X-1
Richard J. 5arber A,oc.;ate. Inc.
Chapter X
CONCLUDING R.LM33JfS
A REVIEW OF P--RSPE. C'fIVES
The preceding chapter in this volume make it clear that generaliza-
tion about AKPA is especi!ly difficult, if not impossible. The Agency
sLmply carmot be tied up in a neat conclusion.ry package that pua-ports to
represent the escence of its seventeen years of operation. Indeed there
appear to have been several APdOA's, each reflectir rather accurately he
tensions and/or opportuuuities of the environment %-ithin which .it was set.
At most, about one-third of ARPA's lifetime can be said to have been
"nor-..%l." .ch of the tLme i lknctioned in the midst of considerable
bureaucratic stress. Outright abolition was widely discussed in 1959 and
appa.-utly quite seriously considered at the Secretary's level a decade
later.
AKPA's triblntions have often been rather xeliable indicators of
forces and trends external to the Agency, although frequently those working
within ARPA did not sense that I%,lly at the time. The ebbs and flows of
ARPA budgets, for example, reflected very clearly the. ebbs and flows of DOD
and RDT&E budgets generally. The relative rise and f.13 of the scientific
elite and of the faith in science and technology's power to resolve a
major national policy issues definitely affected perceptions of ARPA and
what it was su?posed to be doing. The evolution of the Office of the Sec-
retary of Defense, especially ODD?E, conditioned the uses to which ARPA
%s put. tarv political and policy debates in Congress and the Executive
Branch, e.g., ballistic missile defense syst-- deployment, nuclear testing
and arms control policies, and the role of the United States in Asia,--
directly affected the Agency's programs.
During its first decade, ARPA's leadership tended to feel that the
Agucy was a unique organization in DOD with special ties to the Secretary
and hence somehow rune from the tm!?act of many of the forces and decisions
that hape the activities of the Services and other parts of the Department.
The aSmption concerning organization-l uniqueness .was correct, but the
deri';atton of wmnity was not. AAPA was far more an integral element of
the Defause Delartment than it cred to amt and this lesson was brought
home rth-_r severely in the post-1967 period.
There is no dubt that as the period under review in this study ended,
ARPA was a much more constrained. agency than earlier models. In fact, since
1967 it has been consistently receiving aud even asking for less money, yar
by year. Figure X-1 illustrates this point, showzng the dewrmrd slope of
ARPA budget requests calmlnted in constant (1967) dollnrs. in the first
;en years of ARPA's lifetime, the average Congressional cut in ARPA's budget
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FIGURE X-I
TREND IN ARPA BUDGET REQUESTS
Constant 1967 Prices
($ milio,m }
$00.
SPACE '
PROGRAMS
FY 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 7'3
YEARS
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
requests ws 2.6 million, the highest cut as 7.0 million and in five of
those yes_rs there ws no cut at 11. By contrast, in the period F 1969
t.b-ough .Y 1975, the averrage cut in APA's budget requests has aversed
$18.:' million end the lowest of these ann Congressional cuts was $11.9
million. Since FT 1969 the ARPA program budget has averged $205 million
per year. Obviously ARPA ham been cut back (as have many other DOD RDT&E
gencies and programs). A r:ber of respondents' observations sprinkled
throughout the rominder of this chapter implicitly, if not explicitly
s.re conditioned by this fact. A number of them speak about ARPA in the con-
text of an agency with ceusiderably greater funding levels than the Agency
in fact now enjoys and with a "rgin of flexibility" no.longer available
in the form of unobligated balances, forward funding options, etc.
Changes in ARPA's status over tLme s.re not partlcfii-fly surprisir,
but we have been struck by the relative lack of discussion or debate either
in the Secretarys office or the DDR&E's office about how to use su agency
like ARPA, other than the essenti3]y reactive attention that it has re-
ceived when it was or appeared to be in trouble. Aside from the McElroy
period, successive Secretaries have not paid much attention tc it. Even
the DDPJ's hve se=...: to be faced with a wide range of pr, ')lems far re-
moved rom ARPA. They were ,uxahle or saw no need to give AltPA mch time s
especially Dr,. York and Brown. Dr. Foster did for awhile, but the main
reasons seemed to be a felt bureaucratic need to bring the Agency under
proper management control and to use it to meet Vietnam emergencies. This
absence of attention may correctly, reflect the declining. importance of
crucial national security issues defined in P&D term,.,_At th.e ' least, the_
_Sputnik era propensity to define issues amost entirel in terms of science
and tecYmology is' 'clearly dead.
One may ask why.Secretaries or the DDP&E's have not abolished the Agency.
Aside from the fact that ARPA has done a number of undeniably useful things,
a principal reason is probably its budget. If he so desires, a Secretamy
or a DDPE can rather strongly nfluence the use of that money; it permits
.them, in theory, to handle things that "f through the cracks;" and it
may help them to deal quickly with problems that come up overnight, whe
there is not time to go up to Congress for authority and money. The phrase
"may hlp" is used advisedly because, at present as Rechtin observes,
"_ARP..A's orig'_ml charter and ability. to 'move quicWly, ..and take major amounts
money' and throw it into something itk_e an emerency. -- ad not have
everybody stand around and argue about it .- is heavily diluted right now."[1]
DDR&E'. ø also have had a ranch easier time stopping Service programs tYazu they
do in getting the Services to start and sustain properly something that they
do not want to do. orf? inst .an. ce, foun d ARPA a -eat convenience for
start .ing the Material Sciences orogr .am- The Services might have done it, .
but ARPA did it: "There is Just less argument with ARPA about getting
something like that going, and doing it, than there is wih the Services."[2]
* The most recent ARPA funding history, from which these data are derived,
is reproduced as Appendix A at the end of this chapter.
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Richard J. œarber A,ociate. Inc.
x-3
Foster drew on that characteristic even-more intensively, though usually
for mewhat shorter range purposes. Note though that the usual DDEkE
mtlook o ARPA is conservative, restrained, restrictive. It is basically
ARPA as a convenience rather than a necessity. This outlook relates to
the discussion below of planning how best to use an ARPA.
The ARPA Role
A search for the essence of the ARPA role is an elusive one -- its
'charters have been both imprecise and comprised of multiple components.
This has long been a source of continued "why ARPA?" questioning and a
source of strength, in that it is impossible to pin dwn one single Jus-
tification for the Agency that either makes it obviously indispensable
or, conversely, permits it to be categorized as obsolete. As is clear from
the preceding paes, ARPA has performed work of major interest to no .Serv-
ice, to one Service and to several Services. It has undertaken both very
"high-risk" projects and institutional support programs for which the very
ccncept of risk appears inappropriate. It has served OSD and the DDR&E
very directly, supported work which OSD/DDR&E barely tolerated, and under-
taken projects which interested no one outside.of ARPA and the project
performers. It has worked on issues of grand nation! policy debate, prob-
1-q of interest primarily to some specific Service component, and projects
incomprehensible outside of a technical laboratory. Its portfolio covers
a wide range of both military concerns and scientific disciplines.
If pressed to reach a "definitive" definition of the ARPA role, we
would be t-pted to state that ARPA is the agency which, in principle,
'undertakes programs that: (1) have at least one of the characteristics
usu,.lly attributed to ARPA work, namely, "high-risk," multi-Service, falls
between Services, high OSD interest in central gement, etc., (2) have
no alternatiye. home in the contemporary PD bureaucracy, whether due to
roles and missions disputes, budgetary constraints, administrative cmpli-
cations, or lack of interest, and (3) have some promise of more than marg-
inal significance 'either within a technical field or n terms of Defense
implications, or at least have a persuasive advocate to that effect. That
is,. an ARPA program is typically a product of a positive rationale for its
assignment, a negative rationale for its not being assigned elsewhere (ARPA
as a convenience), and a level of special interest in the substance of the
program. ll three characteristics are essential. A "high-risk," multi-
Service interest program can be, and oten is, undertaken on a Joint Service
basis and the Ser%ces normally can make a strong claim for this approach.
Therefore, for ARPA to receive a "multi-Service" assignment there must be
at least some transitory negative reason for the DDR&E not to choose this
option, either due to amnistrative inconvenience or to policy reserv-
tions. Since ARPA does not have a charter to support routine R&D on a
continuing basis, there is also norms_lly a requirement to establish that
there is something unus-- or important about the prospective work (though'
the definition and threshhold of what is deemed Lmortant may vmry considerably).
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Richard J. Barber A:sociates. Inc.
While the above may better describe the ARPA progrsun than simply
declaring ARPA to be the DOD's "anti-surprise" ngency, it is obvious that
it leaves room for considerable progrmtic heterogeneity and vrying
hasis. Not surprisingly, therefore, the numerous respondents who con-
tributed to developing this histomy assessed the ARPA role from many dif-
ferent perspectives. Following below is a review of some of those per-
spectives, including ARPA's role in responding to maor technological oppor-
tunities, fttug gaps in Service PD, provitng flexibility and quick
reaction capabilities, relating to "Presidential Issues," avoiding "tech-
nological surprise," and supporting basic research.
Responding to Technological Opportunities. Virt,ly none of the senior
persons with whom we talked is prepared to say that without ARPA, various
scientific and technological chievements would not have occurred. Such
black and white views are foreign to the scientific temperament. Respond-
ents, rather, commonly say that ARPA may have expedited the appearance of
a particular technique, device or technology -- perhaps by several years --
but that one ay or another most of the ideas supported by ARPA (or any
other tec.hnical ngency) would have come along anyhow:[B]
CIf you ask] how does it compare with other
vaguely comparable elements of the Defense
Department, in other words, how did ARPA mge
defense R&D compared to how the Air Force or the
Army or the Navy manages defense P.D, I think the
answer is they CARPA do fairly well. On the
other hand, if they had been eliminated, if they
had never been..invented, would the United States'
defenses be weaker? I think probably not. Would
they have cost more or less? Darned if I know.
But it w-as a competent group. who did their Job
reasonably well and who made some things ea_ir '
Tor the other people in OSD .... I don't know
whether ARPA had] a better batting average than
other agencies or not. I think ARPA has done
fairly well in the past. I don't know whether
ARPA still does wel or not. I'm really not that
close to it .... I think then early 1960's it
ras pretty good,. but other people's batting aver-
ages were not zero. They other agencies might
not be terribly high, but theyweren't zero. There
.were good and bad groups everywhere.
Sprl r-m-ins 'convinced that without ARPA there would not have been a
Lmted Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but other tb that he tends to second
the point of view expressed above:4]
I don't' tbfn you can say anywhere that 'without
ARPA you m]dn't have had this,' but I think you
can say that the ABRES program ras a much more
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
effective program because of ARPA, in that the
Army ballistic missile Defense program [aency],
ABMDA, was a mch more effective organization and
[made] much better use of federal /%nds because
of the existence of Project DEFTDER, and because
of the continued goosing nd sort of technological
audit and 'keeping honest' role of ARPA.
The simple act of expediting good ideas, of course, can be exceedingly
cost effective, e.g., those who argue that without DER's success in
highlighting fla's in ZEUS and suggesting an s_!ternative approach., the
ZEU system would have been built at ense cost. Moreover: the cost
e._ffectiveness of accelerating such fields as comuter time-sharin a_d.
networking or various areas in materials science may_ have been enormousl
significant, ven_the e.em½!v bro_ad potential influence of devglopment_s
in these fields to the DOD and the civilian sector of the econom V. This
suggests that ARPA's role may b less one of supporting pure discovery or
innovation and more that of choosing selectively from a market basket of
ideas certain preferred it= for accelerated development.
