Changing the Skies

So. A year of waiting, several weeks of research and writing, and it's finally here: the November 2011 issue of Armchair General. On page 36, and running for 8 pages (including some awesome pictures and captions), is my first print article titled Changing the Skies: Curtis LeMay and the Cold War Transition of U.S. Strategic Airpower from Planes to Missiles. It's a bit of a long-realized dream, and on Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago, I opened the mail to find a thick package with several copies: my advance copies of the entire magazine, in glossy print, with my name right below the article title.

In March of 2010, Norwich University held the annual Colby Symposium, a two day event dedicated to military history and writing, typically on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least since I've been there. I've missed a single year since 2002, and ever year, I come away from the talks with a better understanding of how War works. Almost two years ago, while at the Meet the Authors Dinner, I met Col. (RET) Jerry Morelock, the editor in chief of Armchair General, which sponsors a student scholarship, and we began to talk. He gave me his card, and within a couple of days, I'd e-mailed him back with a couple of article ideas. The one that stuck was a transition from the Second World War to the Cold War, particularly when it came to how the United States transitioned from aircraft to missiles.

The article came out of a couple of projects that I'd been working on prior to that. In 2009, I'd finished my Master's in Military History through Norwich, and I'd presented at two conferences, one of which, I presented my capstone paper on Spaceflight and the Military influences, particularly the strategic arms race that raged between the US and USSR. After finishing that work, I came across some additional sources that shed more light on the broader subject, and I wanted to explore more about it.

After gaining approval for the article and signing the contracts, I began research, looking to tie together a better story than the scattered ideas that I had, eventually discovering that much of the history went through General Curtis LeMay, who had implimented many of the lessons that the US put to the skies post-WWII.

The article was turned in, then it came back for a couple of rounds of revisions, and by May, it was complete, a nice feeling. I moved on to a couple of other projects, and soon, the magazines appeared at home. (Another issue, July 2011's, also features a classmate, David Armstrong, with another piece that I've got on the to-read pile.) It's something to know that they'll be coming out, with all the work completed, but it's quite another to see the finished product, from the cutaways, the pictures (and the absolutely gorgeous front page spread), and my name under it all. The people at the magazine seemed to really like it, and the various family members and co-workers who've taken my advance copies have also been quite positive with their reactions, something I barely dared to hope for.

It's been a very, very cool opportunity, one that I'm following up with another project through Armchair General, this time on the late General Ernest Harmon, who commanded the 2nd Armored Division during the Second World War. The research is exciting, and I'm looking forward to getting this one written and turned in.

Changing the Skies appears in the November 2011 issue of the magazine, but subscribers should be receiving it now (I've gotten an additional copy through work in the mail). You can subscribe to the magazine here and get more information about the magazine at their website.

On Nuclear Politics

This evening, President Obama announced a series of limits on the use of nuclear weapons against other countries, even in the event of a non-nuclear attack. The new rules are designed to curb the risk involved with nuclear warfare by removing some elements of gray area from the policies from the Cold War. With the first use of the bombs against the Japanese at the end of the Second World War, the nuclear bomb has remained a central focus of American power abroad, representing a nexus in military/political power and scientific technology as a means of projecting the country’s might against its enemies abroad.

The atomic element of warfare became a missing link in airpower theory, providing a massive level of shock and awe that overcame even the massive fire bombings of Europe and Japan, and scientific advances allowed for the pairing of nuclear bombs and missile technology, allowing for an unstoppable weapon, fundamentally changing how warfare was conducted. (Lawrence Freedman, Makers of Modern Strategy, 736)

This change from conventional to nuclear warfare came with ever growing changes on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union. With the USSR’s detonation of their own bomb in 1949 and their rapid advances in missile technology, the US response was to do the same, and with competing doctrines of mutually assured destruction, the threat of conflict between the two countries diminished, as two rational states found that the consequences would have been unacceptable. According to Freedman, “the study of nuclear strategy is therefore the study of their nonuse of these weapons.” (735) in a large way, the nuclear option is a chain around the nuclear countries, limiting their options and forcing alternatives, such as actions through other nations, the careful placement of strategic missile launch sites and a healthy dose of fear of their use.

With the current plan that has just been imposed, further chains have been placed on the nation’s ability to respond to threats to it’s borders. In the larger scheme of things, this is a positive move for much of the world, because it removes the possibility of destruction from US bombs.

But at the same time, nuclear weapons are essentially weapons that aren’t intended for use: their primary use is one of deterrence against a major enemy that maintained similar stockpiles and opposing political intentions.

However, the United States had still used the weapons once before, and the continual threat of hostilities allowed for the use of such weapons in extreme instances, and because of this gray area, any rational state would recognize the real threat behind a country armed with a nuclear stockpile. Removing this ambiguity, then, helps to realize the flaws in the country’s nuclear policy by removing the threats associated with it.

Still, this move shows change with the modern times, where warfare has changed from a series of rational states working against one another to far more unpredictable players on the field, ranging from terrorist organizations to irrational states. In this world, one much question the use of a deterrence-based policy to far more realistic expectations of the policy in the first place.

Radar Rd. and the Cold War

Over the last couple of months, I've been thinking and writing a lot about the defensive posture of the United States during the Cold War. From the Second World War onwards, there was an enormous buildup of organization and manpower to become one of the dominant powers on the planet. During the 1950s, there was a transition in power from a more conventional air power, a bomber force, to a deterrent based one with ICBMs. The military-industrial complex grew to meet demand. Every level of society was touched in some degree, whether it was through looking at the television screen at astronauts in space, to the very highways that we depend upon.

