarines.
“By the 1970’s there would appear to be no reason why submarine-launched missiles could not be fired at targets well inland, from mid-Atlantic, or from equal off-shore ranges in the Pacific,” a spokesman pointed out. “This is a total sea launch area of more than 10 million square miles, an area of concealment greater than the U.S.S.R. itself. This leads to a major conclusion: The Soviet strike capability will not be fully vulnerable to prompt retaliation by U. S. forces.”
It would be unwise, the Navy feels, to assume that the Soviet bloc will not have such advanced tools as numerous submarines, nuclear-powered and equipped with improved sonar, high-speed torpedoes, and short-range missiles. They will have numerous long-range jet aircraft, equipped with radar and with high-performance homing; ballistic missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles.
Another major Soviet threat arises from that power’s growing ability to exert combinations of political, economic, and subversive pressure on the unstable, underdeveloped nations of the world.
As one speaker put it, “A major component of this complex of Soviet pressures will be trade. It is further becoming apparent that the Soviet bloc merchant marine will expand to carry this trade, disrupting the maritime ties between these nations and the West. It does not strain the imagination to see Soviet naval forces, and, perhaps in time, naval base rights as well, following the Red merchant flag. All these will combine to reinforce the desired impression of Soviet power and Soviet support, provided from the sea. In short, the Soviets will make every effort to displace the sea power which has traditionally been the symbol of Western supremacy.”
The ability of the Soviet Union to upset the uneasy peace of both the Far and Middle East is enhanced by her program of military assistance. Soviet-donated forces are increasing, and they have a considerable potential for challenging our sea routes. They include modern submarines, high-performance manned aircraft, and patrol type surface ships. The actions which this country (United States) may be called upon to take “could include rendering tactical air and gunfire support to friendly indigenous forces.” Further, a major threat is posed in the Western Pacific by the possibility of Chinese Communist probings in any one of three potential trouble spots; North Korea, the Taiwan Straits, or North Vietnam.
“We do not,” Rear Admiral F. V. H. Hilles told the group, “expect to see the Soviet and satellite threat diminish. We cannot afford to have a less than adequate posture of strength in the eyes of these who are with us, those against us, and those who are neutral but very observant. The stakes are high. We cannot afford to bluff. It is bluffing in the first degree to send out ships competent to fulfill only peacetime missions. We must not compromise with quality. Our ships must be fully equal to the task ... to carry out our basic national policy that assistance to the free nations of the world is essential to our national security.”
“Our military posture,” Rear Admiral C. V. Ricketts said, “not only must be credible to the Soviets but also to our Allies and the uncommitted nations. . . . One of the most effective ways of making it credible is a demonstrated determination to hold territory that is challenged. The action we took in the recent off-shore island crisis in the Far East is an example.”
One specific view shared by the Navy and the Poseidon group is of special importance. It is assumed that a nuclear stalemate will continue to exist. Our nuclear stockpile can wipe out any enemy several times; by the same token the United States is endangered by the nuclear capability of our most likely adversary. Each side is fearful; each knows the other is capable of massive retaliation. From this follows the need for residual power in the event of enemy attack. This left-over and intact power can be built up by the Navy to a very high degree, and could spell the difference in our retaliation and survival—better still, it could be the prime factor in deterring the enemy from initiating an attack.
Carrier forces and Polaris submarines are the principal means of maintaining this leftover and intact power. The range of their weapons, the enemy’s difficulty in locating them, and their mobility through the oceans give them special advantages. Mobile land- based weapons systems can, and no doubt will, become difficult for the enemy to locate, but in the meantime the Navy is determined to keep itself in the van of the shifting nuclear picture until it is made abundantly clear what its weapons can contribute, and what can be achieved in mobile land-based weapons.
Carrier strike forces, moreover, are somewhat unique among military weaponry. Assuming a nuclear stalemate, their planes are instantly available for purposes of limited war or cold war. Thus these planes justify themselves by a two-pronged capability.
It should be understood that a report such as Poseidon’s contains a mixture of views expressed by the Navy and accepted by the civilians, views expressed by civilians as a result of their differing experiences, and admixtures of these two. In effect, they are civilian views influenced and catalyzed by Navy and non-Navy thinking.
Among the points made in the Poseidon report are the following:
As to the Navy's missions:
“The seas are no longer a self-contained battlefield,” the report states. “Today they are a medium from which warfare is conducted. The oceans of the world are the base of operations from which navies project power directly onto land areas and targets.
“The mission of protecting sea lanes continues in being, but the Navy’s central missions have become to maximize, its ability to project power from the sea over the land and to prevent the enemy from doing the same.