Dr. York, who is not one to argue that there must be an APPA or that
ARPA stood head and shoulders adore other R&D ngencies in terms of per-
formance, agrees that it ws useful nd that it as characterized particu-
larly by_.an ab.ility to recognize $ood ideas. J5]
The question of 'was there a pay-off?' cen be
asked at so many levels .... One level is that in
a country like this with several million people
working on defense questions and defense ID (maybe
& million persons, or half a million, I guess) it's
ß Just hard to imagine that if you take out. any par-
ticular individ,-I or any particular group of
individuals that those same ideas don't Just arrive
somewhere else anyhow ... ud probably not terribly
long after .... There, though, the question is whether
there is a management group that's list-nng and
that can understand what it is being told; that's
probably more -Tortant than where the idea comes
from ... and there I think of ARPA, as being part
of managemant, rather than originating. It's
probably the ability of ARPA to' listen tos.
and to Bu good ideas; that's more imortant-thn
ability"o think up good deas.]
General Young, whom it will be rec-ll ed supported dissolution of ARPA in
late 1959, believes that the Agency ws excellent at selecting ideas and
developing a sensible program with egard to outer space in the midst of 1
the post-Suatnik chaos. Many space project ideas were floating around in
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X-6
Richard .;, Barber Associates, Inc.
1958. What ARPA did ws to structure or order incipient programs. As he
l said:J6] "ARPA picked the proper things to do, put the right amount of
money on them, shaped them into coherent programs, and evcntl',y turned
them over." His charmcterization of the Roy Johnson ARPA has in fact been
the ideal of most of Johnson's successors.
Dr. Spro3]. is very keen on this function of recognizing good ideas.
He believes that if an sency like ARPA is properly handled:J7]
[I]t will keeo a li&htfootedness that wJ_l.l enable
[the Department it is in] essentially to continue
to modernize itself, which a federal agency has a
terrible time doing. [Having an ABPA enables a
Department] to get a conduit for new ideas that may
l b_e unpon41ar ideas, _callen$in ideas, uncomfortable
ideas, and contact with a world of ideas and people
w-' nt be '11 that accessible to h standard- '
prt of thee [Department].
As of the end of the period under investigation in this study Lukasik
characterized all ARPA staff members as 'oones." soaking up ideas from
everyone, rrely limiting th-melves to a restricted number of sources. J8]
The "high-risk" q,a]ity attributed to ARPA often has meant little more
tb-n a better than average willingness and ability to recognize and support
ideas from mlikely sources thmt otherwise might not get through the "peer
review" committees a the NSF or the layers of review boards and groups
used in v PD organizations, in the Services and elsewhere.
This ability to recognize good ideas ties in with York's view of ARPA
as playing an important role in the "idea exchange mech'uisn'' at high levels
within the DOD and'between DOD .and the outside world. For m,y years ARPA
was willing to support new or high risk reas of research and to make the
results widely awailable to those working in-PD. 'i_is, accordin to one
of our respond,nts, is the only way _to advance the "technological culture."
[9] His model as the advanced BMD technical community that ARPA supported
and stimulated so successfully. Even though much of that work was classi-
fied, AtPA went to g_et.lenths via paper circulatton, inf.9.rmation centers,
sym00s, Rec.ial ,qtxtdy gouRs (with broad participation from university_o
_y, notrfor-profit, .and industrial peop ), supp9re. ing site!restive .
pproaches to t.e.q. hn!cal probiems and Other devices-t6 We the data avail-
able and to solicit debate.* The combination of ARPA's very low-profile
2hi 'as true even for the highly sensitive penetration aids work, e.g.,
AEPA rranged for relatively wide circulation of its compilation of ex-
perimental reentry vehicle performance data specifically to encourage a
"self-cleaning" system, that is, one in which there were incentives such
that corrections, modifications and up-dating would be amost automatically
forthcoming frogs the most kn..zledgeable participants.
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tichard J. Barber A,'.sociates. Inc.
policy sinc 1968-1969 and its greater involvement in intelligence related
R&D in the 1970's has perhaps reduced' this characteristic somewhat, but
ARPA is still generally regarded as superior to other agencies i arranging
the exchange of information and ideas within communities of inte..ested
scientists and technologists. The absence of central prcgram themes in
ARPA and the recent tendency to support relatively small, discrete projects
and program e?.ements, however, might be expected to reduce this feature cf
ARPA's style unless these projects come to coalesce azou3ad a few major
disciplines, fields or missions.
If recognition of' good ideas is a reasonably continuoas bllrk of
ARPA pformanc. over the years, it follows, as ma, contend, that "good
people" -- staff, consultants and contractors -- are the key to the Agency.
This is a truism vlid for any organization, but many take it to be the
distinguishing characteri.tic of ARPA.
Every ARPA Director has unusually strong, positi-e words to say about
the quality of the ARPA staff he directed. We have also found, to almost
Ithe lO0 oer cent level, t?at every AEPA professional considers his ten,re
at ARPA he highlight or one of the highlights of his career. This in-
cludes some who left angry, or quit because they disliked a Director or
office chief, or resigned over the Viethem War or other policy differences
or who departed because of differences over program content or direction.
It is little short of amazing to find such consensus, expressed in such a
forceful manner.
The common denominator running through the opinions of both the happy
and the disgruutled appears to be that each was able to mmerse Dmelf in
the substance ½ ome work that he thought was significant and interesting,
feel that he had played a definite role in chaping it or saving it from its
detracto, and believe that the oumcome of his efforts would be of above-
average vlue to a scientific field and/or to the DOD. To illustrate this
point, we cite at length an ARPA program manager who lived through the
_Agency's most difficult das in the lae l60's and ea=l 1970'S, as h---
'assesses his role and the Agency's røle:[10] =
ARPA is '.rowing older. There's no doubt about
it. There's :.re red tape, more bureaucracy and
less autonom and less rapidity of response than
there used to be .... [I]t's grown since I've come
on board .... It's probably an unavoidable thing.
Whether or not it's a good thing depends on the
q,lity of people that you have. And I don't know
whether ARPA's been lucky or whether there's
thing built into it that causes good people to be
here. I think its self-perpetuatlng to an extent.
A place that has good people can handle the degree
of autonomy which ARPA has, which is still enormous.
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Richard ' J.- 2arber Associates. Inc.
The .power and authority of my pos.tion within
Cmy field] is quite significant. I sit here behind
a desk and make decisions about millions of dollars
.a ear with-out any review boards, ' or advice or an-
els,_or.__anythin else that I don't specificly,
erson13., waut or request. Now, I have to sell--
that tlurough ARPA, but I've had rel]y very good
success in doing that .... With that aount of money,
which would be nothing in phvsics, you couldn't buy
a decent laser ... but in [nr field] that has an
impact. I have made a significant impact .in several
res ....
CI]f I were readily dumb or dishonest or something
that I hope i'm not, it wld be too bad. Then you
could point at it and say: 'How insane ... obviously
someone forgot to put in a review board. ' Now that
would make everything take a lot longer. It would
be a lot less exciting work because yoA have to
please everyone ... or at least satisfy them, and
you would knock off a lot of the interesting parts
of whatever it is [you're proposing] ....
[I]t se= to me there ought to be a place Cwith
ARPA's freedom] ... whether it should be in the De-
partment of Defense I don't know. I tend to think
not -- but on the other hand, if it's not buried
[could it survive?] .... [Moreover this office] is a
tiny part of ARPA. Many people are Just unaware of
its existence. And if it wasn't like that, if it
stood out there in the glare ... maybe it couldn't
exist. It would be so thoroughly scrutinized and
herres s ed ....
I was talking then about our office specifically,
but ARPA as a whore probably has an important place
within DOD. The Services. certainy aren't going to
stick their necks out .... [T]hey attract people who
are conservative and cautious and slow and concerned
more with bureaucratic process than with substantive
research .... It .sem to me that you badly need an
fnsion of a little more life and activity. ARPA
sparks thins, you know [some personal examples here
of pushing the Services to do things] .... They [the
Services] would be taking a terrible chance to take
their money and put it into that kind of basic re-
search. If it didn't work they'd be in trouble; if
my stuff doesn't work, nobody reaJ_ly expects it to
anyway and nc',ody notices too mch if it doesn't.
If nothing worked, Luksik would have dumped me long
ago I suppose. But, you know, some of it works and
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Rtchard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
it's 11 interesting. And if it doesn't work then
it:s good to know that it doesn't work .... So, it
seems to me that it serves an important purpose ....
l I thirk in general ARPA's ability to respond quickly
aud take risks is an important thing and I don't see
how ths could exist in any other agency. [In the
Services, any such budget] would just be sucked
away. You would never accomplish anything ....
[The Service R&D people and ARPA's Service
agents] are from my experience, well, dumb. That's
what it comes down to; not necessarily low IQ, but
not too much imagination or spark or aggressivemess.
They pick out these Jobs, they spend their life in
them -- what the hell do you expect? They're bureau-
crats. That's what they'are. They're more concerned
with ... the bureaucratic aspects: whether they can
get approval, whether it's going to make their office
look good, how it :s going to affect the wy their
budget looks to Congress. I don't give a [damn]
about that. It has to be attended to ....[bum
I I want to think up research and have a fine sci-
entist brin m V fantasies into realiby. That's
-what's fun. - '
aus despite tendencies 'toward institutional rigidity ARPA apparently
retains a spirit- heritage_ tracing in part to the space era and in tart
to the Ruins renaissance.t is a heritage that persists in mainta.nng
that ;RPA is not routine,-5t rather concerned about the important, the
interesting and the innovativ Given the constraints on the Agency in
recent years, the fact that some AP.OA personnel still feel oriented toward
bringing "fantasies into reality" and toward the "fun" of substantive tech-
nical accqmplishment is probably remarkable. Lukastk paid tribute to the
q}_,lity of ARPA's peopl-. Acknowledging that the Agency was theoretically
vulnerable to too ranch cronyism, incest, sm,l in-groups, "shoveling out
the money," etc., he said that ARPA could be e. gigantic scandal, but it
never has succumbed because of its "good people."[ll]
This feature also helps to explain ARPA's apparent success in f.mding
and attracting high quality outsiders to serve as consultants, advisors,
m-mbers of study groups, contractors, etc. And good people have been
attracted to ARPA, both to work within it or associate with it, because
compared to the Services and others, ARPA lached vested interests. It
tended to call the shots as it saw them, and it was recognized that as
part of OSD, ARPA often was close to the sources of power and decision-
making in the Pentagon. Its obvious role in DEFENDER, VELA and even AGILE
for a time, confirmed its status. ARPA could, more often thn the Services,
gain access to talented people who would not otherwise take an interest in
national security issues.
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Richard J.
Borber Associates. Inc.
ARPA's 6.1 research s_lso played a specis_l role in enabling it to
press top flight people into service wheneeded in DOD:[12]
One of the great strengths [of ARPA's 6.1 research]
was that we were in first name, trust-one-another,
contact with people throughout the country ... very
strong people in any field that had any real [con-
nection] with the Defense Department .... We had
access at the end of the telephone to the best
w.'.sdom, analyses, advice, criticism in the country.
Part of this was that mutual trust that built up ...
that we s_!ways learned something from somebody coming
into the office.
ARPA developed'a "flair to interact back and forth" and to "get the most
out of people as well as projects" that Sproull, for one, considered one
of ARPA's most important attributes. J13] It 'as still in place, and just
as highly valued, when Rechtin took over:[14]
I thought that ARPA's contact with the technical
co,nity was a major asset. That was one that
was there long before I got there. I tried to
retain [it]. I think it has been retained since.
It's a bal]wk of ARPA, and that community is what
generates the ideas.
