Air University Review, September-October 1986

Girding for War:
Perspectives on Research, Development,
Acquisition, and the Decisionmaking
Environment of the 1980s

Dr. Richard P. Hallion

Today's U.S. defense decisionmakers face serious challenges as they pursue efficient management of the research, development, and acquisition process. These challenges involve political, economic, time, technological, and managerial constraints that serve to create a specialized research, development, and acquisition environment. An understanding of the dynamics of this environment (together with an appreciation of the kinds of difficulties that decisionmakers face) is critically important for successfully matching anticipated defense needs beyond the 1990s with effective planning to meet them.

Problems of integrating defense planning and systems acquisition were evident in the earliest days of organized conflict. For example, during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), the Peloponnesian states aligned against Athens found to their dismay that they could not effectively confront Athens' powerful fleet. Eventually, because the pace of technological growth was slower at that time and thus the penalty for technological backwardness was still tolerable (a situation that does not exist today), these states overcame their deficiencies, as Athens learned to its sorrow when attempting to seize Sicily.¹ A similar situation plagued Rome during the Punic Wars with Carthage. In this instance, Roman naval architects copied a captured Carthaginian vessel, and this derivative technology, coupled with aggressive naval training, finally spelled the end to Carthage's fine fleet.²

Unlike Greece, whose various states had little appreciation of military technology other than naval architecture, Rome was a nation-state with a strong sense of military technology, falling only after internal corruption and accumulated failures of civil and military leadership had taken their toll. Development of certain kinds of catapults had been standardized to the point where specific directives existed as to their manufacture and employment. The Roman army's heavy investment in military technology clearly paid off, such equipment acting as a "force-multiplier" for an overly large but undermanned empire at war with more numerous (but technologically inferior) enemies.³

Inspired in part by the Roman experience, the exploitation of military technology became an integral part of military and defense affairs in the post-Roman world. For example, the city-states of Renaissance Italy encouraged development of complex war machinery for their military forces. Indeed, to Renaissance man, the very word engineer implicitly meant "military engineer."⁴ As weaponry became more sophisticated, arguments typical of later times were first heard; for example, many leaders considered early firearms a morally unacceptable weapon. Such arguments, which may smack of sophistry when one thinks of the carnage commonly wrought with conventional swords and pikes, tended to diminish as the general usage of firearms became commonplace. Attempts to ban firearms or at least restrict their use met with a notable lack of success––a demonstration that, no matter how much one might want to, it is impossible to "disinvent" a technology once the circumstances favorable for the emergence of that technology have arrived.⁵ That lesson, evident in our reading of the past, is clearly applicable to the present world as well.

American military history in general and Air Force history in particular is replete with examples of how the military dealt with newly emergent technologies. During the revolution, the rifle's superiority over the smoothbore musket helped decide such critical battles as King's Mountain and Saratoga. Nearly three decades later, inventor Eli Whitney furnished a notable example of acquisition ineptness. Receiving a government contract to mass-produce 100,000 rifles, Whitney promised delivery in two years but actually took ten.⁶ No example could more clearly emphasize the importance of adequately predicting problems, which translates directly into the ability to generate a meaningful schedule running from the requirement one frames to the capability one desires. Another challenge inherent in the research, development, and acquisition process is, of course, understanding the technical challenges involved and then confronting them in meaningful fashion.

When the U.S. Army contracted with Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel P. Langley to develop a man-carrying aircraft (the so-called Great Aerodrome), Langley rashly presumed that he could simply scale-up a larger craft from the small models he had successfully flown in the early 1890s. He built a meticulously finished but fatally flawed aircraft having an inadequate control system and a structure incapable of withstanding the loads it would experience in flight. The result was a well-publicized failure that reaffirmed a popular public image that the airplane was, per se, a questionable endeavor.⁷ Langley simply misunderstood the basic principles of flight. Like many other ill-fated pioneers, he emphasized lift and propulsion, not recognizing the need for good controllability and an adequate structure. In short, he did not appreciate that an airplane represents a total system requiring the integration of diverse and separate technologies into a fully successful package.

Even sadder was the reaction of the scientific and military community to the Langley accident. As early as 1896, Lord Kelvin, one of the major scientists of the day, rashly stated "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning," an indication (then as well as now) of how an acknowledged expert in one field can be so wrong in predicting the pace of technological progress in another with which he is less familiar.⁸ After Langley's two 1903 takeoff crashes, official interest in flight waned, the rationale being that if someone of Langley's stature––a recognized authority in science––could not solve the problems of flight, then it was likely they were unsolvable at the time, probably far into the future, and possibly for all time.⁹ Ironically, even before the harsh editorial judgments about Langley's "folly" had died away, the Wright brothers were readying their epochal 1903 Flyer, the first aircraft capable of making a powered, sustained, and controlled flight. Unlike Langley, the Wrights had undertaken a cautious, careful, and incremental ground and flight test program that (in its proceeding from theoretical conception through component design and testing and on to flight validation) is a model for such endeavors, even by today's rigorous standards. Their chief reason for success was, however, their perceptive understanding of the problem.¹⁰

