It is both a privilege and a pleasure for me to be here today, to have an opportunity to join with you in discussion of some of the fundamental problems concerning the future character of our Armed Forces and the formation of national security policy. This Spring I have had the pleasure of visiting the Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, so that this visit completes my brief tour of higher education for naval officers. In visiting these institutions, one cannot help being impressed by the heavy demands that a career in the Navy makes on its officers, by the scope and complexity of the problems with which you must be able to deal effectively, and by the great strides that these institutions are taking to keep up with the ever- increasing requirements for better trained officers.
Were it not for my respect for the gravity of our mutual responsibilities and the seriousness of your purpose, I would have been sorely tempted, in preparing my talk, to limit myself to a rather technical discussion of systems analysis and “cost-effectiveness,” the workings of the Programming System, the importance of reliable cost estimates, and, to ramble on in a non-controversial way about the various innovations that have been made in the past two years in the Comptroller’s Office. Such a course would minimize the risk °f adverse criticism and leave everyone content, if somewhat bored. However, you have been very kind in asking me to come here to speak, and I am sure that the technicalities of financial management are not really what is on your minds. I would like, therefore, to return your favor by discussing very frankly a question of great concern to all of us, which is: How are the fundamental choices of weapon systems and strategies to be made? What kind of information is needed to make those choices? On what basis should they be made? And, what are the roles of the military advisors and the civilian staff of the Secretary of Defense who, with the President, must make the final and critical decisions?
These problems are important. They affect the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars each year. But, far more important, the way in which these questions are answered is sure to affect profoundly the security of the United States and the prospects for freedom around the world.
It would not be possible to cover all of this subject in a brief talk. There is certainly no need to waste your time by defending the need for civilian control in the Department of Defense. In spite of the comments of a few journalists who like to fish in troubled waters, I am sure that there is no disagreement with the principle of civilian control among American military men. Admittedly, we in the Department of Defense may have our disagreements as to the extent to which that control should be centralized and I do want to say, just to keep the record straight, that I am convinced that the Secretary of Defense sits in the best place from which to make the final decisions about our basic strategies and our major weapon systems. However, rather than discuss these organizational questions, I would like to explore with you the character of the intellectual process that generates the assumptions, the questions, and the answers underlying defense planning.
The problems of selecting strategies and choosing weapon systems today are quite unlike anything that existed before the Second World War. Although the change has been gradual, the Second World War seems as good a place as any to locate the watershed. Before that time military technology changed relatively slowly in relation to the average length of military or political career. Both soldiers and statesmen could learn most of what they needed to know about military power and the relationship of weapon systems and forces to national security from their own direct experience and by reading history books. The direct personal experience of both military and civilian leaders, combined with the collective experience accumulated over centuries of warfare was sufficiently relevant to contemporary affairs that the problem of interpreting their experience by the careful rules of scientific method had not become a major one. Of course, this is not to say that there were no important failures to adapt to new military technology. History is full of examples of military successes and failures attributable to successful innovation, or to a lack of adaptation, and the beginnings of both World Wars were full of surprises on this account alone.
But something new has been happening in the past 20 years. Science and technology have gone through a “take-off” and they are now in a period of rapid, accelerating, and apparently self- sustaining growth. Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, computers, large-scale rockets, and space flight are but the most spectacular examples of a revolution which has been led by both military men and civilian scientists. Before World War II, we did not plan on technological change, we merely adjusted to it. Now we are planning on it. We are debating, whether inventions can be scheduled, and we have weapon systems that are being called obsolescent while still in production.
This new development has two important implications for the problem at hand. First, rampant technological change is producing not only better weapons of familiar kinds, it is also producing for us the possibility of many new kinds of weapons. Consider long-range bombardment. The progression from the B-17 to the B-29 to the B-36 was straightforward and apparently obvious. But now we have the possibility before us of literally dozens of distinctly different strategic nuclear delivery systems, not to mention the endless array of other kinds of weapon systems and forces. And the number of possibilities is expanding almost daily. There are air-breathing vehicles and ballistic vehicles that can be based and launched from fixed land bases, mobile land bases, platforms on the surface of the sea, under the sea, and in the air. There are missiles launched from aircraft, aircraft launched from missiles, missiles launched from submarines, and so on in endless progression. Although we have not tried to develop all of these possibilities, we have tried to develop many of them. In fact, within the past several years, the United States has had in development or production more than a dozen different long-range strategic nuclear delivery systems, including three different bombers (the B-52, the B-58, and the B-70), four different ICBM’s (Atlas, Titan, Fixed Minuteman, and Mobile Minuteman), three IRBM’s (Thor, Jupiter, and Polaris), two air-breathing intercontinental missiles (Snark and Navaho), and three air-launched missiles (Hound Dog, Skybolt, and Rascal). A similar development is taking place in almost every kind of warfare.