There is another side to the people issue. Many observers choose to
axplain ARPA's troubles in the very late 1960's and afterwards largely in
terms of a reduced ability to attract high ,-ity staff. The reasons
cited are obvious: unhappiness with Vietnam policy; the particular dis-
enchutment of university people with the Defense Department and a variety
of national secu.ity policies; the alleged anti-science bias in government
symolized by President NLxon's gradual dismantling of the White House
science apparatus; re-emergence of a significant gap in government and indus-.
try salaries at the highest grades; in.creased unemployment, which makes
those with a Civil Service appointment less eager to leave and those on the
outside more 'sensitive to retaining their positions in industry or the
universities; he attacks on ARPA's existence; the Agency's low-profile'
posture; dtnutton in fundthE flexibility and ability to free lance; a
perceived decrease in access to the Secretary or involvement in major policy
issues, etc. ARPA still attracts the outstanding indiviml for specific
projects, it is felt, but not across the board. Dr. Ruina, among many
others, believes that the ,-ity of people in government generally has
"gone way dcn."[15] ARPA is not Lmmune to these trends and dealing with
them is expected to be one of its major cha3lenges for the uture.
Filling Service Gaps. There is still a frequently expressed opinion
that an ARPA is needed to handle projects of interest to the Secretary
-hich a Service might ignore, to manage projects involving more than one
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Richard J, Barber Associate. Inc.
Service, to insure that alternatives to particular Service progr are
actively pursued, and/or to ch_l enge the Services. It is sometimes
difficult to know whether this is a reflex, by-rote response or is actually
firmly believed. ' Rechtin and L_ik routinely talked about working on
projects of interest to more than one Service, but because of funding re-
strictions and their emphasis on transfer, ARPA tends to do less of that
now on an exchsive basis and seeks to make its influence felt by partic-
ipating with the Services on programs of mutual interest. In the case of
lasers, Foster provided generous funding to the three Services and ARPA, a
reversal of the orig--ual 1958-1959 ass,tion that a Secretary or DDRE
would usually be inclined to avoid multiple efforts. Progrmms of interest
to none of the Services were less likely to be picked up in the ARPA of the
erly 1970's because the Secretary and DDtt&E were no longer Wing such
assignments and ARPA as a matter of policy was tending to avoid initiating,
on its own, programs for which there was no clearly visible Service user.
Whether this condition is temporary or permanent is impossible to determiue.
There se- to be a continuing consensus that ARPA can be very produc-
tive in stimulating or challenging the' Services to do better R&D, but absent
solid support and protection by the Secretary and the DDPakE, "stimulation"
and "challenge" can quickly yield a backlash in which ARPA is criticized
for interference, wasting lhmds, creating confusion, or worse. lnile
Foster was sensitive to the latter criticisms, he nevertheless insists that
ARPA exists as "a mechanism to instill a new range of scientific and tech-
nological potentials" in the Defense Department and that he used it to do
things that 'the Services wouldn't, ,.co_'t or shoulZt do]"[16] He
still asserts that ARPA's primary Function is to excel in doing mclvanced
research; conversely the Services cannot be expected to excel in that role
because they have so mmuy other flnctions to perform. For him, "science and
technology can have very high leverage on military systm. and thez_fore it
makes sense to concentrate on the leag edge," and that is ARPA's purpose.
[17] . The ords could have been uttered by Roy JOhnson.
Rechtin would underscore this viewpoint by arguing that in times of
budget stringency, the Services either do not or cannot protect their
b_agets for advanced rescrotch. The great difficulty one has in weighing
this "leading edge" theory is that during the Foster/Rechtin/Lukik era
ARPA seemed to be moving away from the leading edge as often as it approached
Low profile, quick-transfer oriented, "no screwbal ideas," obvious militmry-
relevance agencies are not well suited to the achievement of revolutionary
breakthroughs or major developments. Moreover, as Frosch suggests, ARPA
has not been especially successful in protecting its own budget for advanced
research.[18] A case in point is comparison of the original ARPA role in
bllistic missile defense RD and its 1970's entry into antisubine war-
fare R&D. ARPA's ASW work is much more intimately linked to Service pro-
grams than were large parts of DEFENDER. The Agency has not been able to
get either a charter to match the open-ended DEFENDER assignment nor a
DEFENDER-scale budget. What Frosch ca.Ils "laboratory-scale financing"J19]
will not suffice, normally, to make mor advances. It is well to remember
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Ittc.
that the DEFENDER charter ws virtually unlimited. As Sproull summed it
up: "w did pretty well what we wanted," and the program had Funding to
match. [ 203
In other fields as well, ARPA's ability to produce a "critical mass"
of support for a given area of work often appears to be the dominant
factor behind its success, and without it Service relevance may memu little.
Thus one of the most pressing questions for the post-197 tightly budget-
constrained ARPA is whether it retains the ability to reach a threshold
level of support that can really "make a difference" in a given technical
area. Perhaps under the influence of stricter relevance requirements, mud
definitely. reflecting the pressures of the Vietnam War, the "leading edge"
in recent years increasingly has come to mean, in the view of several
servers, some type of high technology "gadget" like lasers, NITE GAZELLE or
the arctic surface effects vehicle. Indeed to some, ARPA has come close to
being an "advanced procurement agency" rather than an advanced research
agency with occasional excursions into 6.3 (advanced development) and 6.4
(engineering development) territory.
Flexibility and Quick Reaction Capabilities. ARPA has always laid
claim t9 beSng' a 'flexible, quick-rea6tion agency. I-ily,-- m-t ß
$!ng quick to recognize ood ideas and. to sta-t them wit h a minimum of..
.d ta_ It did not necessarily mean quick results. Over time this fea-
ture of AEPA has been interpreted on occasion to mean "quick to get m
result," e.g., the field test of the AR-15 rifle in Vietnam. The subse-
quant Vietnam ZAP channel work was based, lmzre and simple, on ARPA's ability
to commtt Funds fast and the DDR&E's power to mandate, directly, that the
necessary internal reprogrammlng be done to free up the nds. Indeed Dr.
l Foster describes ARPA ms "a crisis agency,"[21] but the crisis response
sought for Vietnam was considerably different from the Sputnik crisis
response that stimulated McElro to establish AiRPA.
Prior to 1968, ARPA tended to think more about technologies than end
items. It continued to be motivated, in fantasy if not in fact, by the
Roy Johnson mission of serving as the Secretary's personal agency in R&D
-- quick, agile and efficient in the task of giving the Secretary an inde-
pandent "technological audit" in fields of special concam to him. This
conception depends vitally on haylag Secretaries who think in such terms
(an issue discussed further below), but accepting that assumption for the
moment, this was a rationale for ARPA in the mid-1960's and one which
Dr. Sprol, for instance, would claim is valid today:J22]
One can move fast, can be responsive, one can be an
extension of the arm of the Secretary if he wants
to make sure that the Army program in something or
other is moving as fast as it possibly can, and he
is uncomfortable about that, he can be talking with
ARPA people and putting some additionsl money in
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Richard d. Barber Associates, Inc. '.'
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Luk-sik' s view
gaps" ws very
ARPA, he can get kind of a sechncogical audit of
tDat ... which would be more efficient than simply
putting more money into the first aenc¾ ... which
would have a tendency Just to .keep working at the
same ideas. I think it's a very good use of a
fraction of the money.
of the need for an ARPA to avoid "technology perception/
close tc this perspective.
The DDR&E's use of ARPA's %uick.uess in the late 1960's ws less to
Derforman audit for the Secretary than to respond to the enormous pressures
% his office. for R&D contributions %o the Vietram War..,. %ukasik uses the
'phrase "the urE_ut drives out the important" to describe this perzo--
the phrase reflects a persistent, built-in dile for ARPA.[23J Te
Agency's virtues as a convenience to the DDR&E simply ae not always mutu-
-99y supportive of other AgenCY missions. The Coreress, for its part,
se-m to prefer that ARPA Function in the relatively large area that falls
between an Arecibo project on the one hand and buying hardware for immediate
field combat testing on the other. ARPA r-mains vu.Luerable to unduly nar-
row interpretations of its quick-reaction attribute.
"Presidential Isues." The most obvious dividing line between the
ARPA Directors concerns feelings about Presidential isaacs and ARPA's role
vis-a-vis the Secretary. These differences are well-illustrated by their
reactions to the hypothesis that ARPA has served its purpose, but nowno
longer is needed, in part because there are no advanced "breakthrough" ideas
equal in significance to the missile/space/nuclear energy combination of
the late 1950's to work on and/or because the Secretary and the DDR&E can
now ccntrol.Service rtvalries and assign them work in D1 confidence that
it will be done. In other words, perhaps events have passed ARPA by.
Surp. risingly perhaps, Dr. Killjan rejects this notion:[2j
I now feel that ARPA is a usefbl agency in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense but the DDR&E
should be heavily involved in the decisions in re-
gard to its program. I do not think that develop-
ments in the military services or in their roles
and missions indicate reason to give up ARPA.
Dr. Rina reacted to the same proposition with the comment:. "That sounds
not easonable."[25] He added the Caveat that if a Presidential issue
ere at hand, he would want an .RPA, but he sees none (i.e., something that
might significantly alter the strategic weapons situation) presently on the
horizon. Presidential issues in which Service vested interests are involved
wazTantan ARPA: "[I]n VELA and BMD an ARPAas absolutely essential."[26]
Without such issues, an ARPA is questionable. This leaves unsolved the
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Richard J. 2arber Associates. Inc.
proolem of sustaining an ARPA-like capaci*y "between issues" or a%empting
to create a new one whenever an appropriate issue arises.
Drs. Sproull and Herzfeld also fall clearly in the Presidential issu's
camp, but are inclined to believe that there will. always be such issues, or
something akin to thcm; facing the Secretary. Herafeld, f_or instance, be u
lieyes thmt "any technical enterprise over one Gillton dollars needs a high
Lqualit Quick reaction sho" to handle that ten per cent of the problems
that thee oranization's "stead-State management" system will not be able
-to handle..[27] Dr. Hellmeier has else likened ARPA to a corporate RiD
activity.* This choice of analogy is somewha smlar to the McElroy-
' Jo.hnson "blue sky" unit.
Herzfeld's gency, however, is presumed tO have very close links to
the top, i.e., in DOD, a close "coupling" to the ß ecretary and his problm
as the dominant customer. VELA and D-FENDER are his models. For these
issues: [ 28]
ß .. it as a good thing for the OSD, on program[s]
this important, to have its own capabilities. And
I have come to be convinced that's =he right answer.
So much so that I think any very large organization
remlly ought to lmve an ARPA in the office of the
president. Because, if the stakes are hih, it [the
work] has got to be right, and it has to move as
rapidly as possible.
Spr,ll's "technological audit" function is based on the notion that it
makes sense for'the ecretary and his DDPE to devote some two to five per
cent of the Department's RDT&E funds to that purpose, and that having an
ARPA "is an effective and efficient way of doing it."[29]
The harsh reality of the Rechtin-Lik period was, as previously
discussed, that the Secretary and his peers had largely lost interest in
APDA, apparently did not see it as especially useftl for resolving that
"tenper cent of difficult problems," and did not accept the need for an
ARPA-directed technological audit on their bebal*. One can speculate that
duing the M:Namara era the growing conviction that new technologies were
driving the arms race helped to create negative feelings about the dvanced
research agency. For instance:[]O]
* Hetmeier's ideal corporate R&D agency, and ARPA, are intended to serve
five functions: (1) filling gaps, by covering high priority probl-m
that cross Service lines, (2) doing unique or unconventional Jobs, (3)
tewing "the revolutionary rather than the evolutionary," (4)undertak-
Lug "high risk alternatives which may run counter to the conventionalway
of doing business," and (5) behaving as an agency with no vested interest
in the status quo. (House Comm!ttee on Armed Services, Milltar Posture,
Hearings, 94th Cong., 1st Ses., "Research and Development Subcommittee
Title II, H.R. 6674," Part , March 24, 1975, 490-4904.)
