ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the relationship between defense strategy and military technology. Military uses of technology can be offensive, defensive, or preventative. For most of the century, the American military has put technology at the forefront of military planning. The chapter focuses on three offset strategies. For one thing, nuclear deterrence strategy—the central tenet of the First Offset Strategy—did little to prevent lower-intensity conventional wars around the world, like the Vietnam Conflict or Arab-Israeli confrontations in the Middle East. Facing the military and economic challenges, President Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, and his Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, William J. Perry, developed what became known as the Second Offset. Secretary Hagel outlined the specific technologies that he saw as the focus of the Third Offset, echoing the long-ago ideas of Hap Arnold, as he called for closer collaboration between the Pentagon and civilian technology experts.
