Document created: 27 August 04
Air University Review, November-December
1970
Lieutenant General Otto J. Glasser
The business of identifying, developing, and acquiring new weapon and support systems is an endeavor which focuses on the future. To be sure, its day-to-day demands become very definitely matters of the moment, but it is the future on which our sights must constantly be fixed.
If we have learned anything from human experience, it is that the future cannot be predicted with certainty. On the contrary, it is fraught with uncertainties―some of the next hour and some of the next decade, some incidental and some critical. One of the more hopeful characteristics of Western man has been an underlying faith that he can help shape his future. As inheritors of that tradition, we in the United States believe we can reduce and channel the uncertainties and thus render the situations they create more manageable.
In a sense, the requirements, development, and acquisition activities in Headquarters USAF are designed to shape our nation’s future. Our article of faith is that by providing the right assortment of systems and technologies, we may enable the Air Force to avoid some of the uncertainties that seem so threatening when contemplated in the abstract. In particular, we believe that if we provide the right kind of military capabilities, we may discourage any other governments from making the kinds of decisions that would damage our nation’s vital interests.
One reason for this belief is that for some time now the threat of technological surprise has been neither real nor likely. This is true because the United States has maintained world technological leadership in both military and economic terms. Our capabilities have continually been superior to and timely enough to cope with those of our potential enemies. This relative advantage has enabled the U.S. to contribute significantly to world peace and maintain our own national security.
Our technological leadership has resulted from a vigorous program of research and development (R&D), coupled with a healthy technical manufacturing capability. This combination is the mainspring of our nation’s ability to have on hand appropriate weapons and technologies when needed. Thus we have had in readiness both plans and hardware for the weapons and systems required to meet challenges as they have arisen. Through this combination we have been able to improve the military alternatives available to our national leaders and to provide them a foundation for understanding the implications of foreign technological advances. Within the limits of the resources available to us, we of the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development, endeavor to continue these services.
Maintaining technological leadership is becoming increasingly difficult. A few years ago our funding for military R&D was almost twice that of our closest competitor, the Soviet Union. By the mid-seventies, if the current trend continues, we will be doing considerably less defense-oriented R&D than they. Whereas on the surface this situation might be justified in the interest of governmental economy, it nevertheless represents a slow erosion and decay of the technological advantage which has allowed us to maintain a comfortable margin of national security through the years.
Part of the reason for this declining trend is that the military is facing constraints as perplexing as any faced before in our national history. First of all, military preparedness and planning have proved so successful that the threat to national security is no longer as visible as it was after World War II. The tremendous costs of advanced systems, such as the C-5, and the technical difficulties encountered with complex technologies, such as the F-111, have served to increase public and Congressional concern over defense spending. This concern has contributed to the overriding issue of national priorities. Increasing attention is being given to questions of how our public resources should be allocated, as among military and a variety of domestic programs. Some influential figures apparently believe we can satisfy domestic requirements by cannibalizing the defense budget. Yielding to this inclination, however, could greatly accelerate the decline of the secure environment, which contributed to the problem in the first place.
While our current request for research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) funds represents a reasonable share of the overall proposed defense budget, it is less than we honestly feel is needed to prepare for future defense requirements. Planned reductions for fiscal year 1971 lower our overall defense spending to seven percent of the gross national product. This represents the smallest amount of purchasing power that we have had for defense in twenty years. Inflation has also taken its toll. The 72 billion defense dollars proposed for FY 71 will buy only 55 billions’ worth in terms of the dollars of seven years ago. Using the same discounting formula, our current request of $2,910,000,000 for RDT&E is the equivalent of only $2,210,000,000 in 1964 dollars; by contrast our appropriation for that year was $3,630,000,000. Faced with reduced levels of support, we have had to eliminate some efforts entirely and reduce others to a minimum.
So far, by sacrificing what we believe in for what we must have, we have been able to maintain a high level of capability. This has required a number of trade-offs, in varying degrees tolerable to both the concerned public and a continuously healthy R&D community. For example, we have sacrificed the Manned Orbiting Laboratory but maintained our insistence on more urgent programs such as the F-15 Air Superiority Fighter and the B-1 Advanced Bomber. However, we are also encountering the necessity for different sorts of trade-offs, like operations and maintenance costs versus RDT&E and new acquisitions. We are caught in an increasingly tight squeeze between the demands for current performance and demands for future capabilities.
As our dollar resources diminish, our research, development, and acquisition flexibility becomes increasingly limited. All our efforts are designed to alleviate current and anticipated operational deficiencies―to fill important gaps in our capabilities to cope with reasonable eventualities. Unfortunately we cannot wait until the need for a particular system becomes crystal clear. Necessarily long development lead times of five to ten years for new systems demand that we anticipate future required capabilities and employ a variety of measures to acquire them. Thus we believe it important to have under way simultaneously at any point in time programs to improve existing systems, to develop totally new weapons and equipment, and to explore potentially useful technologies. Declining resources mean constraining our ability to maintain such efforts in essential areas. This concerns us greatly because without the flexibility to develop alternative technologies and systems our capacity to shape a secure future will diminish.
