SecDef Rock's The Myth of Allied Technological Inferiority

Secretary of Defense Rock wrote recently on the "myth of Allied technological inferiority" in World War II. He was rebutting an idea that the Allies (mostly the US) developed equipment that was less sophisticated but built it in far greater numbers, thus winning the war. As I read the article I began to fear that this takedown included me. I've written a few times about industrialization in World War II and lamented our situation today: an I one of the baddies?

Sherman tanks. Note the boxy shape which eased manufacture. Photo credit: US Army

Previous articles about WWII industrialization:

• Supply Chain Resilience and Deterrence
• Is There a Ramp-Up Plan?

Thankfully, it seems the answer is "no". The case of Allied technical inferiority is not merely "the Allies built in great numbers and sometimes that meant trading performance for manufacturability," but "Germany produced weapons and vehicles that were vastly superior 1:1 to their Allied equivalents and only lost because the US' quantity swamped Germany's quality." And that argument is indeed completely wrong. Rock gives some examples of superior US technology like the P-51 Mustang (one of the best-performing fighters in the war), code-breaking, or use of radar technology as rebuttals.

Indeed, because Rock instead used a broad definition of technology as the "synthesis of logistics, standardization, communications, and operational integration" we reached similar conclusions. I've written about the ecosystem of small machine shops which can flexibly increase production and the need to demonstrate demand so that industry can ramp up from peacetime to wartime production.

One word that kept appearing in the discussion was "exquisite," and that jarred me. The "technological inferiority" argument uses this as a positive term (e.g. the "exquisite" German Tiger tank posited as vastly superior to the US Sherman), but that's not how I've seen it used. For me, an "exquisite" technology or system is one that is more complex than it needs to be: when it works, it's great, but it's too hard to produce/use/maintain and so is not actually effective. A mechanical watch painstakingly assembled from tiny gears but keeps worse time than a cheap quartz watch is exquisite. A luxury car that costs far more to maintain than its mainstream counterpart despite still transporting you to work is exquisite. "Exquisite" is not a compliment when the focus is on effectiveness at reasonable cost, and often implies a lack of effectiveness even at unreasonable cost.

Modern warfare requires complex systems, but "exquisite" systems are ones that are too complex for their effective use (or manufacturing or maintenance). If a country is said to build exquisite military systems, that is a criticism of that country. "Robust," "effective", and "available in useful quantity" are far more desirable in any situation.