THE TECHNOLOGICAL FIX:

WEAPONS AND THE COST OF WAR

Alex Roland

June 6, 1995
ii

*******

The views expressed in this report are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.

Government. This report is cleared for public release;

distribution is unlimited.

*******

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War

College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may be

conveyed directly to the Conference Organizer, Dr. Earl H.

Tilford, Jr., by calling commercial (717) 245-4086 or DSN 242-

4086.

*******

This study was originally presented at the U.S. Army War

College Sixth Annual Strategy Conference held April 26-28, 1995,

with the assistance of the Office of Net Assessment. The Strategic

Studies Institute is pleased to publish the paper as part of its

Conference Series.
iii

FOREWORD

In April 1995, the Army War College’s Strategic Studies

Institute held its annual Strategy Conference. This year’s theme

was “Strategy During the Lean Years: Learning From the Past and

the Present.”

Professor Alex Roland, Professor of History at Duke

University and a Visiting Professor at the Dibner Institute for

the History of Science and Technology, presented this paper as a

part of a panel examining “Technology and Fiscal Constraints.” He

makes the point that historically, technology and war have

operated together. Indirectly, any military institute operates

within its technology context. The Army of today is, for instance,

in a period of technological transition from an Industrial Age

army to an Information Age army. Directly, armies either use

technology to their advantage or seek ways of lessening the impact

of the other side’s technology.

A tremendous faith in technology is an abiding American

characteristic. The idea that technology can be leveraged to make

up for shortfalls in numbers–be those numbers of troops, weapons,

or dollars–is as appealing as it is traditional. In the following

pages, Dr. Roland examines three instances in which states turned

to technology to drive military strategy: chariot warfare in the

second millennium B.C., Greek fire in the first millennium A.D.,

and submarine warfare in the early 19th century. These cases,

distinct in time, provide a fresh perspective on issues facing the

Army as it molds itself into Force XXI.

The study of the past is our most reliable guide to the

future. For that reason, I commend to you the following monograph.

RICHARD H. WITHERSPOON

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies

Institute
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

ALEX ROLAND is Professor of History at Duke University and

Visiting Fellow at the Dibner Institute of the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology where he is completing a history of the

Strategic Computing Initiative. A 1966 graduate of the U.S. Naval

Academy, Professor Roland served in Vietnam with the Third Marine

Division before taking a Ph.D. in military history at Duke

University. He is best known for his book, Underwater Warfare in

the Age of Sail.
v

THE TECHNOLOGICAL FIX:

WEAPONS AND THE COST OF WAR

The United States has always had its defense on the cheap.

The main reasons, of course, are the oceans that isolate us from

most of the world and the neighbors we happen to enjoy to the

north and south. To say that one shares the longest undefended

border in the world speaks volumes about the need for an expensive

military establishment. Even during the Cold War when the Soviet

Union was spending an estimated 18 percent of gross domestic

product (GAP) on the military, the United States spent only 7

percent.1 During the years of peak crisis in the 1950s, the figure

averaged 12 percent, but thereafter it fell well below that level.

Our greatest rate of national expenditure in the 20th century came

in World War II, when spending rose as high as 39.2 percent of GAP

and 89.5 percent of the federal budget. Before and after such

crises, however, the United States has spent comparatively little.

We were spending 1.7 percent of GAP on the military in 1940; we

were back down to 3.7 percent by 1948.

Our defense budget now hovers around 4 percent of GAP.2

 This

is lean, indeed penurious, as an earlier incarnation of this

conference labeled it. We do not have reliable figures for

comparison with other countries historically, but it might be fair

to estimate that states have expended 5 to 10 percent of national

income on the military in time of peace, considerably more in time

of war. England, for example, averaged 10 to 15 percent in the

l8th century, when it fought five major wars. Austria spent a like

amount. Prussia, with less wealth but comparable military demands,

no doubt spent a much higher percentage.3

One reason that the United States could win the Cold War

while spending relatively less than its adversary was that we

bought quality instead of quantity. If the Soviet Union had more

soldiers and more tanks, the United States had better soldiers and

better tanks. Part of this formula entails superior technology. Of

course we would want superior technology in any event, for it is a

force multiplier and it saves lives–always an important

consideration in a democracy. But technology has a special appeal

to Americans, who seem to have an abiding faith in its power.4

Our national optimism about the technological fix suggests to
vi

us that technology may once again be the solution to our problems.

If we are indeed in a period of lean defense budgets, can we not

leverage technology still more to give ourselves the security we

need at a bargain basement price? Can’t dual-use technologies

makes us competitive in the world marketplace and simultaneously

secure from our enemies? Can’t we, in the cliched icon of the Cold

War, get more bang for our buck?