Air Force research, development, and acquisition efforts are administered by a vast and multilayered community. At the uppermost level of management and policy determination is the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), with the Director of Defense Research and Engineering exercising continuous detailed review of Air Force proposals and annual programs. At the working level are the laboratories of the Air Force Systems Command and various university and industrial contractors. Operating at the upper-middle management levels are Headquarters Air Force Systems Command and its subordinate field divisions. In effect, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development, Hq USAF, is the agent of the Chief of Staff, serving as a management link between the program approval authorities, which are the Secretaries of Defense and Air Force, and the Air Force field organization that directly administers the research and development efforts.
The DCS/R&D contribution derives from three primary activities: analysis, advocacy, and management. Stated or conceptualized needs are examined critically and from the standpoint of identifying systems and technology areas where development work is particularly needed. Through program reviews and interagency discussions, we advocate these needs and our proposed development programs to solve them to OSD. The advocacy continues through subsequent Congressional budget hearings, annual program requests, and as long as the Air Force must justify its need for the system. Our broader management tasks involve shaping contract policies, designing development and acquisition programs, participating in Air Force budget formulations, and accommodating policy directives from higher authority. The articles that follow will describe in detail our objectives and problems in some of these areas.
The research and development programs managed by the DCS/R&D are identified in five categories, each signifying a different level of activity: research, exploratory development, advanced development, engineering development, and operational systems development.
research―effort to acquire increased knowledge of natural and behavioral phenomena needed in solving military problems. It is distinguished from other laboratory and study effort in that it is not designed for application to specific technology objectives.
exploratory development―effort to resolve specific military problems ranging from fundamental applied research through development of feasibility demonstration hardware. It also includes specific development projects for which funding levels are too low to warrant identification separate from their parent technology area.
advanced development―individual hardware development projects designed for purposes of testing and experimentation. Even though they may represent either technology or subsystem programs, advanced development hardware items are not intended for eventual operational testing and service use.
engineering development―system and component programs engineered for direct service use but not yet approved for production.
operational system development―continued development, engineering, and testing of systems approved for production.
The work of the DCS/R&D is initiated in a variety of ways. Theoretically, research and development efforts which culminate in a piece of hardware move successively through each of the categories and then into production. Actually, they may begin in any category other than operational system development. They may also begin, regardless of category, either as the result of a formal request for development of a particular capability or as a derivative of ongoing research and technology efforts. In the latter case, work in one area may lead to the emergence of promising technological growth or even an interesting system concept. Formal requests for development efforts usually come from the field, among the using commands; some also originate in the Air Staff. Proposals growing out of other research and development programs may be initiated by our in-house laboratories, by contractors, or by Air Force management elements.
What the DCS does concerning these programs depends on what category they fall in at the time. All research and exploratory development and some advanced development comprise what we call our “technology base.” Individual research and development efforts are administered as projects, grouped under descriptive elements of the overall program. These larger elements appear as separately identified line items in the R&D budget. For example, projects in “surface finishes” and “aerospace lubricants” are administered under the program element Materials; projects in “nuclear radiation hazards” and “combined stress in aerospace environments” are under the program element Aerospace Biotechnology.
For program elements in the technology base, the responsible DCS/R&D office performs a variety of supporting services. It provides Air Staff supervision of related in-house laboratory and contracted work. It continually reviews these elements and projects in the context of others to assure balance and proper emphasis among technology base activities. Staff offices provide essential documentation and Air Staff review of proposals for new projects within a particular program element. Overall, the staff emphasis is to be alert for and provide particular support for those projects which promise significant advances in the technology areas essential for system applications.
Advanced development programs on subsystem hardware and all engineering development programs are handled somewhat differently. Each program is carried as a separate budget line item and is administered by its own staff officer, the Program Element Monitor (PEM). This individual is responsible for justifying the resources needed for his program element during regular portions of the Department of Defense program/budget cycle. By assembling relevant data, preparing written reports, and providing formal briefings, he continually explains, defends, and advocates his program before various Air Staff and OSD review groups. These officers prepare the formal documents required under the Program Budget System, including Program Change Requests (PCR) and Program Change Summaries (PCS). They also periodically prepare action directives to the field as required by Air Staff and higher authority decisions. The driving motivations behind the staff actions for programs in these advanced development and engineering development categories are to achieve timely application of advanced technology to new systems and to provide fully adequate development and testing of approved hardware items.
Before entering these more advanced development categories, however, each program and project must achieve formal recognition as a separate piece of required development work. This recognition can be obtained only through approval of the detailed program and allocation of the necessary funds by OSD. Recognition is preceded by a series of studies and analyses to determine the best ways of alleviating specific operational or technical deficiencies. Depending on the nature of the problem, these may include parametric system design studies, cost and feasibility studies, military mission analyses, and studies to determine optimum applications for specific technologies. Some of these activities are conducted within the R&D Deputate, some in other parts of the Air Staff, some by Air Force Systems Command, and some by contract—for instance, by the RAND Corporation and Analytical Services, Inc. (ANSER), which are Federal Contract Research Centers largely supported by Air Force R&D funding. In the course of such studies, several suitable concepts and development approaches may be identified, but the management climate requires that one best solution be determined. This solution must then be proposed, justified, and sold by DCS/R&D staff officers to higher Air Force authority and thence to OSD. Initial success in this process is indicated by only one measure: whether or not our proposed program is added to DOD’s Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP).