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
Secreta-y McNamara mud other senior civilian
policymakers in the period after 1960 appeared to
feel that any rdica.l new innovation in weapons
systems on the prt of the U.S. defense establish-
ment might destabilize what they hoped would be a
relatively static kind of symmetry in the major
weaponry maintained by the world's most militarily
formidable nations. In this sense, then, there
appeared to be conscious decision after 1960 not
to allow the armed forces to push ahead on inno-.
vtive ideas conceivably leading to major new
departures in militarily useful technology.
ARPA, in its headlest moments, liked to think that it was chartered tc do
Just that, i.e., to "push ahead." One could even argue that York and Brown,
in concludi: that there were uy fewer exciting technical ideas with
breakthrough potential to work on, were permitting policy desires to color
their professional judgments. Such speculation is pointless, however, be-
[cause the more "hard line" Nixon Aatnistrati6ns seemed no more interested
iu ARPA than the Johnson Amnistration. They were intent on "tilting"
back toward the Services within DOD. Secretaries no longer assigned work
to ARPA. Moreover Rechtin confirmed the paucity of good scientific ideas
during his tenure. Thus ARPA Directors after 1967 could not operate on the
assumption that they were in fact the Secretary's agent.
ARPA staff during at least the first ten years of the Agency's exis- I
tence identifled very closely with the Office of the $ecretar . This OSD
connection was a matter of great pride with most of them. Their OSD iden-
tity, if aything, transcended their ARPA identity in importance. For an
independent, flexible sort of agency, ARPA was markedly free of unauthorized
flights in directions purely of its own choosing, in the post-Roy Jo.hnson
period.* The vrious Secretaries of Defense and their key associate prcbab ly ....
never realized the depth of this tpe of OSD lo-lty and certainly failed to
exploi it as y as they might have. Part of the tremendous readjust-
]nent required when the "Presidential issues" programs. were transferred or
closed out was a fnction of the feeling of loss by ARPA staff of close
connection with the Secretary and his concerns, which they hd assumed more
or less as a birthright.
* For instance, Proect AGILE ws creatgd in.part because Gcdel believed
DOD eeded to grapple with the insurgency problem, knew the Se"zices
wold not, and felt that the Secretary would be forced by events to take
the lead. Skeptical ARPA Directors tolerated AGILE because they believed
that "somebody" had to do tt and, at least tufttally, the signal from
the Secretary's offence were that it was important to him and to the
President.
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Richard J. Barber Acsociates. Inc.
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The challenge to the ARP A of the Future may be in defining and maintain-
ing a non-Presidential issues role that is sufficiently unique and valu-
able to warr.ut retaining the organization. This problem appears to be
a real one:[31]
[W]e no-, have an ARPA ... with some 40 projects.
of them quite good ... that is, the technical
quality is very good. The transfer problem is
licked; it works very well into the Services. In
fact, on some projects you can't tell whether it's
an ARPA project or a Service project, and that's
good for many of these things .... However, it does
make it a little difficult ... to figure out what's
going on, because here are no central themes of
large scale at the present time. There are 40 of
them, each of them [in the] $5 to $10 million
class .... But you can't say what central, national
problem is this collection working on ... that
isn't there.
New leadership personalities, of course, could attempt to Change this
situation overnight. Nothir legal has been done to foreclose re-creation
of ARPA's role in DEFENDER or VELA. Dr. Rechtin, however, believes that
it would be extremely difficult to do:[32]
If ;.RPA had tried to keep itself in the national
spotlight, perhaps there would have been national
problems that ARPA would ?ave been handed [by now].
Who.knows? I don't ....
I'm not sure it's practical [to have ARPA %rk
on na_tiorl-level problems]. The reason is, how tie
hell are you going to get the Congress to OK it?
They've -]ea insisted that ARPA's budget be
broken down in sufficient level s that y6u can fol-
low ll these projects at sort of the $5-$10
million class. And if somebody came in tomos row
morning .... and said 'we wub to aggregate . few
of these in the interests of better management'
we'd get shot right out of the saddle..*
Ironic-lly, ARPA ..uy be involved in a carrut Presidential isle, ely,
the le d licatio of.the strategic cse ssile. Accordi to
one rert, "the present incation" oF the cse ssile es a t'-bo-
f ee concept bas on one develod by tA n th te l,0's for
a "Jet belt." is s the I rk aed at usg Jet pro, sion
'es to llft indidn,1 oldiers. (boz' Shapley, "se ssiles:
iz rue, N Weapon ses New Isse," Science, Feby 7, 1975,
)
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Richard Y. Barber Associates, Inc.
Nonetheless it might be s.rgu.d that a return to larger-scale, "Presi-
dentis-! issue" problems could be worth the risk. This is probably a debate
worth having, a quasi-philosophic thinking through within OSD of what an
institution like ARPA might best be used for, over time. We will return to
this point below.
"Avoiding Teclmological Surrise." One mission claimed by some of
the AP3. Directors in both the Presidential issues and non-Presidential
issues cs.ps is that of guarding against technological surprise. ARPA's
"anti-surprise" mission has always been a bit vague, frequently misinter-
preted, but oen repeated because the rhetoric has a resounding ring, as
t does the comps.uiun phrase frequently used by Dr. Foster, "achieving tech-
nological superiority." R9y Joshrison clearly started out with the task of
n. vestiating ut_er. space technolo L (i...nciuding the ballisti__iN3
defense Problem ) on an accelerated basis in order to guard against other
oviet surprises in that medium.. Even the propellent ch,!sty and materials
sciences program assignments were Justified and discussed in terms of their
relevance to missile and space systems. Furthermore ARPA was consistently
described explicitly as a prozram-oriented or project-oriented a_enc. y. Th____e
I.Services zealously mon. itored .ARPA for several years to insure that it died
ot underta..e a whir of work wthout formal assient in part because of
the fear that ARPA might acquire a monopoly over important weapons R&D
and compromise their respective futures. Thus ARPA was in no position to
be a general purpose "anti-surprise" agency. General Betts has made it
crystal clear he believed that the Agency had no such mission when he
directed it (see Chapter IV). Nor apparently did Dr. York, the DDPfkE at
th%t time. Asked if ARPA had caused him any particular disappointments,
measured against his expectations for the ency, Dr. York replied:lB3]
No, not really. I don't think so. Because I
'didn't really expect any of the problsm to actu-
ally be solve. In other words, the fact that
ARPA didn't come through with any breakthroughs
was not a disappointment..
Dr. Spr,l, however, was and is a very keen supporter o an ARPA
"anti-surprise" mission:[34]
I regarded that [guarding against technological
surprise] ms the heart of our mission, as a mat-
ter of fact, I didn't regard those 'buzz words'
as pcJorative at all. They are 'buzz words,' no
quest,'. about that;. they were ... in those days.
But the fact is that I regarded it as one, if not
the principal mission of the Agency: to e sure
that there wasn't something that had been turned
down by the Services as too risky, or impossible
became of the way the Defense Department is
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
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divided up into Services, something that fell in
the cracks, tllat the Soviets were going to come up
with, or somebody else .... That ARPA would be the
Reople that the Secretary and the President would
have the righ to saY 'well the reason I have ARPA
is Just to make sure that we don't get that kdnd of
Shock. '
But _no_te the assumption of presidential and Secretarial involvement and
concerns. Moreover there are additional qm!ifications crucial to Sproll's
conception of ARPA in this role:J35]
The budgets that we had in those days -- which were
$300 million, give or take a little -- were a hell
of a lot of money, if you played your cards right ....
The type of surprise that w are trying to protect
against was the Soviets bu ldtng a laser before we
even knew that a laser existed. And if we had good
enough contacts with the academic community and if
we put mqney out to oose the strong people in the
Service 'laboratories and in academic laboratories,
we couldn't guaranty that, but we could work as hard
as we knew how on it and we could have had a fair
chance of success in protecting against [a] Soviet
success ... that would be a definite change in the
balance of power, from a scientific invention. We
took that extremely seriously. It's true that a
lot of our money was poured into continuing programs
and wasn't a]_l that flexible. On the other hand,
we.kept sbme 6.1 money in almost every project,
sme way or another, and we did a'lot of bootlegging
of things in DEFENDER, for example ... you can't put
your money .o.t to ward off technological surprise
and not have mistake after mistake after mistake.
ARPA then played an anti-surprise role largely within the confines of very
broad program assignments like DEFENDER and within a very large total
Agency budget (a third larger than present day budgets in current dollars
and ranch larger than that. in constant dollars). The large programs and
.large .budgets permitted .6.1-type,'gambling" and -so provided sufficie:ft
."background noise" to absorbmistakes.0 6.1 work in DEFENDER, for znstance,
was easy to jus'ify as relevant sinply by defuing it as related to missile
defense R&D. ARPA ,as both confident enough and big enough in dollar terms
in 1961-1967 to do high risk proJec:ts and not worry unduly if they failed.
Latter-day ARPA's appear to have lost much of that flexibility. Some
program titles such as Strategic Technology and Tactical Technology are
even broader than Ballistic Missile Defense or Nuclear Tes Detection;
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Richard Y.
Barber Associates. Inc.
however, the assignment within them of bite size program elements, very
discrete projects with reasonably precise relevance or transfer ration-
ales, and relatively low budgets, makes carrying out a true anti-surprise
mission somewhat unlikely. There is no margin for "glorious mistakes"
any longer;.. they are no longer as readily hidden or absorbed, although ß
intelligence-related projects sometimes offer scope and Justification for
doing so.
Some of our respondents consider discussion of whether ARPA is capable
of playing an anti-surprise role irrelevant because the concept itself is
faulty. Dr. Ruina, for instance, believes it is foolish:J36]
I never believed in a surprise .... The whole idea
cf surprise is somebody is going to open the door
and out comes an operational system. It's Just
madness. There's no history that that ever hap-
pened .... What you're surprised by is, sometimes,
an experiment that they do .... But the imlica-
tions are that there's a surprise, that a door
opens up, and there is an operational capability
that you couldn't have. That never happens. And
it's Just fantasy. Why do they keep this tremen-
dous air defense structure? We are closing down
ours; why are they keeping thetr's alive? And
it's costing [them] billions a year .... That's
the nature of surprise. But a technological sur-
prise changing the strategic balance is 'Just mad-
ness. You know, I don't think I ever felt that way.
Dr. Rechtin, it will be recalled, sought to follow Foster's instruc-
tions to return to' the fundamentals of the early ARPA, which they tended
to define a "anti-su-prise" an "qui9k-reaction:"[37]
So I went back to the foundations of ARPA, essen-
tially, and said to avoid technological surprise
[is] to do the things we weren't sure of what the
end military mission would be; you Just knew that
there would be a military mission of value. But
you couldn't tell us where the best value woucld
shwup. You lst never can. You can't even
tell that in a weapon system, much less on some-
thing in research.
As noted, this was extremely hard to do in the context of insisting on
relevance and rapid tranafer. Looking back on the experience, Rechtin
adopts a much more ina-like posture:J38]
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
'You can't do a.vthing fast enough in this busine.ss,
that the other side can't compensate for before it gets
disastrous. In other words you can't come up with
an ove-nelming operational advantagc in any short
time. The systems are too big to do this. Now,
you cn come up with a technological surprise. You
can come up with a Sputnik, or you can come up with
a new ASW technique. Bu% you can't make it effec-
tive for some years, Three years minimum. Ten years
for some of these things.. 3md in that time there's
a cmmce for a counter move, to keep it from being
a disaster.