But in the face of the expanding number of systems that we could buy, we have not escaped the ancient necessity for choice arising out of the scarcity of available resources. Whether we like it or not, in the United States today, we have only a limited amount of goods and services available at any one time. Our gross national product, though large, is limited. We have only a finite number of manhours available for all forms of productive activity. If we attempted to develop and procure a dozen or more distinctly different strategic nuclear delivery systems, not to mention the three or four dozens that one might be able to conjure up in an evening’s discussion, we doubtless would end up squandering our resources and not doing a good job on any of them. Therefore, we have to choose.
I emphasize the inescapability of the scarcity of resources and the necessity for choice because many people seem to believe that the scarcity of resources and the resulting limits in our Defense budgets are really the invention of the Bureau of the Budget, the Comptroller’s Office, or the Appropriations Committees. They are not. The limitation on our national resources is a fact of life, like the laws of physics or aerodynamics. There are other needs and demands for those resources besides the demands of defense and of expanding science and technology. There are such needs as feeding, clothing and housing our population, educating our children, and fighting disease, in almost endless number. Therefore, only a limited amount of resources are available for defense. And it is our responsibility, both yours and mine, military and civilians working together, to get the most out of our limited resources by facing up to the hard choices and helping those who must make the decisions to make the right ones.
Another implication of the rapid pace of technological change is that today’s weapons differ more and more from the weapons many of you used in World War II and in Korea. Although it is difficult to know exactly how and to what extent, this does mean that some aspects of earlier experience in combat are probably out of date. And peacetime experience with military operations, however valuable, does not completely make up for this. The wars of the future will differ in some important details from the wars of the past. If, therefore, we are to prepare for the next war rather than the last one, we must address these changes in a systematic way and do all we can to understand their implications for the choice of weapon systems and strategy. As I remarked earlier, this problem is not unprecedented. The machine gun reduced some of the tactical planning preceding the First World War to irrelevance. Armored warfare made a mockery of some of the assumptions on which the Maginot Line was based. The development of naval aviation dealt the battleships such a decisive blow that the defenders of battleships have become the symbol of adherence to outmoded thinking. But the problem is of greater proportions today than ever before.
To deal with it, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is trying to encourage, stimulate, and contribute to the development of a new analytical approach or discipline for synthesizing many of the factors that go into defense planning. It is clear that both the Secretary of Defense and our senior military leaders are being forced by present circumstances to place increasing reliance on such analysis rather than placing exclusive reliance on their experience and judgment. This development has become controversial. It has been described by some as “downgrading the military” or “excessive reliance on young and temporary civilians” and other such epithets. But such a characterization misses the point. It is not a matter of upgrading some people and downgrading others. That is neither the intent nor is it a necessary consequence of the development and reliance on improved methods of analysis. Rather, the problem is one of making a sensible adjustment in our ways of thought to deal with rapid changes in technology and in international circumstances, an adjustment that is appropriate for both military and civilian leaders.
To the extent that there is controversy, I do not think that it is constructive or accurate to describe it as military versus civilian, though unfortunately some may find it to their partisan advantage to do so. One can find both military and civilians on all sides of this issue. Rather, it is a conflict between new and old ways of thinking about national security problems. In fact, the reforms now taking place have their roots in many places, both military and civilian. They are not purely a civilian invention. All of the services make extensive use of operations analysis. It was the Navy that created the Operations Evaluation Group, and the first important applications of operations analysis included Antisubmarine Warfare. The Air Force sponsored the RAND Corporation. General Maxwell Taylor, in his book, called for the development of explicit quantitative standards of adequacy, something we are working hard to do now. But it is appropriate that the broader application of the analytical approach be led by the Secretary of Defense because an important part of his job is to stimulate innovation and reform.
