Neil Armstrong.

Neil Armstrong was one of the most famous Americans of the 20th century, but by the mid-1970s was already shying away from the public eye, preferring the life of a college professor while teaching engineering at the University of Cincinnati. In a rare public appearance, he addressed a pint meeting of the American Defense Preparedness Association's Cincinnati-Dayton Chapter on May 1, 1978, and true to form didn't mention the Apollo program or the moon landing once. His speech, "A Citizen Looks at National Defense," focused instead on military preparedness.

We have relied on our superior quality of forces, the superior education, training and equipment of the American fighting man. Now some critics warn that this may no longer be true: the communist ground forces are increasingly better educated, trained, and motivated, while the quality of the American soldier is said to have degraded, partly due to the lower educational level inherent in switching from the draft to the volunteer Army, and partly due to a decline in morale.

NATO has enjoyed an advantage in quality of weapons. As the Soviets increased their production war machine to a rate perhaps four times ours, the advantage has slowly eroded. Warsaw Pact weaponry today is generally more modern than NATO equipment. Soviet tactical air strength has drawn about even and perhaps overtaken NATO in both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. The Soviet navy continues to grow and is well on its way to becoming the strongest seaborne force in the world.

We have no indication that the trend is changing. The American citizenry is unlikely to support an increased American presence in Europe, in fact, I sense the opposite is more likely. Nor are they enthusiastic about increasing the defense budget, in spite of the fact that, over the last half-dozen years, spending for social needs has grown four times as fast as that for defense. The Russian trend, on the other hand, has shown little evidence of diminishing.

It clearly leaves the military with a tough challenge. Goliath can only be matched by a David who can outsmart him. Battlefield intelligence and more effective weaponry worked for David.

In World War I, both aircraft and dirigibles were being used as bombers, hitting not the combat areas, but sensitive defense and industrial areas, perhaps the first strategic action in the modern sense. By World War II, thanks to Gen. Billy Mitchell and others, aerial bombing was an integral part of the American...