A fascinating thing occurs when a fighter pilot realizes his aircraft is equipped with a radar. It’s on his second or third flight after being assigned to a fleet model while he’s cruising on some jet route in the sunshine, snug wrapped in canvas and fire resistant nomex flipping switches he knows nothing about. Radars to him are lawn fixtures to get satellite cable, or just things rotating on control towers at airports. And why would an airplane even need to transmit anything in the first place.

The only issues of significance stem from the seat of one’s pants. Airflow, fuel supply, and aerodynamic feedback. Everything else just detracts from the view. But admittedly some new confusion emerges about how flying might be more than dynamics. About how the screens that he keeps fiddling with might actually contain symbols that have meaning. And how they might somehow be connected to all those conversations between superiors that he can’t seem to ever keep up with.

It either registers at this point that he’s part of something bigger, or it dies there and is left unaddressed forever. Either way, within a few weeks of the commencement of training, he is summoned along with his classmates into the corner of a quiet room where a black safe sits waiting under guard. The padlock is undone and the contents are put on display. Four tactical manuals measuring several inches thick containing the details of every air threat in existence. Surface-to-air missiles. Shoulder-fired manpads. Russian and Chinese MIG aircraft along with every missile they are thought to be carrying. Their maximum ranges. Who manufactured them. Where and when and how many have been exported since.

It eventually becomes apparent that flying encompasses more than just being airborne. That one’s nosecone houses an instrument that is only one part of a giant electromagnetic puzzle. A webwork of tactics that, instead of determining, are rather fueled by what’s out there. What the other guy has. How to beat it. And it doesn’t take a lot of time to get clued in to the fact that the only window into this world is through one’s radar.

In the days that follow, these manuals are gradually employed in filling pilots with rote data. And sooner or later they tune into the fact that all answers are to be sought from the source. It’s at that point that these four scrolls become equivalent to gospel, and even lauded as being written in blood. One chapter actually welcomes them with this:  

It has been said that the history of failure in war can be summed up with the words 'too late'.  While the origin of war can be traced back 5000 years, it can be argued that the most basic objective of combat since the first battle in history has always been, in simplest terms, to hit the other guy before he hits you.  Consequently, success in achieving that objective has been contingent upon possessing either a longer reach or a faster punch.

In the earliest battles, men fought with clubs and daggers.  Later, their reach was lengthened with the use of spears, and then extended even farther by mounting those spears in bows and launching them as arrows.  The use of chariots soon took those same weapons closer and faster to the heart of the enemy than ever before.  With the invention of gunpowder, man's reach across the battlefield was even faster and farther in the form of bullets and artillery.  Eventually, those same weapons were mounted on sea-borne chariots in the form of ships, and later on mechanized chariots in the form of tanks.  Ultimately, the chariots became airborne, turning the two dimensional battlefield into a three dimensional battlespace.

Although technology has changed significantly over the past 5000 years, that fundamental objective of hitting the enemy before being hit remains unchanged.  Furthermore, it is apparent now, more than ever before, that the most important dimension on today's modern battlefield is the dimension of time.  If one can act before his opponent and force his adversary to react, he can effectively seize the offensive advantage and keep the opponent constantly on the defensive.  Nowhere is this principle more important than in the realm of modern aerial combat where the chariots are now supersonic, the punches are thrown at nearly four times the speed of sound, and the knockouts are permanent

David A. Robinson is an F-18 pilot and former Top Gun instructor who authored the above paragraphs as a Major. They could quite possibly be the most brilliant summation of why weapons symbolize not action, but passivity. Why their design and employment are never meant to provide solutions, and will at best only make them precursors to others. Why the peaceful resolution of any international quarrel would by definition negate the existence of this skill set.

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