National security decision makers face an uncertain world where the accelerated growth of knowledge has changed the character of technological advance and destabilized long-standing relations within and among the military services. Dr Mandeles separates the principles that guide decision making from the proverbs through a case study of decision making in the early post-World War II period. This study examines the impact of organization on the invention and development of jet propulsion-in the form of the B-52-and illustrates both the organizational conditions conducive to developing new operational concepts and the organizational innovations necessary to implement new technology. This study also examines how the Air Force organized to learn and acquire new technology, how the Air Force conceived or identified problems, and how it organized to ensure management would respond to program failure or errors. Attention is devoted to the origins of the weapons system operational requirement, the initial concept of operation, the evolution of technology, organizational structure, and implementation.

The B-52's development and five decades of service, from the Cold War and Vietnam to the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, are featured in this comprehensive and heavily illustrated history.

The B-52 and Jet Propulsion: A Case Study in Organizational Innovation is a coherent and nonpolemical discussion of the revolution in military affairs, a hot topic in the national security arena. Mark Mandeles examines an interesting topic, how can the military better understand, manage, and evaluate technological development programs. We see Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) in operation. No matter how carefully the military designs, plans, and programs the process of technological development, inevitably, equipment, organizations, and people will challenge the desired expectations. Mandeles argues convincingly that recognizing the inevitability of error may be the single most important factor in the design of effective organizations and procedures to foster and enhance innovative technology and concepts. The book focuses on the introduction of jet propulsion into the B-52. This case study illustrates the reality that surprises and failures are endemic to development programs where information and knowledge are indeterminate, ambiguous, and imperfect. Mandeles' choice of the B-52 to illustrate this process is both intriguing and apt. The military had no coherent search process inevitably leading to the choice of a particular technology; nor was decision making concerning the B-52 development program coherent or orderly. Different mixtures of participants, problems, and solutions came together at various times to make decisions about funding or to review the status of performance projections and requirements. Three aspects of the B-52's history are striking because they challenge conventional wisdom about rationally managed innovation. First, Air Force personnel working on the B-52 program did not obtain the aircraft they assumed they would get when the program began. Second, the development process did not conform to idealized features of a rational program. While a rationally organized program has clear goals, adequate information, and well-organized and attentive leadership, the B-52 development process exhibited substantial disagreement over, and revision of, requirements or goals, and ambiguous, imperfect, and changing information. Third, the “messy” development process, as described in the book, forestalled premature closure on a particular design and spurred learning and the continuous introduction of new knowledge into the design as the process went along. Military innovations involve questions about politics, cooperation and coordination, and social benefits, and like other development efforts, there appears to be no error-free method to predict at the outset the end results of any given program. This study offers a major lesson to today's planners: improving the capacity of a number of organizations with overlapping jurisdictions to interact enhances prospects to innovate new weapons and operational concepts. We can mitigate bureaucratic pathologies by fostering interaction among government and private organizations.

Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that "last full measure of devotion"; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries.