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wasteful targets for bombs of such concentrated power and relative scarcity;
their mobility makes them practically impossible to hit with super=rockets of
great range; and those of the United States Navy at least have shown themselves
able, with the assistance of their own aircraft, to impose an impressively high
ratio
of casualties upon hostile planes endeavoring to approach then,
But the
question of how their own security is affected is not the essential point.
For
it is still possible for navies to lose all reason for being even if they them
selves remain completely immme.
A nation which had lost most of its larger cities and thus the major part
of its industrial plant might have small use for a fleet.
One of the basic
purposes forrwhich a navy exists is to protect the sea-borne transportation by
which the national industry imports its raw materials and exports its finished
commodities to the battle lines,
Moreover,
without the national industrial
plant to service it, the fleet would shortly find itself without the means to
function.
In a word, the strategic issues posed by the atomic bomb transcend
all tactical issues, and the 19,6 test and the controversy which will inevitably
follow it will no doubt
etIhe.
serve to becloud that basic point, “:\
iz
a
Outlines of a Defense Program in the Atomic Age
What are the criteria by which we can appraise realistic military thinking
in the age of atomic bombs?
The burden of the answer will depend primarily on
whether one accepts as true the several postulates presented and argued in the
previous chapter,
One might go farther and say that since none of them is
obviously untrue, no program of military preparedness which fails to consider the
likelihood of their being true can be regarded as comprehensive or even reasonably
adequate,
It is of course always possible that the world may see another major war in
which the atomic bomb is not used.
The awful menace to both parties of a
reciprocal use of the bomb may prevent the resort to that weapon by cither side,