Sometimes it pays to be a fast second. When the European pioneers were introduced to–– and humiliated by–– the Wright technology in 1908-09, they quickly moved to develop advanced aircraft, building on the same basic design principles. American aviation, on the other hand, stagnated––in part because of the enervating effects of the Wright-Curtiss patent infringement controversy but in the main because of complacency. As a result, when military and industrial planners confronted America's wartime needs during the Great War, they rashly expected to deliver thousands of aircraft in short order. In fact, not a single American designed aircraft reached the Western Front, thanks to multiple failures in the acquisition process, starting with inadequate forecasting and continuing through a naive belief that the automobile industry could construct airplanes as rapidly as it produced cars, plus a questionable decision to copy European designs but with an American powerplant.¹¹ As an official summary of America's wartime aircraft production morass stated:

The Army had practically no material, personnel, or experience in the designing, producing, or using of aeronautical equipment.... The country had no accurate knowledge of the aeronautical requirements of modern war.... Adequate manufacturing facilities for the production of aeronautical equipment of a war type did not exist in this country…There was no definite understanding as to how much aircraft equipment would be required for the use of the Army or Navy, and therefore no program to work to.¹²

Stung by criticism, defense planners vowed never again to have such a debacle on their hands. When President Franklin Roosevelt issued his famous call in May 1940 for an annual production rate of 50,000 airplanes, a suitable industrial base and military organization existed.¹³ Ironically, the memory of America's lack of preparedness in World War I convinced many Axis planners that the United States could not adequately mobilize for war, and they subsequently learned to their sorrow that what had held true in the past was not gospel in the present. And with even greater irony, it was the Axis powers that proved incapable of sustaining the appropriate combination of production, technological innovation, and creative decisionmaking necessary to overcome the war-winning impetus of the Allied nations. In part, this inability stemmed from complacency, but, in the case of Nazi Germany, also from ideological misconceptions and the politicization of science and technology (such as the quest for "Aryan"––i.e., "non-Jewish"––physics), coupled with poor management of research, development, and acquisition programs.¹⁴

The lessons of the Second World War were regarded as profoundly significant by postwar defense planners, yet the generally successful Allied––and especially American––efforts in the field of research, development, and acquisition were marred nevertheless by specific problems, surprises, and disappointments, particularly in the field of gas turbine (jet) propulsion. The discovery that the United States ran third behind Nazi Germany and Great Britain shocked Army Air Forces (AAF) Chief Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, who determined that never again should the AAF find itself in a position of technological inferiority in the field of aeronautical developments He arranged for the immediate importation of Whittle engine technology from Great Britain and, more significantly, introduced a tradition of seeking outside and independent advice from prominent scientists and engineers such as Theodore von Kármán, which eventually led to both the USAF Scientific Advisory Board and civilian "think tanks" such as the Rand and Aerospace corporations.¹⁶

But if the American shock at discovering the superiority of new German jet aircraft over conventional piston-engine fighters warned against the dangers of technological complacency, the German experience with the V-2 missile warned against nations becoming obsessed with the technologically fanciful at the expense of developing truly meaningful and effective war-winning weapons. In the absence of an atomic warhead––which, because of Germany's ideologicalization of science, was an impossible attainment for the Third Reich––the V-2 simply constituted an enormous R&D drain having negligible military impact.¹⁷

There were more general lessons, including the differences in the approach to research, development, and acquisition within totalitarian and democratic societies. Generally speaking, an examination of the wartime situation indicates that democratic societies have greater difficulty reaching decisions in these areas than do totalitarian societies, primarily because a totalitarian state tends to have a more streamlined decisionmaking process wherein opposition is less vocal and persistent. However, it is more likely that the democratic society will make a wise decision, and it is certainly easier for a democratic society to reverse a bad course of direction or remedy a bad decision than it is for a totalitarian state. In part, this difference is due to the character of leadership and the leadership style of a totalitarian society. Generally speaking, in both right-wing and left-wing totalitarian governments, the process of decisionmaking is caught up in the cult of the individual (the cult of the leader). Reversing a bad decision (or even making less drastic changes to a development process or research program) first involves convincing the leader that he is wrong, and then requires finding some means whereby a reversal of direction can be achieved with minimal loss of prestige––a considerable task.¹⁸ (Certainly the cult of the leader afflicts nontotalitarian societies as well, usually in more extreme "Theory X management"-style corporations, but its negative potential is much less than in a society where respect for the leader's decisionmaking is caught up with how loyal one is considered to the state.)

