CHAPTER 10
The Search for Atomic
Age Divisions
Since we cannot equal our potential enemies on a man for man basis, we must give our soldiers the means of increasing their effective firepower and we must create an organization to control it.
Col. Stanley N. Lonning[1]
After the Korean War the Eisenhower administration adopted a military posture that emphasized nuclear capability through air power rather than ground combat. Three considerations dictated this change: limited resources, a worldwide commitment to contain communism, and the desire to reduce defense spending. Given the declining number of ground combat troops, the Army fielded fewer divisions, but because the possibility of nuclear war remained, Army leaders wanted to devise units that could fight and survive on a nuclear as well as on a conventional battlefield. The divisions developed by the Army for the two combat environments were smaller than in the past, and they were authorized weapons and equipment still under development and not yet in the inventory. The newly designed divisions, however, staked out a role for the Army on the atomic battlefield, which justified appeals for funds to develop new weapons.
Exploring Alternative Divisions
Some Army planners thought a general war would be too costly to wage by conventional means because the Communist bloc could field more men and resources than the United States and its allies. Firepower appeared to be the answer for overcoming the enemy. Ever since the United States dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945, American military planners had pondered the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. The Army, however, was hampered in its effort to understand the effects of tactical nuclear weapons by the lack of data. Studies suggested that nuclear weapons could be used much like conventional artillery. To achieve the aim of increased firepower with decreased manpower, the Army began to take a closer look at that proposition in the early 1950s.[2]
As had happened between World Wars I and II, the new divisional studies began with the infantry regiment. Army Field Forces initiated the studies in 1952,
- ↑ Col Stanley N. Lonning to Acting Assistant Commandant, The Infantry School (TIS), 23 Apt 53, sub: Proposed Reorganization of the Infantry and Airborne Divisions, UA 27.51 15 (4/23/53), Infantry School Library (ISL), Fort Benning, Ga.
- ↑ John J. Midgley, Deadly Illusions: Army Policy for the Nuclear Battlefield (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 2–5.