“The Navy’s role in projecting power from the sea contributes to the deterrent posture, its ability to fight limited wars, and cold war efforts. In no case is quantity specifically calculable, since in the nuclear age there is no yardstick to measure men’s fears. On the other hand, it is possible within limits to calculate capabilities in terms of the tasks to be fulfilled.”
As to the impact of technology:
“The U. S. Navy faces a crisis. On the one hand the sea will grow more important in warfare over the next decade. On the other, unless current trends can be countered, the Navy will be less able to carry out its missions in the future than it is today. Instead of the 900 or more ships which naval planners have estimated as needed in the decade of the 1970’s, the Navy may well consist of only a few hundred different and more complex ships. ...”
“ . . . Technology is changing the Navy, its missions, its ships, its weapons, and its problems. The changes in sea warfare during the period 1945—1960 were much greater than the changes during corresponding previous periods, considering the changes from high to nuclear explosives, from oil to atomic engines, from gunfire to missiles, from low performance to high performance planes, from human to computer calculation. Moreover, there is no foreseeable leveling off in the pace of technology. On the contrary change will increase in pace.
“To date the Navy has not fully felt the impact of research done in the decade of the 1950’s. The research of the decade of the 1960’s will grow in volume, breadth, and depth. Its impact will be even greater. Yet the pace of innovation is already having serious effects on the Navy’s ability to carry out its missions.”
As to ship and weapon designs:
A number of officers advanced a “practicable” solution of the modernization problem in what they called the quantum jump in weapons systems development. “We must, despite screams from the operational forces, start ignoring the interim improvements that the state of the art makes available, and restrict changes in weapon designs to large steps.”
The report’s view on this problem:
“Various concepts underlying ship and weapon design need to be challenged. Thus, a ship no longer has a ‘20-year life,’ since there no longer exists a 20-year purpose. Technology requires that ships be changed and modernized, hence they should be built so that modernization can be accomplished as easily as possible.
“Typing of vessels has tended to lose its meaning. Ships become to a greater extent merely carriers of weapons systems that are developed. . . . When changes in weapons systems can cause destroyer-type ships to grow from 2,000 tons to 7,000 tons, the meaning of the word ‘destroyer’ becomes diluted. Ship sizes must to a greater extent be determined by the size of weapons systems, rather than determining what and how many kinds of weapons a particular size of ship can take.”
As to future Navy costs:
On this, the report stated:
“If one extrapolates present cost trends into the future one is forced to the conclusion that they will outrun assumable budgets. All indications point towards increased costs. Naval ships are aging and must be replaced. The rapidity of technological change means that a new ship must live several lives and have new weapons systems. Ships will have to be modernized more often and more expensively. This is, in effect, a commitment against future budgets. The implications of new technology mean that research and development expenditures should, ideally, increase. New kinds of shore facilities will be needed. The cost of manpower must increase. New technologies tend to lead to design profusion, and thus to work against standardization and cost-cutting.”
As to budgets:
“We believe that more money is needed in current naval budgets to obviate some of these deficiencies or, alternatively, we believe military risks will be run which we regard as undesirable,” the report recommends. “This is said, however, with two qualifications. First, there is a need to re-examine the current distribution of expenditures. We believe that economies can be gradually realized. Second, and much more seriously, the current financial problem threatens during the next decade to become so acute that ‘more money’ is not a sufficient answer. It is this latter problem which most concerns us.”
As to design goals:
The Poseidon findings stress the Committee’s belief that the Navy, unlike industry, “lacks economic criteria to judge the value of improvements in design. Since in the period ahead more money will not be a sufficient answer, improvements in ship capabilities must be tested vigorously against added costs, and in the light of voids which the spending of money creates in other Navy capabilities.”
The report says that several things need to be recognized. Some ship-and-weapons systems, such as carrier and submarine forces, are very expensive. They are necessary, and we must pay what we have to in order to have them. But just as a housewife examines her budget, we must examine the costs of these weapons critically in the hope of finding money which can be spent on other Navy needs.
“Cost increases can be caused by the desirable enthusiasms of advocates of ships and weapons, insofar as they express what they feel they should ‘ideally’ have.
“As with industry, the Navy must set tough goals for costs of new ships and weapons systems. ... In doing this, the unstinted cooperation of industry in reducing costs of ships and weapons must be sought, as reportedly done by the Air Force on the F-105 plane. There must be close rapport of thinking between design and operating people, to secure best compromises. So-called military requirements must be examined” on the basis of whether they are essential.
The report states that more competition of technical ideas on ship designs is needed, with more ideas to be drawn from designers outside the Navy, and that there is need to press forward with the development of radically new forms of ships.