The extraordinarily rapid development that took place in aviation between 1939 (when the turbojet first flew) and the early 1950s (when the supersonic breakthrough was in full flower) gave rise to a number of interesting attempts to take this new technology and apply it to a new generation of combat aircraft. Generally speaking, trends ranged from too conservative to too radical. For example, many designers retained the basic aerodynamic configuration of propeller-driven aircraft (i.e., straight wing and tail, relatively low fineness ratios, and relatively thick wing sections), producing such aircraft as the B-45 Tornado and B-57 Canberra––conservative designs that offered a few advantages over the generation of piston-engine aircraft that preceded them. On the other hand, in such ambitious projects as the proposed (but never built) cart-launched rocket-ramjet XP-92 interceptor, designers let their imaginations run riot, producing impractical aircraft having dubious value.

As in many other human activities, a more reasoned "middle path" approach worked best in designing aircraft––a fact illustrated by the first generation of sweptwing fighters and bombers, typified by the F-86 Sabre. What is disturbing, however, is the number of aircraft that were designed without adequate thought being given to the mission that they should fulfill. Within the so-called Century series, for example, only the F-102 and its derivative, the F-106, served in the role (interception) for which they were originally intended. The F100, F-101, F-104, and F-105 all underwent drastic changes in mission, some successfully (such as the F-105) and others less so (such as the F-104). ¹⁹

A not-so-nostalgic look at the 1945-65 time period indicates some of the characteristic problems in acquisition of selected Air Force aircraft:

Of the unrealistic proposals listed, three were actually built: the XB-70A, F-111, and OV-10. Simply stated, the XB-70A could not have undertaken successfully the long-range strategic bomber mission envisioned for it by the time of the late 1960s; failure to predict adequately the capabilities of Soviet defenses encouraged development of this system, which was canceled before being placed in service. Ironically, the cancellation decision, while good, was made for the wrong reason––namely, the then-popular assumption that missiles would inevitably replace manned aircraft (the same thinking that nearly emasculated the Royal Air Force through the infamous 1957 White Paper of British Defence Minister Duncan Sandys). ²⁰

The story of the F- 111 is so well known as to hardly bear reexamination; two widely differing requirements were optimistically meshed into a single-development program. The result was a costly, protracted program that cost the U.S. Navy more than ten years of fighter development time (from the 1958 F-4 to the 1971 F-14) and produced a seriously compromised design that gave the Air Force innumerable difficulties during its transformation into an acceptable weapon system. A congressional investigation concluded that the original development decision in 1961 had been a mistake, "one of a series of management blunders ... which compounded error upon error as the TFX [F-111] program stumbled along year after year."²¹

The OV-10 story was far less calamitous but indicative of similar misconceptions. Designed as a counterinsurgency aircraft primarily for armed observation and forward air controlling duties, the OV-10 was underpowered and equipped with questionable provisions to carry a small squad of troops in its aft fuselage cargo bay. It lacked the speed, firepower, endurance, agility, and survivability required for the kinds of missions it was flown on in Southeast Asia.

In all of these cases, developers were entranced with a concept (high-altitude mach 3+ strike, commonality in developing new weapon systems, light semi-STOL multimission counterinsurgency aircraft) without giving adequate thought to either the practicality or the war-fighting environment that each would be expected to meet.

The disappointments listed may be summarized as follows: the straight-wing B-45 proved incapable of surviving in the Korean air war environment of 1950-53 when confronted by early MiG-15 sweptwing interceptors. The mistake here, aside from obviously underestimating potential enemy capabilities, was overlooking once again the old truth that an airplane is a totally integrated system; merely adding turbojets to an outmoded aerodynamic configuration did not make an acceptable jet bomber/reconnaissance aircraft. One had to take advantage of the inherent capabilities of the turbojet by joining it to an equally sophisticated airframe.

The disappointing Martin B-57 and the Douglas B-66 suffered from serious limitations that compromised their usefulness. In the former case, planners selected a British aircraft for "off-the-shelf" production (canceling a truly advanced indigenous airplane, the XB-51, to do so), discovering later that American needs dictated total structural redesign. In the latter case, an excellent Navy aircraft (the A3D) was modified to meet an Air Force mission but was so altered by weight and powerplant changes as to be of but questionable value as a bomber; it served primarily in electronic countermeasure/electronic counter-countermeasure (ECM/ECCM) roles until retirement.

