Tactical Diversions

This chapter shows how the struggle for influence over thermonuclear weapons moved onto new territory, where many of those who had opposed the decision to develop the Super expressed their continuing dissent through the politics of national security policy. The same figures emerged as critics of the air force doctrine of strategic bombardment, and of Strategic Air Command, in which its application was vested. In pointing up the prospects for employing nuclear weapons more effectively in the land battle, the dissenters attracted some support from army officers, while their arguments were anathema to air force generals. As Oppenheimer and another member of his General Advisory Committee took control of a study of tactical weaponry, the air force began to move against what was seen as dangerous, possibly subversive, amateurism. The offense was compounded by the promotion of an approach to air defense that was seen as another direct challenge to Strategic Air Command (SAC) through a disavowal of the deterrent force of strategic bombardment. The first steps were thus taken on a path that would lead to Oppenheimer's “trial” before the Atomic Energy Commission's Personnel Security Board.

Atomic Dysfunction

Following World War II the US believed its atomic monopoly was the primary tool to offset large, standing communist ground forces within the Soviet orbit. However, both the newly established and civilian-run Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) along with the nascent US Air Forces’ Strategic Air Command (SAC) were models of dysfunction. In the late 1940s neither the civilians nor the military were capable of fulfilling the requirements outlined in the envisioned atomic air offensives of the time. Apart from their internal problems, both the AEC and SAC failed to properly coordinate with each other for effective transfer of bomb material, requisite training, and standing up the required number of atomic ordnance assembly teams. As a result, the American atomic monopoly from 1945–1950 was largely a bluff with few men, materials, and resources to serve as the nation’s primary strategic offense.