At my alma mater, I took a course in institutional history, where I learned much about the school's founder, Alden Partridge. A huge supporter of experiential learning, I found that this sort of learning is an important one. My geology courses emphasized field work, and I absolutely loved going into the field to see what I was studying in action.

While I've done quite a bit of reading thus far about the Cold War, I've also found a couple of ways to find tangible evidence on the Cold War in my surroundings. Last spring, a friend of mine and I drove up to East Haven, in the Northeast Kingdom, where there is an abandoned Radar Facility, named the Lyndonville Air Force Station.

Commissioned in 1952 by the US Air Force, it was up and running in 1955, during the height of the Cold War, and at the beginning of the rise of the rockets as a major defensive tactic for the United States. The ground based radar station is just one of many that were scattered around the United States at the time, and undoubtedly would have been used to seek out Russian planes or missiles coming across the Atlantic Ocean.

Our hike up the mountain found a deserted, well preserved road into the middle of the woods, with a base camp to support the base staff, and a separate facility a mile up the road that housed the radar installation. (Unfortunately, it was getting late and we weren't able to visit that part of the site).

What the station helped to demonstrate was some of the historical context to how the United States defended itself. The radar station in and of itself was most likely not as important, but it made up part of a system that helps to show the reach of the military at this time. Between the fall of Nazi Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union, the United States had utilized a massive military presence in the world - an unprecedented show of force in the world at that time, one that extended not only to military assets capable of striking far off nations, it implemented a large network of logistical and defensive support that was much, much larger.

The site was abandoned in 1963, and remains in East Haven to this day, a lonely, rundown reminder of the Cold War, and how it affected everything.

Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon

In the years following the Second World War, the world changed, with the balance of power fundamentally changing to polarize the world between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States was virtually untouched by the war, with its infrastructure and industrial base, already booming from supplying the military with hardware, and allowed the United States to establish its power as one of the dominant forces in the world. The Soviet Union, while devastated by the attacks from Germany, with tens of millions of people killed, maintained a large conventional military with the desire to expand its influence. The roots of this conflict had begun much earlier, and throughout the Second World War, this began to rise between the two nations.

It is within this context that we see the dramatic and important rise of Maj. General Bernard Schriever, who helped to implement one of the greatest instruments that the United States could field against the Russians: a deterrent to their nuclear arms, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), and an organization that could deploy and support this weapons system. Neil Sheehan outlines his story in his recent book A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon.While Schriever wasn't directly involved in the creation of missiles and the advances that brought them further into the sky, he was an early proponent of the technology, and correctly saw that this had the ability to change warfare by eliminating it. A missile deterrent system allowed for both the rapid delivery of nuclear warheads to any point in the globe, but also allowed for a smaller conventional force, a key element to cutting costs under the Eisenhower administration.

The key in this instance was to take the bombs that had been brought the Second World War to an end, and to expand and plan out their use. With the end of the war, the United States enjoyed an unprecedented control of the skies through the Air Force, a major step forward over the Soviets, who were mired with a massive conventional military. Under General Curtis LeMay, bombers were in the skies at all times, even over Russia, where they were untouchable, in a show of power. What Schriever, proposed, after learning of the technology, was a new style of warfare that was drastically different from what had been implemented before: the threat of warfare and mutually assured destruction.

Schriever's story is interwoven with numerous other Air Force officers and specialists who came together during the 1950s and 1960s to develop a viable delivery system and supporting organization, against all odds. Schreiver and his colleagues had to convince not only their superiors, but members of Congress and ultimately, the President of the United States. Sheehan captures a number of these scenes in vivid and exciting detail, keeping an eye towards history, but also towards keeping the reader riveted to the story that he was telling, from both the laboratories, launch fields and the White House. Numerous notable figures make their appearances throughout: General LeMay, President Eisenhower, Robert McNamara and President Kennedy, demonstrating the vast influence that Schreiver would gain over the course of his career.

For a biography, there is a lot left to be desired: Sheehan steers clear of Schriever's personal life, with few notes until the very end, focusing on his professional achievements. Instead, it's better to look at this book as a look at Schriever and his team, and how they changed the world. Johnny von Neumann, the brilliant physicist who helped create the first atomic bomb, and nuclear strategy, Lt. Col. Edward Hall, the difficult rocket engineer who helped to build some of the most critical systems and solve some of the daunting problems, and numerous others who contributed to the success of the program.

Rather than a biography of Schriever, this is a biography of the ICBM, from the Thor and Atlas IRBMs, eventually to the Titan and the Minuteman Missile. With the story of the development of these weapons, there is the story of the incredible struggle to put them into place, but also how the project grew in momentum to overtake Air Power as the dominant defensive doctrine. Sheehan weaves this story seamlessly over the course of ten years. The book is very well written, capturing numerous small details that ultimately flesh out all of the central figures and how they went about their work, but there are some small problems - Sheehan doesn't footnote (although there is an extensive bibliography) anywhere, and at times, the small details are dropped in favor of the overall story and big picture.

Where many military history books are about something that went wrong, this book tells the story of where almost everything went right. The style of warfare that Schriever and his team introduced predicated on the threat of war, rather than outright hostilities. The mere fact that this book was written is a testament to its success, as the United States and the Soviet Union, both rational international players, never would have gone to nuclear war with one another, despite several close calls. Indeed, Schiever was the right person for the job, and took the right risks and directions in which to take the program, while putting together a team of experts, rather than political and commercial appointees.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War does more than just tell the story of the ICBM; it provides a detailed insight into the workings of the Cold War, one of the most significant times in United States history. As Sheehan points out at the end of his book, the missiles did more than just expand and hold U.S. power in the world; they prevented war, and brought about incredible advances, such as spaceflight. What Sheehan has put together is an incredible story that captures the people central to it and some of the major events that shaped the middle of the 20th century.