"When Superiority Goes Wrong: Science Fiction and... " Topic

…Offset Strategies.

"For all our talk about the need for military technical superiority, what if pursuit of that goal becomes our downfall? A couple of weeks ago, Bill Sweetman from Aviation Weekly and I were talking about technology development issues and the Pentagon's new offset strategy, the Defense Innovation Initiative. During the conversation he mentioned an Arthur C. Clarke story, Superiority, from 1951 that reminded him of some of our current challenges. Being the nerd that I am, I read it that evening with high hopes.

The story is great: It's short and you should all read it. I'll unpack it in a moment, but I'd like to pause for a second and consider the role of science fiction in military technology thinking. Why would I automatically assume that a science fiction short story from 63 years ago would be useful today?

Most defense nerds love science fiction. Peter Singer famously explored this relationship in Wired for War — drawing out the relationship between the technologists behind unmanned weapons system development and the science fiction that inspired them. The New America Foundation recently hosted a daylong conference, headlined by Neal Stephenson, that sought to re-focus science fiction on providing inspiration to today's scientists and engineers. August Cole, of the Atlantic Council's Art of Future Warfare project, and Peter Singer will publish Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War next year. And, well, this is how Lt Col Dan Ward writes his books…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

From the article:

Here's how the decline unfolds. The superior force abandons the production of old weapons platforms to focus on the development of a new "irresistible weapon." The weapon takes longer to develop than planned and can only be launched in limited quantities. During the development period, the adversary is able to build larger numbers of their inferior weapons so that even when the new weapon works as planned, it does not provide the anticipated advantage.

Basically WWII with Germany wasting resources on "Super Weapons" and the Allies building massive numbers of Shermans and T-34s.

WWI aviation seems to be a counter-example of sorts. Aircraft became utterly obsolete at an amazing pace.

Actually aircraft development is a perfect example.

Rather than try to develop a P-47 aircraft makers incorporated small improvements as they developed them.

The F35 is a current example of this.

Well once computers develop AI, we are all history.

Agree with you my friend.

Amicalement
Armand

45thdiv-- nonsense: we will not become _history_, but we will become _entertainment_.
*NOW* you may be afraid.

Short story on this published nearly 50 years ago. Short version: one side kept trying to come up with the superweapon and kept falling a bit short (such as interstellar teleport, but about 30% of the ships only made 1 jump and then things were out of kilter and couldn't jump again….) and got beat by a determined enemy that had stuff that worked.