The Birth of the U.S.-Soviet Competition
The U.S. military entered the Cold War with a sense of confidence. Many defense experts felt that the United States would enjoy a monopoly on atomic weaponry for some time to come. General Leslie Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, which had produced the atomic bomb, believed that the Soviets would be unable to break the American atomic monopoly for two decades.l Vannevar Bush, the former chairman of the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Franklin D. Roosevelt, agreed that the American nuclear monopoly was durable. As he wrote in 1949, "To build a large st ock of atomic bombs is an undertak ing that will strain the resources of any highly industrialized nation:'2 The general belief among experts was that the threat of nuclear devastation would be so effective as to deter virtually all military challenges. In fact, the American monopoly would last less than five years. On September 3, 1949, an Air Force WB-29 aircraft, flying between Japan and Alaska as part of the Air Force's nuclear reconnaissance program, detected an unusual amount of radioactive particles in the atmosphere.3 This debris came from the Soviet Union's first atomic test, which had occurred on August 29. Intelligence analysts rapidly understood the significance of the discovery.

I. Technology for Strategic Reconnaissance
The birth of the u.S.-Soviet nuclear competition, the secretive nature of the Soviet regime, the geographic depth of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. technological base all spurred the United States to pursue air and space reconnaissance technology. Reconnaissance aircraft and satellites helped the United States determine the size and composition of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and would also warn of impending attack. The u.s. air and space reconnaissance program pushed the realm of
technological possibility. It resulted in aircraft able to fly higher and faster than previous models. It spawned the ability not only to put a satellite in orbit, but also to photograph specific points on the ground and return the film safely to Earth. It also laid the groundwork for a technical collection infrastructure that continues to provide the bulk of U.S. intelligence more than a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. strategic reconnaissance program was a response to the U.S. government's lack of information on the size and characteristics of the Soviet atomic program during the early years of the Cold War. Most intelligence on Soviet industry came from captured German aerial photographs and old maps. Such sources were of limited value in uncovering evidence of Soviet atomic research and development. Somewhat more helpful were debriefings of German scientists whom the Soviets captured at the end of World War II and later repatriated.4 Despite such tidbits, the United States entered its nuclear competition with the Soviet Union essentially blind.

II. The Bomber Gap and Strategic Air Reconnaissance
The need to determine the extent of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, as well as the size of the bomber force that would deliver it, drove the United States to develop innovative reconnaissance aircraft, such as the U-2 and A-12 Blackbird. The images these aircraft took helped deflate estimates of the Soviet bomber fleet.

The limited quantity and suspect quality of information on the Soviet nuclear buildup in the early 1950S led the US. intelligence community to overestimate the size of the Soviet bomber force. During the 1954 May Day parade the Soviet government for the first time revealed the existence of the M-4 Bison strategic bomber.lO That same year the jet-powered Tu16 Badger appeared. The bomber's emergence only a year after that of the first American jet bomber, the B-47, shocked US. intelligence analysts. A year later the TU-95 Bear made its debut at the Tushino Air Show.

Western observers monitoring rehearsals for the 1955 Soviet Aviation Day parade reported seeing between twelve and twenty Bisons. In fact, the Soviets flew the same ten aircraft around the viewing stand in various formations in order to give the impression that at least twenty bombers were participating in the fly-by. Taking the bait, the US. intelligence community revised its estimate of Soviet bomber production sharply upward, concluding that the Soviets had at least thirty strategic bombers in their inventory. In fact, only ten planes in the class were in flying order. The Defense Department pegged the USSR's monthly bomber production at six, rising to twenty by late 1956.11 In fact, between January 1955 and June 1956 the Soviets manufactured a grand total of thirty-one of the aircraft. Between 1955 and 1958 the Bison suffered nine major accidents, leading the Soviets to withdraw it from service for a time.l2

M-4 Bison

1954

93 built

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-4

IV. Nuclear Weapons and the U.S. Armed Forces
The development of strategic reconnaissance technology was an important adjunct to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and long-range delivery vehicles. Historians and defense analysts generally agree that the advent of the latter heralded a revolution in military affairs, or, as Soviet theorists put it, a military-technical revolution.41 In their view, the technology of nuclear weapons and associated delivery systems, combined with new operational concepts and organizations, changed significantly the character and conduct of warfare. The nuclear revolution created new ways of war and threatened to render existing ones obsolete.

