Aircraft before Systems

The air force’s R&D methods trace back to the creation of aircraft in the first decade of the twentieth century. Because the army did not create an arsenal to develop aircraft, contractual relationships between the Army Air Corps and the aircraft industry governed military aircraft development. The Army Sig­nal Corps ordered its first aircraft from the Wright brothers in 1908 using an incentive contract that awarded higher fees for a higher-speed aircraft.2 Army evaluation and testing of aircraft began near the Wrights’ plant in Dayton, Ohio. These facilities soon grew into the Air Corps’s primary complex for air­craft development and testing.

While European powers rapidly developed aircraft for military purposes, the U. S. Army kept aircraft development a low priority. World War I broke American lethargy; in 1915, Congress created the National Advisory Com­mittee for Aeronautics (NACA) to promote aircraft research, evaluation, and development for the military and the aircraft industry. Engineers at NACA’s facility at Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia, concentrated on the testing and evaluation of aerodynamic structures and aircraft performance, using new wind-tunnel facilities to test fuselages, engine cowlings, propeller designs, and pilot-aircraft controllability. The United States mass-produced a few Euro­pean designs during the war but rapidly dismantled most of its capability after the war’s end.3

Between World War I and World War II, the Army Air Corps fostered air­craft development at a leisurely pace. Typically the engineering and procure­ment divisions at Wright Field in Dayton contracted with industry for aircraft, which officers, civilians, and operational commands then tested. Army Ord­nance and the Army Signal Corps developed the armaments and electronic gear that Wright Field personnel then integrated into the aircraft. Wright Field procured the components, then modified them as necessary to inte­grate them into the aircraft. Funding constraints were more important than schedule considerations, leading to a rather deliberate development and test­ing program commonly described as the ‘‘fly before you buy’’ concept.4

After the Air Corps released design specifications, contractors designed, built, and delivered a prototype known as the X-model to the Air Corps. The Air Corps tested this model, making recommendations for changes. After completion of X-model testing, the contractor made the recommended design changes, then developed the Y-model production prototype. The Air Corps then ran another series of tests and made further design recommendations. After approval of the Y-model, the contractor released the production draw­ings and built the required number of aircraft.5

From the mid-1920s, Wright Field assigned a project engineer from its Engineering Division to monitor all aircraft design and development. By the late 1930s, Wright Field assigned a project officer to each aircraft in develop­ment, along with the project engineer and a small supporting staff. For ex­ample, in the Bombardment Branch before World War II, Col. Donald Putt and five other officers managed six aircraft projects with the assistance of a few secretaries and Wright Field engineers assigned to tasks as needed. Be-

‘‘Fly before you buy’’ sequential development, typical of the Army Air Corps in the 1920s and 1930s. Adapted from Benjamin N. Bellis, L/Col USAF Office DCS/Systems, ‘‘The Requirements for Configuration Management During Concurrency,” in AFSC Management Conference, Air Force Systems Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D. C., AFHRA Microfilm 26254, 5-24-2.

cause of the slow pace of development, the limited role of the government in testing and approving designs, and the fixed-price contracting method typi­cal before the war, this small staff sufficed. Project officers focused on aircraft safety and on finding design weaknesses.6

As war loomed in 1940, Congress legalized negotiated cost-plus-fixed-fee (CPFF) production contracts. With a flood of funding and a goal of build­ing 50,000 aircraft, the Air Corps immediately signed letters of intent to get design and production moving, with cost negotiations deferred until later. Under the prior competitive bidding process, procurement officers did not need to understand the financial details of a manufacturers’ bid, because the manufacturer — not the government-lost money if it underbid. However, under CPFF arrangements, cost overruns were the government’s problem. The Air Corps Procurement Branch grew rapidly to collect information and negotiate with contractors to assess the validity of cost charges and determine a fair profit.7

Unless Congress extended the authority to negotiate contracts after the war, the military’s capability to control industry and influence scientists and their new technologies would dramatically decrease. Fortunately for the mili­tary, the Procurement Act of 1947 extended the military’s wartime authority and tools, including the formerly controversial negotiated contract mecha­nism, into peacetime.

The importance of the 1947 act should not be underestimated, for it per­petuated government use of CPFF contracts. This had several significant rami­fications. First, the CPFF contract reduced risk for industry. Where high risk was inherent, as it was in R&D, this drew profit-making corporations and uni­versities into government-run activities. Second, to reduce government risk, CPFF contracts required a government bureaucracy sufficient to monitor con­tractors. Third, CPFF contracts turned attention from cost concerns to tech­nical issues. This “performance first’’ attitude led to higher costs but also to a faster pace of technical innovation and occasionally to radical technologi­cal change. Last, the CPFF contract provided some military officers with the means to promote technological innovation along with their own careers.8

Negotiated contracts formed the basis for Cold War contractual relation­ships between government, industry, and academia. Government officials be­came both partners and controllers of the aircraft industry in a way unimag­ined before the war, with expanded procurement organizations that made the federal government a formidable negotiator. To fully exploit their extended authority to create new weapons, however, the Army Air Forces would also have to solidify its relationships with scientists and engineers.