To download as a PDF click here - US Army Center Of Military History

ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 103
Since its founding in 1950, the Rome Air Development Center had functioned
primarily as a testing and evaluation organization for avionics technologies
manufactured in industry. Component and device development was also part of
Rome’s mission but only to the extent that it supported the electronics programs
outsourced to private contractors. The transfer of more than two hundred
R&D personnel from Hanscom to Griffiss Air Force Base, however, “expanded
[Rome’s] activities in the research end of the field,” Aviation Week and Space
Technology reported in the summer of 1976. Practically overnight, Rome acquired
a more extensive knowledge base in solid-state science and technology, which
complemented the center’s ongoing programs to develop integrated electronic
systems for ground and airborne avionics—a function collectively known at
the time as command, control, communications, and intelligence (C 3 I). 100 R&D
in these fields had originated at the Cambridge Research Laboratories during
World War II and expanded rapidly during the postwar period, especially after
the invention of the transistor at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1947 and
then amid the proliferation of semiconductor technology in the decades that
followed. By the early 1960s, for example, Cambridge researchers were busy
synthesizing and purifying single crystals and other electronic materials, studying
their properties and behavior, fabricating experimental solid-state devices, and
investigating the effects of radiation exposure on semiconductors. By the late
1970s, these and related fields of electronics R&D were firmly entrenched at
Rome. 101
In the mid-1980s, the Rome Air Development Center’s C 3 I program
expanded to include a new R&D initiative in artificial intelligence (AI) funded
by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Carrying out this expansion largely
through contracts with universities and industrial firms, Rome awarded a
five-year, $8.2 million contract to a consortium of eight, regional academic
institutions, led by Syracuse University, to fund AI research and development
and encourage more students to enter the field. 102 Rome also worked closely with
the Wright Aeronautical Laboratories to promote industrial participation. Work
at Wright proceeded along two different but related lines. The flight dynamics
and avionics laboratories collaborated with industrial contractors—primarily
McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, Martin-Marietta, and Honeywell—to develop
pilot assistance systems, based on parallel processor technology funded by
ARPA’s strategic computing program. Representative examples included
100 A. T. Culbertson, “Scheduling Electronic Invention,” Astronautics and Aeronautics 4 (March 1966):
42–44; “Rome Develops New Relations with ESD,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 105 (19 July
1976): 203–05; “Electronic Technology Aims Changed,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 110 (29
January 1979): 221.
101 “OAR Upgraded, Up-Funded for Research,” 123; C. Pugh, “On Discovery’s Threshold,” Airman 26
( January 1982): 29–35. Aviation Week and Space Technology reported in 1979 that “expertise [at Rome] is
being applied to more general fields, such as improving the radiation resistance of semiconductor devices,
which has application to airborne and spaceborne avionics.” See “Electronic Technology Aims Changed,”
Aviation Week and Space Technology 110 (29 January 1979): 221.
102 In addition to Syracuse, the consortium included the University of Massachusetts, University
of Rochester, State University of New York at Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson University, and Colgate University.