Chasing The Silver Bullet

This exhaustive study of 40 years of Air Force high-tech weaponry challenges myths about U.S. military prowess. With a panoramic sweep and shocking frankness unrivaled in the current literature, Ken Werrell reveals the true extent of the Air Force's technological transformation. Chasing the Silver Bullet traces in unprecedented detail the evolution of the Air Force's entire inventory since the Korean War and offers sage analysis of the strategies and doctrine that fashioned the hardware.

No nation in recent history has placed greater emphasis on the role of technology in planning and waging war than the United States. In World War II the wholesale mobilization of American science and technology culminated in the detonation of the atomic bomb. Competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, combined with the U.S. Navy's culture of distributed command and the rapid growth of information technology, spawned the concept of network-centric warfare. And America's post-Cold War conflicts in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan have highlighted America's edge. From the atom bomb to the spy satellites of the Cold War, the strategic limitations of the Vietnam War, and the technological triumphs of the Gulf war, Thomas G. Mahnken follows the development and integration of new technologies into the military and emphasizes their influence on the organization, mission, and culture of the armed services. In some cases, advancements in technology have forced different branches of the military to develop competing or superior weaponry, but more often than not the armed services have molded technology to suit their own purposes, remaining resilient in the face of technological challenges. Mahnken concludes with an examination of the reemergence of the traditional American way of war, which uses massive force to engage the enemy. Tying together six decades of debate concerning U.S. military affairs, he discusses how the armed forces might exploit the unique opportunities of the information revolution in the future.

How did American fighter pilots respond to the challenges posed by increasing automation? Spurred by their commanders during the Korean War to be “tigers,” aggressive and tenacious American fighter pilots charged headlong into packs of fireball-spewing enemy MiGs, relying on their keen eyesight, piloting finesse, and steady trigger fingers to achieve victory. But by the 1980s, American fighter pilots vanquished their foes by focusing on a four-inch-square cockpit display, manipulating electromagnetic waves, and launching rocket-propelled guided missiles from miles away. In this new era of automated, long-range air combat, can fighter pilots still be considered tigers? Aimed at scholars of technology and airpower aficionados alike, Steven A. Fino’s Tiger Check offers a detailed study of air-to-air combat focusing on three of the US Air Force’s most famed aircraft: the F-86E Sabre, the F-4C Phantom II, and the F-15A Eagle. Fino argues that increasing fire control automation altered what fighter pilots actually did during air-to-air combat. Drawing on an array of sources, as well as his own decade of experience as an F-15C fighter pilot, Fino unpacks not just the technological black box of fighter fire control equipment, but also fighter pilots’ attitudes toward their profession and their evolving aircraft. He describes how pilots grappled with the new technologies, acutely aware that the very systems that promised to simplify their jobs while increasing their lethality in the air also threatened to rob them of the quintessential—albeit mythic—fighter pilot experience. Finally, Fino explains that these new systems often required new, unique skills that took time for the pilots to identify and then develop. Eschewing the typical “great machine” or “great pilot” perspectives that dominate aviation historiography, Tiger Check provides a richer perspective on humans and machines working and evolving together in the air. The book illuminates the complex interactions between human and machine that accompany advancing automation in the workplace.

Case studies explore how to improve military adaptation and preparedness in peacetime by investigating foreign wars Preparing for the next war at an unknown date against an undetermined opponent is a difficult undertaking with extremely high stakes. Even the most detailed exercises and wargames do not truly simulate combat and the fog of war. Thus, outside of their own combat, militaries have studied foreign wars as a valuable source of battlefield information. The effectiveness of this learning process, however, has rarely been evaluated across different periods and contexts. Through a series of in-depth case studies of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, Brent L. Sterling creates a better understanding of the dynamics of learning from “other people’s wars,” determining what types of knowledge can be gained from foreign wars, identifying common pitfalls, and proposing solutions to maximize the benefits for doctrine, organization, training, and equipment. Other People’s Wars explores major US efforts involving direct observation missions and post-conflict investigations at key junctures for the US armed forces: the Crimean War (1854–56), Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and Yom Kippur War (1973), which preceded the US Civil War, First and Second World Wars, and major army and air force reforms of the 1970s, respectively. The case studies identify learning pitfalls but also show that initiatives to learn from other nations’ wars can yield significant benefits if the right conditions are met. Sterling puts forth a process that emphasizes comprehensive qualitative learning to foster better military preparedness and adaptability.

A monumental, groundbreaking work, now in paperback, that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, War Made New focuses on four "revolutions" in military affairs and describes how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air strikes have remade the field of battle—and shaped the rise and fall of empires. War Made New begins with the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare's evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation-state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare and the rise of centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq War—arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, "irregular" forces to become an increasingly significant threat.