Well, maybe. I want to shed some light on that question by

exploring it in some different historical contexts. From my own

research I have selected three instances in which states have

found their military strategy driven by the reigning technologies

of war. These are chariots in the second millennium B.C., Greek

fire in the 8th and 9th centuries A.D., and submarine warfare in

the early 19th century. None of these case studies will tell us

what technology can or cannot do for the United States at the end

of the Cold War. They can, however, give us some perspective on

our problem and perhaps suggest a few cautionary notes about our

expectations.

Before beginning, it might be well to remind ourselves that

some of these issues are timeless and some are peculiar to the

modern age. First, war has always been expensive. At least in all

the civilizations we know of boasting specialization of labor, the

sheer manpower necessary to engage in organized violence imposes a

significant burden on the state, both in direct subsistence and in

opportunity costs.5 Soldiers and sailors, after all, might be

better employed producing food or widgets or other services.

The costs of war have affected states differentially over

history. Predator states that choose war as an instrument of

policy have had to make war pay, either by taking booty or by

exacting tribute. Nonaggressive states have sought defense on the

cheap, usually in the form of fortifications and citizen soldiers.

An element of what we would now call dual use attaches to both.

Fortifications were dual-use technologies in the sense that they

drew upon corvee labor during down-time in the agricultural season

to build monumental architecture that both bonded the citizen to

the state and provided security for the society’s wealth. Standing

armies served dual use in that they fought the state’s external

enemies while also providing a force for internal security.

A peculiarly modern aspect of the economy of war is that
vii

governments in the last century have taken on many roles unknown

to the ancient world. As late as the 16th century, Machiavelli

could advise Lorenzo de’ Medici that war was the first business of

the prince.6 Today’s prince may well believe that business is the

first business of the state, followed perhaps by social welfare,

the environment, public utilities, and the like. In times of

military emergency, princes still give war the attention it

deserves. Otherwise, however, it is just one of the components of

what is now called national security. As we look at the calculus

of funding war in earlier times, it is well to remember that the

equations were simpler if nonetheless burdensome.

Chariots.

A chariot revolution swept the Levant in the l8th century

B.C. A technology that had been evolving for at least 500 years

suddenly achieved a take off that propelled it in short order to

dominance on the battlefield. For half a millennium, this new

weapon was to reign over the battlefields of the Near East with a

dominion analogous to that of the mounted knight in the Middle

Ages and the tank in the mid-20th century.

I use the term revolution advisedly. George Roux has used it

before me to describe this transformation of ancient warfare.7

William McNeill called the chariot “the supreme arbiter of the

battlefield in all Eurasia,” “the new superweapon, ”the master

weapon of the age."8 Albrecht Goetze said of these ancient

vehicles that when they were “used in massed assault, no infantry

could possibly withstand them.”9

 O. R. Gurney, who dates the

appearance of the war chariot around 1600 B.C.E., says “it created

a revolution in the nature of warfare: henceforward speed was to

be the determining factor in the battle.”10

There were three to five components of the revolution. First,

the ox or ass that had pulled the clumsy Sumerian war wagon of the

third millennium B.C. was replaced by the horse. Second, a light

chariot evolved boasting standard features that transcended

regional variations–two spoked wheels, a central, curved draft

pole harnessing two to four horses, a fixed axle set beneath the

rear of the rider’s box, and a railing to support the driver and

passengers, who numbered from one to three.11

Third, the chariot seems to have been paired regularly with
viii

the composite bow. Laminating animal sinew and bone on a wooden

frame greatly increased the power of the bow and furthermore

allowed it to be shorter. The shortened bow was ideal for firing

over the walls of the chariot.12 With this innovation, the chariot

became a potent mobile firing platform, capable of approaching

enemy formations at great speed, dispensing a deadly barrage of

arrows, and, say some analysts, retiring before the enemy could

return fire effectively. Most students of chariot warfare in the

second millennium B.C.E. believe this was the primary use of the

chariot, complemented by pursuit of a fleeing enemy. These

scholars doubt that the chariot was capable of “shock,” of

plunging directly through the enemy line, like the modern tank to

which the chariot is often compared. The evidence on this issue,

however, is mixed.13

The last two components of the chariot revolution are less

clear. Some scholars believe that field fortifications were

essential to protect the chariot on campaign. And some believe

that layered body armor became more widely used in the period.

