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80 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
Development Command. Several studies, for example, have examined the
motives behind ARDC’s separation from AMC in terms of a protracted conflict
between enlightened officers tuned to the potential benefits of an independent
R&D command by forward-looking civilian experts and conservative, risk-averse
officers who sacrificed technological superiority in favor of short-term production
goals to maintain a ready force structure. 33 Although such a division may have
existed at the management level, this argument is nevertheless misleading,
because it assumes by consequence that R&D was most effective as a separate
function, independent of production. 34 The evidence presented in this chapter,
however, shows that the division of research and development from production
was not always clearly visible in the laboratories. More historical research on
this subject is needed, but it is perhaps just as likely that, managerial separation
notwithstanding, the Air Force accumulated innovative capabilities precisely
because each of these functions—research, development, and production—
remained mutually dependent in the postwar period.
A similar disjunction between policy and practice was evident in ARDC’s
contracting programs. An executive order issued in 1954 obligated the Office
of Scientific Research to limit its funding of unrestricted scientific research in
favor of investigations expected to yield practical results directly relevant to Air
Force requirements, but program managers quietly manipulated the language of
the R&D funding categories to maintain OSR’s institutional commitment to the
accumulation of fundamental knowledge. 35 Like their counterparts in the Army
and the Navy, the in-house Air Force laboratories and contracting units did not
always operate according to the procedures and guidelines set down by the Air
Staff and the civilian and military leaders who set broad policies in the Office of
the Secretary of Defense.
Growth and Diversification: The Air Research and
Development Command, 1950–1961
“The [Army] Air Forces are delving into every nook and corner of scientific
endeavor. Projects are now underway to study atomic power, jet propulsion,
physics of the higher atmospheres, radioactive explosives, electronics, guided
missiles, and the use of new metals and ceramics,” Chemical and Engineering
News reported in 1946. The AAF spent two-thirds of the Army’s $280 million
R&D budget that year, mostly through contracts awarded to universities and
industrial firms. In 1948, after it had been separated from the Army, the new
Air Force managed a research and development budget nearly twice the size
($145 million) of the one assigned to the next largest consumer of government
33 See, for example, Johnson, The United States Air Force and the Culture of Innovation; Gorn, Vulcan’s
Forge; and Baucom, “Air Force Images of Research and Development and Their Reflections in Organizational
Structures and Management Policies.”
34 Converse, “The Air Force and Acquisition, 1945–1953,” 24, also argues that the claims made by the
historians cited in footnote 34, above, are overdrawn. I am grateful to Dr. Converse for bringing this point
to my attention.
35 See Komons, Science and the Air Force, chap. 5.