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Conclusion: Review and Retrospect
ch a p T e R fIve
On 30 June 1953, Donald Putt became the commanding general of the Air
Research and Development Command (ARDC), which had been established
three years earlier to manage and coordinate the Air Force’s entire research and
development (R&D) program. In an article about Air Force R&D published in
Aviation Week shortly after his appointment, Putt commented on ARDC’s role
in the development of new weapon systems:
ARDC’s job is not to actually do the research and development job. . . . For that we
rely primarily on industry, universities, and civilian research organizations. Our job is
to tell these groups the problems the Air Force wants to solve and to program, finance,
monitor and evaluate the work necessary to solve them. In turn, we keep the Air Force
informed on the kind of equipment they are likely to get at any given time because of the
“state of the art” in any particular field. 1
Putt’s comments were not unique to the Air Force. A similar institutional
strategy guided weapons innovation in the Army and the Navy after World War
II. Although less dependent on the private sector than the Air Force, both services
relied on universities and industrial firms to generate the scientific and engineering
expertise required to develop and manufacture new weapons technologies, ranging
from high-strength materials for conventional ordnance to nuclear-powered
propulsion systems for ballistic missile submarines. The expanding role of privatesector
institutions in weapons development and production during the Cold War
was driven by separate but mutually reinforcing causal events: the waning influence
of the Army’s technical services and the Navy’s material bureaus and the increasing
centralization of decision-making authority within the Office of the Secretary
of Defense (OSD); continued expansion of research universities in the United
States; and the rapid growth and diversification of the research, development, and
production functions in America’s science-based industries.
These events and the sweeping changes prompted by their occurrence
proceeded alongside an internal debate that continued to alter the institutional
landscape of research and development in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force
after 1945. Vannevar Bush, Theodore von Kármán, Louis Ridenour, and other
civilian experts acting on behalf of the military services believed that the separation
of the management of R&D from production was a necessary prerequisite to
effective weapons innovation. Critics of this viewpoint, such as Air Force generals
1 Putt quoted in “ARDC Molds U.S. Air Development,” Aviation Week 59 (17 August, 1953): 75.