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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.
104 so u R c e s o f we a p o n sy s T e m s In n o v a T Io n In T h e depaR TmenT o f defense mission planning, threat awareness, monitoring of aircraft subsystems, and tactical coordination of friendly aircraft in combat conditions. The laboratories also focused their AI efforts on the development of automatic target recognition technology and expert systems to improve aircraft maintenance and diagnostic functions. The materials laboratory, by contrast, sought to apply AI concepts to aerospace manufacturing, especially to the development of automated technologies for flexible assembly. Although much of this work was contracted out to Honeywell and Martin-Marietta, the laboratory did operate an in-house facility that applied AI programming to manufacturing processes with the objective of reducing production times, lowering costs, and improving output quality. 103 As the decade of the 1980s drew to a close, the Air Force Systems Command employed more than half of the service’s scientists and engineers who worked in eight divisions: space systems; aeronautical systems; munitions systems; human systems; electronic systems; flight testing; foreign technology; and, lastly, the Arnold Engineering Development Center. 104 Further consolidation of the Air Force Systems Command’s in-house R&D functions had also culminated in the formation of four “super laboratories.” In addition to meeting required reductions in overhead and personnel precipitated by the end of the Cold War, Air Force leaders expected the consolidation of previously independent laboratories into four major centers would improve the responsiveness of R&D to the specific requirements of the weapons development divisions, a process that had been underway since the 1970s. 105 Those laboratories that did not provide direct technical support to weapons programs were simply absorbed into the new laboratories as auxiliary functions. 106 Meanwhile, ongoing efforts to streamline the weapons acquisition process as defense contractors resumed low-volume production prompted a merger of the Air Force Systems Command and the 103 “Air Force Systems Command Accelerates R&D Efforts,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 122 (22 April 1985): 67; “Wright Laboratories Broadens Advanced Technology Initiatives,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 122 (22 April 1985): 77–78; “Rome Air Development Center Focuses on Expert Systems Applications for C 3 , Natural Speech Technology,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 122 (22 April, 1985): 84; “Research at Aeronautical Systems Division Points to Airborne AI,” Defense Science and Electronics 6 (February 1987): 30–34. On DARPA’s strategic computing program, see Alex Roland with Philip Shiman, Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983–1993 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002). 104 “Air Force Systems Command,” Air Force Magazine 73 (May 1990): 67. 105 See J. W. Canan, “The Labs Move into the Mainstream,” Air Force Magazine 67 (April 1984): 55–59. 106 The Wright Laboratory served the aeronautical systems division through the management of six laboratories: the former materials, aeropropulsion and power, avionics, flight dynamics, and electronics laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the armament laboratory located at Eglin Air Force Base. The Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base provided technical support for the space division. This newly named facility combined Kirtland’s weapons laboratory and the geophysics and astronautics laboratories located at Hanscom and Edwards Air Force Bases. Essentially unchanged, the Rome Air Development Center continued to support C 3 I technology development for the electronic systems division. Finally, the human systems division drew its technical support from the Armstrong Research Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. This facility managed the human research, drug testing, and occupational and health laboratories at Brooks and the aerospace medical research laboratory at Wright- Patterson. D. F. Bond, “Air Force to Reduce Research Overhead with Mergers, Creation of Four ‘Superlabs’,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 133 (3 December 1990): 68–70.
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