L-kasik too, as noted elsewhere, said that given ARPA's circmntnces he
found himself believing 'in the anti-surprise mission less and less: "I
found that that as an idea that didn't wear.very well."[39]
ma oster, alone, am.on E the ma¾ people interviewed for this stdy, re
ins St.r. ong,'essentiall¾ unconditiokl "anti-surprise" enthusiast..-'g
observes that at the time of Sputnik the U.S. as putting two or three
times as much effort into science and technology as the USSR. Now he
estimates that they are ahead of the U.S. on tais measure and that per-
haps 70-80 per cent of Soviet R&D resources is devoted to military capa-
bilities; hence it seems reasonable to him to expect a crisis soon and that
it will be necessary to reinvigorate or reinvent an ARPA: "Today, much
more than 1958, you need an ARPA."[40] While a minority view in our sample,
it is not to be dismissed lightly. A Soviet demonstration of, say, some
strange new orbiting offensive weapon, could result in a reaction not unlike
Sputnik and a modest witchhunt to detae why the U.' S. was caught so
unprepared.
Basic Research Role.. Few things have consistently polarized feelings
about ARPA, from 1958 to the present, as cles.rly as the debate over doing
basic and applied reses-rch (6.1). Betts, Ruina, Sproull, and Herzfeld for
instance, are very keen on ARPA 6.1. Dr. KillJan r-mains adamant that DOD
has an obligation to support basic research and that an agency like ARPA
is a good one to do it. J41] Ruina today assesses the institutional value
of ARPA largely in terms of its performance in the 6.1 area, in part be-
cause it appears that "high quality research" and 6.1 tend. to be synonymous
in his thinking. Asked to assess ARPA's level of accomplishment o%-er its
lifetLme, he developed the following portrai:[42]
Compared to what the rest of the Services did, mY
guess is they JARPAl did beter. Compared to what you
really can do with that kind of money, I'd probably
given them a C minus. JARPAl sho'cld have been
pushing more promising technologies and better
people all the .way." I thnk the Arecibo thing
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
could have ben done en times over in different
fields as far as the basic reses.rch end.
Rechtin and Foster sought to remove ARPA from what they felt was an over-
concern with 6.1. Lukasik moderated that tendency, but did not reverse
it, seeking to Justify some basic reses-rch on the ground that it was the
best source of "breakthroughs," but retaining pride of place for 6.2 work
because it would produce more "successes." There are vast conceptual nd
setic problems in this subject beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice
it to say that 6.1 is one mu's definition of truly "advs_uced research,"
but another's idea of chasing rainbows -- both may be equally dedicated to
the search for revolutionary technology and using ARPA to support it.
Oddly enough, as ARPA has aged, the idea has been broached on several
occasions to centralize all DOD 6.1 R&D in the Agency.* ARPA itself has
never been the source of tis suggestion and only one of its past Directors
would be inclined to support it. Indeed ARPA has tended to be embarrassed
by such a notion because the Services believed that ARPA must be promoting
it.
General Betts has concluded that the idea has some appeal:J43]
It could be done .... [T]raditionally it hasn't
been, [but] I guess if I were reorganizing the
whole operation right now I'd be Just as happy
to see a 6.1 effort managed centrally. [Pro-
vided] the Services are represented by people
who know the Service problems in whatever staff
of DDR&E mnaged that central effort .... I
would do it in ARPA.
The reminde of his colleagdes disagree. Herzfeld believes the Services
must be kept in direct contact with scientists on the outside or they will
lose all receptivity to new ideas,'i.e., it is important to keep some 6.1
in each Service program. J44] Spro,,ll did not thk the idea was sensible.
Foster was not a'proponent of expanding ARPA's limited 6.1 program, much
less an advocate of assigning it the dominant 6.1 role in DOD. Like Herz-
feld, he worried that consolidating all 6.1 in one place "would cut the
guts right out of the Services, and polarize and alienate them."[45]' He
also felt, as do most of the ARPA Directors that coupling the results of
* For instance, at the time Dr. Sproull took over ARPA, the National Acad-
em of Sciences (especially its President, Dr. F. Seitz) turged that ARPA
seek to become the czar of DOD 6.1. The GAO has cnlled for central
management of DOD 6.1 based on the conclusion that the Services were
misms.uaging such work, and the Laird/Packard Blue Ribbon Panel on DOD
reorganization made a smtlar recommendation, designating ARPA for that
role.
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Richard Y. Barber Associates. Inc.
the hundreds of millions of dollars of DOD 6.1 work done annually to the
engineers, operators, etc., in the Services was too big a Job for one.
agency. It would require APPA to devote an immense amount. of its effort
to managing an empire of largely routine work. "ABPA has to do mostly
6.2, it really does. It should be aware of 6.1, but do 6.2 mostly."[46]
Most of the ARPA Directors accept Foster's reasoning for rejecting the
idea of doing all DOD 6.1 research. There are still %-ide differences of
opinion over how much it should do.
Lukasik had to deal directly wdth the Blue Ribbon Panel Report recom-
mendation and opposed it. He explained his position as follcws:[4?]
[Congressional committees asked about the desir-
ability of ARPA centralizing control over all 6.1.]
It was a typical case of whipsawing becmzse what
they wanted me to do was say 'that was a fine ide
and ARPAwould be a great place,' and 1%s volun.-
teering for the Job .... [But] I would never bite ....
IT]he amount of money we are talking about is some
$250 million, which was about equal to or slightly
larger than the size of ARPA. And you kn½ that
you don't move $200 million in the Defense Depart-
ment or any agency without a great deal of strong
[opposition] ... the Services aren't going to lose
that kind of change .... So, I knew that I ould be
dead bureaucrattc-ly if I eve did ....
Is [central ,nagement] a good idea? I do
thlnkyes. Should it be in ARPA? You could not
drop $200 or so million into ARPA -- double its
size -- and keep ARPA the way it is. We would
literally 'kill the goose that's laying the go]den
egg' .... So you would have destroyed ARPA by doub-
iing it, you would have gotten inefficiencies in
ARPA. Congress would not have given AP3A the
billets to do it any way. The Services would have
killed ARPA, if ARPA had tried to mke that kind
of a grab. [F]urthermore, it would have badly
shifted the balance because now instead of having.
3/{PA 20 per cent 6.1, which meant that ARPAwas
driven by the 6.2er's -- [in other words] was
driven by the tactical and strategic technology
officand the V office, he guys [who] were
kind of 'in the real world'-- nowyou would ha.ve
had basically, you knew, a $200-$300 million 6.1
with kind of like a $100 million 6.2. It would
have become ARPA's NSF. It would have been a
.great science operation.all right. And then you
would have had those poor 6.2er's who ... are
critica to communicating with the Services, you
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Richard J. Barber Mssociates, Inc.
X-3
would have lost [them] in the noise .... Further-
more, if Congress is going to do it: it's because
they believe there are some inefficiencies in the
Services. Now, the way Congress works, is, if they
see a $250 million pot of money in the Services
and they think it's inefficient and they decide
it's kind of one-third wasted .... They [will] take
the third off for inefficiency off the top and
heep that and pass on to us the $180 [million].
Expect us to do as much with $180 as w-as being
done with $250 ... and leave us to sort out all the
guys who were sopping up that remaining third of
the money who weren't getting it. So we would have
gotten, you know, political and bureaucratic hassles
up the gazoo ,ud so .... [I]t's an idea that's better
in pincipl, t-_an it is in practice.
There se- to be little or no likelihood that ARPA will 0e designated
as central manager for DOD 6.1 research. It is not clear Just how much of
a 6.1 role it should play in the future. Granted the 9SF is more adequately
funded, will it or other agencies create something like the apparent elite
corps of materials sciences university centers, an Arecibo facility, or the
computer sciences advances attribute to
Consider the following remark:[48]
_ ARPA is ons.dered throughout the .field as
eing the main supporter and oarhaps the most im-
I - ørtant force in the course of U, S, and probabl
I ,rld historY' in_the comPuter ..... Although the
rest of the world has probably heard more of the
ARPANET than [it has about 6.1] computer work,
[the latter] was clearly one of the main reasons
why the U.S. became dominant in the computer
field, because it had these progr at the vricus
universities that were developing people and con-
cepts and ideas, and time-sharing and various other
things. I think it's had a tremendous impact, cer-
tainly in the early dys when Lick was running it
ß.. the country would never have gro%m in the com-
2uter fie'Yd the way it did if it hau't been for.
ARPA.
While ARPA stresses th e milita?y value of developments like time-sharing
systems, MULTICS', ARPANET,' etc. their greatest importance to the country
may lie in non-defense uses. Moreover, ARPA probably wo,Zkd not have had
ARPANET's to crow about if it had not moed into generous support of the
then-risky 6.1 work which made them possible. In the early 1970's, one
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Richard J. Barber ASsociates. Inc.
is hs.rd pressed to envision ARPA taking that sort of plunge in an entirely
new area. One senses from the myriad explanations giveu by our re.pondent
that the immediate reasons why ARPA reduced this role are quite clear, but
that serious post-crisis evaluation of whether DOD and/or ARPA should,
under some set of conditions, resume smlar activity has not been attempted.
Deciding How to Use An ;RPA
One of the strongest impressions an observer gains from a brief. per-
iod of concentration on ARPA's histor-y is the remarkably small amount of
time which has been devoted by senior policy-makers, e.g., the Secretary,
Deputy Secretary, DDBfE, and the ARPA-Directors, to considering how best
to use this sort of institution. We a.re not referring to the annual budget
cycle and the inevitable discussion of what is going to be done in the next
6-12 months. Rather the issue concerns determining what the most signifi-
cant D0D problems are and communicating that in such a fashion that it is
relatively clear to an ARPA Just what problems it should attempt to apply
its PD resources against.
Conceivably one might conclude after undertaking such an exercise that
the Department did not need an ARPA, thereby Justifying elm!na4io. or a
deliberately-chosen program designed to preserve and strengthen an
capability for future periods when it was anticipated such an agency wout
be needed. On the other hand, the conclusion might be a far more direct
articulation of priority defense issues, as the Secretary sees them, to
guide the scientists and technologists in devising an ARPA program. This
assumes, of course, the original ARPA connection to the special concerns
of the Secretary. The Rechtin/Lukasik cperience indicates that this spe-.
cial connection was severed and in its place ARPA sought to develop problems
for attention on the basis of closer Service, JCS and unified command zela-
tionships. This indeed may be the appropriate ARPA role, but as the period
under review in .this study closes, it is not clear from the record whether
this occurred as a matter of conscious choice by senior decision-makers or
by dint of special circumstance and/or default. There .ems,-however, to
be a strong circmstantial case for special circumstance and default..
Apparently Dr. Foster mou%ted a campaign to identiuy important RDT&E
issues meritLug treatment by DOD, including ARPA. He 'sed the Ramo Subcom-
mittee of the Defense Science. Board, the science advisory committees attached
to the Services and other agencies, former associates in the DOD/AEC labora-
tory system, etc., and tried to "diffuse down" ideas that emerged into DOD.
He also made a crucial statement about the pr. acticality of the procedure
by which problems ar identified:J49]
There is a hell of a lot of struct:-e for this,
and it works, but it's 11mted by the r, umber of
able people and how long they will work, and by
the willingness of the Secretar-j of Defense, Deputy
Secretary of Defense and the DDR&E to work [it].
Our research suggests that too often this mechanism has not "worked."
