Strategic Bombing and the Thermonuclear Breakthrough: An Example of Disconnected Defense Planning

摘要

One among many examples of a disconnection of the planning process that has led to trouble for U.S. defense planners has been the case of strategic bombing. Because of the collapse of planning, and for technical reasons, U.S. strategic bombing in World War II did not achieve the objectives that air power enthusiasts had prophesied before the war. After 1945, some felt that the atomic bomb would solve some of the problems experienced in World War II. However, evidence suggests that atomic attack on the USSR probably would have been insufficient to knock the Soviet Union out of a major war. Unfortunately, nuclear air power came to be the core of the West's defense posture. Because of the disconnection of the goals of bombing with traditional national military aims, the overall defense posture suffered. In turn, development of very high yield Hydrogen bombs seemed to neutralize the technical shortcomings of fission weapons. Insofar as the thermonuclear breakthrough rationalized after the fact a segregated and isolated air power concept, the disconnections among forces, missions, and national goals became complete. Though reversed to some degree over time, the effects of severed planning brought about by adoption of a massive air power arsenal--endorsed by this technical development--continue to plague U.S. defense planning and foreign policy nearly three decades later.