Enhancing Army S&t: Lessons from Project Hindsight Revisited

Publisher Marketing: The urge to maintain military superiority over potential adversaries has long been a driver of technological advancement. This interplay between defense strength and technology, so evident in the nature of America's military power, has for decades prompted U. S. defense planners to engage in technology forecasting. Analysis of emerging technologies was, and is, vital to making wise defense investments. While it is important to assess the needs and challenges of the future, understanding past military technological successes can be equally important to Army S&T investment and management. By studying past technology development for weapons systems, one can see what factors were important for success and apply these lessons to the management of S&T1 for future systems. This is an especially valuable exercise now, because in recent years there has been mounting pressure to transfer much of the execution of technical work away from the military's inhouse S&T laboratories to the private sector. Whatever the merits of such a move, it represents a significant change from past practices. It would be unwise to undertake any fundamental shifts without first understanding just what was successful about the way the Army S&T program has done business in past years. This book draws on a series of studies known as Project Hindsight Revisited conducted by the authors at the National Defense University (NDU) from 2004-2006. The Project Hindsight Revisited studies examined, in three reports, the development of four current weapons systems of the U. S. Army: the Abrams main battle tank,2 the Apache attack helicopter,3 the Stinger anti-aircraft missile,4 and the Javelin anti-tank missile. In exploring how these weapons systems were taken from conceptual design to full scale production, the studies brought to light crucial factors in their successful development. This book will pursue significant implications of the studies' findings. In exploring these findings, we hope to make a contribution to answering a question that is of the utmost importance to the Army leadership: how are S&T resources best used to advance the state-of-the-art capabilities of U. S. Army weapons systems? Contributor Bio:  Chait, Richard John W. Lyons is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP), National Defense University. He was previously director of the Army Research Laboratory and director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Dr. Lyons received his PhD from Washington University. He holds a BA from Harvard. Richard Chait is a Distinguished Research Fellow at CTNSP. He was previously Chief Scientist, Army Material Command, and Director, Army Research and Laboratory Management. Dr. Chait received his PhD in Solid State Science from Syracuse University and a BS degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. James J. Valdes is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy and the Army's Scientific Advisor for Biotechnology. Dr. Valdes received a PhD in neuroscience from Texas Christian University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes. He has published more than 120 papers in scientific journals and was a 2009 Presidential Rank Award winner. Contributor Bio:  Lyons, John fm.author_biographical_note1Contributor Bio:  Long, Duncan Duncan Long is an internationally recognized nonfiction and fiction writer of countless books and magazine articles on weapons and warfare. He is a best-selling Paladin author, with more than 20 firearms manuals in print.