Ideas and Weapons - Holley

If you have ever watched the History channel you already know that in the evolution of weaponry first came the club followed by the sword followed by the pike followed by the long bow followed by the musket.  Throughout history the superior weapon smiled victory on those who adopted it’s lethal effects the earliest.  So too is true for the history of aerial weapons or air power as we refer to the doctrine of their use in polite society.  Hot on the heels of World War II and the creation of the United States Air Force as a separate service in 1947, a young reserve officer and intellectual named Irving Britton Holley, set about to capture some thoughts about the development and use of aerial weapons in a series of essays that would later form his PhD dissertation at Yale University.  Published in 1953, “Ideas and Weapons”, has become an entry point into the study of Air Power doctrine in the United States.

“Ideas and Weapons” is primarily concerned about US development of aerial weapons to support the three classes of aircraft used in the skies over Europe during World War I.  These classes aircraft included pursuit, observation, and bomber.  With the air forces in Europe hinged directly to the ground forces Holley traces the mindsets of those responsible for manufacturing and fielding operational aircraft in the US and how, when the US entered the conflict in 1917, these mindsets crippled our ability to successfully support the war effort with the aircraft so dearly desired by our allies.  In addition, at the end of the war these failing would not be recognized or appreciated causing a 20 year delay in fully appreciating the strategic implications of well formulated air power doctrine.

The historical record is full of examples of weapons and their uses on the ground and at sea, but in the aftermath of our first great modern conflict, the use of air power stands alone as a unique domain that requires the development of new technology which requires us to tactically develop the right ways to employ this new technology and forces us to strategically rethink the ways in which wars are to be fought. As we struggle, or as Holley likes to say, “grope”, for technologies and new ways to fight wars in new domains (space and cyberspace come to mind), these lessons about converting ideas to weapons are as pertinent as ever.