Do we still have faith that any conceivable weapon can be built?

Like most of their countrymen and contemporaries, American military leaders of the later 1940s concluded that almost any conceivable weapon could be built if one were willing to make a sufficient investment of ingenuity, resources, and time. Many Americans felt that the failure of the Germans to honor that credo ultimately decided the outcome of the war.

 

That is how faith was born.

 

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. To has “how difficult?” was to display an unseemly lack of faith. “How much?” was heard more often, but “this will be worth any price, we can’t afford not to have it” was the usual response. And if the Manhattan Project seemed too grand an example to be emulated every few years, the Air Force had its own model: the development of the B-29 during the war.

That was Robert Perry in his 1979 paper, “The Interaction of Technology and Doctrine in the USAF.” This view that we can achieve whatever we dream — so long as it is grounded in physical laws — seemed to have prevailed in postwar America. Today, we often look back at the period, perhaps up until the moon landing, as one of extreme optimism as well as extreme progress. There is a fair amount of nostalgia for that time.

Perhaps the optimism was unfounded, but I think it allowed for a certain flexibility where smart people in the right places could make crucial choices quickly. Today, the innovators who have detailed on-the-ground knowledge are often stymied and forced to conform to a bureaucratic consensus. Good project choices, the ones that have a chance of pushing the limits of our knowledge, must be based in anticipations and pattern seeking. If it was easily articulated into a technical specification without ambiguity, then it must be well within the state of current technology.