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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.
36 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 had, with some exceptions, met their mission requirements, transferring the technological know-how of weapons production to private industry. Over time, the continuous transmission of knowledge through this institutional connection and the ongoing expansion of America’s defense industries during the Cold War helped manufacturing firms develop a similar in-house capability, thereby reducing their long-term dependence on the arsenal system. That the Army also depended on a rapidly growing number of industrial firms, not just to fill production quotas but also to engage in the development of entirely new weapon systems, further contributed to the declining operational status of the arsenals. Many of the same institutional constraints guided the postwar evolution of in-house research and development in the Navy and the Air Force.
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In d e x AAF. See Army Air Forces.
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