There was, without question, deep and sincere opposition to the accelerated development of ballistic missiles. It was chiefly effective in the years between 1950 and 1955; thereafter it was overtaken by events. Apart from the grounds of dubious technology, where were most often cited, that objection was based on the assumed lack of a requirement and on the apparent absence of a threat—though “threat” was taken to be convincing evidence that the Soviets were investing in ballistic missiles, a constraint of questionable worth.
That was from Robert Perry’s paper, “The Ballistic Missile Decision.” October 1967. One of the problems of the requirements approach is that it brings in the biases of individuals from all parts of the organization. In the 1950s, it was the Bomber Mafia that held sway in Air Force programming. They identified themselves with a particular technology. Here’s Perry in a different paper:
If the ballistic missile had, by 1952, become technically and financially and culturally conceivable, why was the requirement for it not strongly validated? In retrospect the answer seems plain enough: cultural resistance, or the extreme reluctance of a bureaucracy to change itself.
Looking back on the episode, it’s hard to imagine there wasn’t a “requirement” for ballistic missiles. But then again, there was no requirement for a lightweight agile fighter in the 1970s (F-16 and F-18), no requirement for hypersonic missiles in the 1990s, and again more recently with artificial intelligence. It seems that what ultimately gets the DoD moving on a requirement is a “threat” — that another nation is pursuing the technology. We had our missile gap of the 1950s/60s, a fighter gap in the 1960s/70s, and now we have a supposed hypersonic missile/AI gap today.
The DoD STEM community usually proves successful when senior officials put their mind to something, even if it’s a bit delayed. But the DoD should be able to pursue technologies based on the non-consensual opinion of responsible persons actually doing the work. If projects can only start when there is a requirement linked to detailed technical plans based on explicit facts and given physical rules, then we would never try anything disruptive or new.
Here is Perry on the ill-founded nay-saying of one of America’s most revered scientists:
Those scientists on whom the American services had relied for their advanced technology during the war were not at all unanimous in their opinions, but their most vocal spokesmen—typified by Vannevar Bush—ridiculed the possibility of a long-range ballistic rocket:
“I say technically I don’t think anybody in the world knows how to do such a thing [make an accurate, nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile] and I feel confident it will not be done for a long period of time to come.”
I read cultural resistance as if the cause were, “some people don’t want to change and should be ignored or forced into changing.” I think more meaningful is the structural cause of that reluctance, of which there were and are many.
I think there’s a genuine disbelief of the efficacy of would-be reforms by those who have been through it a lot, or who don’t know how to see their experience being useful in that future.