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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aR m y 35
research on this subject is needed, but the evidence presented in this chapter
suggests that the commitment to the organizational separation of R&D from
production, partially grounded in views expressed by Bush and other civilian
and military policymakers, may have precluded a more nuanced evaluation of
the limits of technological innovation within the arsenal system.
Whether such an evaluation would have altered perceptions and policies
leading to a more active role for the arsenals during the later years of the Cold
War is questionable, given the continued shift of weapons procurement from
public to private-sector institutions. Defense Secretary McNamara’s decision to
centralize weapons acquisition policy within OSD was not based entirely on
notions of administrative reform and institutional efficiency. To be sure, his prior
experience as a senior executive at the Ford Motor Company had manifested
itself in various policies to rationalize Defense Department operations along the
lines adopted by business managers in large industrial corporations. Moreover,
the controversy and embarrassment that surrounded the failure of the Springfield
Armory to develop quickly a suitable replacement—the M14—for the existing
M1 rifle then in service prompted a sequence of contemptuous responses from
McNamara that ultimately resulted in the armory’s closure in 1968. 64 Larger
forces were also at work during this period. Big business had recovered much of
its luster after languishing under the forces of economic instability during the
1930s, when critics charged that the government should intervene to compensate
for industry’s failings. The spectacular wartime success of the manufacturing
sector and the corresponding postwar economic boom had helped to reverse
this trend. So did a business-friendly political climate that favored private sector
weapons procurement at the expense of those public-sector institutions—the
arsenals—that had fulfilled that requirement for more than a century. 65
The arsenal system’s demise as the primary source of weapons innovation
in the Army after World War II should not, however, suggest that it was
merely the victim of institutional circumstances beyond its control. To some
extent, and perhaps ironically, the decline was prompted by the successful
execution of the arsenal mandate. During and after World War II, the arsenals
64 It is unclear to what extent the organizational relationship between R&D and production at the
Springfield Armory contributed to the problems that plagued the M14 rifle program. Much more research
on this subject is needed. According to Edward Clinton Ezell, The Great Rifle Controversy: Search for the
Ultimate Infantry Weapon from World War II through Vietnam and Beyond (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole
Books, 1984), which is considered to be the standard source on the subject, the program’s difficulties can
be attributed to several factors: the inherent conservatism of the line officers in the Ordnance Department
who determined weapons requirements, and the tendency of engineers at the armory to favor efficient
production of existing small arms rather than wholesale adoption of new designs and manufacturing
methods. These explanations are convincing and well-documented. Ezell also identifies another cause—the
Ordnance Department’s failure to separate Springfield’s R&D from its production functions. “Ordnance
leaders did not learn,” he writes, “that it was fatal to place a research department under a production-oriented
organization” (p. xvi). Significantly, Ezell provides almost no evidence to show that the combination of
R&D and production—which had persisted at Springfield Armory for more than a century—crippled the
rifle program.
65 See Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold
War Grand Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 245–50, 265–77; and David M. Hart,
Forged Consensus: Science, Technology, and Economic Policy in the United States, 1921–1953 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998), chaps. 6–7.