ABSTRACT
To evoke the intense loyalty without which combat is impossible, armed forces must be clannish and conservative, proud keepers of exclusive traditions and reassuring continuities. By the time Admiral William A. Owens became the second-highest uniformed officer in the land, as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1994, he had become convinced that the US armed forces had the opportunity to achieve spectacular progress across the board. Military historians know that Owens' systems of systems is not an original American invention: it merely renames the "Reconnaissance-Strike System" brilliantly advocated by Marshal Ogarkov, chief of the Soviet General Staff in the Brezhnev years, evidently as overflowing in its ideas as it was lacking in computers. Owens arguments' logic and his budget arithmetic were both compelling was not enough. Only congress could force the Pentagon to listen to Owens and create new electronics-centered forces, instead of their current, mechanized 1945 forces kitted out with computers.
