Bøger af Richard Chait

The Army science and technology (S&T) program is conducted both in-house and in external laboratories. The program consists of basic research, applied research, and advanced development, known by their respective budget codes of 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3. The 6.1 basic research program is conducted primarily through grants to academia, although some research is conducted in-house. There are also some 6.1 efforts, such as the Army's collaborative technology alliances (CTAs), that bring together subject matter expert from industry and academia with counterparts from the DOD laboratories. The 6.2 applied research program also consists of in-house and external efforts. Here, the external efforts involve m ore industry technologists than are seen in the 6.1 program . The 6.3 program, because of its developmental nature, is primarily executed by industry, but is overseen by in-house technologists.

Recent studies at the National Defense University (NDU) have documented the important science and technology (S&T) contributions of the military service laboratories.1 These studies showed that in-house Department of Defense (DOD) laboratories, in cooperation with the private sector and academia, developed critical technologies for weapon systems that strongly impacted the outcomes of World War II and the Cold War. Involvement of the in-house laboratories continues today, undiminished, as our Nation battles the threat of international terrorism.

The assumption underlying the value of peer re view is that the quality of work is substantiated or improved through critiques by individuals who are independent, objective, and have specialized knowledge in the subject matter. One of the authors (Dr. Lyons) has had firsthand experience with such reviews. Some time ago, while in the private sector, he was asked to serve on a National Research Council (NRC) ad hoc committee of external, independent experts to review the fire research program at the National Bureau of Standards (N BS). The committee found the program s to be fragmented and deficient in basic research, and made a number of recommendations on how to improve them. (For more on how such a committee operates, see the discussion of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in chapter 3.) The result was the creation of a newly focused organization with a strengthened scientific knowledge base. These reforms helped NBS become a world leader in the field of fire research.

This paper originated with the concerns of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology (DASA(R&T)), whose duty is to assess the Army's science and technology (S&T) program.1 The Deputy Assistant Secretary has aggressively sought innovative ideas for measuring the impact of the Army's S&T on the future fighting force. Recently, the National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) conducted a full review of the past contributions of Army laboratories to today's military capabilities.2 Aware of that review, the Deputy Assistant Secretary asked CTNSP to develop approaches for measuring the benefits of today's S&T investments on the future military.

This paper reviews the technology forecast assessments of the Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century (STAR21) study conducted for the Army by the National Research Council in the early 1990s. The review in this paper was requested by the Army Chief Scientist, Dr. Tom Killion. The goal for STAR21 was "to assist the Army in improving its ability to incorporate advanced technologies into its weapons, equipment, and doctrine."1 The objectives were to: identify the advanced technologies most likely to be important to ground warfare in the next century, suggest strategies for developing the full potential of these technologies, and project implications for force structure and strategy for the technology changes."

The Army team at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy has been doing technology studies for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology since 2003. In 2007 we published Enhancing Army S&T: Lessons Learned From Project Hindsight Revisited, which we refer to here as Vo l. I. That publication was a summary of critical technology contributions to the development of four successful Army warfighting systems. Since then, we have completed a number of studies of important aspects of the Army science and technology (S&T) program with an emphasis on the Army laboratories. In the present paper, Vol. II, we integrate the findings of these studies and make recommendations after each chapter, as well as in a separate final chapter. Chapter I of this volume is an introduction, and Chapter II offers an updated view of the work discussed in Vol. I with an emphasis on the relative roles played by the Army laboratories and the contractors that manufactured the systems. The close collaboration between the two groups was judged by us to be the key to the successful outcomes. Both the Army laboratories and the technical personnel at the contractors were essential-without either group the work would have cost more, taken more time, and might well have failed. We believe the collaboration was the result of the efforts of the mid-level managers who pressed technologists to work together. In Chapter III, we discuss the impact of the lack of publicity given to the Army laboratories' work. This lack of publicity has caused some observers to conclude that the laboratories are not significant contributors to the warfighters. This belief in turn has produced recommendations from outside the military to close the laboratories and assign the research to the private sector. We do not agree with the criticism or the recommendation. We discuss two aspects of addressing this problem: the need to maintain high-quality work and the need to provide detailed information about the contributions of the laboratories to all parties concerned-namely, Army senior leadership, officials in the Department of Defense (DOD), the Administration, the Congress, and the general public. Chapter IV explores the laboratory quality question. We begin by asserting that the most important asset of a laboratory is its technical staff members and that, therefore, ensuring staff quality should be a top priority of management. We discuss a number of methods for locating and bringing new employees onboard, including use of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA), post-doctoral appointments, and visiting scientists and engineers. Chapter V discusses two reports we issued on the role of technology in stabilization and reconstruction. We surveyed the experiences of recently returned soldiers from Iraq. More recently we have conducted Gedanken Experiments at Fort Bennning to explore, with experienced soldiers, various challenges facing the laboratory programs. These experiments brought together a number of officers and senior non-commissioned officers in combination with Army scientists and engineers and observers from ASAALT and other Army organizations. The participants have been enthusiastic about the experience and are urging that more such experiments be carried out. In Chapter VI we recommend that the Army laboratories be managed as the important component of developing new capabilities for warfighters that they are. The Army should emphasize reporting relationships and the role of ASAALT in developing policy affecting the laboratories.

