Air Universlty Ubrary OCT I ^ lf c b6 Maxwell afb, Ala. 36112 -| fcAIR UNIVERSITY R eview REVOLUTION IN AIRLIFT...THE INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE... CHINA—THE NUCLEAR THREAT...ANALYSIS (CONTINUED) MARCH-APRIL 1966 THE PROFESSIONAl JOURNAL OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE T he Revol ut ion in Air l if t ........................................................................................................................... 2 Gen. Howell M. Estes, Jr., usaf M a n a gemen t for Defen se...................................................................................................................................16 Maj. Gen. William S. Steele, usaf China—T he Nuclear Threat............................................................................................................................ 28 Lt. Col. Joseph E. Fix III, usa Analysis in W.AR P lanning...................................................................................................................................40 Lt. Col. Richard C. Bowman, usaf Cost-Effectiveness Analysis as an Aid to Wea pon Syst em Sel ec t ion ......................... 49 Lt. Col. Robert S. Berg, usaf I nformation Sciences: S ome Resea r c h Dir e c t io n s ............................................................................... 56 Mrs. Rovvena W. Swanson Military Opinion Abroad R efl ec t ion s on Vie t n a m ............................................................................................................................ 68 Gen. André Beaufre Translated by Dr. Joseph W. Annunziata O bjec t ive and Subjective Dlalectics...................................................................................................74 Lt. Col. M. Yasukov Translated by Norman Preeoda In My Opinion T he Use and Misu se of Cost Effectiveness.................................................................................81 Robert L. Petersen Books and Ideas Air Exploration of the Arctic.........................................................................................................85 Lt. Col. Donald A. Shaw, usaf Castroism......................................................................................................................................................... 91 Capt. David H. Zook, Jr., usaf T he Intellectual in National Sec ur ity Affa irs.................................................................... 95 Col. Marshall E. Baker, usaf T he Contributors............................................................................................................................................. 97 the cover Address manuscripts to the Editor, Air Uni- The C-141 Starlifter, a familiar sight at Tan versity Review, Aerospace Studies Institute, Son Nhut since August 1965, is latest of Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. Printed by the the increasingly sophisticated and productive Govemment Printing Office. Washington, transport aircraft added to the Military Air­ D.C. Subscriptions are sold by the Air Uni- versity Book Department, Maxwell Air Force lift Command inventory. General Howell M. Base’ ,41a-; year'y *4.50, back issues 75 Estes, Jr., discusses current MAC capa- cents. USAF recurri.vc pu bl ic a t io n 50-2. bilities and envisions much greater future achievements in “The Revolution in Airlift.” Vol. XVH No. 3 March-Apr m. 1966 REVOLUTION IN A IR L IF T Gen er a l Howell M. Est es, J r TH E capability to quickly deploy relatively large fully equipped k forces—which can be attained only with an aircraft possessing the performance eristics of the C-5—improves the U.S. military position in, and reduces the length of various possible wars in a variety of theaters and situations, decreases casualties, and reduces the total costs of fighting such a war. fí t —D r . H auold Brown, Secretary of the Air Force, before the Military Airlift Subcommittee, House Committee on Armed Services, October 1965 í ti l HE SECRETARY’S statement crystal- Admittedly, words like “revolution” and '»lizes forme the entire rationale behind “breakthrough,” employed so broadly and cas- the current revolution in airlift. Im- ually these days, strike the mind with a power- kát io this single comprehensive sentence is ful connotation of suddenness or discontinuity. è idKcapablefact: The deep, searching anal- They imply that, in human affairs and in tech- is vthat has penetrated into every facet of nology, abrupt changes spring up indepen- ^númerousstoutly defended Army, Navy, and dently of antecedent developments—much as Air JSorce^ vveapon system proposals and has an electron might make a quantum jump from jjouná manv of them lacking in one conceptual one discrete energy levei to another. KSf techniéál respect or another—that same un- The empirical fact of the matter is, of onal ánalytical process stamped global course, that every revolution, every break­ mbuf airlift as not only essential in the na- through, is essentially the cumulative end >hal int^est but also, in terms of time, lives, product of a lengthy chain of cause and effect. 