Sources of Weapon Systems Innovation in the Department of Defense: Role of Research and Development 1945-2000: The Role of Research and Development 1945-2000

Thomas C. Lassman

Nov 2008 · Department of the Army

About this ebook

After World War II, the military services did not possess the requisite in-house expertise to develop nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other state-of-the-art weapon systems incorporating the latest advances in science and technology. Because of this deficiency, the Department of Defense increasingly acquired new knowledge and technical skills through contracts with industrial firms and colleges and universities. At the same time, however, the services continued to expand and diversify their own internal R & D programs to complement the growth of weapons research and development in the private sector. Sources of Weapon Systems Innovation in the Department of Defense explores the historical evolution of this process during the Cold War, focusing specifically on the content, scope, organizational structure, and management of in-house R & D in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. This monograph is not a comprehensive history of military R & D, but rather a broad historical overview of changing institutional patterns of technological innovation within the Defense Department's major weapons laboratories. It examines many types of research and development including fundamental studies of the physics of metals in the Army's primary manufacturing arsenals, rocket and missile development at the Naval Ordnance Test Station in California, testing and evaluation of aircraft engines and rocket motors at the Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, and a host of other R & D activities at laboratories located throughout the United States. How the military services accommodated changes in management policy and balanced the corresponding growth of R & D outsourcing at the expense of maintaining a viable in-house capability is the central theme of this book. Academia and industry played a crucial role in the development and production of military hardware. Significantly, however, the extant historical literature has paid far less attention to weapons research and development in the Defense Department's own laboratories. Any understanding of how the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force developed and acquired new weapon systems after World War II must include a more thorough examination of the historical evolution of the institutions of science and technology within the Department of Defense. While this monograph only scratches the surface of such an ambitious endeavor, it does attempt to provide a general interpretive framework that historians will hopefully find useful as a guide to further research. -- Publisher's Description.