They guess that the chariot crew needed such armor to protect

themselves from enemy missile fire as they approached the enemy’s

lines. This theory may or may not be reconcilable with the notion

that chariots used as missile platforms were comparatively immune

to enemy counterfire.14

The chariot was used in several ways.15 In the Iliad we see

the most familiar use–as a jeep to carry the aristocrat to the

place of battle, where he dismounts and fights on foot. More often

in the Levant, the chariot probably served as a mobile firing

platform, carrying archers in a caracole before the enemy infantry

formation. Another likely use was to carry archers in mobile

assaults on the flanks and rear of enemy formations. Finally, of

course, the chariot might have been used in frontal, shock

attacks. Though most scholars doubt this possibility, the evidence

is mixed. We certainly know that Alexander the Great and Caesar

both encountered frontal attacks with chariots centuries later;l6

there is no conclusive reason to believe they were not employed in

the second millennium.

Physically and psychologically, the chariot seems to have

been “decisive”.17 For 500 years it dominated the battlefields of

the Near East. States that wanted to be competitive had to take up

this arm. Huge chariot corps developed, often manned by a special
ix

class of warriors. The maryannu, or “chariot warrior,” was

apparently an international mercenary, though perhaps initially of

Mittani origins.18 Among such specialists, standardized tactics and

strategy seem to have evolved, even though it is difficult now to

know exactly what they were.

As was true of the warrior class in Medieval Europe to which

the maryannu bear strong resemblance, the horses and related

equipment of their weapon system demanded land and money. The

states of the Levant that gave over to chariot warfare in the

period tended to organize themselves feudally, mostly to support

the huge chariot corps required to be competitive in warfare. It

was not unusual for an army to appear in the field with hundreds,

even thousands, of chariots, each one requiring several crew, two

or more horses in traction and a comparable number in reserve, and

a huge logistics train.19 Faced with such expense, states either

hired out mercenaries for the duration of an emergency, or they

established some socio-political arrangement, such as feudalism,

to support the charioteers.20 The first alternative came at a high

price and bought but fleeting loyalty to the state. The second

alternative introduced in the state a warrior class that could

demand or take political power. As with many new military

technologies, the chariot raised the costs and the stakes in war.

Furthermore, chariotry placed logistic demands on the state

for which the only precedent was siege warfare. Hitherto armies

had been limited in range and capability only by the endurance of

the men and the amount of food that they could take or scavenge on

campaign. Even if they took a siege train, as states going back

to ancient Sumer seem to have done, most of the engines were built

on site from local resources, mostly trees. Not so chariot

warfare. The vehicles themselves required specialized

manufactories and often imported materials. Skilled workers were

needed for the various components–smiths, for example, for the

indispensable metal fittings. The composite bows required

specialized arsenals of their own. The horses required stables and

pasturage. And when the army hit the road, some field version of

all this had to accompany it. Egyptian depictions of the famed

battle of Kadesh (1294 B.C.) show workers repairing chariots on

campaign. Written sources from the period speak of what the field

arsenals would be called upon to do, from repairing spokes to

straightening poles.21
x

This fabulous infrastructure collapsed almost as quickly as

it had appeared. Around l200 B.C.E., in the violent upheaval known

as “the Catastrophe,” the chariot was overthrown. In its place

emerged a greater reliance on infantry and cavalry. The darkness

and mystery that surround the Catastrophe engulf the eclipse of

the chariot as well. Both have attracted multiple explanations;

neither has achieved historical consensus.

The Catastrophe was a violent, mass movement of IndoEuropeans

in the l3th century B.C.E. It appears that the incursion of

barbarian tribes, perhaps Illyrians, in the Balkans set off a

cascade of forced flight and resultant invasion by refugees. The

chain effect echoed down the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean,

culminating in the invasion of Egypt by the so-called “Sea

Peoples” and the arrival of the Philistines, from whom Palestine

would take its name. Ramses III, the last great pharaoh, finally

arrested the onslaught.22

Why the chariot would disappear at just this time has puzzled

historians. William McNeill has argued that warriors invading the

Near Eastern plains from the mountains of Anatolia brought with

them iron weapons which were better suited to fighting chariots.23

The most recent analysis of this problem, and the most thorough,

posits that the invaders from the Steppe brought with them new

tactics. We know from Alexander and Caesar that trained,

disciplined troops can readily defeat chariots if they are

prepared, resolved, and well led. It is entirely possible that the

chariot dominated the Levant for half a millennium because people

thought it was invincible. Tough warriors from the steppe who did

not know enough to be frightened might have broken the spell and

brought down a psychological icon.24

A third possibility, the one most pertinent to this

conference, is simply that the chariot fell of its own weight. Or

rather the chariot complex fell of its own weight. An arms race of

500 years’ duration had built up a fabulously expensive

infrastructure and a technological stagnation that suffocated the

state and precluded innovation. As long as the chariot seemed to

be the sine qua non of mìlitary preparedness, states no doubt

perceived that they had no choice but to pay the enormous upkeep

and to maintain what Mahan would have called “fleets in being,”

even in time of peace. After all, in the event of emergency, there

would be inadequate time to train and equip a chariot corps
xi

competitive with the maryannu. As soon as this oppressive system

showed the least vulnerability to new weapons or new tactics, it

was bound to collapse with great speed. In other words, the

economic pressure of maintaining an expensive military

establishment can force dramatic and rapid shift to cheaper

systems once the old formula is challenged. We don’t know enough

about the economics of ancient states to make any confident

judgments, but it is even possible that economic pressure by

itself precipitated the collapse that historians have subsequently

attributed to the introduction of new weapons and tactics.

