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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e na v y 53 In 1955, the Secretary of the Navy set up the Special Projects Office outside bureau jurisdiction to develop Polaris, the Navy’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to a distant target. The Quality Evaluation Laboratory diversified its technological capabilities even further through this organizational unit. Crane did not simply graft a new R&D program onto its testing and evaluation functions. Nor did it replace altogether the engineering staff with newly minted Ph.D. scientists. Rather, the technological shift from conventional ordnance to advanced missile systems like Polaris was a complementary process in which diversification remained grounded in Crane’s long-standing engineering tradition. Semiconductors, for example, were used in the fire control, navigation, guidance, and other subsystems on Polaris. Crane engineers and the new cadre of academically trained scientists that joined them during this period acquired extensive expertise in solid-state electronics to develop new testing, screening, and evaluation procedures to ensure peak operational performance of semiconductors, microwave tubes, and other precision electronic devices. In response to this technological shift, Crane management set up the Fleet Logistics Support Department (separate from the Quality Evaluation Laboratory) in 1970 to handle electronics work on the Polaris and Terrier missile systems. 51 Functional specialization at Crane continued throughout the remainder of the Cold War as more advanced ballistic missiles—Poseidon and Trident—were introduced into fleet service. By the early 1990s, what began as the Quality Evaluation Laboratory had evolved into the following individual product divisions: microelectronics technology, electronic module test and repair, microwave components, electromechanical power systems, electronic warfare, conventional ammunition engineering, small arms, and acoustic sensors. Work in these fields combined a broad knowledge base in electronics technology with a continuing focus on product testing and evaluation and technical oversight of manufacturing processes carried out in industry. 52 Bureau of Aeronautics Like the Bureau of Ordnance, the Bureau of Aeronautics owned and operated an institutionally diverse technological infrastructure that included research and development laboratories, testing and inspection facilities, and aircraft manufacturing plants. This network of laboratories and factories remained largely intact until the early years of the Cold War, when the military services began shifting the bulk of their resources for aircraft R&D and procurement to private-sector contractors. 53 Rapid demobilization of the armed forces after World War II had precipitated a massive restructuring of the domestic aircraft 51 The Quality Evaluation Laboratory continued “to concentrate on munitions testing.” Robert L. Reid and Thomas E. Rodgers, A Good Neighbor: The First Fifty Years at Crane, 1941–1991 (Evansville: Historic Southern Indiana Project, University of Southern Indiana, 1991), 88. 52 Ibid., 51, 81, 85 –91, 103–5. 53 Booz Allen, Review of Navy R&D Management, 122; Christman, Sailors, Scientists, and Rockets, 176.
54 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 industry. Manufacturers shed excess capacity to offset sharp declines in military procurement. The establishment of an independent air force in 1947 and the subsequent onset of the Cold War, however, helped reverse this trend as the firms that survived the immediate postwar shakeout acquired lucrative development and production contracts from the newest military service. Significantly, this institutional relationship helped the largest planemakers turn out, in close collaboration with the military services, successive generations of advanced tactical and strategic aircraft and the sophisticated electronics technologies that maintained their operational superiority during the Cold War. 54 In addition to encountering competition from private airframe manufacturers, the Bureau of Aeronautics also continued to lose institutional stability as it engaged in a fierce struggle with the Bureau of Ordnance over control of the Navy’s rapidly expanding rocket and guided missile programs. Despite the imposition of temporary measures designed to alleviate this jurisdictional conflict—for example, the establishment of the Special Projects Office in 1955 to manage and coordinate the Polaris ballistic missile program and the creation of the Lead Bureau Concept two years later the ongoing battle over missile cognizance and the growing significance of weapon systems integration prompted the Navy leadership to merge the bureaus of Aeronautics and Ordnance into the new Bureau of Naval Weapons in 1959. 55 The Bureau of Aeronautics and its successor organization—the Bureau of Naval Weapons—did not simply relinquish control of the large in-house R&D infrastructure that had served the Navy’s aeronautical interests since World War I. The process was gradual and varied. Some facilities closed, whereas others merged into new organizations. The Navy’s experience with aircraft development began in 1915, when Congress enacted legislation establishing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to support and coordinate a broad program of research on behalf of both civilian and military aviation. Subsequently, NACA established a network of in-house laboratories and testing facilities to develop a diverse knowledge base in the aeronautical sciences. 56 The Navy adopted a similar strategy to connect NACA’s research capabilities to military aircraft requirements. This strategic mission was effectively institutionalized in the new 54 In 1948, the Air Force controlled half of the $300 million allocated by all federal agencies for aeronautical research and development. R. McLarren, “Largest Aero Research Program,” Aviation Week 48 (23 February 1948): 42. 55 On the Polaris program, see Harvey M. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972). The Lead Bureau Concept institutionalized the mechanisms used by the Special Projects Office to develop the Polaris missile system. In exceptional cases and depending on the weapon requirement, one bureau would be selected to manage the technical prosecution of a designated project. It would also coordinate the activities of other participating bureaus. Although it tended to dilute the authority and independence of the individual bureaus and cut across organizational lines, the Lead Bureau Concept helped solve the immediate problem of cognizance that had caused territorial skirmishes and inflamed relations between the former bureaus of Ordnance and Aeronautics. Booz Allen, Review of Navy R&D Management, 46. 56 L. C. Stevens, “Research in the Bureau of Aeronautics,” Journal of Applied Physics 15 (March 1944): 271–72; McLarren, “Largest Aero Research Program,” 44–46. On the history of NACA, see Alex Roland, Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1985).
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Conclusion: Review and Retrospect c
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co n c l u sIo n : RevIew a n d ReT
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BIBlIogRaphy 115 A History of Rock
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In d e x AAF. See Army Air Forces.
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In d e x 137 percent of R&D funds a
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