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ReseaRch a n d developmenT In T h e aIR fo R c e 69
had hardened. Proponents of quantity production of serviceable aircraft to
maintain a ready force in the event of another war squared off against advocates
of a more technologically advanced air arm, which would incorporate the latest
developments in science and engineering. Perhaps nowhere was this ongoing
conflict between a “force-in-being” and a “force-of-the-future” more clearly visible
than in the effort to incorporate a diversified research and development program
into the Army’s existing aircraft procurement system and the one that replaced
it after 1947.
Like their counterparts in the Army and the Navy, Air Force leaders
considered the extent to which research and development should be connected
to production. In some cases, they copied institutional mechanisms put in place
by the Army and the Navy to secure scientific knowledge from private-sector
research institutions. In 1948, for example, the Air Staff established the Applied
Research Section (renamed the Office of Air Research [OAR] in 1949) as the
organizational equivalent of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to award
contracts to universities and industrial laboratories for longer-range fundamental
studies unrelated to immediate weapons requirements but broadly correlated
to Air Force interests. 6 OAR also coordinated basic research underway in the
in-house service laboratories operated by the newly created Air Research and
Development Command (ARDC). Established in 1950, ARDC managed the
R&D facilities previously assigned to the Air Force’s procurement arm—the Air
Materiel Command (AMC). 7 Wright Field and the remaining ARDC laboratories
also supported significant R&D programs in electronics, metallurgy, physics,
and other scientific and engineering disciplines. Even in these cases, however, the
content and scope of the work still focused on Air Force requirements.
The division between fundamental research outsourced to the private sector
and the more focused, application-oriented studies handled by the Air Force’s
own laboratories remained largely intact, with some modest adjustments, during
the Cold War. What did undergo a major transformation, however, was the
extent to which the Air Staff coordinated the functions of the in-house R&D
laboratories with the procurement of aircraft and other weapons from industrial
contractors. Before World War II, military aircraft were typically assembled
using off-the-shelf components produced in industry and in the Army’s technical
6 See, for example, R. G. Gibbs, “Chemistry Division of New Air Force Research and Development
Command Will Emphasize Basic Research,” Chemical and Engineering News 30 (3 March 1952): 854–55;
and C. F. Yost, “Metallurgy Program of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research,” Journal of Metals 9 (May
1957): 671.
7 The Applied Research Section was originally assigned to the Air Materiel Command’s Engineering
Division at Wright Field. The Office of Air Research was renamed the Office of Scientific Research
(OSR) in 1951. Four years later, after the establishment of the Air Research and Development Command,
OSR became the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and was assigned independent status
equivalent to ARDC’s other in-house R&D centers (e.g., Wright Air Development Center, Arnold
Engineering Development Center). In 1961, after the Air Materiel Command and the Air Research and
Development Command merged to form the new Air Force Systems Command, AFOSR became the
Office of Aerospace Research (OAR). “OSR: Keystone of Basic Research,” Aviation Week 59 (17 August
1953): 87; Nick A. Komons, Science and the Air Force: A History of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(Arlington, Va.: Historical Division, Office of Information, Office of Aerospace Research, 1966): 65;
Splendid Vision, Unswerving Purpose, 368.