Since World War II, predictions of science and technology for military applications have occurred periodically. A study chartered by the Army Air Force predicted in 1947 a broad range of developments in aeronautics and air power and has been a model for such forecasts ever since. Projections in science and technology have been issued for many years by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, which publishes decadal studies for specific disciplines. Such studies for astronomy and astrophysics, for example, go back to at least 1964. An important task of DOD science and technology (S&T) programs is to avoid technological surprise resulting from the exponential increase in the pace of discovery and change in S&T worldwide. The nature of the military threat is also changing, with the result being new military requirements, some of which can be met by technology. Shaping the S&T portfolio requires predicting and matching these two factors well into the future. Some examples of technologies that have radically affected the battlefield include the Global Positioning System coupled with inexpensive, handheld receivers; the microprocessor revolution, which has placed the power of the Internet and satellite communications in the hands of soldiers in the field; new sensing capabilities such as night vision; and composite materials for armor and armaments. Some of these technologies came from military S&T, some from commercial developments, and still others from a synthesis of the two sectors, but all were based on advances in the underlying sciences. Clearly, leaders and planners in military S&T must keep abreast of such developments and look ahead as best they can. In the Department of Defense (DOD), the last series of forecast studies was done in the 1990s. In 2008, National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) assessed the Army's STAR 21 (Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century) study,3 in which the basic and applied sciences were assessed and forecast as separate and discrete disciplines. Future capabilities were discussed in a separate set of STAR 21 volumes on systems. In general, the technologies of individual systems were not discussed with reference to the underlying sciences. This separation of future capabilities from the underlying S&T forecasts was true for the studies of all three services.

In this paper we review some of the landscape of research and development on power and energy as it pertains to the needs of the Army warfighter. We focus on the battlefield and consider questions related to vehicles, dismounted soldiers, and forward operating bases. The literature in the overall field of energy research is immense; we make no attempt to review all these reports but rather have looked at a few selected studies that focus on the military challenges. The context of the study is twofold: the National need to reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels and the Army's need to reduce the logistical burden and hazards of moving said fuels on the battlefield. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the danger inherent in transporting supplies over terrain that is difficult to render safe from terrorist raids and hidden explosives. The Army seeks to reduce this dependence by improving the fuel efficiency for uses that cannot now be entirely supplied by alternatives. These efforts will also provide the opportunity to save a great deal of money and reduce the number of personnel in the logistics chain. Needless to say, there will still be convoys carrying other supplies to forward bases. However, any reduction in the amount of supplies convoyed will be desirable.

An important challenge for the Department of Defense (DOD) science and technology (S&T) programs is to avoid technological surprise resulting from the exponential increase in the pace of discovery and change in S&T worldwide. The nature of the military threat is also changing, resulting in new military requirements, some of which can be met by technology. Proper shaping of the S&T portfolio requires predicting and matching these two factors well into the future. Some examples of technologies which have radically affected the battlefield include the Global Positioning System coupled with inexpensive hand held receivers, the microprocessor revolution which has placed the power of the Internet and satellite communications into the hands of soldiers in the field, new sensing capabilities such as night vision, the use of unmanned vehicles, and composite materials for armor and armaments. Some of these new technologies came from military S&T, some from commercial developments and still others from a synthesis of the two sectors; but all were based on advances in the underlying sciences. Clearly, leaders and planners in military S&T must keep abreast of such developments and look ahead as best they can.

Presents the experiences of campuses without tenure and campuses where faculty may choose tenure or contracts. Issues covered include academic freedom, faculty recruitment, selectivity, turnover, and reward structures. Answers the question, "What lessons can be learned from campuses with contract systems?".