Let me being by offering three propositions. First, that successful new military weapons routinely derive from proven technology and virtually never emerge from efforts to contrive, shape, or push immature technology in the name of perceived requirements, however well conceived they may be.
Second, that the evolution of USAF military doctrine since World War II has been very largely driven by expectations about the rate and direction of future weapons development.
Third, that many—if not most—of the postwar difficulties of Air Force research and development, and many problems of defining and applying appropriate air doctrine, have developed because of the consequences of basing doctrine on unrealistic technical expectations are widely misunderstood or ignored.
That was the excellent Robert Perry in his 1979 paper, “The Interaction of Technology and Doctrine in the USAF.” Here are a couple other good parts:
Dr. Horst Boog (in a companion paper [at Eighth Military History Symposium, Oct 1978]) has observed that the inability of Luftwaffe leaders to appreciate that technology does not obey military commands, however smartly voiced, was a substantial contributor to the 1943-1945 decline of that air force…
Indeed, until June 1944 all Allied intelligence authorities (if not all analysts) were agreed that no German rocket would ever be fired at England…
The Manhattan Project was proof that if sufficient manpower and brainpower and money were wisely invested in a well managed undertaking, however difficult, it could be successfully concluded.
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