Among other disappointments, the F-104 seems to be a case of an aircraft in pursuit of a mission (as does the B-58); it served but briefly as an interceptor and as a tactical fighter with the Air Force. The F-84s, while workhorses, were underpowered and ground-loving. The F-94C suffered from serious engine flameout problems caused when its salvo-launched unguided rocket armament generated inlet airflow distortion (a result of poor design). Unreliable avionics further effectively limited its potential as an all-weather interceptor.²²

The Air Force managed to live with a number of aircraft that had limitations, undesirable characteristics, marginal performance, or handling quirks. For example, the early-generation turbojet interceptors––the F-86D/L, F-89, and F-94 series––all suffered from a variety of nagging problems (such as, in the case of the "Sabre Dog," high pilot workload) that limited their effectiveness. (So, too, did the F-102 and F-106, which underwent prolonged gestation but which, once flaws were corrected, became very useful aircraft.) The thin-winged B-47 suffered from severe aeroelastic manifestations that limited its performance and served as a warning to Boeing for future bomber designs. Pitch-up––a problem that plagued many early sweptwing aircraft––imposed constraints on the F-101. Initial structural problems and a serious problem with hydraulic leaks following battle damage plagued the F-105. And, finally, the aforementioned F-111 and OV-10 all took getting used to––and sometimes at the cost of aircrew and aircraft lost.

There were a number of success stories, however, such as the elegant F-86 series of day fighters, the B-52 (profiting from the B-47), the KC-135 (incorporating lessons from both B-47 and B-52), the C-130 (a brilliant concept, coupled with excellent design), the T-38 and F-5 family (an example of creative, evolutionary engineering, coupled with rigorous designing for well-defined missions), the F-4 (based on McDonnell's previous jet fighters and the Navy's Korean experience), and the U-2/SR-71 (both special-purpose aircraft that reflected thorough understanding of the mission requirements for specialized high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, coupled with a solid grasp of what technologies needed to be incorporated in such vehicles). A surprising aspect of most of these is the degree to which they were privately initiated projects––outright in the cases of the KC-135, T-38, and F-5; near-private in terms of the F-86, U-2, SR-71, and C-130; and akin to private in the cases of the F-4 and B-52, which benefited directly from a long company tradition of designing naval fighters or long-range bombers and transports. There was little guidance or direction offered from the federal government––a positive comment on the prescience of the companies involved, but a disturbing one on the ability of government planners to forecast their needs adequately and then seek suitable solutions from industry.

In the cases of the KC-135 and T-38/F-5, the companies involved had already designed the aircraft before they approached the government; they tried long and hard to generate interest before finally being successful. (In Boeing's case, the company next had to sell the jet transport concept to the airlines, meeting with fierce resistance along the way from airline executives firmly wedded to the propeller-driven airliner.)

The absence of government guidance was especially the case in developing the U-2 and SR-71, where Lockheed was out on its own on the frontiers of flight. It is often held that so-called black programs can accomplish twice as much as more open programs and for half the cost and development time; in the absence of conclusive evidence, such statements must remain intriguing speculation, but the cases of the U-2 and the SR-71 seem to bear out that at least in one company's experience such claims appear to be true. Presumably, these advantageous results are possible because of more streamlined management, smaller development teams, stringent review of mission requirements, and rigorous adherence to cost and time schedules.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Air Force embarked on a new wave of acquisition, both to offset the growing obsolescence of a fleet dating largely to the 1950s and to redress some of the more serious flaws of defense direction and management that had occurred in the 1960s. The subsequent history of the programs spawned from that restructuring effort, such as the F-15, F-16, and A-10, has been one of general success. However, in looking beyond the 1990s, it is clear that a number of attributes of the present decisionmaking environment that affect the research, development, and acquisition process must be understood by today's decisionmakers. Many of these are beyond the control of managers––but this does not mean that the process is out of control or closed to the influence of shrewd decisionmakers acquainted with its intricacies and topology. The following thoughts, then, are offered in the spirit of stimulating discussion and comment and not with the intention of being proffered as great revealed truths.

Today, even more than in the past, technological decisions are not reached on the basis of technological merit alone but on the basis of a host of other factors-social, political, and economic. A perusal of recent decisionmaking reflects this fact: the SST cancellation, ABM Treaty, fast-breeder reactor development, genetic engineering, B-1A/B development, MX Peacekeeper production and basing, the Strategic Defense Initiative, to name a few. Technologists and military planners no longer have––if indeed they ever did have––the sole option in deciding to develop a system. In part, this complexity in decisionmaking occurs because...

Technology has become so complex and expensive that it has become increasingly time and cost-intensive to pursue and increasingly requires approval by the political process. It is so expensive that it requires the outlay of public funding, necessitating informed political decisionmaking by representatives of the citizenry (whether one is building a highway, a supercarrier, or an aircraft system). Because of cost factors, the number of private ventures undertaken (such as the T-38/F-5 series of the past or the P-51 of World War II) is quite small and usually insignificant. Hence supporters of new acquisition programs must realize that...