Systems that reach this point in the development cycle have successfully completed the phase of Concept Formulation. Although this is a significant step in the life of a system, it is really only the beginning. Each system must pass many more tests, and the responsible PEM must continue to shepherd his program element through several more phases and critical reviews before it can attain production status. Without getting into the detailed procedures and documentation required for successful passage through these subsequent phases, it is well at least to identify them.
Concept Formulation is followed by Contract Definition, during which two or more contractors prepare detailed technical, management, and cost proposals for completion of engineering development. At completion of the Contract Definition Phase a winning contractor is selected, and a development contract is negotiated. At some time after engineering development begins, usually after full-scale development experience and testing indicate that the design is feasible, a decision to produce the system must also be made. With the signing of the engineering development contract, the system enters the Acquisition Phase, which continues until the system is no longer being produced. Through each of these phases, the DCS/R&D staff must continually keep abreast of the specific progress of the system and its general climate of acceptance. Accordingly, we must maintain an effective campaign of advocacy at several levels of review.
One of the processes in which the management and advocacy activities converge most dramatically is the annual defense of our proposed RDT&E and procurement programs before the Congress. By virtue of its control of the purse strings, Congress plays an increasingly critical role in the drama by which Air Force programs progress from paper proposals to productive efforts. Always concerned about the budgetary implications of our programs, the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees reflect increasing public concern over military spending by probing deeply into our development and procurement program accounts. To support our proposals effectively, therefore, we must be able to demonstrate that our management controls prune out duplicative work and that available resources have been expended prudently. In addition, within the present climate of concern over national military commitments, we are being asked to justify much more explicitly than before our need of the systems for which we are requesting development and production funds.
As of this writing, it is still too early to evaluate the success of our current year’s appeal to the Congress. The Armed Services Committees of the two houses have not yet gone into conference on the authorization bill, and appropriations bills have not yet been drafted. Last year, however, our system requests were subjected to the closest scrutiny to date as to their intended use and political utility. Particularly on the Senate floor, critics questioned the need not only for a new bomber, the B-l, but for any bombers at all. They wanted to know specifically what foreign policy commitments necessitated another squadron of C-5s and why only this system would suffice. It is clear that we must be certain that our program requests are grounded on explicit rationale and firm justification.
The various constraints acting on the systems acquisition community have encouraged us at Headquarters USAF to review critically our past procedures and to introduce more economical practices. For example, we are introducing more flexibility into our contracting policies. Increasingly prevalent in the recent past was the practice of competitively selecting a source based on contract definition proposals and a contract for the complete development and acquisition of the system. The C-5 and the Short Range Attack Missile (SRAM) are examples of this total package procurement approach. Unfortunately, this approach committed the Air Force to an untested and unbuilt idea―in short, to a pile of well-analyzed paper. The drawbacks are obvious: we are buying state-of-the-art technology years before production, and later on we have to pay the price of modification if we want the most advanced equipment. Consequently we now tend to contract separately for system development and for procurement. Moreover, we frequently employ cost reimbursement contracts for the early phases of our programs, to provide needed flexibility and the opportunity for a closer participation by Air Force agencies.
We have also begun improving R&D contract procedures by a provision called “mile-stoning.” Under this procedure a system developer must demonstrate that he has accomplished a particular stage of the development on schedule before continuing This, hopefully, will help prevent the costly mistakes so often encountered when a program moves too far, too fast This approach is being applied in ongoing programs for the B-1 Advanced Bomber and the F-15 Air Superiority Fighter.
As still another means of improving our acquisition process, requirements, development, and acquisition people are giving a hard look at the long-neglected concept of prototyping. We believe that with some systems we could benefit greatly by proceeding from advocacy to a form of contract definition that would require competitive development of a prototype: a “fly before you buy” approach. In this way the acquisition decision could be based on more positive knowledge of the system we would be buying. In addition, experienced production and manufacturing teams would lessen our initial risks. This idea has been approved for use with the proposed A-X Close Support Fighter because it is essentially a state-of-the-art aircraft with no new technologies needed.
Unfortunately, there is no assurance that these and other steps we are taking will eliminate all research, development, and acquisition problems. Nor will these steps necessarily guarantee our future security. We are confident, however, that they will help eliminate some of the uncertainties about systems under development and, in turn, some of the uncertainties about our future capabilities. This, we believe, will increase the probability of our nation’s being able to manage its future and preserve the vital interests of its citizens.
Hq United States Air Force
Lieutenant General Otto J. Glasser (M.S., Ohio State University) is Deputy Chief of Staff, Research and Development, Hq USAF, with additional duty as Military Director, U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Except for flying duty during World War II, most of his services has been in technology: directing ballistic missile, electronic, and space projects from research to production. He was Chief, Munitions Branch, R&D, Hq USAF, and since 1965 has been Deputy Director, Operational Requirements and Development Plans, and then Assistant DCS/R&D. He is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College.
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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