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
The lack of serious discussion at high levels of what an ARPA should
do and how to use it applies not only to identification of appropriate DOD
problems, but related policy questions such as the Defense Department's
and ARPA's future ro? in 6.1; the possible use of ARPA in 6.3 or 6.4: i.e.,
should ARPA's informal entry into work of this type via Zhe Vietnam e=.er-
gency be formalized under certain conditions; should a Presidential isues
focus be investigated again or firmly rejected, etc. Dr. Herzfeld confirms
the general absence of that sort of policy debate and makes the highly
relevant cbservation that "every DDR&E [in the period under study] has
inhibited discussion of ARPA's future." It is as if ARPA over the ¾er_s
was doomed to fulfill the stereotype of the tenorary, stand-by, quickz
reaction agency a.alable to .perform "conveniences." The Agency prob..bly
deserves better, bearing in mind that one of the costs of a more explicit
consideration of its long-term role and program could be termination.
Curiously the'absence of institutional discussion of ARPA at high
levels has been mirrored in the Agency itself, with the possible exception
of late 1958-1959 when Roy Johnson's Policy and Planning Division developed
the controversial long-range plan for outer space research and development.
Other than that exercise ARPA itself has done remarkably little long-range
thinking or advance planning as to what it should be doing. The phrase
"advance planning" is somewhat inexact: we do not ,mean day-to-day planning,
planning how to conduct an approved program, annu budget planning, routine
for-form's-sake xtrapolatibn of current program trends for the n:_xt five
years, etc. Above a11, use of. the phrase does not connote erectirE some new
bureaucratic obstruction that in al I likelihood would serve to stifle the
flow of ideas from program directors, contractors, cnsultants, etc., er
compromise those elements of the ARPA style most unique to it, e.g., pr -
viding support to controversial ideas emerging from unexpected sources,
often on an accelerated basis. What "advance planning" is intended to
sggest here is an issue touched on by virtually all our key respondents,
'namely, thktng beyond mmediate program obligations to consider what
ARPA houd be preparing to do or cease doing, a couple of years or more
hence.
Roy Johnson's excursion into these waters failed. The' billion doll.-zr
annual estimates for a long-range space exploration program, while fair,
were considered absurd at the time. The shock was so severe that both
ARPA and "forward planning" were discredited. Johnson's Policy and Planning
ß Division tended.to concentrate on space policy issues and setting up pro-
grams and offices for the rft of new assignments that were ade in late
1959 and 1960-61. The "planning" functien withered rapidly and the Policy
and Planning Division disappeared altogether under Ruina.
Dr. Ruina essentially did his own planning, more or less on a one-to-
one basis with the DDR&E. He did not believe adequate planning could be
done by a group of non-scientists nor did he think strong technical people
would devote th-melves exclusively to a planning function. The Ruina
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Richard J. Barber AssociateL Inc.
solution was to seek ideas from good people, namely, hs own and outsiders
such as PSAC: [ 50]
Get better people. Nothing beats better people,
who re also connected with and listen to nd
have a kind of peer relationship with better
people.
Sprol fell squarely in the Ruina mold. He 'tended to use his program
directors as a de facto planning group, notably Rabinowitz, Frosch and
Herzfeld. He never felt the need for a separate central planning staff
and indeed considered that one would be "redundnt, possibly even embar-
rassing, if they came up with some report I didn't want to do anything with."
[51] Herzfeld's "number one Job" for Sproull precisely as to look at
problems from the perspective of the Secretay e.g., "what is it that is
spoiling [the Secretary's] breakfast this morning?" ccording to Sproul!,
D. Herzfeld had a "maryelias capcit¾" for plannin$ things in the context
of the Secretar's concerns. Reflecting the ARPA tendency to "internalize"
management functions, Herzfeld as AP3A's planning staff and was able to
free people from DEFENDER on an ad hoc basis. to explore new ideas in a
moment's notice. By reaching out to the stafF, JASON, visiting contractors,
IDA, etc., Spro,%l felt that ARPA could adequately cover future planning,
even in program areas not assigned to ARPA. It as an informal approach and
he agrees that it conceivably might overlook some totally different area of
"if
technology where ARPA did not have ohe right people, but, so, I don't
think a planning staff would have saved it JARPAl from that."[52]
Lukasik's conception was much like Spr,11's. He doubted the wisdom
of having a planning group, prtic%lrly one that might develop momentum
for ideas of its own at odds with his own. Accordingly his Technology
As.essments office was kept very l key and used prettily to test and
de'elop his ideas. He also drew on outside sources such as RAND and JASON.
Basically, L,asik, like Ruina and Rechtin, did is own planning.
The vast majority of Directors, then, preferred to institutionalize
planning in themselves or in key individuals in the Agency engaged for the
most part in managing substantive, ongoing programs. Most of the Directors
averaged about two years in office and a very good case can be made that
future planning cld hardly be expected to be top priority in their eyes.
Moreover the early Directors were part of an era during which it was pre-
sumed that, normy, assignments would flow toARPA, from the White House,
the Secretsay or the DDRE. The special connection with higher authority
was taken for granted. It was noted prev_ously that the Directors also
tended to feel reticent, as relative "short-timers," about committing their
successors in advance. Betts, Ruina, and Sproul1 clearlysaw themselves
as transients, nd Herzfeld and Rechtin probably did too. Luksik alone
had a long tenure, but he devoted his energies more to internal restruc-
turing and adjustments in current Agency relationships than to long-term
thinking about the future.
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Richard Y. Barber Associates. Inc.
Two of the past Directors take exception to the position of the major-
ity, although both handled this issue "on the Job" much as the others did.
General Betts believes that ARPA has paid a significant pz'ice for its rela-
tive lack of attantion to consideration of the future:[53]
ß I think that's the fundamental problem that ARPA
hd all along .... It as a continuing problem for
the Director of ARPA. I don't remember being ter-
ribly frustrated by that problem when I was there,
but I was only there a year and I guess I never
relly got to the point where I was worried about
what the next program was that we [ARPA] should be
pursuing.
Dr. Herzfeld smlarly believes that this ise has been "handled badly"
in ARPA. He, like .11ARPA Directors, references the constant time pres-
sure facing ARPA's leadership. A Director has to make a special effort to
push helf and %he organizstion hard, if there is to be any looking ahead.
He also used organizations such RAhrD sad IDA as substitutes, but outsiders,
no matter how able and experienced, tend to lack the feel or touch required
to sense how best to make a particular agency relate properly to the dymam-
ics of the highest level authorities and issues within a large department.
As a practicalmatter, think pieces prepared by outsiders never proved to be
influential.
Herzfeld believes that ARPA needs a policy and planning-t]e unit. He
did not have one when he as Director, accepting the rationale that posi-
tions could not be spared. If he were to "do it again," he would restruc-
ture the organization to include such a unit, with three to five people
and a substantial budget, and endow it with influence within the Agency. J54]
Resolution of this question is not a function of tis study. The. fact
that seriou considerations of ARPA's future has so rarely been addressed
(in othe than the "survival" crunches that oc.ored during the late. John-
rson early Betts, late Herzfeld, Framken, Rechtin, and erly Lukasik periods)
r-m-ins one of the most intriguing aspects of the Agency's history.
raluating What the Agency Has Done. ARPA plrming in the more re-
stricted, conventional sense of considering whether to discontinue, expand
or moddfy existing progrm sud projects is an issue that surfaces in vir-
tually every phase of the Agency's lifetime. Indeed the greatest' self-
criticism that emer.es from ARPA staff at levels below that of the Director
and Deputy Director ,(but including some of them) is that ARPA has often --
b-_en yery efficient at spending money, but weak at knowin in detail what
%t produced: Reference is made to vo_rmes of unread research reports an
llac k of ,lity control. With a small staff, it is clear that ARPA pro-
'fessionals cannot read every paper that their millions of dollars buy. The
I ARPA agent is supposed to do so, and may, but agent performance is a mixed
bag.
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Ric,':ard J, Barber Associates, Inc.
Dr. Ruina took the position that significant findings always filtered
through, were recognized as such and were promptly exploited, whereas
"those things that weren't read, we :mew weren't too important."[55] But
he recalled that there were no formal evaluation procedures and considered
this problem inherent in the short tours of Directors. Few Directors ever
saw ar¾thing that they started through to completion. The ss:e was true of
many program managers, at least in'the 1960's. There was plenty of oppor-
tunity for unevaluated work to slip through. k
This lack of a formal evaluaticn system puts a premium on having very
high qa]ity staff: to do adequate informal or formal evaluations, weed
out marginal or poor work and prevent continued funding of those who do
such work. ARPA has had some tendency to overlook work of rginal quality
and to continue funding the group in question in hopes that it will do
better later, or because it is doing well in some other unrelated ARPA pro-
gram, or because of toleration (sometimes uncritical) of "failure" as a
price of doing R&D, or because the program manager is under presure to
reduce his unobligated balance or else lose the money (and the easiest way
.to do that is to add funds to an existing contract.). For all its success
in being flexible, locating new talent to support, and transferring pro-
grams, AEPA has supported many ideas, individ_-!s and groups for long
periods of t'ime. Today's generation of program officers sometines do not
realize that they are supporting people or ideas that date back to the late
1950's or early 1960's. The following view expressed by a program _uager
in the late 1960's is typical of r-mrks mde by staff who served in almost
11 of ARPA's phases:J56]
When I arrived, the [deleted] part of the program
was already established, and the contracts in it
had their own sets of relationships, and it's hard
to -t-zrn people around. Dr. [deleted] had a con-
sumer for some of his material [in another DOD
office] and he would relate to them and was impos-
sible to reorient. Hence this .part of the program
was out of control because of the powerfttl _ntel-
lectual personalities involved. While I had a
tendency to want to cut people off, I realized that
* Perhaps the outstanding example of ARPA casalness in this regard iG a
crash effort undertaken in the early 19?O's to'evaluate -11 the transferred
DEFENDER programs retrospectively, in response to concerns about a Congres-
sional inquiry. The over-S1 billion spent on DEFENDER was categorized
and assessed as to percentage of funds "well-spent" on various projects,
in a crash two-day period, using a combined internal staff and contractor
effort. The evaluation was essentially intuitive, as there was no file
of structured program assessments available for use.
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Richard .t. œarber Assocttcs. Inc.
it was easier just to fund new things and leave the
old alone. I didn't want to mke waves because I
had to go back to the [relevnt university/industry
environment where reses-rch of t:is type ws done].
ALl of this worked ll right during periods of
adequate funding, but when the pie shrunk the
established old people got a ls.rger and larger
shs.re. It is an unfortunate reality that people
have Just continued to be funded until they
got in trouble. It's a built-in problem.
As these r-mrks suggest, some contractors simply "outlast" their ARPA
monitors and manage to keep things going in a relatively unstructured way
because of the inevitable uncertainties and critical time lapses caused by
rapid personnel turnover and other bureaucratic pressures.
The Behavioral Sciences program provides n example, by no means unique,
of the linkage between inadequate evaluation procedures and future planning.
One program manager in that office; regarded as innovative by his peers,
felt very handicapped by +.he lack of an adequate in-house monitorring capa-
bility. His Service agents did a routine Job at best, meaning that there
actually ws very little feedback on reses-rch ql ity frxm them. When the
program had been started, long before his arrival, the idea ws to estab-
lish centers of excellence or "pockets" of excellence, gave th_m two to
five years to perform and then: (1) evs_luate the significance of the work,
(2) determine whether there were productive potential interrelations, (3)
separate the sheep from the goats, and (4) reformulate .or reshape the
program. The office directors who hmi this focus in mind, however, were
twice or thrice removed by the time such n evaluation should have been
undertaken. Their successors' attention ws devoted elsewhere, reflecting
perhaps the tone of the remarks in the quotation above, namely, it is easier
(and more fun) to start new things than to evaluate or undo the old. At the
broader level, th_re never seemed to be time to do an overall evaluation of
behaviors.1 sciences resultss to consider the value of the "centers," etc.,
and reconstruct new directions for the future. Of course, planning for the
Behavioral Sciences program rapidly became subject to serious distortion
from the bitter political battles over defense relevance and the program's
keynote, of necessity, became "what can be saved" and what types of work
s.re "safe" politically, rather than what might we wish to drop, modify or
expand based on technical results exclusively. The point, however, is that
historically ARPA has been relatively weak at dropping older work and strong
in starting new work, in 'large part because the office directors give prior-
ity to the latter activity.