Understanding the political process is critical. The base of program support in Congress changes every two years with elections, requiring constant and repetitive rejustification of programs. Because elected representatives tend to seek a "spreading of the wealth" through their districts and states, program advocates must consider this aspect in their presentation. Further––and this is not a criticism––it is unrealistic to expect that political decisionmakers will be able to or will wish to understand the intricacies of technology and military requirements (this fact is evident in the reading of congressional appropriations testimony and, for example, the TFX debates of the 1960s). Normally schooled in legislative and economic affairs, they have other agendas and many other issues to grapple with. Program advocates must learn to present their positions in a manner and style that is comprehensible to those who determine the direction and govern the finances. Every four years, there are major changes in the executive branch leadership induced by the electoral process; even if the same administration remains in power, senior-level management usually changes. This shakeup forces program redirection from the very top of government. Simultaneously, at roughly three-to-four-year cycles, other high-, mid-, and low-level managers in the civilian government, military, and industrial communities tend to change, reflecting their own promotions (career progression) through their organizations. This phenomenon reveals another characteristic about corporate and governmental leadership:...

We no longer have czars. The days of a Wernher von Braun or a Hyman Rickover having decades of control over a major program have passed. In some respects, this departure from czarist control is good: the abuse of such long-term power by a poor manager can be disastrous. What is lost, however, is the notion of continuity and lessons learned––in short, corporate history. No longer do we have people in charge of a major program who have a stake in it from beginning to end. In fact, the rapid turnover in administrators leads to what might be termed a "Smith years-Jones years" problem. An incoming administrator is under a great amount of pressure to make his or her own mark on a program. Industrial-organizational psychologists have long recognized that this circumstance often manifests itself in a compulsion for change as an affirmation of managerial prowess and authority (what is sometimes referred to as the "history-book syndrome"): the new manager often feels unable to prove competency and his or her "right" to manage the predecessor's project except by imparting changes to it. This tendency is a serious problem since it is subtle, is caught up in the personality of the individual decisionmaker, may send a signal to subordinates that triggers a "group-think" response, and functions at all levels––high, middle, and low––in the managerial process.²³ Awareness is one method of avoiding it. Another method involves the recognition that...

Planners must always keep in mind the appropriate level of technology required for a particular program. Technological progression tends to follow so-called biological or S-shaped growth curves––slow infantile growth as a technology appears, rapid maturation to adulthood, and then a leveling––off as natural limits are approached.²⁴ Today, many technologies are in an almost explosive growth cycle, particularly in the field of avionics. Since development times routinely approach (and sometimes surpass) the twelve-year mark, managers, who are naturally desirous of incorporating the latest state-of-the-art achievements in their programs, feel strongly compelled to add on new technology to programs already in development. What program managers must keep in mind, however, is whether an addition will meaningfully enhance the capabilities and usefulness of a system or whether it will simply build in greater costs, lengthen development time, complicate system operation, and increase maintenance requirements. Before producing the successful aircraft of the 1940s-60s and such aircraft as the F-15 today, their developers thoroughly understood the mission that had to be met, the level of technology that had to be incorporated, and the amount of potential needed for future development and progressive improvement. They assessed what was actually needed, determined the appropriate level of technology, and had the discipline to live with the decision. Their success reemphasizes that...

Intelligent, reasonable futures forecasting are of vital importance to systems acquisition. No one ever developed an airplane with the intention that it would disappoint or fail––and yet such has often been the case. Today, with time and cost-constraints facing defense administrators, such failures can no longer be tolerated. Planners must approach the future with responsible assumptions, using cautious futures forecasting techniques, to avoid the Scylla of ignorance on one hand and the Charybdis of false expectation on the other. As one team of futures forecasters has warned, "Forecasting ... is an uncertain exercise, plagued with fallacies, uncertainties, and ignorance. It cannot aspire to be called a science, and it must avoid the dangers of pseudo-science."²⁵ Practitioners of forecasting methodologies––cross-impact matrices, Delphi interrogations, and the like pretend to be able to offer accurate estimates of what future conditions will be. However, these methodologies are heavily influenced by the constraints of the forecasting process itself such as Delphi's questionnaires––as well as by qualitative nonobjectivist factors. Additionally, there is a perspective problem that parallels the narrow field of view of a telescope. At the time that a requirement is formulated, the desirable attributes which a system should possess at the time it enters service are typically not readily apparent. These are perceived most accurately only as one approaches the stage of initial operational capability––usually resulting in a frantic, costly, and time-consuming last-minute adding-on of technology in an attempt to offset obvious deficiencies. Futures forecasting can be strengthened by the recognition of a basic historical law: future expectations depend on how well the present world is understood, and that understanding, in turn, depends on the degree to which we comprehend our history. (Moreover, our expectations of the threats we face and the posture and capabilities of potential adversaries are, of course, equally dependent on how well we understand our potential adversaries' history, comprehend their present, and forecast their future.) Finally....

