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High-tech war not an American tradition

By David J. Craig

Televised news reports during the Gulf War showing satellite tracking systems pinpointing Iraqi targets and an American precision-guided bomb flying down a chimney seemed to demonstrate that the United States was willing to spend whatever it took to ensure the sacrifice of few soldiers in defeating Iraq.

Eugenia C. Kiesling, an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, delivered the second annual Colonel John W. Pershing Military History Lecture at the SMG Auditorium. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

But only recently has the U.S. military exploited technology so that its troops have an upper hand in combat, according to Eugenia C. Kiesling, an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Kiesling delivered the second annual Colonel John W. Pershing Military History Lecture at SMG on Tuesday, March 27. The lecture series is named in memory of the 1964 CAS graduate, longtime benefactor of BU's ROTC program, and grandson of the famous John J. Pershing, who commanded the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I.

At least through World War II, Kiesling pointed out, the United States consistently eschewed cutting-edge war tools in favor of mass-producing simple weapons, sometimes far inferior to those of its enemies, and relying on "the morals, discipline, and courage" of its soldiers.

While the French rifles and cannons used by colonists during the American Revolution matched the hardware of British and Hessian troops, Kiesling said, for the next 100 years the United States lagged at least two decades behind European arms technology. "The first half of the 19th century was the greatest age of transformation in the world of military small arms in 150 years, but you wouldn't know it from the production of the U.S. Army's arsenals," she said.

Ignoring "huge innovations" made in other countries to increase the range, accuracy, and reliability of infantry rifles, the Army until the 1840s issued its troops muskets similar to those used during the Revolutionary War. "Thus the standard American weapon of the Mexican War was based on an 80-year-old design," she said.

And the way the Union defeated the Confederacy during the Civil War, Kiesling said, established a tradition for how America won wars -- by outmanufacturing its enemy. "Military leaders were not looking to end a war with a deus ex machina," she said, noting that the U.S. government failed to purchase any of R. J. Gatling's proven machine guns because of their $1,500 price tag. "Energy that might have gone into weapons technology went instead into superior production methods.

"As during the American Revolution, simple weapons suited the American psyche," she continued. In war, men were "called upon to demonstrate their manhood, courage, and love of country. To end the fight with [more powerful] weapons was to turn war into a conflict of machines rather than of young men, who were patriots and Christians, not cold-blooded, technologically enhanced killers."

America's reluctance to shell out big money for top-of-the-line weapons continued well into the 20th century. Although during World War I European armies used machine guns invented in the United States some 30 years before, the U.S. Army issued its troops a cheaper French weapon, a machine gun "universally derided as one of the worst weapons ever," Kiesling said. "Allegedly, we bought 38,000 of them -- twice as many as the number of troops needing them -- because soldiers kept throwing them away."

And even during World War II, when our nation was harnessing science to create the atom bomb, instead of building the best tanks, it was churning out vast numbers of fire-prone Sherman tanks, which were no match for the German Tiger-2. "It didn't matter that it took seven Shermans to beat a Tiger," she said. The United States built 44,000 Shermans, "and the Germans only had 8,000 first-class tanks. Our men fought with inferior weapons, and they knew it."

In Vietnam, more than in any previous war, the United States sought the proverbial magic bullet by developing weapons such as the M-16 rifle, agent orange, and napalm. But Americans still conceived of war as "a test of human beings more so than hardware" and the technological innovations that stemmed from the war were essentially "attempts to magnify the power of the American soldier," Kiesling said.

"Things are undeniably different now," she said. "Today pure research institutions invest billions in the most specialized kinds of [military] research, and recruiting commercials depict war as a high-technology video game. Today we use technology to make our soldiers as invulnerable as possible, allowing them to inflict harm without themselves going in harm's way.

"My biggest concern is that if we become more capable of destroying our enemies without risk to our own soldiers, we will lose track of what war is about," Kiesling added. "If killing becomes too easy and too safe, will we forget that the true measure of the effective soldier is not his or her lethality, but success in ending conflict?"

30 March 2001
Boston University
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