Greek Fire.

Almost two millennium after the collapse of chariotry in the

Levant, another pivotal technology appeared dramatically in the

region and soon became the dominant weapon of its age. Greek fire,

as it came to be called many years later by Western Crusaders, was

reportedly carried to Constantinople by Kallinikos, a Syrian

engineer, around 678 A.D.25 At that time, the legendary Moslem

caliph Mu’awiya was in the 5th year of a naval siege of the

Byzantine capital. The Moslems could not breach the sea walls of

the city, nor could they starve it into submission, for they

controlled neither the land access nor the northern water

approaches to the city protected by the Golden Horn. It was a

stalemate.

Kallinikos broke the stalemate with an incendiary device

analogous to napalm. “Sea fire,” as the Byzantines called it, or

“Roman fire,” as the Moslems called it, was a burning fluid that

could be shot from the nozzles of pressure cannons mounted in the

bows of Byzantine naval vessels. Like some of the other incendiary

weapons known in the Near East for centuries, Greek fire stuck to

what it touched and burned under water. Once doused with this

stream of fire, ships and men were doomed to horrible extinction.

Kallinikos fire drove off the Moslems in 678 and inflicted

psychological scars that were to shape naval warfare in the

eastern Mediterranean for centuries to come.

In the ensuing years, the incendiary seems to have been

improved still further, apparently in a conscious research and

development program.26 The weapon came to be mounted on a specially

designed ship, heated and pressurized below decks to increase its

range and volatility, pumped to a nozzle in the bow, and sprayed
xii

with great force onto enemy vessels.27 In this improved form it

drove off a second and larger Moslem assault on Constantinople in

717-718. The Moslems did not return.

Like the chariot, Greek fire proved to be a super weapon of

sorts. Against it there was no known defense in the ancient world.

Because of its power and its mythical role in saving

Constantinople from the infidel, Greek fire was treated as a state

secret. As best we know, it was the first truly secret military

technology, the only one to appear in the ancient, classical, or

medieval worlds.28 The Byzantines maintained the secret in very

modern fashion. They used the Coca Cola method of bottling the

secret formula in a single, central arsenal where the emperor

could personally oversee access to it. And they used

compartmentalization to ensure that no individuals who might fall

into enemy hands knew more than a part of the entire system. Some

knew how to make the mixture; some knew how to design and

construct the special ships, some knew how to make the cauldrons

used to heat and pressurize the fluid; some knew how to operate

the system in combat. No one but the emperor and reportedly one

other family knew the whole system–and they never left the

capital. 29

One would expect that monopolization of the dominant weapon

of the age would have ensured the security of the Byzantine

empire. Instead, the Byzantines suffered repeated naval defeats

around the Aegean and the Mediterranean. In 698, a Byzantine fleet

dispatched to retake Carthage from the Moslems proved unequal to

the task. The Arabs took Crete in 826 and Sicily in 827. The

battle of Thasos in 829 witnessed the complete destruction of the

Byzantine fleet by corsairs operating out of Crete.30

The reason for these incongruous defeats seems to be that the

Byzantines reserved Greek fire for the defense of the capital.

Constantinople was the heart of an empire built on trade–the

financial, religious, and political hub of an entity that

otherwise had no more cohesion than the eastern half of the Roman

Empire from which it sprung. As Constantinople went, so went the

Byzantine empire.31 When the capital was secure and prosperous, the

emperor had the focus and finances to pursue the unique brand of

politics and international relations that became known as

Byzantine. They would fight when they had to, and often did. But

they were equally likely to achieve their political and diplomatic
xiii

objectives by bribery, tribute, and outright purchase. The

Byzantine empire, in short, ran on money, and Constantinople was

the great market.

For two reasons, then, successive emperors reserved Greek

fire for the defense of Constantinople. First, they wanted to

husband this precious weapon for the only defense that really

mattered. Provinces and outposts could fall to Moslems and other

enemies; so long as the capital stood, the empire stood. The

Byzantines actually maintained not one but three navies.32 One set

of navies was raised by the regional themes at their own expense

for local defense. A second imperial navy was funded by the

capital for command of the major sea routes over which Byzantine

commerce flowed–in the Black Sea, the Aegean, the Mediterranean.