We must be aware of all the factors and pitfalls confronting the defense and acquisition decisionmaker. A host of constraints, difficulties, and problems can confront a decisionmaker attempting to undertake the development and management of a major system. One is the temptation (usually afflicting the uninformed policymaker) to cancel a system that performs reasonably well (or a system that has experienced developmental problems but is now finally on track) in favor of some advanced new technology "just around the corner." This has resulted in the cynical (but appropriate) maxim "best is the enemy of better." Managers confronting this temptation should realize that if it is carried to its logical extreme, nothing will ever be built; something will always hold greater promise. If our planners fall victim to this temptation, we face the danger of becoming followers rather than leaders in technology, as other nations adapt concepts and ideas (which we may have originated) into workable production systems while we continue to search for Holy Grail solutions. Examples of two areas in which we frittered away meaningful lead-times in favor of further refinement (thereby causing delay and increasing costs) are those of attack helicopter development and the abandonment of the AMST STOL transport program of the 1970s. This practice is intolerable in an age where we increasingly lack the grace and time to play catch up.

An even graver danger is technological smugness, which not uncommonly is linked to typecasting of one's adversaries. In the United States during the 1950s, for example, there was a generalized unquestioning acceptance of the backwardness of Soviet technology vis-ŕ-vis the West. A cursory look at history and ongoing realities should have dispelled such smugness. Russian technologists developed the world's first multiengine transport (the Sikorsky Bolshoi); introduced the first modern monoplane fighter (the Polikarpov I-16); first applied ramjet propulsion to aircraft; fielded excellent tactical aircraft (such as the Ilyushin I1-2), armored fighting vehicles (such as the T-34), and battlefield rocket artillery (the infamous Katyusha); flew a turbojet sweptwing fighter (MiG- 15) two months after the F-86; detonated an atomic bomb four years after Trinity; and developed their first supersonic day fighters (the MiG-19)and hydrogen bomb simultaneously with America's F-100 and H-bomb programs. Given this track record, it is dismaying that the West was so surprised by Sputnik in 1957––especially since the Soviets had been openly announcing their intentions to launch an earth satellite for several years previously.²⁶

Nevertheless, technological smugness in the United States continues. Recently, increased media attention has been focused on a generalized Soviet trend whereby the planforms of existing Western aircraft appear to be copied with distressing frequency. One commonly voiced assertion is that this occurrence indicates the backwardness or bankruptcy of Soviet aircraft design practice. Nothing could be further from the truth: it simply represents a traditionally pragmatic Soviet recognition that one method of reducing the long development times of aircraft projects––which afflicts the Soviets as well as ourselves––is simply to adopt a proven or well-thought-out design planform. (This Soviet tradition dates to copying the B-29 as the Tupolev Tu-4 back in 1947). Thus, this practice is a measure not of Soviet lack of technical imagination but, rather, of managerial craftiness. It is aided and abetted by the unfortunate free flow of information and even hardware from the West to the East––products of contradictory governmental impulses regarding technological transfer, the natural results of an inquisitive press in an open society, irresponsible release of information, and, certainly, active espionage aided by our weaknesses in protecting access to sensitive materials. In one notable case, the British government sold the newly designed Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet to the Soviet Union (at a time when the Nene was not yet in use on Britain's own aircraft). This decision freed the designers of the MiG-15 from having to compromise their design with inferior engine technology. Thus, when the MiG met our Sabre over the Yalu, it did so with a Soviet-built copy of the Nene.²⁷

One glaring difference affecting the research, development, and acquisition process is the disproportionate investment in military R&D by the United States and the Soviet Union. A recent survey of military R&D spending revealed that the Soviet Union invested better than $120 billion more than the United States during a ten-year period. Nevertheless, our nation's R&D funding level has remained stagnated since 1965; indeed, the United States today spends only 75 percent (in constant dollars) of what it spent in 1965 on building the national technological base.²⁸

Another inherent problem within the acquisition process is thinking in terms of going from some initial operational requirement toward some initial operational capability (IOC). But is the IOC the critical issue that defense planners should be addressing? Rather, isn't it the time the last unit to reequip or acquire a new system becomes operational? The French Air Force experience in 1940 offers an example of an air force that had large numbers of mediocre aircraft and small numbers of truly excellent aircraft entering service: the force was overwhelmed by larger numbers of good aircraft fielded by the Germans. A good defense planner recognizes that managerial responsibilities do not end with a new system entering service and the initial deliveries to the first users. Rather, the acquisition process must emphasize fleet-wide introduction of equipment.