What is this new approach all about? How far advanced is it? And what are its essential characteristics? I believe that the art of weapon systems analysis, and it is an art, is still in its embryonic stage. It is, in part, an outgrowth of military operations research which really had its start, as a systematic discipline, in World War II. It was not until after that war that economic analysis began to be applied to the problem of choice of weapon systems. And it is only in very recent years that it has been taken seriously by top-level decision-makers. I think that it is fair to say that one can find some good, thorough, reliable analyses that deserve to serve as a guide to serious decision-making. Unfortunately, however, one can also find many bad ones. My general impression is that the art of systems analysis is in about the same stage now as medicine during the latter half of the 19th Century; that is, it has just reached the point at which it can do more good than harm, on the average. Of course, it would be no more sensible to conclude from this that we should not develop and use systems analysis now than it would have been to conclude that we should not use medicine then.
There is now a growing literature on methods of weapon systems analysis. Therefore, I do not believe that a useful purpose would be served by my reviewing techniques or detailed methods. Rather, I would like to try to outline for you some of the broader aspects of this emerging discipline.
The problem of choosing strategies and weapon systems is a unique problem requiring a method of its own. It is obviously not Physics or Engineering or Mathematics or Psychology or Diplomacy or Economics, nor is it entirely a problem in military operations though it involves elements of all of the above. Because it involves a synthesis of the above-mentioned disciplines and others, it requires the cooperation of experts in all of these professions and many others. It is a not infrequent error, made by civilians and military alike, to identify defense planning uniquely with one of the above professions or disciplines.
Beyond its uniqueness and eclecticism, I would like to say that the art of weapon systems analysis, like the art of medicine should be based on scientific method, using that term in its broadest sense. But one hesitates to say “scientific” for several reasons. First, there are many follies that have been advertised as scientific. I can appreciate that it would be tiresome to say the least for an experienced military man to be told that we need a “scientific” approach to war or to amphibious forces. Warfare is, after all, more an art than a science, combining such critical but intangible factors as training, morale, and leadership. Second, one risks suggesting that scientists are therefore the leading experts. One sees nuclear physicists advertised as experts on thermonuclear war despite the fact that they have never done any empirical study of war and know nothing about it, and this must also be tiresome to a military man. But the point is not the authority of science or of scientists. Rather, it is the method of science.
What are the relevant characteristics of scientific method as applied to the problem of choosing strategies and selecting weapon systems? There are several. First, the method of science is an open, explicit, verifiable self- correcting process. It combines logic and empirical evidence. The method and tradition of science require that scientific results be openly arrived at in such a way that any other scientist can retrace the same steps and get the same result. Applying this to weapon systems and to strategy would require that all calculations, assumptions, empirical data, and judgments be described in the analysis in such a way that they can be subjected to checking, testing, criticism, debate, discussion, and possible refutation. Of course, neither science nor systems analysis is infallible. Chemists used to believe in the phlogiston theory of combustion. Some biologists still claim to believe in the inheritance of acquired traits. And I have seen many systems analyses containing equally questionable conclusions. But infallibility is not being claimed; it would be worse than unscientific to do so. However, scientific method does have a self-correcting character that helps to guard science from persistence in error in the long run.
Second, scientific method is objective. Although personalities doubtless play an important part in the life of the Physics profession, the science itself does not depend upon personalities or vested interests. The truth of a scientific proposition is established by logical and empirical methods common to the profession as a whole. The young and inexperienced scientist can challenge the results of an older and more experienced one, or an obscure scientist can challenge the findings of a Nobel Prize winner, and the profession will evaluate the results on the basis of methods quite independent of the authority of the contenders, and will establish what is the correct conclusion. In other words, the result is established on the objective quality of the Physics and not on the reputations of the persons involved. Of course, doubtless, on such occasions, some will scoff at the challenger, and the odds favor the Nobel Prize winners. But the Physics profession is not likely to go about harboring incorrect hypotheses for very long because of the authority of the originators.