And a third fleet, under direct control of the emperor, was

reserved for the immediate defense of the capital. Only to the

last was Greek fire entrusted.

Part of the reason for this was no doubt economic. All

maritime powers know that navies are fabulously expensive to build

and maintain. States that have experienced naval success have

usually done so by raising their fleets in the face of necessity.

When the emergency passes, the temptation to lay up the ships and

pension off the sailors is compelling. Such economizing often

invites a revival of piracy at first and finally renewed naval

challenge for command of the sea. While this cycle is predictable,

it is not by and large escapable. Most states before the British

in the Pax Britannica simply could not afford the cost of a fleet

in being if there was no clear and present danger to justify the

expense. So, too, with the Byzantines.

But why, one asks, did they not equip a small, economical

fleet with Greek fire if this weapon was so dominant? Surely this

was an instance where the penury of naval peace could nonetheless

sustain a relatively cheap deterrent. It seems analogous in many

ways to the United States now maintaining a reduced and

comparatively inexpensive nuclear deterrent in the wake of the

Cold War.

The answer, it seems, is proliferation. The Byzantines

restricted access to Greek fire lest the ultimate weapon of their

age fall into enemy hands and thus be turned against them. So long

as they alone controlled Greek fire, they knew that Constantinople
xiv

could never fall. But if the Moslems ever showed up at the sea

walls with Greek fire of their own, then the city and hence the

empire were forfeit. It was for this reason that they denied Greek

fire to the imperial fleet. And it was for similar reasons that

they denied it to the regional theme fleets. Second only to the

Moslem threat on Constantinople was the threat of internal

insurrection led by the powerful families that controlled the

regional themes of the empire. To place Greek fire in their hands

was to invite yet another kind of enemy to show up at the sea

walls and challenge the reigning emperor for control of the city

and the empire.

Thus it came to pass that successive emperors of Byzantium

seem to have believed that it was more important to protect Greek

fire than exploit it. So successful were they in keeping the

secret that it finally became, I am convinced, secret even to

them. When passing Crusaders took the capital in 1204 A.D., they

found no trace of Greek fire. I believe that the Byzantines had

actually lost the secret long before then, perhaps as early as the

lOth century. The legend of the weapon lived on and apparently

deterred a revival of the Moslem attacks that had threatened the

city in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Though the Moslems

themselves grew proficient in some forms of incendiary warfare,

they never seem to have figured out the ultimate weapon that might

have opened the door to Constantinople.

Lest the Byzantines appear silly for failing to exploit the

full potential of Greek fire, it is important to remember that

their empire lasted a thousand years, longer than any other in

Western history. In many ways Greek fire served their purposes.

But in another sense they were victims of their own success.

Penury, the unwillingness to support an adequate navy in

peacetime, drove them to over-reliance on a technological fix. The

fix was so sweet that they hardly dared use it. As had been true

with the chariot, it dominated war in its time because people

thought it dominated war. But it was a hollow shell through much

of its history, and it collapsed of its own weight long before it

was overcome by other technology.

Underwater Warfare.

Submarines in the age of sail were also seen as a

technological fix for a certain kind of security problem. In that
xv

era, between the battle of Lepanto in 1588 and the Monitor and the

Merrimac in 1862, naval warfare was dominated by what Theodore

Ropp calls a hierarchy of power.33 Ships of a certain rate were all

but invulnerable to smaller vessels. This put a premium on large

numbers of ships of the line, i.e., ships large enough to fight in

the main battleline against the best of the enemy’s fleet. Ships

of the line, displacing upwards of 1,200 tons and carrying 60 guns

or more, were the most complex and expensive technology of their

day.34 In a sense they were floating fortresses, built up in

peacetime at great expense and exercised whenever possible to

sharpen the skills of the crew. Unlike land fortresses, however,

they were dynamic machines operating in a hostile environment.

They required constant maintenance and replacement, and their

crews demanded sustenance and training.35 The burden they imposed

upon the state far exceeded that of comparable land forces.

England came to dominate the age of sail through a succession

of naval wars in the l7th and l8th centuries. Its fleet was the

nation’s first line of defense. Into it the nation poured its

national treasure at a rate few states could match. With the

fleet, England established a worldwide colonial and economic

empire. The country became wealthy through commerce and developed

sophisticated techniques for extracting revenues from its own

citizens and others.

In the l8th century, the French became the last nation to

challenge England for command of the sea in the age of sail. The

French faced a dilemma born if not of penury then at least of

excess demand on finite resources. Forced by ambition, geography,

and history to be a major land force on the continent while

challenging England for sea power, France had to support an army

and navy simultaneously. During much of the period, France even

had ships of superior quality, but it could never match the

seamanship or gunnery of the British. Ironically, it never matched

their daring either. The French could afford to lose their fleet,

for their army was still proof against invasion. England, in

contrast, never dared lose its fleet, for fear of being

defenseless against an invading French army. Nonetheless, the

British repeatedly risked all in its naval wars with France,

constantly seeking decisive engagement. The policy culminated in

the Nelsonian tactics that crushed the French at Trafalgar.

