Jr I B Holley

Ideas and Weapons Jr I B Holley

Professor Irving Brinton Holley, Jr.'s "Ideas and Weapons" remains one of the finest texts ever written on the history of warfare and weapons acquisition. Given the enormous destructive capacity of precision weapons in the modern era, and the inherent vulnerabilities of modern society to high technology attack, this book is more relevant today than when it was first written, in the midst of the nuclear age. As Profession Holley amply demonstrates, since antiquity the side with superior weapons has almost inevitably emerged victorious from conflict. With the rapid development of science and technology from 1945 onward, the history of the Air Force itself has, in many ways, been the history of weapons development. Informed decision-making can ensure that future weapons choices reflect the experience and lessons of the past. This book attempts to explore something of the background of the contemporary air weapon. The study was undertaken in an effort to distill from past experience in the development of air material those lessons which might be of help in formulating policies for exploiting the air weapons more successfully in the future. If the lessons derived are sound, it may be possible to find some principles for developing weapons in general.