Of course, let me emphasize that I say this with respect to the problem of selection of weapon systems and strategies and not with respect to military operational command which is a very different matter. In the latter case we have no sensible alternative to reliance on experience and and reputation.
Third, in scientific method in the broadest sense, each hypothesis is tested and verified by methods appropriate to the hypothesis in question. Some are tested and verified logically, some experimentally, some historically, et cetera. Some sciences, of course, can reproduce experiments cheaply and they tend to emphasize experiment. This is notably the case with the Physical Sciences. In others, particularly some branches of Medicine and the Social Sciences, one cannot experiment readily, if at all, and the detailed analysis of available historical data is most appropriate. In this respect, they resemble Military Science very closely. In choosing weapon systems some experimentation is possible, but a great deal of analysis is also required. In fact, in the development of weapon systems analysis, one is more handicapped than in most of the sciences, for fully realistic tests come only at infrequent intervals in war, while the development of new weapon systems also takes place in peacetime. But this argues for better analysis and more heavy reliance on analysis where fully relevant experience is not generally available.
Fourth, quantitative aspects are treated quantitatively. This is not to say that all matters can be reduced to numbers, or even that most can be, or that the most important aspects can be. It is merely to say that the appropriate method for dealing with some aspects of problems of choice of weapon systems and strategies requires numbers. Non- quantitative judgment is simply not enough.
What is at issue here really is not numbers or computers versus words or judgment. The real issue is one of clarity of understanding and expression. Take, for example, the statement “Nuclear power for surface ships offers a major increase in effectiveness.” Precisely what does that mean? Does it mean ten per cent better or 100 per cent better? When that sort of question is asked a frequent answer is, “It can’t be expressed in numbers.” But it has to be expressed with the help of numbers. Budgets are expressed in dollars, and nuclear power costs more than conventional power. If nuclear power costs, say 33 per cent more for some ship type, all factors considered, then, no matter what the budget level, the Navy and the Secretary of Defense have to face the choice of whether to put the nation’s resources into four conventional or three nuclear ships, or for a larger budget, eight conventional or six nuclear ships, and therefore whether by “major increase” is meant more than 33 per cent, about 33 per cent, or less than 33 per cent. Because the Secretary of Defense has to make the decision in these terms, the statement “major increase” is not particularly helpful. It must be replaced by a quantitative analysis of the performance of various missions, leading to a conclusion such as, “Nuclear power for surface ships offers something between X and Y per cent more effectiveness per ship. Therefore, one billion dollars spent on nuclear-powered ships will provide a force somewhere between A and B per cent more or less effective than the same dollars spent on conventionally powered ships.”
Numbers are a part of our language. Where a quantitative matter is being discussed, the greatest clarity of thought is achieved by using numbers instead of by avoiding them, even when uncertainties are present. This is not to rule out judgment and insight. Rather, it is to say, that judgments and insights need, like everything else, to be expressed with clarity if they are to be useful.
Let me emphasize the point about uncertainties. Many people seem to feel that quantitative analysis is not possible if there are any uncertainties. Of course, strictly speaking, if this were true, I suppose we would have no such thing as Physics. But this view is incorrect. In fact there is substantial literature on the logic of decision-making under uncertainty going back at least as far as Pascal, Bernoulli, and Bayes in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Moreover, there are simple practical techniques for dealing with uncertainty which make it possible to do analyses that point up the uncertainties for the decision-maker and indicate their significance. In fact, rather than conceal uncertainties, a good analysis will bring them out and clarify them. If it is a question of uncertainties about quantitative matters such as operational factors, it is generally useful to examine the available evidence and determine the bounds of the uncertainty. In many of our analyses for the Secretary of Defense, we carry three estimates through the calculations: an “optimistic,” a “pessimistic,” and a “best” or single most likely estimate. If there are uncertainties about context, at least one can run the calculations on the basis of several alternative assumptions so that the decision-maker can see how the outcome varies with the assumptions. This approach is being used to good advantage in studies on nuclear war being done in the Joint Staff by the Chairman’s Special Studies Group.
