History of Acquisition in the Department of Defense, Volume 1, Rearming for the Cold War, 1945-1960 (ePub eBook)

This volume is a history of the acquisition of major weapon systems by the United States armed forces from 1945 to 1960, the decade-and-a-half that spanned the Truman and Eisenhower administrations following World War II. These instruments of warfare—aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery, guided missiles, naval vessels, and supporting electronic systems—when combined with nuclear warheads, gave the postwar American military unprecedented deterrent and striking power. They were also enormously expensive.

The volume is organized chronologically, with individual chapters addressing the roles of OSD, the Army, Navy, and Air Force in two distinct periods. The first, roughly coinciding with President Truman’s tenure, covers the years from the end of World War II through the end of the Korean War in 1953. The second spans the two terms of the Eisenhower presidency from 1953 through early 1961. The year 1953 marked a natural breakpoint between the two periods. The Korean War had ended. President Eisenhower and his defense team began implementing the “New Look,” a policy and strategy based on nuclear weapons, which they believed would provide security and make it possible to reduce military spending. The New Look’s stress on nuclear weapons, along with the deployment of the first operational guided missiles and the rapid advances subsequently made in nuclear and missile technology, profoundly influenced acquisition in the services throughout the 1950s and the remainder of the century.

As used in this study, the term “acquisition” encompasses the activities by which the United States obtains weapons and other equipment.

In surveying the history of acquisition between 1945 and 1960, this study discusses or refers in passing to many of the hundreds of weapon system programs initiated by the services in that period, but it is not a weapons encyclopedia. Instead, it investigates a few major programs in depth in the belief that such detailed examination best reveals the evolution of acquisition policies, organizations, and processes, and the various forces influencing weapons programs.

Table of Contents:

I. WORLD WAR II: A WATERSHED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

II. ORGANIZING FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: OSD AND

ACQUISITION, 1945–1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

 Coordination of Research and Development Prior to the National

 Security Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The Research and Development Board . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Coordination of Procurement Prior to the National Security Act . . .41

The Munitions Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

III. THE RESPONSE TO WAR: OSD AND ACQUISITION,

1950–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78

Rearmament: Purposes and Organization . . . . . . . . . . . .79

 Requirements Estimates and Production Schedules . . . . . . . . 90

Production Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

The Attack on Production Delays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99

Production Priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

 Research and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

IV. MISSION AND MATERIEL: THE ARMY AND

ACQUISITION, 1945–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

The Army, 1945–1953: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Organization for Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

 Research and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

 Procurement and Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

V. EMERGENCE OF THE WEAPON SYSTEM CONCEPT:

THE AIR FORCE AND ACQUISITION, 1945–1953 . . . . . . . 204

The Air Force, 1945–1953: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Organizing to Exploit Science and Technology . . . . . . . . . 212

Determining Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Managing the Acquisition Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

VI. THE AIR FORCE AND THE AIRCRAFT MANUFACTURING

INDUSTRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Industry Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

The Air Force and the Industry’s Postwar Crisis . . . . . . . . . 268

The Air Force, Boeing, and B–47 Production . . . . . . . . . . 279

Employment of Retired Military Officers in Industry . . . . . . . 292

VII. DECENTRALIZATION AND FRAGMENTATION:

THE NAVY AND ACQUISITION, 1945–1953 . . . . . . . . . .319

An Overview of the Navy, 1945–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

Organization for Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330

Acquisition of a Nuclear Weapons Delivery Capability . . . . . . 344

The Marine Corps and Acquisition: The Amtracs . . . . . . . . 359

VIII. CENTRALIZATION BEGINS: OSD AND ACQUISITION,

1953–1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

 The Eisenhower Administration and National Defense . . . . . . 392

Organization for Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

 The Robertson Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

The Acquisition Workforce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

IX. ASCENDANCY OF THE WEAPON SYSTEM CONCEPT:

THE AIR FORCE AND ACQUISITION, 1953–1960 . . . . . . . 457

The Air Force in the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

Organization for Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

The Weapon System Concept and the Acquisition Process . . . . . 472

The B–58 Strategic Bomber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

The Weapon System Concept and Ballistic Missiles . . . . . . . 490

X. TOWARD CENTRALIZATION AND THE SYSTEMS

APPROACH: THE NAVY AND ACQUISITION, 1953–1960 . . . . 522

The Navy in the Eisenhower Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523

Acquisition Organization and Management . . . . . . . . . . . 535

Naval Aviation: Toward the Weapon System Approach . . . . . . 555

XI. CREATING A MISSILE AND ROCKET FORCE: THE ARMY

AND ACQUISITION, 1953–1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592

The Nuclear Army of the Eisenhower Era . . . . . . . . . . . 594

 Centralization of Research and Development Management . . . . 603

The Attack on Lead Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

Missile Acquisition and Industry Relationships . . . . . . . . . .619

XII. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648

APPENDIX I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656

APPENDIX II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669

NOTES ON SOURCES AND SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . 673

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723

Tables

Charts

Military and weapons historians, members of the military, governmental policymakers and Defense department staff, and anyone with a need or desire to learn about the history of U.S. weapon acquisition will find this a useful publication.