Throughout the development of aerospace technology, the general trend has been toward evolutionary rather than revolutionary progression. We must change this pattern to meet the defense needs of the post-1990s successfully. Doing so might involve a number of activities: one worthwhile action could be to reestablish the joint USAF-NASA-industry research airplane committees that functioned so well in the 1950s and 1960s; another might be to fund the construction of new "X-series" aircraft to acquire basic knowledge, validate new technologies and design concepts, and act as technology demonstrators for new generations of military aircraft. Systems Command's initiative in launching Forecast II, seeking to emulate the success of the earlier Project Forecast of the 1960s, should be applauded as one responsible step toward comprehending the Air Force's future.²⁹ In any case, it is easy to ascertain the kinds of "solutions" that will not work: increased micromanagement, centralized organizations for acquisition, and all the other hoped-for solutions that generally promise greater "oversight" and which, ironically, generate oversight of a different and far more intolerable kind: the oversight of missed opportunities and enforced decisionmaking paralysis. Breaking the traditional pattern requires that decisionmakers possess insight unfettered by the constraints of a technological mindset emphasizing the incremental nature of development. It is not with this traditional mindset that we will achieve the breakthroughs of tomorrow that rank with such past and present developments as the turbojet engine, supersonic design technology, or stealth technology. Instead, we must remember the prophetic aphorism of Francis Bacon, one of the great apostles of modern technology, who wrote early in the seventeenth century that "by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein, is found in this––that men despair and think things impossible."³⁰

Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

Notes

1. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Rex Warner, translator (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 177-79, 516-37.

2. William L. Rodgers, Greek and Roman Naval Warfare: A Study of Strategy, Tactics, and Ship Design from Salamis (480 B.C.) to Actium (31 B.C.) (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1964), pp. 270-71.

3. Graham Webster, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1969), pp. 232-35.

4. Bernard and Fawn M. Brodie, From Crossbow to H-Bomb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), pp. 70-71. For an example of the kinds of equipment patrons sought, see Charles Gibbs-Smith and Gareth Rees, The Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1978), pp. 27-47; also see Ludwig H. Heydenreich, "The Military Architect," and Bern Dibner, "Machines and Weaponry," in Leonardo the Inventor, edited by Ludwig H. Heydenreich, Bern Dibner, and Ladislao Reti (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), pp. 11-118.

5. See, for example, Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World (New York: Collier Books, 1965), p. 22; and C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, A.D. 378-1515, revised and edited by John H. Beeler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), pp. 55-56, 110-11.

6. Brodie and Brodie, pp. 104-05, 132-33.

7. Tom D. Crouch, A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875-1905 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1981), pp. 147-48, 255-91.

8. Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, Aviation: An Historical Survey from Its Origins to the End of World War II (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1970), p. 222.

9. Roger E. Bilstein, "The Airplane, the Wrights, and the American Public," in The Wright Brothers: Heirs of Prometheus, edited by Richard P. Hallion (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), pp. 40-41.

10. Gibbs-Smith, pp. 94-104. For a detailed examination of how the Wrights went about their work, see Harry Combs, Kill Devil Hill: Discovering the Secret of the Wright Brothers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979).

11. Grover Loening, Takeoff into Greatness: How American Aviation Grew So Big So Fast (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968), pp. 97-116. The definitive accounting of America's wartime aircraft production effort is I. B. Holley, Jr.'s, masterful Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States during World War I: A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953).

12. G. W. Mixter and H. H. Emmons, United States Army Aircraft Production Facts: Compiled at the Request of the Assistant Secretary of War (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), pp. 5-6.

13. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Fifty Thousand Airplanes," in The Impact of Air Power: National Security and World Politics, edited by Eugene M. Emme (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1959), pp. 69-72. For a perceptive "insider's" interpretation of acquisition and industrial planning during the 1920s and 1930s, see Benjamin S. Kelsey's The Dragon Teeth? The Creation of United States Air Power for World War II (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), especially pp. 92-123; also useful is Roger E. Bilstein's Flight Patterns: Trends of Aeronautical Development in the United States, 1918-1929 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), pp. 7-27. The definitive accounting of aircraft procurement in World War II is I. B. Holley, Jr.'s, Buying Aircraft: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces, a volume in the U.S. Army's United States Army in World War II series (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1964).

14. See, for example, David Irving, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: The Life of Field Marshal Erhard Milch (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), pp. 81-88. Williamson Murray's Luftwaffe (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company, 1985) is the most incisive probing into the Luftwaffe's truly incredible acquisition and planning blunders; Eugene M. Emme's Hitler's Blitzbomber: Historical Notes on High Command Decisions Influencing the Tardy Operational Use of the Me-262 in German Air Defense (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Documentary Research Division, Research Studies Institute, Air University, December 1951) is a thorough and incisive case study of the mismanagement of procurement in Nazi Germany. Also, see Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1970), pp. 114-16.