Before the French lost all at Trafalgar, they were offered a
xvi

technological fix by an enterprising American painter, inventor,

and opportunist named Robert Fulton.36 Penetrating the reigning

paradigm of naval warfare, Fulton perceived that the hierarchy of

power was inviolate only if one played by the rules. Ships of the

line were invulnerable to lesser vessels only if those lesser

vessels attacked in the regular way. The sides of these great

leviathans were made of solid oak, as much as three feet thick.

Enemy fire might damage such hulls, but it would never break them.

Normally, ships were lost only when their crews or their rigging

were disabled, destroying their ability to maneuver and defend

themselves.

Below the waterline, however, these vessels were soft and

thin. The oak hull was not reinforced there as it was on the sides

and it was mushy from immersion in sea water and attack by worms

and other sea life. A blow to this Achilles heel could send a

floating fortress to the bottom. And one did not need a comparable

fortress to deliver such a blow.

Fulton proposed to build and operate a submarine for the

French, imitating his countryman, David Bushnell, who had essayed

just such a project during the American Revolution. French naval

authorities were skeptical that he could succeed and indignant

that the French navy could be reduced to such vulgar expedients.

Still, Napoleon’s government was desperate to beach the British

whale; it would try almost anything. Fulton received some modest

support, and with it he built a submarine he called the Nautilus.

With a small crew he actually took this man-powered craft into the

English Channel in attacks on blockading British vessels.

Espionage being what it was in the Napoleonic wars, the

British knew of Fulton’s schemes and simply sailed away from his

underpowered craft when it came hunting. But the very fact that he

could field such a weapon gave them pause. They lured him into

defection with flattery and lucre, and kept him ineffectively on

retainer until Nelson had done with the French. With the threat

gone, they dismissed Fulton to crawl home to his native land, a

bitter, thwarted man with a taste for revenge. Came the war of

1812, Fulton turned his inventive genius to designing and building

the Demoloqos, the first steam ship of war the world had ever

seen. It was completed too late to exact Fulton’s revenge on the

British.
xvii

The point of Fulton’s sad, almost comical story is not that

he failed but that he had the basic ideas right. The technological

ceiling hanging over the turn of the 19th century precluded the

success that he craved. But he had nonetheless seen through the

hierarchy of power. He predicated his own system on what Basil

Liddell Hart would have called the indirect approach, i.e.,

attacking the enemy where he is least prepared.37

More importantly for our purposes here, Fulton justified his

schemes on economic grounds. He could build and sail his submarine

for a fraction of the cost of a ship of the line. Of course such

an argument carried weight with the French, who were fighting

their enemies on land and sea. It was a tougher sell to the

British, who were resigned to a kind of economic warfare with

Napoleon. To convince them, Fulton actually deployed a modern,

sophisticated economic argument which he borrowed from William

Congreve. Fulton and Congreve participated together in the British

raid on Boulogne in 1804, where Congreve had a chance to

demonstrate his rockets. To sell these new devices to his

government, Congreve had developed a cost-effectiveness argument

which compared them to traditional artillery. Fulton adopted the

same method to compare his submarine warfare to the cost of ships

of the line. The Royal Navy still scoffed at this dishonorable

form of warfare, but the argument seems to have made some

impression in Whitehall. Even states that are trying to drive

their enemy to bankruptcy, as the United States did with the

Soviet Union, will want to save money where it can. Perhaps such

states need to save money even more than those engaged in more

traditional strategies.

When submarine warfare finally broke through the

technological ceiling that constrained Fulton, it proved effective

in just the way he had predicted. In fact, at the turn of the 20th

century, the Jeune École movement within the French navy proposed

to use this emergent technology just as Fulton had recommended, as

an inexpensive weapon system to literally undermine the great

ships of the line.38 At this time those vessels were the

battleships of the Anglo-German naval race. The French movement

garnered inadequate support, but its potential was revealed at the

battle of Jutland, when Jellicoe turned away at the crucial moment

for fear of torpedo attack. Given the relative cost of battleships

on the one hand and submarines and torpedo boats on the other, the

reign of the battleship was clearly in eclipse.
xviii

Still, it was primarily as an instrument of economic warfare

that the submarine achieved its greatest impact. Once the

industrial revolution turned war into a contest of industrial

production in the first half of the 20th century, attacking the

enemy’s logistics was as effective as attacking its main battle

fleet. A dollar spent on submarines could do more damage to the

enemy than a dollar spent on battleships. In other words, it gave

more bang for the buck.

