Cutting into military muscle
17 May 2010
Last weekend I had a reminder of the might of the military and its role in technological advances.
Here in the UK we have the ‘Imperial War Museum’, which is split into five parts. One of these is at Duxford near Cambridge and I took my 12-year old son there. First of all I would like to say, in my opinion, this is a fantastic day out, even for someone like me who is not seduced by the glamour of war. The museum captures everything from the pioneering bravery of those early aviators to the technical brilliance of the Blackbird spy-plane with its sinister curves.
It is not just about war planes either. It really is the story of aviation and the largest of the eight hangers, which features numerous planes including the prototype Concorde, has a timeline that charts the progress of aviation from the Wright Brothers in 1903 up to the present day. For me this was the most revealing part of the whole museum. The evidence was there before me – war is good for technological development.
This should come as no surprise, but the acceleration in technology during times of necessity – even survival – is dramatic. Before the start of the First World War, we were only a few years past the feather-flappers-on-bicycles stage of flying, but in the four years of that conflict, planes had been developed out of recognition into first reconnaissance and then fighter aircraft. This acceleration in development slowed after the war ended. Indeed, going into the next conflict 21 years later, the Messerschmitt, Spitfires, Mustangs etc were only just coming into production and the biplanes of the previous two decades were only just ending their tour of duty in military service. The next six years again saw the technology behind fighters, bombers and the weaponry advance out of sight, and in this case some of the momentum was continued into times of peace because of the cold war.
The message from the Duxford timelime was stark – war (or at least the threat of it) is good for technology. More recently of course this means that it has been good for electronics technology and therefore the electronics industry in general.
Spinning off on a tangent, I wonder if this is an area of technology that might be forced to slow down? In the UK we have just had an election and the new government will now have to make decisions about what to cut. We have no choice if we are to avoid persecution by ‘the markets’ that seem so eager to turn on anyone showing signs of weakness. We have recently seen Greece having to announce unpopular and drastic cuts to shore up the parts of its economy that an EU bailout cannot reach. While other countries, like Spain and Portugal, are in danger of being similarly exposed, virtually every country round the globe is facing the prospect of reducing its spending in order to get their economies back on an even keel.
So what do you cut? The answer will probably end up being everything, but some departments will suffer more than others. Education, healthcare, policing are all huge drains on national resources but such is their importance they are also the most damaging and least popular to cut. Defence budgets attract more polarised and emotive viewpoints. For a global newsletter it is always important that we look at every issue from both sides, but I believe that our readership in Afghanistan is very limited, so I can just look at it from the point of view of countries who have NATO forces stationed there. Many service men and women from many different countries have lost their lives, as have many Afghans, and many people are now shifting beyond the stage of ‘is it worth it?’ to the ‘just remind me why we started in the first place?’ While some believe that we should not let those who have died have done so in vain, others believe enough is enough and it is time to withdraw, particularly if it meant preserving the budgets of other important services ‘back home’.
This argument will doubtless come up in many countries. I suspect most will end up cutting defence budgets but maintaining direct support for front-line troops. So going full circle and returning to what I was talking about in the first half of this column, what is that going to leave for R&D in the military sector? Will it feel the squeeze? And if it does will this have a detrimental effect on development within the electronics sector as a whole?
It is an interesting point although I suspect that some would argue that consumer and communications electronics have taken over as the core drivers in the electronics industry.
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