Although the destructiveness of nuclear weapons was apparent at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their revolutionary nature emerged more slowly. As late as 1951, nuclear warfare appeared to fit comfortably within the framework of pre-World War II strategic bombing theory. Theorists considered that atomic bombs were not so powerful that numbers and accuracy did not matter and armies and navies still had an important role to play. A future war would be one of attrition in which mobilization would be important. 42 However, between 1945 and 1960, as nuclear weapons became more powerful, plentiful, and deployable, how analysts thought about nuclear war changed.

The military's embrace of nuclear weapons was initially tentative. The actual capability of the United States to conduct nuclear operations remained quite limited in the years follOWing World War II. In December 1945, the United States had three atomic bombs; in July 1946, it had nine; a year later it had thirteen; and a year after that it had fifty. All were Mark 3 "Fat Man" implosion devices, weighing five tons. None was assembled; putting one together would have taken a crew of thirty-nine men two days. And it was not until 1948 that the Air Force had a fully qualified assembly team. The weapons were so large and heavy that they could only be mated to the bomber through the use of a special hoist. Through 1948, SAC had only some thirty specially modified B-29S capable of dropping the atomic bomb, all attached to the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell, New Mexico.43 To make matters worse, in 1948 SAC had only some fifty crews trained to deliver nuclear weapons. When General Curtis LeMay assumed command of SAC he found that not a single crew was capable of delivering a weapon on target in anything approaching wartime conditions.44

V. Strategic Bombers
In the early years of the Cold War, the bomber was the only platform capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, or Convair, B-36 Peacemaker was SAC's first postwar bomber and first true intercontinental bomber, In fact, the B-36 was the result of an Army requirement, formulated in the spring of 1941, for a bomber that could take off from American territory, bomb Germany, and return home. It turned out to be a fortunate coincidence that the requirement for the long-distance payload of the B-36, developed before the advent of atomic weapons, equaled that of one atomic bomb (roughly ten thousand pounds) and its combat radius equaled the great-circle distance from Maine to Leningrad.58

The B-36 was a gargantuan aircraft; the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, could nearly fit beneath one of its wings. Its massive bomb bay had the capacity of three railroad cars. Early models were powered by six turboprop engines; later models added four jet engines for takeoff, climbing to extreme altitudes, and dashing across hostile territory. With "six turning and four burning; the bomber could top 400 mph. On the other hand, the jet engines added weight and guzzled gas, reducing the bomber's combat radius to 3,110 miles.

B-36

1946-1959

384 built @ $4.1 mill=$1,574.4 million

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36

B-52

1952-td

744 built @ cost $7.213 billion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-52

VII. From Cruise Missiles to Ballistic Missiles
A combination of technical effectiveness. threat perception, and bureaucratic politics drove the Air Force to develop ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles if they could be made to work-promised a number of advantage over bombers or cruise missiles. Foremost among these was their speed. A ballistic missile would be able to reach its target in minutes, rather than hours for a bomber cruise missile. Just as important was the fact that they would be unaffected by Soviet air defenses. Whereas U.S. bomber bases were increasingly vulnerable to a Soviet first strike and airborne aircraft faced the growing challenge of penetrating Soviet air defenses to deliver their bombs, ballistic missiles offered an assured strike capability.

A number of respected scientists, however, remained skeptical. Vannevar Bush, who had served as the head of the Office of Scientific Research and development, wrote in 1949 that practical intercontinental missiles" were a fantasy:'85 A 1947 Air Staff review panel predicted that for the next decade at least, subsonic bombers would remain the only way to deliver ordnance beyond a thousand miles.86 Much of this skepticism was based upon uncertainty over the technical feaSibility of an intercontinental ballistic missile, specifically the need to achieve accurate guidance, develop powerful rocket engines, and ensure the survival of a warhead as it reentered
the atmosphere.87

The Nuclear Challenge to the Navy
Whereas the nuclear revolution benefited the Air Force, the advent of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles led many to call into question the continued relevance of the Navy, which met the challenge in several ways. The Navy originally chose incremental adaptation by fielding nuclear bombers on its aircraft carriers. With the development of the fleet ballistic missile (FBM) and the nuclear-powered submarines to carry and deliver them, however, the Navy staked its future on the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). In so doing, the Navy found a way of adapting to the nuclear age in a manner consistent with its organizational culture.