15. H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Row, 1949), pp. 242-43. The sources of the turbojet are discussed in Edward W. Constant II's The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); the best discussion of why the United States was third is to be found in Robert Schlaifer and S. D. Heron's Development of Aircraft Engines and Fuels (Boston: Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1950), pp. 480-93.

16. Arnold, pp. 532-33; Theodore von Kármán with Lee Edson, The Wind and Beyond: Theodore von Kármán, Pioneer in Aviation and Pathfinder in Space (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), pp. 267-72; Paul Dickson, Think Tanks (New York: Atheneum, 1971), pp. 23-25, 151-52. A good case study is Everett T. Welmers et al., The Aerospace Corporation––Its Work: 1960-1980 (El Segundo, California: Aerospace Corporation, 1980). Thomas A. Sturm, The USAF Scientific Advisory Board: Its First Twenty Years, 1944-1964 (Washington: USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, 1 February 1967), pp. 2-12.

17. David Irving, The Mare's Nest (London: William Kimber, 1964), pp. 304-13; Frederick I. Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York: Thomsa Y. Crowell, 1979), pp. 239-53. R. V. Jones, Churchill's Head of Scientific Intelligence, correctly perceived the stirring and romantic appeal of this weapon as well as its lack of true war-winning capability; see his memoir The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945 (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1978), pp. 455-61.

18. The question of technological and scientific "styles" in democratic and totalitarian societies is addressed in more general fashion in Vannevar Bush's famous Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968), pp. 193-232.

19. For examples, a quick perusal of Marcelle Size Knaack's Post-World War II Fighters, vol. I of Encyclopedia of U.S. Air Force Aircraft and Missile Systems (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1978), reveals details of these and many other acquisition-related deficiencies.

20. See, for example, Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 91-92.

21. U.S. Congress, Senate, Ninety-first Congress, Second session; Committee on Government Operations, TFX Contract Investigation, Report No. 91-1496 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1970), p. 90. Robert F. Coulam's Illusions of Choice: The F-111 and the Problem of Weapons Acquisition Reform (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977) is a generally reliable study of the entire program.

22. See, for example, Air Force Flight Test Center Technical Report (AFFTCTR) 54-23 on the B-57 (October 1954), and AFFTC TR 57-19 on the B-66 (September 1957), as well as Frederick A. Alling, History of the BRB-66 Weapon System, 1951-195, vol. I (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Historical Division, January 1960); Helen W. Schulz, Case History of the B-57 (Canberra) Airplane, August 1950-June 1953 (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Historical Division, April 1954); and Frederick A. Alling, History of the B-57 Airplane, July 1953-January 1958 (Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: Historical Division, September 1958). (Copies in the files of the Albert Simpson Historical Research Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama.) Also, see Knaack, Encyclopedia sections on F-84/86/89/94/104; and Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1961), pp. 515-16, 542.

23. For example, see Irving L. Janis, "Preventing Groupthink," in Classics of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, edited by Donald Mankin, Russell E. Ames, Jr., and Milton A. Grodsky (Oak Park, Illinois; Moore Publishing Company, 1980), pp. 518-32.

24. Joseph P. Martino, "Survey of Forecasting Methods, Part I," World Future Society Bulletin, November-December 1976, pp. 4-7.

25. Solomon Encel, Pauline K. Marstrand, and William Page, editors, The Art of Anticipation: Values and Methods in Forecasting (New York: Pica Press, 1976), pp. 3-19.

26. For the Sputnik impact, see Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), pp. 57-61, 141-76; James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1977), pp. 2-30; and Constance McLaughlin Green and Milton Lomask, Vanguard: A History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971), pp. 185-90.

27. See Stanley Hooker with Bill Gunston, Not Much of an Engineer: An Autobiography (Shrewsbury, England: Airlife Publishing, 1984), pp. 98-99. This story is well known even among popular aviation writers; see, for example, William Green and Gordon Swanborough, The Observer's Soviet Aircraft Directory (New York: Frederick Warne and Company, 1975), p. 53; and Bill Sweetman and Bill Gunston, Soviet Air Power: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Warsaw Pact Air Forces Today (New York: Crescent Books, 1978), p. 117.

28. General Robert T. Marsh, USAF, "A Preview of the Technology Revolution," Air Force, August 1984, pp. 42-49.

29. Robert F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907-1964, vol. II (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University, June 1971), pp. 797-800.

30. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book I, passage XCII, in Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, edited by Hugh G. Dick (New York: The Modern Library, 1955), p. 511.

Contributor

Richard P. Hallion (Ph.D., University of Maryland) is Director, Special Staff Office, Aeronautical Systems Division, AFSC, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He has been Chief Historian, Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB, California; served as Curator of Science and Technology and Curator of Space Science and Exploration at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution; and taught in the fields of aerospace history, military history, and history of technology. Dr. Hallion is the author of ten books on aerospace and military aviation development.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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