Conclusions.

Beyond the observations already made, these three case

studies suggest some conclusions that might help us see our

contemporary problems more clearly. First, these problems are not

new. As far back as we can see in human history, states have been

seeking ways to get more bang for their buck. The primary

difference between now and then may be the expanded definition of

the purpose of the state. In ages past when war was the primary

business of the state, it may have been easier to secure funding

for military purposes than it is in modern times when so many

other issues seem to influence what we now conceive of as national

security. The barbarian at the gate was a powerful persuader; the

new barbarians are poverty, education, environmental

deterioration, industrial infrastructure, and research and

development–all of which are besieging penurious governments for

scarce resources, all of which are claiming to be indispensable to

national security.

Second, technology has always been one method by which states

have sought to get more bang for their buck. Not until the l7th

century did we begin to think about “technology” as a conceptual

entity with power to shape the future. But there is ample evidence

that states nonetheless thought of specific technologies–chariots,

Greek fire, submarines–as sources of military power. While not as

self-conscious in such pursuits as we are in the modern world, the

ancients nonetheless supported research and development,

subsidized infrastructure, adjusted social relationships, and in

the case of Greek fire at least even maintained state secrecy in

order to promote technologies that enhanced the military power of

the state.

Finally, it may be concluded that technological solutions to
xix

security problems, while not necessarily deterministic, can

nonetheless generate powerful inertial forces that are difficult

to reverse or redirect. Commitment to huge chariot corps seems to

have been a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that led to a longstanding but nonetheless fragile faith in the invulnerability of

this method of combat. Maintained at ruinous cost over a period of

centuries, the whole concept collapsed when challenged by a group

of outsiders who did not realize they were supposed to lose.

So, too, with Greek fire. Introduced initially as the miracle

weapon that saved Constantinople, it soon came to be seen as fit

for no other purpose. But even as it took on mythic qualities as

the defender of Constantinople, so, too, did it pose the converse

threat of arming the enemy with the one weapon that might bring

down Constantinople. Thus, secrecy took control of the weapon; it

seemed more important to deny it to the enemy than to have it

oneself. The same enthusiasm surrounded the introduction of the

proximity fuse in World War II. In some ways it drives the

controversy over proliferation of nuclear weapons now. In the case

of Byzantium, the emperor and his inner circle finally succeeded

in keeping the secret even from themselves.

There was also a technological inertia at work in l8thcentury naval warfare. Just as Levantines faced with huge chariot

corps built huge chariot corps of their own, so too did

governments of the age of sail build huge fleets of battleships to

contest huge fleets of battleships. Perhaps in their time these

were an appropriate technological investment, but they bred a

worship of the battleship.39 So beguiled were Alfred Thayer Mahan

and his contemporaries that they were unprepared for the submarine

and the aircraft carrier when these technologies came along.

Finally, note that all of the weapons systems explored here

were as important psychologically as they were physically.

Chariots dominated the battlefield because people thought they

were invulnerable. Greek fire kept the Moslems at bay long after

the Byzantines had lost the power to deploy it because the Moslems

remembered the horror of Constantinople. Jellico turned away at

Jutland because he feared what torpedo boats might do to his

fleet, and he was, in Churchill’s rnemorable phrase, the only man

who could lose the war in an afternoon. Whatever technology one

buys in times of penury, it is well to remember that its

effectiveness will be measured as much by what people think it can
xx

do as by what it can really do.

ENDNOTES

l. Budqet of the United States Government. Historical Tables.

Fiscal Year 1995, Washington: Executive Office of the President,

Office of Management and Budget, 1994, pp. 17, 82-88.

2. Ibid., p. 88.

3. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the

Enqlish State. 1688-1783, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1990, pp. 40-41.

4. The exception that proves this rule is Merritt Roe Smith,

Harpers Ferry Armorv and the New Technoloqy: The Challenqe of

Chanqe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

5. Of course some barbarian states make war the principal

economic actìvity of the state, thus combining the army and the

work force in a single body.

6. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 14.

7. George Roux, Ancient Iraq, 2d ed., London: Penguin, 1980,

p. 230.

8. William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the

Human Community, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963, pp.

104, ll5.

9. Albrecht Goetze, “Warfare in Asia Minor,” Iraq, Vol. 25,

1963, p. 125.

10. O. R. Gurney, The Hittites, London: Penguin, 190, p. 104.

ll. M. A Littauer and J. H. Crouwell, Wheeled Vehicles and

Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East, Handbuch der

Orientalistik, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1979, pp. 1-72.

