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IS “NEXT-WAR-ITIS” A MENTAL DISEASE?

From the Revolutionary War through Korea, it has been America’s unfortunate tradition to be unprepared for war. In both World Wars and Korea, we went to war with the weapons, strategies, and tactics of the previous war. It’s not our experience alone. The French, for example, built the Maginot Line to repel the German Army of World War I, but only after that war was over. By 1940, the Luftwaffe and Wehr - macht of World War II had evolved past 1918.

After Korea, we belatedly took George Washington’s admonition to heart. In his first annual address to Congress in 1790, Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” And we did it with a history-making investment that produced a constant flow of new technologies. Because our economy was so strong, we could and did invest in the men and machines that would dominate any modern battlefield. Our military and intelligence community was led by people who jumped on opportunities to advance those technologies. I was privileged to know some of these men.

In the late 1980s, while working for Lock-heed Corporation, I was befriended by an irascible genius by the name of Ben Rich. (He liked to say that around Lockheed’s super-secret “Skunk Works,” he was known as “FBR” and that the “F” wasn’t for “friendly.”) A thermodynamicist by trade, Rich apprenticed with the great Kelly Johnson, and by the time I met him, he was the head of the Skunk Works.