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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 101
R&D activities in these laboratories through the 1970s covered a broad range
of topics, from testing and standardization—Wright’s traditional field of expertise
dating back to World War I—to the development of semiconductor devices
for avionics systems and high-strength, temperature-resistant metal alloys and
composite materials for critical aircraft components used on the McDonnell-
Douglas F–15 tactical fighter, General Dynamics F–111 fighter-bomber, and
the Rockwell B–1 strategic bomber. 94
By the mid-1970s, while these and other programs proceeded at the Wright
Air Development Division, the headquarters staff of the Air Force Systems
Command executed a sweeping reorganization of its in-house laboratories.
Several factors had prompted action: tightening budgets, rising inflation, and
ongoing debates within the Department of Defense, Congress, and AFSC about
the extent to which research and development should be more narrowly focused
on practical results applicable to service requirements. 95 R&D facilities closed,
merged, or were transferred to other locations in response to this realignment of
mission priorities.
In 1970, the Office of Aerospace Research was abolished, and its constituent
organizations—Office of Scientific Research, electronics and geophysics
directorates at the Cambridge Research Center, and WADD’s Aeronautical
Research Laboratory—were reassigned to AFSC headquarters, though no
longer reporting directly to the Air Force chief of staff. Declining funding levels
“forced [OSR] to focus more sharply on contracting for basic research with clear
links to present and future [Air Force] requirements,” Aviation Week and Space
Technology reported in 1974. Some seemingly esoteric fields that had received
substantial support in the past, such as nuclear physics, were dropped entirely
94 W. C. Wetmore, “Flight Laboratory Pushes Joint Projects,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 101
(15 July 1974): 136, 138; “Research Lab Studies Air Force Needs,” Aviation Week and Space Technology
101 (15 July 1974): 251, 253–54; “Propulsion Lab Refines Engine Designs,” Aviation Week and Space
Technology 101 (15 July 1974): 247–48; “Materials Lab Focuses on Top Priorities,” Aviation Week and Space
Technology 101 (15 July 1974): 235, 237–38. Electronics R&D at Wright also included pilot production of
new semiconductor materials in the avionics laboratory’s electronics technology division. By the late 1970s,
division researchers and their counterparts working on contract at Hewlett-Packard, McDonnell-Douglas,
Rockwell, and Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge, had identified gallium-arsenide as a possible replacement
for silicon devices used in aircraft avionics systems, such as signal processors in radar and electronic
countermeasures equipment. Gallium-arsenide microcircuits operated at higher speeds than silicon devices
(while maintaining high power and low noise levels), but work with these microcircuits in the civilian sector
had been limited because of silicon’s dominance in the consumer and industrial markets served by the major
semiconductor firms. The manufacturing facility in the electronics technology division was built to help
encourage industrial participation in the development of advanced semiconductor materials. In addition
to serving as a conduit for the exchange of technical information between researchers at Wright and their
collaborators in industry, the facility also enabled the Air Force to procure critical semiconductor materials
for operational systems no longer produced in the private sector. “Weapon System Capabilities Explored,”
Aviation Week and Space Technology 110 (29 January 1979): 186–89; Klass, “Avionics Lab Expanding
Applications,” 213–15.
95 For an insightful analysis of how changing views about the relevance of R&D to military
requirements affected industrial contractors during this period, see Glen R. Asner, “The Linear Model, the
U.S. Department of Defense, and the Golden Age of Industrial Research,” in The Science-Industry Nexus:
History, Policy, Implications, ed. Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm (Sagamore Beach,
Mass.: Science History Publications, 2004).