Dr. Spro11 reacts hotly to criticism of inadequate evaluation. He
believes that there ws sufficient evaluation during his tenure, without
over-management. He deeply believed that in the mid-1960's period that
he knew well -- when so many ARPA successes materialized -- ARPA project
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Richard Y. Barber Associates, Inc.
and program managers as a rule knew far more about the substance of the
work they were supporting, and abcut the substance of work in their fields
genenlly, than their counterparts in any other federal agency. Indeed
it was pr'm-ily because of that characteristic that he regarded ARPA as
strong sd unique. [57]
ARPA had that strength ... and I hope to 'hell it
had as much of that when I left as it did when I
arrived. But that's for somebody else to decide.
Ary ther is no question but what it ws a
very strong and unusual agency -- the word 'unique'
is overused -- but I think it truly was unique.
An ARPA could be reduced to an ordinary, stale b,zreaucratic agency if it
was forced to ilstall detailed evaluation and planning systems. Indeed
some critics have said as much.about ARPA in its lster yes.rs as layers of
paperwork have been added, e.g., by the DOD Pls.uning, Programming and Bud-
geting System (PPBS), increased Congressione_l dends. for budgetary detail,
!.nsfield Amendment requirements, and the Rechtin/Lmtkasik emphasis on re-
cording and justifying relevance transfer, etc.* Be that as it my, by
the end of the period under re_ew, Dr. Lk_sik felt that ARPA had not yet
mastered the art oœ "concluding" its progrsE, that is' more or less form-
11y evaluating and recordir what happened.. GAO has also criticized ARPA
for failing to document the transfer of ARPA projects to the Services and
determining their success or failure after transfer exercises, paperwork
which probably would not contribute to a more ef'fective ARPA in the slightest.
But a more rigorous review of the technical output of progr probably
would. To the az.ent that relevance and transfer, z&ong with smaller bud-
gets, do make it easier to track work and to impose the discipline required
for adequate evaluation, this problem may be on the way to resolution. The
point, however, i that ARPA professionals strongly predisposed to the ARPA
idea are inclined to mention inadequate technical evaluation, leading to
wasteftul support of contractors, as one of the most vexing internal ARPA
management deficiencies.
Presenting ARPA's Record
Intensive review of ARPA's lifetime reveals that the Agency has rather
consistently downplayed what it does. Given nl the concern about "why ARPA?"
* We have not adressed the advent of PPBS during the McNamara regime.
Management and technical people alike in ARPA found it to be a worthless
nmhers game. At best it was a scheme for rationalizing PD decisions
after the fact rather than contributing to the decision-making. At worst
it inculcated a habit of lying or faking because normally it was impos-
sible to predict results from resesrch and exploratory development pro-
grams, and how they were going to be used, for five years into the future.
The exercise was regarded as foolish; the added workload on a sm11 agency
like ARPA was consequential.
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Richard 7. Barber Associates. Inc.
questioning, it is remarkable that so little has been done to make clear
to its critics and potential supporters what it has accomplished. We are
not speaking here of crass public relations, the glossy "P.R." put out by
information office flaks; indeed, AP3A has no such office. The issue is
whether ARPA has given an adequate accounting of itself to those in authority
nd the record suggests that it has not. Consequently when difficulties
arise, e.g., the AGILE problenm with the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Con-
gress, etc., there often is an inadequate background of known succecses
aainst which to weigh them.
In the Roy Johnson period, .%RPAwas hardly a ws_ltflower when it came
to publicity and visibility. The Services bitter/' resented ARPA gettin S
credit for soace projects and they constantly tried to ublicize their
nvolvement As discussed in the early chapters of this report, _ARPA ws
der Presidential order to insure that the Services did not laster thei
ogos litero/_ly and finrative%y,. on the space roSects. This non-technic-I
responsibility greatly compounded ARPA's difficulties with the Services.
When the Johnson era ended and York sentenced ARPA to what then seemed to
be oblivion, this situation changed dramatically: "After Roy, the matter
" 8 "low
of ARPA claimir credit for anything becme a curse word. [5 ] The
key" ARPA from a public visibility standpoint became almost an article of
faith for the Agency from then on.
As note d previously, ARPA rarely sought to make clear who the sources
of ts early assignments were. Spce, b,llistic missile defense, materials
research, propellent chemistry, nd nuclear test detection all traced back
to -_xplicit White House requests or endorsements. ARPA said little or
nothing about that legacy, except in the broadest generalizations. Roy
Johnson's disdain for the Killfan group and faith in his own sanding with
the Secretary may explain his failure to do so. But long after Johnson
left, ARPA consistently failed to document for the succession of Senators,
Congressmen, Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of Defense, Budget Bureau
Directors, etc., that the work it as doing was deemed important at the
White House, or in some instances, to the Secretes-y, i.e., that the work
had acls. im to national importance. The .DDRAE's, more or less in line
with their low key acknowledgment of ARPA, likewise had relatively little
to say about it, what it ws doing, or how significant its assignments may
have been. hey s.lmost never volunteered to respond to "why ARPA?" ques-
tions, .mltbough logically the "why" of ARPA's existence and the structure
of its assigned workload world properly have been handled at that level.*
General Betts recognized that York very much wanted to moe ARPA out
of the spotlight in order to reduce USAF-NfœA-ARPA bickering over space.
Betts was low key in temperament by nature and preferred to deal with the
Agency's aclustment problems in as sheltered an environment as possible.
:na and Sproull were not noted for horn-tooting. Ruina considers this
* This changed for a time when Dr. Foster was in process of recasting
ARPA and reasserting DDR&E control over it.
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Richard Y.
Barber Associates, Inc.
attitude "a failing in every job I've had ... I've played public relations
much too low key."[59] In those days ARPA seemed content to keep the DDR&E
happy and console itself with the fact that it knew that it was doing a
first rate Job. There was also a certain feeling that the less Congress
and the Services Pmew, the less friction would result and accordingly ARPA
would create fewer troubles for itself and the DDPE. ts research result
.in other words t .would peak or themselves. This smtrable rationalization
resulted in a self-sp.un ]rotective cocoon based on the belief that ARPA
should lie low do mood thins and eventually all the right people would
f_ind out aboAt them.f It proved to be short-sighted policy. Many Outsiderz
interpreted this outlook sLmply as undue arrogance and it may actunl]y have
reinforced the critics' propensity to find fault.
An excellent example of ARPA hiding lbs light under a basket is its
research related to penetration aids. Many in ARPA consider it a major
contribution to the national defense. Even discounting for the initial
high classification and lmted access nature of the work, ARPA went out
of its ray to say very little about it. The following exchange is an
excellent example of the customary ARPA approach: [60]
A: I don"t think that pen aids officially identified
as such was ever more than 20 per cent of the
DEFENDER budget. On the other hand, in y n
personal view, which I shared with few people at
the time, the real x-aison d'etre for the reentry
program was pen aids. Therefore the raison
d'etr for about hn] of the DEFEND'.. program was
pen aids. Therefore, I saw it ostly as a pen'
aids exercise at the end.. Now, ! $hred this view
with Spro11, with Ruina,with the DDR&E's, and
with McNamara. I suggested it in Congressional
hearings, but alwaya in a classified session.
?
Q: But not stated] flat out?
A.'
Q:
Not relly flat out. But people who understood,
understood immediately. They said, 'yeah, isn't
it great we happen to have all the right stuff in
place.' I said, 'yes, it's great.' It ras a lucky
accident. To a large extent, it was a lucraCci-
dnt. It was turned into -- that. accident. was
worked very hard -- it turned into a very strong
policy.
We have been right, more or less, in inferring that
pen aids probably became the dominant justification
for continuing PRESS?
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
A:
Absolutely, because while I thought it was very
important to find out the infinite details of the
reentry physics in order to get a laboratory, if
you will, discrimination capability, I had little
confidence ... that that could be fielded very
effectively, for a lot of reasons .... On the other
hand, I was absolutely sure that that also -l_owed
me to understand what the other fellow would have
to do to counter our attack, and boy that was worth
every penny spent there.
The Presidential interest in this subject, or that of the Secretary and
the DDR&E, and their explicit decision to use AKPA in this area received
scant attention, much less the work itself. It is important to lay such
groundwork. "Presidential issues" do not recur regularly, but if one is
to have an agency available to cope with them there h-s to be recognition
in the "down times" that the agency h&s performed well. ARPA did not do
a good job of sustaining that understanding, nor did successive Secrets-ties
and DDR&E' s.
The "low profile" ARPA of the early 1970's crries on this policy.
With direct trmsfer of projects rated so highly, ARPA also believes that
it must be very careful to minimize the NIH (not invented here) factor
which can iruhibit Service acceptance of ARPA results. Self-effacement is
considered essential to achieving that objective. ARPA's gradml addition
of intelligence-related projects reinforces this policy. Indeed ARPA has
consistently indulged a propensity to engage in intelligence-related
from the early work on reconnaissance satellites to the present day. Such
work serves as sort of a surrogate for "Presidential issues" because the
aura of secrecy involved implies significance; often comes wih a built-in
user and relevance justification; minimizes review requirements; and pro-
vides an additional rationale for keeping a "low profile." On the other
hand, ARPA has consistently had ,nagement problo with such work because
access lmttations do impede adequate peer review.
.r.n mry, in its attempt to survive, ARPA has simply made the "low
key" k%bitual. As Lukasik puts it: "I don't believe, deep down, then and
now, that ARPA should advertise."[61]
ReL%ted to the issue of establishing its record, we return to the
obser,ration that ARPA has not stimulated a broad following or clientele
in the scie.ntific. communi.ty _despite its relutation for flexib.ility _
ingness to support far-out ideas,_comm!tment to long-term funding of
esearc_h (for a time,_and skill in managfng advanced research. ARP
ts loyal adherents in specific fields .e.g., advanced computer science
and technology and Substantia3. segments of the missile defense community,
but somehow these have tended to remain pockets of support rather than
becoming the basis for strong backing across the board. The early feuding
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Richard J. rber Associates, [nc.
X-3
with PSAC and the President's Science Adviser cost the Agency dearly,
creating a level of suspicion or disappointment that never as overcome.
Ruina helped immensely with his personml rapport with the scientific elite,
but no serious institutional linkage between it and ARPA emerged. Sproull
maintained the level of civility attained during the Ruina periods. Dr.
Ruina believes that ARPA failed to develop strong vocal backing amor many
of the resemrchers it supported because the money was filtered through
agents (who were there before ARPA and would be afterwards) and because
they regmrded'ARPA program managers, ARPA Directors, and perhaps ARPA it-
self as transitory. Thus rather than run the risk of offending the estab-
lished bureaucracy, they tended to avoid testimonials.
ARPA dertainly passed the stage of being transitory and it developed
a record of not being cavalier in its willingness to support good progrmms;
however, by that time the highly politicized issues that divided DOD and
y in the scientific community -- bnll_istic missile defense systems de-
ployment, the Vietnam War, arms control and disarmament, etc., plus the
great debate regmrding the role of science and technology in society
'gener.]ly -- were at work, and tended to swamp any attempts at unraveling
a factor as specific as ARPA. Suffice it to say that the advanced research
agency stilated by a scientific elite intent on modernizing and educating
the military somehow failed to forge or sustain a lasting link with its
progenitors of the scope and depth which might have been anticipated.