Next, choosing strategies and weapon systems is fundamentally an economic problem, using the term in its precise sense. That is, it is a problem in choosing how best to use our limited dollars and limited resources valued in dollars, such as man hours, materials, plant and equipment, etc. To do this properly, one must think through the purposes of the weapon systems, formulate good criteria of effectiveness, and then consider alternative systems or mixes of systems in terms of their effectiveness and their cost.
Much of the innovation of which I am speaking has been the introduction of techniques of rational economic analysis and planning. One of the purposes of this is to avoid serious imbalances in the Defense program, such as bombers without enough bases and crews, fighter-bombers without ordnance, and Army divisions without adequate equipment or airlift, all of which have occurred in the past several years. Anyone can recognize the grave and obvious imbalances. But a great deal of effectiveness also can be lost through less obvious imbalances, and it takes detailed quantitative analysis to discover and correct them. Another purpose for which economic analysis is being introduced is to discover and avoid further expansion in those program areas which are, if I may oversimplify, out on the “flat part” of the “cost effectiveness curve” where the gain in effectiveness is small in relation to the increase in cost. I am sure that you are all familiar with the cube root law relating horsepower and the speed of ships. It is a classic case of diminishing marginal returns. After a point it takes a very great increase in horsepower to produce a small increase in speed. Of course, this is not to suggest that some increases in speed are not highly desirable nonetheless. But there comes a point at which it no longer pays to go on increasing horsepower, and it makes sense to look for alternative ways of outflanking the problem and accomplishing the mission. We have found that this same general point applies throughout the defense program, both in the design of weapon systems and in the choice of strategies. That is, there comes a point at which small increases in effectiveness can be bought only at the price of great increases in cost. In such circumstances, it may lead to a great waste of resources to insist on maximum performance at any price. After all, our objective is not to break world speed records or to maximize the range of our surface-to-air missiles. Rather our real objective is to use our resources as best we can to keep ourselves and as much as possible of the rest of the world alive and free. And this may not coincide with buying the fastest airplane. Of course, the other side of this coin is the expansion of programs for which the extra effectiveness associated with increases is large in relation to the extra cost.
A corollary of this point is that the allocation of the budget between different missions, and the choice and design of weapon systems should ordinarily change as conditions change. Curiously enough, this point is widely understood if one is talking about putting jamming gear on board a bomber in response to improvements in enemy defenses. But it is frequently missed if the required change is to build up nonnuclear forces in response to the build-up of protected enemy nuclear retaliatory power. In the business of choosing weapon systems, as opposed to conducting military operations, one should not be “offense minded” or “defense minded,” “air minded,” or “for or against bombers,” or any other such approach. Whether a good offense is the best defense will depend on the character of the forces, on costs, as well as the important psychological factors. Just as the commander in the field or the admiral at sea must decide when to attack and when to assume a defensive posture, so a man can be for a particular doctrine or weapon system in one set of circumstances, and against it in another without being guilty of self-contradiction or indecisiveness or being wrong. It is the man who does not change his mind as conditions change who bears special watching.
I will admit that all this sounds like a pretty antiseptic prescription, perhaps unreal, certainly far from the controversial world we know in which some individuals are fighting for their favorite weapon system because it symbolizes a way of life and in which others are indulging whatever prejudices they may have. But these factors we have always with us, and they are not in danger of being excluded. What is in danger of being excluded is the effective pursuit of our national security objectives. In the balance between reliance on authority and experience, the tug of vested interests, and the scientific method, I believe that we need more scientific method, that is, more objectivity, more logic, more open explicit analysis.
Do judgment and experience have no place in this approach to the choice of weapon systems and strategy and design of the defense program? Quite the contrary. The suggestion that the issue is judgment versus computers is a red herring. Ultimately all policies are made and all weapon systems are chosen on the basis of judgments. There is no other way and there never will be. The question is whether those judgments have to be made in the fog of inadequate and inaccurate data, unclear and undefined issues, and a welter of conflicting personal opinions, or whether they can be made on the basis of adequate, reliable information, relevant experience, and clearly drawn issues. The point is to render unto computers the things that are computers’ and to judgment the things that are judgment’s. In the end, there is no question that analysis is but an aid to judgment and that, as in the case of God and Caesar, judgment is supreme.
