Riding the tide: quantum leaps in technology—a century in the making

The sun sets behind a radar station at Barter Island, Alaska, in this 1987 photo of one of 30 stations that composed the distant early warning line. The north warning system replaced the distant early warning line in the early 1990s and is used to provide survillance of potential attack routes via Arctic airspace. The system includes 15 long-range and 39 short-range radars in Canada and Alaska along the northern edge of North America. The state-of-the-art radars form a 3,000-mile-long and 200-mile-wide "tripwire" stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland. The development of radar technology accelerated during World II in the effort to detect from Germany.

The centennial of flight is paved with technological breakthroughs and quantum leaps such as radar, jet engines, precision guided missiles and nuclear weapons. But the journey has demanded 100 years of steady, painstaking work built upon the triumphs and failures of succeeding generations.

In Bob van der Linden's opinion, the most important milestone during the past 100 years occurred at the beginning of powered flight on Dec. 17, 1903. On a sand dune at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Orville Wright accomplished the first heavier-than-air machine flight.

"They [Orville and Wilbur Wright] figured out how to fly. No one else had done that," said van der Linden, a curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., when asked by Airman.

That historic flight also topped Maj. Gen. Paul Nielsen's list as the century's most significant technological advancement.

"For thousands of years, man and woman dreamed of flying," said Nielsen, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. The lab leads the discovery, development and integration of warfighting technologies for air and space forces.

But it was only 66 years after Kitty Hawk, Nielsen noted, that man ascended from sandy dunes to the dusty surface of the moon. Nielsen used the quote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" from Sir Isaac Newton, to express how science and technology continues to build upon past advances. And the advances have been many.

Radar, which stands for radio detecting and ranging, also made the short list of top achievements for several scientists and Air Force leaders, Development accelerated quickly during World War II when England used the then-classified technology to establish a chain of radar stations around the British Isles to detect German attacks by air and sea. In addition to detecting enemy aircraft, the radar beam also echoed from precipitation, which proved a valuable tool in war planning.

"It carried the day for them. It allowed the British to withstand the onslaught" of German air attacks, said Col. Robert Newnam, vice commander of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The center gauges the capability of new systems to meet warfighter needs by planning, testing and reporting independent operational evaluations.

Describing radar as the first big innovation during the centennial of flight, Newnam noted that further development and refinement of radar allowed expanded use in areas such as identifying targets.

From his list that includes aluminum aircraft structures, synchronizing machine guns to fire through propellers, the bombsight, rocket engines, intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite communications, Brig. Gen. William Shelton chose jet engines and nuclear weapons as most significant.

"Jet engines opened up new flight regimes not possible with propeller-driven airplanes," said Shelton, director of operations at Air Force Space Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.

Newnam also hailed the arrival of the jet engine as the "next big leap" in technology. The transition from early aircraft such as the F-86 to the F-15 marked a big leap in the progression of jet engines. But the latest and greatest model, the F/A-22, Newnam likens to "jumping across the Grand Canyon" in terms of technological capability.

Early leaps

The origin of the jet engine is linked both to German Dr. Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain and British aviation engineer and pilot Sir Frank Whittle. Both men conducted research on the jet engine during the 1930s separately, and knew nothing of each other's work. On Aug. 27, 1939, test pilot Erich Warsitz made the first successful flight of a Henkel He-178 aircraft powered by an He S-3 turbojet engine developed by von Ohain. Germany used jet fighters toward the end of World War II. For their achievement, von Ohain and Whittle received the Charles Draper Prize -- the equivalent to the Nobel Prize in technology - in 1992.

Shelton, who has a master's degree in astronautical engineering, also chose nuclear weapons because "they changed the calculus of warfare."

Also making a huge impact were precision guided munitions, according to James Douglas Marlowe, technical director for the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center and a former fighter pilot.