Benjamin S. Kelsey - The Dragon's Teeth?

The Dragon's Teeth?

As the occupant of the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum, Kelsey wrote an overview of American aircraft development before and during World War II. The research was conducted in 1979 and 1980. Kelsey died of cancer at age 74 on March 3, 1981 at his home in Stevensburg, Virginia. The Dragon's Teeth?: The Creation of United States Air Power for World War II was published posthumously by the Smithsonian Institution in 1982.

In The Dragon's Teeth?, Kelsey observed that, for proper defense, a nation must maintain a "force in being", the same concept as 'fleet in being' but applied to the entire military of a nation at peace. He predicted that "Specific measures to counter a specific threat will almost guarantee that if an emergency occurs it will be in a different place and of a different nature." Instead of trying to solve every military challenge in advance, Kelsey wrote that a nation must save its money and keep a core of military engineering and manufacturing industries alive by giving them enough business so that they don't disappear. In response to an attack, these industries could quickly expand to meet the challenge. Kelsey compared this careful husbanding of the potential for war-making effort with the myth of Cadmus, a Phoenician prince who supposedly sowed dragon's teeth in the ground to create an instant army.