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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 105 Air Force Logistics Command into a newly reconstituted Air Force Materiel Command (with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in 1992, thus completing a cycle that had begun with the institutional separation of these functions more than four decades earlier. 107 Coming Full Circle: Patterns of Organizational Change in Air Force R&D Since 1945 In 1997, Gen. Lew Allen, retired Air Force chief of staff, commented on what he believed to be the challenges facing the in-house laboratories managed by the new Air Force Materiel Command: [The] consolidation reduces personnel and is consistent with the reduction in force required by the Air Force. However, R&D tends to be subordinated to logistics, because logistic problems are often urgent and affect readiness. The danger is that the long-term view is sacrificed to short-term issues. The Air Force laboratories have encountered their share of criticism and recently have been judged unresponsive to the needs of the operational Air Force. The laboratories are now placed under the control of the product centers. It is hoped that leaner, more nimble laboratories will result but, again, the risk is a focus on the immediate problems at the expense of long-term research. 108 Effectively managing this “risk” had been an ongoing effort in the Air Force since 1947. To be sure, Allen’s views were neither atypical nor necessarily misinformed. They had perhaps derived from his experience as a practicing physicist in the Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in the 1950s and then were developed and refined over the course of his subsequent rise through the administrative ranks to become commander of the Air Force Systems Command in 1977. Allen followed a long line of Air Force officers, who, in consultation with experts in the scientific community, had argued that successful weapons innovation depended upon the separation of R&D from procurement. Except for the decade of the 1950s, however, these functions operated side by side within the same organizational unit—the Air Materiel Command until 1950; the Air Force Systems Command between 1961 and 1992; and finally, the Air Force Materiel Command in the decade of the 1990s. R&D in the laboratories managed by these organizations proceeded along two separate but related lines. Throughout the postwar period, much of the work focused on technical support for the industrial contractors that manufactured the bulk of the weapon systems for the Air Force. Although testing, evaluation, 107 H. Viccello Jr., “The Past, Present, and Future of AFMC,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 146 (16 April 1997): 38, 41; Benson, Acquisition Management in the United States Air Force and Its Predecessors, 2. 108 L. Allen, “Science Remains Key to Air Supremacy,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 146 (16 April 1997): 60.
106 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 and standardization predominated, scientific and engineering studies of all types, regardless of the definitions or categories (e.g., basic, applied, fundamental, product-oriented) assigned to them by the Air Staff, were also supported by the service laboratories in line with evolving Air Force requirements. The laboratories focused on three major technologies after World War II—jet propulsion systems for tactical and strategic aircraft, microelectronics for ground-based and airborne avionics, and long-range ballistic missile systems equipped with nuclear weapons. At the same time, they diversified into state-of-the-art fields, ranging from laser and particle-beam weapons to artificial intelligence. Because it lacked the same type of institutional infrastructure that constituted the Army’s arsenal system and the Navy’s network of shipyards, the Air Force relied much more heavily on the private sector for the requisite technical expertise and manufacturing know-how required to turn out aircraft and other advanced weapon systems. According to one estimate reported in Aviation Week in 1953, the Air Research and Development Command allocated nearly 90 percent of its R&D funds to civilian contractors that year, while the Army and the Navy distributed 45 percent and 65 percent, respectively, to external vendors. 109 The absence of an in-house production capability, however, did not preclude the existence of a significant internal R&D function in the Air Force. Since its establishment as the Army Air Corps before World War II, the Air Force had maintained a broad knowledge base in science and engineering, initially concentrated at Wright Field in Ohio, but later replicated and dispersed among laboratories and testing facilities located throughout the United States. The institutional structure of Air Force R&D after 1945 differed from its Army and Navy counterparts in degree, not in kind. Throughout all three services, with the exception of the Naval Research Laboratory, in-house studies were conducted in direct support of weapons development programs. The content and scope of such work typically covered a broad range of mutually supporting subjects, from less-frequent fundamental investigations of scientific phenomena to the far more common functions of testing, evaluation, standardization, and prototype production of weapon systems and components. Similarly, in the case of speculative research unrelated to specific weapons requirements, the services established special program offices, such as the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, to manage contracts distributed to universities and other privatesector R&D organizations. The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that institutional change in the Air Force’s R&D establishment after World War II was driven more by strategic considerations and evolving weapons requirements than by broad policies designed to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict between advocates of an independent R&D operation separate from production and procurement and those who favored the merger of these functions into a single organization. Because the laboratories at Wright Field were not equipped to test jet engines and their components, the Air Force established a new facility to fulfill this 109 “ARDC Molds U.S. Air Development,” Aviation Week 59 (17 August 1953): 75.
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