The Future of Aerospace (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Defense Aerospace and the New World Order
Defense Aerospace and the New World Order
Pages 7-14
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From page 7... ...
Just two months after Boris Yeltsin stood on the tank, President Bush announced a unilateral reduction in the nuclear arms of the United States, a move that essentially eliminates all the ground-based and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons in the U.S. forces.
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From page 8... ...
About three years ago, in an article in Foreign Affairs, T pointed out that the Soviet Union had a new leader who seemed to be serious about introducing new thinking to foreign policy. ~ suggested that this new thinking would lead to an end of the Cold War, but that it would very likely lead to an increase in regional wars; that as a result, there would be a decline in our defense budget and a restructuring of our defense forces so that they could be more effective in regional wars, and that would lead specifically to an emphasis on three technologies: stealth technology, C3{ (command, control, communications, and intelligence)
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From page 9... ...
One of the particular issues for the Defense Department is the effectiveness in regional conflicts of a military capability that was developed for an entirely different scenario, namely, war with the Soviet Union in central Europe. PLANNING AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE In the late 1970s when T was in the Pentagon, and before that time, we saw the threat from the Soviet Union as a shortwarning attack of armored forces in Europe, and we estimated that we would be outnumbered two or three to one in such an attack.
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From page 10... ...
Historically, we could expect attrition losses of ~ to 2 percent, going against that sort of an air defense. With the 3,000 sorties a day we were conducting, if we had suffered ~ to 2 percent attrition rates, we would have been losing 30 to 60 airplanes every day, and over a 30-day campaign we would have lost i,000 to 2,000 airplanes.
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From page 11... ...
NEW CHALLENGES AFTER THE COLD WAR Thus, the decisive factor in this war was an application of U.S. technological capability, especially the truly extraordinary application of air power deployed in what T would call a system of systems.
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From page 12... ...
Defense R&D played an important role in that leadership position, but in all cases that R&D was supported and defended on the basis of the Cold War. In the absence of the Cold War and the presence of very real economic problems in this country it will be very difficult nol~ti_, ~ r~~~-~ ..
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From page 13... ...
In addition, it will be important to maintain a small but modern production base for systems that are "defense unique." It is easy to make up a short list of such systems: fighter aircraft, submarines, air-to-air missiles, antitank missiles, for example. Many of the components in those systems can be made in the commercial field, but the systems themselves have no commercial counterpart; therefore we cannot count on market forces to maintain them.
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From page 14... ...
The third generalization is that defense companies, as they go into commercial diversified markets, would do well to enter into partnerships or joint ventures with companies that already have the required marketing skills, instead of trying to do it independently. Graham Greene once saict, "There always comes a moment in time when a door opens and lets the future in." A door has opened and the future is coming in, whether or not the aerospace industry is ready for it.
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