As to Navy general planning:
“To the extent that the Bureau of the Budget in conserving funds makes decisions whose soundness must rest on engineering and operating considerations, it overlaps the Navy’s functions. To the extent that the Defense Department may set up committees on purely naval problems, it will do so because of supposed default by the Navy. To the extent that Congress differs with the Chief of Naval Operations as to his needs, a grave question is posed.
“We are not criticizing here any bureau or department, or Congress, despite our concerns. To the extent that the Navy does not provide a basis for planning that will convince its leaders and enable them to convince others, then others will move in to do the Navy’s planning for it. Probably they will do it far less well than the Navy could do it for itself.”
To this end the Poseidon committee makes its most important recommendation: That there be set up in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations a management advice organization combining the skills of naval of-fleers and civilians from industry and universities. This organization would facilitate the system approach to projects and programs.
Some of its objectives would be:
*To provide a central planning function into which all factors relating to Navy missions could be fed and studied.
*To help analyze the impact of new technologies on the Navy’s over-all mission.
*To determine the margins of usefulness within which new equipment must fall to serve the over-all mission.
*To estimate present and future costs of programs.
*To facilitate the all-important function of selecting and discarding outmoded programs.
*To facilitate the disposal of obsolete bases and equipment by showing their failure to contribute to the mission.
*To integrate scheduling of development, design, and construction to the needs of the missions.
*As a secondary benefit, to interpret overall activity so as to permit the public to be informed of significant problems of development, construction, and operation.
It would give a one-sided picture to speak only of the Navy’s problems and what it needs to do. Throughout its history the Navy has been characterized by superior technical accomplishments, and this was never truer than it is today.
Any group such as Poseidon is not much concerned about the many things the Navy is doing well. It was not called together to praise the Navy’s accomplishments. Its job was to stress what needed to be done better, or point out what was not being done. It followed the management-by-exception rule, seeking exceptions in order to smooth performance.
But every engineering and scientific member of the Poseidon Group has been impressed —and believes the public should be impressed —by the Navy’s technical accomplishments. There is not space here, nor is it the purpose, to describe the Navy’s high-performance planes and missiles, its versatile carriers, its amphibious landing craft, or other developments. Suffice it to say that, as a single example, the combination of Polaris missiles and nuclear submarines appears to be one of the most outstanding engineering achievements of our nation during the past decade.
It may help to understand the Navy’s problem to point out that it is somewhat like a competent industrial company that is in trouble. Suppose that such a company knows how to design products well and how to make them well, but its products do not sell. It is faced with the need for market research, and market research is of course what the Navy is doing in establishing new goals. It is faced with conservation of money, so that it may price more economically and broaden its product lines. And it is faced with improving its public image. Just so with the Navy.
On this point the report says, “The Navy has many fine engineering and construction accomplishments which are not being sufficiently described, particularly to influential people, including scientists, engineers, industrialists, and political leaders. These stories should not be told as propaganda, but in an educational manner.”
In a sense, the Navy’s strength is also its weakness. Strong in engineering, it has assumed, like Emerson’s maker of mousetraps, that if it performed capably, its needs would be understood. In 1907, the Great White Fleet which sailed around the world symbolized the power and majesty of the United States. In the 1930’s, aircraft carriers were exciting new developments, which the public understood. Since World War II planes and missiles have become the glamor items. But the “silent” submarine service happens to reflect an attitude more typical of the Navy.
Paradoxically, assuming a nuclear stalemate, the Navy’s most important job is its most unglamorous. It is that of acting to prevent war or to limit aggression. A silent fleet roaming the Mediterranean is like a queen in a chess game, powerful and ready to strike, but unexciting so long as it does not do so.
The uniforms that military men wear, their strict codes of discipline, their working behind screens of security, have seemed to set them apart from laymen, as a special breed of men with different interests. The ferment of today’s world has created many anxieties, but it has had one heartening result. No longer may it be said that military men's goals are substantially different from other men’s. The prospect of war and devastation threatens not only civilians, but also the families and descendants of the men and women of the Navy; the culture, religions, and values they hold dear; indeed all that is meaningful in life.
The drawing together of military and civilian leaders, under the necessities of the nuclear age, explains the candor with which the Poseidon study was carried out. Such precedents augur well for the development of the kind of national leadership on which the success of our nation will depend.
Chairman of the Poseidon Committee, Doctor Shea is a Vice President of the Western Electric Company. Possessing degrees from Harvard and M.I.T., he has been in electrical engineering since 1920. He has been general manager for the Atomic Energy Commission’s Sandia Laboratories, a director of Bell Telephone Laboratories, director of war research at Columbia, 1941—45, member of undersea warfare National Defense Research Committee, and organizer and director of the New London Laboratory for submarine research. He is a recipient of the Medal of Merit in recognition of his exceptional services to the submarine forces.