Perhaps some of these ideas may be made more clear and definite by the use of an example. Two years ago, some people in my office became interested in the problem of choice of air-to- ground non-nuclear ordnance for fighter-bomber aircraft. They observed that there had been great advances in the performance of the aircraft, as well as great increases in their cost, but they found that one of the services was procuring essentially the same ordnance as had been procured ten years earlier. They did a few calculations suggesting that it would pay to go to more accurate weapons having greater lethality, even though it cost more, and they went to the Service to ask about it. The first reaction they seemed to get was, “We fought World War II with iron bombs and we know best Leave us alone.” My men persisted. Among other things, it turned out that these particular Service people were calculating only a portion of the relevant cost. They were calculating or- dance cost per target killed instead of complete system cost. The point here is that the cost tc kill a target or to suppress movement in an area by weapons delivered from aircraft is dominated by the cost of buying and operating the aircraft, training and maintaining the pilot, and the cost of the actual ordnance delivered tends to be small in comparison. Complete system cost is the appropriate measure of cost in such cases. It measures what it really costs to do the job. The fact that this was the case encouraged us to press our views all the harder. As we did so, the resistance increased, apparently based on a belief that we lacked operational experience and therefore that the question of choice of ordnance was none of our business.
But there are important aspects of this and similar problems requiring backgrounds other than military operational experience. Much of our job in the Office of the Secretary of Defense is to help the Secretary to reach balanced decisions by helping him to bring to bear a broad range of other equally relevant considerations including economic, scientific, technical, and diplomatic aspects. Most of the civilians in the Office of the Secretary of Defense have considerable professional training and experience in one or more of these areas. But these other factors interact with the military aspects in a very intimate way, so that in general they cannot be separated out. For example, the whole point of so-called “cost- effectiveness” analysis is that it does not make sense to consider cost and effectiveness separately. They are opposite sides of the same coin. The conclusion I draw from this is that we must all work together and be willing to make the effort to communicate with and learn from each other. Of course, a part of our job is to see to it that Defense Department programs are chosen and carried out as economically as possible. To do this, there is no alternative to questioning the programs of the Services.
In this particular case, later on it did appear that one of the assumptions used in our calculations was open to question. Though our analysis was corroborated by other military reviewers, it was the case that had used accuracy factors based on test range data, and it was pointed out to us that in combat the effect of enemy opposition would be to degrade the accuracy substantially, although the amount of the degradation is still uncertain and still being debated. We may have placed inadequate weight on what the Services called the “scare factor.” So we have revised the assumption and we and the Service are now reworking the calculations.
It is now clear to me that one of the main reasons for the opposition we encountered was the belief that we were neglecting this “scare factor” and that our method inherently overlooked similar important aspects of operational reality. I can only say that I wish that we had been able to have a frank and objective discussion of the problem early in the game so that the time spent in sparing would not have been wasted.
Interestingly enough, the difficulty was first pointed out to me by a man who thought that he was thereby disproving the validity of the whole method. I am happy to report that I was able to bring him around to our point of view by pointing out that the very fact that he could tell me precisely what was wrong with our analysis and how to fix it was strong confirmation of the validity of the method. For this illustrated some important characteristics of the analytical approach we were trying to use, that is, it was self-correcting and verifiable. The trouble with reliance on past experience alone, unaided by analysis, is that it is not self-correcting and verifiable. It might be wrong, and if it is we have no way of knowing it or correcting it.
Incidentally, to say that our calculations proved wrong is not to say that the original Service proposal that we were criticizing proved to be correct. Rather what has happened, I am happy to report, is that subsequently the parties involved did manage to get together and learn to work together and appreciate each other’s value, and they are now developing yet another solution which promises to be better in both cost and effectiveness than the ones previously considered.
What kind of problem is the choice of air-to-ground weapons? How should it be analyzed? It has many elements and it is essential that the experts on the various elements recognize that and be willing to cooperate with others in putting together a good analysis. The problem simply cannot be viewed as the sole preserve of the military man, the technician, the production specialist or the economist, although there is no reason why some of these skills cannot be combined in a single person.
