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70 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
services. Private firms delivered engines and airframes, for example, while the
Army Ordnance Department provided armaments and munitions and the
Signal Corps supplied communications equipment. 8 Moreover, development
and procurement of aircraft proceeded in sequential order, from R&D through
prototype construction and testing to full-scale production.
Prompted by the urgency of wartime requirements for more technologically
advanced weapons during the Cold War, aircraft manufacturers began to overlap
these sequential functions to accelerate the procurement process, a concept
known as concurrency. They also began to use a related strategy, that came to be
known as the weapon system concept. Contractors no longer conceived of aircraft
as agglomerations of interchangeable parts assembled sequentially but rather
as complex, fully integrated systems in which all constituent components were
designed, built, maintained, and operated according to precise specifications
and rigorous performance requirements. 9 Faced with the increasing complexity
of military aircraft, the rapid pace of innovation in electronics and propulsion
technologies after the war, and changing strategic considerations, Air Force
leaders increasingly employed both concurrency and the weapon system concept
in the weapons acquisition process. 10
The transition from sequential development to systems integration and
concurrency had a major impact on the Air Research and Development
Command, the umbrella organization established in 1950 to manage the Air
Force’s network of in-house laboratories. In 1961, ARDC’s laboratories and
testing installations merged, once again, with the procurement functions of the
Air Materiel Command to form the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). The
Air Staff realigned the ARDC laboratories to provide technical support to AFSC’s
four major weapons divisions (ballistic systems, space systems, aeronautical
systems, and electronic systems), while the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR) merged into a new and diversified Office of Aerospace Research
(OAR) to manage and coordinate both in-house R&D and extramural research
in universities and industrial laboratories. This reorganization simultaneously
consolidated and decentralized the entire Air Force acquisition process, placing
responsibility for research, development, and procurement squarely within the
divisions. Although centralization of decision-making authority in the Office of
the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in the 1960s limited its operational flexibility, a
8 See, for example, G. C. Gentry, “Aircraft Armament,” Journal of Applied Physics 16 (December 1945):
771–73.
9 During World War II, Consolidated Aircraft, Boeing, and the Glenn L. Martin Company all used
concurrency to produce the B–24, B–26, and B–29 bombers. Boeing also employed the nascent weapon
system concept on the B–29 program but only for some of the aircraft’s major components. Convair’s
F–102 interceptor was the first postwar military aircraft whose development and procurement cycles were
guided at the outset by concurrency and the weapon system concept.
10 Michael E. Brown, Flying Blind: The Politics of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Program (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1992), 17–27; Elliott V. Converse, “The Air Force and Acquisition, 1945–1953,”
October 2003, 40–48 (unpublished manuscript), U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort Lesley J.
McNair, Washington, D.C. I am indebted to Dr. Converse for sharing an early version of this manuscript
with me.