12. William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West, p. 104; Yadin,

The Art of War in Biblical Lands, Vol. I, pp. 39, 80.
xxi

13. J. K. Anderson is surely correct when he says “there was

no single ‘proper’ system of chariot-tactics in antiquity.” “Greek

Chariot-Borne and Mounted Infantry,” American Journal of

Archaeology, No. 79, 1975, p. 187. See also Alan Richard Schulman,

“The Egyptian Chariotry: A Reexamination,” Journal of the American

Research Center in Eqypt, Vol. 2, 1963, pp. 75-98, esp. pp. 88,

90.

14. McNeill, p. 105.

15. Mary Aiken Littauer, “The Military Use of the Chariot in

the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age,” American Journal of

Archaeology, No. 76, 1972, pp. 145-57; S. Yeiven, “Canaanite and

Hittite Strategy in the Second Half of the Second Millennium

B.C.,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, pp. 101-107; Alan R.

Schulman, “Chariots, Chariotry, and the Hyksos,” Journal for the

Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, No. 10, 1980, pp.

105-53.

16. Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, 4:33; Arrian, Expeditions

of Alexander, 3:12 - 3:13.

17. V. Gordon Childe, “Wheeled Vehicles,” in A History of

Technology, ed. by Charles Singer, et al., 8 vols., Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1954-1984, Vol. I, p. 722.

18. W. F. Albright, “Mitannian Maryannu, ‘chariot-warrior,’

and the Canaanite and Egyptian Eguivalents,” pp. 217-221. N.K.

Sandars notes that maryannu means literally “young here.” The Sea

Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean,, 12,50-ll50 BC,

rev. ed., London: Thames and Hudson, 1985, p. 38.

19. Alan Schulman is skeptical of the most extreme numbers,

but there is nevertheless reason to believe that chariot corps did

actually achieve enormous size. One scholar estimates that 7,000

chariots were on the field at the battle of Kadesh. See Yadin,

Vol. II, p. 286.

20. McNeill, Rise of the West, pp. 127, 144; Sandars, The Sea

People, p. 38.

21. Yadin, Vol. I, 90.
xxii

22. Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 246.

23. McNeill, Rise of the West.

24. Robert Drews, The End of the Bronze Aqe: Chanqes in

Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C., Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1993; N. K. Sandars concludes from the Biblical

account of Deborah’s victory over Canaanite chariots that “a

clever enemy, who did not ‘stick to the rules,’ could outmanoeuvre

an army whose strength lay in its chariots, and which fought

according to the conventions of the chariot warfare established

between the great powers.” The Sea Peoples, p. 72.

25. The following account is drawn largely from Alex Roland,

“Secrecy, Technology, and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of

Byzantium,” Technology and Culture, No. 33, October 1992, pp. 655-

679.

26. Byron C. P. Tsangadas, The Fortifications and Defense of

Constantinople, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980, p. 123.

27. J. Haldon and M. Byrne, “A Possible Solution to the

Problem of Greek Fire,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift, No. 70, 1977,

pp. 91-99.

28. Pamela O. Long and Alex Roland, “Military Secrecy in

Antiquity and Early Medieval Europe: A Critical Reassessment,”

History and Technoloqy, No. 11, 1994, pp. 259-290.

29. Roland, “Secrecy, Technology, and War.”

30. Ibid., p. 67l.

31. George Ostragorsky, History of the Byzantine State,

trans. by Joan Hussey, rev. ed., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

University Press, 1969.

32. Hélène Ahrweiler, Byzance et la mer: La marine de guerre,

la politique et les institutions maritimes de Byzance aux VIIe -

XVe

 Siècles, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1966.

 33. This account is drawn primarily from Alex Roland,

Underwater Warfare in the Aqe of Sail, Bloomington: Indiana
xxiii

University Press, 1978; the citation to Ropp is on page 3.

34. Peter Goodwin, The Construction and Fittinq of the

Sailinq Man of War, London: Conway, 1987, says (p. 263) that

vessels of 60 guns displaced 1,191 tons, those of 100 guns

displaced 2,000 tons.

35. John Brewer reports that HMS Victory cost £63,174 to

build in 1765; in that period the navy spent f26,000 a year to

maintain a first-rate battleship. Sinews of Power, pp. 34-35.

36. Actually, Fulton offered two fixes. One was the

submarine described below; the other was a fleet of barges towed

by steamships. On these barges Fulton proposed to tow an invading

army across the English Channel on a day when the British fleet

was becalmed.

37. Basil H. Liddell Hart, Strateqy: The Indirect Approach,

2d ed., New York: Praeger, 1968.

38. Theodore Ropp, The Development of a Modern Navy: French

Naval Policy, 1871-1904, Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute

Press, 1987.

39. John U. Nef, War and Human Progress: An Essay on the Rise

of Industrial Civilization, London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1950.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

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Commandant

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Author

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Editor

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