System builders may enable or inhibit technological change. Military innovation scholars point to the importance of “specificity” as an enabler of these processes. As historian Williamson Murray defined it, specificity is the identification of a clearly stated problem or problem set requiring a solution.44 Consensus on the problem must exist; otherwise, Lincoln’s “divided house” metaphor applies. The specific problem for the ICBM builders was to create a reliable, accurate, survivable, and affordable ballistic-missile force capable of achieving national strategic objectives, namely deterring and winning a nuclear war.45 As system builders develop potential solutions (i.e., means and ways), they must respect the evidence they compile; otherwise, self-deception will inhibit the innovation. Murray described this risk as the “misuse of history” or evidence.46 An organizational culture open to new ideas and honest evaluation of the evidence is necessary. This culture must possess an attitude of open learning.47 Thoughtless adherence to “our way” represents rigidity.
Rosen, Pierce, and Murray can be integrated with historian Thomas P. Hughes’ five-phase model of technological innovation. Their concepts apply to each of Hughes’ phases, including (1) invention and development, (2) transfer and diffusion, (3) system growth, (4) technological momentum, and (5) stability.48 As Hughes understood, within one overarching national program, the multitude of subprograms will be at different phases. Any historical description necessarily reduces and simplifies this messy reality. The phases overlap, and as failures arise, internal feedback loops return portions of the system’s development to an earlier phase.
Within each phase, Hughes emphasized the role of different actors, including inventors, engineers, financiers, and managers.49 This book does not assign primacy to any actors’ specific roles within given phases. Such distinctions depend upon the context, which determines what human skills predominate at different times, settings, and places. Some inventors were outstanding managers and engineers. Some were not. Few were Wall Street financiers. This book also recognizes an important distinction regarding military and government technology development. Presidents and congresses deciding the fates of ICBM programs did not fit any single occupational category. Leaders such as General Schriever were more than inventor or engineers. The contextual differences of national technological systems necessitated that the key decision makers and problem solvers work within many realms.
This book also revises Hughes’ developmental phases from five to four: (1) invention and development, (2) transfer and diffusion, (3) bureaucratic security, and (4) stability. My model considers momentum a force that bridges all phases. It is no longer an independent phase (it was Hughes’ fourth phase). In addition, phase three now reads “bureaucratic security.” A technology that achieves this has generated sufficient momentum to secure its bureaucratic existence. Other combat arms may threaten it, but the newcomer has reached adulthood and can defend itself. As the years pass and sustaining innovations occur, it becomes a stable member of the “old guard” (phase four).
Invention and development remain phase one. This is the infancy stage. All sustaining and disruptive innovations begin here. A problem exists. People try to understand it and want to solve it. Agents explore, test, and debate many roads not taken. No single paradigm dominates, and multiple mental architectures form. During the early era of ICBM invention and development, a number of competing deployment modes existed, including stationary above- and below-ground launch facilities and a variety of air-, sea-, and land-mobile modes. The silo was not preordained, and the mobile ICBM was a legitimate contender. The American nuclear triad could have become a dyad.50
Technological transfer and diffusion begin during phase one but increase dramatically during phase two. Adolescence and the teen years equate to this phase. Like academics debating new ideas, technological innovators share knowledge via many means—staff studies, reports, simulations, military exercises, experiments, colloquia, journals, and the like. In the Pentagon’s internal battle for control of the ICBM mission, the antagonists had to share knowledge. Whether Air Force, Army, or Navy, they depended upon the same academic and industrial experts. General Schriever’s management system of concurrent and parallel development speeded transfer and diffusion within the American military, industrial, and academic bases. A similar scenario unfolded in the nuclear Navy. The success of transfer depends upon how successfully the technology and its cultural artifacts adapt to their new contexts.51
As noted, Hughes termed phase three “system growth.”52 During this phase, a technology overcomes “reverse salients.” A reverse salient is a critical problem that prevents progress in a portion of a technology’s development and thereby inhibits further growth of the overall system. Some problems are functional, such as an insufficiently powerful engine or a weak metal alloy. Some problems are theoretical, such as that the speed of light bounds travel times. Whether termed a reverse salient, functional failure, an anomaly, or critical problem, such a problem requires intense effort to solve.53 Conflict and resolution occur, and some potential technological roads end. The survivor develops “momentum,” which Hughes describes as the fourth stage of technology development.54 But momentum is a phenomenon, not a phase. It commences, if only minutely, when a potential technological solution emerges in phase one. Whether it grows depends upon many contextual factors, but as proponents solve reverse salients, they squeeze competitors. If skilled in the halls of bureaucracy, they may well eliminate their rivals, thereby attaining bureaucratic security. There-fore, this study revises Hughes’ model by dropping momentum as an independent phase and renaming his phase three as “bureaucratic security” (formerly it was “system growth”). The mobile ICBM competed well as a ballistic-missile operational concept through phases one and two; however, it failed twice to advance past phase three. Retaining funds and political capital for complex national-level technocratic programs such as the ICBM demands great skill within the halls of bureaucracy, laboratory, and factory. Large-scale military technological systems are political projects, and growth depends upon the innovator’s ability to secure political and financial support. As Kranzberg summed it up, “although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions.”55 During each phase, the agents of change must master and shape their contexts.
In this book’s third phase, bureaucratic security, the traditional combat arms accept the new technology as a peer partner, even if they do not like it. Imagine the new technology has become a young adult, college educated but still new to life’s big games. Typically, reaching this level takes at least ten years, and the demarcation between phases two and three is amorphous. Opponents simply have stopped their attempts to kill the newcomer, although they may try to contain it, to prevent further growth and the loss of their own favored technological systems. They may imagine re-absorbing the interloper at some future opportunity. A political agreement may exist to keep bureaucratic peace, or competing systems may have died. The original disruptive innovation or new combat arm transitions to a context comprising sustaining innovations. Sources of momentum include the aggregate of invested manufacturers, educational institutions teaching the new science and technology (and seeking new streams of student and research revenue to pay their bills), research institutions, and the growing body of support experts. Many agents have staked heavy capital investments (emotional, intellectual, physical, financial, etc.) to invent, develop, diffuse, and secure the technology.
The new technology then enters the fourth and final phase, stability. Survivors of the battles for supportive legislation and funding have “skin” in the sociotechnical system’s continued existence. They and their technical means become homogenized and specialized. Further specialization of knowledge, organization, and skill occurs.56 This is the era of long-term sustaining innovations, incremental and modular. The human equivalent is the experienced professional man or woman, well established and respected in a career. The technological