《AIR AND SPACE FORCE CLIMBING AND ACCELEERATING翻译》.doc

AIR AND SPACE FORCE: CLIMBING AND ACCELEERATING 空天力量：攀登与加速 Richard P. Hallion 理查德?哈里恩 A century has passed since the advent of the military airplane, and almost a century since the establishment of the world’s first air force. Invented in 1903, adopted by the military in 1908, flown in combat in 1911, the airplane proliferated and matured at a rate remarkable even by the standards of the electronic revolution of the same century. And in much the same fashion that the computer’s potential impact was largely missed--in 1945, a prominent member of a National Research Council study committee stated baldly that the United States will never need more than five or six electronic computers, missing the American computer market of a half-century later by a factor of tens of million--the airplane’s impact upon military affairs was, likewise, something few foresaw or appreciated. 自军用飞机诞生和世界首支空军的建立已经有将近一百年的历史了。自从其1903年被发明出来，1908年开始被军队接纳，并在1911年投入战斗中使用，军用飞机以令世人瞩目的速度急剧增多，渐趋成熟，其发展的速度甚至可以与同世纪的电子革命相媲美。同样，与电子计算机的潜在作用在很大程度上被忽视相类似，军用飞机的发展也几乎没有得到相应的重视：1945年，美国国家研究委员会的一位重要人士断言称，美国所需要的电子计算机数量绝不会超过5个或6个。这一言论直接导致了美国计算机市场的发展推迟了半个世纪之久以及数以百万计的销售机会被错失；无独有偶，在军事领域中所起到的作用同样没能被预见和足够重视。 A TROUBLED BIRTH 艰难的诞生 Developers and demonstrators of new technology typically encounter skepticism or derision, and in aeronautics it was ever thus. In August 1783, when Benjamin Franklin watched the ascent of a small unmanned hydrogen balloon over Paris as a “technology demonstrator” by scientist J.A.C.Charles and the brothers Jean and Noel Robert, an onlooker remarked, “Of what possible use of it?” Franklin shot back, “What is the use of a newborn babe?” The babe grew quickly: the balloon gave humanity its first “off-the-planet” observational vantage point, and not surprisingly, the balloon was soon adopted for military purposes. In April 1794, France Committee of Public Safety organized the world’s first aerial combat unit, and the following month it went to war for “l’observation des marches et mouvem