Defense: The Whizziest Kid

Although inevitably some people will resent the application of dispassionate, cold analysis to something as rich in meaning and tradition as warfare and strategy, there is no sensible alternative in the nuclear age.

So said Dr. Alain C. Enthoven, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis, in a lecture this month to the Naval War College at Newport, R.I. Enthoven (rhymes with went rov-in’) was certainly right about one thing: when he starts submitting defense policy to his dispassionate, cold analysis, generals explode and admirals shiver their timbers. For of all Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s famed Pentagon whiz kids, Enthoven, at 32, is by far the whizziest.

The Shopping List. What is a whiz kid? Well, by definition he is young and bright. The tools of his Pentagon trade are a piece of chalk, a blackboard on which to slash equations, and a computing machine. Dispassionate, cold analysis is his business, and Systems Analyst Enthoven has no peer. His analysis of the workings of the Pentagon goes as follows: “I think it can best be described as a continuing dialogue between the policymaker and the systems analyst, in which the policymaker [McNamara] asks for alternative solutions to his problems, while the analyst attempts to clarify the conceptual framework in which the decisions must be made, to define alternative possible objectives and criteria, and to explore in as clear terms as possible (and quantitatively) the cost and effectiveness of alternative courses of action.”

In somewhat simpler terms, what Enthoven really does is prepare McNamara’s shopping list. He welcomes, indeed he solicits, recommendations about weapons systems from professional military men. But as often as not, those recommendations do not stand up under his own independent analysis; in whiz-kid terminology, professional military “experience” often translates as “emotion.” In his analyses, Enthoven considers service missions, examines the weapons systems that might best fit those missions, computes costs v. performance, offers alternative answers to McNamara for final decision.

Cost is of prime consideration when Enthoven strikes items from the Pentagon shopping list. On his recommendation, the Skybolt missile was killed for a gross saving of $3 billion. However, to replace the missing Skybolts, the U.S. is spending an additional $1 billion for supplementary Minutemen, so the net saving is $2 billion. Enthoven’s recommendations knocked off an estimated $10 billion with the B-70, but his 26-man “shop” did not participate in the controversial TFX decision.

On the positive side, Enthoven influenced the expansion of the Air Force’s Tactical Air Command. At present, Enthoven is examining the Navy’s carrier program to see if all those flattops are really necessary.

The Uphill Fight. How does one get to be a pre-eminent whiz kid? Alain Enthoven was born in Seattle, the son of a French mother and a British father with a Dutch name. He majored in economics at Stanford, went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and, as a lanky 6-foot 4-incher, rowed No. 4 on the New College crew. As a mathematician and economist he spent four years with California’s think factory, the Rand Corp., just pondering military strategy. And then, in 1960, he went to the Pentagon.

When he first got there, he seemed pretty arrogant to a lot of people. He had a disconcerting habit of pausing in the middle of a sentence to ask “O.K.?”, as if his listener were mired two ideas behind him. He still does—but the habit has been accepted by those who work with him most closely. “He has improved a lot in tolerance,” says one Navy admiral. “Whenever he gets too stuffy, I just look up over my glasses at him and say, ‘Yes, Professor,’ and he breaks down and laughs.”

Enthoven is plenty smart enough to know that the whiz-kid image needs improving, both in and outside the Pentagon. And to that end he has undertaken a missionary project, speaking at every stronghold of the military mind. Last week he opened a four-week systems analysis workshop for Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps officers.

Whatever the result of this effort may be, Enthoven will still stick by his chalk and blackboard. Said he at a Naval War College talk: “We must make defense planning and the selection of weapon systems an intellectual rather than an emotional process. To do so, we must turn our attention to the question of what’s right, not who’s right.” There can be little argument with that —as long as the what’s right really is.