Military Technology and the Demise of the Citizen-Soldier

These three books continue the trend among military historians of focusing away from battles toward a wider view of technology, people, policy, and politics. Although their subjects are quite varied, they shed light on the many strands that make up American military history and, taken together, could suggest that improved military technology is one reason why citizen-soldiers have disappeared from the American military.

Katherine C. Epstein's Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain explores torpedo development prior to the First World War to highlight the intellectual property issues that arose from collaboration between military and industrial entities developing complex technical systems. Although self-propelled torpedoes—also called automotive or locomotive torpedoes—were only invented after the American Civil War, they had undergone remarkable improvement in less than fifty years. These early torpedoes were very complex machines, well deserving of Epstein's description as “systems of systems” (p. 144). Epstein focuses on improvements to three major systems: propulsion, vertical guidance, and horizontal guidance. This book adds significant knowledge to the historical development of these systems, the resulting intellectual property disputes, and the interactions between government and private entities collaborating on complex technology. The narrative covers a wide range of material from business and legal sources, including extensive archival research, and it will be most valuable to the small torpedo history community. Other readers will need to look elsewhere for a complete history of torpedo development in this period.¹

Although the author recognizes the complexity of torpedoes and their individual systems, her narrative would have been aided by simple descriptions of how torpedo guidance systems actually functioned by means of pneumatic, mechanical, and electrical feedback mechanisms. Additionally, a summary and timeline of these three major systems would have further aided comprehension of very complex technical and legal issues. A few shortcomings are worth pointing out. In discussing the different reasons the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy had for adopting the gyroscope in the late 1890s, the author mentions that the latter “had fired thousands of submerged shots” (p. 220), which seems like an enormous number given the contemporary rates of torpedo production and the relative parsimony of the British government. Discussing the history of torpedo development in the U.S. Navy, she suggests that “the Spanish-American War might as well not have happened” (p. 18) but only a few pages later mentions that “emergency purchases of torpedoes from foreign companies” during that conflict had revealed that the foreign torpedoes had “many new and valuable features, none of which had ever been brought to the notice of the Bureau [of Ordnance]” (p. 26). Also unmentioned is the U.S. Navy capture, during that war, of several torpedoes that were added to their inventory. Likewise, no mention is made of the Russo-Japanese War, during which combatants fired a total of 300 self-propelled torpedoes, sinking three capital ships and two destroyers in actions that were closely studied by foreign navies. Lastly, the author does not discuss the use of torpedoes in World War I, as that “is incidental to—and may even distort—the story being told here” (p. 17). Whatever one's opinions of the current military-industrial complex in the United States, it has produced very effective weapons that have been proven in combat. Accepting the obvious fact that torpedo development clearly falls within the bounds of the early military-industrial complex, it would seem reasonable to determine the efficacy of this collaboration by evaluating military effectiveness of the weapons that were developed. In other words, what was the actual value of the intellectual property...