A good analysis requires answering many sorts of questions, such as, What are the targets? Why hit them? How important is more or less destruction? What are the criteria of effectiveness? These questions are primarily problems for a military planner, although he can doubtless profit in their formulation from coopperation with operations researchers and/or economists. I think that this has been widely recognized by the Services and is shown by the fact that for years they have used operations research analysts. Then we must ask what alternative types of ordnance are available, or can be developed. This is a technical question best answered by a person experienced in engineering, using methods appropriate to engineering questions. He is likely to be able to benefit a great deal, however, from collaboration with an experienced military man who can suggest to him which characteristics would be particularly useful. How much will these alternative kinds of weapons cost to develop and to produce? That is a question for someone experienced in cost estimation and production, and for someone experienced in the management of research and development. Then, how effective, how accurate, how reliable and how lethal will these weapons be? This is very complicated. Some relevant data can be obtained on the test range. But the judgment of an experienced military planner is required to establish how the tests can be made to approximate operational conditions and also to estimate how the operational factors derived from test data need to be adjusted for operational conditions.
Then, how are the weapons to be used? Again, a question for a military man, who is likely to be able to do a better job on this if he is assisted by an operations research analyst. Finally, for any given amount of resources spent on the complete system, including the aircraft, pilot training and everything else, putting all this together into a balanced program is an economic question, solved best by people experienced in the application of economic analysis.
Now, in the real world of deadlines, personnel ceilings, and the thousands of questions that have to be decided by the various staffs in the Pentagon, it won’t be possible to break each question down into its smallest component parts and to get an appropriate expert to analyze each one. Moreover, even a problem as simple as this one has gray areas of overlap between specialties. But even so, it is important to bear in mind the fact that there are many different kinds of questions involved in such a problem, each having its own appropriate method of solution. It is also important to maintain a sense of humor and of charity toward others, the practical difficulties of real communication between members of different professions being what they are.
My intention in emphasizing the many different kinds of factors entering into such a problem, and the many different kinds of disciplines and skills that need to be applied, is not to suggest that military men should confine themselves to the purely military aspects of the problems. That would be neither realistic nor desirable. Moreover, many officers are exceptionally well qualified in areas other than purely military matters such as the Physical Sciences, Economics, and the critical matter of judgment of human psychology.
But I do want to suggest two things. First, there is a definite place for representation from other backgrounds and disciplines, in the planning of forces and strategies; and second, it is wrong to cover the whole area of defense planning with the mantle of “military judgment” or “operational experience.” Military judgment, if by that is meant specifically the experience and knowledge gained by military men in combat or conducting military operations, is something very precious indeed. Unlike most of the things we know and have which are earned at the price of hard work, the military profession has had to pay in blood for its combat experience. This valuable currency is cheapened by attempting to apply it to things to which it does not apply. Military judgment should not be the basis for a view with respect to technical feasibility. Nor is it fair to suggest, when the Secretary of Defense makes a decision contrary to that of his military advisors on the procurement of a weapon system, that military advice and experience are being ignored or that military judgment is being downgraded. Rather, the problem is that the Secretary of Defense has to balance many other factors in his decisions. I am sure we all agree to that in theory. The problem is that it is sometimes forgotten when practical examples come up.
A few years ago there was a very hot political issue on the ballot in the State of California. Someone proposed to remove the tax exemption from parochial schools. As the campaign progressed, it became apparent that the issue might not be resolved on its merits, but could easily divide the State into Catholics and non- Catholics because the Catholic Church operated most of the parochial schools in the State. However, at this point, the Seventh-Day Adventists, who also operate parochial schools, made a major contribution to clearing the air by coming out with the slogan, “It’s what’s right, not who’s right.”
Sometimes Defense gets to be a pretty emotional business. Many people involved have strong feelings about it, and that is not at all surprising. Defense involves our lives, our survival, the livelihood of many people, the livelihood of districts, and above all our precious freedom. Our Military Services have seen and made a lot of history and they are the bearers of many of our most glorious traditions. Although inevitably some people will resent the application of dispassionate, cold analysis to something as rich in meaning and tradition as warfare and strategy, there is no sensible alternative in the nuclear age. Our national survival depends on our ability to come up with good answers as consistently as possible. Therefore, we must make defense planning and the selection of weapon systems an intellectual rather than an emotional process. To do so, we must all turn our attention to the question of what’s right, not who's right. Thank you.