Friday, June 20, 2025

Jove

Sippican Cottage found a scientist who coined a very useful phrase describing air forces (and some of the space force partisans): "Jupiter Complex."

"the ease with which they could keep erring mankind in order by threatening them (as if they were Jove himself) with atomic thunderbolts."

The same sort of dream plagued WW-2 ("The bombers will always get through" -- except they didn't, and they generally couldn't hit the broadside of a factory within a half a mile.), and I hear people touting the "rods from god" as though that would solve everything. Or that bunkerbusters will solve the last problems in Iran, to be up-to-the-minute about it.

Read it

2 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

If it were so surgical and precise it would be easy to support.

But getting in is easy, getting out is hard.

james said...

But it's never as thorough as planned, or as accurate as advertised, nor is one's knowledge as complete as believed, and there's the intangible of "getting their back up" among the people you weren't aiming at.