War: A source of new inventions?

“War is permeated by technology to the point that every single element is either governed by it or at least linked to it.”--Martin van Creveld

The rapid technological progress that took place during the twenty years that elapsed between the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the First World War in 1919, and the start of the Second World War, illustrates the ways in which technologies developed during wartime can become indispensable during the peace that follows. After I read the Martin van Creveld’s book, War and Technology,  I was interested in exploring the relationship between technology and war, especially the WWII. In the book, he argues “war is permeated by technology to the point that every single element is either governed by it or at least linked to it.” (p.311). In this essay, I will explore how the WWII facilitated a discovery of RADAR and nuclear energy and how these new findings have shaped the modern societies.

WWII facilitated technological development by encouraging funding of high learning institutions by governments so that they could conduct research. For example, the United States government found and funded a Radiation Laboratory (1940-1945) at MIT, which worked on Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) and not radiation for nuclear bombs, as its name suggests. This name was chosen to disguise its primary research of radar for nuclear weapons, believed by many not to be a promising technology for war at that time. The discovery of RADAR led to the replacement of microwaves with radio waves in detection and ranging of objects on land, sea and in space. Radio waves were better than microwaves because they did not need a long antenna and they could work over a long distance.  In the course of the research, the government employed 3500 people to work in the lab. The lab spent more than $4 million per month.

The discovery of a long-range radar at the Radiation Laboratory changed the course of the WWII. The new technology saved many lives, but also it killed many people who were considered as ‘the enemies’. For example, it helped to nullify the V-1 threat to London and it also highly reduced the number of Allied ships which were sunk by the enemies. Hence, the new technology saved lives. On the other hand, it claimed several lives since it was employed in airborne bombing radar and gun-laying radar. These tools could be used to fire any people or planes which were identified as enemies.

Nowadays radar technology is widely used for national security and allocating lost civilian vessels like planes and ships—for example, most of the time when a plane loses contact with radar, a tragedy happens which may involve a killing of all passengers due to loss of communication with an air control station. Thanks to WWII for bringing us RADAR.

In addition, when WWII was in progress, scientists and engineers were encouraged or even forced by their governments to come up with more advanced tools to help them win the war. This situation led to a discovery of new and more advanced technologies. With a fear that Germany was building an atomic bomb, physicists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner urged Einstein to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt so that the government could fund their

research on chain nuclear reaction and building of a nuclear bomb. The president agreed to fund the research, which was known as The Manhattan Project. The mission to build the most destructive weapon ever made and used by humankind was accomplished after 5 years. Einstein described the bomb in his first letter to the president as quoted: “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.” Even though he never saw any of those bombs when he was writing the letter, his prediction was correct. Five years later, Einstein’s imaginary description of the bomb was confirmed by Masuji Ibuse, the author of the novel, Black Rain. This novel was written after the actual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed thousands of innocent people. In his novel Ibuse says “I had a glimpse of something that looked like a captive balloon drifting lazily downwards in the sky beyond the barracks … the destructive power of the bomb was fantastic.” (Ibuse 243, 245).

Nowadays, nuclear energy is primarily used as an energy source rather than nuclear bomb development. For example, Countries like France, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belgium, and Hungary produce more than 50% of their electricity from nuclear energy and about 11% of electrical power in the world is produced by using nuclear energy. Despite some negative effects which may happen due to mishandling of nuclear reactors and poor management of nuclear wastes, nuclear energy is promising to solve problems associated with the production of power like global warming and concomitant deaths. Statistics show that annual deaths from nuclear energy production in Japan are just 10, while 12,500 deaths are caused by coal energy production.  This implies that, in Japan, the shift from coal to nuclear energy as a source of electricity saved more lives than the ones taken by the 1945-nuclear bomb, nuclear reactors’ accidents and radiation from nuclear energy generation, all combined.

In conclusion, it has to be noted that, I am not arguing that it impossible to just have a creative creation technology and also not arguing that without the WWII, RADAR and nuclear weapons or other technologies wouldn’t have been invented—they could but maybe they could have taken longer to be invented. Neither I am campaigning to have a WWIII so that we can ‘boost’ our technology. But I argue that when there is war, the technological development is facilitated. Even though wars promote a development of destructive technologies, these same technologies such as RADAR and nuclear energy which as dramatized in the Dr. Stranglove movie can destroy the human race, can save human lives when they are properly handled and used.