Jim Bennett has a good column about...well...lots of things, including idiotic grandstanding politicians, but Transterrestrial regulars may find this part of interest:

During peacetime, military bureaucracies historically tended to follow the pattern of civilian ones: stick to the rules, and beware innovation. During the stress of wartime, especially when things weren't going well, militaries, to be successful, had to find a way to encourage and use innovation. Thus the military, unlike civilian bureaucracies, had legends of rule-breaking innovators that saved the day -- sometimes literally. During the American Civil War, the innovative Union armored warship Monitor steamed into Hampton Roads the day after the similarly innovative Confederate ironclad, the Virginia, had decimated the wooden-hulled Union fleet. It is also a comment on the relative flexibility of military bureaucracies versus civilian ones to note the amount of time it took the British admiralty to give up on the wooden warship once news of that battle reached London: all wooden warships under construction were cancelled the next day.

Thus, when in 1957 the Soviets challenged the West by launching the first satellite, Sputnik, President Eisenhower reacted by creating two new government organizations. One became NASA, which went on to create the American civil space program (also conveniently drawing attention away from the already-massive American military space program, which had been drawing close to deploying the first reconnaissance satellites.) The second was a military agency, DARPA, which was a classic example of the military reaction under challenge -- innovate and take risks. Although NASA became instantly famous, DARPA labored in mostly-welcome obscurity for decades, creating the occasional little invention like the Internet.

I found it particularly interesting in that I read it shortly after returning home from a meeting with someone fairly high in the ranks of the Air Force, at which we discussed this very problem.

The link doesn't work, it opens an about: blank window

Sorry about that--it's fixed now.

I think that military inovation and our love for military weaponry is based on Fundamental Design principles. Below is a copy of a short essay I did that talks about this:

What is our fascination with Military Weapons? If it isn't that we are all killers and want of destruction, what is it? As an analytical designer, I believe that what people are really seeing (and love) in both historic and modern weapons are 'designs' that are 'purpose-built:' dedicated machines that truly excel at what they were meant to do! The fact that they're for war isn't what attracts us. It is their embodiment of serious thought and 'functionality' that so entices us, but which is so lacking in other parts of society. Would an M-1 tank sport frillies and other wasteful, non-critical 'esthetics' like a false hood-scoop and spoilers? No, of course not! Our clamor for esthetics is the opposite: a 'false desire' geared more for displaying wealth in a 'class system' than it is a true 'inner call' for effectiveness and functionality!
Realizing what our true fascination is with weapons, will finally allow us to apply the exact same ‘Fundamental Design Principals’ that the military uses so deliberately and decisively (like proportionality, streamlined systems, and complementing/non-overlapping designs) throughout the rest of our otherwise everyday/humdrum society. What is ‘required’ by careful analysis will replace those things we only thought we wanted. The space station, to provide an example, is something we thought we wanted - just for the sake of having - but which we used ‘false logic’ to justify. Instead of deliberately and methodically tailoring the station to support future moon missions, orbital construction or using it as a supersensitive Terra/Envisat-like sensor platform (as well as to find WMD), we chose to justify it only to test microgravity research and to spawn international cooperation. International cooperation is supposed to be the key that allows you to get more of what you want -not become one of the sole justifications for it!

Cold war inventions needed to keep pace with the much more numerous Soviet forces wasn't based on us having better technology. It was based on 'packaging it up' into 'systems' designed to meet the demanding 'requirements' of the day. Working within requirements and realistically evaluating the opponent, makes you come up with ideas like MLRS - a submunitions platform (no new technology (rockets and bombs) just a different package) to handle different circumstances.

This is a general overview. Yes, we had some advavnced tech over them as they indeed did over us.

Chris

I'm glad they got that detail right-- to this day, the CSS Virginia is commonly misidentified as the Merrimack. Virginia was built on what remained (the intact drive system) after USS Merrimack was burned to the waterline as the Confederates took control of Norfolk Navy Yard. Merrimack was a steam frigate that nominally had 3 masts for sails. Virginia had Merrimack's hull and steam drive, but its ironclad decks were a Confederate innovation.

Also, the Royal Navy may be receptive to change its ships, its traditions most certainly did not change-- It took decades to drop its resistance to the establishment of land-schooling for sailors and officers, it continued to train its officer candidates on wooden ships and all that goes with them, right into the 20th century (until the loss of one ship with all hands, mostly boys under 17), and it beat all sense if initiative out of its officer, a fact which cost them any hope of victory at Jutland (which arguably is what began to turn that tradition around).

On Tech-

Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.

contemporary ditty -1897

A side note that the British and French in their cross channel rivialry was already producing iron sided warships but not radical as the Americans so they were a little more ready to except the concept. Oddly after the Civil War most then modern inronships were scrapped, assigned to harbour defense, sold to South American nations or put up on blocks while wooden steam frigates surived for a few more decades in the US Navy. I remember reading the embarrasment of one USN officer docking along side a British armoured crusier of the 1870s in a Steam Frigate of the 1850s.

"DARPA labored in mostly-welcome obscurity for decades, creating the occasional little invention like the Internet."

Oh bummer, i always thought it was Al Gore who did that.
Oh and everybody knows that DARPA is doing some pointless and dangerous stuff, like sponsoring this whole Grand Challenge competition. They should just give the money to some robotics company.
Heavens forbid, with more than 40 teams signed up, some of them might actually _make it_ and thats just not what we want.