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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aR m y 33 The continued diversification of Watervliet’s Research and Engineering Division complemented this problem-oriented research on gun fabrication and performance. In 1969, the laboratories were modernized, and new facilities were built for research in experimental mechanics and thermodynamics, solid-state physics, electrochemistry, and physical chemistry. Moreover, Watervliet scientists also won high praise from the scientific community for their work on the theory of the mechanics of solids. A new research program in superconductivity arose out of this broad knowledge base in solid materials. A highly speculative field of investigation in which practical applications lay far in the future, superconductivity research at the arsenal in the 1970s and 1980s focused on exotic materials that exhibited unique magnetic and electrical properties. Studies of superconductivity at Watervliet Arsenal originated in the laboratory facilities dedicated to high-pressure testing, normally in the range of 200 kilobars (200,000 times normal atmospheric pressure). In 1973, a separate research program was established, focusing on the production of significantly higher pressures, in the range of 500 to 1,000 kilobars. Using these extremely high pressures, arsenal scientists sought to create entirely new materials. Their efforts began to pay off by the end of the decade, when the laboratory produced two new phases of bismuth, exhibiting unusually high electrical conductivity. Metallic states of sodium chloride, gallium phosphide, and boron were also produced for the first time. The limited metastability of these materials—that is, the extent to which they remained structurally intact outside a high-pressure environment—was a recurring problem, however. Most specimens were too unstable, but one—cadmium sulfide—maintained its integrity as a metal under normal atmospheric conditions, and it also exhibited unique magnetic properties. Other work along this general line of investigation included a search for metallic hydrogen, which prompted further work on superconductivity. 60 Speculative as it was, this research represented only a small fraction of the overall R&D effort at Watervliet Arsenal. In 1981, the arsenal’s research director confirmed the laboratory’s primary function: “We furnish the engineering for the arsenal[’s] products. . . . Our projects have led to better ways of making cannons.” 61 Decline of the Arsenal System By the time scientists and engineers at Watervliet Arsenal immersed themselves in research on superconducting materials, the arsenal system as a whole had already undergone a significant contraction that left only three of the original, old-line arsenals in operation by 1980. Springfield and Frankford arsenals were permanently closed; their research, development, and production functions were either phased out entirely, transferred to the remaining arsenals, or shifted to industrial contractors. Manufacturing facilities at Watertown 60 A History of Watervliet Arsenal, 1813 to Modernization 1982, 231; “Watervliet Arsenal Improves Laboratory Facilities,” Army Research and Development News Magazine 10 (March 1969): 19. 61 L. D. Kozaryn, “Watervliet Arsenal: Birthplace of the Army’s Big Guns,” Soldiers 36 (February 1981): 43.
34 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 Arsenal had also been shuttered. This outcome was prompted by the continued outsourcing of weapons R&D and production throughout the postwar period. 62 The sources of this trend were rooted in multiple and related causal events that evolved over time: the waning influence of the once-powerful and independent Army technical services; increasing centralization of weapons acquisition policies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; steadily rising productivity of private industry after the war and the corresponding expansion and diversification of corporate research and development into weapons-related fields; and the establishment and growth of a permanent captured market for those defense industries that manufactured military technologies during the Cold War. Perhaps the most significant causal event that signaled the demise of the arsenal system was the gradual centralization of decision-making authority within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a process that began in 1947 and culminated in the elimination of the independent status of the Army technical services nearly two decades later. 63 Until that time, the Ordnance Department and the other six technical services operated as autonomous organizations under the direction of a relatively weak Army Staff. In 1962, however, institutional rigidity within the Army’s procurement system prompted Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to wrest control of the weapons acquisition process from the technical services and place it within a new centralized unit—the Army Materiel Command. The establishment of AMC did result in some organizational division of labor between R&D and production and procurement at the laboratory level, but this outcome may not have met the expectations originally envisioned by the civilian scientists, such as Vannevar Bush, and like-minded Army leaders who favored a more complete separation of these functions. Research and development in the Army remained intimately connected to weapons production and procurement throughout the Cold War. High-level disagreements among civilian and military policymakers about the structure, function, and organization of research and development did not necessarily capture the operational realities of weapons innovation in the arsenals. A disjunction sometimes existed between the policies designed to manage innovation and the actual workings of that process in the arsenal system. The embrace of research, development, and production within the same institutional setting—exemplified in the metals research programs at Frankford and Watertown arsenals—proved to be highly successful during the postwar period. To be sure, this outcome also depended on the Army’s established priorities and institutional patterns of funding and resource allocation. Much more historical 62 In 1960, for example, the government financed nearly 60 percent of the research and development conducted in industry, largely through contracts awarded by the Department of Defense. Merton J. Peck and Frederic M. Scherer, The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis (Boston: Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1962), 215. For additional quantitative data on Defense Department funding of industrial research after World War II, see Nathan Rosenberg and David C. Mowery, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 6. 63 See Roger R. Trask and Alfred Goldberg, The Department of Defense, 1947–1997: Organization and Leaders (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997), 1–53, esp. 31–34.
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