9 a n d money, an espeeially cost-effeetive instru- The atomic breakthrough or nuclear revolu­ ^ OÍent o f national policy. tion, as one case in point, traces its lineage as 4 AIR UN1VERSITY REVIEW far back as the fourth century b .c . and Democ- threat of unacceptable consequences to any ritus—or, on a more scientific plane, at least to who would challenge it. In other words, the Dalton’s atomic theory of 1803. The long line aggressor is guaranteed to fail, and he can of workers between Dalton and Alamogordo clearly understand that the price of that failure would include, at the very minimum, Einstein, is ruin. Rutherford, Lawrence, Urey, Curie, Joliot- To the degree that the probability of gen­ Curie, Fermi, Bohr, and Wheeler—and this eral war is thus reduced to a minimum—to that listing leaves out far more contributors than it same degree the probability of some form of includes. limited conflict is increased. The price of failure The other great breakthrough of our era, in limited war, however, is not necessarily the breaching of space, likevvise owes an in- ruinous, and as a result this type of conflict is calculable debt to a long line of researchers, far more difficult to deter or prevent than gen­ going back at least as far as Kepler, Galileo, eral war. Limited war, like general war, will be and Nevvton. Newton himself acknowledged deterred only when there has been a decisive that, if he savv farther than other men, it was demonstration that it will not be profitable to only because he stood on the shoulders of the those who try it. The obvious difference is that giants who had preceded him. a nuclear explosion carries overwhelming con- Whether any of these individuais, or the viction with it; any counterargument is, at best, many others who helped increase the sum of feeble. But this is not true of the tools of limited human knowledge, considered his own achieve- conflict. The proof that limited war is also fruit- ments revolutionary is doubtful. And yet, taken less will require long and arduous demonstra­ in the aggregate, one outcome of centuries of tion, unflagging determination for years and basic and applied research was the mating of perhaps decades, supreme patience, and the the nuclear warhead with the space-capable utmost military flexibility of which we are ca- rocket to produce the intercontinental ballistic pable. missile. This was unquestionably a revolution; Of all the time-honored principies of war, individuais, nations, and governments have perhaps none has increased in significance in been forced to revolutionize their thinking, the present age more than that of flexibility. As their policies, and their grand strategies in technology has provided the communication order to accommodate to the existence, the and transport means to encompass the whole reality, and the profound implications of such earth in one arena, the military importance of a weapon. flexibility has become paramount. The most obvious and immediate effect Global military airlift has been shown, was the unarguable necessity to design against throughout the era of the cold war, to be a what the engineer calls the “worst case”—in principal médium of achieving maximum mili­ this context, general nuclear war. That overrid- tary flexibility. If this is revolutionary, it is only ing requirement dictated the highest national because it is easier for most people to argue priority—a crash program of such magnitude the limitations of any new way of doing things and complexity as to dwarf the wartime Man­ than to visualize the almost limitless potential. hattan Project—and virtually all the funds al- In my own view, the revolution in airlift was located to military programs. inherently contained in the invention of the The successful establishment of an over- heavier-than-air craft. Once given a mechanism whelmingly superior strategic nuclear deter- that could lift itself and some sort of load off rent, however, while it all but foreclosed the the earth and could be guided directionally “worst case,” as it was designed to do, was un- under its own power, the breakthrough had able by its very nature to provide for the host of been made. After that, it was inevitable that the other bad cases along the entire speetrum of ultimate versatility of the maehine would be conflict. A powerful and survivable strategic realized. nuclear capability, after all, deters aggression The Wright brothers, then, provided the in its own realm by the strong and explicit basis for the revolution in airlift. Bevond