The emergence of the Air Force-and SAC in particular-as the premier arm of the U.S. military elicited a range of responses from within the Navy. Although some Navy officers wanted to beat the Air Force at its own game by transforming the Navy into a strategic Air Force, most believed that it was more important for the Navy to demonstrate its continued
relevance by showing that its ships were not excessively vulnerable to atomic attack and that Navy carrier aircraft were at least as useful as Air Force bombers for nuclear strike.lOB

The Navy and Ballistic Missiles
The Navy was the last of the services to embrace the ballistic missile. As Vincent Davis has argued, the Navy lagged because "there were many naval officers who generally opposed a new emphasis on missiles, some because they questioned the Navy's need for missiles, some because they questioned whether basic scientific and technological research had made enough progress to warrant a new emphasis, and some because they were apprehensive that a new emphasis on missile development would mean a decreased emphasis on other high priority Navy programs at a time when naval appropriations were still relatively restricted:'1l8

The barriers to producing a SLBM were high. There was no proven nuclear weapon design of sufficient yield that was small enough to be carried aboard a submarine, no accurate guidance system, and no solid propellant energetic enough to propel the missile. Indeed, there was no guarantee that any amount of money would be enough to bring such a missile into existence.

Because of such concerns, in the summer of 1955, the chief of naval operations (CNO) decided that moving ahead with the FBM was premature and cancelled the program. At the same time, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ruben Robertson announced a tentative decision to give the Air Force a monopoly over IRBMs, a move that would have shut the Navy completely out of the ballistic missile arena.1l9

The FBM program gained a new lease on life with the appointment of Admiral Arleigh Burke as Chief of Naval Operations in August 1955. Within twenty-four hours of taking office, Burke called for a briefing on the FBM program; within a week he had decided to revive the program and took a personal interest in it.l20 In 1955 he formed a Special Projects Office under Rear Admiral William F. Raborn and gave him license to recruit the fifty best people he could find. 121 Burke received additional backing when the final Killian Committee report was released in September 1955. The report recommended that the Navy develop a 1,500 mile sea-based missile to provide the United States with a secure retaliatory
capability.122

The Army: Weathering the Storm
The advent of nuclear weapons threatened the Army more than any other service. In the years that followed World War II, the service faced the challenge of adapting its organization and doctrine to rapid technological change. It responded by adopting nuclear weapons for land warfare and even competing with the Air Force in the development of long-range missiles, space, and strategic air defense. It also undertook a radical-though ultimately unsuccessful-restructuring of its forces in a bid to retain its relevance on the nuclear battlefield.

The Army was the biggest loser in the organizational and fiscal battles brought on by the development of nuclear weapons. It ended the Korean War with twenty combat divisions; by 1961, it had been reduced to fourteen divisions, including three training formations. Throughout the Eisenhower administration, the Army enjoyed the smallest share of the defense budget of any service.129 One officer believed that the Army had been reduced to the status of "an auxiliary service:'130 As General John H. Cushman candidly admitted in 1954, "I do not know what the Army's mission is or how it plans to fulfill its mission. And this, I find, is true of my fellow soldiers. At a time when new weapons and new machines herald a revolution in warfare, we soldiers do not know where the Army is going and how it is going to get there:'131

The advent of nuclear weapons and strategic air power appeared to call into question the utility of traditional ground forces. At the very least, it seemed to demand a fundamental reconsideration ofArmy weapons, doctrine, and organization. As John K. Mahon wrote in 1954, "It may be that atomic power coupled with air power has changed [the role of armies]. So lethal a combination may at last have altered the basic role of land armies. No man can be sure. It is certain, however, that the experience of the last war cannot be relied on to any great extent in preparing for the next (should the nations be foolish enough to permit one to start):'1