By and lsge, our respondents and the written record portray a most
inadequate performance in explaining ARPA. This is most unusual for an
agency with ARPA's budget levels. The complexity of much of its subject
matter undoubtedly complicates explanation. Greater exposure would like-
wise generate criticism and increase the vulnerability of some programs or
projects, lthough that se-m unlikely after the events of 1968 and subse-
quent yemrs. Indeed those events tend to confir the necessity of pre-
senting an accurate and balanced story.
It rmnins to be seen whether the early-1970's ARPA, based on rele-
vance, transfer,. small projects, and the low profile'will succeed in the
sense of communicating satis'actorily with the higher authorities to which
it t respond. The' Presidential issue assignments no longer exist. The
case sem to rest with the appeal of presenting an ARPA geared increas-
ingly to Service and to intelligence-related requirements.
THE READER'C CHOICE
In see_king a final assessment of ARPA over is various periods, the
observer is driven back to personal values and to highly subjective judg-.
merits concerning the Agency's influence on science and technology and on
the military establishment. Virtl ly every Director of ARPA and every
maor program manager has been both praised and damned. The flash and
melodrama of Roy Johnson's grand battles over space programs were to many
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Richard J. Barber Assocfiat½s. Inc.
resigndents the peak of the Agency's existence. To others, those days
were all motion and little substance. Dr. Ruina's emphasis on reses-rch
quality and broad support for technological advance was to many, espe-
cially ps.rticipants in that period, little short of heroic -- the essence
of what has made ARPA unique. To others, the Ruina approach was the height
of folly, lesding to severe questioning of the legitimacy of the ARPA mis-
sion and ultimately to near-cancellation of tile Agency; to these observers,
Rechtin's vigorous insistence on transfer and Defense relevance and Lusik's
development of a solid base of Service relationships resurrected the Agency
and endowed it with a viable role. To some, however, Dr. Herzfeld's proud
defense of a muscular, independent, free-wheeling ARPA, sensitive to the
major policy issues of the day, represented the last valiant attempt to
maintain n Agency that could "make a difference" in the Defense estab-
lishment. Yet to still another group the b-lnced Agency management and
spectacular technical project successes of Dr. Spro,ll's period were the
high point of the ARPA story.
On progu-a, as with Directors l the observer is given a wide range of
choice. Was VATA the hidden ingredient essential to the achievement of the
lmted and threshold testa ban agreements, or did its adjustments to the
Defense establishment compromise the nation's ability to conclude a truly
comprehensive treaty? Was AGILE a "glorious failure," a voice in the
wilderness wb_ich, if heard, could have moderated the tra:mas of Southeast
Asia; or was AGILE merely a symptom of Defense Department and ARPA confu-
sion, ineptitude and inability to recognize or admit that they could not
cope -ith a problem? Did ARPA's broad institutionel support for materials
science, inform_tion processing technology, seismology, and other fields
fundamentally strengthen the nation's scientific infrastructture, or did it
simply postpone the evolution of a rational Federal progr:n of support to
science? Was DEFENDER at the core of the development of modern strategic
offensive and defensive technology, or was i an expend-ire luxury providing
unnecessary conffrmation of the obvious and a scientific and technological
hobby shop for developments never to be deployed9. The list could be con-
tinue4 indefinitely.
What is in the end mcctunique about ARPA, taking an historicel view,
is that there is no other technolosy-oriented agency in Washington to match
_ it in the prebentiodsness of its claims the exposure of its work to
serious criticism and the colorfulness of its style.
The maxm43t view of ARPA credits the genc¾ with settin the course
for the evolution of U, S. spa? technology strategic defensive technology?
strategic offsnsive tecboloaw and the future directions of tactical tech-
nology andspossibly navalwarfare. In other words, outspoken ARPA advocates
sometimes claim that the Agency has established the key technological param-
eters for the Defense Depsrtment and NASA. Iq. ddition the maz!mst view
sires the Agency credit for establishin the-cuttiNg edge of material '
science , computer science radar technology. seismology and geophysics,.
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Richard J. Barber Associates, Inc.
laser technology quantitative politGal science:, and othe. r a.reas:_plus_
intervening at crucial times in aspects of radio astronomy energy con-
-Vrsi'oh; propellant chemistry, 'climatology, atmospheric physics, and many
other fields.
The critics, on the other hand, can see expensive monuments to failure
or to irrelewuuce al1 over the landscape: the giant ILLIAC IV computer, -
the. sprawling LASA array in Montana, the Arecibo dish, many and varied
radars (e.g., PINJSHION), an abandoned SATU1LN clustered rocket technology,
indirectly a non-operational Safeguard B) installation, and many others.
This is not to mention the many abandoned progrm, projects and endless
study efforts not necessarily resulting in obvio hardware or results,
ranging from the counterinsurgency field units, through far-fetched systems
and sensitivity studies to aborted university-industry materials "coupling"
programs.
As to colorfulness, there is no other agency that could'match a reper-
toire of investigations including a nuclear bomh-oropelled rocket, __a
"mechanical elephant," plans to orbit millions of bee-bees for BMD purposes,
mau-comp uter communications via brain waves, laser and charged particle.
eapons., sd a multi-million dollar program old throuEh a, diaKram of a
Greek temple:..L And these are not necessarily even the most exotic entries
in ;.PJøA's book of memorabilia. This is an Agency which has designed both
super-acceleration rockets and balloons tied to a cable. It is also no
._surpr.e to find that Evel Knievel's ateam-propeLled rocke motorcycle was
_d..esign.:d b an ARPA alumnus.
In the end: the reader is left to search for his own net assessment .
of ARPA's ulttmate 'alue, sorting amongst the triumphs, failures, disap-
pointments, and the flaky according to his own standards and expectations.
For our part, it does not appear possible to measure conclusively ARPA's
influence on the Defense establishment and broad areas of science and tech-
nology. The far more exciting proposition is to consider what such an'
institution might properly be charged to do in the future. If there is
a case for an ARPA, it must be because those in authority conclude that
the nation and the Department of Defense feel the zeed, paraphrasing Ruina's
words, for a place "that's for fun not to make a living." -------'
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3.
4.
5.
6.
%/10.
11.
12.
13.
1H.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
CHAPTER X: FOOTNOTES
Discumsion with Dr. E. Rechtin, De_eber 7, 1974.
Discus.ion with Dr. H. F. York, April 4, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion with Dr.. R. L. SproutS1, May 29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. H. F. York, April 4, 1975.
Discussion with Brig. Gen. C. A. Young, Jr., June ll, 1974. Col. Dent
Lay (discussion, June 17, 1975) is very strong on this point.
ß Discussion with Dr. R. L. Spro1]l, May 29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. S. J. Lukasik, y 28-29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. R. Holbrook, July lO, 1975.
Unattributed study interview..
Discussion with Dr. S. J. Lukasik, May 28-29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. R. L. Spro11, y 29, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion with Dr. E. Rechtin, July 7, 1975.
Discussion, with Dr. J.P. Ruina, June 26, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J. Foster, Jr., July 9, 1975.
Ibid. '
Discussion with Dr. R. A. Frosch, October 31: 1975.
Ibid.
Discussio n with Dr. R. L. Spro21, ."my 29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J. Foster, Jr., July 9, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. R. L. Spro,11, May 29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. S. J. Lukasik, May 28-29, 197[.
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25.
26.
28.
29.
BO.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
0.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
Richard J. Barber Asa'ociates. Inc.
Letter from Dr. J. R. Killian, Jr. to Le:. W. Huff, June 4, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J.P. Ruina, June 26, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion with Dr. C. M. Herzfeld, September 17, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion -ith Dr. R. L. Spro:11, May 29, 1975.
'Vincent Davis, The Politics of Innovation: Ptterns in Navy Cases,,
Monograph Series in WorlS. Affairs, Vol. 4 (3), University of Denver,
1966-67.
Discussion with Dr.. E. Rechtin, December 7, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion with Dr. H. F. York, April 4, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. R. L. Spro1, May 29, 1975.
Ibid.
Discussion 'with Dr. J.P. Ruina, June 26, 1975..
Discussion with Dr. E. Rechtin, December 7, 1974.
-Discussion wTth Dr. E.. Rechtin, July 7, 1975.
Discussion %-lth Dr. S. J. Lukasik, May 28-29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J. Foster, Jr., July 9, 1975. '
Discussion with Dr. J. R. Killin,. Jr., May 8, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J.P. Ruina, June 26, 1975.
Discussion with Lt. Gert. A. W. Betts, April 7, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. C. M. Herzfeld, September'17, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J. Foster, Jr., July 9, 1975.
Ibid.
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Richard J. Barbgr Associates, Inc.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
Discussion with Dr. S. J. Lukasik,..My 28-29, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. L. Roberts, pril 23, 1974.
Discussion with Dr. J. Foster, Jr., July 9, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J.P. Ruins, June 26, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. R. L. $pro,l, May 29, 1975.
/bid.
Discussion with Lt. Gen. A. W. Betts, April 7, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. C. M. Herzfeld, September 17, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J.P. Ruins, June 27, 1975.
Unattributed study interview.
Discussion with IF. R. L. Sproull, May 29, 1975.
Discussion with W. H. Godel, June 18, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. J.P. Ruina, June 26, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. C. M. Herzfeld, May 7, 1975.
Discussion with Dr. S. J. Lukasik, May 28-29,._1975.
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
APPENDIX A
ARPA FJND! HISTORY
THROUGH FISCAL YEAR 1975
The following funding figures 'e based
on an internal budget table prepared by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
dated November 4, 1974.
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'iscal Amount
year Requested
1958 -
1959 520.0
16o ,455.o
161 215.o
1962 186.o
1963 257.0
1964 28o.o
1965 283.4
1966 277.0
1967 262.9
1968 254.1
169 244.7
1970 238.1
1971 222.7
1972 228.0
1973 226.7
1974 210.5
1975 216.8
A-1
ARPA FUDING HISTORY
(Dollars in Millions )
Richard Y. Barber
(NOA) Program
Amount Approved by Congressional
Appropriated Congress Cut
52 O. 0 52 O. O -0-
455.0 455.0 -0-
215.o 215.o -o-
186. O 186.0 -0-
250.o 250.0 - 7.0
274.6 274.6 - 5.4
278.1 278.Z - 5.3
274.3 274.3 - 2.7
255.9 c 262.9 c -0-
248.7 248.7 - 5.4
233.2 233.2 -11.5
2O9.0 2o9.0 -13.7
206.5 b 209.8 b -18.2
19.7 199.7 -27.0
194.2 194.2 -16.3
202.3 202.3 -14.5
Associates,
Program
at End of
Fiscal Year
31.5
485.8
340.9
259.6
?50.7
254.8
283.2
275.5
273.9
278.5
228.3
200.4 a
216.0
209O
199.7
194.3
.3
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Richard J. Barber Associates. Inc.
A-2 -
Footnotes to Treble:
Prior to Ff 1963 ARPA as not on a program year basis, and n33 uncommitted
Tands as of June 30 were included in following year program totals.
a $38.0 million transferred to Dept. of Army for ABMDA Progrs.m.
b In H 1972 'Congress approved a program $3.3 million in excess of NOA.
$3.3 million was obtained by reprogr-mmng F 1971 & prior year funds
into IT 172.
c in FY 1967 Congress approved a program $7.0 million in excess of NOA.
The $7.0 million was supposed to be a reimbursement from Dept. of A. F.
for Atlas boosters.
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