Costs, requirements, and the development of the jet engine
Here’s an excerpt from Robert Perry’s 1967 paper, “Innovation and Military Requirements: A Comparative Study.” In it, he finds that one of the inventors of […]
robert perry
Experts misguiding innovation in the age of ballistic missiles
Actually, the vital ingredients of a medium-range ballistic missile were mostly within reach by 1947, excepting a nuclear warhead and proven means of warhead reentry, […]
Agile development isn’t new to defense, it was just cast out by the “whiz kids”
It seems clear that the reciprocity of innovation and requirement is unusually important during the period when demonstrations of feasibility are being attempted. The character […]
Lessons for Today: Opposition to ballistic missiles in the 1940s/50s
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 […]
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 […]
Pushing immature technology to meet requirements
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 […]
The need to demonstrate technical feasibility
Finally, it is clear that in the German case, as in the British, an early demonstration of the technical feasibility of the turbojet engine made […]